Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Mollie John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds and Donald Trump says Taylor Swift endorsing
Speaker 1: President Biden when she disloyal to the man who made
Speaker 1: her so much money.
Speaker 2: We have such a great show today.
Speaker 1: MSNBC's own Meeker Brazinski tells us about her journey to
Speaker 1: help women, and she also tells the story of how
Speaker 1: she mentored me. Then we'll talk to polster Adam Carlson
Speaker 1: about the flaws and polling.
Speaker 2: In the twenty twenty four election.
Speaker 1: But first we have the host of the Enemy's List,
Speaker 1: the one, the only, the Lincoln Projects owned Rick Wilson.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to.
Speaker 1: Fast Politics, My best ye Rick Wilson.
Speaker 3: Good afternoon, good morning, good evening, or whatever time this
Speaker 3: podcast airs in your part of the world.
Speaker 4: I'm glad to be back with you.
Speaker 1: Oh no, We're like giddy in this horrible, unbearable way.
Speaker 3: I planned today as we record this, to be unbearable
Speaker 3: all damn day.
Speaker 2: I prefer insufferable.
Speaker 3: Well I could be insufferable too, you can do it all.
Speaker 3: I just finished writing this piece about McConnell that hasn't
Speaker 3: gone up yet.
Speaker 4: But you know what, I'm just fucking done. I'm done
Speaker 4: with these people.
Speaker 1: Let's have a moment here. First, we got a lot,
Speaker 1: a lot of fucking bullshit to talk about. I want
Speaker 1: to start with the very bad, no good week that
Speaker 1: the Republicans in the House of Representatives had.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's go through it one step at a time.
Speaker 3: When you get to the first part of it of
Speaker 3: Trump not being immune from prosecution, which you know, it
Speaker 3: seems like that happened like a month and a half ago,
Speaker 3: but it was Monday. When you look at that decision alone,
Speaker 3: it is a nuclear bomb going off on the January
Speaker 3: sixth case. Trump really really was depending right some method
Speaker 3: to spin that case down, because look, he knows that
Speaker 3: gutlass Merrick Garland is eventually going to say to Jack Smith, Okay, Boss,
Speaker 3: time's up. I gotta call it. He's the Republican nominee.
Speaker 3: We can't be we can't be seen as biased.
Speaker 2: Yahh. We have two minutes to trash Mayre Garland.
Speaker 3: You call me anytime, day or night, now, trash Mere Garland.
Speaker 3: I'm so frickin' done.
Speaker 1: Do all special councils have to be a Republican like
Speaker 1: you know, there are a lot of fucking Democrats.
Speaker 3: Out there, generally speaking, the Special Councils of our recent memory. Durham, who,
Speaker 3: aside from magnificent facial hair, seems to have been an
Speaker 3: utter fucking legal chuckle fuck of the first order. You
Speaker 3: know that the infamous Durham Report was going to reshape
Speaker 3: America forever are and it turned out to be nothing.
Speaker 3: This guy or Hut or Hoop or whatever his fucking
Speaker 3: name is. I'm sorry, but the level of unprofessionalism in
Speaker 3: that report, the level of editorializing in that report, I'm
Speaker 3: not the first or the last to make this comparison.
Speaker 3: This was very much like Jim Comey, I don't have evidence,
Speaker 3: but I'm gonna go out and slap him around a
Speaker 3: little bit, you know. I think Harwood said that yesterday,
Speaker 3: and I just it's just like, there's nothing, there's nothing
Speaker 3: in this report that is more important than the finding
Speaker 3: that they're not going to bring criminal charges against him,
Speaker 3: set aside the editorializing bullshit, Okay, and they were Biden's
Speaker 3: handwritten personal notes that were expos facto classified in some
Speaker 3: of the cases. The real drama that they're trying to
Speaker 3: make out of this thing is.
Speaker 5: Oh Buden Nosino, He's drooling in his porridge. And I
Speaker 5: will say this, I liked angry Biden last night. I
Speaker 5: liked angry Biden going out there and knocking the shit
Speaker 5: out of some of those reporters. We love our friends
Speaker 5: in the press, but that instinct to bend over backwards
Speaker 5: to show that you're not biased by being dis when
Speaker 5: you get a chance to smash Biden a little bit.
Speaker 5: It struck me at least as a bit much because
Speaker 5: Donnie mumblefuck over there, who thinks he ran against Barack
Speaker 5: Obama and who thinks that Nikki Hayley was in charge
Speaker 5: of the capital on one six? I am sorry. I
Speaker 5: want to see them bang Trump with questions about his
Speaker 5: mental acuity, because he is much much shakier mentally than
Speaker 5: Joe Biden is by a good stretch.
Speaker 1: Well, I have this theory that if you're defending yourselfs
Speaker 1: so I never defend myself. But I will say one thing,
Speaker 1: which is her worked in the Trump administration.
Speaker 3: That was a choice made by Merrick Garland. I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: I know everybody had this soft spot for Merrick Garland
Speaker 3: because of the whole situation with.
Speaker 2: He's not a Supreme Court jest Rush, I mean, fuck him.
Speaker 6: By the way, I'm not a Supreme Court justice either,
Speaker 6: and could should have okay, but he is so cautious
Speaker 6: and so programmatic, and I know, Look, do I want
Speaker 6: the Attorney General of the United States behaving like a
Speaker 6: Bill Barr?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 4: I do not.
Speaker 3: But do I also want the Attorney General of the
Speaker 3: United States behaving like he's scared of his own shadow
Speaker 3: and when the bad guys are aggressively pursuing epic fuckery?
Speaker 4: No, I do not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that is really such an important point.
Speaker 1: The Democrats continue to play by the twenty twelve rules,
Speaker 1: and Republicans have weaponized the entire federal government. So this
Speaker 1: week the House Republicans tried to impeach a Cabinet secretary
Speaker 1: because they didn't like what he was doing. It didn't
Speaker 1: work because they can't do math. But I mean, come on.
Speaker 3: The absolute epic dumbfuckery of the Republicans in the House.
Speaker 3: And if you were in an ordinary situation, the Speaker
Speaker 3: would slink away in shame. He would go and leave
Speaker 3: to spend more time with his son's porn app on
Speaker 3: his phone, whatever the hell it was. So humiliating, and
Speaker 3: the guy ran out of there like a scalded dog.
Speaker 3: I mean he ran out of there like his dick
Speaker 3: was on fire. And honestly, this whole thing was atrial
Speaker 3: run for impeaching Joe Biden, which is their biggest desire,
Speaker 3: their greatest passion.
Speaker 2: And they don't have the votes because math is hard.
Speaker 3: And they're going to have even fewer votes soon because
Speaker 3: more Republicans are pulling the switch.
Speaker 4: They're getting out of there, They're running.
Speaker 1: Here's a question I have for you, So Republicans, Maga
Speaker 1: Mike Johnson been in the House since twenty sixteen. I
Speaker 1: mean I've been in the House longer than Mike Johnson's
Speaker 1: been in the House. This guy, he has decided that
Speaker 1: he's going to put these bills on the floor and
Speaker 1: just pray to Jesus that he has the votes.
Speaker 2: Turns out, Jesus is not a vote whip.
Speaker 3: Here's my sequence of House speakers I have either known
Speaker 3: or dealt with or been around for. Okay, Jim Wright,
Speaker 3: Tom Foley, Dennis Haster, Nancy Pelosi, John Bayner, Paul Ryan,
Speaker 3: Kevin McCarthy. You know the difference of all of these
Speaker 3: people and Moses Johnson.
Speaker 2: They can do math.
Speaker 3: They could do math, they could count votes, they knew
Speaker 3: when they had the votes and when they didn't. And
Speaker 3: the number one, the single most important rule of all
Speaker 3: as speaker, never bring a vote to the floor unless
Speaker 3: you're going to win. This is something they beat into
Speaker 3: your head on day one of speaker school. And these
Speaker 3: guys just don't get it. They just didn't understand it.
Speaker 3: And I'm sorry, I have very little pity for him.
Speaker 3: He embarrassed himself.
Speaker 2: So he brought the MAJORCIS vote. It lost.
Speaker 1: Then he went and brought this Israel funding standalone.
Speaker 2: It lost. One of the things I want to ask
Speaker 2: you is like, so here you have the.
Speaker 1: Five vulnerable Republicans like Mike Lawler, that fucking guy, and
Speaker 1: these guys, and you have about five or six in California,
Speaker 1: and you have Republicans with a one vote majority. What
Speaker 1: happens when Mike Lawler goes back to the Hudson Valley
Speaker 1: and is like, yes, I voted to impeach the Cabinet
Speaker 1: secretary first time in one hundred years. Yes, I voted
Speaker 1: from Israel Aid standalone, which, by the way, Israelis didn't want.
Speaker 3: What happens then none of these guys. Okay, not one
Speaker 3: of these guys in that Biden eighteen has a argument
Speaker 3: to make that they're not all on the crazy train.
Speaker 3: Every single one of them has to go home and say, yeah,
Speaker 3: by the way, I know we didn't do anything on X,
Speaker 3: Y or Z issue that you care about, but we
Speaker 3: did vote to impeach the DHS secretary. How do you
Speaker 3: take that out there? That's a bold strategy, Cotton, to
Speaker 3: go out and say we're going to go out and
Speaker 3: campaign on the fact that we impeached. It's so obscure,
Speaker 3: it's so in the weeds, it's so small ball crazy.
Speaker 3: I'm just like, who's running this thing? And the answer
Speaker 3: is apparently nobody, because if someone with a brain.
Speaker 2: No, I think the answer is Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: That's true.
Speaker 3: Let's not forget they wanted to make him Speaker of
Speaker 3: the House, right, I.
Speaker 1: Mean, that would have been amazing. But there's going to
Speaker 1: be their problem with the R and T chair. They
Speaker 1: want Rana out.
Speaker 2: Rana.
Speaker 1: This is a woman who has spent the last whatever
Speaker 1: ten years basically just destroying herself.
Speaker 2: Proving the adage that a guy I know.
Speaker 1: Once came up with everything Trump touches. Does this Rana.
Speaker 1: This is the worst job, right, you have to raise
Speaker 1: money for the Republican Party. Donald Trump is spending all
Speaker 1: his money on lawyers, and then I guess he's gonna
Speaker 1: have to put some money in this eighty three million
Speaker 1: dollar bond, right, and then he's gonna have another one
Speaker 1: hundred million, two hundred three hundred million coming up for
Speaker 1: the fraud case. So Ronald McDaniel has to raise money,
Speaker 1: convince big donors. It's not going to Trump's legal fees.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a terrible job. So they're going
Speaker 1: to remove her and put someone else who is less
Speaker 1: good at fundraising in this job.
Speaker 2: How does this work?
Speaker 3: Laura Trump is going to be the best Republican Party
Speaker 3: chairman ever, and I hope she stays there for one
Speaker 3: hundred years.
Speaker 1: Then Eric is calling people asking them for money. I mean,
Speaker 1: you had a speaker, and again I am no fan
Speaker 1: of Kevin McCarthy, but but you had someone who sort
Speaker 1: of knew how to do it a little bit right
Speaker 1: then Tom.
Speaker 2: Emmers wanted to do it.
Speaker 1: Trump was like, not Maga enough, Let's get someone who's
Speaker 1: really incompetent. Because that's the true spirit of Maga erag.
Speaker 3: I can see so many outcomes of selecting a different
Speaker 3: RNC chairman that end up in clownish disaster. And every
Speaker 3: single one of the people that could take that job
Speaker 3: that would make Trump happy, every single one of them
Speaker 3: are going to do one thing. Shovel money back to
Speaker 3: Donald Trump and every penny that small dollar donors put
Speaker 3: into the RNC right now or big dollar donors. By
Speaker 3: the way, this is rnc's major donor season right now.
Speaker 3: If this was the Bush or Reagan administrations right now,
Speaker 3: the RNC chairman, whether it was Michael Steele or whomever,
Speaker 3: would be out saying, Okay, we're going to do the convention,
Speaker 3: so at and t we'd like a half a million dollars.
Speaker 3: And Democrats do this too. Right about now, right everybody's
Speaker 3: doing their major fundraising. I gotta tell you, if you're
Speaker 3: a major fundraiser, major dollar fundraiser, a corporate board type,
Speaker 3: you're thinking, to hell, I'm putting a damn dime into
Speaker 3: that rat hole. And that's why the RNC is broke
Speaker 3: right now. That's why they're broke. When I was working
Speaker 3: for Bush in the two thousand cycle, I think at
Speaker 3: this point the RNC had something like one hundred and
Speaker 3: eighty million dollars in the bank. This is nuts that
Speaker 3: they have that they have eight million dollars cash on
Speaker 3: hand and.
Speaker 1: Then a line of credit because you know things are
Speaker 1: going great when you need a line of credit.
Speaker 3: But they owe on the eight something like five and
Speaker 3: so that's why they're out getting a line of credit.
Speaker 3: At this point, they're gonna be out like getting getting
Speaker 3: a title loan of their cars.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's so bad and we shouldn't make fun
Speaker 1: of them, but I think we should because fuck them. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, what is amazing to me is you have
Speaker 1: a Republican president chill candidate who was an incumbent, who
Speaker 1: has such a tight grip on the party and also
Speaker 1: everyone else is so fucking scared of him that he
Speaker 1: now controls the House. Right, he's fighting with McConnell in
Speaker 1: the goal of controlling the Senate. They don't even have
Speaker 1: the majority, but he wants McConnell at.
Speaker 4: And by the way they get they may get that.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think McConnell's like, fuck this shit, don't you think.
Speaker 4: Well, look, I think he'll finish his term.
Speaker 1: Right, He's not going to do the Kevin Ray leaves
Speaker 1: in January.
Speaker 4: Right, although I will say this.
Speaker 3: You know a lot of McConnell people, A lot of
Speaker 3: McConnell folks that are out there are like you. He
Speaker 3: could rally one last time. I'm like, if the motherfucker
Speaker 3: was going to rally, he should have rallied on January sixth,
Speaker 3: when there was a moment where he had a majority
Speaker 3: of the Republicans in the caucus, A majority of the
Speaker 3: Republicans in the caucus were with him, and every Democrat,
Speaker 3: of course, and he wouldn't do it.
Speaker 1: Can we just go to the alternative universe for a
Speaker 1: second where McConnell whips those votes. Trump gets impeached and
Speaker 1: it is clear that he can never run again. Republicans
Speaker 1: fast forward. They are unstoppable. They have Nicki haleynomine. I mean,
Speaker 1: they did this to themselves and to all of us.
Speaker 3: They chose this path. Here's one of the things that
Speaker 3: I think is really important to remember. The mob terrifies everybody.
Speaker 3: It terrifies Mitch McConnell, it terrifies Mike Johnson, it terrifies
Speaker 3: every Republican out there. They're all petrified of Trump and
Speaker 3: his mob and the idea of their violence and their
Speaker 3: cruelty and their willingness to use violence and force against people.
Speaker 3: You know, you want to know why the Supreme Court
Speaker 3: was so cautious yesterday or the other day in their hearings.
Speaker 3: It's because they're worried about becoming targets of the damn mob.
Speaker 3: They don't want to be targets of the mob.
Speaker 1: Shay Moss Ruby Friedman, I mean they ruin your life.
Speaker 2: I mean that's the you know what, They're really scary.
Speaker 3: They are scary, and you know what, and the people
Speaker 3: that will not put up with their shit are you know,
Speaker 3: assholes like me dragged out feed first. But the intimidation
Speaker 3: is where that alternative universe failed. We could have been
Speaker 3: in a different world, we could have been in a
Speaker 3: better place. But you know, that day Mitch McConnell said, Nope,
Speaker 3: we're not going to whip votes for this. It was
Speaker 3: for frontalers with the ball up marks are not Oh no, well,
Speaker 3: polish one. The voters have already spoken. I mean could
Speaker 3: and as one of his aides said, what's the harm
Speaker 3: in humoring them?
Speaker 2: Right? And I think the level of anxiety right now
Speaker 2: is pretty high.
Speaker 3: Oh, I would certainly say that's the case. It's pretty high,
Speaker 3: and there are very few people who feel confident right
Speaker 3: now in American democracy, and you know what, and that
Speaker 3: kind of sucks. That's kind of a really shit place
Speaker 3: to be of not being confident in a nation that
Speaker 3: had a pretty good run of people understanding that while
Speaker 3: it was messy and loud and complicated and stupid, our
Speaker 3: country was really fundamentally strong. And now most people don't
Speaker 3: share that view anymore. And again it's because of Donald
Speaker 3: Trump exactly.
Speaker 1: I also want to mention that there is some really
Speaker 1: fucked up shit going on with the Montana Center rays.
Speaker 7: Oh, Matt Rosendale's I'm in back baby, Okay.
Speaker 1: So Matt Rosendale is like one of the few people
Speaker 1: who is really just so bad. I mean, he's like
Speaker 1: doctor Oz but without the is.
Speaker 4: He one of the few Molly I think there are.
Speaker 2: Let's be honest, you though, he is pink Maga.
Speaker 4: He is high tone Maga.
Speaker 1: So he was indorsed by Maga Mike Johnson, and then
Speaker 1: Maga Mike Johnson thought better of it and said that
Speaker 1: he was unindorsed.
Speaker 2: It's been a bad week for Mike Johnson.
Speaker 3: Apparently, Mike Johnson's not an ace at picking them as
Speaker 3: they say this has not been missed on a lot
Speaker 3: of people. Now that Maga Mike is, shall we say,
Speaker 3: less less perceptive as a political analyst than he might
Speaker 3: otherwise be incredible. You can't wake up in the morning
Speaker 3: these days and expect anything but more of this chaos.
Speaker 8: So only two hundred and sixty nine days ago, that's right,
Speaker 8: that's right, that's right.
Speaker 2: Did you know?
Speaker 1: Rick Wilson and I are bringing together some friends for
Speaker 1: a general election kickoff party at City Winery in New
Speaker 1: York on March sixth.
Speaker 2: We're going to be.
Speaker 1: Chatting right after Super Tuesday about what's going on, and
Speaker 1: it is going to probably be the one fun night
Speaker 1: for the next eighty days. If you're in the New
Speaker 1: York area, please come by and join us. You can
Speaker 1: go to City Winery's website and grab a ticket. Mika
Speaker 1: Brazinski is the host of Morning Joe and Morning Mika
Speaker 1: as well as the.
Speaker 2: Founder of the Know Your Value movement.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Fast Politics, Mika, yay hi hi.
Speaker 2: I am so excited to have you.
Speaker 1: And this is one of these things where you're doing
Speaker 1: this mentorship project.
Speaker 9: Yes, I am.
Speaker 2: You mentored me so.
Speaker 1: And I saw this, I was like, wait, so let's
Speaker 1: talk about First of all, I love the idea that
Speaker 1: you have to be over fifty for this one.
Speaker 9: Category to get on the list. Yeah, you're too young.
Speaker 9: You're too young.
Speaker 2: It's like finally something I'm too young for.
Speaker 1: So the thing I think people don't know is you've
Speaker 1: been doing this for a long time.
Speaker 2: And this did not start as a glamorous project.
Speaker 9: No it didn't. But can I say a story about
Speaker 9: you first always, and then we'll talk about how non
Speaker 9: glamorous this was. So somebody once told Mollie that she
Speaker 9: would never be something. Yeah, and she told me that
Speaker 9: story just in passing blah blah blah blah blah, like
Speaker 9: it was, you know, I ate a sandwich and someone
Speaker 9: told me I would never be a I don't know,
Speaker 9: on air contributor or something. And I thought to myself,
Speaker 9: she just said that like she was eating a sandwich
Speaker 9: like that was okay, and it was like hard for
Speaker 9: the course. It was just something that she decided that
Speaker 9: she would accept. And I thought to myself, that is
Speaker 9: fed up. Like right now, I don't know this woman
Speaker 9: that well, but I need to talk to her. We
Speaker 9: need to have a little talk, and then she needs
Speaker 9: to have a little talk with that special person. That's all.
Speaker 9: That's all I'm gonna say. That was my mentoring. You're welcome, yes,
Speaker 9: and let me just say you were right.
Speaker 1: So I want you to talk about the beginnings of
Speaker 1: Know Your Value, because like this is really actually a
Speaker 1: passion project.
Speaker 7: It is.
Speaker 9: I mean, I don't even know if it was twelve
Speaker 9: or thirteen years ago, A long time ago. I sort
Speaker 9: of realized that I didn't know my value, and I
Speaker 9: started documenting all the disasters in my career where I
Speaker 9: was so close to making great money or getting a
Speaker 9: great promotion, and I would literally be the person who
Speaker 9: made sure it didn't happen, or who made sure that
Speaker 9: I was the first person to get a job at
Speaker 9: a certain level was only paid like twenty percent what
Speaker 9: the last people who had that job was. Like, I
Speaker 9: was so lucky to be there, and I realized I
Speaker 9: was in a cycle. So as I started documenting these things,
Speaker 9: and then I had my own like real life equal
Speaker 9: pay battle at MSNBC, I decided to write the book
Speaker 9: Know Your Value. I wrote in real time what my
Speaker 9: experience at MSNBC was and actually read it on the
Speaker 9: floor of Phil Griffin's office. He was the president of
Speaker 9: MSNBC at the time. He Joe and I sat together
Speaker 9: and read the manuscript and I thought, I'm so fired.
Speaker 9: But I also thought, he's not telling me I'm not
Speaker 9: publishing this, like he knows that I walked the relationship
Speaker 9: we had at that point that was not coming in
Speaker 9: asking for permission, but I wanted him to have a
Speaker 9: heads up and to see it, and also to have
Speaker 9: a chance to sort of make sure I wasn't missing
Speaker 9: an angle on something since it was so close to
Speaker 9: the network. And the funny story about Phil is he
Speaker 9: was like, Meca, Meka, I don't say man, Joe, you know,
Speaker 9: I say no, Joe like and I was like, Phil,
Speaker 9: I was trying to protect you. He's like, that's not
Speaker 9: how I talk. You gotta put the F bomb back
Speaker 9: in there. And I was like, this is your one change. Okay. Anyhow,
Speaker 9: but the book was released and it immediately was on
Speaker 9: New York Times and all these business lists, and it
Speaker 9: took off in a way that I could have never expected,
Speaker 9: where people were like stopping us on the street. I
Speaker 9: read your book. I got to raise I read your book.
Speaker 9: I got a divorce. I read your book. I changed
Speaker 9: my life. I read your book. I got a raise
Speaker 9: I have heard hundreds of times because knowing your value
Speaker 9: is not just about getting value back financially, which I
Speaker 9: definitely put the map out for that, but it's about
Speaker 9: getting value back in every relationship, which is why you
Speaker 9: stopped me cold when you told me that someone had
Speaker 9: said what they said to you and you just accepted it.
Speaker 9: That was not value back. That was like give me
Speaker 9: you like a turd on a platter, okay, and you're going, oh,
Speaker 9: that looks so good. No, so like it's learning how
Speaker 9: to say it. And so when I realized that was
Speaker 9: that message was so resonant and there was such a
Speaker 9: hunger for it, I started doing events and I actually,
Speaker 9: you know, went rogue and started on my own event
Speaker 9: in Hartford, Connecticut, just to see if anybody would show up,
Speaker 9: and those three words they filled the room. And then some.
Speaker 1: Will you please tell the story about what happened in
Speaker 1: Hartford because you've told the story to me and it
Speaker 1: feels like such an important moment.
Speaker 9: Well, it was incredible. Actually, I had put together of
Speaker 9: the event with my producers Duby McDowell and Robin Jenris,
Speaker 9: and we had a couple of weeks to put it
Speaker 9: together because I do everything in a rush, and I'd
Speaker 9: say three weeks before it started, we had at the
Speaker 9: Marriotte Downtown Marriette Marquee in Hartford. I had used my
Speaker 9: sort of notoriety as a local host from fifteen years earlier,
Speaker 9: and I had gotten a lot of sort of just
Speaker 9: Gail King, who used to work in Hartford. She was
Speaker 9: lined up. I got companies in the area to sponsor
Speaker 9: it and CEOs to show up. And I had this
Speaker 9: idea at the very last minute to have a competition
Speaker 9: where five women that we pick out of videos that
Speaker 9: were sent in would compete on stage for ten thousand
Speaker 9: dollars bonus. They would have to pitch for one minute
Speaker 9: or less what their value is, no matter what their
Speaker 9: reality was in life, stay at home mom, CEO, philanthropist assistant,
Speaker 9: you know, it doesn't matter. Just tell me what it
Speaker 9: is that you bring to the table and sell it.
Speaker 9: And we had five women. We had so many videos
Speaker 9: sent in. Somebody sent video from prison, literally, CEOs sent videos.
Speaker 9: It was incredible the response we got and we found
Speaker 9: five women. We coached them as best we could, and
Speaker 9: they got up on stage and it was amazing. First
Speaker 9: of all the whole room. It was five hundred women
Speaker 9: in the We had perhaps two hundred more people who
Speaker 9: walked in. There was a waiting list. People were lining
Speaker 9: the walls, and they were all so supportive. They were
Speaker 9: so invested in these women that they had gotten to
Speaker 9: know all day long throughout the event. And we had
Speaker 9: a woman from Madison, Connecticut, who was fired from her
Speaker 9: job on Wall Street. She was in her fifties. She
Speaker 9: had opened a second hand store for babies and children's
Speaker 9: clothing in downtown Madison, and she wanted to use the
Speaker 9: money to start a website for the moms to interconnect.
Speaker 9: And we had a woman who had just moved to Middletown,
Speaker 9: Connecticut from Houston who wanted to be a dress designer.
Speaker 9: We had a grandmother in her seventies with beautiful long
Speaker 9: dreadlocks and she had like ten grandchildren. She lived in
Speaker 9: the North end of Hartford and she wanted to open
Speaker 9: an animal sanctuary. We had this blonde woman, a mom
Speaker 9: of three girls who had been dumped by her husband
Speaker 9: from Avon, Connecticut, who wanted to open a gym in
Speaker 9: her basement so she could be a trainer as well
Speaker 9: as take care of her kids. And we had an
Speaker 9: assistant named Jennifer Hotchkiss with a booming voice. So she
Speaker 9: worked as an assistant. She wanted to be the boss someday,
Speaker 9: but she needed a college education. She was a single
Speaker 9: mom and she wanted to be the first person in
Speaker 9: her family to go to college. She named Baypath College
Speaker 9: in Hartford because I guess they had flexible hours, and
Speaker 9: she was a mom. The woman who was fired from
Speaker 9: Wall Street one Darcy sorta. She had this incredible pitch
Speaker 9: and she came running up on stage. She gave me
Speaker 9: a big hub and I noticed a tube was sticking
Speaker 9: out of her neck, and I was like, are you okay?
Speaker 9: And everyone's clapping and no one can hear us, and
Speaker 9: she's like, Mika, I had heart surgery forty eight hours ago.
Speaker 9: The doctor told me not to come. There's a wheelchair backstage.
Speaker 9: I had to come. I had to tell you my value.
Speaker 9: I was practicing on the stretcher. Oh my god, please
Speaker 9: don't die right here. But that's amazing, and I'm like,
Speaker 9: I'm so moved. Let's close out the day. This is
Speaker 9: a good know your value event. First one, let's get
Speaker 9: out of here before anything goes wrong. And then this
Speaker 9: woman starts pulling on my dress saying, I need the microphone.
Speaker 9: I need the microphone. She seemed pretty elegant, so I said, uh,
Speaker 9: we have an announcement. I guess I hander the microphone
Speaker 9: and she goes, hello, I am the CMO of Baypath College,
Speaker 9: Jennifer Hotchkiss, the runner up young lady, and she pointed
Speaker 9: right out her She goes, you are amazing. Come see
Speaker 9: us on Monday. We are going to give you a
Speaker 9: full ride. And the whole room went ah, and we
Speaker 9: all just gasped, and you could hear this collective gasp
Speaker 9: and then like we all started crying, every single person
Speaker 9: on stage in the room, and Jennifer was bawling. And
Speaker 9: she graduated with highest honors two years later and was
Speaker 9: the graduation speaker at Baypath and is on her way.
Speaker 9: That was how I know your value, the events and
Speaker 9: the book series and fifty over fifty in Nabu Dabi.
Speaker 9: That's where it all start in Hartford, Connecticut, where I
Speaker 9: worked as a local reporter and kind of used the
Speaker 9: scrappy skills that you get in local to put together
Speaker 9: an event. I got to tell you, Molly, what brought
Speaker 9: women in there was not me was not Gael was
Speaker 9: not like anybody that you might have known. It was
Speaker 9: those three words know your value. Women, especially now, there
Speaker 9: seems to be a little bit of a resurgence. We
Speaker 9: have fallen back in so many ways. We want to
Speaker 9: know our value and we want to communicate it effectively.
Speaker 1: I also well up when you tell the story of
Speaker 1: Baypath College.
Speaker 2: It's amazing.
Speaker 1: And my husband is on the board of this college
Speaker 1: called Southern New Hampshire, which is another college right that
Speaker 1: does education for people who are going back to college.
Speaker 1: And it is so important that we make education formal
Speaker 1: for people.
Speaker 2: It's very meaningful to me.
Speaker 1: So I wonder if you could explain how people nominate
Speaker 1: each other or these two different groups thirty under thirty
Speaker 1: and fifty over fifty.
Speaker 9: So with fifty over fifty, actually we need to start
Speaker 9: talking about the next US List. Our first US List
Speaker 9: came out three years ago. We had ten thousand submissions
Speaker 9: in less than two weeks. Just to understand when the
Speaker 9: thirty under thirty list started. For Forbes their first year,
Speaker 9: it's gone global, it's huge. So I can say this,
Speaker 9: they had a couple hundred. So again like know your value,
Speaker 9: fifty over fifty kind of reaches an area where women
Speaker 9: are really hungry for recognition and for a sense of
Speaker 9: their value. And we have found that not just in
Speaker 9: the United States, but around the world, women are reaching
Speaker 9: their greatest impact, their most money, their greatest joy well
Speaker 9: after the age of fifty. Whether it's starting families or
Speaker 9: becoming CEOs or doing a complete pivot, they're doing it
Speaker 9: and they're it And I can't tell you how many
Speaker 9: women we were like, oh my god, this is insane.
Speaker 9: And so Randa Lane, the head of Forbes, and I,
Speaker 9: like within minutes, realized after the US fifty over fifty
Speaker 9: list was launched that we needed to go global. So
Speaker 9: there's Europe, Middle East, and Africa, and there's the asial list.
Speaker 9: And we literally have the most incredible responses when we
Speaker 9: call out to people to sign up. So you can
Speaker 9: go on Forbes dot com or Know your Value dot
Speaker 9: com to know how you have to be over fifty,
Speaker 9: and you can nominate yourself, which I think is very
Speaker 9: kyv or you can be nominated by a friend or
Speaker 9: a colleague. Honestly, we do the vetting. It's extremely complicated,
Speaker 9: and it's really fun and really rewarding.
Speaker 2: So talk about some of the speakers you're having at
Speaker 2: this okay.
Speaker 9: First of all, last year was insane and this year
Speaker 9: is turning out to be completely different and insane. We
Speaker 9: have such a diverse list of of speakers. We meet
Speaker 9: in Abu Dhabi, the crossroads of the world. The concept
Speaker 9: is the thirty under thirty listers and the fifty over
Speaker 9: fifty honorees come to Abu Dhabi. There's a ton of
Speaker 9: cross generational mentoring going on.
Speaker 2: And yet again generation act what generation are we? Jesse?
Speaker 2: We get left out? But that's okay or not?
Speaker 9: Well, that's explain it. Someday you'll have me. You should come,
Speaker 9: by the way.
Speaker 2: No, it's our one live show. If it were not
Speaker 2: a one live show, I would be on my.
Speaker 9: Way with live do it live from Abu Dhabi anyhow.
Speaker 9: But it's everything from Shania Twain to Shila Johnson to
Speaker 9: Ellen Johnson, Sirleif the former president of Liberia. We have
Speaker 9: like Susie Orman and yes, by the way, know your value.
Speaker 9: She is my inspo. I mean I used to watch
Speaker 9: her talking to people on the phone and I learned
Speaker 9: to talk to people honestly by watching Susie.
Speaker 1: Kathy Griffin told me the reason she has money is
Speaker 1: because of Susie. Really yeah, because Susie tells you how
Speaker 1: to do your money.
Speaker 9: She does, and she doesn't mince words. She's like, you're
Speaker 9: doing it all wrong. This is what you need to do,
Speaker 9: and she doesn't hold back. I love how just blatantly,
Speaker 9: bluntly honest she is with people about how they need
Speaker 9: to change their lives. And it's going to be the
Speaker 9: event itself. Huma Aberdeen, as you know, who's also on
Speaker 9: Morning Mika, is the vice chair, and we can have
Speaker 9: a lot of women from the region as well. We're
Speaker 9: very well known in their own right in the region.
Speaker 9: So the mentoring is it goes in so many different directions,
Speaker 9: younger to older, older to younger, Middle East to Western.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 9: I remember the second year when we had Elena Zelenska,
Speaker 9: Billy Jean King, Gloria Steinem and Hillary Clinton all on
Speaker 9: stage together. I was like, pinch me right now. I
Speaker 9: was in the elevator and this girl in her twenties
Speaker 9: like my daughter's age. She was like, oh my god,
Speaker 9: this elevator is so slow. I have got to get
Speaker 9: to networking. And I'm like, who's excited about networking? Like
Speaker 9: that makes me want to vomit actually like networking. I
Speaker 9: don't know why, but it feels like such a chore,
Speaker 9: you know, right, And she was. She invented the first
Speaker 9: networking event and loved it so much that she was
Speaker 9: like late and freaking out. And I thought, Okay, this
Speaker 9: event is successful if you've got a twenty something like
Speaker 9: like my twenty somethings like to stay home, so you know,
Speaker 9: post COVID twenty somethings or not, you know, the most
Speaker 9: like I want a network. But this kid was just
Speaker 9: on her way. So the event's remarkable. It really is
Speaker 9: something that I could have never dreamed of in terms
Speaker 9: of what people take away from it, no matter who
Speaker 9: they are, where they come from, what their age or
Speaker 9: background is. And I'm really proud of it. I'm blown
Speaker 9: away by it. But I'm incredibly proud at as to
Speaker 9: what we've been able to accomplish with thirty fifty in
Speaker 9: Abu Dhabi.
Speaker 2: So now talk to me about more yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 9: Four hours and then morning mega. I love it. Actually,
Speaker 9: I came into it with a little bit of a
Speaker 9: bad attitude because the four hours are exhausting, and I
Speaker 9: just was like, am I going to be able to
Speaker 9: give it and bring it. And the first, like the pilot,
Speaker 9: I was like, oh my god, I'm so tired.
Speaker 7: Do no.
Speaker 9: And then I got into it and now I'm like, oh, Joe,
Speaker 9: you take this segment. I just had an idea. I
Speaker 9: need to type it up for Morning Mega and I'm like,
Speaker 9: have you see me on my iPad During the show,
Speaker 9: I'm like typing away because I'm like, oh my god,
Speaker 9: great thought. So I love it and I love that
Speaker 9: Jen Simone and Huma are the co hosts. What's fun
Speaker 9: is that I think they just all They're all joyful, beautiful,
Speaker 9: fabulous people who have a different take on things, maybe
Speaker 9: a little different than I would have, but we come
Speaker 9: to it with so much joy. And the whole point
Speaker 9: is to have a lot of fun and to have
Speaker 9: a really interesting conversation and to move it along quickly.
Speaker 9: So when you're watching or you pull it up and
Speaker 9: you stream it while you're doing other things, it's going
Speaker 9: to move fast. It's not going to bog you down,
Speaker 9: and you might even like rewind and go, what was
Speaker 9: that that was fun?
Speaker 4: I'm going to use that.
Speaker 9: So I love it.
Speaker 1: I think it's great, and I also think that there's
Speaker 1: so much resistance in media to the idea of women
Speaker 1: like doing programs together, and there's something really cool about
Speaker 1: the fact that all the hosts are women.
Speaker 9: Yeah. I mean, you know, everyone was like when the
Speaker 9: we were putting together the show, and they're like, well,
Speaker 9: how should we describe it with a women's take, And
Speaker 9: I'm like, no, No, we're just four hosts. We happen
Speaker 9: to be women. But I'm not sitting here going women.
Speaker 9: We must be all women, and let's tell everything about women,
Speaker 9: and let's talk about women. We will all talk about
Speaker 9: things that interest us, which probably will bring us to
Speaker 9: women's issues, but we're not going to force it. We're
Speaker 9: going to talk about what's out there and what's bugging
Speaker 9: us and what's keeping us up at night.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, and I also think ultimately, I mean, all of
Speaker 1: these elections twenty three, twenty twenty two, twenty twenty, twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: the story we don't talk about, but they've been women's elections.
Speaker 1: They've been about Roe, they've been about you know, Donald
Speaker 1: Trump's messade here. I mean, these have been the issues
Speaker 1: that have propelled us.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and there have been a lot of things that
Speaker 9: I want to say on Morning Joe it's not that
Speaker 9: I haven't had the chance. Hahaha. No, it's not Joe
Speaker 9: interrupting me. It's more I want to own it, and
Speaker 9: I want to say it right to camera, and I
Speaker 9: want to be very clear about what I'm saying. And
Speaker 9: I have some things to share about my own personal
Speaker 9: experience with that former president, and this is a good
Speaker 9: place for it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So interesting, Mika. Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 9: Yay, thanks for having me, and thank you for being
Speaker 9: on Morning Joe. We love having you, Mulli Joe Fast.
Speaker 9: You're the best.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's really fun.
Speaker 1: Adam Carlson is a recovering political pollster.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 7: Adam Carlson, Hi, Mollie, how you do it?
Speaker 2: Good Adam? What do you do? Explain to us what
Speaker 2: you do.
Speaker 7: I am a polster. I used to work in political
Speaker 7: polling for Democratic Polling Organization. I sold out a bit
Speaker 7: working more in corporate stuff, so more of an outside observer,
Speaker 7: but kind of lived and breathed that world for about
Speaker 7: six years or so.
Speaker 1: So explain to us a little bit about what polling
Speaker 1: is now and what it was before and how it's changed.
Speaker 2: A little bit. Give us a little rit large on
Speaker 2: pulling of course.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so right now, we are no surprise to anybody.
Speaker 7: Polling is a bit volatile these days, and it faces
Speaker 7: a lot of structural challenges for a lot of people.
Speaker 7: You see all these spam callers on your phone, most
Speaker 7: people will pick up the phone and.
Speaker 2: Those are pollsters right calling you.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so they're calling you. In response rates which used
Speaker 7: to be even like fifteen twenty years ago, we're close
Speaker 7: to ten percent and fifteen percent are now down to
Speaker 7: you're lucky to get two or three percent response rate
Speaker 7: on phone poles, which is obviously you're not going to
Speaker 7: get necessarily a great representative population. So polls take great
Speaker 7: effort to ensure that they have a representative sample. They're
Speaker 7: contacting people over the phone, but it's expensive to do
Speaker 7: a really, really good phone poll, so you see a
Speaker 7: lot of kind of junk polsters come in and do
Speaker 7: either phone polls but not a lot of strict methodology
Speaker 7: to cut corners and save costs, or we'll do online polls.
Speaker 7: And there are a lot of really good online pollsters
Speaker 7: out there and a lot of cheap, trashy ones as well,
Speaker 7: So it's really important to understand which ones are doing
Speaker 7: the due diligence and are acting in good faith, which
Speaker 7: ones are kind of cutting corners, are trying to push
Speaker 7: a narrative. And I think that five thirty eight Polster ratings,
Speaker 7: which they put out a few weeks ago, do a
Speaker 7: really good job of looking at their track records and
Speaker 7: how transparent they are in methodology. It used to be
Speaker 7: a hell of a lot easier to pull even ten
Speaker 7: twenty thirty years ago than it is now.
Speaker 1: When you pull, you have this larger question. Right, we
Speaker 1: have in America a very shifting electra. One of the
Speaker 1: reasons why the polls were so off in twenty sixteen
Speaker 1: was that Trump brought out voters who had never voted before.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 7: And the same thing happened in twenty twenty as well.
Speaker 7: I mean, he overperformed his polling in both elections, and
Speaker 7: kind of a little known fact is that poll was
Speaker 7: pretty good in the Trump era when he wasn't on
Speaker 7: the ballot in twenty eighteen and twenty twenty two. But
Speaker 7: when he's on the ballot, things tend to get at
Speaker 7: a little screwy because to your point, a lot of
Speaker 7: his supporters are pretty distrustful of institutions, including polling, because
Speaker 7: Trump has railed against them when they haven't been benefiting him.
Speaker 7: He loves them now because they mostly show him ahead,
Speaker 7: but they're much less likely to pick up the phone
Speaker 7: or to even take it online survey, so it's harder
Speaker 7: and harder to reach his base.
Speaker 1: Let's sort of talk about what is happening right now.
Speaker 1: You have a really interesting thesis. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: polling that shows Trump ahead in varying degrees, but there's
Speaker 1: also a lot of pulling.
Speaker 2: That is junkie, that is messing up the averages.
Speaker 7: So in twenty twenty two, there was this big narrative
Speaker 7: that was being pushed by a lot of media outlets
Speaker 7: that it's going to be this big red waves, and
Speaker 7: a lot of that was informed by again, these kind
Speaker 7: of junk polsters like Eutrafalgers, your inside Advantages.
Speaker 2: Brass button Yes yes, yes.
Speaker 7: Rathmlssen, who were just putting out the again these cheap poles.
Speaker 7: Whether they were acting good faith or whether they were
Speaker 7: kind of cutting corners on methodology, they were showing Republicans
Speaker 7: doing better both nationally and in key swing districts in
Speaker 7: swing states, and that's why a lot of folks were
Speaker 7: surprised when Democrats ended up holding their own in a
Speaker 7: lot of these key racers almost holding the House, which
Speaker 7: was pretty much unstathomable both to most people beforehand. But
Speaker 7: they are a site split Ticket which has a lot
Speaker 7: of great work on this and kind of pokexholes and
Speaker 7: a lot of conventional wisdom using data, had an average
Speaker 7: for the national popular vote for the House, which only
Speaker 7: included high quality polsters, and they got really close to
Speaker 7: the final result again by being discerning and looking at, Okay,
Speaker 7: who is a reputable polster, not ones they're showing good
Speaker 7: results for your candidate, but ones that are doing their homework.
Speaker 7: And so we're kind of seeing a bit of a
Speaker 7: version of that again this year. It's still early, but
Speaker 7: some data worked on with the Economist using five thirty
Speaker 7: eight new polster ratings for a Trump versus Biden twenty
Speaker 7: twenty four head to head race, found that poles taken
Speaker 7: in January of twenty twenty four, of the really good,
Speaker 7: highly rated polsters only had Trump head by under a point,
Speaker 7: actuallyo point two points. If you look at polsters that
Speaker 7: are ranked most poorly, so the ones we were just
Speaker 7: talking about, your fagers, et cetera, they had Trump up five,
Speaker 7: So it's under one point versus five points. Obviously Biden
Speaker 7: wants to be ahead, but under one point popular vote
Speaker 7: margin is definitely easier to come back from than being
Speaker 7: down five. So a lot of media and sites like
Speaker 7: RCP will just group all of these polsters together regardless
Speaker 7: of quality, when in reality, if you kind of look
Speaker 7: at it by all, right, what's their track record, are
Speaker 7: they acting in good faith? Are they publishing their methodology?
Speaker 7: You can get a but it what is potentially a
Speaker 7: more realistic average? We won't know until election day. But
Speaker 7: I think an average is only as good as the
Speaker 7: poll you include in it.
Speaker 1: I want to go from here to the idea of
Speaker 1: polling as disinformation. So twenty twenty two, Ron Johnson wildly insane,
Speaker 1: not super popular candidate runs against him, called Mandela Barns.
Speaker 1: He is the sort of grassroots candidate wins the primary
Speaker 1: versus a sort of more traditional candidate. He is polling
Speaker 1: six seven, eight points behind. He loses by a very
Speaker 1: small one point less, you know, a little less than
Speaker 1: one point margin. I mean, he was basically destroyed by polls, right,
Speaker 1: a lot.
Speaker 7: Of those decisions. So to your point, Mandela Barnes was
Speaker 7: pretty much cut loose by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee
Speaker 7: and Triage be cousins on all the races. Yeah, they
Speaker 7: do their own internal polling as well, which we never
Speaker 7: get to see.
Speaker 2: That also probably showed it.
Speaker 7: Probably informed it for sure, and he for whatever reason.
Speaker 7: So they were all wrong and they were all wrong,
Speaker 7: and polls are wrong and mean with Wisconsin has had
Speaker 7: some big misses and polling recently too. I don't know
Speaker 7: if you remember the poll that had bidened up by
Speaker 7: seventeen there in twenty twenty October twenty eighth, twenty twenty,
Speaker 7: which obviously is a big, a big outlier, but to
Speaker 7: your point, it was clearly a pattern right where he
Speaker 7: outperformed his polling. And then in retrospect, if Democrats had
Speaker 7: invested in Barns the way they had in other races
Speaker 7: like Arizona Pennsylvania, it's a very good chance he would
Speaker 7: have won. And Ron Johnson is one of the most
Speaker 7: right wing senators in a representing a state that Biden won,
Speaker 7: which is very rare in these days. That one really hurts.
Speaker 7: I don't necessarily buy for that race that it was disinformation.
Speaker 1: Certainly in that race, I don't think it was, but
Speaker 1: there's clearly a way to shift the narrative via polls.
Speaker 7: Yes, And this was actually a point that one of
Speaker 7: Nate Silver's hypotheses, which ended up not looking so great
Speaker 7: in twenty twenty two, was that, well, Republicans are releasing
Speaker 7: all these poles from their internal their internal polls and
Speaker 7: Republican affiliated pollsters that are skewing these averages. Like Democrats
Speaker 7: could do that too, but they aren't. So it's kind
Speaker 7: of like a free market effect. And maybe that was
Speaker 7: Democrats didn't believe their own numbers, Maybe they just wanted
Speaker 7: to keep it close to the vest, who knows, But
Speaker 7: in reality, it was just them flooding the zone with
Speaker 7: Republican leaning polls. Again, whether that was good faith, poor methodology,
Speaker 7: just you know, a regular polling miss will never really know.
Speaker 7: But it did shape the narrative leading up to it,
Speaker 7: and we don't really know what the effects of that
Speaker 7: narrative shaping are. Did it shift funding probably? Did it
Speaker 7: prohibit Democrats from donating in races that they otherwise would
Speaker 7: be competitive because there were despondent You never know. It
Speaker 7: could have had the opposite effect. But polling for better
Speaker 7: or for worse, I would argue mostly for worse, does
Speaker 7: shape the narrative, which the media narrative, especially especially if
Speaker 7: we don't have much else to go on. People are
Speaker 7: trying to read the tea leaves from these like uncontested
Speaker 7: presidential primaries right now, and they're grasping its straws for
Speaker 7: the most part, and polling is the only thing to
Speaker 7: talk about right now, and right now the narrative is
Speaker 7: that Trump is winning, Biden's in trouble. That drives clicks.
Speaker 7: But it's a little more complicated than that, I think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so let's talk about this because there is also
Speaker 1: one other factor here that is deeply involved in polling,
Speaker 1: and that is No Labels, Mark Penn's wife's organization, Nancy Jacobson.
Speaker 1: So Mark Penn has a polling company. Can you talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about that No Labels as a third
Speaker 1: party organization that fundraises, gets a lot of money from Republicans,
Speaker 1: really desperately wants to make the case that Biden cannot
Speaker 1: win and that a third party candidate needs to come in.
Speaker 1: They've had some trouble trying to find a third party candidate,
Speaker 1: but that is their goal.
Speaker 7: So Mark Penn hits up a Stagwell group which partners
Speaker 7: with Harvard University on the Harvard Harris Caps polls. He
Speaker 7: also has an organization called HARISX, which primarily does tech
Speaker 7: and telecom polling, but has been doing political polling since
Speaker 7: at least twenty eighteen. They put out some kind of
Speaker 7: eye popping headlines and Dave Wibel did a great story
Speaker 7: about this stick around Israel, and they did a lot
Speaker 7: of polling around and the Bob Moler case. If everyone
Speaker 7: what remember is that I feel like decades ago, I
Speaker 7: kind of raised some headlines and has shown some polling
Speaker 7: or they've put out some maps that show this kind
Speaker 7: of viability for a third party candidate that had been
Speaker 7: met with some skepticism.
Speaker 1: Right, which is very convenient because the wife is running
Speaker 1: an organization that is running a third party candidate or
Speaker 1: trying to.
Speaker 7: I think the press is waking up to that a
Speaker 7: little bit. I think that'll take more shape if and
Speaker 7: when they find a candidate, which supposedly will be as
Speaker 7: soon as March. But there's been a lot of stories.
Speaker 7: Adam mass has been doing a lot of good research
Speaker 7: on this and put some good stories on this, but
Speaker 7: they're just really struggling to find a candidate. They're onbout
Speaker 7: the ballots in some states, but they're having a lot
Speaker 7: of internal issues, including with their their funders, who thought
Speaker 7: to be more of an issue based organization.
Speaker 2: Don't They have some donors who are suing them.
Speaker 7: Yes, Robert Durst, So it's members of the durs family.
Speaker 2: Because they feel it's a bait and switch, right.
Speaker 7: Yeah, they wanted to be kind of based on issues
Speaker 7: and finding a middle path and by part reisanship. I
Speaker 7: believe there was a whole time story about this, and
Speaker 7: they feel that they're not getting what they paid for
Speaker 7: because they're trying to seal the third party candidate, which
Speaker 7: most people are concerned about what hurt Biden more than Trump,
Speaker 7: especially given that there's all the people that are going
Speaker 7: to decide this election are people that don't really like
Speaker 7: either of them, and they maybe have a take towards
Speaker 7: a Joe Manchin or Larry Hogan or people who are
Speaker 7: more in the middle of the spectrum.
Speaker 1: Of course, it's hard to see the difference between Joe
Speaker 1: Mansion and a Joe Biden when they largely read a
Speaker 1: lot a like, except that Joe Manchin worked on killing
Speaker 1: some of Joe Biden's more fullsome legislation, you know, I
Speaker 1: mean it's sort of amazing. Like I think Joe Manchin
Speaker 1: is more for the donor class right than Joe Biden,
Speaker 1: because I mean, ultimately he cares about you know, it
Speaker 1: was a lot of decisions about taxes and trying to
Speaker 1: deprive working people of benefits. So let's just talk for
Speaker 1: another minute about pulling methodology. Sometimes posters will look at
Speaker 1: the numbers and sort of rejigger them in other ways, right.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean in twenty twelve, if any numbers that
Speaker 7: far back, there was this whole Republican leading organization called
Speaker 7: Unskewed Polls or the guy to this pastournalist I believe
Speaker 7: our blogger started, which was taking these polls that were
Speaker 7: showing good results for Barack Obama and being like, oh no,
Speaker 7: this party identification, Like there's too many Democrats in this point.
Speaker 7: So I'm going to take the data. I'm going to
Speaker 7: rewait it add more Republicans or more independence or what
Speaker 7: have you, and like, here's what the actual numbers are.
Speaker 7: And of course, in retrospect, this is kind of silly,
Speaker 7: but there's been written about extensively that the Romney campaign
Speaker 7: was buying into this, and they entered into election day,
Speaker 7: I think, well, all these polls are wrong, they're pulling
Speaker 7: too many Democrats, putting too many Democrats, and we're going
Speaker 7: to win. I think he was genuinely flabbergasted, even though
Speaker 7: most of the polls are very very good that year
Speaker 7: and showed Obama winning by a few points. He won
Speaker 7: by a few points in a comfortable electoral college margin.
Speaker 7: But it's funny this year kind of see a bit
Speaker 7: of the opposite happening, where a lot of polls are
Speaker 7: showing potentially impausibly good polls for Trump, but maybe they're
Speaker 7: maybe they're accurate.
Speaker 4: You know, we don't know.
Speaker 7: It's still nine months out. Although there's reasons to be skeptical,
Speaker 7: which we can get into later, But there's Democrats who
Speaker 7: are just like seeing poles are unfavorable to Biden and saying, no,
Speaker 7: this can't be true, this can't be right. The polls
Speaker 7: are broken, and this isn't right. And then I understand
Speaker 7: that skepticism, especially after twenty sixteen and twenty twenty, but
Speaker 7: they're still really important for showing us where the races
Speaker 7: are most competitive. Even if you take them seriously, not literally,
Speaker 7: you're actually they're still pretty accurate. And there's this huge
Speaker 7: discourse that's been happening with like Simon Rosenberg and Matt Iglesias.
Speaker 7: If the election were held today, who would win? And
Speaker 7: I think it's kind of a silly premise to begin with,
Speaker 7: because it's not campaigns matter. The Biden campaign and the
Speaker 7: Trump campaign will spend billions and billions of dollars and
Speaker 7: their allies, a lot of people still don't know that's
Speaker 7: going to be the matchup. I know it's kind of
Speaker 7: hard to believe.
Speaker 2: No, I think that's absolutely right.
Speaker 7: It's like a third of the electoris still doesn't kind
Speaker 7: of either doesn't want to believe it or doesn't believe it.
Speaker 7: So I think everyone just needs to be a little
Speaker 7: bit more patient about this instead of just immediately attacking
Speaker 7: the polls like poles are misunderstood as these kind of
Speaker 7: predictive things.
Speaker 2: To spar out right and not just a moment in
Speaker 2: time and exactly right shifts.
Speaker 1: It seems like twenty sixteen, the polls were wrong because
Speaker 1: they weren't able to pull Trump right, the Trump factor,
Speaker 1: whatever that is. And you're saying that again in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: the polls were wrong because they weren't able to pull
Speaker 1: the Trump factor, but Biden was able to pull.
Speaker 2: Out more voters too, so it ended up working out right.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think it's definitely twenty twenty is a bit
Speaker 7: more complicated. There's a lot of theories, but I think
Speaker 7: there was some of that kind of repeat that just
Speaker 7: it's Trump voters are kind of weird and hard to
Speaker 7: contact sometimes that can skew things. The polls had Biden
Speaker 7: winning in twenty twenty, and it got that the national
Speaker 7: popular vote decently right, but really underestimated Trump in the
Speaker 7: swing states, so he still won. So directionally like they got,
Speaker 7: they said Biden was going to win, and he did,
Speaker 7: but it was very, very very narrow, and that was
Speaker 7: not the case from the poles were show and I
Speaker 7: thought it was gonna be a pretty comfortable way.
Speaker 2: So basically, when Trump is on the ballot, it's much
Speaker 2: much harder to paul.
Speaker 7: It's a small sample size, but for the data we
Speaker 7: do have twenty sixteen and twenty twenty, yeah, it tends
Speaker 7: to be a little bit unpredictable, and the past two
Speaker 7: times it's worked in his favor. But one theory that
Speaker 7: some people have, which is again hard to prove, is
Speaker 7: that polsters have been looking for answers. Going back to
Speaker 7: the beginning of this podcast, what are the problems facing
Speaker 7: the industry? Sometimes polsters are changing their methodology from cycle
Speaker 7: to cycle to be like, all right, we're having trouble
Speaker 7: getting a representative sample, getting enough Republicans, or getting enough
Speaker 7: young people or people of color on the phone, which
Speaker 7: are just harder to get in general. So it's possible
Speaker 7: they could overcorrect, change the methodology too much and underestimate Biden.
Speaker 7: I think that's an underrated possibility.
Speaker 4: Again, we won't know.
Speaker 7: But just because something's happened twice before, it doesn't mean
Speaker 7: it's going to happen a certain time.
Speaker 1: Oh so interesting and also so strange. Are you guys
Speaker 1: going to figure out a new way to do.
Speaker 7: Pauline, It's a constant conversation. I mostly do again for
Speaker 7: mostly a corporate nonprofit clients, although there's a bit in
Speaker 7: the political realm to do online polling. The issue with
Speaker 7: that is you can't get a truly as much as
Speaker 7: you can ever get a truly representative sample because you
Speaker 7: have to opt in, you have to click in, and
Speaker 7: you usually you're paid for your answers. Versus phone polls.
Speaker 7: You can do a random digit dialing, and you can
Speaker 7: work for very very large voter lists and work from
Speaker 7: there get a representative sample. Then you have the response
Speaker 7: rate issue. The New York Times did a good, really
Speaker 7: interesting experiment in Wisconsin in twenty twenty two with mail voting,
Speaker 7: I mean mail polling rather to see if that would
Speaker 7: increase response rates. It gave a little incentive that's not
Speaker 7: really replicable on a big scale because just takes too
Speaker 7: long to get everything back and there's a lot more
Speaker 7: logistics involved. People try and contact via text messages. So honestly,
Speaker 7: the industry is always looking for answers, always looking to improve,
Speaker 7: and understands that I think just one or two more
Speaker 7: big polling misses away from further distrust in the industry.
Speaker 7: But I can tell you that after twenty sixteen, when
Speaker 7: I was working with the Democratic Pollster, you know, we
Speaker 7: were just looking for we were looking for answers. We're like, okay,
Speaker 7: we got to really examine what worked, what didn't. If
Speaker 7: we got a state right, was it for the right
Speaker 7: reasons or we had two errors canceling each other out.
Speaker 7: It's always a challenge. So to answer your question, I
Speaker 7: don't know if we'll find the silver bullet, but I
Speaker 7: think it's important to keep searching for it, and I
Speaker 7: think twenty twenty four will be very instructive. If the
Speaker 7: polling industry gets the margin wrong a third time by
Speaker 7: a big amount, I think it was going to be
Speaker 7: even deeper soul searching, and even deeper and quite deserved
Speaker 7: public cometicism. Thank you so much, of course, thanks for
Speaker 7: having me.
Speaker 5: No moment full on, who.
Speaker 2: Is your moment of fuckery? We covered a lot of shit.
Speaker 3: My moment of fuckery this week is the special counsel
Speaker 3: who decided he was going to try to make this
Speaker 3: into a job application in the Trump two point zero
Speaker 3: administration instead of a straight up the middle analysis of
Speaker 3: the legal case that he was hired and swore an
Speaker 3: oath to examine. If, like me, you read that thing
Speaker 3: and thought, wow, this is an editorial not an actual
Speaker 3: fucking legal case, you would be like I am kind
Speaker 3: of pissed off, and you think this is a moment
Speaker 3: of fuckery, and it is my favorite.
Speaker 1: Actually thought on this comes from our friend Joe Scarborough,
Speaker 1: who said they couldn't indict Biden legally, so they tried
Speaker 1: to indict him politically.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's exactly right. Joe's exactly correct on that one
Speaker 3: hundred percent right. None of this had to go this way,
Speaker 3: but this guy chose to make this into a very
Speaker 3: personal dig on Biden. Look, I think it was exceedingly
Speaker 3: unprofessional and exceedingly shitty. And yet you know, remember, this
Speaker 3: is a guy who found a place in the Trump administration,
Speaker 3: so that tells you an awful lot about his character.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Rick Wilson, as.
Speaker 4: Always happy to be with you, and I will see
Speaker 4: you again next week.
Speaker 2: Yay.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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