Latest / Pod Save America / Can Biden Stop Trump’s Revenge Tour?

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Can Biden Stop Trump’s Revenge Tour? · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: On today's show, House Democrats make moves to overthrow the gerontocracy.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: We're getting more information about who the swing voters were
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: in the 2024 election, the kind of information they're getting
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: and how Trump won them over. Then we get to
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: hear Dan's conversation with our friend Steve Shale, a Democratic
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: strategist and campaign vet in Florida, about how we got
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: into such a deep hole there, especially with Latino voters,
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: and why he's worried that what happened to Democrats in
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Florida may not stay there. But first... You heard it
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: on Pod Save America first. On Tuesday's show, Tommy and
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: I both mentioned that it might be a good idea
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: for Biden to issue preemptive pardons for people who Trump
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: and his allies have said they want to prosecute, which,
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: according to Politico's Jonathan Martin, the White House is now considering.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: You're welcome, Adam Schiff and Liz Cheney. Just kidding. We
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: were not even close to the first that raised that.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: And the White House has been working on it a while, apparently,
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: according to Jay Mart. He says that there has been a, quote,
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: vigorous internal debate about this among a small group of
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: the most senior White House aides, including the White House
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: counsel and the chief of staff, though the president himself
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: has not yet been part of the discussions. The news
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: has set off a debate among Democrats over whether it's
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: wise to issue preemptive blanket pardons. Congressman Brendan Boyle, who's
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: a close ally of Biden's, said that Trump's decision to
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: put Kash Patel in charge of the FBI is means
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: that prosecuting his enemies is, quote, no hypothetical threat, and
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: urged the president to give the pardons. But Schiff himself,
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: who would presumably be on the list, urged Biden not
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: to do it, arguing that it would seem defensive and unnecessary. Well,
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: what do we think? Jim Jordan was actually asked about this,
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: the idea of a preemptive pardon. We're going to listen
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: to what he said, and then we're going to listen
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: to what Donald Trump says about what he plans to do.
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: Democrats are now asking Joe Biden for a preemptive pardon, okay,
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: of Liz Cheney, Adam Schiff, and Tony Fauci. What is
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: this all about, preemptive pardons, for heaven's sake?
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: This is ridiculous. Donald Trump has never been about retribution.
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: Already hundreds of people have been murdered because of.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: Her action at the border, and thousands more will follow
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: in rapid succession.
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: She should be impeached and prosecuted for her actions.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: Nancy Pelosi should be prosecuted for that. If we win
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: and when we win.
• 3:00
  Speaker 4: We're going to prosecute people that cheat on this election.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: And if we can, we'll go back to the last one, too,
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: if we're allowed.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: What do you think? You think they're going to be allowed?
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: What do you think of this? Pros and cons of
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: Blanket preemptive pardons from President Biden on his way out
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: the door.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: Let me start with the one con which I give
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: zero fucks about, which is the idea that somehow doing
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: this breaks a norm or makes it easier for Trump
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: to do what he wants to do when he leaves office.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: Trump's going to do what Trump wants to do no
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: matter what, whether Biden does preemptive pardons or not. If
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: he wants to do the same thing, he'll do the
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: same thing for his people. We should stop reverse engineering
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: our ideas or our actions around things Trump may or
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: may not do. That is stupid. The pros here are
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: pretty clear. Donald Trump campaigned on prosecuting his political opponents.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: He picked someone to head the FBI who published a
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: literal enemies list of people to prosecute. There's no subtlety
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: happening here.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: What an appendix, you know? It's like in the back
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: of the book.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: He was hoping people wouldn't find it, but we did.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: The idea of preemptive pardons is a rational response to
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: what Trump is promising to do with his words and
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: his actions. And if you run around saying and believing,
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: as Joe Biden has done and said, and I think
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: we have said and believe, that Donald Trump is an
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: existential threat to democracy, this sort of action, a preemptive pardon,
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: is a rational response to that threat. The con here is...
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: also pretty serious, which is people don't trust government. They
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: think everyone's corrupt. And these people did nothing wrong. These
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: are invented crimes. Trump can't even define the crimes they committed.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: And if you offer them pardons, it's going to give
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: people a reason to believe that the crimes were really committed,
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: that the Biden administration really was corrupt, that these people
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: really did do something wrong. Because why would you do that?
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: It's hard to explain to a the median voter that
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: we need these pardons because of someone named Kash Patel.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: Like that doesn't make sense. And you're just going to
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: assume your natural inclination is people are corrupt. So that's
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: the downside to it, I think.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: It's funny. I didn't think about that downside. I guess
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: if I was going to announce it and I was
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden, I would like play maybe even a longer
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: super cut, like the one we just did of all
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: the times and all the people Trump said he was
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: going to prosecute. And then put Kash Patel in there, too,
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: saying that he's going to come after people and whoever
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: else is in his administration and be like, that's why
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: I'm doing this. These people did not commit any crimes.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: They're innocent. I mean, I don't know. You're right. That's
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: the way that people would consume the news about it
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: could lead them to believe that these that these folks
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: are actually guilty. I think the other con is or
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: at least one of the challenges with doing this is
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: where do you draw the line? Where do you stop?
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: Like who's on the list?
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: That's pretty clear. You start with Anthony Fauci and you
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: end somewhere right after podcasters. Like, that's the plan.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: Apparently, the Washington Post followed up on the J-Mart reporting today.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: They said that people who have been discussed are General Milley, Fauci, Schiff, Cheney.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: Jim Clyburn, I think, gave an interview to CNN. He
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: said that Jack Smith's on his list. But you can
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: start to see where this grows. Like, all right, so
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: Jack Smith's on the list. What about Jack Smith's whole team?
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: What about Merrick Garland? What about like a whole bunch
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: of other, well, Joe Biden's probably not gonna put Merrick
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: Garland on there now. It's like Merrick Garland has as
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: much chance as we do is getting on that list.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: What about like most of the Justice Department? I mean,
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: the danger is that Biden saves a bunch of people
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: and then, and Lovett brought this up on Tuesday, then
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: like the next group of mid-level people have targets on
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: their backs.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there are 1 million, challenges to this approach. I
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: think if you're going to do it, you should at
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: least limit it to people who worked in the administration,
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: who did things that Joe Biden asked them to do
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: as part of their jobs. Once you start getting members
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: of Congress, I think that's ridiculous. Is it going to
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: be Schiff, Cheney? What about Eric Swalwell? They seem to
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: hate Eric Swalwell and keep accusing him of espionage. What
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: about Joe and Mika? What about Leslie Stahl? What about
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: the producer? It just goes down the road.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: I think Joe and Mika secured their freedom. Well, I mean,
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: they're waiting with bated breath to find out, I'm sure.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: So you could go down the line forever if you
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: were to do this, Fauci, Milley, Jack Smith.
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: But it's hard. There is no good answer here. We
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: are in unprecedented and dangerous territory. I do think it's
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: good that they are contemplating it and thinking about it.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: Because I think there has been this sense, and I've
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: felt this since the election, that it's like, oh, Donald
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: Trump's this huge danger. Oh my God, everything's terrible. And
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: then it's like, eh, it's not really not that bad,
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: as bad as you think it is. And it is
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: an important corollary to the conversation on the Hunter Biden pardon, right?
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: Where it's not just that, right? That one went first.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: That one went first because of the sentencing. But at
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: least you're thinking of other ways to do it. And
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: if he does do it, This is my main criticism
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: of the Hunter Biden pardon. I understand why I was
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: kind of mad about it at first. I now understand
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: why Biden did it. I probably would have done the
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: exact same thing. In fact, I'm 100% sure I would
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: do the exact same thing. But if he were to
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: do it, he's got to go out and explain it.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: You can't do a paper statement on Sunday night. You
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: have to just go out and defend it. And just
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: like the way you said it, we don't want to
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: do this. This wasn't our choice, but he picked a
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: guy to head the FBI who published an enemies list.
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: So maybe I should protect the people on the list, right?
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: Like maybe just use that list.
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, look, we talked about this Tuesday. If I
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: was in his shoes, I probably would have done the
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: same thing too. I do think that if you imagine
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: what you just suggested, which is like, imagine if Biden
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: comes out and includes the Hunter pardon with this like
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: blanket preemptive pardon for all the people who have been
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: part of the administration or worked closely with Joe Biden
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: that Trump has specifically mentioned that he wants to prosecute.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: And same thing with Kash Patel and same thing with
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: anyone else in his orbit who's explicitly listed people that
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: they want to prosecute. And you did it all at once.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: You probably don't get the blowback, or at least you
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: don't get as much blowback as he did by just...
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: And I still think if he decides not to do
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: these at all and only pardons Hunter and then We're
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: in 2025 and Trump's president and suddenly there's a whole
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: bunch of prosecutions. Like, you know, that's a con for
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: not doing it. But I don't think it's, like, I
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: was in favor of this, you know, when I first
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: heard about it. It's not like cut and dry and easy. Also,
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: by the way, the other thing is that the pardons
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: don't protect you from a crazy red state prosecutor, attorney general,
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: someone in a red state, like state-level crimes, right, you're
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: not protected from. And then the other challenge here is
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: the Hunter pardon was this very sweeping blanket pardon. Any
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: crimes that may have been committed over a 10-year period,
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: The only other time there was a pardon that sweeping
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: in modern history was the pardon that Ford gave Nixon.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: It was preemptive and it was pretty complete. These kinds
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: of pardons have not been tested at the Supreme Court yet.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: Pardons for crimes that have not been committed that are
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: not specified in the pardon. So there is like a
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: risk there, but it's fucking crazy, by the way, that
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: we're just, we should have said at the outset, it's
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: crazy that we're talking about this.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: And that it's not insane that Biden's thinking about it, right?
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: That's the thing.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: Fucking nuts. It also, it's like the pardon power is wow.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: Really stupid. Bad, bad move from the founders because I mean,
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: not the only one, John, but like your, your point
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: at the beginning where it's like, oh yeah, Trump's going
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: to do what Trump's going to do. That is true.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: But like, I mean, Trump could just basically come into
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: office and say, everyone, uh, should go commit crimes, go
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: kill people, go do whatever. And, uh, I'll pardon you afterwards.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: No big deal. And now the Supreme Court has said
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: he can't be prosecuted for that. He wouldn't be impeached
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: for that because, you know, Republicans do whatever he says.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: And so that's it.
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we have been– the Supreme Court's immunity decision and
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: all of this conversation around pardons just sort of codified
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: something that became obviously true during the Trump administration, which
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: is a president can commit– at least a Republican president
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: can commit any crimes they want. They can't be charged
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: while in office. They cannot be impeached because of the
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: radicalization of the Republican Party and polarization. And now, because
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: of the Supreme Court, they can commit crimes out of office.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah. What did you make of Schiff's comments about... I mean,
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: I would say that I think if you want a
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: preemptive pardon, you probably wouldn't publicly say that you want
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: a preemptive pardon. First rule of preemptive pardon club. Guess
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: we broke that. But do you think he just cares
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: about the norms because he's a norms guy?
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: He is a norms guy. Also, I think it's the
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: norms and trust that this... Obviously, he's very, very smart.
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: This is incredibly complicated. This is sort of things that
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: White House advisors and lawyers and legal scholars can sit
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: around and discuss for 17 straight days and come to
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: no conclusion and end up not doing it because it's
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: so complicated because there is no obvious way to do it.
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: I do think– I imagine the shift is also concerned
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: about what it says to the public about the party.
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: People are going to think you're guilty of crimes. It's
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: just– it reinforces their view that everyone is corrupt. Like
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: if Trump going out of office– if Trump had just
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: unilaterally pardoned all of his people for anything that may
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: have happened, imagine what we would have thought about that.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: Imagine what the average voter would have thought about that.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: I mean, he tried to overturn the election and cited
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: a violent insurrection and then everyone was like, yeah, let's
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: take another flyer on the guy.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: Well, the point is Democrats will have a few years
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: to fix the problem.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: So I don't know, man. I don't know. The one
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: thing I doubt, and I think I'm in favor of
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: this idea, but the one thing I doubt is that
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: the public would be like, oh, they're all guilty. I
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: think the public would be like, well, he's got the power.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: He can do what he wants. It feels like one
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: thing I have learned from this last election is that
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: most people in this country do not give a fucking
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: shit about norms.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: I don't think it's the norms.
• 13:45
  Speaker 4: I agree.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: I wrote an entire book about breaking norms. I am
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: very anti-norm. I've been anti-norms for a long time. Norm-izen
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: is the only norm I like.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: Not you, Norm-izen. Yeah, that's you.
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: Yes, Norm-izen is the only norm I like, I guess.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: Anyway.
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: The way in which we are going to get back
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: to power is to be able to convince the median
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: voter that the other side is corrupt and that we
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: are going to fix Washington.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: I get that.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: And that gets harder to do in this situation.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's not like there's allegations against those people
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: that are real. Like if it was Hunter, right? Like
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: the Hunter stuff, you're like, oh yeah, he, I mean,
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: a jury convicted him of crimes.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, a jury convicted Donald Trump of crimes too.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: The right feels about the Trump crime.
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: The problem we have here is that it's all fake.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: It's all fake. And like, of course, the MAGA people
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: would be like, yeah, he gave them pardons because they're
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: all really corrupt. But most people would be like, oh, yeah,
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump ran around saying he was going to prosecute people.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: So I guess Biden used his like special, you know,
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: his special power to help them. I guess that's what
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: you get to do when you're president because they're all
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: fucking corrupt.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: I guess we'll test this proposition maybe one day.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: Oh, really bad, really bad. All right, let's talk about
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: what's going on with House Democrats, who are going to
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: end up with 215 members now that Adam Gray officially
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: pulled off a win here in California by less than
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: 200 votes. 200 votes. What do we say? Every vote matters.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: This is why you go out. This is why you
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: knock on doors, make phone calls, because Adam Gray won
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: by 200 votes and now Democrats have 215. There will
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: be 220 Republicans. But with Matt Gaetz not returning and
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: Elise Stefanik and Mike Waltz leaving for jobs in the administration,
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: that is a 217 to 215 margin for the opening stretch,
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: meaning that if all Democrats vote together and just one
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: Republican joins them, you'd get a tie, which in the
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: House means the vote fails. Even so, being in the
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: majority means Republicans will get to chair every committee, hire staff,
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: send out subpoenas, control just about everything. The most powerful
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: Democrat on each committee is will then be known as
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: the ranking member. And since they're in the minority, their
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: main job is basically representing the opposition party during hearings
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: and generally making Republicans' lives difficult, which is why Democrats
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: have decided that their best shot here is to bounce
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: some of their older ranking members on key committees in
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: favor of younger, more telegenic folks. On the Judiciary Committee,
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin announced a challenge to New York
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: Congressman Jerry Nadler. apparently at the urging of Gen Z
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: sensation Nancy Pelosi. Nadler couldn't shore up the votes and
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: announced that he is bowing out. So Jamie Raskin will
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: be the ranking member on judiciary. On the oversight committee,
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: where all the fun investigations take place, AOC has said
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: that she's interested in taking Raskin's spot as the ranking
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: member since he's going to judiciary, but she hasn't made
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: a final decision. And then similar scenes are playing out
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: on the Agriculture and Natural Resources Committees. I know those
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: are two committees that you're very excited about. We don't
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: talk a lot about congressional committees here since Dan just
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: fell asleep while I was talking. But this seemed worth
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: getting into. What do you think about this overall move
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: towards sort of younger, more telegenic Democrats on these committees?
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: Why is that valuable? What does it matter? What do
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: you think?
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: I don't want to overstate the importance of the ranking
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: members on committees. There are some exceptions, which we'll get into.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: I don't know if there's that much of a danger.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: But what I appreciate is that this is a recognition
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: of the fact that Democrats have lost touch with younger voters.
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: That has been a trend that has been ongoing for
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: eight years here. We had an 80-year-old president. We had
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: congressional leadership in their 70s. We had two consecutive nominees
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: in Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden who were, at best,
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: young voters had lukewarm feelings about, did not feel like
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: that they represented them. That was something that came up
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: in all of it. Kamala Harris did much, even though
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: she did not end up doing as well as we
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: would like with younger voters, she at least was more
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: culturally connected with at least parts of our base than Democrats.
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: But we have a real problem here. And so trying
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: to put younger faces forward is absolutely essential. The House leadership,
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: to their credit, Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Jim Clyburn, they
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: stepped aside. They made room for Hakeem Jeffries and his
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: team who are younger. They are more modern media savvy,
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: and that's good. Doing that here is a good thing.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: It does, I will say, speak to the challenges of
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: the gerontocracy that We are pivoting from Jerry Nadler in
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: his 70s to Jamie Raskin, who is 61, I think.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: We're not exactly getting a bunch of likes. We're not
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: getting like Maxwell Frost there yet, but it's progress. It's progress.
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: I mean, look, I mentioned gerontocracy at the beginning and
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: it's sort of a joke. I think it's less about
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: age and more about performance and being good on TV, right?
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: Like committee hearings, let's be honest, are about performance these days.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: I know a lot of staff work goes into committee hearings.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: They are important for legislation, but especially when you get
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: to what the Republicans have done to the oversight committee,
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: where it's just like a place to have these investigations
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: and it's a circus and they do all these hearings.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: What you need is people who are good on TV
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: and who are good performers and who get it and
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: who are going to have moments that end up going viral.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: And I think we saw that even in the difference
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: between Some of the hearings we've seen, the January 6th hearings,
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: for example, I think probably went better than most people expected,
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: partly because Liz Cheney was excellent during them. They also
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: didn't let every single person on the panel speak and
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: give five-minute speeches. Forget about the members being old. The
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: entire style of communication. in Congress is old. The rules,
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: the way people do it, the chart, like all of it.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: And I think when you have people who are new
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: to Congress who tend to be younger or people who
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: are just practiced being on TV, speaking to voters, speaking
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: to reporters, like it's just going to be It's going
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: to be more compelling. And especially if you're in the
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: minority and you don't have that much power to begin with,
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: all you really have is the performance that you deliver
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: at these hearings. And so you might as well go
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: with your best.
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly right.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: What do you think about AOC, AOC's move for oversight?
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: I love this idea. I mean, let's just be frank.
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: AOC is probably the best communicator in the Democratic Party
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: right now. What she says, how she says it, and
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: where she says it. And she is obviously very good
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: at getting attention. She is quite relatable. I was on
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: TikTok and I saw this video of AOC making an
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: espresso martini. And it's like, get yourself a member of
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: Congress who can make a homemade espresso martini. And the
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: thing that's interesting is I'm pretty sure I didn't even
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: see it on her page. I saw it on an
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: AOC fan page, which just how many members of Congress
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: have a fan page on TikTok, right? Where their content
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: is so compelling that other people are trying to draft
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: off of it for engagement by reposting their videos.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: Dan, do you know that I can make an espresso
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: martini as well?
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: How often do you make them?
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: Once in a while.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: Is it good?
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: Yours are pretty good? Ask Emily.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: I hate to really age myself here, but I don't
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: think I can have caffeine that late at night.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: No, I'm sure you can.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: Yes, look. I really tap out at about 10 a.m.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: I need a steady drip of caffeine from 5 a.m.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: right through bedtime. It's weird.
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: It's weird that... I mean, I recognize I'm up at
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: the same time you are, but it's weird you're not
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: a great sleeper. You're just polishing that Diet Coke off
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: with dessert.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: Anyway, I want to check out AOC's recipe, but go on.
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: Anyway, I think she is a phenomenal communicator, and there
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: is a benefit in the fact that She drives the
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: Republicans insane. And that is good because it just means
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: more attention. If we had picked AOC being the ranking
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: member on these hearings, it means they're going to get
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: more attention, more coverage, certainly more– what is going to
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: matter even more than whether CNN takes it live is
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: whether people are going to clip parts of it and
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: put it on social media, and that will happen with her.
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: I think she's very smart, and she's been very good
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: in these hearings, and she speaks like a human. So
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: I think this is, this is great. I hope she
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: does it. I hope people support her doing it.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: I will also say that she, she does drive Republicans crazy,
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: but when she speaks during these hearings, it's not the typical, like,
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: like she doesn't just make the whole thing about the
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: Republicans on the committee or about Republicans in general. And
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: I do think that's important because I think there are
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: a lot of members and moments that go viral that like,
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: you know, libs share we all share with each other
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: and we all think it's amazing blah blah and i
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: think if most voters saw it they'd be like these
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: fucking people are yelling at each other the republicans the
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: democrats an asshole they're all going back and forth they
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: don't care who started it right and i think that
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: aoc like i think on the oversight committee if she
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: ends up being ranking member and then you know part
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: of this is a play where like if we take
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: back the house in 2026 then she is then she
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: gets has subpoena power and then she can sort of
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: hold her own hearings on oversight right And I would
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: imagine that she'd be more like a Katie Porter model
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: than a like just beat up Republicans. Like imagining AOC
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: bringing in a bunch of CEOs and corporate interests and
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: lobbyists and just sort of holding them accountable at these
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: hearings for like why they are screwing most working class Americans.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: I think that is even more effective than like, oh,
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: did you see this AOC dunk on Jim Jordan, right?
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the dunk thing is very important because we, you know,
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: you and I, We saw this at the convention. We
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: saw so many of the speeches that the– especially the
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: Democratic House members were doing were basically reverse engineered from
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: a dunk on Republicans like moment that could go viral.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: And AOC doesn't have to do something to go viral, right?
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: This is– like there's a certain set of politicians who
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: have this ability for whatever reason. Trump is one of them, right?
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: Obama was one of them. You can just– Pete is
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: the same thing where you don't have to– just your
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: presence doing what you do authentically gets attention and traffic
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: on the internet as opposed to trying to come up
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: with a thing where you're just going to like really
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: take down Marjorie Taylor Greene or in front of everyone
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: as a way to do it. It makes it easier
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: to have a conversation in that committee that speaks to
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: voters as opposed to speaks to political junkies who will
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: hit the share button.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: AOC destroys Marjorie Taylor Greene. I mean, right now, Elijah's
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: thinking that's great SEO.
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. No one wants us more than Elijah
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: because we're going to crush on YouTube if that happens.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: All right, before we get to your conversation with Steve
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: Shale about how Democrats can win again, I want to
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: talk about some new findings that the party might be
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: able to draw some lessons from. Shane Goldmacher at the
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: New York Times dropped a long story on Thursday in
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: which the Trump campaign explained how they went after swing
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: voters on streaming services. So according to campaign officials, they
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: put together an actual list of 6.3 million individual battleground
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: state voters that they thought were persuadable, That was about
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: 14% of battleground state voters. They tended to be young, non-white,
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: and they heavily used streaming services like Tubi and Roku.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: The Trump campaign believed that about half of this group
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: of persuadable voters watched streaming TV exclusively. The Trump campaign
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: referred to these voters as, quote, streaming persuadables. And I
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: had no idea, but apparently a lot of these streaming
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: channels now allow you to target ads from to individual
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: households rather than just regions. The Trump campaign said they
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: took advantage of that feature, but the Harris campaign didn't,
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: which meant that they were spending huge amounts of money
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: on viewers who had already made up their minds while
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: the Trump folks were able to make their money go further.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: This is, of course, according to the Trump campaign. This
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: general theory of swing voters' media consumption is backed up
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: by new data from Navigator. This is based on their
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: big survey of 5,000 people who said they voted in
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: the election, whereas half of Harris voters said they get
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: their news from broadcast television. Only 38% of swing voters
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: said they did. They were much more likely to get
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: their news from YouTube and Facebook. 61% of swing voters
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: said they watch live TV through a streaming service. And
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: only 42% of them said they get their live TV
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: through cable or satellite. All right, there's a lot in there.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: What did you think of the Times piece? And do
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: you buy the Trump campaign's take on how much this
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: targeting mattered and what was happening with the Harris campaign?
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: I think we should stipulate that the Trump campaign... did
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: a very good job of communicating with their target voters
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: through a variety of means. Paid advertising, including this individualized
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: targeting on streaming, all of his media appearances, the work
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: they did with influencers like Aiden Ross and the Milk Boys,
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: they knew who their target voters were, and they went
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: after them, and they clearly reached them. I do feel
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: a little bit like in reading this story that they're
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: taking what is a relatively common tactic for political advertising
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: and treating it as sorcery. So I think it was
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: good that they had a challenge. Democrats had more money
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: than Republicans. They had to spend their money more efficiently.
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: This was an efficient way to do it. It's not
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: as brilliant, I think, as maybe they would like us
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: to believe, but it obviously worked. So what am I
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: to say?
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: What do you make of the Harris campaign side of this?
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: Why were they not targeting individual households on streaming and
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: instead doing it by region? They're doing it.
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: By zip code, which is– obviously, that's a smaller population
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: of people than the metro area of Philadelphia or the
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: state of Pennsylvania. The reason why I believe the Harris
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: campaign did what they did is pretty simple. In the
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: battleground states, the Trump path to their win number was
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: pretty simple. It was base vote plus some slice of
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: this Swing voter university was overwhelmingly male and younger. That
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: gets you there. The Harris campaign path to these swing states,
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: which are bipartisanship and political performance, a couple points to
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: the right of the nation as a whole, was to
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: get their base of core Democratic voters, but then they
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: also had to get some of these same young men voters.
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: They had to get older black voters. They had to
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: juice up their numbers with college-educated suburbanites. They need Republicans
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: and Republican-leading independents. They needed some of these Nikki Haley voters.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: They needed to juice the numbers with seniors. Their math
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: was so much more complicated that it was more cost
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: efficient to do it by zip code than it was
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: to do it on an individualized basis. And the other
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: thing I just say about the individualized targeting is many
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: of the streaming services do not allow political ads.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: Like YouTube is the big one.
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: That does not. Well, YouTube TV uses it. You can
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: do political ads on YouTube TV.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: That's what I meant.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: You can't do individualized on it. You can't do individualized. Netflix,
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: no political ads. And the vast majority of Netflix subscribers
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: don't use the ad tier. But we brought up Tubi
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: and all of these fast networks. It's free ad supported TV.
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: It's like if you buy a smart TV today and
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: you just turn it on. connected to your internet, you'll
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: see a bunch of icons. Tubi is one of them.
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: There's a bunch of free TV you can just watch
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: with ads and an increasing number of people do it.
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: And particularly young people who get their diet is like Netflix,
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: maybe another streaming service. And then if they're just like
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: flipping the channel or looking for something, they'll just go
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: on to these fast channels and you reach those people.
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: And so it's not that the Trump campaign is smarter
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: than the Harris campaign. The Harris campaign was very smart
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: about how they did a lot of their advertising. It's
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: just they had to reach a much more diverse group
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: of voters to get to their win number. So it
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: was probably much more efficient. You think about it this way,
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: you're doing zip code, you're going to do a certain
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: number of people in Waukesha, Wisconsin, or you're going to
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: do a certain zip code in Waukesha, Wisconsin, right? And
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: so it's kind of Let all six here have toes
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: in the other, I think. But it is the future.
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: This is the future. And this has consequences for Democrats
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: because our advantage in a world where Republicans have a
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: massive advantage on free media and social media was in
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: paid linear television, right? Particularly targeting people on cable, on
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: people who are watching live television, news, sports, et cetera.
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: And that advantage is dramatically diminished and is going to
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: be just– Given the rate at cord cutting and the
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: rate at which the cable business is collapsing before us,
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: it's hard to imagine what 2028 is going to look like,
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: but it's going to be very different from this election.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I just think that, I don't know. At some point,
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: the utility of all of these ads and just... one
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: after another that sounds the same and looks the same
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: and on your phone. And like, you can't watch anything else.
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: I just, I feel like there's gotta be diminishing marginal
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: utility at some point.
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's, it is the greatest waste of money
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: in modern American history. Like billions of dollars were spent
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: to reach like 12 million people in the country, not
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: even 12 million people.
• 31:42
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: And it's like, I know I could, I could go
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: on this forever, but like.
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: I have a YouTube show about this. You're always welcome.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: Well, it's just like there's– I feel like we're like
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: really– there's always a step that's being skipped, which is like, well,
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: this ad tested really, really well. It's like, yeah, of course.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: You showed it to a bunch of voters and the
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: voters are like, yeah, this is persuasive. This might make
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: me vote more, blah, blah, blah. And then you run
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: the ad and then you know the ad reached people.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: But like we still don't know. But like once the
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: ad reaches the actual voter, does it move the voter
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: to actually go take the– I mean I know that
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: you can.
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: You can do a regression analysis on this stuff, but
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: you never really know because it's impossible to test in
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: a lab the actual impact of watching all the ads
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: you see. I mean, we spent some time in Battleground
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: States at the end. I watched football in Philadelphia way
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: before our show started. I mean, holy shit.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: We left Philly and you voted for Trump.
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: That's right. A lot of Harris ads, actually. But then
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: it's also how does it fit with all the... And
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: what you really can't test is how the ad fits
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: with all the other surround sound you're getting, right? From
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: social media, the regular news, stuff like that. So it's
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: a lot of money is being spent and we're not
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: really sure why.
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: Cool, cool. One other perennial post-election debate is the question
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: of turnout versus persuasion. The way this goes is, did
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: Kamala Harris lose because more Biden 2020 voters stayed home?
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: or because more Biden 2020 voters switched to Trump? The
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: answer is always, in every election, some of both. But
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: one reason it's heavily debated is that if the loss
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: was mostly caused by voters staying home, often there are
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: lefty types who will argue that it's because the candidate
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: didn't sufficiently excite the party's liberal base. If the loss
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: was mostly caused by voters switching parties, Centrist types will
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: argue that it's because the candidate failed to win the
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: middle moderates. Nate Cohn at The Times waded into the
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: debate this week with a piece where he makes a
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: few points. One, lower turnout among Democrats was a big
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: part of the story in non-battleground states this election, but
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: not in the battleground states where turnout was much higher.
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: And then a second point is The Times polling data
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: suggests that the Biden 2020 voters who did stay home
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: in 2024 weren't necessarily deciding between Kamala Harris and the couch,
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: as is often the phrase. They were, in fact, more
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: moderate voters, less partisan, less ideological voters who, if they
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: had turned out, could have just as easily supported Trump.
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: What do you think? Does this settle the argument once
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: and for all?
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: This argument will never be settled, John, for the exact
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: reasons you laid out, which is people have an interest
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: in continuing the argument. It's happened in every losing election
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: in my career. We're always looking for simple ways to
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: tell ourselves a story, right? But this idea that there's
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: this ocean of potential Democratic voters that if we could
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: just reach with our very compelling Democratic, very progressive message
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: would turn out, that would be a great world to
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: live in because your path to victory forever is obvious.
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: Another simple story to tell ourselves is if we could
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: just sand down the edges on this issue or that issue,
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: then we could get this mythical group of centrist, very
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: focused policy voters who line up the white papers of
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: both campaigns on a diner table somewhere in Wisconsin and
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: they make a decision. No, voters are complicated and they
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: have different reasons for turning out and different reasons for
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: making their decisions. They are cross-pressured in thousands of ways.
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: I do think in this election, the most brutally honest
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: thing we can say to ourselves is that Donald Trump
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: convinced our voters to leave us and join him. That
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: is what happened. And we can't shy away from that
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: because if you shy away.
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: From that- And you know what? He did it in 2016.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: He added more votes in 2020, even as he lost
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: by 40,000 votes. I mean, Donald Trump added- Like millions
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: and millions and millions of votes to his total between
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: 2016 and 2024. And a good portion of that is
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: people who have voted for Democrats, Barack Obama, Joe Biden.
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: It's just, that's what happened.
• 36:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: There's a bunch of Obama Trump voters. Got a bunch
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: of Biden Trump voters. Like it is, and it just,
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: it is hard and dark, but I think you kind
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: of have to just like reckon with the absolute wreckage
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: that we're currently in so that you can right-size what
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: the solutions are. Because if you want to tell yourself
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: an overly simplistic story, and I think people in the
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: center and the left are doing that, then you're not
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: going to do all the work you have to do together.
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: Because we have to win. I know this was a
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: very– I don't know if you heard this, John, but
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: I did an interview with the Harris campaign.
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: Whoa.
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: Happened over the holiday break. Not a lot of people
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: noticed it.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: I got to check that out.
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I think you would like it.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: I hope you were tough.
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: Well, I would say that Joe DiMelle Dillon is still
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: walking the earth, so I was not as tough as
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: some people would like. But in that interview, David Plouffe
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: made the point that in these states, we have to
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: crush it with moderate voters. And people got very mad
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: about that, right? Like that's a mistake. But the thing is,
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: you have to, if we're going to win, we have
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: to win moderate voters. We have to do better with independents.
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: And we have to get all of those young voters
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: who either went to Trump or stayed home. And some
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: of the young voters definitely stayed home who were voters
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: who should have been with us for a variety of reasons,
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: including Gaza. And we have to get them all back.
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: We have to do all of those things. It's not
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: as simple as one or the other. And I think
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: that's just the most important takeaway from this is that
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: we have a very complicated task before us. It is
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: the problem of having a big tent coalition. But it's
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: that big tent coalition that has given us the ability
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: to win the popular vote in all but two elections
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: since 1988. And if we want to continue that, we
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: have to figure out how to do all the things.
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, the most simplified version of the argument
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: that both sides are making, which is they are not
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: actually making this argument, but this is just for the
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: sake of talking about it.
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: This is the Twitter version of it, yes.
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, right. Which is like, there's this economic populist button
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: that if you press it, suddenly just thousands and thousands,
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: millions of voters who were just hanging out at home
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: are just going to just leave their houses and run
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: to the polls as fast as they can, because now
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: the Democrats actually stand for something, economic populism, that all
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: these voters will come out and vote for them. And,
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: and also if, you know, in this instance, it had
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: to do with Gaza as well in Michigan, which did
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: make a real difference in Michigan. And then on the
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: other side, it's like, if only, if only on, on,
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: on cultural and social issues. If Democrats just sort of,
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: you know, said, no, you know, I'm going to, I'm
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: not for trans rights. I'm not going to talk about
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: it anymore. I'm not going to talk about cultural issues anymore.
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to talk about immigration anymore. I'm going
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: to be as tough as Republicans are on the border.
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: And I just going to take all these positions. Then
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: suddenly all the moderate voters, all the swing voters are
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: going to come. And it's just, that's just, we talk
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: about the data and everyone's like the data, everyone's too
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: into the data. It's like, Don't call it data then.
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: Just go talk to fucking voters.
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: It's math.
• 39:11
  Speaker 4: It's math.
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: I swear to God. Just go out there. Talk to
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: fucking voters. People that you don't know. People that aren't
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: like you. Like, sit down with them. And, I mean,
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: what I take from this, and this drives me nuts
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: because I've been doing this since, I've been having this
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: conversation and this debate since when I did the first
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: season of The Wilderness in 2018, 2017. Yeah. years ago now,
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: seven years ago, whatever. And the way I think about
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: it is the voter who, the Democratic voter, or the
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: person who has voted for Democrats in the past, who
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: decides to stay home, is not that much different than
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: the person who's voted for democrats who then switches to
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: vote for republicans they are they're they're different but they
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: are not as different as this debate makes them out
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: to be yes they are less ideological they are less
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: partisan they tend to be and and what's what confuses
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: democrats is they tend to now be younger and non-white
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: which liberals think oh that's our voter if they're if
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: they're young and they're a black voter or latino voter
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: and age voter then they must be progressive And it's
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: the wrong way to think. It is the wrong. It
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: is not supported by the facts. And and so the problem,
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: you know, and I think the same thing for some
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: of these voters that switch to Trump.
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: And that doesn't mean that they're not. That doesn't mean
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: that they're out of reach for us. That doesn't mean
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: that that a good chunk of them would respond favorably
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: to more progressive positions on X or a more economically
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: populist position on Y or. more cultural moderation on something else.
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: But you can't make blanket statements about entire identities of
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: voters in terms of their behavior and how they're going
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: to act in an election. You just can't do it
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: anymore because people are just too different.
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: I think one thing we should... There are several things
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: I think we could do going forward that would help
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: our mentality on this. One is we have to just
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: eliminate the term GOTV as a part of a messaging strategy.
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: Everyone is a persuasion target.
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: I was just going to say that. They're all persuasion targets.
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: The second is we do have to just untrain ourselves
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: from how we thought about politics for a long time.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: I think the term identity politics is obviously overused and
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: has been weaponized by Republicans in really gross ways. But
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: this idea that you used to be able to make
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: real predictions about how people would vote based on their race,
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: that is no longer true in politics. So we should
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: abolish the idea that we have any sense of how
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: people are going to vote based on their race because
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: that's clearly not true anymore. And finally, we probably ought
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: to stop using the term moderate because moderate, and this
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: isn't the way in which Plouffe used it in the interview,
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: is that's how people self-identify. That's how they describe themselves.
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: To a pollster. I think people miss that from that.
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: That's why I was, I'm surprised that clip got so
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: much reaction because I'm like, the moderate thing you're saying,
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: like in an exit poll, it's how you self-identify. The
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: exit pollster says, are you liberal, moderate, or conservative? And
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: then you pick one and you tell them.
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: And that is different for every voter, right? That needs
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: some combination of maybe I am very liberal on economic issues.
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: I am, you know, certainly care a lot about Social
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: Security and Medicare and protecting those. And I might be
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: a union member. But also maybe I'm concerned about the border.
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: And then for other voters, it's the reverse, right? Where
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: it's like, they are very liberal on social issues. Like,
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: trans rights and marriage equality and all that, but they're
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: deeply concerned about spending and taxes. We create these avatars
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: of fake voters when it's like everyone is different, everyone
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: has a different point of view. The other thing is
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: stop thinking about voters ideologically because that puts them in
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: the wrong bucket, I think, particularly when you get to
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: the moderate.
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: Well, especially when the central divide in American politics now
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: is whether or not you have a college degree. That
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: is the best predictor of how you're going to vote.
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: And what we have seen since Donald Trump took over
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: the Republican Party is you have a coalition of voters
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: who do not have faith in institutions, who are anti-establishment,
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: who don't think the system is working for them. And
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: most of them don't have a college degree. And then
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: you have a coalition of voters who do have a
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: college degree, who generally do think the system is working
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: and want to defend institutions. And like that is the
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: axis of American politics right now. And it just it
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: does scramble the traditional ideological positioning that we've talked about
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: for the last, you know, much of the century.
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: Instead of thinking of politics as left versus right, it's
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: insider versus outsider. Like that is the way in which
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: our politics moves now.
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: All right. When we come back from the break, you'll
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: hear Dan's conversation with Steve Shale about what the hell
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: is wrong with Florida. and the Democratic brand and strategy
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: more broadly. But before we do that, the latest episode
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: of Hysteria dives into some of the biggest questions from
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: the last election. Erin and Alyssa are joined by our
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: friend Erin Haines, editor of the 19th News, to break
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: down the role that racism and misogyny played in Trump's
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: win and the latest revelations about Secretary of Defense nominee
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: Pete Hegseth's problematic past. Tune into Hysteria today wherever you
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: get your podcasts. When we come back, Steve Shale.
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: Joining us now is a Democratic strategist who calls himself
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: a 26-year survivor of Florida politics, Steve Shale. Welcome to
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: Pod Save America. Hey, thanks, man.
• 44:38
  Speaker 4: Good to see you.
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: Good to see you. All right. You spent your political
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: career in Florida. You helped Obama win in 2008, 2012.
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: You wrote a piece for The Bulwark with the title,
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: I Watch the Democratic Collapse in Florida, I Fear It's
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: Happening Nationally, which certainly caught my attention. You were also
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: on our list of people to talk to about what
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: the hell happened in this election, so I thought this
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: was a great time to bring you on. I want
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: to get into your recommendations for the party, what you
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: think is happening nationally, but I want to start with
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: the party collapse in Florida. We won in 08, we
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: won in 12, we barely lost in 16, and Democrats
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: lost Florida in 2024 by a margin not dissimilar to
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: to what we used to see in places like Montana.
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: What the hell happened in your state?
• 45:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean, I think finally just the weight of
• 45:21
  Speaker 4: the coalition falling apart. I mean, if you go back to, say,
• 45:24
  Speaker 4: for example, the Clinton years, I mean, we were winning
• 45:26
  Speaker 4: Hispanics in Florida by 30 points. And we began to
• 45:33
  Speaker 4: see the slippage among Hispanic support here as early as 2018,
• 45:36
  Speaker 4: certainly in 2020. you know, a county, Dade County that,
• 45:40
  Speaker 4: you know, we won, you know, with Obama by 20
• 45:42
  Speaker 4: some odd points, Biden only won by seven. And you
• 45:46
  Speaker 4: saw particularly those Hispanics that were non-Mexican, the exile era type,
• 45:50
  Speaker 4: your Cubans, your Venezuelans, really just kind of almost repel
• 45:55
  Speaker 4: to some of the rhetoric that was out there, defunding
• 45:57
  Speaker 4: the police, you know, some of the socialism talk. I mean,
• 46:00
  Speaker 4: I remind folks all the time, like if you're from Venezuela,
• 46:03
  Speaker 4: you know, you came here to avoid socialism. So when
• 46:06
  Speaker 4: you hear people wax on poetically about socialism, That brings
• 46:09
  Speaker 4: back an immediate bad trigger. And so we saw some
• 46:13
  Speaker 4: of that kind of begin to slip away. And then
• 46:15
  Speaker 4: in 24, the combination of non-college whites, which again, we've
• 46:18
  Speaker 4: seen kind of go the wrong way here, added to
• 46:20
  Speaker 4: the issues we've had with Hispanics. And it all just
• 46:23
  Speaker 4: added up to a disaster, frankly.
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: I remember after 20 talking to folks in Florida and
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: reading folks, I think you made this point that one
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: of the things that happened between 16 and 20 was
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: that a lot of the rhetoric around democratic socialism really
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: had an impact on people with Cuban and Venezuelan, maybe
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: Salvadorian backgrounds in Florida. And that was a unique situation.
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: But this time around, we saw in like Osceola County,
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: a largely Puerto Rican county, just a massive collapse over
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: the previous year. So it seems more widespread than that.
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: Thoughts on that?
• 46:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean, I think there's, you know, listen, man,
• 46:59
  Speaker 4: you get this, you just does it your whole life.
• 47:01
  Speaker 4: I mean, there's a permission structure in almost any community
• 47:04
  Speaker 4: you go into. And so You know, we used to
• 47:06
  Speaker 4: talk about it, you know, back sort of college educated
• 47:09
  Speaker 4: white voters who were Republicans in Florida, the Obama days,
• 47:11
  Speaker 4: like our permission structure was talking about cutting taxes. And
• 47:14
  Speaker 4: if we talked about cutting taxes, they would listen to
• 47:16
  Speaker 4: us on other stuff. And a lot of the permission
• 47:18
  Speaker 4: structure in these Hispanic communities, Puerto Ricans, for example, starts
• 47:22
  Speaker 4: at sort of understanding that there's a cultural politics, which
• 47:27
  Speaker 4: are a cultural sort of part of life that is different,
• 47:31
  Speaker 4: that's more conservative, you know, you know, They may be
• 47:35
  Speaker 4: with us on education and healthcare, but they may not
• 47:37
  Speaker 4: be where we are on, for example, abortion. I think
• 47:41
  Speaker 4: that the sense in a lot of these communities is
• 47:43
  Speaker 4: that we've gotten away from it. I'm not saying it's
• 47:45
  Speaker 4: totally accurate. I think it's the sense, the reality that
• 47:47
  Speaker 4: they see that we've gotten away from focusing on things
• 47:50
  Speaker 4: like the Affordable Care Act, on good schools, good jobs,
• 47:54
  Speaker 4: and we are now entirely focused on these social issues,
• 47:57
  Speaker 4: which often runs contrary to the faith-based sense of who
• 48:02
  Speaker 4: they are as a people. That's a real problem. And
• 48:04
  Speaker 4: I think, you know, there was that interesting story that
• 48:06
  Speaker 4: came out in The Atlantic you may have seen. It
• 48:08
  Speaker 4: was something like, you know, I think it was the
• 48:10
  Speaker 4: voters thought that like the number two issue we cared
• 48:12
  Speaker 4: about around the country was trans issues. The number three
• 48:15
  Speaker 4: issue was abortion. And, you know, that and again, I'm
• 48:18
  Speaker 4: not saying we don't fight for those issues, no fight
• 48:20
  Speaker 4: for marginalized voices. But when the perception is that is
• 48:22
  Speaker 4: our primary goal, those communities where, you know, where faith
• 48:25
  Speaker 4: is a big part of who they are, you know,
• 48:27
  Speaker 4: it's hard for us to kind of get in the
• 48:29
  Speaker 4: door to talk about other issues.
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: Democrats have struggled. We won, obviously, won Florida at the
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: presidential level. Bill Nelson had some success there for a
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: while in recent years. But Democrats have not had the
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: governorship in Florida in more than a quarter century now.
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: So any lessons you see there about sort of the
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: organization and funding of the party infrastructure that can apply nationally,
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: sort of what you've seen over the course of your
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: time there?
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's funny.
• 48:53
  Speaker 4: I was talking to our mutual friend, Sam Corneli at
• 48:55
  Speaker 4: the DNC earlier. And I mean, you know, the places
• 48:59
  Speaker 4: where state party infrastructure has really been bad, we've really
• 49:02
  Speaker 4: struggled in. And, you know, Florida is a place where
• 49:05
  Speaker 4: we just frankly haven't invested in the partisan infrastructure. And honestly, man, like,
• 49:10
  Speaker 4: you know, I mean, as you know, I'm a homer
• 49:12
  Speaker 4: for our old guy. But a lot of the stuff
• 49:14
  Speaker 4: that we did coming out of the Obama years, in,
• 49:16
  Speaker 4: I think, the Organizing for America infrastructure, a lot of
• 49:19
  Speaker 4: which got kind of moved away from sort of partisan
• 49:22
  Speaker 4: infrastructure into a lot of these C3 and C4 groups
• 49:25
  Speaker 4: in states that have weak political party infrastructure to begin with,
• 49:29
  Speaker 4: really kind of set us on a not great course. And,
• 49:32
  Speaker 4: you know, the challenge we've had in Florida is that
• 49:34
  Speaker 4: when we've had presidential elections that are engaged, we have
• 49:36
  Speaker 4: this huge infrastructure. It's here for six months. you know,
• 49:39
  Speaker 4: registers hundreds of thousands of voters, puts hundreds of kids
• 49:42
  Speaker 4: on the ground, and then it leaves the next day,
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: and there's nothing to take its place. And so as,
• 49:47
  Speaker 4: you know, as we got into 2020, for example, it
• 49:49
  Speaker 4: had a very different kind of campaigning. Listen, I don't
• 49:51
  Speaker 4: blame the campaign for not putting boots on the ground.
• 49:53
  Speaker 4: We were dealing with COVID. We didn't know what we
• 49:54
  Speaker 4: were dealing with. But I think not having that real
• 49:56
  Speaker 4: infrastructure on the ground, even for presidential campaigns, and then
• 50:00
  Speaker 4: having sort of nothing in between, you know, it just
• 50:02
  Speaker 4: at all, it atrophied to really nothing. I mean, The
• 50:05
  Speaker 4: Democratic Party at this point literally operates out of a
• 50:08
  Speaker 4: rented third floor building in an office downtown, and they
• 50:11
  Speaker 4: maybe have three or four full-time staffers in a state
• 50:13
  Speaker 4: of 23 million people. It's hard to win from there.
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: I mean, Florida's obviously a state where there's a lot
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: of money, right? A lot of the big Democratic donors
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: come from Florida. Is it struggle? Is it people think
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: it's a lost cause? We've spent way more money in
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: Texas over the last 10 years to try to turn
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: that one blue, obviously with less success there as well.
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: But I'm just sort of curious as to what the
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: struggle is to get actual investment. And I will say,
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: I think it's important to note that we did almost
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: win the governorship in 2018 in Florida. And we almost
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: reelected Bill Nuss. So we came within basically a point,
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: I think, or close to a point in those.
• 50:49
  Speaker 4: 9,000 votes.
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Much less than a point. As for someone whose
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: formative political experience was Al Gore's election in the recount,
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: that seems like a landslide to me, but I get
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: the point.
• 51:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: But just what is preventing broad scale investment in state
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: party infrastructure in Florida? And I take your point on
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: Obama in 08 and 12. I was part of some
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: of those decisions. I understand why we made them. They
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: had downstream effects that I think have been not awesome
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: in Florida's example of that. But we're 10 years past
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: that now.
• 51:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, I think, listen, a lot of Southern states
• 51:24
  Speaker 4: have this problem in that the political party infrastructure never
• 51:27
  Speaker 4: existed in the same way that a state like Michigan
• 51:29
  Speaker 4: that has a strong union base, has had a lot
• 51:31
  Speaker 4: of governors, like a partisan infrastructure is part of their DNA.
• 51:35
  Speaker 4: A lot of these Southern states, the political party existed, frankly,
• 51:38
  Speaker 4: just as a way for governors, old Southern governors to
• 51:41
  Speaker 4: run money through their get around contribution limits. And so
• 51:44
  Speaker 4: we've never really had a real party. to begin with.
• 51:47
  Speaker 4: And then not having a governor who can help drive
• 51:50
  Speaker 4: money to a political party has been a tough issue.
• 51:53
  Speaker 4: And so I think all of these things, I tell
• 51:56
  Speaker 4: donors all the time, listen, the Florida Democratic Party is
• 51:58
  Speaker 4: whatever the donors make it. If you put eight or
• 52:01
  Speaker 4: $ 10 million into it, it's going to be something better
• 52:03
  Speaker 4: than it is today. But it's just, there's just never
• 52:06
  Speaker 4: been a real culture to build the political party. And
• 52:08
  Speaker 4: that's been, frankly, if I've I've been setting myself on
• 52:12
  Speaker 4: fire about one thing down here for the last decade.
• 52:14
  Speaker 4: It's been that, which is if we're ever going to
• 52:16
  Speaker 4: get Florida to a better place, and I'm not even
• 52:18
  Speaker 4: saying at this point getting a place where we're competitive
• 52:20
  Speaker 4: in 26-28. I'm talking about a better place to make
• 52:22
  Speaker 4: sure that Jared Moskowitz gets reelected and that Congressman Frost
• 52:27
  Speaker 4: can grow and just kind of win seats at the
• 52:30
  Speaker 4: local and congressional level. We still need to invest in
• 52:33
  Speaker 4: that permanent infrastructure at the partisan level. We've just never
• 52:35
  Speaker 4: really done it.
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: So in your piece for the Bulwark, you offered a–
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: you talk broadly. I actually recommend everyone should read it.
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: It offers a lot of very interesting thoughts about where
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: the party has been, where it's going. You offer some
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: specific tactical recommendations, which I will summarize here. You should
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: feel free to correct my summary. But they include spending
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: more money early in campaigns, using data less smartly, more smartly.
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: I'll let you explain that one.
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: Sort of diversifying the number of groups who are campaigning
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: on behalf of the nominee, sort of in the Super
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: PAC universe. So could you maybe sort of explain what
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: you're arguing for here?
• 53:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah, no, it's funny. So, you know, I ran a
• 53:15
  Speaker 4: Super PAC in 2020 and sort of a little bit
• 53:17
  Speaker 4: in 2024 called Unite the Country. And it's one of
• 53:20
  Speaker 4: these things, I never thought I would ever run a
• 53:22
  Speaker 4: Super PAC until my, you know, our mutual friend, Greg
• 53:24
  Speaker 4: Schultz called me at like 9.30 on a Friday night
• 53:27
  Speaker 4: at a friend's 40th birthday party in a moment of weakness,
• 53:30
  Speaker 4: I said, yes.
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: No.
• 53:31
  Speaker 4: And a great lesson about not answering phone calls at
• 53:34
  Speaker 4: that hour after five or six beers. And, you know,
• 53:37
  Speaker 4: what was interesting about 2020, and when you guys had
• 53:39
  Speaker 4: Puff on the internet, this is kind of what drove that,
• 53:42
  Speaker 4: you know, David talked about the infrastructure that existed in 2020.
• 53:45
  Speaker 4: And again, I don't have any experience before that. I
• 53:47
  Speaker 4: never ran one of these things, but in 2020, you know,
• 53:50
  Speaker 4: there wasn't really a primary super PAC. And what was
• 53:53
  Speaker 4: interesting about that is it forced all of us to
• 53:55
  Speaker 4: kind of figure out together how to support, you know,
• 53:58
  Speaker 4: then Vice President Biden. It brought lots of interesting voices
• 54:02
  Speaker 4: to the table. You know, like, for example, I never
• 54:04
  Speaker 4: had known a woman named Adrienne Shopshire, who runs Blackpack.
• 54:07
  Speaker 4: I'd never met her until 2020. She's one of the
• 54:09
  Speaker 4: smartest people I've ever talked to in my life. And
• 54:12
  Speaker 4: because of that lack of sort of singular entity, you know,
• 54:16
  Speaker 4: her voice was elevated in ways that it certainly wasn't
• 54:19
  Speaker 4: this cycle. And I think that, you know, Biden benefited
• 54:22
  Speaker 4: from having that, you know, that chorus of people on
• 54:25
  Speaker 4: the outside, all raising money, all working together. It was
• 54:28
  Speaker 4: hard for donors. Donors hated it. because they would get
• 54:30
  Speaker 4: 35 pitch calls instead of one. But in the end,
• 54:33
  Speaker 4: like you had so many more voices with so many
• 54:36
  Speaker 4: more sort of views at these tables. And I think
• 54:39
  Speaker 4: collectively ended up in a really good place. So for example,
• 54:41
  Speaker 4: we learned, we ran solely pro Joe Biden ads. That
• 54:45
  Speaker 4: was our lane in 2020. American Bridge ran these ads
• 54:50
  Speaker 4: where they would find former Trump voters talking about why
• 54:53
  Speaker 4: they were voting for Biden. Well, what we found is
• 54:56
  Speaker 4: that our ads and their ads were really good. Our ads,
• 54:59
  Speaker 4: if they were on the same buy schedule as their ads,
• 55:02
  Speaker 4: were amazing because we would tee up people talking about
• 55:05
  Speaker 4: why they were not leaving Trump. And then, you know,
• 55:07
  Speaker 4: you would fast forward us. And so you had, I
• 55:11
  Speaker 4: hate the word synergy, but you had kind of that
• 55:12
  Speaker 4: thing that happened because you had that. Whereas this cycle,
• 55:16
  Speaker 4: you know, I mean, I like a lot of those
• 55:17
  Speaker 4: guys are all friends of ours at Future Forward, but
• 55:19
  Speaker 4: like they had a theory of the case. And if
• 55:22
  Speaker 4: you weren't part of their theory, you just weren't at
• 55:24
  Speaker 4: the table. And, you know, and in the end, I mean,
• 55:27
  Speaker 4: like they believe the science says spend money late. You know,
• 55:31
  Speaker 4: I totally agree. Like running ads late, you know, something
• 55:34
  Speaker 4: we all do. But like the foundation was so bad,
• 55:37
  Speaker 4: you know, and I think that, you know, folks made
• 55:38
  Speaker 4: this point on your pod last week. Like we were
• 55:42
  Speaker 4: in such a bad place to begin with that I
• 55:44
  Speaker 4: don't care how much money you put in, you couldn't
• 55:45
  Speaker 4: move the foundation. Whereas you go back to say 2012,
• 55:49
  Speaker 4: like the work that was done by Priorities and Bill
• 55:51
  Speaker 4: and those guys to define Romney in the spring was,
• 55:56
  Speaker 4: just made it easier for all of us in the
• 55:57
  Speaker 4: fall to go do our jobs. And that was my frustration.
• 56:01
  Speaker 4: I think had we run, for example, a bunch of
• 56:05
  Speaker 4: anti-Trump ads in the spring of 2024, we might have
• 56:10
  Speaker 4: been at a place to actually close the deal in
• 56:11
  Speaker 4: the fall. But the floor was so low.
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: This one is so hard because at least there was
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: a ton of pro-Biden spending early. In 2023, Future Forward
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: and the Biden campaign spent tens of millions of dollars
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: to do it and moved Literally nothing, right? Any person
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: you talk to said nothing. Now, it's like, what's the
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: right answer? Is that because it was too early? Is
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: it because people's minds were made up on Joe Biden
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: at the time and nothing was going to change anyone's mind?
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: It's there.
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: Was it– the ads were just– they were like, the
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: right strategy, wrong execution because the ads were bad. I
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: generally agree with you. I've heard several people all associated
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: with the Harris campaign and other super PACs make the
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: same point that Plouffe and Jen made to me and
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: you're making now that diversity– is better, right? You just,
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: it's sort of, you have more fail-safes in the system
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: where if one, and I'm not arguing the future forward
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: what they were doing was wrong or their theory was wrong,
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: but if you have more people, you have more theories,
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: you're less likely, you have your eggs in multiple baskets.
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: Correct.
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: But then it's also hard to set like, this is
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: why I find this election so hard to talk about
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: because there are all these tactical things that we can
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: debate till the end of time that the Harris campaign
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: did wrong, the rest of us did wrong, But do
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: any of those add up to victory? Hard to say, right?
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: It's close, but it wasn't that– it was close in margin.
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: But when you look at the movement among groups, it
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: was so widespread that it's hard to get to– it's
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: hard to argue that more money wins this race for her.
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: But does more money make it closer? Is more money
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: better than less money? Probably. Hard to say, right? Yeah.
• 57:47
  Speaker 4: And I think, you know, part of why the first
• 57:49
  Speaker 4: line of my blog or the piece for Bulwark was
• 57:51
  Speaker 4: essentially like, I don't want to talk about 2024 anymore.
• 57:53
  Speaker 4: And I know I talked about it in the piece, but,
• 57:55
  Speaker 4: you know, my frustration has been, I think we've gotten
• 57:57
  Speaker 4: to a place where, you know, I mean, we're very
• 58:00
  Speaker 4: cycle to cycle. That's collections. But like, you know, we've
• 58:03
  Speaker 4: had some macro level trends that, you know, in part because,
• 58:07
  Speaker 4: you know, frankly, Biden was old and a lot of
• 58:08
  Speaker 4: people were kind of, that was baked in. Some of
• 58:11
  Speaker 4: it's Trump being what he is, but like the macro
• 58:13
  Speaker 4: level trends, for example, with Hispanics, that didn't start today.
• 58:17
  Speaker 4: The macro level trends with non-college whites, that didn't start today.
• 58:21
  Speaker 4: And I think my point on a lot of this
• 58:23
  Speaker 4: stuff is, A, we have to get back to some
• 58:24
  Speaker 4: basic organizing, some early organizing. I do think, particularly in
• 58:28
  Speaker 4: some of these communities that we consider to be base communities,
• 58:31
  Speaker 4: that we do need to spend more money communicating earlier.
• 58:34
  Speaker 4: We have to treat voters who I think we've treated by,
• 58:36
  Speaker 4: you know, particularly just a turnout trend. target is persuasion.
• 58:40
  Speaker 4: And at that part of the point I made about
• 58:42
  Speaker 4: the data thing is, you know, we've gotten to this.
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: Will you make that, make that point for our listeners?
• 58:46
  Speaker 4: Yeah. So, you know, for, you know, your average, you know,
• 58:48
  Speaker 4: way we look at data as a party, your average
• 58:51
  Speaker 4: voter is going to have a score from one to
• 58:52
  Speaker 4: a hundred, one being, you know, 1% that are going
• 58:55
  Speaker 4: to vote for our candidate, a hundred being the sure thing.
• 58:57
  Speaker 4: And we, we tend to sort of chop up the
• 58:59
  Speaker 4: electorate by, by, by that way. And so, you know,
• 59:02
  Speaker 4: if you're, for example, a African-American male who's voted in
• 59:06
  Speaker 4: four elections in a row and has a primary voting history,
• 59:08
  Speaker 4: like you may have a, persuasion score of a hundred.
• 59:10
  Speaker 4: We think you're going to vote for us. So we
• 59:12
  Speaker 4: don't talk to you anymore and except to make sure
• 59:15
  Speaker 4: you vote. Well, you know, if we're not talking to
• 59:17
  Speaker 4: you anymore and the other side is talking to you,
• 59:19
  Speaker 4: you know, that's, that's not going to work out well
• 59:22
  Speaker 4: for us. And I think at the same time, and,
• 59:24
  Speaker 4: you know, Stan from, you know, the Obama years, like
• 59:26
  Speaker 4: one of the things that our guy doesn't get enough
• 59:27
  Speaker 4: credit for, and you guys campaign don't get enough credit for,
• 59:30
  Speaker 4: is he kept the floor in a lot of these
• 59:33
  Speaker 4: places very high. And in part because, frankly, we had
• 59:37
  Speaker 4: money so you could communicate widely. But take the panhandle
• 59:42
  Speaker 4: of Florida, very conservative area. I mean, I look at
• 59:46
  Speaker 4: where we were versus where Harris was. And it's not
• 59:49
  Speaker 4: changed dramatically. It's still white, still non-college. But we spent
• 59:54
  Speaker 4: the money there, put the people on the ground there
• 59:56
  Speaker 4: to keep those floors high. And, you know, nowadays, like
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 4: if you were to look at data, they'd be like, oh,
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 4: you know, that area always was Republican. It's a waste
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 4: of your time, your money. So you don't spend any
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 4: money there. Well, all of a sudden the floor has
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 4: gone from 40 percent to 25 percent. And so my
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 4: point is like I just for me, it's it's I'm
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 4: not a smart guy. I'm smart enough to add up
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 4: to 50 percent. Like if we're not talking to enough
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 4: people to make sure we're getting to that number, then
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 4: we're not going to win very many elections. And so
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 4: I think we have to cast a broader net. And
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 4: we have to kind of sometimes accept where the median
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 4: voter is, even if it's not where we want them
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 4: to be. It's just my view of the world.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: One question before I let you go, because I know
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: you've got a flight to catch, but just the real
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: canary in the coal mine for Florida and the country
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: is the massive shift in the Latino vote. As someone
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: who saw that firsthand, what recommendations would you have for
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: the party to begin to Not just stem that tide,
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: but reverse it.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 4: I mean, first of all, I mean, if we don't
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 4: do this as a party, we are not going to
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 4: elect presidents.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think- Or senators, frankly. Yeah.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 4: I mean, because I think the other thing that's really
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 4: important to keep in mind here is that the next redistricting,
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 4: reapportionment after the next census, is going to change the
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 4: map in fundamental ways. The path to 270 through Pennsylvania, Wisconsin,
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 4: and Michigan will be a path to like 255 to 257.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 4: So we're going to have to win Nevada's. We're going
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 4: to have to win Arizona's and Georgia's and potentially Florida's,
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 4: North Carolina's. All these states have much bigger Hispanic populations
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 4: than you have in the upper Midwest. So A, we
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 4: have to do it. You know, I think a lot of,
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 4: I mean, the upside is, listen, man, like before Barack Obama,
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 4: we weren't necessarily doing great with Hispanics either. I mean,
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 4: we were able to change that pretty quickly. A, we
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 4: had an amazing candidate, generational candidate. But also I think
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 4: just kind of getting back to redefining who we are.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 4: I mean, I think this perception that we are a
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 4: party that is more focused on sort of niche social issues.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 4: And again, I'm not saying we shouldn't stand up for
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 4: the marginalized. We absolutely should. That's what makes us all Democrats.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 4: But redefining that, you know, we are there, you know,
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 4: whether it's, you know, for helping people go to college
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 4: or tech degrees. I mean, just getting back to those
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 4: core issues, which is going to require us to spend
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 4: a lot of money. But I think we have to
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 4: just engage in redefining who we are in those communities.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 4: It's going to be slow. It's going to be painful. Again,
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 4: I think that, you know, I think that some of
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 4: the work that, I mean, I, critical of a lot
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 4: of things. I'm not critical of like what the DNC
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 4: has been doing on the ground in a lot of
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 4: these states. I think it's been very good. We should
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 4: build on that going forward. But I mean, we'd have to,
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 4: I mean, it's just going to have to claw back
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 4: and redefine who we are as a party with those voters.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: Steve Shale, thank you so much. We will count on
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: you to turn Florida back around in the next 48 years.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: So it's great to talk to you.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 4: I'm getting old, man. I'll do what I can do.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 4: Good to talk to you, buddy. Thanks, man.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: That's our show for today. We'll be back with a
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: new episode on Tuesday morning. Have a great weekend, everyone.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 4: Bye, everyone.
• 1:02:47
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