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“The midterms start now.” · Pod Save America

0:00
Speaker 1: The Supreme Court has had a busy summer loosening gun
0:02
Speaker 1: restrictions in states, overturning Roe v. Wade, and severely threatening
0:06
Speaker 1: our Miranda rights. I'm Leah Lippman, and each week on
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Speaker 1: Strict Scrutiny, I'm joined by my co-hosts and fellow law professors,
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Speaker 1: Melissa Murray and Kate Shaw, to break down the latest
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Speaker 1: headlines and the biggest legal questions facing our country. It's
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Speaker 1: more important than ever to understand the repercussions of these
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Speaker 1: Supreme Court decisions and what we can do to fight
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Speaker 1: back in the upcoming midterm elections. Listen to new episodes
0:25
Speaker 1: of Strict Scrutiny every Monday, wherever you get your podcasts.
0:49
Speaker 2: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
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Speaker 3: I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
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Speaker 2: On today's pod, Republicans have the best election night since
0:55
Speaker 2: Trump won in 2016. Democrats debate what went wrong in
0:59
Speaker 2: Virginia and what it means for the 22 midterms. And
1:02
Speaker 2: delegate Danica Rome joins to talk about how she managed
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Speaker 2: to be one of the few progressives in Virginia to
1:07
Speaker 2: win re-election last night. But first, I hope you're all
1:11
Speaker 2: listening to Crooked's new show, X-Ray Vision. Host Jason Concepcion
1:15
Speaker 2: and his co-host will be giving us the latest news
1:17
Speaker 2: on films and franchises over the next couple months, including Dune.
1:22
Speaker 2: Marvel's Eternals, Spider-Man, No Way Home, Cowboy Bebop, and Succession. Awesome.
1:29
Speaker 2: And don't forget to check out Offline. Last week, I
1:31
Speaker 2: had a fascinating conversation with Monica Lewinsky about public shaming
1:34
Speaker 2: and cancel culture. And this Sunday, I talk with Snapchat's
1:38
Speaker 2: Peter Hamby about how Twitter has ruined journalism. This one's
1:42
Speaker 2: for you, Dan.
1:45
Speaker 3: They're all for me, Jon.
1:46
Speaker 2: They're all for you. You can find Offline here on
1:49
Speaker 2: the Pod Save America feed, and you can find X-Ray
1:51
Speaker 2: Vision here wherever you listen to your podcasts. All right,
1:56
Speaker 2: let's get to the news. Spoiler alert, it sucks. Republican
2:00
Speaker 2: Glenn Youngkin will be the next governor of Virginia, defeating
2:03
Speaker 2: Terry McAuliffe by about 80,000 votes in a state that
2:07
Speaker 2: Joe Biden won just a year ago by 450,000 votes.
2:13
Speaker 2: In a state that Democratic Governor Ralph Northam won in
2:15
Speaker 2: 2017 by 230,000 votes. Democrats also lost the lieutenant governor's race,
2:21
Speaker 2: the attorney general's race, and seven seats in the House
2:23
Speaker 2: of Delegates, giving Republicans control of that chamber. But wait,
2:27
Speaker 2: there's more. The Democratic governor of New Jersey, Phil Murphy,
2:31
Speaker 2: narrowly beat his Republican opponent by a point in a
2:35
Speaker 2: state that he won by 14 points just four years ago.
2:38
Speaker 2: And the Democratic president of the state Senate in Jersey
2:41
Speaker 2: lost to a random truck driver whose campaign spending totaled
2:44
Speaker 2: $ 153 for Dunkin' Donuts and Flyers. I do like the
2:49
Speaker 2: Dunkin' Donuts part. Republicans also won in places like Seattle,
2:53
Speaker 2: Long Island, and six of them were elected to state
2:56
Speaker 2: and local offices who had attended the January 6th rally
3:00
Speaker 2: that led to a violent insurrection against the federal government.
3:03
Speaker 2: I could go on, but I don't want you all
3:05
Speaker 2: to turn off the pod. Dan, before we get to
3:09
Speaker 2: why this happened. How surprised were you that this happened?
3:13
Speaker 2: What was your reaction to watching this absolute clusterfuck unfold
3:18
Speaker 2: on Tuesday night?
3:20
Speaker 3: I mean, obviously, I did not predict because I did
3:22
Speaker 3: not predict anything in politics that McAuliffe would lose and
3:26
Speaker 3: the Virginia would be this close. We had a sense
3:28
Speaker 3: that the trends were all moving in the wrong direction.
3:30
Speaker 3: We talked about this a little bit in the lead
3:32
Speaker 3: up to it. Democrats were facing a lot of political headwinds.
3:35
Speaker 3: I had this really bad feeling as I was watching
3:38
Speaker 3: the polls in New Jersey. which all of a sudden
3:41
Speaker 3: you started seeing these polls, which paid no attention to
3:42
Speaker 3: New Jersey, which obviously probably an oversight on our part.
3:45
Speaker 3: All of a sudden it's like six points, eight points.
3:48
Speaker 3: And I sort of thought to myself, you know, you
3:50
Speaker 3: can see a world where Virginia is way too close
3:53
Speaker 3: and McAuliffe ekes it out or even, you know, the
3:55
Speaker 3: polls were so close that maybe Young could win, but
3:57
Speaker 3: what would be really shocking would be if Murphy only
3:59
Speaker 3: won by four, right? That would be the shocking thing.
4:01
Speaker 3: It turns out as bad as we thought things might be,
4:04
Speaker 3: they were even worse, which is really a lesson in
4:07
Speaker 3: how we should prepare ourselves emotionally from politics these days.
4:11
Speaker 2: Much like the Pennsylvania voters who clung to their guns
4:15
Speaker 2: and religion, I clung to the belief that there was
4:18
Speaker 2: something wrong with the polls only because I could not
4:23
Speaker 2: imagine that in a country as polarized as ours, that
4:28
Speaker 2: you could have such a big swing like this in
4:30
Speaker 2: a state that Democrats won by 10 points just a
4:35
Speaker 2: year ago. Um, but it turns out you can, and I'll,
4:38
Speaker 2: and I'll talk about like why I believe that because
4:41
Speaker 2: we're going to get to this, but a lot of
4:42
Speaker 2: people say, you know, state swing all the time, especially
4:45
Speaker 2: in off years, election off year elections. And that's certainly true.
4:48
Speaker 2: But again, with each passing election cycle, the country has
4:51
Speaker 2: grown more and more polarized. And so blue, the, the
4:54
Speaker 2: trend has been blue States and blue districts get bluer
4:58
Speaker 2: red States and red districts get redder. And, uh, you know,
5:02
Speaker 2: there was a big question of whether this would continue
5:05
Speaker 2: after Trump left the scene after 2020 or after he
5:07
Speaker 2: was no longer in office. And then sure enough, we
5:10
Speaker 2: had a California recall where the results of the recall were,
5:17
Speaker 2: the margin was almost exactly the same as Gavin Newsom's
5:22
Speaker 2: election in 2018. And the turnout was almost exactly the
5:26
Speaker 2: same as Gavin Newsom's 2018 race. And I know people say, oh,
5:30
Speaker 2: it's California. So obviously it's a more liberal state, but
5:33
Speaker 2: you would even think that if you were going to
5:35
Speaker 2: see this kind of swing to the right, that even
5:37
Speaker 2: in the redder and purple areas of California, of which
5:40
Speaker 2: there are plenty, they're just overpowered by the big blue cities,
5:44
Speaker 2: you would have seen the same sort of rightward shift
5:48
Speaker 2: just a month and a half ago in September. But
5:50
Speaker 2: we didn't see that. And so I expected the same
5:53
Speaker 2: thing to happen both in Virginia and New Jersey. I
5:56
Speaker 2: expected pretty much status quo. Maybe the Democrats lose a
5:59
Speaker 2: few points because Biden's poll numbers are so bad. And
6:02
Speaker 2: the fact that that didn't happen tells me at least
6:05
Speaker 2: that Democrats have an enormous amount of work to do,
6:09
Speaker 2: to say the least. But let's start with Virginia and
6:12
Speaker 2: what happened there. What do the results, the data, and
6:16
Speaker 2: the final exit polls tell us about how Glenn Youngkin
6:19
Speaker 2: pulled this off?
6:20
Speaker 3: Basically, what Glenn Youngkin did was he did what did
6:24
Speaker 3: the Democrats did in 2018 in reverse, which is he
6:27
Speaker 3: had incredibly high turnout, but he paired that with winning
6:31
Speaker 3: over a relatively substantial number of people who voted for
6:36
Speaker 3: Ralph Northam in 2017, Joe Biden in 2020, and then
6:40
Speaker 3: switched their vote for him. So it was a combination
6:42
Speaker 3: of huge turnout running up larger margins in some cases
6:45
Speaker 3: in the redder parts of the state with persuasion. And
6:48
Speaker 3: that is exactly how we took the House in 2018.
6:50
Speaker 3: It is the recipe for winning in midterm elections in
6:55
Speaker 3: states you lose in presidential years.
6:57
Speaker 2: And- You know, a lot of these elections, you look
6:59
Speaker 2: at the data and you say, oh, it's one demographic
7:02
Speaker 2: group swinging or the other. We should just say, Youngkin
7:05
Speaker 2: ran ahead of Trump in every single part of the state. Cities, suburbs,
7:10
Speaker 2: rural areas, heavily white precincts, non-white precincts. And just to
7:16
Speaker 2: put a finer point on your turnout comment, McAuliffe got 200,000
7:20
Speaker 2: more votes than Northam did in 2017, which.
7:25
Speaker 2: Was an absolute historic turnout for Democrats in 2017. So
7:29
Speaker 2: you have like the highest turnout ever for Democrats in
7:32
Speaker 2: 2017 in Virginia, and McAuliffe gets 200,000 more votes than that.
7:36
Speaker 2: So Democrats have a pretty healthy turnout on Tuesday night.
7:39
Speaker 2: But Youngkin got nearly 500,000 votes more than Gillespie got
7:44
Speaker 2: in 2017. So just astronomical turnout for Glenn Youngkin. I
7:49
Speaker 2: believe he got like 87% of Trump's votes in 2020.
7:53
Speaker 2: 2020 being a presidential year where you get the most turnout.
7:58
Speaker 2: So for an off-year election to get 87% of what
8:00
Speaker 2: Trump got is just bonkers turnout. And of course, there
8:04
Speaker 2: was also some evidence of Democratic drop-off in big cities
8:07
Speaker 2: and turnout from 2017. And then, as you said about
8:10
Speaker 2: vote switching, exits show that 5% of Biden voters backed Youngkin.
8:15
Speaker 2: And there was also a lot of evidence in the
8:16
Speaker 2: precinct level of vote switching in some of the swingiest
8:20
Speaker 2: counties in Virginia. So people, again, who voted for Joe Biden...
8:24
Speaker 2: and then showed up and voted for Glenn Youngkin on
8:26
Speaker 2: Tuesday night. Do you have any other thoughts on what
8:30
Speaker 2: changed between 2017, 2020, and Tuesday night's results?
8:35
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, it is not unusual for the party
8:41
Speaker 3: that is out of power to do very well in
8:42
Speaker 3: midterm elections. That is what normally happens. And I think
8:45
Speaker 3: it's also fair to say that if you were to
8:47
Speaker 3: pick a time in 2021 that would be the worst
8:50
Speaker 3: time to have this election, it would probably be right now.
8:53
Speaker 3: which is Congress is wrapped, is still, has not delivered
8:57
Speaker 3: yet on Biden's legislative agenda. It's just been a giant
9:00
Speaker 3: mess for a long time. Schools have just opened and
9:02
Speaker 3: parents are still navigating the challenges of going to school,
9:06
Speaker 3: of taking their kids to school. Vaccines for kids have
9:08
Speaker 3: not yet started. Inflation is hitting. Pandemic pessimism is receding,
9:14
Speaker 3: but not receding fast enough. So it was sort of
9:15
Speaker 3: like the worst of all worlds right in this moment,
9:18
Speaker 3: combined with the historical bounce back for the party out
9:22
Speaker 3: of power. And you end up with something like this. Now,
9:26
Speaker 3: that is not to say that this is not a
9:28
Speaker 3: giant fucking warning sign because this is Virginia. This is
9:31
Speaker 3: a state that was non-competitive in 2016 and 2020. We
9:35
Speaker 3: won easily in 2017 and 2019 in the state legislative level.
9:41
Speaker 3: And we just lost. And all the other stuff aside,
9:44
Speaker 3: there's something bigger here that we have to address and
9:47
Speaker 3: look at.
9:48
Speaker 4: All right.
9:48
Speaker 2: Let's get to what everyone is– calmly debating online with
9:53
Speaker 2: the kind of humility that comes with an unexpected loss,
9:57
Speaker 2: why Democrats lost Virginia. So I thought... we would go
10:00
Speaker 2: through each big, beautiful take one at a time, and
10:05
Speaker 2: then you and I can offer the unassailably correct answer.
10:08
Speaker 2: How does that sound?
10:09
Speaker 3: That sounds great. I want to stipulate that the answer,
10:11
Speaker 3: we're going to address all of these. The answer is
10:14
Speaker 3: all of the above. It's just a question of what
10:16
Speaker 3: percentage each of them are.
10:18
Speaker 2: We'll see. We'll see. Okay, all right.
10:20
Speaker 3: Maybe you put some new ones in I haven't seen.
10:22
Speaker 2: I might throw my lot in with one of these takes, Dan.
10:24
Speaker 2: We don't know.
10:25
Speaker 5: Okay.
10:26
Speaker 2: Number one, the party that holds the White House almost
10:28
Speaker 2: always loses off-year gubernatorial races. You just touched on this.
10:32
Speaker 2: What do you think?
10:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, that is true, but it's not always true.
10:36
Speaker 3: And we did win in 2013 right after Obama had
10:41
Speaker 3: been reelected. Former Governor Terry McAuliffe is proof that you
10:45
Speaker 3: can win gubernatorial elections in an off-year. Um, so it
10:49
Speaker 3: is not, it explains some, but it doesn't explain everything.
10:52
Speaker 3: And just chalking it up is just sort of the natural, uh,
10:56
Speaker 3: occurrences of history is sort of excuse making and not
10:59
Speaker 3: looking at the problems we need to solve.
11:02
Speaker 5: Yeah.
11:02
Speaker 2: Two, two things that two problems I have with that explanation.
11:05
Speaker 2: One is Virginia and New Jersey have gotten bluer every
11:10
Speaker 2: election cycle. So they are much bluer than they were
11:13
Speaker 2: when we've lost them in past off-year cycles. And two,
11:17
Speaker 2: and this is maybe the more important one, when Democrats
11:21
Speaker 2: lost the Virginia governorship and the New Jersey governorship in 2009,
11:26
Speaker 2: a year after Obama won Virginia and New Jersey, Obama
11:31
Speaker 2: then went on to lose, the Democrats then went on
11:34
Speaker 2: to lose 63 House seats in 2010. So the history
11:40
Speaker 2: of what happens next is pretty grim. So we can
11:44
Speaker 2: all comfort ourselves by being like, well, this always happens
11:46
Speaker 2: in off-year elections. Yeah, it always happens in off-year elections.
11:49
Speaker 2: And then you know what happens in the midterms? Fucking catastrophe.
11:53
Speaker 2: So it is not something to comfort yourself with, that
11:56
Speaker 2: this always happens in off-year elections. Because the history is
11:59
Speaker 2: also that the party out of power doesn't necessarily bounce
12:02
Speaker 2: back in the midterms. Number two. Terry McAuliffe was a
12:06
Speaker 2: bad candidate who ran a bad campaign where all he
12:09
Speaker 2: talked about was Donald Trump.
12:12
Speaker 3: This one is a little more complicated because I think
12:15
Speaker 3: there are plenty of completely fair critiques about McAuliffe's campaign strategy.
12:21
Speaker 3: And one is he ran a campaign strategy with his
12:25
Speaker 3: focus on Trump that was sort of born of spending
12:29
Speaker 3: too much time online. If you are someone who is
12:32
Speaker 3: not on Twitter, who does not watch cable news, does
12:35
Speaker 3: not listen to podcasts, or not a political junkie, you
12:38
Speaker 3: have probably not thought about Donald Trump once in months.
12:42
Speaker 3: He is so absent from your life. He's not on
12:44
Speaker 3: the news. He's not on Facebook. He's not on Twitter.
12:47
Speaker 3: Unless you are someone who lives inside progressive media or
12:50
Speaker 3: you live inside far-right media, you don't see Trump. You
12:53
Speaker 3: don't hear anything about him. And so when McAuliffe is
12:55
Speaker 3: running around saying he's Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Donald Trump,
12:58
Speaker 3: you have no idea what he's talking about. It's so
12:59
Speaker 3: removed from your life. I think it's also fair to
13:02
Speaker 3: say that while on paper at the outset, McAuliffe looked
13:05
Speaker 3: like a very strong candidate, he was a successful former
13:08
Speaker 3: governor who had governed and run in the mold of
13:11
Speaker 3: Joe Biden, who had just won the state by 10
13:13
Speaker 3: points less than a year ago. But as a former governor,
13:19
Speaker 3: he was the embodiment of the status quo, particularly in
13:22
Speaker 3: a state where Democrats have controlled the governorship for 16
13:24
Speaker 3: of the last 20 years. at a time in which
13:27
Speaker 3: people are very angry. And so in a change for
13:29
Speaker 3: status quo election, we pick sort of the embodiment. You
13:32
Speaker 3: can't get any more of embodiment of status quo with
13:34
Speaker 3: a challenger, with an open seat, non-incumbent candidate, Terry McAuliffe.
13:38
Speaker 3: He has all the, he had all the downsides of
13:41
Speaker 3: incumbency with none of the upsides. But put that aside,
13:44
Speaker 3: that doesn't explain anything about Phil Murphy or any of
13:48
Speaker 3: the other candidates. And so the thing we have to
13:50
Speaker 3: recognize is, sure, we can nitpick some of the decisions
13:54
Speaker 3: Terry McAuliffe made, but I think there are they're sort
13:55
Speaker 3: of ancillary to the larger political trends here. And if
13:59
Speaker 3: we focus on how we fix the problems of McAuliffe's
14:01
Speaker 3: campaign strategy, we're all in tactics, we're all in symptoms
14:05
Speaker 3: and not in disease. And so, yeah, it's all true,
14:08
Speaker 3: but I don't think that maybe a better campaign actually
14:10
Speaker 3: might've eked this out, but the larger political problems still exist.
14:13
Speaker 3: Whether McAuliffe wins by one or loses by two, same
14:17
Speaker 3: problem exists that is devastating in much less blue states
14:20
Speaker 3: that are gonna decide control of the House and the Senate.
14:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, my big response to that is, Phil Murphy, Phil Murphy,
14:26
Speaker 2: Phil Murphy, right? This is one of the most progressive
14:29
Speaker 2: governors in the country, Phil Murphy in New Jersey. He
14:32
Speaker 2: has passed in his first term a $ 15 minimum wage,
14:35
Speaker 2: new taxes on millionaires, legal weed, free community college, voting
14:39
Speaker 2: rights for the formerly incarcerated. He spent his entire campaign
14:43
Speaker 2: talking about his accomplishments in his first term, those accomplishments
14:46
Speaker 2: that I just mentioned, and how he handled the pandemic,
14:49
Speaker 2: which he got sky-high ratings for. He had a bigger
14:53
Speaker 2: swing against him than Terry McAuliffe, even though he won.
14:56
Speaker 2: It was a bigger swing than what happened in Virginia
14:59
Speaker 2: against Phil Murphy. So whatever you say about Terry McAuliffe
15:01
Speaker 2: has to also apply to Phil Murphy. And that's not
15:04
Speaker 2: to say that, like, you're right. Terry McAuliffe was a
15:06
Speaker 2: yesterday candidate, right? And it's very possible that voters may
15:10
Speaker 2: not have wanted to give him another term. The Trump stuff,
15:13
Speaker 2: I have complicated feelings on because I think that when
15:17
Speaker 2: Democrats talk about Trump, we can be lazy about it.
15:21
Speaker 2: and just go around saying, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump.
15:24
Speaker 2: By the end, Terry McAuliffe was saying, if Glenn Youngkin
15:27
Speaker 2: wins Trump, Donald Trump's going to announce the next day. Basically,
15:31
Speaker 2: don't vote for Glenn Youngkin, or else Donald Trump will
15:34
Speaker 2: come back. And that's a little hyperbole, I think. It's
15:36
Speaker 2: a little exaggerated. That said, Sarah Longwell, who's with The Bulwark,
15:42
Speaker 2: does a podcast that only nerds like us would love,
15:45
Speaker 2: which is she has focus groups of voters, and then
15:47
Speaker 2: she has people talk about the focus groups. And she
15:50
Speaker 2: had a focus group of 10 Democrats in Virginia who
15:52
Speaker 2: are undecided. And a lot of them were saying, you know,
15:57
Speaker 2: I'm not sure, but that Glenn Youngkin, he's, it sounds
16:00
Speaker 2: like he, he's endorsed by Trump. He wanted to run
16:03
Speaker 2: because of Trump. He's a lot like Trump. And I
16:05
Speaker 2: don't like that. We can't have another Trump. And so
16:08
Speaker 2: I do think some of the Trump stuff worked, but
16:11
Speaker 2: it is, well, I think talking about the fact that
16:14
Speaker 2: Trump could come back, which by the way, is a
16:17
Speaker 2: valid thing to talk about because the guy is Probably
16:19
Speaker 2: going to run again in 2024, almost definitely. So it's
16:23
Speaker 2: not like Trump is gone and we're just bringing back
16:25
Speaker 2: someone who's gone from the scene forever. He's coming back, probably.
16:29
Speaker 2: Talking about him as valid, it is necessary, but it
16:31
Speaker 2: is not sufficient. You can't just make your message about Trump.
16:35
Speaker 2: I think talking about why the Republican Party has embraced
16:39
Speaker 2: the worst of Trump is important. I think one of
16:42
Speaker 2: our problems in 2020 is we were so intent on
16:45
Speaker 2: running against Trump, which was the most important thing to do.
16:48
Speaker 2: And you saw this in the House level in 2020,
16:50
Speaker 2: is that probably we did not define the Republican Party
16:54
Speaker 2: as well as we defined Donald Trump in that election.
16:56
Speaker 2: And that is why Donald Trump lost. And yet we
16:58
Speaker 2: lost ground in the House and a bunch of Republicans
17:01
Speaker 2: in the House won. And I still think we have
17:03
Speaker 2: not figured out how to define the Republican Party independent
17:07
Speaker 2: of Trump. while letting people know that a lot of
17:09
Speaker 2: the Republican Party's problems are that they have embraced the
17:12
Speaker 2: worst of Trumpism. Does that make sense?
17:14
Speaker 5: It is.
17:14
Speaker 3: I have a lot of thoughts on this that I
17:16
Speaker 3: will share when we get into the prescriptive parts of this,
17:19
Speaker 3: because I think that this is a repeat, what we
17:22
Speaker 3: saw in this race, which I don't think is what,
17:24
Speaker 3: this is not the main problem, right? Like I said,
17:27
Speaker 3: it's problem adjacent, is that we, Trump has blotted out
17:30
Speaker 3: the sun and we continue to let it blot out
17:32
Speaker 3: the sun for us and how we think about messaging.
17:35
Speaker 2: And I will just say on the flip side, Glenn
17:37
Speaker 2: Youngkin didn't want Trump to come to Virginia to campaign
17:40
Speaker 2: for him. Glenn Youngkin wanted to make sure it was
17:42
Speaker 2: a closed press final teller rally with Donald Trump. It's
17:46
Speaker 2: not like he clearly didn't think that Trump being involved
17:49
Speaker 2: in the race was a good thing for him. He
17:52
Speaker 2: needed Trump's base, but he didn't want to openly welcome
17:54
Speaker 2: Trump to Virginia, which tells you something about the potency
17:58
Speaker 2: of Trump and how at least this Republican candidate who
18:01
Speaker 2: ended up winning was somewhat afraid of having Trump campaign
18:04
Speaker 2: with him or else he would have brought him to Virginia.
18:07
Speaker 2: Number three, speaking of Youngkin, number three take is Glenn
18:10
Speaker 2: Youngkin is God's gift to the Republican Party and should
18:13
Speaker 2: run for president when his term is up in four years.
18:15
Speaker 2: This is basically what Ross Douthat tweeted on Tuesday. What
18:19
Speaker 2: do you think of that?
18:20
Speaker 3: I think it is fair to say that Youngkin ran
18:24
Speaker 3: a very deft campaign. What is wrong? I spent a
18:27
Speaker 3: lot of time watching his ads in preparation for an
18:31
Speaker 3: episode of Campaign Experts React that I did with Peter Hamby,
18:33
Speaker 3: your next guest on Offline, a few weeks ago. And
18:36
Speaker 3: his ads are very smart. They made a very specific
18:41
Speaker 3: change for a status quo case against McAuliffe. Glenn Youngkin
18:46
Speaker 3: is an incredibly wealthy private equity executive who was able
18:50
Speaker 3: to make McAuliffe the insider candidate beholden to corporate interests.
18:55
Speaker 3: And so that's a pretty good trick. And he walked
18:58
Speaker 3: the line between courting Trump's base and appeasing anti-Trump independents
19:03
Speaker 3: and Republicans very well. Now, I would say that two
19:07
Speaker 3: things about this. One is the fact that he was
19:10
Speaker 3: an incomplete political outsider made this task much easier. He
19:13
Speaker 3: was not on the front lines of politics for the
19:15
Speaker 3: last five years being forced to offer public fealty to Trump.
19:19
Speaker 3: There aren't a bunch of clips of him on Fox
19:20
Speaker 3: News saying how much he loves Trump. He doesn't have
19:22
Speaker 3: the scar tissue of the Trump wars of the last
19:25
Speaker 3: few years. And that makes very helpful. And I also
19:27
Speaker 3: think it makes it hard for a lot of Republicans
19:29
Speaker 3: who are likely to be at the top of the
19:30
Speaker 3: ticket to replicate what he pulled off. Republicans in Virginia
19:35
Speaker 3: made a very specific decision to pick Youngkin because they
19:37
Speaker 3: had picked Trumpy candidates long before Trump and lost. Against McAuliffe,
19:43
Speaker 3: they picked Ken Cuccinelli, a complete nut job attorney general
19:48
Speaker 3: who lost. And I think in hindsight, maybe we should
19:49
Speaker 3: think more about the role that Cuccinelli's weakness played in
19:53
Speaker 3: that 2013 history upending victory. They picked, against Tim Kaine
19:57
Speaker 3: in 2018, they picked Corey Stewart, an actual confederate who
20:02
Speaker 3: wasn't even from Virginia. He was a Confederate carpetbagger from Minnesota.
20:05
Speaker 3: You have to go out of your way to find
20:08
Speaker 3: someone that bad. And so they had a choice between
20:09
Speaker 3: Amanda Chase, very Trumpy, and Youngkin. They picked Youngkin. It's
20:12
Speaker 3: not clear other primary electorates who have not faced that
20:17
Speaker 3: level of getting their ass kicked are going to be
20:19
Speaker 3: that clear-eyed about the choice they make. But before we
20:24
Speaker 3: play in his inaugural parade, I think it is likely
20:28
Speaker 3: that Glenn Youngkin's political future looks a lot more like
20:33
Speaker 3: Scott Brown's than a future president. Now, Scott Brown was
20:36
Speaker 3: this pickup truck driving outsider who won the Massachusetts special
20:42
Speaker 3: election to replace Senator Ted Kennedy. It was a huge deal.
20:46
Speaker 3: A Republican took a Kennedy seat in Massachusetts. This guy
20:49
Speaker 3: is the future. And now he is... Like, where is
20:52
Speaker 3: Scott Brown, right? He went to New Zealand to be
20:53
Speaker 3: Trump's ambassador. We've never heard from him again. He sort
20:56
Speaker 3: of became a national joke. And I don't know that
20:58
Speaker 3: Glenn Young can be a national joke, but he's more
21:01
Speaker 3: the right person in the right moment than some sort
21:03
Speaker 3: of political savant. Does that make sense? Yeah.
21:06
Speaker 2: I mean, like you said, I think it's for all
21:08
Speaker 2: of Glenn Young's talents as a candidate. And I agree,
21:11
Speaker 2: like he doesn't, look, he doesn't sound like Trump, doesn't
21:14
Speaker 2: sound like congressional Republicans. He nodded and winked to the
21:17
Speaker 2: Republican base. using the Republican media machine, right? He was
21:21
Speaker 2: on Fox and Seb Gorka's show. But most voters in
21:24
Speaker 2: Virginia didn't see that, those appearances. They saw soft-spoken guy
21:28
Speaker 2: who seemed like a nice suburban dad who talked about
21:31
Speaker 2: raises for teachers in his ads. Didn't know that until
21:34
Speaker 2: I went back because that wasn't in a lot of
21:36
Speaker 2: the coverage that we read. Lower taxes, keeping schools open,
21:41
Speaker 2: letting parents have a say in what their kids learn.
21:43
Speaker 2: Democrats pointed out that this was all bullshit what he
21:46
Speaker 2: was doing. and that he was going on Seb Gorka's
21:48
Speaker 2: show and that he embraced Donald Trump, voters either didn't
21:51
Speaker 2: hear that or they didn't believe it, right? That was
21:52
Speaker 2: Glenn Youngkin. But again, Glenn Youngkin probably has a very
21:56
Speaker 2: hard time getting through a Republican primary, someone like Glenn Youngkin,
22:01
Speaker 2: getting through a Republican primary, particularly on a national level.
22:04
Speaker 2: So I don't know that that success can be replicated.
22:06
Speaker 2: And again, I will point everyone's attention to New Jersey,
22:10
Speaker 2: where there wasn't a Republican candidate as talented, perhaps as
22:14
Speaker 2: Glenn Youngkin running against Phil Murphy. I guess his name
22:16
Speaker 2: is Jack Cittarelli. I don't even know if I'm pronouncing
22:19
Speaker 2: that correctly because I really didn't know who it was
22:21
Speaker 2: until Tuesday. And I do this for a living. But anyway,
22:28
Speaker 2: and he almost beat Phil Murphy, right? So again, I
22:32
Speaker 2: don't think candidates matter. Candidates always matter. They especially matter
22:35
Speaker 2: in close races and competitive races. But I don't know
22:38
Speaker 2: that either Terry McAuliffe or Glenn Youngkin, both of their
22:43
Speaker 2: talents or their drawbacks as candidates can... accurately tell us
22:49
Speaker 2: what happened in both of these races, or at least
22:51
Speaker 2: they don't tell us the full story. Number four take.
22:57
Speaker 2: Both Virginia and New Jersey were all about parents' frustrations
23:00
Speaker 2: with schools, namely pandemic-related closings and the controversy over critical
23:05
Speaker 2: race theory. This is a big one. What do you think?
23:09
Speaker 3: This one, I guess all of these are complicated, and
23:13
Speaker 3: the challenge of having any discussion on any of this
23:16
Speaker 3: is There's this tremendous desire to find a simple explanation
23:20
Speaker 3: for a complicated outcome because we need to fit it.
23:23
Speaker 3: We need to fit our take on Twitter.
23:24
Speaker 2: Right.
23:24
Speaker 3: So it's got to fit to it. But also just
23:27
Speaker 3: our desire as people who care about Democrats getting elected
23:29
Speaker 3: is you want there to be one problem that you
23:31
Speaker 3: can fix. So part like one of the main points
23:35
Speaker 3: that we've heard people make is Republicans have figured out
23:38
Speaker 3: this secret wedge issue with critical race theory. And they
23:42
Speaker 3: have mobilized parents. And COVID, and the critical race theory
23:45
Speaker 3: thing is, I think, actually more relevant looking forward than
23:48
Speaker 3: the very real frustration with school closures. Because we are
23:54
Speaker 3: hoping and believing that by the time people go vote
23:56
Speaker 3: in the midterms, this is not an issue anywhere in
23:59
Speaker 3: the country. If it is, if schools are still being
24:01
Speaker 3: closed for COVID, we have gigantic problems that go beyond
24:04
Speaker 3: this as a society, let alone a party in charge
24:07
Speaker 3: of Congress.
24:08
Speaker 2: I believe you and I have said this before. I
24:10
Speaker 2: think we might've also said at one point, if this
24:12
Speaker 2: is still an issue in the fall of 21, but
24:16
Speaker 2: so like, yeah, really hoping it's not an issue in
24:18
Speaker 2: fall of 22, but I agree. Like I think the
24:20
Speaker 2: likelihood is that it won't be.
24:23
Speaker 3: This one has been, the parents rebellion or the weaponization
24:27
Speaker 3: of critical race theory is complicated because I made this
24:30
Speaker 3: point in the message box I wrote on Very Little
24:32
Speaker 3: Sleep about Virginia is critical race theory is a fake issue.
24:35
Speaker 3: It is not being taught anywhere. And a lot of
24:37
Speaker 3: people reached out and I made that point in order
24:40
Speaker 3: to show the power of the Republican media advantage, which
24:43
Speaker 3: is they can take a fake issue and make it
24:45
Speaker 3: seem real to lots of people. A lot of people
24:47
Speaker 3: reached out and said, you're being overly literal about the
24:49
Speaker 3: term critical race theory, because when people say critical race theory,
24:53
Speaker 3: they don't actually mean the technical definition of critical race theory.
24:56
Speaker 3: They mean a set of changes in curricula and language
25:00
Speaker 3: that makes people uncomfortable. Some group of people uncomfortable. They
25:03
Speaker 3: could be people who are, who, uh, are to the
25:06
Speaker 3: far right who don't want any discussion of slavery or
25:09
Speaker 3: America's sort of sordid racial past, or people who are
25:15
Speaker 3: more in the middle and sort of struggling with a
25:17
Speaker 3: very rapid changing set of terms and viewpoints about race
25:22
Speaker 3: in this country. And I think that that is– anecdotally,
25:26
Speaker 3: you hear that from everyone. In the case of Virginia,
25:30
Speaker 3: one of the challenges in understanding what really happened is
25:32
Speaker 3: an overwhelming number of people who talk about politics for
25:35
Speaker 3: a living– Send their kids to the Virginia public schools.
25:38
Speaker 5: Yeah. Right.
25:38
Speaker 3: So it's like, what does that really mean? Now, the
25:42
Speaker 3: exit polling is very confusing on this. That is a
25:44
Speaker 3: very flawed measure, as we would say, but it's the
25:49
Speaker 3: only sort of measure we have right now, which is
25:52
Speaker 3: Youngkin did just as well with men with children as
25:55
Speaker 3: men without children and women with children as As women
25:58
Speaker 3: without children. And so there wasn't– you can't find evidence
26:00
Speaker 3: yet of a specific– that the people who moved were
26:05
Speaker 3: disproportionately parents. And what I think is we have to
26:10
Speaker 3: acknowledge that there is definitely some discomfort with schools, COVID
26:15
Speaker 3: and curriculum. In Virginia in particular, I think, and there
26:18
Speaker 3: are some examples in Loudoun County and others that have
26:20
Speaker 3: been– have received a lot of national attention. But we also,
26:23
Speaker 3: I think, have to recognize that this is a proxy
26:25
Speaker 3: for a larger issue that goes beyond just parents. And
26:33
Speaker 3: sort of the history of civil rights in this country
26:36
Speaker 3: is progress followed by backlash. And you can chart Republican
26:39
Speaker 3: political success by charting the backlash. Nixon getting elected after
26:43
Speaker 3: passing the Civil Rights Act. Donald Trump getting elected after
26:46
Speaker 3: Barack Obama's two terms. George W. Bush getting reelected on
26:51
Speaker 3: a homophobic platform demagoguing marriage equality after a series of
26:56
Speaker 3: advances at the state level in California and Vermont elsewhere
26:58
Speaker 3: about gay marriage. That is the history. And so you
27:02
Speaker 3: have to connect sort of the reaction to this that
27:05
Speaker 3: goes beyond parents, beyond just school curriculum, to a backlash
27:10
Speaker 3: to the very public and intense and important conversation about
27:15
Speaker 3: structural racism that began after the murders of George Floyd,
27:19
Speaker 3: and Breonna Taylor, and so many others. And so the
27:22
Speaker 3: only reason I bring all of that up is if
27:24
Speaker 3: we say just like, we need a parents' bill of
27:26
Speaker 3: rights tomorrow, or we have to start.
27:29
Speaker 2: Which the Republicans, which the House, Kevin McCarthy has promised
27:32
Speaker 2: to introduce.
27:33
Speaker 3: We have to, or we have to do something very
27:36
Speaker 3: specific about school curricula that that's going to solve our problem. It's,
27:39
Speaker 3: I think, missing the broader point, which is we're going
27:41
Speaker 3: to have to find a way to navigate racial grievance
27:45
Speaker 3: politics writ large that is bigger than school curriculum or
27:50
Speaker 3: critical race theory or something like that. Yeah.
27:54
Speaker 2: So I think this is a very complicated issue and
27:58
Speaker 2: I want to, I want to exercise some humility and
28:02
Speaker 2: like analyzing what happened here, because I do think this
28:06
Speaker 2: is one that's heavy on anecdotes, which are important. They're
28:10
Speaker 2: a start for how we learn about this. There's a
28:12
Speaker 2: lot of conflicting polling on this. There were some polls
28:16
Speaker 2: right before the election that showed Youngkin was way ahead
28:19
Speaker 2: with parents who have kids K through 12. Like you said,
28:23
Speaker 2: the exit polls showed that there wasn't as much difference.
28:27
Speaker 2: Let's start by talking about what we know. And let's
28:30
Speaker 2: talk about the importance of the issue. The exit polls
28:32
Speaker 2: showed 15% of all voters in Virginia said that education
28:36
Speaker 2: was the most important issue. That was right behind the
28:39
Speaker 2: 17% who chose COVID and well behind the 35% who
28:44
Speaker 2: chose the economy. So that's from the exit polls. Again,
28:46
Speaker 2: exit polls are not gospel. though when they're reweighted at
28:49
Speaker 2: the end a couple days after the race, they're a
28:51
Speaker 2: little bit better than all the first wave of exit
28:53
Speaker 2: polls that everyone fucking freaks out about and are usually wrong.
28:57
Speaker 2: Education voters were more likely to choose Youngkin. We also
29:00
Speaker 2: know that. So people who said it was their most
29:02
Speaker 2: important issue were more likely to choose Youngkin. As you mentioned,
29:04
Speaker 2: some of this could be COVID-related. Virginia had the seventh
29:09
Speaker 2: fewest days of in-person learning among all 50 states in 2020,
29:13
Speaker 2: and New Jersey was 10th. And so, you know, people
29:16
Speaker 2: could still be remembering that. On the other hand, people
29:19
Speaker 2: who said that the debate over COVID restrictions in schools
29:22
Speaker 2: was the most important issue backed McAuliffe. So there's that
29:26
Speaker 2: data point as well. I think it is 100% true
29:30
Speaker 2: that there are right-wing activists who show up at school
29:33
Speaker 2: board meetings saying racist shit, trying to stop schools from
29:37
Speaker 2: teaching kids about racism and the most racist parts of
29:39
Speaker 2: our history. We heard it. We've seen the videos. We
29:41
Speaker 2: know it's true. It's also 100% true that critical race theory,
29:44
Speaker 2: as you said, which is a law school level curriculum
29:47
Speaker 2: about structural racism, isn't technically being taught in public schools.
29:52
Speaker 2: But think about Terry McAuliffe's quote that ends up being
29:55
Speaker 2: the big gaffe of the campaign. I don't think parents
29:58
Speaker 2: should be telling schools what they should teach. And even
30:02
Speaker 2: that is not that doesn't have race in it. But
30:05
Speaker 2: that becomes the big quote that Youngkin jumps on and
30:08
Speaker 2: Republicans jump on for the rest of the campaign. And
30:11
Speaker 2: here's how I think this is landing with parents. And
30:13
Speaker 2: to figure this out, you really have to, like, look
30:15
Speaker 2: through the news stories in Virginia. over the last couple
30:20
Speaker 2: of years. And some people were doing this. Dave Weigel
30:21
Speaker 2: from the Washington Post was doing it. A couple other
30:23
Speaker 2: Washington Post reporters have been looking at that, obviously, because
30:26
Speaker 2: they're Washington Post reporters. It's right over the river. So
30:29
Speaker 2: the stories that parents are seeing are not necessarily stories
30:32
Speaker 2: about Republicans wanting to ban students from teaching kids about
30:36
Speaker 2: racism or racist history, but stories about Virginia schools thinking
30:42
Speaker 2: about eliminating advanced placement math classes, which turns out Not
30:46
Speaker 2: to be actually true, but the Virginia Department of Education
30:49
Speaker 2: had to go on record and say, no, we're not
30:50
Speaker 2: really eliminating advanced math classes, but not before it caused
30:55
Speaker 2: this big uproar that all these parents thought that, you know,
30:58
Speaker 2: for the sake of equity, they were eliminating all kinds
31:00
Speaker 2: of advanced placement classes. Also stories about Thomas Jefferson High School,
31:06
Speaker 2: which is this really good school in Northern Virginia. One
31:09
Speaker 2: of the best ranked in the country was eliminating the
31:12
Speaker 2: admissions tests to that school to increase diversity. which then
31:16
Speaker 2: caused a bunch of families of Asian-American kids to sue
31:19
Speaker 2: because they thought that that was going to disproportionately affect
31:21
Speaker 2: Asian-American kids at the expense of increasing diversity from other
31:26
Speaker 2: kids in the school as well. So that becomes a
31:28
Speaker 2: big controversy. You get a Loudoun County school board member
31:32
Speaker 2: writing op-eds about how Loudoun County hired an equity consultant.
31:36
Speaker 2: that recommended that teachers base their lessons on books like
31:39
Speaker 2: Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility, which says, quote, a positive white
31:43
Speaker 2: identity is an impossible goal. White identity is inherently racist.
31:47
Speaker 2: White people do not exist outside the system of white supremacy. Now,
31:53
Speaker 2: are those words being taught to kids? No evidence of that.
31:56
Speaker 2: But it's true that books being recommended to Loudoun County teachers,
31:59
Speaker 2: and it's true that Loudoun County school board members who
32:03
Speaker 2: are Republicans and who have bad intentions in mind, are
32:06
Speaker 2: broadcasting that to everyone in the county and saying those
32:09
Speaker 2: words to everyone in the county. So imagine how that
32:12
Speaker 2: lands with parents who are not super politically engaged, who
32:16
Speaker 2: are not partisan, who may have been Biden voters, who
32:18
Speaker 2: may have been Democratic voters. And then they hear that
32:21
Speaker 2: about what's now going to be taught in schools. Is
32:24
Speaker 2: it a tactic to inflame racial division on behalf of Republicans?
32:29
Speaker 2: Of course it is. But think about how that lands
32:32
Speaker 2: with parents who aren't really paying close attention to to
32:35
Speaker 2: the political back and forth that all of us are
32:37
Speaker 2: all the time. And I kind of think that that's like,
32:40
Speaker 2: this whole debate has been a bit simplified on Twitter
32:45
Speaker 2: and just in political debate in general, don't you think?
32:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. This is incredibly complicated. Anything involving people's kids,
32:53
Speaker 3: whether it's healthcare, education, thinking about the pandemic, all is very,
33:00
Speaker 3: very complicated. Now, I have a slight advantage in this
33:02
Speaker 3: discussion because I already talked to Danica Rome for the
33:05
Speaker 3: interview you're going to hear on the back of this,
33:06
Speaker 3: and I asked her this question. And she told me
33:09
Speaker 3: that the results in Loudoun County are actually not consistent
33:13
Speaker 3: with a giant backlash against that sort of teaching because
33:17
Speaker 3: her colleagues in Loudoun County actually won relatively easily. That
33:20
Speaker 3: was not– Not saying that it's not a real issue
33:22
Speaker 3: that played all over the state, but it was broader
33:25
Speaker 3: than that county. But then also you look at– if
33:28
Speaker 3: you want to look at COVID closures, right, which is
33:30
Speaker 3: another element of this. Because some of the Virginia schools
33:34
Speaker 3: were some of the last ones to open, similar thing
33:36
Speaker 3: in New Jersey. But look at California, which had some
33:39
Speaker 3: of the longest and most frustrating closures of any school.
33:43
Speaker 3: And Gavin Newsom paid, as we can tell, no price
33:47
Speaker 3: right now. Does that have to do with Larry Elder
33:49
Speaker 3: versus Glenn Youngkin or– The guy whose name we just
33:52
Speaker 3: learned in New Jersey, who was essentially a generic person
33:55
Speaker 3: not named Phil Murphy, as far as you're concerned, maybe.
33:57
Speaker 3: That may be. But it is a factor. All of
34:01
Speaker 3: these things you're saying played some role. In a two-point
34:03
Speaker 3: race in Virginia, or whatever the margin is in New Jersey,
34:07
Speaker 3: an incredibly narrow one that didn't get called until dinnertime
34:10
Speaker 3: last night, according to the New York Times, everything matters.
34:15
Speaker 3: But the danger is reducing it to being the primary
34:18
Speaker 3: problem or the primary cause of our loss. and therefore
34:22
Speaker 3: focusing a disproportionate amount of our energy on solving that problem,
34:27
Speaker 3: we're going to miss the big thing.
34:28
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, that's why I sort of started with
34:30
Speaker 2: the importance of the issue to voters, right? Because if
34:33
Speaker 2: it's number three, even to Virginia voters where it's been
34:35
Speaker 2: this big issue, that tells you something. Part of the reason,
34:39
Speaker 2: what do you mean?
34:40
Speaker 3: Well, I think this is why it's complicated and why
34:42
Speaker 3: you sort of have to go back and do focus
34:44
Speaker 3: groups and other things, which is People also, people who
34:48
Speaker 3: are planning on voting for a candidate will always cite
34:51
Speaker 3: that candidate's number one issue as their number one issue.
34:55
Speaker 1: Right.
34:55
Speaker 2: Well, I wasn't saying that to pump up the importance
34:59
Speaker 2: of it. I was trying to say that let's remember,
35:01
Speaker 2: even as we're talking about this, voters chose the economy
35:04
Speaker 2: as their number one issue by a healthy margin. No,
35:06
Speaker 2: I was saying it the opposite.
35:07
Speaker 5: Yes.
35:08
Speaker 2: But I think why this is important is because there's, look,
35:10
Speaker 2: there's going to be this huge debate about it. There
35:12
Speaker 2: already is right now. We're going to be hearing nothing
35:14
Speaker 2: but critical race theory for the next several weeks, if
35:17
Speaker 2: not months. Republicans, like you said, are planning to use
35:20
Speaker 2: this as a strategy. So obviously we need to talk
35:22
Speaker 2: about it. And I think what would help us here
35:25
Speaker 2: is to understand how complicated and nuanced this can be
35:30
Speaker 2: and how this, how nuanced it can be landing with people.
35:32
Speaker 2: And also like I, you know, someone was tweeting part
35:35
Speaker 2: of Glenn Youngkin's stump speech, right? And he said, we'll
35:39
Speaker 2: teach all history, the good and the bad. We have
35:41
Speaker 2: an amazing history, but we also have some dark and
35:43
Speaker 2: abhorrent chapters. We must teach them all. But what we
35:46
Speaker 2: don't do is teach our children to view everything through
35:47
Speaker 2: a lens of race where one group's an oppressor and
35:49
Speaker 2: another group's a victim. We all know what he's doing here.
35:53
Speaker 2: Those of us who've been in politics, the listeners of Falsetto.
35:56
Speaker 2: But again, think about how this lands with people who
35:58
Speaker 2: don't pay attention to politics that well. They hear that
36:01
Speaker 2: and they're like, well, that sounds relatively non-threatening to me.
36:05
Speaker 2: And then again, these Washington Post reporters say, went out
36:09
Speaker 2: to Prince William County, which again went for Terry by
36:12
Speaker 2: 14 points, up to Blue County, and they interviewed people
36:16
Speaker 2: who might be voting for Youngkin. Latina mom who plans
36:19
Speaker 2: to send her four-year-old to private school to avoid public
36:21
Speaker 2: school education about race, they talked to her. There was
36:25
Speaker 2: a black father who said his son brought home an
36:27
Speaker 2: assignment on Lincoln that troubled him, and he said, I'd
36:29
Speaker 2: like to not vote for the guy who said it's
36:31
Speaker 2: not the parent's responsibility to take care of their kids.
36:34
Speaker 2: So again, this is like how it lands with people.
36:37
Speaker 2: And even The point that Dana Caron made to you,
36:40
Speaker 2: like you can see why perhaps those who ran for
36:44
Speaker 2: delegate who weren't sort of right in this fight could
36:48
Speaker 2: have won. And yet McAuliffe was more attached to the
36:51
Speaker 2: education issue, particularly because of what he said in that debate.
36:54
Speaker 2: And so they connected him to that. And also Loudoun
36:56
Speaker 2: County like swung 14 points towards the Republicans. It was
37:01
Speaker 2: probably one of the big it was the biggest swing
37:03
Speaker 2: towards the right in northern Virginia, right in Loudoun County.
37:07
Speaker 2: So it's good that the delegates won, but it's pretty
37:08
Speaker 2: clear that there was a rightward shift in Loudoun County
37:11
Speaker 2: towards Republicans. But again, it's not to say, look, this
37:15
Speaker 2: is not to say that we should change our beliefs,
37:18
Speaker 2: our values, our principles, our positions on issues at all.
37:21
Speaker 2: But I think we need to, and a lot of
37:23
Speaker 2: people have pointed this out, we can't ignore this issue
37:26
Speaker 2: because Republicans aren't going to let us ignore this issue.
37:29
Speaker 2: And not only can we not ignore this issue, but
37:31
Speaker 2: we have to speak about it in a way that
37:34
Speaker 2: stays true to our values, beliefs, and principles, but also
37:39
Speaker 2: has language that meets people where they are who aren't
37:42
Speaker 2: necessarily paying attention to politics and sees everyone as persuadable
37:48
Speaker 2: who at least has voted for Democrats in the past.
37:51
Speaker 2: No one is saying, oh, we got to win over
37:53
Speaker 2: the right-wing nuts who show up at the school board
37:55
Speaker 2: meetings and start screaming racist shit. We're not going to
37:57
Speaker 2: win those fucking people over. But there are plenty of
37:59
Speaker 2: people who voted for Ralph Northam and Joe Biden who
38:02
Speaker 2: then voted for Glenn Youngkin. And we have to figure
38:05
Speaker 2: out why they made that switch and how to win
38:07
Speaker 2: them back or else we will not have enough voters
38:10
Speaker 2: to win. That is just the math.
38:15
Speaker 5: All right.
38:23
Speaker 2: Number five, it's the fault of Democrats in Congress for
38:25
Speaker 2: not passing the infrastructure bill and build back better. And
38:29
Speaker 2: depending on who you are, you can either blame Joe
38:31
Speaker 2: Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema for not letting Democrats be bold enough.
38:34
Speaker 2: or House progressives for pushing the party too far to
38:37
Speaker 2: the left. What do you think?
38:40
Speaker 3: I think it definitely would have helped to have put
38:42
Speaker 3: this legislative debate behind us. For sure. I mean, just
38:47
Speaker 3: me personally, you personally, people listening to this podcast.
38:50
Speaker 2: I don't know who likes it. Who likes this debate?
38:52
Speaker 2: Does anyone love this debate? Does anyone enjoy this? Anyone
38:54
Speaker 2: feel good about politics listening to this?
38:56
Speaker 3: Joe Manchin seems to thoroughly love it.
38:58
Speaker 2: He is the one person. Yeah, and Kyrsten Sinema too.
39:00
Speaker 2: Maybe the two of them like it.
39:03
Speaker 3: Would it have been better to have this done by
39:05
Speaker 3: the deadline that Joe Biden set out the last time
39:07
Speaker 3: we did the podcast? Absolutely. Is this the reason that
39:11
Speaker 3: Terry McAuliffe lost?
39:13
Speaker 4: No.
39:14
Speaker 3: It just isn't. There's no evidence of that. Let's say
39:20
Speaker 3: the Democratic turnout had been well below what it was
39:23
Speaker 3: in 2017. You might be able to make a case
39:24
Speaker 3: that Democratic voters stayed home because they were angry that
39:28
Speaker 3: the things they had been promised in 2020 2020 did
39:30
Speaker 3: not happen. But while there's definitely, as you point out,
39:33
Speaker 3: there are pockets of lower turnout in certain places, Terry
39:37
Speaker 3: McAuliffe got 200,000 more votes and still lost. So that
39:39
Speaker 3: wasn't our problem. Now, I think We should get this
39:43
Speaker 3: thing over with and done and passed tomorrow. And we
39:45
Speaker 3: can talk about that a little bit later. But I
39:47
Speaker 3: just have not seen any evidence that that is the
39:49
Speaker 3: primary reason or even a significant reason that we have
39:52
Speaker 3: this current problem.
39:55
Speaker 2: So the AP exit poll, which is the AP has,
39:59
Speaker 2: there's two different exit polls. The AP one is always
40:01
Speaker 2: a bit more accurate and better. It has a stat
40:05
Speaker 2: in it. 75% of all voters in Virginia said negotiations
40:08
Speaker 2: in Washington over Biden's governing agenda were an important factor
40:11
Speaker 2: in their vote. What do you think that's about?
40:14
Speaker 3: I have no idea.
40:15
Speaker 2: I just, I don't look, I sort of, my gut was,
40:20
Speaker 2: my gut still is where you were, right? Which is like,
40:23
Speaker 2: it would have been better to have these past. Um,
40:27
Speaker 2: but it's probably not the biggest deal. I do think, look,
40:31
Speaker 2: these are Virginia voters. A lot of them live in
40:32
Speaker 2: Northern Virginia and they consume more sort of news about
40:36
Speaker 2: what's happening in Washington than most people in the country.
40:40
Speaker 2: And if all the news you hear is Democrats fighting
40:42
Speaker 2: each other and not getting anything done, does that have
40:45
Speaker 2: an effect?
40:46
Speaker 1: I don't know.
40:46
Speaker 2: I think I'm leaving myself open to the possibility that
40:49
Speaker 2: it might.
40:50
Speaker 1: Yeah.
40:50
Speaker 3: Look, I think we're saying the same thing, which is
40:54
Speaker 3: it would have been helpful to get it done. And
40:56
Speaker 3: there are two ways in which, right? Which is, and
40:58
Speaker 3: you make a very important point that I should have acknowledged,
40:59
Speaker 3: is the vast majority of people, their paper, to the
41:02
Speaker 3: extent that they are subscribed to a newspaper, is the
41:05
Speaker 3: Washington Post. Yeah. It is a very different form of
41:08
Speaker 3: local news than happens in any other state. Second, there's
41:13
Speaker 3: just a general– chaos, disappointment, bad news, doom loop that
41:19
Speaker 3: we've been on for a long time. Now, that does
41:22
Speaker 3: not seem to have led to a mass depression of
41:24
Speaker 3: the Democratic base. But if you're a person who didn't
41:28
Speaker 3: really like the chaos and incompetence of the Trump administration,
41:33
Speaker 3: and just every time you pick up the newspaper or
41:34
Speaker 3: you go on Facebook, it's just like they can't get
41:37
Speaker 3: anything done. It's not that great. Everyone's fighting. That's not great.
41:41
Speaker 3: for the party in power. And the party in power
41:43
Speaker 3: in Virginia, which has been in power for a long time,
41:45
Speaker 3: is the Democrats. So I would say not helpful, but
41:47
Speaker 3: better to get it done. It is not, like all
41:49
Speaker 3: of these things, not the sole or primary reason that
41:53
Speaker 3: we lost.
41:54
Speaker 2: I will also say if we pass both bills, it's
41:56
Speaker 2: not like the effects of that legislation people would have
42:00
Speaker 2: felt in time for the election, number one. But could
42:05
Speaker 2: Terry McAuliffe have responded to Glenn Youngkin's critical race theory
42:11
Speaker 2: stuff and education stuff with, you know what Democrats believe?
42:14
Speaker 2: We believe that every child, no matter what you look
42:16
Speaker 2: like or where you come from, should have a world
42:19
Speaker 2: class education. And Republicans want to give tax cuts to
42:23
Speaker 2: the rich so the rich can then afford to send
42:26
Speaker 2: their kids to private schools while all the rest of
42:28
Speaker 2: our kids have to struggle with budget cuts in their schools.
42:31
Speaker 2: And you know what Joe Biden and the Democrats want
42:32
Speaker 2: to do? We just passed legislation that makes universal preschool
42:37
Speaker 2: available for every single three and four-year-old in this country.
42:41
Speaker 2: And we are on the path to making sure that
42:43
Speaker 2: a good quality education is available for every single person
42:45
Speaker 2: in this country, no matter what the color of your
42:47
Speaker 2: skin is, no matter where you live. That's what Democrats
42:49
Speaker 2: are for and Republicans are not for that. And that's
42:51
Speaker 2: the issue with education in this country. That would have
42:54
Speaker 2: been a pretty powerful argument to be able to make.
42:57
Speaker 2: Could he have made it? No, because who knew if
42:59
Speaker 2: Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema were going to cut pre-K,
43:02
Speaker 2: universal pre-K out of the bill? They didn't, but they
43:05
Speaker 2: could have. which is just like a larger issue with
43:08
Speaker 2: how hard it is to sell this bill before it's
43:10
Speaker 2: cooked because the whole thing is just a moving target.
43:14
Speaker 3: But once again, then you have New Jersey, which had
43:16
Speaker 3: the exact same problem, is much less dialed, receives perhaps
43:20
Speaker 3: some of the least political news of any state because
43:24
Speaker 3: it exists in the nether region between two media markets
43:26
Speaker 3: that serve other cities, Philadelphia and New York, and has
43:30
Speaker 3: been relying on newspapers, mostly owned by the Gannett Corporation,
43:32
Speaker 3: which is a zombie corporation that just exists for milking
43:36
Speaker 3: of parts for some private equity fund. And so once again,
43:41
Speaker 3: there is something very big here. All of these things
43:43
Speaker 3: contribute to a bad political environment, but it's a lot
43:48
Speaker 3: more than just one thing. The sum is even greater
43:51
Speaker 3: than the total of the parts here.
43:52
Speaker 2: What do you think about the critique that's going around,
43:55
Speaker 2: and you know, political reporters eat this one up, that
43:58
Speaker 2: progressives push the party too far to the left and
44:01
Speaker 2: you know, there's a few data points people are pointing to.
44:04
Speaker 2: India Walton, a socialist in Buffalo, won her primary but
44:07
Speaker 2: was then defeated by the incumbent Democratic mayor in a
44:09
Speaker 2: write-in campaign, a measure to replace the Minneapolis Police Department
44:13
Speaker 2: with a new Department of Public Safety in, you know,
44:16
Speaker 2: in the city where, in the place where George Floyd
44:19
Speaker 2: was murdered, failed, 57 to 43. What do you think
44:23
Speaker 2: about that?
44:25
Speaker 3: This is like all of these, I guess, and Thank
44:27
Speaker 3: you for downloading our just overly nuanced, on one hand,
44:30
Speaker 3: on the other hand, podcast.
44:32
Speaker 2: Like I said, no matter what we're saying here, neither
44:36
Speaker 2: of us are 100% sure. We're trying to lay out
44:38
Speaker 2: all the arguments.
44:39
Speaker 4: That's right.
44:39
Speaker 2: And I think there's a lot more research to be
44:41
Speaker 2: done before anyone can be confident.
44:43
Speaker 4: Yes.
44:44
Speaker 3: Thank you for joining us to work through our personal
44:46
Speaker 3: processes about this. Yeah. The reason why this one is
44:50
Speaker 3: complicated is all of the provisions of at least the
44:53
Speaker 3: Biden legislative agenda are– not viewed by anyone as overly liberal.
44:58
Speaker 3: They have big bipartisan support. They're incredibly popular. By all
45:04
Speaker 3: measures of public opinion, they are mainstream policies. Now, the
45:08
Speaker 3: broader narrative about them is Huge, transformative. It's language being
45:13
Speaker 3: used by the press. It's social policy, social safety net.
45:16
Speaker 2: The $ 3 trillion social spending bill.
45:20
Speaker 4: Yeah.
45:20
Speaker 3: You can see why it's less ideological and more detached
45:25
Speaker 3: from people's lives. You don't really know what's in it.
45:28
Speaker 2: It seems messy.
45:29
Speaker 3: You don't trust it. It seems expensive, but you don't
45:33
Speaker 3: really know what's in it. It definitely, the individual piece
45:37
Speaker 3: is popular. So it's not like he moved too far
45:40
Speaker 3: to the left. I think there's a larger conversation about
45:43
Speaker 3: the challenges of electing someone who runs under a socialist banner.
45:48
Speaker 3: There's a larger conversation about the ways in which the
45:52
Speaker 3: criminal justice reform movements have been sort of branded under
45:57
Speaker 3: the defund the police slogan that has made policies that
46:01
Speaker 3: in a blind taste test are popular in common sense,
46:04
Speaker 3: harder to enact. And what happened in Minneapolis is a
46:06
Speaker 3: certain part of that. But I think now we're in
46:09
Speaker 3: this world where it's, you know, Abigail Spanberger, who's going
46:12
Speaker 3: to run in Virginia in what is likely to be
46:13
Speaker 3: a tough race in 2022, had a quote that was
46:14
Speaker 3: something to the effect, I don't have it in front
46:17
Speaker 3: of me, but something to the effect of, Joe Biden
46:19
Speaker 3: was elected to not be Trump and bring us back
46:21
Speaker 3: to normal, not to pass this giant transformative.
46:25
Speaker 2: Not to be the next FDR, she said.
46:26
Speaker 3: Not to be the next FDR, right. And yeah, I
46:29
Speaker 3: think there is some truth to that of, it was
46:32
Speaker 3: a very narrow election, very aggressive- Basically, as people point out,
46:38
Speaker 3: you're trying to pass an FDR size agenda, at least
46:41
Speaker 3: at the outset, the $ 3 trillion original scope, trying to
46:46
Speaker 3: pass FDR's agenda without FDR's majorities or FDR's mandates. Here's
46:51
Speaker 3: what I would say about all that now, which is
46:52
Speaker 3: we are pot committed. This is the deal. Can we
46:55
Speaker 3: do a little stuff around the edges and there's some
46:58
Speaker 3: final negotiation to do and Nancy Pelosi has put paid
47:01
Speaker 3: leave back in, which I fully support. We have to
47:03
Speaker 3: fight with the Senate over that, but just get it done.
47:05
Speaker 3: This is where we are. We can't go back in
47:08
Speaker 3: time and undo that. We just got to go. It's
47:13
Speaker 3: in everyone's interest, whether you're Pramila Jayapal or Josh Gottheimer,
47:16
Speaker 3: to get it done as close to what we have
47:19
Speaker 3: it as right now. and get going.
47:22
Speaker 2: And again, there is a laziness, especially among the press,
47:26
Speaker 2: in terms of defining what constitutes progressive, what constitutes moderate, right?
47:31
Speaker 2: Because it really is about what do people want? What
47:33
Speaker 2: do voters want? And prior to the USA, the Democratic
47:36
Speaker 2: Super PAC put out a memo today and again reiterated
47:40
Speaker 2: that the most popular policies with new Biden voters, people
47:46
Speaker 2: who hadn't turned out before that turned out for the
47:48
Speaker 2: first time in 2020 for Biden, And swing voters, people
47:52
Speaker 2: who switch back and forth between parties, are raising taxes
47:56
Speaker 2: on the rich to give middle class folks a tax break,
48:00
Speaker 2: prescription drug reform to make prescription drugs affordable, and expanding
48:04
Speaker 2: Medicare so that more benefits for dental, hearing, and vision
48:07
Speaker 2: reach more seniors. Now, a couple of those are Bernie
48:11
Speaker 2: Sanders policies. A couple of those sound pretty popular, pretty populist.
48:15
Speaker 2: But Those are extremely popular policies with the people who
48:19
Speaker 2: swing back and forth between parties. So the definition of
48:22
Speaker 2: what's progressive and what's moderate and everything else gets sort of...
48:26
Speaker 2: It's just people are lazy about it when they write
48:28
Speaker 2: about these things, which is just something to keep in mind.
48:30
Speaker 3: As a general rule, if something has more than 50%
48:34
Speaker 3: support in a poll, you cannot call it far left
48:38
Speaker 3: or far right. It is a mainstream policy by definition.
48:42
Speaker 2: And again, when you... ask people, do you want to
48:48
Speaker 2: defund the police or do you want to spend more
48:50
Speaker 2: money or less money on policing in your area? You
48:53
Speaker 2: get a majority of people of all races saying they
48:57
Speaker 2: want more money spent on police, even though when you
49:00
Speaker 2: mention a whole bunch of police reforms, including using some
49:04
Speaker 2: money from police departments to fund public safety and mental
49:07
Speaker 2: health services and public safety officers who don't have guns,
49:11
Speaker 2: that is far more popular. But as we saw from
49:13
Speaker 2: the ballot measure in Minneapolis, just saying that you want
49:16
Speaker 2: to replace the police department isn't popular, even in a D.
49:20
Speaker 2: deep blue city like Minneapolis, where George Floyd was murdered.
49:24
Speaker 2: All right, take number six. It's the fault of Joe
49:27
Speaker 2: Biden's shitty approval rating, which is the worst of any
49:30
Speaker 2: president at this point in his term, except Donald Trump.
49:36
Speaker 3: Like passage of the Biden legislature agenda, would it have
49:40
Speaker 3: been better if Joe Biden's approval rating was in the 50s?
49:42
Speaker 5: Yes.
49:42
Speaker 3: Would Terry McAuliffe have likely won in that situation?
49:45
Speaker 5: Yes.
49:46
Speaker 3: But there's a real chicken or egg problem when discussing
49:49
Speaker 3: presidential approval and impact on elections. Did Joe Biden drag
49:55
Speaker 3: down Terry McAuliffe and Phil Murphy, or did the forces
49:59
Speaker 3: that dragged down Joe Biden, the pandemic, inflation, just general
50:06
Speaker 3: national crankiness also dragged down Terry McAuliffe and Phil Murphy.
50:12
Speaker 3: I think it is more likely the latter than the former.
50:16
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, maybe because it dragged down every Democratic candidate everywhere.
50:19
Speaker 2: I mean, that was my, you know, what I wrote
50:21
Speaker 2: down after that take is, yes, but why is Joe
50:23
Speaker 2: Biden's approval rating so shitty? Which leads to take number seven,
50:27
Speaker 2: the final take that we're going to do here, which is,
50:30
Speaker 2: the country is miserable that the economic, political, and psychological
50:33
Speaker 2: fallout from the pandemic is still with us after two
50:35
Speaker 2: of the worst years in American history, which I put
50:39
Speaker 2: a little spin on that one because it's the one
50:41
Speaker 2: I probably believe the most. The economy is still the
50:43
Speaker 2: top concern with voters. Inflation is a top concern. Supply
50:46
Speaker 2: chain issues, labor shortage issues, tax issues came into play
50:50
Speaker 2: in a lot of these races, both in Virginia and
50:53
Speaker 2: in New Jersey. And these are the issues that most
50:55
Speaker 2: people who don't pay super close attention to politics or
50:58
Speaker 2: culture wars are or anything in the news, which is,
51:01
Speaker 2: by the way, a majority of voters, these are the
51:04
Speaker 2: issues they really care about and that they want fixed.
51:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is the problem. This is not to excuse
51:11
Speaker 3: the White House to say that they couldn't do this
51:14
Speaker 3: or that better, have a sharper message, or be more omnipresent,
51:17
Speaker 3: or all of, like, that's all fair, but that is
51:20
Speaker 3: sort of just happening around the edges. The bigger issue here,
51:26
Speaker 3: and this is different than, like, in 2017, we were
51:28
Speaker 3: living in a time of Historic peace and prosperity. Trump's
51:32
Speaker 3: approval ratings were terrible because Trump was doing a terrible
51:34
Speaker 3: job as president. It was chaos. It was incompetence, firing people, tweets.
51:39
Speaker 3: Joe Biden is not perfect, but he's doing, by all accounts,
51:42
Speaker 3: a good job. But he's being pulled down by things
51:46
Speaker 3: that are largely beyond his control and suffering from it.
51:50
Speaker 3: Because he's being pulled down, everyone else is getting pulled
51:52
Speaker 3: down as well.
51:53
Speaker 2: I think because we're all still living through it, we
51:56
Speaker 2: have underestimated the effect of what the Delta variant has
52:02
Speaker 2: done to the country and to all of us. Like
52:05
Speaker 2: everyone had a taste of freedom in late spring of 2021, May, June.
52:11
Speaker 2: And when it seemed like the pandemic was ending, case
52:14
Speaker 2: numbers were down. The CDC said everyone can take their
52:17
Speaker 2: masks off and go live their lives. And by the way,
52:19
Speaker 2: in late May, that was when Joe Biden's approval ratings
52:23
Speaker 2: were the highest in the 538 average. They basically matched
52:26
Speaker 2: or exceeded his approval when he came into office in
52:29
Speaker 2: after he was inaugurated, they were at 54% approval. That
52:32
Speaker 2: was the best because everyone thought everything was great. Then
52:35
Speaker 2: Delta hit. And the message then was, the message before
52:38
Speaker 2: Delta was get vaccinated and you and your family can
52:41
Speaker 2: go live your life. The message after Delta was unvaccinated
52:45
Speaker 2: people aren't safe like they weren't before, but neither are
52:47
Speaker 2: vaccinated people. And so Don't just mask up again, but
52:51
Speaker 2: worry about travel, worry about gatherings, worry about indoor restaurants,
52:55
Speaker 2: worry about your kids going to school. And by the way,
52:57
Speaker 2: the economy is going to take a big hit because
52:59
Speaker 2: of all this. And it was almost like we were
53:02
Speaker 2: hit with a second pandemic this summer and fall. And
53:06
Speaker 2: all of the effects that come with that economic, political, cultural,
53:09
Speaker 2: we are still wrestling with right now. And it's making
53:12
Speaker 2: everyone really pissed off. And when everyone's really pissed off,
53:16
Speaker 2: you know, they the people that they elected, you To
53:19
Speaker 2: fix it, that's who they get pissed at, right? Joe
53:22
Speaker 2: Biden was, I mean, the one thing that Spanberger said
53:24
Speaker 2: that was correct is people who don't pay close attention
53:27
Speaker 2: to politics, people who aren't partisans, elected Joe Biden because
53:29
Speaker 2: they wanted to get rid of Trump and they wanted
53:31
Speaker 2: life to go back to normal. And life right now
53:33
Speaker 2: is still not back to normal for a lot of
53:34
Speaker 2: people in the country. And I think that's fundamentally what
53:38
Speaker 2: the Biden White House's challenge is in the next year.
53:42
Speaker 2: Which brings us to the final section here, which is
53:45
Speaker 2: where do we go from here? I think we break
53:47
Speaker 2: it into three quick categories, Congress, Biden, and the 22 midterms. Congress,
53:51
Speaker 2: what do we know so far about how Tuesday's results
53:53
Speaker 2: might impact the passage of Biden's economic agenda, both the
53:56
Speaker 2: infrastructure bill and Build Back Better?
53:59
Speaker 3: It seems like in the House, at least, the losses
54:02
Speaker 3: in Virginia and the poor performance around the country have
54:04
Speaker 3: focused the minds. And all of a sudden, Pramila Jayapal
54:07
Speaker 3: and Josh Gottheimer are retweeting each other, and we are
54:10
Speaker 3: in a rules committee hearing, and it.
54:12
Speaker 2: Retweeting each other. How about that? Jayapal retweets Gottheimer saying,
54:17
Speaker 2: the election told us that we have to pass both
54:19
Speaker 2: bills as fast as possible. And she retweeted it. Look,
54:21
Speaker 2: everyone's happy. Wonderful.
54:23
Speaker 3: Retweeting each other is the new Tip O'Neill and Ronald
54:26
Speaker 3: Reagan having dinner together or something. But so as of
54:32
Speaker 3: right now, it seems like the House is trying to
54:34
Speaker 3: get something done. This will not be the end of
54:36
Speaker 3: the process for them. But there's one important point, which
54:38
Speaker 3: means it will send the bipartisan infrastructure bill to the
54:41
Speaker 3: president's desk and will become law. There is still a
54:44
Speaker 3: lot of work to do on the Senate side. You
54:46
Speaker 3: have to pass, even if the House passes something, it
54:48
Speaker 3: will be adjusted by both Manchin and the Senate parliamentarian,
54:52
Speaker 3: and they'll have to pass something again. But they are
54:55
Speaker 3: trying to move this process forward, get out of the
54:57
Speaker 3: stasis we are in. So that is, I think, a
54:59
Speaker 3: very important and positive step in the right direction.
55:02
Speaker 2: And some good news on that, and just the substance
55:04
Speaker 2: of the bill, they came to an agreement on prescription drugs.
55:07
Speaker 2: on a policy that's going to cap out-of-pocket costs at $ 2, 000
55:10
Speaker 2: a year and cap insulin costs at $ 35 a month,
55:14
Speaker 2: which has been a real struggle for a lot of people.
55:16
Speaker 2: And every Democrat is on board with that. The Kyrsten
55:19
Speaker 2: Sinemas of the world, the Manchins, the people in the
55:21
Speaker 2: House that were against prescription drug reform, they're all on
55:23
Speaker 2: board together. So that's good. As you mentioned, Pelosi put
55:27
Speaker 2: paid family leave back in the bill, at least in
55:29
Speaker 2: the House version. Still seems like Manchin will probably try
55:31
Speaker 2: to strip it out in the Senate version, so that's
55:33
Speaker 2: less good news. The whole SALT The salt drama. I
55:38
Speaker 2: read today that the House plan limits your deductions to
55:41
Speaker 2: seventy two thousand dollars, which is this is as you
55:45
Speaker 2: as you heard me bring this up with Katie Porter
55:47
Speaker 2: and then Sean Patrick Maloney and some others. I think
55:50
Speaker 2: limiting it to seventy two thousand dollars does prevent the
55:53
Speaker 2: attack that it is just this gigantic tax cut for
55:56
Speaker 2: the rich because seventy two thousand is not rich for.
55:59
Speaker 1: A lot of people.
56:00
Speaker 2: All right. What should Joe Biden do? Over the next
56:03
Speaker 2: several days, weeks and months. How much how much control
56:05
Speaker 2: does he have over his own political standing here with
56:08
Speaker 2: all of the exigent circumstances that we just mentioned?
56:12
Speaker 3: Very little control, unfortunately.
56:15
Speaker 4: Right.
56:15
Speaker 3: I mean, he is getting a huge win. Like as
56:18
Speaker 3: of today, I believe kids are getting or maybe as
56:21
Speaker 3: of last night, kids are starting to get vaccinated. Kids
56:23
Speaker 3: age five to 12. That is a huge thing for parents.
56:27
Speaker 2: Huge.
56:27
Speaker 3: It is going to really change the school conversation. It's
56:29
Speaker 3: going to change how a lot of parents feel, who
56:31
Speaker 3: are the people who have unvaccinated people living in their house,
56:33
Speaker 3: who are the most hindered in their life by the
56:37
Speaker 3: Delta surge. And so that's a big deal. He's just
56:41
Speaker 3: got to keep doing that. But I think the one
56:44
Speaker 3: thing to do is try to go get some wins
56:47
Speaker 3: that are popular. Let me put it this way. When
56:50
Speaker 3: you are down in the polls, the first thing you
56:53
Speaker 3: should do, is go try to win back your people,
56:57
Speaker 3: the lowest hanging fruit. So do things, get this win
57:00
Speaker 3: in Congress, try to get BBB done. BBB, I hate myself.
57:03
Speaker 3: Try to get your jobs and climate bill done.
57:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, there we go.
57:08
Speaker 3: Thank you. We're going to die on a vine being
57:10
Speaker 3: the only people who use that term, but we're going
57:11
Speaker 3: to try. Maybe there's some executive actions to do to
57:16
Speaker 3: just like get up a tempo of strength and leadership
57:19
Speaker 3: and wins that are popular at their base. Those, you know,
57:22
Speaker 3: you get it, you know, 5% of Democrats back, your
57:24
Speaker 3: numbers go up. You can begin to sort of set
57:26
Speaker 3: a circuit breaker on the doom loop narrative that you've
57:29
Speaker 3: been in basically since August.
57:32
Speaker 4: Yeah.
57:33
Speaker 2: I think that, um, once we get through, I think
57:36
Speaker 2: the state of the union this year is going to
57:38
Speaker 2: be a big inflection point for him, because I think
57:39
Speaker 2: at that point, a couple of things will have happened. One,
57:43
Speaker 2: these two fucking bills better have passed. Um, Two, the
57:47
Speaker 2: vaccines will be available to everyone in the country. They'll
57:51
Speaker 2: probably get six month to four year olds done as
57:55
Speaker 2: by then as well. And three, if there is another smaller,
58:00
Speaker 2: hopefully winter surge that will be on the downswing by
58:04
Speaker 2: the time he gives the State of the Union. And
58:05
Speaker 2: I do think at that point. the state in the
58:08
Speaker 2: state of the union, there's a big inflection point for him.
58:10
Speaker 2: I think he needs to say, you know, you elected
58:12
Speaker 2: me to end the pandemic and revive the economy. And
58:14
Speaker 2: that's what I'm focused on every single day, every single
58:16
Speaker 2: thing I do now that we've made it through another
58:19
Speaker 2: winter and vaccines are available to every American, the worst
58:21
Speaker 2: of the pandemic is over. And, you know, I just
58:23
Speaker 2: saw that the prime minister of Singapore, um, gave a
58:26
Speaker 2: big speech the other day and, you know, they had,
58:28
Speaker 2: they did well for a while in Singapore and then
58:30
Speaker 2: they've had like you know, pretty high cases recently with
58:33
Speaker 2: Delta and pretty tough restrictions. But he gave this speech
58:36
Speaker 2: where he said, we need to update our mindsets. We
58:38
Speaker 2: should respect COVID-19, but we must not be paralyzed by fear.
58:41
Speaker 2: Let us go about our daily activities as normally as possible,
58:44
Speaker 2: taking necessary precautions. Biden has defined his version of that
58:48
Speaker 2: to say and to put sort of a marker down
58:52
Speaker 2: in the next state of the union now that vaccines
58:54
Speaker 2: are available to everyone and we'll have gone through probably
58:57
Speaker 2: another winter of this because I think he needs to
59:00
Speaker 2: Show some optimism here. And then I think he also
59:04
Speaker 2: needs to, as you were saying, just show that he
59:06
Speaker 2: is laser fucking focused on the economy. whether it's new
59:10
Speaker 2: policies proposing, executive actions, jobs, economy, inflation, helping the middle class,
59:17
Speaker 2: selling his plan if it passes, God willing. And I think,
59:21
Speaker 2: you know, it's some kind of message like Republicans want
59:23
Speaker 2: us to emerge from this pandemic with, you know, the
59:25
Speaker 2: rich doing well and everyone else struggling and here's my plan.
59:28
Speaker 2: Here's why I'm different than them. I think that has
59:30
Speaker 2: to be the message next year. And I think he
59:32
Speaker 2: has to be really, really focused on that. Last question.
59:37
Speaker 2: What do all of us do about 2022? Where do
59:40
Speaker 2: we even begin? We talked about Biden, but all of
59:43
Speaker 2: us have agency here and all of us have a stake.
59:46
Speaker 3: This is not the ideal time to deliver this message
59:49
Speaker 3: because I think people are frustrated and disappointed and it
59:51
Speaker 3: can feel, you can feel despair. But this is the
59:55
Speaker 3: exact argument for Doubling down and reengaging. The stakes could
1:00:00
Speaker 3: not be higher. The idea that when you look at
1:00:03
Speaker 3: what happened, there are two takeaways from this. One is
1:00:08
Speaker 3: the brittle fragility of our post-Trump electoral coalition.
1:00:12
Speaker 4: Yeah.
1:00:13
Speaker 3: But the other thing is this race in Virginia was
1:00:16
Speaker 3: incredibly winnable. We can go do that. Because if you
1:00:20
Speaker 3: think about– this is one of the things we have
1:00:21
Speaker 3: to think about. We didn't get fully into the turnout conversation,
1:00:24
Speaker 3: but a little north of 3 million people voted– in
1:00:27
Speaker 3: Virginia this election. 4.6 million voted in 2020. There was
1:00:33
Speaker 3: a huge group of people that we had with time, energy,
1:00:37
Speaker 3: and a good message we can go get to turn
1:00:40
Speaker 3: out for 2022. And that takes organizing and work. Now
1:00:43
Speaker 3: it's persuasion. We need to persuade some of those people
1:00:46
Speaker 3: who voted for the sort of prototypical voters who went Biden-Yunkin.
1:00:51
Speaker 3: And those people exist in every state in this country.
1:00:53
Speaker 3: And persuade them to stay on our side, why it matters,
1:00:55
Speaker 3: why it'd be a great mistake to let election Republicans
1:00:58
Speaker 3: have power again, and also persuade the people who turned
1:01:01
Speaker 3: out and got involved in politics because of a very
1:01:04
Speaker 3: legitimate existential concern about Donald Trump and what he was
1:01:07
Speaker 3: doing in this country, that this midterm matters. And then
1:01:11
Speaker 3: we had the fight continues. And so like, we all
1:01:13
Speaker 3: have to get up off the mat, We have to
1:01:15
Speaker 3: work ourselves through your process if you don't have an
1:01:17
Speaker 3: incredibly long podcast like we just had to do that.
1:01:20
Speaker 3: And then get back engaged. Obviously, Vote Save America, no
1:01:24
Speaker 3: off-year funds are going to be huge opportunities to do that.
1:01:26
Speaker 3: But the deck is stacked against us heading into 2022.
1:01:30
Speaker 3: But it does not mean we are definitely going to lose.
1:01:33
Speaker 3: We can win. These are all states where there are
1:01:35
Speaker 3: enough Democratic voters to win. We just have to go
1:01:37
Speaker 3: out and get them. And that is on all of us,
1:01:40
Speaker 3: the people like us who are trying– have an opportunity
1:01:43
Speaker 3: to try to convince people to do it, and the
1:01:44
Speaker 3: people listening who have the time and opportunity to commit
1:01:48
Speaker 3: to continuing the fight to take this country back.
1:01:50
Speaker 2: I think that's very well said. You know, I started
1:01:54
Speaker 2: by saying that the results surprised me partially because I
1:01:58
Speaker 2: thought that the electorate was so polarized that large swings
1:02:03
Speaker 2: like we saw on Tuesday weren't really possible anymore. Well,
1:02:08
Speaker 2: the flip side of that is... if we could swing
1:02:11
Speaker 2: this much in just a year, then we can swing
1:02:15
Speaker 2: this much again in another year, right? A lot can
1:02:18
Speaker 2: change in a year, but it's not going to change
1:02:20
Speaker 2: if we just sit around and hope for it to change.
1:02:22
Speaker 2: We have to, we have to do it. We have
1:02:24
Speaker 2: to change it ourselves. And that's a lot of work.
1:02:26
Speaker 2: And I do think that starts with like, there's a
1:02:29
Speaker 2: few things we've got to stop fighting among Democrats among the,
1:02:34
Speaker 2: about these fucking bills. Like I guarantee yelling about Joe
1:02:37
Speaker 2: Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema is not winning new votes. because
1:02:41
Speaker 2: it's just Democrats fighting Democrats. We need to finally settle
1:02:45
Speaker 2: on a frame for the Republican Party, define the Republican
1:02:48
Speaker 2: Party in an age where Trump is in the background,
1:02:52
Speaker 2: still a threat in the future, but not leading it
1:02:55
Speaker 2: right now, even if he's sort of leading it. But
1:02:58
Speaker 2: we need a message about the Republican Party, and then
1:03:00
Speaker 2: we need a message about ourselves and what we're for.
1:03:03
Speaker 2: And part of this is, like you said, it's a
1:03:05
Speaker 2: very fragile coalition, and it needs to stay together. And
1:03:09
Speaker 2: that requires talking to and listening, listening to our voters.
1:03:14
Speaker 2: And when I say our voters, I mean everyone who
1:03:16
Speaker 2: voted for Joe Biden and then some. Progressives, moderates, former Republicans,
1:03:21
Speaker 2: voters in cities, voters in suburbs, voters in rural areas
1:03:24
Speaker 2: where we keep getting crushed, young voters, old voters, all races, right?
1:03:28
Speaker 2: The math is that we need all of them, especially
1:03:32
Speaker 2: because since we have this fucked up system now where
1:03:36
Speaker 2: Republicans can rule with a minority of the votes in
1:03:40
Speaker 2: a lot of states and cities because the Senate, because
1:03:41
Speaker 2: of gerrymandering, because of all the shit we've talked about,
1:03:43
Speaker 2: we need a bigger majority. And that means that our
1:03:45
Speaker 2: tent needs to be bigger in order to win. And
1:03:48
Speaker 2: so we can't have progressive voters staying home. We can't
1:03:52
Speaker 2: have moderate voters staying home. We need everyone who voted
1:03:54
Speaker 2: in 2020 and then some to turn out again. It
1:03:58
Speaker 2: is a tall order. But the only way we're going
1:04:00
Speaker 2: to get there is to go out and actually like
1:04:02
Speaker 2: break out of the information bubbles that we're all in
1:04:05
Speaker 2: who pay super close attention to politics all the time
1:04:08
Speaker 2: and actually talk and listen to people who have voted
1:04:11
Speaker 2: for us in the past. Not trying to like get
1:04:15
Speaker 2: your MAGA uncle to vote for us. Just trying to
1:04:18
Speaker 2: get your friend who took a flyer on Joe Biden
1:04:21
Speaker 2: for the first time in the Democratic Party to still
1:04:23
Speaker 2: vote Democrat, right? That should be a little bit easier,
1:04:26
Speaker 2: even if it's still going to be a big challenge. So,
1:04:28
Speaker 2: you know, don't don't assume that everyone follows the news
1:04:31
Speaker 2: and follows politics as closely as you do and give
1:04:34
Speaker 2: people the time and space to come around to the
1:04:38
Speaker 2: views that we all hold by working really hard to
1:04:40
Speaker 2: persuade them. I think that's that's something to keep in mind.
1:04:44
Speaker 2: You know, one of the ways that people can help.
1:04:45
Speaker 2: We've talked about this a bunch recently is we have
1:04:49
Speaker 2: this no off years fund at Vote Save America, where
1:04:52
Speaker 2: we are raising money for organizations on the ground in
1:04:55
Speaker 2: key midterm states to to find and register new voters
1:04:59
Speaker 2: now so that we are not panicking about registering new
1:05:01
Speaker 2: voters a month before the election in 2022. That's what
1:05:06
Speaker 2: organizers on the ground who've been doing this work for
1:05:07
Speaker 2: a long time tell us is the most important thing
1:05:10
Speaker 2: to do is to be able to register voters now early.
1:05:14
Speaker 2: and organizing work done early is just a lot better
1:05:17
Speaker 2: and increases your chance of winning. That's just the way
1:05:20
Speaker 2: it has been for a long time. So if you
1:05:21
Speaker 2: go to votesaveamerica.com slash nooffyears, we could really use your
1:05:26
Speaker 2: help and soak these organizers on the ground. All right,
1:05:29
Speaker 2: when we come back, we will have Dan's conversation with
1:05:32
Speaker 2: Virginia Delicate, Danica Rome.
1:05:43
Speaker 3: Joining us now, she's a Democrat in the Virginia House
1:05:45
Speaker 3: of Delegates, first elected in 2017. She was the first
1:05:48
Speaker 3: openly transgender person to serve in the U.S. state legislature,
1:05:51
Speaker 3: and she was just reelected, winning 54% of the vote.
1:05:53
Speaker 3: Danica Roem. Danica, thanks for joining Pod Save America.
1:05:55
Speaker 5: Thank you so much, Dan. It's good to be back
1:05:57
Speaker 5: with you all.
1:05:58
Speaker 3: Well, first, congratulations on your victory. What secret strategy did
1:06:02
Speaker 3: you have that eluded others across the country and in
1:06:04
Speaker 3: the Commonwealth of Virginia this week?
1:06:06
Speaker 4: Well, you know, I was actually just doing an interview
1:06:09
Speaker 4: with a reporter out of Richmond who was asking me
1:06:11
Speaker 4: something very similar to this. And what I did that
1:06:15
Speaker 4: this campaign was exactly what I did in 2017 was
1:06:19
Speaker 4: exactly what I did in 2019. My messaging at the
1:06:22
Speaker 4: doors to my constituents did not change at all. So
1:06:25
Speaker 4: let me talk about what we did in terms of
1:06:27
Speaker 4: our advertising. And let me talk about what we did
1:06:30
Speaker 4: in terms of like our field engagement. So in our advertising,
1:06:34
Speaker 4: we led with Medicaid expansion. It was a promise that
1:06:37
Speaker 4: I made in 2017 that I would vote to expand
1:06:39
Speaker 4: Medicaid at the time to what we thought would be
1:06:41
Speaker 4: about 400,000 Virginians and including 3,700 people in the 13th district.
1:06:46
Speaker 4: I then kept that promise on May 30th, 2018. And
1:06:48
Speaker 4: when actually coverage began on January 1st of 2019, immediately
1:06:56
Speaker 4: right there, my constituents started getting signed up. In fact,
1:06:59
Speaker 4: the first person in the state to get signed up
1:07:01
Speaker 4: was my constituent, Kara. Kara is an amputee from Manassas
1:07:04
Speaker 4: who's missing her dominant right arm below the elbow. And
1:07:08
Speaker 4: within the month that she was enrolled, she had life-saving
1:07:13
Speaker 4: surgery to have a stent put in. And when we
1:07:16
Speaker 4: are talking to people about their quality of life and
1:07:19
Speaker 4: directly bringing it home with those real world examples, and
1:07:23
Speaker 4: that we're providing people health insurance, That's the sort of
1:07:26
Speaker 4: thing that cuts through the noise because you're talking about
1:07:28
Speaker 4: an issue that has, yes, national significance and that, you know,
1:07:33
Speaker 4: the ACA is what authorized Medicaid expansion in the first place.
1:07:35
Speaker 4: At the same time, people feel it in the community.
1:07:38
Speaker 4: And I'll tell you that now in this point of 2021,
1:07:43
Speaker 4: as of November 1st, we have now enrolled 596,000 Virginians
1:07:47
Speaker 4: in Medicaid expansion. In the greater Prince William area, it's
1:07:54
Speaker 4: more than 28,000 people. From my constituents, it's nearly 5,000
1:07:59
Speaker 4: people of my constituents who've now enrolled. I had 15,000
1:08:03
Speaker 4: some odd votes on Tuesday. I would suggest a large
1:08:07
Speaker 4: number of them came from a, it's not the majority,
1:08:10
Speaker 4: but a significant number of them came from people who
1:08:13
Speaker 4: are now benefiting from that as well.
1:08:15
Speaker 1: And why?
1:08:15
Speaker 4: Because it's a quality of life issue for them, as
1:08:17
Speaker 4: well as a security issue for them, as well as
1:08:19
Speaker 4: a pocketbook issue for them. So That was our first
1:08:22
Speaker 4: message on that. The second one was we talked about
1:08:25
Speaker 4: the same stuff I talked about in 2017, 2019, fixing
1:08:27
Speaker 4: Route 28, which is synonymous with my profile locally as
1:08:31
Speaker 4: well as nationally. And we have actual tangible progress to
1:08:35
Speaker 4: show people now. All the traffic lights are gone from
1:08:37
Speaker 4: the 2866 interchange over in Centerville. As a member of
1:08:40
Speaker 4: the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority, I voted for the sixth
1:08:43
Speaker 4: landing that's now underway over in Centerville to be completed
1:08:47
Speaker 4: in March 2023. And my big push for here in
1:08:49
Speaker 4: the 13th district, is for innovative intersection designs along the
1:08:53
Speaker 4: route 28 quarter between Manassas Park and Yorkshire. And because
1:08:57
Speaker 4: you know, even though we're still waiting to get the
1:08:59
Speaker 4: full funding that we need, the full $ 56 million to
1:09:01
Speaker 4: implement all of it, we have already begun making changes there.
1:09:04
Speaker 4: Like we've reduced the traffic signal phases by adding a
1:09:07
Speaker 4: flashing yellow, for example, at Orchard Bridge drive and over
1:09:11
Speaker 4: at Yorkshire lane, which cuts down the amount of red
1:09:14
Speaker 4: lights that you actually have on that little part of
1:09:16
Speaker 4: the quarter. We've made safety improvements at Leland and, um, Maplewood.
1:09:20
Speaker 4: And as we're doing this, people can also see that, yes,
1:09:24
Speaker 4: there's actual progress being made right before their eyes. And
1:09:27
Speaker 4: so they know this wasn't just a slogan for me,
1:09:30
Speaker 4: but something I really care about. And right next to
1:09:32
Speaker 4: Route 28, we have the VRE that runs into Manassas Park,
1:09:36
Speaker 4: literally across the street from my apartment that I'm talking
1:09:38
Speaker 4: to you about right now. And over here, I voted
1:09:41
Speaker 4: for the Speaker of the House's bill, HB 1414 last year,
1:09:44
Speaker 4: which allows us to increase, you know, basically it gives
1:09:47
Speaker 4: us the administrative infrastructure that we need to eventually have
1:09:50
Speaker 4: night and weekend service on the VRA. That's just another
1:09:53
Speaker 4: one of those hyper-local issues. And then when I was
1:09:55
Speaker 4: knocking doors out west, I talked about my bill to
1:09:58
Speaker 4: ban above-ground transmission lines along the I-66 corridor between Gainesville
1:10:01
Speaker 4: and Haymarket for 10 years because that will protect your
1:10:04
Speaker 4: property value as well as the local environment. I talked
1:10:06
Speaker 4: about how I voted for the funding that we needed
1:10:08
Speaker 4: for the first commuter bus that now links Heathcote Boulevard
1:10:12
Speaker 4: and Haymarket and Gainesville out to five metro stations a
1:10:14
Speaker 4: day over in Arlington so we can get more traffic
1:10:16
Speaker 4: off of I-66 each day. I say all of that
1:10:19
Speaker 4: to you and to add that we passed eight of
1:10:22
Speaker 4: my bills to feed hungry kids in schools and that
1:10:25
Speaker 4: my advocacy that myself and other people from Virginia led
1:10:29
Speaker 4: to the USDA at the federal level, we have free
1:10:32
Speaker 4: school meals across the entire country this year. That directly
1:10:36
Speaker 4: affects people's pocketbooks. It directly affects their kids' nutrition. It
1:10:39
Speaker 4: directly affects quality of life. And so when you do
1:10:41
Speaker 4: all of that together, the issues that I'm talking about
1:10:44
Speaker 4: at the doors that we're talking about in the mail,
1:10:47
Speaker 4: and that we're talking about in our advertising really comes
1:10:50
Speaker 4: down to what are you doing for the district? Oh
1:10:52
Speaker 4: my God, you're actually doing a lot for the district.
1:10:54
Speaker 4: I think I can support you. And I say this
1:10:57
Speaker 4: as that, you know, trans metalhead from, from Vedas, you know,
1:11:02
Speaker 4: reporter turned legislator who's like, yeah, I'm authentically myself. People
1:11:07
Speaker 4: know exactly that, you know, wearing my heavy metal hoodie
1:11:10
Speaker 4: right now. People know like, yeah, I'm wildly myself all
1:11:14
Speaker 4: the time. And at the same time, I'm good at
1:11:15
Speaker 4: my job. And I think You put all that together
1:11:19
Speaker 4: and people trust me. And I'm grateful that I earned
1:11:22
Speaker 4: their respect over the last few years.
1:11:25
Speaker 3: I'm curious about your perspective of what it was like
1:11:28
Speaker 3: on the ground in Virginia, because you ran in 17,
1:11:31
Speaker 3: great year for Democrats, 19, another very good year for Democrats, 21,
1:11:34
Speaker 3: other than for yourself and a handful of others, not
1:11:37
Speaker 3: a very good year. Did it feel different in terms
1:11:40
Speaker 3: of enthusiasm or pushback from the, from Republicans who may
1:11:45
Speaker 3: live in your district or just what you're hearing from
1:11:47
Speaker 3: sort of volunteers and activists out there.
1:11:50
Speaker 5: At the top of the ticket. Yes. For my race. No.
1:11:55
Speaker 4: I did not have a significant number of, you know,
1:11:58
Speaker 4: either my field team when they were on doors or
1:12:00
Speaker 4: myself being on doors, we did not encounter a lot
1:12:05
Speaker 4: of hostility to us directly. Now that's, you know, we're
1:12:08
Speaker 4: having good persuasion conversations with that. We also understand targeting
1:12:11
Speaker 4: at the doors, for example. So while I serve all
1:12:15
Speaker 4: my constituents all the time, the doors we're knocking and
1:12:18
Speaker 4: the very intentional, we're not gonna go out of our
1:12:20
Speaker 4: way in terms of talking to people who are never
1:12:23
Speaker 4: going to vote for us during a campaign cycle about
1:12:26
Speaker 4: the campaign.
1:12:27
Speaker 5: I will talk to people who are.
1:12:29
Speaker 4: Never gonna vote for me about public policy issues that
1:12:31
Speaker 4: directly affect their community because I represent them.
1:12:34
Speaker 5: And they know that. And one of the things that
1:12:36
Speaker 5: happens with this If you.
1:12:38
Speaker 4: Look at my race versus my challenger this past year,
1:12:42
Speaker 4: my challenger was very underfunded. And that could have changed
1:12:47
Speaker 4: for a lot of different dynamics. But the thing is,
1:12:50
Speaker 4: my constituents like the work I'm doing. And so even
1:12:54
Speaker 4: if they're not going to support me with their vote,
1:12:56
Speaker 4: they're not going to be overtly hostile either. And because
1:13:00
Speaker 4: of that, they're not throwing a lot of money into
1:13:03
Speaker 4: getting me unseated in the first place. And so- That's
1:13:06
Speaker 4: another one of those things that I think Democrats have
1:13:09
Speaker 4: to understand in terms of how we engage with the
1:13:11
Speaker 4: other side is yes, bipartisanship in terms of getting a
1:13:14
Speaker 4: legislation passed is an inherent, it's necessary, we have to
1:13:19
Speaker 4: do it. At the same time, we also understand that
1:13:22
Speaker 4: if we're good in our communities, we're showing up, we're
1:13:25
Speaker 4: doing the right thing, then people, even if they're not
1:13:27
Speaker 4: going to vote for us, they're not necessarily going to
1:13:29
Speaker 4: be hostile toward us. Let's get to a place where
1:13:32
Speaker 4: people aren't hostile. And that will be a big help
1:13:35
Speaker 4: in terms of our brand turnaround that we're going to
1:13:37
Speaker 4: really kind of have to need after this year.
1:13:41
Speaker 3: In saying that, do you think that Democrats broadly nationally,
1:13:45
Speaker 3: maybe at the top of the ticket, are we engendering hostility?
1:13:49
Speaker 3: Are we not being open enough or maybe dismissive of
1:13:52
Speaker 3: people's concerns? What, what do you think is going on there?
1:13:54
Speaker 3: And also what your cat looks great.
1:13:57
Speaker 5: That's my, uh, my Calico Melinda joining us as she
1:13:59
Speaker 5: always does. Anytime I am on camera for anything. Yes.
1:14:03
Speaker 4: Um, It is very hard for me to say exactly
1:14:08
Speaker 4: on a national level, here's what you need to do.
1:14:10
Speaker 4: That's going to be different from, you know, what, you know,
1:14:13
Speaker 4: it's going to change an election result or X, Y,
1:14:14
Speaker 4: or Z, because the thing that national Democrats could have
1:14:20
Speaker 4: done that at the very least wouldn't have hurt us.
1:14:23
Speaker 4: And at the very best might have actually helped us
1:14:26
Speaker 4: is pass the two damn infrastructure bills. If they actually
1:14:29
Speaker 4: had done their job and they had demonstrated competency in
1:14:33
Speaker 4: government and You know, by bringing all the sides and
1:14:36
Speaker 4: all the factions together, whether it's our, you know, conservative
1:14:39
Speaker 4: slash moderate holdouts in the Senate or it's, you know,
1:14:44
Speaker 4: progressives in the House. And I understand is actually sympathize
1:14:47
Speaker 4: with their plight in particular in terms of passing very popular,
1:14:50
Speaker 4: you know, public policy initiatives like paid leave.
1:14:53
Speaker 5: I'm all on board.
1:14:54
Speaker 4: Trust me, all on board on that. at the end
1:14:56
Speaker 4: of the day, you still have to produce a bill.
1:14:59
Speaker 4: And at that point, it no longer matters in terms
1:15:02
Speaker 4: of if you're right or wrong, if nothing happens. Nothing
1:15:06
Speaker 4: happened by the time our names were on the ballot.
1:15:10
Speaker 4: And these are supposed to be core issues that Democrats
1:15:14
Speaker 4: agree on. Just like we did with all the COVID
1:15:19
Speaker 4: emergency funding as soon as the president was sworn in,
1:15:23
Speaker 4: that was wildly popular with American people. if our folks
1:15:25
Speaker 4: had figured out their act in time to actually have
1:15:28
Speaker 4: something good on these two infrastructure bills that they could
1:15:31
Speaker 4: have done in early fall, that could have been another
1:15:34
Speaker 4: message we brought to the doors. For example, when I'm
1:15:36
Speaker 4: looking for funding for Route 28, I'm putting together a
1:15:38
Speaker 4: lot of pieces from a lot of different funding sources.
1:15:40
Speaker 4: If I could say, absolutely, this bill is, you know,
1:15:43
Speaker 4: because of this, they're going to have more enhanced build grants,
1:15:45
Speaker 4: what used to be tire grants. And because we're going
1:15:48
Speaker 4: to have these grants, um, Absolutely. My multimodal project is
1:15:52
Speaker 4: definitely going to be able to qualify for that. We're
1:15:53
Speaker 4: going to be able to expect delivery of this, blah, blah, blah.
1:15:56
Speaker 4: It might sound like a bunch of jargon and nothing
1:15:58
Speaker 4: to other people, but when you're in the district and
1:16:01
Speaker 4: you're having that conversation, you're demonstrating competency and you're demonstrating
1:16:04
Speaker 4: a plan that yes, I'm not just blowing smoke.
1:16:08
Speaker 5: I am telling you, this is, you.
1:16:09
Speaker 4: Know, you can follow along and you can watch how
1:16:12
Speaker 4: it is that I'm operating in order to do my job.
1:16:15
Speaker 4: And because I have that openness, that transparency and everything,
1:16:19
Speaker 4: That's something that I think a lot of national Democrats
1:16:21
Speaker 4: could really focus on is let's really hit home on
1:16:25
Speaker 4: those quality of life issues that we know we're good on,
1:16:28
Speaker 4: that we know the public supports.
1:16:30
Speaker 5: The public supports infrastructure. The public supports paid leave. Let's
1:16:33
Speaker 5: bring it all together. Let's get it done.
1:16:35
Speaker 4: But the fact that they've just been holding out and
1:16:38
Speaker 4: they've been doing this, they did us no favors whatsoever.
1:16:41
Speaker 4: I'm not going to say that's going to make the
1:16:42
Speaker 4: difference in every race, but again, it wouldn't have hurt
1:16:46
Speaker 4: us for them to do it.
1:16:47
Speaker 3: It's very interesting because that's been one of the debates
1:16:49
Speaker 3: among sort of the national political analysis was how much
1:16:53
Speaker 3: that mattered. It's very interesting for you to say that it,
1:16:56
Speaker 3: not necessarily that it was decisive in the election, but
1:16:59
Speaker 3: was certainly downward pressure you did not need.
1:17:02
Speaker 4: And I've got two of my colleagues who are currently
1:17:05
Speaker 4: trailing by less than 300 votes going into the mail-in
1:17:11
Speaker 4: absentee ballots that have to arrive at the registrar's office
1:17:15
Speaker 4: by noon tomorrow. And then we'll see what happens. Maybe
1:17:18
Speaker 4: we can salvage one or two of them. When we're
1:17:22
Speaker 4: that close, maybe there are a few voters within that
1:17:26
Speaker 4: little pool where that could have made a difference in
1:17:28
Speaker 4: terms of their overall thoughts about Democrats. Because the phrase
1:17:33
Speaker 4: I've been using is, this election was not because of
1:17:36
Speaker 4: one thing. This was death by a thousand cuts. There
1:17:38
Speaker 4: was a lot of things contributing to that. But if
1:17:41
Speaker 4: you stop the bleeding in even one area by showing
1:17:44
Speaker 4: here's a really good public policy thing that we're doing
1:17:46
Speaker 4: and we're communicating that we're marketing that so that, you know,
1:17:49
Speaker 4: in 2017, after I won my election, I said, and
1:17:53
Speaker 4: I said this, I was quoted in an online publication
1:17:57
Speaker 4: about this. I said, you can't just hate Trump your
1:18:00
Speaker 4: way to victory. You have to show people and give
1:18:02
Speaker 4: people a reason to believe in you and to be
1:18:05
Speaker 4: inspired by what you're doing. Is tying a Republican to
1:18:09
Speaker 4: Donald Trump going to be effective? If you do it
1:18:11
Speaker 4: late in the campaign, after you have already defined that
1:18:14
Speaker 4: person on all the other public policy issues that directly
1:18:17
Speaker 4: affect the person's life, that your challenger in that case
1:18:20
Speaker 4: or the Republican nominee happens to be out of sync
1:18:22
Speaker 4: with your constituents on, then at the very end, yes,
1:18:25
Speaker 4: that can be effective. And our polling showed that the
1:18:28
Speaker 4: difference between asking as the first question of the battery
1:18:31
Speaker 4: versus the last question of the battery, it outperformed much
1:18:34
Speaker 4: better when you did it at the last because people
1:18:36
Speaker 4: have fatigue over the issue.
1:18:37
Speaker 5: They're burned out over it. They want to talk about
1:18:39
Speaker 5: something else.
1:18:40
Speaker 4: And to me, it's getting that public policy, those good
1:18:44
Speaker 4: accomplishments done, having a very effective strategy for talking about
1:18:48
Speaker 4: it and bring it home and let people know you,
1:18:50
Speaker 4: let them trust you.
1:18:51
Speaker 5: It's a little harder to do at a statewide.
1:18:53
Speaker 4: Level, but I think that if you have statewide folks
1:18:56
Speaker 4: who are really in touch with being able to connect
1:19:00
Speaker 4: on the pocketbook, being able to connect on infrastructure, being
1:19:04
Speaker 4: able to connect on healthcare and having a consistent, clear
1:19:08
Speaker 4: message about it, That consistency goes a long way to
1:19:11
Speaker 4: helping win elections.
1:19:13
Speaker 3: It's interesting what you said about the death of 1,000 cuts.
1:19:15
Speaker 3: One of the issues that's gotten a ton of attention
1:19:17
Speaker 3: both in the run-up to the election and then in
1:19:19
Speaker 3: the post-election analysis has been about schools, whether it's critical
1:19:23
Speaker 3: race theory or other objections to school curricula. We talked
1:19:28
Speaker 3: to a local activist right before the election on last
1:19:31
Speaker 3: Thursday's episode who said, not something she was hearing at
1:19:34
Speaker 3: the doors at all. What were you hearing about that?
1:19:36
Speaker 3: Do you think that played a big role, less of
1:19:38
Speaker 3: a role than people are saying?
1:19:39
Speaker 4: So here's the thing. I represent Western Prince William County
1:19:41
Speaker 4: in the city of Manassas Park. So the county I
1:19:43
Speaker 4: represent is directly south of Loudoun, but I do not
1:19:46
Speaker 4: have Loudoun County in my district. The Republicans went all
1:19:51
Speaker 4: in on everything they didn't like about Loudoun County for
1:19:53
Speaker 4: this election, right? And then they claim victory afterwards saying, well, look,
1:19:58
Speaker 4: we lost Loudoun County by less points than we otherwise
1:20:02
Speaker 4: should have That's a win for us. And I go,
1:20:04
Speaker 4: hold on a second, timeout. Number one, Ed Gillespie actually
1:20:07
Speaker 4: beat Mark Warner in 2014 in the U.S. Senate race
1:20:10
Speaker 4: in Loudoun County. Number two, they have a countywide elected
1:20:13
Speaker 4: Republican sheriff, for example. Loudoun County can and will vote
1:20:17
Speaker 4: Republican under right circumstances. And had that message been as
1:20:22
Speaker 4: effective as they thought it was going to be, my colleague,
1:20:25
Speaker 4: Wendy Gidaitis, who sits directly next to me, she's my
1:20:27
Speaker 4: seatmate on the House floor, would not have.
1:20:29
Speaker 5: Made it through this election. She won. She found a
1:20:32
Speaker 5: way to win.
1:20:33
Speaker 4: All of our other Democratic incumbents and the Democratic open
1:20:36
Speaker 4: seat for part of Loudoun that we had as well,
1:20:38
Speaker 4: all of them are returning. And they're returning with healthy,
1:20:41
Speaker 4: significant margins of victory. In some cases, with more than
1:20:44
Speaker 4: 60% of the vote. Had that issue out of Loudoun
1:20:48
Speaker 4: been as pertinent as it was made out to be
1:20:51
Speaker 4: in terms of voters, we would have felt it in
1:20:53
Speaker 4: the House of Delegates. It would have hit our people
1:20:57
Speaker 4: at the most local level because we would have been
1:21:00
Speaker 4: the people most directly associated with the.
1:21:02
Speaker 5: Community in that case.
1:21:03
Speaker 4: So that's the first thing I'm going to say is
1:21:05
Speaker 4: that was the margin down compared to 2020? Yes.
1:21:09
Speaker 5: But did it do as much damage as they think
1:21:11
Speaker 5: it did in Loudoun? No.
1:21:13
Speaker 4: What it did do was it gave them a straw
1:21:16
Speaker 4: man and it gave them a boogie man that they
1:21:18
Speaker 4: could take to other areas of the Commonwealth and have
1:21:21
Speaker 4: something to run against. Don't you not like this one
1:21:25
Speaker 4: thing here? Don't you not like this issue that we're manufacturing?
1:21:29
Speaker 4: and that we're going to create faux outrage over to
1:21:31
Speaker 4: make sure that you're really mad about, because even though
1:21:34
Speaker 4: the people in Loudoun County didn't agree with our assessment
1:21:37
Speaker 4: on this, we still think that other people in other
1:21:39
Speaker 4: areas are going to see the news coverage of it,
1:21:42
Speaker 4: and they're going to say, oh my God, this is
1:21:43
Speaker 4: what Democrats want to do everywhere.
1:21:45
Speaker 5: Well, here's the thing.
1:21:45
Speaker 4: With our, you know, basically protecting trans kids in schools,
1:21:49
Speaker 4: you know, bills that we passed, that were passed with
1:21:51
Speaker 4: bipartisan support in both chambers, by the way, they've been
1:21:55
Speaker 4: adopted now by school boards all across the commonwealth. They're
1:21:58
Speaker 4: actually mandated to have to adopt them, but some of
1:22:01
Speaker 4: them haven't. Loudoun's doing the same thing as these other ones,
1:22:05
Speaker 4: but because of its proximity to Washington, D.C., to having
1:22:10
Speaker 4: what was seen as a suburban battleground area, it became
1:22:14
Speaker 4: a political hot point, which when you're dealing with education
1:22:18
Speaker 4: and your kids and everything like that, when you overly
1:22:21
Speaker 4: politicize that, you're creating a hostile work environment for people
1:22:24
Speaker 4: to actually even go to school and to go to
1:22:26
Speaker 4: school board meetings then.
1:22:28
Speaker 5: That's not okay.
1:22:29
Speaker 4: And so long story short with this is I think
1:22:32
Speaker 4: that what we saw out of Loudoun, when they made
1:22:37
Speaker 4: that the central message of their campaign, maybe they got
1:22:40
Speaker 4: something out of it statewide, but it did not affect
1:22:43
Speaker 4: down ballot in terms of our House of Delegates candidates,
1:22:46
Speaker 4: which means that they're going to have to have a
1:22:47
Speaker 4: new message going into 2022.
1:22:50
Speaker 3: Well, that's fascinating. And once again, congratulations on your victory.
1:22:53
Speaker 3: And thank you for sharing this perspective with us. I
1:22:54
Speaker 3: know a lot of candidates around the country follow your
1:22:57
Speaker 3: model of how you were able to win in this
1:22:58
Speaker 3: very tough political environment.
1:23:01
Speaker 4: Well, thank you very kindly. And just the last things
1:23:03
Speaker 4: I would just want to mention on this. If you
1:23:05
Speaker 4: really focus, and this is my message to Democrats across
1:23:08
Speaker 4: the country.
1:23:08
Speaker 5: Yes. Yes, you can focus on pro-inclusion, pro-equality initiatives.
1:23:14
Speaker 4: In Virginia House of Delegates, you know, the General Assembly
1:23:17
Speaker 4: and our Democratic majority in the last two years, we
1:23:19
Speaker 4: adopted two dozen pro-LGBTQ equality bills. Not one person at
1:23:23
Speaker 4: the door threw that back in my face. that were
1:23:26
Speaker 4: everywhere I was going. And we won by a larger
1:23:29
Speaker 4: margin this year than I did in my first race
1:23:31
Speaker 4: in 2017 against a 26-year incumbent. So I'm saying that, yes,
1:23:35
Speaker 4: you can be pro inclusion and equality. And as you're
1:23:39
Speaker 4: doing that, your primary message that you're bringing out to
1:23:43
Speaker 4: people has to be concrete.
1:23:46
Speaker 5: Issues, such as concrete, such as infrastructure.
1:23:50
Speaker 4: You have to talk about issues that directly affect people's
1:23:54
Speaker 4: lives And as you're doing this, you've got to be
1:23:58
Speaker 4: of the mindset here that if you can talk to
1:24:01
Speaker 4: people about what is affecting their quality of life, whether it's,
1:24:04
Speaker 4: you know, in my case, fixing roads, bringing out more
1:24:07
Speaker 4: mass transit, ensuring more of my constituents have health insurance,
1:24:11
Speaker 4: making sure that above ground transmission lines in Gainesville and
1:24:15
Speaker 4: Haymarket aren't affecting people's property values, local environment, as well
1:24:20
Speaker 4: as all the other sort of stuff that we deal with.
1:24:22
Speaker 4: We voted to increase the standard deduction by 50%. These
1:24:25
Speaker 4: are things that we should have put a lot of
1:24:27
Speaker 4: money behind, a lot of attention, a lot of focal
1:24:30
Speaker 4: point emphasis and saying that this is what we were
1:24:33
Speaker 4: really good at. And there comes a point where if
1:24:36
Speaker 4: you don't emphasize that properly, even when it's been an
1:24:40
Speaker 4: emphasis of your work in the legislature, people aren't going
1:24:44
Speaker 4: to feel it. And you've got to let people know
1:24:46
Speaker 4: that you've done the right thing and that you've done
1:24:48
Speaker 4: it consistently.
1:24:49
Speaker 5: There's one thing that polling will show.
1:24:50
Speaker 4: Polling will always say abortion is what motivates people and X, Y,
1:24:53
Speaker 4: and Z. And that's a very important issue. Reproductive health
1:24:55
Speaker 4: care is very important. As a trans woman, my entire
1:24:58
Speaker 4: transition is dependent on reproductive freedom. At the same time,
1:25:02
Speaker 4: you've got to get people feeling it in their pocketbook.
1:25:05
Speaker 4: You've got to get people feeling it in terms of
1:25:06
Speaker 4: their health care and all these other day-to-day quality of
1:25:09
Speaker 4: life issues. Because if you don't, you're not going to
1:25:12
Speaker 4: inspire them to vote for your positive message as much
1:25:16
Speaker 4: as you're just trying to get them to be opposed
1:25:18
Speaker 4: to the other side. That's not healthy, and this is
1:25:20
Speaker 4: what we've.
1:25:20
Speaker 5: Got to do.
1:25:22
Speaker 3: That is incredibly insightful. And as I said, I hope
1:25:25
Speaker 3: everyone follows that advice. Thank you so much for joining
1:25:27
Speaker 3: us and we will talk to you again soon.
1:25:29
Speaker 5: Thank you.
1:25:31
Speaker 2: Thanks to Danica Rome for joining us, everyone. Enjoy your
1:25:34
Speaker 2: weekend and we'll talk to you next week.
1:25:36
Speaker 3: Bye everyone.
1:25:40
Speaker 2: Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive
1:25:42
Speaker 2: producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Andy Gardner Bernstein.
1:25:47
Speaker 2: Our producer is Haley Muse and Olivia Martinez is our
1:25:49
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