Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds. And Greg Abbott says he's not responsible
Speaker 1: for public education budget shortfalls.
Speaker 2: Why would he be? We have such an interesting show
Speaker 2: for you today.
Speaker 1: And Applebaum stops by to talk to us abutter new
Speaker 1: book Autocracy, Inc. The Dictators who want to run the world.
Speaker 1: Then we'll talk to Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki fried
Speaker 1: about how Democrats can win in Florida again.
Speaker 2: But first we have.
Speaker 1: Senior editor at The Atlantic and author of Rock Me
Speaker 1: on the Water, Ron Brownstein.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Fast.
Speaker 1: Politics, my friend and really one of the smartest people
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 2: Ron Brownstein.
Speaker 3: Hey, MOLLI thanks you the nice intro. It's true we
Speaker 3: had had been gotta being true as think shak exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're smart, but you also have been doing
Speaker 1: this for a long time.
Speaker 3: Well, month is my fortieth anniversary of covering national politics
Speaker 3: again this month in nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 2: You started covering national politics when you were nine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you really do have the benefit of hindsight, and
Speaker 1: I always think that one of the things that we
Speaker 1: really struggle with in pundit land is that we don't
Speaker 1: love to draw from recent history for whatever reason, and
Speaker 1: so we often deal with things as aberrations and not
Speaker 1: as you know, part of a larger pattern or tapestry,
Speaker 1: which I think is useful absolutely.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, almost everything that happens in politics
Speaker 3: is an extension of something that has already happened. Now
Speaker 3: you do get swerves, and we are getting a few
Speaker 3: swerves in this election that are kind of creating. You know,
Speaker 3: it's a funny thing. You know, this may have been
Speaker 3: a matchup that very few people wanted, but it is
Speaker 3: certainly a matchup that a lot of people anticipated and
Speaker 3: kind of even if they felt resigned to it, thought
Speaker 3: we were going to get. And yet in how it
Speaker 3: is dividing the electorate, it is not unfolding exactly the
Speaker 3: way that you would have predicted their signs. But you know,
Speaker 3: a lot of the dynamics are somewhat surprising and counterintuitive
Speaker 3: and really kind of added to the uncertainty about where
Speaker 3: we're going.
Speaker 1: Yes, we are going to be cross tabs truthers right now.
Speaker 1: So cross tabs are the parts where they break down
Speaker 1: the poles and they look at who pulled what there
Speaker 1: were some very dicey polls released on Monday, and they
Speaker 1: said a lot of different things, and when you looked
Speaker 1: at the cross tabs, they didn't entirely track with each other.
Speaker 3: I at least think that if you look at the
Speaker 3: bulk of polls, both nationally and in the Swing States,
Speaker 3: there are a few things that are consistently appearing, some
Speaker 3: dynamics and as I say, dynamics that you would not
Speaker 3: necessarily expect. And just I think the two two biggest
Speaker 3: ones the two actually three, there are three kind of
Speaker 3: big inversions that are underway, and they are and when
Speaker 3: you add them all up together, they're these demographic inversions
Speaker 3: are kind of producing an unexpected geographic dynamic or map,
Speaker 3: you know. I think you can say in polling pretty consistently,
Speaker 3: I think, almost universally in fact, that Biden is holding
Speaker 3: a higher share of his twenty twenty support among whites
Speaker 3: than non whites.
Speaker 2: And older whites too, which is a strange.
Speaker 3: That's the second one, right, So the first one is
Speaker 3: that if you look at the change from twenty twenty
Speaker 3: to now, Biden has lost more ground with non whites
Speaker 3: than with whites. I think that is a pretty consistent pattern,
Speaker 3: whether we're talking about black voters or Hispanic voters. And
Speaker 3: I'm not surprised that Biden is often running a little
Speaker 3: better with college whites than he did last time, because
Speaker 3: people forget, it's easy to forget the dobbs only happened
Speaker 3: after the twenty twenty election, and very sixth only happened
Speaker 3: after the twenty twenty election. But what's surprising to me
Speaker 3: is that Biden really, in most polls, I mean, there
Speaker 3: are some, there are outlaws, he's not really losing that
Speaker 3: much ground with non college whites. So point one, Biden
Speaker 3: holding his twenty twenty support better among whites than nonm walites.
Speaker 3: You got to point two, which is that Biden is
Speaker 3: holding his twenty twenty support better among older voters than
Speaker 3: younger voters or even middle aged seniors have been a
Speaker 3: Republican leaning constituency, you know roughly. Yeah, well, I mean,
Speaker 3: at least the last twenty five years, pretty consistently, you
Speaker 3: got from the New Deal seniors to like, you know,
Speaker 3: different cohorts of seniors, and eating twenty twenty, Biden and
Speaker 3: Trump roughly split seniors, with most of the big data
Speaker 3: sources giving Trump a slide advantage. Biden usually has its
Speaker 3: slight advantage now among seniors.
Speaker 1: Which is, by the way, completely crazy if you think
Speaker 1: about it, that elderly people now like the Democrat.
Speaker 2: I mean, that is wild stuff about that.
Speaker 3: But let's just close the circle by singing by comparison.
Speaker 3: You know, Biden's vote among young people eighteen to twenty
Speaker 3: nine or eighteen to thirty four, depending on the ball
Speaker 3: is down significantly.
Speaker 2: And that is why he's losing in these polls.
Speaker 3: And that plus I think black and Hispanic men up
Speaker 3: into their forties, not only young people will come back
Speaker 3: to like why why he's holding a better receives. As
Speaker 3: an outgrowth of these first two inversions, there's a third
Speaker 3: in version, which is that Trump is running best among
Speaker 3: the people who are least likely to vote. I mean,
Speaker 3: what we're Democrats thinking they have to expand the electorate
Speaker 3: in order to win. That may not be the case
Speaker 3: this year. I mean, Biden is running well with college
Speaker 3: whites and seniors, who are two of the most reliable
Speaker 3: voting groups in the country, and he's struggling with non
Speaker 3: college non men, who are not one of the most
Speaker 3: reliable voting groups in the country. And if you look
Speaker 3: at for example, the New York Times, you know, Santopolis
Speaker 3: can like yesterday, not the individual states, their accumulation of
Speaker 3: the whole thing. Trump was leading by twenty points among
Speaker 3: people who said they didn't vote in twenty twenty, which
Speaker 3: is not unusual. Definitely the polling like that. But those
Speaker 3: people who didn't vote in twenty twenty said they were
Speaker 3: less likely to vote, far less motivate than people who
Speaker 3: did so. In the end, I think it's going to
Speaker 3: be really I think there are a lot of younger,
Speaker 3: non white men who are going to be really hard
Speaker 3: for Biden to win back, and the kind of the
Speaker 3: hard triage question in the fall, maybe can you at
Speaker 3: least get them off voting for Trump, either by voting
Speaker 3: for Kennedy or Cornell West or by not voting, kind
Speaker 3: of alienating them from Trump so much and they kind
Speaker 3: of say, well, both of these guys stink. I'm staying home.
Speaker 3: That is not something the Democrats have had to think
Speaker 3: about much in my lifetime, but that may case. So
Speaker 3: if you add all of this up, it gives you,
Speaker 3: again what is a pretty clear pattern, which is that
Speaker 3: Biden is much more competitive in the three rust Belt
Speaker 3: swing states, which are older and whiter than he is
Speaker 3: in the four sun Belt swing states, which are younger.
Speaker 2: Which you're younger, and more Hispanic.
Speaker 3: Ben Eltin said to me it was Bernie's Polster like,
Speaker 3: you know, I can't even wrap my head around. We're
Speaker 3: doing better in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania relative to Arizona, Nevada,
Speaker 3: and North Carolina and Georgia because they're less diverse, you know,
Speaker 3: and thus less change from last time. If you look
Speaker 3: at these demographic forces that were describing, these demographic trends
Speaker 3: that were describing, it creates clear tiering in the geography.
Speaker 3: It may change, but right now Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin
Speaker 3: plus Omaha the one CD in Nebraska would get Biden
Speaker 3: to two seventy And as Carville said to me, if
Speaker 3: you win all three of them, you win. If you'll
Speaker 3: lose any one of the three, you are scrambling because
Speaker 3: Arizona and Nevada look much harder than those three, though
Speaker 3: I think still doable, and the other two, the southeastern ones,
Speaker 3: Georgia and North Carolina, looking and harder than them. So
Speaker 3: that's kind of where we are. Can Trump hold that
Speaker 3: level of non white support all the way to the
Speaker 3: finish line. No, I doubt it. Yeah, I doubt it,
Speaker 3: but it doesn't necessarily mean it goes back to Biden.
Speaker 1: No, exactly two things I want to bring up here.
Speaker 1: I also wonder how much of this is polling error. Right,
Speaker 1: there are two things I think going on. Younger voters
Speaker 1: are mad at Biden for any number of reasons, and
Speaker 1: he's definitely Hispanic voters also. But I just wonder if
Speaker 1: there's also some polling inaccuracies here, because.
Speaker 2: These are harder groups to poll.
Speaker 3: True, the polls are internally consistent in the sense that,
Speaker 3: like with Hispanic voters, they are expressing overwhelming discontent with
Speaker 3: Biden's economy and the belief that the economy was better
Speaker 3: under Trump. And people who do focus groups with Hispanic
Speaker 3: and for that matter, Black voters. I cannot tell you
Speaker 3: how many Democratic bolsters I have talked to who have
Speaker 3: said variations on the same phrase. They sit in the
Speaker 3: folk group and somebody says Trump's a racist, He's crude,
Speaker 3: you know, he's disrespectful of women. I wouldn't want him
Speaker 3: around my kids. But I'm being honest. I had more
Speaker 3: money in my pocket when he was president, and things
Speaker 3: are more alaudable. So there's that internal consistency. And then
Speaker 3: with young people, like the fall of twenty twenty is
Speaker 3: like the one time they've ever been excited about Biden.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, they didn't rally to him in
Speaker 3: the primary, and they certainly have not given him highpproval
Speaker 3: ratings really throughout his presidency. I personally am dubious that
Speaker 3: there is a complete polling fail here because we are
Speaker 3: getting the same message from so many places. But as
Speaker 3: you note, when there are large sample surveys aim just
Speaker 3: at this group, these groups like the young people surveys
Speaker 3: of these pseudo politics at JFK School of Kennedy, or
Speaker 3: large sample Hispanic polls from Univision, generally it is not
Speaker 3: as dire as it is for in the in the
Speaker 3: media polls which have smaller samples of these groups. But
Speaker 3: I think it is real. I mean it's like the
Speaker 3: question is kind of where does he land? I do
Speaker 3: not think Biden will match his twenty twenty number among
Speaker 3: black voters, Hispanic voters, or young voters. That doesn't mean
Speaker 3: he will do as badly as he is doing today.
Speaker 3: And so you know, the question may be where in
Speaker 3: that spectrum from where he was to where he is now,
Speaker 3: does he finish? And by the way, if we're talking
Speaker 3: about Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin versus as Arizona and Nevada,
Speaker 3: I think you also have to kind of have in
Speaker 3: your mind, is it possible to win back black voters
Speaker 3: more easily than it will be to win back Hispanic voters?
Speaker 1: Right though, we know that Hispanic voters are not a
Speaker 1: monolith because there are different kinds of Hispanic voters.
Speaker 3: The share of Hispanic voters who have expressed conservative views
Speaker 3: on all sorts of things was always higher than the
Speaker 3: share who voted for Republicans because there was kind of
Speaker 3: a barrier and a sense that Republicans are anti Hispanic. Obviously,
Speaker 3: Trump has given plenty of ammunition to that argument. But
Speaker 3: what you're seeing, what you so on twenty twenty, and
Speaker 3: what we're seeing twenty twenty four, is that more Hispanics
Speaker 3: who express conservative views are willing to also vote Republican.
Speaker 3: But that doesn't mean, like you know, like the New
Speaker 3: York Times stuff had Trump winning Hispanics I think.
Speaker 2: Right, which is completely crazy.
Speaker 3: I don't think Biden can match what he's got in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty, but I do not think it is guaranteed
Speaker 3: that Trump will hold everything he is poland in fact,
Speaker 3: you know, the one thing Trump has to be nervous
Speaker 3: about is that, given how little movement there has been
Speaker 3: amoung wide voters, is lead largely dependent on doing something
Speaker 3: that no Republican has ever run.
Speaker 2: And has ever done historically ever.
Speaker 3: So that's not necessarily solid ground on which to stand, right.
Speaker 1: And this is a guy who's largely run on anti black,
Speaker 1: anti Hispanic racism.
Speaker 3: He's getting the better worlds, right, He's azing his base
Speaker 3: with these very polarizing messages about race, calling all of
Speaker 3: these black prosecutors rasists.
Speaker 1: And so how do you rely on those voters when
Speaker 1: you're when half of your campaign is maligning.
Speaker 3: Them, well, because you're counting on them to vote for
Speaker 3: you on other issues. Right, the share of Hispanic and
Speaker 3: Black voters who will say the economy was better under Trump,
Speaker 3: or will say I trust Trump more than Biden on
Speaker 3: the economy is too big for Biden to be comfortable with.
Speaker 3: Like if everybody who says that, if every black and
Speaker 3: Hispanic voter who says that votes for Trump, he's in
Speaker 3: a lot of Trump saying's true, and whites by the
Speaker 3: way Biden right now is trailing by what fifteen points
Speaker 3: on who can better handle the economy. I don't know
Speaker 3: if it will be that bad on election day, but
Speaker 3: it's probably not going to be even on election day,
Speaker 3: which means that Biden is going to have to convince
Speaker 3: a significant number of voter which.
Speaker 2: Is insane by the way.
Speaker 1: I mean, just to pull back for a second, like
Speaker 1: Trump to completely disorganized lunatic who you know, basically believes
Speaker 1: in a form of crony capitalism, which is at best
Speaker 1: Russia and it works North Korea.
Speaker 3: So if Trump believes on the economy, that means Biden
Speaker 3: is going to have to convince some people who think
Speaker 3: Trump is better for their bottom line to vote against
Speaker 3: him anyway, because he's in a front to their rights
Speaker 3: and their values and democracy and that is available to him.
Speaker 3: I mean, there are people who will make that calculation.
Speaker 3: In fact, there are millions of them. We saw it
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty two. But the question is are there
Speaker 3: There's not an infinite pool of people who will make
Speaker 3: that calculation, and Biden just has to improve his own
Speaker 3: his own standing. People ask all the time, like why
Speaker 3: isn't this hurting, Why isn't that hurting Trump? The answer
Speaker 3: is it is hurting Trump. I mean, look at yesterday's
Speaker 3: The New York Times Sianna Polos. In the head to
Speaker 3: head against Trump, Biden is seven points better than his
Speaker 3: approval rating in Arizona, six better in Michigan, six points
Speaker 3: better in Pennsylvania, six points better in Wisconsin, five points
Speaker 3: better in trigger. That is very unusual. That is the
Speaker 3: measure of how many people are resistant, who are saying,
Speaker 3: I don't think Biden's doing any a good job, but
Speaker 3: I am not going to vote for Trump anyway because
Speaker 3: he is so unacceptable to me. The problem is, you know,
Speaker 3: as I said, there's not an infinite number of people
Speaker 3: who will make that calculation. And the way I phrase
Speaker 3: it is that all of Trump's problems are like throwing
Speaker 3: this seventeen foot ladder to Biden. The problem is is
Speaker 3: that right now Biden is standing in a twenty foot hole,
Speaker 3: and he doesn't have to get back to ground level
Speaker 3: to win this election, but he does have to get
Speaker 3: somewhat closer to it than he is today.
Speaker 1: That makes sense, yes, But talk about the genericity because
Speaker 1: that is really interesting. And the other thing I want
Speaker 1: you to talk about is in this poll in Nevada,
Speaker 1: it has this Senate candidate writing about fifteen points ahead
Speaker 1: of Biden, Jackie Rosen.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, but what there's no okay, yeah, right. So
Speaker 3: the history so here is I mean, the history is
Speaker 3: that it is becoming almost impossible for Senate candidates to
Speaker 3: win in states that vote the other way for president.
Speaker 3: In the last in twenty sixteen, it was the first
Speaker 3: election in American history where every Senate race went the
Speaker 3: same way as the presidential race in that state. And
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty, it happened again in every race except
Speaker 3: meaning where Susan Collins won while Biden on the state.
Speaker 3: As you saw on that New York Times poll, there
Speaker 3: are Democratic Senate candidates who are winning in states where
Speaker 3: Biden is even or losing, but most of them are
Speaker 3: under fifty. And in that you know, except for Tammy Baldwin,
Speaker 3: who was close to fifty, I think she was a
Speaker 3: forty nine. I cannot imagine Joe Biden losing Nevada by
Speaker 3: ten points in Jackie Rosen winning.
Speaker 2: By seventeen points. I mean, well, she was up by two,
Speaker 2: I think, right, But I mean it just seemed like
Speaker 2: a lot.
Speaker 3: Well, I remember states like Kentucky and South Carolina and Kansas, Montana.
Speaker 3: Democrats spent a fortune in the Senate races in those states,
Speaker 3: and I don't believe any of those candidates ran any
Speaker 3: more than two points better than Biden. That was the
Speaker 3: most and that was just and no one really ran
Speaker 3: better than Trump. On the Republican side, I mean, they
Speaker 3: ran slightly better than Trump, but it's really hard there
Speaker 3: are you know, in the twenty five states that Biden
Speaker 3: won last time, Republicans are down to two of the
Speaker 3: fifty Senate seats, and in the twenty five states the
Speaker 3: Trump won, Democrats are down at three of the fifty
Speaker 3: Senate seats. So I do think it is possible that
Speaker 3: someone like Tammy Baldwin or Bob Casey or even Ruben
Speaker 3: Diego could win if Biden loses their state narrowly, and
Speaker 3: maybe even Alyssa Slotkin. That could be harder though against
Speaker 3: a solid opponent in Mike Rogers. But by and large
Speaker 3: Democrats need Biden to recover or else the Senate I
Speaker 3: think could get bad. Now, what you're referring to is
Speaker 3: the opposite, right, which is, you know that Democrats in
Speaker 3: the Senate races and in the generic House ballot are
Speaker 3: doing better than Biden is doing and that is kind
Speaker 3: of interesting. I mean, you know, you could you can
Speaker 3: look at that a number of ways. Some people have said, well,
Speaker 3: you know, it's just a Biden problem. It's it's not
Speaker 3: a democratic problem. I think the history is more that
Speaker 3: you can't separate the two, and that if there is
Speaker 3: a Biden problem, it will become a democratic problem by
Speaker 3: the end that you know that ultimately it's a verdict
Speaker 3: on his governance and democratic governance, and everyone in the
Speaker 3: party is going to face a big undertow if in
Speaker 3: fact he can't win some of these states. Now you
Speaker 3: know again Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. He you know, those
Speaker 3: are really tight again, as they have been in each
Speaker 3: of the last two elections, Arizona and Nevada. Most polling
Speaker 3: it shows Trump with a lead, a significant lead, but
Speaker 3: I don't view those as gone for Democrats. Georgia in
Speaker 3: North Carolina could be very art although North Carolina is
Speaker 3: kind of an intriguing wildcard with abortion, but really after
Speaker 3: the Big three, it's kind of a fall off.
Speaker 1: But I want to just pause for a minute and
Speaker 1: remind you how much Republicans flood the zone with junkie polls,
Speaker 1: and how much polling is really no longer a science.
Speaker 1: And also more importantly, I want to just look back
Speaker 1: at Wisconsin for a minute, where Ron Johnson basically won
Speaker 1: on polls right. Every poll showed Mandela Barnes seven eight
Speaker 1: points behind Mandela Barns abandoned by the Democrats lost by
Speaker 1: half a percent. So I do think there is an
Speaker 1: X factor here, and Republicans have used polls really successfully
Speaker 1: to suppress the vote.
Speaker 3: It's something like real good politics really is just as
Speaker 3: I said, just an arm of the Republican master's machine.
Speaker 3: You're right, and they do include a lot of junk piles.
Speaker 3: My focus is less on the absolutes of the ors
Speaker 3: race than on the patterns that we were talking about earlier.
Speaker 3: We know I think I do think we know from
Speaker 3: public and private polling that Biden use holding ist is
Speaker 3: vote better older and wider than younger and more diverse,
Speaker 3: and he is running better among the most likely voters
Speaker 3: than the least likely voters, two.
Speaker 2: Which are both two very good you want those voters.
Speaker 3: All of that has clear geographic implications, and they leave
Speaker 3: him with a path to winning. But what could be
Speaker 3: a narrow path, and that's kind of where he is.
Speaker 3: I mean, I could see a world where Biden can
Speaker 3: survive losing Wisconsin and replacing it with that. No, I
Speaker 3: could see a world where he can buy losing Michigan
Speaker 3: and replacing it with Arizona, Nevada. There's no I think
Speaker 3: plausible replacement for Pennsylvania, And in all likelihood, it seems
Speaker 3: unlikely to me that he would win Arizona and Nevada
Speaker 3: unless he's also winning all three of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
Speaker 3: Given what we are seeing with you know, younger Hispanic voters,
Speaker 3: like I said, Dobbs happened after twenty twenty. January sixth
Speaker 3: happened after twenty twenty. Biden's vote on boncollege educated white
Speaker 3: voters is likely to be higher, I think, in twenty
Speaker 3: four than it was in twenty despite concerns about things
Speaker 3: like inflation, and if he doesn't decline much among the
Speaker 3: blue collar whites that added little boost in the Madison
Speaker 3: you know suburbs, and the Detroit suburbs and the Philadelphia
Speaker 3: suburbs could allow him to squeeze out all three of
Speaker 3: those states, even if turnout and or margins are down
Speaker 3: for him in Milwaukee, Detroit, and Philadelphia. The math works
Speaker 3: there there are enough of those college whites that you
Speaker 3: can offset even if you underperform a little bit among
Speaker 3: black voters, whereas it in the Southwest, I think the
Speaker 3: Hispanic vote is just too big a piece of the
Speaker 3: Democratic coalition. If in fact, he does lose anywhere near
Speaker 3: as much ground as now seems possible, it's going to
Speaker 3: be hard to make it up. So what's the answer
Speaker 3: for him? I mean, you know, in Arizona, Nevada, it's
Speaker 3: recover as much out of that ground on Hispanic voters
Speaker 3: as you can get it as close to that roughly
Speaker 3: sixty percent that they got in twenty twenty. And then
Speaker 3: when that shortfall is down a manageable number, you could
Speaker 3: make it up with college white women who are pissed
Speaker 3: off about Dobbs and particularly with abortion, you know, referenda
Speaker 3: on the ballot in both of those states. But he's
Speaker 3: got to I think he's got to improve his own
Speaker 3: circumstance with some of these voters. That is more the
Speaker 3: key than you know, seeding more doubts about Trump, because,
Speaker 3: like I said, Biden is already the doubts about Trump
Speaker 3: are evident in the results that Biden is running so
Speaker 3: far out of his own approval rating compared to previous presidents,
Speaker 3: but pull rating at thirty eight or forty winning a
Speaker 3: state that is a big goal. That is a lot
Speaker 3: of people who have to say, I don't think you're
Speaker 3: doing a good job, but I'll vote for you with
Speaker 3: you anyway, because I think the other guy's threat millions
Speaker 3: of people will say that ten million people will say
Speaker 3: that I guarantee you twelve million people, but well fifteen, well, eighteen,
Speaker 3: that I think is less clear. And that's why Biden,
Speaker 3: I think, has to improve his own standing, why it's
Speaker 3: so essential for him to do that.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Ron Brownstein, Thank you Mollie.
Speaker 1: Spring is here and I bet you are trying to
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Speaker 1: And Applebaum is the author of Photocracy, Inc. The Dictators
Speaker 1: who Want to Run the World. Welcome back to Fast
Speaker 1: Politics and Applebaum.
Speaker 4: Thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 2: I'm so delighted to have you.
Speaker 1: So I'm reading this article by you in the Atlantic,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, this is just so important, And I
Speaker 1: actually was thinking I was reading, I was thinking, this
Speaker 1: is so important, this is so important. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: how we should just be talking about this all the time.
Speaker 1: It's actually part of your new book, Autocracy inc. I
Speaker 1: don't know how it's so timely when it's part of
Speaker 1: a book, but it is like you've just completely nailed
Speaker 1: what we are about to go through and how important
Speaker 1: it is to know these things, So talk to us
Speaker 1: about that.
Speaker 4: So the article describes authoritarian propaganda, not as we used
Speaker 4: to know of it in the twentieth century, when the
Speaker 4: Soviet Union used to make posters of tractor drivers with
Speaker 4: kind of square jaws and talk about steel production. Authoritary
Speaker 4: and propaganda nowadays is mostly not promoting anything, but is
Speaker 4: instead aimed at undermining democracy and kind of smearing democracy.
Speaker 4: And it's also aimed at creating citicism and nihilism, partly
Speaker 4: by doing this kind of non stop lining that we've
Speaker 4: all become so familiar with, which eventually leads people to say,
Speaker 4: I have no idea what's true. I am not paying
Speaker 4: attention to this I'm checking out and I'm going to go,
Speaker 4: you know, fishing or whatever. And the argument of the piece,
Speaker 4: which is part of a larger argument in the book,
Speaker 4: is that although this was a kind of early Russian project,
Speaker 4: it's now there are a lot of countries that do it.
Speaker 4: China is one, Venezuela is one, but also a part
Speaker 4: of the American Republican Party, uses the same tactics, of
Speaker 4: the same language, and is in turn amplified by you know,
Speaker 4: Russian and Chinese and other actors. And it's not a conspiracy.
Speaker 4: This isn't a description of some kind of secret saying
Speaker 4: that's happening. It's a open project and you don't have
Speaker 4: to know any special you don't have to have access
Speaker 4: to secret rooms in order to see it happening. I mean,
Speaker 4: you can analyze it with your own eyes.
Speaker 2: And Republican members of the House have brought this up.
Speaker 4: Michael McCall, Yes, so, I mean one just little mini example.
Speaker 4: This is more specifically about Russia and Ukraine. There was
Speaker 4: a story kind of bouncing around the internet about the
Speaker 4: fres of Ukraine Zelenski, who supposedly owns two vulgar yachts,
Speaker 4: and of course he doesn't own the yachts, and other
Speaker 4: people owned the yachts, and the yachts aren't for sale,
Speaker 4: and he didn't buy them. And it's just a piece
Speaker 4: of false propaganda. But it's circulated in the same ecosystem
Speaker 4: that other are right and Republican and Russian propaganda circulates.
Speaker 4: And several people heard colleagues within the Senate, the Senator
Speaker 4: Tom Tillis is another Republican, also talked about this, so
Speaker 4: much so that when the House and Senate were debating
Speaker 4: sending more weapons to Ukraine, people were saying, why should
Speaker 4: we send weapons when Zelenski's just going to use the
Speaker 4: money to buy yachts. That there are now members of
Speaker 4: Congress who believe this complete garbage and who have trust
Speaker 4: in it because it comes from the same world where
Speaker 4: they get the rest of their information is just one
Speaker 4: little example of how smoothly the system now works.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean just terrifying.
Speaker 1: I feel like the propaganda that these autocrats shopped in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen was a little bit different than what it's now.
Speaker 4: I mean, they just get better at it, they get
Speaker 4: more sophisticated. Some of the cruder things have disappeared. I mean,
Speaker 4: it felt a few years ago, like the Russians were
Speaker 4: just throwing spaghetti against the wall to see what would stick.
Speaker 4: You know, Oh, let's do anti immigrant groups in Idaho.
Speaker 4: You know, let's do something else. And it's just become
Speaker 4: more sophisticated and more targeted. They're better now at hiding
Speaker 4: tracks so you can, for example, they you know, they'll
Speaker 4: create a video, put it online, seed it to several
Speaker 4: people so that they retweet it or repost it, and
Speaker 4: then the original video will disappear so that it's not
Speaker 4: traceable anymore, so that you can't know where it's from,
Speaker 4: a lot of the social media companies in twenty twenty
Speaker 4: took down and actually some of them, I think Meta
Speaker 4: still takes down networks of what they call inorganic material.
Speaker 4: You know, so if they see an inorganic which is
Speaker 4: foreign propaganda that they recognize as being false online and
Speaker 4: they take it down. But if they can't detect it
Speaker 4: because it's now being posted in different ways, then of
Speaker 4: course it's much harder to take it down. And of
Speaker 4: course the other big shift from twenty twenty is that
Speaker 4: Twitter doesn't take it down or certainly doesn't make down
Speaker 4: all of it or any of it or any of it,
Speaker 4: and even Facebook has become somewhat less interested in doing this.
Speaker 2: Partly.
Speaker 4: Then another piece of the story, and this is also
Speaker 4: in my article, is that but of course there's been
Speaker 4: a there's been a you know, all of the academic
Speaker 4: groups and researchers and think tanks and others who were
Speaker 4: set up after twenty sixteen to track this stuff and
Speaker 4: trace it and understand it have all in the last
Speaker 4: few years become focus of really quite horrible and in
Speaker 4: some cases debilitating attacks from the far right. Some of
Speaker 4: it is personal there's just sphere campaigns, and some of
Speaker 4: it is lawsuits, congressional investigations. Jim Jordan has a committee
Speaker 4: in Congress that's investigating some of them, the Weaponization of
Speaker 4: Government Committee. Deafly, his Weaponization of Government Committee has looked
Speaker 4: at this, and so even some of the rudimentary things,
Speaker 4: you know, the kind of occasional phone calls between the
Speaker 4: state department or federal government and the social media companies
Speaker 4: are now you know, almost re bote. You know, people
Speaker 4: don't do it. We've I'm successfully pushed back against anyone
Speaker 4: who talks about this, studies it, thinks about it, or
Speaker 4: publishes about it. And that's again because it helps them,
Speaker 4: it serves their purposes. So we now have a system
Speaker 4: where whether it's Russia or it's China, where it's other
Speaker 4: autocratic state, it puts out this kind of material, there's
Speaker 4: less resistance to it, and there's less willingness or ability
Speaker 4: to stop. And even then there was four years ago.
Speaker 4: And I just say another piece of the story being
Speaker 4: that we're talking now about the United States. But of
Speaker 4: course this is an international project. The Chinese have spent
Speaker 4: billions of dollars buying and creating television stations and websites
Speaker 4: and content sharing agreements in countries all over Africa, all
Speaker 4: over Asia, Latin America, and of course they use that
Speaker 4: network to put out the same stuff too, So the
Speaker 4: stuff that we see is also seen in all over
Speaker 4: the world. So it's not just, of course we're mostly
Speaker 4: interested in the US piece of it, but there's a
Speaker 4: wider project as well.
Speaker 1: I mean, it just feels insurmountable, and which I guess
Speaker 1: is the point, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I don't think it's insurmountable. It's just
Speaker 4: that it hadn't yet been taken seriously. But I mean,
Speaker 4: so funny thing for me is that I've been talking
Speaker 4: about this for I'd say a decade. You know, I
Speaker 4: started seeing this stuff in twenty fourteen, at the time
Speaker 4: the first Russian invasion of Ukraine. A lot of people
Speaker 4: who are aware of it. I mean, there's almost nothing
Speaker 4: in my article that hasn't been published somewhere before, been
Speaker 4: talked about by so on before. It's known, but it
Speaker 4: somehow hasn't risen to the level of being a proper
Speaker 4: focus of anybody's concern, and so far the efforts to
Speaker 4: push back against it are pretty minimal. I mean, ultimately,
Speaker 4: part of the problem is that you'd have to think
Speaker 4: about talenttering, especially the Chinese influence in Africa. You have
Speaker 4: to think about changing the way the democratic world, not
Speaker 4: just the US, but Europe and others do their messaging,
Speaker 4: conduct their communications. You probably have to start thinking about
Speaker 4: how you regulate social media, by which I don't mean
Speaker 4: censor it. I mean we make the algorithms transparent, give
Speaker 4: some people some choice about algorithms and so on. I mean,
Speaker 4: you'd have to begin doing very serious things, and so
Speaker 4: far it hasn't risen to the level of the thing
Speaker 4: that people in Congress are most aware of and speak about.
Speaker 4: And when it does, of course, the tech companies lobbied
Speaker 4: very hard against it, against any kind of change or
Speaker 4: any kind of regulation. There are some pretty easy fixes
Speaker 4: for some of this. I don't know that there are
Speaker 4: easy fixes, but even just being able to identify it
Speaker 4: would help people. I would make social media companies legally
Speaker 4: responsible for stuff that appears on their platforms, which would
Speaker 4: of course change them completely, you know, but I'm not empress,
Speaker 4: and I don't get to decide that that's what I
Speaker 4: would do. I think people have correctly identified some of
Speaker 4: this in TikTok, and I think that's a part of
Speaker 4: the reaction against it. That's the first time I've seen
Speaker 4: conversse take seriously both TikTok as a system for collecting
Speaker 4: data about Americans but also as a source of algorithmic
Speaker 4: amplification of who knows who's messaging? Actually, I mean, one
Speaker 4: of the weird things about TikTok, just but which is
Speaker 4: not unusual, is that we don't even know that much
Speaker 4: about it, and we can't study it, so we don't
Speaker 4: really know what people are seeing or reading on it,
Speaker 4: or how millions of young people who read it are
Speaker 4: reacting to it. And there seems to be a kind
Speaker 4: of incoherate recognition, and there's something about that that's wrong.
Speaker 4: But of course, you know, TikTok is an easy target
Speaker 4: because it's Chinese zone and by the way, not in
Speaker 4: Band in China, and band also in India, right, you know.
Speaker 4: But of course the bigger problem would be the American owned.
Speaker 3: Companies, right.
Speaker 1: And there does seem to be an interest in Congress
Speaker 1: in shirking all responsibility for any kind of regulation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, partly because again I said, there's been a successful
Speaker 4: conservative backlash against any regulation on the grounds that any
Speaker 4: form of regulation is censorship, even though you know, we've
Speaker 4: had regulation of political advertising for decades. We have in
Speaker 4: the past regulated broadcasting, you know, we it's not it's
Speaker 4: not unheard of most cursive decrovision, that's right. Most most
Speaker 4: democracies do regulate some pieces of the public sphere. The
Speaker 4: United States is much less regulated than other than than
Speaker 4: other countries are. And I mean, ironically, what may eventually
Speaker 4: happen is that the Europeans may regulate it, and then
Speaker 4: right the social media companies will be forced to conform
Speaker 4: to that, and that might change things. The conversation in
Speaker 4: Europe is kind of farther along and more death. And
Speaker 4: you know, European un is a kind of regulatory superpower.
Speaker 4: I mean, that's what they do, that's what they're really.
Speaker 1: You're in Poland right now. This is like the year
Speaker 1: of important elections. Many many countries are having elections, some
Speaker 1: of them reel, some of them puppet.
Speaker 2: Can you talk about what this sort of the rest
Speaker 2: of the world looks like.
Speaker 4: Well, Poland had an election. It's big election was in October,
Speaker 4: and we had a surprising actually change of government. There
Speaker 4: was an autocratic populist government here that very much used
Speaker 4: the kind of propaganda that I described in my article
Speaker 4: about the West being degenerate and raised for stability and
Speaker 4: so on. And yet they lost, and they lost thanks
Speaker 4: to a really broad grassroots campaign as well as a
Speaker 4: reaction of young people against this propaganda and also specifically
Speaker 4: against very harsh abortion laws. So there's a lesson for
Speaker 4: for the United States. We do, however, have a set
Speaker 4: of their European elections coming up here in June, and
Speaker 4: those are very important because they shape the European Parliament,
Speaker 4: which in turn shapes the European Commission, which is the
Speaker 4: thing that like rights, for example, these kinds of regulations
Speaker 4: and there is here a fear that the European far right,
Speaker 4: which is very much influenced by authoritarian narratives. Some of
Speaker 4: the European far right parties are clearly Russian linked and
Speaker 4: maybe Russian funded, and there is a fear that they
Speaker 4: will have They're not going to win, but they're going
Speaker 4: to have more influence after this year than they had before.
Speaker 4: So this is certainly not a problem unique to the
Speaker 4: United States, and it's not even unique to North American Europe.
Speaker 4: And it's kind of international now, right, It is such
Speaker 4: an important year in the world. So can you sort
Speaker 4: of explain to us what the progression of this authoritarian
Speaker 4: world looks like and sort of your thoughts on how.
Speaker 2: To get out of it.
Speaker 4: My book, which is called Autocracy, Inc. Is a book
Speaker 4: about the network of modern authoritarians. So it's you know, Russia, China, Iran,
Speaker 4: North Korea, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, and a dozen others specifically the
Speaker 4: country that collaborate in various ways, not because they have
Speaker 4: anything ideologically in common. In fact, they don't at all.
Speaker 4: You know, Chinese communism and Iranian theocracy and Venezuela and
Speaker 4: Bolivarian socialism. You know, these are really different things. They
Speaker 4: don't have anything in common that they're all or, but
Speaker 4: they have some things in common that they're all against.
Speaker 4: And they're against us. And by Us, I mean Americans
Speaker 4: holds Europeans, and they're against us because we use the
Speaker 4: democratic language that is the most threatening to them. All
Speaker 4: of them have domestic oppositions. They have you know, Nivaldi's
Speaker 4: movement in Russia, or the Hong Kong democracy movement, or
Speaker 4: the Iranian women's movement. All of them use language about transparency,
Speaker 4: about freedom, about rights, about democracy, and that's a threat
Speaker 4: to this group of dictators. And so one of their
Speaker 4: efforts is to work in common against that language and
Speaker 4: also to continue to undermine US, so undermine European Union,
Speaker 4: undermine NATO, any Western alliances or organis that they can
Speaker 4: weaken they will try to do.
Speaker 1: I mean.
Speaker 4: The main thing for US, I think, is to reframe
Speaker 4: our thinking. So, you know, in the US you have
Speaker 4: foreign policy experts in Asia or foreign policy experts you know,
Speaker 4: who focus on Eastern Europe or who focus on South America.
Speaker 4: That's not how Russia and China see the world, and
Speaker 4: they see it as a global system. You know, they're
Speaker 4: fighting against democracies and democratic ideas wherever they are, whether
Speaker 4: it's in Syria or whether it's in Ukraine, or whether
Speaker 4: it's in Taiwan, and they look at it as all
Speaker 4: of these things is connected. And I think it's important
Speaker 4: for us to begin to look at it that way too.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's one of the reasons why I've thought
Speaker 4: the war in Ukraine was so important, because Russia it's
Speaker 4: a test case. You know, Russia is seeing you know,
Speaker 4: can you break every rule in the book about changing
Speaker 4: borders by force? Can you put people in concentration camps,
Speaker 4: can you kidat s chouldren, which they do in large numbers,
Speaker 4: and can you then get away with it? And if
Speaker 4: you can, then other people are going to follow. Again,
Speaker 4: it's not an alliance. They don't all like each other.
Speaker 4: They don't have everything in common all the time, but
Speaker 4: they do watch what one another does and then they
Speaker 4: make adjustments based on that experience.
Speaker 2: Anne Applebaum, thank you so much, really appreciate you.
Speaker 5: How thank you.
Speaker 3: Mother.
Speaker 1: Nikki Freed is the chair of the Florida Democratic Party.
Speaker 1: She is the former of Florida Commissioner of Agriculture.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Speaker 5: Nikki Freed Hello, Mollie, Thanks for having me on today.
Speaker 1: I desperately wanted to have you on because I want
Speaker 1: to talk to you about Florida. You are the head
Speaker 1: of the Democratic Party in Florida. This is a very
Speaker 1: complicated time to be the head of the Democratic Party
Speaker 1: in Florida.
Speaker 2: I don't say, and because we're not on television, I'm
Speaker 2: going to say this shit's going down in Florida.
Speaker 1: I want you to walk us through what it is
Speaker 1: that's happening in your great state and why I actually
Speaker 1: believe that you guys could be the next Kansas. Yeah.
Speaker 6: Well, first of all, like let me let me also
Speaker 6: level set for everybody of like how we got here
Speaker 6: and to know that not all is lost. You know,
Speaker 6: first of all, it's been Yes, it's been thirty years
Speaker 6: since we have elected here in the state of Florida
Speaker 6: a Democratic governor. In those thirty years, there's only been
Speaker 6: a handful, including myself, that have been able to be
Speaker 6: elected statewide.
Speaker 1: You were the third highest state ranking office. You were
Speaker 1: the AG chair.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so I was at commissioner.
Speaker 6: I was elected in twenty eighteen as a member of
Speaker 6: the Florida cabinets, the only one in twenty eighteen to
Speaker 6: get across the finish line. The same year that Andrew
Speaker 6: Gillam had lost against Ron DeSantis, and we had lost
Speaker 6: Senator Nelson to unfortunately Rick Scott, and so we walked
Speaker 6: in in twenty eighteen, where again we had lost that election,
Speaker 6: and the party really kind of was in despair, you
Speaker 6: know that we lost Enator Nelson, we lost you know,
Speaker 6: are the great White hope, you know of Gilam, and
Speaker 6: so the party really kind of just you know, took
Speaker 6: a lot of beets and really didn't spend the time regrouping,
Speaker 6: trying to figure out what went down, what happened. And
Speaker 6: so we went into despair. And in twenty twenty was
Speaker 6: the pandemic, and everybody stayed home with the Republicans here
Speaker 6: in the state, continued to door knock, continued to work,
Speaker 6: you know, all of our communities, and unfortunately Democratic Party
Speaker 6: wasn't doing voter registration, wasn't doing any things. And then
Speaker 6: here comes twenty twenty two and you've got a you know,
Speaker 6: an incumbent who we all knew was going to run
Speaker 6: for President of the United States, had a war chest
Speaker 6: of one hundred and fifty million dollars, which is unheard
Speaker 6: of for a governor's race, and you know, the Democrats
Speaker 6: stayed home in twenty twenty two. We had over a
Speaker 6: million Democrats that did not vote in November twenty twenty two.
Speaker 6: And if that's a million Democrats, then that's the least
Speaker 6: five hundred thousand left leaning and Independence Independence now are
Speaker 6: about a third of the state and so the party
Speaker 6: collapsed in twenty twenty two. But that is not who
Speaker 6: we are. You know, every single election cycle, we're losing
Speaker 6: or winning by by margins. I won by sixty seven
Speaker 6: hundred Dissant is only won by thirty threeenty twenty.
Speaker 5: So I walked in as now chair.
Speaker 6: Everybody kept saying and laughing at me, like you jumped
Speaker 6: onto the Titanic after it hit the iceberg?
Speaker 5: What are you thinking?
Speaker 6: And the reality is I was thinking that I love
Speaker 6: my state and that we've got to get us back
Speaker 6: on track. And I know that November twenty twenty two
Speaker 6: is an outlier. We've got a lot of work to do.
Speaker 6: But there's a lot of people that are just really
Speaker 6: frustrated with the direction that DeSantis has taken the state.
Speaker 6: The extremism between the book banning and now we're living
Speaker 6: under a six week abortion ban. I never in a
Speaker 6: million years would have thought that the state of Florida
Speaker 6: would be a six week abortion band state. And here
Speaker 6: we are, and yes, that is how we're going to
Speaker 6: get ourselves out of this mess is by recognizing the
Speaker 6: extremism and this.
Speaker 5: Is not who the people of Florida are.
Speaker 1: So there really was a state party structure problem in Florida,
Speaker 1: and I had heard that for years and years at
Speaker 1: the state party in Florida was really decimated. Why you
Speaker 1: to talk about what this state abortion ban looks like
Speaker 1: for Florida because you were sort of the last of
Speaker 1: the free states in the South where women could get abortions.
Speaker 2: And this is really a sea change, all in.
Speaker 1: The service of Ron DeSantis's presidential campaign.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, that's exactly what it is.
Speaker 6: You know that seventy seven percent of Flordians did not
Speaker 6: want a six week abortion ban that was pulled during
Speaker 6: legislative session in twenty three and twenty two. We had
Speaker 6: just gotten the fifteen week which people were already unhappy with,
Speaker 6: and that to your point, Molly, it was all for
Speaker 6: DeSantis to run for president and after the fall of Road,
Speaker 6: they just they went crazy and they went to session
Speaker 6: extreme and the impacts is going to be drastic. We
Speaker 6: were already hearing the stories out of the South. We
Speaker 6: were already hearing the stories of the fifteen week abortion ban,
Speaker 6: and unfortunately now I did a big press conference earlier
Speaker 6: part of this week. A majority of Floridians don't know
Speaker 6: that a six week abortion ban.
Speaker 3: Is on the books.
Speaker 5: So what's going to happen?
Speaker 3: What does that mean?
Speaker 6: That means means that, you know, a nineteen year old
Speaker 6: girl who just found out that she was pregnant, missed
Speaker 6: her first period and was like, Okay, I'm pregnant.
Speaker 3: Oh no, what am I going to do?
Speaker 6: Because at that point she isn't going to get assistance
Speaker 6: as she wants to terminate the pregnancy. And if she
Speaker 6: is in college and doesn't have any financial means to
Speaker 6: travel to Virginia, which is so close at state right
Speaker 6: now in the South, you know, she's going to be
Speaker 6: making some impossible decisions.
Speaker 1: And we know that.
Speaker 6: And that is just you know, one small, small example,
Speaker 6: but that there are so many women that need access
Speaker 6: to this healthcare, that have miscarriages, that are going to
Speaker 6: be put into healthcare risks or complications in the pregnancy
Speaker 6: that need to terminate the pregnancy, and now aren't going
Speaker 6: to get access to this healthcare. And it's not going
Speaker 6: to stop abortions, as we all know and we've heard
Speaker 6: from the generations before us, it's going to stop safe
Speaker 6: in legal abortions. And so women are going to go
Speaker 6: to back alleys again, They're going to have to go
Speaker 6: to other countries where there might not be safety measures
Speaker 6: and the right health care providers, or there have to
Speaker 6: save up dollars to travel to other parts of this
Speaker 6: country that are going to not have accessibility either, because
Speaker 6: now those clinics are going to be inundated with now
Speaker 6: everybody else from the South, and it's just going to
Speaker 6: be a really horrendous situation here. And again most women
Speaker 6: don't even know that this is happening, and when they
Speaker 6: find out, it may be too late for them.
Speaker 1: Why I brought up Kansas was that in Kansas there
Speaker 1: was a governor called Governor Sam brown Back, and he
Speaker 1: enacted a ton of really restrictive laws and he's stripped
Speaker 1: the federal government of you know, he's a real libertarian asshole.
Speaker 1: We can say that here. And what happened is now
Speaker 1: Kansas has a democratic governor who just got re elected
Speaker 1: Laura Kelly. And that's Kansas, not even Florida. That's not
Speaker 1: a purple state, that's a red state. So and we've
Speaker 1: actually seen this in other states where we sent it
Speaker 1: right Democrat. I mean, I feel like North Carolina is
Speaker 1: tracks closer to Florida then, but yes, yes, North Carolina,
Speaker 1: and there have been other states in the South where
Speaker 1: you have found a revolt of bad policy and Republican
Speaker 1: governor overreach. So I would and you know, DeSantis's term
Speaker 1: momented out. He'll be out in twenty six if we
Speaker 1: make it that far right. So talk to us about like,
Speaker 1: I mean, do you see a ground swell? We had
Speaker 1: this woman who did the Florida ballot and who's working
Speaker 1: on the Florida ballot initiative.
Speaker 2: I mean, are you seeing that kind of revolt in
Speaker 2: the state.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm seeing it a multifacets, you know, first and
Speaker 6: foremostly you know, when I walked in here, I knew
Speaker 6: that the first priority I had to build was bringing
Speaker 6: faith and hope back to the party, into the base
Speaker 6: of the party because there was a lot of despair.
Speaker 6: You know, there's a lot of despair the last couple
Speaker 6: of years of feeling like everybody's just hitting their head
Speaker 6: against the wall that there was no way through that.
Speaker 6: So that was one of the really big obstacles that
Speaker 6: we had for the first year, was showing life you
Speaker 6: know that there's a heartbeat back here in the Democratic
Speaker 6: Party to give that hope and that we're going to fight,
Speaker 6: and we're going to fight back, and we're going to
Speaker 6: fight smarter. You know that so many times that we've
Speaker 6: been fighting, we fight stupid and it doesn't make an impact.
Speaker 6: So now that the party is back up and back
Speaker 6: on track, is winning elections, is building that faith based
Speaker 6: back up in the party apparatus. Now we can have
Speaker 6: real constructive conversations with the now almost one third independents
Speaker 6: that are in our state and the moderate Republicans who
Speaker 6: legitimately don't like this mag extremism.
Speaker 5: That's not who they are. There are people that go to.
Speaker 6: Margaritaville, you know, that go to Key West that just
Speaker 6: want to be left alone, very libertarian and a lot
Speaker 6: of respects here and are not happy. But we had
Speaker 6: to go to and build that faith and trust that
Speaker 6: we are the solution to what they're experiencing. In the
Speaker 6: Republican Party under DeSantis, and I think that we've done
Speaker 6: that now that we can go into these conversations. Say, look,
Speaker 6: property insurance number one issue here in the state of
Speaker 6: Florida as we're about to get into hurricane season, that
Speaker 6: it has increased four hundred percent since DeSantis took over
Speaker 6: as governor. That is an impossible number for most Filaridians
Speaker 6: to be able to to financially plan on to see
Speaker 6: almost fifty percent increases, five hundred percent increases in their
Speaker 6: property insurance. That inflation is number one in the country.
Speaker 6: That people can't afford to live in Miami, they can't
Speaker 6: afford to work in the state. And so now it's like, okay, well,
Speaker 6: now we have a Democratic party that has a plan,
Speaker 6: that we have a plan of how to get out
Speaker 6: of this that we are taking all their Republican talking points.
Speaker 6: We want less government, less spending, but smart spending, making
Speaker 6: sure that we're back to free market, which is again
Speaker 6: the Republicans have played winter losers.
Speaker 1: Florida has been hit by wild inflation way more than
Speaker 1: is normal, and part of that is because of this
Speaker 1: problem with the inflation and the insurance. Can you explain
Speaker 1: to our listeners why insurance has gotten so crazy there
Speaker 1: in Florida because it's a lack of free markets, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So it's a couple of things that that's happened.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 6: First off, they have come in and tried to in
Speaker 6: some ways deregulate the industry and get the industry blank
Speaker 6: checks and have basically not allowed consumers to go in
Speaker 6: there and sue when they haven't been able to get
Speaker 6: their reimbursement for any of their lost property. And so
Speaker 6: with that, the insurance company has just continued to increase
Speaker 6: their rates and there's no accountability whatsoever. There was a
Speaker 6: hearing that happened last week or two weeks ago where
Speaker 6: one of our property insurers had the largest fine for
Speaker 6: not paying off decks from Hurricane Ian a couple of
Speaker 6: years ago. But that is a million dollars that isn't
Speaker 6: going to it's not going to homeowners. The homeowners have
Speaker 6: already been lost of all of their damage and haven't
Speaker 6: been able to get the money back. So one is
Speaker 6: just the fact that they've given a free check to
Speaker 6: the insurance industry. But the other thing is what has
Speaker 6: happened in our state for the last of ability for
Speaker 6: the legislature to come in and work on mitigating our risk.
Speaker 6: And I say this as far as climate crisis, Florida
Speaker 6: is the most susceptible state in the nation to climate change,
Speaker 6: whether to sea level rising, our coastal communities, that our
Speaker 6: reliance on agriculture, our springs, our wetlands, and so we
Speaker 6: as a state have not invested in how to harden
Speaker 6: our buildings, how to make sure we're building proper drain
Speaker 6: news systems, how the sea level rising situation. And so
Speaker 6: insurance company is like, wait a second, you all are
Speaker 6: willing to mitigate your own risk, but you're expecting us to.
Speaker 6: So they're leaving the state. They're dropping policies because they're
Speaker 6: seeing these Cat four's, Cat fives every single year threatening
Speaker 6: and hitting the state. And so the insurance companies are leaving.
Speaker 6: So unfortunately, we've got our own state insurance company called Citizens,
Speaker 6: which is supposed to be the insurer of last resort,
Speaker 6: but right now in some places is ensured for the
Speaker 6: only resort. And that is a life my ability right now.
Speaker 6: Of I believe it's somewhere close to six billion dollars.
Speaker 6: Maybe I'm totally off on that number, but I think
Speaker 6: it's a lot higher. But some insane number that if
Speaker 6: in fact a CAT five comes and like hits the stay,
Speaker 6: I think it's one.
Speaker 5: Hundred and thirty seven billion.
Speaker 6: Now then I'm like way off, but some extraordinary number
Speaker 6: that if a CAT five hits a very populated area,
Speaker 6: it will in fact bankrupt the state. And Desand has
Speaker 6: been playing games and not trying to resolve the situation
Speaker 6: and trying to figure out how to do this. Instead
Speaker 6: has just given a blank check to the insurance industry.
Speaker 2: That's such a totally insane thing.
Speaker 1: But there's also other inflationary aspects in Florida right there's
Speaker 1: a real housing crisis in the state too.
Speaker 6: There's a tremendous housing crisis, and part of that is
Speaker 6: because we've had thirty years of Republicans have a trust
Speaker 6: fund called the Sadowski Fund. That money is supposed to
Speaker 6: be every single year, it's from you, certain parts of
Speaker 6: our taxes that come in it is supposed to go
Speaker 6: to this trust fund. The trust fund is solely to
Speaker 6: build affordable homes across the state. Since Governor Jeb Bush
Speaker 6: and now we've gone through Jeb, we went through Charlie
Speaker 6: cris now we've gone through on DeSantis has gutted that
Speaker 6: Trust Fund and a tune of like almost two billion
Speaker 6: dollars of affordable homes that have not been built over
Speaker 6: the last few decades. And so it's really put a
Speaker 6: crunch and the bottom of the market, and so the
Speaker 6: top of the market is very expensive, and it is
Speaker 6: pushing down homeowners to the point what used to have
Speaker 6: been you know, average houses used to know, one hundred
Speaker 6: and fifty thousand dollars. Now it's three hundred and fifty
Speaker 6: thousand dollars. Well, your middle class family can't afford those
Speaker 6: higher costs, and certainly, you know, our families that are
Speaker 6: working two three jobs certainly can't. And so people can't
Speaker 6: afford to live here. And the other problem is that
Speaker 6: DeSantis has refused all of the incredible things that have
Speaker 6: come from the Biden Harris administration to redo inflation, you know,
Speaker 6: whether it is you know, through the IRA or it's
Speaker 6: from the Infrastructure Bill, all these things that are supposed
Speaker 6: to have been brought down to the States for more
Speaker 6: job growth, for more infrastructural building, for a reduction of inflation.
Speaker 6: DeSantis has refused to take down those dollars. So Floridians
Speaker 6: are not getting the benefit that other parts of the
Speaker 6: country are receiving from the things that has happened from
Speaker 6: the federal government to alleviate some of this inflation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that is such a destructive thing that
Speaker 1: these Republican governors are doing, where they're turning down you know,
Speaker 1: free school breakfasts for kids. Yeah, I mean that stuff
Speaker 1: is like crazy. So what are you guys doing on
Speaker 1: the ground in Florida to register voters.
Speaker 2: And what does that look like?
Speaker 5: Everything?
Speaker 6: As I said in the beginning of the show, is
Speaker 6: we as a party had relegated that responsibility to third parties,
Speaker 6: and third parties can't do partisan voter registration. They can't
Speaker 6: go into a conversation and persuade some many to regislars
Speaker 6: of Democrats. So we have seen a tremendous uptick to
Speaker 6: the point that it's almost one third of our voter
Speaker 6: registration in Florida are independents. But they're our voters, like
Speaker 6: they're clearly like they should be with us, but they
Speaker 6: haven't had those conversations. So what we have done and
Speaker 6: had to do is bring everything back in house. We
Speaker 6: completely have revamped our internal structure. We have a statewide
Speaker 6: voter registration director, and of course the Republicans have made
Speaker 6: it much more difficult to register voters.
Speaker 5: They've changed the laws.
Speaker 6: They every two years now everybody on vote by mail
Speaker 6: has to re enlist, So everybody at December thirty first
Speaker 6: of twenty twenty two, the entire vote by mail list
Speaker 6: was wiped out. So we are now having to spend
Speaker 6: time and resources getting everybody back on to those lists.
Speaker 5: The other thing that they've done is they've changed the
Speaker 5: way that.
Speaker 6: The Supervisor of Elections have to go through the roles
Speaker 6: every single year and clean out and purpurge voters and
Speaker 6: have redefined what an active and inactive member looks like.
Speaker 6: Last year, Democrats lost eight hundred and eighty thousand active
Speaker 6: voters onto an inactive list, and they've said either it's
Speaker 6: a cycle, and so a lot of people who didn't
Speaker 6: vote in twenty twenty two got kicked out. As we
Speaker 6: just talked about the housing crisis, people are renting and
Speaker 6: rents going up, so they're moving. People are our CouchSurfing.
Speaker 6: We have a much more transient population. And if you
Speaker 6: got one postcard from the SOE and it came back undelivered,
Speaker 6: you automatically are going on the inactive list. And so
Speaker 6: we are sitting with like kind of a three prong approach.
Speaker 6: One to get people back on the vote by mail lists.
Speaker 6: Two because there's a three to one ratio of advantage
Speaker 6: for Democrats on vote by mail to get people off
Speaker 6: the inactive list, to get them back onto you active
Speaker 6: and define new voters. And so we are going into
Speaker 6: the communities. We're doing canvassing, and we have some paid
Speaker 6: programming that is happening in Miami Dad. Certainly for any
Speaker 6: of your listeners, go to Florida Dems dot org. We
Speaker 6: can certainly use every penny now that's going to vote
Speaker 6: a registration to increase that gap.
Speaker 5: So it is all hands on deck. We are doing
Speaker 5: everything we can.
Speaker 6: We're prioritizing those areas where we have to flip seats
Speaker 6: where right now in a super minority in both the
Speaker 6: Florida House and the Florida Senate, and so we're prioritizing
Speaker 6: those areas on seats that we know are flippable to
Speaker 6: make sure that all three of those categories are increased
Speaker 6: so that way we're very competitive. And those seats that
Speaker 6: are ours, they are our seats. They are D plus eleven,
Speaker 6: D plus twelve, DE plus five that we lost in
Speaker 6: November twenty twenty two, but we're going to take them
Speaker 6: back this year.
Speaker 1: What I think is really interesting about Florida is some
Speaker 1: of the most exciting young congress people come from Florida.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about Maxwell Frost, I'm thinking about Anna eft Money. Yes,
Speaker 1: and it really is true, Like you guys have an
Speaker 1: incredible group of young politicians coming out of that state.
Speaker 2: Tell me about the faces that are going to the
Speaker 2: young faces. Jesus, I've become that person.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 5: It's actually kind of exciting to your point.
Speaker 6: We have the second largest college population first of all,
Speaker 6: outside of California, and what I did when I first
Speaker 6: came in is recognize that in order for us to
Speaker 6: truly take back Florida, we had to turn over the
Speaker 6: key to that younger generation. We've built a youth Council
Speaker 6: that has thirty five and unders. Congressman Frost is the
Speaker 6: advisor to it. We have, you know, really brought them
Speaker 6: into the party. We have them in leadership circles, we
Speaker 6: have them on committees. Myself, our college Dems, and our
Speaker 6: Youth council chair opened up our General Assembly last weekend
Speaker 6: on our weekend conference and really giving them the keys
Speaker 6: to make sure that they've got us set at the
Speaker 6: table now, not you know, in ten, fifteen, twenty years,
Speaker 6: because unfortunately we've seen an older generation older than us
Speaker 6: haven't turned over the keys. And so it's really important
Speaker 6: that those faces and that we're building a broad coalition,
Speaker 6: a big tent. We have a very big tent of
Speaker 6: very different political views and ideologies inside the Democratic Party
Speaker 6: and want to make sure that everybody feels seen. And
Speaker 6: then everybody understands that in order to build a big tent,
Speaker 6: everybody's got to respect each other's views, but understand that
Speaker 6: the mission ahead is to bring a united Democratic Party
Speaker 6: for November.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, thank you, Thank you Nikki Freed.
Speaker 6: Of course, I thanks Molly for all that you do
Speaker 6: and defending democracy across the country. Your voice is so
Speaker 6: valuable to there we are today.
Speaker 3: A moment.
Speaker 4: Jesse Cannon, Malei john fasts, what were you seeing at
Speaker 4: the Trump trial?
Speaker 2: Today? Trump Trial?
Speaker 1: The Speaker of the House of Representatives, MAGA, Mike Johnson
Speaker 1: comes down to lend his guys support and also to
Speaker 1: get around the gag order by trashing the prosecutor and
Speaker 1: the DA in his speech. He then immediately starts fundraising
Speaker 1: off of it, sending texts and emails.
Speaker 2: This is the Speaker of the House.
Speaker 1: He's number two in line of secessions the presidency.
Speaker 2: This man is out there with his party's.
Speaker 1: Presumptive nominee, fundraising and trying to perform a workaround for
Speaker 1: the gag order during his criminal trial to assess whether
Speaker 1: his payments to an adult film star constitute an illegal
Speaker 1: election contribution, and then covered up with fake business filings. Congratulations,
Speaker 1: Republican Party, You've really done it this time. Mike Johnson
Speaker 1: and his fundraising appeal at the criminal trial is our
Speaker 1: moment of fuckery. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics.
Speaker 1: Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the
Speaker 1: best minds in politics makes sense of all this chaos.
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to
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Speaker 1: for listening.