Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discuss the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds. And Matt Gates said he will attempt
Speaker 1: to oust Kevin McCarthy from the speakership. This week, we
Speaker 1: have an amazing show for you today, The States Projects
Speaker 1: Daniel Squadron talks to us about how his organization helps Democrats.
Speaker 1: We'll talk to NPR Steve Inskeep. He'll tell us about
Speaker 1: his new book Different. We must how Lincoln succeeded in
Speaker 1: a divided America.
Speaker 2: But first we have the.
Speaker 1: Author of Win Every Argument. MSNBC's Madi Hassan. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to Fast Politics, Maddie.
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Momie, I hope you were watching those quote unquote impeachment
Speaker 1: hearings with the same sort of unbelievable shodenfreude that I
Speaker 1: was discussed.
Speaker 3: It was hilarious. I have to say.
Speaker 4: It was so much worse for the Republicans that I
Speaker 4: thought it would be. I think we all thought it
Speaker 4: would be bad for the Republicans. Anyone who's been following
Speaker 4: the Hunter hundred stuff for years, there's.
Speaker 3: No there there.
Speaker 4: I thought they would at least have some kind of
Speaker 4: you know, as Neil Cavuto FOP Post put it yesterday,
Speaker 4: we thought there would be smoke and there might be
Speaker 4: some fire to go with the smoke, but there was
Speaker 4: just more smoke on top of smoke.
Speaker 3: They were so unprepared. And I keep saying that, I've
Speaker 3: been saying this for years.
Speaker 4: The only reason we are not in a fully complete
Speaker 4: fascist state in America right now is because, thankfully, the
Speaker 4: fascist on offerers so incompetent. And that applies to Donald Trump,
Speaker 4: that applies to all of these House Republican freaks.
Speaker 3: They're just so bad at their jobs.
Speaker 4: We are lucky that we are not up against smart
Speaker 4: and savvy fascists, and there are smart and savy Faschis
Speaker 4: out there, but the ones in charge of the.
Speaker 3: GOP right now are just so incompetent.
Speaker 4: Whether it's Kevin McCarthy, whether it's Jim Jordan, whether it's
Speaker 4: James Comer, Byron Donald's rising star, you know, admitting to
Speaker 4: evidence a text it Alexandria Costick pares a part. It's
Speaker 4: just a completely out of context doctor Meanich. And this
Speaker 4: is what they did, and it was so bad that
Speaker 4: their own aids are going around briefing CNN of all
Speaker 4: people saying, oh my god, this was a disaster.
Speaker 3: This was a catastrophe.
Speaker 4: You have Steve Bannon in real time being quoted by
Speaker 4: Democrats in the inquiry, while he says on his show
Speaker 4: in real time, why do we have these witnesses? Why
Speaker 4: were they not on the maybe list? Why is it
Speaker 4: so going so badly? So, yeah, it was a disaster.
Speaker 4: On one hand, it was fun to watch. On the
Speaker 4: other hand, let's remind ourselves by them doing this, not
Speaker 4: only are they degrading Congress, degrading impeachment, but of course
Speaker 4: there's a government shutdown coming as well, so it's an insult.
Speaker 4: All these people are going to lose paychecks on Monday morning.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I did think that was incredible stuff.
Speaker 1: And I think it's really important to note that there
Speaker 1: really is like their job is actually to govern, and
Speaker 1: you know, it was fun to watch, but ultimately the
Speaker 1: American people suffer.
Speaker 3: They've made it clear that isn't their job. I mean,
Speaker 3: they're not hiding it. Their job is not to govern.
Speaker 3: Their job is to own the Libs. Their job is
Speaker 3: to perform. Their job is to be on Fox.
Speaker 4: I think Maxwell Frost had a great line about Jonathan Turny,
Speaker 4: thank you for stopping by here on your way to
Speaker 4: your neck Fox here.
Speaker 3: That sums them up perfectly.
Speaker 4: And John Bayner said this years ago in his memoir
Speaker 4: that I was dealing with a crazy right wing caucus.
Speaker 4: He said, where Michelle Backman If I turned her down?
Speaker 4: She said, when I'm going on Hannity tonight to criticize
Speaker 4: you like that has been the plan for years. That
Speaker 4: is what they do. I mean, there's a great supercut.
Speaker 4: I'm sure you spend as much time as I do,
Speaker 4: on a healthy amount of time on Twitter as I do. Molly,
Speaker 4: you've seen, I'm sure the supercut of Ted Cruz just
Speaker 4: saying on my podcast, on my podcast, on my podcast,
Speaker 4: on my podcast, he's a podcaster first, a senator from
Speaker 4: the great state of Texas second.
Speaker 3: And that is who these people are.
Speaker 4: They're not interested in governing, to the point where New
Speaker 4: Gingrich is telling the Washington Post today, I think this
Speaker 4: is nuts. What are they doing a shutdown for? Even
Speaker 4: New Gingrich, the master of nihilistic politics, have burn it
Speaker 4: all down of confrontation. Even he doesn't understand what is
Speaker 4: going on with the shutdown and ask for the impeachment inquiry. Yeah,
Speaker 4: they're doing it for the sake of doing it. But
Speaker 4: with Bill Clinton at least there was something there. With this,
Speaker 4: there's literally nothing. They've got nothing on the Biden and
Speaker 4: all that yesterday was was a great opportunity, as you
Speaker 4: and I both pointed out in separate tweets, for House
Speaker 4: Democrats to say, hey, look at our young and upcoming stars.
Speaker 3: Especially with people of color.
Speaker 4: Look at Maxwell Frost owning the Republicans. Look at Jasmine
Speaker 4: Crockett in that amazing passionate viral moment Summer Lee obviously
Speaker 4: AOSC who is known for years doing fantastic well. These
Speaker 4: people were just knocking it out of the park one
Speaker 4: after another, and it's just a reminder of how good
Speaker 4: the quote unquote Democratic benches that were often told is
Speaker 4: not deep, and how bad the Republican leadership.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I was watching.
Speaker 1: There were so many of these Republicans just like mediocre
Speaker 1: white guys with red ties sitting there sort of looking embarrassed.
Speaker 4: People you've never heard of. And they found me like
Speaker 4: Oligo Glock. The other guy couldn't say olig That.
Speaker 3: Was my favorite word.
Speaker 4: There's no quality control on half of the American political spectrum.
Speaker 1: Well, we have an education problem in this country, but
Speaker 1: that is for another day. I just want to get
Speaker 1: back to New Gingridge, Like New Gangridge was the architect
Speaker 1: of all of these kind of like shutdowns for shutdowns
Speaker 1: sake and the government to burn it down and this
Speaker 1: sort of Marxist zeal.
Speaker 2: But my question for you is this now here we are?
Speaker 1: This shutdown even seems like as shutdowns go, it's basically
Speaker 1: mad Gates thinking he's acting on the behest of Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: which he probably is versus Kevin McCarthy.
Speaker 2: There's not some other thing here that we're not seeing, right, No.
Speaker 4: It is an intra republican squabble between Kevin McCarthy and maccate.
Speaker 4: I think is post of Politico is some outlet to
Speaker 4: thatcarmam which one has a great piece about how it's
Speaker 4: so personal between them, and there's a really depressing graph
Speaker 4: and the piece about how i ardly they both are
Speaker 4: annoyed and they're jealous that Donald Trump likes one over
Speaker 4: the other. They both think Trump likes the other one more.
Speaker 4: Imagine bringing the country to a screeching halt because you
Speaker 4: want Donald Trump to love you more than your colleague.
Speaker 4: I mean it tells you everything about the Republican body.
Speaker 4: And just to go about to New Gingridge, Like when
Speaker 4: New gingridg as you say, the architect of burn it
Speaker 4: down of government shutdowns is saying, what are we doing here?
Speaker 4: This is nuts? It's like, I don't know. It's like
Speaker 4: Jack the Rippa saying you're killing too many people?
Speaker 3: Like what is going on here? What on earth are
Speaker 3: we do?
Speaker 4: Wherever the Republican Party reached And you know, Jamie Raskin
Speaker 4: had a great lad in the impeachment inquiry accident, and
Speaker 4: this is a Seinfeld impeachment, right, It's an impeachament about nothing,
Speaker 4: and the same line as being applied to the shutdown.
Speaker 4: It's a Seinfeld shutdown. It's about nothing. Whatever you think
Speaker 4: about the old GOP shutdowns, which were also absurd, at
Speaker 4: least they were about something. Right in twenty eighteen nineteen,
Speaker 4: it was about funding the border wall. A decade ago,
Speaker 4: it was about ACA, Obamacare, all of that nonsense that
Speaker 4: they opposed. Now it's about literally, what are shutting the governor?
Speaker 4: What's your demand? Didn't have one?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: I kind of want to talk about Representative Tony Gonzales.
Speaker 2: He is in Republican leadership.
Speaker 1: But yesterday he was not focused on the government shut down,
Speaker 1: nor was he focused on the quote unquote impeachment.
Speaker 2: He was on a little trip with our are a
Speaker 2: good friend.
Speaker 4: He was with the owner of x dot com formerly
Speaker 4: known as Twitter, who I don't understand. I know, I
Speaker 4: sound silly, a knaghy, and this is a gender This
Speaker 4: is not genuine question. What was Elon Musk doing at
Speaker 4: the border? Like why he's not running for president? By
Speaker 4: the way his stands may want him to be president,
Speaker 4: He can never be president, thankfully.
Speaker 2: Not born in this country.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the one blessing of our lives. And what is
Speaker 3: he doing there?
Speaker 4: Like is the CEO of BMW going to the border tomorrow.
Speaker 4: I know we've become numb to this, Molly, but the
Speaker 4: guy runs a car company and owned the social media
Speaker 4: with it. What is he doing there? And least when
Speaker 4: Mark Zuckerberg went on this tour of Americas because we
Speaker 4: thought he might run for president in twenty twenty, thankfully
Speaker 4: he did not. What I don't understand, no one even
Speaker 4: we've reached this weird part of celebrity politics now where
Speaker 4: no one even asks why is he at the border.
Speaker 4: We're just expressed to think that's normal. He turns up
Speaker 4: the border in a cowboy hat that apparently I'm no
Speaker 4: expot on cobwoin. He was wearing it backwards. You know,
Speaker 4: that's how it is to be the richest around in
Speaker 4: the world. None of your sycophantic staff will tell you, boss,
Speaker 4: you got the cap on the wrong way round, nor
Speaker 4: will the.
Speaker 3: Congressman who's hosting you, presumably news. It's so busy.
Speaker 4: He turns up there and then he goes live on
Speaker 4: ck the video and then stops working. There's reporting that
Speaker 4: he blasted his staff and said make this work, which
Speaker 4: is so ironic.
Speaker 3: By the way.
Speaker 4: On a side, I've be watching a lot of Elon
Speaker 4: Musk recently for my sins because I did a long
Speaker 4: He's a shameless plug for that Mary Hussen show. This
Speaker 4: week we did a long, deep dive into hate on Twitter,
Speaker 4: which must claims doesn't exist. You remember that time he
Speaker 4: said to the BBC reporter, name me an example, and
Speaker 4: the reporter foolishly can't do it. So we've gone through
Speaker 4: two dozen examples of tweets that are up, including Musk's
Speaker 4: own anti Semitic tweet. But anyways, we did that, so
Speaker 4: we watched a lot of Musk footage. When you watch musks,
Speaker 4: A lot of us don't watch Musk, right, we see
Speaker 4: his tweet, actually watch him speak as he was yesterday.
Speaker 4: My god, the man lacks charisma. My god, the man
Speaker 4: struggles to deliver a sentence. My god, the man is
Speaker 4: a bad speaker. He's just got nothing to say, which
Speaker 4: is probably why he spends so much time on his keyboard.
Speaker 4: So I just found that fascinating that, like, you know,
Speaker 4: why are you there. You're not very good at what
Speaker 4: you're doing. Your platfor is working on a day when
Speaker 4: your CEO also had a meltdown.
Speaker 3: The day after that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that was interesting.
Speaker 4: The whole thing is bizarre. And as AOC said, what's
Speaker 4: the congressman doing there? Why is he not on the
Speaker 4: Capitol Hill trying to protect his constituents from an unnecessary shutdown?
Speaker 4: A shut down by the way, let's just put a
Speaker 4: bow on all of this which they're causing.
Speaker 3: They're causing.
Speaker 5: It will cost the CBP millions dollars, As Mitchell McConnell
Speaker 5: pointed out, their beloved border patrol and Border protection is
Speaker 5: going to get cut in funding when the government shuts down.
Speaker 3: How ironic.
Speaker 2: But the thing that I.
Speaker 1: Don't understand about it is it's true he owns a
Speaker 1: car company, but he also owns a large percentage of
Speaker 1: American satellites. So this is not like the CEO of
Speaker 1: Overstock acting out right. This is a person for whom
Speaker 1: his opinions, as we found out with the use or
Speaker 1: abuse of starlink, right, has real consequences.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: He turned off starlink so that the Ukrainians couldn't attack
Speaker 1: the Russians because he felt again and there are many,
Speaker 1: many different reasons why that have been offered, but we
Speaker 1: clearly are not getting this straight story here.
Speaker 2: So I do think it's a national security risk, so.
Speaker 3: I mean the nationally It's interesting.
Speaker 4: Yesterday he tweeted out classic right wing bop talking point,
Speaker 4: why do politicians on both sides care a hundred times
Speaker 4: more about the border of Ukraine than our border? Which
Speaker 4: he could have been lifted straight from a kind of
Speaker 4: Marjorie Taylor Green Gostar press release. I had Joel Roth
Speaker 4: on my show this week at former Twitter head of
Speaker 4: Trust and Safety. You had to flee his home because
Speaker 4: Musk Stands threatened his life and Musk suggested falsely he
Speaker 4: was a groomer, a lovely guy, and Joel Roth made
Speaker 4: the point that we should stop treating Musk's politics as
Speaker 4: somehow marcurial.
Speaker 3: Oh is he an independent? Is he? What is he anti?
Speaker 4: He's just your Bob standard far right Republican who's spewing
Speaker 4: Fox and bright Bart talking points. And that becomes very
Speaker 4: clear with this border trip. And the best part of
Speaker 4: this is and that not the best part. Actually the
Speaker 4: worst part, most ironic part which really annoys me and
Speaker 4: I hope annoys your listeners, which is that he goes
Speaker 4: to the border, as you say, does this republican stunt
Speaker 4: with a Republican congressman. He's busy running an anti Semitic
Speaker 4: campaign against the ADL. And yet at the same time,
Speaker 4: the Biden administration just gave him another contract this week
Speaker 4: to space X. They just got another government contract. I
Speaker 4: think we're seventy million dollars. And at the same time,
Speaker 4: the Wall Street Journal does It op ed last week saying, hey,
Speaker 4: why is the Biden administration targeting Musk with all these
Speaker 4: investigations and lawsuits? He shares a great Yeah, they seem
Speaker 4: to be targeting me. Yeah, they are targeting you with
Speaker 4: taxpayers cash. Why Chuck tchumor just hosted Elon Musk. I'm
Speaker 4: amazed that more Democrats don't ask Chuck Schumer, why are
Speaker 4: you hosting Elon Musk? If classic Democratic Party you can
Speaker 4: beat us, we'll give you the stick to beat us with.
Speaker 4: We'll still be nice to you and host you and
Speaker 4: reach out across the aisle and be biparties. Can you imagine,
Speaker 4: just imagine for a second, Molly Senator Mitch McConnell as
Speaker 4: a majority leader, or Kevin McCarthy hosting George Soros for
Speaker 4: an event a George Sorry, Jeffrey Katzenberg or some I
Speaker 4: don't know, some Democratic billionaire who gives billions to.
Speaker 3: The Bart and slags the Republicans.
Speaker 4: It would never happen, and if it did happen, the
Speaker 4: Republican base would go mad and McConnell slash McCarthy would
Speaker 4: have to apologize and withdraw the invite. But not on
Speaker 4: the Democratics that they just hosted Elon Muskus. If it's
Speaker 4: totally normal to host Elon Musk. And one last point
Speaker 4: on this the Ronan Pharaoh piece. I hope everyone has
Speaker 4: read the Ronan Pharaoh piece, not just for what Musk says,
Speaker 4: is quoted as saying in there, there's a Pentagon spokesman
Speaker 4: in a Democratic administration who tells the New Yorker, I
Speaker 4: don't know if I can talk to you unless mister
Speaker 4: Musk is me permission.
Speaker 3: Uh what governments? Most people have to get permission from
Speaker 3: Elon Musk to talk to journals. Where are we living?
Speaker 3: You know, oligloggold Lucky.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Maddie, Yes exactly, and yes, and I think
Speaker 1: that's a really good point.
Speaker 2: And we don't see democrats do the number.
Speaker 3: They're weak.
Speaker 1: I would also add, there aren't all that many great alternatives.
Speaker 1: So there is a question of like, why is government
Speaker 1: putting its finger on the scale for someone who we know,
Speaker 1: oh is clearly at best conservative, at worst severely you know,
Speaker 1: mentally ill. I mean, what I think is really interesting.
Speaker 1: And you see this with the biography that just came out,
Speaker 1: these very severe right leaning perhaps autocratic and you know,
Speaker 1: I want to say racist, but I want to say
Speaker 1: something that's like a little less extreme than racism. But clearly,
Speaker 1: I mean the whole idea South Africa is based on
Speaker 1: this racism, right, So this is the family has you know,
Speaker 1: these are like strong roots. I mean this is not
Speaker 1: like the guy just came along to these values. I mean,
Speaker 1: it seems very clear that Elon Musk has always believed
Speaker 1: these things.
Speaker 3: It's interesting topic.
Speaker 4: Here is another topic that again reminds you of why
Speaker 4: liberals always fight with one on behind their back.
Speaker 3: I want to say a couple of things.
Speaker 4: One is you mentioned like, you know, is he kind
Speaker 4: of mentally he behaves in a deranged fashion. I just
Speaker 4: want to clarify because I know this is not what
Speaker 4: you were saying. Like, the guy has talked about being
Speaker 4: on the spectrum, right, he's talked about right his issues.
Speaker 4: That is not why he's a awful But let's just
Speaker 4: be very very clear about that. You know, Walter Isaacson
Speaker 4: and his biography talks about all of you know that
Speaker 4: that aspect of his character, and does that make him
Speaker 4: a joke? I personally get very frustrated when people are like, oh,
Speaker 4: you know, it's like Republicans say, we have all these
Speaker 4: shooters because of mental illness.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 4: First of all, don't blame violence on mentally ill people, right.
Speaker 4: And number two, there are lots of people with mental
Speaker 4: health issues who are not jerk. Right, the fundament he's
Speaker 4: a jerk because he's a jerk. He behaves in a
Speaker 4: deranged manner, because a lot of people on the right,
Speaker 4: as we just discussed at the start as this show,
Speaker 4: behave in a deranged man that seems to be more
Speaker 4: related to the politics of these people than anything inside
Speaker 4: of their head. As many people are pointed out, Musk
Speaker 4: wasn't always like this, like he wasn't this deranged and
Speaker 4: conspiratorial five ten years ago. It's the more he goes
Speaker 4: down into the right wing fever swamps that he behaves
Speaker 4: like every other right wing grifter. So I think it's
Speaker 4: worth just establishing that. To come back to your point
Speaker 4: about racism. You know, he's been tweeting recently about South
Speaker 4: Africa and talking about you know, kill the Whitey song
Speaker 4: and all the stuff that's going on in South Africa.
Speaker 4: He's been endorsing some rather dangerous tropes about white genocide
Speaker 4: in South Africa that Kaka Carlson and Donald Trump have
Speaker 4: done in the past.
Speaker 3: I would say this, look whether his.
Speaker 4: Racism today, and as I say, I've done a long
Speaker 4: deep dive about the racism on X and that racism
Speaker 4: that comes from his own account. Some of the neon
Speaker 4: artsis He replies, to and amplifies and some of the
Speaker 4: horrible things he says. Is that a product of his
Speaker 4: childhood upbringing? I genuinely don't know. But maybe it's funny
Speaker 4: how we don't talk about it, because that's like it's
Speaker 4: off limit to point out that the guy grew up
Speaker 4: in white controls South Africa. Maybe maybe that's part of
Speaker 4: his worldview. I'm not saying it is, but I would
Speaker 4: argue that you know, as a Muslim, as somebod who
Speaker 4: spent the last twenty years always having to justify my
Speaker 4: views as what is not because of my religion or
Speaker 4: you know, don't type cast me because I'm a Muslim,
Speaker 4: or I don't have to apologize for what Muslim countries
Speaker 4: are doing.
Speaker 3: I'm not even from.
Speaker 4: The Middle East, and I spent half my life having
Speaker 4: to defend myself saying, well, no, I'm not speaking on
Speaker 4: behalf of Iran. No, it's funny that the guy actually
Speaker 4: from apartheid South Africa who now says racist things is
Speaker 4: not asked.
Speaker 3: At well, is this because of your upbringing?
Speaker 1: And whose grandfather went to apartheid South Africa because he
Speaker 1: liked apartheid so much? I mean, I get conservative saying
Speaker 1: to me, well, your grandfather was a communist, so you
Speaker 1: must be a communist, by the way, to which I say,
Speaker 1: my grandfather did the right thing and refused to name
Speaker 1: names for the house on an American activity when the
Speaker 1: American government went rogue, and I hope that if I'm
Speaker 1: in a position, I.
Speaker 2: Would do the same.
Speaker 1: And so I do think it is an incredible, incredible
Speaker 1: sense in which like he should not be given the
Speaker 1: benefit of the doubt. But I just want to move
Speaker 1: on from Elon Musk for two seconds. So there's going
Speaker 1: to be a government shutdown, Republicans's aren't worried. I was
Speaker 1: on CNN with a Republican strategist just like an hour
Speaker 1: or two ago, and he was saying, he was reading
Speaker 1: out these statistics and he was like, well, twenty percent
Speaker 1: of Americans will blame the Biden administration for this shutdown.
Speaker 1: And I was like, Okay, I don't think that's true,
Speaker 1: but sure.
Speaker 4: What So three quick things in response to that number
Speaker 4: One Republican strategist, isn't that Oxymoor On these days?
Speaker 3: I would just say I love the title. Two.
Speaker 4: The polling does suggest that if you put if you
Speaker 4: look at the polls and you and I can talk
Speaker 4: about Poles another day. The polling does suggest, if you
Speaker 4: believe the polls, that a bigger PLIALI voters blame Democrats
Speaker 4: in Congress plus the Biden illustration then blame the House gup.
Speaker 4: And I think that's a fact. That's also part of
Speaker 4: asking the question. You're dividing up Democrats into Biden and Democrats.
Speaker 4: So some people pick Democrats, some people of it Biden.
Speaker 4: But look, we don't know the exact numbers. Clearly there's
Speaker 4: a big number of Americans who blame them. Now many
Speaker 4: of them will be Republicans who just blame Democrats for everything.
Speaker 4: This priorization in this country that underlies every poll. But
Speaker 4: the third point I would make is this, it does
Speaker 4: matter what democrats say.
Speaker 3: I say this all the time.
Speaker 4: Every time you leave a vacuum in politics, just as
Speaker 4: in nature, you cannot leave a vacuum and aphause.
Speaker 3: A vacu Right.
Speaker 4: So when Democrats say, oh, well let's get out of
Speaker 4: the way and let Republicans destroy each other, oh, I'm
Speaker 4: not going to comment on this. I'm going to stay
Speaker 4: above the fray. It doesn't work in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 3: It just does.
Speaker 4: And therefore, when you see polls suggesting, for example, give
Speaker 4: me some random poll results from recently. Donald Trump delivered
Speaker 4: on his agenda more than Biden has. That's what one
Speaker 4: poll showed recently. Donald Trump's economy was better than Joe
Speaker 4: Biden's economy. That's what many polls show. Joe Biden's mental
Speaker 4: competence is less than Donald Trump's. There's a new poll
Speaker 4: out this week from Morning Consult that shows Democrats are
Speaker 4: seen as more ideologically extreme than There's one underlying theme
Speaker 4: to all these poll results, apart from quote unquote polarization
Speaker 4: in America, and that is that Democrats have allowed Republicans
Speaker 4: to define the nature of the arguments that we have.
Speaker 4: So Republicans go around screaming that Democrats are baby killers
Speaker 4: and QAnon and groomers and evil and satan. I'm not
Speaker 4: even joking. These actual words that Republican politicians have used
Speaker 4: to describe Democrats. Marjorie Telly wins as Democrats have started
Speaker 4: killing it right, this is what they say. Meanwhile, Democrats
Speaker 4: run around like Joe Biden yesterday giving speeches saying John McCain,
Speaker 4: what a wonderful guy. I miss John, and go around
Speaker 4: saying let's be bipartisan and let's reach across the island.
Speaker 4: Let's be grown up. That doesn't work. That's asymmetric warfare. Right,
Speaker 4: one side is demonizing the other. The other side is
Speaker 4: busy saying, hey, let's pass the bipart is an infrastructure act.
Speaker 4: Where's the credit for that? You don't get any So
Speaker 4: these polls all do make the same with the shutdown,
Speaker 4: It's not surprising that Democrats are gonna get blamed, partly
Speaker 4: because we're Polo, partly because Democrats have not gone on
Speaker 4: the offensive in US. And this is why, you know,
Speaker 4: it all comes down to messaging and media was It
Speaker 4: doesn't come down to your pocket book. It doesn't come
Speaker 4: down to what is the inflation?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, you know, people don't vote in that way.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, it's vibes. Sorry, we bring up an a
Speaker 4: lot of what passes for politics in this country's just vibes.
Speaker 4: When I meet people who are Democrats, I meet normal
Speaker 4: Democrats will say to me, oh, well, Joe Biden's too old,
Speaker 4: and I think, you know, Donald Trump looks healthier. Literally,
Speaker 4: somebody said that to me recent. I was like, what
Speaker 4: you think Donald Trump is more mentally fit than Joe
Speaker 4: Biden when he looks that way, I was like.
Speaker 2: What, it's literally because he's heavier.
Speaker 4: And it's not even because that person's gone and studied
Speaker 4: their statements or want it's just what they're hearing in the.
Speaker 2: Air vibes many.
Speaker 1: I could keep you on for another forty minutes, but
Speaker 1: then we'll both get in trouble.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank.
Speaker 4: You for having me and let me rent on a Friday.
Speaker 1: Daniel's Squadron is one of the founders of the States Project.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Fast Politics, Daniel Squadron.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much, an honor.
Speaker 2: So talk to.
Speaker 1: Us about what the State's Project is well.
Speaker 3: States Project believes that state lawmakers are just about the
Speaker 3: most important policy makers in the country and have been
Speaker 3: left to the worst forces in our politics for fifty years.
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Speaker 3: the lawmakers the tool the training they need to govern
Speaker 3: in a way that delivers for their constituents and and
Speaker 3: crew's law. Its booking with short term and over time.
Speaker 1: So Republicans have had a head start here, let's talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about ALEC, and like with so many things,
Speaker 1: Republicans have had headstart.
Speaker 3: Yes, and ALEC, you know is the American Legislative Exchange Council,
Speaker 3: which I know you know and probably many of dear
Speaker 3: listeners do, but most Americans who never heard of it.
Speaker 3: The most important to the organization in the country that
Speaker 3: most people have never heard of. It was found in
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy two, the same time as the Heritage Foundation,
Speaker 3: in order to drive extremist, far right special interest issues
Speaker 3: to state lawmakers around the country. I served in New
Speaker 3: York State Legislature for nearly a decade, and on the
Speaker 3: other side of the aisle, Republicans were in the majority
Speaker 3: and were being handed issues and getting support ideas prop
Speaker 3: state contact from ALEC, and those ideas were coming from
Speaker 3: their biggest donors.
Speaker 1: The sort of thinking behind ALEC was that if you
Speaker 1: could give state legislators who don't have a ton of
Speaker 1: money already written legislation, they would use it. And that
Speaker 1: is kind of what's.
Speaker 3: Happened right exactly, That legislation gets ritten in secretive ALEC
Speaker 3: working groups by big corporations and extremistic dist.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that has happened in state
Speaker 1: legislatures around America is there are a couple of new
Speaker 1: laws that you can sort of trace back to this,
Speaker 1: and maybe they're not alec, but they are from this influence.
Speaker 1: I would think one of them would be the lowering
Speaker 1: punishments for child labor right. That's something we've seen pop
Speaker 1: up at different state houses. Sarah Sanders did it. Then
Speaker 1: we also saw the governor of Arkansas. We've saw pushes
Speaker 1: of anti trans bills. You can see these themes reverberate
Speaker 1: throughout state legislatures.
Speaker 3: Chat and you and I think that what happened with
Speaker 3: the constitutional right to make healthcare decisions, run, sell through
Speaker 3: reproductive health decisions and abortion is in many ways the
Speaker 3: icon of this constitutional right defined explicitly.
Speaker 2: We're talking about SB eight in Texas.
Speaker 3: Here, well, I'm really talking and actually about the Mississippi
Speaker 3: law that gave these Supreme Court justice the excuse to
Speaker 3: a rac and constitutional right.
Speaker 2: So dobbss exactly.
Speaker 3: There were more than a dozen different versions poppying around,
Speaker 3: many look of whites, all designed as part of a
Speaker 3: strategy to give the court to smorgasboard to choose from
Speaker 3: in order to erase the right in the twenty teams.
Speaker 3: We were in Mississippi in twenty nineteen that bill had
Speaker 3: just passed, and if you were working in the state legislature,
Speaker 3: you knew exactly why it was passing in exactly the
Speaker 3: forum it was, and you knew, as you point out,
Speaker 3: kimmilar bills in Texas, Missouri, Kentucky and around the country.
Speaker 1: So many of the Supreme Court decisions we've seen lately
Speaker 1: are the product of these cases that are crafted for
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court decision. You know, it Usually the way
Speaker 1: it's supposed to be is you have a case and
Speaker 1: then the court decided. But now we have a situation
Speaker 1: where because there's so much money in conservative politics and
Speaker 1: these conservative policies, they really were seeing cases that are
Speaker 1: crafted to get a certain Supreme Court decision. And that
Speaker 1: I think of the three H three Creative decision, which
Speaker 1: is a really good example of that three H three creative.
Speaker 1: The woman never made a website, but she wanted to
Speaker 1: know she could discriminate against gay people if she decided to.
Speaker 3: It's really their cycle is state legislatures and the court,
Speaker 3: back and forth state legislatures because between gerrymandering, lack of
Speaker 3: public attention, and I would say disdain from our side,
Speaker 3: they had outside power in the courts because they don't
Speaker 3: need to answer to the people. Meanwhile, on our side,
Speaker 3: I would say there's an obsession with the presidency and
Speaker 3: the every two year fight for Congress. You know, it's
Speaker 3: interesting until this past November, Democrats are the trifecta inside
Speaker 3: the belt Leigh and Washing you see both chambers of
Speaker 3: Congress and the White House. And yet the right to
Speaker 3: abortion was a race and then a race for hundreds
Speaker 3: of millions of people, including every state in the South
Speaker 3: exception Virginia. Issue after issue, state legislatures in the court
Speaker 3: is what they're doing and where you know, dancing about
Speaker 3: the shiny out there.
Speaker 1: So I want to ask you, as we're sort of
Speaker 1: looking at these state legislature bills, give us an example
Speaker 1: of what your organization does.
Speaker 3: The first thing we do, and this is really important,
Speaker 3: is we try to make the job for state lawmakers
Speaker 3: who are there to be responsible to their constituents easier.
Speaker 3: Here this is our job. I know that the idea
Speaker 3: the term of state lawmaker just just sting the blamour
Speaker 3: and glitz. And it's probably even harder left lamorous, let
Speaker 3: with the than people would imagine it, or the op
Speaker 3: culture commentary would mop these.
Speaker 2: Are people living in Albany.
Speaker 3: These are people commuting to Albany, in my case, one
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty three miles, you know, twice a week
Speaker 3: from my hall my kids, or Springfield or Lansing or
Speaker 3: you know. It's part time in most dates, even the States,
Speaker 3: it's full time. It's low pay, there's little or no
Speaker 3: staff support. You know. Sometimes you'll ask the state Lonmacker
Speaker 3: how many staff you've had, and they'll say, oh, there's
Speaker 3: one person for everyone. So a lot of the issue
Speaker 3: is you get into office, there's an issue that drove
Speaker 3: you there. You care about your local school, you care
Speaker 3: about a bridge that's falling apart, you want to do
Speaker 3: public service. You get there and you have to deal
Speaker 3: with a thousand bills a year, and on the other side,
Speaker 3: high powered lobbyists, ALEC others are just surrounding you with information.
Speaker 3: If what you want to do is be a responsive
Speaker 3: to your constituents and say, like you, no, there's this
Speaker 3: bridge issue in my district. We're in a budget brunch.
Speaker 3: What do I do about it? You know, it's possible
Speaker 3: that you know, veering pansa. Somebody in Nebraska has based
Speaker 3: that issue involved it. The one thing we do is
Speaker 3: we try to connect lawmakers across they who have common
Speaker 3: issues that aren't driven or talked about by lobbyists inside
Speaker 3: the hall of their capital, but matter heck of a
Speaker 3: lot to their constituent. The second thing we do is
Speaker 3: try to just give them the tools to think about
Speaker 3: how to work together. You know, in Michigan and Minnesota
Speaker 3: and Pennsylvania this year there are extremely tight majorities won
Speaker 3: by just a couple of dozen votes, and no votes
Speaker 3: to give if they want to do things like raise
Speaker 3: the minimum wage or past paid family lead. So we
Speaker 3: help give tools and a framework so that they can
Speaker 3: figure out how to work together and where they have
Speaker 3: the vote, so it doesn't end up sort of in
Speaker 3: what happened in New York when I was there, which
Speaker 3: is inviting. That meant very little could get done and
Speaker 3: it was hard to make the case to the voters
Speaker 3: next time around.
Speaker 1: I think of Minnesota as sort of this incredible example
Speaker 1: of Democrats killing it when it comes to state legislature.
Speaker 2: Can you tell us what they did right there?
Speaker 3: One thing they did that is really important I want
Speaker 3: to send around to every state in this country is
Speaker 3: they imagined the future for it to kurt and the
Speaker 3: Minnesota sennet flipped this year, which created a trifecta there
Speaker 3: where they're going to split government. That was hard to
Speaker 3: get things done in But they didn't start planning or
Speaker 3: thinking about their agenda after election day. They were planning, thinking,
Speaker 3: doing the hard work with some of the partners who
Speaker 3: have issues. They care a lot about, the constituents, they
Speaker 3: care about and each other for years, even before they
Speaker 3: had the gabble that let them move legislation so prior
Speaker 3: to preparation for events for performance. It's a good old cliche,
Speaker 3: and sometimes things are cliches for a reason. That's one
Speaker 3: thing they did, and again, any state in this country,
Speaker 3: deep red, purple, right blue, planning matters a lot. The
Speaker 3: second thing is they knew that the way they got
Speaker 3: there was voters who turned out for down ballot racing
Speaker 3: or frost parties from the top of the ticket to
Speaker 3: the bottom of the ticket. So they were very focused
Speaker 3: on delivering actually for most minutes, expanded rights so that
Speaker 3: everyone could live their lives with equal opportunity. They were
Speaker 3: very clear on their value and very clear on making
Speaker 3: the case publicly about them. The third thing is, you
Speaker 3: know they don't have a full time legislature, so they
Speaker 3: were on the clock, and thinking about your deadline and
Speaker 3: the period of time you have can really help. You know,
Speaker 3: It's an interesting question because those sorts of tools and
Speaker 3: lessons are ones that are certainly not rocket science, but
Speaker 3: it can be hard for a new state lawmaker or
Speaker 3: a new majority to take on. After things get started,
Speaker 3: things moved so quickly, you're responsible for the agenda every day.
Speaker 3: The winds blow pretty strong in these state legislatures from
Speaker 3: outside interests, and so just having a framework that you
Speaker 3: want to do things that are popular, that are economical,
Speaker 3: that will actually, you know, over time, health the states
Speaker 3: and people's financing that will immediately improve lives in ways
Speaker 3: that are demonstrable. You're telling the constituent that kind of framework,
Speaker 3: not three dimensional chats, but it can be very helpful
Speaker 3: once you're in the pressure cooker.
Speaker 2: Tell me what you guys do.
Speaker 1: So you connect state lawmakers with each other, and then
Speaker 1: do you supply them with bills?
Speaker 3: We connect lawmakers with each other, We help groups of lawmakers.
Speaker 3: Joanna McClinton, who is the speaker in Pennsylvania, just talking
Speaker 3: about this this week to actually prepare for and think
Speaker 3: about the future. So different kinds of groups of folks
Speaker 3: getting together making plans for the future. And the State's
Speaker 3: Project also does posts on our website at Statesproject dot
Speaker 3: org a bunch of bills that are really ebuils to
Speaker 3: achieve some broadly popular goals like equal opportunity for all
Speaker 3: and affordable quality healthcare and every kid in this country
Speaker 3: graduating high school with a good day through twelve educator.
Speaker 3: So there are bills that are reflections of ways to
Speaker 3: achieve these goals that we've seen occur in other state
Speaker 3: on the website. And then because there's always new ideas,
Speaker 3: there's always the need when you're in a legislature to
Speaker 3: get the votes of your colleague, the State Project helps
Speaker 3: lawmakers think about what other ideas they might need and
Speaker 3: then help them try to find them.
Speaker 2: So let me ask you, as we are in this
Speaker 2: fight for our lives is twenty twenty four election wal
Speaker 2: Democracy Survive, what do you think is the sort of
Speaker 2: state legislature of what races you're watching? I know I
Speaker 2: am thinking a lot about Virginia right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, twenty twenty four privlet.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, But let's talk about what it looks like
Speaker 1: Virginia now, and then what races you are on your radar.
Speaker 3: And there's a whole lot the state's project. We say,
Speaker 3: you have you know, fifty mini congresses out there around
Speaker 3: the country. Each one has its own interesting dynamics. When
Speaker 3: it comes to the political side of the work. Virginia
Speaker 3: is incredibly closed in both chambers. You know, there's a
Speaker 3: real risk in Virginia, look at the staying into democracy.
Speaker 3: If both chambers are lost and young Gimney can sort
Speaker 3: of do whatever he wants the governor down there, there's
Speaker 3: even the risk that they could start to mess with
Speaker 3: an undermine the presidential election. Those thirteen electoral votes coming
Speaker 3: out of Virginia are critically important to actually be legitimately
Speaker 3: counted and operated. So Virginia this year incredibly close in
Speaker 3: both the House and the Senate. And the stakes could
Speaker 3: well be the free and fair presidential election.
Speaker 2: Wait, why I feel like the stakes are choice? Right?
Speaker 1: Like, Young Cain could definitely get rid of choice, and
Speaker 1: he could certainly do a lot of Florida style stuff.
Speaker 1: But why would the stakes be free and fair elections?
Speaker 3: Right? Well, certainly choice, because it's the last southern state
Speaker 3: where abortion is still legal, and for the free and
Speaker 3: fair presidential election. There's this kind of concepts that in
Speaker 3: bouncing around the extreme right wing that your state legislatures
Speaker 3: have a state power right when it comes to presidential
Speaker 3: electors and the president and the president. Ya. I think
Speaker 3: Supreme Court did a surprisingly good thing earlier this summer.
Speaker 1: Right, that's the state legislature theory, right right, And the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court said and break that legislatures can't act totally
Speaker 1: outside of their state constitution, they might even need the
Speaker 1: governor to sign off on fundamentally undermined the election.
Speaker 3: What they didn't say is that the clarity and validity
Speaker 3: of elections is enough a federal prerogative that states can't
Speaker 3: mact with it. So if you have a unified anti
Speaker 3: democratic legislature and Glenn Youngkin trying to prove that news
Speaker 3: trumpier than the magic and self, and you have a
Speaker 3: state that has tended to vote for Democrats over the
Speaker 3: last few presidential cycles, that's a real risk. So the
Speaker 3: States Project is very concerned that people are just looking
Speaker 3: pat Forginia.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm concerned that people are looking past Virginia. If
Speaker 1: you're listening to this podcast. There's a major, super important
Speaker 1: state race going on right now.
Speaker 3: Right now. And again, if I was a betting person,
Speaker 3: I would sit this one out. It's so close right now.
Speaker 3: I'm not, but it's real close.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And then in twenty twenty four, you know there's some
Speaker 3: of the usual SUFFEC states that are really important. Michigan
Speaker 3: has been doing incredible work. Just that Minnesota did That
Speaker 3: House majority is razor thin. Has to be defended next
Speaker 3: year a Minnesota and you talk about all the work
Speaker 3: they got done. Both chambers are up for election. You're
Speaker 3: talking about hundreds of votes having determined the majority. There
Speaker 3: the Pennsylvania House with the Pennsylvania Miracle and twenty twenty
Speaker 3: two with the States Project help Pennsylvania House with by
Speaker 3: ewer than one hundred votes that has to be defended.
Speaker 3: And then across the country, you know a lot of
Speaker 3: other interesting places and thresholds. You know, Nebraska having a
Speaker 3: supermajority or an not can make them being different on
Speaker 3: Arizona is a place that hasn't quite gotten over the topic.
Speaker 3: But and you know on all of these plates in
Speaker 3: that in Virginia people can get involved the way you
Speaker 3: say it stas project, we actually create a tool for
Speaker 3: people to get involved, called giving circle, where they can
Speaker 3: actually create their own giving group, become experts on it.
Speaker 3: They get their friends and neighbors to start singing this
Speaker 3: incredibly important tune and have a vastly bigger impact on
Speaker 3: the outcome than they ever could at Congress. It's not
Speaker 3: too late to even start a giving circle or Virginia
Speaker 3: if folks appropriately get worried after they hear everything you said.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 3: Oh any time. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Steve Inskeep is the host of Morning Edition and Up
Speaker 1: First on National Public Radio and author of Differ We
Speaker 1: Must How Lincoln succeeded in a divided America.
Speaker 2: Welcome too Fast Politics.
Speaker 3: Steve, thank you, it's great to be here.
Speaker 1: I have a theory of why you wrote this book,
Speaker 1: but I want to hear from you.
Speaker 2: Why did you write this book?
Speaker 3: I was going to say, if you already know, I
Speaker 3: could just listen and find out why.
Speaker 2: I still love that.
Speaker 3: Tell me your theory. I want to know the theory.
Speaker 1: Well, so you wrote this book about Lincoln, and I
Speaker 1: think that when Biden got inaugurated, which would be about
Speaker 1: three years ago, there was a lot of sort of
Speaker 1: feeling that he could be a sort of Lincoln president.
Speaker 3: Oh so that's the theory.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's my theory. Is that not right at all?
Speaker 6: Well, I think the timeline would complicate that a little
Speaker 6: bit because I started it in early twenty twenty, the
Speaker 6: spring of twenty twenty. I think I started with a
Speaker 6: particular interest in history and evolved to understand how it
Speaker 6: related to the politics of now. And you're definitely right
Speaker 6: that it relates to the politics of now. But my
Speaker 6: starting point is that I've always admired Lincoln, and I
Speaker 6: grew up in Indiana, where he spent a lot of
Speaker 6: his boyhood. And then I've written two other books on
Speaker 6: the nineteenth century, and so you learn a lot about
Speaker 6: Lincoln and just the context and the background, and you
Speaker 6: see how it relates to present day as well. And
Speaker 6: then I got this idea to do a book that
Speaker 6: would tell Lincoln's whole life through his meetings with people
Speaker 6: who were in some way different from him, like a
Speaker 6: diverse group of people, I mean, different backgrounds and also
Speaker 6: different races and genders and all sorts of different things.
Speaker 6: And then I realized it wasn't exactly a book about difference.
Speaker 6: It was mainly a book about disagreement, about his meetings
Speaker 6: with people who disagreed and how he dealt with them.
Speaker 6: As you can see, the purpose of the book is
Speaker 6: creeping closer and closer to our really discordant and divided
Speaker 6: moment now, where I don't really think we're headed for
Speaker 6: a civil war or anything, but Lincoln's time is something
Speaker 6: to tell us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I don't think you can say that
Speaker 1: we're definitively not Again. I hate this civil war talk,
Speaker 1: and I think it's really important to not ever sort
Speaker 1: of have rhetoric that is inflammatory. But we're as certainly
Speaker 1: as much on the precipice of terrifying political violence as
Speaker 1: we've ever been in my lifetime.
Speaker 6: Oh, political violence is another thing. Political islands is very
Speaker 6: possible because it's just this very American thing, right Like
Speaker 6: you look into history and you realize we've had a
Speaker 6: lot of it of different kinds at different points. I
Speaker 6: should say about a civil war, I mean, I don't
Speaker 6: predict the future, and if it happens, I'll cover it.
Speaker 6: But what makes me think it's not imminent is what
Speaker 6: really would it be about. I mean, the Civil War
Speaker 6: was about slavery, which was this huge economic system that
Speaker 6: implicated everybody in the country in various ways, and it
Speaker 6: was an enormous difficulty to do anything about it, even
Speaker 6: when people agreed that it was wrong. We have today
Speaker 6: this big divide in the country. But it's really and
Speaker 6: I don't mean to say there's no serious issues. There's serious,
Speaker 6: big issues, things like abortion. We could list ten big things,
Speaker 6: but it's a really incoherent divide. I don't see people
Speaker 6: truly going like into armies in Civil war about memes
Speaker 6: and attitudes and the various things that people argue about
Speaker 6: and get mad about day by day. Yeah, it doesn't
Speaker 6: seem eminent.
Speaker 1: It is though this strange earth one versus Earth's true reality,
Speaker 1: which could ultimately descend into anything. But I want to
Speaker 1: get back to this idea of there's sort of relevance
Speaker 1: of Lincoln to now, so talk to me about that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, what Lincoln did face was a divide in society
Speaker 6: where people had radically different ideas of society and also
Speaker 6: had every other kind of difference that they have because
Speaker 6: I mean, it's a republic, it's a democracy, and I
Speaker 6: think that in this book, I'm able to show him
Speaker 6: practicing a skill that a lot of us sort of
Speaker 6: have contempt for now have lost respect for, or thrown
Speaker 6: up our hands. It's like useless to talk to the
Speaker 6: other side. They're all zombies over there. They don't listen,
Speaker 6: they've got alternative facts, everything's made up. What's the point
Speaker 6: of arguing with them. It's very frustrating, and I don't
Speaker 6: deny some truth in that. It can be very frustrating
Speaker 6: to talk to people on the other side. And it
Speaker 6: is very hard to change the mind of a human being.
Speaker 6: I mean, think about that. You go to Thanksgiving with
Speaker 6: your crazy uncle or crazy you, and you think you're
Speaker 6: going to change his mind over dinner, like the beliefs
Speaker 6: that he's over the last thirty years.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's not very likely.
Speaker 6: But Lincoln understood that even if you don't change the
Speaker 6: other person's mind, even if they don't change your mind,
Speaker 6: you can get something out of that encounter. You might
Speaker 6: find out of like ten big things you agree on
Speaker 6: one you might find out that you don't agree on
Speaker 6: anything and can't do business with this person at all,
Speaker 6: But you learn something from the exchange. He even had
Speaker 6: people because he's a politician and he's practical and he's
Speaker 6: trying to get things done. There are even occasions where
Speaker 6: he was able to use people. They didn't agree about anything,
Speaker 6: but he managed to get some use out of them
Speaker 6: for his cause.
Speaker 1: It's true, I kind of want to argue with you
Speaker 1: about talking to the other side as much as I
Speaker 1: am a person who comes from the Bulwark and appreciates
Speaker 1: never Trump conservatives. And you know, I mean I interviewed
Speaker 1: doctor Hotels in Austin this weekend and we had RFK
Speaker 1: Junior and lots of really menacing looking people trying to
Speaker 1: get us distracted or perhaps looking for the opportunity to
Speaker 1: do something really bad. So I do feel like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's one party wants to give you healthcare and the
Speaker 1: other party wants to end your rights. I mean, I
Speaker 1: understand that you're on the straight news side, so it's
Speaker 1: you have to seem less partisan, but it does seem
Speaker 1: to me like the insanity of the situation has to
Speaker 1: be hard to parse.
Speaker 6: I grant what you're saying, I don't even know. I
Speaker 6: mean different we must did I just drop the book title?
Speaker 6: But no, Actually, I think we don't necessarily disagree. I mean,
Speaker 6: there are some divides that you can't bridge. But the
Speaker 6: lucky thing is that democracy doesn't require that. I mean,
Speaker 6: democracy doesn't require everybody to agree. And when someone says
Speaker 6: can't we all get along? I mean that famous Rodney
Speaker 6: King quote, which was so heartfelt and so sincere at
Speaker 6: the time, but as a political philosophy, actually, no, we don't,
Speaker 6: and we're not going to because it's a free society
Speaker 6: and we all have different backgrounds and we're going to
Speaker 6: have different ideas, including a lot of crazy ones. And
Speaker 6: that's another thing that I learned studying the nineteenth century.
Speaker 6: There've always been crazy conspiracy theories and bananas ideas and
Speaker 6: warped ideas of humanity. That's always with us. But you
Speaker 6: need a majority to be sensible. You need to assemble
Speaker 6: a coalition of the majority that is sensible. And I
Speaker 6: could give an example that's going to be really familiar
Speaker 6: to you, Liz Cheney. I'm guessing that if we talked
Speaker 6: about LGBTQ rights, you don't agree with Liz Cheney at all,
Speaker 6: find her bananas and dangerous. But if you are thinking
Speaker 6: in terms of getting facts out about January sixth, Liz
Speaker 6: Cheney was very valuable to the country, cost her a
Speaker 6: primary election.
Speaker 3: Of course, but she.
Speaker 6: Did her job. And that kind of alliance is the
Speaker 6: kind of thing that I think about when I think
Speaker 6: about Abraham Lincoln, who led the country into the Civil War.
Speaker 6: I mean, he didn't get along with everybody either literal
Speaker 6: war against other people in this country, but he knew
Speaker 6: he could keep and he had to keep a majority
Speaker 6: on his side, and he ended up with a lot
Speaker 6: of literal slave owners who fought for the Union side
Speaker 6: and supported the country, which means that in the long term,
Speaker 6: they did something to end slavery, which is kind of
Speaker 6: wild to think about that slave owners helped to end slavery,
Speaker 6: and that is a tribute to Lincoln that he made
Speaker 6: room in his coalition for people like that and didn't
Speaker 6: say you're immoral and wrong out of here.
Speaker 1: No, you think that Actually that case sort of makes
Speaker 1: my case. I mean, Liz Cheney, I don't agree with
Speaker 1: her on a lot of stuff, but she her heart.
Speaker 2: She wants government to succeed.
Speaker 1: I mean, she believes in the sort of democratic principles.
Speaker 1: She is truly loathed and despised by people like Jim
Speaker 1: Jordan and even people like Kevin McCarthy who run the
Speaker 1: House GOP consider her to.
Speaker 2: Be you know, an enemy of the state.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think of my own grandfather, Howard Fast,
Speaker 1: who was jailed by McCarthy right from his trial right
Speaker 1: to his jail cell in nineteen fifties. And I wonder
Speaker 1: when people in the government are wrong or evil or
Speaker 1: not respecting the democratic norms. If we don't say so, well.
Speaker 6: Oh well, I mean, you call out people who don't
Speaker 6: respect democratic norms. I don't think the call here is
Speaker 6: to be dishonest or to suppress the truth. The call
Speaker 6: is to try to deal with people where you can.
Speaker 6: I mean, I think that would be Lincoln's call. And
Speaker 6: you discover sometimes in a big country, with this republican
Speaker 6: small r republican system that we have, that there are
Speaker 6: people who you despise that maybe become allies from time
Speaker 6: to time. I mean, I think about something like the
Speaker 6: recent push by the state legislature in Alabama to again
Speaker 6: and again and again and again impose congressional districts so
Speaker 6: there can be one less black representative or one more
Speaker 6: Republican representative, or however they look at it, and I mean,
Speaker 6: I understand their argument. They're like, it's racist to consider
Speaker 6: race at all. We should just do the lines that
Speaker 6: we want that elect more Republicans.
Speaker 2: But it's obviously not about racism.
Speaker 6: Sure, let's acknowledge their argument, but basically, the courts have
Speaker 6: told them again and again and again, you're wrong, and
Speaker 6: they keep going back. They've gone back twice to the
Speaker 6: Supreme Court without knowing. You can imagine that they had
Speaker 6: a hope that the conservative majority super majority on the
Speaker 6: Supreme Court would one way or another back them, and
Speaker 6: they did. You know, maybe they wouldn't back them in
Speaker 6: the end, but maybe they do one of those shadow
Speaker 6: docket orders which would let them get another year or
Speaker 6: two out of the map.
Speaker 3: This could just go on forever and ever and ever.
Speaker 6: And the Court, who I'm guessing you have had a
Speaker 6: lot of criticism for, knocked them down and said, actually, no,
Speaker 6: that's not allowed. And so there was somebody sticking up
Speaker 6: for the system, right. And we could have a long
Speaker 6: debate about why they chose to do that, and whether
Speaker 6: the public criticism of the court on some other cases
Speaker 6: had something to do with their opinions or whether they
Speaker 6: decided it purely on the law. I don't know, but
Speaker 6: they did something that you would agree with even if
Speaker 6: a large majority of their decisions are things you don't
Speaker 6: agree with.
Speaker 1: No, I agree, and I also say something like that
Speaker 1: is pretty clear cut.
Speaker 2: But it is hard. I mean, don't you agree.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's hard.
Speaker 1: I mean, especially when you have a situation like right now,
Speaker 1: Trump versus Biden. You cannot accurately describe Trump as a
Speaker 1: candidate without seeming at least partisan.
Speaker 3: Oh you mean, because if you just say the facts about.
Speaker 2: Him, Yeah, it seems very partisan.
Speaker 3: I would grant that.
Speaker 6: But now you're asking me, I think maybe about being
Speaker 6: a newsperson, because as a journalist, I describe Trump, and
Speaker 6: my job is to state the facts and to try
Speaker 6: really hard to state them calmly and state them fairly.
Speaker 6: I mean, I wrote a thing about this the other day,
Speaker 6: about the question of how to think about Trump crump.
Speaker 6: Trump is a criminal defendant because we are in a
Speaker 6: country where you're innocent until proven guilty, and for all
Speaker 6: we know, one, two, three, or four juries may well
Speaker 6: find this person innocent. I have no idea, because that
Speaker 6: is a matter of criminal law, and who knows what
Speaker 6: evidence they're going to admit, who knows what evidence they're
Speaker 6: going to exclude, what anybody's going to think of anything,
Speaker 6: what novel legal defense may come up. So I'm willing
Speaker 6: to accept that Trump is innocent until proven guilty. But
Speaker 6: I also know, as a journalist who's been present and
Speaker 6: following facts what he did, and so I am not
Speaker 6: inclined to say allegedly tried to overturn the results of
Speaker 6: the twenty twenty election.
Speaker 3: Because we know all the evidence.
Speaker 6: You know, we're just going to say he did that,
Speaker 6: And if challenged on a source, I can say, well,
Speaker 6: he went to more than sixty courts and lost every time.
Speaker 6: Thousands of election officials from both political parties affirmed that
Speaker 6: the election results were fair. So that's really not something
Speaker 6: we have to argue about. I think my job is
Speaker 6: to accurately describe both of those things. He's an a
Speaker 6: criminal proceeding. We honestly don't know how it's going to
Speaker 6: turn out, but we do know the facts that are
Speaker 6: at issue.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so let's talk about Lincoln.
Speaker 1: One of the things I think is really interesting is
Speaker 1: this idea that he really did need to kind of
Speaker 1: sell what was doing it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, talk about that.
Speaker 6: It's an incredible thing because of how little support really
Speaker 6: there was for abolition in the United States. There were
Speaker 6: all of these interests and prejudices and laws in favor
Speaker 6: of slavery, and remarkably few people who said this is terrible,
Speaker 6: we have to end it right now. There was a
Speaker 6: very widespread view that slavery was wrong. And you know
Speaker 6: this history. Southern states had embraced slavery since the founding
Speaker 6: of since before the founding of the country, and it
Speaker 6: got stronger and stronger as an industry, so to speak,
Speaker 6: and northern states had gradually abolished it. And so people
Speaker 6: in the North understood that slavery was wrong. Honestly, a
Speaker 6: lot of people who own slaves would say, yes, this
Speaker 6: is an evil, it is wrong. But when you got
Speaker 6: around to the question of what to do about it,
Speaker 6: everybody would ham in hall or many people would and
Speaker 6: have reasons not to act. Northerners, for example, this was
Speaker 6: true in Abraham Lincoln's Illinois, were opposed to slavery, but
Speaker 6: would be very reluctant to have emancipation, because what if
Speaker 6: some of these millions of suddenly freed people came north
Speaker 6: in search of work and were competing against me for
Speaker 6: a job and wanted to live in my neighborhood. People
Speaker 6: didn't want that. There were even people making arguments that
Speaker 6: if millions of enslaved people were suddenly freed, they would
Speaker 6: not get along with white people. There would be a
Speaker 6: race war, and they would be exterminated. And therefore, according
Speaker 6: to this argument, it was better for black people to
Speaker 6: keep them enslaved. Crazy crazy thinking to us. But these
Speaker 6: extraordinary rationalizations made it really hard to build a big
Speaker 6: political coalition against slavery, and Lincoln had to be very
Speaker 6: careful about how he talked. He had to be very
Speaker 6: careful about what he stood for, even who he associated with,
Speaker 6: and he thought really hard about his audience and thought about,
Speaker 6: how can I say it is in your interest to
Speaker 6: oppose slavery. How can I remind people that slavery may
Speaker 6: spread into this very state and harm you in some way,
Speaker 6: And that is why we need to be at least
Speaker 6: against it spreading, even if we can can't end it
Speaker 6: right now. His efforts to craft a political argument are
Speaker 6: fascinating to me, and they're grounded in his understanding of
Speaker 6: human nature and how people kind of do build their
Speaker 6: beliefs around their self interests, and he had to work
Speaker 6: with that and understand who was talking to and understand
Speaker 6: their interests and try to ignite them in a higher
Speaker 6: cause by engaging their interests in it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's such an interesting thing because we don't think
Speaker 1: about how unpopular doing the right thing can be. And
Speaker 1: you will see again and again if you go back
Speaker 1: through history so many different times when doing the moral
Speaker 1: upstanding thing was wildly unpopular.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and there were people at the time who were
Speaker 6: saying the moral upstanding thing. Anybody who says, well, that's
Speaker 6: just how people believed at the time. There were plenty
Speaker 6: of people around saying why slavery was wrong and what
Speaker 6: ought to be done about it right now, but getting
Speaker 6: a majority to say that was really hard. And I'm
Speaker 6: thinking of a current example, if you'll allow me, where
Speaker 6: people are attempting this kind of politics, and it has
Speaker 6: to do with climate change. There's this Inflation Reduction Act
Speaker 6: that was passed last year that includes a bunch of
Speaker 6: money for renewable energy, and the administration is steering this
Speaker 6: and there are plenty of other people who are engaged
Speaker 6: in it. A lot of the money for renewable energy
Speaker 6: products to battery plants, solar farms, wind farms, and so
Speaker 6: forth are going toward Red states. And this is conscious
Speaker 6: on some level to make sure that people in red
Speaker 6: states who have not bought the science on climate change
Speaker 6: or increasingly have their own rationalizations for it. So like, yes,
Speaker 6: I accept climate change is real, but it's just not
Speaker 6: that big a deal. They haven't bought that. But this
Speaker 6: gives them an interest, a financial interest in the money,
Speaker 6: in the jobs, in what is Honestly, I mean, it's
Speaker 6: the energy industry. The energy that we use has to
Speaker 6: come from somewhere. We use a heck of a lot
Speaker 6: of it, use an unbelievable lot of electricity. You and
Speaker 6: I are using some right now. Has to come from somewhere.
Speaker 6: Might as well come from a wind turbine. Who cares?
Speaker 6: And if they can engage people in red states who
Speaker 6: to have an interest in climate change, the theory goes
Speaker 6: that changes the politics of climate change. Does that work?
Speaker 6: I don't know if it works or not. Honestly, again,
Speaker 6: I can't predict the future. But that's the kind of
Speaker 6: politics that we're discussing.
Speaker 2: So interesting. Thank you, Steve, You're welcome. In a moment,
Speaker 2: fuck Jesse Cannon, Molly John Fast.
Speaker 3: The government did not shut down, despite the fact that
Speaker 3: everyone seemed to think it would. Tell me what you
Speaker 3: see here, you're.
Speaker 2: Just trying to gloat. You didn't think the government was
Speaker 2: shut down.
Speaker 3: You're giving me the chance to say that. I said
Speaker 3: for two buds that this was never happening.
Speaker 1: You are a moment of fuck the one time that's
Speaker 1: Jesse has been right before, but this one he was
Speaker 1: actually right. And literally every other newsroom thought the government
Speaker 1: was going to shut down. So Jesse being right about
Speaker 1: the aversion of a government shutdown is our moment of fuck.
Speaker 2: Ray So the government did not shut down at the
Speaker 2: eleventh hour. One Kevin McCarthy the weakest. We have never
Speaker 2: had a speaker who is less good at math than
Speaker 2: Kevin McCarthy, and supposedly even when he was whip he
Speaker 2: could not count votes. So this guy finally decided to
Speaker 2: pick up the cr that the Senate had passed twice
Speaker 2: with more than seventy five votes, and he picked up
Speaker 2: that exact same CR.
Speaker 1: And it's a he put it through. And so at
Speaker 1: the eleventh hour, the government did not shut down. And
Speaker 1: so they have a kind of hail Mary for forty
Speaker 1: five days. But would like to point out that after
Speaker 1: he did that, Mad Mighty Mad Gates the Botox CA
Speaker 1: went on Jake Tapper's.
Speaker 2: Show this morning, which will be to yesterday morning for
Speaker 2: all of you.
Speaker 1: And he told Jake Tapper that he was going to
Speaker 1: just make McCarthy's life miserable. He was going to put
Speaker 1: together a motion to vacate, or as now it is
Speaker 1: being called when you read in shorthand, MTV. So we
Speaker 1: are in a terrible point in American history where MTV
Speaker 1: now stands for her motion to vacate, and that, my friends,
Speaker 1: is our moment of fuckery. That's it for this episode
Speaker 1: of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday and Friday
Speaker 1: to hear the best minds in politics makes sense of
Speaker 1: all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard, please
Speaker 1: send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 2: And again, thanks for listening.