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“The Clown Prince of CPAC.” · Pod Save America

0:20
Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
0:22
Speaker 2: I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
0:22
Speaker 1: On today's pod, Joe Biden's strategy for dealing with the
0:25
Speaker 1: star of this weekend's CPAC, Texas Democrats' analysis of why
0:29
Speaker 1: they came up short in November, and new polling on
0:31
Speaker 1: a democracy reform bill that may be even more popular
0:34
Speaker 1: with voters than the COVID relief bill. Then Dan talks
0:38
Speaker 1: to expert immigration reporter Dara Lind about what's really going
0:41
Speaker 1: on at the border with unaccompanied migrant children. Two quick
0:45
Speaker 1: housekeeping notes before we start. Very cool pod save the
0:48
Speaker 1: world this week. Tommy interviews Ugandan musician and member of
0:51
Speaker 1: parliament Bobby Wine about his presidential campaign against a military dictator.
0:55
Speaker 1: And then Ben and Tommy talk about the line between
0:56
Speaker 1: legitimate criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism and how right wing
1:00
Speaker 1: hacks like Mike Pompeo demagogue the issue publicly. To attack
1:04
Speaker 1: their political opponents. It seems like they might have strong
1:06
Speaker 1: views on Mike Pompeo. As do I. I had it
1:11
Speaker 1: written that they were attacking him because he's a lying
1:14
Speaker 1: sack of shit, but they wanted to be. a little
1:16
Speaker 1: more honest and professional.
1:18
Speaker 2: That's the difference between Pod Save the World and Pod
1:20
Speaker 2: Save America right there.
1:21
Speaker 1: That's right. Also, check out the 200th episode of With
1:27
Speaker 1: Friends Like These, one of the very first shows we
1:30
Speaker 1: launched at Crooked with our friend Anna-Marie Cox, who always
1:32
Speaker 1: offers some of the most thought-provoking conversations you'll hear on
1:36
Speaker 1: any podcast. Go check it out if you haven't already.
1:39
Speaker 1: And congrats to Anna-Marie for 200 episodes of With Friends
1:43
Speaker 1: Like These.
1:44
Speaker 2: All right.
1:45
Speaker 1: Let's get to the news. I hope you all enjoyed
1:47
Speaker 1: your short break from Donald Trump because he will be
1:50
Speaker 1: terrorizing America once again at this weekend's Conservative Political Action Conference,
1:55
Speaker 1: otherwise known as CPAC, otherwise known as a fucking circus.
1:59
Speaker 1: Many of the 2024 insurrectionist hopefuls will be there jockeying
2:03
Speaker 1: to be the candidate who might get humiliated by Trump.
2:06
Speaker 1: But according to MAGA sources who spoke to Axios, the
2:09
Speaker 1: former president's speech will be a, quote, show of force
2:12
Speaker 1: intended to send the message that he is still fully, quote,
2:15
Speaker 1: in charge of the Republican Party and is the, quote,
2:18
Speaker 1: presumptive 2024 nominee should he choose to run. What do
2:24
Speaker 1: other Republican leaders think of this? Well, here's a fun
2:27
Speaker 1: clip of Kevin McCarthy and Liz Cheney answering that very question.
2:30
Speaker 3: Do you believe President Trump should be speaking or former
2:32
Speaker 3: President Trump should be.
2:33
Speaker 2: Speaking at CPAC this weekend? Yes, he should.
2:36
Speaker 3: Congressman Cheney?
2:38
Speaker 2: That's up to CPAC.
2:39
Speaker 3: I've been clear in my views about President Trump and
2:43
Speaker 3: the extent to which following January 6th, I don't believe
2:49
Speaker 3: that he should be playing a.
2:49
Speaker 2: Role in the future of the party or the country.
2:54
Speaker 2: Is that how you know?
3:00
Speaker 1: Dan, let's start with a question that some of our
3:04
Speaker 1: listeners may be asking. Why are we still talking about
3:06
Speaker 1: Donald Trump?
3:07
Speaker 2: Clicks? Downloads? I mean, the reason we're going to talk
3:14
Speaker 2: about this is it's an amazing story that Donald Trump
3:17
Speaker 2: somehow shook off the shackles of big tech censorship to
3:20
Speaker 2: get his message out. So that is, I mean, that's
3:23
Speaker 2: an amazing escape story.
3:24
Speaker 1: How did he do it? Yeah, it's truly unbelievable. He
3:25
Speaker 1: uncanceled himself.
3:26
Speaker 2: We have to acknowledge that Donald Trump, the former president
3:30
Speaker 2: of the United States, who just last month incited violent
3:35
Speaker 2: insurrection at the Capitol and is potentially maybe planning to
3:39
Speaker 2: run for president in 2024, speaking for the first time
3:43
Speaker 2: about something other than Rush Limbaugh is a news story.
3:45
Speaker 2: It will get covered. It should get covered. There's a
3:48
Speaker 2: broader conversation about quantity of coverage and tone of coverage
3:53
Speaker 2: around Trump that we can look at, and there will
3:55
Speaker 2: be some good examples. There's some bad examples to help
3:56
Speaker 2: us understand who in the media has learned some lessons
4:00
Speaker 2: over the last four to five years here. But it
4:04
Speaker 2: is a very legitimate news story that has real repercussions
4:09
Speaker 2: for every part of politics, how the Biden agenda gets
4:13
Speaker 2: through Congress, what happens in 2024. who's going to be
4:16
Speaker 2: on the ballot in 2022 is part of the things
4:18
Speaker 2: he's apparently going to talk about according to, and I
4:21
Speaker 2: just love this phrase, what MAGA sources told Axios. I
4:29
Speaker 2: love that.
4:30
Speaker 1: It's perfect.
4:32
Speaker 2: It's that he's going to support primary challenges against people
4:37
Speaker 2: like Liz Cheney. That is a legitimate political story. Is
4:41
Speaker 2: it a bigger story than the pandemic? No, it's a
4:44
Speaker 2: bigger story than– passage of Joe Biden's agenda to help
4:48
Speaker 2: control the pandemic?
4:49
Speaker 4: No.
4:50
Speaker 2: But is it a story? Is it worth talking about?
4:52
Speaker 1: Yes.
4:54
Speaker 3: Yeah.
4:54
Speaker 1: I mean, long-term, guy could be the Republican opponent in 2024. Medium-term,
5:02
Speaker 1: he's going to be all over the country for the
5:03
Speaker 1: midterms endorsing Republicans, as you just mentioned. And then just short-term,
5:11
Speaker 1: people need, from our perspective, not just as people who
5:14
Speaker 1: cover the news, but Democratic activists, organizers, strategists, like people
5:19
Speaker 1: need to remember that Trumpism is not gone. Even if
5:23
Speaker 1: Trump doesn't run again, even if Trump just sort of
5:26
Speaker 1: for the next couple of years pretends that he's going
5:28
Speaker 1: to run and then ultimately bows out, the party is
5:30
Speaker 1: still a very Trumpy party. And if we want to
5:33
Speaker 1: beat the Republican Party, we need to understand the influence
5:36
Speaker 1: he continues to wield over this party, which right now
5:40
Speaker 1: is near totals. Um, and, uh, it's also reported that
5:46
Speaker 1: he's going to spend a good amount of time in
5:48
Speaker 1: the speech, um, attacking Joe Biden. And so understanding what
5:52
Speaker 1: the message about Joe Biden is going to be from
5:55
Speaker 1: Trump and that Trump both, you know, directs the message
5:59
Speaker 1: for the Republican party and sort of amplifies the message
6:01
Speaker 1: that you find in right-wing media. That is a good
6:04
Speaker 1: barometer of what kind of attacks both Biden and the
6:06
Speaker 1: Democrats are going to get in the next two years
6:08
Speaker 1: leading up to the midterm election. Um, What does it
6:11
Speaker 1: do to the rest of the field and the party
6:14
Speaker 1: if Trump spends the next few years even acting like
6:17
Speaker 1: he's going to run, which is going to start with
6:19
Speaker 1: some of these endorsements for the midterm candidates in 2022?
6:22
Speaker 1: In terms of.
6:24
Speaker 2: What does it do to the 2024 presidential field?
6:27
Speaker 3: Yeah.
6:28
Speaker 2: What certainly freezes it for the candidates who want to
6:31
Speaker 2: be the heir to the Trump base, whether that's Ted
6:34
Speaker 2: Cruz or Josh Hawley or Tom Cotton, there is nowhere
6:37
Speaker 2: for them to go. And it is not unlike Trump.
6:41
Speaker 2: the looming prospect of Hillary Clinton's candidacy in 2016 had
6:46
Speaker 2: on the Democratic field. A whole bunch of people who
6:49
Speaker 2: viewed themselves in her same political lane or ideological lane
6:53
Speaker 2: did not run because they thought she would run and win.
6:56
Speaker 2: It makes it impossible to do a lot of the,
6:59
Speaker 2: quote unquote, shadow primary scut work that you do if
7:03
Speaker 2: you want to win president. You're going to Iowa, you're
7:05
Speaker 2: meeting with activists, you're trying to line up potential staff.
7:08
Speaker 2: All of that is frozen As long as Trump hangs
7:13
Speaker 2: over the field. That has more to do, I think,
7:17
Speaker 2: with the ability of other Republicans to build momentum to
7:20
Speaker 2: be the possible nominee that it does on what the
7:23
Speaker 2: Republican Party can do to take on Joe Biden.
7:26
Speaker 4: Right?
7:26
Speaker 2: I think it has more of an impact. There's one
7:28
Speaker 2: way you could look at it and say, well, is
7:30
Speaker 2: that going to make it harder for them to beat
7:31
Speaker 2: Joe Biden? I don't know the answer to that, but
7:33
Speaker 2: it doesn't stop the work you do to beat the incumbent,
7:37
Speaker 2: presuming Joe Biden is going to run again 2024, but
7:39
Speaker 2: it makes life a lot harder for Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton,
7:42
Speaker 2: et cetera.
7:45
Speaker 1: We are not going back into the prediction business just
7:47
Speaker 1: because the 2020 election is over, but I have to
7:49
Speaker 1: tell you, I do not know how any of these
7:54
Speaker 1: other Republican candidates beats Donald Trump if he runs. For
7:59
Speaker 1: this reason, think about what is the mood of the
8:01
Speaker 1: Republican electorate right now? What is the mood of the
8:03
Speaker 1: Republican base? They are pissed off that an election that
8:09
Speaker 1: they think their candidate won didn't actually go their way.
8:12
Speaker 1: And many of them believe that election was stolen. They
8:14
Speaker 1: think that Donald Trump is the rightful president of the
8:17
Speaker 1: United States. And Pretty much all of his competitors, with
8:22
Speaker 1: a few exceptions, potential competitors in 2024, have gone along
8:26
Speaker 1: with that lie that Donald Trump really won the election
8:29
Speaker 1: and have expressed to varying degrees their undying support of
8:33
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. So why would you go with the imitation
8:36
Speaker 1: Trump when you have the real thing?
8:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, we are not going to make predictions
8:41
Speaker 2: and predictions for four years from now, or it's really
8:44
Speaker 2: two years from now is when that would start. But
8:47
Speaker 2: you would have to assume that if Donald Trump ran,
8:49
Speaker 2: he would be the nominee. He has 100% name ID
8:51
Speaker 2: and 85% approval rating among the people who are going
8:54
Speaker 2: to choose the next Republican nominee. A lot of things
8:58
Speaker 2: could happen between now and then that would cause him
9:02
Speaker 2: to not run.
9:03
Speaker 1: For example, the news this morning that the Manhattan DA
9:08
Speaker 1: finally got access to Trump's tax returns.
9:12
Speaker 2: I mean, and it's not that what is in those
9:14
Speaker 2: tax returns could prevent Trump from winning the Republican nomination
9:20
Speaker 2: unless– on one page he wrote, I love Obamacare. That
9:23
Speaker 2: would be the one thing in the tax returns. But
9:25
Speaker 2: it just– it sort of presages the possibility that his
9:30
Speaker 2: legal troubles could get a lot more challenging in the
9:33
Speaker 2: run-up to the election. So there are those things that
9:35
Speaker 2: could prevent it. There is a world in which Democrats
9:40
Speaker 2: have a very good 2022 that sort of upends expectations
9:44
Speaker 2: that could cause In part because Trump got a bunch
9:47
Speaker 2: of Trumpy candidates nominated and they lost Senate races they
9:51
Speaker 2: should have won or House races they should have won.
9:54
Speaker 2: And it changes the mood among Republicans about the ability
9:57
Speaker 2: you know, sort of upends the electability question for them. But,
10:00
Speaker 2: you know, we're also, how are we down this rabbit
10:03
Speaker 2: hole talking about Trump in 2024 right now? How did
10:04
Speaker 2: that happen?
10:06
Speaker 1: Basically, because I want to talk about how, I mean,
10:09
Speaker 1: like CPAC is going to feature a bunch of 2024
10:12
Speaker 1: hopefuls talking about it and people are going to start
10:14
Speaker 1: talking about, oh, well, can these people win? Can these
10:17
Speaker 1: people have the nomination? And I just think, like, I
10:20
Speaker 1: think our hope, it was certainly my hope, that Trump
10:23
Speaker 1: would sort of fade away, go like hang out at Mar-a-Lago,
10:28
Speaker 1: play some golf, not care about politics. So far, reading
10:31
Speaker 1: these stories about CPAC and what he's going to do
10:33
Speaker 1: in the midterms, that does not seem to be the case.
10:35
Speaker 1: And so therefore, like we got the Republican Party in
10:39
Speaker 1: this country. They got a spot on the ballot as
10:41
Speaker 1: much as we want to ignore them. And until Trump
10:45
Speaker 1: decides otherwise, the Republican Party is Trump's party. And so
10:49
Speaker 1: talking about the Republican Party is talking about Donald Trump.
10:52
Speaker 1: And I think he's just going to play a huge
10:53
Speaker 1: role until he decides not to or until the law
10:56
Speaker 1: decides he can't. That's that's about it. So one person
11:01
Speaker 1: who will not be talking about or reacting in any
11:03
Speaker 1: way to Donald Trump's CPAC speech is President Joe Biden.
11:06
Speaker 1: Even though Trump is supposed to tear into Biden during
11:08
Speaker 1: the speech, White House communications director Kate Bedingfield told The
11:11
Speaker 1: Washington Post this week that the Biden administration plans to
11:13
Speaker 1: engage with Trump, quote, never. Here's both Joe Biden. And
11:19
Speaker 1: White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki leading by example.
11:21
Speaker 5: I remember you and I talking during the campaign and
11:24
Speaker 5: you had the former guy saying that, well, you know,
11:29
Speaker 5: we just can open things up and that's all we
11:31
Speaker 5: need to do. We said, no, you got to deal
11:33
Speaker 5: with the disease before you deal with the with the
11:36
Speaker 5: getting the economy going. I'm tired of talking about Donald Trump.
11:39
Speaker 5: Don't want to talk about him anymore.
11:41
Speaker 4: Well, the president's view is that we've spent a whole
11:43
Speaker 4: lot of time, not we, but in this briefing room
11:46
Speaker 4: talking about President Trump over the last few years. Yes,
11:49
Speaker 4: for good reason.
11:50
Speaker 3: He was president.
11:51
Speaker 4: And that his view is we're going to spend the
11:53
Speaker 4: time focusing about the American people and our objectives to
11:57
Speaker 4: help them and our commitment to helping them. So I
12:00
Speaker 4: wouldn't say he's thought a lot about the president, former
12:02
Speaker 4: president's visit to, you know, I was going to say performance.
12:06
Speaker 4: Maybe that's appropriate at CPAC.
12:09
Speaker 1: I was going to say performance. Nice. Nice, Jen. So
12:13
Speaker 1: the Biden team is thinking, you know, people want the
12:16
Speaker 1: president to beat the virus and fix the economy. They
12:19
Speaker 1: didn't elect him to get in fights with this asshole.
12:22
Speaker 1: Why give him oxygen? Others might argue, why not hit back?
12:27
Speaker 1: Biden is much more popular than Trump right now. He
12:29
Speaker 1: benefits from the comparison. And he should remind people that
12:32
Speaker 1: Trump still presents a real threat to democracy. Which do
12:35
Speaker 1: you think is right?
12:37
Speaker 2: I think the Biden approach is the correct approach for now,
12:40
Speaker 2: for sure. And we know that the single most important
12:46
Speaker 2: thing for Joe Biden's political success over the long run
12:48
Speaker 2: and Democratic political success in 2022 is get the virus
12:52
Speaker 2: under control and fix the economy. The best way to
12:54
Speaker 2: do that is to pass the American Rescue Plan. which
12:58
Speaker 2: currently has large bipartisan support. That is the thing it
13:02
Speaker 2: has most going for it. And we live in an
13:05
Speaker 2: era of negative partisanship. So if Joe Biden starts hitting
13:08
Speaker 2: back against Trump or talking about Trump, it's very likely
13:12
Speaker 2: that it'll peel support off the bipartisan elements of his agenda.
13:17
Speaker 2: And so, yes, there will be a time as we
13:20
Speaker 2: get closer to 2022 where Joe Biden and Democrats are
13:22
Speaker 2: going to have to make a case against Republicans. And
13:26
Speaker 2: the role that Trump plays in the party and what
13:28
Speaker 2: a lot of these Republicans did when Trump was president
13:30
Speaker 2: and how they defended him in the insurrection and all
13:32
Speaker 2: those other things will be part of that argument. But
13:34
Speaker 2: there is no reason to make that argument now. It
13:38
Speaker 2: is simply the press wants him to talk about Trump
13:41
Speaker 2: because it's good. It's a good story. And it is
13:44
Speaker 2: what political junkies, which is what most of political journalism
13:48
Speaker 2: services want to hear because it's we want to live
13:51
Speaker 2: in 24-7 campaign mode. But it is very clearly not
13:54
Speaker 2: what the rest of the American people want to hear.
13:56
Speaker 1: Also, Joe Biden wants to control the narrative, and he's
14:00
Speaker 1: the president of the United States, so he has more
14:03
Speaker 1: power to do that even than he did during the campaign.
14:05
Speaker 1: He is in the process of passing a COVID relief
14:09
Speaker 1: bill that has 70%, 75%, 80% support among the American people,
14:13
Speaker 1: hugely popular among Democrats, splits the Republican Party in two.
14:18
Speaker 1: Half Republican voters are happy about it or supportive of it.
14:23
Speaker 1: The Republicans and Donald Trump don't want to talk about that. Right.
14:26
Speaker 1: They want to talk like Donald Trump's going to spend
14:30
Speaker 1: this CPAC speech trying to hit Joe Biden on immigration,
14:34
Speaker 1: migrants at the border, unaccompanied minors. You know, Cliff Sims
14:39
Speaker 1: is a former Trump aide said Trump and Trumpism are
14:41
Speaker 1: going away because Biden represents a return to the issues
14:44
Speaker 1: that gave rise to them in the first place. Mass amnesty,
14:47
Speaker 1: kowtowing to China, crushing American jobs under the weight of
14:49
Speaker 1: radical environmentalism and forever wars in the Middle East. Nice,
14:53
Speaker 1: nice messaging. So like this is what they want to
14:56
Speaker 1: talk about. And if every time Biden hits back at Trump,
14:59
Speaker 1: that becomes the issue that we're talking about in the news.
15:02
Speaker 1: Trump's framing of some fucking issue. So, of course, he
15:05
Speaker 1: shouldn't hit back at Trump. Of course, he should keep
15:07
Speaker 1: talking about things he's doing to improve people's lives and
15:11
Speaker 1: why they're supported by most of the people in the country.
15:13
Speaker 1: It just it makes sense to me. I would never
15:15
Speaker 1: hit back at Trump if I was the Biden people,
15:17
Speaker 1: at least not now.
15:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, he won the presidency yesterday. in part because he
15:22
Speaker 2: was very disciplined about not chasing Trump down every single
15:25
Speaker 2: rabbit hole.
15:27
Speaker 4: Right.
15:28
Speaker 1: So why would he do that now? Well, I was
15:31
Speaker 1: going to say, you could at least make an argument
15:32
Speaker 1: during the campaign that he sort of had to deal
15:35
Speaker 1: with Trump at some points because he was running against him.
15:37
Speaker 1: He's not running against him now. Ron Klain told the
15:38
Speaker 1: Washington Post he's running against the coronavirus. He's running against
15:41
Speaker 1: a broken economy. He needs to fix those things. And
15:44
Speaker 1: by the way, that's what people want him to do.
15:46
Speaker 1: It may not be what every Democratic partisan wanted to do.
15:49
Speaker 1: Would it be fun for us to hear Joe Biden
15:51
Speaker 1: go after Trump and Trump go back. Yeah, it would
15:53
Speaker 1: be like, great. We talk about it. It'd be funny.
15:56
Speaker 1: That's not what most people in the fucking country want
15:58
Speaker 1: at all. Probably not even what most Democrats want. They
16:03
Speaker 1: actually want the virus to be fixed and the economy
16:05
Speaker 1: to fix. And they want to know that their president
16:07
Speaker 1: is working on that. So it just, it makes more sense,
16:09
Speaker 1: I think.
16:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a very strange argument. I will say that
16:15
Speaker 2: if Joe Biden simply did not talk about Trump, I
16:18
Speaker 2: think most voters would not notice that. Right. I mean,
16:21
Speaker 2: they would be like subconsciously they might say, oh, that
16:24
Speaker 2: seems nice. But what is benefits Biden is I think
16:28
Speaker 2: voters don't want him to talk about Trump. And now
16:29
Speaker 2: he's got there's a whole bunch of stories that are
16:32
Speaker 2: about Joe Biden not talking about Trump. It's you know,
16:35
Speaker 2: they would if people just read the script, they wouldn't
16:37
Speaker 2: get that. But since the press has to coverage the
16:38
Speaker 2: stage directions, they know that that is the case. It's
16:41
Speaker 2: this sort of very meta level of communications. I think
16:44
Speaker 2: like I think Joe Biden very sincerely, regardless of the politics,
16:47
Speaker 2: does not want to talk about Donald Trump. I think
16:50
Speaker 2: the Biden staff can't imagine anything dumber in the middle
16:54
Speaker 2: of a pandemic and a recession and in the wake
16:57
Speaker 2: of an insurrection that they should have to talk about
16:59
Speaker 2: what Donald Trump's going to say at CPAC. But I
17:02
Speaker 2: think the sort of the press coverage dynamic here also
17:06
Speaker 2: benefits Team Biden because it's gone to this meta level
17:11
Speaker 2: of stories about why Biden won't talk about Trump and
17:14
Speaker 2: voters can say, oh, that's cool that Biden doesn't want
17:15
Speaker 2: to talk about Trump.
17:17
Speaker 1: I will say that the press has a choice here
17:19
Speaker 1: to make as well, though. I mean, it depends on
17:23
Speaker 1: how much oxygen Donald Trump gets for his various stunts.
17:27
Speaker 1: Like right now, it's been easy. He's been relatively quiet.
17:29
Speaker 1: He puts out a statement once in a while. He
17:30
Speaker 1: doesn't have Twitter. You know, we'll see what happens at
17:33
Speaker 1: CPAC again. That is a newsworthy event. But like Donald
17:36
Speaker 1: Trump starts doing an event down by the border about
17:40
Speaker 1: migrant children and caravans coming to the country and and
17:44
Speaker 1: blames Joe Biden and blames Joe Biden for this and that.
17:47
Speaker 1: And he's always popping up and he's always, I wonder
17:49
Speaker 1: if it then becomes a little tougher for Biden to
17:52
Speaker 1: resist the inevitable sort of press narrative that Trump is
17:58
Speaker 1: whacking the shit out of Biden and Biden's just not
18:00
Speaker 1: saying anything.
18:00
Speaker 2: Oh, you can already see it.
18:02
Speaker 1: You know it's coming.
18:03
Speaker 2: I can tell you what's going to happen is you're
18:05
Speaker 2: going to see this small drop in the Washington Post
18:09
Speaker 2: ABC poll. And because Biden's at a high right now,
18:14
Speaker 2: it's going to come back down to earth at some point.
18:16
Speaker 2: And when you see that like three or four point drop,
18:18
Speaker 2: even if it's just statistical noise, the entire Meet the
18:21
Speaker 2: Press panel, which will be Hugh Hewitt and his neighbors,
18:25
Speaker 2: I guess, will talk about how Biden's mistake to not
18:30
Speaker 2: engage with Trump is hurting, you know, they won't assert it.
18:33
Speaker 2: They'll ask the question. Is Biden's failure to take on
18:37
Speaker 2: Trump hurting him in the polls? Back after this break,
18:40
Speaker 2: Hugh Hewitt, Rich Lowry and two objective reporters.
18:45
Speaker 1: And then the playbook headline will be like Dem allies
18:48
Speaker 1: of Biden worried about his stance on Trump. And it'll
18:51
Speaker 1: be like a fucking former Hill staffer and fucking Ed Rendell.
18:58
Speaker 2: Ed Rendell was a good poll.
18:59
Speaker 5: Yeah.
19:00
Speaker 1: That's where we're headed. Anyway. All right. Let's talk about
19:04
Speaker 1: something more productive. We'll talk about Texas, where last week's
19:08
Speaker 1: catastrophic failure of governance in response to a deadly storm
19:12
Speaker 1: makes you wonder if voters will finally kick the Republicans
19:15
Speaker 1: who control the state out of office. In 2012, Obama
19:20
Speaker 1: lost Texas by 15 points. 2016, Hillary lost by nine points.
19:24
Speaker 1: And in 2020... the year there was a real chance
19:27
Speaker 1: Texas might go blue, Biden still lost by 5.6 points.
19:32
Speaker 1: And Democrats up and down the ballot failed to make
19:34
Speaker 1: gains in the House or the state legislature. So what happened?
19:38
Speaker 1: The Texas Democratic Party released a very detailed analysis this
19:41
Speaker 1: week that has two primary explanations. One, Republicans registered more
19:45
Speaker 1: new voters than Democrats did. And two, Republicans turned out
19:49
Speaker 1: more of their own base voters than Democrats did. The
19:52
Speaker 1: report cites as causes for all of this lack of
19:54
Speaker 1: Democratic investment in the state, the decision by Democrats to
19:57
Speaker 1: limit in-person canvassing, and poor performance among Latino voters, particularly
20:03
Speaker 1: in the Rio Grande Valley. Can you start by giving
20:06
Speaker 1: people an idea of how the Texas Democratic Party put
20:09
Speaker 1: this report together and sort of what they looked at
20:11
Speaker 1: and what data they analyzed? Sure.
20:13
Speaker 2: They went and looked at their data model, which they
20:17
Speaker 2: used in the run-up to the election to predict how
20:20
Speaker 2: people would vote. And their model relied on partisanship, whether
20:25
Speaker 2: someone be a Republican or a Democrat. And they actually
20:27
Speaker 2: have an interesting slide in here, which takes the various
20:30
Speaker 2: Democratic Party models out there, the DNC model, some of
20:34
Speaker 2: the Democratic data firms models and the Joe Biden model.
20:39
Speaker 2: And the Texas Democratic Party model was the second most
20:42
Speaker 2: accurate of them. And they went and looked at both
20:46
Speaker 2: the precinct level data compared to their model to make
20:49
Speaker 2: an analysis of the 631,000 vote difference between Trump and
20:56
Speaker 2: Biden in the state.
20:58
Speaker 1: So, yeah. So and just so people know, this is
21:00
Speaker 1: not the most accurate analysis comes from when you finally
21:03
Speaker 1: look at the voter file and the voting history file
21:05
Speaker 1: and you can actually start matching who voted for who
21:08
Speaker 1: and you have a more granular detail. But this is
21:10
Speaker 1: pretty good because this is, you know, campaigns before an
21:15
Speaker 1: election have basically they have a score for each voter.
21:20
Speaker 1: how likely you are to vote for your campaign. And it's,
21:22
Speaker 1: it's a predictive model, but after the election, you can
21:25
Speaker 1: sort of backtrack and see how your predictive model did.
21:27
Speaker 1: Like you said, the Biden's model was the best in Texas.
21:30
Speaker 1: It was the closest to the actual results. And then
21:32
Speaker 1: the Texas democratic party was second. So the report says, quote,
21:36
Speaker 1: the pandemic prevented us from getting the most out of
21:39
Speaker 1: our most powerful competitive advantage. Our volunteers, we struggled to
21:42
Speaker 1: reach voters for whom we did not have phone numbers
21:45
Speaker 1: who were disproportionately young folks of color. What do you
21:49
Speaker 1: think about the decision to limit in-person canvassing in terms
21:51
Speaker 1: of the impact? Could it have had an over 600,000
21:55
Speaker 1: vote impact on the final results, which is how much
21:59
Speaker 1: Trump won by? No.
22:01
Speaker 2: I mean, and the report's actually relatively clear on that.
22:04
Speaker 2: There's this very– if you have to look at one
22:07
Speaker 2: page in this report, which I highly recommend to everyone,
22:09
Speaker 2: and I want to say kudos to Texas Democratic Party
22:11
Speaker 2: for A, doing it, and B, making it public.
22:15
Speaker 1: Yes.
22:15
Speaker 2: Because millions of dollars were invested in Texas by grassroots
22:19
Speaker 2: donors who really wanted to see this state go blue
22:21
Speaker 2: and were quite disappointed by the results. So reporting back
22:26
Speaker 2: to your shareholders, if you will, about what happened, what
22:28
Speaker 2: went right, what went wrong, is how you ensure people
22:31
Speaker 2: invest again. So instead of feeling burned by this, they
22:33
Speaker 2: actually lay out a very honest analysis of what happened
22:37
Speaker 2: and then sort of a roadmap of how we actually
22:38
Speaker 2: get to Texas being blue in a decade. So I
22:41
Speaker 2: think that's very, very important. But if you're going to
22:44
Speaker 2: look at one page on here, it'd be page six,
22:46
Speaker 2: and they have this pie chart that breaks down where
22:51
Speaker 2: the deficit came from, that 630,000 or 5.58%. And 60%
22:59
Speaker 2: of that deficit is simply from the fact that Texas
23:03
Speaker 2: is still a Republican state. It's what they call baseline
23:06
Speaker 2: electoral disadvantage. There are more Republicans than Democrats in the state.
23:09
Speaker 2: Among the registered voter pool. And that's just an important
23:12
Speaker 2: thing to acknowledge that we have a lot of work
23:14
Speaker 2: to do. And part of this is a, I think
23:18
Speaker 2: an expectations issue. which is, had there not been a
23:21
Speaker 2: bunch of very incorrect horse race polling that made everyone,
23:24
Speaker 2: other than Joe Biden's team, think that Democrats were going
23:27
Speaker 2: to win Texas, then, and you were to come back
23:29
Speaker 2: and say, well, Joe Biden only lost Texas by 5.5%,
23:31
Speaker 2: people were like, well, that's a great year. Because 16
23:36
Speaker 2: years ago, John Kerry lost it by 23%. And it
23:38
Speaker 2: is getting closer and closer every time.
23:40
Speaker 1: And we should tell people, when you talk about sort
23:42
Speaker 1: of just baseline differentials there, what that means, what you
23:47
Speaker 1: just read is, if every Republican- And every Democrat in
23:51
Speaker 1: the state of Texas all voted. Republicans would win the
23:54
Speaker 1: state because there's just more of them. Now, that doesn't
23:56
Speaker 1: happen in any election. There's some percentage of Republicans and
23:59
Speaker 1: some percentage of Democrats that go out to vote. But
24:01
Speaker 1: as a partisan advantage, with all the voters, Republicans have
24:04
Speaker 1: that overall.
24:05
Speaker 2: And then– so your question of was it the right
24:08
Speaker 2: decision to limit in-person canvassing? I have no idea how
24:13
Speaker 2: to– like I'm not an epidemiologist. We were in the
24:16
Speaker 2: middle of a pandemic.
24:17
Speaker 1: Yeah.
24:18
Speaker 2: I understand– I'm very sympathetic and understand why campaigns were
24:22
Speaker 2: hesitant to go ask millions of people around the country
24:26
Speaker 2: to go knock on the door and talk to other
24:29
Speaker 2: people face-to-face in the middle of a pandemic. That seems
24:31
Speaker 2: like a very risky thing to ask people to do,
24:34
Speaker 2: particularly given how little information we knew over the summer
24:37
Speaker 2: about how the virus was spread, where you were at risk, etc.
24:42
Speaker 2: And so it is– Hard to say. I don't think
24:45
Speaker 2: that would have made the difference in Texas. It could
24:48
Speaker 2: have met larger margins for Biden and some other states.
24:50
Speaker 2: And we did see some evidence comparing Georgia in November
24:54
Speaker 2: to Georgia in January. In January, there was more in-person
24:57
Speaker 2: canvassing from Democratic organizers. And how that turned out, that
25:01
Speaker 2: implies that, yes, I think it would have been helpful.
25:04
Speaker 2: But it's not the reason we lost Texas. And I
25:08
Speaker 2: think there's an over... It's not almost worth focusing on
25:12
Speaker 2: that because.
25:14
Speaker 1: I was just going to say that.
25:15
Speaker 2: It's not going to happen. God willing.
25:18
Speaker 1: We do these lookbacks and these autopsies in order to
25:21
Speaker 1: not just hang around in the past, but to learn
25:24
Speaker 1: lessons about the future.
25:26
Speaker 3: Like.
25:27
Speaker 1: We're not going to hopefully, hopefully deal with have a
25:30
Speaker 1: pandemic in 2022 and 2024. Yeah. So maybe we need
25:35
Speaker 1: to learn this time the next time there's a pandemic. God,
25:37
Speaker 1: I hope it's not in our lifetime. But we're not
25:40
Speaker 1: going to have this problem again in 22 and 24.
25:42
Speaker 1: So we shouldn't dwell on it that much.
25:44
Speaker 3: Yeah.
25:45
Speaker 1: Yeah. One issue that we are going to have to
25:55
Speaker 1: deal with going forward, and this is one of the
25:57
Speaker 1: big stories out of the election, was about how Trump
25:58
Speaker 1: did a lot better among Latinos than he did in 2016.
26:02
Speaker 1: Here's what the report says about that. Quote, Republican Latino
26:05
Speaker 1: voters turned out at a higher rate than Democratic Latino
26:08
Speaker 1: voters in the 2020 cycle relative to expectations. Many heavily
26:13
Speaker 1: Latino areas, especially in the Rio Grande Valley, broke for Trump.
26:17
Speaker 1: Bad performance among Latino districts was driven by both differential
26:21
Speaker 1: turnout and persuasion. However, Latinos in most of the state
26:25
Speaker 1: supported Democrats roughly as much as they did in 2016.
26:28
Speaker 1: Losing ground among Latino communities appears to be explained by
26:31
Speaker 1: differential turnout. Dan, will you translate this for everyone who
26:35
Speaker 1: isn't a sad political nerd like us?
26:38
Speaker 2: I mean, even sad political nerds like us kind of
26:40
Speaker 2: needed to.
26:41
Speaker 1: Read the report. It took me a few times. It
26:44
Speaker 1: took me a few times to figure it out.
26:46
Speaker 2: What it essentially means is Latinos that are Republican voters
26:51
Speaker 2: turned out at a higher rate than Latinos that are
26:54
Speaker 2: Democratic voters. It does not mean that the shift is
26:59
Speaker 2: attributable entirely to Latinos who voted for a Democrat in
27:04
Speaker 2: 2016 voting for a Republican in 2020. These are different voters.
27:08
Speaker 2: And it's important to remember that over a third of
27:12
Speaker 2: Latino voters vote for Republicans. And so sometimes when we
27:17
Speaker 2: talk about the black vote, Democrats have traditionally won such
27:21
Speaker 2: a high percentage of the black vote that the Republican
27:23
Speaker 2: numbers are so small and aggregate. On the Latino side,
27:26
Speaker 2: there's a large pocket of Republican Latino voters in all
27:30
Speaker 2: places around the country, including Texas. And according to this report,
27:32
Speaker 2: that group turned out at a higher rate than Latinos
27:36
Speaker 2: that traditionally vote Democratic.
27:39
Speaker 1: And this goes to a larger debate. that data analysts have,
27:44
Speaker 1: political data analysts have, and we, I did a lot
27:46
Speaker 1: of reporting on this in the wilderness, both seasons, there
27:49
Speaker 1: is a debate about sort of turnout versus persuasion, right?
27:53
Speaker 1: And what this is saying is that, you know, a
27:55
Speaker 1: turnout debate is, okay, Democrats have 100 Latino voters, and
28:01
Speaker 1: they want to turn out all of them, but they
28:04
Speaker 1: turned out like 80 out of 100, right? Then the
28:07
Speaker 1: other thing they want to do is that they see
28:08
Speaker 1: some Latino Republicans that they want to convince to come
28:12
Speaker 1: vote for Democrats now. They want to persuade them to
28:15
Speaker 1: come be Democrats now, and maybe they get a couple
28:17
Speaker 1: of those. So that's persuasion. And the other part that
28:19
Speaker 1: I was talking about is turnout. The question is, when
28:21
Speaker 1: you have a result like this, is it because of
28:26
Speaker 1: better turnout or that we just persuaded more voters to
28:29
Speaker 1: switch parties and to come to our side? But the
28:31
Speaker 1: Texas Democratic Party is saying among Latinos, there was definitely
28:34
Speaker 1: some vote switching, particularly in the Rio Grande Valley. of
28:37
Speaker 1: people who voted Democrat in the past and then decided
28:40
Speaker 1: to vote for Trump this time. But most of it
28:42
Speaker 1: was this turnout differential where just Republican Latinos turned out
28:46
Speaker 1: at higher rates than Democratic Latinos. Now, it seemed like
28:50
Speaker 1: from the reaction to the report by some data analysts
28:52
Speaker 1: that not everyone agreed with what the Texas Democratic Party found.
28:57
Speaker 1: Nate Cohen of the New York Times said this report
28:59
Speaker 1: is another example of Democrats reducing elections to be about
29:02
Speaker 1: turnout and reducing electoral strategy to be about grassroots organizations
29:07
Speaker 1: because we have this romantic notion about the power of
29:10
Speaker 1: organizing and it also shields activists from questioning their views
29:14
Speaker 1: or at least figuring out how to persuade voters who
29:17
Speaker 1: might disagree with us. What do you think of that argument?
29:21
Speaker 2: I mean, the entire question around how Latinos perform in
29:24
Speaker 2: the 2020 election has occurred on Twitter with these sort
29:27
Speaker 2: of like two straw people arguments. One being everything is fine.
29:35
Speaker 2: Don't worry about it. The other one is Holy shit,
29:37
Speaker 2: the sky is falling. Democrats are fucked as far as
29:39
Speaker 2: the eye can see. And it's obviously something in the middle.
29:42
Speaker 2: Where I agree, and I think this report comes down
29:46
Speaker 2: in that this is a nuanced discussion of an issue
29:48
Speaker 2: that people would rather yell about in overly simplistic terms
29:51
Speaker 2: on Twitter. Nate Cohn's point, I think, is accurate broadly.
29:57
Speaker 2: I don't think it's accurate about this report. But we
30:00
Speaker 2: tend to think about persuasion as a question of message.
30:05
Speaker 2: Like what TV ad, what speech, what piece of direct
30:09
Speaker 2: mail can we show a voter who's deciding between candidate
30:12
Speaker 2: A and candidate B that will make them vote for
30:13
Speaker 2: our candidate? And we think about turnout as purely this
30:17
Speaker 2: logistical function of how many volunteers we can get to
30:21
Speaker 2: knock on how many doors or how many phones they
30:23
Speaker 2: can text or call. And what I think we have
30:26
Speaker 2: to recognize is that there is also a message, agenda,
30:29
Speaker 2: emotional connection element of persuasion to get people to persuade
30:32
Speaker 2: them to either vote or not vote. And that's what
30:36
Speaker 2: gets lost.
30:36
Speaker 1: Every voter is a persuasion target. This is what I
30:41
Speaker 1: heard General Malley Dillon say this on a podcast during
30:44
Speaker 1: the campaign. That's how the Biden campaign thought of every voter.
30:47
Speaker 1: And there is there is, you know, we have to
30:49
Speaker 1: fight against the notion that there's a bunch of Democratic
30:55
Speaker 1: base voters sitting home and just waiting for a Democratic
31:00
Speaker 1: organizer to knock on their door and say, come vote
31:03
Speaker 1: for the Democratic candidate. And they'll say, oh, yeah, well,
31:04
Speaker 1: no one asked me. I'm ready to go vote more
31:08
Speaker 1: often than not. When we talk about expanding the electorate,
31:11
Speaker 1: and you can ask Stacey Abrams about this and everyone
31:12
Speaker 1: in Georgia who just pulled this off in Georgia, it
31:16
Speaker 1: wasn't about just simply knocking on the doors and signing
31:19
Speaker 1: them up. If someone seems like they should be a
31:21
Speaker 1: Democratic voter for whatever reason, education, race, age, gender, you
31:27
Speaker 1: name it. if they seem like they should be a
31:29
Speaker 1: Democratic voter, but they haven't voted in a few elections,
31:32
Speaker 1: there are reasons for not voting that may go beyond
31:35
Speaker 1: the fact that you just weren't asked and you just
31:38
Speaker 1: didn't see a Democratic organizer. You may have issue disagreements
31:41
Speaker 1: with Democrats. You may not think the election is that important.
31:44
Speaker 1: You may not understand the stakes. You may have some
31:45
Speaker 1: conservative views. You may be cross-pressured on different issues, right?
31:49
Speaker 1: You may think that the party is too centrist. You
31:51
Speaker 1: may think that the party is too far to the left, right?
31:54
Speaker 1: There are a million reasons why you may not have
31:58
Speaker 1: voted that aren't just an organizer hasn't knocked on your door.
32:01
Speaker 1: So I think the lesson that Democrats should take from
32:04
Speaker 1: this is whether it is a voter who cast a
32:07
Speaker 1: ballot for Trump or a voter who stayed home in
32:10
Speaker 1: the past, you are still trying to persuade them to
32:13
Speaker 1: turn out and vote for a Democrat with the most
32:15
Speaker 1: effective message possible. And we especially have to do that
32:18
Speaker 1: in the Latino community, which is not one monolithic community,
32:22
Speaker 1: but many different communities. And that's something that we haven't
32:25
Speaker 1: understood as well either.
32:26
Speaker 2: It is true that in a low turnout, low attention
32:30
Speaker 2: special election, knocking on doors and telling people there's an
32:33
Speaker 2: election they did not otherwise know about can be the
32:36
Speaker 2: difference between victory and defeat. In a presidential election with
32:40
Speaker 2: Donald Trump on the ballot, people are not missing the
32:43
Speaker 2: fact of the election. Yes, of course, organizers can help
32:46
Speaker 2: people understand how to vote, and that is often best
32:48
Speaker 2: in a face-to-face conversation. But there is something bigger here,
32:53
Speaker 2: and I think we have to– we can't simply treat
32:58
Speaker 2: a lower turnout or less high turnout than we hope
33:00
Speaker 2: for as a logistical problem. It is something bigger that
33:04
Speaker 2: has to do with brand and message, et cetera, and
33:07
Speaker 2: we have to really understand that going forward.
33:11
Speaker 3: Yeah.
33:12
Speaker 1: And we talked to Chuck Rocha about this when he
33:13
Speaker 1: was on the pod a couple months ago. There's a
33:16
Speaker 1: great Washington Post story about what happened with the Latino
33:18
Speaker 1: vote in Texas from November that I was reading before
33:21
Speaker 1: the pod. And a man named Trinidad Gonzalez, who's a
33:25
Speaker 1: professor of history and Mexican American studies at South Texas
33:28
Speaker 1: College said, He's talking about Latino communities and said they
33:31
Speaker 1: are conservative, liberal, indifferent, and hybrid. Part of the injustice
33:34
Speaker 1: of living as a minority in the United States is
33:36
Speaker 1: not being afforded the same understanding of personhood and its
33:39
Speaker 1: complexities and contradictions that everyone else gets to live with.
33:43
Speaker 1: In other words, like we should not treat demographic groups
33:48
Speaker 1: as it is a stereotype to treat them that they
33:51
Speaker 1: are all going to vote the same, have the same views,
33:53
Speaker 1: believe the same things. even the idea that is prevalent
33:57
Speaker 1: in a lot of democratic circles, that all Latinos care
34:00
Speaker 1: about immigration and immigration is their top issue. That's not
34:03
Speaker 1: necessarily true. In fact, when you look at pollings, it
34:05
Speaker 1: doesn't often seem true. Many times jobs and the economy
34:08
Speaker 1: are at the top of the list. Many times healthcare
34:09
Speaker 1: is at the top of the list. Many times what
34:11
Speaker 1: Latinos care about are what a lot of white families
34:13
Speaker 1: and black families care about. And immigration's up there, but
34:16
Speaker 1: not necessarily the top issue. And I do think, and
34:19
Speaker 1: the same goes for black voters and the same goes
34:23
Speaker 1: for women voters and the same goes for college educated voters.
34:25
Speaker 1: Like we do have to do a better job of
34:27
Speaker 1: figuring out the differences within communities, and sort of the
34:32
Speaker 1: intersectional differences between geography, class, race, gender in the Democratic Party.
34:39
Speaker 2: As the political conversation has gotten more sophisticated over the years,
34:43
Speaker 2: there has been this acknowledgement when people talk about the
34:45
Speaker 2: Latino community in Florida that is very diverse. You have Cuban-Americans,
34:49
Speaker 2: there are Puerto Ricans, there are people from Central America,
34:52
Speaker 2: and that those different segments have very different views. But
34:55
Speaker 2: we have not yet expanded that to the rest of
34:57
Speaker 2: the country and that there was a, as you point out,
35:00
Speaker 2: there's a huge diversity of opinion geographically, um, demographically all
35:04
Speaker 2: across the board. And we have, we absolutely, it is
35:06
Speaker 2: absolutely essential that Democrats stop thinking about the Latino community
35:11
Speaker 2: in these monolithic terms. We have to think, we have
35:13
Speaker 2: to understand the differences within that community and speak to them.
35:18
Speaker 1: And, you know, um, One of the women who talked
35:20
Speaker 1: to The Washington Post was a Democratic Party chair in
35:24
Speaker 1: one of the counties on the border, the Rio Grande Valley.
35:26
Speaker 1: And you say, OK, well, maybe they don't care about
35:28
Speaker 1: immigration as much there, but, you know, it's a sort
35:30
Speaker 1: of a poor rural area. And she said, you know,
35:33
Speaker 1: you have a lot of folks that feel like they've
35:35
Speaker 1: been neglected and they keep voting Democrat, but not much
35:37
Speaker 1: is changing. This area before the pandemic had a 30
35:40
Speaker 1: percent poverty rate and a fourth are uninsured. I can
35:42
Speaker 1: see why people might be open to voting Republican. it's
35:45
Speaker 1: a hard thing to hear, right? But like, if you
35:49
Speaker 1: are impoverished, if you live in a rural area, if you,
35:52
Speaker 1: and you know, we're so used to this conversation being
35:54
Speaker 1: about like rural whites and economic anxiety and oh fuck,
35:58
Speaker 1: they didn't have economic anxiety. A lot of them were
36:00
Speaker 1: just racist. And that is certainly true with a lot
36:02
Speaker 1: of Trump voters, perhaps most Trump voters, perhaps the vast
36:05
Speaker 1: majority of Trump voters. And of course, many of them
36:07
Speaker 1: fly to the fucking insurrection on a private jet. But
36:10
Speaker 1: then you think about some of these folks Latinos in
36:15
Speaker 1: rural communities on the Texas border struggling with poverty year
36:19
Speaker 1: after year after year. And if you keep voting for
36:23
Speaker 1: the same party and your life isn't appreciably better, you're
36:26
Speaker 1: not going to be tuned into all the reasons why,
36:29
Speaker 1: you know, it was Republicans who blocked the Democrats and
36:32
Speaker 1: that's why they didn't improve your life. You're just going
36:34
Speaker 1: to say, I want to try something new at this point.
36:35
Speaker 1: I'm just going to try something new. And I do
36:38
Speaker 1: think back to our earlier conversation about Biden, that is
36:41
Speaker 1: why his primary strategy is to pass legislation and take
36:46
Speaker 1: executive actions that are going to tangibly improve people's lives.
36:49
Speaker 1: Because if people in 2022 and then in 2024 look
36:52
Speaker 1: around and say, oh, pandemic's better, the economy's better, my
36:55
Speaker 1: life is a little better. Oh, and now I can
36:57
Speaker 1: see the Democrats were in charge when that happened. And
36:58
Speaker 1: maybe I'll go vote for Democrats. Like that's that is
37:01
Speaker 1: the bet that what what how voters will think in
37:03
Speaker 1: a couple of years.
37:05
Speaker 2: You know, when you look at that, Patrata says that 2.7%
37:08
Speaker 2: of the 630,000 vote difference is from persuasion. And you
37:13
Speaker 2: may say, well, that's only a tiny fraction. But remember,
37:18
Speaker 2: Donald Trump has 40,000 votes spread across a handful of
37:21
Speaker 2: states from becoming president. Like we simply– cannot afford under
37:26
Speaker 2: the current political structure that dramatically over-represents Trump's base to
37:30
Speaker 2: bleed voters anywhere. That matters. You can't look at this
37:38
Speaker 2: and be dismissive of the persuasion effect here. The persuasion
37:42
Speaker 2: effect matters. If that is a trend, not an anomaly,
37:45
Speaker 2: we have some very big problems, not just in Texas,
37:48
Speaker 2: but all across the country.
37:51
Speaker 1: So what do you think? How close are we to
37:52
Speaker 1: flipping Texas? You think it's the next Georgia? You think
37:54
Speaker 1: it's a bit further away?
37:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, it could very well be the next Georgia, right?
37:58
Speaker 2: As this report shows, there are enough unregistered likely Democrats
38:03
Speaker 2: in the state to negate the inherent Republican partisan advantage.
38:07
Speaker 2: So with organizing, with good messaging, with good branding, with
38:12
Speaker 2: real work, it can absolutely move in the Democratic direction.
38:16
Speaker 2: I lost by almost six. If it continues on its trajectory,
38:22
Speaker 2: it will be very close to being blue. It will
38:26
Speaker 2: be a battleground state in 2024, I am sure. There
38:31
Speaker 2: is a little bit of a chicken and egg problem
38:33
Speaker 2: with Texas. It's incredibly expensive to run a campaign there.
38:38
Speaker 2: The Biden team made a decision, obviously based on their model,
38:41
Speaker 2: which turned out to project a loss of about this magnitude,
38:46
Speaker 2: to not spend... $ 50 million there that could be spent
38:51
Speaker 2: on Georgia or Wisconsin or somewhere else. And this is
38:54
Speaker 2: always going to be the problem, is that how do
38:58
Speaker 2: you invest in an expensive state where it is a
39:02
Speaker 2: longer shot to get there? And this is where sort
39:05
Speaker 2: of the grassroots supportive organizations like the Texas Democratic Party,
39:08
Speaker 2: like Beto O'Rourke's Powered by People can do the work
39:12
Speaker 2: now that make it more likely that the National Democratic
39:15
Speaker 2: party or the Democratic nominee will invest in there in 2024.
39:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember when Stacey Abrams was pitching me on
39:23
Speaker 1: Georgia during the wilderness, and she said, plus we're a
39:27
Speaker 1: pretty cheap date in terms of... investment in Georgia. Texas
39:30
Speaker 1: is not a cheap date, no. Texas is not a
39:33
Speaker 1: cheap date. Texas is not a cheap date. All right.
39:34
Speaker 1: So this week, the House is passing COVID relief. Next week,
39:38
Speaker 1: they're voting on H.R. 1, otherwise known as the For
39:41
Speaker 1: the People Act, otherwise known– as what may be our
39:46
Speaker 1: last chance to save democracy. We've seen some very favorable
39:48
Speaker 1: polling for the bill, including in our Polar Coaster series
39:50
Speaker 1: last month, but we wanted to test the individual provisions
39:54
Speaker 1: in the bill and find out what's the most effective
39:56
Speaker 1: way to talk about the overall legislation. So we partnered
39:59
Speaker 1: with our friends at Data for Progress to do a poll.
40:01
Speaker 1: Here's what we found. 68% support the overall bill, including
40:06
Speaker 1: 57% of Republicans. 57% of Republicans. Then here are the
40:12
Speaker 1: individual provisions. 59% for automatic voter registration. 60% for same-day
40:17
Speaker 1: voter registration. 68% for a mandatory 15-day early voting period.
40:23
Speaker 1: 58% for giving every voter the option to vote by mail.
40:26
Speaker 1: I thought that was particularly notable since the Republicans spent
40:28
Speaker 1: most of 2020 attacking vote by mail. Still has 58% support.
40:33
Speaker 1: 73% support the use of nonpartisan redistricting commissions. 64% support
40:37
Speaker 1: limiting money in politics and 61% support increasing election security. Dan,
40:43
Speaker 1: anything surprise you in these results?
40:47
Speaker 2: I mean, the vote by mail number you mentioned is
40:48
Speaker 2: very significant since the person with the largest megaphone in
40:52
Speaker 2: the world spent nearly a year talking about how vote
40:55
Speaker 2: by mail was illegal fraud and you still have enough
40:57
Speaker 2: Republicans supporting it that you can get to 58%. Any
41:00
Speaker 2: provision that affects voting and then the overall bill are
41:03
Speaker 2: sort of viewed through this zero-sum game of Democrats versus Republicans.
41:08
Speaker 2: And when you take it outside of political operatives and
41:10
Speaker 2: political strategists and elected members of Congress, this is something
41:13
Speaker 2: that is broadly popular in a way that should be
41:17
Speaker 2: shocking to the world given how polarized we are on
41:20
Speaker 2: most things in American politics.
41:23
Speaker 1: Yeah. And I would say that the one number that
41:26
Speaker 1: stuck out to me that we did not mention is
41:30
Speaker 1: that when you said, we asked an initial question at
41:32
Speaker 1: the top of the poll that just said, how much
41:34
Speaker 1: have you heard about the For the People Act without
41:36
Speaker 1: explaining it? And only 18% of voters had heard of
41:40
Speaker 1: the For the People Act. So we do have, and
41:43
Speaker 1: we said this last time we pulled this, a lot
41:44
Speaker 1: of work to educate the public about what's in this
41:48
Speaker 1: bill and the stakes. We are trying to help change that.
41:51
Speaker 1: If you go to votesaveamerica.com slash for the people, you
41:55
Speaker 1: can learn more about what's in the bill and you
41:57
Speaker 1: can use our call tool to be connected to your
41:59
Speaker 1: representatives in Congress. And either thank them for supporting the bill,
42:02
Speaker 1: which is really important to do, even if they're supporting it.
42:04
Speaker 1: It's important. It's positive reinforcement really helps. Or if they're
42:08
Speaker 1: not supporting it, ask them why they're not. But we
42:11
Speaker 1: do need to start, you know, the House is going
42:12
Speaker 1: to pass it next week. The timeline from there, you know,
42:16
Speaker 1: who knows when it gets to the Senate, not until
42:17
Speaker 1: after COVID relief is done, but probably sometime in March.
42:21
Speaker 1: And we're going to have sort of a short runway
42:23
Speaker 1: to really build a lot of public support for this bill.
42:26
Speaker 1: And so we're going to need everyone to both educate themselves,
42:29
Speaker 1: educate your friends, your colleagues, and then start calling Congress
42:32
Speaker 1: about this because I think we need to put the
42:34
Speaker 1: pressure on. What do you think, Dan?
42:37
Speaker 2: I mean, this is it. Like one of our friends
42:39
Speaker 2: and former colleagues said to us that it all boils
42:43
Speaker 2: down to Democrats either going to pass H.R. 1 or
42:45
Speaker 2: we're fucked.
42:45
Speaker 4: Yeah.
42:48
Speaker 2: Those are the stakes. This poll suggests that may not
42:50
Speaker 2: be the best message to persuade the overall population, but
42:54
Speaker 2: it is a simple fact. If you look at all
42:56
Speaker 2: of the laws that are being proposed, Iowa just passed
43:00
Speaker 2: a series of incredibly restrictive voter suppression laws just last night,
43:03
Speaker 2: I believe. There are bills moving through the legislature in Georgia, Arizona,
43:08
Speaker 2: et cetera, that all across the country to make it
43:11
Speaker 2: harder for people to vote, surgically targeting in particular black
43:17
Speaker 2: and brown voters to prevent them from voting to make
43:19
Speaker 2: it more likely Republicans will win elections. We have limited
43:22
Speaker 2: leverage in a lot of these states because Republicans control
43:24
Speaker 2: the state legislature and the governorship. We can't stop a
43:27
Speaker 2: lot of these bills just by the mere fact of
43:31
Speaker 2: the number of votes we have, but we can undo
43:34
Speaker 2: a lot of that damage by passing H.R. 1. That
43:35
Speaker 2: is the power before Democrats. It is an absolute essential.
43:40
Speaker 2: It is hard to imagine something that is more important
43:44
Speaker 2: in the short, medium, and long term than passing this bill.
43:48
Speaker 1: We also tested a few messages about the bill against
43:50
Speaker 1: a Republican argument that said, this bill is just a
43:53
Speaker 1: power grab by Democrats to Democratic politicians, and it gives
43:56
Speaker 1: Washington way too much power over states. So that was
44:00
Speaker 1: the Republican argument tested. Then we tested three Democratic arguments
44:03
Speaker 1: in response. We wrote one message about protecting voting rights
44:06
Speaker 1: and civil rights, one about limiting big donors influence and
44:09
Speaker 1: expanding voting access, and one about the urgency of redistricting
44:12
Speaker 1: and stopping sort of the Republican state legislatures that you
44:14
Speaker 1: were just talking about. They all did extremely well. though
44:18
Speaker 1: the winner by just a few points was the following.
44:23
Speaker 1: Democrats say we need this bill to protect civil rights
44:25
Speaker 1: and voting rights because everyone should have an equal voice
44:28
Speaker 1: in our democracy, no matter what you look like, where
44:30
Speaker 1: you come from, or how much money you have. Any
44:33
Speaker 1: thoughts on the messaging here?
44:35
Speaker 2: You know, to the point of pass H.R. 1 or
44:40
Speaker 2: we're fucked, we, you know, like I said, we view
44:43
Speaker 2: that through the prism of Democrats. And I am more
44:46
Speaker 2: guilty than perhaps anyone walking the planet to talk about
44:49
Speaker 2: this issue in the context of Democrats winning elections and
44:53
Speaker 2: why it's so important. But what this polling shows is
44:55
Speaker 2: you can change who the were is in were fucked
44:58
Speaker 2: to America. And if you talk about democracy, change it
45:03
Speaker 2: from Democratic Party capital D to American Democracy lowercase d,
45:07
Speaker 2: it is much more appealing to a broader swath of
45:09
Speaker 2: the electorate.
45:12
Speaker 1: I also, so I wrote that message and I did
45:15
Speaker 1: so with the race class narrative that Anat Shankar Osorio
45:20
Speaker 1: and Heather McGee have taught us about over time in mind,
45:25
Speaker 1: which is you write something that explicitly calls out the
45:29
Speaker 1: racial aspect of it, which I did with civil rights
45:32
Speaker 1: and voting rights. And also, but then you make it,
45:34
Speaker 1: You make the benefit universal to everyone, no matter who
45:37
Speaker 1: you are, what you look like, where you come from.
45:39
Speaker 1: And they've always told us that that is incredibly effective
45:41
Speaker 1: in their polling. And it turned out here as well.
45:43
Speaker 1: And it's interesting that it was an effective in this
45:45
Speaker 1: specific way. If you when you do a party breakdown,
45:49
Speaker 1: Republicans found the message on voting rights and civil rights
45:52
Speaker 1: least persuasive, but independents found it more persuasive by a
45:57
Speaker 1: huge margin over any of the other messages. And then
46:01
Speaker 1: Democrats sort of all found them similarly persuasive. So it
46:04
Speaker 1: was one that, you know, which is much like the
46:06
Speaker 1: race class narrative is sometimes it pisses some Republicans off,
46:09
Speaker 1: but you end up getting a much broader swath of
46:11
Speaker 1: the electorate and it energizes Democrats, which is what you
46:14
Speaker 1: need to build a majority. So one last thought, one
46:18
Speaker 1: last question on this. Do you have any new thoughts
46:21
Speaker 1: on how we get to a place where we actually
46:23
Speaker 1: pass this bill by convincing Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema
46:26
Speaker 1: and maybe others to get rid of the filibuster? Because
46:29
Speaker 1: that's what it's coming down to.
46:30
Speaker 2: Well, I think we should not worry about Kyrsten Sinema
46:35
Speaker 2: and Joe Manchin yet. We have more work to do,
46:38
Speaker 2: and this poll is crystal clear on this, to convince
46:41
Speaker 2: Democrats and Democratic activists just how important this is. And
46:45
Speaker 2: Democrats have this sense that is well-worn over the years
46:49
Speaker 2: that we shouldn't talk about process. We should talk about policy,
46:53
Speaker 2: health care, wages, jobs, kitchen table issues. But- If you
46:58
Speaker 2: want good progressive policy, you have to put in place
47:01
Speaker 2: process reforms. Republicans have spent all the time and every
47:06
Speaker 2: opportunity they have, not just since this election, but over
47:09
Speaker 2: the last several decades, lying about voter fraud and convincing
47:13
Speaker 2: their voters that elections will be stolen if they do
47:16
Speaker 2: not implement these racially based voter suppression measures like voter
47:20
Speaker 2: ID and limiting just happening to eliminate the one day
47:25
Speaker 2: with the highest African-American turnout for early vote, just as
47:29
Speaker 2: a cost-saving measure, whatever else. And Democrats have not done
47:33
Speaker 2: the work, ourselves included, our former boss included, everyone in
47:36
Speaker 2: the Democratic Party, of convincing Democratic voters why this is
47:39
Speaker 2: so important. You know, we saw this in the change
47:42
Speaker 2: research polar coaster poll that we talked about a Republicans
47:48
Speaker 2: are incredibly motivated to stop voter fraud and Democrats are
47:51
Speaker 2: barely motivated to expand voting. And you can't see that
47:56
Speaker 2: because it's a podcast, but voter fraud has air quotes
47:58
Speaker 2: because it's not a real thing. And so we have
48:01
Speaker 2: to talk about it more. We have to make the
48:02
Speaker 2: case where we have to build momentum for it. If
48:05
Speaker 2: we are going to ask at some point in the
48:08
Speaker 2: relatively near future for Democratic senators to put pressure on
48:12
Speaker 2: their colleagues to to amend the filibuster, change the rules
48:16
Speaker 2: in some way, shape, or form to pass the most
48:19
Speaker 2: important piece of civil and voting rights legislation since the 60s,
48:24
Speaker 2: we have to get people excited about it. And that's
48:25
Speaker 2: what is critical about this message. That's what's critical about
48:27
Speaker 2: talking about. That's what's critical about the Vote Save America
48:30
Speaker 2: efforts that you just referenced.
48:32
Speaker 1: Yes. So votesaveamerica.com slash for the people gives you tons
48:38
Speaker 1: of information about what's in the bill so you can
48:40
Speaker 1: tell all your friends about it. And we provide a
48:43
Speaker 1: call tool so that you can connect to your representatives
48:45
Speaker 1: in Congress and tell them either thank you for voting
48:47
Speaker 1: for the bill or why they should support it. OK,
48:51
Speaker 1: when we come back, we'll have Dan's interview with immigration
48:54
Speaker 1: reporter Dara Lindt.
49:04
Speaker 2: Dara Lynn is a reporter who covers immigration policy for ProPublica.
49:07
Speaker 2: She's also a co-host of the podcast, The Weeds. Welcome
49:10
Speaker 2: to Pod Save America.
49:11
Speaker 4: Thanks.
49:11
Speaker 3: Good to be on. Good to be back.
49:13
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us again. I wanted to have you
49:16
Speaker 2: on because there's a lot of conversation happening around immigration policy.
49:21
Speaker 2: changes in policy, new legislation, and some confusion about where
49:24
Speaker 2: things stand. So I want to start with a story
49:28
Speaker 2: and photo that went online a couple of days ago
49:31
Speaker 2: that said, The Biden administration opens their first facility for
49:37
Speaker 2: migrant children. People got very worked up about this. Activists
49:41
Speaker 2: retweeted it. Reporters retweeted it. CNN's Jim Acosta asked, can
49:47
Speaker 2: we be a country who doesn't do this? Members of
49:49
Speaker 2: Congress did. And I think a lot of the, not
49:53
Speaker 2: sure everyone who retweeted about it clicked on the link
49:55
Speaker 2: of the story, but could you help explain what that
49:57
Speaker 2: is and what this facility is and what it says
50:00
Speaker 2: about the Biden immigration policy as it relates to migrant children? Sure.
50:04
Speaker 3: So to be just kind of super 101 level about it,
50:08
Speaker 3: this is part of the system that is set up
50:13
Speaker 3: for dealing with kids who are coming to the U.S.
50:16
Speaker 3: without their parents. Traditionally, they're called unaccompanied alien children, legally speaking.
50:23
Speaker 3: And so the government has a responsibility to take care
50:28
Speaker 3: of them while it finds someone in the U.S. to
50:31
Speaker 3: place them with, which is usually a relative. the Trump
50:35
Speaker 3: administration for a while was subjecting these kids to its
50:39
Speaker 3: kind of CDC order to just expel everybody who came
50:42
Speaker 3: to the US without papers. A federal court in November
50:46
Speaker 3: said that it couldn't just summarily expel unaccompanied kids, that
50:49
Speaker 3: that was a violation of the law on dealing with
50:52
Speaker 3: unaccompanied children. And the Biden administration, even though that court
50:57
Speaker 3: order got revoked, and it would have been allowed to
50:59
Speaker 3: do that, decided not to, and in fact, decided to
51:02
Speaker 3: changed the text of the CDC order so that it
51:04
Speaker 3: explicitly exempted unaccompanied kids. But at the same time, obviously
51:10
Speaker 3: COVID is still a problem. The health and human services
51:13
Speaker 3: shelters that are there to keep kids in custody and
51:19
Speaker 3: take care of them while they look for sponsors have
51:21
Speaker 3: had to reduce their capacity tremendously in order to comply
51:24
Speaker 3: with social distancing. And so we're quickly kind of, as
51:28
Speaker 3: they're taking these kids in again, the number of kids
51:31
Speaker 3: arriving has risen some, and the ceiling for how many
51:35
Speaker 3: people they can keep in custody is much lower. And
51:38
Speaker 3: there have been delays in finding and placing them with
51:40
Speaker 3: sponsors because of COVID. So they're beginning to, all of
51:44
Speaker 3: that means that they did have to increase kind of
51:47
Speaker 3: the physical capacity. And that's why that Carrizo Springs shelter,
51:51
Speaker 3: which was closed in 2019, you know, under a certain
51:56
Speaker 3: amount of protest, or after a certain amount of protest
51:59
Speaker 3: because of the conditions in which it was holding children.
52:01
Speaker 3: That's why it's now being reopened. So there are kind
52:03
Speaker 3: of two different levels of questions here, right? One is
52:07
Speaker 3: the policy question of what is done with kids who
52:11
Speaker 3: come to the US without parents and how does the,
52:14
Speaker 3: you know, what is the government obligated to do with them?
52:17
Speaker 3: And then there's the conditions question of, is this particular
52:21
Speaker 3: facility the right place? There have been questions, certainly under
52:25
Speaker 3: the Trump administration about the kind of particular nonprofits that
52:28
Speaker 3: these were getting contracted out to about whether they were
52:31
Speaker 3: really more like shelters or really more like, you know,
52:34
Speaker 3: prisons or detention centers. But that kind of specific question
52:38
Speaker 3: is separate from the bigger, are we a country that
52:43
Speaker 3: does this, quote unquote, question.
52:45
Speaker 2: And so there's two elements to this. One element of confusion,
52:49
Speaker 2: I think, among some of the people who might have
52:50
Speaker 2: seen this online was confusing policies to deal with children
52:55
Speaker 2: who come unaccompanied without parents and the child separation policies
53:00
Speaker 2: of the Trump administration. These are two different things, correct?
53:03
Speaker 1: Right.
53:03
Speaker 3: And this is kind of To be fully honest with you,
53:06
Speaker 3: this is why I and a lot of other reporters
53:08
Speaker 3: spent a lot of 2019 and 2020 very uneasy with
53:13
Speaker 3: the way that kids in cages was getting used as
53:16
Speaker 3: shorthand for Donald Trump's entire immigration policy. Because it was
53:20
Speaker 3: conflating several different eras of policy. Family separation in the
53:25
Speaker 3: kind of everybody who comes to the border gets separated
53:27
Speaker 3: from their parents' way was only practiced border-wide for a
53:31
Speaker 3: couple of months. And then the Trump administration walked it back.
53:33
Speaker 3: when kids in cages kind of became a thing again
53:36
Speaker 3: in spring 2019, it was because there was a lot
53:39
Speaker 3: of attention to, there were tons of really just unprecedented
53:42
Speaker 3: numbers of families coming to the US. And so the
53:45
Speaker 3: conditions in which they were being held were just these
53:47
Speaker 3: really overcrowded facilities that weren't designed to hold people for
53:51
Speaker 3: a long time at all, much less hold children. And
53:54
Speaker 3: so that was a conditions question. It was not a
53:56
Speaker 3: policy question, but they got conflated under that kids in
53:58
Speaker 3: cages rubric. And so now there's kind of a lot of,
54:03
Speaker 3: I think, the work that, you know, things, things that
54:08
Speaker 3: were kind of politically good for Democrats to encourage with
54:12
Speaker 3: that conflation. Now that a democratic administration is an office,
54:16
Speaker 3: there's a little more desire from certain political figures to
54:20
Speaker 3: disambiguate them, but kind of that, that work is that
54:22
Speaker 3: like that troops already been laid down. Um, but yes,
54:26
Speaker 3: this is, there are questions about kids who come with
54:29
Speaker 3: relatives who aren't their parents. Um, Before 2020, the government's
54:35
Speaker 3: line was that it had to separate a grandparent who
54:38
Speaker 3: came with their grandkids. It had to separate an uncle
54:40
Speaker 3: who came with his niece. In 2020, when they put
54:44
Speaker 3: in the CDC order, they said, for the purposes of
54:47
Speaker 3: expelling you, we will count you as a family if
54:50
Speaker 3: you're an uncle and a niece or whatever, so that
54:53
Speaker 3: they didn't have to take in anybody. And it's genuinely unclear,
54:56
Speaker 3: like the Biden administration has not explicitly said which of
55:00
Speaker 3: those two interpretations it's using. So like, In theory, some
55:03
Speaker 3: of these may be children who came with non-parental relatives
55:06
Speaker 3: and were separated, but every indication we have is that
55:09
Speaker 3: they are continuing to expel most families, and so they
55:13
Speaker 3: would probably be continuing to do that.
55:16
Speaker 2: I don't want to suggest that the immigration activist community
55:20
Speaker 2: is monolithic, but what is it that the activists would
55:23
Speaker 2: like to see the Biden administration do with these unaccompanied
55:27
Speaker 2: minors who arrive? Is it simply a question of better
55:30
Speaker 2: conditions in the facilities or is there something else?
55:33
Speaker 3: There, I mean, there is something of a split between
55:39
Speaker 3: people who think that the HHS system is like, okay,
55:43
Speaker 3: but that there was a punitive turn under the Trump administration.
55:47
Speaker 3: And so the priority really ought to be on kind
55:51
Speaker 3: of ramping, you know, on finding the better, better facilities
55:57
Speaker 3: on kind of returning to a foster care, you know,
55:59
Speaker 3: not like foster facility sort of, I mean, obviously, foster
56:03
Speaker 3: care systems are themselves like not ideal, but that it
56:06
Speaker 3: should be seen as that rather than as something punitive.
56:10
Speaker 3: But there's also, I mean, there are also people who
56:13
Speaker 3: will point out that because a lot of these, a
56:15
Speaker 3: lot of kids who come to the US without parents,
56:18
Speaker 3: or without any relatives, it's because they have relatives in
56:20
Speaker 3: the US. And, you know, obviously in many cases, these
56:23
Speaker 3: are like teenagers, sometimes older teenagers. So there, there has
56:28
Speaker 3: been an ongoing question of if someone's relative showed up
56:33
Speaker 3: at the border to take them, wouldn't it be possible
56:36
Speaker 3: for the government to release them much more quickly rather
56:38
Speaker 3: than go through this whole, like, Oh, we have to
56:41
Speaker 3: find and vet a sponsor and place you with them.
56:44
Speaker 3: And that, that kind of thing. Um, that's something that
56:47
Speaker 3: some immigration lawyers maintain the government could be doing that
56:50
Speaker 3: would really reduce the amount of time that kids have
56:53
Speaker 3: to spend in custody. There's also kind of, I mean,
56:58
Speaker 3: in theory, you could also say that like, if you
57:01
Speaker 3: were rewriting the law from scratch, that like, maybe you
57:03
Speaker 3: say that 16 plus, you know, you can't be held
57:06
Speaker 3: with adults in an adult facility, but you can kind
57:08
Speaker 3: of get released on your own recognizance or something like that. There's,
57:12
Speaker 3: you know, the If you were kind of rebuilding the
57:14
Speaker 3: system from scratch, there would be like more or less,
57:17
Speaker 3: you know, abolitionist ways to do it. But, you know,
57:21
Speaker 3: the concern is that at this point, the HHS facilities
57:28
Speaker 3: do appear to exist along a continuum and that one
57:32
Speaker 3: end of that continuum is a lot closer to detention
57:35
Speaker 3: than it is to, you know, kind of community supported care.
57:40
Speaker 2: Another element of Biden's campaign promises that has been brought
57:44
Speaker 2: into question is he had pledged to pause deportations for
57:47
Speaker 2: 100 days. He has been unable to do that for
57:51
Speaker 2: a number of reasons. Could you talk about what that
57:53
Speaker 2: is and perhaps how the Trump administration sort of hamstrung
57:57
Speaker 2: him in that effort?
57:59
Speaker 3: Right. So on its way out the door, like literally
58:03
Speaker 3: this was discovered in the last month of the Trump administration,
58:08
Speaker 3: like I think in the last couple of weeks. Trump's
58:11
Speaker 3: DHS signed agreements with a few states and a couple
58:14
Speaker 3: of localities that basically said, we agree not to change
58:20
Speaker 3: enforcement policy. And if we try to change enforcement policy,
58:24
Speaker 3: you have a right of action to challenge that, which
58:28
Speaker 3: there were a lot of questions about the way these
58:29
Speaker 3: contracts were written. It kind of turns out that that's
58:33
Speaker 3: not even that, that, Texas used the contract when the
58:40
Speaker 3: initial pause on deportations was announced to go into a
58:43
Speaker 3: federal court and say, look, we were promised we could
58:46
Speaker 3: do this. This is a violation of this agreement. Used
58:52
Speaker 3: the exact same argument on why they had standing to
58:55
Speaker 3: sue that they had used in the cases over DACA,
59:00
Speaker 3: et cetera, which is that just by having anything that
59:05
Speaker 3: makes it that encourages unauthorized migration hurts our education system
59:11
Speaker 3: so the federal judge ruled with Texas and you know
59:17
Speaker 3: issued a temporary restraining order against the deportation clause which
59:20
Speaker 3: is now turned into a preliminary injunction not even saying
59:23
Speaker 3: this not even based primarily on the contract based primarily
59:27
Speaker 3: on the administrative procedure act which is the exact same
59:31
Speaker 3: federal law that the Trump administration kept getting hung up
59:34
Speaker 3: on in challenges to its immigration policies because the argument
59:38
Speaker 3: made by the federal judge is that the Biden administration
59:41
Speaker 3: failed to consider less radical alternatives to this deportation pause
59:46
Speaker 3: and didn't kind of show its work in going through
59:49
Speaker 3: a deliberative process. Now, it's really, really not clear where
59:56
Speaker 3: the line is because at a certain level, all all
1:00:00
Speaker 3: immigration enforcement policies are matters of prosecutorial discretion, right? Like
1:00:03
Speaker 3: they all operate from the premise of we are not
1:00:07
Speaker 3: funded or frankly given a political mandate to seek out
1:00:11
Speaker 3: and deport every unauthorized immigrant in the US and therefore
1:00:14
Speaker 3: we are making individual decisions about who should be, you know,
1:00:18
Speaker 3: about who we should go after. It's really not clear
1:00:23
Speaker 3: how much the APA can regulate that, right? Because you
1:00:27
Speaker 3: can't say that federal law absolutely requires you to go
1:00:34
Speaker 3: after X, Y, and Z cases. So there are lots
1:00:37
Speaker 3: of questions. And in the meantime, this litigation has also
1:00:40
Speaker 3: involved a lot of demands for information and statistics from
1:00:44
Speaker 3: DHS that they've some of which they've actually managed to provide.
1:00:48
Speaker 3: But that is like more transparency being demanded on very
1:00:52
Speaker 3: short notice by the federal judiciary than like we've routinely
1:00:55
Speaker 3: seen from ICE in its entire history. So it's not
1:00:59
Speaker 3: super clear how much this is going to just continue
1:01:02
Speaker 3: to be a thing for the Biden administration. But so far,
1:01:06
Speaker 3: it really does look like there's going to be as much,
1:01:09
Speaker 3: you know, it does look like, you know, because if
1:01:12
Speaker 3: you find the right court venue, it's very easy to
1:01:15
Speaker 3: find an ideologically agreeable judge, that there's going to be
1:01:19
Speaker 3: as much trouble from like the Fifth Circuit under the
1:01:22
Speaker 3: Biden administration as there was from the Ninth Circuit under
1:01:24
Speaker 3: the Trump administration.
1:01:26
Speaker 2: You talked earlier about if we were starting from scratch,
1:01:28
Speaker 2: if we were rewriting the laws. A few days ago,
1:01:31
Speaker 2: Democrats unveiled a piece of immigration reform legislation. What are
1:01:35
Speaker 2: sort of the core elements of that? And what does
1:01:36
Speaker 2: it say about how democratic views of immigration policy have
1:01:40
Speaker 2: shifted since the 2013 immigration bill that passed the Senate?
1:01:45
Speaker 1: So the U.S.
1:01:46
Speaker 3: Citizenship Act, which is what the Biden administration kind of
1:01:50
Speaker 3: talked up in its first days in office as its
1:01:52
Speaker 3: day one immigration bill, has now officially been introduced. It's
1:01:57
Speaker 3: what would have been called a comprehensive immigration reform bill
1:02:01
Speaker 3: before this year. And like, there are, you know, to
1:02:06
Speaker 3: the extent that comprehensive immigration reform has been used for
1:02:08
Speaker 3: the last like 15 years to mean legalization for unauthorized
1:02:13
Speaker 3: immigrants currently in the country, plus like a broader readdressing
1:02:17
Speaker 3: of future immigration. what it doesn't have that previous comprehensive
1:02:22
Speaker 3: bills did have was a ramping up of enforcement. The
1:02:25
Speaker 3: old theory of the case was, you know, we're going
1:02:27
Speaker 3: to do this one-time legalization and then we'll set up
1:02:32
Speaker 3: the system so that we don't have 11 million unauthorized
1:02:34
Speaker 3: people again by increasing enforcement, you know, by both at
1:02:37
Speaker 3: the border and like changing some stuff in the interior,
1:02:40
Speaker 3: et cetera. That isn't in this. And that's because Democrats are,
1:02:46
Speaker 3: you know, like it's, it's, serving as something of a
1:02:50
Speaker 3: marker bill, like, obviously, there's not a whole lot of it's,
1:02:54
Speaker 3: there isn't a consensus that this could be done through
1:02:57
Speaker 3: reconciliation by any means. And so you have the question
1:03:00
Speaker 3: of how do you get 10 Republican votes in the Senate.
1:03:02
Speaker 3: So Democrats aren't, you know, it's not that they, there
1:03:06
Speaker 3: is not exactly an expectation that this is the bill
1:03:09
Speaker 3: that President Biden would sign in a couple of weeks.
1:03:12
Speaker 3: But it is an illustration that Democrats are no longer
1:03:16
Speaker 3: kind of negotiating with themselves on this, right? That like,
1:03:19
Speaker 3: they now see enforcement as something that has to be
1:03:22
Speaker 3: demanded by Republicans, not as something that is like good
1:03:25
Speaker 3: on the policy merits. And between that and the fact
1:03:29
Speaker 3: that the actual path to citizenship, the legalization program is,
1:03:34
Speaker 3: relatively broader in terms of who would be eligible and
1:03:38
Speaker 3: that it's a shorter period of time until people would
1:03:40
Speaker 3: be able to become permanent residents than we've seen in
1:03:43
Speaker 3: prior bills. Both of those make it a relatively generous,
1:03:47
Speaker 3: relatively dovish bill in terms of what we have actually seen,
1:03:50
Speaker 3: you know, get the backing of democratic leadership in Congress.
1:03:55
Speaker 2: One of the, you know, it, There's very much the
1:03:59
Speaker 2: lesson of the Obama years in the 2013 bill is
1:04:02
Speaker 2: that wherever Democrats start on enforcement, Republicans will up it.
1:04:05
Speaker 2: So I agree with the legislative strategy here. Even beyond
1:04:09
Speaker 2: the legislation, one of the challenges with setting enforcement priorities
1:04:14
Speaker 2: is dealing with ICE, the ICE union. This is– Obama
1:04:19
Speaker 2: had a– this is what ultimately led, as you know
1:04:23
Speaker 2: better than almost anyone, what led to Obama's order in
1:04:26
Speaker 2: DACA was he kept– through Secretary Janet Napolitano saying, do
1:04:31
Speaker 2: not prioritize DREAMers. And DREAMers kept getting caught up in
1:04:35
Speaker 2: the system. I imagine this is going to be a
1:04:37
Speaker 2: huge problem for the Biden administration in terms of figuring
1:04:41
Speaker 2: out how they're going to deal with enforcement if you have,
1:04:44
Speaker 2: you know, I think it's a lot of progressives see
1:04:46
Speaker 2: a rogue element. It's obviously where Abolish ICE came from.
1:04:49
Speaker 2: But have you heard about how the Biden administration or
1:04:51
Speaker 2: Secretary Mayorkas is thinking of dealing with that challenge of
1:04:54
Speaker 2: sort of reining in the enforcement side?
1:04:57
Speaker 3: So we have gotten under the dude who's kind of
1:05:01
Speaker 3: running ice on an interim basis, Tay Johnson, did send
1:05:04
Speaker 3: out a new enforcement priorities memo about a week ago,
1:05:08
Speaker 3: which is, it goes, it's a more general or like
1:05:14
Speaker 3: a more restrictive version of the memo that Obama issued
1:05:18
Speaker 3: or through DHS Secretary Jay Johnson in 2014, which was
1:05:23
Speaker 3: kind of the only one of the Obama administration's many
1:05:28
Speaker 3: efforts to tell ICE agents who they should and shouldn't
1:05:30
Speaker 3: prioritize that actually did result in change on the ground.
1:05:34
Speaker 3: And there were two different arguments. There was an argument
1:05:38
Speaker 3: that it actually got changed on the ground because Jay
1:05:40
Speaker 3: Johnson had done the kind of stakeholder work of getting
1:05:43
Speaker 3: ICE field offices on board and all of that. And
1:05:45
Speaker 3: there was another argument that it actually was just in
1:05:48
Speaker 3: laying down who should count as a priority based on
1:05:51
Speaker 3: very particular guidelines and that made it a little easier
1:05:55
Speaker 3: to ensure accountability. The Biden administration appears to be working
1:05:58
Speaker 3: on the second of those theories insofar as this is
1:06:02
Speaker 3: being issued by an interim chief. We haven't gotten a
1:06:06
Speaker 3: nominee for ICE director yet. In general, DHS is not
1:06:12
Speaker 3: really fully staffed with political appointees in any rapid way.
1:06:16
Speaker 3: And so it's going to be interesting to see how
1:06:20
Speaker 3: that memo gets implemented. And that really is the question
1:06:23
Speaker 3: right now is, you know, in an environment where it's
1:06:26
Speaker 3: clear that a lot of rank and file ICE agents
1:06:28
Speaker 3: don't like those priorities. Like, you know, you have people
1:06:32
Speaker 3: giving blind quotes saying, oh, they're abolishing ICE through memo.
1:06:35
Speaker 3: Stephen Miller is, you know, making the rounds in media,
1:06:38
Speaker 3: essentially encouraging, you know, ICE agents who disagree with these
1:06:42
Speaker 3: priorities to kind of continue to do what they want.
1:06:45
Speaker 3: But we are going to have to see. And this
1:06:47
Speaker 3: is the kind of thing that frankly takes a lot
1:06:49
Speaker 3: of time because you're looking for differences in trends from,
1:06:55
Speaker 3: you know, like there isn't like a public blotter of
1:06:58
Speaker 3: ICE arrests, you know, you end up relying on the
1:07:02
Speaker 3: data points of like quarterly arrest data, which is not,
1:07:08
Speaker 3: you know, like that's every three months and often doesn't
1:07:11
Speaker 3: come out until like a month after the quarter has ended.
1:07:13
Speaker 3: And on particularly on whatever cases happen to blow up,
1:07:17
Speaker 3: which can certainly give you an indication of oh, this
1:07:20
Speaker 3: person shouldn't fit under the guidelines but is being deported anyway,
1:07:24
Speaker 3: but doesn't give you a clear idea of whether the
1:07:28
Speaker 3: problem is this particular regional field office, whether that was
1:07:33
Speaker 3: a rogue operation and ultimately that person will be disciplined.
1:07:36
Speaker 3: So it's going to really take a while. And in
1:07:41
Speaker 3: my experience under the Trump administration, you could figure out
1:07:45
Speaker 3: the pattern on enforcement after like four months. And then
1:07:50
Speaker 3: stuff started changing. And when there isn't sustained local coverage
1:07:57
Speaker 3: or when there's other stuff in the news and so
1:07:59
Speaker 3: these things are less likely to go viral on social media,
1:08:02
Speaker 3: it can be that much harder because you just don't
1:08:04
Speaker 3: have the eyes everywhere.
1:08:07
Speaker 2: Last question for you. Just as you point out, progressives
1:08:09
Speaker 2: or activists sometimes blur the lines on the kids in
1:08:12
Speaker 2: cages policy dispute. One area where Trump and the right
1:08:16
Speaker 2: blurred the lines was between undocumented immigrants who crossed the
1:08:20
Speaker 2: border and asylum seekers. And there's some confusion about how
1:08:24
Speaker 2: the Biden administration has changed the asylum policy. What is
1:08:29
Speaker 2: going on with that?
1:08:31
Speaker 3: That is an ongoing process because for the kind of
1:08:36
Speaker 3: for the same reasons when we were talking about just
1:08:39
Speaker 3: unaccompanied kids like there is a the the current border
1:08:44
Speaker 3: the current regime for people trying to seek asylum in
1:08:46
Speaker 3: the u.s is that they aren't they're still getting expelled
1:08:49
Speaker 3: for the most part under the cdc order um that
1:08:52
Speaker 3: is something that the administration has said it will review
1:08:56
Speaker 3: but there isn't as yet any promise that they're going
1:08:59
Speaker 3: to change it, much less any kind of timeline. There
1:09:04
Speaker 3: are also, meanwhile, people who have been waiting in Mexico
1:09:08
Speaker 3: under the Trump administration's quote unquote, migrant protection protocols or
1:09:11
Speaker 3: the remaining Mexico policy, who have court dates in the
1:09:15
Speaker 3: US that keep getting pushed back because they keep getting
1:09:17
Speaker 3: not allowed to show up to cross the border into
1:09:19
Speaker 3: the US for COVID reasons. So many of those people
1:09:22
Speaker 3: have now been waiting for, everyone under that has been
1:09:26
Speaker 3: waiting for at least a year, potentially two years, or
1:09:28
Speaker 3: the overwhelming majority of people. And so the Biden administration
1:09:31
Speaker 3: stopped putting people into MPP, its first day in office,
1:09:37
Speaker 3: and is now slowly starting to let the people who
1:09:41
Speaker 3: were waiting in Mexico into the US so that they
1:09:44
Speaker 3: don't have to be in makeshift, you know, refugee camps
1:09:47
Speaker 3: and all but name in places that like, as we've
1:09:51
Speaker 3: known for, as we've seen from Texas, like that same
1:09:53
Speaker 3: weather pattern was happening on the other side of the
1:09:54
Speaker 3: border too. So people were, you know, intense during this
1:09:57
Speaker 3: intensely cold snap in Matamoros. The process for how they're
1:10:03
Speaker 3: doing that has been a little bit shaky to get
1:10:05
Speaker 3: started because it relies on people enrolling online. And that's
1:10:10
Speaker 3: difficult when not everyone is literate, when not everyone has
1:10:13
Speaker 3: reliable internet access. So it's not super... And frankly, no
1:10:18
Speaker 3: one knows where a lot of these people are. There
1:10:20
Speaker 3: wasn't any real effort to track them. The US government
1:10:24
Speaker 3: as often as not, instead of writing a real address
1:10:26
Speaker 3: for where they were staying in Mexico, just wrote domicilio
1:10:28
Speaker 3: conocido or known address. And, you know, it's totally plausible
1:10:33
Speaker 3: at this point that some of them have gone back
1:10:35
Speaker 3: to their home countries, that some of them have, you know,
1:10:38
Speaker 3: settled elsewhere in Mexico. Who knows how many people have,
1:10:43
Speaker 3: you know, been killed or disappeared. So it's, there isn't
1:10:48
Speaker 3: a lot of knowledge about how many people will ultimately
1:10:50
Speaker 3: be able to take advantage of this. And, you know,
1:10:52
Speaker 3: it's not clear how much effort the US government is
1:10:55
Speaker 3: going to go to, or like UNHCR, which is doing
1:10:58
Speaker 3: a lot of the implementation of this on the Mexican side.
1:11:00
Speaker 3: to really seek those people out. But what you have
1:11:03
Speaker 3: right now is a situation where like, there was, I
1:11:07
Speaker 3: think the the Times recently in its some of its
1:11:10
Speaker 3: recent border coverage, identified a couple who the one pair,
1:11:16
Speaker 3: the father had been in had been enrolled in the
1:11:19
Speaker 3: remain in Mexico program, and so was a is going
1:11:21
Speaker 3: to be able to go into the United States. But
1:11:23
Speaker 3: his partner, who had arrived in November of last year,
1:11:25
Speaker 3: was turned away under the CDC order and is still
1:11:28
Speaker 3: getting turned away. She's not eligible to come in because,
1:11:30
Speaker 3: you know, people who were subject to that, there isn't
1:11:33
Speaker 3: a process for them yet. And that's going to be,
1:11:35
Speaker 3: you know, when that happens is going to depend on
1:11:38
Speaker 3: how much the Biden administration can, you know, can ramp
1:11:42
Speaker 3: up capacity to safely process people in without, you know,
1:11:47
Speaker 3: risking epidemiological dangers. without risking people just kind of getting
1:11:52
Speaker 3: lost in the system or dumped on. For a while
1:11:56
Speaker 3: under the Trump administration, busloads of people were just getting
1:11:59
Speaker 3: dumped at bus depots in El Paso. And that's not
1:12:02
Speaker 3: helpful for that community. That's not helpful for the migrants.
1:12:06
Speaker 3: So it's the kind of infrastructure work that won't necessarily,
1:12:13
Speaker 3: even kind of under the most motivated circumstances, wouldn't be
1:12:17
Speaker 3: able to happen immediately. And we're with an understaffed DHS.
1:12:21
Speaker 3: It's not super clear how quickly that can happen at all.
1:12:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that is the I think immigration is
1:12:26
Speaker 2: probably the issue where this may be the most complicated,
1:12:28
Speaker 2: given how aggressive the Trump administration was. But President Biden
1:12:31
Speaker 2: has an understaffed government operating in a pandemic on things
1:12:35
Speaker 2: that are really hard. So this is this is very complicated.
1:12:37
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for joining us and helping shed
1:12:39
Speaker 2: light on this. And we will love to have you
1:12:41
Speaker 2: back soon, because this is going to be an issue
1:12:42
Speaker 2: that is going to remain at the forefront for a long,
1:12:44
Speaker 2: long time.
1:12:46
Speaker 3: Thanks. Yeah, anytime, anytime.
1:12:52
Speaker 1: Thanks to Dara for joining us today and hope you
1:12:54
Speaker 1: all have a great weekend. We'll, we'll see you next
1:12:56
Speaker 1: week after CPAC.
1:12:58
Speaker 2: Bye everyone.
1:13:01
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