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“A global laughingstock.” · Pod Save America

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Good news, gift givers. The holidays just got a little
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• 0:15
  Speaker 1: It's me.
• 0:15
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• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, that I know. It's me. It's love.
• 0:18
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• 0:19
  Speaker 2: It's not you, Tommy.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: It's crafty. Each box contains Cricket Coffee's delicious medium and
• 0:23
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• 0:25
  Speaker 1: and arts? Well, now you made me think. I don't know.
• 0:27
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• 0:28
  Speaker 3: I saw what John did to a pumpkin the other day,
• 0:30
  Speaker 3: and I don't know.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: I don't think I can see Tommy making one of
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: those snowflakes he cut out. You know what I mean?
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: I just don't see him as the artistic type. Yeah,
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• 1:21
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: On the pod today, we got an impeachment report, we
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: got an impeachment hearing, and Kamala Harris ending her presidential campaign.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Then I'm going to talk to one Democratic candidate who's
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: still in the race and looking to get on that
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: December debate stage, Senator Cory Booker. Before we get into
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: all that, a few quick housekeeping notes. Tommy's latest episode
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: of his Iowa series is out, episode three. You'll learn
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: in this episode how important And humbling the hunt for
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: big endorsements can be, along with all the arguments against
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: Iowa going first and caucuses generally. There's also a great
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: anecdote in there about catching chickens and how to catch
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: a chicken. So it's a great episode. Check it out.
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: How many are in the series?
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: There's, I want to say five.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: Five.
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: If there were six, I would probably end up quitting
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: this podcast and joining a campaign.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: I know.
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: Everyone gets the nostalgia media going even more.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: It's so great. And on Pod Save the World, Tommy
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: and Ben cover Trump's trip to NATO, which we're going
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: to talk a little bit about too. They also talk
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: about Ben's recent trip to Hong Kong and the upcoming
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: UK elections with The Intercept's Mehdi Hassan. Also a newer
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: episode of Rubicon Out Friday. where Crooked's own Brian Boitler
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: will do a deeper dive on all the latest impeachment
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: news of the week. So subscribe to that now, wherever
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: you listen to your podcasts. And finally, the Crooked store
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: is running a surprise new sale every day for 12 days,
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: and we're calling it the 12 Days of Crooked. How
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: about that?
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: I was about to applaud you for what a great
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: name Rubicon was for an impeachment podcast, but I'm not
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: going to do that now because of the 12 Days
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: of Crooked.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know who came up with that. Shop
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: the sales stock up on GIFs and check out our
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: holiday merch on cricket.com. Of course, I love a good pun.
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: A lot of people are asking when the It's Not
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: Great Dan merch is going to be restocked. And by
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  Speaker 3: a lot of people, I mean my wife and many
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: members of my family.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: I'm asking the same thing because I want a few
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: things from the store for my family and I've been
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: told that they're sold out too. So I thought I
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: had more connections. I do not. But I think we're
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: working on restocking that pretty fast. Emily was looking online
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: at the store the other day and she goes, it
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: is fucking bizarre to see It's Not Great Dan merchandise
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  Speaker 1: sold out.
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  Speaker 3: Why, Emily? Why is that? Why is that bizarre?
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  Speaker 1: I think it was sort of a hit on both
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: of us, too, but not that that makes it any better. Yeah, no,
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  Speaker 1: it is.
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  Speaker 3: It's also weird that members of my family want to
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: wear a shirt that says, it's not great, Dan.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: It's weird, man. Okay, let's get to the news. On Tuesday,
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: the House Intelligence Committee approved their impeachment report on a
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: party-line vote and then sent it off to the Judiciary Committee,
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  Speaker 1: which is charged with drafting articles of impeachment against that
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: they will soon be doing. They'll soon be drafting articles
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: of impeachment according to an announcement from House Speaker Nancy
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: Pelosi this morning. It is happening. Most of the 300-page
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: report is a summary of what we all learned during
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: the public hearings, with the exception of one very notable
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: bit of pizzazz, a series of call logs obtained from
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  Speaker 1: AT & T and Verizon that show extensive contact between
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: Rudy Giuliani in the White House, Rudy Giuliani in the
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  Speaker 1: Office of Management and Budget, Rudy Giuliani and right-wing conspiracy
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: theorist John Solomon, Giuliani and Devin Nunes, and between Devin
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: Nunes and the indicted founder of Fraud Guarantee, Lev Parnas. Dan,
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: let's start with Rudy, who, as a reminder, is also
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  Speaker 1: under federal investigation. What's the significance of these calls to
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  Speaker 1: the White House, to OMB, and to An unknown number
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  Speaker 1: that's identified in the report only as dash one.
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  Speaker 3: Well, I think on one level, it's not bizarre that
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  Speaker 3: there are a lot of calls between Rudy and Trump
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  Speaker 3: because they are men of a certain age who are
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  Speaker 3: unfamiliar with the efficient wonders of texting.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. Although Rudy does text a lot of reporters. He does.
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  Speaker 1: They like to screenshot his text messages and tweet them.
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  Speaker 2: Yes.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, one of the more bizarre, if not endearing
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  Speaker 3: exchanges was between Ryan Riley of the Huffington Post and
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  Speaker 3: Rudy Giuliani about the birth of Ryan's son.
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  Speaker 1: I saw that.
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  Speaker 2: Awesome.
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  Speaker 3: Very clever tricks. Send a baby picture. You can get
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  Speaker 3: away with almost anything is a lesson I learned about
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  Speaker 3: 18 months ago. So on one level, it's not weird
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  Speaker 3: that they're talking, but the timing is incredibly conspicuous because
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  Speaker 3: this is all happening around the Zelensky meeting, the decision
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: to fire the U.S. ambassador to the Ukraine. And it
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  Speaker 3: bespeaks what Gordon Sondland told us, which is everyone was
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  Speaker 3: in the loop, that this is a conspiracy that involved
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: people throughout the administration. And when we say, well, Giuliani
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: is the president's attorney, of course they should be talking.
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  Speaker 3: It is not the job of an attorney to fly
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  Speaker 3: to Ukraine and try to strong arm a government into
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  Speaker 3: interfering election. That is not part of the duties of
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  Speaker 3: the attorney. So this would be happening outside of what
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  Speaker 3: I would call the normal course of business.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And I also think The real flag here is
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  Speaker 1: Rudy talking to the Office of Management and Budget. Like
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: you said, it's almost the easier to explain call is
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  Speaker 1: all the calls with, you know, dash one, which seems
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  Speaker 1: to be Donald Trump, because in the Roger Stone hearing,
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  Speaker 1: a number was also listed as dash one that was
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: assumed to be Donald Trump there as well. But that's
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  Speaker 1: almost not as, like you said, it's not as surprising because,
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  Speaker 1: you know, Rudy was Donald Trump's personal lawyer. But Donald
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  Speaker 1: Trump's personal lawyer shouldn't necessarily be calling the Office of
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  Speaker 1: Management and Budget unless he was talking about, I don't know,
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  Speaker 1: freezing $ 400 million worth of aid to Ukraine, which happened
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  Speaker 1: right around the time he was calling OMB. Right after,
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  Speaker 1: you know, he called OMB a couple weeks after the
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  Speaker 1: aid was frozen. So, you know, that seems pretty suspicious, huh?
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  Speaker 3: Did you read the breakdown in Fox, provided by our
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  Speaker 3: wonderful producer Jordan Waller, about the circumstantial evidence that Dash
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  Speaker 3: 1 is Trump?
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  Speaker 1: I did, yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: So what it said was Rudy received three calls on
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  Speaker 3: his various phones, all within a very short distance that
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  Speaker 3: he did not answer, immediately after he texted the White House,
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  Speaker 3: and then he tries to call back those three numbers.
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  Speaker 3: And as you and I know from having worked in
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  Speaker 3: the White House, when the president calls you, it is
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  Speaker 3: like a five alarm fucking fire. Because your work, like
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: we used to have a BlackBerry, we're so old, for work,
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: a personal phone, and then even back then a home phone.
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: And so they all ring basically at the same, like
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: within seconds of each other. And like, it could be
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: the president just calling with speech edits or to ask
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  Speaker 3: a question or get to a bunker and you don't
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: know which. And so this was a very, and then
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: trying to call back is always challenging because you have
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  Speaker 3: to call back several numbers. And so this was a very,
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  Speaker 3: this very clearly was dash one, like dash one is Trump, obviously.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: Can I, can I tell you a very embarrassing story
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: is once on my, I was working on speech edits
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  Speaker 1: in the white house and I had sent them to
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  Speaker 1: Obama and I fell asleep. And apparently my phone rang
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: a bunch of times. I did not hear it ring.
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  Speaker 1: And I woke up to an email from the President
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  Speaker 1: of the United States that said, are you up? Looking
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  Speaker 1: for me because he wanted to give me more speech edits.
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  Speaker 1: And I just missed it. And the way you know
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: that we worked for the kindest, most generous man that
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: I'll ever work for is that He had no problem
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: in the morning. I was like, I'm so sorry. I slept.
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  Speaker 1: I didn't see. He's like, that's fine. It's okay. We'll
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  Speaker 1: deal with it.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah. I always had this passing in the nights situation
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  Speaker 3: with the president, which is I would go to bed
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  Speaker 3: pretty early because I'd get up quite early and he
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: was a night owl. So I would constantly wake up
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: to a series of emails with various questions and sometimes complaints.
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: And then there'd be this several hour gap between when
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: I saw it and then when he would be done,
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: like getting the girls off to school, working out and
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: then like checking into his email. And so always like
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: no worse feeling in the world than waking up to
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: discover that you, that you, that you left the president
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  Speaker 3: United States who needed your assistance hanging.
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: But I, for some reason I feel like Rudy Giuliani
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily feel that way. Cause he's got a lot
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: going on. He's wheeling and dealing.
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: Rudy sleeps between one and three in the afternoon, so
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: he'll be fine.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about notoriously stupid Congressman Devin Nunes. Tommy's trying
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: to get that title to stick. So I'm just going to,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: you know, use that. So Nunes is currently suing CNN
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: for running a story that quotes Lev Parnas' attorney as
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: saying that Parnas helped Nunes set up meetings in Europe
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: to get dirt on Joe Biden. Nunes denies this. But now,
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: after denying this, after filing this lawsuit, I don't know
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: what this is talking about. I've never visited Europe. This
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: is all bullshit. Now he has to explain why these
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: call records show him making a nine-minute phone call to
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: Lev Parnas. What do you think, Dan? Did the world's
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: dumbest congressman strike again here? What's going on?
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: I think we owe Lev Parnas an apology because the
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: last time you and I recorded a podcast together, which
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: feels like 10 years and 17 turkey meals ago, we
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: were very cautious to put our faith in in the
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: recently indicted Mr.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: Parnas.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: We wanted to be caught. We didn't want to jump
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: to any conclusions. We wanted to be more fair to Mr.
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: Nunes than he has been to anyone else in history.
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: And we were wrong. We should have trusted Lev Parnas.
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: He was right. Devin Nunes, the notoriously stupid congressman, is
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: waist deep in this criminal conspiracy.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, so he goes on Hannity, you know,
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: he goes to a safe space and Hannity is like,
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: you don't know this guy Les Parnase, do you? Like,
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: you know, intentionally fucking up the guy's name as if, like,
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: Sean Hannity's never heard of him before. And, you know,
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: Nunes is like, you know, it's possible. I haven't gone
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: through my phone records. I don't recall that name. You
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: don't recall talking to that guy for nine minutes on
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: the phone, dude? Come on. Come on.
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: Nine minutes might be my longest phone conversation in six months.
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: Who is he talking to for nine minutes? So it
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: does seem like Nunes is involved. What do you think
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: happens from there? I mean, I guess they could launch
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: an ethics investigation, the Democrats in the House, into Nunes.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: Schiff seems like he wanted to be careful about accusing
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: him of anything based only on these phone records, which
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: I think is smart. But where do you think the
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: Democrats go from here on Nunes? I mean, an.
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: Ethics investigation seems like the right thing to do. We
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: just can't... Just for the same reason that impeachment is
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: being undertaken... That if you involve yourself in a massive
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: conflict of interest, don't tell people and then preside over
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: hearings into that conflict of interest.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: Then you– Good rule of thumb. Yeah.
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: I mean there should be accountability for that and there
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: should be an investigation to get to the bottom of it.
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: Will anything happen? Of course not because our democracy is
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: fundamentally broken and it was broken by a morally bankrupt
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: Republican Party.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: That's what we're trying to fix in 2020, Dan. Any
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: other highlights from the Intel Committee impeachment report? I will
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: admit I did not read all 300 pages, but I
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: read many articles about it and many summaries. It does seem...
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: I'm just going to be honest with you folks. 300
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: pages is a lot of pages.
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: People out there, when John says articles, he means tweets. No,
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: you know what?
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: I take a break from the tweets when it's time
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: to prep for the pod. I go full article. Not
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: even just... The summaries that Jordan and Michael helpfully prepare,
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: I click on those links. I read the whole thing.
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, give that ad money to Jeff Bezos.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: It does seem to be a pretty good summary, especially
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: in the executive report, of sort of laying out the
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: impeachable offenses, its abuse of power, its undermining national security,
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: its interfering, its getting a foreign government to interfere in
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: our elections. You know, it's what Pelosi laid out in
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: her press conference today when she basically announced that they're
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: going to write articles of impeachment. Did you find anything
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: else noteworthy?
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: Well, as has been pointed out by the pizzazz police
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: out there, much of what was in that report was
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: known already. The new nuggets are the ones that we
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: just discussed. But what I thought was particularly compelling in
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: the context of that report was the degree to which
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: the President of the United States and his administration has
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: obstructed the investigation. Preventing everyone from testifying, not being unwilling
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: to turn over a single piece of paper in response
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: to it. And that is historically unprecedented and is in
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: and of itself an impeachable offense. The Constitution gave Congress
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: the power to hold the executive branch accountable. It is
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: what holds the system up. The American people elected, by
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: a historic margin, this Congress. This is a constitutionally appropriate,
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: politically viable impeachment investigation. It has been signed off on
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: by the founders and the voters. And the president doesn't
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: get to just ignore it because it's inconvenient that he
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: fell ass backwards into a crime pit. It is a
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: real thing, and he should be held accountable for that.
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: And this is not the typical back and forth over
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: executive privilege that happens for good reason in most– administrations
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: and Congresses. This is a specific effort that goes well
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: beyond what Nixon did to prevent Congress from doing its
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: constitutionally mandated job. And I think that's important. And the
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: report does a very good job of laying that out.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I get that obstruction process crimes are
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: not as, they don't register as high on the pizzazz
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: meter with a lot of the press do, but it
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: is unbelievably fucked up and dangerous for the president of
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: the United States to just say, You cannot investigate me.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: You cannot indict me. I do not have to cooperate
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: with anything. I do not have to cooperate with any investigations.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: I can do basically whatever I want, and I'm immune
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: because legal indictments aren't a remedy, and now impeachment isn't
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: a remedy, and congressional investigations aren't a remedy either, so
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: fuck you all. Can't have that. Can't have that. That
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: is what a king does. That is what a dictator does.
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: Or at least a president with a complicit party and
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: a rigged court.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. All right, let's talk about yesterday's hearing. It
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: was the Judiciary Committee's first, and the goal was to
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: prove that Trump's Ukraine scheme constitutes an impeachable offense. The
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: hearing lasted all day with testimony from four constitutional law scholars,
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: three called by Democrats and one called by Republicans. A
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: similar hearing was held during the impeachment of Bill Clinton
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: in 1998. Dan, what do you think this hearing accomplished?
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: And more importantly, was there enough pizzazz?
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: We're going to make pizzazz jokes until the author of
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: the original pizzazz piece apologizes to America.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: That's what I'm waiting for. You know who you are.
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: I'm actually very sure the hearing did not shift the
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: political tides in any major way. But for all of
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: the people dismissing it on Twitter as either boring or
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: just telling us what we already know, I would note
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: that the three broadcast networks carried the hearing for several hours. Yeah.
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: And so in the larger democratic effort to try to
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: find the small pockets of persuadable Americans out there, this
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: was a very useful exercise. And the arguments, like the report,
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: are overwhelmingly compelling. It is like in any normal functioning
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: democracy with a normal functioning opposition party, this would be
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: an open and shut case and Trump would be flying
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: Marine One out of here.
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: In a week.
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: And the fact that that's not happening says a lot
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: about where we are as a country.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I completely agree. Like, I think we've said many,
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: many times here, public opinion on this is pretty set.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: I don't expect it to move dramatically. But this is
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: like a game of news cycles here. And when people
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: turn on the television or go online to read the news,
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: you know, the soundbites they're going to see from three
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: constitutional law professors are, you know, Professor Noah Feldman said,
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: President Trump has committed impeachable high crimes and misdemeanors by
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: corruptly abusing the office of the presidency. Michael Gerhardt, if
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: what we are talking about is not impeachable, nothing is impeachable.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: And Professor Pamela Carland, drawing a foreign government into our
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: election process is an especially serious abuse of power because
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: it undermines democracy itself. So look, like you said, all
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: the networks covered it. Everyone else covered it. And when
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: you see a bunch of constitutional law professors say that,
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: I don't think it's going to change a ton of minds,
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: but it's certainly not unhelpful.
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: It was almost amusing watching these constitutional law professors because
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: there was an inherent absurdity to the exercise, which is
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: what the president did, which is beyond factual dispute. It
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: is 100% clear. There are call records. There is firsthand testimony.
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: There is the admission of the White House chief of
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: staff on national television. There are presidential tweets and press
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: conferences where he cops to the crime. The facts are
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: beyond dispute. It is the textbook definition of an impeachable offense.
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: If you were trying to provide an example to help
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: law students understand what is impeachable, this would be it.
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: And so they're up there sort of wondering almost how
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: did they end up in this theater of the absurd
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: where the obvious is treated as extraordinary? And I mean,
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: the patience at which those three professors showed was quite impressive,
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: I thought.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: I thought so, too. I thought the witness who seemed
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: especially just floored that this is even taking place is
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: Pamela Carlin, who I thought was quite good. And she
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: gave a really great analogy, I thought, where she said,
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: you know, imagine living in a part of Louisiana or
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: Texas that's prone to hurricanes and flooding. What would you
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: think of when your governor asked the federal government for
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: the disaster assistance that Congress has already provided? The president responded,
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: I would like you to do us a favor. I'll
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: meet with you and send the disaster relief once you
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: brand my political opponent a criminal. And I thought that
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: was just a great way to sort of make it
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: even more accessible for people of just how fucked up
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: what the president did is.
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's beyond dispute and abuse of power.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah. What did you think about the Republican witness, Professor
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: Jonathan Turley, who, you know, made an interesting argument in
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: that he didn't say that the call was perfect. In fact,
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: he said the call was very much not perfect. He
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: said that the use of military aid for a quid
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: pro quo to investigate one's political opponent, if proven, can
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: be an impeachable offense, but he thinks it hasn't been proven.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: What did you sort of make of that argument?
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: I feel like if the worst parts of Washington, D.C.
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: had a mascot, it would be Jonathan Turley. There needs
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: to be some context here that he is a television
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: talking head attorney who basically came to fame... in the
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: late 90s supporting the impeachment of Bill Clinton, essentially making
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: the opposite argument on every issue that he made today.
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: He is a shameless merchant in the marketplace of political attention,
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: and it says a lot about how weak the Republican
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: cases that they were left with, apparently either Jonathan Turley
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: or Alan Dershowitz were the two people available to them
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: to make their very weak case.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you know, Jonathan Turley, he said during
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: his testimony, you know, I'm not a Trump supporter. I
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: didn't vote for Trump. I support Obama and Clinton. So
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: he clearly is trying to credential himself as this like
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: nonpartisan legal observer here. So he defends Bill Clinton's impeachment
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: still to this day at the same time as his
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: main argument about the Trump impeachment is not that it's
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: completely wrong. It's that it's been being rushed. though the
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: Clinton impeachment and the Trump impeachment are both on track
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: to be around the same exact number of days. They're
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: about 75 days from the beginning of the investigations to
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: the vote on impeachment. So that argument kind of falls apart.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: He also argued that he doesn't believe that Nixon should
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: have been impeached for the obstruction charges that Nixon was
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: going to be impeached for. And he thinks that notorious
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: racist Andrew Johnson was railroaded during his impeachment as well.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: So I don't really know how well his argument holds up,
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: even though I get that someone who says, well, I
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: didn't vote for Trump and I'm not a supporter of Trump,
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: but I don't believe in impeachment. I can see how
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: Republicans would think that might be effective.
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: I think his legal positions are reverse engineered from what
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: gets him booked on television.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: You think so? You think it's it? I mean, we
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: should note that he has already embraced some pretty far-fetched
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: conspiracy theories about Ukraine in the past, right? He Earlier
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: this year, he wrote an op-ed in The Hill that
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: downplayed Manafort's connections to Russia, which we know are plenty.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: And he also unhighlighted his connections to the Ukrainian government.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: So he sort of bought into a few of these
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: Ukrainian conspiracy theories, too.
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, not great.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: Not great. So, I mean, you know, Turley's main argument
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: also seemed to be the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee's
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: main argument yesterday, which is it's a new one now.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: Democrats are rushing the impeachment. That seems to be the problem.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: Why do you think they're going with this new argument
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: about a rushed impeachment? And do you think it's more
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: effective than just saying what they were saying the last
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: couple of weeks, which is just that Trump didn't do
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: anything wrong at all?
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: I think on the most basic, least thought-out surface level,
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: it seems like a better argument, which is like, look,
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: we are for accountability and justice, but we want a
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: fair process. We want the president to do process. We
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: want to get to the bottom of this. So in
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: that sense, as someone who's been paying zero attention to
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: anything the Republicans have done to date, zero attention to
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: anything that Trump has said or the effort ways in
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: which they've gone about obstructing the investigation– Well, that makes sense.
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: Like don't– this is very serious. Why would we rush?
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: Except it's such patently obvious bullshit. I mean their argument
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: basically is you're going too fast. You don't have all
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: the information. But we're going to give you none of
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: the information. The other argument is, which is just as bullshit,
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: is look, impeachment is very serious, but it must be bipartisan.
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: But if anyone in our party supports impeachment, we're going
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: to kick them out so you can't call it bipartisan.
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: So if you think about it, it's just like, shut
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: the fuck up, people. You are so stupid. But it's
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: not an ineffective strategy given the way media works, which
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: is they have microphones and they say it and people
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: often hear that or they read the headlines and don't
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: click on the link or whatever else and get to
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: the full bottom of it. So for people who are
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: paying a– little bit of attention, if any at all,
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: that you can skate by with this bullshit.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because, I mean, it's a smarter media strategy because
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: they know that the media tends to ding them when
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: they throw out all kinds of wild conspiracy theories, which,
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: good for the media, and they should. But they also
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: know that there's a debate within the Democratic Party about,
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: are we rushing into this too fast or should we
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: take time? And so they know that if they jump
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: in and say, well, they're rushing it, then the media
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: will see that as a legitimate debate because it's already
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: one that's happening in the Democratic Party. And then you'll
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: get headlines like we have in the New York Times
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: today that say, are Democrats rushing impeachment? So, you know,
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: they once again pin a strategy on the credulousness of
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: reporters and sort of knowing that reporters are looking to
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: do both sides at all times. And, you know, that's
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: more effective. But like you said, Once you examine the
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: argument for just fucking 10 seconds, it falls right apart. Like,
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: what are we going to do? I mean, and I get, like,
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: we should talk about whether we think it's rushed or not. Like, again,
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: you could wait forever for a court to decide whether
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: John Bolton testifies or not, I guess. But the White
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: House is obstructing, has decided that they're going to obstruct
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: no matter what. And how much more evidence do we need?
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: You know, like even there's this whole thing like, well,
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: the Democrats don't have the smoking gun on the aid
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: because we don't actually have a tape or an email
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: of the president saying withhold the aid until I get
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: the favor. But like. It's not just about the aid
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: for the Biden investigation. We have Mick Mulvaney on TV
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: admitting that they withheld the aid until the Ukrainians agreed
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: to launch the fucking crazy conspiracy investigation into the CrowdStrike bullshit.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: So like the chief of staff has admitted on TV
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: that there was a quid pro quo involving aid. Like,
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: I don't know why we need more evidence on this.
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: And not just the White House chief of staff. He
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: is also the acting director of the Office of Management
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: and Budget, the office that withheld the aid. So we
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: have the person responsible for aid withholding saying on national
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: television that, yes, it was a quid pro quo. Yes,
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: they withheld the aid and then told the American people
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: to get over it. That is the smokiest of guns
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: humanly possible.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: I also think if Nancy Pelosi went to the microphone
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: today and said, we're going to wait on the courts
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: to decide. And hopefully they'll decide quickly to see if
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: they compel John Bolton and Mick Mulvaney and others to testify.
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: We're going to keep investigating. She said that what would
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: happen is everyone would forget about impeachment for a little while.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: We'd move on to the next thing. The holidays would arrive.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: And then in like, even if it was only three
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: weeks from now, right? Let's even if it's four weeks
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: from now, right? And suddenly the courts decide in the
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: best case, the courts decide they testify and And we've
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: lost all that momentum because now no one in the
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: country is talking about impeachment. And we've moved on. The
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: reporters have moved on to the next media thing, which,
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: you know, they have a whole 2020 primary to cover.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: That's probably pretty interesting. Or perhaps even a government shutdown.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: We don't know what's happening. So that's in the best
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: case scenario. In the worst case scenario, they lose the
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: court case. And then it's like Democrats lose big court
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: case on impeachment are all the headlines. I don't I mean,
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: I get it. I've seen, you know, there's a lot
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: of people on the on the Democratic side and the left,
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: you know, including our own Brian Boitler. who have argued
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: for a longer impeachment, a longer investigation. I just, having
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: now been through a couple weeks of it, I don't
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: see how you continue to capture the public's attention if
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: you drag this out longer.
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, it is a
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: tough call because if you were just doing this from
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: the pure question of what is the constitutional obligation.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: And it's not just about like, I don't think we
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: need Bolton and Mulvaney to testify for any reason. other
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: than public attention because the evidence of said crimes is
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: without is overwhelming so it's not like they will they
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: can provide nuance to it they would provide very high
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: profile tv moments but you don't need it for that
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: like has Trump committed a gazillion impeachable offenses? Like we
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: just found out the other day that he gave a
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: contract to a very small North Dakota firm for wall
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: construction that's owned by a donor. Like, like there, there
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: are like we, there is impeachment everywhere, but this is
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: where we are right now. And the U S Congress
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: could be investigating impeachable offenses by Trump until the end
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: of time, but we got to do what we got
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: to do.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: And it's, and I, yeah, I get it. It's, it's, uh,
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: it's very, it's hard. And I think that, like, we've
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: seen how hard it is to keep the public's attention
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: on this. Like, I think Adam Schiff and the Intel
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: Committee conducted near flawless hearings, you know, and they were
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: incredibly compelling. And even that doesn't move the needle all
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: that much. And so to think that, and that's as
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: high drama as you're going to get, all those witnesses testifying,
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: new revelations every day of that, of those hearings. So,
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: you know, I think it's hard because, a lot of
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: the new revelations that would come with continued investigations are,
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: like you said, stories that have already popped up in
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: the news, like what you just said about the contract, right?
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: So investigating stories that are already there and then finding out, yeah, well,
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: there is a connection between Trump and this scandal. I
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: don't know how much more it gets you. I don't
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: know that it convinces Republicans more. So you might as
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: well move forward with what you have.
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: I do want to make one point, though, on the
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: public opinion piece, which is America is polarized, right? I
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: think we have to stop trying to analyze the political
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: success and failure of various efforts based on this macro
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: number of how far away we move from 50-50 because
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: we're pretty locked in to that and start looking at
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: different pockets of people, right? Whether that's non-voters, that can
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: be the Obama, Trump, Democrat in 18 voters. It could
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: be Romney, Clinton voters. There's like different pockets of people
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: who could be deciding these elections in these various states.
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: like this is what I think between media polling and
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: campaign polling is media polling is often about a top
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: line that is attached to a narrative, right? Like, do
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: you support impeachment? Yes or no. Is the impeachment hearing
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: too long or too short? And campaign polling is also
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: is very often both in quantitative research like polls and
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: qualitative research like focus groups trying to get at how
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: what happens in the news, what happens in advertising affects
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: the how the public views the character of and values
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: of the candidate, right? Like, is Trump losing ground on,
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: with these voters, on being a agent of change in Washington?
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: Is he losing ground on draining the swamp? Are voters
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: getting more exhausted by his presence? There are a lot
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: of different measures that I think, I'm sure a number
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: of the Democratic super PACs and party organizations are looking at,
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: and then our nominee eventually will. And when we trap
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: ourselves in this, you know, either or of binary discussion
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: about the overall electorate. I don't think we're fully understanding
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: the potential impact of these things.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay.
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: End of rant.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: So before we move on to 2020, we should talk
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: about Trump himself, what he's been up to. He spent
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: the early part of the week at the NATO summit
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: in London, where he once again embarrassed his country on
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: the world stage with a series of rambling statements and
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: shots at other world leaders who were later caught on
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: video mocking Trump during a reception at Buckingham Palace. Justin Trudeau,
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: Emmanuel Macron, Boris Johnson, Princess Anne. and the Netherlands Prime
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: Minister Mark Rutte can be seen standing in a circle
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: lightly roasting Trump. In the video, which went viral, Justin
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: Trudeau can be heard saying he was late because he
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: takes a 40-minute news conference at the top and, quote,
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: you just watch his team's jaws drop to the floor. So, Dan,
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: Trudeau later said, you know, yeah, we were talking about Trump,
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: but it was mostly about how astonished his team looked
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: when he randomly announced that the G7 would be held
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: at Camp David. And Trump, when he hears what Trudeau said,
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: calls him two-faced, cancels his last press conference, and leaves
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: the summit early in a huff. Is that the behavior
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: of a stable human being?
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: No, but it is pretty typical behavior of Donald J. Trump,
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: President of the United States.
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it is. So I thought this was interesting. In
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: response to Trump's meltdown, Joe Biden said, put together a
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: new ad that he released on Twitter, at least last night.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: Let's play a clip. World leaders caught on camera laughing
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: about President Trump.
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: Several world leaders mocking President Trump.
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: They're laughing at him.
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: My administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: the history of our country. Didn't expect that reaction, but
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: that's okay. World leaders mocking and ridiculing him for being
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: completely off balance. Allies are deeply worried about him. They
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: say he's becoming increasingly isolated. Something is very wrong.
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: The world sees Trump for what he is, insincere, ill-informed, corrupt,
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: dangerously incompetent, and incapable, in my view, of world leadership.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: So I've always thought that Trump, as someone who's embarrassing America,
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: who's making our country a laughingstock, is an effective political
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: attack in 2020. I don't think it should be the
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: only message, obviously, but I think as we think about
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: messages that work against Trump, I do think that has
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: some power. What do you think?
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: I thought it was an excellent ad, as we all
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: said on Twitter last night, both in the sense that
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: At least in 2008, in the Obama campaign, the idea
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: of Obama improving America's standing in the world after being
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: shunned because of the absolute catastrophe that was Bush's foreign
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: policy was a very powerful message for Obama in the
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: Democratic primary and very powerful with the dependents and Republicans
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: in the general election. I have not yet– I have
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: not seen evidence that– like I just haven't seen polling
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: that guarantees that that's true this time, but I think
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: it has real power. It also was a very good
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: ad because I think what a lot of people took
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: from it was this was a very quick, rapid response
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: from Biden. It was nimble, something that his campaigns has
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: been criticized for not being previously. And so even people
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: who were ambivalent about the message of the ad viewed
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: this as a proof point about his potential abilities as
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: a general election opponent of Trump. I do think it
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: will be important if this is an argument that Biden
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: or whoever our nominee is carries forward, that you connect
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: Trump's embarrassing behavior, his lack of standing in the world
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: with actual impacts on American families.
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: Oh, for sure. But like, so, you know, like, like
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: everything on fucking Twitter there, you, you tweet something about
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: this and then I'll, you know, there's, there's a bunch
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: of Biden haters on the left and some folks on
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: the left who are like, no, That's a bad message.
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: Hillary tried the message that Trump was bad. It didn't
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: work for her. The more important message is about, you know,
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: economic inequality and all that. And I agree that, you know,
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: messages about jobs, the economy, health care are extremely effective.
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: So I completely agree with that. And then there were
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: some people on the right who were saying, you know, like,
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: you know, I tweeted that it was a good ad
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: and then I got this from Ben Shapiro. I'm sure
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: Michigan voters will resonate to the message. I don't really
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: know if that's how you say it. I'm sure Michigan
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: voters will resonate to the message that we must have
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: a president respected by Emmanuel Macron and Justin Trudeau. So
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: it's like, you know, that message is, oh, I guess
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: he thinks that like the rubes in the middle of
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: the country don't really care about America standing in the world,
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: you know, which I think is pretty condescending. But like,
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: I will say, when I did these focus groups for
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: the wilderness, right, I did four groups, four different groups
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: of voters, right? Democrats who were disengaged, Obama voters who
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: stayed home, who were non-voters in 16 or voted third party,
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: Romney-Clinton voters, and Obama-Trump voters. The only thing that came
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: up in all four groups, all four groups, were people saying,
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: I am embarrassed by Donald Trump. He is embarrassing America
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: in front of the world. I have a quote from
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: an Obama-Trump voter, middle-aged white guy in Milwaukee. And I said,
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: you know, what do you think of Donald Trump? You
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: voted for Donald Trump. And this is how he responded.
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: I'll be honest. I think he's done some good things,
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: but I'm really concerned about where we're headed in the
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: next couple of years if he's still around. I think
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: he's a laughingstock around the world. And I think he's
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: burning bridges around the world. And you never know when
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: you're going to need your allies. And that's, you know,
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: non-college educated white Trump voter from Milwaukee, from outside Milwaukee,
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: from one of the suburbs. So, like, I think, like
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: you said, you know, we haven't seen polling. This is
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: qualitative research in focus groups. It's not the same as
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: polling a thousand people, so you have to wait and see.
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: But I think it is dangerous, just as it's dangerous to, like,
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: predict a bunch of shit, it's dangerous to do a
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: bunch of punditry about what voters in the Midwest think
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: or anywhere in the country without actually talking to them.
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: because people are complicated and nuanced and subtle, and they
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: might surprise you with what they care about, right? There's
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: a lot of voters. It surprised me. I did not
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: think so many people would care about America's standing in
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: the world with Trump as president. I thought there'd be
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: a long list of other grievances with Trump, but it
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: came up in a lot of groups that I did.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: So there you go.
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: The other thing that is important to think about is
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: that the impact of messages differ based on who the
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: messenger is. This is a message that is particularly conducive
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: to Biden's argument for himself. He is someone who has
• 40:05
  Speaker 3: been on the world stage. He knows these leaders. He
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: is promising a return to normalcy. We can dispute whether
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: that is possible or not, but it is an argument
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: that works for Biden. It may not work for others,
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: but it has the potential to work for him because
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: of his bio, his message, and how people understand who
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: he is.
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think there's one last point to make about this.
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: You know, Trump is running an ad. I think this
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: was the ad he ran during the World Series, perhaps,
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: where the ad basically ends with, yeah, maybe Trump's not
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: the nicest guy, but sometimes you can't have a nice guy.
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: You know, it takes someone who's not that nice to
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: fix Washington or something like that. I think if we
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: made an argument that foreign leaders believe that Donald Trump
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: is too mean, or they just think he's too nasty,
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: then I get people saying, well, we want our president
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: to be tough with foreign leaders. Fuck those people. He
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: should push them around a little bit. There could be
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: a little of that. I could see that from voters.
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: But I think when the message is that we're being
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: laughed at, that Donald Trump, our president, is being laughed
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: at around the world, that everyone's looking at America as like,
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: what the fuck happened there? Who is this buffoon in charge?
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: When he's mocked and laughed at as opposed to feared,
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: which is what he wants to be. I do think
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: that's powerful, you know?
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: All right. Let's talk about 2020. On Tuesday, Kamala Harris
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: announced that she was suspending her campaign for president, citing
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: a lack of financial resources in a post where she said, quote,
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: I'm not a billionaire. I can't fund my own campaign.
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: And as the campaign has gone on, it's become harder
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: and harder to raise the money we need to compete.
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: In good faith, I can't tell you, my supporters and volunteers,
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: that I have a path forward if I don't believe
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: I do. So, Dan, this announcement came on the same
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: day that a super PAC supporting her prepared to make
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: a huge ad buy in Iowa. Gavin Newsom, Governor of California,
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: who had endorsed her earlier, talked about how he was
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: so excited to go campaign with her. How surprised were
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: you by this news?
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: I was shocked.
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: Me too.
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: I had been thinking... and even considering either offering this
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: take on this podcast or in a piece of written
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: content on a website known as crooked.com, that there was
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: this parade of articles sort of culminating in the New
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: York Times that were about all of the problems with
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: the Harris campaign, all which were incredibly well-sourced and all
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: delineated the same problem, so I imagine accurate. And I
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: sort of had this view that it was possible that
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: Kamala Harris was poised for a comeback. Because media narratives
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: in campaigns tend, particularly negative ones, end in a crescendo.
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: And it's usually when, with a bunch of stories just
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: like the one that happened here, which then forces the
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: campaign to make a bunch of changes, someone will generally
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: get fired, they will offer a blood sacrifice to the
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: Washington media, and then they get a chance to have
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: a comeback narrative. And this was sort of a perfect,
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: this is how, as you know better than most, what
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: happened to John Kerry's campaign in 2004. It's what happened
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: to John McCain in 2008. And so I sort of
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: thought what would happen here is that after all of
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: this talk about these problems at the top of their campaign,
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: a change would be made. Kamala Harris would have an
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: opportunity now to get a second look, to become part
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: of a comeback narrative and make a run at it.
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: Because I still believed, even as yesterday morning before this announcement,
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: that of all the people who were not in the
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: top four, she had the clearest chances of being the nominee.
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: And I still believe that were she the nominee, she
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: probably would have had the best chance to reconstitute the
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: Obama coalition in an updated post-2016 form. So I was
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: shocked by this.
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: So, you know, I guess the question is, what do
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: you think happened? Why do you think her campaign didn't succeed? Because,
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: you know, it's not the case with her, like some
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: of these other candidates, that she just had struggles from
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: the start and never took off. Campaign kickoff, 20,000 people
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: in Oakland. It was probably the biggest kickoff of any
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: candidate in terms of crowd size. $ 12 million raised in
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: the first quarter. She was second place in the fundraising
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: race with that hall. And then she had another big
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: fundraising hall in the next quarter. She peaked at about
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: second place in the polls in early July after that
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: debate where she sort of tangled with Biden. She was
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: at 15% was her real clear politics average in the polls.
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: That was second place. She was ahead of Sanders and Warren.
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: And she was second in the endorsement primary. So she had,
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: aside from Joe Biden, she had more establishment institutional support
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: within the party than almost any other candidate. So it's
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: not like, you know, there were all these things that
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: sort of prevented her from even getting off the ground.
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: I think what she achieved is very commendable, you know,
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: that she got as far as she did. And she
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: got so much support and she really got a look
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: from voters. So what do you think happened?
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: I just want to say one thing before we sort
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: of dive into the autopsy element of this, which is
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: there are hundreds of people around the country, mostly young people,
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: who have spent much of the last year of their
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: life working their tails off to make Kamala Harris president
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: of the United States. They believed passionately in her, even
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: if the campaign itself was not successful. They are exhausted,
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: heartbroken today. And campaigns only end two ways, right? You
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: either become president. or you lose and the losing is
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: really hard and it's, you know, really hard for the
• 45:46
  Speaker 3: young people involved. And so I hope they get a,
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: catch a break, get some sleep and then like get
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: back in the fight. Cause we've all been there before
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: and it's hard.
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I totally agree. And I also think, you know,
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: we've said this a million times, but I love Kamala Harris.
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: I think she is incredibly charismatic. She is tough. She
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: is brilliant. She's just, she's, I really had sort of
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: high hopes for her candidacy at the outset, partly because
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: I think she is so talented. And so, you know,
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: I don't think, I mean, like as we dive into
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: this autopsy, as you said, I don't think there is
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: any easy explanation for this. Like, I think it is
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: a number of different factors. I think some of them
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: are structural and some of them are, you know, mistakes
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: that the candidate in her campaign made. But what do
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: you think?
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's right. This is one of those
• 46:47
  Speaker 3: conversations that's impossible to have on Twitter because it's not
• 46:50
  Speaker 3: an either or, right? It is true that her campaign
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: made a series of very serious mistakes, right? And I
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: think that's probably the prototypical example of that is that
• 47:02
  Speaker 3: she launched this incredibly well-executed, brilliantly delivered, perfectly planned debate
• 47:08
  Speaker 3: moment against Biden on busing. like one of the best
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: debate moments anyone's ever had rocketer to the top of
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: the polls, but her campaign did all of that without
• 47:18
  Speaker 3: having an answer to the question of her position on busing.
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: So within the day of that great moment, she stumbled
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: and was caught in, uh, you know, a media mess.
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: And like that, like that seems like a really, like
• 47:33
  Speaker 3: if you're going to launch an attack on Biden on busing,
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: you better be ready for the next day question.
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: And they were not. Yeah.
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: But, But I think a thing– and I've been thinking
• 47:42
  Speaker 3: about this really a lot, both in the context of
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: what's happened to Kamala Harris' campaign, but also what the
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: debate stage was going to look like in December, even
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: with Kamala Harris, who had qualified for that debate, because
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: it was going to be quite white. As of right now,
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: no candidate of color has qualified for the debate stage,
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: other than Kamala Harris, who has.
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: Now dropped out.
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: And I think– There have been a lot of discussion
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: about making Iowa and New Hampshire first and the problems
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: of having these very white states at the front. And
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: then people will come back and say, well, Obama won
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: Iowa and almost won New Hampshire. So that's proof that
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: that's not a problem. And I think that that is
• 48:30
  Speaker 3: not the right way of looking at it. I think
• 48:33
  Speaker 3: we are operating in an electoral environment where the most
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: important characteristic that voters want in their Democratic nominee is
• 48:40
  Speaker 3: the ability to beat Trump. And they are getting their
• 48:43
  Speaker 3: information about who is best to beat Trump from a
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: political conversation that treats white male candidates as inherently more electable.
• 48:55
  Speaker 3: And what that means is that it doesn't mean that
• 48:58
  Speaker 3: Kamala Harris or Cory Booker or Julian Castro or any
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: other candidates of color who are fully qualified to be
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: on the stage who have not made it to the
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: top tier. It does not mean they haven't made mistakes
• 49:08
  Speaker 3: or run perfect campaigns. It means they have less, exponentially
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: less margin for error than the white candidates, particularly the
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: white male candidates. And it's just that the prism of
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: viewing the electability of a candidate through their ability to
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: persuade white male voters in Wisconsin basically puts a tax
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: on non-white male candidates. And that is something we have
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: to think really hard about. And there's not an obvious
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: or easy solution of changing the debate criteria, or it's
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: a multifaceted thing, but I think it it had a
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: huge impact on her campaign. And it is having one
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: on Cory Booker's and a bunch of other people.
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: And when you say that, you know, we have to
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: really think about it and there's not an easy solution.
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's very true because it's not like, so
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: when we've talked about this before, but when Obama was running,
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: if Obama was running in 04, right against George Bush
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: and it was, we have to be George W. Bush
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: no matter what. And everyone was really worried about who's
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: the most electable person to, go against George W. Bush
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: like they were in the 04 race, I don't know
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: that Obama could have won that primary because I think
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: concerns about electability in 2008 when it was assured that
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: George Bush would not be on the ticket when it
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: was an open race and we didn't know who the
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: Republican nominee was going to be, concerns about electability were
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: not as high as they are now. And, you know,
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: we said this a lot, but the emotion that sort
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: of pervades this entire race is fear in voters. And
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: it's not just white voters, Kamala Harris and Cory Booker
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: have had trouble earning any black support in any of
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: these polls. And aside from the very white states of
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: Iowa and New Hampshire, poll after poll in South Carolina
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: shows that too. I mean, Joe Biden has his biggest
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: lead in South Carolina, and that lead is because of
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: his huge lead among black voters. Joe Biden, to the
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: extent that he's lost some support since his announcement, which
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: he has, he's lost it among white voters. And he
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: hasn't lost really any support among the black community. And
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: so why is that? And look, I think there's a
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: couple explanations. There is that, you know, this fear about
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: electability is not just a fear among white voters. It's
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: a fear among black voters and Latino voters and other voters, right?
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: People want to beat Donald Trump. And so there's that
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: electability thing. And I also think it's a challenge of
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: trying to get attention in a primary that's crowded when
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: people are not tuning in as closely. And so the
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: demographics that is tuning in very closely right now are,
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: you know, college educated voters, and they tend to be
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: very progressive and liberal. And that means that's a whole,
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: there's a whole swath of voters that aren't paying as
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: close attention to the primary right now. And so for them,
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: you know, name ID matters more. And so that's, you know,
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: that's part of the reason that I think Joe Biden
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: and Bernie, it's not the whole reason, but it's part
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: of the reason that Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: still doing well. I mean, another thing, you know, I
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: asked everyone about all the candidates and all these focus groups.
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: And aside from the Arizona voters who are Romney Clinton voters,
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: who are people who tend to pay more attention to
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: the news, the other three groups, no one had heard
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: of Kamala Harris. So all the stuff about like, what
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: did she do wrong? Was there no message? Was there this?
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: Was there that? Like, they just hadn't heard of her.
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: And they hadn't heard of Pete Buttigieg. They hadn't heard
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: of any other candidates but Biden, Bernie, and then some
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: had heard of Warren. That's it. which was really surprising
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: to me because I'm like, oh, I live in this
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: world where I know every twist and turn of this race.
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: And I know a lot of people who are going
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: to vote. All these people said we're going to vote
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: in 2020 in the primary still haven't really tuned in yet.
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: And I think when you're trying to capture attention, which
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: you must in order to raise money and to get
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: make the polling threshold for these debates, it's really hard
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: in a field this crowded with people Joe Biden and
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: Bernie Sanders at the top of the field who are
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: almost universally known within the Democratic Party.
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 53:06
  Speaker 3: And Elizabeth Warren, who is in second or third place,
• 53:09
  Speaker 3: depending on how you look at the polling average, also
• 53:12
  Speaker 3: had incredibly high name ID when she came into this race.
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 53:15
  Speaker 3: Much higher than a bunch of the other candidates.
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: That's true. What do you think that Kamala Harris's departure
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: from the race means for some of the other candidates?
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: Like the typical way of looking at that question is
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: she had... 5%, 3%, whatever it is. And you think
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: about it, it's like, how is that percentage allocated among
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: other voters? Like, who's going to get 3%? Who's going
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: to get one of those 3%? And when you have
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: 3% or 5%, I don't think it is determinative, right? Like,
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: it'd be one thing if, for whatever reason, Bernie Sanders
• 53:43
  Speaker 3: dropped out or Joe Biden dropped out or Elizabeth Warren
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: dropped out, where they're holding on to 15% to 20%
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: of the electorate. And then, like, those are meaningful numbers
• 53:50
  Speaker 3: that can give someone a real cannabis. What I think
• 53:53
  Speaker 3: it's going to affect is... I think it's going to
• 53:56
  Speaker 3: affect the conversation in a negative way, which is in
• 54:01
  Speaker 3: that last debate where both Harris and Booker were on stage,
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: they both began trying to expand the electability conversation beyond
• 54:10
  Speaker 3: persuading these Obama-Trump-white voters to being about the most electable
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: candidate has to be someone who can excite communities of
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: color to turn out. And that conversation was not finished yet.
• 54:24
  Speaker 3: on that stage. And now I think it's very problematic
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: that if things stay the way they are, and Cory
• 54:31
  Speaker 3: Booker does not have a sort of miraculous run of
• 54:34
  Speaker 3: four polls coming up here in the next, whatever it is,
• 54:36
  Speaker 3: 10 days, then there will be no candidate of color
• 54:39
  Speaker 3: on that stage to have that conversation. And that is
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: critically important because it is a huge element of how
• 54:45
  Speaker 3: we're going to win this election is being able to
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: speak to in authentic ways and mobilize those voters. And-
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: that's just going to be missing. And I think that's
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: a huge negative.
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: So I guess the question there is, you know, I
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: can understand being upset about that, which I am. I'd
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: love to see a more diverse field on stage right
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: up until the end of the primary, you know, obviously.
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: But I've, and I've seen a lot of people, you know,
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: register sort of how upset they are about this. But
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: I wonder what you do. I wonder what the alternative
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: is from either the DNC debate rules perspective or any
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: other perspective, like, you know, is there an alternative for
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: picking who gets to be on the debate stage that
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: would ensure a more diverse field? I guess it's my
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: question because I've been trying to think of one and
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: so far I haven't come up with anything except that,
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: you know, Tom Perez and the DNC could have said,
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: you know what, there's going to be no polling threshold
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: and no fundraising threshold and And from now until the
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: end of the primary, we're just going to have, every
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: time there's a debate, two nights, 10 candidates on stage
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: each night, and we're going to let everyone participate right
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: up until the end.
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, this is sort of an impossible situation because it's
• 56:08
  Speaker 3: very important to note that Kamala Harris dropped out because
• 56:10
  Speaker 3: her campaign ran out of money, not because she did
• 56:13
  Speaker 3: not reach the DNC thresholds. She reached both the polling
• 56:16
  Speaker 3: thresholds and the online donor requirement thresholds. And so in
• 56:20
  Speaker 3: that sense, she was not excluded by the DNC processes.
• 56:25
  Speaker 3: And it is still possible that Andrew Yang and Tulsi
• 56:27
  Speaker 3: Gabbard could get some polls to get in there. Almost
• 56:29
  Speaker 3: every candidate is going to reach the online donor threshold.
• 56:33
  Speaker 3: I think I saw today Helene Castro is 1,000 donors away, 1,000
• 56:38
  Speaker 3: donations away. I think Booker has crossed that threshold already.
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: And it's the polling threshold. I don't have a great answer.
• 56:44
  Speaker 3: The DNC made a decision, which I agreed with at
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: the time. Which was– have some pretty easy qualifications because
• 56:52
  Speaker 3: you've got 20 candidates making the first couple of debates.
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: And they did not want to do a kids' table debate.
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: Where you take the lowest polling 10 and do it
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: at like 4 in the afternoon and no one cares
• 57:04
  Speaker 3: to give these candidates a chance to rise.
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 57:09
  Speaker 3: So I think that was the right decision. I honestly
• 57:11
  Speaker 3: don't know how you fix it here. I think that
• 57:15
  Speaker 3: there has to be an incredibly serious conversation within the
• 57:18
  Speaker 3: party about changing the order of the primary after this election.
• 57:22
  Speaker 3: Because the Des Moines Register poll in Iowa, which is
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: historically accurate and incredibly impactful, is driving huge parts of
• 57:31
  Speaker 3: the conversation, right? It is the proof point that Pete
• 57:34
  Speaker 3: Buttigieg should be a frontrunner, which has.
• 57:37
  Speaker 3: A self-perpetuating nature to it. And so when the most
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: influence in the media narrative about who's rising, who's falling,
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: who deserves donations, who does not, who deserves support, who
• 57:50
  Speaker 3: does not, is driven by Iowa first, New Hampshire second,
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: is I think inherently problematic. And that has never been
• 57:59
  Speaker 3: more true than it is in this cycle, where such
• 58:01
  Speaker 3: a flawed concept is so preeminent in the minds of voters.
• 58:05
  Speaker 3: So I don't know how you fix it this time.
• 58:07
  Speaker 3: I wish I did. But I think the fact that
• 58:11
  Speaker 3: at a period of time where we had the most
• 58:12
  Speaker 3: diverse field ever, and the field has winnowed, at least
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: on the debate stage, to a debate stage of all
• 58:18
  Speaker 3: white candidates, like six weeks before the first vote is cast,
• 58:22
  Speaker 3: there is an inherent problem there that has to be
• 58:23
  Speaker 3: addressed somehow.
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: I think what's really difficult here is the argument that
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: was being made during the last debate by both Booker
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: and Kamala about viewing electability... much more broadly as we
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: do right now, and that.
• 58:40
  Speaker 3: Inaccurately.
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: Inaccurately, right. And what is accurate about electability is you
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: cannot win the general election unless you have sky-high levels
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: of turnout from black voters. And it is true that
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: if Hillary Clinton in 2016 matched Obama's turnout and margins
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: among black voters in Philadelphia and Detroit and Milwaukee... And
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: she had matched turnout in those states with the Obama
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: levels in 2012 that she would be president of the
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: United States right now. Barely, but she would get it.
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: It would be close. Now, it is hard, perhaps, to
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: reach Obama levels of black turnout. But so I agree
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: with all of that, that like as much as we
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: talk about how do we get the Obama Trump voters,
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: how do we get sort of the white moderates that
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: everyone always talks about? And like everyone's tired of that conversation.
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: I get it. And we do need some of those voters.
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: But just as important and I would argue more important
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: is that we have turnout among the base of the
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party and the core of the base of the
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party is black voters. So I completely agree with
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: that 100 percent. The challenge is and what I can't
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: figure out is the two candidates of color, the two
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: black candidates who made that argument themselves had single digit
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: support among black voters nationally and in South Carolina. And
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: the person who could probably who has the most black
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: support is Joe Biden. And so it's a real tricky
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: thing to sort of figure that out, to make an argument. And,
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm going to ask Cory Booker about this,
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: but to make the argument like we need a candidate
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: who can inspire voters of color to turn out in
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: record numbers. It's harder to make that argument when you're
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: currently not receiving much support from that community.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I guess to end this topic, I am incredibly
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 3: disappointed that Kamala Harris is not in this race anymore.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 3: I'm sorry it ended this way. I think she was
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 3: tremendously talented. And really, I think you were describing all
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 3: the great characteristics about her, her sort of political talent.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 3: I think the one that was most notable and the
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 3: one I liked the most about her was how joyful
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 3: she was. I mean, just like she emanated joy. And
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 3: I thought that was sort of captured in some of
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 3: the videos we've seen of her dancing with her staff
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 3: as she's traveling the country, visiting her campaign staff at
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 3: their headquarters in the only primary state. And I think
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 3: that's going to be missed.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: And I would say to, you know, to people who
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: really liked Kamala and supported her, she is at the very,
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: very top of the VP list, I think, you know,
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: one or two right now. And so I think that,
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: and even if she's not chosen as vice president, you know, she's,
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: Senator from California and has a great perch on the
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: Judiciary Committee. And I think we'll be hearing from her
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: a lot in the months and years ahead. So that
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: is a very good thing. And I hope we do.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: I really do. Okay. When we come back, I will
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: interview Democratic presidential candidate Cory Booker. I'm now joined by
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: New Jersey Senator and presidential candidate Cory Booker. Senator, thanks
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: for coming back on the pod.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: I really love being on with you. Appreciate what you
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: guys are doing with your podcast. It really is what
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 2: we need, which is informing, engaging, and frankly, energizing folks
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: in the fight we've got coming up.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: That is very, very kind of you. So you just
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: gave a big speech in Iowa today where, in part
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: of your remarks, you talked about how it is a
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: real problem for our party that Kamala Harris couldn't continue
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: for financial reasons. And I've been wondering about this because,
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: you know, it's not that she always had a problem
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: raising money. She raised the second most of any candidate
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: in the first quarter. She had a huge haul in
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: the second quarter. What do you attribute sort of her
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: more recent struggles to? Why do you think her campaign
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: couldn't take off?
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: Well, before we go into one campaign, and I'm not
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: sure I'm the best person to give criticism or critique
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: in that way. What I'm I'm talking about a much
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: larger picture in the United States of America right now.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: And first of all, I just want to preface it
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: all by saying I have gotten an avalanche of calls
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: and conversations about people who were not even supporting her,
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: but how hurt they were that she's no longer on
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: the stage, but other people are by benefit of their wealth.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: And so you have to understand, we are in a
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: nation where conversations are had every single day. I've had
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: them in from barbershops to the table where most of
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: the African Americans sat at Stanford were in my lunchroom
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: about the obvious things we all know. And this goes
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: with gender, it goes with sexual identity, it goes with
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: so many issues in our life about the real reality
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: of different treatment for different people. And by the way,
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: this is durable, we know that black women are have
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: more maternal mortality rates four times higher than white women,
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: we know factually, that African-Americans have different experiences in the
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: criminal justice system just based on race. We know factually
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: that black women are paid the least relative to white
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: men of any other gender and race combination. So what
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: the message I heard and felt in my own heart
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: was that Why do we have a system right now
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: and a party that is trying to do and really
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: talk about the concentrations of wealth and the perversions of
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: our political system, how billionaires and large corporate oligarchs have
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 2: so much influence over our system. We as Democrats now
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: have a system where clearly a black woman dropped out
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: of this race because she didn't have the resources she
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: needed to continue. And then frankly, I'm just going to
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: add to that, that we have Treatment of female candidates
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: women candidates are very different than than men and and
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: so the point I'm trying to make is if you
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: know we we can agree and by the way I'm
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: sure there are some that wouldn't agree with us, but
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: that we have racism sexism Or bigotry in general in
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: our society and whether it's overt or implicit But statistically
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: provable the question isn't does racism exist the question the
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: question is is then what are you doing about it?
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: Because I think Angela Davis said, you know, it's not
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: enough to say I'm not a racist. You need to
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: be anti-racist. And our party should be actively grappling with this.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: And there are people within our party that rightfully are
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: doing things about the fact that we don't have as
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 2: many women elected leaders as men. That problem won't solve itself.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 2: We need to do something about it. And now our
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 2: presidential debate stages seem to be shaped by those forces
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: that we as a party can collectively decry. But the
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: question is, what are we doing about it?
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: Well, that was my next question. I mean, what do
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: you think a better process would be for determining who
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: gets on that debate stage? Would you eliminate the polling
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: and fundraising thresholds altogether? Would you allow every candidate on
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: stage throughout the entire primary and just have two nights
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: of debates and 10 candidates each night? What do you
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: think is a system that seems fair to you?
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: Well, to be blunt, it's not something I've thought through
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: and I'm ready to roll out a proposal on. This
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: is what I do know, is that there are people
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: who had to leave this race. They burned through resources
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: they had trying to meet an artificial barrier. We had
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 2: to do that. We had to spend hundreds of thousands
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: of dollars that we should as a party want people
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: to be doing connecting with voters to suddenly try to
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: meet some of these unofficial debate thresholds. We're doing it
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 2: right now. Sitting here in Iowa, I was watching late
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 2: night TV and I thought it was a small handful
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: of candidates TV because I saw the same commercials over
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: and over again by people with a lot of wealth.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: And we're now trying to raise as much money as
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: we can to get on the debate stage and do
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 2: ads when my state director here is like, we need
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 2: to continue growing what is our advantage here, which is
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: our grassroots organization. So we've done things that has drawn
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 2: behavior out that is not in any way a reflection
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 2: of a campaign's viability. And What I was told from
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: the very beginning is focus on the things that win
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 2: in Des Moines and win in Ankeny, win in Iowa.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: And none of them have to do with the qualifications
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: for a debate stage, especially polling. I mean, God, how
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: many times do we have to see that polling is
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 2: not predictive to still be so poll obsessed as a
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: party and as a nation?
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And that's tough, right? Because polls can go all
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: over the place. I mean, I do think that The
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: idea that a Bloomberg or a Steyer can basically buy
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: their way onto a debate stage is infuriating, regardless of
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: what you think of them as candidates. To me, though,
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: that does seem like a larger problem of money in
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: politics that sort of pervades the entire political system in
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: the country more than it does a problem that the
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party itself can solve. It feels like we just
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: need to overturn Citizens United. But I don't know. What
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: do you think? Am I wrong?
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: You're wrong and right. And look, we demonstrate we need
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: to overturn Citizens United. And I wish every candidate in
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 2: this race would take the Citizens United pledge on their
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: own campaigns. I'm proud to do that and not take
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 2: corporate lobbyist money or former executive money or oil company
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: exec money, all that. So let's put that aside that
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: we all agree that the bigger issue. But I think
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: sometimes we allow our inability to do everything. to undermine
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 2: our determination to do something. And the best example I'll
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: give this is, I'm in the Democratic Party that can't
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: win that many elections without diverse people. But when I
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: got to be a United States Senator a few years back,
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: and I walk into the Senate, and I was like,
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: wait a minute, this is the least diverse place I've
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 2: ever worked. On the Senate staffers, committee staffers, we're the
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: Democratic Party. And Brian Schatz, who was my partner in this,
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: we went to Chuck Schumer. To his credit, he jumped
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: up and said, basically, yeah, tell me what we can do.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about it. And so we instituted the Rooney
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 2: Rule for hires in key Senate positions. And most importantly,
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: Chuck Schumer, thank you, agreed to make every senator have
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: to publish the diversity statistics of the people of color
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: and the women they have on their staffs. Now, guess
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 2: what's happened since that? Man, is the number of women
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 2: in positions of authority have gone up, and we are
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: a better party for it. So just because I can't
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: solve racism in America, It doesn't mean that we all
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 2: can't be doing things constructively to do it better, to
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 2: make a difference, to move this ahead. And so, yeah,
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 2: the Democratic Party is not going to solve the corruption
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 2: of money in politics overnight. I hope my presidency will.
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 2: But what we can do is to design a party processes,
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: primary processes that don't that actually grapple with these issues,
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: that talk about them and not just hope they're going
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: to solve it. This is the most diverse debate stage ever.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 2: in our history of our party because of individual ambition,
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: not because of a collective commitment we had. A lot
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 2: of incredible diverse individuals decided to run, who we haven't
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 2: seen this kind of diversity before, but we have a
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 2: collective responsibility to deal with the under-representation of women, of
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: Asian Americans, of minorities. I can go through the folks
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 2: that we should be talking about. Why do we have
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: a process for the Democratic nomination that benefits a billionaire
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: more than a, I talked to a lot of qualified
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: African American women this week, including members of my family
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: who were just venting that they don't see themselves up
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: there because there's no pathway for them because of the
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: discrimination that exists in this society. So look, man, we
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 2: have a problem. I sounded that note today, a small
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: part of my speech. It's a problem when you have
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 2: more billionaires running for president right now than black people. Yeah.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: Are you surprised that Joe Biden's support among black voters
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: has remained this high, even as he's lost some support
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: among white voters since he announced.
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 2: Not the least because in the democratic party, one of
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 2: the most loyal voting bases you have is African Americans.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 2: And the reason why it doesn't concern our campaign, Number
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 2: one is I know that when I've been on the
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 2: ballot in New Jersey, black turnout goes up. It's not
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 2: just about, by the way, percentage of black support. It's
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 2: about the turnout. That's what helps us win elections. And
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 2: I know that Barack Obama was well behind Hillary Clinton
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 2: amongst black voters until he won in Iowa. So I
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 2: think Joe swore me in. And so I can represent
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 2: at least 33% of the black senators in America and
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 2: tell you that we like them.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. I didn't realize this because I always, you know,
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: obviously I was on the Obama campaign and I remember
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: the story of how Hillary was beating us among black
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: voters until we won Iowa. And then suddenly the numbers
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: almost changed overnight. I hadn't realized that at this stage
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: in the primary, Obama had about 45% of the black
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: vote in South Carolina. Clinton had 46. Edwards was down
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: in single digits. So obviously you don't need 45% to
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: be competitive in a field that's crowded. But what's your
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: strategy now? from here through Iowa and then on through
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: South Carolina to sort of at least get out of
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: single digits and gain more support among black voters?
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: Well, you know the answer to that because the pathway
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: is a well-worn pathway. There were so many of our
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: nominees that were exactly where I am. So many of
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 2: the people that actually went on to win the presidency
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 2: were exactly where I am. People polling in the low
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 2: single digits, Carter around 1%, Phil Clinton around 4%. Barack Obama,
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 2: who was in the double digits, but he was still
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: about 20 points behind Hillary Clinton. All of them did
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 2: in Iowa what Iowa does, which is it doesn't listen
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: to national polls. It evaluates candidates the old fashioned way
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: in living rooms or town halls and make their decision
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: in caucus rooms. And so we are pretty thrilled. We're
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 2: at the top of this race. We're in the top
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 2: gaggle of most liked people in Iowa, where our net
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 2: favorabilities are pretty darn high in the state, which in
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 2: a state where most people haven't made up their mind
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: yet is a good thing. We also have, according to
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 2: the Des Moines Register, have one of the best organizing
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 2: teams on the ground here. And then we lead in
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 2: Iowa and New Hampshire in local leaders endorsing us, which
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 2: is a big help when you have a mayor of
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 2: a town coming to caucus for you in a small
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 2: caucus room. So when I studied this before I jumped in,
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 2: from the Kerry campaign to the Obama campaign, everybody gave
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 2: us the metrics that they thought were really important going in.
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 2: And everybody cautioned us. It was amazing how many people
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 2: cautioned us. Don't get distracted by national polls. Don't get distracted.
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 2: Focus on the quarter of a million people that are
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 2: caucusing in Iowa. And I'm telling you, we're doing really
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 2: well here. We win here, and our goal is to win,
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 2: but we've come in the top two or three. Folks
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 2: like you and others are going to be saying that
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 2: we probably overperformed here. And I think coming around to
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 2: South Carolina, just like Obama, we're going to have a
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 2: good head of steam and have proven to a lot
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 2: of voters down there that we can win in this
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 2: nation and we can beat– Donald Trump. And frankly, that's
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 2: something we should be talking a lot more about, which
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 2: is who can energize the fullness of our coalition. Because remember,
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 2: if Hillary Clinton had gotten the same amount of votes
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 2: from black people that Obama had gotten four years earlier,
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 2: she would be President Hillary Clinton. In fact, in just
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 2: three states, the ones we lost by 77,000 votes combined, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin,
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 2: we lost the diminution of African American voters. Heck, in
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 2: Milwaukee alone, there were 70,000 less black voters, it turned out.
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 2: So I know that I am best positioned in this
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 2: race to reignite not just the Obama coalition, but frankly,
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 2: the Democratic coalition, that rainbow coalition that enables us to
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: beat this bully, to beat this demigod, and go into
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 2: the White House, not just with the White House, because remember,
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 2: I'm in this to beat Mitch McConnell. But to do that,
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 2: let's talk about the diversity we need in Arizona, in
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 2: North Carolina, in South Carolina, in the two Senate seats
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: up in Georgia, we better have a candidate that can
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 2: get record minority turnouts because that's how we get Mitch
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 2: McConnell to be a backbencher. I know I'm the best
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 2: person to do it in this race and we're gonna
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 2: prove it here in Iowa.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: It's funny, we were just talking about that on the
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: pod today, how the candidate, the Democratic nominee absolutely needs
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: higher turnout and maybe not reach the Obama levels of turnout,
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: but much higher than we have seen in the last
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: couple of elections, especially among black voters. Do you think
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: it would be harder for a nominee who's white to
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: do that?
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 2: Again, Bill Clinton proved that he had incredible support amongst African-Americans.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 2: People used to joke that he was the first black president.
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 2: But again, when I was mayor, I used to have
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 2: this saying, because I got really good at managing after
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 2: my first year of making a lot of mistakes. And
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 2: I used to always say, in God we trust, but
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 2: everybody else brings us data. So if you're looking at
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 2: your field and you're worried about winning, who's got the
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 2: data to show that they can really answer that? Well,
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 2: you know this, that when I ran for Senate, Chris
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 2: Christie had a choice of where to put my election,
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: my special election. The obvious I thought would have been
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 2: just put it on his day, the day he was
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 2: up for reelection. But he moved it three weeks earlier
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 2: on a Wednesday. And so I was the only name
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 2: on the ballot on a nontraditional day where we had
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 2: to educate people that it's not a Tuesday vote, it's
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 2: a Wednesday vote. The black vote in New Jersey spiked
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 2: higher than the population to about between 13 and 14 percent.
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 2: Three weeks later on a normal on a normal election
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 2: with competitive races up and down the ballot, it dropped
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 2: down between nine and 10 percent. So I'm confident that
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 2: African-American voters, I've been one all my life, we want
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 2: somebody who is authentically connected, that we know we can trust,
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 2: that has a proven record of standing up and fighting
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 2: for our communities. It's the same thing, frankly, when we
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 2: talk about LGBTQ issues. When I became mayor of the
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 2: city of Newark, majority black city, I raised the American flag.
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: The second flag I did first time ever in our
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 2: city hall was the pride flag because I wanted to
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 2: make a statement that my kids who faced homelessness, higher rates,
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 2: suicide rates, bullying, that we were going to be a
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 2: city that protected everybody. That was before some of our
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 2: national leaders had even evolved on these issues. And so
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 2: folks want to know what your history is in standing
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 2: up and fighting for the issues that matter in an
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 2: inclusive way. And if your first time talking about some
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 2: of these issues is when you put a tab on
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 2: your website and you're running for president, I'm a little
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: suspect of what you're going to do when you get
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 2: to the White House. Are you going to be a
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 2: senator that goes out of the United States Senate and remarks, hey,
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 2: this place is not diverse and we need to do
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 2: something structurally about to change it? Or is diversity issues
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 2: going to be a second and third thought as well? So, again,
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 2: I'm in this because I'm running because I believe I'm
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 2: the best person to unite the Democratic Party. and to
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 2: ignite the totality of the coalition we need to win,
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 2: and not just to win beating Donald Trump. Again, I
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 2: want that North Carolina seat. I want us to win
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: Jamie Harrison in running in South Carolina. These are seats
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 2: that can only be won if we have record black turnouts.
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 2: And I believe I'm the best person, not just to
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 2: get the White House back, but to put Mitch McConnell
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 2: back into the back benches.
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: So Pete Buttigieg has this line that's clearly meant as
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: a contrast with Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. we fight
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: when we need to fight, but we're never going to
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: say fighting is the point. The point is what lies
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: on the other side of the fight. To me, it
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: sounded a lot like your message when you say that
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: people desperately want to heal and move forward in this country.
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: Do you agree with Pete's view of Warren and Bernie there?
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 2: God, first of all, uh, I, I, and this is some,
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 2: it may sound like semantics to you, but you always
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 2: got to fight. I mean, So this idea– I mean
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 2: there's an Oscar-nominated documentary about me. You can watch it
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 2: for free now on on YouTube called Street Fight.
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 3: It's great.
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 2: And, and, and so it was great until it lost
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 2: to March of the Penguins in the Oscars.
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: Tough. That's a tough one.
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 2: Rough, rough, rough. Keep my ego, uh, in check. But look, I,
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 2: I've always been called for fighting America. I mean, if you, slavery, uh, uh, uh, suffrage, uh,
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 2: from Stonewall to, uh, the Edmund Pettus bridge. I mean,
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 2: we are people that have fought, but my point isn't,
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 2: is how do you, how do you fight? And, and,
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 2: and yeah, I criticized the, the, the, the gratuitous, uh,
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 2: tribalism that's coming up between our parties or, uh, the demeaning, degrading,
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 2: tearing of people down. I'm talking about the kind of
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 2: fighting that, uh, we did to beat Bull Connor, that
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 2: unified coalitions that didn't exist before. After those kids, it
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 2: was called, I think in Taylor Branch's book, it's called
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 2: The Children's Miracle. When kids were marching in front of
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 2: Bull Connor's dogs and fire hoses, it so ignited the
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 2: moral conscience of this country that others joined the fight.
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 2: Black folks, white folks, people from all backgrounds, got on buses,
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 2: got on planes, came down to Birmingham, and in 12 days,
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 2: I think it was, if I have an exact, segregation
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 2: fell in that town. I'm talking about the kind of
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 2: fighting that unifies us all in a larger purpose than ourselves,
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 2: common cause, where we're fighting for not just for ourselves,
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 2: but we're fighting for our neighbors. We're fighting for those
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 2: people left out. So I don't know about the semantic
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 2: fight that Pete might be having with somebody right now.
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 2: But for me, my whole philosophy of this campaign is
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 2: about this idea of the greatest fighting force there is,
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 2: which made people storm beaches in Normandy or made Goodman,
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 2: Cheney and Schwerner, black, white, Christian, Jewish, die together. And
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 2: that's love. Fighting with love. Patriotism is love of country.
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 2: You can't love your country unless you love your fellow
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 2: countrymen and women. And so for me, I just come
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 2: from a space that if you live where I live, man,
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 2: you want to fight. I mean, I live, for those
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 2: of your listeners who don't know, I made a decision
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 2: when I came out of law school, having benefited from
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 2: civil rights activists who fought for my housing rights, to
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 2: move into inner city Newark. It's a neighborhood I still
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 2: live in and fight as a tenants rights lawyer. And you...
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 2: I hope if I walked you around my neighborhood, which
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 2: we're making tremendous change, tremendous strides, God bless my current mayor, Baraka,
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 2: but if you don't get pissed off seeing the inequalities
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 2: and are ready to take on a fight, then yeah,
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 2: I'm worried about you. I always say if America hasn't
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 2: broken your heart, you don't love her enough. Because we
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 2: need to be more motivated to get into the fight
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 2: and start winning the Battles for justice right now and
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 2: take down those forces that are that are betraying us.
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 2: So that doesn't mean we don't forgive those forces I
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 2: mean John Lewis told me about this moving story about
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 2: The guy who beat him on the Edmund Pettus Bridge
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 2: Decades later coming back to his office with his child
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 2: or grandchild. I can't remember exactly and asking for his
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 2: forgiveness I'm all for this idea of redemptive love but
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 2: that's not gonna stop me from defending the folks were
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 2: being evicted in my community now from slumlords over $ 100
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 2: and that the guy, the landlord, should be paying them.
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 2: It's not gonna stop me from fighting against the corporate
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 2: gun lobby that is making it so easy for weapons
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 2: to pour into my community and kill so many young
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 2: black boys. But the problem, and I'm sorry to go
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 2: on on this, I'll stop on this point, which is
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 2: King said this, one of our great fighters said that
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 2: the problem today is not simply the vitriolic words and
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 2: violent actions of the bad people, it's the appalling silence
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 2: and inaction are the good people. So I'm running for
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 2: president to get folk woke. I tell people very simply,
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 2: if you elect me, first of all, I'm your nominee,
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 2: it's true for this as well, but if I'm your president,
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna ask more from you than any president has
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 2: ever asked in your lifetime. Because Lord knows we don't
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 2: need a savior in the White House. We need people
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 2: that are gonna recognize where the power is and how
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 2: change has always been made. It wasn't a bunch of
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 2: dudes getting together in 1920 on the Senate floor that
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 2: suddenly got us women's rights. But they didn't say, hey, fellas,
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 2: let's give women the right to vote. No, it was 4-4.
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 2: The health care battle, I was in the Senate battling
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 2: it out. But you know why they didn't tear down Obamacare?
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 2: It was because the grassroots of this country responded.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So, I mean, one dynamic that always happens in
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: these campaigns is, you know, the scene in Iowa or
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: New Hampshire or wherever you're campaigning, person to person doing
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: town halls, is a lot different than sort of the
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: national narrative. So, you know, I know that, that you
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: and your campaign have been saying, you know, when you're
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: on the ground and I, when you're in these town halls,
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: you're getting this really great response. What, what specifically is
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: working in your town halls and, and what are you
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: hearing from, from voters that all the pundits and, you know,
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: annoying podcasters out there are, uh, are missing?
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 2: I do worry about what the media gets fascinated with,
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 2: the takedown, the one liner, um, And who gets media
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 2: coverage and who doesn't? Who gets treated like a darling
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 2: and lifted up? And who's ignored? And again, Kamala's– I
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 2: know there will be lots written about analyzing that. But
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 2: for me, I got warned by really funny quotes. And
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 2: I won't tell you the campaign leaders and stuff like that.
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 2: But I had people tell me how horrible it is
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 2: to run for president, how brutal it is. I mean
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 2: it's a real raw stuff. Actually, I was sobering. But
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 2: I am loving this because I get to go out
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 2: every single day and I'll do it multiple times today
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 2: and stand before Americans who are hurting, who are yearning,
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 2: who are aspiring. And I get to connect to that,
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 2: which is the best of who we are, which is
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 2: not mean and cruel. It is folks that want the
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 2: hope right now, want a message that shows that we
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 2: can win and then actually not just win an election,
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 2: because God, we've won lots of elections as Democrats, but
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 2: actually then be able to make the change that needs
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 2: to be made. And so- I have this weird process
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 2: that I walk people through sometimes, which sometimes people don't
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 2: get me. And I see people writing articles saying, oh,
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 2: he's the love candidate. And I feel like I should
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 2: play some Barry White or something in music. But, you know,
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 2: I still remember when I first trips out here to
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 2: Iowa running for a debate stage. Big guy sees me.
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 2: I'm a big guy, former tight end at Stanford. Older
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 2: I get, the better I was. And he put his
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 2: arm around me and he goes, dude. I want you
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 2: to punch Donald Trump in the face. And my response
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 2: to him was, dude, that's a felony. And he laughed.
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 2: And I had to walk him through this process that
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 2: what we don't need in America right now is a
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 2: doubling down on hate and Trumpiness and that kind of stuff.
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 2: But walk people through the point that I've already made
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 2: with you, which is we have always won when we
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 2: create bigger, coalitions of activism. That's when we accomplish things.
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 2: And so that message is really resonating. And I could literally,
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 2: I have, I wish you could embed yourself with me
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 2: so you can see what, and stand in the line
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 2: of folks that afterwards where I take selfies, answer questions
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 2: and have how many people say you weren't on my
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 2: radar stream. My friend convinced me to come here. I
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 2: get it. I get it now. This is what we need.
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 2: This is what we want. And so Look, if this– again,
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 2: if we can figure out some way to figure campaign finance,
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 2: I believe we should just have public financing. And these
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 2: other– if we just had straight out who can go
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 2: into communities, rooms, talk to people, connect with people, engage
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 2: with people because that's how I beat the machine in Newark.
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 2: It was just old-fashioned. We weren't running commercials. We weren't
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 2: doing any of that kind of stuff. I know our
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 2: message is working and I know we just need time.
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 2: And the scoreboard, the clock is ticking down. And I'm
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 2: really happy, though, that we're starting to see movement. And
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 2: we'll see what happens on February 3rd. But I am
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 2: really hopeful, really optimistic. And by the way, if it
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 2: doesn't happen, I'm going to go right behind whoever ends
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 2: up being the nominee. I'm going to go right back
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 2: to work as a guy in this nation calling out
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 2: issues that, frankly, have never been called out from the
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 2: debate stage before. I was taught when I was a
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 2: kid life is about purpose, not position. And I just
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 2: feel blessed right now to be in this, to be
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 2: one of the top in Iowa. Pick your person, top
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 2: five or six campaigns on the ground here. And I
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 2: just think that my message will win out over because
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 2: it's a message of values and virtues in order to
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 2: get to the policy. Because this is this is the
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 2: funny thing about some of the debates we're having over
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 2: policy is, you know, Obama won with a slogan. Yes,
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 2: we can. And the operative word is weak. Uh, this
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 2: is no, none of us could do it alone on
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 2: that stage. We're going to have to build a coalition
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 2: in Washington in around this country, activate activists, uh, to,
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 2: in order to win this. And so the person that
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 2: best can do that, that's how I started my career.
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 2: That's how we beat slum Lords in Newark. When I
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 2: first started, it was organizing tenants. And that's how I
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 2: won the mayorality in Newark by organizing black and Brown coalitions, uh,
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 2: particularly in the city. Uh, that's how we, that's how
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 2: I got criminal justice reform done by, for months and
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 2: months ahead of that, going out to dinner and sitting
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 2: down and meeting with people on the other side of
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 2: the aisle and finding common ground. And that's how we're
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 2: going to change America.
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: Well, Senator, you are undoubtedly the joyful warrior in the field,
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: and I've always found your message quite appealing. So best
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: of luck to you in the homestretch here before the
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: first caucus, and talk to us again soon.
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 2: I appreciate it. Thank you so much.
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Cory Booker for joining us today, and everyone
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: have a great weekend. We'll talk to you later.
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 2: Later. Bye, everyone.
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: Bye. Pod Save America is a product of Cricket Media.
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: The senior producer is Michael Martinez. Our assistant producer is
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Carolyn Reston, Tanya Sominator,
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: and Katie Long for production support. And to our digital team,
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: Elijah Cohn, Narmel Coney, and Yael Freed, and Milo Kim,
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: who film and upload these episodes as a video every week.