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 Congress and Matt Gates has leaked
Speaker 1: a draft of emotion for Majority Leader McCarthy to vacate
Speaker 1: his speaker chief. What he left it on a baby's
Speaker 1: changing table.
Speaker 2: We have a.
Speaker 1: Star studded show today. White House Chief of Staff Jeff
Speaker 1: Zeitz talks to us about the Biden Administration's move to
Speaker 1: negotiate drug prices for the American people. Then we'll talk
Speaker 1: to pollster John Delavalpi about the grains of salt we
Speaker 1: should be taking with many of these polls that are
Speaker 1: lighting up the op eds these days. But first we
Speaker 1: have the host of the Lawrence O'Donnell shows, and Miss
Speaker 1: Senbyc's own Lawrence O'Donnell. Welcome back to Fast Politics. Lawrence o'donnald.
Speaker 3: Thank you. There's a little flaw in the booking system here.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, because when.
Speaker 3: You asked me to do this, you never ask is
Speaker 3: there anything you'd like to talk about?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 3: Because the answer the answer would always be no. So
Speaker 3: I begin with nothing to say, okay, and so it's
Speaker 3: kind of a game to see if we can pull
Speaker 3: anything out of thin air for me.
Speaker 1: To say, it's funny because when I was just about
Speaker 1: to record him, thinking like, poor Lawrence has to deal
Speaker 1: with our American political system right now, I mean, I
Speaker 1: just the kind of cirrus. I honestly just want your take.
Speaker 3: Well, I just saw Jamel Bowie's latest piece about how
Speaker 3: unbelievably ridiculous is He charitably did not use the word
Speaker 3: childish for punditry to have ever talked about, oh, you know,
Speaker 3: Biden should not run for a second term, or Kamala
Speaker 3: how should be dumped from the ticket, and these things
Speaker 3: that were always ludicrous every single day they were said.
Speaker 3: And one of the things that that comes from is
Speaker 3: that when your job is writing about politics, and I
Speaker 3: mean politics, not government, and there's a huge difference. Government
Speaker 3: is a huge and complex subject that requires career study,
Speaker 3: and politics is a game that you can get up
Speaker 3: to speed on in less than a baseball season. And
Speaker 3: your opinion is of exactly the same value as anyone
Speaker 3: who's been throwing around such opinions for thirty years. And
Speaker 3: that is not to in any way to mean the
Speaker 3: value of the new opinions. It's just to say that
Speaker 3: they're all ridiculous. You don't get better at it if
Speaker 3: you are talking about and predicting in politics and just
Speaker 3: politics and campaigning and all of that sort of stuff.
Speaker 3: I've never seen anyone get better at it. I've never
Speaker 3: seen anyone be better at it in their twenty fifth
Speaker 3: year than in their first year, because it is a goofy,
Speaker 3: mostly uninformed, guessing game of idle minds that have to
Speaker 3: guess about something because they aren't authorities on anything.
Speaker 2: I could go on and on.
Speaker 1: I read that same piece and I had almost all
Speaker 1: of the same thoughts, and I did wonder why there
Speaker 1: wasn't more talk just about the power of incumbency, And
Speaker 1: because I had written about this, I also was thinking
Speaker 1: about In that Jonathan Jade piece, he talks about the
Speaker 1: four presidents who had been primaried and what happened to them.
Speaker 3: I didn't see that piece, but primaries against incumbent presidents
Speaker 3: do have a relatively short history. It's a thing that
Speaker 3: kind of started, you know, in my lifetime, in nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty eight, and the Democratic Party, the professionals in the
Speaker 3: Democratic Party, the potential future presidential candidates in the Democratic
Speaker 3: Party would have to have taken the defeat of Donald
Speaker 3: Trump by Joe Biden lightly in order to decide, now,
Speaker 3: let's mess with the formula that did that. Let's four
Speaker 3: years later have a big Democratic primary, which, as you know,
Speaker 3: is what political reporters want right desperately, West Berkley want
Speaker 3: to do that. They want this big primary with presumably
Speaker 3: everyone except Biden who ran last time, and more you know,
Speaker 3: Gavin news stars, you know, these kind of dream candidates
Speaker 3: who they dream about, and that that would be better
Speaker 3: for the Democratic Party. While you have defendant Trump in
Speaker 3: four different courthouses around the country, it would be great
Speaker 3: to have this big, confused Democratic primary, in which, by
Speaker 3: the way, remember you would have to to some degree
Speaker 3: run against Joe Biden. You'd have to say here's what
Speaker 3: was in attic about the Biden presidency, that I will
Speaker 3: do better. And there actually isn't a candidate who's going
Speaker 3: to be able to run for president and the Democratic
Speaker 3: side and say this is what I will do better
Speaker 3: than Joe Biden. There isn't one, because there isn't a
Speaker 3: thing within the jurisdiction of the presidency that Joe Biden
Speaker 3: hasn't actually done better than all you modern Democratic presidents.
Speaker 3: By modern I would say what I now mean by
Speaker 3: that is all presidents who included the environment and morphed
Speaker 3: into the subject of climate change as a serious subject.
Speaker 3: So that takes you back basically to Bill Clinton and forward.
Speaker 3: It's really childish if you think that it's easy for
Speaker 3: the Democratic Party to just go through a nominating process
Speaker 3: and find a good candidate who is better than Biden,
Speaker 3: which is precisely what they set out to do last time.
Speaker 3: And pretty much everyone thought that there were candidates better
Speaker 3: than Biden, including me at the beginning. I looked at
Speaker 3: the polling and I looked at this situation, and I
Speaker 3: thought there were better candidates than Biden, and I was wrong.
Speaker 3: The voters said, no, this is the candidate we want,
Speaker 3: This is the candidate we will support. This is the
Speaker 3: candidate who we will elect presidents. And there hasn't emerged somebody,
Speaker 3: either from the last field or now who could reasonably
Speaker 3: take that away from him. And Gavin Newsom knows that.
Speaker 3: Gavin Newsom knows. Among other things that Gavin Newsom knows
Speaker 3: is that if he did run a primary against Joe Biden,
Speaker 3: he'd lose. And so you know, he might do very
Speaker 3: well he might get forty percent of the votes you know,
Speaker 3: in the primary.
Speaker 2: But he'd lose.
Speaker 3: He wouldn't get the nomination. And this is especially the
Speaker 3: time period, which is the year before the year of
Speaker 3: a presidential election, in which punditry is at its worst
Speaker 3: because it's it's desperately waiting for you know, voters to
Speaker 3: show up in Iowa, and waiting for them for New
Speaker 3: Hampshire and for South Carolina, and so in all the
Speaker 3: idle time that they have before the real votes start,
Speaker 3: they come up with absolute nonsense. Imagine if the professional
Speaker 3: baseball season had a year of spring training before the
Speaker 3: first pitch is thrown out at Yankee Stadium for the
Speaker 3: actual season, I mean, baseball journalism would be a disaster.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's what we're looking at right now. I
Speaker 1: think Trump has some legal problems. You talked about this yesterday.
Speaker 1: Give us the TLDR on that.
Speaker 3: Jurisprudence is actually more predictable than politics. Okay, So I
Speaker 3: have dropped out of the political predicting field, so this
Speaker 3: is not political predicting. So one thing to know about
Speaker 3: the country you live in is that depending on the
Speaker 3: jurisdiction you're in the guilty verdict at trial rate hovers
Speaker 3: somewhere in the ninety percent. Okay, there's plenty of places
Speaker 3: where it's ninety nine ninety eight. You know, the best
Speaker 3: places for defendants have like ninety two percent guilty verdict
Speaker 3: rates in trials that go to jury's Okay, that go
Speaker 3: all the way to jury's. So he's facing four different
Speaker 3: criminal juries, okay, with four different judges, one of whom,
Speaker 3: let's just presume in Florida, is going to try to
Speaker 3: tilt everything she can in Donald Trump's favor. That is
Speaker 3: still a fairly limited way to influence the trial. The
Speaker 3: judge has influence, but other than outright dismissal of the case,
Speaker 3: which the judge is empowered to do, it's very difficult
Speaker 3: for the judge to steer the case and a criminal
Speaker 3: trial to a not guilty verdict. So you have to
Speaker 3: assume that minimum of three out of four of these
Speaker 3: cases are going to end up in guilty verdicts. And
Speaker 3: the guilty verdict, as I've said before, is just the
Speaker 3: first day of the appeals process, and the appeals process
Speaker 3: in each case is going to take at least two years.
Speaker 3: But this is the most real thing that's happening both
Speaker 3: in our politics and in Donald Trump's life, and in
Speaker 3: this history of the Trump era, which is defendant Trump,
Speaker 3: which is why I concentrate on that on my show
Speaker 3: without ever mentioning a presidential poll. I couldn't care less
Speaker 3: what the presidential polls say. I couldn't care less that
Speaker 3: someone in New Hampshire is mad because South Carolina is
Speaker 3: going to go first. I don't care. There's not a
Speaker 3: single voter in New Hampshire who's not going to vote
Speaker 3: for Joe Biden in the general election because the South
Speaker 3: Carolina went before New Hampshire for the nom press. It's
Speaker 3: all just child's play. That stuff, and this thing is
Speaker 3: real with real evidence that is ultimately going to to
Speaker 3: stop the madness of the Trump era. It won't stop
Speaker 3: Donald Trump. He will be if he gets a sentence.
Speaker 3: The most he's going to get his home confinement because
Speaker 3: they're never going to figure out how to send the
Speaker 3: Secret Service to prison with him and all that. He
Speaker 3: will rant for the rest of his life, that's for sure.
Speaker 3: But those verdicts are going to be very, very very
Speaker 3: powerful definers and punctuation points on the era.
Speaker 1: You know, I think that's a really good point and
Speaker 1: like maybe a little bit cinematically disappointing, but probably it's
Speaker 1: very unlikely that Trump will actually have bars in front
Speaker 1: of him.
Speaker 3: I actually am a liberal, and a kind of light
Speaker 3: sentencing liberal. I've been in courtroom when I was ten
Speaker 3: years old watching someone be sentenced to the death penalty
Speaker 3: to be electrocuted. And in Massachusetts when that used to happen,
Speaker 3: the way they would read that verdict is the word
Speaker 3: death would come at the very end of the verdict
Speaker 3: and it would be this very specific thing where electrical
Speaker 3: current will pass through the body until death was very
Speaker 3: very specific. I've seen people, you know, sentenced to life.
Speaker 3: I've seen them sentenced to twenty years. I've seen them
Speaker 3: sentenced to one year. I'm not a hard sentence guy.
Speaker 3: I'm not the guy to ask to put someone away for.
Speaker 2: A long time.
Speaker 3: So I got to say, you know, the sentences never
Speaker 3: matter to me as much as the verdicts do. And
Speaker 3: so if someone gets twenty years, I'm never going to
Speaker 3: complain and say they should have gotten life. And so
Speaker 3: but anyway, that's the long winded way of saying I'm
Speaker 3: very defendant sympathetic basically, but home confinement is going to
Speaker 3: be its own wonderful comedy. There's going to be Trump
Speaker 3: Home Confinement Broadway plays one hundred and fifty years now.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: It took one hundred and fifty years for the British
Speaker 3: to finally write, you know, the Madness of King George,
Speaker 3: and it was a phenomenally wonderful play, but no playwright
Speaker 3: could see him that way. It took over one hundred
Speaker 3: years to see George that way, you know. And the
Speaker 3: thing about Trump is, you get every playwright's going to
Speaker 3: see him that way, like right now today.
Speaker 2: But the ripening of it will go on forever.
Speaker 3: I believe the Trump Home Confinement play of one hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty years from now will be better than the
Speaker 3: one ten years from now. It will just get better
Speaker 3: and better. It will give forever. There will be sitcoms,
Speaker 3: there will be It'll just be its own giant entertainment genre.
Speaker 1: George Conway always says to me that he thinks that
Speaker 1: the Republican Party will have to die in order for
Speaker 1: it to get Trump out of his system. I don't
Speaker 1: want to ask you to predict the future, but it
Speaker 1: does seem like they are really addicted to Trump.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, the corporate structure of the parties I
Speaker 3: think makes it functionally impossible for them to die, especially
Speaker 3: in a two two party system that the media supports energetically.
Speaker 3: The media needs it to be a two party system
Speaker 3: because they don't know how to cover a four party
Speaker 3: system or a seven party system as they have in
Speaker 3: other countries. It's just too many cameras, you know, too
Speaker 3: many camera crews. They can't handle it. The structure of
Speaker 3: the two party system is probably unbreakable and probably has
Speaker 3: such enormous barriers to entry to a third party that
Speaker 3: I suspect there's going to be this thing we call
Speaker 3: the Republican Party going forward, and the question becomes who's
Speaker 3: running it, who gets control of it. If you look
Speaker 3: at your examples of parties changing utterly, the Democratic Party
Speaker 3: is the example you have, and the Republican Party, the
Speaker 3: Republican Party was the most subt It just changed on
Speaker 3: a dime with the madness of Donald Trump and the
Speaker 3: madness by the way of millions upon millions upon millions
Speaker 3: of Republican voters who said, oh, this would be great,
Speaker 3: he should be present. Those people are nuts, and so
Speaker 3: no one knew they were nuts because they were offered
Speaker 3: Mitt Romney or they were offered John McCain. So the
Speaker 3: same people who voted for John McCain and Mitt Romney
Speaker 3: then said, oh, no, I want to vote for the clown.
Speaker 3: I want to vote for the abject buffoon clown right,
Speaker 3: And so those voters have been exposed. And the question
Speaker 3: is the question is all about them. It's entirely about them,
Speaker 3: And what are they going to do when Trump is
Speaker 3: out of the picture and there are these Trump pretenders
Speaker 3: who are running.
Speaker 2: And are the vives?
Speaker 3: Are those kinds of candidates going to become like they
Speaker 3: used to be in the Republican primary, this temporary bubble
Speaker 3: of oh isn't that interesting and fun Herman Kain? You
Speaker 3: know that kind of character, And they will bubble for
Speaker 3: a month and a half on the polls, and then
Speaker 3: they'll go down and you'll end up back in the Romney,
Speaker 3: McCain Bush territory. I don't know who the Romney, mccains
Speaker 3: and Bushes are. I know who all the clown characters,
Speaker 3: but I don't know who those Romney and McCain and
Speaker 3: type people can be in the future, because that's not
Speaker 3: who you're putting in the Senate. That's not who you're
Speaker 3: putting in the House representatives in the Republican Party. That's
Speaker 3: not really who their governors are. And it's not how
Speaker 3: you get on Fox. It's not how you get the
Speaker 3: following in the past. Nineteen sixty eight was a big
Speaker 3: kind of an attempted revolution within the Democratic Party that
Speaker 3: people think didn't work.
Speaker 4: They're wrong.
Speaker 3: They just didn't understand the length of the time it
Speaker 3: takes for a revolution to work. It was a four
Speaker 3: year revolution.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: It began in nineteen sixty eight and was victorious in
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy two with the most liberal nominee for the
Speaker 3: Democratic Party in history and George mcgovernment. And you can
Speaker 3: tell how much of a revolution it was because McGovern
Speaker 3: went on to lose forty nine states. That's how far
Speaker 3: the Democratic Party went from kind of a kind of
Speaker 3: establishment centrism to what was the current real leftism of
Speaker 3: the Democratic Party. And you know, then it kind of
Speaker 3: pulled back a little bit in the direction of Jimmy
Speaker 3: Carter and was finding its way along and getting in
Speaker 3: fits and starts, sometimes with two steps forward and one
Speaker 3: step back, increasingly liberal to the point where Joe Biden
Speaker 3: is in fact the most liberal president in history, and
Speaker 3: no one would have told you. No one would have guessed,
Speaker 3: you know, in the nineteen seventies, you know that Joe
Speaker 3: Biden was going to grow up to be the most
Speaker 3: liberal president in history. And so that's a slower evolution
Speaker 3: of a party, but it's all based on thinking and
Speaker 3: considering issues. And the first time that anyone in the
Speaker 3: United States Senate in the nineteen eighties or nineties, whatever,
Speaker 3: was the first time any one of those people heard
Speaker 3: the phrase gay marriage. Every one of them thought, well,
Speaker 3: that's crazy, that's crazy, right, that's a joke. And eventually
Speaker 3: it becomes a taken for granted element, you know of
Speaker 3: the Democratic Party's range of sympathies and interests, and what
Speaker 3: that is is a party and politicians listening and thinking
Speaker 3: and having their gay relatives and having their gay friends
Speaker 3: and having you know, this story evolves publicly for them
Speaker 3: in ways in which they actually open their minds and learn.
Speaker 3: I can't think of an example of anything like that
Speaker 3: in the Republican Party. I can't think of one, Like,
Speaker 3: not one thing did the Republican Party think their way
Speaker 3: through collectively, by the way, with the majority of the
Speaker 3: country who was also thinking their way through it to
Speaker 3: get to a new position. That's not anything the Republican
Speaker 3: Party's ever done. And so Stuart Stevens is my favorite
Speaker 3: because he was Romney's campaign manager. He was the last
Speaker 3: campaign manager of a Republican presidential nominee who was saying
Speaker 3: and Stuart, you know, he was the most thoughtful person
Speaker 3: I know in that field. He's a novelist, he's a writer,
Speaker 3: he's a thinker. When he sat down to do his
Speaker 3: book about what happened that gave us Donald Trump, he
Speaker 3: just kept staring at it, the situation, and kept staring
Speaker 3: at the situation, kept staring at the situation. And it's
Speaker 3: all in the title of his book. It was all
Speaker 3: a lie. And I never would have said that. I
Speaker 3: never would have said to you, Mitch McConnell was lying
Speaker 3: to us in the Senate in nineteen ninety four, nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety six, nineteen ninety seven, when he appeared to be
Speaker 3: a completely reasonable Republican senator, he was just lying to us.
Speaker 3: He was just getting through the day, believing in nothing.
Speaker 3: And it was all a lie. If that's true, and
Speaker 3: I think it is, it leaves the thing we call
Speaker 3: the Republican Party with absolutely no fulcrum on which to turn.
Speaker 1: Lawrence is so interesting, important and also quite depressing. Thank
Speaker 1: you for joining us.
Speaker 3: Depressing is my specialty. They're supposed to be a warning
Speaker 3: about that on my phone number. When you call it,
Speaker 3: they're supposed to be it pops up. But you call her,
Speaker 3: ID is supposed to say to you, depressing, depressed, be careful.
Speaker 1: Jeff Science is the Biden White House chief of staff.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 5: Can I call you, Jeff, of course, and thank you
Speaker 5: for having me. It's an honor to be with you.
Speaker 1: You're not like the right honorable chief of staff, right, there's.
Speaker 5: No, absolutely not. And he talked to my children, you
Speaker 5: do your much worse things. So let's just stick with Jeff.
Speaker 1: You are the chief of staff for the President of
Speaker 1: the United States. These are enormous shoes to fill. Left
Speaker 1: by Ron. Ron has been on this podcast twice. He's
Speaker 1: friend of the pod, but you know, he was pretty
Speaker 1: burnt out. I mean, it's a really rough job. Can
Speaker 1: we talk about that.
Speaker 4: It's a hard job.
Speaker 5: I mean I think all these jobs are hard and
Speaker 5: probably getting harder, just in terms of how fast things
Speaker 5: are moving, how difficult the political environment is, how complex
Speaker 5: the world is you know, obviously the hardest job is
Speaker 5: the president's job, but those of us who are lucky
Speaker 5: enough to serve around but we do have our jobs.
Speaker 5: And you know, I think Ron did a spectacular job.
Speaker 5: I mean, the results speak for themselves, the historic accomplishments
Speaker 5: across the first couple of years that President Biden achieved,
Speaker 5: and you know Ron was his right hand person chief
Speaker 5: of staff, So huge credit to Ron, and you know,
Speaker 5: massively big shoes to fill. I think the way I
Speaker 5: approach I've approacheached to my challenges is getting the right
Speaker 5: thing together, and to me, that means diverse backgrounds, different experiences,
Speaker 5: low ego about it for the right set of reasons,
Speaker 5: and have each other's back. And if you get that
Speaker 5: team around a table literally figuratively, you can do everything,
Speaker 5: meaning you can deal with any crisis, you can capture
Speaker 5: any opportunity. And having that team together means all so
Speaker 5: that they function as a team well. And I think
Speaker 5: we have that going here. Ron had that team together.
Speaker 5: Many of the same players are still here. We've added
Speaker 5: some new folks, and I think that the way you
Speaker 5: get through these very difficult periods of different issues both
Speaker 5: domestically and internationally and get a lot of great things done.
Speaker 5: As this president has is to have that team around
Speaker 5: the table and work together and have each other's back.
Speaker 5: That's a lot of how I view my job is
Speaker 5: to serve the president by ensuring that he gets the
Speaker 5: right team at the table. And that's true both here
Speaker 5: in the White House and it prop the cabin right.
Speaker 1: You come from National Economic Council. You were involved in
Speaker 1: the COVID roll out, the coordination there. I think of
Speaker 1: you as like a numbers guy and very much about
Speaker 1: sort of setting into motion the work of government. How
Speaker 1: does that track to what you do now?
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I call myself a numbers guy. I am
Speaker 5: the analytic, and I think that it's always important to
Speaker 5: be rigorous in thinking through the situation and what are
Speaker 5: the considerations for a decision and what are the options
Speaker 5: or recommendations for the president to make decisions on hard issues.
Speaker 5: So I think I'm rigorous on making sure that there's
Speaker 5: strong analytics research, every view is considered, every perspective, and
Speaker 5: to me, again that comes back to ID. My job
Speaker 5: is making sure that we have the right team and
Speaker 5: they're functioning as a team. And that's how I approach
Speaker 5: the challenges when I was at the National Economic Council,
Speaker 5: it's certainly how I approach the challenges as COVID coordinator,
Speaker 5: and it's all about teamworking, coordination and prioritization and holding
Speaker 5: each other accountable. And I think that's how you get results.
Speaker 5: And you know, I think one of the things that
Speaker 5: particularly in this period of time, a lot of people
Speaker 5: coming into the federal government, into the White House or
Speaker 5: into cabinet agencies with policy priorities. You know, they have
Speaker 5: an idea for a piece of legislation or an executive action,
Speaker 5: and that's where they focus, and that is a lot
Speaker 5: of the focus at the beginning of most administrations, you know,
Speaker 5: so the infamous hundred day Policy Agenda, and it's a
Speaker 5: big deal to get a piece of legislation signed into
Speaker 5: law you'll call the Affordable Care Act. That was certainly
Speaker 5: a lost piece of legislation, and thank goodness, it passed
Speaker 5: congresson was signed into the law by the Obama Biden administration.
Speaker 5: And I remember the signing ceremony. The most signing ceremonies
Speaker 5: are in the Oval Office, but when it's a really
Speaker 5: big deal, you move across the street to the old
Speaker 5: Executive Office. Building and the Southport Auditorium you can sit
Speaker 5: more people, And there were a lot of people at
Speaker 5: that signing ceremony, and you know everyone's crowding to get
Speaker 5: into the picture. If you're really lucky, you get a pen.
Speaker 5: The President youth to find a piece of legislation. Remember
Speaker 5: that's when the ben and Vice President Biden was caught
Speaker 5: on the hot mic describing how big a deal it
Speaker 5: was to sign that piece of legislation. Do you remember that, Yes,
Speaker 5: I will repeat it here, but it was a big,
Speaker 5: big something deal, and it was that piece of legislation
Speaker 5: which has had such an impact on tens and millions
Speaker 5: of people's lives. It's state lives, right. It almost stell
Speaker 5: with art because of allows e website. And the point
Speaker 5: I'm making is that execution getting stuck done. Look, it's hard.
Speaker 5: It's hard in any setting, private sector or NGO. I
Speaker 5: think it's particularly hard in the federal government just given
Speaker 5: the scale, the scrutiny, the oversight, the politics. But getting
Speaker 5: stuck done executing is really important in the federal government.
Speaker 5: And I think this team is this president has this
Speaker 5: team very focused on execution and implementation of the historic
Speaker 5: legislation and actually making these trillions of dollars in investments
Speaker 5: in America lower prescription drug prices real to the American people.
Speaker 5: American people are benefiting from thirty five dollars insulin. American
Speaker 5: people are benefiting from the new jobs that are created
Speaker 5: through new bridges and roads and new factories. And how
Speaker 5: do we get more and more done, and also how
Speaker 5: do we tell our story to the people of how
Speaker 5: this is making a difference in their lives.
Speaker 1: You know, when I was writing about you guys, and
Speaker 1: I asked a straight reporter who's a friend of mine,
Speaker 1: I said, this drug program where they're negotiating these drug
Speaker 1: prices like this is something that every president has tried
Speaker 1: to do.
Speaker 4: Every president has tried to do right.
Speaker 1: And nobody has ever done it. And I said, and
Speaker 1: now here's Fiden doing it. His complaint was this administration
Speaker 1: is aggressively boring. He said they are so boring that
Speaker 1: he said, it's like a cudgel.
Speaker 5: If boring is head down doing work, then I'll take boring.
Speaker 5: But I think, you know, I'll actually push it back
Speaker 5: a little bit to the press. And maybe it's what
Speaker 5: people are interested in in terms of online and all
Speaker 5: the rest, But the press likes controversy. I mean what
Speaker 5: you're talking about on prescription drugs or gossip, that's just
Speaker 5: plain old with me. It's the first time in history
Speaker 5: that Medicare can negotiate drug prices.
Speaker 4: It makes total sense.
Speaker 5: That Medicare is the largest purchaser of drugs, should be
Speaker 5: able to negotiate drug prices. But as you said, no
Speaker 5: one's being able to get that done. And President Biden
Speaker 5: got that done. We now have thirty five dollars insilent,
Speaker 5: and that matters. And I think the challenge here is
Speaker 5: I maybe good stuff is somehow considered boring.
Speaker 4: I think good stuff is good stuff.
Speaker 5: And it's our job to implement and get more and
Speaker 5: more stuff done, but also to tell the story and
Speaker 5: break through to the American people about how this is
Speaker 5: changing their lives.
Speaker 1: So, the drug price negotiation, what does that look like?
Speaker 1: He's doing it now, When will this happen? What will
Speaker 1: look like? Pharma is pushing back? Will you sort of
Speaker 1: debunk the ads and explain what this will look like
Speaker 1: if it works?
Speaker 5: Well, this is ten drugs that are high cost to
Speaker 5: the federal government, the highest cost, and it's negotiating for
Speaker 5: better prices in the amount of drug that the government
Speaker 5: is purchasing for Medicare recipients. It makes sense that the
Speaker 5: government should get a good deal, and the prices are
Speaker 5: too high and they can be lower. And so now
Speaker 5: we're negotiating those ten and that impact will be seen
Speaker 5: across the coming years, and we'll negotiate more drug prices
Speaker 5: across time each year, and that will result in lower
Speaker 5: prices for Medicare recipients, and hopefully that'll trickle over to
Speaker 5: the rest of the American people through lower prices, because
Speaker 5: oftentimes the pricing of Medicare is what insurers and other
Speaker 5: healthcare providers will gravitate toward. And you know, I think
Speaker 5: that it's look, big pharmas fighting it because this cuts
Speaker 5: their profit right and it cuts their ability to buy
Speaker 5: back stock. There's still plenty of money for big pharma
Speaker 5: and biotech and other companies to invest in future drugs.
Speaker 5: So look, this is maybe something that people will cover
Speaker 5: because there is a.
Speaker 4: Lot of controversy around this. I think, plain old good stuff.
Speaker 5: It's long overdue, and President Biden got it done, but
Speaker 5: making no mistake that drug companies don't want this to happen,
Speaker 5: and Republicans on the hill, no one voted for this legislation.
Speaker 4: No Republicans voted for it.
Speaker 5: In fact, they're trying to take back the legislation and
Speaker 5: cancel the legislation so we don't have cheaper prescription drugs.
Speaker 5: And I think all Americans are most Americans agreed to
Speaker 5: drug prices are too high.
Speaker 1: Right. It's such an interesting thing because it's like one
Speaker 1: of these things where the polling really supports it and
Speaker 1: people really want it, and Republicans, of course are against it.
Speaker 1: Speaking of which, many newsrooms believe that we are going
Speaker 1: to have a shutdown. What is happening?
Speaker 4: Good question.
Speaker 5: I'd start by saying, we absolutely absolutely should not have
Speaker 5: her shut down and we should not rab a government
Speaker 5: shut down, right, but particularly now because back in June,
Speaker 5: remember in June, we had a bipartisan agreement that averted
Speaker 5: America defaulting.
Speaker 4: On its debt for the first time. So we didn't
Speaker 4: do that, that's a good thing.
Speaker 5: As part of that, we agreed to budget levels and
Speaker 5: those are the budget levels that we're now debating again.
Speaker 5: And look the Senate, both Democrats and Republicans, most of
Speaker 5: the House, certainly Democrats and many Republicans want to honor
Speaker 5: that agreement that was made back in June. It was
Speaker 5: a bipartisan agreement.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: I think through President Biden's uncanny ability to lead bipartisan solutions,
Speaker 5: we got to a bipartisan solution on the budget. And
Speaker 5: now because it's some extreme Republicans in the House, they
Speaker 5: want to reopen that agreement by proposing to cut by
Speaker 5: a significant amount the services that the American people rely
Speaker 5: on in need, food safety inspectors, education, law enforcement, head Start, childcare,
Speaker 5: meals on wheels. These are programs that really matter to
Speaker 5: Americans across the country, across all communities. It's totally wrong
Speaker 5: to threaten to shut down the government over these extreme
Speaker 5: far right demands. The bottom line is the how else
Speaker 5: should do its job? Honor the agreement that was made
Speaker 5: a couple of months ago and fund the government, and
Speaker 5: we should not be discussing government shutdowns at this point. Unfortunately,
Speaker 5: that's not what's happening right now. There's still a couple
Speaker 5: of weeks left, and I'm vopeful that the agreement will
Speaker 5: be honored and we won't shut down the government.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be Pollyanna here, but a government
Speaker 1: shutdown is still much less cataclysmic than American defaulting on its.
Speaker 4: Dat Yes, we'll stop by that terribly.
Speaker 5: They're sure, even we're talking about, you know, people's lives
Speaker 5: and food safety and law enforcement and housing like. Yes,
Speaker 5: you are correct that technically this is not as devastating
Speaker 5: as a default would have been.
Speaker 4: But I think we're not in a good space. We're
Speaker 4: talking about degrees of devastating.
Speaker 1: Right, No, it's true, and I want to get to
Speaker 1: now the strike. The WGA is striking, the Screen Actor's
Speaker 1: Guild is striking, and then the people who will looking
Speaker 1: on the manufacturing lines and some of these car companies
Speaker 1: are striking. Donald Trump is toying with the idea of
Speaker 1: going there bafflingly. Talk to me about how this administration
Speaker 1: is connected to this union.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I won't attempt to debaffle on that front. I've
Speaker 5: known the president now since two thousand and nine, so
Speaker 5: almost fifteen years. He is a union guy, and that's
Speaker 5: been clear in all the interactions I've had with him
Speaker 5: across time.
Speaker 4: He's certainly the most pro union president in our history.
Speaker 5: I'll speak to the UAW because the President spoke to
Speaker 5: it on Friday. He believes in collective bargaining. He wants
Speaker 5: the parties to stay at the table. And he believes,
Speaker 5: and I'm quoting the President here, that record corporate profits
Speaker 5: deserve record contracts for the UAW workers, and we want
Speaker 5: an automobile future in this company that's made in America.
Speaker 5: He supports twenty four to seven world at the table
Speaker 5: to get to an agreement that keeps.
Speaker 4: Workers at the heart of our auto future.
Speaker 5: President is a union guy and believes in collect and bargaining,
Speaker 5: and that's what he's pushing for right here.
Speaker 1: I wrote about this this week in my column. I
Speaker 1: write about it all the time. Donald Trump numerous indictments,
Speaker 1: impeachments guy is an armed insurrection Joe Biden a lot
Speaker 1: of accomplishments. His thing that the media is using to
Speaker 1: make a false equivalency is his age. Just like with
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton, they used her emails. I think it's the
Speaker 1: structure of the way mainstream media a lot of the
Speaker 1: time operates. I say this as a member of the
Speaker 1: mainstream media. I mean, what do you say to.
Speaker 5: That look at the results of what's happened under this
Speaker 5: president's leadership. I mean a decade or more than a
Speaker 5: decade worth of historic legislation done in two years, more
Speaker 5: jobs created in two years than in any other war
Speaker 5: year term of any president. We talked about the progress
Speaker 5: prescription drugs. We haven't talked about, but think about all
Speaker 5: of the progress that the President is making on the climate.
Speaker 5: With the biggest investment ever in clinnement. All the electricity
Speaker 5: in the US is going to be generated by clean
Speaker 5: energy by twenty thirty five. That's pretty remarkable.
Speaker 4: So look at the results of this period of time.
Speaker 4: It's off the charts.
Speaker 5: And as I said, we have a huge opportunity to
Speaker 5: continue to implement every day things that really matter to
Speaker 5: people's lives. Better roads, better bridges, more prescription drug costs, reductions,
Speaker 5: getting rid of junk fees, like barging parents with kids
Speaker 5: extra in order to sit with their kids on an airplane.
Speaker 5: We're at it every day, building on this tremendous first
Speaker 5: two and a half years. One of the privileges I
Speaker 5: have is working very closely with the President. And you know,
Speaker 5: I'm a firm believer and put your head down, work hard,
Speaker 5: and good things happen. Watching this president work is a
Speaker 5: case study and hard work, being relentless, all of his
Speaker 5: six coming to bear. He's relentless and hard to keep
Speaker 5: up with. I mean you know, just last week he
Speaker 5: left here the White House. Yeah, but you know that
Speaker 5: was after a full day work. He gets on a plane,
Speaker 5: he travels twenty odd hours to India. He gets off
Speaker 5: the plane, he has a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Mody.
Speaker 5: You know, across a couple of days, he meets with
Speaker 5: thirty world leaders at the same time. I'm talking in
Speaker 5: all hours of the day and night, because you know,
Speaker 5: we're twelve hours apart on time, and he's staying on
Speaker 5: top of you know, what's happening with the weather situation,
Speaker 5: what's happening with workers here at UAW and elsewhere, what's
Speaker 5: happening in Congress. Then he's off the Vietnam late night
Speaker 5: press conference. You know, he goes and meets with embassy
Speaker 5: staff and military people even to somehow down in time
Speaker 5: and all of that to go to manass So he
Speaker 5: eats his priorities even when he's that hectic.
Speaker 4: So my answer is, look at the results.
Speaker 5: And then you know, given this lucky seat that I
Speaker 5: get to sit in, I can tell you, hey, study
Speaker 5: and hard work coupled with experience just get gets things done.
Speaker 4: And that's what we need now, and that's what we need.
Speaker 5: For the next many years, the next several years here
Speaker 5: in America under his leadership.
Speaker 1: And this is like something I talk about all the
Speaker 1: time to everyone. I know, why is the polling not better?
Speaker 5: Look, it's not where we spend time here. Our focus
Speaker 5: is you've bird over and over again. It's getting things done.
Speaker 5: And that's what the President holds this team accountable for
Speaker 5: as results. And you know, there's so much more to
Speaker 5: do when you look at how Americans steel job satisfaction.
Speaker 4: Is at a thirty six year high.
Speaker 5: Over seventy percent of Americans have a positive view of
Speaker 5: their own financial situation. Look, there's you know, we have
Speaker 5: had high inflation, inflation is moderating, We are seeing real
Speaker 5: wages growing, and the invest in America agenda which we
Speaker 5: talked about starting to bear real fruit here. You know,
Speaker 5: we think Americans will continue to have an improve view
Speaker 5: of the overall economy. You know, as the polling this
Speaker 5: is a very similar place to where President Obama was
Speaker 5: in twenty eleven. I was at OMB at the time,
Speaker 5: across the way in the old Executive Office building. So
Speaker 5: I remember those days and as you know, the story
Speaker 5: ended with him beating Mitt Romney handily.
Speaker 4: So President. The main thing is, you know, keep your
Speaker 4: head down into your work.
Speaker 5: But I think it's also you know, as you've heard
Speaker 5: the President say before, don't compare him to the almighty
Speaker 5: or the unknown compared to the alternative. And I think
Speaker 5: that's what the American people will do.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, thank you. I really appreciate getting
Speaker 1: you on. John de la Volpi is a poster and
Speaker 1: author of Fight How gen Z is channeling their fear
Speaker 1: and passion Do You Save America? As well as the
Speaker 1: sub stack j dv on gen Z. Welcome back, Too
Speaker 1: Fast Politics.
Speaker 4: John.
Speaker 2: Great to be back with you. Thanks so much for
Speaker 2: having me.
Speaker 4: Mollie.
Speaker 1: I'm delighted to have you. And actually I've been trying
Speaker 1: to get you for like three weeks because the moment
Speaker 1: I started seeing polls, I was like, I knew, John
Speaker 1: here to explain to us what's happening, and I want
Speaker 1: to start with what does the landscape look like right now?
Speaker 2: So listen. The reason that you know it took us
Speaker 2: a while to book this is because I've been on
Speaker 2: the road, you know, end of the summer, I've been
Speaker 2: on the road. I've been talking to voters. Came back
Speaker 2: from a week in Florida. I've been talking to voters
Speaker 2: across the country. Here's the thing. I think there's just
Speaker 2: a massive disconnect between kind of what the media polls
Speaker 2: are telling us the country cares about, and what everyday
Speaker 2: Americans are caring about, whether they're Democrats or Republicans. I
Speaker 2: think broader picture, all the polls, you know, are showing
Speaker 2: this race to be a toss up. That's I think
Speaker 2: just the cycle of national politics today. But I think
Speaker 2: when you get beyond this, I think the issues that
Speaker 2: I'm most concerned about that could affect the election of
Speaker 2: a year plus from now, they're not being covered by
Speaker 2: the polls. And I think that's a disconnect. And I
Speaker 2: think that's my concern, you know, as someone who cares about,
Speaker 2: you know, kind of empowering voters of an understanding public opinion.
Speaker 1: I want to do like a quick lightning round with
Speaker 1: you about polling national polls four hundred plus days out
Speaker 1: from the election accurate or not well.
Speaker 2: Recent iSER say they're not accurate or not only are
Speaker 2: they not accurate, they're not relevant. I mean, it's okay
Speaker 2: as one data point to see where we are right,
Speaker 2: It's okay to see what you know one data point.
Speaker 2: But if that's the case, plenty of people have talked
Speaker 2: about this. You know, we'd be seeing, you know, a
Speaker 2: president Giuliani, President McCain, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2: So Bob Dahl exactly, we could go on, you go
Speaker 2: on for decades. Right, helpful but not insightful.
Speaker 1: Okay, So that's interesting. Also, I want you to just
Speaker 1: talk about like the nuts and bolts of polling for
Speaker 1: a second. Are they still happening on landlines? I mean,
Speaker 1: talk to me about the methodology. Has it changed?
Speaker 2: So there are some polls, some high quality polls are
Speaker 2: conducted using land lights, not a lot, but they're still used,
Speaker 2: you know, as as a relatively small percentage of the
Speaker 2: overall interviews. But here's the thing. There's two basic kinds
Speaker 2: of polls. Okay. You can think of a probability based survey, okay,
Speaker 2: which means that every voter or every American has an
Speaker 2: equal chance of being included in the survey. And then
Speaker 2: you have a non probability or convenience sample where people
Speaker 2: sign up from lists and or recruited and are compensated
Speaker 2: for them. Okay. The idea of the probability the high
Speaker 2: quality research, you don't need to conduct that over the
Speaker 2: telephone anymore. We recruit people to take these surveys based
Speaker 2: upon not what kind of telephone you have, but based
Speaker 2: upon where you live, an address based approach. So the
Speaker 2: highest quality survey research today is based upon that probability
Speaker 2: based polling, which uses it's basically agnostic in terms of
Speaker 2: technology telephone, mobile phone, internet device, et cetera. So that's
Speaker 2: basically how we how we think about that. And what's
Speaker 2: tricky is that there are some questions in some polls
Speaker 2: between a convenience and a probability sample where there are
Speaker 2: no differences, and there are other questions where there could
Speaker 2: be a ten or fifteen point difference. So it's just
Speaker 2: a very perilous time both as someone who collects data
Speaker 2: but also someone who interprets data.
Speaker 1: So I want to just talk a little more about this.
Speaker 1: And again, I think that this is all super interesting,
Speaker 1: and I know what this is like sort of boring
Speaker 1: nuts and baltsa stuff for you, but I know for me,
Speaker 1: like I want more information on all of this because
Speaker 1: it's just so it feels so relevant right now. One
Speaker 1: of the things that I wanted to know though, is
Speaker 1: like with the midterms, and the midterms, we saw junkie polls,
Speaker 1: we saw a lot of resmutant kind of polling that
Speaker 1: would shape the averages. And remember, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: the best story about this is Patty Murray, right was
Speaker 1: you know, that's a deep less ten thousand seat and
Speaker 1: for a minute it looked like she might really have
Speaker 1: a challenger. So would you talk to us about that
Speaker 1: phenomenon of these junkie red poles and whether or not
Speaker 1: you see that this cycle.
Speaker 2: It's an increase in concern for memal it's polling as propaganda.
Speaker 2: The barrier to entry polling today is relatively low. You know,
Speaker 2: when we talk about again the high quality address based
Speaker 2: sampling probability, that costs upholster tens of thousands of dollars
Speaker 2: just to collect that data. That's very expensive and it
Speaker 2: takes a long time. Okay, On the other hand, for
Speaker 2: one thousand dollars or a couple thousand dollars, anyone in
Speaker 2: this audience can conduct a pole and you can get
Speaker 2: it on one of these averaging sites pretty quickly. Right,
Speaker 2: And what therefore happens is there's an incentive, in my opinion,
Speaker 2: right to change a narrative, whether it's to ask irrelevant
Speaker 2: questions to get them into the media environments. It's the
Speaker 2: oftentimes hard right media environment based upon what some proportion
Speaker 2: of Americans say. And as we could see less cycle,
Speaker 2: there was a group of polls that people questioned who
Speaker 2: was paying for them, that were showing a very different
Speaker 2: election outcome. They were predicting this red wave. A lot
Speaker 2: of the traditional pundits looked at those polls, and they
Speaker 2: also looked at the history of you know, incumbent first
Speaker 2: term presidents, et cetera, et cetera, and they change our narrative.
Speaker 2: That's one thing, but it's also driving millions of dollars
Speaker 2: of spending, right, it's driving cable news coverage. It's it's
Speaker 2: really I think, having an effect that again further erodes
Speaker 2: trust in media, trust in news, in trust in institutions,
Speaker 2: including academic research and survey research. So it's now a
Speaker 2: political tool. Sadly.
Speaker 1: So, one of the questions I have about all of
Speaker 1: these Biden news to old polls is a lot of
Speaker 1: these polling the questions that people are asking, will you
Speaker 1: talk to us about this sort of kind of innate
Speaker 1: bias in some of these questions and what that means
Speaker 1: and what that looks like.
Speaker 2: And this is something I'm most concerned about, right, so
Speaker 2: we could have a thoughtful conversation about the way in
Speaker 2: which data is collected, probability and non probability. But my
Speaker 2: biggest concern about the polls that your audience and other
Speaker 2: people see is just like the lack of curiosity right
Speaker 2: in the rehashing the same questions day after day, month
Speaker 2: after month, year after year, cycle after cycle. That is
Speaker 2: where I think many of us fall prey to misinterpreting
Speaker 2: public opinion. Let me give you an example of this.
Speaker 2: At my company's social sphere, I published a very detailed
Speaker 2: survey Midsummer I as Democrats Republicans, I asked all Americans
Speaker 2: on a scale from zero to ten, just as an example,
Speaker 2: how they felt about the economy. Okay, we found massive differences.
Speaker 2: We found that forty three percent of Republicans said it
Speaker 2: was bad on a scale from zero to ten, zero
Speaker 2: one or two, okay, twice as many as Democrats. Huge differences.
Speaker 2: Same thing on the other end, okay, But when I
Speaker 2: ask how their financial situation is, there's no difference. There's
Speaker 2: literally no difference. Thirty four percent Democrats say it was excellent.
Speaker 2: Thirty percent of Republicans said theirs was excellent, and only
Speaker 2: fourteen percent of Republicans say it was the worst. Okay,
Speaker 2: to me, that's incredibly insightful that we as pollsters need
Speaker 2: to throw out the old playbook if it's not giving
Speaker 2: us data that informs us, if it's not reflective of
Speaker 2: what our neighbors and our family members, you know, and
Speaker 2: our community members are feeling right and think about how
Speaker 2: and how to do this the right way. And that's
Speaker 2: the concern about whether it's the age question or some
Speaker 2: of these directional questions. You know, people are now just
Speaker 2: predisposed to put on their political hat whenever we start
Speaker 2: asking them questions, and we need to take a few
Speaker 2: steps back and really understand as much about like their
Speaker 2: humanity in their lives compared to kind of what partisan
Speaker 2: camp they are, because that doesn't provide us real insight.
Speaker 1: It's pretty interesting what you're talking about, this idea that
Speaker 1: you can have these partisan questions and the thing you're
Speaker 1: talking about right now, the difference between how is the
Speaker 1: economy and how is your financial situation? That's a pretty
Speaker 1: interesting disconnect, right, And I mean that is that partisanship issue.
Speaker 1: I mean, did that not exist ten years.
Speaker 2: Ago, not to this degree, Molly.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 2: And by the way, Democrats Republicans, there is no significant
Speaker 2: difference on whether or not they have enough night to
Speaker 2: take a vacation, whether they're saving money, whether they could
Speaker 2: afford a home. I'm not saying that the economy isn't
Speaker 2: an issue. I'm not saying the commy doesn't put pressure
Speaker 2: on people and it needs to be addressed. Of course
Speaker 2: it does. But when you ask people like in English right,
Speaker 2: how their day is going. They just did ten focus
Speaker 2: groups the last week or so. In the first hour,
Speaker 2: that's the conversation I'm having. What's a good day, what's
Speaker 2: a bad day? What stresses you well, what makes you happy? Okay?
Speaker 2: And it was nearly impossible to know whether I was
Speaker 2: in a Republican focus group or a Democrat focus group,
Speaker 2: you know, until we turn to the news. It was
Speaker 2: nearly impossible because Americans care about the same things based
Speaker 2: upon where you live. Traffic is a big deal, road
Speaker 2: rage is a big deal in states with traffic and
Speaker 2: a lot of guns. Right, that transcends party. And I
Speaker 2: just don't think we get that level of insight about
Speaker 2: the issues, Nor do we get the level of insight
Speaker 2: as you know, something I care a lot about in
Speaker 2: terms of like some of these really important subgroups who
Speaker 2: are likely to decide the outcome of the election, right,
Speaker 2: whether it's people of color, younger people, women, et cetera.
Speaker 2: We don't nearly have as much insight in terms of
Speaker 2: those important groups as well.
Speaker 1: That's really interesting. So when you get to news and
Speaker 1: you see the disconnect, what does it look like?
Speaker 2: People put their blinders on, and it's nearly impossible to
Speaker 2: have a conversation or for Republicans to give Biden credit
Speaker 2: on anything in similar Democrats on Republicans. But I think
Speaker 2: it's harder, you know, for Republicans. The mental gymnastics I
Speaker 2: see in some of these focus groups is just difficult
Speaker 2: for me to understand and process. You know, how someone
Speaker 2: can feels one hundred and eight degrees different when we're
Speaker 2: talking about like an individual's family based upon whether they're
Speaker 2: Republican or Democrats. So I definitely see kind of more
Speaker 2: of a blinder situation in Republicans programmed to basically kind
Speaker 2: of hate anything associated with the Democrat Party. However, as
Speaker 2: I said ten minutes early, in those focus groups, I'll
Speaker 2: find Republicans will say one of the biggest challenges in
Speaker 2: America and then their lives is not enough access to
Speaker 2: healthcare or reproductive healthcare, you know, or issues that Democrats
Speaker 2: have been fighting for for generations.
Speaker 1: But they're not open to the possibility that that's what's
Speaker 1: going on.
Speaker 2: So this is why when I walked out of the scrip,
Speaker 2: I said, I don't want to give up on some
Speaker 2: of these kind of independent minded people who have just
Speaker 2: not had a relationship with civic life, with politics, with government.
Speaker 2: You know, who watch their news generally from Fox News,
Speaker 2: but their values and the things that they care about,
Speaker 2: in my opinion, are much more aligned with Democrats than Republicans.
Speaker 2: So it's the question of, I think, how do Democrats
Speaker 2: begin to have conversations with these voters at a much
Speaker 2: earlier age. We now have a generation that's been raised
Speaker 2: or two generations have been raised exclusively based upon where
Speaker 2: you live on Fox TV, and they're seeing this quote,
Speaker 2: as I said, this polling propaganda.
Speaker 1: I mean, when you talk to these Republicans, do they
Speaker 1: just say, like, is Fox sort of the answer to
Speaker 1: all of this? Like when you ask them about their
Speaker 1: media diet, is it always Fox, so well, I don't
Speaker 1: watch cable news.
Speaker 2: I tuned out from that, right, So, or they say,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm a fan of Trunk, but there's a
Speaker 2: lack of pride associated with that. I listened to how
Speaker 2: I watch it, and you can certainly kind of hear,
Speaker 2: you know, see the through lines there in their rhetoric.
Speaker 1: It's so interesting. So when you're polling, I mean, is
Speaker 1: there a sense like when you said, when they say, well,
Speaker 1: Biden's too old, is there any sense like, well Trump
Speaker 1: is two and a half years younger than he is,
Speaker 1: or does it?
Speaker 2: Is it? Just like that's it, that's it, based upon
Speaker 2: what group I'm in, whether it's with a Democrat group
Speaker 2: or Republican group. I played Devil's advocate out argue some points, Well,
Speaker 2: you know, is he young enough for create thirteen point
Speaker 2: five million jobs? Is young enough to gun you know, violence, etc.
Speaker 4: Et cetera.
Speaker 2: They just are listening because in that political context, and
Speaker 2: they'll say, you know, he's too old and I like him,
Speaker 2: he's a nice guy, but he's just too old, right,
Speaker 2: So it makes them feel a little bit better, But
Speaker 2: just it's going to be really challenging to kind of
Speaker 2: break through, right, Like right now. That's a longer term
Speaker 2: plan as far as I'm concerned. Right is to kind
Speaker 2: of re establish civic IQ, you know, and ability to
Speaker 2: discern propaganda from from facts. That's a longer term play.
Speaker 2: My concern for short term is the role that this
Speaker 2: is having in increasing levels of cynicism that would just
Speaker 2: incentivize people from voting or or voting for one of
Speaker 2: the two party candidates.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I think is pretty interesting
Speaker 1: right now is we find ourselves in a kind of
Speaker 1: disconnect between some of the survey stuff I've seen, so like,
Speaker 1: for example, I'm seeing survey stuff that shows that, like
Speaker 1: most Americans want some amount of gun control. You know,
Speaker 1: they don't really care about trans people being denied healthcare.
Speaker 1: That's not something they care about. They just want people
Speaker 1: to live their lives. That kind of stuff is not
Speaker 1: particularly popular with the voters, but I guess is very
Speaker 1: popular with the Republican base. So they're going to have
Speaker 1: to pivot when they get to the main election. I mean,
Speaker 1: talk to me about that.
Speaker 2: There's going to have to be a significant pivot away
Speaker 2: from some of these culture war issues. I think that
Speaker 2: the discussion a year from now, in a general election
Speaker 2: is going to be about basic rights and which party
Speaker 2: is defending and expanding basic rights. And we're not just
Speaker 2: talking about reproductive rights, obviously incredibly important. There are a
Speaker 2: number of younger women and younger men I've met in
Speaker 2: the last couple of weeks who are the process of
Speaker 2: recently married, planning for a wedding, etc. Who are thinking
Speaker 2: about where they're going to live, whether or not they
Speaker 2: want to have children. Based up upon the Supreme Court
Speaker 2: decision a year ago. This is directly impacting thousands, if
Speaker 2: not millions of lives. That's an example. The basic right
Speaker 2: to access clean air, clean water, basic right to feel
Speaker 2: safe in a movie theater or in a school classroom.
Speaker 2: These are the basic rights, the basic right to work
Speaker 2: hard and to be able to afford college or home
Speaker 2: if that's your choice. And I think that's going to
Speaker 2: be the frame that this campaign will be run on.
Speaker 2: And I think, you know, that's going to be a
Speaker 2: more positive frame at this point for the Democrats than Republicans,
Speaker 2: based upon I think, you know, their their legacy of
Speaker 2: fighting and expanding for these rights. Now, whether they can
Speaker 2: communicate to you know, to the right people in the
Speaker 2: right places, that's an incredible challenge. That's how I see,
Speaker 2: you know, the themes of the next fifteen month or
Speaker 2: so playing out.
Speaker 1: Are you worried?
Speaker 2: I'm extremely worried. My book which has been focused on
Speaker 2: gen z and I say, I'm not worried about the
Speaker 2: future if we allow our kids to get there and
Speaker 2: our democracy is intact. But I am extremely worried, especially
Speaker 2: coming off of the road for the last week or so,
Speaker 2: just about again, which I think is this kind of
Speaker 2: propaganda machine which has made everything related to politics and
Speaker 2: public service negative, which turn people away where they're not
Speaker 2: able to see some of the good things that are happening.
Speaker 2: And this has been something that hasn't happened over the
Speaker 2: course of this administration or the last couple of administrations,
Speaker 2: but this is something that has been in our system
Speaker 2: now for decades, and that's what concerns me. I think
Speaker 2: we need to kind of invest in systems that allow
Speaker 2: younger people to feel comfortable having conversations about civic life
Speaker 2: and politics Part one. But I also think that we
Speaker 2: need to as soon as possible, begin to tell those
Speaker 2: stories about how government can do big things. This administration
Speaker 2: has done big things, and no one can set this
Speaker 2: thing out next year. Thank you, John, Thank you Molly.
Speaker 2: It's great to be with you. As always.
Speaker 3: Jesse Cannon, Molly, Jong fastt Joe Manchin. He always thinks
Speaker 3: he's right and he knows what's up when I think
Speaker 3: the rest of us disagree.
Speaker 1: Joe Manchin, who's toying with the third party run to
Speaker 1: make Trump president again, is very concerned about the Senate
Speaker 1: dress code, which was changed for John Fetterman, because honestly,
Speaker 1: why should the Senate have a dress code. Mansion told
Speaker 1: a reporter that he spoke to Fetterman today about the
Speaker 1: Senate dress code. I hope Fetterman talk to him about
Speaker 1: the child tax credit, I said, John, I think it's
Speaker 1: wrong and there's no way I can comply with that. Well,
Speaker 1: you know what there's no way I can comply with
Speaker 1: is you abolishing the child tax credit and protecting big
Speaker 1: oil and gas. And for that, Joe Manchin, you are
Speaker 1: yet again, and your houseboat and your lack of charm,
Speaker 1: you are our moment of fuck. That's it for this
Speaker 1: episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday and
Speaker 1: Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes sense
Speaker 1: of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard,
Speaker 1: Please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 1: And again thanks for listening.