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 George Santos has recused himself from
Speaker 1: sitting on any congressional committees. We have a show today
Speaker 1: that is going to blow your mind. NBC political analysts
Speaker 1: and Republican strategists Susan del Purcio will talk about the
Speaker 1: Republican Party's descent into chaos. Then Washington Post contributing columnist
Speaker 1: Danielle Allen, we'll talk about her a year long project
Speaker 1: reporting on how we can repair our democracy. But first
Speaker 1: we have senior editor at The Atlantic, Ron Brownstein. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Fast Politics. Ron Brownstein, Hey, thanks for having me again.
Speaker 1: Happy to year. I guess can I still say that? No,
Speaker 1: you're out of the window. Out of the window, and
Speaker 1: letter David doesn't live that far from me, so who knows.
Speaker 1: You might come down and smite me. But I want
Speaker 1: to ask you. We are in the middle of this
Speaker 1: insane house. I mean, it does feel like the there
Speaker 1: are no adults in the house. Chilp. Yeah. I mean, look,
Speaker 1: you know, the house is often the expression of the
Speaker 1: party's I at any given moment, either party. We certainly
Speaker 1: saw that in the nineties when the ging which generation
Speaker 1: took control of the House. And now you have a
Speaker 1: House in which roughly three quarters of the Republicans are
Speaker 1: from deep Trump country, the districts that Trump won by
Speaker 1: at least ten points, and then you have, you know,
Speaker 1: their majority makers which put them over the top, are
Speaker 1: the eighteen Republicans from districts that voted for Biden. And
Speaker 1: the big question all year is going to be whether
Speaker 1: those more vulnerable swing seat Republicans impose any restraints on
Speaker 1: the right flank of the caucus or the conference which
Speaker 1: feels enormously empowered by the outcome of the speaker fight
Speaker 1: in which, you know, McCarthy kind of, as someone said
Speaker 1: to me, surrendered his way to the speakership, really drawing
Speaker 1: almost no lines and just constantly giving more visibility, power,
Speaker 1: authority to the most extreme members of his caucus. And
Speaker 1: the question is when, if at all, do the relatively
Speaker 1: more you know, I wouldn't even say centrist members, members
Speaker 1: from more centrist areas draw online Molly. I will say
Speaker 1: that historically, waiting for this has been you know, waiting
Speaker 1: for good. Oh. I remember when Republicans were looking at
Speaker 1: impeaching Clinton. And there were many people, myself included, who
Speaker 1: noted that there were at that point House Republicans from
Speaker 1: districts had voted for Clinton in ninety six, and the
Speaker 1: thought was, well, at least some of them are going
Speaker 1: to throw the brakes on this train, and they didn't.
Speaker 1: So logically you would say these eighteen plus another twenty
Speaker 1: or so in districts the Trump wont only narrowly would
Speaker 1: have a different set of incentives. But until proven otherwise,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that's going to be the case. It's
Speaker 1: interesting because Republicans paid dearly for that impeaching Clinton, yes,
Speaker 1: and they paid dearly even in this election for the
Speaker 1: image of extremists. You know, I wrote, I wrote the
Speaker 1: other look historic, and you and I have talked about
Speaker 1: this before. Historically, if you have the set of conditions
Speaker 1: that we had in November twenty two, the out parties
Speaker 1: should be looking at substantial games. Uh. You had a
Speaker 1: president's groper writing was in the load of mid forties,
Speaker 1: who had seventy of the country say the economy was
Speaker 1: on the wrong track, and you had the highest inflation
Speaker 1: in forty years, and yet Republicans enormously underperformed, and the
Speaker 1: principal reason they underperformed at really all levels was that
Speaker 1: too many voters who were dissatisfied with the way things
Speaker 1: are going fought that Republicans are too extreme to entrust
Speaker 1: with power. In fact, I had someone run from me
Speaker 1: from the exit pose the other day to quantify this,
Speaker 1: as you know, I like to quantify the ephemeral. Something
Speaker 1: like forty two percent of voters who said the economy
Speaker 1: was in bad shape said that Republicans were too extreme,
Speaker 1: and those voters overwhelmingly voted Democratic for the House and
Speaker 1: presumably for these other statewide races. And that was the
Speaker 1: difference between I think a normal mid term that you
Speaker 1: would expect in these conditions and what you actually got,
Speaker 1: which was very disappointing for Republicans. And I've put them
Speaker 1: in this situation where because they have such a narrow majority,
Speaker 1: the far right part of the conference has all of
Speaker 1: this leverage. So that's the paradox right, the the image
Speaker 1: of extremism limited their gains, and those limited gains are
Speaker 1: in turn empowering the most extreme forces in the conference
Speaker 1: to demand more of the same attitudes and policies that
Speaker 1: hurt them in the first place it seems like Kevin
Speaker 1: McCarthy is not the man for this job. Well, McCarthy
Speaker 1: has decided, you know that he's just not going to
Speaker 1: fight this that he has got. McCarthy has basically made
Speaker 1: the calculation which I have seen Republican speakers make before,
Speaker 1: that in the end, it is the center, or the
Speaker 1: folks from the centrist districts, who are going to break
Speaker 1: and who will fall in line because they have theoretically,
Speaker 1: in a five seat majority, they have as much power
Speaker 1: as the right. You know, I mean eighteen House Republicans
Speaker 1: and districts that Biden one, another two dozen or so
Speaker 1: in district that Trump only narrowly, one that can easily
Speaker 1: go the other way in a presidential race. They could
Speaker 1: have said no to any of this, but he's betting
Speaker 1: they won't, and that as long as he keeps the
Speaker 1: right happy, he can keep his job. The voters get
Speaker 1: another say on that in two years as well. But
Speaker 1: in terms of the dynamics inside the Cock Conference, that
Speaker 1: is clearly the calculation that he's making. The center in
Speaker 1: the end will give in if he tells them I
Speaker 1: have to do this to satisfy the right, and if
Speaker 1: I don't you're gonna get someone even further than the
Speaker 1: right to speaker like Schooley's. It is an interesting calculus.
Speaker 1: And I do think that Matt Gates, I mean, he's
Speaker 1: really elevated Matt Gates. I mean, I think that's proof
Speaker 1: that what he's doing isn't ear a work gang. Well.
Speaker 1: Marjorie Taylor Green as well. I mean, look, Marjorie Taylor Green,
Speaker 1: You've got to imagine that they're going to be ads
Speaker 1: in with Republican candidates in suburban districts, morphing into Marjorie
Speaker 1: Taylor Green and Matt Gates, and you know, in the
Speaker 1: same way that Republicans have tried to run against and
Speaker 1: have run against Pelosi or the squad. You know, something
Speaker 1: like six It was pretty close. I think was fifty
Speaker 1: percent of independent voters in elections said Republicans were too extreme,
Speaker 1: and it was a significantly wider spread for Republicans than
Speaker 1: it was for Democrats among independent voters. McCarthy is systematically
Speaker 1: putting the most off, putting potentially members of his caucus
Speaker 1: in front of TV cameras and and giving them power
Speaker 1: for the next year. I mean, they are on the
Speaker 1: Oversight Committee, they are on this special Weaponization of the
Speaker 1: Federal Government Committee. They are on the COVID Committee, and
Speaker 1: so to the extent there are Republicans and they may,
Speaker 1: in fact, you know, draw some blood from the Biden
Speaker 1: administration through these various attacks and negotiations, but he has
Speaker 1: guaranteed that in the process, their most extreme members are
Speaker 1: going to be front and center, you know, talking about
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories and all sorts of things that hurt them,
Speaker 1: you know, in the places why they underperformed, and potentially
Speaker 1: it hurt them even more in the context of a
Speaker 1: presidential year, right, And and I think that's ultimately kind
Speaker 1: of where we're seeing it go. Um. So, now we
Speaker 1: have these committee hearings coming up soon, but we also
Speaker 1: have the debt ceiling, and you've written about the dead ceiling.
Speaker 1: Talk to me about this. It's like a runaway freight train. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's clearly the most important policy debate or confrontation that
Speaker 1: we're going to have in in Washington. There's not going
Speaker 1: to be a lot of substantive I mean, it's hard
Speaker 1: to imagine this Republican conference in the House getting to
Speaker 1: agreements with Biden on very much other than the bare
Speaker 1: minimum of keeping the doors open in the government and
Speaker 1: keeping the U S from defaulting, potentially throwing catastrophic ripples
Speaker 1: through the global economy. And you know, what you've got
Speaker 1: is a reprise of what happened in T eleven. So
Speaker 1: you know, when Republicans are in the White House, Republicans
Speaker 1: in Congress have no real problem raising the debt ceiling.
Speaker 1: I mean they've they've done it. They did it repeatedly
Speaker 1: under Trump, they did it under w It wasn't an issue.
Speaker 1: When Democrats are in the White House and Republicans hold
Speaker 1: a majority in either or both chambers, they demand spending
Speaker 1: cuts to offset the debt ceiling increase. In fact, when
Speaker 1: John Banner became Speaker in eleven, he offered what was
Speaker 1: called the Baynor rule, which said for each dollar in
Speaker 1: more debt authority you get, there should be an offsetting
Speaker 1: dollar of spending cuts. Never mind that the debt ceiling
Speaker 1: is not about future spending, it's about you know, funding
Speaker 1: things we've already done, right, But that was what Bayner
Speaker 1: laid out, and in eleven Obama did choose to negotiate
Speaker 1: with the House Republicans on a deficit reduction deal was
Speaker 1: known then as the Grand Bargain, and went through months
Speaker 1: of kind of a multi layer negotiation that began with
Speaker 1: Joe Biden and Eric Canter, who was then the number
Speaker 1: two in the House, holding these meetings about you know,
Speaker 1: cutting spending in the postal service and you know, auctioning
Speaker 1: off the airwaves more efficiently and so forth. That ultimately
Speaker 1: broke down over the Republican refusal to raise taxes, and
Speaker 1: then Bayner and Obama picked up the baton in late
Speaker 1: June July eleven. They had a series of secret meetings
Speaker 1: that got them close to what was again described as
Speaker 1: the Grand Bargain, which was basically a ten year plan
Speaker 1: to raise taxes and reduced spending on Social Security and
Speaker 1: medicare primarily to you know, lead toward the budget being
Speaker 1: a balanced over time. And people who lived through that
Speaker 1: will recall there was as as someone said to me,
Speaker 1: put it to me last week, there was a lot
Speaker 1: of that in the air. In eleven, I mean, there
Speaker 1: was a Simpson Bowls Bipartisan Commission. He was executive to rector,
Speaker 1: by the way, as the Deputy chief of Staff, and
Speaker 1: the White House Bruce read there was a Dominicci rivalent.
Speaker 1: I mean, they were just like these bipartisan commissions and
Speaker 1: Obama basically accepted the idea that it would be a
Speaker 1: good thing to reach a long term budget deal. And
Speaker 1: in fact, there were a number It wasn't only Republicans
Speaker 1: who were pressing him to do that at that point,
Speaker 1: there were more kind of center right mansion esque Democratic
Speaker 1: senators who were also pressing him to do that. After
Speaker 1: two thousand too big initiatives, the stimulus planned on the
Speaker 1: Affordable Care Act. So Obama went through these negotiations Biden
Speaker 1: canner that collapsed, Obama banner that collapsed, and they were
Speaker 1: forced to scramble in the final weekend before default in
Speaker 1: these you know, horrific tense meetings inside the White House
Speaker 1: to cobble together what turned out to still be a
Speaker 1: significant budget reduction deal in order to get Republicans to
Speaker 1: raise the dead ceiling. And Jack lou who was the
Speaker 1: OMB director then and the Treasury secretary and the second term,
Speaker 1: said to me, you don't have to here the audio.
Speaker 1: You can just see the looks on the faces in
Speaker 1: peach suits his pictures, and you know how much it was.
Speaker 1: And Obama came out of that where none of the
Speaker 1: positives that he was seeking a rational long term pathway towards,
Speaker 1: you know, managing the debt. The deficit came out and
Speaker 1: you instead had all of this market turbulence that took
Speaker 1: the country to the Briton. And he came out of
Speaker 1: that and he said never again. And the US credit
Speaker 1: was downgraded. I mean it was traumatic. Oh, the US
Speaker 1: credit was downgraded. It was a debacle. Republicans did get
Speaker 1: something they wanted out of that. Ultimately they got some
Speaker 1: substantial budget cuts and this process known as sequestration, which
Speaker 1: really dominated the fiscal debates of the next decade with
Speaker 1: automatic defense and the message discretionary spending cuts. But Obama
Speaker 1: came out of that experience in tleven and basically said
Speaker 1: never again. And in fact, as as several people involved
Speaker 1: told me, it wasn't even that he came out of
Speaker 1: that experience and said never again. Even as it was concluding,
Speaker 1: he had decided never again. And in fact, in his
Speaker 1: second term, when Republicans came back and said, okay, if
Speaker 1: you want to raise you have to raise the dead
Speaker 1: ceiling again. Now we're demanding more cuts and we're demanding
Speaker 1: that you would ravel the Affordable Care Act, he refused
Speaker 1: to negotiate with them over the dead ceiling. And eventually
Speaker 1: in the fall the spring, and again in the Republicans
Speaker 1: back down and under Bay they did raise it. And
Speaker 1: that is the posture that Biden is taking now. It's
Speaker 1: important that people understand he is not saying he won't
Speaker 1: negotiate with them about the budget. Obviously has to do
Speaker 1: that they control one chamber of Congress. What are he
Speaker 1: is seeing is we are not going to negotiate with
Speaker 1: the threat of default, you know, as the gun cocked
Speaker 1: against our head. We are not negotiate in the context
Speaker 1: of the dead ceiling. Raising the dead ceiling is non negotiable.
Speaker 1: We don't want to attach anything to it. Now whether
Speaker 1: he can hold to that all the way through with
Speaker 1: Joe Manchon already out there saying, well, we should have
Speaker 1: another commission like we had back then, you know, to
Speaker 1: study deficit reduction. But that is Biden's posture. It is
Speaker 1: inextricably rooted in his experience next to Obama. By the way,
Speaker 1: footnote on this, Molly, that's worth noting when the second
Speaker 1: confrontation came up in about Republicans saying, don't you know,
Speaker 1: we're not going to raise the dead ceiling unless you
Speaker 1: give us more cuts and roll back the affordable character.
Speaker 1: Harry Reid, you know, the Christ and Peace, who was
Speaker 1: then the Democratic Majority leader, went to the White House
Speaker 1: and specifically told Obama to keep Biden away from the
Speaker 1: negotiations because he thought he would be too willing to
Speaker 1: cut a deal with Mitch mcconm just just an interesting fact. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, it kind of shows you how far Biden
Speaker 1: has come, you know, And even the threshold is not
Speaker 1: really true anymore. Like back then, you know, people can
Speaker 1: forget Obama and the key people around him thought it
Speaker 1: was both good economics and good politics to reach a
Speaker 1: long term deficit reduction deal that traded some cuts and
Speaker 1: to care and Social Security for you know, tax increases.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's true anymore, either in no in
Speaker 1: the in the Biden White House, or among Democrats in
Speaker 1: the Senate that is, in the House that is very
Speaker 1: much a minority position today. And and so even the
Speaker 1: threshold that you know, Obama's threshold was, yeah, a deal
Speaker 1: would be a good thing, and he didn't see it
Speaker 1: as disqualifying to tie the negotiations to the debt ceiling.
Speaker 1: Both both of those propositions I think are no longer
Speaker 1: true among Democrats. So how this plays out. I think,
Speaker 1: you know, Biden is betting that enough Republicans, those Republicans
Speaker 1: we've talked about before from more competitive districts in the
Speaker 1: end will break and in some way maybe by signing
Speaker 1: a discharge position will pass this through the House, and
Speaker 1: that enough Senate Republicans obviously will do so as well.
Speaker 1: But there are gonna be a lot of white knuckle
Speaker 1: moments between now and then. You know, there's also the
Speaker 1: question of military spending, right yeah, well, you know, look,
Speaker 1: I mean that was like when they made this final
Speaker 1: deal on this horrible final weekend before the country defaulted
Speaker 1: for the first time. The deal was that it created
Speaker 1: a so called super committee in the House, which is
Speaker 1: kind of what uh mansion wants now. I think that
Speaker 1: if they could reach agreement on a plan, would be
Speaker 1: guaranteed a floor vote on the plan. But if they
Speaker 1: couldn't reach agreement on a plan to cut the deficit
Speaker 1: by a little over one trillion, the fallback was what
Speaker 1: was known as sequestration, which were automatic cuts in discretionary
Speaker 1: domestic and defense spending, and Democrats fought that was their
Speaker 1: fail safe because Republicans in the end would never allow
Speaker 1: the defense spending cuts to go into effect, and to
Speaker 1: some extent they were right because Congress did repeatedly loosen
Speaker 1: the belt on the sequestration, and but some of it
Speaker 1: did go into effect, and Republicans were willing to have
Speaker 1: those cuts go on to defense. And so like probably now,
Speaker 1: betting that defense cuts are the circuit breaker they keep
Speaker 1: Republicans from demanding other cuts is probably a misguided hope
Speaker 1: for Democrats. Yeah right, definitely, because also Republicans are now
Speaker 1: they're sort of against this war in Ukraine. There the
Speaker 1: spending on Ukraine, right, so they could easily want to
Speaker 1: cut that. Yeah, right, So you could see Bayner is
Speaker 1: like Lincoln compared to McCarthy. Bainer kind of accepted that
Speaker 1: there were responsibilities, you know, I mean, and he writes
Speaker 1: in his memoir about how much he hated the Second
Speaker 1: Confrontation that he was just he just thought it was
Speaker 1: ridiculous and counterproductive, and you know, the crazy Caucus and
Speaker 1: all of that. He was all in the first time.
Speaker 1: You know, he did go to New York and he
Speaker 1: gave this speech in Maylen where he laid down the
Speaker 1: bin a rule, a dollar for cuts for dollar of
Speaker 1: more debt authorization. But yes, I mean Bainer clearly, and
Speaker 1: Ryan even to a significant extent. So it as part
Speaker 1: of his job to resist the demands of the far
Speaker 1: right in the Republican ranks, and McCarthy clearly views his future,
Speaker 1: his viability in the job as acceding to as many
Speaker 1: of those demands as possible while leaning on the moderates
Speaker 1: now to give in rather than trying to resist what
Speaker 1: the right wants to do, which was more the posture
Speaker 1: of Banter and even more the posture of Ryan. So
Speaker 1: where do you think this goes? I guess I am
Speaker 1: in the camp that believes default is so unpredictable and
Speaker 1: potentially catastrophic that they will find a way to avoid it,
Speaker 1: and that enough Republicans will sign a discharge petition to
Speaker 1: pass a debt seiling increase in the House. But I
Speaker 1: would guess that as part of that, Biden is going
Speaker 1: to have to accept some kind of Simpson Bowles type thing,
Speaker 1: you know, yet another commission to study the deficit. I
Speaker 1: don't think he will agree to Obama did in, which
Speaker 1: is a guaranteed, streamlined process for that to be voted on.
Speaker 1: But I'm not sure I see even how he gets
Speaker 1: nine votes in the Senate without some sort of fig
Speaker 1: Leaf study group that's, you know, examining how we deal
Speaker 1: with this and maybe if I can get enough Republicans
Speaker 1: to just back down to get a clean debt ceiling increase,
Speaker 1: but I'm not sure. Ron Brownstein so interesting. I hope
Speaker 1: you will come back. Always glad to be here. Thanks
Speaker 1: so much for having me. Susan del Perco is an
Speaker 1: NBC political analyst and Republican strategist. Welcome, Too Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: Susan del Purcio. Great to be with you. I'm so
Speaker 1: excited to be on your new podcast. Well, we're excited
Speaker 1: to have you. And as I was, I was writing
Speaker 1: my Vanity Fair thing today and yesterday, and I was
Speaker 1: thinking about Trump being back. And it's been uh, you know,
Speaker 1: this weekend of Trump pretending to be Jeb. I mean,
Speaker 1: of course he's not Jeb and he still you know,
Speaker 1: went into his autopilot autocrat. But there's certainly seems like
Speaker 1: there's a concerted effort, uh for Trump to try to
Speaker 1: pretend to be normal. Yeah. And Trump doesn't do normal well,
Speaker 1: and he doesn't stay very long when he does um.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, he'll get criticized for doing
Speaker 1: for trying to do normal because he can't do it
Speaker 1: well and it shows, and he comes off as very
Speaker 1: flat and not energetic. And his his weekend appearances were pathetic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they because we're simply pathetic. They were just read off
Speaker 1: some copy and and here's what the worst part is.
Speaker 1: Actually it was trying to be normal and trying to
Speaker 1: rehash the past. He wasn't even trying to say like
Speaker 1: I'm gonna come forward and do this for you. He's like,
Speaker 1: just stay with me because I'm really upset and I
Speaker 1: need your support, so please be with me. Like a
Speaker 1: little blanky. Yes, he said, he's back, and he's ang.
Speaker 1: I mean, you have worked with Republican candidates. You were
Speaker 1: Republican strategists. I mean, I don't know the people in
Speaker 1: my life who were Republicans. Many of them have changed
Speaker 1: to independence. Are you an independent? Are you still Republican? No,
Speaker 1: I'm still a Republican. Although I asked him, I said
Speaker 1: that question, why every every day? This is the answer.
Speaker 1: And it's changed over the years. You know, initially like
Speaker 1: he's not taking over my party, God damn it. And
Speaker 1: you know, I was very defiant, and then I was like, well,
Speaker 1: there's gotta be someone here like to at least bring
Speaker 1: like sanity to the conversations. But it evolved, i'd say
Speaker 1: in the last couple of years too. This is a
Speaker 1: two party country. People may want an independent party and
Speaker 1: other parties, but that's not how we work. If everybody
Speaker 1: leaves the Republican Party who's frustrated with it, when it
Speaker 1: comes back, they're not going to be so welcomed into it.
Speaker 1: And you have to be part of bringing it up.
Speaker 1: So I'm a Republican that hoped to see the party
Speaker 1: burned to the ground to build it back up, but
Speaker 1: to show it's almost like, yes, we need Republican voices
Speaker 1: out there, even if no one's listening right now, because
Speaker 1: I spend all this time thinking about, like, how can
Speaker 1: there be a normal Republican party and sort of trying
Speaker 1: to game it out in my head, and and it
Speaker 1: seems like, I mean, this is such a great example, right.
Speaker 1: I had one to ask David from this question, and
Speaker 1: he said a party needs to lose three elections in
Speaker 1: order to sort of rewrite the ship. So I thought
Speaker 1: two thousand eighteen two that they might, but but someone
Speaker 1: else told me no, it's three presidential elections that they
Speaker 1: have to lose. I'm kind of in between those numbers.
Speaker 1: By the way, I think it starts in twenty with
Speaker 1: the beginning of the the end for the Republican Party,
Speaker 1: and it's not going to come back to mostly be
Speaker 1: because you not only have to presidential elections there, but
Speaker 1: the midterms the other congressional election races. Those are where
Speaker 1: the local people really have a voice and they start
Speaker 1: pushing out the losers. So you lose in, you lose in,
Speaker 1: You lose in because it will go through at least
Speaker 1: and then maybe by like people are like enough and
Speaker 1: the state and local organizations start recalibrating. And that's what
Speaker 1: you know, I guess, coming from you know, building from
Speaker 1: the down, Yeah, the low the lowliest races of city
Speaker 1: council all the way up to the presidential level. You know,
Speaker 1: you get to know how local politics really works and
Speaker 1: where the shifts start to come in, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's clearly. I think the hope is that there'll be
Speaker 1: some I know that this rn C meeting last week
Speaker 1: was a bloodbast It's amazing because I have a friend
Speaker 1: who called me in a rage. Oh really, yeah, because
Speaker 1: they were harassing people. It's so interesting because Trump was
Speaker 1: you could tell that. Like leading up to it, he
Speaker 1: was like, I may throw Runna under the bus. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure yet, Like I could do it because I
Speaker 1: don't like getting blamed, and maybe I could get her
Speaker 1: to be blamed for losing, but oh gosh, I don't know.
Speaker 1: And plus other people like me, so maybe. And then
Speaker 1: it was just it was too far. It went too
Speaker 1: far down the pipe for it too to have a leadership,
Speaker 1: but to have one third of the voting members say
Speaker 1: like no, thank you, I would say, is good. But
Speaker 1: they went for more crazy, which was the problem. Right,
Speaker 1: And my friend said exactly that we obviously need new blood.
Speaker 1: But but um, you know this is I mean, my
Speaker 1: pillow guy is not going to be how it happens. No, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: It'll take rebet because again, those people who vote at
Speaker 1: the r n C for chairman come from the state parties. Again,
Speaker 1: it's gonna take time, but you have to be patient.
Speaker 1: But you feel a little bit optimistic that there could
Speaker 1: be a sort of sanity like that Emit Romney could
Speaker 1: come back, or you know, someone like that. Oh, I
Speaker 1: think there will sanity will return. But I think we're
Speaker 1: maybe about halfway through as far as burning to the
Speaker 1: ground that we need to. We have a long way
Speaker 1: to go to really found miserb of like And that
Speaker 1: goes to what you were about to say when I
Speaker 1: interrupted you. So I apologize about Kevin McCarthy and this
Speaker 1: new house that we have. Yeah, so let's talk about that.
Speaker 1: I mean, they are ready to roll with lots of investigations,
Speaker 1: I mean already. I mean, I'm sure. So that's CNN
Speaker 1: polling last week that you know, the American people are
Speaker 1: not so interested in Hunter Biden's laptop. No, there's not,
Speaker 1: and I don't think And here's the key, given the
Speaker 1: way we operate now as a country versus fort example,
Speaker 1: even during the Benghazi hearings, you know, almost it's almost
Speaker 1: a decade ago, can you believe it? But the difference
Speaker 1: is that people just don't buy into that kind of
Speaker 1: stuff now, and they're already so planted into each side
Speaker 1: that if the Republicans, if that's all they can do
Speaker 1: is get into the Hunter Biden's laptop and let's say
Speaker 1: they can put it all online and everyone can see
Speaker 1: what's on it, and there is bad stuff on it,
Speaker 1: no one's going to care because you haven't done anything
Speaker 1: to govern, and they walk into this so poorly, with
Speaker 1: such a bad look votes. The calculus that McCarthy has
Speaker 1: made is that he has to appease the right and
Speaker 1: the center will go along. Right the far right and
Speaker 1: the center right will go along. But a lot of
Speaker 1: these people will in fact lose their seats. I mean
Speaker 1: they're in very swingy districts. So I mean, do those
Speaker 1: people eventually go like, funk this it's not for me,
Speaker 1: excuse my French. Or do you think they just are like,
Speaker 1: we have to appease the right. Um, it's a great question.
Speaker 1: I think. You know, there were eighteen newly elected members
Speaker 1: of Congress that came from Biden districts, and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of talk about how many were from New York.
Speaker 1: I'm willing to bet not including Santas, which is his
Speaker 1: own problem. Don't put that aside for a moment, But
Speaker 1: even Santos district, there is at least three or four
Speaker 1: of those newly elected Republicans that will not win reelection.
Speaker 1: They just won't. And it's the way it goes. It
Speaker 1: happens in New York quite often, by the way. Republicans
Speaker 1: come in at weird times where the rest of the
Speaker 1: country does not as great and Republicans do well, and
Speaker 1: then they get voted out in a presidential because of turnout.
Speaker 1: And so I do think that you know, I've been
Speaker 1: yelling for it. They all have the same vote. You know,
Speaker 1: how many votes a member of Congress has one. It
Speaker 1: doesn't matter if you're Matt Gates or Mike Lawler or whoever.
Speaker 1: You only get one vote. And I've been waiting for
Speaker 1: these eighteen to kind of form, if you will, like
Speaker 1: the Democracy Caucus is what I had had in mind,
Speaker 1: like they would actually do the right thing, because these
Speaker 1: are sensible people again minus santos Um, but there and
Speaker 1: there are others who want to do the right thing.
Speaker 1: Now here's where it gets interesting is that McCarthy is
Speaker 1: throwing out all these things. He had the anti abortion vote,
Speaker 1: he's going to do some stupid immigration you know, order vote.
Speaker 1: He's going to put all these really hardcore conservative votes
Speaker 1: out there. The question is how many or for how
Speaker 1: long will he continue to do that, because that's when
Speaker 1: they start getting pushed back from the middle because the
Speaker 1: Republicans that I just talked about, those eighteen plus about
Speaker 1: at least another twenty are not going to vote to
Speaker 1: default on our death. They won't do it right. Well,
Speaker 1: that is the big that is the big, big question.
Speaker 1: But the thing that I think is interesting, so people
Speaker 1: will people always say when when Nancy Pelosi. By the way,
Speaker 1: I think that McCarthy has been a walking advertisement for
Speaker 1: Nancy Pelosi, right, Like, this job is a lot harder
Speaker 1: than it looks. Right. But the question I had was,
Speaker 1: so here we have this guy who you know. One
Speaker 1: of the things that Ancy Pelosi was famous for was
Speaker 1: she never made Democrats vote on things that might hurt
Speaker 1: them in re election. So, for example, Medicare for all,
Speaker 1: she never took Medicare for all. She never let it
Speaker 1: go to the to the Congress because even though it's
Speaker 1: a very good idea, she worried it would hurt though
Speaker 1: was frontliners, the swingy Democrats like that it might hurt
Speaker 1: them in their re elections. So this is like completely
Speaker 1: contrary to exactly what McCarthy is doing. Yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 1: Pelosi was such, I mean, a tremendous leader. Not only
Speaker 1: could she get the votes that were really tough through
Speaker 1: with her very slim and equal majority to what McCarthy
Speaker 1: is feeling with now, but she also was able to
Speaker 1: work with the other side to know where the votes
Speaker 1: were to let her members off the hook. She was
Speaker 1: also known for telling her members, if you have to
Speaker 1: run against me and make me the devil, go right ahead,
Speaker 1: right She even like ego get in the way. Where
Speaker 1: is McCarthy The only thing he has is his ego
Speaker 1: because that's the only thing that's driving him to do
Speaker 1: this job. Otherwise, wouldn't you be so embarrassed? I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're a McCarthy, everything you've had to do for
Speaker 1: God's freake, But he lives with Frank Lutts. Okay, so
Speaker 1: I want to get into this for a second. Frank Lutts.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can say a lot of things about him,
Speaker 1: but he's no dummy. I mean, so, I mean there
Speaker 1: are people advising McCarthy who are explaining to him, Are
Speaker 1: there or am I just delusional? No? There are people
Speaker 1: who explain it. But the thing is is that no
Speaker 1: one knows as best as people in those positions, if
Speaker 1: you will, that are all based on ego, like McCarthy.
Speaker 1: Carthy listens, yes, but he still thinks he knows better.
Speaker 1: Right right, So you can surround yourself with really smart
Speaker 1: people and maybe do one or two smart things, but
Speaker 1: it won't stop you from blowing yourself up if you're
Speaker 1: convinced this is the only way I can get from
Speaker 1: here to there. Right, So it's Ego we are in
Speaker 1: this weird run up. There's one declared Republican candidate right now.
Speaker 1: His name is Donald Trump. He's very curious, and everyone
Speaker 1: trying to run against him. I mean, where does that go?
Speaker 1: I mean, do you think he ends up being the nominee?
Speaker 1: I actually don't think he'll appear on a ballot. Interesting.
Speaker 1: I don't say he's not going to run because he's announced,
Speaker 1: so that therefore he's running, But I don't think he
Speaker 1: will be running long enough to have his name on
Speaker 1: a natural ballot. So I've been let that way for
Speaker 1: a while. For there's a whole host of reasons. His
Speaker 1: legal troubles are going to start catching up with him.
Speaker 1: Poles are starting to move against him. And it's not
Speaker 1: if he can't be number one. He doesn't want it,
Speaker 1: and more importantly, he doesn't want to lose. And that
Speaker 1: fear of losing is what will probably be the biggest
Speaker 1: driver again going to Ego, because there's no way he wins.
Speaker 1: He can't moderate enough not only is it not in
Speaker 1: his personnel, but literally he can't do it. There's no
Speaker 1: room for him to change. But the problem is that
Speaker 1: reality of plotting the field is still there. It is.
Speaker 1: And yet that's what Donald Trump was betting on. Put
Speaker 1: my name in early. It'll stop people from running, or
Speaker 1: they'll just be speculations. So there really won't be much
Speaker 1: of a field if for some reason it works that
Speaker 1: I want to run. But the point was just to
Speaker 1: shut everyone else out. And here's the thing he's not
Speaker 1: and he didn't because Ron de Santis has not stopped
Speaker 1: the whisper campaign, he's amplified it. Nicki Haley probably jumps
Speaker 1: in now whether what you think of these two individuals,
Speaker 1: you know, we'll put aside. But the fact is is
Speaker 1: that they're going to get more attention and they're gonna
Speaker 1: be talking about what's happening in the future. And Donald
Speaker 1: Trump is going to be like, well, there's nothing without me. Okay,
Speaker 1: well what are you gonna do for me? Donald? It
Speaker 1: does seem to me like he's just so unable to
Speaker 1: stay on message that that is going to hurt him.
Speaker 1: And I also think like the novelty of him is
Speaker 1: gone absolutely and I actually think one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why he hasn't done the rallies is because his lawyers
Speaker 1: are petrified of him just going on. You know, he
Speaker 1: doesn't just do a typical speech or rally. He goes
Speaker 1: on for an hour with all these gripes and who
Speaker 1: knows what he's going to say when he gets on,
Speaker 1: you know, in his group. So I think that's one
Speaker 1: of the reasons. And people are tired of him people,
Speaker 1: and that's why I think that the problem with like
Speaker 1: Biden has a problem to people are tired of all
Speaker 1: of this. They want to put twenty six behind them.
Speaker 1: They're happy that Biden's there in that he's steadied the ship.
Speaker 1: But I think people want to look forward. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that's right. I continue, though, to wonder if
Speaker 1: you're I mean, I think there's certainly a hunger for that.
Speaker 1: But there are a lot of things in this Republican Party,
Speaker 1: for example, that sort of Trump has I'm trying to
Speaker 1: pivot to match Slap and Seapack Sea Pack is coming up.
Speaker 1: Match Lap has these allegations, there's tape. I mean, what
Speaker 1: are we doing here? I mean, does he just get
Speaker 1: to keep Sea pap because nobody cares. You know, what
Speaker 1: the heck is seapack Anyway, Kelly and Conboy did get
Speaker 1: one thing right when she went there right after Trump's win.
Speaker 1: It's Trump pack, it's tea pack. It's not conservative pack.
Speaker 1: This is nowhere close to what you used to see
Speaker 1: back in the day years ago when I started in
Speaker 1: the business, seapack. I mean, I think it wasn't a
Speaker 1: big fan, but it was like not it was actually
Speaker 1: conservative values moving forward and I and actually a place
Speaker 1: for ideas. Seepack now is just a Trump circus, and
Speaker 1: it's not surprising that one of its leaders find themselves
Speaker 1: in trouble. And so what is seapack? I mean seriously, like,
Speaker 1: I don't even know who cares to go to it anymore.
Speaker 1: People look like the Marjorie Taylor Greens of the world
Speaker 1: and Ghostart want to go to like the like. So
Speaker 1: who's going to see pack? Right, No, I mean it's
Speaker 1: a it's a very good question. Jesse is texting me.
Speaker 1: Then Matt Slap actually said they are not conservatives. They
Speaker 1: are people who are in love with the founding of America. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, I'm certainly not going anymore. I think the
Speaker 1: hope for a lot of the more sane Republicans left
Speaker 1: is that there'll be some kind of reckoning, right absolutely,
Speaker 1: And like I said, it'll take the party to burn down.
Speaker 1: It just it won't be small little improvements that you're
Speaker 1: gonna say, oh, we're a little bit better, We're a
Speaker 1: little bit better. It's going to have to be a
Speaker 1: complete utter failure at the electoral level, which is probably
Speaker 1: going to be. And I would say, with the exception
Speaker 1: of I think the Senate will flip to Republican just
Speaker 1: because of the map. I know everyone said, how could
Speaker 1: the Republicans lose this time? But there were at least
Speaker 1: a few swing states in play. But there's too many
Speaker 1: seats in play with too many incumbents. Like if Tester
Speaker 1: doesn't run, who wins Montana? Like what Democrat wins run?
Speaker 1: No one, do we think Tester is not running? I
Speaker 1: thought Tester was running. He may but like I'm just saying,
Speaker 1: the point is is that, like there's only a handful
Speaker 1: in West Virginia. I mean, yeah, he's just gonna say
Speaker 1: Mansion does he run as a Republican? Completely doable. I
Speaker 1: don't think Mangin can runs because Jim Justice is thinking
Speaker 1: about running right, But you know it all happened until
Speaker 1: it's it's all happening until it's not happening, right exactly. No,
Speaker 1: I mean the map is really bad. So you are
Speaker 1: a New York Republican and so this is really your wheelhouse.
Speaker 1: Why did Democrats have such a bad showing a New
Speaker 1: York State? Two reasons. One was the maps that the
Speaker 1: Democrats proposed were so ridiculous, and that was because of
Speaker 1: Sean Patrick Maloney, and let's put the blame there. He
Speaker 1: wanted it to go even further. Jerry nandered. So when
Speaker 1: the maps went to the courts, of course they got
Speaker 1: overturned because they were so bad. The second thing is
Speaker 1: is turnout in New York State was abysmal by the Democrats.
Speaker 1: Republicans were jazzed up, which normally doesn't matter, but Democrats
Speaker 1: did not show up. Everyone made a big deal about
Speaker 1: Kathy Hope. Oh my god, six points in a ten
Speaker 1: million dollars given to Lee's Eldon. You know what, Letitia
Speaker 1: James ran against the repulsion that didn't have bust. She
Speaker 1: ran against someone who didn't have bus there, and she
Speaker 1: won by eight points. Four years ago, she won by
Speaker 1: twenty seven points nothing changed except for Republican turnout. But
Speaker 1: more importantly, Democrats didn't show up. They just did. The
Speaker 1: numbers were not there, and that's what the Democrats have
Speaker 1: to fear. In states like New York and other places
Speaker 1: like people are not showing up. Yeah, that's so interesting.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. She's in del per c O.
Speaker 1: I hope you'll come back, of course, absolutely, thank you.
Speaker 1: I know you, our dear listeners are very busy and
Speaker 1: you don't have time to sort through the hundreds of
Speaker 1: pieces of pundentry each week. This is why every week
Speaker 1: I put together a newsletter of my five favorite articles
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Speaker 1: Danielle Allen is a contributing columnist at The Washington Post.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics, Danielle Allen. Thank you, Molly, glad
Speaker 1: to be here with you. I'm very excited to have
Speaker 1: you because it's a very interesting project that is something
Speaker 1: that is greatly needed. So explain to us what you're
Speaker 1: doing at the Washington Post. The short of it is.
Speaker 1: I think we all know a lot of us are
Speaker 1: pretty frustrated, anxious, depressed about the state of our politics.
Speaker 1: I've been in a state of high alert about our
Speaker 1: democracy for a decade, going back even longer, for a
Speaker 1: lot of reasons things happening to. My family lost a
Speaker 1: cousin in two thousand nine, which is real life turning
Speaker 1: point before me. So I've been thinking a lot about
Speaker 1: why is it that our democracy feels like it's not
Speaker 1: delivering for us right now? Why does it feel so
Speaker 1: much understrained, so fragile. And that has led me into
Speaker 1: a project that I call a project of democracy renovation.
Speaker 1: Think of our democracy, our institutions as a house. We
Speaker 1: all limited together, and you know, we're a heck of
Speaker 1: a lot bigger, has a family, and more complex than
Speaker 1: used to be. The systems aren't fit for purpose anymore.
Speaker 1: The house was never built for everybody. Some people had
Speaker 1: you know, beautiful rooms with a view. Others were stuck
Speaker 1: in gloomy basements, and so we've got to address that.
Speaker 1: And then there are other features of the house that
Speaker 1: have just been you know, sort of pillars and foundations
Speaker 1: knocked out from under us by transformation. For example, the
Speaker 1: transformation of social media. So I think we have a
Speaker 1: lot of deferred maintenance basically on our democracy, and so
Speaker 1: I'm spending my year for the Washington Post trying to
Speaker 1: lay out things that we can do to renovate our
Speaker 1: shared house, our democracy, so that it works for us
Speaker 1: in the twenty one century. So you're a political theorist
Speaker 1: at Harvard, can you explain to our listeners what that is?
Speaker 1: I feel like that's a real basic question. But like
Speaker 1: my dad, you know, just for whoever doesn't totally now,
Speaker 1: of course no, I mean, it's not an obvious thing.
Speaker 1: So I am in a political science to print, and
Speaker 1: so there are a whole lot of people who study politics,
Speaker 1: But that doesn't actually mean, you know, studying politics the
Speaker 1: way you read about it in the newspaper. It's not
Speaker 1: about tracking the horse race in the election or something
Speaker 1: like that. It's more about trying to understand the deeper
Speaker 1: phenomena that are affecting why our politics operates the way
Speaker 1: it does. And then, in my case, I'm also a
Speaker 1: political philosopher. That means I really ask questions not just
Speaker 1: about how things work and why they work, but also
Speaker 1: what should we do, how should they work, um, what
Speaker 1: are the positive visions we should pursue. So political philosophers,
Speaker 1: for example, think about theories of justice. There is a fairness,
Speaker 1: there is a freedom, theories of equality, and we ask
Speaker 1: a question, Okay, these ideals are worthy, how do we
Speaker 1: actually make them real in the world. So this feels
Speaker 1: like an impossible, impossible feat where do you start? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, first of all, we've got to remember that
Speaker 1: it's not impossible, and in some sense, you know, our
Speaker 1: history is a history of people carrying out toocracy renovations.
Speaker 1: There was the first really big one, known as the
Speaker 1: Constitutional Convention. It's fair to say that all those folks
Speaker 1: who helped design the Constitution were political theorists. For example,
Speaker 1: they thought about the how and the why and the what.
Speaker 1: But they also had a goal. You know, they were
Speaker 1: trying to achieve effective governance. They had a banking crisis,
Speaker 1: a Congress that couldn't form a quorum, they couldn't deal
Speaker 1: with their wartime debt, and so forth. It was really
Speaker 1: those issues that provoked the Constitutional Convention, and they literally
Speaker 1: re engineered the systems of their government in order to
Speaker 1: make sure it worked. Of course, we re engineered again
Speaker 1: after the Civil War, in the early twentieth century. A
Speaker 1: lot of re engineering happened then and what was known
Speaker 1: as that sort of progressive era, where that was when
Speaker 1: we got direct collection of senators, for example, and not
Speaker 1: having them be picked by the state legislatures anymore. It's
Speaker 1: when women got the right to vote. So we have
Speaker 1: had big periods of democracy renovation, and I believe we're
Speaker 1: due for another one. And what would that look like exactly?
Speaker 1: So there are a lot of pieces and parts of this,
Speaker 1: and I was fortunate to coachair a commit shim that
Speaker 1: did work on this. It was sponsored by an organization
Speaker 1: called the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. This is
Speaker 1: a super old organization's older than the country. It was
Speaker 1: founded by the same people who led the revolution. And
Speaker 1: what they wanted to do is assemble what they at
Speaker 1: the time called you, all the members of the learned professions,
Speaker 1: so doctors and lawyers and ministers and professors and so forth,
Speaker 1: who were asked to always sort of stand by as
Speaker 1: a knowledge body that could help the new country figure
Speaker 1: its way through problems. So we did a lot of
Speaker 1: work on the strain and our democracy, and we have
Speaker 1: a report with about thirty one recommendations. So it's a
Speaker 1: lot of things, and some of them are federal, some
Speaker 1: of them are at the state level. If I just
Speaker 1: started the federal level. For me, one of my favorites
Speaker 1: of the thirty one recommendations is the idea that it
Speaker 1: is time to uncap the House of Representatives. Oh. Interesting,
Speaker 1: the House was supposed to grow, you know, over time,
Speaker 1: and it hasn't grown for about a century. It seems
Speaker 1: like something that would be a hard cell to Republicans,
Speaker 1: but certainly was the original idea. It was the original
Speaker 1: idea exactly every ten year census, the House was supposed
Speaker 1: to grow again. We've actually done a lot of modeling
Speaker 1: on what it would mean to just play due deferred
Speaker 1: maintenance and grow it as if if we had stayed
Speaker 1: growing at the same sort of apportionment rate as had
Speaker 1: been historically the norm, we would currently be at about
Speaker 1: five and eighty five members. We've done a lot of
Speaker 1: modeling on that it does not actually obviously result in
Speaker 1: benefit to either party, So there may be a little
Speaker 1: window of possibility where we could actually get this through. Ooh,
Speaker 1: that's so interesting, And what states would benefit from this
Speaker 1: well to some extent, you know, as you might imagine
Speaker 1: the bigger states with the bigger populations wouldst for California exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But the other thing it would do is it would
Speaker 1: flow through to the electoral college. So the electoral college
Speaker 1: is was designed to be waited in favor of less
Speaker 1: populous states, But the numbers in the college electoral college
Speaker 1: flow directly from the size of the House. So one
Speaker 1: of the reasons the electoral ledge is so badly out
Speaker 1: of whack right now is because we haven't grown the
Speaker 1: house for a century. So that's really interesting. Can you
Speaker 1: give me one other really interesting suggestion, you guys said, sure. So,
Speaker 1: you know, we look at the Supreme Court and it's
Speaker 1: very clear that the longevity of justices has politicized that body.
Speaker 1: It means that, you know, the selection of Supreme Court
Speaker 1: justices is now sort of the number one issue in
Speaker 1: a presidential election. I think it's really important to de
Speaker 1: politicize the court, and we think that the most important
Speaker 1: way of doing that is by achieving term limits for
Speaker 1: Supreme Court justices. They don't need to serve for life,
Speaker 1: they could serve for eighteen years. There's a little bit
Speaker 1: of debate about whether this could be done merely through
Speaker 1: the rules of the judiciary. With the sort of transfer
Speaker 1: of justices to another court in the federal judiciary, they
Speaker 1: can stay in the system for life, but needn't stand
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court for life. Um, that's one possibility. Others
Speaker 1: think maybe it would require a constitutional amendment, but whatever
Speaker 1: the case, eighteen years with then you'd have a kind
Speaker 1: of routine beat of justices rotating on and off. Every
Speaker 1: president would get basically the same number of justices to
Speaker 1: a point, and in principle, that would help deep politicize
Speaker 1: the court. Yeah, do you feel like there's an appetite
Speaker 1: for this stuff? I mean, I certainly am all in
Speaker 1: on it, but I'm just curious since you've been on this. Sure,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's definitely an appetite in among us, you know,
Speaker 1: Americans broadly across the country. If I hear your question right,
Speaker 1: I'm hearing a question about politicians and could we actually
Speaker 1: gets done? Yes. So I think that's a really important point,
Speaker 1: and it matters in some sense. There's kind of like
Speaker 1: an order of operations you have to think about here.
Speaker 1: Probably we're not likely to get Congress to do these
Speaker 1: things right up front, so it's really important to remember
Speaker 1: that power over how members of Congress get elected lies
Speaker 1: in the states. So in every state we can do
Speaker 1: what Alaska just did, for example, change the election method.
Speaker 1: Nevada just voted as well for an approach with a
Speaker 1: nonpartisan primary for ranked choice right believen. More importantly than
Speaker 1: that is shifting away from a partisan primary to what
Speaker 1: you might call it a preliminary where you've got all
Speaker 1: comers and you take the top four or five candidates
Speaker 1: on and yes, instant runoff in the general election. But
Speaker 1: it's really that switch away from the party primary structure
Speaker 1: that is the importance of opening up. It means candidates
Speaker 1: would have to campaign to the general electorate all the
Speaker 1: way through the process. That's what would generate different dynamics
Speaker 1: in incentives for elected officials. That's really interesting. Do you
Speaker 1: think that's feasible. I mean, certainly it's it is happening
Speaker 1: so that and it's Nevada is is a swing state,
Speaker 1: but Alaska is very brad Yeah. I mean this is
Speaker 1: a mechanism that is beneficial again in both red and
Speaker 1: blue context. So when I talk about toxic renovation, I
Speaker 1: am not talking about this in a partisan way. I
Speaker 1: am talking about what I think we need to have
Speaker 1: institutions that are responsive to the people, that can get
Speaker 1: us past gridlock to effective steering so that we can
Speaker 1: solve the urgent problems that we collectively share. Do you
Speaker 1: want to talk a little bit about your about because sure,
Speaker 1: I mean I said, I've had a sense of urgency
Speaker 1: about our democracy for a long time, and that does
Speaker 1: really come from basic family experiences. You know. The first
Speaker 1: part of that is I have come by as sort
Speaker 1: of commitment to democracy totally honestly, just as a matter
Speaker 1: of family inheritance. You know, my granddad helped found one
Speaker 1: of the first end of l A c. P Chapters
Speaker 1: in northern Florida in the forties, which was just super
Speaker 1: dangerous for and then on my mom's side, my great
Speaker 1: grandparents helped fight for women's right to vote in the
Speaker 1: early twentieth century. So my greatgrandmother was president of the
Speaker 1: Legal Women Voters in Michigan in the thirties. So dangerous, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: not not quite the same level, but through amount of
Speaker 1: insanity for sure, right, yes, for sure. So that kind
Speaker 1: of commit been to empowerment was just sort of part
Speaker 1: of the air and water that I breathed growing up.
Speaker 1: And so democracy didn't really become personal to me until
Speaker 1: I just watched my own generational cohort come up in
Speaker 1: the world. And whereas my parents generation everybody came up,
Speaker 1: that wasn't true for my generation. For my generation, it
Speaker 1: was really what I call the great pulling apart. So
Speaker 1: you know, some of us had amazing opportunities. Here I
Speaker 1: sit tenure and professor at Harvard. I believe there's no
Speaker 1: more privileged position in the world from the point of
Speaker 1: view of freedom and security. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: I've got dead cousins, and not in a way you
Speaker 1: can feel good about, so homicide and substance use disorder
Speaker 1: and things like that. So because it's my book about
Speaker 1: one of my cousins, my baby cousin, Michael. Michael was
Speaker 1: killed in two thousand nine. He was shot and killed.
Speaker 1: He had spent a long time in prison. He had
Speaker 1: gone to prison at the age of fifteen on a
Speaker 1: first arrest in southern California for an attempted carjacking. This
Speaker 1: was a terrible thing to have done, obviously, but it
Speaker 1: was also a time when punishment in California was at
Speaker 1: its most intense. So Michael got a sentence of twelve
Speaker 1: years and eight months and serve most of that, so
Speaker 1: it only had two years out at the point that
Speaker 1: he was again shot and killed by somebody he had
Speaker 1: met while he was in prison. So that sort of
Speaker 1: changed everything for me. Really, all the work I had
Speaker 1: already been doing on democracy, it came to sort of
Speaker 1: pull it to a focus on justice reform. But I
Speaker 1: quickly came to understand that even where we had bipartisan
Speaker 1: solutions for problems, it was really hard to get them
Speaker 1: through because of the dysfunction of our politics. So that's
Speaker 1: what brought my attention then to our democracy. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: we need that democracy renovation in order to do some
Speaker 1: of the really important things we all need to do
Speaker 1: for our communities. I feel like criminal justice reform is
Speaker 1: a part of this, It's a part of it, for sure.
Speaker 1: And also being able to address the urgent problems in
Speaker 1: the economy, you know, real sort of stalling out of
Speaker 1: mobility for a whole lot of people, the fact that
Speaker 1: so many people can't find a footing in the labor
Speaker 1: market in the sense of good jobs, jobs that are
Speaker 1: only sustaining jobs that permit a sort of thriving life. Um,
Speaker 1: there's work out there, but a lot of it really
Speaker 1: alienating or exploitative in various ways. So right now, you know,
Speaker 1: our society is kind of scaling up and getting ever
Speaker 1: more complex, and we're not actually dealing with that in
Speaker 1: ways that give people a foundation for flourishing in their communities.
Speaker 1: And that's about criminal justice. It's about safety from violence
Speaker 1: for you know, all people need that safety. I mean
Speaker 1: that's not just about crimes, but violence generally in our culture.
Speaker 1: And you know, we just while watched what's happened in Memphis,
Speaker 1: you know, this past period of time. So there's a
Speaker 1: lot that we need to do on our own. Palf Yeah,
Speaker 1: so important and so interesting. Do you think there's anything
Speaker 1: sort of solid that the Biden administration can do? Now?
Speaker 1: A lot of this is on the federal, but do
Speaker 1: you have any you know, sort of recommendations for them.
Speaker 1: You know, this is a slightly different direction, but I
Speaker 1: think that there are a lot of really important oportunities
Speaker 1: in the work they've just done passing the Inflation Reduction Act,
Speaker 1: for instance, So that is going to require an awful
Speaker 1: lot of proactive coordination across the different levels of our
Speaker 1: federal system, so federal, state, county, and municipal and I
Speaker 1: think that is actually a real opportunity to you know,
Speaker 1: strengthen and make much healthier. How all those different jurisdictional
Speaker 1: levels are working together, can we find a kind of
Speaker 1: harmonizing approach. I talk about aspirational federalism a lot. I
Speaker 1: think the Biden administration actually has a real opportunity to
Speaker 1: show us, you know, a really different way that we
Speaker 1: can go about putting the puzzle pieces together and becoming
Speaker 1: a country where we can actually get things done with
Speaker 1: a sense of common purpose. Yeah. No, it definitely seems
Speaker 1: like that. You still teach undergrads, right ye undergrads and
Speaker 1: graduate students yea, the whole gamut. I mean, are you
Speaker 1: seeing anything that we should know that's hopeful that will
Speaker 1: make us less depressed? No pressure, Well, I mean let me,
Speaker 1: I am full, but let me first just at the
Speaker 1: context a little bit. I mean, you're right, my students
Speaker 1: right now, there is a lot of fear, a lot
Speaker 1: of anger, a lot of anxiety. Those are the emotions
Speaker 1: that they register. I do little surveys even at the
Speaker 1: start of class about things, and those are the emotions
Speaker 1: that came out at the start of this semester for sure.
Speaker 1: So I can't pretend that there's a kind of you know,
Speaker 1: joyful wave about to ascend. At the same time, though,
Speaker 1: I am hopeful, I said, I've been working in this
Speaker 1: space of democracy renovation for about a decade now, and
Speaker 1: my total red alert went off in when Congress had
Speaker 1: at nine approval rating. So from my point of view,
Speaker 1: honestly my estimates, we're about halfway through a really bad store.
Speaker 1: I think we've got another decade to go. It's a
Speaker 1: long time, but I actually think we're halfway through. And
Speaker 1: the reason I think that is because I can see
Speaker 1: so many people all over the country at the grassroots
Speaker 1: level working at democracy renovation at every level, city level,
Speaker 1: you know, where people are working on things like participatory budgeting,
Speaker 1: or bringing in rank choice voting so that you have
Speaker 1: more inclusion, or people participating, you know, the effort to
Speaker 1: really achieve high levels of voter registration and voter participation.
Speaker 1: I mean, there is a lot of renovation work going
Speaker 1: on all over the country, and that wasn't really true
Speaker 1: a decade ago. So that in itself is enough to
Speaker 1: tell me we're headed in the right direction. Oh Okay,
Speaker 1: now we have to end because this was hopeful and
Speaker 1: that never happens. So we have to end now because
Speaker 1: we never get a hopeful moment here. I hope you
Speaker 1: will come back. Thank you such an important voice. And
Speaker 1: also you have a really interesting perspective in in this,
Speaker 1: and I think to get some I feel like we're
Speaker 1: so in it and we never sort of pull back
Speaker 1: to have high level thinkers in here to sort of
Speaker 1: explain the philosophical So this is really helpful, at least
Speaker 1: to me anyway. Well, I'm glad to hear that. Anything
Speaker 1: I can do to be helpful, glad to do it.
Speaker 1: And it's been a pleasure to talk with you. Molly.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Molly Jung Fast Jesse Cannon. That carry Lake woman,
Speaker 1: a woman who clearly has a writer that says she
Speaker 1: cannot go anywhere without perfect lighting or a filter on
Speaker 1: her zoom. She's in a little trouble I here. So
Speaker 1: she wanted to be governor, but instead she's going to
Speaker 1: be investigated. The request from Arizona Secretary of State comes
Speaker 1: after Lake posted a tweet on January that made an
Speaker 1: unfounded claim that there were forty thou ballots that didn't
Speaker 1: match voter signatures that the state had on record. Lake
Speaker 1: posted a graphic that showed sixteen voters studentatures alleging that
Speaker 1: they didn't match with what Arizona had on file. Look,
Speaker 1: this is going to keep happening until a stop is
Speaker 1: put to it, and so it is really important that
Speaker 1: people who believe in Democrats see stand up for it.
Speaker 1: There's very few little to look forward to in the future.
Speaker 1: But the one thing I look forward to in the
Speaker 1: future is carry running against Reuben Diego and him having
Speaker 1: to remind her that she ran even behind blake Masters
Speaker 1: in some of the districts that she lost. Well, we could,
Speaker 1: I think we could see a Blake Master's Carrie leg
Speaker 1: Reuben Diego Kirsten cinema deathmatch. One of those fools is
Speaker 1: going to step up to the plate. Yeah, and for that,
Speaker 1: but she is our moment of gray. That's it for
Speaker 1: this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday
Speaker 1: and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes
Speaker 1: sense 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.