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 Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace says, we
Speaker 1: cannot be assholes to women.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, that's something.
Speaker 1: We have such a great show for you today, the Atlantics,
Speaker 1: Franklin Fower talks about his new book, The Last Politician,
Speaker 1: Inside Joe Biden's White House and the struggle for America's future.
Speaker 2: Then we'll talk to Hanafried.
Speaker 1: Executive director of All Voting as Local, about how we
Speaker 1: keep our elections fair. But first we have MSNBC Daily
Speaker 1: Editor James Downey.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Fast Politics. Jim Downey, thank you for
Speaker 2: having me back. We're delighted.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about this last slow week of summer.
Speaker 1: This comes out on Monday, so we're kind of catching
Speaker 1: up to the kind of it was the best of times,
Speaker 1: it was the worst of times. It was vacmenttum it
Speaker 1: was discuss vic everywhere.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I tend to subscribe to the theory that a
Speaker 3: large part of this is that the GOP race is
Speaker 3: so boring. You've got the santisis top strategists saying we
Speaker 3: need fifty million dollars.
Speaker 2: I feel like the top line is they back down.
Speaker 3: Like somehow he needs It's almost like he's facing a
Speaker 3: hur or he's dealing with the fall from a hurricane,
Speaker 3: and he needs more help with the collapse of his
Speaker 3: political campaign. Like that's how bad this is. So I
Speaker 3: think it's you all, yeah, you see this a lot
Speaker 3: of times. My personal comparison with Vivic is Herman Kane
Speaker 3: in a lot of right, where it's the guy who
Speaker 3: comes in with all of these slogans that don't pass
Speaker 3: the left test, spell test, that whatever test you want
Speaker 3: to run on them. But you get to September October
Speaker 3: and all of the regular stories have been written by
Speaker 3: the political press, and they're like, well, who else is here?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 3: This guy nine guys, yeah, yeah, have a nine nine
Speaker 3: nine fag He's just it's remarkable where somebody decided to
Speaker 3: take everything that's much of the worst of Donald Trump
Speaker 3: and all of the worst of Ted Cruz and this
Speaker 3: sockety that that was a winning strategy for politics.
Speaker 1: All of the worst of Ted Cruz, and also Jeff
Speaker 1: row who worked on Ted Cruz too.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's right, yes, and in ours, yeah it.
Speaker 1: Is now making money on yet another uncharismatic candidate. So
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you about this idea of boringness, right,
Speaker 1: and the political mainstream media, which is us, right, that's us.
Speaker 1: I mean I hate it when people are like criticizing
Speaker 1: the mainstream media and I'm like, that's you, bitch. I'm sorry, Like, well,
Speaker 1: like this is us. But there is some pressure to
Speaker 1: write things that people want to read.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it can be difficult sometimes. As I said,
Speaker 3: I hit September October, and I think in this situation
Speaker 3: in particular, where we all know where this Republican race
Speaker 3: is going, absence some remarkable event, we know who's going
Speaker 3: to be the nominee, it's one of the least suspenseful,
Speaker 3: so to speak, primaries in decades, maybe.
Speaker 2: Maybe in maybe in even more.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm trying to think back to I mean when
Speaker 3: George W. Bush won the two thousand race, I mean
Speaker 3: that was people McCain for a little bit there Al
Speaker 3: wore on the other side, but he was an incumbent
Speaker 3: vice president.
Speaker 2: I mean that was pretty boring.
Speaker 3: That was pretty boring.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was.
Speaker 1: The birth of the Naomi Wolf being brought in to
Speaker 1: tell him to wear more feminine suits discourse, which was
Speaker 1: in fact one of the dumber moments.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's only looked dumber in hindsight as she's
Speaker 3: done made.
Speaker 2: Her her career is an anti vaccer.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, Well, when you've completely embarrassed yourself on the BBC,
Speaker 3: your book has been pulp literally pulp taken out a
Speaker 3: circulation because an error you made. What's left but to
Speaker 3: become a.
Speaker 2: Grifter, right exactly.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I think it's tough. I have a lot
Speaker 3: of some of you. I think when you work at
Speaker 3: a place like I mean, I'm an MSNBC and we
Speaker 3: have a lot our colleagues and NBC News, we have
Speaker 3: people who are on the road every day with these
Speaker 3: candidates or will be on the road every day with
Speaker 3: this candidates soon, and you've got to say new stuff.
Speaker 3: I think that that's something that can be very And yes,
Speaker 3: people will say you need to be substantive, and you should,
Speaker 3: you should cover the substantive stuff. But also, first of all,
Speaker 3: if you're covering a parent like Vivic, how much substantive
Speaker 3: stuff is? I mean you can be like, what was it?
Speaker 3: We need a physical fitness test for colleges, right, I mean,
Speaker 3: like at a certain point, you know, I mean, how
Speaker 3: many times can you write that story? Again? If he
Speaker 3: comes out with a new substance of new policy, you
Speaker 3: write that story and you write reactions to it, and
Speaker 3: hopefully you write about how dumb that is. But sometimes
Speaker 3: that may get you one to two stories, but it
Speaker 3: may not. It's not going to be it's not going
Speaker 3: to do a whole month of reporting for you.
Speaker 2: So right, exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean, the pressure to file copy is real, right,
Speaker 1: and the pressure to make these stories interesting. The American
Speaker 1: public israel And I again, I don't like where we
Speaker 1: are in American democracy, and I don't think anyone does.
Speaker 1: But we have the kind of civic engagement that we
Speaker 1: haven't had in a long time, right like these I
Speaker 1: mean I remember news cycles filled with like why don't
Speaker 1: people vote?
Speaker 2: How do we get people to vote?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: People?
Speaker 1: We have these turnouts that are like knocking the doors off.
Speaker 1: I mean, think about that Ohio. We had a special
Speaker 1: election in Ohio and August that was set up in
Speaker 1: the hopes of not getting a lot of people there,
Speaker 1: and the numbers were insane.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think that's a great example of much
Speaker 3: as we've bemow the many faults of sort of the
Speaker 3: age of the Internet and the age of and the
Speaker 3: difficulties with disinformation and privacy issues and so forth. I
Speaker 3: think about how much more difficult it would have been
Speaker 3: to get out the word about those sorts of things,
Speaker 3: particularly maybe not so much inside the state. And in
Speaker 3: terms of it might have been a little bit easier
Speaker 3: and the turnout wouldn't have been a huge drop off,
Speaker 3: but in terms of the funding and in terms of
Speaker 3: the national attention, you look at from Ohio with the
Speaker 3: abortion referenda to all of the anti trans efforts in
Speaker 3: various states across the country, and you think about how
Speaker 3: quickly this news moves and how quickly people are able
Speaker 3: to be aware of it. We're undeniably in that situation,
Speaker 3: in a better situation under in the Internet era than
Speaker 3: we were twenty or fifty years ago. I mean, you
Speaker 3: go back and look at when you had just three
Speaker 3: major broadcast networks in your local newspaper, and obviously the
Speaker 3: death of local news is a huge problem, but.
Speaker 2: The gatekeeping was insane.
Speaker 1: I mean, I come from nineties world because I published
Speaker 1: my first book when I was twenty ish and so,
Speaker 1: which was of course in twenty twenty one no the
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety whatever, and so the gatekeeping like if
Speaker 1: you didn't get a review somewhere, you were fucked. Like
Speaker 1: there was no If Ana let you write for Vogue, great,
Speaker 1: but if not, there were like three choices and it wasn't.
Speaker 1: So I do feel like what's been incredible about this
Speaker 1: Internet world, and I've been a huge beneficiary of it myself,
Speaker 1: is that you can really if people think you're funny,
Speaker 1: they'll sort of and there's a much different kind of people.
Speaker 1: Can I mean again, like I feel like this is
Speaker 1: a conversation like everything bad for you is actually good
Speaker 1: for you. But I want to like sort of just
Speaker 1: talk about kind of what is coming up this week
Speaker 1: because the House is coming back. They have the GOP House,
Speaker 1: which has barely five seats and has all of these
Speaker 1: very vulnerable House Republicans is planning on doing a lot
Speaker 1: of crazy shit.
Speaker 2: Can you talk to us about that?
Speaker 3: Absolutely? Well, it starts with the fact that Kevin McCarthy
Speaker 3: is still very bad at his job. That's much of
Speaker 3: voice is happy in the House.
Speaker 2: We will talk. That's because he's very stupid.
Speaker 3: At the very least, he's very good at fundraising and
Speaker 3: he's very bad at keeping his mouth shut, because they're
Speaker 3: moving forward. It looks like he's moving forward with this
Speaker 3: impeachment effort, even though GOP congressman aids they'll admit off
Speaker 3: the record, I mean, in every other story on this
Speaker 3: movement to impeach him has a quote from an aid
Speaker 3: or a congressman off the record, of course, because God forbid,
Speaker 3: they put their names behind it, but saying that, like,
Speaker 3: we just don't have the evidence to do this. We
Speaker 3: don't have the evidence to this. And actually the fact
Speaker 3: that they have him move forward with this impeachment investigation
Speaker 3: is in and of itself a sign that they don't
Speaker 3: have the evidence, because the fact that they didn't move
Speaker 3: forward with it in April, say, because there's such pressure
Speaker 3: from the right right, as you mentioned, they have such
Speaker 3: a narrow majority, and they have enough moderate quote unquote
Speaker 3: moderate let's say, representing Biden's endangered congressmen and women who
Speaker 3: look at this, look at what the so called evidence,
Speaker 3: and say, this isn't there and it's only going to
Speaker 3: hurt me. This is not going to help me, because
Speaker 3: we mean, you look at the Democrats. The Democrats did
Speaker 3: not suffer at the ballot box for pursuing impeachment. I
Speaker 3: think that's pretty indisputable, right whereas here Republicans themselves, there's
Speaker 3: enough of them who look at this and say this
Speaker 3: is a bad idea. And McCarthy's doing this in part
Speaker 3: not just because he's trying to protect himself just overall
Speaker 3: this sess am now a majority, but also because he
Speaker 3: made that error where he didn't immediately when he was asked.
Speaker 3: I believe on CNBC that whether Trump was the strongest candidate,
Speaker 3: he didn't say yes right away. He didn't doff his
Speaker 3: cap and scrape and bow, and this is his way
Speaker 3: of covering for it. And now we're just going to
Speaker 3: be headed back towards an impeachment inquiry is going to
Speaker 3: be a wasteerer when it's time, and a shut down,
Speaker 3: that possible shutdown, which is again going to be a
Speaker 3: wastewaary West Simon will and if it goes through, will
Speaker 3: hurt the economy and it's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: And I want to talk about shut down for a minute.
Speaker 1: So basically Republicans are mad that they're debt ceiling, so
Speaker 1: they had caused a debt ceiling fracas. The dead ceiling
Speaker 1: is not Republicans if a Republican president off in office,
Speaker 1: Republicans agree to lift the debt ceiling. If a Democratic
Speaker 1: president's office, Republicans agree to not lift the debt ceiling
Speaker 1: because they hate Democrats, or because they want to be obstreppers,
Speaker 1: or because they think they can get something from it.
Speaker 1: Republicans did not get anything from it. The MAGA Caucus,
Speaker 1: which includes Marjorie Tayler Green and Matt Gates and that
Speaker 1: crew furious. So now they want to do a government
Speaker 1: shutdown to stick it to the Libs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And the pathetic part of this is that there
Speaker 3: was an argument to be made, and there was some
Speaker 3: polling to suggest that a debt default could hurt both parties,
Speaker 3: that that was a materially different situation, could crush the economy. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that could have been such a shock that both sides
Speaker 3: would have been blamed. Whereas the shutdown. We've been through
Speaker 3: several of these in the last decade. We know how
Speaker 3: this ends, we know and McCarthy knows how this sends, right,
Speaker 3: And you had you have Marjorie Taller Green, who it's
Speaker 3: worth noting Marjorie Taylor Green, and I believe gets as well.
Speaker 3: But certainly Green has she underperformed a lot of similar
Speaker 3: Republicans in nearby districts or or similar kinds of districts.
Speaker 3: She is not good at politics. It's kind of funny
Speaker 3: to me that the people talk about her as a
Speaker 3: potential VP. And I mean, who knows what Jeff does
Speaker 3: god to do, but she even among a roster of
Speaker 3: very bad choices, she would be particularly awful.
Speaker 1: I would like to add in to take this moment
Speaker 1: to talk for a minute about Jadie Vance, who has
Speaker 1: also drunk the Maga kool aid. Though obviously he's a
Speaker 1: little smarter than Marjorie Tayler Green and has this very
Speaker 1: fancy pedigree. But he is another one who well underperformed
Speaker 1: right Like had he been running in Pennsylvania, he would
Speaker 1: have lost, but because he was running in such a
Speaker 1: deeply read state, he was able to win. But he's
Speaker 1: still underperformed, like by a larger margin than most Republicans
Speaker 1: in Ohio. And I think it is worth realizing that
Speaker 1: these Maga celebrities is and Ted Cruz is another one
Speaker 1: who is up for re election now again Texas seems
Speaker 1: like a hard nut to crack, but these Maga celebrities,
Speaker 1: they really only serve a very small part of this
Speaker 1: very kind of galvanized dug in base.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and I've thrown Lauren Bobert there as well, of course.
Speaker 3: I mean we remember that there was suspense for she
Speaker 3: couldn't claim victory in her race until a couple days
Speaker 3: after the midterms. Last year, her race came right down
Speaker 3: to the warne at the election was so close that
Speaker 3: it triggered her recount.
Speaker 2: She only won by five hundred votes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think Cruise is sort of the er example,
Speaker 3: the original example of this. I mean, obviously Democrats would
Speaker 3: love to flip texts, and as you said, it's a
Speaker 3: tough nut to crack, but a lot of the most
Speaker 3: sort of promising signs have been less about Texas changing
Speaker 3: and more about Ted Cruz being a uniquely bad, terrible candle.
Speaker 1: I mean, it is also worth talking about the gubernatorial
Speaker 1: races of twenty twenty three, of which there are a
Speaker 1: few that are like Andy Burscher in Kentucky. I think
Speaker 1: he's term limited, but there's another Democrat running for that seat.
Speaker 1: And then Mississippi has a Democrat running for Elvis Presley's cousin, right,
Speaker 1: who was the highest elected Democrat in the state. And
Speaker 1: then there are like a sort of spate of these
Speaker 1: red states with blue governors or where a blue governor
Speaker 1: has a real shot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and obviously that's going to say that people are
Speaker 3: going to be watching really closely, because you recall that
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty one with Glenn Youngkin in Virginia and
Speaker 3: the Republican near Flip Jersey as well, which actually, compared
Speaker 3: to the fundamentals, was in some ways more of a
Speaker 3: Republican of a performance than in Virginia that basically determined
Speaker 3: the narrative for the whole year running up, and that
Speaker 3: that was the reason why people thought there was going
Speaker 3: to be a red wave and also materialize. Yeah, well right, yes,
Speaker 3: and I think here this is gonna be sathing that
Speaker 3: people are gonna be watching very closely and as much
Speaker 3: as anything, even though because I believe it's in Louisiana,
Speaker 3: Mississippi and Kentucky. Yes, even obviously not exactly. Basher has
Speaker 3: done a tremendous job in Kentucky in terms of electoral
Speaker 3: track record, and John Bell Edwards and then John Bell
Speaker 3: Edwards and Louisiana exactly so, but these are usually difficult
Speaker 3: states for Democrats to succeed in state well stay wide
Speaker 3: or district lost both paying in the district. I think
Speaker 3: Edwards and Basher would sort issue. I think it's Cameron
Speaker 3: who is right.
Speaker 2: Cameron is running Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the ag But no, they would tell you, of
Speaker 3: course that they are always looking uphill on it.
Speaker 1: But the thinking there is that these Democrats are the
Speaker 1: bulwark against crazy Republican state legislatures.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think in terms of the national the narrative,
Speaker 3: no one's the people who want to say, oh, this
Speaker 3: is if Edward's and or Cameron Lewis it's I think
Speaker 3: you're going to see people who have been waiting since
Speaker 3: last fall to argue against anything Biden does and points
Speaker 3: at any electional proof. They're going to try and use
Speaker 3: this as evidence if things do go badly.
Speaker 1: So, will you talk for two seconds about this prescription
Speaker 1: drug pricing negotiation. It's the slowest week of the year.
Speaker 1: This is a very big fucking deal. Can you talk
Speaker 1: about it and explain why it's so important?
Speaker 3: Well, prescription me lowering position drug prices is one of
Speaker 3: those issues that let's start with the politics. Lower prescription
Speaker 3: drug prices is one of those issues that pulls well
Speaker 3: across the board. It's something that even Donald Trump was
Speaker 3: talking about doing, but until he met with pharmaceutical obvious
Speaker 3: and then all of a sudden he just forgot about it.
Speaker 3: But also it's something that has made through Congress at
Speaker 3: different points. It's gotten fairly close and then sort of
Speaker 3: mysteriously died as it gets closer to being turned into law.
Speaker 3: And so this announcement earlier this week from President Biden,
Speaker 3: which they announced the first ten drugs that Medicare will
Speaker 3: be able to negotiate.
Speaker 1: Prike will like request blood dinners, Ye, cancer drugs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, cancer drugs, And they went basically as I understand it,
Speaker 3: by usage. These are all widely used, These are all
Speaker 3: going to save people a lot of money, and so
Speaker 3: more important in a lot of ways than the politics
Speaker 3: is the policy. This is going to save people tons
Speaker 3: of money. As Ernie Sanders and others are fond of saying,
Speaker 3: America pays higher prices for worse healthcare outcomes, and prescription
Speaker 3: drugs are a big part of that. And I mean,
Speaker 3: this is going to be something I think you're going
Speaker 3: to hear this again and again and again and again
Speaker 3: between now and next fall well and really through the
Speaker 3: rest of the rest of Biden's Simon office, because this
Speaker 3: is something that Biden can point to and say, I'm
Speaker 3: lowering prescription drugs for you. And obviously these first ten
Speaker 3: drugs are only the start. There will be more each
Speaker 3: year added to the list. And even though the lowering
Speaker 3: of prices they only snap into place a couple of
Speaker 3: years from now, that doesn't mean that it won't affect
Speaker 3: the drug price market before that. And so this is
Speaker 3: going to make a big difference in people's lives, and
Speaker 3: I think also is going to be a big winner
Speaker 3: at the polls.
Speaker 1: One last question, the Biden underperformed with older voters.
Speaker 2: Could this help him?
Speaker 3: I mean, undoubtedly. I don't see how it can hurt him.
Speaker 3: Something that anybody who has an older relative, whether they
Speaker 3: hear it from the relative or they just are taking
Speaker 3: care of it relative, you get sticker shock at the
Speaker 3: prices for some of these strokes, and just putting more
Speaker 3: money in people's pockets can only help. Thank you so much, Jim,
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Franklin Foer is a writer at the Atlantic an author
Speaker 1: of the Last Politician, Inside Joe Biden's White House and
Speaker 1: the Struggle for America's Future.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 1: Franklin Foer. He do a great introduction. So it's called
Speaker 1: The Last Politician, and it's a book.
Speaker 2: Give us the elevator, pitch go.
Speaker 5: Joe Biden is somebody who people think of as being
Speaker 5: as boring as cardboard, and for some strange reason, I
Speaker 5: think of failing in our media culture, perhaps a failing
Speaker 5: in Joe Biden's administration's part. His accomplishments and the man
Speaker 5: himself have not been marketed to the country as the important, consequential,
Speaker 5: engaging residency that they have been. And this presidency has
Speaker 5: arguably got more accomplishments on its side of the Ledger
Speaker 5: than Eddie and recent memory, everything from the vaccine rollout,
Speaker 5: which everybody seems to forget, to saving the economy from
Speaker 5: the brink of collapse, to all the pieces of transformational
Speaker 5: legislation that will cut carbon emissions, that will for American manufacturing,
Speaker 5: et cetera, et cetera. And some of this has been
Speaker 5: done without any drama. Like all these events that are
Speaker 5: usually catacuismic, like a banking crisis or a dead sealing negotiation,
Speaker 5: he's managed to dispose of without them getting to the break.
Speaker 5: And so he's actually a totally fascinating. Guy Fox is
Speaker 5: like created this persona this corpse who is stalking I'm
Speaker 5: going to get.
Speaker 1: To the corpse because I want to talk about that
Speaker 1: right wing depiction of him, because it's super fascinating. But
Speaker 1: I want to stop first and roll back and talk
Speaker 1: about the accomplishments piece because that is such a really
Speaker 1: good point. And I have a lot of people in
Speaker 1: my life who say things like, Okay, hot take, Joe
Speaker 1: Biden is the most transformative president of our lifetime. And
Speaker 1: I was listening this morning to one of my political
Speaker 1: podcasts and they were talking about the prescription drug pricing situation,
Speaker 1: which has never happened under any president, and they've been
Speaker 1: trying to do it since even before Reagan.
Speaker 2: Just continue down that road.
Speaker 5: So you take two big buckets of policy. With economic policy,
Speaker 5: for a couple generations, we've been stuck in a paradigm
Speaker 5: that Democrats Republicans alike that was kind of skeptical of unions,
Speaker 5: inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to markets,
Speaker 5: that was pro globalization. And he's gone this other way
Speaker 5: where he's given the state this new and totally different
Speaker 5: and ultimately progressive way of managing the economy, so that
Speaker 5: the state begins to make these consequential investments in industries
Speaker 5: that we have deemed to be of national important. So
Speaker 5: we need semiconductors because they go into everything, and because
Speaker 5: there's this possibility that China might someday invade Taiwan a
Speaker 5: realistic possibility, or all the green energy investments because the
Speaker 5: market is moving in this direction to invest in solar,
Speaker 5: to invest in when, to invest in electric vehicles, but
Speaker 5: we're never going to get there in time to satisfy
Speaker 5: our emissions goals, and so it just needed the government
Speaker 5: to come in and give the market this huge shove.
Speaker 5: And the shove has turned out to be so much
Speaker 5: bigger than anybody expected because when they negotiated the bill
Speaker 5: with Joe Manchin, they didn't cap the tax credits and subsidies.
Speaker 5: Mansion was a little bit caught off by this fact
Speaker 5: and now hates it. But the result is is that
Speaker 5: when Congress initially said there would be three hundred and
Speaker 5: seventy billion dollars investment in clean energy, it's going to
Speaker 5: end up being something closer to one zero point one
Speaker 5: trillion dollars of investment in clean energy, and it's going
Speaker 5: to really make the transition happen so much quicker than
Speaker 5: anybody had anticipated. Or you take foreign policy, and he
Speaker 5: actually has a grand strategy. You look at something like
Speaker 5: the Asia Pacific and I know this is like kind
Speaker 5: of maybe two in the weeds, but when you listen
Speaker 5: to him describe what he wants to do, it's like, Okay,
Speaker 5: I'm going to broker a relationship between Korea and South
Speaker 5: Korea and Japan that they've been fighting for all these
Speaker 5: decades because we need them.
Speaker 3: To get along.
Speaker 5: We're going to create a new military alliance with the
Speaker 5: Australians in the British. We're going to take Modi, who
Speaker 5: maybe an odious character, and we're going to woo him
Speaker 5: so that he flips out of China's camp and he's
Speaker 5: more neutral and more favorably inclined to us. And he's
Speaker 5: got a vision for competing with the Belton Road initiative.
Speaker 5: And when you listen to him talk about this, it's
Speaker 5: at a level of sophistication that the country doesn't see.
Speaker 5: It's not something that he really can talk eloquently about,
Speaker 5: but his path breaking. He's transforming not just American strategy
Speaker 5: and priorities, but he's actually remaking the geostrategic map.
Speaker 2: So really interesting.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about that that meeting and Camp David
Speaker 1: that Biden recently had with Japan and Korea, which was
Speaker 1: the first time anyone's been in Camp David, or at
Speaker 1: least anyone who's not like one of the Trump kids
Speaker 1: that where they've had foreign leaders there since twenty fifteen.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: One of the interesting things about Joe Biden as a
Speaker 5: politician is that he's got a sense of stagecraft, which
Speaker 5: unfortunately doesn't translate always to his public messaging, but he
Speaker 5: understands the ways when he's dealing with the congressional leader
Speaker 5: or foreign leader, how if he conducts the meeting in
Speaker 5: the rate setting, he can use the majesty of the
Speaker 5: presidency to become this home court advantage. So Camp David's
Speaker 5: a good example of that. Another example of that is
Speaker 5: he took Joe Manchin once to his house in Delaware,
Speaker 5: which he never does. He never takes, but he's a
Speaker 5: super proud guy about his real estate. It's like there's
Speaker 5: a lot of status anxiety and interesting psychological dynamics at
Speaker 5: work there.
Speaker 3: But he cares a lot about his house in Delaware.
Speaker 5: And so when you give somebody the tour of your
Speaker 5: private abode and you haven't done that for anybody else.
Speaker 5: It's a meaningful thing. Or you take the Oval Office itself,
Speaker 5: which with the help of the historian John Meachum, he
Speaker 5: decorated it so that there are all these set pieces
Speaker 5: in the Oval Office from American history that have been
Speaker 5: designed to tell specific stories, Like there's a picture of
Speaker 5: Hamilton next to Jefferson, which he can point to and say,
Speaker 5: you know, we've had all these disagreements in our past
Speaker 5: and we've been able to get by them. You know,
Speaker 5: he's got FDR sitting there across the desk from him,
Speaker 5: and that's there for very specific, maybe obvious, but a
Speaker 5: narrative purpose that he calls on repeatedly. That goes to
Speaker 5: the title of the book, The Last Politician, that all
Speaker 5: these things that we kind of think of is like
Speaker 5: maybe cheesy or antiquated that he engages in and that
Speaker 5: he deploys as tactics are actually at the core of
Speaker 5: his persona and kind of a lost to American art
Speaker 5: and we've lost faith in it as a people. And
Speaker 5: his thesis is that he can prove that politics is
Speaker 5: still an effective way of get people who disagree with
Speaker 5: one another vociferously to coexist in this nation.
Speaker 1: Right, I mean, and if he can't, we're all completely fucked.
Speaker 1: But I do think that's a really good point. I mean,
Speaker 1: you hear that from the Biden administration all the time,
Speaker 1: like Trump got so much credit and hopefully doesn't again,
Speaker 1: got so much credit for things like declaring it Infrastructure Week,
Speaker 1: but then not ever passing any infrastructure, whereas Biden has gone.
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like Chips is an amazing piece
Speaker 1: of legislation, and then the prescription drugs which is part
Speaker 1: of this larger climate package, And then can we talk
Speaker 1: about the trains? Is that okay? Is that too weird?
Speaker 3: We can talk about trains.
Speaker 5: Joe Biden would probably tune into this podcast as a
Speaker 5: train fanatic himself if we talk about trains. But one
Speaker 5: thing that's super interesting to me about the way that
Speaker 5: they think about the legislative accomplishments that they don't talk
Speaker 5: about is that the Chips Bill, the infrastructure Bill, the
Speaker 5: Clean Energy Bill all interact because they've made them interact.
Speaker 5: So you have people in the White House who are
Speaker 5: in charge of implementation and coordinating the spending of all
Speaker 5: of these trillions of dollars, and the idea is you
Speaker 5: can take a place and you can transform it, whether
Speaker 5: it is someplace in upstate New York that's struggling that
Speaker 5: you can suddenly get broadband piped into in subsidized ways
Speaker 5: via the Infrastructure Bill, that suddenly will have a solar
Speaker 5: factory in there, and then other spending on other parts
Speaker 5: of the supply chain for that that are embedded in
Speaker 5: other pieces of legislation, and it has the possibility of
Speaker 5: actually transforming the political geography of this country in a
Speaker 5: totally interesting sort of way. Because you build a plant
Speaker 5: in Georgia, which they've built a lot of, like in fact,
Speaker 5: they've built one of a solar plant is getting built
Speaker 5: in Marjorie Tailer Greens District, or you build one in Phoenix.
Speaker 5: You don't just have have manufacturing jobs coming into those places,
Speaker 5: but you also have a lot of engineers and managers
Speaker 5: and kind of white collar workers who were college educated
Speaker 5: white collar workers who were migrating to those places in
Speaker 5: order to take those specialized jobs. And it's going to
Speaker 5: have a political effect where maybe to some extent, workers
Speaker 5: kind of appreciate the role that the Biden administration played
Speaker 5: in the creation of these centers. But you also, just
Speaker 5: as like a matter of math, you have people who
Speaker 5: tend to be Democratic voters having to move to work
Speaker 5: in these jobs, and in a tightly divided electorate, if
Speaker 5: you have five ten thousand workers moved to Phoenix or
Speaker 5: to the excerbs of Atlanta, that could make a difference
Speaker 5: in a tight election.
Speaker 1: Speaking of that, one of the situations here with the
Speaker 1: prescription drug So this prescription drug negotiation, which I think
Speaker 1: is actually quite quite a big deal, right. I mean
Speaker 1: it's funny because I actually was listening to NPR podcast
Speaker 1: and they were talking about like how no president has
Speaker 1: done it, it's so amazing. And then they were like,
Speaker 1: but could this fail? If this fails, could that be
Speaker 1: bad for Joe Biden? And I was like, Jesus Christ,
Speaker 1: you guys, but I want to ask you a we
Speaker 1: are a country where we are just at the mercy
Speaker 1: of prescription drug pricing. I mean, a great example is
Speaker 1: Joe Manchin's daughter who was involved in this EpiPen. I mean,
Speaker 1: I have a kid who has anaphylactic food allergies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so like I remember, we went from like these
Speaker 1: EpiPens are twenty bucks to these EpiPens are one hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty dollars and you know they expire. They're not forever,
Speaker 1: you know, they're for three years or something or maybe
Speaker 1: less of my existence. Yeah, I could probably do a
Speaker 1: fact check on that, and you cannot. You know, if
Speaker 1: you have a kid with anaphylactic food allergies and I've
Speaker 1: given an EpiPen a bunch of times, like they can't
Speaker 1: go out of the house without it, they can die.
Speaker 1: And so I mean, we really are at the mercy
Speaker 1: of our drug companies for pricing, and that I think
Speaker 1: is a really good example. But with this negotiation, it
Speaker 1: might actually have Biden do better with older voters if
Speaker 1: they if somehow Trump can't claim credit for it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And just to step back, I mean,
Speaker 5: I think you were talking about the administration the NPR podcast,
Speaker 5: where the administration's accomplishment was maybe being compouter. There was
Speaker 5: this skepticism in it. And I think that there's a
Speaker 5: really interesting dynamic at play with the press as it
Speaker 5: relates to Biden, which is press went so all in
Speaker 5: on opposing Trump, yet we're kind of still stuck within
Speaker 5: the structures of objectivity, and so I think there's almost
Speaker 5: this subconscious desire to treat Biden with like some of
Speaker 5: the same sorts of skepticism or the same kind of
Speaker 5: even at the Ledger, in some sort of way to
Speaker 5: preserve authority and credibility. And it's a conscients solving thing.
Speaker 5: But sometimes I think that the press maybe has gone
Speaker 5: overboard and self correct there, and that there's this kind
Speaker 5: of tendency to downplay or deny accomplishments that I think
Speaker 5: comes out of something that has nothing to do with Biden,
Speaker 5: but that has everything to do with the psychodrama of
Speaker 5: the last decade.
Speaker 1: Right, No, for sure, And I think it really is
Speaker 1: these institutions like the press and the federal government. I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about, you know that Heritage News story about how
Speaker 1: Heritage has a plan for if they can get Trump reelected,
Speaker 1: which would involve basically just completely dismantling the federal government as.
Speaker 2: We know it.
Speaker 1: And there is a feeling that these institutions have been
Speaker 1: through so much that they are forever changed.
Speaker 4: Right exactly.
Speaker 5: And so what's so interesting about this is Biden is
Speaker 5: kind of an institutionalist to his core. I mean, he
Speaker 5: was this guy who served in the Senate forever and ever.
Speaker 5: He's got faith in institutions that comes from another generation.
Speaker 5: And you know, on the one hand, it's hard not
Speaker 5: to see the shortcomings in that analysis when you have
Speaker 5: the heritage. Fedition is Trump bes kind of bent on
Speaker 5: just shredding these institutions and politicizing them, and so the
Speaker 5: natural response is to say, well, the only way to
Speaker 5: fight fires with fire and to politicize the institutions for ourselves.
Speaker 5: I think in Biden's view, protecting and preserving institutions means
Speaker 5: that you're protecting and preserving this buffer the next time
Speaker 5: the authoritarian comes to power, and so you have to
Speaker 5: steward them as well as you can to the next time,
Speaker 5: so that the Justice Department, civil service feels like they
Speaker 5: can resist some of the worst orders that will come
Speaker 5: their way. There is probably some naivete to that worldview.
Speaker 5: I've thought about this as long in our and I
Speaker 5: can't really come up with a much better alternative to
Speaker 5: that other than the one, which is to just kind
Speaker 5: of throw up your arms and say, like, it's all politics.
Speaker 5: Our institutions shouldn't be neutral, they should just be ours
Speaker 5: of the state. But I think that that's a far
Speaker 5: more dangerous set of circumstances.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you have this problem of Democrats coming back into
Speaker 1: power after an authoritarian and trying to get us back
Speaker 1: to normal. I think that's been a real problem. And
Speaker 1: I think one of the things that I've been really
Speaker 1: interested in is we've seen the right wing media and
Speaker 1: so they message about Biden the same way the mainstream
Speaker 1: media messaged about Trump. Right So they say Biden is
Speaker 1: an authoritarian, Biden is a dictator, Biden is just throwing norms,
Speaker 1: which is not true on the face of it, but
Speaker 1: I think it has been very powerful for in this
Speaker 1: right wing media eco chamber.
Speaker 5: Oh my god, I've just been dealing with this. So
Speaker 5: when we're talking today, my book has yet to come out.
Speaker 5: It was embargo until next Tuesday, and some guy at
Speaker 5: The Guardian managed to get a hold of a copy
Speaker 5: of my book game store.
Speaker 2: I know that guy.
Speaker 5: Okay, Martin Martin, I'm not speaking ill. Martin Martin is
Speaker 5: a very industrious reporter. Martin found one line in the
Speaker 5: end of my book where I'm talking about Joe Biden's age,
Speaker 5: and I mentioned that Joe Biden on occasion would say
Speaker 5: that he felt tired, like as I'm sure you do
Speaker 5: about five times a day, as we all do like,
Speaker 5: if that's the worst man about Joe Biden's age, then like,
Speaker 5: you know, God bless. But then the next thing, you know,
Speaker 5: it's like, you know, five shows on Fox take this
Speaker 5: little chard of truth and then inflated into this absurd
Speaker 5: story that they twist into the demagogically to serve their
Speaker 5: narrative purposes. This guy, Jess Waters, did something hilarious yesterday.
Speaker 5: Kind of scary, but it's like it's hilarious. He took
Speaker 5: my excerpt about Afghanistan and I had an anecdote. Well,
Speaker 5: he starts ranting about how I had reported that Joe
Speaker 5: Biden wanted to build parking lots and cobble in the
Speaker 5: middle of the withdrawal crisis, and he starts laughing about
Speaker 5: it and how absurd this idea is and how all
Speaker 5: of Biden's age were mocking him for his declining mental acuity,
Speaker 5: when in fact, what I wrote was Biden, who threw
Speaker 5: himself into the details of the Afghan crisis, was studying
Speaker 5: maps of Kabble and he pointed out a parking lot
Speaker 5: where he said it might be a convenient place for
Speaker 5: refugees to gather so that they could be militarily escortated
Speaker 5: to the airport, and Waters is like going on and
Speaker 5: on about this terrible misreading of my piece. That's like
Speaker 5: probably a willful misreading or he just doesn't actually care.
Speaker 2: In Jesse waters defense, it is possible that he can't read.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, well, which is the perfect reason to give
Speaker 5: him a prime time show.
Speaker 1: Right, well, it is the perfect reason to give him
Speaker 1: a prime time show on Fox.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, Franklin, I hope you will come back.
Speaker 3: It would be my immense pleasure.
Speaker 6: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Hanna Fried is a quote rights attorney and executive director
Speaker 1: of All Voting is Local.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 4: Hannah, thank you. Fun to be here.
Speaker 2: Well, it hasn't happened yet. Let's see.
Speaker 4: It's a bud life.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: First, let's start with what your organization is and what
Speaker 1: it does.
Speaker 4: Sure All the Any Local is a non partisan, multi
Speaker 4: state voting rights organization, and the work that we do
Speaker 4: Probalyground and eight States focuses on the power that state
Speaker 4: and particularly local election officials have over the right and
Speaker 4: ability of people to register to guest a ballot and
Speaker 4: to cast a ballot that's going to get counted. And
Speaker 4: we work especially in communities of color communities that have
Speaker 4: been long disenfranchised, and we advocate, We say, you have
Speaker 4: to run your elections in a way that makes it
Speaker 4: easier for people to vote. Have processed these rules systems
Speaker 4: and are more fair. And that's the work that we do.
Speaker 4: We've been doing it for about five years and it
Speaker 4: is a really it is an exciting and interesting time
Speaker 4: to be doing this work.
Speaker 1: Give us an example of a community where you have
Speaker 1: helped voters get enfranchised and how you've done it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I can give some examples from this past month.
Speaker 4: We have long advocated in Florida, in Duval County, which
Speaker 4: is the county in the north part of the state,
Speaker 4: for voters to have more access to in person early voting.
Speaker 4: Early voting has been really popular in Florida for a
Speaker 4: long long time, particularly popular among black voters. And we
Speaker 4: want to make sure that when election officials are selecting
Speaker 4: their early voting locations that they're putting them in places
Speaker 4: that people can actually get to. Can people get there
Speaker 4: easily on foot? Can they get there easily through public transportation?
Speaker 4: Are these locations near to where people work or go
Speaker 4: to school? And one great piece of news from just
Speaker 4: the last couple of weeks has been that the Supervisor
Speaker 4: of Elections, the top elections of the Shore Douvall County,
Speaker 4: has just announced that they're going to open five more
Speaker 4: early voting sites, including one on the campus of Edward
Speaker 4: Waters University, which is a historically black college. They're in
Speaker 4: Duval County, and this matters because we know when people
Speaker 4: can get easily to their polling place, they are more
Speaker 4: likely to build. And so we are delighted, particularly for
Speaker 4: the black community in Duval County, particularly for the students
Speaker 4: at and Waters, to have once again access to voting
Speaker 4: in a way that makes sense for them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that sounds great.
Speaker 1: And again we've seen a lot of times Republicans have
Speaker 1: been really against college kids voting. I can't imagine why.
Speaker 4: But that said, you know, I take the point of
Speaker 4: your question about you know, there is certainly a lot
Speaker 4: of energy of say in the states where we work,
Speaker 4: there's energy on the part of students, but there's also
Speaker 4: energy on the fire folks who want to pass laws
Speaker 4: and make it harder for people to vote. I mean,
Speaker 4: state legislators have passed or tried to pass record numbers
Speaker 4: of anti voter laws across the country. Last count I
Speaker 4: saw was north of three hundred laws that have been introduced, right,
Speaker 4: that make it harder for people to register, that make
Speaker 4: it harder for groups that do vote registration drives. That's
Speaker 4: actually along on the topic of Florida top of minds
Speaker 4: that they faced a hurricane just recently. Right, state legislature
Speaker 4: just passed a law earlier this year that would have
Speaker 4: issued multiple fifty thousand dollars fines to voter registration organizations.
Speaker 4: I mean, that is devastating to an organization that's trying
Speaker 4: to register voters in communities of color, particularly which is
Speaker 4: where a lot of voter registration drives are doing their
Speaker 4: work to try and make up for historical gaps in
Speaker 4: registration among black voters Latino voters. And you know that's
Speaker 4: just registration, right. I mean, there have been efforts in
Speaker 4: Georgia to get rid of every single ballot dropbox. Why
Speaker 4: would you do that, right, Voters showed up in twenty twenty.
Speaker 4: They love to have options for voting.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: That was true in the pandemic. But it's not just
Speaker 4: about that. So without question, there is a ton of
Speaker 4: momentum right now on the part of folks who want
Speaker 4: to stop voters from voting and stop their votes from county.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is such an incredible bumber.
Speaker 2: It is the goal here is to get people to vote.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about this fake electors scheme implicating a
Speaker 1: sitting state senator. Yeah, I would love you to, like
Speaker 1: just give us the TLDR on this, even though I
Speaker 1: know it some of our listeners might not.
Speaker 2: And then what you're doing there.
Speaker 4: In Georgia, in Michigan and a bunch of other plaphans,
Speaker 4: they know that there were activities around the twenty twenty election,
Speaker 4: and there are now charges being brown a couple of
Speaker 4: these states against people who allegedly served as fake electors.
Speaker 4: These are people who were put forward as a false
Speaker 4: flight of electors to elect somebody who had not actually
Speaker 4: been elected by the people of fair state. And there
Speaker 4: are charges being brought against them in Michigan and in Georgia,
Speaker 4: including a sitting state senator. And there are sitting officials
Speaker 4: in Michigan also mayor member of a city council. I
Speaker 4: believe we're not fans of that. If I've heard people say,
Speaker 4: you know, if you're going to be a firefighter, you
Speaker 4: should not be trying to set things on fire. And
Speaker 4: I think same can be said here about public officials.
Speaker 4: Election officials certainly should not be people who've also served
Speaker 4: as fake electors. Public officials, whether it's the mayor, a
Speaker 4: member of a city council, a sitting state senator, these
Speaker 4: are people who have demonstrated that they do not believe
Speaker 4: in the fair systems of elections that we have in
Speaker 4: this country. These democratic values, and I use that with
Speaker 4: a very small d these are the systems that we
Speaker 4: have in place. These are how people get elected in
Speaker 4: this country. And I think at a bare minimum, we
Speaker 4: should all be able to have faith in our public
Speaker 4: officials that they are going to uphold the norms and
Speaker 4: democratic values of this country and the laws of this country, right.
Speaker 4: I mean, the allegations here are that these folks have
Speaker 4: actually broken the law.
Speaker 1: I think so much about how during that twenty twenty
Speaker 1: election there was so much pressure on secretaries of state
Speaker 1: from MAGA world to do the wrong thing.
Speaker 2: And I really did think.
Speaker 1: If Carrie Lake were elected governor of Arizona or some
Speaker 1: of these swing state governors were put in there, that
Speaker 1: we really could see refusals to certify.
Speaker 4: We have seen refusals to certify. I mean in twenty
Speaker 4: twenty two, there was a county in Pennsylvania, Luzern County
Speaker 4: that did not certify. In Arizona, Coachees County officials tried
Speaker 4: to delay certification through a last minute change to process
Speaker 4: of hand counting every single ballot. And you know, look,
Speaker 4: I mean don't want to terrify anyone, but it doesn't
Speaker 4: take a lot gum up the works on this front. Right, Like,
Speaker 4: you can have a county, couple of county officials who
Speaker 4: can cause a lot of trouble by refusing to follow
Speaker 4: the law and follow their obligations to the voters that
Speaker 4: they're supposed to serve. So that threat is real.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about these anti voter tactics and how
Speaker 1: we certainly seen a number of times people on the
Speaker 1: right wing media spreading conspiracies about votes coming from Hong
Speaker 1: Kong and Ruby freedmen having a hard drive which turned
Speaker 1: out to be a ginger mint, and this sort of
Speaker 1: want for a handcount of ballots and dealing certification.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, let's where even to a start. So I think, well,
Speaker 4: perhaps the place to start is the sort of underlying
Speaker 4: theme that connects all this stuff which is taking power
Speaker 4: from the people, taking power from voters. That is the
Speaker 4: sort of unifying thread among all these efforts is that
Speaker 4: some people want to grab power and they will do
Speaker 4: it at any cost. And you know, whether it is
Speaker 4: the intimidation and threats made against election workers that you
Speaker 4: just referenced, right, whether it is you know, storming the
Speaker 4: capital on January sixth, right, it all comes down to
Speaker 4: the very same thing, which is that the people get
Speaker 4: to vote and they get to decide they're elected officials
Speaker 4: and not the other way around. And there are some
Speaker 4: people who just cannot abide that, they will not accept
Speaker 4: that that is the way this country works. And I'll
Speaker 4: say two, Look, I mean we started all voting as
Speaker 4: local five years ago, where what we still this organization
Speaker 4: to do was to fight against voter suppression. And people
Speaker 4: ask me a lot. You know, you've been doing this
Speaker 4: work for a long time, off and on for about
Speaker 4: fifteen years. House things in the wall, and they have,
Speaker 4: without question, right, the threats that we're talking about right now,
Speaker 4: refusal the sort of by election results. You and I
Speaker 4: would not have been having this conversation you years ago,
Speaker 4: well a few years ago actually now, but five years ago, no, right,
Speaker 4: not you know, just no voter suppression comes from the
Speaker 4: same place. It's the same impulse. Right, It's all about
Speaker 4: taking power from the people. It's just dressed up differently. Right.
Speaker 4: You've goss the strict photo ID law, you cut early voting, right,
Speaker 4: you put polling locations away from public transit.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: Why are you doing those things? Right? Why are you
Speaker 4: passing those laws? Why are you making those policies? It
Speaker 4: is because people want to use the systems we have
Speaker 4: to their own advantage, to the advantage of you know,
Speaker 4: the political party or the candidate that they want to win.
Speaker 4: They want power for themselves, and they will use what
Speaker 4: they can to get it done. And just so happens
Speaker 4: that right now, we're in a moment where one of
Speaker 4: the tools some folks are using to achieve that end
Speaker 4: is questioning our election results, lying about our election results,
Speaker 4: and building as we're learning, whole conspiracies around that.
Speaker 2: Very idea. So interesting.
Speaker 1: I'm a listener here, I'm listening to you. I want
Speaker 1: to help people to vote. I want how can people
Speaker 1: support you guys?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 4: Really a lovely question. And I although I feel I
Speaker 4: haven't been going pretty dark, there actually is a lot
Speaker 4: to be done right.
Speaker 1: Well, that's why I wanted to pull back and talk
Speaker 1: about that.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so one thing that people can do if they
Speaker 4: really want to help voters is become a poll worker.
Speaker 4: I really mean that, that is a real that question.
Speaker 4: We know that there are shortages of the people who
Speaker 4: make our polling places run. Right. A poll worker is
Speaker 4: the person who you know all of us have probably
Speaker 4: at one time or another voted in person.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: That's the person who greets you, the person who gives
Speaker 4: you your ballot. Right. If the person who helps you
Speaker 4: if you have a question, you didn't bring the idea
Speaker 4: you needed, They're going to help you figure out what
Speaker 4: your options are. They are the essential backbone of our democracy.
Speaker 4: And that is not lip service. If we do not
Speaker 4: have pull workers, our democracy doesn't function. And this was
Speaker 4: a cour a huge concern in twenty twenty because of
Speaker 4: the pandemic. But pollworker shortages have always impacted particular communities
Speaker 4: that generally deal with underresourcing around elections. And so if
Speaker 4: as a you know, on election day, I'm usually pretty
Speaker 4: goodgee because I do mooting rights work. If that's a
Speaker 4: big day for our you know the work of organizations
Speaker 4: like mine. But if I were not doing that, I
Speaker 4: would become a pullworker. That is number one. I think
Speaker 4: the second thing is that I mean, you know, probably
Speaker 4: your listeners are hearing or aware of really entrenched problems
Speaker 4: of disinformation that we have in this moment. And again
Speaker 4: not a new problem, but at scale, right, I mean,
Speaker 4: social media has made it so much easier. Right, And
Speaker 4: then we you know't whatever we are, I think, all well,
Speaker 4: pretty well burst in kind of what's going on the
Speaker 4: front idioms. It is really a problem of scale right now.
Speaker 4: And so I think, you know, one thing that we
Speaker 4: know is that people trust their friends and their family
Speaker 4: for advice, and so I think one thing I would
Speaker 4: offer to a listener is shake it back. Right. There's
Speaker 4: a lot us bloating around out there, whether it's about
Speaker 4: the hours of voting or about the systems we used
Speaker 4: to count ballots, about who is influencing our elections, right,
Speaker 4: it is worth spending a little time before you repost
Speaker 4: reshare is this good information?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: Don't spread misinformation that seems like a really good.
Speaker 4: You are a trusted messenger to somebody in your life.
Speaker 4: You should take that responsibility seriously.
Speaker 2: I think that's really important.
Speaker 1: But also that you shouldn't you know, you should make
Speaker 1: sure that the information you're getting to vote is credible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1: So interesting. What states are you particularly worried about. We've
Speaker 1: had James Carvell on this podcast a lot. James Carpal
Speaker 1: is a creature of the South, and he is very
Speaker 1: bullish on Mississippi maybe electing a Democratic governor for the
Speaker 1: first time. Mississippi is a state where if there wasn't
Speaker 1: such criminal disenfranchisemant it would probably be a blue state.
Speaker 1: But these voters are really targeted and kept from voting.
Speaker 1: Could you talk a little bit about how you fix
Speaker 1: a state like Mississippi.
Speaker 4: One of the things I'll say, you know, when we
Speaker 4: started thinking about where did we want to do this work,
Speaker 4: which states we want to work in, and I'll say,
Speaker 4: you know, Mississippi isn't one of them.
Speaker 2: Because it's just too hard.
Speaker 4: We had to make some decisions, but one way or another.
Speaker 4: But I will say about Mississippi and some of the
Speaker 4: other states in the Deep South, that part of what
Speaker 4: has made these states. And we work in Florida and Georgia,
Speaker 4: we work in other places that had some federal protections previously.
Speaker 4: What's made these states tough is that they don't have
Speaker 4: the full protections of the voting right seck that they
Speaker 4: once did. I don't want to act too Rosie. Things
Speaker 4: were tough even when we had those protections. But until
Speaker 4: the Supreme Court not evenven about a decade ago now
Speaker 4: gutted the core protection of Section five O Vuilting Rights Act.
Speaker 4: There were special protections for these states had deep, deep,
Speaker 4: deep histories of disenfranchisement. And it became a free for
Speaker 4: all after that, and so then there was no bottom right,
Speaker 4: It just you It was like a free fall. And
Speaker 4: we've seen that in some of our states that used
Speaker 4: to have these protections. And so I think that, you know,
Speaker 4: our theory of change is so premised on the power
Speaker 4: of local election officials and the power that communities have
Speaker 4: to make change. I mean, I use this example of
Speaker 4: this county in Florida, Duval County. That is because communities
Speaker 4: there are coming together and demanding change. And sometimes you
Speaker 4: have a legislature or a governor who isn't going to
Speaker 4: step up and actually helpfulders, and sometimes they very intentionally
Speaker 4: are not helping burners. But communities can actually overcome and
Speaker 4: push and demand and I think that is what we
Speaker 4: have seen when when things seem hopeless. That is the
Speaker 4: thing that we have found is what moves the needle
Speaker 4: Coaches County Arizona. When these election officials are saying, hey,
Speaker 4: we're not going to count these you know, we're gon
Speaker 4: we're going to handcout all these balls. Were even sure
Speaker 4: the elections can be trusted, people showed up at public
Speaker 4: meetings there and said you have to count these roots. Right.
Speaker 4: This has been a largely dark conversation with most of
Speaker 4: my conversations about this topic are But in these states,
Speaker 4: what we see is these communities turn out and they
Speaker 4: just say enough is enough. Voter said it in Ohio
Speaker 4: in August about Issue one. You know about this legislature
Speaker 4: basically trying to end democracy as we know it in
Speaker 4: the state of Ohio. Letters just said we've had enough,
Speaker 4: and they set it through their advocacy. They said it
Speaker 4: by signing up as poll workers, as I mentioned, and
Speaker 4: they send it in their vote.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: I hope you'll come back. And also everyone needs to
Speaker 1: sign up to be a poll worker.
Speaker 4: That's the message.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 6: All moments Jesse Cannon, Molly Jung Fast that Ron de
Speaker 6: Santis I think he has nightmares every night of that
Speaker 6: Chris Christy embrace of Obama and now he is really
Speaker 6: doing some dumb, dumb stuff.
Speaker 1: This weekend was they pos hurricane recovery in Florida. It
Speaker 1: was a very bad hurricane, but not with a ton
Speaker 1: I mean, some damage, but not as much damage as
Speaker 1: they were worried about. Joe Biden flew down to Florida
Speaker 1: to meet with local Floridians to talk about the situation,
Speaker 1: and believe it or not, the governor of Florida, the
Speaker 1: man who has basically treated his governorship as an audition
Speaker 1: to primary Donald Trump, refused to meet with Joe Biden,
Speaker 1: thus looking small and petty, and instead Joe Biden met
Speaker 1: with the man who was trying to get Mitch McConnell's job,
Speaker 1: the one the only Mars attack, Senator Rick Scott. I
Speaker 1: don't think anyone is surprised that Ron DeSantis is politicizing
Speaker 1: this and refusing to meet with Biden. That said, one
Speaker 1: of the times when Biden came down to meet with DeSantis,
Speaker 1: there were lots of pictures where DeSantis looked like he
Speaker 1: wasn't relating to other humans, and Biden did so. I
Speaker 1: could see where the campaign might have a little anxiety
Speaker 1: about this. Either way, I think it makes DeSantis look
Speaker 1: terrible like he did in those boots exactly.
Speaker 2: And for that, those boots were made for doing your
Speaker 2: goddamn job. And that is our moment of fuckery.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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Speaker 1: in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you
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Speaker 1: and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.