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 Donald Trump shared a video referencing
Speaker 1: a unified Reich. We have such a great show for
Speaker 1: you today. Colorado Governor Jared Paulus stops by to talk
Speaker 1: to us about what's going on in his state. Then
Speaker 1: we'll talk to Ari Berman about his new book, Minority Rule,
Speaker 1: the right wing attack on the will of the people
Speaker 1: and the fight to resist it. But first we have
Speaker 1: the host of the Focus Group podcast, the publisher of
Speaker 1: The Bulwark, Sarah Longwell, Welcome back to Fast Politics. Sarah Longwoll, Hey,
Speaker 1: what's going on?
Speaker 2: Nothing.
Speaker 1: We were just talking about what we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about and my anxiety about American democracy. I think we
Speaker 1: should start by talking about something that is actually really
Speaker 1: positive for Joe Biden. We're still seeing Nikki Haley winning
Speaker 1: between sometimes as little as ten, sometimes as much as
Speaker 1: thirty percent of the vote in the Republican primaries. She
Speaker 1: has not been in this election for a number of months.
Speaker 1: It's like a zombie campaign. What do you make of that?
Speaker 3: Well, the biggest coalition in American politics is an anti
Speaker 3: Trump coalition, and I don't think it has anything to
Speaker 3: do with Nicki Haley whatsoever. I just think voters are
Speaker 3: when given an opportunity to vote against Donald Trump, there's
Speaker 3: a highly motivated section of voters, many of whom are
Speaker 3: in the Republican Party, who will turn out to vote
Speaker 3: against Trump. And look, I've been saying this for a
Speaker 3: while about the Nicki Haley voters. Some of those voters
Speaker 3: are already voting for Joe Biden. Some of those voters
Speaker 3: are going to come home to Donald Trump, and then
Speaker 3: the rest we got to fight over because they are
Speaker 3: the double haters.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 3: Those are the people who they don't like Joe Biden,
Speaker 3: they don't like Donald Trump, they don't want to vote
Speaker 3: for either guy. A lot of them are RFK curious.
Speaker 3: And this is the swing voter this time, is people
Speaker 3: who are not happy with either person, which is why
Speaker 3: it's going to be a super depressing campaign because it's
Speaker 3: not about who anybody likes, It's not about anything affirmative.
Speaker 4: It is all who hates who more.
Speaker 3: It's one of the reasons that I think that Trump's
Speaker 3: numbers are continuing to hold in a positive direction for him,
Speaker 3: not the country is because look, Joe Biden is top
Speaker 3: of mind for people, and so they reach for him
Speaker 3: with their frustrations over inflation or crime or immigration. And
Speaker 3: Donald Trump as he sits in a courtroom and talks
Speaker 3: about a hush money payment that was made back in
Speaker 3: twenty fifteen, people are looking backwards on Trump. They're not
Speaker 3: looking forward about what he might do. And I think
Speaker 3: that that conversation. I'm not saying that the cases are
Speaker 3: bad for Joe Biden or that they're good for Trump.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of people are saying, oh, this
Speaker 3: is going to make people more motivated to vote for Trump.
Speaker 3: Anybody who's going to vote for Trump because he's in
Speaker 3: court was already going to vote for Donald Trump. And
Speaker 3: I think that if he is convicted on the margins,
Speaker 3: it has some negative impact on Trump.
Speaker 1: Right, it doesn't have a positive impact. No, I think
Speaker 1: that's an insane hill to die on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, people get lost in the primary mindset, right, where
Speaker 3: that everything that Donald Trump that's like weird about him
Speaker 3: helps him, which is true in a primary, it's not
Speaker 3: true in a general.
Speaker 4: It's not.
Speaker 1: Also, like Republican primary voters who are still with Trump
Speaker 1: are a completely different breed than anyone else voting in
Speaker 1: this election.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, look, I say this all the time,
Speaker 3: as for me, as like a real bedrock of what's
Speaker 3: happening right now, which is that the gap between what
Speaker 3: Republican base voters want and what sort of moderate swing
Speaker 3: voters will tolerate. That gap has gotten really wide. So like,
Speaker 3: just let me give you one quick example. Town in
Speaker 3: North Carolina. You got this guy Mark Robinson running for governor.
Speaker 3: Dude is looney toots, right, He's a holocaust denier, says
Speaker 3: gay people are filth, has some real weird views on women,
Speaker 3: call the Parkland shooting kids prostitutes. So not a great dude.
Speaker 3: And he won the Republican primary in a landslip. He
Speaker 3: won by sixty five percent the Republican primary, but he's
Speaker 3: polling in the low forties. And the guy Josh Stein,
Speaker 3: who's kind of just a mainstream LIB running against him,
Speaker 3: is just trouncing him and all the polling, and we
Speaker 3: just did a bunch of focus groups on this, so
Speaker 3: what's top of mind for me? But that, to me
Speaker 3: is a good illustration of this gap. But I'll give
Speaker 3: you a negative theory that I'm holding onto that I've
Speaker 3: started formulating from the groups, which is one of the
Speaker 3: weird things byproducts of Republicans nominating just absolutely batshit crazy
Speaker 3: candidates like Mark Robinson, like Kerry Lake, like herschel Walker.
Speaker 3: You know, there's a bunch of them in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 3: Is that Trump starts to look less insane by comparison
Speaker 3: because they're so out there and so like in North Carolina,
Speaker 3: Trump is still in every average, winning by about seven
Speaker 3: percentage points, which means there's a ton of people And
Speaker 3: I just talked to this group of people, a ton
Speaker 3: of people who for whom Trump is totally acceptable and
Speaker 3: Mark Robinson is not.
Speaker 2: That's strange, but real. Why do you think that is?
Speaker 3: Some of its abortion people don't view Trump as extreme
Speaker 3: on social issues. They think of him as sort of
Speaker 3: a cultural moderate as a result of years of them
Speaker 3: seeing him just in the media being well, they don't
Speaker 3: think this is this guy of sexual morality, you know, right,
Speaker 3: They think he's paid for abortions. People say that in
Speaker 3: the groups all the time, and so like, they just
Speaker 3: don't believe, which is which is one of Trump's superpowers, right,
Speaker 3: He's able to weirdly hawk Bibles and hold them upside down.
Speaker 3: And be like, see Christians on one of you, while
Speaker 3: everybody who's more secular and moderate completely being like, yeah,
Speaker 3: this guy's not a real Christian and he's not going
Speaker 3: to do what the Mike Pence or Mike Robinson or
Speaker 3: anybody else who's sort of deeply who's actually ideologically or
Speaker 3: religiously committed to some of this stuff.
Speaker 4: So, look, there's a.
Speaker 3: Lot of bad news I think, both in the polling
Speaker 3: and the focus groups right now.
Speaker 2: So I want you to talk focus groups.
Speaker 1: I hate Paul's and I sure saying that's why I
Speaker 1: do focus groups.
Speaker 2: Yeah, where are you focus grouping? And what are you seeing?
Speaker 3: We're still it's early enough that we're still doing lots
Speaker 3: of different places, but we're focused on the Swing states
Speaker 3: more than anything else. We're talking to a lot of
Speaker 3: these double haters, and we're also talking to a lot
Speaker 3: of two time Trump voters who rate him very unfavorably.
Speaker 3: Because we're trying to figure out who's gettable. The reason
Speaker 3: I was starting with sort of the directionally bad news, like,
Speaker 3: look I see in the double haters or swing voters.
Speaker 3: So these are people who voted for Trump and sixteen
Speaker 3: voted for Biden in twenty if you do a group
Speaker 3: of those, you know, there's usually a few of them
Speaker 3: in the group who are either going back to Trump
Speaker 3: or who want to vote for RFK and not Biden.
Speaker 3: On the flip side of that, though, there is a
Speaker 3: whole new group of people. This is my most optimistic
Speaker 3: thing that I've seen. There's a whole new group of
Speaker 3: people who voted for Trump twice and will not vote
Speaker 3: for him again. Now they won't vote for Biden. But
Speaker 3: I suspect there's going to be a very large segment
Speaker 3: of the Republican voting population that will leave it blank.
Speaker 3: And a lot of those voters are kind of these Reagan,
Speaker 3: Romney McCain Republicans who held their nose and votvoted for
Speaker 3: Trump both times. But the insurrection, the lying about the election,
Speaker 3: it was a last straw. And there's a lot of
Speaker 3: these voters in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, and I hope
Speaker 3: Nebraska too. And also my other optimistic piece is that
Speaker 3: in some of these tough states like Arizona's a tough state,
Speaker 3: the slide with Hispanics is going to hurt in Arizona.
Speaker 3: But Arizona's been trending toward Democrats. Carrie Lake is on
Speaker 3: the ballot again, which is bad for Trump because she's
Speaker 3: a nut.
Speaker 2: She's such a nut, she's the worst.
Speaker 4: She's the worst.
Speaker 3: And like there will be people who vote for the
Speaker 3: Democrat in that Senate race and vote for Trump.
Speaker 2: Insane. Yes, but here's the thing.
Speaker 3: They're going to get a ballot initiative about abortion in Arizona,
Speaker 3: and I think that's really gonna help. And so I
Speaker 3: still think there's two keys to this election, to winning
Speaker 3: it and saving democracy. One is I wish that RFK
Speaker 3: wasn't in this race, because anything that splits up that
Speaker 3: anti Trump coalition is bad. But if he's gonna be
Speaker 3: in the race, and he's going to be on the ballot,
Speaker 3: then everybody better figure out how to make these voters
Speaker 3: understand Democratic voters that voting for him is a terrible
Speaker 3: idea and help Trump voters understand he's their guy. And
Speaker 3: I think making sure that he works as a as
Speaker 3: somebody who can peel off Trump voters is going to
Speaker 3: be essential. Like we're just going to have to play that.
Speaker 2: Game, right, And he is anti vax.
Speaker 3: He's anti vax. He's also sort of anti establishment. And
Speaker 3: because I've done a lot of groups around RFK. One
Speaker 3: of the things that's interesting about Republican voters in RFK
Speaker 3: is that there's nothing they love more than a Democrat
Speaker 3: who turns on other Democrats, right, they love it, and
Speaker 3: so he has a lot to offer them. They also
Speaker 3: hate a regular politician, they love an outsider, and they
Speaker 3: love an insider outsider.
Speaker 2: That's a really good point. So RFK has a lot
Speaker 2: for those voters.
Speaker 4: And that's one thing you gotta do. You got to
Speaker 4: make O RFK work for you.
Speaker 3: That's going to be just a strategic game that people
Speaker 3: are going to have to figure out how to play.
Speaker 1: It's so interesting because clearly Trump has seen that Republicans
Speaker 1: are RFK Junior curious, so he'll be less the guy
Speaker 1: is a crazy liberal.
Speaker 2: You've heard that, right, of.
Speaker 4: Course, I've heard that.
Speaker 3: You know, Trump figured out a little belatedly that his
Speaker 3: voters liked RFK. Now, some of Biden's do too, Like
Speaker 3: there's just a lot of dams who are kind of like, oh, Kennedy,
Speaker 3: he looks at a spry seventy, he looks younger than
Speaker 3: Joe Biden, and then he likes the environments. There's some
Speaker 3: of that and like you're just gonna have to that's
Speaker 3: an education game. That is an affirmative education game you're
Speaker 3: gonna have to do. And then here's the other thing.
Speaker 3: There's the other thing that's going to win this race,
Speaker 3: save democracy, reelect Joe Biden. Which is one of the
Speaker 3: reasons I like focus groups and not pulling. Is it
Speaker 3: gauges intensity. And the thing about the double haters, we
Speaker 3: call them that because they're people who don't want to
Speaker 3: vote for either guy, but they don't actually hate Joe Biden.
Speaker 2: They Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: They just are like about Joe Biden, like they just
Speaker 3: make guttural noises about why this is their choice. Which
Speaker 3: means that you got to run the hardest, toughest, relentlessly
Speaker 3: negative campaign against Trump to help people understand what a
Speaker 3: second Trump term's going to look like, the fact that
Speaker 3: he's not gonna leave, the fact that he's going to
Speaker 3: be a lunatic surrounded by other lunatics, and you gotta
Speaker 3: go negative so hard every day, relent big saragate game.
Speaker 3: I think that people are going to have to like
Speaker 3: stop kind of wringing their hands. You know, you can't
Speaker 3: roll up your sleeves when you're wringing your hands man,
Speaker 3: and you gotta go hard.
Speaker 1: It's interesting what you're saying, because Biden has definitely got
Speaker 1: He's got two big problems here.
Speaker 2: One is Hispanic support and.
Speaker 1: The other is younger Black voters and younger voters too.
Speaker 1: But I always think of younger voters are kind of
Speaker 1: an oxymoron, right, like, you're going to get some of them,
Speaker 1: You're not going to get all of them. They're young.
Speaker 1: But I know because I have a college kid who
Speaker 1: I'm like, you have to go and fucking vote and
Speaker 1: take as many people as you can. He goes to
Speaker 1: a small college, but he told me there are two
Speaker 1: people he thinks are going to go from his college
Speaker 1: to vote, and I was like, oh Jesus Christ. But
Speaker 1: the point is, I do think Trump is also hemorrhaging support.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think this is going to be like
Speaker 1: the opposite of twenty twenty, you know, a lower turnout
Speaker 1: election where it's still tight.
Speaker 3: You know, yeah, I mean, I think I think that
Speaker 3: is a entirely plausible scenario. I think that enthusiasm is
Speaker 3: really down overall, and the lower turnout election in the
Speaker 3: off season elections, it's really helped Democrats because the people
Speaker 3: who reliably show up to vote tend to be these
Speaker 3: college educated suburban voters who increasingly vote with Democrats. It's
Speaker 3: why you saw in Wisconsin the Supreme Court election, the
Speaker 3: Democrat pro to Saowitz win by like ten points in
Speaker 3: a place like Wisconsin right off your election. And so look, yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean you gotta hope that enthusiasm's really down for Trump,
Speaker 3: that people either don't come out for him or they
Speaker 3: leave it blank.
Speaker 2: So it could be.
Speaker 1: Look, I don't know, and more importantly, we don't know
Speaker 1: what's happening, and we just we know what we're seeing
Speaker 1: right now more than you know one hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: days from the election.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, one of the reasons it's super hard
Speaker 3: to predict is when you have two functional incmbents running
Speaker 3: against each other, people don't feel like they need to
Speaker 3: tune in. I mean, this is the thing with the
Speaker 3: focus groups, Like people are they know Trump's in court
Speaker 3: for one of the cases, but like they're not following it.
Speaker 3: They're kind of like these two choices. You know, I've
Speaker 3: been saying to people, it's like the voters have been
Speaker 3: going through the five stages of grief, where like the
Speaker 3: anger that these guys were running again, like that anger
Speaker 3: is those Nikki Haley voters. It's Joe Biden's low approval numbers.
Speaker 3: There's the bargaining, which is the third party no labels stuff,
Speaker 3: the RFK, the maybe Kamalo will step down, maybe Joe
Speaker 3: Biden will still step down. There's like depression, which I
Speaker 3: think we're in now.
Speaker 1: And I want to fact check myself. It's one hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty eight days to the election, not one hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty.
Speaker 2: Okay, cool.
Speaker 3: Anyway, My point is just like we're still a long
Speaker 3: way from acceptance, and when we hit that phase, I
Speaker 3: do think like we'll see things move, but like we're
Speaker 3: not there yet.
Speaker 2: I also do think like democrats.
Speaker 1: I was talking to a member of Congress today, one
Speaker 1: of those members of Congress who's like a ranking member,
Speaker 1: very smart, but not anyone you've heard of. And I
Speaker 1: was like, you know, what's your taake on this right,
Speaker 1: because there are so many members of Congress that have
Speaker 1: the people no one knows who the fuck they are.
Speaker 1: Excuse my friend, I, what's your tea this? And he said,
Speaker 1: you know, I see Democrats overperforming, but I also know
Speaker 1: that Biden world takes us all very very seriously. And
Speaker 1: is running a very disciplined campaign, which is why they're
Speaker 1: going to Pennsylvania and they're going to Wisconsin, and they're
Speaker 1: going to you know, but it is going to be
Speaker 1: just a miserable one hundred and sixty eight days.
Speaker 3: It is, and we're going to live with an extraordinary
Speaker 3: amount of anxiety. But people want to know what they
Speaker 3: can do. And some of it is like, you know,
Speaker 3: be part of turning the vibes around. Go out there,
Speaker 3: push hard for Biden, like there's no point in being depressed,
Speaker 3: Like we got to do the work. Make sure you know,
Speaker 3: Biden's most people's No, it's not their first choice, but.
Speaker 4: Got to dance with the guy who brought you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I also would like to add that he wasn't
Speaker 1: necessarily the first choice in twenty twenty either, but the
Speaker 1: coalition got behind him, I think largely because there was
Speaker 1: a feeling that he was very electable against Trump.
Speaker 2: That calculus.
Speaker 1: You know, he's a little older, I get it, Orgu's
Speaker 1: foot whatever, but that calculus has not largely changed. I mean,
Speaker 1: remember they tried an impeachment and it didn't work because
Speaker 1: their their lead witness ended up in jail.
Speaker 3: Republicans, Yeah, I mean, I don't want to be a
Speaker 3: super downer. I do think running with a record in
Speaker 3: an anti incumbent environment, which we are just like perpetually
Speaker 3: in now, like incumbentcy has lost some of its juice
Speaker 3: that it used to have. But I still think Joe
Speaker 3: Biden can win this. I am like less optimistic about
Speaker 3: places like Nevada and Georgia, but I remain pretty optimistic
Speaker 3: about Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, you know, Nebraska too, and Arizona,
Speaker 3: and I think, you know, you just that's I don't
Speaker 3: think anybody's getting fancy with Florida and North Carolina, but
Speaker 3: that's what he's got to Do's got to hold those
Speaker 3: blue wall states.
Speaker 1: It's a tough Senate map, but it's a weird state map.
Speaker 2: What are you seeing?
Speaker 1: Do you have any hot takes on the Senate?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 3: My biggest hot take is something we were talking about
Speaker 3: on the focus group pod recently, which is politics is
Speaker 3: changing quite a bit, and we don't have of a
Speaker 3: lot of new examples sort of moderates being able to
Speaker 3: win over the other party, like in these really red states,
Speaker 3: like that's getting less and less frequent, where you've got
Speaker 3: like a Democrat that gets elected in a super red state.
Speaker 4: But the places where it still happens or where.
Speaker 3: You can get a non Maga Republican elected is people
Speaker 3: whose reputations precede the Trump era. And so when you
Speaker 3: take a guy like Shared Brown or a guy like
Speaker 3: John Tester, you just have a situation where their reputations
Speaker 3: were forged before all of this stuff. And I think
Speaker 3: that that who and I can give you like some
Speaker 3: reverse examples of that, which is like a Mike the
Speaker 3: Wine in Ohio who MAGA hates Mike de Wine because
Speaker 3: he's kind of a moderate Republican, or even Kemp in Georgia.
Speaker 3: You know, Kemp's been able to withstand it, and that's
Speaker 3: because they forged their identities with their voters and their
Speaker 3: relationships with their voters pre Trump. And I just think
Speaker 3: that's true of Shared Brown, it's true of Tester.
Speaker 2: Case in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 3: Yeah, in Pennsylvania. And so that I think is one
Speaker 3: of the things that seems to.
Speaker 1: Help Tammy Baldwin though that's a good one, But I
Speaker 1: think Minnesota being on the map is bullshit, Like Trump
Speaker 1: trying to get Minnesota, like that's just a dumb news story.
Speaker 1: He's trying to bait people with Yeah.
Speaker 3: I don't think Trump's going to do well in Minnesota.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're smarter. They're smarter than that, I mean.
Speaker 1: Sarah Longwell, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks for having me. Love doing it.
Speaker 1: Spring us here and I bet you are trying to
Speaker 1: look fashionable, So why not pick up some fashionable all
Speaker 1: new Fast Politics merchandise. We just opened a news store
Speaker 1: with all new designs just for you. Get t shirts, hoodies, hats,
Speaker 1: and top bags. To grab some, head to fastpolitics dot com.
Speaker 1: Jared Polis is the governor of Colorado. Welcome to Fast Politics, Governor.
Speaker 5: Paulas Molly, could you hear your voice?
Speaker 1: You are the governor of Colorado, but you also have
Speaker 1: a number of interesting things about you. You've been into
Speaker 1: pot before pot was hot, Well not literally, Molly, not literally. Obviously.
Speaker 5: This is the biggest, you know, scandal I have as
Speaker 5: governor of Colorado's I've never actually tried it. So that's
Speaker 5: now that I never have to run again, I can
Speaker 5: confine with you.
Speaker 1: Pot legalization is now pretty much a thing.
Speaker 5: It kind of stems from like a basic value, bodily autonomy,
Speaker 5: you know, choice, freedom of course, people should be able
Speaker 5: to use marijuana recreationally just as they use alcohol. Doesn't
Speaker 5: mean I'm pro alcoholic pro marijuana. These are choices people make.
Speaker 4: People make good.
Speaker 5: Choices, bad choices, and different choices. It's up to everybody
Speaker 5: to live their own lives. Obviously marijuana is part of that.
Speaker 4: And you're right.
Speaker 5: I was at the pot party before it became the
Speaker 5: popular party. I was always for legal marijuana back when
Speaker 5: you know, Colorado was one the first date to do it. Actually,
Speaker 5: I supported the ballot inshative.
Speaker 1: Wait, so you're term limited out as governor, but you
Speaker 1: still might run for something else.
Speaker 5: Well, two and a half years left, and I hope
Speaker 5: my failure to try marijuana doesn't pull me down.
Speaker 1: But just because you can't run for governor again doesn't
Speaker 1: mean you won't run for something else.
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, I not something I think about, LOLLI.
Speaker 5: But if I do, I don't think the lack of
Speaker 5: trying marijuana will be the end of it.
Speaker 1: Yes, well, I've moved on from the marijuana at this point.
Speaker 4: I'm glad.
Speaker 5: I'm glad. It was sort of a fling in your youth, Lolly.
Speaker 5: You just had a brief like in college or something.
Speaker 1: Well, No, I've been sober since I was a teenager.
Speaker 4: Good for you, good believe it or not.
Speaker 1: So I don't have any particular personal horse in the
Speaker 1: marijuana stuff race.
Speaker 4: I'm glad you've moved on.
Speaker 1: Yes, I know that it's wildly popular, and I know
Speaker 1: that you have these libertarian leanings despite being a Democrat,
Speaker 1: and it seems like right now is a time when
Speaker 1: there is a wide lane.
Speaker 2: For libertarians in the Democratic Party.
Speaker 4: Well, I would say probably in both parties.
Speaker 5: There's an opportunity for that because you know, anybody who
Speaker 5: speaks the language of freedom, of choice, of empowerment, I
Speaker 5: think that can be a winning message.
Speaker 4: On either side.
Speaker 5: It's one that's often not heard enough on either side either.
Speaker 5: So it's certainly always been part of what I've talked
Speaker 5: about as a member of Congress and now as governor.
Speaker 1: Is it really available in both parties because like what
Speaker 1: I'm seeing on the Republican side, certainly not maybe not
Speaker 1: from a Mitch McConnell, but certainly from Madonald Trump is
Speaker 1: a lot and the Heritage Foundation is a lot of
Speaker 1: interest in regulation, whether it comes to IVF or birth
Speaker 1: control pills or abortion.
Speaker 5: Oh no, absolutely, the main serare Republican party is very
Speaker 5: much command and control or strict freedom. I'm talking about
Speaker 5: folks like Justin Amash and back in the day, Ron
Speaker 5: Paul Lesso, his son. But yeah, absolutely there's a lane there.
Speaker 5: You see people doing it, but it's you know, it's
Speaker 5: it's lonely on either side sometimes, but certainly in terms
Speaker 5: of the bodily autonomy, personal freedom side, a lot better
Speaker 5: time to be a Democrat to support Democrat. Republicans are
Speaker 5: really trying to control everything people do through government.
Speaker 1: I mean you're saying that statement, I'm thinking about it.
Speaker 1: It's such an insane time in American politics because that
Speaker 1: maybe it was what they set out to do. But
Speaker 1: I think the party's gone really far afield. You are
Speaker 1: in Colorado. It has become a really reliably blue state.
Speaker 1: How do you think Democrats have won hearts of minds
Speaker 1: in Colorado?
Speaker 5: So, I think the important thing you know about Colorado
Speaker 5: for you and your listeners is it's really an independent state.
Speaker 5: The plurality of voters and actually, quite soon, Molly, it'll
Speaker 5: be the actual majority of voters will be unaffiliated voters,
Speaker 5: neither Democratic nor Republican, and they're on loan to the Democrats. Yes,
Speaker 5: they're supporting Democrats, doesn't mean they're in love with Democrats,
Speaker 5: but frankly, they're not Donald Trump Republicans, to be clear.
Speaker 5: So the state they're waiting for, George Bush, mid Romney
Speaker 5: ran strong here. Obama was also very strong, But this
Speaker 5: is not a Donald Trump state. It's very well educated
Speaker 5: and thoughtful Republicans. And you know, again, I think they
Speaker 5: can win the independent vote, but not with the candidates
Speaker 5: that they've been running lately, and so those inde bed
Speaker 5: votes have been on owned Democrats, which is why right
Speaker 5: now Democrats control both US Senate SA, it's both chambers
Speaker 5: of the state legislature.
Speaker 1: You have gotten a bunch of Democrats mad at you
Speaker 1: recently because six spills.
Speaker 2: You vetoed talk to us about that.
Speaker 4: What were year?
Speaker 5: I mean year, I veto some bills. I think last
Speaker 5: year was the year I vto the most ten. But
Speaker 5: keep in mind, I sign, you know, three hundred or so.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I'm just curious.
Speaker 1: There are endless problems with legislation, and some of them
Speaker 1: are sort of you know, just with the legislation being
Speaker 1: badly written or I'm just curious with the.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I would say every year. It changes year to year,
Speaker 5: but usually the majority the concept is okay, but it
Speaker 5: just wasn't sort of fixed. The words aren't right, and
Speaker 5: it has unintended consequences. So I feel it's better for
Speaker 5: them to go back and work on it for another
Speaker 5: year rather than you know, deal with the product that
Speaker 5: could lead to the wrong outcomes. So that's probably seventy
Speaker 5: percent of the time. The thirty percent of the time
Speaker 5: it's one that I disagree with or just you know,
Speaker 5: don't think it's a good way to go. So it
Speaker 5: just sort of depends on the bill. But I every
Speaker 5: single bill that reaches me. In the way our legislature
Speaker 5: works in Colorado, Moley, each legislator gets five bills sixty
Speaker 5: five and hours thirty five cent. That's five hundred bills.
Speaker 5: There's a few special bills, but usually there's about four
Speaker 5: hundred that reach me, or so three to four hundred
Speaker 5: each one. I get a legal analysis, policy analysis, fiscal analysis,
Speaker 5: make a decision, and that's how that works. So, you know,
Speaker 5: like any executive, I don't have a formative role a
Speaker 5: lawmake you know, That's what I did when I was
Speaker 5: a member of Congress. But I do have a yay
Speaker 5: or at a at the end.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And what are the sort of things that you're
Speaker 1: because you are, you know, seeing different voters than I am,
Speaker 1: and you're talking to people and you really got a
Speaker 1: good sense of the state. What are the sort of
Speaker 1: things that people care about your constituents Right.
Speaker 5: Now, that's a number one in Colorado. Probably it's the
Speaker 5: same across country as costs. Just costs have gone up,
Speaker 5: and housing here is front and central, as it is
Speaker 5: in not every market, but many markets, because part of
Speaker 5: what drives it is interest in mortgage rates, right, so
Speaker 5: that's been tougher everywhere. But on top of that, we've
Speaker 5: had a significant run up in the cost of a hole.
Speaker 5: But on top of it's groceries, it's gas, it's all
Speaker 5: that inflation, insurance, right, all those things. So we really
Speaker 5: focused our agenda around, you know, reducing cost, reducing taxes,
Speaker 5: saving people money. That's a big part of what we
Speaker 5: talk about. Housing reforums we might get into. We've done
Speaker 5: a lot of that to build more housing. That's really
Speaker 5: the number one issue right now, i'd say, followed probably
Speaker 5: by public safety, and then you know, like always education
Speaker 5: strong perennial issue. People care about their kids, in schools
Speaker 5: and education opportunities.
Speaker 1: So you did sign into law House Built thirteen thirteen
Speaker 1: in which is a zoning law basically helping build multi
Speaker 1: story houses. These are the things that you have to
Speaker 1: sort of push up against. How is that going? And
Speaker 1: is there a lot of resistance?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: So you know, why is the cost of housing so
Speaker 5: high in Colorado? The average home costs in the Denver
Speaker 5: metro area is about six hundred thousand dollars, you know,
Speaker 5: state state wide, it's maybe four eighty. So it's expensive.
Speaker 5: And yes, you could be in southern California and say wow,
Speaker 5: that's cheap, right, or in New York City, but like
Speaker 5: for our standards, it's expensive, and compared to our neighboring states,
Speaker 5: it's expensive. So why is it expensive? High demand? That's good,
Speaker 5: people want to live in Colorado. Great place to live,
Speaker 5: great raised to raise of family, outdoor recreation, all that stuff.
Speaker 5: But supply has been artificially constrained. We simply haven't allowed
Speaker 5: enough ones to be built to keep up with supply
Speaker 5: with demand, and that's what serven crisis up. So we
Speaker 5: focused our reforms on allowing more housing to be built,
Speaker 5: not everywhere. You know, we don't want to sprawl further
Speaker 5: out of more traffick and congestion ruin our quality of life.
Speaker 5: We want to do it in a way that protects
Speaker 5: our quality of life.
Speaker 4: And what does that mean.
Speaker 5: It means more housing closer to job centers and on
Speaker 5: transit lines. And the bill you mentioned specifically allows multi
Speaker 5: family along transit lines near job centers. And that's an
Speaker 5: important piece of what we need to do to make
Speaker 5: housing more affordable, more livable, and more sustainable in Colorado.
Speaker 1: Do you get pushback from the I mean, is that
Speaker 1: a delicate balance?
Speaker 5: Well, of course, we actually and you might have noted,
Speaker 5: we actually did not succeed last year getting this through
Speaker 5: the legislator.
Speaker 4: We did this year.
Speaker 5: We had kind of an omnibus housing bill for lad
Speaker 5: use last year. It didn't quite make it. It made
Speaker 5: it past one chamber or not the other. We broke
Speaker 5: it up into six different bills. They all made it
Speaker 5: to my desk, and we're going to build on them
Speaker 5: all in the future. But it equals over like we
Speaker 5: got rid of parking restrictions. We allowed accessory dwelling units
Speaker 5: by right, so people can build it as long as
Speaker 5: there are lots of certain size. A mother mother in
Speaker 5: law and ready flat. So you know, these things add
Speaker 5: up to a real solution broadly popular the people of
Speaker 5: Colorado obviously, you know, doesn't mean it's universally popular as
Speaker 5: people who post it, but majorities of Republicans, Democrats, and
Speaker 5: Independence all are strongly supportive of these measures to create
Speaker 5: more housing.
Speaker 1: What else can you do as a governor to decrease inflation?
Speaker 1: I mean, and you know Florida has this crazy inflation
Speaker 1: largely driven by insurance. Is there anything you guys can
Speaker 1: do with the insurance markets and also just to lower
Speaker 1: inflation those costs in a state like Colorado.
Speaker 5: Well, look, and we all know that inflation is really
Speaker 5: a function of monetary policy, fiscal policy federally, they might
Speaker 5: vary a fraction of a point between different markets. And
Speaker 5: obviously a place with a hot housing market has like
Speaker 5: Colorado has had, in Florida has had that drives inflation,
Speaker 5: because that's one of the facts. But no, can we
Speaker 5: affect overall inflation?
Speaker 1: Wait, I'm going to push back on you for a second.
Speaker 1: In Florida, the housing market is hot, but you know,
Speaker 1: the insurers have been monopoly and also climate.
Speaker 5: Change, Yeah, and their particular model, I know, is driven
Speaker 5: out many private insurers and forced the government to do that.
Speaker 5: I would say, first of all, look at an insurance.
Speaker 5: Is it a problem here? Yes? Why because that we
Speaker 5: thankfully out of the hurricanes, but we have a higher
Speaker 5: risk of fire. So people's insurance rates across our state
Speaker 5: in general have gone up more than inflation. Absolutely the
Speaker 5: last couple of years. We had the Marshall Fire two
Speaker 5: years ago, most destructive wildfire in the history of the state.
Speaker 5: Destroyed destroyed over a thousand homes. So that drives insurance.
Speaker 5: What do we need to do. It's not so much
Speaker 5: that the insurance side has broken, but we need to
Speaker 5: reduce the risk because you know, at the end of
Speaker 5: the day, insurance is just actuary a. They compute the risk,
Speaker 5: they add their profit and boom, you got it. So
Speaker 5: we need to reduce risk, and we are leading into that.
Speaker 5: We are doing fire risk mitigation. We're doing more proactive
Speaker 5: and controlled burns. We've purchased several helicopters a fire HOWK
Speaker 5: top of line helicopter, but all so several type two helicopters.
Speaker 5: We used to rely on a shared air fleet with
Speaker 5: neighboring states in the West. But what happens if there's
Speaker 5: a fire in California, Arizona and Colorado at the same time,
Speaker 5: we're not going to get that quick aerial response. So
Speaker 5: we've made the decision to move towards having our own fleet.
Speaker 5: We now do. It's continuing to grow. We want to
Speaker 5: boom hit fires early when it matters, when we can
Speaker 5: reduce them. That in the long run, of course, will
Speaker 5: help equate to better actuarial tables and reduced insurance costs
Speaker 5: for our homeowners.
Speaker 1: Do you see stient typically that this kind of stuff
Speaker 1: prevents larger fires. I'm talking about the control burns, the
Speaker 1: kind of stuff you can do profilactively.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, so community defence perimeters that would be your control burns,
Speaker 5: taking down vegetation in and around communities. So to prevent
Speaker 5: fires from jumping doesn't mean we're not going to fires.
Speaker 5: We always have fire smalling coolera. It's always to be.
Speaker 5: Fires are part of nature. The danger is when they
Speaker 5: threaten human civilization, people's lives, and we absolutely significantly reduce
Speaker 5: that with community defense perimeters and yes, home defense perimeters
Speaker 5: where we're equipping homeowners with the ability to do that.
Speaker 5: As an example, we recently remove the ability of hoa's
Speaker 5: to prevent fire hardening. Many of them are requiring different things. Well,
Speaker 5: let's call it wooden fences that are trees that were
Speaker 5: actually bad for fires. We now empower homeowners to take
Speaker 5: the steps necessary. But beyond that, community defense perimeters meeting
Speaker 5: areas with no vegetation that can prevent the spread of
Speaker 5: fire absolutely a critical tool, as well as rapid detection
Speaker 5: and response, including aerial response.
Speaker 1: Okay, so two questions now. One is I hate tariffs
Speaker 1: good because I think they punish the consumer. Sounds like
Speaker 1: you do too, So let's talk about that.
Speaker 5: Well, you're on hundred percent right, wellly, I mean it's
Speaker 5: rare to get an issue that like pretty much every
Speaker 5: economists degrees on like left right, cent are like saris
Speaker 5: are regressive, they punished the receiver. Brit is regressive being
Speaker 5: they're kind of like a sales tax. They don't scale
Speaker 5: with income, think about consumer products.
Speaker 4: They are costly.
Speaker 5: They drive inflation. Absolutely, one of my suggestions for reducing
Speaker 5: inflation is dropping tariffs, entering, having more free trade agreements
Speaker 5: with more countries, no question about it.
Speaker 4: And I'm very critical of with.
Speaker 5: Parties obviously, particularly Donald Trump, who champions and talents even
Speaker 5: more tariffs than Joe Biden.
Speaker 4: I encourage Joe Biden.
Speaker 5: I hope he is the second term to lean into
Speaker 5: trade agreements with Europe with our allies. Our Senator Bennett
Speaker 5: has the America's Act expanding the Free Trade Zone uspectually
Speaker 5: Canada to other countries. These would be great tangible measures,
Speaker 5: good for the economy, good for the consumer, and they
Speaker 5: would reduce inflation.
Speaker 1: So you have an aibill. I spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time reading Balwey media. I don't live in DC, but
Speaker 1: I know that AI is sponsoring like almost everything right,
Speaker 1: So clearly they are trying to get ahead of the
Speaker 1: regulatory environment. I think it's interesting that you're doing this.
Speaker 1: I think it's good explain to me how what you're
Speaker 1: doing to regulate AI.
Speaker 2: And also, can we.
Speaker 1: Just for one second, the lack of regulation is how
Speaker 1: tech companies basically drove out local news. So I just
Speaker 1: am curious if you have thoughts on that too.
Speaker 5: So I would say that our AI bill that I
Speaker 5: signed a law. It deals with the potential discrimination of AI.
Speaker 5: We also appeared deeply about privacy rights of AI. I
Speaker 5: would say it's a conversation accelerator, meaning what needs to happen,
Speaker 5: Molly frankly, is it needs to be done nationally because
Speaker 5: I don't really support a system where there's fifty different
Speaker 5: versions of two different states.
Speaker 2: It's undoable, Yeah, go on.
Speaker 5: It's undoable. But the way those things happen, Having served
Speaker 5: in Congress, I've seen it is it takes a few
Speaker 5: states to kind of mess around in this space and
Speaker 5: then all of a sudden, you know, eight states, fifteen
Speaker 5: states have done it, and then Congress wakes up and says,
Speaker 5: we'd better figure this out. We better, you know, get
Speaker 5: it reasonably right. And they can look at what the
Speaker 5: EU's done, and they can look at other models and
Speaker 5: create uniformity across the states. But I would say, what
Speaker 5: what we're doing? You know, it doesn't take effect to
Speaker 5: twenty six and hopefully it'll be you know, changed, or
Speaker 5: Congress will take it up then. But it's a conversation
Speaker 5: accelerator about how we approach AI and we should look
Speaker 5: at it from a potential perspective of discrimination as well
Speaker 5: as privacy rights and how it affects US.
Speaker 1: California got a complicated legislative record in my mind, though
Speaker 1: I like a lot of the stuff they do, though
Speaker 1: sometimes I think they get ahead of themselves is trying
Speaker 1: to do something that will regulate tech companies make them
Speaker 1: pay for content. God forbid, anyone should pay for content.
Speaker 1: It's a sort of tax. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: know the No, I.
Speaker 5: Don't, but I would just say something interesting about California.
Speaker 5: So there is an alternative to Congress, because we all
Speaker 5: know how notoriously slow they have been of late, right.
Speaker 1: And how uninterested in tech regulation they are.
Speaker 5: California can act and then other states can adopt something
Speaker 5: similar to created the facto national standard. It could also
Speaker 5: be Texas or New York, but a big state could
Speaker 5: lead others. So I have a look at that. I'm
Speaker 5: not talking about the tax or fiscal round there, Molly.
Speaker 5: I'm talking about more of the regulatory realm. But we
Speaker 5: have done a little bit of.
Speaker 4: That around evs.
Speaker 5: We haven't exactly imitated electric vehicles, that is, we haven't
Speaker 5: imitated California, but because they've moved a certain way, it's
Speaker 5: enabled us to move a certain way with manufacturers that
Speaker 5: Colorado couldn't.
Speaker 4: Do on our own.
Speaker 5: Because we're, you know, tuber population of the country.
Speaker 1: It does seem to me that the only way we're
Speaker 1: going to get protection for local news, which well, in
Speaker 1: the end cause us to have better information as citizens
Speaker 1: and prevent us from ending up in an autocracy. Maybe
Speaker 1: we won't do it this time, but we will do
Speaker 1: it at some point. If we don't, if our citizens
Speaker 1: can't read the truth, could be on the state level. Right.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, I want to see where you're going
Speaker 5: with this, Molly. It's obviously very dangerous for government to
Speaker 5: mess with the press and freedom of the press in
Speaker 5: any shape or form, like favoring certain lids or investing
Speaker 5: or But I'm more.
Speaker 1: Just saying that the idea that tech companies should have
Speaker 1: to be responsible for either what is put on their
Speaker 1: platform or have to pay for the content that they use.
Speaker 5: Well, look, our major media companies are also tech companies, Mollie, Right,
Speaker 5: So I mean there's a blurring to a certain extent.
Speaker 5: We have a great local press in Colorado, a nonprofit
Speaker 5: called Colorado Sun, Independent, nonprofit, new model. We obviously, unfortunately
Speaker 5: many of our newspapers are owned by hedge funds. They
Speaker 5: have been gutted. That's not a good thing. We still
Speaker 5: have fairly vibrant local television news. But I'm particularly proud
Speaker 5: of these new models like Colorado Sun that have created
Speaker 5: a nonprofit content generation model. I hope that occurs in
Speaker 5: more cities and states.
Speaker 1: So interesting, you still have half a term left, but
Speaker 1: you've been governor of Colorado for a while. What have
Speaker 1: you learned?
Speaker 5: Well, a lot. I came from two different backgrounds, I
Speaker 5: guess through three it away, so as private sector started,
Speaker 5: several businesses started, a couple of charter schools, social entrepreneur,
Speaker 5: and then I was in Congress for ten years. So
Speaker 5: this is obviously the most exciting, fastest paced job I've
Speaker 5: ever had, for sure. And you're really able to get
Speaker 5: things done, unlike in Congress where you might have to work,
Speaker 5: you know, six seven, eight years to finally get one
Speaker 5: amendment into something that becomes law in your area of jurisdiction.
Speaker 4: We pumped stuff out quickly.
Speaker 5: We got universal preschool in kindergarten in the state one
Speaker 5: of Michaels as governor. We've cut the income tax. We've
Speaker 5: done a number of savings around healthcare to bring down
Speaker 5: people's costs, especially in the healthcare exchange for those who
Speaker 5: don't get it from work. We've protected the environment. We've
Speaker 5: provided you know, rebates to accelerate electric vehicle adoption and
Speaker 5: so many things. Just boom boom, boom, boom boom. It's
Speaker 5: an exciting job. But of course we yes, we also
Speaker 5: deal with crisis is, fires, floods, pandemic, you name it.
Speaker 5: But despite that, it's fun to be proactive and get
Speaker 5: a lot done at the state level.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Governor, Thank you.
Speaker 6: Molly ari Berman is a reporter at Mother Jones and
Speaker 6: the author of Minority Rule, The Right Wings Attack on
Speaker 6: the Will of the People and the Fight to Resist It.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 4: Ari Berman, Hey Molly, so great to be here. Thank you.
Speaker 1: So Minority Rule, The right Wing Attack on the Will
Speaker 1: of the People and the Fight to resist it.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's like every fucking day.
Speaker 1: Go tell us, tell us why we shouldn't just kill ourselves?
Speaker 2: No, no, tell us about this book.
Speaker 4: Well, good to know we can swear on the podcast.
Speaker 4: That's always a possi right baby, especially when discussing this topic.
Speaker 4: So you know, I've been reporting on the issue of
Speaker 4: voting rights for over a decade now, and as I
Speaker 4: got deeper into reporting on voter suppression, I began asking
Speaker 4: my self, why is the Republican Party doing this so aggressively?
Speaker 4: Is it just to try to get an electoral advantage
Speaker 4: or is there some larger purpose here? And what I
Speaker 4: concluded is that the larger purpose here is minority rule.
Speaker 2: Right, is to get the electoral advantage.
Speaker 4: Exactly, so they can have a minority of the population
Speaker 4: but a majority of the power, which basically goes directly
Speaker 4: against the idea of the consent of the governed that
Speaker 4: democracy is based on the consent of the government has
Speaker 4: laid out in the Declaration of Independence. So what I
Speaker 4: did is basically two things. I traced it all the
Speaker 4: way back to the founding fathers to show that there's
Speaker 4: always been these anti democratic strains in the country. But
Speaker 4: then there's essentially this new anti democratic movement layered on
Speaker 4: top of it, which is voter suppression, gerrymandering, dark money,
Speaker 4: all the things that Republicans are doing now. So we
Speaker 4: kind of have this historical minority rule embedded in the system,
Speaker 4: but it's gotten worse because the Republican Party has so
Speaker 4: aggressively radicalized against democracy.
Speaker 1: Right, and that is the Republican Party radicalizing against democracy.
Speaker 1: I want to just do two seconds on that, because
Speaker 1: you're a voting right sky among other things, so Republicans
Speaker 1: have wanted to make it so people who are not
Speaker 1: white can't vote for a long time. But what's happened
Speaker 1: now is I think it's kicked into high gear in
Speaker 1: a different way.
Speaker 4: Discuss exactly I think that's true. So, I mean, you
Speaker 4: can go back a long time, and I do trace
Speaker 4: it a long time in the book about Republicans saying
Speaker 4: that black people shouldn't vote. I mean they said it
Speaker 4: during Jim Crow, they said it after the Voting Rights Act.
Speaker 4: It goes back a long way.
Speaker 2: Long and story tradition of racism, big.
Speaker 4: Part of Nixon's Southern strategy, big part of Reagan courting
Speaker 4: white voters. But what I argue is it obviously got
Speaker 4: worse after the election of the first black president, which
Speaker 4: sort of crystallized the fears they had about the changing
Speaker 4: nature of the country. And so in the kind of
Speaker 4: modern incarnation of GOP voter suppression that the point is
Speaker 4: after the twenty ten election, when Republicans get control of
Speaker 4: all those key swing states like Wisconsin and North Carolina
Speaker 4: and Ohio and Florida, and they start making it harder
Speaker 4: to vote, to try to manufacture an electorate that will
Speaker 4: be older, wider, more conservative as opposed to younger, more diverse,
Speaker 4: more progressive that I think, in many ways lays the
Speaker 4: groundwork for Trump, because the radicalization of the Republican Party
Speaker 4: happens before Trump, and then it creates an opening for Trump,
Speaker 4: and then you start to see voter suppression get much
Speaker 4: worse under Trump. First he makes all these false claims
Speaker 4: about stolen elections, and then he actually tries to overturt
Speaker 4: the election and incis and insurrection, and then it's basically
Speaker 4: voter suppression on steroids. They're not just trying to make
Speaker 4: it harder to vote on the front end, they're actually
Speaker 4: literally trying to overturn votes on the back end as well.
Speaker 4: And that's the scary thing that's happening today is we
Speaker 4: have not just laws making it harder to vote, but
Speaker 4: we essentially have a Republican party in which the Big
Speaker 4: Lie is now the central organizing principle of Trump's Republican Party.
Speaker 1: So what I think is interesting besides the fact that
Speaker 1: these sentence the big Lie is the central organizing of
Speaker 1: Trump's Republican Party, which I think is right and also
Speaker 1: makes me so incredibly depressed about the state of democracy,
Speaker 1: and also the intelligence of Republicans. What I think is
Speaker 1: interesting is that Republicans, and I want you to sort
Speaker 1: of talk us through this because I think this is
Speaker 1: like they've gotten themselves an interesting place here.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of new polling.
Speaker 1: I think polls are bullshit, especially these polls, because I
Speaker 1: just think they're hinky and I'm a cross tabs truther.
Speaker 1: But I want you to talk about this. Republicans are
Speaker 1: very excited about the possibility that they could win over
Speaker 1: black and Latino voters. Now, I think this is very
Speaker 1: overstated in the polls. But if they are trying to
Speaker 1: do this, isn't everything they do to keep these people
Speaker 1: who they are trying.
Speaker 2: To win now from voting.
Speaker 4: Well, that's what's interesting is you've already heard the Republican
Speaker 4: Party start changing there too. And I just heard Trump
Speaker 4: said that people should vote early and vote by mail,
Speaker 4: which well directly at odds with his message for many years.
Speaker 4: I mean, I'm conflicted about the polling because I think,
Speaker 4: first off, i think it's still the case that white
Speaker 4: voters are the key part of the Republican Party and
Speaker 4: certainly the key part of the Republican base. So let's
Speaker 4: not fool ourselves that the Republican Party has undergone a
Speaker 4: full Rainbow Coalition make over. I think it's still if
Speaker 4: you went to most Republican meetings, I think you're going
Speaker 4: to see a lot of white faces there, and certainly
Speaker 4: that's where the energy is on the base. Secondly, I'm
Speaker 4: not sure how much this is about the Democratic Party
Speaker 4: or Biden per se. We didn't see in twenty twenty
Speaker 4: two the Democratic Party have these fundamental problems with voters
Speaker 4: of color, or young voters for that matter. My sense
Speaker 4: is if Gretchen Whitmer, for example, the governor of Michigan
Speaker 4: where the nominee, she would not be losing young voters
Speaker 4: or voters of color. So I think some of this
Speaker 4: is Biden centric to the extent it exists. But I
Speaker 4: think the basic thesis that I have of that the
Speaker 4: Republican Party is a largely white party that's concerned about
Speaker 4: the changing demographics of the country is still true regardless
Speaker 4: of whether there's some blips in the polling. That is
Speaker 4: I think more specific to Biden than it is about
Speaker 4: kind of long term trends in American politics.
Speaker 1: They put themselves in a fascinating situation here, but even still,
Speaker 1: like if they are losing white college educated voters, which
Speaker 1: if these polls are right, which again I don't necessarily
Speaker 1: think they are, they show a real racial realignment for
Speaker 1: working class you know, not necessarily black, but Hispanic voters
Speaker 1: going more Republican, and then affluent college educated voters, like
Speaker 1: these suburban Republicans all becoming Democrats. They would have completely
Speaker 1: fucked themselves. I'm just saying, again, we don't know. It's theoretical.
Speaker 4: There is a realignment going on, certainly among white voters, right,
Speaker 4: kind of the kind of classic suburban country club white Republicans,
Speaker 4: many of them are now never Trumpers.
Speaker 2: Ordem which is fascinating.
Speaker 4: You know, a lot of the Lincoln Project folks, of
Speaker 4: those kind of people, and that then you have, you
Speaker 4: know a lot of the working class whites that were
Speaker 4: the core of the Democratic Party in a lot of
Speaker 4: places for many years they now abandoned the Democratic Party.
Speaker 4: And so I think there's this realignment, and I think,
Speaker 4: you know, I think you can't make any kind of
Speaker 4: sweeping predictions. That's why every time there's these books about
Speaker 4: like emerging Democratic majorities emerging, they always go out of
Speaker 4: date really quickly. But I think, you know, there's a
Speaker 4: pretty consistent through line for many, many years of the
Speaker 4: Republican Party relying on reactionary wheys. I mean, that's a
Speaker 4: pretty solid through line that predates this election, you know.
Speaker 4: I mean, and I trace it. I trace it a
Speaker 4: long way. I mean, you can go back before there
Speaker 4: were Democrats and Republicans, you can go back to the
Speaker 4: founding fathers, and basically they're trying to protect elite white
Speaker 4: power before there were political parties. And then, certainly that's
Speaker 4: been a theme of the Republican Party since the Civil
Speaker 4: Rights movement, and I think even more of a theme
Speaker 4: of the Republican Party under Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: For sure. For sure.
Speaker 1: Now let's talk about where we are right now with
Speaker 1: this Republican Party and also just what they're doing to
Speaker 1: make it harder to vote, and our Democrats sort of
Speaker 1: add quickly addressing that or now.
Speaker 4: So, I mean, there's a few things they're doing. First off,
Speaker 4: they changed in most Republican controlled states, changed the voting
Speaker 4: laws in some way or another after the twenty twenty election.
Speaker 4: So this was how they kind of weaponized the insurrection.
Speaker 4: I called it the insurrection through other means because Trump
Speaker 4: fails to overturn the vote. But then in Georgia and
Speaker 4: all these states they changed the voting laws, and you know,
Speaker 4: maybe they were fighting the last war, because a lot
Speaker 4: of this went after mail voting, and we'll see how
Speaker 4: many people actually vote by mail in the next election.
Speaker 4: But certainly the laws have changed in meaningful ways in
Speaker 4: a number of swing states. Then of course they've doubled
Speaker 4: down on election sub version, so trying to contest election outcomes.
Speaker 4: And we've seen local Republican Party officials, for example, fail
Speaker 4: to certify elections, and we've seen that basically Republicans who
Speaker 4: have said that the Republican Party should stop contesting elections
Speaker 4: essentially get purged from the RNC. You know, Trump won't
Speaker 4: hire anyone who says that the election wasn't stolen, which
Speaker 4: leads you to believe that they're preparing for a more organized,
Speaker 4: better funded effort to try to steal the election in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty four, if it comes to that, because I
Speaker 4: think there really was no election denier movement in twenty
Speaker 4: twenty As you know, Molly, this was totally seated. Their
Speaker 4: pass This was you know, the hair dye tripping down
Speaker 4: Rudy Juliani's base. Four seasons total landscaping kind of election denial,
Speaker 4: and now this is central to the RNC, it's central
Speaker 4: to Republicans all across the country that they have a
Speaker 4: much more organized, well funded movement that's bought into this.
Speaker 4: And so I think if the election outcome is close,
Speaker 4: I think we can expect very very aggressive challenges to
Speaker 4: it in twenty twenty four, in addition to the laws
Speaker 4: that they're passing to try to make it harder to
Speaker 4: vote on the front end. What makes you hopeful, Well,
Speaker 4: a few things, I think. First off, there's a lot
Speaker 4: of really interesting organizing happening at the state and local
Speaker 4: level right now. A key part of the end of
Speaker 4: my book is about Michigan, and I had a New
Speaker 4: York Times op ed about this, But basically, Michigan is
Speaker 4: one of those states that was seemingly rigged. After the
Speaker 4: twenty ten election. Republicans routinely got a minority of votes
Speaker 4: but controlled the state legislature for a decade and a half.
Speaker 4: And then what everyday activist did is they started putting
Speaker 4: initiatives on the ballot to try to make the democratic
Speaker 4: process more fair. They passed a ban on partison jerrymandering,
Speaker 4: They dramatically expanded voting rights through things like automatic and
Speaker 4: election day registration. They put on ballot initiatives that enshrine
Speaker 4: the right to abortion rights. So they use direct democracy
Speaker 4: to expand voting rights. And that's something that has happened
Speaker 4: in a number of places. And then there's also other
Speaker 4: places where people have changed in terms of Democrats have
Speaker 4: focused more on local elections. Wisconsin, for example, there's a
Speaker 4: progressive majority on the state Supreme Court that's struck down
Speaker 4: jerrymandering there so that those heavily gerrymanded maps are no
Speaker 4: longer in place. So if you look at the state
Speaker 4: landscape and the battleground states, it's a lot more fair
Speaker 4: than it was in twenty twenty. There is more democratic governors,
Speaker 4: there is more democratic state legislatures, there's more democratic secretaries
Speaker 4: of state, attorney general. And I have to say that
Speaker 4: every Democrat is going to be good on democracy issues,
Speaker 4: but these are people that ran on these issues that
Speaker 4: made it a central part. So I think, you know,
Speaker 4: if Trump would try to contest the election in the
Speaker 4: place like Michigan or a place like Pennsylvania or Wisconsin,
Speaker 4: you have a much tougher time doing it in twenty
Speaker 4: twenty four than in twenty twenty. And so in that sense,
Speaker 4: I think the system has been trump proofed a lot
Speaker 4: compared to how it was last time.
Speaker 1: But it's also true that if you have democratic governors,
Speaker 1: there's less chance to cheat, right there.
Speaker 4: Is, Yeah, exactly because a lot of those places, democratic
Speaker 4: governors are in charge of certifying the election, right so,
Speaker 4: democratic governor in Pennsylvania, Democratic governor Michigan, Democratic governor in Arizona,
Speaker 4: Democratic governor Wisconsin. That means that they're going to have
Speaker 4: a major say in certifying the election results, which means
Speaker 4: it's harder to cheat. It's also harder to pass laws
Speaker 4: that make it harder to vote in the first place
Speaker 4: as well. And you know, in some of these places
Speaker 4: there's a stalemate, right like in Wisconsin, where there's a
Speaker 4: Republican legislature and a Democratic governor, they haven't really been
Speaker 4: able to do much of anything, but it prevents bad
Speaker 4: things from happening. And then in places like Michigan, they've
Speaker 4: been able to do a lot of really proactive things.
Speaker 4: And so basically what I'm saying is, I do think
Speaker 4: we need a long term movement for institutional reform on
Speaker 4: the federal level to reform the Supreme Court to reform
Speaker 4: the US setate, to break some of these to break
Speaker 4: up some of these broken structures. But I also think
Speaker 4: that changing the state and local level happens a lot quicker.
Speaker 4: And even if you live in a blue state Molly
Speaker 4: like we do, there's a lot of swing districts in
Speaker 4: New York.
Speaker 2: So I'm aware that's why Democrats lost the House.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, they lost the House because of California and
Speaker 4: New York. And I always hear people in New York say,
Speaker 4: I'm going to Georgia, I'm going to Wisconsin, and I'm like,
Speaker 4: you could just go to Staten Island.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well don't go to Stutson Valley, but you could.
Speaker 4: Go to Long Island exactly. You could flip the House there.
Speaker 4: And so I mean, I think people need to think
Speaker 4: more about organizing locally in general.
Speaker 2: And I think that's a really good point.
Speaker 1: I mean, the federal staff, I hesitate to say that
Speaker 1: this Supreme Court has done something that isn't completely beyond
Speaker 1: the pay. Explain to us what's happening in this congressional
Speaker 1: district in the Great State of Louisiana.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so this is a complicated case, but basically the
Speaker 4: good news is that the Supreme Court ruled that Louisiana
Speaker 4: has to use a congressional map for twenty twenty four
Speaker 4: that includes two majority black congressional district Are you shocked.
Speaker 4: I'm not shocked, only because the state of Louisiana took
Speaker 4: this position. So I mean, like, black voters in Louisiana
Speaker 4: are on the same side, which is very rare. The
Speaker 4: state of Louisiana was forced into drawing a second black
Speaker 4: congressional district, which is expected to elect a Democrat because
Speaker 4: of lower federal court decisions. Now, what the Supreme Court
Speaker 4: has done is it is upheld those lower court decisions
Speaker 4: and that has been a rare bright spot for voting rights.
Speaker 4: And that they did this not just in Louisiana. They
Speaker 4: did it in Alabama too, which was very surprising. Now
Speaker 4: we'll see how long this lasts to the sense that
Speaker 4: there is support for voting rights in the court. It's
Speaker 4: very tenuous. It takes five justices, obviously one of them
Speaker 4: who is in the majority in the Alley Bama case,
Speaker 4: Brett Kavana, also already said he's open to challenging the
Speaker 4: constutionality of the remaining parts of the voting Rights Act.
Speaker 4: So I'm not popping too much champagne here, but I
Speaker 4: do think like, given this is a six to three
Speaker 4: conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court, so anytime they don't
Speaker 4: do something terrible, you have to celebrate it, at least momentarily.
Speaker 2: Yes, how did they break Well, this is.
Speaker 4: The interesting thing. It broke six to three, which normally
Speaker 4: six conservatives and three liberals assenting. Normally, you would think
Speaker 4: that that would mean that it was a bad decision
Speaker 4: on voting rights. It was a good decision on voting rights.
Speaker 4: But the way they reached the case was basically in
Speaker 4: voting this principle that said that you can't make election
Speaker 4: changes too close to the election. Now, that was a
Speaker 4: good thing in this case, but a lot of the
Speaker 4: times the Supreme Court invokes the same principle to then
Speaker 4: reinstate discriminatory voting. Yeah, exactly, so they it's mostly been
Speaker 4: used for crappy purposes. So I think the three liberals
Speaker 4: may view this as something of a pyrrhic victory where
Speaker 4: they said, listen, the Conservatives are giving us a win here,
Speaker 4: but they're about the fust.
Speaker 1: So do you think they see something coming?
Speaker 4: I don't know. If there's something coming. My guess is yes,
Speaker 4: But I also think they're probably just worried about. Listen,
Speaker 4: you expand this principle that is generally speaking been used
Speaker 4: to curtail voting rights. You're expanding it in a good
Speaker 4: way here, but then you could weaponize it in a
Speaker 4: bad way further. So I think that's why they dissented.
Speaker 4: So every victory on voting rights by the Supreme Court,
Speaker 4: which is a rare in of itself, always comes to
Speaker 4: some kind of asterisk, and I think that that's the
Speaker 4: asterisk in this case. But you know, again, live to
Speaker 4: fight another day, right.
Speaker 2: Oh so interesting?
Speaker 1: So what's still on the docket with the Supreme Court?
Speaker 1: I mean, besides the death of democracy? And they're also
Speaker 1: going to fuck over the birth control pill staff, not
Speaker 1: the birth control, the meth of pristone. Talk to us
Speaker 1: about what else you see that's voting rights wise on
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court docket.
Speaker 4: We're still waiting for them to issue a decision in
Speaker 4: a South Carolina redistriction case, which is Nancy Mace's congressional district.
Speaker 4: And the crazy thing here is that basically the lower
Speaker 4: court struck down her district. They called it stark racial jerrymandering. Basically,
Speaker 4: they took a bunch of black voters out of the
Speaker 4: district to make it a lot more Republican. Mace has
Speaker 4: become a lot Trumpier as a result. Remember she was
Speaker 4: one of I think seven House Republicans who ousted Kevin McCarthy,
Speaker 4: and so she's become very trumpy. And essentially this was
Speaker 4: appealed to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court was told
Speaker 4: to act by the beginning of the year. It's now
Speaker 4: May and they haven't taken any action. And the lower
Speaker 4: court that struck down the district was basically forced to
Speaker 4: reinstate it because the Supreme Court had done nothing. So
Speaker 4: it's kind of like the version of the immunity case.
Speaker 4: They basically just ran out the clock to deny Democrats
Speaker 4: having a shot at winning back another House seat. And
Speaker 4: that's concerning because the House could be extremely close. I mean,
Speaker 4: it could very well come down to one district.
Speaker 2: The Louisiana decision gives a seat to Democrats, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, so basically, but I mean Democrats need more
Speaker 4: than two seats. So right now, Democrats have picked up
Speaker 4: seats in Alabama and Louisiana based on the court decisions,
Speaker 4: they could have theoretically picked up another seat in South
Speaker 4: Carolina that they're not going to pick up. The problem
Speaker 4: is is that in North Carolina, Republicans drew a really
Speaker 4: jerrymandered map that's going to get them three to four
Speaker 4: new seats, So you've got to make up those seats somewhere.
Speaker 4: There's some talk about whether they could pick up seats
Speaker 4: in New York, but New York actually passed a redistricting
Speaker 4: map that was very similar.
Speaker 2: It's so fucked up.
Speaker 1: New York passed basically a completely unjenary mandered redistricting map.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think that the conventional wisdom here
Speaker 4: is that the New York Democrats feel like they can
Speaker 4: just win seats outright on this map. But I mean,
Speaker 4: they certainly didn't adopt in North Carolina tactics. And some
Speaker 4: people would view this as unile or disarmament that basically
Speaker 4: Republicans in North Carolina jerrymandered as aggressively as they could
Speaker 4: and New York didn't. Now, maybe Democrats in New York
Speaker 4: were worried about court striking down a map, but nonetheless
Speaker 4: they add the power to jerrymander Moore and they didn't
Speaker 4: and we can argue whether it's a good thing or
Speaker 4: a bad thing that parties are basically just try to
Speaker 4: jerrymander the fuck of things. I think that's ultimately bad
Speaker 4: for democracy when they engage in like a gerrymandering arms race.
Speaker 4: But I think it's also fair to argue that if
Speaker 4: one party is doing it, then the other party has
Speaker 4: no choice but to do it as well. But it's
Speaker 4: a complicated argument, and I don't think it's probably very
Speaker 4: good for democracy if that's where we end up.
Speaker 2: So interesting. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 4: Ari, thanks so much. Molly really appreciate it.
Speaker 2: No moment full Jesse Cannon.
Speaker 4: Molly junk Fast.
Speaker 5: It seems like Donald Trump decided to do Joe Biden
Speaker 5: a favor today.
Speaker 1: What are you seeing here? So? Donald Trump said on
Speaker 1: an interview that he was looking at placing restrictions on contraception.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you a little more about this. Trump
Speaker 1: was asked by a local Pittsburgh TV station, do you
Speaker 1: support any restriction on a person's right to contraception that's
Speaker 1: birth control, and he said, we are looking at that.
Speaker 1: I'm going to have a policy on that very shortly.
Speaker 1: Sounds like infrastructure week. I think it's something you'll find interesting.
Speaker 1: Trump says, you will be releasing a very comprehensive policy
Speaker 1: on contraception within a week or so. Things really have
Speaker 1: to do a lot with the states, and some states
Speaker 1: are going to have different policies than others. That's pretty
Speaker 1: scary stuff. I never thought that we would be in
Speaker 1: this place in America. Really scary. That's it for this
Speaker 1: episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and
Speaker 1: Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes sense
Speaker 1: of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard,
Speaker 1: please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 1: And again, thanks for listening.