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“Debate me, coward.” · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: On today's very packed pod, we've got two interviews for you.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Dan talks to Manny Garcia and Cliff Walker, the leaders
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: of the Texas Democratic Party. about what it will take
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: to turn the state blue. Tommy talks to Ben Rhodes
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: about his brand new Crooked Media podcast, Missing America. And
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: before all that, Dan and I will break down Tuesday's
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: election results, Joe Biden's big new ad buy, and the
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: debate over the presidential debates. But first, a few quick
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: housekeeping notes. Check out this week's Pod Save the World,
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: where Tommy and Ben talk about the horrifying explosions in Beirut,
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: the criticism of VP hopeful Congresswoman Karen Bass's views on Cuba,
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: and much more. If you're around later today at 7 p.m. Eastern,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: 4 p.m. Pacific, Vote Save America is hosting a special
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: virtual screening of Good Trouble, the new documentary about John
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Lewis's life, along with a panel discussion about voting rights
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: featuring Crooked Media's own political director, Shaniqua McClendon, and me.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: $ 5 from each ticket will go towards getting people out
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: to vote in the fall. So get your tickets at crooked.com
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: slash good trouble. Also, check out the new episode of
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Campaign Experts React with Dan and Crooked's chief content officer,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Tanya Somanator. it's hard to get Tanya to do anything public.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: She is brilliant, funny. It is a fantastic episode. I'm
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: so glad she did it.
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: She was very hardest get. We have had, we have
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: had this whole time. I basically had to beg her, uh,
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: to get her to do it. She finally agreed. But
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: before we move on to anything else, Hey, how you
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: doing dad?
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: Oh, I'm, I'm good. I'm good. We are, um, Charlie
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: is just a wonderful baby. Emily is completely crushing it. And, um,
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: And we have Em's mom here to help us for
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: the month, which has been amazing. Marnie is here. So
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: we're all quarantined in our house and just doing fantastic.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: So I keep saying so far so good because I'm
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: waiting for like, you know, some bout of too much
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: crying or not sleeping or whatever else. But so far,
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: so good.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: That's good. Way to knock on wood for that. You
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: should know, you know this, our listeners do not, that
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: every Thursday when I go do the podcast, When I
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: leave the house, go to my office, which is in
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: my garage. Kyla says, good luck on your podcast. Are
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: you going to talk to John? Will you see Leo?
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: And this morning she said, will you see baby Charlie
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: and Emily? So that's the best.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: Kyla should jump in and guest host one of these.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: Also, also this morning while I was sitting next to her,
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: while she was sitting on an Elmo shaped potty, she said,
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: We must vote for Joe Biden so we have a
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: new president, which is something no one's ever taught her.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: She is just picking these things up in the ether.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: I can't believe you weren't going to bring up the
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: video that you and Holly sent me and Emily last
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: night where she said, let's win North Carolina.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we have to win North Carolina. Holly's been teaching
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: her that for months. It will probably have some sort
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: of social media debut at some point when we have
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: appropriate gear.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: Elijah right now is just making the meme.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: That's right. I'm going to coordinate with a Michael Bay
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: of political videos, Elijah Cohn.
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: So catch the latest episode of Campaign Experts React on YouTube.com
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: slash Crooked Media. And we're having a big sale at
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: the Crooked merch store up to 70% off. So go
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: to Crooked.com slash store. Biggest sale of the year.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: All right, Dan.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: Let's start with some good news for once. We had
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: another round of primary elections this week, and one of
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: the biggest headlines of the night came out of pretty
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: red Missouri, where over the opposition of Republican politicians, voters
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: approved a measure to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: Act by 53 to 47 percent, which means that another 230,000
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: Americans will now have health insurance. Missouri is now the
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: sixth state to expand its Medicaid by ballot initiative, joining Idaho, Utah, Nebraska, Oklahoma,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: in Maine. And a special shout out here to the
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: Fairness Project, which is a pretty small organization that has
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: been absolutely heroic in getting these Medicaid initiatives on the ballot. Dan,
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: what is the success of these Medicaid expansion efforts in
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: mostly red states, where statewide Democratic candidates are mostly losing,
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: say about the politics of health care?
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: Well, it says that Republicans made a decision 10 years
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: ago that they were going to oppose all things related
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: to Obamacare. which was one of the most morally indefensible
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: decisions in recent American history. Thousands and thousands of people
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: have been sick and not gotten coverage because of it.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: People have died because they've had access to coverage in
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: these states like Missouri that have refused to expand Medicaid.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: And this also shows that they've been on the wrong
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: side of the politics the whole time, right? Which is people,
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: even in red states, want access to quality, affordable healthcare
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: and are willing to vote for that. And so all
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: of this has been such a gigantic, stupid Fox News-fueled
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: waste of time. We could have been helping people for
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: a decade. And it's just the stubbornness of Republicans have
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: put us in this terrible position. And they continue to
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: be on the wrong side of the issue. And maybe
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: we have to win a ballot initiative in every available
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: state to get them on the right side.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: I think that's right. I also think it says something
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: about how not just the politics of healthcare have changed,
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: but the politics around Medicaid as a program. Medicaid is
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: a program for low-income Americans, um, for parents with children
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: who have disabilities. And it has often been thought of
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: politically because it's a program that targets low income Americans.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: Maybe it is not as broadly popular as a program
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: like Medicare, which helps seniors across all income groups. And
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: the fact is Medicaid, as we have seen since the
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: affordable care act passed and in all of these ballot
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: initiatives is extraordinarily popular across party lines, across income lines.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: Like it is not the traditional safety net program for
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: low income Americans that, you know, even some moderate Democrats
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: back in the 90s would say, oh, you have to
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: be careful about, you know, championing programs for the poor.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: It's just it's very, very popular. And it's interesting. Dave
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: Wasserman of the Cook Political Report made an interesting observation
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: about how this expansion passed in rural Missouri. Medicaid did
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: only slightly better than Claire McCaskill did in her 2018
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: Senate race. Where the ballot initiative made huge gains over
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: McCaskill's race was the middle and upper income suburbs of St.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: Louis and Kansas City. What's your explanation for that? What
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: do you think happened there?
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: Well, I think it shows that the suburban realignment post-2016
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: is about something bigger than Trump. The election of Trump
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: may have sparked that, but this was a policy-related ballot initiative.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: This was not framed in the way to stick it
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: to Trump. This was not about voting for a Democratic
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: House to check Trump or to vote for Joe Biden
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: against Trump. This was about moving a group of voters,
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: many of whom supported Mitt Romney in 2012. to vote
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: for a progressive policy issue on healthcare. And I think
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: it bodes very well for the long-term realignment in American politics. Now,
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: it'll be incumbent upon Joe Biden and the Democrats if
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: they win to continue to hold that group of people
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: over time. But seeing a vote like this on something
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: that is unrelated to Trump shows that Trump started the realignment,
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: but it's not entirely about him.
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: I also think it shows that a coalition... A Democratic
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: coalition that has a disproportionate number of college-educated, increasingly more
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: well-off individuals within that coalition. I think people both, I've
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: seen people on the left and I've seen more centrist Democrats,
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: both assume that will mean that that coalition will not
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: be for sort of economically progressive policies. That maybe that
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: is a more socially and culturally liberal coalition that but
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: that on economics, maybe because these voters are more educated
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: and specifically more well-off, higher income, that they will want
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: more like centrist economics or centrist, you know, fiscal conservatism
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: matched with social and cultural liberalism. And we are just
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: not seeing that. And this Medicaid expansion is a perfect
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: example of that. This is a Medicaid expansion passed not
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: by rural politicians, Americans in Missouri who probably would economically
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: benefit more from the Medicaid expansion, but by wealthier suburbanites
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: who want to expand Medicaid for poorer Americans. And it
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: does go to show, as you said, sort of the
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: totality of the realignment that when you have a coalition
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: that's made up of more college-educated voters, they're still going
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: to go for more progressive economic policies, which I think
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: a lot of Democrats should take to heart.
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: The failure of the initiative to do better among the
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: pro-Trump rural areas is, I think, something we should note.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: Because as you point out, would massively benefit from this.
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: And we have been in a steady erosion among rural
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: voters since 2008, really. And I think there's several things
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: we have to think about there. If we want to
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: have political power nationally at all levels of the government,
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: we're going to have to figure out how to do better.
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: There had been this thought that it Obama in 2012
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: was going to be sort of the nadir of Democratic
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: support with rural voters because, you know, black guy from
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: South Side of Chicago, Barack Hussein Obama. Then Hillary Clinton
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: in 2016, misogyny at play there. Hillary Clinton sort of
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: a a, a often demonized figure, you know, among Republican
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: voters or conservative voters, that would be a problem. But
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: what if Joe Biden, old moderate white guy does, does
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: as poorly as Clinton and Obama there. And that, that
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: is something we have to worry about because those voters
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: have disproportionate political power in, in, the House of Representatives
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: and the Senate in particular. And we have to think
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: about how we're going to stop that slide and improve
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: our position as Democrats because we have the policies that
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: help them. And part of it is this separation. We
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: sometimes separate cultural issues and economic issues. And in a
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: world where people's most important identity is their political party,
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: every economic issue is a political issue and every political
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: issue is a cultural issue. So there's a lot of
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: long-term work to do that may end up not being
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: particularly consequential in this presidential election, or at least we hope,
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: but over the long term, we're going to have to
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: figure out how to do better there.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there's no universe where Democrats can write
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: off rural America. And, you know, this Medicaid expansion also shows,
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: you know, Medicaid did do slightly better than McCaskill in
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: these rural areas. So I think the key is to
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: hold the margins or cut down Republican margins in rural areas,
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: knowing that Democrats are probably not going to win those areas,
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: but they can hold their margin down and then rack
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: up big margins and in these growing suburbs that are
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: closer to the cities, and of course, in the cities themselves.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: All right, another big headline from Tuesday was also out
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: of Missouri, where Democratic Representative Lacey Clay, a 10-term incumbent
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: who represents St. Louis, was defeated in a primary upset
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: by a nurse and progressive activist, BLM activist named Cori Bush.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: In 2018, Bush lost to Clay by 20 points. On
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: Tuesday night, she beat him by three. If she goes
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: on to win the general, Cori Bush will be the
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: first black woman in history to represent Missouri on Capitol Hill. Dan,
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: Bush is the latest progressive challenger to knock off an
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: older longtime Democratic incumbent. We just saw Jamal Bowman beat
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: Elliot Engel. How did she pull this off and what
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: does it mean for the future of the party?
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: I think that it's very fitting that Cori Bush won
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: this race in the middle of the conversation about the
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: legacy of John Lewis. Because as you point out, Cori
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: Bush came to politics through activism. She got involved in
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: Missouri after Ferguson five or six years ago. And I
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: think Cori Bush is the future of the Democratic Party.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: And I say that not because of her policy positions,
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: although I think her progressive policy positions probably almost certainly
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: are the future. I say that because The next generation
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: of Democrats are going to be the people who've come
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: out of the wave of activism of the last five
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: or so years. It is Black Lives Matter activists. It
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: is the people who got involved after Trump won, whether
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: it's the Women's March or the grassroots groups that formed
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: up people who got engaged and have been protesting in
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: the streets. Certainly the kids in the Sunrise Movement who've
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: been fighting on climate change, the students fighting on gun violence,
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: and obviously, most recently, the people in the streets of
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: America after the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: and so many more is that the next generation of
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: the Democratic Party's activists, just like John Lewis went from
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: fighting for civil rights to serving in Congress, I think
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: we're going to see a lot more of this. And
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: I think it's a very, very encouraging sign.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: It's such an important point because, you know, I remember
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: when Jamal Bowman won, you know, we talked about part
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: of what fueled his victory, part of what fueled AOC's
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: victory before him and so many other progressive challengers is
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: the something more than just ideology and policy positions. And,
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: you know, some lefty folks on Twitter get annoyed when
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: you mention this because they think that we are diminishing
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: ideology in the wind, which I don't want to do
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: because the policy positions are incredibly important to all these
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: progressive challengers winning. But in this race, you know, Lacey
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: Clay ended up being for Medicare for all for the
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: green new deal. What Cori Bush represented though, was something
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: bigger than just policy. she was an activist on the
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: streets where he was not, and he was in Washington.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: She refused to take corporate money where he did, right?
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: So there is sort of an entire, there's something much
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: bigger going on in these races than just ideology. It
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: is an old versus young divide here. It is inside
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: versus outside Washington. And in Cori Bush's case, it's someone
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: who has sort of been on the front lines of
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: this new wave of activism and versus someone who's been
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: in Washington for a very long time. And there's just
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: sort of an authenticity. And a lot of these progressive challengers,
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: they don't go by the rules of Washington and how
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: they talk and carefully constructed talking points and the same
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: old consultants and all that kind of stuff. There's just
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: a newness to this generation of challengers that I think
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: for voters who are tired of what they're getting out
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: of Washington, some from both parties, this gives them an alternative.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: These challenges give them an alternative.
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: And the other reason I think this victor is particularly
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: significant is in the context of both Jamal Bowen and
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: Mondaire Jones's victories in New York last month, we made
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: the point that a lot of this is happening in
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: New York, right? And when you talk about Ayanna Pressley,
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: we are talking, in some cases, those races have been
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: about the districts changing demographically and politically under the feet
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: of long-term incumbents, right? Whether that's Capuano or Crowley or Engel.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: But here you have– and the districts are becoming more
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: demographically diverse and the candidates running represent those districts better
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: than the older establishment white candidates. This is different, right?
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: This is Missouri, not New York. This is a black
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: challenger against a black incumbent. It is, it's, I think
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: it speaks to all the things you said and they
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: are all tied together, right? It's like, it is not
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: only the policy, but you can't have, I think the
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: generational divide, the insider outsider divide, the activism ties without
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: the progressive policies, right? Like they're all part of a,
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: they are all representative of this next generation of Democrats.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: And they, like John Lewis, when he ran are coming
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: to power before the establishment is ready to invite them in.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: It also shows the success of a very specific strategy
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: that the Justice Democrats have undertaken. And Sean McElwee, our
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: friend from Data for Progress, has talked about this before.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: In 2018, you saw a number of progressive challengers in
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: primaries in more red or purple districts lose their primary challenge.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: And Sean makes the point that it is much tougher
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: to run a progressive challenger in a swing district because
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: then that person might actually not be the best fit
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: for the district when it comes to the general and
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: they might have a tougher time winning that district. And
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: the real strategy is Find longtime Democratic incumbents that have
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: been entrenched in Washington in safe blue districts where we
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: know that whoever wins the primary is going to win
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: the general anyway and run young progressive candidates of color
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: against these older establishment Democrats in these safe blue districts.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: And that way, you know, you're sort of guaranteed in
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: the general or not guaranteed, but pretty close to a
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: win anyway. And so now you have a bench of
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: very progressive Democrats in the House who can sort of
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: push legislation and push the debate. And you don't have
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: to worry as much about, you know, someone running in
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: a purple district or a red district. And then, you know,
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: maybe the progressive challenger wins and then they have a
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: tougher time in the general election against because the district
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: is just more conservative than some of these safe blue districts.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: So it is a very smart, concerted strategy that some
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: of these progressive challengers backed by the Justice Democrats are running.
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: It's an important lesson of politics that the most innovative
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: campaigns tend to come from insurgents, right? That was what
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: fueled Obama in 08, it's what fueled Bernie in 2016.
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: And you're seeing a lot of really interesting, smart strategies
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: from these candidates, beginning with AOC, Ayanna Pressley, all the
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: way up to Cori Bush. Because they do not have
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: access to the same set of consultants who have been,
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: because if you work for a primary challenger, you still
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: get blacklisted by the DCCC, which is an incredibly crazy
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: policy that you would not want people who elected Jamal
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: Bowman helping to keep the house. You don't have access
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: to the same amount of money. You have to think
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: much more creatively. And that is manifesting itself in these
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: races in ways that have led to a lot of success.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: And it also pushes a lot of these Democratic incumbents
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: to embrace some of these more progressive policies if they
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: want to keep their seats.
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: Which is why, as we've said a million times, primaries
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: are healthy. So one more headline from Tuesday that contains
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: good and bad news was out of Kansas, where Republican
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: Chris Kobach lost the Senate primary to Republican Congressman Roger Marshall.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: The good news is here a racist, xenophobic vote suppressor
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: like Kobach lost an election and won't be going anywhere
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: near the U.S. Senate. The bad news is Kobach probably
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: would have made it easier for Democratic State Senator Barbara Boyer,
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: To pick up this Kansas Senate seat. Dan, what do
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: you think about Kobach losing? And is the Kansas Senate
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: race still competitive?
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: I think with one of the lessons of 2016 for
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: everyone is you shouldn't ever root for a racist to
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: win a primary because you think it'll be easier to
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: beat them in the general because sometimes they win and
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: then your country gets really fucked. We've been burned by
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: that one before. by that one before.
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: So that's one less of 2016 we should avoid. It's
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: not a guess that Kobach would be easier to beat. Obviously,
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: he ran in 2018, did a terrible job and Democrats
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: had to pick up because of that. The question here is,
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: is Kansas still on the map? And we don't know
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: the answer to that, but Kansas has been the.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: Really the case study of Republican economics for the last
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: few years. And there's been a lot of rejection of that.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: So I think my understanding, I don't know Barbara Boyer,
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: my understanding is she's a very good candidate and we
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: should keep looking at that race because you need as
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: many paths to 50 plus one as possible.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think a Democratic polling firm put out some
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: numbers right after the race and it's still like a
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: single digit race. She's within the margin of error. So
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: it very much could still be a race. I also
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: think people should realize that, you know, Kobach didn't lose
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: a Republican primary because Republican the Republican electorate is coming
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: to its senses and doesn't want to vote for a
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: racist xenophobe. He lost because he's a loser because he
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: lost in 2018. And Republicans thought to themselves, do we
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: want to nominate this guy again who just lost in
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: 2018 in the governor's race for the Senate? And so
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: I think the image of him as a loser is.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: Probably helped seal his fate more than his right-wing policy positions, unfortunately.
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: Yep.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: But that's what happened there.
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about Joe Biden's campaign, which just announced the
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: largest ad buy in history. $ 280 million in ads for
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: the fall in 15 different states, including not just the
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: six swing states where Trump's margin of victory was closest,
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: but states like Iowa, Ohio, Georgia, and Texas.
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: Of that $ 280 million, $ 60 million will be reserved for
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: digital advertising. And in a memo, campaign manager Jen O'Malley-Dillon
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: said the buy will include, quote, an immense commitment to Latino, African-American,
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: and AAPI-targeted media, as well as discrete tracks of programming
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: geared towards youth and senior audiences. Dan, did the breadth
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: of this buy surprise you? And what do you think
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: the strategy is here?
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: It did surprise me, pleasantly. I am pleasantly surprised by
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: it in the sense that, look, we presumed for a
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: very long time that Joe Biden was going to be
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: massively outspent in this election. And while I still think
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: the Republican side of this between Trump and the super
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: PACs and everyone else is going to have more money
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: than the Democratic side, Joe Biden has narrowed this gap
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: in a way we did not see as possible, where
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: he has the ability to compete in a wide array
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: of states. I'm very pleasantly surprised by that. I am
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: pleasantly surprised and curious about some of the state choices.
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: And there's a lot of information, more information we need
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: to know about it. But I think we should feel
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: good about the fact that Joe Biden is on, is
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: winning and on offense.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: What do you say about the argument from, I noticed
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: from some pundits, DC pundits, that, you know, forget about Texas,
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: forget about Georgia. If you're in a position, you know,
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: put all, if you have all this money, great, but
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: put it all in Florida and And Arizona and Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan,
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: like you only need Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan to win. Shouldn't
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: you put all of the resources you have into those
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: three states until you're absolutely sure about the margin there
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: and your organization and everything else? And then if there's
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: leftover money, you put it in some of these reach states.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: Well, I think that that is a legitimate question when
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: it comes to your overall campaign budget in terms of staff, organizers,
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: mail delivery. That sort of thing. But there's only so much.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: Let's just talk specifically about television advertisement now. There's only
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: so much inventory you can buy in each state. And
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: at some point, you get to the point of diminishing returns.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: So I do not know this, but I can't imagine
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: it is not true. The Biden campaign has done a
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: sophisticated analysis of how much money they need to spend
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: on TV to win Wisconsin, right? How much they need
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: to spend in Wisconsin, to Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, the states
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: they need to get to $ 2. 70. And now they've had
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: this other money. So what are you going to do
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: with it? And the advantage of spending money in the
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: other states is you don't know what's going to happen
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: a month from now or two months from now or
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: three months from now, right? You want to give yourself
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: as many paths to 270 as possible. And that is
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: particularly true in a world in which we don't know
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: what's going to happen with the pandemic, right? Let's say
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: you're betting huge in Arizona. And then there's a resurgence
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: in the fall that makes voting very challenging or means
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: that we can't hit our registration goals in that state.
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: So you want to have some backup plans. And they
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: clearly have the money to do it. Discipline matters, right?
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: There's a great press release from saying you're going to
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: be in Texas and Georgia. We're excited about that. The
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: internet is excited about it. It could help us help
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: bring the Senate. It can help flip the Texas State House,
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: which is something I talked to the Texas State Democratic
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: Party about later in this podcast. But you have to
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: very carefully track and be willing to take the press
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: hit to pull out. So in 2012, this seems crazy
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: to imagine, but we had significantly less money than the
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: Republicans because the Republicans had these giant super PACs that
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: were spending a ton of money. And so we made
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: a decision in that campaign that we would not run
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: ads in– this also seems crazy– Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: Because if we were losing any one of those states,
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: we were going to lose the election.
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: Right? Right.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: We figured out what our tipping point state was, is
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: we needed Ohio. Ohio was the state that was going
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: to put us on the map. And so we did
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: not have the resources to compete in all of those states.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: So we picked a very narrow batch. Now, at the
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: very end of the campaign, we went up in Wisconsin
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: and potential– I think Wisconsin, maybe Minnesota to just close
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: the deal there. But we were willing to back away
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: from that public red line because we needed it. And
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: I think the reverse has to be true here for–
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: For the Biden campaign, which is if in a month
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: or six weeks, Georgia does not seem to be in
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: reach as you take those resources, you put them elsewhere.
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: And so like that level of sort of tough minded
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: resource allocation is going to be key to success here.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: So Jen and Biden chief strategist Mike Donilon did a
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: call with reporters to announce the ad buy and they
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: previewed some of the messages in the campaign. in the
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: ad campaign. According to the New York Times, Donilon said
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: that Biden offers stability compared to an erratic Trump, that
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: he represents core American values compared to walking away from them,
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: and that Biden is someone willing to, quote, bear the
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: burden of leading. Then Mike said, quote, there's a great
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: value in being able to positively speak to the central
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: concern of people's lives. The Trump campaign is in a
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: very difficult situation where they're unable to speak to the
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: central issue in this country and their entire campaign is
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: really an effort to distract people's attention. What did you
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: think of that? I do think that last summary of
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: sort of the challenge of the Trump campaign, which is
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: that the central issue facing voters right now that people
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: care about the most is their whole campaign is trying
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: to distract from because he has failed on the pandemic
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: and he doesn't want to talk about it.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: Well, yes, that's right. The single most important issue in
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: American life is the pandemic. And Donald Trump is, at
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: least as of earlier this week, running zero ads on
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: it and hasn't run any ads on it in weeks.
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: And so he is specifically trying to say, hey, look
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: over here at this other thing. And people are very
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: focused on the pandemic. And that's the part because his
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: response to it is indefensible, right? Like that is the
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: challenge they have And people are so convinced of how
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: indefensible his response is that they have responded poorly to
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: his ads, according to some of the stories we've read.
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: And that is to the Biden campaign's great advantage. And
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: that is why you're continuing to see them focus their
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: ads on that. Like Trump is, it's sort of insane
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: that he's not defending himself on it in some way,
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: shape or form or trying to muddy the waters because
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: he's giving the Biden campaign this free land. They had
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: this very powerful ad out in Florida with these two, with, uh,
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: just going to mention this.
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: You know, with, with this couple that is talking about
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: the impact of senior couple that's talking about the impact
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: of COVID, uh, in their lives and in their community.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: And Trump has no response for it, and he's not
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: responding for it. And I think he is suffering greatly.
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: The biggest thing is that he has fucked up the pandemic.
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: But from a political point of view, to try to
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: ignore the biggest issue can't possibly be a good strategy.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: It's a couple that lives in the villages in Florida,
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: in central Florida. These should be Trump voters in so
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: many ways. And I think the most effective part of
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: that ad is the woman talks about how she hasn't
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: been able to hug her grandkids for months and months.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: And then she says, I don't blame Donald Trump for
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: the pandemic coming here in the first place, but he
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: hasn't done anything to solve it. And you see a
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: couple like that and you see an ad like that
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: and you think, they will probably have some success in
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: the Trump campaign at driving up Joe Biden's negatives in
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: various ways, on giving people doubts about Joe Biden. And
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: that's why we may see the polls tighten as we
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: get closer to November. But you're probably gonna have, and
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: we already do, a lot of people who voted for
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump or didn't vote at all, who think, I
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: do have some doubts about Joe Biden, but this guy
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: who's president right now dealing with the worst crisis this
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: country has ever faced in my lifetime, isn't doing anything
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: about it. And I got to try something new, you know,
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: and I think if the Biden campaign can sort of
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: narrow the entire campaign down to that question, to that issue,
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: it's going to be very difficult for Trump to counter
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: that unless he starts paying attention to the pandemic in
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: a way that doesn't, you know, it doesn't involve like
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: shouting conspiracy theories about it.
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: If Donald Trump's reelection depends on him doing his job well,
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: he will lose because that is not a strategy that
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: is available to him. Circumstances around him could change. The
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: electoral impacts of the pandemic in terms of who gets
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: to vote and how those votes counted could benefit him.
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: But there's just not a world in which he is
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: going to wake up tomorrow, adopt a new tone, and
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: do his fucking job because that– he has never done
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: a job in his entire life. He's not going to
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: start now with the hardest job.
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: In the world. Right.
• 29:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah, no.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: Also– you know, the pandemic could get better. There could
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: be fewer cases, right? Like you could see an improvement
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: in the pandemic, an improvement in the economy that could
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: potentially help Trump. But you're right. If this depends on
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: him doing better at managing it, then that's not going
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: to work out for him. What do you think about
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: the size of the digital spend in this ad buy?
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: Our friend Tara McGowan at Acronym tweeted, an advertising blitz
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: in 2020 that invests nearly four times more in traditional
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: media than digital would suggest to me that a campaign
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: sees their path to victory through an incredibly traditional lens
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: and electorate, or they're counting on groups like Packer and
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: him to make up the difference. You know, you've been concerned.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: We've all been concerned about sort of digital strategy, digital
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: advertising since during the primaries. Uh, of this campaign, what
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: did you think about the size of the digital spend here,
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: which is bigger than most other campaigns have ever spent?
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's the, it is, it is. The size
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: of it is incredibly large. The size, the proportion of
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: the overall spend that is digital is I think less
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: than some people expected. We need to know more about this, right?
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: This is not the full, they can spend more above this.
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: We need to know about the whole number. We need
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: to know how they're spending that 60. What is it?
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: What is it on? And we need to know– we
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: actually need to know more about the state spending to
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: truly know what is going on. Like we don't know
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: how much money they're spending per state. Like Ohio is
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: mentioned in there. But we don't know which markets in Ohio.
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: The places where they've been up in Ohio to date
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: are markets that are designed to reach Michigan and Pennsylvania,
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: not win Ohio. So we have to wait until they
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: go up in Cleveland to know if they're going to
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: be up in Ohio. Similar thing with Iowa and some
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: other states. So I think it does say that– I
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: think the TV to digital spend says something about what
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: Joe Biden sees as his targets, which is older voters.
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: Because if you were trying to jack up turnout among
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: Gen Z and millennial voters, you were not doing that
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: through linear television. You were doing that through a digital spend.
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: And it's very possible that they have a, maybe even
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: likely that they have a very smart, unique way of
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: spending those TV dollars to reach younger people. That is very,
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: very challenging, but potentially can be done. So we need
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: to know more. But I think it says a lot
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: about Joe Biden seeing his path to the presidency with
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: a more traditional set of the electorate than maybe Barack
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: Obama needed in 2008.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And I think if you read Jen's memo closely,
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: there are hints of that in there. I mean, they
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: say that this is a spend about activating and mobilizing
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: the Biden electorate. The Biden coalition, which is going to
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: be different than an Obama coalition or a Clinton coalition.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: I mean, every campaign's coalition is different. And they also
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: specifically mentioned, you know, targeting youth audiences and seniors audiences.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: You don't usually hear Democratic presidential campaigns talk about their
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: ad spending plan to target seniors specifically because seniors really
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: haven't been in play for most Democratic presidential candidates since,
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: I don't know, 2000 maybe?
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: And so, you know, it is going to look like
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: a different coalition. And perhaps, you know, we're still, you know,
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: we've talked about this before, seeing some weakness with Biden's
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: campaign among Latino voters. He's running a bit behind Hillary
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: Clinton in some polls there, potentially a little bit with
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: young voters as well. But he is so far making
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: up the difference and then some among seniors and among
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: some of these suburbanites.
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: These things are not written in stone. They can be
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: adjusted over time. The piece of information I am very
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: interested for, and could be potentially coming to a message
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: box near you, is how many ads are they running?
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: That is a much more interesting number than total spend.
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: Mitt Romney spent more on TV than Obama, or Mitt
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: Romney plus the Republican side than Obama plus the Democratic side.
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: But Obama ran many times more ads because we had
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: a very sophisticated way of understanding how to efficiently reach voters.
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: While they were just running, like the most expensive, and
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: Trump seems to be, I need to look at some
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: data on this, but seems to be spending ads in
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: the most expensive way possible. It's why you see those
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: ads during NFL football games, 60 Minutes, local news, the
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: most expensive piece of TV real estate. There is a
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: lot you can do with targeted cable, with addressable TV
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: to get right ad voters in a much more efficient way.
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: And so I want to know how they're going to
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: spend that money as much as how much they're going
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: to spend both digitally and television wise.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: All right, let's talk about negotiations over the presidential debates,
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: which start next month. Holy shit. The Trump campaign this
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: week asked the Nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates to add
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: a fourth debate to the schedule. And if they won't
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: add a fourth, they want them to move up the
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: last debate to early September to account for the early
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: voting that begins that month. In his letter to the commission,
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: Trump campaign lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: Unbelievable.
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: He's just fucking still kicking around here, causing trouble. Also
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: proposed a list of acceptable moderators, which is not something
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: campaigns have ever had any control over. That include various
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: Fox News personalities and right wing talk radio hosts. The
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: Trump campaign is also pushing a bizarre conspiracy that Joe
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: Biden will try to skip the debates, despite the fact
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: that the former vice president has already agreed to the
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: original schedule. while Donald Trump has not. Dan, what is
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: the possible strategic value in making up a conspiracy about
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: how your opponent is too afraid to debate when that
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: opponent has already agreed to do so?
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: There is none, John. What are they doing? What are
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: they doing? I think this is a fascinating example of
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: how the right-wing media echo chamber works, which is they are...
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: creating the reality that Donald Trump wants. It's this symbiotic
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: relationship where they want content that Donald Trump's approve of
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: and Donald Trump is likely to share. And so they
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: create this alternative reality. The problem is Donald Trump and
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: a lot of Republicans, operatives and elected officials are not
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: in on the game. So they then create a campaign
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: strategy That reflects that altered view of reality, right? They're
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: getting dressed in a funhouse mirror every single day. And
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: so in this world, you turn on Fox News and
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: it's like, Joe Biden is hiding in his basement. Joe
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: Biden makes gaffes all the time. The virus is going away.
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: Schools should be opening. The economy is getting better. Donald
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: Trump is not a moron. And so then you message
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: like that. And that's why they are sort of, this
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: is a particularly dumb tactic, but they are doing this
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: tactic for the same reason that they are running ads
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: about Antifa taking over cities, which is something that only
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: Fox News viewers understand, even though it's not true.
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: I mean, the oldest and maybe silliest tradition around presidential
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: debates is to set expectations as high as possible for
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: your opponent. I remember in the 2004 campaign, Bush's campaign
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: had a really funny line. where they said that John
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: Kerry is supposed to be the greatest debater since Cicero,
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: which was both a backhanded attack on John Kerry and
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: trying to say that John Kerry is this great debater
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: and George W. Bush is this, you know, this dumb
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: Texan who we don't know if he's going to be
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: able to keep up with John Kerry because you're supposed
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: to lower expectations for yourself and raise expectations for your opponent.
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: The Trump campaign, by saying that Joe Biden is so
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: afraid to debate, he's hiding in his basement and he's
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: lost a step and all this kind of stuff. If
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden shows up on the debate stage at this
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: point and doesn't drool on himself for the next several hours,
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: he has surpassed all expectations that the Trump campaign has
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: set for him.
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: He's now a big winner. Like, what are they doing?
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: If you were to try, I'm not saying they're a strategy.
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: I'll be very clear. I am not saying that. If
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: you were trying to reverse engineer a strategy to this stupidity,
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: you would say that they look at this and say
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: they are losing. They cannot solve the pandemic problem. The
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: economy is out of their control. And so they're going
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: to take all of their chips and put it on
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: Joe Biden debate gaffe on the roulette wheel, right? And
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: so they're just going to say that the way we're
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: going to win this is we are going to set
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: the pretext that Joe Biden is cognitively incapable of being president,
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: and we're going to hope like hell that he screws
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: up in a way that will convince voters who have
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: some skepticism in him that we were right. This is
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: a 2016 redux, which is that living in their gross
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: echo chamber in 2016, Trump constantly made an issue of
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: Hillary Clinton's health and fitness for the job, which was,
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: to be clear, just thinly veiled misogyny, right? It was
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: just about that a woman– he was trying to say
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: with even a modicum of more subtlety than Donald Trump
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: would normally have that a woman can't do the job.
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: But then Hillary Clinton had a very public health scare
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: not long– a month or two months before the election
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: and that gave then credence to everything he had said beforehand,
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: which seemed ridiculous up until that moment. And so this is,
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: I guess, what they are possibly trying to do is
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: set it up so that if Joe Biden screws us
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: in a debate, something that did happen in the primary debates,
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: that they could weaponize that in a way that could
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: potentially change the dynamics in this race.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and let's be clear, they are priming the media
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: to jump all over even the slightest gaffe from Joe Biden.
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: And like you said, Joe Biden will absolutely garble his
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: words at some point over the course of three presidential debates.
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: I can't predict too much, but I can predict that
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: will happen at least a couple times. And it may
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: not look very bad to most voters or to us, but...
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: I guess they think that if they can get the
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: media to be on the lookout for the Biden gaffe,
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: then they will profit from that once Biden just screws
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: up or worse. I mean, we know that, you know,
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: Biden has struggled with a stutter throughout his life. We
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: have seen him in the primary debates also just sort
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: of fumble his words even beyond a stutter. And so
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: that's something that's going to happen probably in these debates.
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: And they're going to turn that into a big deal,
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: just like they're doing this now where they like selectively
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: edit videos or they jump on anything Joe Biden says wrong.
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: to sort of highlight the problem. Now, the Trump campaign,
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: you know, per usual has lied about the fact that
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: Biden or anyone in his circle has even entertained the
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: notion of skipping the debates. But there have been a
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: few suggestions of the sort from some folks in the media.
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: Former Clinton White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart wrote a
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: CNN piece telling Biden, quote, whatever you do, don't debate Trump.
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: It's a fool's errand to enter the ring with someone
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: who can't follow the rules or the truth. I think
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: this sounds, you know, Joe's a very smart guy, but
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: I think this sounds completely crazy to me that Joe
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: Biden would ever want to skip a debate with Donald
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: Trump or could, could get away with it.
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Joe is a smart guy. He's been in politics
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: a lot longer. And we have, I have to say,
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: this seems like the political version of the Atlanta Falcons'
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: second half strategy against the Patriots in the Super Bowl,
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: which is like, you don't get to just hold, you
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: don't just get to try to hold the ball and
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: hope for the best. He has to debate. To not
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: debate would give credence to everything Trump has said. The
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: press would rightfully go insane if the challenger decided not
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: to debate. it would be a very compelling piece of
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: prima facie evidence that he is not up to the
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: task of president. Like, I can't even imagine that's the case. Now,
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: it is possible given that insane list the Trump campaign
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: put out of acceptable moderators, including just Fox News panelists,
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: like real world star Rachel Campos Duffy, like that they
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: want to create an environment where Donald Trump looks like
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: he wants to debate, which is why he proposed his
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: fourth debate. But then they are unable to come to
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: an agreement on format and moderator. and therefore they can
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: then try to convince people that Joe Biden was the
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: one who walked away from the table. That also seems
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: like a little bit of a lark to me, but.
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, here's the problem with this strategy too. So
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: the nonpartisan commission on presidential debates, right?
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: They are now.
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: Like the Trump campaign is now making demands of the commission.
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: You must use these moderators. You must give us four debates.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: You must move up one of the debates. So they're
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: making all these demands of the commission, yet they're also
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: letting it be known that their campaign really wants to debate.
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: So therefore, all the leverage in the negotiations is with
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: the commission. Because if the commission knows that if they
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: tell the Trump campaign to fuck off with all these demands,
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: the Trump campaign is still going to come debate anyway
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: because they're running around saying how much they want to debate.
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: I feel wrong bursting your bubble on this one right
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: here on Zoom, but— The art of the deal is
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: not a real book and Donald Trump is not a
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: master negotiator. He is not real. I don't think this
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: is particularly well thought through.
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: What incentive does the commission have to meet any of
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: these crazy demands by a campaign?
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: I'll tell you what it does. One is if there
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: aren't debates, the commission will go away. And two, the
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: members of the commission all play leading roles in the
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: both sides play that is Washington. I know, I know,
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: I know, I know.
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: If they're, okay, if they're smart.
• 43:46
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: Listen to us, members of the Presidential Debate Commission.
• 43:51
  Speaker 4: All right.
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: The other thing, the other thing I'd love to understand
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: here is why the Trump campaign thinks that they will
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: benefit from an additional few hours of the American people
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: hearing stuff like this from their candidates.
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: And, you know, there are those that say, you can
• 44:13
  Speaker 4: test too much. You do know that. Who says that? Oh,
• 44:17
  Speaker 4: just read the manuals, read the books. Manuals? Read the books.
• 44:20
  Speaker 4: Read the books. What books? What testing does. I'm sorry.
• 44:24
  Speaker 4: Wait a minute. Let me explain. A thousand Americans are
• 44:27
  Speaker 4: dying today. They are dying. That's true. And it is
• 44:30
  Speaker 4: what it is. I did more for the black community.
• 44:34
  Speaker 6: Than anybody with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln, whether
• 44:38
  Speaker 6: you like.
• 44:38
  Speaker 4: It or not. You believe you did more than Lyndon Johnson,
• 44:41
  Speaker 4: who passed the Civil Rights Act? I think I did, yeah.
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: How?
• 44:42
  Speaker 4: Because I got criminal justice reform done. And I do
• 44:46
  Speaker 4: wish her well. I'm not looking for anything bad for her.
• 44:48
  Speaker 4: I'm not looking bad for anybody.
• 44:50
  Speaker 6: And they took that and made it such a big deal.
• 44:54
  Speaker 6: We had the ability to test because we came up
• 44:57
  Speaker 6: with tests. Jonathan, we weren't even, when I took over,
• 45:00
  Speaker 6: we didn't even have a test. Now, in all fairness,
• 45:03
  Speaker 6: there was no test for this.
• 45:06
  Speaker 4: We're lower than the world.
• 45:08
  Speaker 7: We're lower than Europe.
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: In what?
• 45:11
  Speaker 4: Take a look. Right here. Here's case death. So we
• 45:17
  Speaker 4: have a new phenomenon.
• 45:19
  Speaker 6: It's called mail-in voting, where you send where a governor.
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: It's been here since the Civil War.
• 45:25
  Speaker 4: In terms of.
• 45:26
  Speaker 6: Look, they're sending out.
• 45:28
  Speaker 4: Let's do concrete. They're sending out... Applications.
• 45:31
  Speaker 8: Governors.
• 45:32
  Speaker 4: Download them. Millions of ballots. No, they're not. It's applications.
• 45:36
  Speaker 4: There is no way.
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 45:39
  Speaker 4: Thank you. Thank you very much.
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: My favorite part of that is Jonathan Swan just saying,
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: Lower than the world. So that was a super cut
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: from our friends at Packernim of Jonathan Swan's Axios interview
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: with Trump last week. Was it last week? Oh, it
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: was this week.
• 46:01
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: They're all blending together.
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: Look, between a pandemic and you having a newborn, time
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: lost all meaning. And it'll start meaning something years from now.
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: I'm not there yet personally.
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: At some point floating in time, there was this Axios interview.
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: What did you think of the interview?
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: I mean.
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: And what did you think of, specifically, what did you
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: think of how Jonathan Swan did? You know, I was
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: one of the many people who praised him on Twitter
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: because I think he, you know, followed up when Donald
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: Trump said something fucking crazy.
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: I mean, he did great. Like it was, he took
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: no bullshit, right? Which people tend to do in interviews
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: with Trump. And there's an interesting, a couple of interesting
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: things about it, I think. One is, Trump, both in
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: the Swan interview and in the Chris Wallace interview a
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: few weeks ago, Trump went in thinking he was having
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: a conversation with his friends at Fox News, with a
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: friendly interviewer. And it's been so long since he's done
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: an interview with someone who is not a friendly interviewer
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: that he doesn't know how to do them anymore. He
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: has not taken live pitching in a very long time,
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: and he was completely flummoxed. And I take nothing away
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: from either Jonathan Swan or Chris Wallace, who I think
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: both did incredibly excellent jobs. But it says more about
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: the other people who have interviewed Trump than Swan and
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: Wallace with how much praise they've gotten. Because being prepared,
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: knowing the facts, and asking follow-up questions, and just doing
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: a little film study to see how Trump typically tries
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: to get out of telling the truth is not fucking sorcery, right?
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: It is Journalism. It's good journalism. But like David Muir
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: should if David Muir were to watch either of those interviews,
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: he would he should just resign from journalism at that
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: point because he did such a terrible job. He actually
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: got himself.
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: By the way, we should say that he got himself
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: on the list.
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: He was right below Rachel Campos Duffy on the list.
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: No, I totally I mean, it made me think about
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: these White House briefings that we've seen lately, both with
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: Kayleigh McEnany and Donald Trump. where, like, I've come to
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: now think, I think they're just useless at this point,
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: because Donald Trump has a strategy, and so does Kayleigh McEnany,
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: where you get asked a question, you just lie, you
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: say something fucking crazy, and then you move on to
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: the next question, because no one challenges you, because if you,
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: if a reporter tries to ask a follow-up, you say, no,
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: I'm going to call on someone else, you call on
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: the next reporter, and the next reporter just decides to
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: ask something completely different, doesn't follow up for their colleague.
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: Doesn't say, Hey, my colleague just asked to follow up.
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: You said something sort of crazy. This doesn't seem right.
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: This doesn't seem true. I want to go back to
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: what my colleague just said. They don't have any strategy
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: and I get it. They're all competing against each other
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: for scoops. But what it, what it does is it
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: makes the briefings, these briefings completely useless. And it gives
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: the Trump, it gives Trump and the Trump white house
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: just an easy way to get out of shit. And
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: the proof is Jonathan Swan and Chris Wallace. Every time
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump or his White House is challenged and someone
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: follows up on one of their lies, they completely fall apart.
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: They completely fall apart. The other reporters haven't figured out
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: how to coordinate strategy to make sure that happens when
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: they're asking questions during a briefing. So I don't understand
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: the purpose of them anymore.
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: I feel like for three and a half years, I've
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: been having a similar conversation with you and my wife
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: about these briefings, which is like, why are the questions
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: so terrible? Whenever there's a press conference, why are the
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: questions so terrible? And I think It's never going to
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: get better. It's not a solvable problem. It is, as
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: you point out, the power dynamic, and we know this
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: from having worked in the White House, the power dynamic
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: benefits the person behind the podium. It's very different than
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: an interview. It is very hard to interrupt a president
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: or a press secretary in the middle of their remarks
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: when they're saying something.
• 49:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: And they get to control who asks the next question. Reporters,
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: there's a collective action problem among reporters. They have no
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: incentives to strategize, which is why the White House Correspondents
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: Association is a toothless organization. It has no power because
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: they do not have each other's interests. And, and this
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: is critically important, is that briefing room is filled with
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: conservative safe spaces. So Jonathan Karl or Caitlin Collins or
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: someone else is hammering Trump or Kayleigh McEnany, they just
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: go find the Fox person, the Breitbart person, the OAN person, right?
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: And there are no progressive organizations in that briefing room
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: right now.
• 50:42
  Speaker 8: Right?
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: At least like, I don't know why you guys haven't
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: sent Brian to the White House. He lives like a
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: mile away. Like that would be helpful.
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: But I think he applied for a press pass. I
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: can't remember. Right.
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's actually, there's a lesson for the Biden
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: White House about the advantage of nurturing a progressive media infrastructure,
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: but that's a different conversation. But like, it's just impossible.
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: You're never going to succeed in that briefing. There can
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: be a moment where one reporter really like nails the president,
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: the press secretary. We've seen that happen a couple of times,
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: but they just have a huge advantage. And There's no
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: incentive for the reporters to work together. Every once in
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: a while, you see someone do the right thing. I
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: think this happened like a day or two ago where
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: someone followed up on someone else's question that had come
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: up and that does happen periodically. But that's usually because
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: the person behind the podium is screwed up and not
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: moved directly to one of their friends. So interviews is
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: where– and we got all this crap for all the
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: interviews Obama did. But interviews– with objective journalists is the best,
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: most revelatory way to hold a politician accountable, much more
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: so than these press conferences.
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: And look, and the reason we're talking about this, it
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: goes back to the conversation we're having about the debates,
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: because that's why it's so important for the commission to
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: not give in to the Trump campaign's demands for a
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: safe space moderator, which that list of people largely was.
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: Not completely. There were some fair journalists on there. But
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: by and large... That was a bunch of safe spaces
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: for the Trump campaign. And these debates cannot be moderated
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: by people like that. And I do think, again, the
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: Trump campaign wants the debates. So either get a real
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: moderator and you show up to debate Joe Biden or
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: you're the one who doesn't want to debate because you
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: didn't you weren't guaranteed a safe space on the debate stage.
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: The inclusion, we joke about it, but the inclusion of
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: David Muir and Nora O'Donnell, who I think is a
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: good interviewer and an excellent journalist.
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: I was surprised by including Nora. Nora was like the
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: one that I was like, oh, I'm wondering why they,
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: because I think she's a pretty good journalist.
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: That's evidence that they actually want the debates. You have
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: to put, there have to be some, Biden would, I think,
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: agree to Nora O'Donnell in two seconds as a debate model.
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: And David Muir, for as terrible as he was, in
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: his interview with Trump, is not a pro-Trump journalist. He's
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: just a bad interviewer. And Biden could not and would
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: not reject David Muir, I think, either, if that's who
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: the commission proposed. So buried in there is the admission.
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: They threw a lot of red meat to all of
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: their right-wing friends. But in there is the path potentially
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: to some number of debates. I do think also this
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: is what happens when you, like, you sort of ask
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: the question is, if you watch Trump speak in public,
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: why would you possibly think your victory depended on him
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: speaking in public? And part of it is because no
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: one ever tells him he does a bad job. And
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: I sometimes joke that, you know, the saying about George W.
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: Bush that he was born on third base, but thought
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: he hit a triple, right? Donald Trump is someone who
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: comes up to bat, strikes out swinging, and every single
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: time walks back to the dugout thinking he hit a
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: home run. And so he looks at that interview and
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: thinks he did great, right? He watches his Fox and
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: Friends performance the next morning and thinks he did great.
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: So he thinks he's smart and no one around him
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: has the ability to tell him otherwise so that they
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: run this strategy that, like I said, it's based on
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: a funhouse mirror version of Trump.
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: I also think the Trump campaign has probably strategized that
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: right now we are in a campaign environment where, like,
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump says crazy shit every day that gets the
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: lion's share of the coverage. And once in a while,
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: a Biden gaffe slips through. But it is mostly about
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: how many crazy things Donald Trump says every day. If
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: you get into a debate stage where Donald Trump continues
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: to say crazy shit for three hours up on stage
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: in front of a national audience, that's nothing really new
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: to people.
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's fair.
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: But if you can get Joe Biden to make a
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: number of gaffes that the media focuses on because everyone
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: is inured to the fact that Donald Trump is always
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: saying crazy shit, then that is a marginal win for
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: the Trump campaign.
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: It's an inspiring strategy, Dan. It's an inspiring strategy.
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: When we come back, we will have Dan's conversation with
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: Manny Garcia and Cliff Walker, the leaders of the Texas
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party. And stick around after that to hear Tommy
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: talk to Ben Rhodes about his brand new Crooked Media podcast,
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: Missing America.
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: I'm now joined by the executive director and deputy executive
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: director of the Texas Democratic Party, Manny Garcia and Cliff Walker. Hey, guys,
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: thanks for joining the show.
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: Thanks for having us.
• 55:28
  Speaker 8: All right.
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: I want to start with what is a question that
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: Democrats have been asking for a very long time. Is
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: this the year that we can turn Texas blue?
• 55:38
  Speaker 3: Hell, yes.
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: All right, good.
• 55:41
  Speaker 4: You know, yes.
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: I mean, we've been having this conversation for, you know,
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: really since 2012 about when Texas would finally be to
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: what we believe its destiny to be, which is a
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: purple to bluish state. You know, we came tantalizing close
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: in 2018 with Beto's race against Ted Cruz. What is
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: different in 2020?
• 56:03
  Speaker 7: Look, the first thing, it's all about the people, right?
• 56:07
  Speaker 3: I mean.
• 56:07
  Speaker 7: We have a wonderful, talented team. We're very excited about them.
• 56:10
  Speaker 7: We have nearly 100 people, nearly 100 talented operatives at
• 56:14
  Speaker 7: the Texas Democratic Party and great partnerships with all of
• 56:18
  Speaker 7: our candidates. But at the end of the day, Texas
• 56:20
  Speaker 7: is just there. I mean, for a long time, we've
• 56:22
  Speaker 7: had the raw population to be a blue stronghold, but
• 56:25
  Speaker 7: there have been held backs on whether to really invest
• 56:28
  Speaker 7: or not. You know, Republicans have obviously put obstacles in
• 56:31
  Speaker 7: front of our way to obstruct people's ability to have
• 56:33
  Speaker 7: their voice heard at the ballot box. But what we've
• 56:37
  Speaker 7: seen over the trajectory of the past several years is
• 56:41
  Speaker 7: in 2016, for the first time in two decades, we
• 56:43
  Speaker 7: became a single digit state. And a lot of folks
• 56:46
  Speaker 7: just told us, well, that's just because Donald Trump was
• 56:48
  Speaker 7: on the ticket. And then Beto came within three points.
• 56:51
  Speaker 7: And then they were like, well, that's just because Beto
• 56:53
  Speaker 7: O'Rourke was on the ticket. And that was just like
• 56:55
  Speaker 7: a unique campaign. Well, you know, now we're back to
• 56:58
  Speaker 7: Donald Trump and we got, you know, all these state house,
• 57:02
  Speaker 7: we're just nine seats away from flipping the state house.
• 57:04
  Speaker 7: We have more congressional targets here than any state in
• 57:07
  Speaker 7: the country. We have a US Senate race that's within
• 57:09
  Speaker 7: single digits already. And Joe Biden is consistently pulling up
• 57:14
  Speaker 7: over Donald Trump over and over and over again. I
• 57:16
  Speaker 7: think it's just because of Texans. They've wanted a massive change.
• 57:22
  Speaker 7: They've been frustrated with what the Republican Party has given them.
• 57:27
  Speaker 7: And when you look at our population, we are fast
• 57:30
  Speaker 7: growing and we're incredibly diverse. Texas looks like the Democratic coalition.
• 57:35
  Speaker 7: And if we just speak to them and we're proud
• 57:37
  Speaker 7: about who we are and we make sure that we
• 57:40
  Speaker 7: get them the information to come out to vote, we win.
• 57:42
  Speaker 3: Just to piggyback off of that a little bit and
• 57:44
  Speaker 3: dive into some of the numbers, we came within around 215,000
• 57:49
  Speaker 3: votes from carrying the state in 2018. But there's still 2.4
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: million Democrats who did not vote in a midterm election.
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: Not terribly surprising, although we did have an incredibly large
• 58:00
  Speaker 3: powered up, fired up turnout in large part, thanks to
• 58:03
  Speaker 3: Beto and the down ballot candidates. But going into a
• 58:07
  Speaker 3: presidential year, we think we have an excellent opportunity to
• 58:10
  Speaker 3: mobilize folks. We're seeing high turnout, not just across the country,
• 58:13
  Speaker 3: but here in Texas, in our primary, in our runoff.
• 58:17
  Speaker 3: And then when you layer on the confluence of opportunity,
• 58:20
  Speaker 3: it's a perfect storm for Democrats in Texas. And Republicans
• 58:24
  Speaker 3: get this. They know that the Texas House is verged
• 58:28
  Speaker 3: to flip. There are in-state investors. There are out-of-state investors
• 58:32
  Speaker 3: that are coming in big to really get the job
• 58:35
  Speaker 3: done to flip the Texas House. We're nine state house
• 58:37
  Speaker 3: seats away. We were within single digits in 22 seats
• 58:43
  Speaker 3: in 2018. The congressional opportunities are expansive and expanding. We
• 58:51
  Speaker 3: had seven targeted seats at the beginning of the cycle
• 58:54
  Speaker 3: when the DCCC said that Texas was the focal point
• 58:58
  Speaker 3: of the offensive strategy in the country. That list, you
• 59:02
  Speaker 3: would expect it to whittle down as the cycle continues,
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: but it has grown, potentially. In the last week or two,
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: there have been very encouraging polls that have been publicly
• 59:12
  Speaker 3: released in three additional congressional seats that are not yet
• 59:15
  Speaker 3: on that target list. We've got a U.S. Senate seat
• 59:18
  Speaker 3: where John Cornyn is unknown by two-thirds of people, and
• 59:22
  Speaker 3: the ones who do know him don't like him. And
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: then you're right. Texas is a jump ball at the
• 59:28
  Speaker 3: presidential level. Uh, we, I checked the five 38, uh,
• 59:32
  Speaker 3: breakdown every morning. Uh, man, it gives me grief.
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: We all live on the polar coaster here.
• 59:38
  Speaker 4: It's okay.
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: But it's, it's not just, uh, I mean, you pick
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: your polar coaster. It's not just five 38. Uh, you know, we,
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: we see the economist, uh, that is now listing us
• 59:51
  Speaker 3: as a toss up. I think NBC this morning, uh,
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: released a, that, that we were a toss up state
• 59:56
  Speaker 3: as well. And this is new territory for Texas. So
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 3: when you layer in all of these opportunities, about a
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 3: third of our congressional states will be competitive. And it's
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: even a talk about the new Democrats. We've got a
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 3: bunch of folks that have moved in. We're poaching Democrats
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: from other states. That's all we're going to get another
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 3: three or so congressional districts after reapportionment. But the folks
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 3: that are moving in, we're registering those people in droves.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: In spite of the fact that there's been a pandemic,
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 3: which has, I think, impacted everybody across the country, we
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 3: are still, as we estimate right about now, closing out
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 3: on about 200,000 net Democratic voters registered since the last
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 3: presidential election.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: I wanted to ask you about that because, you know,
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: around the country, we have seen, because of the pandemic,
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: we've seen dramatic drops in voter registration rates. It was
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: up a 75% in some states. Are you guys having
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: success registering new voters in this, you know, obviously very
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: challenging environment? And if so, what are you doing?
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 3: Well, we've got, we have to get creative in Texas, right?
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 3: We've had to be scrappy and creative, right? We have
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 3: never been the darling of some of the the larger
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 3: money in the state. So we've had to, for instance,
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 3: raise a lot of money online. We raised more money
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 3: online than any other state party by double. In fact,
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 3: during this last virtual convention that we had, which was
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 3: the first big virtual convention in the country, we raised $ 1. 5
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 3: million from 40,000 people across the country who went to 38for38. com
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 3: and contributed $ 38. But to actually go back to your question,
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 3: You know, I think what is a little bit different
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 3: about what we are doing on the voter registration front
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 3: is we identify those Democrats who are moving into the state.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 3: This is something that we engineered in 2018. It's just
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: in a pilot project, and this is with the partnership
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 3: of Beto O'Rourke. That's how we were able to fund it.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 3: We mailed 700,000 applications to register to vote to Democrats
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 3: who had moved in the state. We pre-filled them. with
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 3: the voters' information. And we included an envelope that was
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 3: stamped and addressed to the clerk. So while we do
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 3: not have online voter registration in the state, we have
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 3: to get creative in finding ways to get applications that
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 3: will be filled out in front of people. We know
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 3: that emailing them a PDF isn't really enough to get
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 3: them to actually, I mean, who has a printer in
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 3: their home? I don't. I mean, I know many millennials
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 3: and Gen Z voters who do.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 3: So we've got to get creative. And that's the thing
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 3: that we're doing now. We have a couple hundred thousand
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 3: more applications that are about to hit mailboxes in 10 days.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 3: And since we do not have online voter registration, we
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 3: created a website called RegisterTexas.com. If you go to RegisterTexas.com,
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 3: you can check your registration status, but you can also
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 3: plug in your information. We will download it. We will
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 3: print out the app. mail it along with the envelope
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 3: and an addressed envelope with a stamped envelope and send
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 3: it out to the voter. All they have to do
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 3: is review it, sign it, pop it in the mail,
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 3: and then they're on their way to be registered. So
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 3: we know we have to eliminate hurdles in anything that
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 3: we can do to just shave off a few minutes
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 3: or seconds from the process means that you get a
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 3: higher yield. So those are the things that we're doing
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 3: to innovate.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: One of the big questions that's hanging over the presidential
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: race is how, How much is Joe Biden going to
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: play in Texas? They made an announcement about an ad buy,
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: which says they're going to spend in Texas. We don't
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: know yet how much. This is a $ 50, $ 60 million investment.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: How essential is it for your congressional races, the MJ
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: Hager race against Cornyn, and the down ballot stuff that
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: Joe Biden played big in Texas?
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 7: Look, I want to say one of the lessons that
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 7: I think Democrats have learned over the past several years
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 7: in particular is Um, is that when you run everywhere,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 7: you got a local Democrat who increases turnout in your district, right?
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 7: In the 2018 cycle, we ran nearly a hundred percent
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 7: of our state legislative seats for the first time ever.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 7: And we ran a hundred percent of our congressional seats.
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 7: In this cycle, we've, we're matching those numbers again. So
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 7: there is both a, you know, uplift effect, uh, and
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 7: it goes, it goes vice versa, right? And you're running
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 7: a true coordinated campaign. One of the things we tend
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 7: to get, you know, the media covers everything like a
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 7: horse race. It's this bank account versus this bank account.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 7: And as if voters experience the world that way, you know,
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 7: they don't just experience Joe Biden commercials and Donald Trump commercials.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 7: They experience all this slew of, you know, mail and
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 7: conversations and text messages and digital ads and then TV
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 7: commercials layered upon it. from all sorts of different people
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 7: within a certain message that they consume and feel with
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 7: and whether or not it responds to their lived experience.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 7: And when you have a state where our state house districts,
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 7: our competitive state house districts overlap with our competitive congressional districts,
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 7: both of which are going to be fully funded endeavors
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 7: with massive amounts of resources, both from very well-funded campaigns
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 7: as well as as well as outside organizations coming in
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 7: and supporting these efforts from across the country.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: Then you layer in a U.S.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 7: Senate race and MJ Hager, who is just a kick-ass
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 7: candidate and is working with us and fully integrated with
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 7: us and doing a just rock star job. The proposition
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 7: to the Joe Biden campaign is no longer to take
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 7: the $ 100 million endeavor that it would take Texas.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 2: On your own.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 7: There's already tens of millions of Democratic mobilization dollars in
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 7: the infrastructure. Our state party is larger than it's ever been.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 7: You got Beto O'Rourke's operation. You got those state house races.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 7: You got the congressional campaigns.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: You got the U.S.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 7: Senate campaign. All of that is going to bring out
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 7: Democratic voters too. And so the proposition for the Joe
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 7: Biden campaign is really, how do you integrate with all
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 7: of those efforts? How do you best complement those efforts?
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 7: And it turns out that we also have a very, very,
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 7: very popular candidate in Joe Biden, who is very well
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 7: liked while the Donald Trump polling has It had him
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 7: pretty horrible here. And not just in this election, but
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 7: in the 2016 election, he was quite weak here too.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: And, you know, obviously you brought up these statehouse races.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: Can you help our non-Texas listeners, maybe some of our
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: Texas listeners, understand the importance of flipping the house in
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: Texas and what that means going forward, particularly in a
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: redistricting year?
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 7: Yeah, I'll briefly say both Cliff and I are like
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 7: house trained. We both came up. through Texas state house
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 7: races and worked in the Texas Capitol. And, you know,
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 7: we're leading into a redistricting session here. And when, when
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 7: you take a chamber like the Texas house of representatives,
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 7: you're able to set representation really for a generation. You
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 7: can really make some massive change here. And, you know,
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 7: some of, some folks might remember the name Tom delay who, who,
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 7: who gerrymandered congressional districts in Texas in the middle of
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 7: a decade and tried to break the rules on the process.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 3: This is big.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 7: And it's not only for, you know, what kind of
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 7: what electoral representation looks like for the next decade. It's
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 7: also the effect of Texas on the national and world scale.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 7: We're one of the largest economies in the world. And
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 7: what policymaking happens in Texas ends up affecting many of
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 7: the states across the country. So when you can flip
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 7: a chamber here, you can completely grind. The Republican effort
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 7: can be completely stopped. You not only bring, you know,
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 7: real change to millions of people from health care to education,
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 7: but you also just completely stop the Republican agenda in
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 7: its tracks in the biggest place in the country. I mean,
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 7: this was considered the stronghold of the Republican Party, and
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 7: it's the one that I think, you know, flips on
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 7: a dime.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: For our listeners who want to help support your efforts
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: to turn Texas blue, where do they go and what
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 2: can they do either both financially and in terms of
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: volunteer opportunities?
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 3: Well, you can actually do both by texting votes to two, one, three, three, three,
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 3: make it very easy. Uh, texting votes to two, one, three, three, three, uh, we'll, uh,
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 3: put you in the queue to make sure that you
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 3: see what volunteer opportunities that we have up and running. Uh,
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 3: one quick, uh, note, uh, I think we all had
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 3: our best laid plans at the start of the year
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 3: for very massive field campaigns. And shortly after we announced ours,
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 3: which was right after our primary on Super Tuesday, a
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 3: week after that, we went to remote working and all
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 3: of the staff that Manny just mentioned are all working virtually.
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 3: So the plan to have a bunch of canvassers and
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 3: organizers on the ground was put, we had to get
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 3: creative and think of something different. So we launched a
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 3: platform that we call Connect Texas, which is a Slack platform,
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 3: but we've got thousands of folks on there. Originally, we
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 3: launched it as a sort of mutual aid society. So
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 3: people who are identifying needs in their communities, resources, volunteer opportunities,
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 3: they could connect with others and learn from what people
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 3: were doing in one region and apply some of those
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 3: learnings across the state. Well, now we've reoriented that towards
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 3: voter communication. And I've been looking at the Connect Texas
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 3: signups today, and there are people from all across the country.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 3: And I think that's in part thanks to what we're
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 3: doing today, what we're doing here. That is an excellent
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 3: place to connect and join the Distributed Voter Contact Team.
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 3: But we do have a weekend of action that started
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 3: a little earlier. Weekend starts on Thursday in Texas this week.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 3: And we're going to text this week and dial a
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 3: million voters across the state. And that is tremendous for us.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 3: Just one last quick note that I'll share to give
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 3: you a sense of the scale that we have to
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 3: do things in Texas. Just last week, we held what
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 3: we call our Black Voters Matter Week of Action. And
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 3: your listeners may not know this, but Texas is home
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 3: to more Black people than any other state in the country.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 3: And as we know, Black voters are the backbone of
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 3: the Democratic Party. And we often hear that too often
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 3: candidates and parties and whatnot get religion the Sunday before
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 3: election day. So we wanted to live our values and
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 3: start by reaching out to our base. And last week,
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 3: over the course of the week, we mobilized candidates, our
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 3: local party committees, our Texas Coalition of Black Democrats, which
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 3: is our Black Caucus, and crucially, Better Works Powered by People.
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 3: And collectively, we called and texted a million times to
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 3: Black voters across the state to really kick off our
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 3: coordinated campaign in a way that was reflective of our values.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 3: We pitched voter registration, vote by mail, and opportunities to volunteer.
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 3: And we're excited to do that again, keeping up that pace.
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 3: That was the biggest voter contact week that we had.
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 3: But I think we are in queue. I'm seeing the
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 3: shift numbers grow on my screen right here. And I'm
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 3: pretty convinced that we're going to expand beyond that this week.
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 3: So that's going to help, you know, as Manny mentioned,
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 3: those congressional, the state house races. And we didn't speak
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 3: much about the State Board of Education, which sets education
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 3: policy and determines curriculum in the state of Texas. Since
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 3: we buy so many textbooks, that impacts schools across the country.
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 3: So when we do it, when we have a Democratic-led
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 3: State Board of Education, which is very possible, there are
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 3: three seats that were within a single digit this past election, 2018,
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 3: and we are, guess what, three seats shy of flipping
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 3: the State Board of Education. That's a big darn deal.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 3: We've got four seats on the Texas Supreme Court. We've
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 3: got three seats on the Court of Criminal Appeals that
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 3: are up statewide. These are hugely impactful, and you impact
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 3: all of these folks. And lest I forget it, The
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 3: Railroad Commission, which has nothing to do with railroads in Texas,
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 3: but regulates our oil and gas industry.
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: Of course, welcome to Texas.
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 3: But it regulates our oil and gas industry. Right now,
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 3: it's through Republicans. You can guess the kind of policies
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 3: that are coming from there. We have a chance to
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 3: get a Democrat on that board, which would make this,
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 3: I would argue, the most important environmental race in the
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 3: country outside of the presidency. So everything is bigger in Texas.
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 3: And I know that that has made folks nervous in
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 3: the past, but given the confluence of opportunity, We can
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 3: get it all done in one fell swoop.
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: This is great stuff. You guys have made a great
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 2: case for playing in Texas. Cliff, Manny, thank you guys
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 2: so much for joining us on Pod Save America and
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 2: good luck with everything you were doing in this election.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: I'm sure we will talk again before election day. Thank you.
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 3: Great to be with you. Thank you.
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 2: On the pod, we have Ben Rhodes. You know him.
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 2: You love him. He is the host of Pod Save
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 2: the World. He is also.
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 9: The host of the brand new, incredible podcast, Missing America. Ben,
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 9: it's great to connect with you through the same fucking
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 9: Zoom for this very different show.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 8: Yes. I haven't crossed over to PSA in a while, Tommy.
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 8: This is high. We're going to.
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 9: Have to rant about Mike Pence or something at some
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 9: point in this just to get into the domestic feel.
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 8: Just so I know, is there a different vibe now
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 8: than to PSTW? Do I have to become more sober?
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 2: No, I think it's the opposite.
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 9: I'd like to think that we're the high-minded version, so
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 9: you can really dumb it down for me now that
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 9: we're on this side of the house. Ben, I'm excited
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 9: to talk to you because Missing America is out. I've
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 9: gotten to listen to, I think, half of the episodes.
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 9: It is incredible. You're reporting from the before times from
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 9: around the world. Can you give listeners a sense of
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 9: what Missing America is about and why you wanted to
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 9: do this show now?
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 8: So it's basically about what has happened to the world
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 8: in the absence of America. We have not been the
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 8: country that historically we've at least tried to be around
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 8: the world in the last three and a half years
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 8: under Donald Trump. So we've literally gone missing. We're not present.
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 8: And the COVID response shows it most acutely, but it's
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 8: not just that. What's happened to the spread of nationalism,
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 8: the spread of disinformation, the spread of climate change, all
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 8: these kinds of problems, diseases that that have been spreading
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 8: around the world have gotten much worse in the absence
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 8: of America trying to do anything about them. And in
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 8: some cases, America being a part of the problem here.
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 8: So I wanted to both show people a global perspective
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 8: on just what has happened around the world in the
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 8: absence of American leadership and also get insights into, well,
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 8: what do we need to do about that if we're
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 8: able to get past Trump and have an opportunity of
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 8: a democratic administration?
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean, that's what I think is so cool
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 9: about the show, right? Because you're talking about these global.
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 9: Systemic challenges facing countries around the world and how they
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 9: aren't getting addressed in part because traditionally America's leading that
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 9: effort to solve them. But so, you know, obviously Trump
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 9: looms large here and is a big reason for that
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 9: absence of US leadership, but he's not the root of
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 9: all these problems. And I thought one really fascinating example
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 9: and illustrative example was what Facebook has done to Burma's democracy.
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 9: Can you talk about that story? Because I thought those
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 9: activists that you interviewed for that that episode were just incredible.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 8: Well, and first of all, Tommy, it speaks to a
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 8: bigger thing that, you know, I was traveling a lot
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 8: and talking to a lot of people, meeting a lot
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 8: of interesting people. And then I even started recording those
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 8: conversations before I even knew I was going to do
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 8: a podcast. So when I first met the guy who
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 8: told the Burma story, I didn't even know I was
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 8: going to do this podcast. And I went back to
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 8: him to record it. And what I found, Tommy, is
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 8: that I could actually understand better what was happening in
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 8: America and By looking at what was happening in other countries.
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 8: Because the same shit is happening everywhere. So the Burma
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 8: Facebook story is an extreme version of what's happening here.
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 8: And the story that this guy walked me through in
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 8: each episode is basically the first half of each episode
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 8: is just a story. It's not a bunch of interviews.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 8: It's telling a story about what happened in one place
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 8: with one problem. And he described to me there was
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 8: no internet in Burma. It was a closed country. It
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 8: was a North Korea-style country. There was almost 0% internet penetration.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 8: And then because of the opening up that happened there
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 8: over the last decade, within a year, it went from
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 8: 0% internet to 95% internet coverage. But the entire experience
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 8: of the internet in this country was on phones and
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 8: through the Facebook app because people didn't have computers because
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 8: Google didn't even have Burmese script. So imagine going from
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 8: getting no information, maybe all you get is like state
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 8: run media for a junta. And then suddenly you think
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 8: you have all the information in the world and it's Facebook.
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 5: I think like at the beginning, Facebook see Myanmar as
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 5: a new market that hasn't been explored, right? So they
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 5: came to the country without thinking of what are the
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 5: impact of Facebook for the population. If you look at
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 5: the data around 2014, Facebook has only about two or
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 5: three content moderators for the country.
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 8: For the whole country?
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 5: For the whole country.
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 9: Two or three people.
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 8: For a country of 60 million people.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 5: Yeah, two or three people who monitor hate content, review
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 5: the content on Facebook.
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 8: And of course, what it became was virulent disinformation and
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 8: hate campaigns. And the people consuming it had no reason
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 8: to think it wasn't true. So if they're reading about
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 8: Muslims rampaging or raping Buddhist women, they think it's the internet,
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 8: it's Facebook, it's trusted news, right? And the result in
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 8: part is it contributed to the ethnic cleansing that took
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 8: place there. But it's a window into what's happened here, right?
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 8: Which is that people consume Facebook and they think it's
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 8: shared by their friends. They think it's credible. They don't
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 8: know what's true and what's not. And so the same
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 8: lack of antibodies against disinformation and the same Facebook platform
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 8: that turbocharges hate speech and sensational images and stories contributed
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 8: both to the Russian intervention in our election and to
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 8: what happened in Myanmar. We're all in the same boat here.
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 8: And that's something I want people to take away from
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 8: this podcast is that what's happening in these other countries
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 8: is the same shit that's happening here. So we need
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 8: to learn from each other.
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 4: You're right.
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 9: That connection really does come through. It's like, imagine the
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 9: problem of your mother or grandmother thinking that every Facebook
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 9: post is accurate and magnify that by the entire country.
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 9: And then imagine what Facebook has done to gut local
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 9: newspapers around the country or any media, frankly, in the US,
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 9: and then magnify that by having no independent media to
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 9: check the disinformation that's spreading on Facebook. That was, I thought,
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 9: one of the most tragic and preventable examples of this
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 9: systemic growing problem that we face right now.
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 8: And what I like about what we arrived at in
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 8: the format when we got the crooked team around it
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 8: and a team of folks around it is, okay, we'll
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 8: tell this story and it's like, oh, shit, this is
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 8: a big problem. But then in the second part of
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 8: that episode, and this, again, the same format for each episode,
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 8: we hear from a whole bunch of people about what
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 8: to do about it. So we've got leading European thinkers
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 8: and politicians. We got people who are going to be
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 8: in the Biden administration. We got tech activists around the world.
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 8: talking about, well, how should we regulate social media? How
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 8: should we approach platforms like Facebook? So we want to
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 8: leave people with a sense of just how bad things are,
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 8: but also like, hey, here's what we can do about it.
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 8: And here are all these smart people around the world
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 8: who are thinking about this. So it's not just Americans.
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 8: It's something we have to solve together as progressives globally.
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 9: Yeah, you really did a good job of looking around
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 9: the world for solutions to problems. And honestly, my favorite
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 9: part of the show is that we go with you
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 9: around the globe, to meet all these unbelievable, mostly young,
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 9: inspiring activists. How did you get connected with all these people?
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 9: Were these Obama affiliations? Because every country in the globe,
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 9: you tend to know the 30, 40-year-old inspiring MP that
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 9: is the future of the country.
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 8: Well, yeah. I mean, some of it is Obama Foundation people.
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 8: So the Obama Foundation has networks of young leaders that
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 8: are generally civil society leaders around the world. And some
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 8: of the interviews I did were kind of on the
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 8: margins of these Obama Foundation convenings in Johannesburg, in Malaysia,
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 8: in Germany. Some of it is I ask people. So
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 8: I ask for references. I go to Human Rights Watch. Hey,
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 8: who should I talk to about China? And people want
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 8: to tell their stories, particularly at this moment in time.
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 8: Hong Kong was an interesting piece of this because I
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 8: met a tremendous... a young person who was in an
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 8: Obama Foundation program. But then I also met the Human
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 8: Rights Watch people. And then I asked them for references
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 8: of people to talk to. So if you listen to
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 8: the show, we've got, as the Hong Kong protests are
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 8: unfolding and tragically, ultimately run into Beijing's repression, you have
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 8: different Hong Kong voices of people I've met in different
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 8: venues in different parts of the world who are involved
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 8: in these protests at different junctures. And you hear how
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 8: they're wrestling with and how they're dealing with it. One
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 8: of them even had to obscure his voice because he
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 8: obviously feared for his family's safety, not just his own.
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 8: So I was able to tap into like that Obama network.
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 8: I was able to tap into other civil society networks.
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 8: I was able to tap into some of the political
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 8: leaders I've met over the years. David Lammy, a remarkable
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 8: rising labor politician in the UK we've had on Pod
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 8: Save the World. kind of walked me through, well, how
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 8: did we get to Brexit? I mean, what, what happened
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 8: inside of the UK that brought back this form of nationalism,
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 8: you know? And, and, and so I think one of
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 8: the cool things about the project is over the course
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 8: of a couple of years, really, I was just taking
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 8: my recorder with me all over the world. And so
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 8: these interviews are literally taped, I think on, on every continent, um,
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 8: except for, you know, Antarctica, I guess is a continent,
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 8: but everywhere else, you know, with voices from all these places, um,
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 8: From former prime ministers like Kevin Rudd down to like,
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 8: like you say, whoever the most interesting 30 year old
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 8: activist is I could find.
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 9: Well, and the other thing that's cool about this is like, again,
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 9: this was mostly done in the before times before COVID
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 9: and you could travel. A lot of the times you
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 9: were in countries where interviewing an activist about their concerns
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 9: about the current government is a risky proposition. I mean,
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 9: were there times you were having to be furtive, cover
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 9: your tracks, communicate covertly? Like, how did you pull this off?
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 8: Well, you know, what's interesting is in a bunch of
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 8: the most extreme scenarios, I did things in third countries. So,
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 8: you know, one of the prominent Hong Kong interviews I
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 8: did in Malaysia because the person was traveling there. And,
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 8: you know, you find increasingly like that, That's something you
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 8: have to do. When you get inside Europe, you get
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 8: a place like Hungary. Hungary is within the EU, right?
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 8: And so it's not as if it's hard to get
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 8: in and out of Hungary. I did at times recognize
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 8: I wasn't facing any risk, but some of the people
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 8: talking to me were. And I always ask people, what
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 8: are you comfortable saying and doing? Are you comfortable... taking
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 8: this risk. A good example is one of the activists
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 8: I talked to who was from China, lived in Hong Kong,
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 8: I think was basically kicked out of Hong Kong and
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 8: is now in New York, right? So her risk ultimately
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 8: led her, I think, to have to be in some
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 8: form of exile. But other activists, you know, they know
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 8: the risks that they're taking and talking to you, and
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 8: they take it anyway. The India story I tell is
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 8: entirely through the prism of Rana Ayyub, who is a
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 8: remarkable journalist, who's had massive amounts of death threats, had
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 8: fake pornography circulated about her, has had massive disinformation campaigns
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 8: against her. And she sticks it out and she accepts
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 8: all the risk of being a journalist in Mumbai and
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 8: reporting what's happening under an increasingly nationalist Indian government. And
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 8: that's just, that's what she's taking on, right? So I
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 8: think what's most extraordinary is that all these people are
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 8: willing to raise their voices despite the danger they face.
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 9: Rana Ayyub is like a truly heroic journalist. And that
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 9: is one of my favorite episodes because of the way
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 9: you connected the current nationalism under Modi in India with
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 9: India's history of Gandhi fighting for freedom and universal rights
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 9: and how he inspired Martin Luther King, and how it
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 9: was all tied into US history and our civil rights movement.
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 9: It's just an incredible experience to sort of go abroad
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 9: to learn about our own history in the way that
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 9: you did in that episode.
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 8: One of the best things that I liked about this
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 8: project is it's always good when you end up somewhere
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 8: that you didn't start. And so for me, I learned
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 8: a lot. And one of the things I kept picking
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 8: up is there was a lot of commonality in terms
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 8: of the far right creeps in the world learning from
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 8: one another, right? And so when we get to India,
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 8: Modi has a citizenship law that is basically a Muslim ban.
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 8: And it's not a leap to think that he might
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 8: have picked something up from Trump. And there's this kind
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 8: of symbiotic relationship between what Modi and Trump have been
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 8: up to in terms of having these kind of ethno-nationalist
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 8: conceptions of what the nation state is. At the same time,
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 8: in talking to people about the history of India, I
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 8: started to learn more and revisit what used to be
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 8: the symbiotic relationship between Gandhi and the movement for India's
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 8: independence and the American civil rights movement. And I was thinking, well,
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 8: how do we go from a place where progressives used
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 8: to coordinate across borders and you could have a Gandhi
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 8: inspiring a king to make this enormous change in both
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 8: countries to the wrong people learning from one another? And
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 8: right as I was kind of, you know, in that space,
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 8: BLM exploded in the U.S., And then you saw all
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 8: these protests around the world in support of BLM. And
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 8: one of the basic conclusions I came to is what
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 8: we need around the world is a massive progressive mobilization.
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 8: It's going to take a global Black Lives Matter movement.
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 8: It's going to take global support for Hong Kong protests
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 8: or for Indians who are facing repression. or people in
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 8: European countries that are drifting towards dictatorship to all stand
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 8: up together, right? And, you know, I got there by
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 8: visiting all these places and hearing from these people and
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 8: having them tell me, hey, the right has been well organized.
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 8: The left has not been. We got to get our
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 8: stuff together inside our own countries, but across borders as well.
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that episode.
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 9: I mean, listen, part of it is Ron Ayub is
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 9: just someone who I can listen to talk for hours
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 9: on end. It's inspiring, but it was just such a
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 9: cool turn of our history.
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 2: Last question for you.
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 9: I mean, you ended up interviewing a ton of people
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 9: who are now the most senior individuals on Joe Biden's
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 9: foreign policy team on the campaign, and will probably take
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 9: up like the most senior positions in his administration. A
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 9: lot of these conversations were before they were officially involved
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 9: in the campaign, which I think led them maybe to
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 9: speak a little more freely than they might have. Did
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 9: anything they say surprised you? Do you think anybody wants
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 9: to take something back that's gonna wind up in the show?
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 9: Because very candid stuff from senior sober people.
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 8: Yeah, well, look, I think what you get, what's so
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 8: great about this is, like you and I have been there, Tommy,
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 8: like when you enter into a campaign, what you can
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 8: say like suddenly shrinks and then you're in government and
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 8: you're just a spokesperson, right? Even if it's stuff you
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 8: totally agree with. And what was great about this is
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 8: I reported over a couple of years and, you know,
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 8: got to talk to people, you know, who we worked with, right?
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 8: Like Jake Sullivan and Avril Haines and Susan Rice, very prominently, obviously,
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 8: and Samantha Power and others who might play these critical
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 8: roles in the Biden administration and just kind of get
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 8: their worldview. and get their sense of what does the
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 8: United States need to do about China? What does the
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 8: United States need to do to regulate social media? Like,
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 8: what does U.S. leadership on climate look like? And from
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 8: their own perspectives. And so I think people will get
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 8: a window into what the people who end up working
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 8: for a Biden administration, what do they think? How do
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 8: they think about these issues? And yeah, in some cases,
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 8: very concrete ideas about what U.S. policy should be. But
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 8: I think most valuable is just this is maybe the
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 8: last time you get to hear them just talk as
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 8: human beings before they have to become campaign spokespeople or
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 8: surrogates and then government officials. And I say that with humility.
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 8: I was once one of those people.
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 4: Oh, me too, man.
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 2: We were both robots. We were not allowed to say anything.
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 8: So I don't want to put any one person on
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 8: the spot. I will say, though, there's a collection of
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 8: people that I think you would expect to be making
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 8: up the kind of inner circle of And because I
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 8: was talking to them in 2018, 19, you know, early 20,
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 8: I do think you'll get a sense of how are
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 8: these people wrestling with the same problems that we wrestle
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 8: with in the series and what might that mean for
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 8: a Biden presidency and foreign policy. Yeah.
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 9: Well, listen, it is such a great show. I don't
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 9: think any of them will regret the things they said,
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 9: but I do think it will be incredibly instructive for
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 9: people who want to know how they'll govern in.
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 2: Areas like tech regulation, right?
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 9: Like you have Jake Sullivan talking in great length about
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 9: how he thinks technology companies should or could be regulated.
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 9: And I think that's fascinating and instructive because it's probably
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 9: not an area where Joe Biden has the most deeply
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 9: developed views, you know?
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah, no.
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 8: And what I hope people take away from the interviews
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 8: with these folks is that we're all human beings here, right?
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 8: And we're all wrestling with these things. We're wrestling with
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 8: our own experience and what we're seeing, right? And so like, yeah,
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 8: someone like Jake spent a lot of time thinking about
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 8: tech in part Because in 2016, he was working for Hillary.
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 8: And he saw how Facebook was manipulated to essentially defeat
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 8: his then boss. And so he really wrestled with it.
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 8: And he really thought deeply about it. What is the
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 8: responsibility on these tech companies? And what is the role
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 8: of government if they don't meet those responsibilities? And I
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 8: think that's true of all the government voices. John Brennan
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 8: is in there talking about how to demilitarize our approach
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 8: to terrorism and how to emphasize other aspects of US
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 8: leadership in the Middle East. Susan Rice is in there
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 8: talking about the connection between social justice in this country
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 8: and our leadership around the world amidst the Black Lives
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 8: Matter movement. Samantha Power reflecting what she learned during the
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 8: Ebola response and what that means for how the US
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 8: needs to think about international cooperation. And so what I
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 8: love about it is it's both those people putting out
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 8: policy positions that they think are important. But even more importantly,
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 8: it shows you how they've been informed by their experiences
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 8: in government. And I, frankly, try to do that myself.
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 8: And there are multiple places in the podcast where I say,
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 8: I wish we'd done something different in the Obama years,
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 8: or if we'd known then what was going to happen,
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 8: we would have thought about it differently. Or I think
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 8: we got this right, but here's how you build on that.
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 8: And I think showing all this as a human endeavor
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 8: is something that you can do in a podcast and
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 8: you can't do in a lot of other formats.
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 9: Yeah, none of these issues are simple. None of the
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 9: answers are simple. It's nice to hear people just sort
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 9: of think aloud about the problem, the range of possibilities,
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 9: and everything in between. Ben, people should subscribe to Missing
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 9: America right now.
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 2: The trailer is up.
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 9: You can find it on Apple. You can find it
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 9: on Spotify. When is the first episode going to hit
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 9: their inboxes once they subscribe?
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 8: So Tuesday, so next week, Tuesday, smash the subscribe button.
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 8: Give us that five-star rating. No, I mean, I just
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 8: say this has been kind of a passion project, and
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 8: it's great that Crooked got behind it because the opportunity
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 8: to bring all these voices, particularly the global voices, I
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 8: think folks will think it's hopefully worth checking out. And
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 8: it's really great to have that opportunity.
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 2: It's an incredible show.
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 9: And I also can confirm that Ben has put blood,
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 9: sweat and tears into this thing. There have been hours
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 9: and hours a day of him sitting in a closet
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 9: with a blanket over his head, trying to record voiceover
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 9: with little kids running around the house. It's not easy
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 9: to do this stuff remotely, man.
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 8: Let me tell you, like, so when I signed up
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 8: to this, I was like, oh, this is great. I'll
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 8: take these interviews and... And first of all, like none
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 8: of the cricket people really, I think, level with me
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 8: about how much work a scripted podcast is. It's a
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 8: shit ton of work. And there's a great team of
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 8: people that get you from like a bunch of interviews
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 8: to a script. But then I was like, oh, this
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 8: will be great. Every Tuesday I come in, I tape
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 8: Pod Save the World with Tommy and I'll record all
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 8: my stuff there. And boom, then the pandemic hits right
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 8: when I'm supposed to start doing this. So I have
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 8: to build a pillow fort in my closet downstairs with,
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 8: Where all my kids' toys are, by the way, the
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 8: toy storage closet. So sometimes they're like banging on the door,
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 8: they're trying to invade the closet. Like I've got people
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 8: in my ears telling me that I'm not speaking like,
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 8: you know, the people do in this American life or whatever.
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 8: And I'm like, come on, man. Like, just like, this
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 8: is not how I saw this going, but I'm glad
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 8: it turned.
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 2: Out like it did.
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 9: You're like sitting on a Lego. It's just stabbing you.
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 8: I'm sitting on a Lincoln Logs. I literally recorded the
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 8: whole thing on a giant bucket of Lincoln Logs in
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 8: my closet. So thankfully, Crooked has access to tremendous sound designers.
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 4: That's true.
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 2: That is very true. Podcasting, it is glamorous.
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 9: I say this as I had to escape from my
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 9: bedroom where there was a lawnmower to my office where
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 9: someone has a different lawnmower. I'm so sick of this
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 9: quarantine shit.
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 2: But Missing America, we'll get you through it.
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 4: Subscribe.
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 2: It is incredible.
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 9: Ben, great to talk to you over on this side
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 9: of the house. I guess we talked about foreign policy anyway,
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 9: so whatever.
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 8: Yeah, glad to be on the side of the house.
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 8: I think it's like once a year I get over
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 8: here and then you send me back.
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 9: We just got to find something to rant about and
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 9: just come on. It's like pre-record something just to shout
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 9: about Marco Rubio.
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, we can do that. We can get back
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 8: to that.
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Manny Garcia and Cliff Walker and Ben Rhodes
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: for joining us today. And everyone have a good weekend.
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: We'll talk to you next week.
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 2: Bye everyone.
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: producer is Michael Martinez. Our associate producer is Jordan Waller.
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Sominator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou,
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: Caroline Reston, and Elisa Gutierrez for production support. And to
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Narmel Konian, Yale Freed, and
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: every week.
• 1:35:23
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