Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds and the majority of the twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four Republican Iowa caucus goers don't believe Biden legitimately won
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty election. We have such a great show
Speaker 1: for you today. Run for some things. Amanda Litman tells
Speaker 1: us about how down ballot races well make a difference
Speaker 1: in the twenty twenty four election, and we know this
Speaker 1: could be tight. Then we'll talk to protect democracies Ian
Speaker 1: Bassen about protecting democracy. But first we have the host
Speaker 1: of the Laurence o'donald Show MSNBC is Laurence O'Donnell. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to Fast Politics. Lawrence.
Speaker 2: Great to be here.
Speaker 1: It's so great to have you. And I feel like
Speaker 1: I actually think I was watching the returns. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know they called it with one percent reporting.
Speaker 3: That's not my choice. I disagree with my industry on this.
Speaker 3: I don't think there's any reason to rush it, especially
Speaker 3: in a I mean, could you have asked for less
Speaker 3: suspense in the outcome of any voting process in American history?
Speaker 3: There was no Prize awarded for you know who was
Speaker 3: the first to say it's all over. But yeah, people
Speaker 3: were still voting in Iowa, you know, and it's an
Speaker 3: early finish anyway.
Speaker 2: I don't get it. I just don't get it.
Speaker 3: I thought, you know, DeSantis was very angry about it
Speaker 3: and posting about how dare they? And you know, that's
Speaker 3: the one thing I agree with Desantus about. The Ronald
Speaker 3: Reagan election victory in nineteen eighty was called by the
Speaker 3: networks before the polls closed in California, and so that
Speaker 3: was the first I think of these truly outrageous things
Speaker 3: and by the networks, and like most of us, they're
Speaker 3: incapable of learning.
Speaker 1: Yeah, United States of Amnesia. Yeah, I mean it's so
Speaker 1: funny because I'm like on this Gorvidal kick and every
Speaker 1: time you go back, and also Christopher Hitchins, like they
Speaker 1: wrote some of these pieces twenty thirty, forty years ago,
Speaker 1: even though the stakes are not quite as high, a
Speaker 1: lot of the problems are the same.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And isn't it weird when you read older things
Speaker 3: like that to discover that there used to be smart
Speaker 3: people before us, Like we're what what they had smart
Speaker 3: people before?
Speaker 2: Oh? How'd they do that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean Hitchens is a really good example of
Speaker 1: someone who I don't know. He just looks at things
Speaker 1: in a very interesting way. That makes me you want
Speaker 1: to look at things in an interesting way.
Speaker 2: Yeah. There was a pure coldness to his logic, and
Speaker 2: there was never the slightest attempt to accommodate anyone disagreeing
Speaker 2: with him. And that was not considered offensive. That was
Speaker 2: considered a perfectly legitimate conversational approach. And there were people
Speaker 2: I know, people who knew who sharply disagreed with them,
Speaker 2: who never felt uncomfortable in that kind of exchange. And now,
Speaker 2: you know, so much of what we have to say
Speaker 2: has to do simultaneously take care of the people who
Speaker 2: are disagreeing with us as we're saying it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are things that we can learn from Iowa
Speaker 1: that are insane and disturbing and also I think a
Speaker 1: little bit hopeful. So first for insane and disturbing. NBC
Speaker 1: News Iowa Entrance poll. Did Biden legitimately win in twenty twenty?
Speaker 1: Eighty percent of the Hailey voters say yes, forty percent
Speaker 1: of the Disantis voters say yes, and six percent of
Speaker 1: the Trump voters say yes.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So the entrance and what will now be exit polling
Speaker 3: from primaries that you see in the ear of Trump
Speaker 3: are simply intelligence tests.
Speaker 2: That's all they are. And they didn't used to be.
Speaker 3: It wasn't an intelligence test, you know, when you were
Speaker 3: getting Romney voter exit polling, you know, or McCain voter
Speaker 3: exit polling. It wasn't. It was simply a disagreement about techation.
Speaker 3: It was a disagreement about how big government should be,
Speaker 3: how much government you can afford, and abortion issues and
Speaker 3: gun issues. And it was not an intelligence test.
Speaker 2: And now it is.
Speaker 3: And Trump's the stupidest thing that's ever happened in American politics.
Speaker 3: And you know, if you're with them, you are not
Speaker 3: necessarily stupid. But what those polls showed, those entrance polls
Speaker 3: show last night is that you are in an extremely
Speaker 3: stupid group everybody. If you're not stupid in the Trump
Speaker 3: section of the Iowa caucus, pretty much everyone around you
Speaker 3: is profoundly stupid and pretty deeply and intensely racist at
Speaker 3: the Hitlerian level, since eighty one percent believe, as the
Speaker 3: CBS poll showed that eighty one percent of Republican primary voters,
Speaker 3: which we have to remember, is a subset of Republican voters.
Speaker 3: It is just a subset of them, but it is
Speaker 3: the most extreme. And eighty one percent of them believe
Speaker 3: that Trump is right that immigrants poison the blood of
Speaker 3: this country. Nikki Haley's parents were immigrants. She is the
Speaker 3: poison blood. She has it in her, the poison blood
Speaker 3: that Trump is talking about. She's transmitted the poisoned blood
Speaker 3: Trump is talking about.
Speaker 2: To her children. And eighty one percent of the people
Speaker 2: who Nikki Haley is trying to get to vote for
Speaker 2: her believe she is walking poisoned blood. So the ceiling
Speaker 2: on that candidacy is most clearly described by that poll,
Speaker 2: more than more than any other. It's impossible for her
Speaker 2: to get anywhere close to the nomination among those voters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a certain amount of incredible wishcasting to think
Speaker 1: that somehow you're going to be able to put in
Speaker 1: someone who she's ultimately really one America. I mean again,
Speaker 1: I am not a fan of her policy, but she's
Speaker 1: made it in America right in a way that you
Speaker 1: know that our great grandparents did, the way that this
Speaker 1: is meant to work the whole country, and the idea
Speaker 1: that somehow these people who voted you know who got
Speaker 1: vary bubble with Trump because Trump touched that fourth rail
Speaker 1: of racism that Republicans pretended not to believe in. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's kind of an amazing bit of pushcast in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, she's a standard Republican candidate. She
Speaker 2: comes from a long line of Republican candidates like her.
Speaker 2: And what she's done is she has adopted Trumpian views
Speaker 2: where necessary or stayed silent on them. You know, Nikki
Speaker 2: Haley's position on tariffs, which she hasn't said a word about,
Speaker 2: will no doubt be functionally identical to Donald Trump's. And
Speaker 2: that's a one hundred reversal of the Republican Party position
Speaker 2: on tariffs until Donald Trump came along. And she looks
Speaker 2: to a lot of people, I think like a normal
Speaker 2: Republican candidate, and that's true, but it's a normal Republican
Speaker 2: candidate who's adapted to trump Ism in many policy corners
Speaker 2: that go unnoticed.
Speaker 1: A lot of us assume that you would behave like
Speaker 1: a normal Republican if she lost, But there's ample evidence
Speaker 1: to suggest that this authoritarian streak, while it runs through DeSantis.
Speaker 1: Why wouldn't it necessarily run through her.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't think it would, because she's rational. Here's
Speaker 3: the rational part. She knows this. You know, she elected governor.
Speaker 3: The first thing you do, the first thing you have
Speaker 3: to do after an election that you win, is work
Speaker 3: on getting the people who didn't vote for you, picking
Speaker 3: up as many people as possible who didn't vote for you. So,
Speaker 3: you know, Richard Nixon wins in nineteen sixty eight by
Speaker 3: less than one percent of the vote. Okay, it's a cliffhanger.
Speaker 3: They don't call it until the day after and all that. Right,
Speaker 3: So four years later he wins forty nine cents. You know,
Speaker 3: Ronald Reagan the same thing. Well, what did they do.
Speaker 3: They spent the entire time trying to get votes they
Speaker 3: didn't get the first time. That's all he did. Now
Speaker 3: that you can't get everyone, right, but there's some margin,
Speaker 3: there's some margin. And so it's why one of the
Speaker 3: reasons Trump has been so laughable to me since he
Speaker 3: one in twenty sixteen. I was waiting for the day,
Speaker 3: you know, was it going to be a week after
Speaker 3: the election or when was it going to be the
Speaker 3: day when he started speaking to the voters who didn't
Speaker 3: vote for him, and he never spoke to them ever. Right,
Speaker 3: And so the next time he loses to vote by
Speaker 3: an even bigger margin than he lost the vote in
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen. And what's he done since then, Well, he's
Speaker 3: gone even farther away from the voters who didn't vote
Speaker 3: for him. And so Hayley will not do that. Ailey
Speaker 3: will be a Nixon Reagan, you know, Bush. That's what
Speaker 3: you do when you get elected. You start working on
Speaker 3: picking up two or three or five percent of the
Speaker 3: people who didn't vote for you. She will do that.
Speaker 3: And so that's where she is. And she's also going
Speaker 3: to have a dysfunctional Congress basically, you know that won't
Speaker 3: be able to deliver very much. So there's not much
Speaker 3: she can do. She certainly won't spend ten seconds of
Speaker 3: her time shuring the Israeli government to possibly be more
Speaker 3: humane and their approach to a situation in Gaza. And
Speaker 3: what she might or might not.
Speaker 2: Do or support doing with Ukraine is likely to be
Speaker 2: much closer to Biden than to Trump on Ukraine.
Speaker 1: And put it that way, what you're talking about is
Speaker 1: a really interesting point about Trump's in staunch refusal to
Speaker 1: grow the electorate and You've talked about this with me before,
Speaker 1: and we've talked about this together, and it is why
Speaker 1: I actually think that Trump is again. I do think
Speaker 1: he'll ultimately be the Republican nominee. But he is ultimately
Speaker 1: in trouble because he's not shown any interest ever in
Speaker 1: growing his face.
Speaker 2: If you look at Biden, it's the standard version. Like
Speaker 2: when he wins, the first speech he makes is inclusive
Speaker 2: and reaches up to people who didn't vote for him.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's true of Richard Dixon, it's true of
Speaker 2: Ronald Reagan, It's true all these people. It's the very
Speaker 2: first thing they do, and true of Bill Clinton. And
Speaker 2: by the way, Bill Clinton, the big group to reach
Speaker 2: for was the Ross Puau voter. You know, there was
Speaker 2: a giant.
Speaker 3: Third party vote in nineteen ninety two. Bill Clinton gets
Speaker 3: elected with forty three percent of the vote. That wasn't
Speaker 3: very comfortable. So he spends every day trying to talk
Speaker 3: to the Parrot voter, you know, while also trying to
Speaker 3: hold onto what he had with voters. And that's how
Speaker 3: he got reelected. It's just the way it works. And
Speaker 3: so the tension that people have to learn to live
Speaker 3: with now is that you have a fifty three percent,
Speaker 3: saye population. Okay, the CBS poll shows that fifty three
Speaker 3: percent of Americans disagree with Donald Trump that immigrants are
Speaker 3: poisoning the blood of America. Okay, So that means fifty
Speaker 3: three percent is your maximum number of sane people in America.
Speaker 3: Fifty three percent, that's it. And so Biden doesn't get
Speaker 3: to work with seventy percent of the population. Potentially, fifty
Speaker 3: three percent is the absolute maximum that he could get
Speaker 3: if every single person who thought that voted for him.
Speaker 3: And the trouble is that many of the people who
Speaker 3: disagree with Trump on poisoning the blood of America also
Speaker 3: want lower taxes, so you know, or other things right
Speaker 3: that Biden's not going to give them. So the maximum
Speaker 3: spot you can get to in these elections at most
Speaker 3: is fifty point one percent.
Speaker 2: And so they're going to be close. They're going to
Speaker 2: always be close.
Speaker 3: And it's ridiculous, you know that Donald Trump should have
Speaker 3: like a closer he should lose more narrowly than Jimmy
Speaker 3: Carter lost. Is kind of ridiculous, but that's the country
Speaker 3: you live in now, you know. You notice that the
Speaker 3: Republican side is completely comfortable with this. They're one hundred
Speaker 3: percent comfortable with this. They know that when you're landing
Speaker 3: this plane that the wheels are going to scrape the
Speaker 3: top of them out and tops, but they don't care
Speaker 3: about how close it is. Nobody on the Republican side
Speaker 3: is worried about how alienating Trump is, how unpopular Trump is.
Speaker 3: In fact, no one on the Republican side is urging
Speaker 3: Trump to do something to appeal to these voters, the
Speaker 3: way everybody on the Democratic side has a suggestion to
Speaker 3: Joe Biden about how he has to appeal to voters
Speaker 3: who aren't quite with him just yet. There's never a
Speaker 3: suggestion about that on the Trump side. And that's this
Speaker 3: is a guy, you know, who lost by you know,
Speaker 3: seven million votes or something last time, and no one's
Speaker 3: saying it to him, Hey, you got to gotta do
Speaker 3: better than that. Why do you think that is this
Speaker 3: interesting professionalism about voting On the Republican side, they are politicians.
Speaker 3: We now know it more than ever that the Republican
Speaker 3: voter is a politician. You know, I used to say
Speaker 3: this to people that you know during the Clinton years
Speaker 3: other times that you know, one of the one of
Speaker 3: the things I didn't want people to have to become
Speaker 3: was a politician themselves.
Speaker 2: When they went into the voting booth.
Speaker 3: And so, you know, I used to, you know, welcomely
Speaker 3: encourage people who thought they wanted to vote for a
Speaker 3: third party or make some statement with their vote, especially
Speaker 3: if they lived in New York or California, because it
Speaker 3: won't matter in the electoral college. But by all means
Speaker 3: do so, because you shouldn't be forced into becoming a
Speaker 3: politician with your vote. Well, Republicans never bought that right,
Speaker 3: and so the Republicans were never voting for Ralph Nader
Speaker 3: or anything like that, but Democrats were. And I certainly
Speaker 3: did many times, you know, vote for third party candidates.
Speaker 3: But I always voted in Massachusetts, New York, or California,
Speaker 3: so my vote never mattered. It's never mattered once in
Speaker 3: my life, the presidential votes. And so I could play
Speaker 3: around with it in any way I wanted to.
Speaker 2: But Republican voters were already politicians. They were already making
Speaker 2: that calculation of yeah, you know, this guy's not perfect.
Speaker 2: Romney's not perfect, but I'm with him. McCain's not perfect,
Speaker 2: but I'm voting farm. Many Republicans definitely did not think
Speaker 2: Ron Reagan was perfect, but you know, okay, we're will it,
Speaker 2: you know, And the Democrats have always been more ambitious
Speaker 2: than that, much less willing to come to that final
Speaker 2: decision as a voter to be a politician.
Speaker 3: They often have not chosen to do that. And it's
Speaker 3: in the nature of the way these two parties vote,
Speaker 3: and it's a riskier thing on the Democratic side. And
Speaker 3: that's how Richard Nixon became president in nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 3: because you know, people thought young voters thought that, you know,
Speaker 3: Humphrey and Nixon were the same. Turned out they weren't.
Speaker 3: I certainly believe that I was a little kid at
Speaker 3: the time. I was hearing it from everybody, you know,
Speaker 3: all my.
Speaker 2: Older brothers, you know, Humphrey and Nixon's to say, okay,
Speaker 2: you know, so I didn't care. I mean, as a
Speaker 2: little kid that he were Humphrey lost. I didn't know
Speaker 2: that what was at stake. And so the notion of
Speaker 2: lesser of two eevils voting was a very common understanding
Speaker 2: of the way it works in a two party system.
Speaker 2: It doesn't work that way in Israel.
Speaker 3: You get to vote for exactly what you think, and
Speaker 3: in parliamentary systems you get to do that.
Speaker 2: But in our system, which was set up specifically to
Speaker 2: avoid the kind of coalition stuff that occurs in parliaments,
Speaker 2: the idea, you know, lesser of two evils was what
Speaker 2: I was looking at on ballots pretty much most of
Speaker 2: my life. You know. It's like I wasn't enthusiastic about
Speaker 2: what the menu choice was. And so I think one.
Speaker 3: Of the Obama effects I think might be, especially with
Speaker 3: younger voters voters can cast their first vote for Obama,
Speaker 3: is that they get to idealize presidential voting. They get
Speaker 3: to go, oh, no, got I voted for a perfect candidate.
Speaker 2: I agreed with them on everything, said, well, wow, I
Speaker 2: never experience and that's pretty amazing. The Republicans are very
Speaker 2: used to this, that you vote for what's in front
Speaker 2: of you, and you know, you take the one thing
Speaker 2: they're serving on the menu, and you know, you know,
Speaker 2: and Democrats, especially the younger voters I think who got
Speaker 2: had that Obama experience of idealizing their vote is they
Speaker 2: feel weird about how come I don't feel idealizing in
Speaker 2: my vote for Joe Biden. And so in the end,
Speaker 2: in September, October November, I think the focus on lesser
Speaker 2: of two evils will be pretty clear.
Speaker 3: I don't think there's going to be that Humphrey Nixon
Speaker 3: mistake again, because Trump is so much more vividly bad.
Speaker 3: Even the Nixon was in nineteen sixty eight, and he
Speaker 3: was pretty bad looking in nineteen sixty eight, but Trump
Speaker 3: is much worse. And so you know, we had a
Speaker 3: voter interviewed in New Hampshire West that on MSNBC who
Speaker 3: said she's heavily left, describe yourself as heavily left, and
Speaker 3: then said she would, of course vote for Nicki.
Speaker 2: Haley over Joe Biden. Well, you're not heavily left, or
Speaker 2: you have a little more homework to do. I know
Speaker 2: for a fact, absolute certainty. In fact, I want to
Speaker 2: track down that voter and bring her on in October
Speaker 2: and ask her, you know, how she's feeling, because she's
Speaker 2: not going to vote.
Speaker 3: For Republican judges and Republican Supreme Court justices. She's not
Speaker 3: and she's not going to vote for Republican candidate who
Speaker 3: has zero sympathies or no sense whatsoever that there should
Speaker 3: be any restraint ever suggested to the Israeli military. She's
Speaker 3: not going to vote for that candidate.
Speaker 1: No, of course not. Thank you so much, Lawrence. This
Speaker 1: is really great.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Amanda Littman is the co founder of Run for Something.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Fast Politics. My MVP of the week,
Speaker 1: Amanda Littman.
Speaker 4: I'm always always happy to be here, Mollie.
Speaker 1: Last was a big week for Run for Something, because
Speaker 1: yet again a lot of your candidates took the stage
Speaker 1: and were shown to be just superstars. Can we talk
Speaker 1: about Congresswoman Crockett.
Speaker 5: Jasmine Krockett from the Great State of Texas is just
Speaker 5: killing it in the best possible way. You know. Run
Speaker 5: for Something worked with her in her first race for
Speaker 5: the Texas State House, and when she won the seat there,
Speaker 5: she was one of the leaders pushing Greg Abbott and
Speaker 5: Republicans especially against voter suppression and horrific bills they were
Speaker 5: trying to pass. Not only did pass in Texas, she
Speaker 5: became one of the first Run for Something alum to
Speaker 5: take a seat in Congress and has over and over
Speaker 5: and over again proven why it really matters to have young,
Speaker 5: diverse progressives who show up differently and lead differently and
Speaker 5: do not give a single fuck about what the norms
Speaker 5: are in terms of civility and is really ready to
Speaker 5: hold people accountable for their actions.
Speaker 4: She's an all star.
Speaker 1: So one of the things about the congresswoman is she
Speaker 1: actually had really I think appropriate background for Congress. Can
Speaker 1: you explain a little bit about that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So, Jasmine was a civil rights attorney, she was
Speaker 5: a public defender. She started her own law firms. She
Speaker 5: duck on a bunch of pro bono cases. She originally
Speaker 5: ran for the Texas State House back in twenty nineteen
Speaker 5: in a special election and then was able to run
Speaker 5: for Congress again in a special election after a Congresswoman
Speaker 5: Bernice Johnson, and now she wasn't going to seek reelection.
Speaker 5: She was in a competitive primary she didn't want. In general,
Speaker 5: she's like exactly the kind of person you want in office.
Speaker 5: She is really values driven, she's super smart, and most important,
Speaker 5: I think she's like very clearly able to call out
Speaker 5: the bullshit when she sees it in a way that
Speaker 5: it makes brings so much fresh energy, especially to the
Speaker 5: hearings that she's doing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, she just it's not business as usual, right,
Speaker 1: it's really people's lives.
Speaker 5: And she understands, like really intimately I think and inherently
Speaker 5: the value of making a scene like I think this
Speaker 5: is Republicans been really good at, especially in these congressional
Speaker 5: hearings over the years, that like going viral not is
Speaker 5: like is a good thing because it brings attention to
Speaker 5: an issue you're trying to bring.
Speaker 4: She knows that, like she didn't get into.
Speaker 5: This to wait her turn, that some people might want
Speaker 5: her to stay quieted, but she is just deeply ready
Speaker 5: to cause a little good trouble, I guess is the
Speaker 5: best way of saying it.
Speaker 1: The Oversight Committee was set up by Republicans to be
Speaker 1: good on television right and to make viral moments that
Speaker 1: they could then fundraise off of. And what he did
Speaker 1: which was smart, was he then put on people on
Speaker 1: the Democratic side who could also do that. The congresswoman
Speaker 1: is really still new, so I think it's really valuable.
Speaker 1: But one of the things I wanted to ask you too,
Speaker 1: is this is a case of a candidate. She comes
Speaker 1: from a red state that might have a swingy future.
Speaker 1: We've talked a lot about how important it is. You
Speaker 1: and I have talked a lot about how important it
Speaker 1: is to run people in seats even when you might
Speaker 1: not win. Can you talk about the importance of that.
Speaker 5: Yes, So I think Congressman Crockett is a really good
Speaker 5: example of the voters in her community are going to
Speaker 5: show up for her because they're excited by her. And
Speaker 5: we're seeing the same thing happen in districts across the country,
Speaker 5: even in places where we don't always come out on top,
Speaker 5: simply fielding candidates and fielding candidates voters can get excited about,
Speaker 5: especially at the most local levels state house, state senate,
Speaker 5: city council, school board, can really gin up turnout. We
Speaker 5: did studies on this back in twenty twenty, and we
Speaker 5: looked at the presidential election and state legislative races and
Speaker 5: the governor's races, and found that simply fielding a candidate
Speaker 5: for a state legislative race in summer we hadn't before,
Speaker 5: which historically have been a lot of districts that have
Speaker 5: gone uncontested, can increase turnout for the top of the
Speaker 5: ticket in that district by anywhere between half a percent
Speaker 5: and close to two and a half percent. That's the
Speaker 5: margin of victory. It makes a lot of sense, like
Speaker 5: these local candidates are knocking doors, they're having personal conversations
Speaker 5: with voters, They are much more relatable in many ways
Speaker 5: than the top of the ticket whatever that is. In
Speaker 5: that place, they are really running strong, brassroots driven campaigns,
Speaker 5: especially as folks that run for something works with and
Speaker 5: it's much easier, I think, to connect those races to
Speaker 5: your day to day life. Like, yes, obviously what happens
Speaker 5: in DC is incredibly important, but what happens to your
Speaker 5: school and the streets you drive on and the cost
Speaker 5: of your home, all of that is being determined at
Speaker 5: the local level, and you get to really have a
Speaker 5: conversation with a person who's making a decision about it.
Speaker 1: And so let us talk about your theory of the
Speaker 1: case when it comes to the twenty twenty four election
Speaker 1: and how down ballot candidates could help the top of
Speaker 1: the ticket.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think we're going to see this, especially in
Speaker 5: twenty twenty four when, as we now know, it is
Speaker 5: going to be Trump first Biden. Many of us have
Speaker 5: known for a while, but I think it's like really
Speaker 5: starting to think in with the Iowa behind us, it's
Speaker 5: going to be Trump first Biden round two. There's a
Speaker 5: lot of people who aren't that excited about it.
Speaker 4: That's okay.
Speaker 5: You don't necessarily have to be excited to show up
Speaker 5: at the polls, but you do have to show up,
Speaker 5: and I think it's really good to give people a
Speaker 5: reason besides the presidency. So one of the things we
Speaker 5: run for Something is really focusing on this year is
Speaker 5: making sure we're recruiting and supporting candidates everywhere, but especially
Speaker 5: in these places where there's really top of the ticket consequences.
Speaker 5: Expect to work with more than eight hundred and fifty
Speaker 5: candidates this year. Over one hundred and thirty five of
Speaker 5: them are likely to be focused exclusively in Michigan, Wisconsin,
Speaker 5: and Pennsylvania, knowing that the electoral college will likely be
Speaker 5: decided in those three key states. We're also thinking a
Speaker 5: lot about where our school board candidates in California and
Speaker 5: New York can help maybe spur up turnout for the
Speaker 5: congressional races, where our local folks in Montana can help
Speaker 5: John Tester increase his help hold the Senate hopefully. You know,
Speaker 5: all of this makes a difference in an election that
Speaker 5: will likely be decided by tens of thousands of votes,
Speaker 5: if not less.
Speaker 1: When you talk about school boards, we really saw what
Speaker 1: could happen with school boards and ultimately the Moms for
Speaker 1: Liberty Crew really did just get creamed. But you were
Speaker 1: involved in that, so talk about that. Yeah.
Speaker 5: One for Something had a seventy two percent win raid
Speaker 5: for our school board races in twenty twenty three, Moms
Speaker 5: for Liberty had maybe in the thirty percentage range of
Speaker 5: a third of their folks one thirty too much. Yeah,
Speaker 5: like they're not more popular. There's not book not popular.
Speaker 5: Talking about fur Asian schools not popular. Distracting from the
Speaker 5: issues like teacher pay and facilities funding and how we're
Speaker 5: teaching our kids to read. Not popular when we can win.
Speaker 4: So it's why I run for something.
Speaker 5: That's really thinking about candidate recruitment, especially right now when
Speaker 5: the deadlines are coming up week after week.
Speaker 4: It is almost too.
Speaker 5: Late to run for office, but probably not too late
Speaker 5: depending on where you are.
Speaker 1: And if you're a woman, you need to be told.
Speaker 1: Just remind us that's statistic, because I think that's so important.
Speaker 5: You know, there's research that says women need to be
Speaker 5: asked seven times before they run for office. So the
Speaker 5: joke goes, men don't need to be asked at all.
Speaker 5: They'll tell you when they're.
Speaker 4: Running and ask you for money.
Speaker 5: Right, so you know, if you're listening to this, I'm
Speaker 5: asking for run. I'm asking you to run seven times
Speaker 5: over and we'll help you if you decide to get
Speaker 5: on the ballot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you'll always be better than Dean Phillips.
Speaker 4: Always the bar is so luck you will always be
Speaker 4: there and feel it.
Speaker 1: Tell me about some of the other races that we
Speaker 1: should be watching. If you are listening to this and
Speaker 1: you're thinking about running, what are the low hanging fruit,
Speaker 1: the kind of small races that make a big difference.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So I would definitely be looking at school board races.
Speaker 5: There are you know, twenty four thousand of them happening
Speaker 5: this year that are going to be incredibly important and
Speaker 5: that will do a big push towards turnout at the
Speaker 5: top of the ticket. We know Republicans especially are investing
Speaker 5: pretty intensely in school board races in California, specifically to
Speaker 5: help their congressional folks. I'd also take a look at
Speaker 5: things like mayor and city council races in Phoenix, Arizona,
Speaker 5: and Maricopa County in Scottsdale, where there's some really critical
Speaker 5: turnout that could happen.
Speaker 4: We're looking, of.
Speaker 5: Course at races in Missouri where there's an exciting governor's race,
Speaker 5: and also a ton of local elections there. There's city
Speaker 5: council and mayorship races in some of the bigger places
Speaker 5: in North Carolina that can make a difference. Obviously, there's
Speaker 5: a bunch of stuff happening in Ohio, especially a state
Speaker 5: Supreme Court race. There's like city some in balladives happening.
Speaker 5: There are local elections happening all across Texas, including positions
Speaker 5: that directly oversee the election, like sheriff and tax assessor
Speaker 5: and county commissions, which we're counting on the future of democracy.
Speaker 4: It would be good if people held them.
Speaker 5: And I would say in Wisconsin, you know there's the
Speaker 5: unicipal elections happening this April that will make a difcs
Speaker 5: and what's happening in November. So all of these is
Speaker 5: the way to win the big ones is to win
Speaker 5: these small ones.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think it's worth I mean, we're talking
Speaker 1: about California. So in twenty twenty two, the red wave
Speaker 1: right where we were told there would be a red
Speaker 1: wave and Democrats would get their assets handed to them.
Speaker 1: One of the way is that Republicans won was they
Speaker 1: won these in Biden districts in California and New York.
Speaker 1: So is that what you're talking about when you're talking
Speaker 1: about Republicans running school board candidates in California?
Speaker 4: Exactly right?
Speaker 5: And we have heard this sort of through the grapevine
Speaker 5: that they have been very intentionally focusing on work in California.
Speaker 5: Just let an email from the Leadership Institute in the
Speaker 5: last week or two.
Speaker 4: They're starting up.
Speaker 5: All of these trainings for activists in southern California, specifically.
Speaker 4: For school board races and local races, but.
Speaker 5: Coincidentally located the same place as there are competitive congressional seeds.
Speaker 5: That's how they're going to try and hold the house,
Speaker 5: and we're gonna be there to stop them.
Speaker 1: Right, And I think that's really important. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: funny because it's like so many of these races. If
Speaker 1: you look at twenty two, I'm thinking about George Santos, right,
Speaker 1: George Santos won that race because there was a lack
Speaker 1: of democratic enthusiasm and a lack of investigation and a
Speaker 1: guy who really read is pretty sketchy even from early on.
Speaker 1: That needs to not happen again in twenty four.
Speaker 5: And I think like the thing to keep in mind
Speaker 5: here is people are coming on like the Biden versus Trump,
Speaker 5: you know, to do all the work here to get
Speaker 5: people to show up with the polls. But in places
Speaker 5: like basically everywhere outside of the core electoral battleground states,
Speaker 5: Biden's not going to have a campaign presence, nor should he.
Speaker 5: That's not a job. His job is to win the
Speaker 5: White House. His campaign job is to win the White House.
Speaker 5: Going to have organizers on the ground in some of
Speaker 5: these suburban districts in New York and California. Nor will
Speaker 5: they have folks on the ground in places like Montana,
Speaker 5: where we need to win to hold the Senate.
Speaker 1: Right. Oh, because it's not a presidential.
Speaker 5: Joe Biden's not gonna win Montana, and it would be
Speaker 5: foolish campaign to spend resources to try and win Montana.
Speaker 4: But we can.
Speaker 5: Absolutely help John Tester by investing in city council races,
Speaker 5: school board races, county offices, the kinds of positions that
Speaker 5: maybe if the candidate themselves doesn't win, but they get
Speaker 5: an extra two hundred voters to show up for them
Speaker 5: that wouldn't otherwise, that can help John.
Speaker 4: Tester win that state and hold that state.
Speaker 5: So that's what we're looking out across the country is
Speaker 5: making sure that we have really good candidates running in
Speaker 5: as many places as possible to do the kind of
Speaker 5: communications and organizing work that we know wins elections, especially
Speaker 5: knowing that the Biden campaign isn't and shouldn't necessarily.
Speaker 4: Be everywhere that we also need to win.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that's a really good point. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's funny it's we're talking about this, but it is true,
Speaker 1: Like the Biden campaign can only work in the states
Speaker 1: where Biden needs to win or will win, right, and
Speaker 1: those are states like Arizona, right, states like and they're
Speaker 1: not states like Ohio, which is a Senate seat that
Speaker 1: Democrats desperately need to keep.
Speaker 5: Exactly right, And I don't involve the Biden campaign for that.
Speaker 5: They're doing exactly the right thing, investing as much as
Speaker 5: they can and the key states they need to win
Speaker 5: the electoral College. We as a community of people who
Speaker 5: also care about other things, need to be investing everywhere else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to ask you about Florida because I
Speaker 1: feel like one of the things that you're not on
Speaker 1: the ground reporting. That's not your job, obviously, but you
Speaker 1: do get to see where candidates are coming from, and
Speaker 1: I have a suspicion like if you looked at Arizona
Speaker 1: Sheriff Joe or Bio caused a great deal of a
Speaker 1: lot of really cool candidates came out of what was
Speaker 1: really bad and hurtful anti immigrant policy from this deranged sheriff.
Speaker 1: Are you seeing a similar dynamic out of Florida.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we are seeing some, especially on the education side
Speaker 5: of things. You know, superintendents in Florida are elected positions
Speaker 5: are county wide school boards, and these districts tend to
Speaker 5: be really big because they're county wide. In many places,
Speaker 5: the supervisors of elections are county wide and a lot
Speaker 5: of power all of these positions. We are seeing some
Speaker 5: really like just batchet stuff like that I just saw
Speaker 5: I think earlier last week. They're banning Bill O'Reilly's book.
Speaker 5: They're banning the Dictionary, They're banning Bible, they are banning
Speaker 5: you know, novels that are like core to cannon and
Speaker 5: foundational text for so many, especially teenagers. They're going over
Speaker 5: the line that SIT's not popular, but we have to
Speaker 5: make fighting against them, and one of the Florida is
Speaker 5: one of the places we're really thinking about doing more
Speaker 5: school board work in the years to come, because you know,
Speaker 5: Ron De Santis is not going to be president, but
Speaker 5: he's going to stay governor of Florida for a while,
Speaker 5: and we're going to make sure that he is being
Speaker 5: held accountable for the political machine that he has built there,
Speaker 5: which includes a lot of these school board candidates.
Speaker 1: We had this candidate who's running for Senate in Florida.
Speaker 1: Her name is Debbie Powell and she's running against really
Speaker 1: Rick Scott is the guy from Mars attack. Do you
Speaker 1: think that there is any chance for like a kind
Speaker 1: of miraculous backlash, I mean like a sort of brown
Speaker 1: back kind of phenomenon the way that it happened in
Speaker 1: Kansas and Florida.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think anything is possible.
Speaker 5: We got to make sure we have folks on the
Speaker 5: ground having the conversations to hold other than Florida Republican
Speaker 5: Party accountable. Florida Democrats have been in a tough spot.
Speaker 5: You know, it's become sort of a tautological truism. They
Speaker 5: don't win and then a hard time raising the money
Speaker 5: so that they really can't win. But we're going to
Speaker 5: be there for the long haul and hope to be
Speaker 5: part of the Florida comeback story.
Speaker 4: What's such that it could be?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that would be really exciting. Tell me other states
Speaker 1: where you're sort of seeing staff for where you feel
Speaker 1: that there's something brewing.
Speaker 5: I think there are so many places where are really
Speaker 5: exciting candidates we're working with this year.
Speaker 4: Obviously, amazing folks down in Texas.
Speaker 5: We're already talking to people that are running in twenty
Speaker 5: twenty five down in Texas, which is good. We're going
Speaker 5: to need that long runway to have those conversations. Got
Speaker 5: amazing folks in Illinois, Missouri, Ohio. There's incredible leadership in
Speaker 5: mayor Justin Bibb in Cleveland. I'm trying to build that
Speaker 5: bench there.
Speaker 4: We have really cool folks who.
Speaker 5: Have run and won. In Indiana, of all places, it's
Speaker 5: Mike Pence's home state, but he's not going to be
Speaker 5: on the beout there.
Speaker 4: But we have some amazing local folks who.
Speaker 5: Are coming up and really like showing what could be possible.
Speaker 4: For an Indiana Democrat. I'm really excited about our folks in.
Speaker 5: Nevada, Colorado, Washington State, Upstate New York, Connecticut. And really
Speaker 5: the cool part about this work is there's so many
Speaker 5: exciting people running in every single state who give me
Speaker 5: a re and to think that, yeah, like the president
Speaker 5: is kind of bleak, but the future, if we get there,
Speaker 5: will be really right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we just have to get there. I think that
Speaker 1: Biden can be Trump. I have a fair amount of
Speaker 1: confidence in that. But I do think that there are
Speaker 1: a lot of young progressives who might not be super
Speaker 1: excited by Biden for any number of reasons, and that
Speaker 1: this would be a way to theoretically get them to
Speaker 1: turn out.
Speaker 4: Right, that's exactly right.
Speaker 5: And I think especially for young voters who are correctly
Speaker 5: in many cases furious at the Biden administration, like, we
Speaker 5: need them to show up for other reasons. And if
Speaker 5: they also cast the ballot for Biden, that's fine.
Speaker 4: They don't ask it, not it. They just got to
Speaker 4: show up with the polls.
Speaker 5: And the more we can give them a reason to
Speaker 5: be on the presidency, the better.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think that's a really good point. This
Speaker 1: is the do you want to have elections? Election?
Speaker 5: And like, do you want to have elections elections? Do
Speaker 5: you want to have reproductive rights elections? Do you want
Speaker 5: to have the right to marry who you love?
Speaker 4: To read?
Speaker 5: What you want to, you know, be able to buy
Speaker 5: or rent a home and a place you want to live.
Speaker 5: That's what's at stake here, and the more that our
Speaker 5: local folks can really communicate that, the better.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Amanda anytime Molly. Ian Basson is
Speaker 1: the executive director of Protect Democracy. Welcome Too Fast Politics.
Speaker 2: Ian, I'm so glad to be here. Thanks for having So.
Speaker 1: This is going to air tomorrow, we will be in
Speaker 1: this kind of post traumatic malaise of the realization that
Speaker 1: most of us, I think knew this was coming, but
Speaker 1: there is something spectacularly grim about the reality that Trump
Speaker 1: is going to be the Republican nomine.
Speaker 2: I think we're all in a state of denial, even
Speaker 2: those of us who pay excruciatingly close attention to these matters.
Speaker 2: But nationally, there seems to be an inability or an
Speaker 2: unwillingness to look at and did just hard things. And
Speaker 2: so you see this, I think within the Republican ranks,
Speaker 2: where people are wishing it away, columnists writing chantasy stories
Speaker 2: about well it could be somebody else, or maybe he's
Speaker 2: not so bad, all of that, and you see it
Speaker 2: in the pro democracy coalition seeming to not yet be
Speaker 2: able to digest the reality that we are going to
Speaker 2: be facing an election this year in which someone who
Speaker 2: tried to overturn the results of the book last time
Speaker 2: and is a facially patent authoritarian is going to be
Speaker 2: one of the candidates that have fifty percent chance or
Speaker 2: better of winning.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about where you are involved in this. Tell
Speaker 1: us what EURO up to.
Speaker 2: So I run an organization called Protect Democracy, which is
Speaker 2: a cross ideological anti authoritarianism group, and I come to
Speaker 2: this out of the background as a government lawyer. I
Speaker 2: served for the first three years of the Obama administration
Speaker 2: of the White House Counsel's Office, where part of my
Speaker 2: job was counseling executive branch officials on the rules that
Speaker 2: governed executive branch behavior and trying to make sure that
Speaker 2: we didn't violent. And when I did that work, I
Speaker 2: inherited a set of rules from the Bush administration, and
Speaker 2: if I had questions about them, I called EMMITTT. Flood
Speaker 2: did my job for the Bush administration. If Embitt I
Speaker 2: could answer it, we called the lawyer who did it
Speaker 2: for the Clinton administration. It didn't matter whether you were
Speaker 2: serving under a Republican or a Democratic president. The rules
Speaker 2: were the same from administration to administration. And when Donald
Speaker 2: Trump was elected in twenty sixteen, it marked a turning
Speaker 2: point for our country because unlike anyone else who was
Speaker 2: running from Bernie Centers on the left to ten crews
Speaker 2: on the right, Donald Trump doesn't believe in our constitutional,
Speaker 2: representative democratic form of government. He aspires to be a dictator.
Speaker 2: He admires the world's leading autocrats. And so it was
Speaker 2: a moment that called for the beginning to assemble a
Speaker 2: coalition that would try to protect the foundations of our democracy.
Speaker 2: And that coalition needs to include progressives and moderates and conservatives,
Speaker 2: Democrats and republican and our organization does include all of
Speaker 2: those people to stand up for the right of a
Speaker 2: free people to continue to self govern and every four
Speaker 2: years to be out able to have a free and
Speaker 2: fair choice of who to elect. And that is what
Speaker 2: is in danger right now. And so my role in
Speaker 2: this is to be part of the coalissionment tries to
Speaker 2: protect democracy for the next generation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm thinking about what it was like when government
Speaker 1: lawyers just did their job with no partisanship, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: emmid Flood wasn't going to tell you, you know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we just threw that stuff out because we weren't interested
Speaker 1: in it, or we let our boss take home classified documents.
Speaker 2: As any lawyer who served in the executive or a
Speaker 2: president will tell you, every president tries to push the
Speaker 2: bounds of presidential power. If you look at a ledger
Speaker 2: at the end of an administration. This is true for Democrats, Republicans,
Speaker 2: going back to the beginning of the republic, there are
Speaker 2: a bunch of issues in which they tried to push
Speaker 2: the balance and then they said, nope, you know what,
Speaker 2: the system probably shouldn't allow me to do that, and
Speaker 2: they relent. Now there's a bunch where they pushed the
Speaker 2: battance and they said, oh, you know, maybe this is
Speaker 2: one where I can kind of push a little bit
Speaker 2: and get a little bit more powerful the executive. And
Speaker 2: there's always a couple of examples on each side of
Speaker 2: the ledger for every president. What is fundamentally different about
Speaker 2: Donald Trump is he doesn't believe there should be any
Speaker 2: restrictions on his power at all.
Speaker 1: Waking up on this sort of dawn of another bout
Speaker 1: of authoritarianism, and what can we do.
Speaker 2: The way we at least think about it is that
Speaker 2: our democracy coalition in this country needs to essentially do
Speaker 2: three things if we're going to survive this moment. And
Speaker 2: when I say survived this moment, I don't just mean
Speaker 2: Donald Trump, because Donald Trump is riding a wave of
Speaker 2: authoritarianism that has been sweeping the world in the twenty
Speaker 2: first century. You know, democracy had been on the rise
Speaker 2: in the last quarter of the twentieth century, and then
Speaker 2: sometime in the early aughts it plateaued and began to
Speaker 2: go into reverse. And so you've seen countries that had
Speaker 2: been making progress democratically, countries like Venezuela, countries like Poland,
Speaker 2: countries like Hungary or Turkey or even India backsliding into
Speaker 2: more illiberal and authoritarian forms of government. And that's happening
Speaker 2: here as well. So in order for us to survive
Speaker 2: this moment, which goes beyond Donald Trump, he has symptom,
Speaker 2: not cause of this, although he poses an acute threat
Speaker 2: because he is an extremely talented demogogue. We essentially need
Speaker 2: to do three things. The first is just put the
Speaker 2: fire out that is engulfing our house, and that is
Speaker 2: making sure that the twenty twenty four election is free
Speaker 2: and fair and that ideally a candidate wins who believes
Speaker 2: in our system of government, who is pro liberal representative democracy.
Speaker 2: And that's the first challenge. The second is that our
Speaker 2: founders anticipated that there would be self interested tyrants who
Speaker 2: would try to aggrandize power for themselves. They built the
Speaker 2: constitution in response to King George being a tyrant, and
Speaker 2: they built a system of overlapping checks and balances and
Speaker 2: guard rails to constrain tyranny. And those worked relatively well
Speaker 2: in Trump's first term, not by themselves. They weren't self executing,
Speaker 2: is because people use them, but they were exposed as
Speaker 2: perhaps not being as strong as we would like. The
Speaker 2: second thing we need to do is we need to
Speaker 2: strengthen those guardrails, and we need to do that ideally
Speaker 2: without an autocratic power, but certainly in the instance that
Speaker 2: we might have an autocred and power. And the third
Speaker 2: thing we need to do is there's a reason why
Speaker 2: we're in this mess, and that is that the current
Speaker 2: structures of our system are in many ways incentivizeding this behavior.
Speaker 2: Kevin McCarthy and the other Republicans who behaved in incredibly irresponsible,
Speaker 2: antidemocratic ways, in a lot of ways, they were doing
Speaker 2: the rational thing. If you had their set of incentives,
Speaker 2: and that's because the current structures of our system, the
Speaker 2: two party duopoly, the first past the post electoral system
Speaker 2: that we have, where the gerrymandering of districts, the ways
Speaker 2: that primaries dictate who wins general elections, those are all
Speaker 2: incentivized in this behavior. They went to college, and so
Speaker 2: we've got to change some of those structures. Over the
Speaker 2: last one hundred and fifty years, every other advanced democracy
Speaker 2: in the world has updated its system to reflect the
Speaker 2: fact that we've all learned what makes a better system.
Speaker 2: The only country that hasn't done that is ours. Steve
Speaker 2: Levitski and Daniel Ziblat, the authors of the book How
Speaker 2: Democracies Die, have a new book out called Tyranny of
Speaker 2: the Minority, where they talk about the fact that we
Speaker 2: as a country are advising other nations on how to
Speaker 2: update their democracies to be more resilient, and we're not
Speaker 2: taking that medicine ourselves. It's like a Somalia saying, drink this,
Speaker 2: but I won't drink it. Right. We need to update
Speaker 2: our system, and so we need to do all three
Speaker 2: of those things, and we've been working out all of
Speaker 2: those fronts as an organization, but we've got to do
Speaker 2: it really as a country.
Speaker 1: Really good point. I'm curious to know what that would
Speaker 1: look like. Give me a few ideas here.
Speaker 2: Let's get specific. So we talk about protecting the free
Speaker 2: and fair election. We're talking about a couple different aspects
Speaker 2: of this. I'll just name two of them. What is
Speaker 2: elections only work when you have a healthy information ecosystem
Speaker 2: where we're all having a debate on a shared set
Speaker 2: of facts. And one of the challenges we faced obviously
Speaker 2: years is the rampant spread of disinformation and misinformation. Misinformation
Speaker 2: being innocently shared information that's inaccurate, disinformation being maliciously shared
Speaker 2: information that is known to be inaccurate, but people are
Speaker 2: spreading it anyway for their own corrupt purposes. And we've
Speaker 2: seen a proliferation of both of those and we've got
Speaker 2: to check that. And so we have a project called
Speaker 2: Law for Truth where we have litigated a number of
Speaker 2: defamation cases against some people who have spread injurious and
Speaker 2: false information about elections. So recently people may have seen
Speaker 2: this in the news. Are incredibly brave clients, Ruby Freeman
Speaker 2: and Shay Moss to brave election workers in the state
Speaker 2: of Georgia, who were falsely accused of corrupting the twenty
Speaker 2: twenty election one one hundred and forty eight million dollar
Speaker 2: verdict against Rudy Giuliani on the basis of things that
Speaker 2: he said about them that were determined in a court
Speaker 2: of law to be a false interfamatory. We recently also
Speaker 2: so wan a decision clearing emotion and dismiss in a
Speaker 2: similar case on behalf of the Republican recorder in America,
Speaker 2: Po County, a guy with the name of Stephen Richard
Speaker 2: who was we alleged was falsely accused by Terry Lake
Speaker 2: of corrupting the twenty twenty two gubernatory election that she lost,
Speaker 2: and the court recently ruled that we can proceed with
Speaker 2: that case. We have a number of other cases like
Speaker 2: this where we are trying to do what the legal
Speaker 2: system has allowed for hundreds of years, which is people
Speaker 2: who were falsely accused and in a way that injures
Speaker 2: them materially have recourse through the justice system. And what
Speaker 2: we believe will happen is if enough of these cases
Speaker 2: get litigated and people are held accountable, you will start
Speaker 2: to see the deterrent of tort law work to check
Speaker 2: somebout business information. But we also need to worry about
Speaker 2: the structures of our system. So on January sixth, twenty
Speaker 2: twenty one, during the storming of the Capitol, what was
Speaker 2: Congress doing. It was counting electoral college ballots pursuant to
Speaker 2: an incredibly vague and our Kane law from the eighteen
Speaker 2: eighties called the Electoral count Pack. And that law was
Speaker 2: incredibly poorly drafted, and it allowed for bad faith actors
Speaker 2: to try to put forward disingenuous interpretations to the law
Speaker 2: that led to a lot of the conflagration we saw
Speaker 2: on January sixth, and so one of the things that
Speaker 2: we did pause for.
Speaker 1: A second, so that is that idea that Mike Pence
Speaker 1: could opt in another slight of electors he could refuse
Speaker 1: to certify. That was sort of where we had Mike
Speaker 1: Lee sending, you know, Mark Meadows an email saying, maybe
Speaker 1: we could do this, we could do that, we could
Speaker 1: do other slights. Yes, continue, that's right.
Speaker 2: And so one of the things that seemed obvious after
Speaker 2: that tragic day was, well, we should really update that
Speaker 2: law and make it incredibly clear, for example, that the
Speaker 2: vice president doesn't have the power to simply decide who
Speaker 2: the next president should be and so working with a
Speaker 2: coalition ing great groups like the Campaign Legal Center at
Speaker 2: Issue one and some terrific lawyers from the right and
Speaker 2: left like Bob Bauer and Jack Oldsmith and Ginsberg, we
Speaker 2: advised Congress on how they could reform that law, and
Speaker 2: ultimately a bipartisan working group came together the Electoral Account Reformat,
Speaker 2: which was signed into law by President Biden December of
Speaker 2: party twenty two. That strengthens that process to hopefully avoid
Speaker 2: some of the problems that we solve before. And then
Speaker 2: going beyond that, we've now been working with state legislators
Speaker 2: around the country to update their laws to align with
Speaker 2: the federal new Electoral Account reformat to have a smoother
Speaker 2: process where there are less opportunities for bad faith actors
Speaker 2: to try to take us off the rail. So, for example,
Speaker 2: in Michigan, they've already done that. We're working on in
Speaker 2: some other states as well. So those are some of
Speaker 2: the ways in which, you know, sort of in the
Speaker 2: in the nitty gritty details of how our electoral system operates,
Speaker 2: we can try to strengthen the system in time for
Speaker 2: this election, make sure that there's less opportunity for shenanigans
Speaker 2: and foul play, and we can talk about some of
Speaker 2: the things that we could do on some of the
Speaker 2: other fronts as well.
Speaker 1: So I want to just talk about this idea of
Speaker 1: being able to take out some of that the sort
Speaker 1: of more vague language that Trump and his people tried
Speaker 1: to use in twenty twenty. Do you think And again,
Speaker 1: I know this is probably not going to happened, but
Speaker 1: I mean, where are you on the fourteenth Amendment and
Speaker 1: Trump being pushed off the ballot?
Speaker 2: You know, I've really come around on this one. I
Speaker 2: started off concerns, but after January sixth, we did an
Speaker 2: analysis of the Section three of the fourteenth Amendment, and
Speaker 2: our conclusion internally was that as a purely legal matter,
Speaker 2: if you were sort of just an academic interpreting the law,
Speaker 2: that it's even clear to us that it applied to
Speaker 2: Donald Trump, that by any definition, Donald Trump engaged in insurrection,
Speaker 2: and that the purpose of a fourteenth Commendment after the
Speaker 2: Civil War was to disqualify anybody who had taken it
Speaker 2: out and done that in order to preserve our republic
Speaker 2: from threats like the Confederacy rising again, and that he
Speaker 2: should be disqualified. But our concern was that, you know,
Speaker 2: and this has been obviously talked about a lot recently,
Speaker 2: that in other countries, that tool of disqualifying opponents is
Speaker 2: one that is used in undemocratic places, and we were
Speaker 2: worried about what it would look like if that tool
Speaker 2: got if that sword got on chief here. But I've
Speaker 2: come around to the view that I absolutely think now
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court should uphold the Colorado decision and disqualify
Speaker 2: Donald Trump. And let me say why, for a couple
Speaker 2: of reasons. So what the concern that we'll wait a minute,
Speaker 2: this is a Pandora's box, and if that's done to Trump,
Speaker 2: won't Texas simply disqualified? Joe Biden, Well, the truth is
Speaker 2: that every law that we have on our book can
Speaker 2: be misused by bad faith actors in circumstances for which
Speaker 2: it was not intended. But that does not lead us
Speaker 2: as a nation to simply decline to apply the law
Speaker 2: as it exists in situations for which it was designed.
Speaker 2: If we were to do that, then not only would
Speaker 2: we never enforce laws in appropriate circumstances because of fears
Speaker 2: that they could be misused in others, but we would
Speaker 2: give the worst actors of veto over ever being able
Speaker 2: to be held accountable merely by threatening that if they're
Speaker 2: held accountable, their allies are going to do it to
Speaker 2: someone else. If you were to give bad faith actors
Speaker 2: that veto, you would essentially put people like Donald Trump
Speaker 2: and every other criminal in a country above the law,
Speaker 2: and that cannot be the way that the system should operate.
Speaker 2: The second reason I think it's really important the Supreme
Speaker 2: Court applied the text of the Constitution as it is
Speaker 2: written is because there is this fantasy out there that somehow,
Speaker 2: if the Supreme Court were to disqualify Donald Trump, he
Speaker 2: and his supporters would go ballistic and cause all sorts
Speaker 2: of chaos. But here's the thing, we know they're going
Speaker 2: to do that anyway if he loses at the ballot box.
Speaker 2: They did that in twenty twenty. So this fantastical notion
Speaker 2: that if we withhold ourselves from applying the law, if
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court somehow we're to just look the other
Speaker 2: way at the text of the Constitution, then our crisis
Speaker 2: would be resolved in some more peaceful, plesident way through
Speaker 2: some other mechanism is a fantasy that is not going
Speaker 2: to happen. The truth is that Trump has launched an
Speaker 2: anti democratic movement of this country that is going to
Speaker 2: wreak havoc on this country. No matter what, they are
Speaker 2: going to rek havoc on his country. If he has
Speaker 2: returned to power governs as an autocrat. They're going to
Speaker 2: rerekavoc in many ways if he is defeated at the
Speaker 2: ballot box. And yes, they are likely to wreak havoc
Speaker 2: if the Supreme Court disqualifies him. And given that they're
Speaker 2: going to wrekavoc one way or the other, there's no
Speaker 2: way out. Only way is through, and we should apply
Speaker 2: the Constitution as written. That's what the Supreme Court is for.
Speaker 2: That's what the law says. The Supreme Court should do it.
Speaker 2: And if there is to be essentially a prudential decision
Speaker 2: to say, you know, even if the law says that
Speaker 2: he should be disqualified, he should run anyway, Well, you
Speaker 2: know what, the fourteenth Amendment says, that decision is in
Speaker 2: Congress's hands, not the courts. Because the other provision of
Speaker 2: Section three of the fourteen Amendment is that Congress can
Speaker 2: remove the disqualification by a two thirds vote of both houses,
Speaker 2: and that meant that the framers of the Constitution understood
Speaker 2: that there might be times when we might want to say,
Speaker 2: even if this person did engage in this direction, we
Speaker 2: should lap the voters decide, and the Framers very clearly
Speaker 2: delegated that power to Congress, not the court. And so
Speaker 2: if the court feels that it just would be better
Speaker 2: for the nation if Trump were allowed to run, then
Speaker 2: that's Congress's job, not the court.
Speaker 1: Right exactly in this larger anti democratic movement. So when
Speaker 1: you look at the exit polls from last night, a
Speaker 1: very large percentage of Trump supporters and again you know
Speaker 1: this is a percentage of a percentage, but very large
Speaker 1: percentage of Trump supporters believe that Joe Biden did not
Speaker 1: win the twenty twenty election. And if you read in
Speaker 1: Politico today, there was a really good article about these
Speaker 1: poll workers who just cannot explain how things are on
Speaker 1: Earth one to these people in Trump world. So again,
Speaker 1: this is something I spent almost all my time thinking
Speaker 1: about it because I'm such a nerd. But what do
Speaker 1: you do here? How do you deprogram these people?
Speaker 2: Well, they didn't come up with those ideas on their own.
Speaker 2: They were given those ideas first and foremost by Donald Trump,
Speaker 2: who has been humping this toxicity into our body politic. Now,
Speaker 2: he has had all sorts of help in doing that
Speaker 2: from allies within his party, from a conservative media ecosystem
Speaker 2: that is doing it, But he is the originator of
Speaker 2: that big lie, and frankly, I think if he were
Speaker 2: no longer pumping that lie into people's mind, the rest
Speaker 2: of the ecosystem would not be nearly as effective or
Speaker 2: even have the incentive to do so to the degree
Speaker 2: that he does. And so I don't think you get
Speaker 2: out of this death spiral of deep distrust in our
Speaker 2: system and in elections while the primary agent that is
Speaker 2: infecting our system with that virus is out there continuing
Speaker 2: to spread it. And that's another reason why the Supreme Court,
Speaker 2: I think, would be wise to apply the law as
Speaker 2: written and uphold the color Art decision against Soland Trump,
Speaker 2: because so long as he is out there in some
Speaker 2: capacity as an active candidate and potentially president of our system,
Speaker 2: he is eroding the very fabric of our democracy. And
Speaker 2: I'm not suggesting that the Supreme Court should a legal
Speaker 2: interpretation to remove him him from being tending, not at all.
Speaker 2: I'm suggesting that, given that the law clearly does apply
Speaker 2: to him, they shouldn't bend over backwards to not apply
Speaker 2: the law as written to him, precisely because he is
Speaker 2: the person that the Constitution was written to deal with,
Speaker 2: someone who is fundamentally not committed to our system of government.
Speaker 2: And only once he is he no longer has a
Speaker 2: stranglehold over the Republican Party. Can you hope to rebuild
Speaker 2: the underlying fabric of our society? Bring people back together again,
Speaker 2: have people rooted in a sense of shared reality, have
Speaker 2: people committed to a common project. So long as he
Speaker 2: is out there unleashing his political virus on the scene,
Speaker 2: it is going to be very, very hard to cure
Speaker 2: the body politics. Thank you, Ian, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: I am optimistic notwithstanding all of this sort of doomed
Speaker 2: speaking that at root, this country is a pro democratic country.
Speaker 2: This country has, in multiple elections over the last several years,
Speaker 2: made pro democracy choices. I think it will again, and
Speaker 2: it thanks to people having conversation like this.
Speaker 1: One moment full Jesse Cannon.
Speaker 6: My junk fast. Who would have guessed that Trump couldn't
Speaker 6: keep his mouth shut about Egene Carol, I will tell
Speaker 6: you this, I have definitely guessed it. Yes, if we
Speaker 6: weel on the betting market. This would be the safest
Speaker 6: bet of the entire world.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. I don't know how many gag orders he has,
Speaker 1: he's gagged, he's ordered, he's ordered, he's gagged, and how
Speaker 1: many trials, and yet he still can't keep it. So
Speaker 1: here he is. He calls the case attempted extortion based
Speaker 1: on fabricated lies and political shenanigans. Jesus Christ. Anyway, let
Speaker 1: me point out how much he is just digging himself
Speaker 1: into yet another hole. And while his supporters are on
Speaker 1: Earth two, the rest of us are on Earth one,
Speaker 1: and on Earth one, the guy who got charged with defamation,
Speaker 1: we'll get charged with more defamation. And for that, Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: killer of democracy, winner of the Iowa Caucus, defendant against
Speaker 1: ninety one criminal charges, is our moment of fuckory. That's
Speaker 1: it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday,
Speaker 1: Wednesday and Friday to hear the best minds in politics
Speaker 1: makes sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what
Speaker 1: you've heard, please send it to a friend and keep
Speaker 1: the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.