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 Ron DeSantis has signed a bill
Speaker 1: ending permanent alimony. We're back from vacation. Did you have
Speaker 1: a great vacation. We did not really do anything, but
Speaker 1: we had a great vacation and we have a fabulous
Speaker 1: show for you today. Christina Ramirez, president of Next Gen America,
Speaker 1: talks to us about young voters so important in the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four election. Then we'll talk to the Enigma
Speaker 1: of Clarence Thomas author Corey Robbin about the latest.
Speaker 2: Fuckory in the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: But first we have the host of the Enemy's List,
Speaker 1: the one, the Only fan.
Speaker 2: Favorite, the Lincoln Projects, Rick Wilson.
Speaker 1: Welcome back, too, Fast Politics, fan favorite, personal friend of mine,
Speaker 1: the one the Only Rick Wilson.
Speaker 3: Mollie John Fast, How are you on this fine Sunday afternoon.
Speaker 1: Now, look, it's a weekend of a little bit of fuckery,
Speaker 1: a little bit of craziness, some fucker Republican candidates pretending
Speaker 1: everything is fine, and this is just saying it's fine.
Speaker 3: Molly, what's the problem. What's the problem? What do you mean.
Speaker 2: Normally there's only seventy one cal.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's twice impeached, he's twice indicted federally, state level.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, he's just a normal Republican candidate
Speaker 1: and he might not even get the nomination. Right.
Speaker 3: But Molly, but Molly, you're ignoring the national crisis. Joe
Speaker 3: Biden wore a pair of swim trunks with turtles on them.
Speaker 2: Any wore sneakers with tiny socks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm sure you're not paying attention to the crisis
Speaker 3: this has caused around the world because beachwear gate, Because
Speaker 3: beachwear gate is clearly it clearly says so much about
Speaker 3: America right now. Obviously it's a sign that he's trying
Speaker 3: to show solidarity with the global forces of cookery.
Speaker 2: Here's the problem with beachwear.
Speaker 1: Gate, aside from all the others, besides for how stupid
Speaker 1: this is. I mean, he was on the beach. He
Speaker 1: was not wearing a shirt. I guess that's the problem.
Speaker 1: Biden was on the beach in Delaware. There were the
Speaker 1: RNC posted the picture and said, Joe Biden has taken
Speaker 1: seven thousand vacation days or whatever, thirty four of me whatever,
Speaker 1: the numbers were.
Speaker 2: But here's the problem.
Speaker 1: He I mean, unless something enormous happens, he will be
Speaker 1: running against a guy who basically lived in Palm Beach
Speaker 1: for the winter.
Speaker 3: Yes, the vacation day's argument does not work.
Speaker 2: Are you sure.
Speaker 3: I hate to disappoint all the Trump world political geniuses,
Speaker 3: and by political geniuses, I mean fucking morons, but this
Speaker 3: is not an argument that is going to work for y'all.
Speaker 3: It does not work. I'm sorry. I know that most
Speaker 3: of you are basically windows licking people who you like
Speaker 3: to have your gruels served served at room temperature. But
Speaker 3: it doesn't work. This is not going to solve your
Speaker 3: political problem that you're that you're that your candidate is
Speaker 3: a goddamn weird Palm Beach fifty percent of the time
Speaker 3: spins on the golf.
Speaker 2: Course crimes, who and who does crimes?
Speaker 3: And I'm sorry, call me crazy, But the other thing
Speaker 3: they tried to jack into some sort of like Meja
Speaker 3: Skanda this week was then some more on lifting any
Speaker 3: bitty bag of cocaine somewhere in the visitor center of
Speaker 3: the White House. And I'm like, oh yeah, come on,
Speaker 3: as I said to somebody, it's like, oh, it was
Speaker 3: about Laura Trump. Laura was like, I'm like, listen, what
Speaker 3: did you think that Don Junior just had bad pollen allergies?
Speaker 3: Get the fuck out of here.
Speaker 1: Well, I want to talk about the cocaine cocaine Gate.
Speaker 1: Cocaine found in the West Wing in area where people tour.
Speaker 1: I was there a couple of weeks ago. It's not mine,
Speaker 1: I'm yours.
Speaker 2: I was nineteen.
Speaker 1: I know you, but I do want to say it's
Speaker 1: not Joe Biden's. We can say we know it's not
Speaker 1: Joe Biden's. I'm sorry, but there are many There have
Speaker 1: been many presidents in my lifetime where we could not
Speaker 1: totally foresure say that some presidents that you might have
Speaker 1: even had relationships with.
Speaker 2: I'm just saying I.
Speaker 3: Will tell you this. I think there's a zero percent
Speaker 3: chance that w did cocaine while he was in the
Speaker 3: White House.
Speaker 1: I'm not accusing anyone, but I'm just saying that, you know,
Speaker 1: this is a president where we know he doesn't drink,
Speaker 1: he's incredibly old, he doesn't do cocaine.
Speaker 2: If nothing else we have.
Speaker 3: That, Yeah, I mean I'm sure that I'm sure the big,
Speaker 3: the big drug bust on Joe Biden's probably the occasional
Speaker 3: B twelve shot.
Speaker 2: Right exactly twelve.
Speaker 1: And I think, I mean, I think, look, B twelve
Speaker 1: is a very serious drug and if you find it,
Speaker 1: called the police right away. But I want to get
Speaker 1: back to this. Another thing that happened this weekend was
Speaker 1: run on to Santis as you.
Speaker 3: Know him, meet a Ron Ronda Sanchez.
Speaker 1: Ronda sanctimonious, as Jason Miller calls him in playbooks.
Speaker 2: This weekend has just been skirting along the skidding.
Speaker 1: Along the bottom I have I'm making by the way,
Speaker 1: for those of you because this is an audio podcast
Speaker 1: and we don't have a video component yet. Do you
Speaker 1: want a video component? Send CHESSI canon messages on Instagram.
Speaker 1: You can find his instagram. It just takes a little
Speaker 1: bit of doing, but I'm sure you can find it.
Speaker 1: So we're skidding along the bottom here, Ron DeSantis, he says,
Speaker 1: in fact, he you know, he gives a mainstream media quote.
Speaker 1: He you know, he avoids the mainstream media because he
Speaker 1: hates the liberal media.
Speaker 3: That's a narrative, Molly, That's just a narrative. Yes, he says,
Speaker 3: that's an every time he gets any kind of question
Speaker 3: or criticism, that the nertive. I'm like, no, Moron, it's
Speaker 3: a fucking question, Jesus.
Speaker 2: But also it does happen to be a narrative, that
Speaker 2: is correct.
Speaker 3: Some narratives happen to true, Ron, that's right.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think this is a narrative, and it's
Speaker 2: a narrative for a reason, because it's what's happening.
Speaker 3: Right. A narrative is a description of the events as
Speaker 3: they occur. Ron, perhaps this is what's occurring. You're getting
Speaker 3: your shit handed to you because as a candidate, you
Speaker 3: are a like one hundred hitter. You are a bad candidate.
Speaker 2: God, he's a bad candidate.
Speaker 1: Thank God he's a bad candidate, because he's a very
Speaker 1: good autocrat.
Speaker 3: The interesting thing in Florida, I'll give your audience a
Speaker 3: little bit of a little bit of.
Speaker 1: Dish, Yes, give us some Florida gop dish, since you
Speaker 1: know a lot of Florida geopick.
Speaker 3: I was with a bunch of lobbyists last night in
Speaker 3: the Great State of Florida.
Speaker 2: Again again the night before and.
Speaker 3: The night before, but last night, and it's interesting because
Speaker 3: suddenly people are chit chatting again. Basically, the feeling is this,
Speaker 3: Ron DeSantis bet the entire house, and everybody wanted to
Speaker 3: stay safe from his budget. Veto's right because in lord
Speaker 3: of the governor has a line on a vito, but
Speaker 3: only for the budget so he can fuck people really badly.
Speaker 3: And DeSantis went ahead and did that to anybody who
Speaker 3: endorsed Trump or wasn't like cooperative enough with him, or
Speaker 3: wasn't he wasn't like his little bitch boys. Well, here's
Speaker 3: the thing. This the political climate. You knowing, Nothing turns
Speaker 3: politicians to hate more than weakness, and the perception that
Speaker 3: this guy is suddenly weak and pathetic and lame and
Speaker 3: not the twenty seven foot tall, solid titanium giant killer
Speaker 3: that he pretended to be is biting in. Yeah, we're
Speaker 3: also hearing out in the rest of the country, not
Speaker 3: just in Florida. So, by the way, what'll happen is
Speaker 3: he'll come back here and try to try this strong
Speaker 3: arm shit again, and people will be like, no, fuck off,
Speaker 3: I would like my donations from Disney to come back,
Speaker 3: you know. And a lot of these guys get a
Speaker 3: lot of money from Disney, okay, and from all these
Speaker 3: other people that he fucked over. And I just want
Speaker 3: to tell your audience one more time. Ron Desanta has
Speaker 3: just signed a bill. If you want to talk about
Speaker 3: a guy who is so fucking disconnected. There's an industry
Speaker 3: in Florida called the phosphate industry. They mind phosphate. It
Speaker 3: produces in the course of doing this a low level
Speaker 3: radioactive waste. Okay, now right, radioactive waste, bad all around,
Speaker 3: low level, but still he signed a bill allowing the
Speaker 3: phosphate industry to now use the radioactive waste that they
Speaker 3: produce in building roads in the state of Florida. So
Speaker 3: once again, he signed a bill to allow the phosphate
Speaker 3: industry to use the radioactive waste that they produce in
Speaker 3: building roads in the state of Florida. I'm sorry, because
Speaker 3: what dirt is too fucking expensive, because concrete is so
Speaker 3: you have to have radioactive waste in the work. I mean,
Speaker 3: we were already a state full of enough fucking mutants
Speaker 3: without radioactive roads.
Speaker 2: I mean, think about what's going to happen to your alligators.
Speaker 3: Right, I mean those some bitches are going to get
Speaker 3: to be like forty feet long, and they're gonna have conversations.
Speaker 3: They're going to get opposable thumbs, right.
Speaker 2: I feel like I saw this movie.
Speaker 3: The whole thing is it's like a mad Max radioactive
Speaker 3: waste shit show. But he's just so bad. He's so
Speaker 3: bad at governing. He's good at being an authoritarian punk,
Speaker 3: and he's good at hurting people.
Speaker 1: Right, I want to pull on a thread here and
Speaker 1: not plug my threads account, So Elon Musk, because I
Speaker 1: think these two things sort of relate to each other.
Speaker 1: Elon Musk decided he was going to buy Twitter and
Speaker 1: sort of remake the mainstream media, right, I mean that
Speaker 1: was what was coming from behind. He said, we don't
Speaker 1: need this stupid NPR. We don't need this stupid you
Speaker 1: know mainstream. We don't need Vanny Fair. What we need
Speaker 1: are citizen journalists like you know, these sort of disgraced
Speaker 1: crypto bros or the crass and Steins. Those are going
Speaker 1: to be our journalists. We're going to remake the mainstream media.
Speaker 1: And he got going on it, he got all his
Speaker 1: tech brosen and it didn't work, right, I mean, it
Speaker 1: just didn't work.
Speaker 3: Call me crazy, Call me crazy that the decline of
Speaker 3: Twitter and the arrival of Tucker Carlson happened almost simultaneously.
Speaker 2: You So, Tucker's numbers have gone way down to I have.
Speaker 3: And when Tucker's numbers started to tank, it wasn't just
Speaker 3: that he didn't have the Fox ecosystem. It's that the
Speaker 3: place he chose to do it has been so fundamentally
Speaker 3: broken by Elon Musk's terrible business decisions. The fact that
Speaker 3: he believed that he was going to I'm going to
Speaker 3: level the playing field between as I said on threats today,
Speaker 3: like an account called you know Cuckmaster six sixty six
Speaker 3: versus you know you or me or anybody else who's
Speaker 3: in media journalism politics, who is actually you know, talking
Speaker 3: by and large and broadly about ideas and occurrences and
Speaker 3: events and news. The fact that he deliberately algorithmically elevated
Speaker 3: the worst fucking trolls in in the world and up
Speaker 3: a system where if you were a mouth breathing, mildew
Speaker 3: trailer bubba dumbfuck from ass Lick, Arkansas, you could get
Speaker 3: a blue.
Speaker 2: Really getting peak Rick, we are right.
Speaker 3: Now because I am on my shit. If you gave
Speaker 3: that person a blue check mark and therefore algorithmically elevated
Speaker 3: them for eight dollars a month. The idea he had
Speaker 3: that is it wouldn't affect the rest of the human
Speaker 3: beings who use Twitter, and they all have basically said, God,
Speaker 3: this plays stinks like a damn dead hooker and I'm
Speaker 3: in the trunk of a pento. It's just awful. Twitter is.
Speaker 3: It's insufferable these days because the algorithmic elevation of the
Speaker 3: worst of the worst was done to troll people like us.
Speaker 1: Okay, it reminds me of Clubhouse. When I joined Clubhouse,
Speaker 1: it had this sort of you know, you would go,
Speaker 1: you'd hear occasionally a celebrity talk, and you think it
Speaker 1: was pretty interesting. And then what happened was Clubhouse is
Speaker 1: they would just make all their investors huge, so they
Speaker 1: got this supported, and then it became all their investors
Speaker 1: who nobody really cared about because they're not famous or
Speaker 1: notable people.
Speaker 2: But I want to tie this.
Speaker 1: So Elon tried to come after the mainstream media, and
Speaker 1: you know, there was nothing wrong with innovation per se.
Speaker 1: But what I want to come back to is Ron DeSantis.
Speaker 1: DeSantis had a similar kind of thing where he would
Speaker 1: not give interviews to anyone who wasn't a sort of
Speaker 1: astro turfed fake site.
Speaker 2: Do you think that has ultimately actually hurt him?
Speaker 3: Yes. Look, here's the thing he and Florida in particular.
Speaker 3: Will not speak to traditional media. He won't talk to
Speaker 3: the Associated Press or the SAP Times, Miami Herald, Orlando Sentinel.
Speaker 3: He won't talk to reporters. He does not talk to them.
Speaker 3: He will not talk to Peter Shorsha Florida Politics, the
Speaker 3: largest political website in Florida by an order of magnitude.
Speaker 3: He will, however, talk to like Real Florida, Maga, Red State,
Speaker 3: Red State Voice, and you know Epstein Today News and
Speaker 3: all these like you know, all these crazy ass edge case.
Speaker 3: There's one called Florida's Voice, which is run by a
Speaker 3: bunch of people who are like, you know, Ben Shapiro
Speaker 3: is my role model. It's just it's just amazing. And
Speaker 3: the problem with it all is that it made him weak.
Speaker 3: It made him a weaker candidate on the stump, because,
Speaker 3: you know what, you don't actually get to go and
Speaker 3: play the game by your own rules when you're campaigning
Speaker 3: for president. There are actually reporters there and if you still,
Speaker 3: if you don't answer their questions, you know what they're
Speaker 3: gonna do. They're gonna report whatever the fuck they want
Speaker 3: about you, and they're going to report the truth because
Speaker 3: Desantas made himself weak. He made himself into an athlete
Speaker 3: who was not trained for the business of politics in
Speaker 3: America in twenty twenty five three. And you have got
Speaker 3: to be able to go out and take a punch
Speaker 3: and give a punch. You've got to be able to
Speaker 3: go out and answer questions. And you've got to be able,
Speaker 3: more than anything to understand that the fantasy bubble you
Speaker 3: create in your head is not real. The line of
Speaker 3: bs you're selling yourself or your donors are, your maniacal
Speaker 3: wife is not real. And so so as he's collided
Speaker 3: more and more with the fact that his numbers have
Speaker 3: gone down. Remember when he.
Speaker 2: Started, right, he was the hope, he was the great home.
Speaker 3: He was the golden child.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: It was basically and our survey about a year ago,
Speaker 3: now well nine months ago, nine months ago, the first
Speaker 3: I think nine months goes when we sort of paying attention,
Speaker 3: like with our big survey, Trump was at fifty one
Speaker 3: and he was at thirty.
Speaker 2: Six, right, and it was like could happen?
Speaker 3: And now Trump is it like in our numbers at
Speaker 3: like fifty six and Desanta's is at fourteen. What's happening?
Speaker 3: Three things are happening.
Speaker 2: Tell us.
Speaker 3: First off, there's an old phrase in advertising that you
Speaker 3: can't sell bad dog food with good advertising because the
Speaker 3: dogs don't see the advertising, but they do taste the food.
Speaker 3: So you can go out and pretend Rond de Santis
Speaker 3: is the second Coming and he's this great leader and
Speaker 3: all this other stuff.
Speaker 2: But people have met him before.
Speaker 3: But when you sit him down in a room and
Speaker 3: ask him questions and he gets pissy and cranky and
Speaker 3: weird because he's weird, it starts to drop off when
Speaker 3: the mega donors are in these rooms and they're like, yes, obviously,
Speaker 3: well what will happen is he'll get one hundred million
Speaker 3: dollars that it will clear the field. Donald Trump will
Speaker 3: realize that Rond de Santis is so powerful and he'll
Speaker 3: leave the race. It's all fantasy.
Speaker 2: It is a very nice fantasy for them.
Speaker 1: I mean not for us and not for American democracy,
Speaker 1: but it's nice that they felt they could still love
Speaker 1: a candidate who wasn't Donald Trump and who was so
Speaker 1: bad at retail politics.
Speaker 2: I want one more minute.
Speaker 1: I know we're doing this too long, but you and
Speaker 1: I really do truly hate DeSantis.
Speaker 2: Truly hate is the wrong word.
Speaker 3: No, it's not. I actually hate him because he's a
Speaker 3: shir He's a bad person and a bad candidate.
Speaker 1: I just want to say that I thought he was
Speaker 1: one really dangerous guy, and so I feel very believed
Speaker 1: that he's crashing and burning because I think he's a
Speaker 1: really scary guy. But I just I want to say
Speaker 1: one last thing about him, which is that video.
Speaker 2: And it struck me.
Speaker 1: I think I've mentioned this before, Jesse, tell me if
Speaker 1: I have, actually don't, it's fine. But when people met
Speaker 1: him and he said okay, like, Hi, I'm Joe, and
Speaker 1: he said okay, like that is not good retail politics.
Speaker 3: No, he's not good. Set aside my visceral dislike for
Speaker 3: him because he is what I call an unlimited government conservative.
Speaker 3: He believes in using the power of the state to
Speaker 3: hurt his political enemies. And as a person who believes
Speaker 3: that the state is a source many times of danger
Speaker 3: and overreach. That's not even a mistake, that's a lot
Speaker 3: of times it overreaches by miss and stupidity and whatever.
Speaker 3: This is a deliberate embrace of a philosophy of using
Speaker 3: the power of the government to harm people, and he's
Speaker 3: done it a lot. It's not just Disney, it's not
Speaker 3: just teachers, it's not just drag queens. This is a
Speaker 3: guy trying to use the power of his office to
Speaker 3: cause fear, pain, intimidation, and hurt. And I think that's
Speaker 3: the lowest sort of political traveler that come up. Ace
Speaker 3: he's experiencing is very satisfying. I don't I'm not going
Speaker 3: to take my eyes off him yet. Trump could still,
Speaker 3: you know, have an aneurysm. But I will also say
Speaker 3: he is. He is now also attracting something that everyone
Speaker 3: who's in real politics has observed before. All these mega
Speaker 3: donors are calling him now all the time, fix your campaign,
Speaker 3: Fix your campaign.
Speaker 2: Yes, that must be a fun experience. Have you had
Speaker 2: that experience.
Speaker 3: Ever, you know, Molly, I have been on both ends
Speaker 3: of that equation. I've been on the I've been on
Speaker 3: the end of the equation where they where I'm the
Speaker 3: guy who gets brought in after they fix the campaign.
Speaker 3: I've been the guy on the other side of it.
Speaker 1: Not a good feeling, right, No, oh no, No, it's
Speaker 1: not a good feeling.
Speaker 2: It's not a good phone call.
Speaker 3: It's a dangerous phone call because if you don't turn
Speaker 3: it around immediately, the money cuts off. And by the way,
Speaker 3: that's what's happening with the big guys right now. There's
Speaker 3: a slow drain off of him with the major candidates.
Speaker 3: Some of them are like, well, I guess we'll get
Speaker 3: Christy some money. But Jeff Row the guy he brought
Speaker 3: in to run a Weber.
Speaker 1: Pack, the guy that Puck News made famous for some
Speaker 1: unknown reason, Yes, who.
Speaker 3: Spent one hundred million dollars of donor money last year
Speaker 3: on eleven candidates and elected one of them. So good ratio, bro.
Speaker 3: My understanding is that after the weird serial killer homo
Speaker 3: erotic Ron DeSantis.
Speaker 1: Yes, we're talking so for those who do not completely
Speaker 1: know Rick Wilson Shorthand, we are talking about a video
Speaker 1: that Ron DeSantis's campaign posted that was very anti gay
Speaker 1: but also very sexy.
Speaker 3: Creepily homo erotic and associated him with criminals and Patrick Bateman,
Speaker 3: the famous serial killer.
Speaker 2: Yes, it was a very strange video.
Speaker 3: Very strange.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: My understanding is that Casey DeSantis's reaction to that was
Speaker 3: not good. And by not good, I mean I'm going
Speaker 3: to use a word that is not in common parlance anymore,
Speaker 3: but it was used when they were tearing whales apart
Speaker 3: on ships. There it is flensing f l E and
Speaker 3: s I in g flinsing. I understand that there was
Speaker 3: that there was some flensing afoot during that entire period.
Speaker 3: Because here's the dirty secret of Casey DeSantis. She's playing
Speaker 3: the role of moms for Liberty, like Mini Van Taliban
Speaker 3: all that other stuff. But she desperately, desperately, desperately wants
Speaker 3: to go to Washington, d C. And be invited to
Speaker 3: swink little soirees the homes of Temmy Haddad and Julianna Glover, and.
Speaker 2: She has the opera gloves for it.
Speaker 3: She wants the opera gloves. She wants the Kennedy Center,
Speaker 3: she wants to be invited to Fashion Week. She wants
Speaker 3: all that stuff. That's what she wants. And now she's
Speaker 3: starting to realize that the path they're pursuing to get there,
Speaker 3: there's no way to sent her back, there's no way
Speaker 3: to swing back to the middle. After you've been somebody
Speaker 3: who's like, we're going to run an half that says
Speaker 3: we're going to end the gay way of life. Oh
Speaker 3: that doesn't sound bothers him at all.
Speaker 1: Rick Wilson is, will you please come back very soon?
Speaker 1: You know, I will Christina Ramirez as president at next
Speaker 1: Gen America.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Fast Politics. Christina, thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 2: Can you explain to us what next Jane is?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: So, next Gen America is the country's largest youth organization.
Speaker 4: In the last presidential race in twenty twenty, we help
Speaker 4: mobilize one in nine young voters across the country, leading
Speaker 4: to the largest youth voter turnout in American history and
Speaker 4: helping elect Joe Biden and send Donald Trump packing. We
Speaker 4: focus on young people because they are the largest, the
Speaker 4: most progressive, and the most diverse generation in American history,
Speaker 4: and we believe they have the power to remake American
Speaker 4: politics and save democracy.
Speaker 2: So explain to me what that looks like. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So, we organize young people anywhere and everywhere we can,
Speaker 4: so we will in this upcoming presidential race. We will
Speaker 4: be on hundreds of college campuses and battleground states talking
Speaker 4: to young voters, making sure they're registered and get them
Speaker 4: pledged to vote. We will have a volunteer army of
Speaker 4: close to thirty thousand volunteers that will help us send
Speaker 4: tens of millions of calls and text to young people
Speaker 4: in states. They'll even hop on dating apps because we
Speaker 4: can search by age, geography, and you can even seek
Speaker 4: people's political persuasions. And we will also organize with and
Speaker 4: mobilize influencers across the country, including college athletes, to mobilize
Speaker 4: young people. So anywhere and everywhere that young people are,
Speaker 4: both in real life and online, we will try and
Speaker 4: be to make sure that they make their voices heard
Speaker 4: and turn out and record them.
Speaker 2: Say more about the dating apps.
Speaker 4: During COVID, when everything went virtual, there was a huge
Speaker 4: increase in people using dating apps, so a ninety percent
Speaker 4: increase in people using dating apps. And we have always
Speaker 4: been trying to figure out new ways to reach young people.
Speaker 2: Where are young people congregating?
Speaker 4: Where are they meeting? And so we knew that they
Speaker 4: were meeting on dating apps and dating apps in some
Speaker 4: ways you would think were set up just for organizing.
Speaker 4: Because we can search again by age, if we want
Speaker 4: to find someone a young voter in Wisconsin, we can
Speaker 4: search by gender. We can talk to them. Also if
Speaker 4: we want to talk to young queer voters, you know
Speaker 4: right now is Pride month. For example, in ninety three
Speaker 4: percent of young queer voters, of which one in four
Speaker 4: young people identify as voted for progressive candidates. We are
Speaker 4: an explicitly progressive organization, so our volunteers will have real
Speaker 4: life conversations in dating apps, telling young people about what
Speaker 4: their voting plans are, making sure they're ready to vote. No,
Speaker 4: we're not trying to catfish anyone. No one shows up
Speaker 4: to their first DAID in surprise it's a location or anything.
Speaker 4: But we will talk to people about issues that they
Speaker 4: care about and just make sure that they're ready to
Speaker 4: vote in the upcoming elections.
Speaker 1: Explain to me a little bit about what you are
Speaker 1: going to do in twenty four and what that's going
Speaker 1: to look like.
Speaker 4: I think everybody knows this is going to be a huge,
Speaker 4: huge election. Our organization has been around for ten years.
Speaker 4: We were started a decade ago with the premise that
Speaker 4: if we could organize young people to scale, we could
Speaker 4: take on one of the biggest challenges that our country faces,
Speaker 4: which is the climate crisis. And I'll tell you ten
Speaker 4: years ago, most political strategists thought it was a waste
Speaker 4: of time and money to focus on young people. And
Speaker 4: it's ten years later, We've had three consecutive elections with
Speaker 4: historic youth voter turnout, and we want to keep up
Speaker 4: that momentum. At next Gen America, we endorsed Joe Biden
Speaker 4: and Kamala Harris, and we endorse them because no administration
Speaker 4: has done more to deliver on progressive policy change. When
Speaker 4: they were talking about climate change, student debt, gun safety reform,
Speaker 4: gay marriage, and the list goes on. That is why
Speaker 4: we endorse this administration so early, because for us, it's
Speaker 4: not enough about a party or any single one politician.
Speaker 4: It really comes down to policy that helps make young
Speaker 4: people's lives better. So we're going to be doing everything
Speaker 4: we can to talk to and connect to young people
Speaker 4: to make sure they know what's at stake this election
Speaker 4: and help millions of them. We'll be contacting ten point
Speaker 4: five million young people roughly across nine states to try
Speaker 4: and turn them out this election.
Speaker 2: What do you think?
Speaker 1: I mean, it's interesting because it's like we've seen a
Speaker 1: lot of people on the right. They know that young people,
Speaker 1: they are Democrats, they do not respond to this sort
Speaker 1: of Republican oligarchy, and you're seeing like real beginnings of
Speaker 1: anxiety when it comes to conservatives.
Speaker 2: I'm just curious, like this is a theory you.
Speaker 1: Guys have had for a while, but it's only recently
Speaker 1: that that young people have really kind of delivered. Why
Speaker 1: do you think that is.
Speaker 4: Well, there's several It is true Republicans are now reaching
Speaker 4: fever pitch about young voters because they are voting so
Speaker 4: overwhelmingly for Democrats, and that is not historically the case.
Speaker 4: Up until about two thousand and four, Republicans and Democrats
Speaker 4: pretty evenly split the youth vote. And today you see
Speaker 4: that young people you count Gen Z and millennials, they
Speaker 4: are now the largest voting block and they are clearly
Speaker 4: repulsed by the Republican Party. And the Republican Party has
Speaker 4: a few choices. They can change their policies to answer
Speaker 4: to a very progressive generation. Of course they're not doing that. Instead,
Speaker 4: they're going full throttle on policies to further exclude a
Speaker 4: very young queer, a very diverse generation, and also make
Speaker 4: it much harder for them to vote. But like I said,
Speaker 4: our organization has been around for ten years. There have
Speaker 4: been other projects, but there's been very little investment from
Speaker 4: progressives or conservatives into young voters, and so it's taken time.
Speaker 4: In some of the states that we're in, we've seen
Speaker 4: the youth vote share increase over six years, eight years,
Speaker 4: some clients ten years. Because this is electorate where a
Speaker 4: lot of candidates and campaigns are not going to put
Speaker 4: the money and time into talking to young voters because
Speaker 4: they are new or infrequent voters. And so what we've
Speaker 4: been able to prove in a place like Pennsylvania where
Speaker 4: we've been for since twenty sixteen is if you invest
Speaker 4: and start registering and engaging young voters early, that over
Speaker 4: time they will turn out that It's not a question.
Speaker 4: This is not young people are not apathetic. This is
Speaker 4: actually the most civically engaged generation in American history. It's
Speaker 4: about putting time and money into young people and then
Speaker 4: again delivering on progressive policy because that is ultimately what
Speaker 4: young people care about. They are voting overwhelmingly for Democrats,
Speaker 4: but a huge percentage of them actually see themselves as independents,
Speaker 4: even though how they vote is not necessarily the case.
Speaker 1: So basically, you're saying, if you treat young people the
Speaker 1: way you treat other voters, right, if you they'll behave
Speaker 1: the way other voters behave.
Speaker 4: Right. If you spend time and money engaging with young people,
Speaker 4: guess what they turn out? And there's a whole lot
Speaker 4: of young voters. Like I said, there's seventy million young
Speaker 4: eligible voters from when Biden and Harris took the presidency
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty. By twenty twenty four, there will be
Speaker 4: seventeen million young people that will have turned eighteen in
Speaker 4: that time period. That is a huge number of young
Speaker 4: people that have become eligible to vote just in this
Speaker 4: short time period.
Speaker 2: So I want to ask you.
Speaker 1: One of the things that the pundit industrial complex is
Speaker 1: quite passionate about is this idea that even though Biden's
Speaker 1: been this wildly successful president and he's achieved a lot
Speaker 1: of progressive victories and infrastructure and this, and that people.
Speaker 2: Think he's too old. What do you think about that?
Speaker 4: You know, there's several things. One I think for young people,
Speaker 4: we get asked this question all the time, and I
Speaker 4: like to remind political pundits that it is true that
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty, Joe Biden was not the candidate of
Speaker 4: young voters, but it was the guy that was actually
Speaker 4: even older than him that was the candidate, which was
Speaker 4: Bernie Sanders. So it really had nothing to do with agent,
Speaker 4: had everything to do with progressive policy. And what drives
Speaker 4: me crazy about the political pundit class that talks about
Speaker 4: Joe Biden's age is that they often forget to mention
Speaker 4: Trump's age. I mean, he is no spring chicken himself.
Speaker 4: And to me, honestly, it wouldn't matter if Donald Trump,
Speaker 4: and I think the a lot of young people understand
Speaker 4: this too, if Donald Trump was fifty years younger than
Speaker 4: Joe Biden, because his policies feel straight out of the
Speaker 4: nineteen fifties. That whether you are talking about women's rights, abortion,
Speaker 4: LGBTQ equality, climate change, gun safety, legislation, race in America,
Speaker 4: on any single issue, it is day and night between
Speaker 4: the two candidates. And we don't want to go backwards.
Speaker 4: Young people do not want to go backwards. We want
Speaker 4: to go forward, and there is only one candidate on
Speaker 4: the ticket in the Democratic Party that wants to do that.
Speaker 1: One of the things we're seeing conservatives do is try
Speaker 1: I mean, I think they're pretty convinced that Donald Trump
Speaker 1: is going to be the GOP candidate, and I think
Speaker 1: they're pretty worried. One of the things we're seeing is
Speaker 1: they're trying to prop up third party candidate. It's like
Speaker 1: RFK Junior. I mean, do you think that young people
Speaker 1: that that kind of anti vacs, anti science stuff speaks
Speaker 1: to young people.
Speaker 2: I don't know that.
Speaker 4: I don't the number rate when we talk about young people.
Speaker 4: Young people are not a monoliths, but like, what are
Speaker 4: the key patterns? Right? Young people overwhelmingly vote for Democrats.
Speaker 4: You know, depending on the race or state, you're talking
Speaker 4: at least like sixty two to sometimes even like seventy
Speaker 4: five percent of the young people in certain races have
Speaker 4: been voting for Democrats. That's how John Fetterman got elected
Speaker 4: and flipped that seat in the Senate. That's how we
Speaker 4: were able to protect Warnock seat, and Georgia and Senator
Speaker 4: Cortez Matsto and Nevada. Young voters really came through the idea, right,
Speaker 4: is that they can shave off margins with third party candidates.
Speaker 4: I think the other thing is that where I do
Speaker 4: think Democrats worry me is that one they may not
Speaker 4: invest in young people because they're going to be an afterthought.
Speaker 4: They know they need them, but they also still have
Speaker 4: long held beliefs about young people that are untrue, right,
Speaker 4: that young people don't turn out that they're not reliable.
Speaker 4: Or also as young people get older, they get more
Speaker 4: conservative anyway, which is actually the data saying is not true,
Speaker 4: especially for older millennials. And then I think we have
Speaker 4: to really take seriously, even more so than the third
Speaker 4: party candidates, is voter suppression that will be targeted at
Speaker 4: young people. I am very worried about local county election
Speaker 4: administrators in Republican places where there are big colleges all
Speaker 4: of a sudden when they announce where they're going to
Speaker 4: have polling locations in twenty twenty four before the election,
Speaker 4: and there's going to be a bunch of countings that
Speaker 4: no longer have those college polling locations available. And that
Speaker 4: is very diffuse. It's very difficult to attack through litigation
Speaker 4: and fight back against and so we're going to have
Speaker 4: to have a whole strategy as progressives about what we
Speaker 4: do and how we do rapid response, not if that happens,
Speaker 4: but when that happens.
Speaker 1: Right it makes sense. I want to ask you, what
Speaker 1: are the things that kind of keep you up at.
Speaker 4: Night at next gen? We have always so we don't
Speaker 4: put our hope in any single one politician or party.
Speaker 4: We put our hope in America's young people. But it
Speaker 4: very very much keeps me up and worries me. One
Speaker 4: how Republicans and the far right will attack young voters' power. Two,
Speaker 4: that we have made big progress on climate change, the
Speaker 4: most existential crisis of our time, and that if Republicans
Speaker 4: gain power, they will roll back the gains we have made.
Speaker 4: We need to continue to make gains, not be fighting
Speaker 4: to hold on to what little we've gained. And the
Speaker 4: last part is that we've also seen what they have
Speaker 4: done long term. The fact that you know this coming
Speaker 4: week is the year a year to the date when
Speaker 4: we saw the reversal and overturning of Roe v. Wade,
Speaker 4: an abortion access limited to tens of millions of peace people,
Speaker 4: and going back fifty years overnight, they can continue to
Speaker 4: do that on many issues, and so I think this
Speaker 4: is a very pissed off generation as well. They should be.
Speaker 4: They're exercising their power. But it worries me that how
Speaker 4: far Republicans will go to limit that power, and also
Speaker 4: how sleepy sometimes Democrats may remain to invest in that power.
Speaker 1: When you're sort of looking on the horizon, what states
Speaker 1: do you feel like Democrats could sort of change a
Speaker 1: narrative in.
Speaker 4: There has been big shifts right Like we look at Georgia,
Speaker 4: we look at Arizona. Arizona very young state. A lot
Speaker 4: of what changed Arizona, which I don't think it's told enough,
Speaker 4: and the narrative is especially a lot of young Latinos
Speaker 4: organizing in that state, building that electorate over time. And
Speaker 4: then the big battleground states we know will prove in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty four. We know we need to be in Pennsylvania,
Speaker 4: we know we need to be in Arizona, Georgia, in Wisconsin, Nevada,
Speaker 4: But also where can we shift the map long term?
Speaker 4: Had we gone back six years ago and said to
Speaker 4: Democratic political strategists that Georgia was going to be at
Speaker 4: Bellweather and be able to determine the outcome of the
Speaker 4: rest of the country for the Senate, for the presidency,
Speaker 4: people would have laughed at that and not shifted because
Speaker 4: of people like Stacy Abrams of nze Ufut who did
Speaker 4: the hard work of registering and organizing voters that most
Speaker 4: people ignored. So you know, I also live in my
Speaker 4: home state of Texas, where it's the third youngest state
Speaker 4: in the country. One in three eligible voters is under
Speaker 4: the age of thirty. It's also one of the most
Speaker 4: diverse places we have to be willing to make long
Speaker 4: term investments in changing states and understand that demographics are
Speaker 4: not destiny. They're simply a core ingredient and the recipe
Speaker 4: for change.
Speaker 2: Do you think Texas is a pipe dream for Democrats
Speaker 2: one percent?
Speaker 4: I do not think that. I think it's a big
Speaker 4: state and it's a big prize and that Republicans know
Speaker 4: they need to hang on to it. Again, That's why
Speaker 4: I say demographics are not destiny. But like in Texas,
Speaker 4: half of the people turning eighteen are Latino. If you
Speaker 4: talk about and then if you look at the fact
Speaker 4: that only Utah and Alaska are younger, and that you
Speaker 4: have hundreds of thousands of people moving into the state
Speaker 4: from more progressive states California, for example, there are big
Speaker 4: shifts happening, but you have to make investment in those demographics.
Speaker 4: And so there has been a lot one and shifted
Speaker 4: in Texas. But I think where we fail on the
Speaker 4: left as we expect things to change overnight, and we
Speaker 4: also don't often invest in the exact communities we need
Speaker 4: to change. Especially you know, when you talk about the
Speaker 4: Latino population, which is critical to changing Texas, the fact
Speaker 4: that you know, our most common age for white Americans
Speaker 4: is age fifty five in the United States. For African
Speaker 4: Americans it's twenty seven. For Latinos it's age eleven. So
Speaker 4: if you want to change Texas, you have to invest
Speaker 4: in young people of color. And guess which voters are
Speaker 4: the ones that Democrats and all candidates invest the least
Speaker 4: in young people of color.
Speaker 2: I'm so interesting.
Speaker 1: And what would you say to people who say that,
Speaker 1: like the Tino vote, Democrats are having trouble with the
Speaker 1: Latino vote.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think about you know in my state, especially
Speaker 4: in South Texas gets pointed to in Florida.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 4: The Latino vote is not monolith it. People ask me
Speaker 4: all the time, you know in Texas our Latinos Republicans
Speaker 4: or Democrats, And I say, we're neither.
Speaker 5: We're poor.
Speaker 4: And who comes and speaks to our pain and what
Speaker 4: we face and our pain will win our vote. So
Speaker 4: in the Valley you have counties we're during the Democratic
Speaker 4: primary long term held by Democrats. Bernie Sanders won those
Speaker 4: counties hands down during the twenty twenty Democratic primary because
Speaker 4: he spent a lot of time and my he's talking
Speaker 4: about fifteen dollars an hour supporting unions, making sure there
Speaker 4: was access to higher education for everyone, basic bread and
Speaker 4: butter issues to make people's lives better. And then you
Speaker 4: had Trump come in and win because Trump put in money.
Speaker 4: I think you can see it as there is still
Speaker 4: Latinos are overwhelmingly Democratic, but there's a portion of the
Speaker 4: Latino vote for up that's up for grabs. I don't
Speaker 4: necessarily think that's a bad thing. I think that that
Speaker 4: means Democrats have to do a better job, and that
Speaker 4: they have to lead with strong economic populist messaging. Because
Speaker 4: most Latinos make under are the ethnic group that are
Speaker 4: least likely to make more than fifteen dollars an hour,
Speaker 4: are the least likely to have healthcare, the least likely
Speaker 4: to go to college. So speak to that pain and
Speaker 4: you will win the Latino vote.
Speaker 1: You know, we have this very tight labor market. We
Speaker 1: have children working in factories. We have Republicans trying to
Speaker 1: ease child labor laws so that they can have children
Speaker 1: working in factories. Are you surprised that there isn't more
Speaker 1: interest in a path to citizenship?
Speaker 4: So I spent my first job. I spent a decade
Speaker 4: across Texas organizing mostly undocumented construction workers, and I spent
Speaker 4: years believing. I remember participating in the two thousand and
Speaker 4: six mega marches, and for people that don't remember, those
Speaker 4: were up until the uprisings that happened around Black Lives Matter,
Speaker 4: those were the largest marches that had happened in US history.
Speaker 4: And strikes of day long strikes by millions of undocumented
Speaker 4: workers striking, and I believed when I was young that
Speaker 4: with so many people striking and so many people mobilizing,
Speaker 4: that of course there would have to be action. And
Speaker 4: instead we saw Republican states, local municipalities, and even some
Speaker 4: Democrats go after the immigrant community and pass really draconian policy.
Speaker 4: It's in the economic best interest of this country to
Speaker 4: create a pathway citizenship, but it is not in the
Speaker 4: best interest of big business to do so. I saw
Speaker 4: from ten years of organizing undocumented construction workers, who were
Speaker 4: often not paid for their work, who were often left
Speaker 4: injured on the job, that the status quo was good
Speaker 4: for business. It wasn't good for American born workers, it
Speaker 4: wasn't good for immigrants. But you know who benefited were
Speaker 4: the largest construction companies in my home state, the largest
Speaker 4: contributor to the Republican Party. Also happened to be the
Speaker 4: largest employer of undocumented labor, which was the construction industry.
Speaker 4: So I think we have to remember why we are
Speaker 4: where we are. But there's still a lot more organizing
Speaker 4: we have to do, and that's why building political power
Speaker 4: is ultimately I think, how we will win citizenship because
Speaker 4: the economic reality that benefits big business, whether we're talking
Speaker 4: about in agriculture, construction, housekeeping, or in these factories where
Speaker 4: young people are being employed, children being employed to do
Speaker 4: adults jobs.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Christina, Thanks so much.
Speaker 1: Hi, it's Mollie and I am wildly excited that for
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Speaker 1: Corey Robin is a professor of political science at Brooklyn
Speaker 1: College and author of the Enigma of Clarence Thomas. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Fast Politics.
Speaker 5: Corey Rabin, nice to be here.
Speaker 1: So wanted to talk to you about the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: because that's really it's Supreme Court season, right it is.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's a silly season.
Speaker 1: It used to not be that the Supreme Court would
Speaker 1: just dump all of their controversial opinions and go on vacation.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: No, it's become an annual thing and the way to
Speaker 5: kick off the summer. It's interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's talk a little bit about your favorite and mine.
Speaker 1: Is it favorite? I think favorite is the wrong word.
Speaker 1: He's actually the longest serving justice.
Speaker 3: He is.
Speaker 5: People don't realize how young he was when he was
Speaker 5: appointed to the court.
Speaker 1: We're talking about one Clarence Thomas. I actually do because
Speaker 1: when Clarence Thomas was going through the Anita Hill hearings,
Speaker 1: my grandfather was still alive, Howard Fast and she was
Speaker 1: not quite a Communist anymore, but both he and my
Speaker 1: mother were quite enraged with Justice Thomas as a pick,
Speaker 1: especially because of how young he was.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and you know now he's going to be in
Speaker 5: a few years, he will be the longest serving justice
Speaker 5: in American history.
Speaker 1: So it's a little ironic because he's the worst talk
Speaker 1: to me about his incredible scandal. I feel like scandal
Speaker 1: is like not the right word because it's kind of
Speaker 1: an understatement, like what scandal plus plus plus.
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, as everybody knows now, he's been getting
Speaker 5: these extraordinary gifts, most from Harlan Crow's or real estate
Speaker 5: tycoon out of Texas, not declaring them, and living, you know,
Speaker 5: a pretty fancy life. But I honestly, I think the
Speaker 5: bigger scandal is that Thomas, pretty much in his court
Speaker 5: opinions going back to the nineties, laid out a roadmap
Speaker 5: for how and why wealthy people should have access to
Speaker 5: public officials and justified this. And you know, I'm hoping
Speaker 5: that coming out of this is not only that you know,
Speaker 5: these ethics rules get enforced and all the rest of it,
Speaker 5: but people take a closer look at what Thomas has
Speaker 5: basically been telling us since he joined the Court, which
Speaker 5: is what that wealthy people have a kind of access
Speaker 5: to public officials that ordinary citizens don't. And not only
Speaker 5: do they have that access, but they should have that access,
Speaker 5: and to try to limit them from having that access
Speaker 5: is to go against the rules of basic democracy. That
Speaker 5: has been Thomason's opinion when it comes to campaign finance,
Speaker 5: and it's it's a kind of an extraordinary opinion because
Speaker 5: it basically sets out the rules of the road for
Speaker 5: living in an oligarchy.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: I was on television with someone really dumb and they
Speaker 1: were like, what we should do is pay each of
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court justice is a million dollars And I
Speaker 1: was like, that's really fucking stupid. But it stuck with
Speaker 1: me because it was so stupid.
Speaker 5: But you know, in a way though, it's it tells
Speaker 5: you that you know the kind of sums that we're
Speaker 5: talking about here, that this is the way people think
Speaker 5: that you can protect, you know, from an oligarchies that
Speaker 5: requires a minimum of a million dollar you know, salary
Speaker 5: for a public official. That's how bad things have gotten.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: First of all, the idea that it's so hard to
Speaker 1: find people who will serve on the Supreme Court.
Speaker 2: And thus you have to pay them.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are so many parts of this idea
Speaker 1: that is stupid, right, Yes, Like, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: you have a fucking federal society. His entire goal is
Speaker 1: to just groom great numbers of young conservatives to be
Speaker 1: on that said court. So what are the sort of
Speaker 1: consequences of Clarence Thomas's relationship with Harlan Crowe and what
Speaker 1: it's opened.
Speaker 2: The door to.
Speaker 5: I think the real problem here is not the actual
Speaker 5: relationship between him and Crow. It really is the right
Speaker 5: word turn of the court. I mean you just talked
Speaker 5: to you just now about the Federalist Society. Whether these
Speaker 5: people are you know, getting payoffs or not, they are
Speaker 5: dedicated to pushing the court in this direction where the
Speaker 5: rules of the road, you know, are such that you know,
Speaker 5: men of tremendous wealth have a kind of access and
Speaker 5: you know that ordinary citizens don't. And I think that's
Speaker 5: really the biggest problem here. I mean, we could talk
Speaker 5: till we're blue in the face about ethics reforms and
Speaker 5: all the rest of it, and it should happen. None
Speaker 5: of that will undo that pipeline that the Federalist society
Speaker 5: has created. None of that will undo that, and that's
Speaker 5: what we're living with and I think really need to
Speaker 5: focus on.
Speaker 2: And there is no liberal answer to the federalist society.
Speaker 5: No, no. I mean, historically we've had reactionary Supreme courts
Speaker 5: throughout American history that it's not new, but they've never
Speaker 5: been undone by a kind of a liberal version of
Speaker 5: the federalist society. It's always been overwhelmingly popular social movements,
Speaker 5: you know, really cataclysmic social conflicts that have been able
Speaker 5: to undo the work of a reactionary court. So I
Speaker 5: think to try to come up with some counterparts of
Speaker 5: the federalist society. Liberals and Democrats have been trying to
Speaker 5: play that game for quite some time. Let's come up
Speaker 5: with a version of Fox News. Let's come up with
Speaker 5: a version of X. Whatever X is on the right.
Speaker 5: That's not how you're really going to undo this work
Speaker 5: that the right has been able to do.
Speaker 1: Right, let's talk a little bit about this idea of
Speaker 1: Republicans trying to cement minority rule.
Speaker 5: Yes, the first thing to remember is that the constitution
Speaker 5: and liberals, I think have a hard time remembering this
Speaker 5: because they have a view of the Constitution that's derived
Speaker 5: from the nineteen fifties and the nineteen sixties when you
Speaker 5: had all kinds of civil rights reforms happening and so forth.
Speaker 5: But the truth is is that the Constitution already privileges minorities.
Speaker 5: And by minorities, I don't mean racial and ethnic, gender
Speaker 5: or sexual minorities. I mean wealthy minorities, people of great
Speaker 5: property and great wealth. That's baked into the design of
Speaker 5: the constitution. It's why we have things like the Senate,
Speaker 5: the Electoral College, and all the rest of it. So
Speaker 5: you were already starting from that, and the Republicans going
Speaker 5: back to the nineteen sixties have really been slowly trying
Speaker 5: to undo the progress of the New Deal and the
Speaker 5: Great Society by things like turning more power back to
Speaker 5: the states in terms of control over voting and really
Speaker 5: creating a kind of a you know, demographic and balance
Speaker 5: that allows for the Republican Party to rule despite the
Speaker 5: fact that it doesn't command a majority of support and
Speaker 5: things of that sort. And this has been going on.
Speaker 5: You know, it goes back again, like I said, to
Speaker 5: the nineteen sixties. You know, we think of a lot
Speaker 5: of the voting you know, and election shenanigans is somehow
Speaker 5: an innovation of Donald Trump, you know, and that's just
Speaker 5: not the case. Under Richard Nixon, they started going after
Speaker 5: voting rights. Under Ronald Reagan they did. And so this
Speaker 5: has really been a long term project.
Speaker 1: John Roberts has been working on messing with voting rights too.
Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely, I mean John Roberts, he came into the
Speaker 5: Reagan administration. It was a young lawyer in the Justice Department.
Speaker 5: He was almost, you know, the kingkin of the effort.
Speaker 5: I mean, well, first, you know, in Congress, there was
Speaker 5: an effort to reform the Voting Rights Act in nineteen
Speaker 5: eighty two to make it more progressive, and the Republicans
Speaker 5: really fought that effort quite a bit, and they lost
Speaker 5: some of that. And so then comes in John Roberts
Speaker 5: in the in the Justice Department, who starts issuing a
Speaker 5: stream of memos interpreting the Voting Rights really cutting it back.
Speaker 5: And you know, not to get too technical or wonky
Speaker 5: about it, but the lynchpin of his effort was to
Speaker 5: really gut what's called the Section five of the Voting
Speaker 5: Rights Act, which is that whole preclearance where you know,
Speaker 5: the Justice Department and the federal government could go in
Speaker 5: advance and stop local white supremacist efforts. And from the
Speaker 5: get go, John and Roberts saw this as something that
Speaker 5: had to be undone, and he tried to do as
Speaker 5: much as he could in the Reagan administration and finally
Speaker 5: had full success once he became Chief Justice of the
Speaker 5: Supreme Court. So again a very long standing project just
Speaker 5: sort of one other historical footnote to this, because again
Speaker 5: I think people have a hard time thinking that any
Speaker 5: of this proceeds Donald Trump. One of the first big
Speaker 5: efforts to get the Voting Rights Act in Congress was
Speaker 5: led by Gerald Ford in the House of Representatives. People
Speaker 5: have a much work benign view it for it as
Speaker 5: somehow part of this.
Speaker 2: But they probably shouldn't.
Speaker 5: Exactly, they should not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the thing I always think about with Trump and
Speaker 1: trump Ism is that Trump did a lot of this stuff.
Speaker 2: Republicans were quietly doing.
Speaker 5: Right, but he just did the much louder I would
Speaker 5: put it even more strongly than that. He vocalized what
Speaker 5: they were doing. He put it into words, And that's
Speaker 5: really the innovation is is you know, he just put
Speaker 5: into speech what had been done, as you say, quietly
Speaker 5: in practice, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, that was sort of Nixonian in a way.
Speaker 1: But I do think of like a lot of the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court stuff we're seeing now was Roberts trying to
Speaker 1: quietly shift the country with the Court, and then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden you had these trump petus justices come
Speaker 1: in and be like, we don't need to be quiet
Speaker 1: about it anymore.
Speaker 5: Exactly, and so that's you know, come back to Clarence Thomas.
Speaker 5: Thomas was somebody who was always saying the quiet part
Speaker 5: out loud. Nobody ever paid attention to him because they
Speaker 5: thought he was not very smart, or you know, they
Speaker 5: thought he was you know, Scullya's puppet. But the truth
Speaker 5: of the matter is he was always the avant garde
Speaker 5: leading the avant garde in the court. It was an
Speaker 5: avant garde of one. And now you know he's commanding
Speaker 5: a majority, which is you know, truly frightening.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is interesting now as we look at the
Speaker 1: decisions that have come out so far. We had two
Speaker 1: decisions that were sort of not as insane as a lot.
Speaker 2: Of us worried. Tell me what your take on that is.
Speaker 1: And we're talking about there's a voting Rights Act that
Speaker 1: was a little bit you know, you can't just completely
Speaker 1: racistly jerry mander a state and also you know, you
Speaker 1: can't separate and for some reason, to baffling reason, Gorsach
Speaker 1: is good on Native American rights but bad on all
Speaker 1: other rights for all other people.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, the course such thing is interesting and
Speaker 5: I think was somewhat expected because, as you say, he's
Speaker 5: had this, you know, reputation for quite some time of
Speaker 5: leading you know, the charge on a Native American rights,
Speaker 5: and has been quite good about that. The voting rights
Speaker 5: decision was a genuine surprise. I mean I was shocked
Speaker 5: by it because while Roberts also has one of these,
Speaker 5: you know, he's a quieter Gendler reputation, when it comes
Speaker 5: to voting rights. He has been absolutely ruthless and very clear.
Speaker 5: As we said just a second ago, the fact that
Speaker 5: he wrote this decision, it's not just the side that
Speaker 5: he took, it's the language he used and the arguments
Speaker 5: he deployed really were surprising. This is the justice you said,
Speaker 5: if you want to stop discrimination on the basis of race,
Speaker 5: you have to stop discriminating on the basis of race,
Speaker 5: which he used against a desegregation effort. He's somebody who
Speaker 5: has really been if we want to gut voting rights,
Speaker 5: we want to stop affirmative action, all these things, we
Speaker 5: have to adopt this formally color blind jurisprudence. And the
Speaker 5: surprise of that decision is that he seemed to really
Speaker 5: throw that out the window. You know that you can
Speaker 5: take race into consideration. It wasn't just the society he took.
Speaker 5: It was the way he took It was a genuine surprise.
Speaker 1: What else are you sort of watching now?
Speaker 5: You know, there's a bunch of economic stuff that will
Speaker 5: be coming down next year. You know, one of the
Speaker 5: things that really does seem to unite the Republicans on
Speaker 5: the Court the Conservatives is chipping away at federal administrative agencies.
Speaker 5: This stuff gets very technical and people get very bored
Speaker 5: by it, but it really goes to the heart of
Speaker 5: what the New Deal was all about, which was creating
Speaker 5: these federal agencies that could interpret their own rules and
Speaker 5: have a certain degree of autonomy. And you know, one
Speaker 5: of the ways that the Conservatives have really gone after
Speaker 5: the New Deal is to say no, unless Congress dots
Speaker 5: every I and crosses every te on some administrative policy,
Speaker 5: these agencies can't do that. And they already the Court
Speaker 5: already had a case like this involving the National Labor
Speaker 5: Relations Board, which strangely Kagan and so Domayor joined the
Speaker 5: Conservatives on. But we're going to see more of that
Speaker 5: kind of stuff, and that, to me, I think is
Speaker 5: one of the big things to be watching for.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. I hope you'll come.
Speaker 5: Back, Thank you. I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 3: No moment fuck Do.
Speaker 2: You have a moment of fuckery, my friend, I.
Speaker 3: Do have a moment of fuckery. I always have a
Speaker 3: moment of fuckery.
Speaker 2: Only one moment.
Speaker 3: My moment of fuckery this week, once again, I'm sorry
Speaker 3: to say, is going to come back down to Clarence
Speaker 3: Thomas again.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 3: Piece of the New York Times on Sunday reveals that
Speaker 3: Harlan Crow isn't the only sugar daddy, and the Clarence
Speaker 3: Thomas pantheon of billionaire sponsors, yes and enablers of a
Speaker 3: lifestyle to win the salary of a Supreme Court justice
Speaker 3: would not ordinarily allow. Look, it's not just Thomas's fault.
Speaker 3: He should know better, but it's also the Court and
Speaker 3: John Roberts and if they don't stop the bleeding on
Speaker 3: these stories and the recently stories are happening. Is not
Speaker 3: because liberals are out to good Clarence Thomas. It's because
Speaker 3: Clarence Thomas is living a lifestyle with billionaire donors who
Speaker 3: are giving him tons of money and travel and goodies
Speaker 3: and trips, and then having cases and issues come before
Speaker 3: the Supreme Court. This is a moment of fuckery. I mean,
Speaker 3: this is a more serious MOMENTI fuckery than I normally
Speaker 3: will throw out. But I really believe that if we
Speaker 3: let the Supreme Court become tainted by this continued, obvious,
Speaker 3: painful corruption, that the outcomes will not be a sustained
Speaker 3: trust in the Court at any level in the future.
Speaker 3: And we need that in this country. We need a
Speaker 3: court that people can trust again. And they're not going
Speaker 3: to trust it for a long while because of the
Speaker 3: current status of how the majority got out there. But
Speaker 3: Clarence Thomas has been on the Court now for damn
Speaker 3: near thirty five years and should know better than to
Speaker 3: be on the take.
Speaker 2: That's a very good moment of fuckery, and I don't know.
Speaker 3: And more serious than the usual I'm sorry to say.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, well, the Supreme Court is fucked up, man.
Speaker 1: So my moment of fuckery comes from the Internet and
Speaker 1: the billionaire v billionaire so Elon bought Twitter for forty
Speaker 1: four billion dollars. Musk has been delighting and interacting with
Speaker 1: libs of TikTok and all the right wing accounts.
Speaker 2: That are his favorite.
Speaker 1: Now all of a sudden, you know, because of this
Speaker 1: rate limit debacle. So during July fourth weekend for those
Speaker 1: of you who are not completely online all.
Speaker 2: The time and have actual lives and families.
Speaker 1: Elon Musk decided over July fourth weekend that he was
Speaker 1: going to rate limit how many posts you could read,
Speaker 1: and that this was going to solve datas which was
Speaker 1: the thing that was ruining Twitter. He always the thing
Speaker 1: I love about Elan is every like couple weeks he
Speaker 1: decides like, this is not making money, not because it's
Speaker 1: never really made money or made great gobs of money,
Speaker 1: but instead because of data scraping. So he limited the
Speaker 1: amount of posts you could read, and it was called
Speaker 1: Great Limit. It turned out to be a debacle because
Speaker 1: it turns out that people don't want to only be
Speaker 1: able to read six hundred posts. During that time, Mark Zuckerberg,
Speaker 1: quietly waiting in the wings, decided that he would launch
Speaker 1: his new Twitter called Threads. This was a moment of
Speaker 1: fuck grate. Am I ruining for Mark Zuckerberg? No, Mark Zuckerberg,
Speaker 1: I'm mean involved in genocides. Really unhelpful in many many ways,
Speaker 1: including the twenty sixteen election. Did a lot of bad stuff,
Speaker 1: but does have some content moderation, which is a stark
Speaker 1: contrast from one Elon Musk, who has zero content moderation,
Speaker 1: and when you write to him for a comment, the
Speaker 1: press department at Twitter, which is now nobody, responds with
Speaker 1: a poop emoji. And for that, this billionaire the billionaire
Speaker 1: cage match is my moment of hockery.
Speaker 3: I can't blame you on that one at all. You know,
Speaker 3: when you've got people defending Elon, like Cernovich and others,
Speaker 3: and they're all trying to get themselves into a lather
Speaker 3: about a hypothetical cage fight between these guys. I mean, look,
Speaker 3: Mark Zuckerberg signing up for Threads. We all knew what
Speaker 3: we were getting, which was, you know, the rape and pillars.
Speaker 3: He was stealing the rabig pillage of our privacy at
Speaker 3: every level. But it's just like the degree to which
Speaker 3: Elon has psychotically driven Twitter off the cliff is. It's
Speaker 3: inexplicable to me as somebody who I generally think of
Speaker 3: myself as having a fairly stable mental view of the universe.
Speaker 3: But the people around Elon, when we figure this all
Speaker 3: out in the end, the way they've influenced the sky
Speaker 3: and the crazies that got into him and gave him
Speaker 3: the Maga mind virus. It's going to cost him billions
Speaker 3: of dollars to have new friends.
Speaker 1: Yes, Wow, thoughts, prayers, Thank you, Rick Wilson.
Speaker 3: Anytime you'all have a great evening.
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.