Latest / Pod Save America / “Transition to greatness!”

Transcript

“Transition to greatness!” · Pod Save America

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey guys!
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: On today's pod, I talked to Chuck Rocha, who ran
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: Latino outreach for Bernie Sanders and other Democratic groups about
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: 2020 and beyond. Before that, we'll talk about how outgoing
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: President Trump is consuming attention that should be focused on
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: the pandemic. and how President-elect Biden is planning to address
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: some of the country's biggest challenges with or without a
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: Democratic Senate. But first, to help make sure the President-elect
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: has a Democratic Senate, we have launched Adopt-A-State Georgia. Go
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: to votesaveamerica.com slash Georgia to find opportunities to donate, volunteer,
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: and elect John Ossoff and Reverend Raphael Warnock on January 5th.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: It's our last chance to take away Mitch McConnell's Senate majority.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: Thousands and thousands of you have already signed up, so
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: thank you. If you can donate, we would love that.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: To split, you can go to votesaveamerica.com slash getmitch and
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: split your donation between Ossoff and Warnock. They need the cash,
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: so to organizations on the ground, this is very, very important.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: Thank you to everyone who's signed up to help. We
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: could use more of you.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Finally, love it.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: How was the show this weekend?
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Great, love it or leave it. That's it.
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: No, it was great. I talked to Michael Beschloss about
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: Trump's unprecedented anti-democratic murmurings since he lost the election. I
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: talked to Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania, John Fetterman. And then
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: in the monologue, Naomi Ekperigan, returning champion, was there. It
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: was hilarious. So check it out.
• 1:54
  Speaker 4: Remember early on when you guys would make fun of
• 1:56
  Speaker 4: me and call me Tommy Beschloss if I dared to
• 1:59
  Speaker 4: mention an event before the year 2008?
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good reminder to use that.
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: I forgot about that.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: I can't believe you had two guests who were so similar,
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: like Michael Beschloss and John Fetterman.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, created some weather.
• 2:12
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: All right, let's get to the news. So there are
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: two major stories competing for media attention right now. First
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: story is the pandemic, which is more out of control
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: than it's ever been. Every day brings record cases, record hospitalizations.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: We're back over a thousand dead per day. Some healthcare
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: systems are at capacity, especially in the Midwest. It's only
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: getting worse as people spend more time indoors for the
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: winter and prepare to travel for the holidays. Meanwhile, other
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: stories about Donald Trump, who has completely given up on
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: the pandemic in order to focus exclusively on trying to
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: make people believe the lie that the election he lost
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: was rigged against him. Trump did seem to acknowledge in
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: a Sunday morning tweet that Biden won, but then quickly
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: followed up by tweeting, I concede nothing and has spent
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: the rest of yesterday and this morning ranting and raving
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: about his usual nonsense. Tommy, at what point is it
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: OK to stop paying so much attention to everything Donald
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: Trump says and does, particularly since he refuses to accept
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: the reality that he lost?
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: Two weeks ago, three weeks ago.
• 3:17
  Speaker 4: I mean.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: Here's a thought experiment.
• 3:19
  Speaker 5: 2015?
• 3:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: Here's a thought experiment for everybody. Would be good.
• 3:24
  Speaker 4: Imagine if ISIS was executing 1,000 Americans a day. And
• 3:28
  Speaker 4: in response, the president did nothing. He watched TV, he golfed,
• 3:32
  Speaker 4: and he tweeted. And then imagine if 90% of those
• 3:36
  Speaker 4: ISIS attacks could be stopped by putting a tiny piece
• 3:40
  Speaker 4: of fabric on your face. That's the reality we're living in.
• 3:43
  Speaker 4: There's a daily massacre happening. of American citizens. And yet
• 3:46
  Speaker 4: the news of the day is being driven by these pathetic,
• 3:50
  Speaker 4: last gas tweets from Trump, where he pretends that there's
• 3:54
  Speaker 4: some way to overturn the election. So I think we
• 3:57
  Speaker 4: have to take these anti-democratic threats from Trump seriously, because
• 4:00
  Speaker 4: there is no doubt in my mind that he would
• 4:03
  Speaker 4: usurp power and stage a coup if he could figure
• 4:06
  Speaker 4: out a way to do it. But I think it's
• 4:08
  Speaker 4: time for the press and for Washington generally to just
• 4:12
  Speaker 4: break its addiction to Trump outrage and focus more on
• 4:15
  Speaker 4: the much bigger problems we have to deal with. Not
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: every question has to be a response to something Trump
• 4:21
  Speaker 4: did or said that day, which is what the Sunday
• 4:23
  Speaker 4: shows have been for four years. And that includes the pandemic,
• 4:25
  Speaker 4: both the immediate mitigation and the need to pass a
• 4:28
  Speaker 4: coronavirus relief package. a bunch of states are about to
• 4:31
  Speaker 4: go into lockdown again to prevent more deaths. Like we
• 4:33
  Speaker 4: need to figure out a way to help those people.
• 4:35
  Speaker 4: It includes more coverage of climate. There's a category four
• 4:38
  Speaker 4: or five hurricane barreling down on Nicaragua right now as
• 4:41
  Speaker 4: we speak. That comes at the end of Atlantic hurricane
• 4:44
  Speaker 4: season with the most named storms ever, right? So like
• 4:48
  Speaker 4: Trump's a lame duck. The stench of loser is wafting
• 4:51
  Speaker 4: off of him. It is getting stronger every single day.
• 4:54
  Speaker 4: We just can't let him be our assignment editor anymore,
• 4:56
  Speaker 4: which is what he is tried to be, it's the
• 4:57
  Speaker 4: only part of the job he really enjoys and has
• 4:59
  Speaker 4: been doing for, what, four years now.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, like, his legal challenges are failing in
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: just about every case. There was an AP story over
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: the weekend about how Republican legislators in some of the
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: critical battleground states have said they're not going to go
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: along with his fucking harebrained plan to send a slate
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: of Trump electors. Like, the coup attempt is just about over.
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: He's failing at it. I like turned off Trump notifications
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: finally for a new tweets. And it's funny because like you,
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: you know, you spend all day not paying much attention
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: to Twitter as I did yesterday. And last night, you know,
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: like I'm going through Trump's tweets and I was just like, wow,
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: he sounds like a really fucking desperate, sad loser. And
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: I don't really care anymore.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: Love it.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: What do you think?
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: I mean, look, I think, um, I feel as though
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: we are learning this lesson a bit late in the
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: Trump cycle, which is that his words don't matter. They
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: never really have, right? He's all over the place. It's
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: just such a sad part of our reality, right? Trump tweets,
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: Joe Biden won because of a bunch of lies. And
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: everyone's like, ah, he said Joe Biden won.
• 6:07
  Speaker 5: That's cool.
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: Can we use that for an hour? Right.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: Got him.
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: And then, you know, it's read to Ron Klain on
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: Meet the Press who responds, well, it doesn't really matter
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: what Trump says because it's not really up to him,
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: which is, of course, correct.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: But I do.
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: Think maybe now at long last, we can finally decide
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: to focus on Trump's actions as the only piece of
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: what Trump can do that actually matters. And what matters
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: is not the kind of stages of grief Trump is
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: going through on Twitter. What matters is what is his
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: administration doing or not doing? And so you can basically
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: just disregard Trump, the Twitter persona, Trump, the the mouthpiece
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: and you can just focus on whether or not Joe
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: Biden is getting his briefings, which he is not, whether
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: or not the coronavirus task force that Joe Biden as
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: president elect has assembled is able to communicate with the administration.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: It's not.
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: They're forced to go around the administration to talk to
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: CVS and Walgreens directly, to talk to governors, to find
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: out if there's anything they need to be prepared to
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: do about the supply chain of vaccines because they don't
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: have access to the resources that they should have from
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: the transition. They're not allowed to communicate officially with members
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: of the administration, with members of, you know, with Fauci
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: or with HHS or any of the other agencies that
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: are working on this. So to me, I would just
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: disregard Donald Trump as a person and really just focus
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: entirely on what the administration is or is not doing.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: Tommy, is there anything the incoming Biden administration can do
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: here in this sort of transition purgatory around COVID? Or
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: is there anything else they should be doing that they're
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: not already doing?
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: I don't think so. No. I mean, they're not in power.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure what the recommendation would be.
• 7:51
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's a, you know, we always used to
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: say this during the transition, right? There's one president at
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: a time. Joe Biden is not the president right now.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: I do think like, you know, as they get set up,
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: like more, you know, daily briefings about COVID with his
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: task force, you know, he can keep talking about the
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: steps he's going to take once in office. He sort
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: of did. He gave a speech last week, which was
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: a great start on this. Yeah. But it's a unique
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: situation in that we are in the middle of an emergency.
• 8:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think he should start by changing
• 8:19
  Speaker 4: his Twitter tandal to Joe wear a mask Biden and
• 8:22
  Speaker 4: then take pictures with a telephoto lens to scold people
• 8:25
  Speaker 4: he sees gathering in groups.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: I'm just kidding.
• 8:28
  Speaker 4: I think all that self-righteous scolding was probably counterproductive. I mean,
• 8:31
  Speaker 4: I think what Joe Biden and his team could do
• 8:33
  Speaker 4: would be to offer helpful, actionable advice. Like, here's what
• 8:37
  Speaker 4: I've noticed in my own life. From March until August
• 8:39
  Speaker 4: of last year, my quarantine was very strict. I saw
• 8:42
  Speaker 4: a tiny group of people We basically only saw each
• 8:44
  Speaker 4: other in houses or backyards, mostly with a few exceptions.
• 8:47
  Speaker 4: And then in August, I took a couple of days off.
• 8:49
  Speaker 4: I traveled up to the Santa Barbara area with my
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: wife for a little vacation. And we were walking around
• 8:55
  Speaker 4: town and we saw senior citizens out everywhere living their lives.
• 8:58
  Speaker 4: It was this weird realization that there is a scary
• 9:03
  Speaker 4: in-your-house quarantine reality that is all cable news and Twitter threads.
• 9:06
  Speaker 4: And you can sometimes just miss the fact that lots
• 9:09
  Speaker 4: of people either are living their lives or have no
• 9:12
  Speaker 4: choice but to be out because they have to work.
• 9:14
  Speaker 4: And I'm not saying that like moving on is the
• 9:17
  Speaker 4: right answer. What I'm saying is I think the conversation
• 9:19
  Speaker 4: has to be about risk mitigation and not about like
• 9:22
  Speaker 4: lockdown and draconian things. And it has to be proportional
• 9:25
  Speaker 4: and it has to be actionable. So that obviously starts
• 9:27
  Speaker 4: with masks and encouraging people to wear masks. But I
• 9:30
  Speaker 4: also think, you know, short of shutting down everything, You
• 9:33
  Speaker 4: could start to piecemeal shut things down, like in-room dining
• 9:37
  Speaker 4: or bars, etc. Obviously, that is brutal for the proprietors
• 9:41
  Speaker 4: of these places and has to be coupled with some
• 9:42
  Speaker 4: sort of economic relief for restaurants or bars or others.
• 9:46
  Speaker 4: But the messaging was so fucked up on the first
• 9:48
  Speaker 4: lockdown that I don't think you're going to convince people
• 9:51
  Speaker 4: to do it again, especially when the White House refuses
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: to even try.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: What are some of the challenges, Lovett, that President-elect Biden
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: will face again? this pandemic under control once the transition
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: actually happens?
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: So I think you have to talk about, let's say,
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: the politics, the culture, and then the policy. What you
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: see in terms of what they're doing on policy is
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: they have they've put out, obviously, a cogent plan, which
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: is a huge, you know, a low bar to clear.
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: But they've gone well above that bar.
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: They have a plan.
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: You kind of reading between the lines in what the
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: what they're trying to do right now is you seem
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: to see a team that is trying to find out
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: what has been fucked up that will make getting the
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: vaccine out harder. And what would they be doing right
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: now to try to expedite the manufacturing and the distribution
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: and the complicated the supply chain questions? What would they
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: be doing to make that work better now if they
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: were in power so they can be prepared to take
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: those kinds of steps? I think on policy, they've been right. Obviously,
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: we need a relief bill. And Tommy, you're right. The
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: messaging has been completely fucked up. And at this point,
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: people aren't willing to do a lockdown. However, at this point,
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: I try to imagine what it would have been like.
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: Forget the absence of the kind of evil anti-leadership from Trump. Like,
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: or just the absence of that would have been an improvement.
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: But if there had been a consistent message of taking
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: this seriously as being bipartisan, if we had had that
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: from a Republican or a Democratic president from the beginning.
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: Right now, you could imagine a president in concert with
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: governors across the country basically saying, I know this is terrible.
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: I know how long this has been. I know how
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: much you want to see your families. We're so close
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: to the end.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: We're so close to the end. We are potentially weeks
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: away from the first round of these vaccines going to
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: high risk people and frontline responders. We are within a
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: few months of being able to vaccinate on a mass
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: scale if everything goes according to plan. And And at
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: that exact moment, when what we really should do is
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: kind of send everybody a message like, stay home. I
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: know that these lockdowns are terrible. We should have paid
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: people to not work. We should have paid people to
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: not have to run their restaurants. We should have paid
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: people to not have to do these kinds of things
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: and just told people we're so close to the end,
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: just stay home, just make it to the end, do
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: your duty. But instead we're in this kind of kinetic,
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: like bouncing back and forth. Some governors say one thing,
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: others say another. There's complete inconsistency. It takes hospitals being
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: nearly overrun for some conservative and some Republican governors to
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: finally take it seriously. So I think that that's sort
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: of an epic tragedy, obviously. But in terms of the cultural...
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: job of president, I mean, that's the biggest thing that
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: he should do right now. Tommy, you said it. The
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: job of president in terms of being a moral leader
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: for the country is open.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: Do the job.
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: That's the one place Donald Trump conceded years ago. That
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: job's open.
• 12:44
  Speaker 5: Take that one. He's not trying to keep that one.
• 12:46
  Speaker 4: The challenges are winter, the Republican Party, And Mitch McConnell
• 12:49
  Speaker 4: refusing to do anything to help the economy with a
• 12:52
  Speaker 4: COVID relief bill. But yeah, I agree. Initially, it was
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: like 15 days to stop the spread. And then it
• 12:57
  Speaker 4: was like, and dot, dot, dot. And then 15 days
• 13:01
  Speaker 4: to lock down indefinitely because we don't know what's going
• 13:02
  Speaker 4: to happen next. And now there is this vaccine light
• 13:04
  Speaker 4: at the end of the tunnel. And my God, it's
• 13:06
  Speaker 4: unconscionable to let people die in this window.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: I mean, I do think that the part of the
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: fucked up public messaging is a consequence of policy choices.
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: which is that like, and we've seen this here in
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: Los Angeles, like, you hear Mayor Garcetti or our public
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: health commissioner be talking about like, don't see even close
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: friends and family.
• 13:28
  Speaker 5: It's absurd.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: Cancel all gatherings. It's ludicrous messaging. And then you see
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: restaurants are open, gyms are open, right? And the reason
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: that those businesses are open is because there's a huge
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: economic cost to this. And we decided not to pay restaurants, bars, gyms,
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: places that like really you can only... you know, you need,
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: you need to be indoors. We decided not to pay
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: them to not to stay home and to not have customers.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: And so like the fact that we chose not to
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: reimburse these businesses means that there was more pressure to
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: keep them open, which fucks up the public messaging again.
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: I agree with that, except that it's been particularly egregious
• 14:09
  Speaker 4: in LA when you had Democratic officials, Garcetti, the governor, others,
• 14:14
  Speaker 4: like criticizing people for going to the beach, right? There
• 14:17
  Speaker 4: were very dumb early messages about like outdoor gatherings.
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: Totally.
• 14:21
  Speaker 4: Like condescending and sneering at people being like, don't get
• 14:25
  Speaker 4: together with your family, yada, yada, yada.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: And it's like, no, stop with that shit. That is over.
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: It didn't work then, it won't now. Give me specific, concise,
• 14:33
  Speaker 4: actionable things that are practical that I can implement in
• 14:36
  Speaker 4: my own life that might actually help mitigate this thing
• 14:39
  Speaker 4: at scale. But like, hey, telling everyone that Thanksgiving and
• 14:41
  Speaker 4: Christmas is over, it's not gonna work.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: It's just not gonna work.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: Well, the problem is because like at the, because of
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: that messaging being fucked up, now when it seems like
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: it's the worst emergency yet, people are going to be
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: less likely to take that advice. That's the problem is
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: like now I've seen people who were not very alarmist
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: back in the spring and summer be very alarmist right now.
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: Like I have never seen so many public health experts, epidemiologists,
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: everyone else say that like, this is seriously, we are
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: about to go into a really, really bad place. And
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: I worry that a lot of the public won't take
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: that as seriously because of how the messaging wasn't as
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: good in the spring.
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: Well, you know, part of this is though, part of this,
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: obviously like we keep coming back to this, but so
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: there are going to be mistakes, right? We've never been
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: in a pandemic like this before. There was a, there
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: was a big mistake made on masks early on. It
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: was surfaces, not airborne. Then we find out that Basically,
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: Trump and Bob Woodward were kibitzing about how it was airborne,
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: but the rest of us didn't know. But there was
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: a deeper mistake, I think, that was never rectified. And
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: it was that the whole posture from the federal government
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: to local government was, we need to pause life for
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: a very brief period of time, and then things will
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: be okay. And there was never a moment where anyone,
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: because there was no leadership from the White House, And
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: there is no one who could fill this vacuum other
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: than people like Anthony Fauci, who carefully measured how critical
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: he could be of the administration's failures. That basically said
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: we're now transitioning from a short period of time to
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: try to control this to the fact that it is
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: now widely spread and in our communities. And it is
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: about actually finding a way to live sustainably. in a
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: way that prevents the disease from spreading, which is like,
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: to your point, Tommy, like we went from like criticizing
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: people to being on the beaches, which felt incredibly draconian
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: and about being outside, which we now know is like
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: really safe. And by the way, part of what makes
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: this fucking sustainable is being able to go outside and
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: be six foot apart from somebody you care about and
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: having a conversation and catching up. There is never a
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: moment where they said, here are the things that you
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: can do to make your life sustainable and okay during
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: this time. And so now we come to the holidays,
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: everyone is burnt out. Nobody knows exactly what's right. Everybody's
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: been kind of thrown to the wolves of their own
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: version of risk mitigation. And it's actually never been worse.
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: It is less safe to go out of your house
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: in most of the country right now than it was
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: in March or April when we were at our most draconian.
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: And that inconsistency isn't addressed. It isn't part of the conversation.
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: Nobody really wants to be honest about what's happening.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And back to our original conversation about sort of
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: news coverage. I think for casual news consumers, a lot
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: of coverage about a very dangerous, deadly spike could help
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: shape behavior and stop the spread. You know, public health
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: is obviously primarily about communication and education. And I think,
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: you know, if all we're talking about is Donald Trump
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: and his crazy tweets, that doesn't happen as much. So
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: I think that's one thing that could help the situation.
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: And the other big thing that could help the situation
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: is a COVID relief bill. So negotiations over the relief
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: bill in Congress still haven't gone anywhere. Biden, Schumer, and
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: Pelosi all back the House's two-plus-trillion-dollar bill. McConnell won't go
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: for anything over $ 500 billion. And then on Saturday, Trump
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: urged Congress to pass a, quote, big and focused bill
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden. Here's Donald Trump again. Tommy, what
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: are the chances of passing a COVID relief bill in
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: the lame duck session, and how much should Democrats be
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: willing to compromise?
• 18:20
  Speaker 4: I mean— I have literally no idea what the chances are.
• 18:23
  Speaker 4: It is impossible to follow where anyone is on this.
• 18:27
  Speaker 4: I know that the difference between the McConnell proposal, which
• 18:30
  Speaker 4: was like half a trillion, and the largest Pelosi proposal,
• 18:36
  Speaker 4: which was three trillion, seems very difficult to surmount.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: But I don't know.
• 18:40
  Speaker 4: I'm hopeful maybe that these guys will find some sort
• 18:43
  Speaker 4: of responsibility, Gene.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 18:46
  Speaker 4: We're in a very tough place once again, which is
• 18:49
  Speaker 4: you don't want to pass something that is woefully insufficient
• 18:53
  Speaker 4: to meet the moment and then have Mitch McConnell spend
• 18:55
  Speaker 4: the next six months to a year saying, no, we
• 18:57
  Speaker 4: already did something. I'm not going to pass anything else
• 19:00
  Speaker 4: in a naked attempt to sabotage the economy in the
• 19:04
  Speaker 4: Biden administration. But I do think the obvious public policy
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: answer right now would be to pass something that gave
• 19:11
  Speaker 4: people money for at least six months that also led
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: to the closure of indoor dining and in bars, in
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: things that are high risk until we get to a vaccine.
• 19:22
  Speaker 4: It seems like the obvious thing to do. The fact
• 19:24
  Speaker 4: that the two parties can't come together to pass that
• 19:28
  Speaker 4: shows primarily how broken the Republican Party is, even in
• 19:30
  Speaker 4: the face of a pandemic, but also just like why
• 19:33
  Speaker 4: people have all but given up on politics in this country.
• 19:36
  Speaker 4: Because again, it seems very obvious what we have to do.
• 19:39
  Speaker 4: And the fact that we can't seem to meet the
• 19:40
  Speaker 4: moment is absurd.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: It's absurd.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: I think I would be more open to a compromise
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: than I even was. before the election at this point
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: on behalf of Democrats, because I sort of worry that
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: you don't get anything done in the lame duck, which again,
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: we have no idea if we can. But if we don't,
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: we could get to a Biden administration where Mitch McConnell
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: is just going to block everything. And maybe Mitch McConnell
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: has more of a chance to pass something with Donald
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: Trump as president than Joe Biden as president just because
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: of his politics. But I think that people are struggling
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: and they're going to be struggling even more as the
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: economy gets worse because the pandemic gets worse. And I
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: would be sort of for passing something rather than nothing
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: in this lame duck if it's possible. But what do
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: you think?
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: So first of all, it's actually really hard to totally
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: understand what, the transition from a Donald Trump to a
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: Joe Biden presidency does to Mitch McConnell's calculus. Donald Trump
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: is a non-factor right now. He's just not, he'll sign,
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: if something passes, he'll sign it. He's not going to
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: veto something passed by the Congress. And, you know, he
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: can claim he wants this or wants that. But like,
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: you know, we talked about this before the election that
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: Mitch McConnell was getting away with murder, allowing this to
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: become Donald Trump's problem when he has been the main
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: obstacle for the past six months. you know, the only,
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: you know, politically, like what, what are the, what are
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: the places where we could see ramifications of this quickly?
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: It's Georgia. I don't know what they are. I don't
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: know what happens if you pass it. I also think
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: it shouldn't be a concern.
• 21:12
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: I'm kind of where you are now. It's like, you know,
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: the midterm elections are now two years away. The politics
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: really have, have changed. I'm kind of where you are. Like,
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: you know, I understand the posture that, that Democrats are taking.
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: I think we should get the biggest deal humanly possible, but,
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: but man, I mean, it's just, it's just hard to
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: keep going month after month without getting relief to people.
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: It's just, it's horrible.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: The question just is, what is it? You know what
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: I mean? Like, what is the bill?
• 21:39
  Speaker 4: If it's liability for businesses that stay open, a little
• 21:43
  Speaker 4: bit of relief to states or for hospital systems that
• 21:46
  Speaker 4: does nothing, and like some more money for the PPP
• 21:50
  Speaker 4: program that wasn't particularly effective. I just think that's insufficient.
• 21:54
  Speaker 4: I mean, something is better than nothing, but man, that's
• 21:58
  Speaker 4: a tough bargain to have to swallow. I would also
• 22:00
  Speaker 4: say like, Trump, again, Trump is a non-factor. He's given
• 22:04
  Speaker 4: up on the job of president. But I wonder if
• 22:06
  Speaker 4: he also understands that he might be president if Mitch
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: McConnell had worked with Pelosi and passed another significant coronavirus
• 22:13
  Speaker 4: relief bill. It's pretty clear from the anecdotal evidence from
• 22:16
  Speaker 4: the exit polling, et cetera, that people liked getting a
• 22:19
  Speaker 4: check with Donald Trump's name on it. And they screwed
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: up massively by not more seriously pursuing something that would
• 22:26
  Speaker 4: have been significant in advance of the election.
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: Well, I sort of wonder if it's, you know, you
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: could play to Trump's ego a little bit, give him whatever,
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: give him a win on the way out the door
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: since he thinks he's fucking, you know, going to run
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: again in 2024. So maybe that's sort of an incentive.
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: I think to your point, Tommy, about what's in the bill, like. look,
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: you need to have some kind of unemployment relief, an
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: extension of unemployment relief. You need to have some money
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: for state and local governments, even though I'm sure it
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: will be woefully insufficient for what the Democrats proposed versus
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: what they will get from Mitch. And I think the
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: PPP program did have some success after a while, but
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: you're right. I think unemployment and sort of state and
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: local relief are the most important parts of that bill.
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: One just other piece of this that I don't, I
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: feel like I know enough about, which is I'd be
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: curious what smart people who are thinking about this imagine
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: is going to happen when we get to certain kind
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: of must-pass bills as the year goes on, because we
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: will finally have an actual president. I mean, it's not
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: just that Donald Trump was a Republican. He was an
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: absentee president for so much of the time that a
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: lot of this was outsourced to Congress. But what happens
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: when you have a Democratic president who's part of these negotiations,
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: who is using, you know, budget negotiations, government funding negotiations?
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: He has a drink with Mitch McConnell and then it
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: gets fixed.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: It's all solved.
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: I mean, look, look, we have said this for years.
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: It is time. No, you, Joe Biden, get a drink
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: with Mitch McConnell.
• 23:51
  Speaker 5: It's time.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: Get that drink.
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about Biden's transition, which we're going to try
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: to make a regular feature here through the inauguration. The
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: pandemic and the recession are the two most immediate issues
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: the incoming administration will face. But they're also going to
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: try to make quick progress on several others, including climate change, immigration,
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: potentially student debt. How much progress Biden can make, of course,
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: depends on whether or not he has a Democratic Senate,
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: which will be decided by the two Georgia Senate runoffs
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: in January. But let's start with climate. Tommy, what could
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: Biden do about climate change on his own and what
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: would he need a Democratic Senate for?
• 24:33
  Speaker 4: So there was a great piece in The Washington Post
• 24:36
  Speaker 4: about how Biden is planning to set up his entire
• 24:39
  Speaker 4: government to tackle climate change. And so what that means
• 24:42
  Speaker 4: is you don't just have the EPA involved and you say, hey, EPA,
• 24:46
  Speaker 4: you're handling climate. You tell the State Department, you tell
• 24:49
  Speaker 4: the Treasury Department, you tell Commerce that you have to
• 24:52
  Speaker 4: figure out actions and things you can do to address climate.
• 24:55
  Speaker 4: And they have a big plan that helps you work
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: through all of this. So that's a good thing because
• 24:58
  Speaker 4: to your question about Congress, the odds of passing a
• 25:02
  Speaker 4: big cap and trade bill through a Republican Senate are
• 25:06
  Speaker 4: next to zero. It might even be hard if we
• 25:07
  Speaker 4: won both Georgia seats. So Biden is going to have
• 25:10
  Speaker 4: to figure out how to use executive orders and executive
• 25:12
  Speaker 4: action to do it. Some of the recommendations that have
• 25:16
  Speaker 4: been put forward to him include creating a White House
• 25:19
  Speaker 4: National Climate Council, which is sort of like the Domestic
• 25:22
  Speaker 4: Policy Council or the National Economic Council within the White House.
• 25:25
  Speaker 4: You make that a very senior that speaks to the
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: importance of the task. You could establish a carbon bank
• 25:33
  Speaker 4: with the USDA and that would pay, you could pay
• 25:36
  Speaker 4: farmers basically and forest owners to store carbon in their
• 25:40
  Speaker 4: soils and lands. You could use the Department of Transportation
• 25:43
  Speaker 4: to accelerate the purchase of electric vehicles and just use
• 25:46
  Speaker 4: the purchasing power of the government. There was a great
• 25:49
  Speaker 4: op-ed last week by the former Secretary of the Navy,
• 25:52
  Speaker 4: Ray Nabus, who actually tried to change the Pentagon and
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: do more on climate when he was at the Navy.
• 25:59
  Speaker 4: But he pointed out in this op-ed that the Department
• 26:02
  Speaker 4: of Defense uses more fossil fuels than any other organization
• 26:05
  Speaker 4: on Earth. So there's ways within the government that you
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: can implement things. You can roll back Trump-era regulations that
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: made cars less fuel-efficient. you could roll back ways they
• 26:15
  Speaker 4: allowed more oil and gas exploration or Trump allowed companies
• 26:18
  Speaker 4: just to like pour methane into the atmosphere. You can
• 26:21
  Speaker 4: fix that. There's the international piece of this as well.
• 26:24
  Speaker 4: Like he'll get back into the Paris Climate Accords on
• 26:26
  Speaker 4: day one. A bunch of his Biden's early calls with
• 26:29
  Speaker 4: European leaders have focused on negotiating a stronger agreement through Paris.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: And that's critical, right?
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: Because only 15% of global emissions come from the US.
• 26:39
  Speaker 4: The rest are abroad. You have to deal with all
• 26:41
  Speaker 4: of that if you actually want to deal with climate. Now,
• 26:43
  Speaker 4: the scary thing is the courts and what they may
• 26:46
  Speaker 4: or may not strike down when it comes to regulations,
• 26:48
  Speaker 4: but we'll cross that bridge when we get there.
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems like the two biggest levers they have
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: are sort of the purchasing power of the federal government
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: and just the federal government in general, the cars they buy,
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: the buildings that we have, right? Like that you can
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: do a lot without Congress to sort of reshape what
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: the federal government does. And then In 2007, the Supreme
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: Court ruled that the Clean Air Act applied to carbon emissions.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: And so that means the EPA has the power to
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: regulate them. So there's a lot you could do there.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: But again, the big challenge is the courts right now
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: are not necessarily friendly to the executive branch regulating a
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: lot of things on its own without Congress, to say
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: the least, to say the least.
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: Tommy talked about going through different parts of the government.
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: The Defense Department, recognizes that climate change is a threat
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: in their, you know, look at like long term planning,
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: they acknowledge that one of the biggest risks to facilities
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: to the security of the country is climate change and
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: the instability could cause as climate change has been internalized by,
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: you know, the progressive movement, certainly, but industry as well, right?
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: Insurance companies understand that climate change is a real threat
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: when they when they model out what they're going to
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: charge people in flood zones and storm areas, right? For example,
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: you know, David Roberts, who's been a great climate writer,
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: he wrote about how the presidency has an extraordinary amount
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: of power around systemic risk to the economy through the Dodd-Frank.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: Act, right?
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: Well, climate change is a tremendous systemic risk to the economy.
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: And so I think one other piece of this is
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: just what I would like to see is just an
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: administration that is honest about the threat posed by climate change,
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: which demands that you use all the levers of the presidency,
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: maybe in creative and experimental ways, especially when we're going
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: to have to throw a bunch of shit against the
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: wall to see what Amy Coney Barrett thinks is originalist,
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: you know? So.
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: No, I was going to say like creative and ambitious,
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: and then the court will strike down what it strikes down.
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: But like, you got to just, you got to move.
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: And look, this is, I want to talk about immigration.
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: This is sort of what happened to us on immigration
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: is how long did it take the Obama administration to
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: finally take an executive action on DACA, on the Dreamers
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: to reprioritize deportations didn't happen until the second term. And
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: a lot of it was because a lot of lawyers
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: and a lot of policy people say, oh, I don't
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: know if we have the authority to do this or
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: we're not sure. And the lesson is, like you said, Levitt,
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: you sort of just try everything, see what the courts
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: strike down and what they don't strike down, it's a win.
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: But you can't really wait on this kind of stuff.
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: What do you think on immigration, Levitt, the Biden folks
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: can do both with Congress and without Congress?
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's worth noting too that I think today, as
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: we're recording this, a court in New York ruled that
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: acting Chad Wolf at the Department of Homeland Security is
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: not technically authorized to make the decisions he's making around DACA.
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: So the decision to create DACA that has been moving
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: through the courts for years, that was contentious, that was
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: attacked for being illegal by conservatives, and that is even
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: recognized as being a stretch for presidential power has kind
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: of survived to this point, despite the onslaught that the
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: Republican administration waged against it, though largely it survived thanks
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: to the incompetence of the administration and their reasoning they
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: offer to the court. But that said, they can immediately
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: protect the dreamers. They can immediately suspend the Muslim ban.
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: They can immediately move to reverse some of the Stephen
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: Miller policies around refugees. They can immediately halt deportations of
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: everyone except violent offenders. There's a whole host of things
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: that they can do on immigration. On day one, it's
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: a lot of reversing the you know, nativist policies that
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: Stephen Miller and Donald Trump have put forward, but they
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: also have some places where I think they can move
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: things forward too.
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: Tommy, what about you? What do you think?
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 30:33
  Speaker 4: Listen, Biden is going to erase everything Stephen Miller ever did.
• 30:38
  Speaker 4: You can't undo the damage.
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: That is permanent.
• 30:40
  Speaker 4: But all of the immigration policies that they put forward
• 30:43
  Speaker 4: were pretty much through executive action and not through Congress.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: So Biden can unwind it.
• 30:47
  Speaker 4: So I'm very excited for someone on that administration to
• 30:51
  Speaker 4: to write an op-ed that says, Stephen Miller, you are canceled,
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: you are erased, you are gone. Yeah, so like, you know,
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: Lovett's got the big ones, DACA, the Muslim ban. You
• 31:00
  Speaker 4: can get rid of the public charge rule that basically
• 31:03
  Speaker 4: allowed the U.S. to discriminate against people from coming to
• 31:06
  Speaker 4: the U.S. based on whether they might conceivably fall on
• 31:09
  Speaker 4: hard economic times in the future and need, you know, assistance.
• 31:13
  Speaker 4: The list goes on and on. Um, but yeah, it's,
• 31:16
  Speaker 4: it's a place to be. And obviously family separations.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: Family separation.
• 31:19
  Speaker 4: Done, right?
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: Of course.
• 31:20
  Speaker 5: Sorry. No, no, no.
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: Of course.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: I mean, get rid of it forever.
• 31:23
  Speaker 4: But like, look, you could also put decent human beings
• 31:25
  Speaker 4: in charge of these policies. That's a, that's going to
• 31:28
  Speaker 4: be a huge piece of this. Which is huge, which
• 31:30
  Speaker 4: is huge. I mean, I do think, you know, and
• 31:32
  Speaker 4: some of these.
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: On some of what Trump did on both climate and
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: the environment and immigration, one challenge is, and I know
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: the public charge rule is one of them, it's actually
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: going to take some time to undo them because you
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: have to go through this like fucking regulatory process. And
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: Trump really fucked it up so bad that it's going
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: to take a couple of years, but best to start immediately.
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: The real challenge on immigration is that the main policy
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: objective is that we've been trying for for the last 10,
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: 15 years, ever since Obama took office, which is a
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: pathway to citizenship for every undocumented immigrant in this country,
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: that you can only do with a Democratic Senate. And
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: that is just yet another reason to focus on winning
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: those two seats in Georgia, because without a Democratic Senate,
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: you will not be able to do anything on citizenship
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: for undocumented immigrants. You'll be able to protect the dreamers.
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: And that's about it. Tommy, are there other executive actions
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: that you were looking at that Biden can take quickly
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: and make some real progress with?
• 32:29
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, look, a few quick ones. And like,
• 32:32
  Speaker 4: this sounds simple, but it's a huge deal. Like just
• 32:34
  Speaker 4: putting competent people in charge is going to make such
• 32:37
  Speaker 4: a difference. I mean, watching Ron Klain do interviews over
• 32:41
  Speaker 4: the weekend was just such an unbelievable relief. It was like, oh,
• 32:44
  Speaker 4: a pandemic expert is now the chief of staff, especially
• 32:47
  Speaker 4: as we're reading stories about Trump's like, 30-year-old meat jockey
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: body guy who is now leading a purge of people
• 32:56
  Speaker 4: across agencies, despite the fact that he was fired for
• 32:59
  Speaker 4: gambling on the job or whatever in 2018 and came back.
• 33:02
  Speaker 4: Then Biden can undo a bunch of Trump-era policies.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: Wait, I'm sorry.
• 33:06
  Speaker 4: I'm sorry.
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: I don't mean to interrupt. I don't mean to interrupt.
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: I just have a quick follow-up question.
• 33:10
  Speaker 5: Did you say meat jockey?
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. That's worse than a meathead.
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: What's a meat jockey?
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: So like, you know... Chris Cuomo, basically.
• 33:21
  Speaker 4: Wow.
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 33:23
  Speaker 5: Cool.
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: Got it.
• 33:24
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Tommy. Thank you.
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: If you're posting your workouts on Instagram, if you're posting
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: a picture of yourself lifting weights, that's your meat.
• 33:33
  Speaker 4: Specifically deadlifting. You know what I mean? There's a hierarchy
• 33:36
  Speaker 4: of meathead workouts, right? Like the clean and jerk is
• 33:40
  Speaker 4: way up there. You know, like anything sort of glute forward.
• 33:46
  Speaker 5: Go on. I should stop.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: I had you aglut.
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: It's so stupid to post a deadlift. You look so stupid.
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: It doesn't look cool. Every deadlift looks exact.
• 33:55
  Speaker 5: Wow. A deadlift.
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: You leaned over.
• 33:57
  Speaker 5: No.
• 33:58
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: Well, no, no workout.
• 33:59
  Speaker 4: Instagram looks cool is the truth here.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: But look, I know.
• 34:03
  Speaker 4: So Trump had a bunch of policies that restricted reproductive choice, right?
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: There's the global gag rule that prevents nonprofits receiving USAID
• 34:10
  Speaker 4: from even discussing abortion.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: If they want federal funding, that can go away.
• 34:15
  Speaker 4: There's all this discussion now about Biden canceling up to.
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: $ 50, 000.
• 34:20
  Speaker 4: Worth of student loan debt. We talked about getting rid
• 34:23
  Speaker 4: of the ban on transgender people serving in the military,
• 34:27
  Speaker 4: get back in the Iran nuclear deal, and support for
• 34:30
  Speaker 4: the Saudi-led war in Yemen. I mean, there's a million
• 34:32
  Speaker 4: things that Biden can do quickly that will be enormously
• 34:37
  Speaker 4: beneficial that I'm very excited about. I just cannot wait
• 34:40
  Speaker 4: for this transition purgatory to end.
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: Love it.
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: You have some favorite executive actions you want to throw
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: in there?
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: No, I would also just add too on the lifting
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: of the trans ban for the military, that's something that
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: can happen right away. That's just something that they can
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: do pretty quickly without having to go through a long
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: process because it was already policy and it was already
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: kind of put through those paces. So I'm glad about that.
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: I'm trying to think if you missed any off the
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: top of my head. It's like, it's an article two quiz. Yeah.
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: I was gonna say, I have a few from our friend,
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: Elizabeth Warren, who wrote in the Washington Post in addition.
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: in addition to student loan debt, which she just wrote about.
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: There's also apparently the ability to bypass patents to bring
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: down some drug prices that you can do through executive authority,
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: or should, so she says. Health and safety standards, so
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: the companies can't force employees to work in unsafe conditions
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: during COVID. Um, one of the concerns of course, is
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: these liability protections we're talking about in the COVID relief bill,
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: but it seems like you might be able to do something, uh,
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: through executive action on that and minimum wage for all
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: federal contractors. Uh, you can increase it to $ 15 an
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: hour for anyone who contracts with the federal government, which
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: is a lot of people.
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: I'll add from Elizabeth Warren's list, which, uh, heaven for offend,
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: I briefly forgot, uh, and shame on me, shame on
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: all of us. Uh, but, but she also mentions. that
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: we can refocus on having antitrust regulators that actually care
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: about stopping monopolies and the effects of monopolies. I continue
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: to believe that that is one of the biggest and
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: most important challenges facing the country is the consolidation in industries,
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: not just in tech, which we talk about all the time,
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: but across our economy that has created a lot of
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: the inequality and inequities. And I think also just the
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: kind of lack of agency and control that has created
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: so many... sort of economic challenges, not just sort of
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: in a broad macroeconomic way, but in the way that
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: it impacts actual people's lives on a daily basis.
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: Box jumps too.
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: Box, oh, we're back to that. I know we're, it's
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: tough to pivot back and forth between workouts that are
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: acceptable to post on Instagram and executive actions that Joe
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: Biden takes.
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: None are acceptable.
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: That's what we do here in this podcast.
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: None are acceptable for Instagram.
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: That's what we do here. So, Lovett, we talked a
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: lot about the executive actions, but obviously there is like,
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: you know, much of Joe Biden's agenda requires legislation, which
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: requires a Democratic Congress. How does all of this affect
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: how Democrats should frame these Georgia races? Like how much
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: should Ossoff and Warnock talk about what's at stake nationally
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: versus sort of making the race about Georgia?
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I don't know what it means to
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: make the race... On policy, I think making it about
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: Georgia and making it national are not that different. I
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: do think it's, you know, given that we saw, you know,
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: places like Florida raise the minimum wage, we saw weed
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: expansion in Montana, we've seen Medicaid being popular in red
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: states across the country, I do think focusing on the
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: kind of policies we could have in a Democratic Senate,
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: maybe not focusing so much on the kind of political
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: process of who controls the Senate, but the fact that
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: if we win these two seats... We not only remove
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: two of the most corrupt members of the Senate, and
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: I do think corrupt is the word for them, right?
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: These are two people that play down the pandemic while
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: trying to profit on it personally. I think there can't
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: be anything more corrupt than that. And they've been incredibly
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: craven in trying to serve their party over their country,
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: et cetera. I think that all can be part of
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: the negative messaging. But the possibility of raising the minimum
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: wage hangs on these two races, the possibility of expanding
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: health care. of giving people a public option, expanding protections
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: for preexisting conditions, all hinges on these two races, investing
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: in infrastructure, investing in the kind of clean energy jobs
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: that we want. Those things hinge on these two races.
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: So I think like, I don't, look, I'd be curious
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: what polls say, but like my instinct is to make
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: it about those issues that the balance of the Senate
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: will determine, less about Mitch McConnell as a person, less
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: about national politics.
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: Polls, who cares about polls anymore?
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: Well, that's the other thing.
• 38:37
  Speaker 5: What's a fucking poll? I'll go.
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: I'm going to start my own Trafalgar. I'll start my
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: own Trafalgar. And whatever we want the polls to say,
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: they'll say it. They'll say whatever we need them to say.
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: Tell me, what do you think? What's your gut tell you?
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: Forget the polls.
• 38:50
  Speaker 4: I mean, look, my gut tells me I want to
• 38:52
  Speaker 4: look at some polls. I would pull the shit out
• 38:56
  Speaker 4: of these races and see what Georgians want to hear about. Now,
• 38:59
  Speaker 4: if you told me like, okay, you have to nationalize this,
• 39:01
  Speaker 4: like make the case for some things. I agree with
• 39:04
  Speaker 4: Lovett that a $ 15 minimum wage would be way up
• 39:07
  Speaker 4: high on my list. I would think about whether talking
• 39:10
  Speaker 4: about marijuana legalization, at least for medical uses, is something
• 39:13
  Speaker 4: you want to talk about because it's an incredibly popular policy.
• 39:16
  Speaker 4: I would talk about how to deal with price gouging
• 39:21
  Speaker 4: credit card companies that give you high interest rates if
• 39:25
  Speaker 4: you default. I would look for as many populist bread
• 39:28
  Speaker 4: and butter economic issues as I could possibly find. Then
• 39:31
  Speaker 4: if you wanted to make a broader argument, the case
• 39:34
  Speaker 4: is pretty simple, which is if we win these two seats,
• 39:37
  Speaker 4: we can do all of these things. If we don't
• 39:38
  Speaker 4: win these two seats, we can do none of these things.
• 39:40
  Speaker 4: It becomes very binary and I think easy to sharpen
• 39:43
  Speaker 4: for people. I also am quite compelled to by the
• 39:48
  Speaker 4: videos circulating on Twitter and elsewhere about just how corrupt
• 39:51
  Speaker 4: Kelly Loeffler is and just how corrupt Perdue is. They
• 39:53
  Speaker 4: are the exact elite, super rich aristocracy of America that
• 40:01
  Speaker 4: it is very easy to make people hate, and we
• 40:04
  Speaker 4: should try to do that more often.
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: I very much agree with you that I think a
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: simple binary choice between two years of complete gridlock Versus
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: progress on issues that could actually improve your life in
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: a tangible way is probably the best way to go here.
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: I also don't know that Democrats have a choice between
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: nationalizing it or not, because what we know so far
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: from the Republican messaging is that they have decided to
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: nationalize the race and they're saying Loeffler and Perdue and Trump.
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: And every other Republican who's now fucking gone down to
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: Georgia and held an indoor rally without masks, like Marco
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: Rubio and the rest of the gang, they're basically saying,
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: this is your chance to save the Senate. This is
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: your chance to stop the radical left Democrats from taking
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: over the world and socialism and all this stuff. They've
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: nationalized the race. So I think Loeffler, I mean, so
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: I think Ossoff and Warnock need to have a response
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: to that that's also national, which is like, look, you
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: elect us, we're going to have progress for the first
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: time in a long time. We're going to have health corruption.
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: We're going to have a higher minimum wage. We're going
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: to have all this stuff. You don't, we're going to
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: have shit.
• 41:09
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 41:10
  Speaker 4: I'm super interested to see if Trump actually cares about
• 41:12
  Speaker 4: these races, right?
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: Me too.
• 41:14
  Speaker 4: He's trying so hard. to get four more years of
• 41:18
  Speaker 4: a job that he hates and doesn't do. So why
• 41:21
  Speaker 4: then do we assume that he cares about the United
• 41:23
  Speaker 4: States Senate? He's the most selfish person in the history
• 41:25
  Speaker 4: of the world. I have more faith in him parking
• 41:28
  Speaker 4: his lazy, slobbily ass at Mar-a-Lago for a couple of
• 41:32
  Speaker 4: weeks than actually campaigning for these guys. Like I could
• 41:34
  Speaker 4: be proven wrong. But like, can you imagine what that
• 41:37
  Speaker 4: rally speech would be like? It would just be like
• 41:39
  Speaker 4: one long, whiny grievance.
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: Well, I've thought about this too. The only thing that
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: might compel him to campaign hard is... He might think
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: to himself, if I get a win in Georgia, if
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: we win these two Republican races, I can leave office
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: bragging about how I won.
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: That's true.
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: Like one more fake win for Donald Trump on his
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: way out just to sort of, you know, feed his ego.
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: And then he can start talking about how he wants
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: to run again in 2024 because he saved those Senate
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: seats in Georgia.
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: But he is lazy.
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: He is lazy.
• 42:10
  Speaker 5: He is lazy.
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: Well, I do think, well, yeah, he's lazy, but, you know,
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: he's also... incredibly disciplined when it comes to seeking out applause.
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: I agree. I actually think he'll watch. If it looks
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: like they'll win, he'll want to go. He'll want to
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: rail against Joe Biden. He'll want to be on television.
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: He'll want to claim that he did it. I do
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: think he will be talking immediately about 2024, not least
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: of which because of his legal problems. And I do
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: think him being a potential candidate in 2024 will be
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: one of the things he will be saying, which is
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: my people yell, lock her up. And everyone tells me
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: I'm so terrible. Look at Joe Biden trying to put
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: me in jail because he doesn't want to run against me. Uh,
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: so like, I do think that that's coming for all
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: of us. Um, him being political is like one of
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: the only ways I think he can talk his way
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: through at least some of the legal challenges that will
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: likely face him after he leaves office. So, uh, you know,
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: that'll be fun.
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: Well, Yeah.
• 43:08
  Speaker 4: He'll probably go campaign down at the Augusta National Golf
• 43:11
  Speaker 4: Club and leave it at that. Just hang out, hit
• 43:13
  Speaker 4: balls for a few weeks, call back campaigning.
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: Okay. When we come back, we will have my interview
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: with Chuck Rocha. Chuck Rocha is president of Solidarity Strategies
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: and Nuestro PAC. He was also a senior advisor to
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: Bernie Sanders' 2020 presidential campaign and the author of the book, T.O. Bernie,
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: the inside story of how Bernie Sanders brought Latinos into
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: the political revolution. Welcome to Pod Save America, Chuck.
• 43:46
  Speaker 5: Hey, thanks for having me.
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: So among Latinos who voted in the Democratic primary, Bernie
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: Sanders did well in 2016. He did phenomenally well in 2020,
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: especially with younger Latinos. Can you talk us through your
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: very successful strategy that helped increase Bernie's vote share with
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: Latinos between 16 and 20? And also, I should ask
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: just to start off, like, given the huge diversity within
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: the Latino population, is there a better way to be
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: talking about the Latino vote in general?
• 44:15
  Speaker 5: You know, John, I appreciate you asking. I recognize that
• 44:17
  Speaker 5: you asking that because we all go by so many different,
• 44:20
  Speaker 5: you know, what we call each other, you know, Latinos, Hispanic, Latinx,
• 44:25
  Speaker 5: and all of those for all of you at home.
• 44:26
  Speaker 5: They're all right. It all depends on who you're talking
• 44:29
  Speaker 5: to and where you're at. The way I like to
• 44:31
  Speaker 5: think about is I say Latino. So I'd like for
• 44:33
  Speaker 5: us to use Latinos today for everybody. When I walk
• 44:35
  Speaker 5: into a space and they want to use Latinx out
• 44:37
  Speaker 5: of respect, that's what I do. Non-gender bias. I get
• 44:40
  Speaker 5: all of that point. And so I like to reflect
• 44:42
  Speaker 5: however somebody else is talking about it that way. I
• 44:44
  Speaker 5: don't make nobody upset. But thanks for asking the question
• 44:47
  Speaker 5: about 15 and 16 and 20. I think the biggest things,
• 44:52
  Speaker 5: I think the biggest reasons why we had such a
• 44:54
  Speaker 5: success was we had included Latinos into the operation of
• 44:58
  Speaker 5: the overall campaign. You know, I've been doing this for
• 45:01
  Speaker 5: 31 years. And what I've always seen is Black people,
• 45:04
  Speaker 5: Brown people, Asian people, even women, siloed off into their
• 45:08
  Speaker 5: own departments, given no budget, given no say-so, where they
• 45:10
  Speaker 5: really don't know the overall strategy of the campaign. So
• 45:13
  Speaker 5: they never can really intersect in the overall messaging field apparatus,
• 45:17
  Speaker 5: political work that's done. And so since I got to
• 45:19
  Speaker 5: be a senior advisor, and in my book, I wrote
• 45:21
  Speaker 5: about this, about getting to build out literally the infrastructure
• 45:24
  Speaker 5: of the campaign, I very purposefully put women and people
• 45:27
  Speaker 5: of color in positions of power so that I knew
• 45:29
  Speaker 5: that they would be intersectionality within every aspect of the campaign.
• 45:33
  Speaker 5: And what that led to was us starting our Latino
• 45:36
  Speaker 5: outreach six, seven, eight months before that caucus. It was
• 45:39
  Speaker 5: very culturally competent. So there were Latinos making every bit
• 45:43
  Speaker 5: of the products, all Latino consultants, Latino staffers. We ended
• 45:46
  Speaker 5: up having over 200 Latino staffers on the campaign. And
• 45:50
  Speaker 5: I think Bernie's message also really helped because it really
• 45:53
  Speaker 5: is a working class message that as you look at
• 45:56
  Speaker 5: what happened this year, and I know we'll get into it,
• 45:58
  Speaker 5: Latinos are a very working class group of folks, no
• 46:01
  Speaker 5: matter if they're Cuban, Dominican, Puerto Rican. There's lots of
• 46:04
  Speaker 5: us since we're such a young demographic that still have
• 46:06
  Speaker 5: to work a lot of our jobs, hourly jobs. So
• 46:09
  Speaker 5: that economic populism is something that really works. So it
• 46:12
  Speaker 5: was the perfect storm of having a good candidate who
• 46:15
  Speaker 5: always stays on message, starting early, having a Latino in
• 46:19
  Speaker 5: the room where they happen, me, John, me and Jeff
• 46:22
  Speaker 5: Weaver and Faz and the Senator. So I was in
• 46:25
  Speaker 5: the room. So I could say, let's make sure we
• 46:26
  Speaker 5: keep this funding going and do this work. So I
• 46:29
  Speaker 5: think that all grew into having the most historic Latino
• 46:32
  Speaker 5: outreach in the history of American politics.
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: So in the general election, your group, Nuestro PAC, helped
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: persuade Latino voters in key battleground states to turn out
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: for Joe Biden. Can you talk about the difference between
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: Latino voters who turn out in a primary and those
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: who might turn out in a general election?
• 46:50
  Speaker 5: It's not that much different than white primary voters. They
• 46:54
  Speaker 5: have more information, so they're more high information voters, right?
• 46:57
  Speaker 5: So they're regular voters. But what we proved in Nevada
• 47:01
  Speaker 5: specifically with Bernie is that if you'll go out and
• 47:03
  Speaker 5: talk to non-primary Latinos, they'll actually show up and vote.
• 47:07
  Speaker 5: What the problem is and the larger problem with the
• 47:09
  Speaker 5: overall democratic infrastructure is that we've become so reliant on
• 47:14
  Speaker 5: data and micro-targeting is we leave out huge swaths of
• 47:17
  Speaker 5: voters who would participate if we would literally ask them.
• 47:21
  Speaker 5: So a targeting became a big part of Bernie's success
• 47:24
  Speaker 5: and the success we had with Nuestro because we expanded
• 47:26
  Speaker 5: that target beyond what we call a prime voter to
• 47:29
  Speaker 5: a non-prime voter and even put in newly registered Latinos
• 47:33
  Speaker 5: in every state and every aspect of what we did
• 47:35
  Speaker 5: with the Bernie campaign. And then we did the exact
• 47:38
  Speaker 5: same thing with Nuestro PAC because we wanted to build
• 47:40
  Speaker 5: off of what we had just tested in real time.
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: So you warned months ago that the Biden campaign might
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: underperform with Latino voters. What were your concerns at the time?
• 47:51
  Speaker 5: They didn't know who he was. They know of him,
• 47:53
  Speaker 5: but they didn't know who he was. And at a
• 47:56
  Speaker 5: time when we started doing focus groups right after the primary,
• 47:58
  Speaker 5: even during the primary, let's go back because we spent
• 48:01
  Speaker 5: a ton of money on polling and focus groups then.
• 48:03
  Speaker 5: Folks like Joe Biden, and I like to tell people,
• 48:06
  Speaker 5: and you'll love this, you're such an animal on this,
• 48:08
  Speaker 5: is that when we did the first political poll in Nevada,
• 48:12
  Speaker 5: Joe Biden was beating Bernie Sanders with Latinos by five points.
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: That was in September.
• 48:16
  Speaker 5: Oh, wow. of 19. So I had six months to
• 48:21
  Speaker 5: move Latinos that were supporting Joe Biden. And by the end,
• 48:23
  Speaker 5: get this, we won 73% of those Latinos. So when
• 48:27
  Speaker 5: folks say that Latinos aren't a persuadable audience, I was like,
• 48:30
  Speaker 5: I've done this in real time. They are persuadable if
• 48:32
  Speaker 5: you'll spend a whole lot of money to go talk
• 48:34
  Speaker 5: to them where they're at.
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: So what's your take then on getting to 2020 in
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: the general, what happened in the election itself? I'd love
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: to hear your thoughts because I know They've got to
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: be very different in each area. But I'd love to
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: hear your thoughts on what happened in Florida, what happened
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: in the Rio Grande Valley. And then maybe you can
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: talk about where or if you saw some bright spots
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: in terms of Biden's performance with Latinos.
• 48:56
  Speaker 5: Look, I break this down in a couple of different levels.
• 48:58
  Speaker 5: I've been doing this a long time. This is my
• 49:01
  Speaker 5: 31st year of doing it. And for all you folks
• 49:02
  Speaker 5: that are listening at home, I sound like an old
• 49:04
  Speaker 5: white man, but I swear to God, I'm Latino. I
• 49:06
  Speaker 5: just sound like an old white man when I talk.
• 49:08
  Speaker 5: So I've been doing and watching our community evolve. And
• 49:11
  Speaker 5: there's lots of Latinos like me who sound like an
• 49:13
  Speaker 5: old white man who grew up in East Texas hunting
• 49:15
  Speaker 5: and fishing since I was a little boy who actually
• 49:17
  Speaker 5: worked for Bernie Sanders. That seems like a lot of
• 49:19
  Speaker 5: conflict things, but that's just a really good representation of
• 49:23
  Speaker 5: who our people are. In the presidential campaign, Joe Biden
• 49:27
  Speaker 5: did a good job with Latinos. He spent a lot
• 49:29
  Speaker 5: of money, he started relatively early, and he had a
• 49:32
  Speaker 5: pretty decent operation in a time of COVID on what
• 49:35
  Speaker 5: he could accomplish. And because he threw so much money
• 49:38
  Speaker 5: at Latinos advertisement, at least in Spanish in Florida, Arizona,
• 49:42
  Speaker 5: and other places, He did good. Could he have done better?
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 49:46
  Speaker 5: We could have started earlier. We couldn't have had COVID.
• 49:49
  Speaker 5: There was a lot of little things you could have done,
• 49:51
  Speaker 5: but overall, Joe Biden and his team did a good job.
• 49:53
  Speaker 5: The problem is below that, below that at the Senate level,
• 49:57
  Speaker 5: at the congressional level, and at the state Senate level,
• 50:01
  Speaker 5: you saw a huge dramatic shift in the Latino vote
• 50:03
  Speaker 5: because there's nobody actually having a conversation with those voters
• 50:07
  Speaker 5: at that level. They knew who Joe Biden was, and
• 50:09
  Speaker 5: of course they knew who Donald Trump was, not depending
• 50:11
  Speaker 5: if they were a conservative candidate like a Cuban in Miami,
• 50:14
  Speaker 5: or if they were a Mexican who'd been fighting Joe
• 50:16
  Speaker 5: Arpaio in Arizona for 10 years, they acted much differently.
• 50:19
  Speaker 5: But below that, because the party infrastructure just assumed that
• 50:22
  Speaker 5: Joe Biden and the DNC would take care of Latino outreach,
• 50:25
  Speaker 5: there was not a lot of work done there. So
• 50:28
  Speaker 5: you saw this dramatic difference between the ways Latinos acted
• 50:31
  Speaker 5: in the border towns of Texas, in Miami, or in
• 50:35
  Speaker 5: Tucson or Phoenix, where there was dramatic differences. You saw
• 50:39
  Speaker 5: Joe Biden so underperformed in Miami-Dade by 20 points. You
• 50:43
  Speaker 5: saw him overperform in Phoenix and get almost 72% of
• 50:46
  Speaker 5: the Latino vote. And then in rural Texas in the Valley,
• 50:50
  Speaker 5: you saw unprecedented underperformance where neither one of the candidates
• 50:53
  Speaker 5: spent $ 1 talking to Latinos.
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: So the single biggest divide among white voters for quite
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: some time now has been education, with Democrats winning larger
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: and larger margins with college-educated white voters, and Republicans, especially
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: in the Trump era, doing better and better with non-college whites.
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: Do you see any kind of educational divide occurring among
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: Latino voters?
• 51:15
  Speaker 5: Not as much educational as you do demographically. Let me
• 51:18
  Speaker 5: start by saying that the average age of a Latino
• 51:21
  Speaker 5: in America is 27. So we're just so much younger
• 51:24
  Speaker 5: because we haven't been in America as long. So you
• 51:27
  Speaker 5: have these old school Mexicans like me or my father,
• 51:30
  Speaker 5: who's passed away now, who are good Democrats who came
• 51:34
  Speaker 5: up under a system, knew that Democrats kind of were
• 51:36
  Speaker 5: for working class people. But then you have this whole
• 51:38
  Speaker 5: new demographic of people who have come of age. Let's
• 51:41
  Speaker 5: make a point in Texas that 69% of every school
• 51:44
  Speaker 5: child in Texas is non-white. There's just this huge explosion
• 51:48
  Speaker 5: in Texas and Georgia, places of Latinos coming of age
• 51:51
  Speaker 5: so quickly. And when they're coming of age, because we
• 51:53
  Speaker 5: have micro-targeted these universes out of talking to them, they're
• 51:56
  Speaker 5: all registering as no party preference voters. They don't really
• 52:00
  Speaker 5: like the Republicans because of Donald Trump. They really don't
• 52:02
  Speaker 5: like the Democrats because they're most socially progressive. They're kind
• 52:05
  Speaker 5: of a Bernie Democrat. So they're just registering as no
• 52:07
  Speaker 5: party preference. And that's the biggest divide right now is
• 52:10
  Speaker 5: the younger Democrats compared to the older, not really on
• 52:14
  Speaker 5: an education level, because so many of our people don't
• 52:16
  Speaker 5: go to college.
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: What about a potential gender divide? There's been a lot
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: of analysis about how Trump's appeal to some non-white voters,
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: particularly Latino men, had to do with a certain machismo.
• 52:27
  Speaker 5: You are so right about that. The gender divide is
• 52:29
  Speaker 5: very real. And let me go on record now to
• 52:31
  Speaker 5: once again, say for the 10th time, women are smarter
• 52:34
  Speaker 5: than men. And it continues to be proven over and
• 52:36
  Speaker 5: over again. And again, it's proved that brown women are
• 52:39
  Speaker 5: smarter than brown men. So let's start with that synopsis.
• 52:42
  Speaker 5: But what you're saying is there's a dramatic underperformance in
• 52:46
  Speaker 5: non-college educated brown men. And as a non-college educated brown
• 52:50
  Speaker 5: man myself, I'm one of the few national political consultants
• 52:53
  Speaker 5: who do this work. who've never been to college a
• 52:55
  Speaker 5: day in my life. You can tell by the way
• 52:57
  Speaker 5: that I talk, but also how I run campaigns. I'm
• 52:59
  Speaker 5: an emotional beast. And what we've done is taken emotion
• 53:02
  Speaker 5: out of the way we've done campaigns. If I've got
• 53:04
  Speaker 5: to watch one more ad about preexisting conditions, that wasn't
• 53:08
  Speaker 5: moving a Latino man. Because we still have the same
• 53:10
  Speaker 5: group of pollsters, the same group of consultants, and the
• 53:13
  Speaker 5: same group of people running every one of these cookie
• 53:15
  Speaker 5: cutter congressional campaigns. And there's nothing that really motivates a
• 53:20
  Speaker 5: brown man who's not getting a bunch of information, who
• 53:23
  Speaker 5: is a little sexist, who is a little machismo, right?
• 53:26
  Speaker 5: And he likes that Donald Trump is a tough guy,
• 53:29
  Speaker 5: even though it's just ignorant as hell. But they do
• 53:31
  Speaker 5: get drawn to that, not the majority of them, but
• 53:33
  Speaker 5: enough of them to make a difference. We could have
• 53:36
  Speaker 5: a counter narrative to people who were like me when
• 53:39
  Speaker 5: I was in my 30s, a single father, trying to
• 53:42
  Speaker 5: make it with my son who's never been to college,
• 53:44
  Speaker 5: who is a rough and tough kind of person. Like
• 53:46
  Speaker 5: I have gotten in a way more fistfights than I
• 53:48
  Speaker 5: have gotten fights on Twitter in real life. That's how
• 53:51
  Speaker 5: these folks are. And they like somebody who's going to
• 53:53
  Speaker 5: compete and fight for them. And sometimes we leave that
• 53:56
  Speaker 5: out when we've had this same group of consultants writing
• 53:59
  Speaker 5: another ad about preexisting conditions.
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: So here's one thing I've been trying to figure out.
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: It appears that Bernie had some real success with his
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: very economically populist message, particularly among Latinos. On the other hand,
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: you have people after this election like, you know, Donna Shalala,
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: who lost her House seat in a heavily Latino district
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: in Florida, said the party didn't do enough to rebut
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: Republican claims that we're all socialists. You hear a lot
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: of concerns about rebutting the socialist charge. And yet Bernie, who,
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: you know, identifies as a Democratic socialist, had a lot
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: of success in the primary with an economic message. How
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: do you sort of square that circle? Where do you
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: come down on the whole socialism debate here?
• 54:38
  Speaker 5: It's just so different, you know, this state by state.
• 54:41
  Speaker 5: Did it really have effect in Miami-Dade? Yes. And also
• 54:44
  Speaker 5: because there was this huge campaign down there with this
• 54:46
  Speaker 5: misinformation about that, just in Spanish, just to this huge
• 54:50
  Speaker 5: group of people. Everybody listed this podcast. Loves politics. Miami-Dade
• 54:54
  Speaker 5: is just a different county. There's a ton of Cubans
• 54:56
  Speaker 5: and they're all registered as Republicans. Their sons and their
• 54:59
  Speaker 5: daughters vote as Democrat and the mothers and the grandmothers
• 55:02
  Speaker 5: vote as Republican. So it's different there. But let me
• 55:04
  Speaker 5: draw something out here that many of you may not know.
• 55:06
  Speaker 5: We're going to end up losing like 10 congressional seats
• 55:09
  Speaker 5: from last week's election of those six of them. are
• 55:13
  Speaker 5: in districts where people of color make up 30 to
• 55:17
  Speaker 5: 80% of the electorate. That means that there is a problem.
• 55:20
  Speaker 5: And it's much different with Donna Shalala and with Debbie
• 55:23
  Speaker 5: Mercosel Powell in South Florida than it is with Gil
• 55:26
  Speaker 5: Cisneros in Orange County or TJ Cox in the Central Valley.
• 55:30
  Speaker 5: All Latinos, all 70 percent Latinos. And we lost him
• 55:33
  Speaker 5: dramatically because we're not having the right conversations. A little
• 55:36
  Speaker 5: part of that is about socialism in South Florida. But
• 55:39
  Speaker 5: the other part is culturally connecting to people in these
• 55:42
  Speaker 5: other places, these working class brown, black and Asian voters
• 55:45
  Speaker 5: who Democrats aren't doing a good job at talking to.
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: So I want to get to the disinformation campaign in
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: a second. But even before that, what do you think
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: the more effective conversations sound like? What are the issues
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: that should be emphasized? How do you sort of cut
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: through the socialism attack? What's been going on there?
• 56:05
  Speaker 5: The key is starting early. Let me tell you what
• 56:07
  Speaker 5: we did with Bernie Sanders. You don't think of Bernie
• 56:09
  Speaker 5: Sanders as the second coming of Cesar Chavez when you
• 56:11
  Speaker 5: think about Bernie Sanders. So it started. We needed some
• 56:14
  Speaker 5: time to tell people who Bernie was and that he
• 56:16
  Speaker 5: liked Latinos. So six months in advance, the first TV
• 56:19
  Speaker 5: commercial I ran, the first mail piece, the first digital
• 56:22
  Speaker 5: ad was all the same piece. And it said, my
• 56:24
  Speaker 5: name is Bernie Sanders. My father came here from another
• 56:26
  Speaker 5: country and could not speak English and didn't have any money.
• 56:29
  Speaker 5: I won't forget my immigrant experience when I'm in the
• 56:31
  Speaker 5: White House or growing up in the projects of this
• 56:33
  Speaker 5: building in New York City. Now, what I just did there, John,
• 56:36
  Speaker 5: and you know this, is I just built some commonality
• 56:38
  Speaker 5: between you and Bernie. He's one of us. Like, he
• 56:40
  Speaker 5: don't look like us. He don't sound like us. But
• 56:42
  Speaker 5: housing project, couldn't speak English, didn't have any money. The
• 56:45
  Speaker 5: walls come down. Let's have a conversation. And because I
• 56:48
  Speaker 5: didn't do this in the last two weeks, I could
• 56:49
  Speaker 5: then say, let me tell you about Medicare for all.
• 56:52
  Speaker 5: Let me tell you about college affordability and get rid
• 56:54
  Speaker 5: of your student debt. Let me tell you what $ 15
• 56:56
  Speaker 5: an hour would mean to we could do this right now. Oh, well,
• 56:59
  Speaker 5: the key and what Democrats forget is if you'll treat
• 57:02
  Speaker 5: Latinos like a persuadable white woman in the suburbs to
• 57:04
  Speaker 5: start talking to them six and eight months in advance,
• 57:07
  Speaker 5: you can get 70 and 80 percent of that vote.
• 57:09
  Speaker 5: But you can't start that conversation three, four weeks in
• 57:12
  Speaker 5: advance and say pre-existing condition health care. We know health
• 57:15
  Speaker 5: care is your number one issue. So now we're going
• 57:17
  Speaker 5: to talk to you about health care in Spanish.
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, it makes sense.
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: It makes sense. So how do you how do you
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: battle some of the disinformation campaigns that we've seen? You know,
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: the Republicans directed them against Latinos, especially Spanish speaking Latinos.
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: They were lies and conspiracies about Joe Biden, about Black
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: Lives Matter. You know, the Republicans love to sort of
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: turn brown people against black people. They've done that for
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: a long time. Lies about socialism. What do we sort
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: of do about that in the future to try to
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: combat these sort of crazy conspiracies that are floating around
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: out there?
• 57:50
  Speaker 5: You need to have brown validators. You need somebody that
• 57:52
  Speaker 5: somebody knows who says that old white man is with
• 57:55
  Speaker 5: us and don't believe this crazy shit these people are
• 57:57
  Speaker 5: trying to tell you because it's a lie. If Joe
• 58:00
  Speaker 5: Biden does that, it's natural that he's defending something that
• 58:02
  Speaker 5: he's wrong about. So that's why I created New Estro Pack,
• 58:05
  Speaker 5: because I wanted to validate Joe Biden with people like
• 58:08
  Speaker 5: Kristen Urgesa, whose father had died in Arizona of COVID,
• 58:11
  Speaker 5: who you saw at the convention. She's on our team.
• 58:13
  Speaker 5: We made an ad of her. She was validating that
• 58:16
  Speaker 5: Donald Trump is bad and Joe Biden is good. What
• 58:18
  Speaker 5: you needed was Democratic Miami Cubans pushing back on their
• 58:22
  Speaker 5: radio stations and pushing back on their YouTube stations, at
• 58:25
  Speaker 5: least taking them on face to face going, you're wrong.
• 58:28
  Speaker 5: You're right. You're wrong. Let's have an argument. The Democrats
• 58:30
  Speaker 5: left that on the table and wouldn't have that argument. Right.
• 58:33
  Speaker 5: I remember a former congressman from Miami calling me four
• 58:36
  Speaker 5: months before the election going, Chuck, you got to get
• 58:38
  Speaker 5: people on TV down here. You got to get people
• 58:39
  Speaker 5: on these radio stations. pushing back on this. And I'm like, look,
• 58:42
  Speaker 5: I don't run Joe Biden's campaign. I run a super PAC.
• 58:45
  Speaker 5: We're going to do a lot of mail, a lot
• 58:46
  Speaker 5: of TV and a lot of digital, but I ain't
• 58:47
  Speaker 5: in charge of staff on the ground. So I knew
• 58:50
  Speaker 5: that there was some things down there. So the way
• 58:52
  Speaker 5: you kind of take it on is you have a
• 58:54
  Speaker 5: trusted messenger who looks like the community, sounds like the
• 58:57
  Speaker 5: community going, them some bitches is lying.
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: You've talked a lot about sort of the need to
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: have these conversations and to have them many months out.
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: How much did COVID and the inability to campaign in
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: person and to do door-to-door organizing, how much did that
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: stifle our strategy here?
• 59:19
  Speaker 5: I think it hurt some, but don't let people let
• 59:22
  Speaker 5: you think that because of COVID and because we weren't
• 59:24
  Speaker 5: knocking on the doors for six months that it affected
• 59:26
  Speaker 5: that much. Anybody who's really worked in campaigns... knows that
• 59:29
  Speaker 5: your field operation can make up one to three points.
• 59:32
  Speaker 5: And that we all know that real field operations talking
• 59:34
  Speaker 5: to everybody can never be scaled at the level. And
• 59:36
  Speaker 5: what I'm doing is getting really deep with you for
• 59:38
  Speaker 5: somebody who does this for a living. Field is great.
• 59:40
  Speaker 5: Don't let me tell nobody that field's not great. Is
• 59:42
  Speaker 5: it the most persuasive? Absolutely. Is it the most inefficient? Absolutely.
• 59:47
  Speaker 5: So it's just one piece of a pie that's very important.
• 59:51
  Speaker 5: It's one cog, but losing that cog does affect your
• 59:54
  Speaker 5: operation and where the races are super tight, it can
• 59:57
  Speaker 5: have an effect. The problem is, is many times, and John,
• 59:59
  Speaker 5: you know this, They'll take all the brown voters and
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 5: all the black voters and put a bunch of money
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 5: into putting kids into those neighborhoods just in the last
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 5: three weeks for GOTV when they could have been there
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 5: year round with grassroots organizations that are doing more community
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 5: service and then transitioning into politics, which is the great
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 5: example of why Arizona was so good and why what
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 5: Stacey Abrams built in Georgia end up helping them win
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 5: the entire state.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: Well, speaking of Georgia, you've written that there's about 300,000
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: persuadable Latino voters in Georgia who are registered but don't
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: identify with either party. In addition to that, Georgia has
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: a lot of younger Latinos. What's the best way to
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: turn these voters out in the January runoff?
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 5: This is not an operation about persuasion. It's how we
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 5: get those folks back. And what we have estimated now
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 5: is about one hundred eighty five thousand of these Latinos
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 5: showed up and voted in November. So we got to
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 5: go get them and get them back. That means we
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 5: need to make sure that they ask for a ballot,
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 5: get a ballot like we feel like we can do that.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 5: But the problem, what none of us knows is that
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 5: a lot of Latinos, a lot of Asian-Americans, a lot
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 5: of black people showed up not because of Ossoff or Warnock.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 5: They showed up because they hated Donald Trump. Our big
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 5: thing now is how do you get them back to
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 5: vote for two Senate races and how you get them
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 5: to come back to let them know that the majority
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 5: in the Senate can affect their everyday life. Do you
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 5: know that the state minimum wage in Georgia is $ 5
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 5: an hour? That is crazy. If you can go in
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 5: there now and have a debate about just the minimum
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 5: wage with working class Latinos, and that would turn out
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 5: a lot of people. The reason there's so many Latinos
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 5: in Georgia is Georgia has exploded over the last 20
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 5: or 30 years And what you're seeing now are the
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 5: sons and daughters of all of these Mexicans who came
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 5: to Georgia to literally build all of these houses 20
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 5: years ago, who are all now between 18 and 30
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 5: years old, who are high information voters. They're more progressive.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 5: They're more liberal. They're voting Democrat. So these are the
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 5: ones we got to get back. And me and you
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 5: both know, John, younger voters are just harder to get
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 5: back to the polls sometimes.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: So really, I mean, a very simple message, it sounds like,
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: you know. these two senators are the difference between a
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: $ 15 minimum wage and five and five, what you have
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: right now.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 4: And that's it.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: That's the, that's the election, man.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 5: But I'll bet your ass. We run more ads about
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 5: preexisting conditions. You just wait.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: I mean, you've talked about the preexisting condition thing a
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: few times. How do you think, or do you think
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: healthcare should be part of the message and how should
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: it be part of the message?
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 5: Look, I, I, I, I joke in gist that, And
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 5: my thing is, is that I really feel like we
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 5: can have a two hour conversation, John, when you have
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 5: me back about what we need to do to fix
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 5: the party overall.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 5: And what I'm getting at is that there's there's just
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 5: not anybody in there putting emotion back into politics on
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 5: the Democratic side. We need people who are stand up
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 5: and start having an offensive message instead of always figuring
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 5: out how we're going to react to them. And because polling,
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 5: who we've all seen is broken. says that healthcare, and
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 5: it is the number one issue, talk about it as
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 5: if you want to take care of your own children.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 5: Bernie Sanders made Medicare for all popular because he would
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 5: talk about what that means to your life. And if
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 5: you don't have to pay a copay, let's pay for
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 5: this other thing. However, Democrats want to talk about healthcare.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 5: If you talk about giving people healthcare and having more
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 5: access to healthcare, it's all a winning message. But why
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 5: can't we roll that into healthcare, a minimum wage and
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 5: standing up and fighting for a community that nobody cares about?
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 5: One thing that we learned with Bernie Sanders is this
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 5: thing about the rigged system Latinos really do get. Latinos
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 5: feel like, and they've all come from countries where they're
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 5: a corrupt government, so they get this shit, right? If
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 5: you say the government is supposed to work for us,
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 5: but just the people at the top are getting these breaks,
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 5: they get that connection. And that was one of the
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 5: secret weapons we used with Bernie Sanders to make connectivity.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: Chuck Rocha, thank you so much for your insights, your
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: heart and wisdom. And I will take you up on
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: the offer to come back. And so we can talk
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: even more about how to fix the party. One of
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: my favorite topics.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 5: Thanks, John.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: Thanks to Chuck for joining us today. And we will
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: talk about the rest of the schedule, what you can
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: expect from us. This week, Dan and I will have
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: a Thursday pod. And then for Thanksgiving week, we'll have
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: two pre-recorded pods that we're going to do this week.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: One's a mailbag and one's a very special episode of
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: Campaign Experts React that Dan and I are going to
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: record this week.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: Bye, everyone. Bye. Bye, everybody.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: producer is Michael Martinez. Our associate producer is Jordan Waller.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 2: It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somenator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou,
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: Caroline Rustin, and Justine Howe for production support. And to
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Melkonian, Yale Freed, and
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: every week.