Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Mollie John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds, and Donald.
Speaker 2: Trump told billionaires he'll keep their textes low at his
Speaker 2: latest fundraising gala. We have such a great show today,
Speaker 2: Run for Something, as Amanda Littman stops by to talk
Speaker 2: to us about the local races to watch the selection
Speaker 2: year that we'll talk to the director of Georgetown University
Speaker 2: Center on Faith Injustice, Jim Wells about his new book,
Speaker 2: The False White Gospel, Rejecting Christian Nationalism, Reclaiming True Faith,
Speaker 2: and Refounding Democracy. But first we have the host of
Speaker 2: the Enemy's List, the Lincoln Project's own Rick Wilson.
Speaker 3: Hello, Rick Willson, Molly Jong Fast, A happy day to you.
Speaker 1: It's a funny voice today here Fast Politics. Funny voices.
Speaker 3: They're funny, Molly Jung Fast, not funny, very very very
Speaker 3: not funny. And in the new Europe Trump administration, I'm
Speaker 3: telling you.
Speaker 1: Oh no, oh god, you're doing Alan Aldwin doing Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: We're going to end up all of us.
Speaker 3: I'm so sorry again, We're all going to get about.
Speaker 1: I was on this panel last week where the host
Speaker 1: asked me about Trump's plan to jail his political enemies.
Speaker 3: Yay, that's us.
Speaker 1: And I was like talking about how cash Batel had
Speaker 1: actually said he would also so like this was about
Speaker 1: members of the January sixth committee, But of course cash
Speaker 1: Batel had also was planning to reach out and grow
Speaker 1: that thesis to include the mainstream media. I mean, how
Speaker 1: are we living through this time? This is crazy?
Speaker 3: Let me tell you how we're living through it badly.
Speaker 3: We're not doing well. We're not really prospering in this
Speaker 3: particular regard. And I'll tell you I have a pretty
Speaker 3: strong sense that no matter what you've read so far
Speaker 3: this week, when you finally get around to reading Isaac
Speaker 3: Orangsdorf's new book, Finish what we started, you probably won't
Speaker 3: sleep for a week.
Speaker 1: Wait, so tell may.
Speaker 3: I read it in one sitting last night.
Speaker 1: Wait? Who is this again?
Speaker 3: He's a Washington Post reporter and he's written a story,
Speaker 3: a history of the post January sixth hyper radicalization of
Speaker 3: the Republican Party and just how intentional they are about
Speaker 3: what they're going to do to this country if Donald
Speaker 3: Trump takes office again. Isaac Orangsdorf, I really recommend it.
Speaker 3: These people are as they always do, telling you exactly
Speaker 3: what they're going to do. They're telling you exactly what
Speaker 3: they're going to do, and what they're going to do
Speaker 3: is all of the horror shows that you hear Bannon
Speaker 3: and Patel and Miller and others haha joking about with
Speaker 3: reporters like I'm gonna put you in jail, you son
Speaker 3: of a bitch.
Speaker 4: Ha ha.
Speaker 3: They mean it. They mean it. And here's the thing.
Speaker 3: A lot of these reporters in the mainstream media who
Speaker 3: go back to Steve Bannon over and over again because
Speaker 3: he gives good quote, are like, well, no, that's just there.
Speaker 3: They're just cosplay. They're just play acting. What the heck,
Speaker 3: it's all just silly fun. No, y'all, it's not. It's
Speaker 3: not They're not joking. They're not playing around with this.
Speaker 3: This is now what they believe is the best way,
Speaker 3: the best outcome for their version of America. And I
Speaker 3: am sorry. We are not taking it as a country
Speaker 3: seriously enough. We are not taking this seriously enough. We
Speaker 3: are not treating this with the level of intensity and
Speaker 3: crisis that it demands. And honestly, I'm profoundly concerned about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, no, no, I mean I agree. And look,
Speaker 1: I mean the reality is they keep telling us. You
Speaker 1: remember that Fox interview with Sean Hannity where Sean Hannity
Speaker 1: is like, just make everyone feel better. You're not going
Speaker 1: to be dictator on day one.
Speaker 3: Right, and Trump looks at him like, who the fuck
Speaker 3: are you talking to, bro?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And by the way, the fake reason is he said,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna drill, baby, drill. We are the largest exporter
Speaker 1: of natural gas.
Speaker 3: We're the largest producer of all forms of hydrocarbon based
Speaker 3: and fossil fuel based energy in the world, not only that,
Speaker 3: but in the history of the world.
Speaker 1: So that is why it's so fucking stupid that that
Speaker 1: is his life.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm gonna drill everywhere. And coal, no, you're not.
Speaker 3: So there's a reason coal is out it. Coal miners
Speaker 3: don't have jobs anymore. It's because it's a terrible business.
Speaker 3: It's because natural gas is a zillion times cheaper and cleaner,
Speaker 3: relatively speaking. And all of these things that Trump talks
Speaker 3: to his audience about are echoes of a dead religion
Speaker 3: in a distant past. This is not a country anymore.
Speaker 3: And you can say this for better or for worse.
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, because coal was so good for everyone. Just
Speaker 1: coal was just a big winner.
Speaker 3: You're gonna have a Houli lyrics.
Speaker 1: Great, Yeah, I mean, like, what are we even doing here?
Speaker 3: It is really a silly on the one hand, but
Speaker 3: terrifying on the other spell that he casts on these people.
Speaker 3: And what I worry about is this temptation for this
Speaker 3: nostalgia that he talks about with his people, that it
Speaker 3: takes them back into this world that doesn't exist anymore.
Speaker 3: You know, mommy in the kitchen and no black people nearby,
Speaker 3: and dad working down with the auto factory. That's over.
Speaker 3: It's all gone. Whether you love it or hate it,
Speaker 3: it's all gone. But he has this ability to sell
Speaker 3: his people on it. And look, the President is as
Speaker 3: big a guy about industrial American industrial might and industrial
Speaker 3: policy as you could hope for. And he understands it
Speaker 3: a lot better than Trump does. But he's realistic about it,
Speaker 3: which is which is difficult because realism doesn't sell in
Speaker 3: this country. Fantasy sells in this country, and so Trump
Speaker 3: sells in this fantasy. And it's like, oh, the reason,
Speaker 3: by the way, you don't have that great union job,
Speaker 3: but the auto plan anymore is the black folk or
Speaker 3: the brown folk or whoever scary person in blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: But what's interesting, I mean, the reason we got here.
Speaker 1: I always talked to Eddie gold about this.
Speaker 3: I love Eddie Glod.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's amazing, And whenever I run into him, I'm
Speaker 1: We're always talking about this because this is really the
Speaker 1: theory of the case, right, is that this is this
Speaker 1: post reconstruction, last gasp of American anti democracy, right racism.
Speaker 1: This is the white races saying, you know, no, we
Speaker 1: can't have a multi racial democracy. We have to continue
Speaker 1: in this sort of you know, really untenable, not democratic system.
Speaker 1: And and you know it's they can't get their head
Speaker 1: around the idea that in fact it's over. That world
Speaker 1: is gone, thank god. I mean it was not a
Speaker 1: great world.
Speaker 3: This country is poised to enter a new era of prosperity,
Speaker 3: but it's not the one that involved turning wrenches on
Speaker 3: an assembly line. And it's not the one that a
Speaker 3: lot of people would love to go back to. In
Speaker 3: part would love to go back to because some of
Speaker 3: it now codes in their minds as the pre civil
Speaker 3: rights era, the pre civil rights posture.
Speaker 1: But some of it is just nostalgia. Is an illness.
Speaker 1: I mean, nostalgia does not real ever.
Speaker 3: No, nostalgia is a lovely and wonderful sort of ability
Speaker 3: in people's minds to return to something they never had
Speaker 3: to get back onto Trump for a second. And the
Speaker 3: reason it works that I still think is a danger
Speaker 3: in this campaign going forward is that a lot of
Speaker 3: the people that are listening to it are not sophisticated people.
Speaker 3: They are not people who understand that they're being played.
Speaker 3: And I worry about those folks turning up again. I
Speaker 3: worry about the fact that people will believe things that
Speaker 3: are objectively not true. And I worry also that they're
Speaker 3: being pregamed right now, very heavily. They're being told, oh, well,
Speaker 3: they're going to steal the election from Trump again. They're
Speaker 3: going to take it the deep state, liberals, Jews, immigrants, gays,
Speaker 3: fill in the blank. They're telling the people right now
Speaker 3: that the election is about to be stolen from Trump.
Speaker 3: They are about to take it from him. They are
Speaker 3: about to go and make your kids become you know, gay,
Speaker 3: Sharia married, or whatever weird fantasy conglomeration in their head
Speaker 3: cells for the fear mangers. I know, I sound a
Speaker 3: little more serious than usual today. But I have been
Speaker 3: really thinking about like the power of the delusions that
Speaker 3: he's able to induce and his people.
Speaker 1: But now we need to talk about something really important.
Speaker 1: No labels has no candidates.
Speaker 3: No candidate, no campaign, ain't got nothing. It's over. It's done.
Speaker 3: Stick a fork in it, roll it around on the
Speaker 3: grill for a while, wait until it reaches the correct
Speaker 3: internal temperature. And that is that this is a moment
Speaker 3: where nothing they said was going to happen happened. They
Speaker 3: never had a path to two hundred and seventy electric
Speaker 3: College votes. They never got on the number of states
Speaker 3: they claimed they would get on.
Speaker 1: But they did get on a lot of ballot.
Speaker 3: They got on nineteen ballots, of which eleven are what
Speaker 3: we call the easy states, the easy ballot states.
Speaker 1: Okay, right, But they got on swingy states too, where
Speaker 1: they really fucked up Biden.
Speaker 3: They got in a few swing states, and they really
Speaker 3: spent their money in a few of the swing states,
Speaker 3: like Arizona, where they really wanted to be on the ballot,
Speaker 3: because that's going to be a tight state. That's going
Speaker 3: to be one of the tightest states in the race.
Speaker 3: It's going to be so close there that they could
Speaker 3: have split off enough votes from Biden to give Trump
Speaker 3: the win, which is what they wanted to do.
Speaker 1: Is RFK spoiler on that?
Speaker 3: Listen, here's the thing about RFK. RFK is in a
Speaker 3: posture right now where yes, he takes some votes from Biden,
Speaker 3: but there's a rising sense of panic on the right.
Speaker 3: Then he's also messaging about the January sixth protesters being activists,
Speaker 3: talking about all this anti vax stuff and crypto stuff,
Speaker 3: and you know, and basically doing the rounds of the
Speaker 3: kind of messaging that appeals to Trump voters. And there's
Speaker 3: a reason, you know that the Trump people are freaked
Speaker 3: out about r He was on you know, All In,
Speaker 3: and he was on all these other podcasts and all
Speaker 3: these other shows on Fox and everywhere else when he
Speaker 3: was in a position where he was running as a
Speaker 3: Democratic primary opponent to Joe Biden. What happened, though, was
Speaker 3: when he became a threat to Trump by taking up
Speaker 3: Trump's messaging, That's when it all split. That's when they
Speaker 3: stopped doing this, That's when they stopped, you know, covering him.
Speaker 3: So what you're going to see here is he's going
Speaker 3: to end up drawing some out of Trump some out
Speaker 3: of Biden. I don't know what the final configuration of
Speaker 3: that is, but I do know that with No Labels
Speaker 3: off the radar screen, I have now plenty of extra
Speaker 3: time to torture the living hell out of him. I
Speaker 3: don't think I won't.
Speaker 1: Will you tell us about no Label's last hell? Mary pass?
Speaker 3: Oh my god? Look, they may have gone behind a
Speaker 3: Greyhound bus station and tried to find some guy with
Speaker 3: the shape drinking Sterno out of a sock. After this,
Speaker 3: with their last big play was to go to Asa
Speaker 3: Hutchison and say you're our last hope. And Asa just said, no,
Speaker 3: I'm all passed. That'll be fine, thanks for playing. They
Speaker 3: went to from what we know because for whatever reason,
Speaker 3: we have the uncanny, weird ability to get people inside
Speaker 3: organizations to talk to us. And so we had four
Speaker 3: separate people inside the no Labels world at every different
Speaker 3: level like okay, here, here's what's going on. This sense
Speaker 3: among all of these people, these grassrootsy people that thought
Speaker 3: no Labels was this where we're just do gooders. We're
Speaker 3: moderate centrists who just want everybody to work together and
Speaker 3: sing Kumbaya in the pale moonlight as we dance naked
Speaker 3: before the idol of an ancient Assyrian god. Sorry about that.
Speaker 3: The last parts of my parties, you've.
Speaker 1: Really just moved on to that. I feel like you're
Speaker 1: doing great. Just keep going, doing great, Wilson, doing great.
Speaker 1: It's doing you going.
Speaker 3: Those volunteers and those grassroots types, the people that became
Speaker 3: the delegates to the No Labels convention, they are so disheartened,
Speaker 3: they're so sad. They realized, you know, this is like
Speaker 3: the guy who's wired his last ten thousand dollars to
Speaker 3: the Nigerian prints hoping for the wire transfer to come in.
Speaker 3: These poor people they just got their shit handed to
Speaker 3: them and they don't understand why. They don't get it,
Speaker 3: and it's really sad. It's really sad in a lot
Speaker 3: of ways because look, there are people in the country
Speaker 3: who would love for this world to be something different
Speaker 3: than it is. But it's not right.
Speaker 1: No, it's a good point. And now what will Nancy
Speaker 1: Jacobson and Mark Penn do.
Speaker 3: Well, Look, they're living in Miami most of the time now, Yami,
Speaker 3: and they've had their house in DC it was on
Speaker 3: the market. I think they're going to become naturally Florida residents.
Speaker 3: Now Mark is going to go to Trump. Bet me
Speaker 3: a dollar because you're going to see Mark Penn on
Speaker 3: Fox any day now saying, well, there's no way that
Speaker 3: Joe Biden can win working class voters in Pennsylvania. There's
Speaker 3: no way Joe Biden because if you go back for
Speaker 3: the last couple of years and watch any clip of
Speaker 3: Mark Penn on Fox, he's like, yes, mister Trump, can
Speaker 3: I wash your car a second?
Speaker 4: Toe? H?
Speaker 3: Would you like a foot massage? Mister Trump? It is
Speaker 3: ridiculous how in the sack he is for Donald Trump?
Speaker 3: And it is ridiculous how deeply delusional people are.
Speaker 1: You know who else I think is very trumpy?
Speaker 3: Blank fronts.
Speaker 1: I was going to say that weird guy with the
Speaker 1: pollster who pretends not to be trumpy but used to
Speaker 1: live with Kevin McCarthy still does. Yeah, what's that guy's name?
Speaker 3: Frank Luntz.
Speaker 1: Frank Lunz, They're basically the same.
Speaker 3: Well, listen, Frank will end up next with RFK Junior.
Speaker 1: Oh really you think so?
Speaker 3: He will? I listen. I've known Frank. I've known Frank
Speaker 3: since the nineties. He will go wherever he can get,
Speaker 3: Like I'm gonna be like I caught a classic guy.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna be the one who tells you like it is,
Speaker 3: and it always is. It's always the worst person you
Speaker 3: can imagine, from Ross Parrot to RFK. It's a lovely arn't.
Speaker 1: And here we are, Rick Wilson. Let's talk about Florida.
Speaker 1: Big news out of Florida this week, really interesting ballad
Speaker 1: initiative and also a very repressive abortion change.
Speaker 3: So the Supreme Court upheld Rondasantis' six week abortion band,
Speaker 3: which moved it from the unreasonable fifteen weeks to the
Speaker 3: poison of six weeks. And by poison, folks, I mean
Speaker 3: Ronda Santis's own polsters, whom I know were in a
Speaker 3: room with him when he was going to sign the
Speaker 3: six week bill begging him, big strong polsters with tears
Speaker 3: in their eyes, begging him to not sign this effing bill,
Speaker 3: begging him okay, because they knew that if he got
Speaker 3: to the General by some weird miracle, this thing was
Speaker 3: a kill shot against him. This thing was a radioactive
Speaker 3: waste pile on top of a burning tire mountain. It
Speaker 3: was every terrible potential political outcome. What they did was
Speaker 3: to go into the Supreme Court. They approved that it
Speaker 3: also triggered a horrible political pushback, and now we're going
Speaker 3: to have a ballot initiative to unwind the six week band.
Speaker 1: Okay, so here's my question for you. We all know
Speaker 1: about the ballot initiative and two weeks. Really sorry, I
Speaker 1: mean we know that it is. It changes the calculus,
Speaker 1: It does a lot of things, and also ballot initiatives
Speaker 1: tend to overperform the partisan lean. But what I want
Speaker 1: to ask you about this is you grew up in Florida.
Speaker 1: So Florida has historically always been a state where abortion
Speaker 1: has sort of been okay, and it's been sort of
Speaker 1: the one southern state that's allowed abortion. That's a real
Speaker 1: sea change for the state. You live in.
Speaker 3: Florida always had a kind of of vaguely libertarian stance
Speaker 3: on abortion. It was always sort of like, yeah, you
Speaker 3: know what, we're not going to get too deep into
Speaker 3: the weeds on this. There were a few pieces that passed,
Speaker 3: you know, over the years, on marginal things. You know,
Speaker 3: some things about like regulating where doctors and had to
Speaker 3: be certified, but it was all small ball. Okay, Desantus
Speaker 3: comes along. They did the fifteen weeks. They moved the
Speaker 3: fifteen weeks down to six. And what's happening right now
Speaker 3: in Florida is that vaguely libertarian take on it has
Speaker 3: now become one of the most restrictive in the country.
Speaker 3: And this is different than Mississippi or Alabama. First off,
Speaker 3: it's the third largest state in the country. This isn't
Speaker 3: going to be four or five or ten women a
Speaker 3: month that have an ectopic pregnancy that kills them or
Speaker 3: a medical emergency because they can't get care. It's going
Speaker 3: to be thousands. It's going to be thousands of women
Speaker 3: the month. You are going to see a public health
Speaker 3: consequence to this in Florida that you would not see
Speaker 3: anywhere else. And DeSantis has decided he is going to
Speaker 3: be waging a big public war over this, which actually
Speaker 3: is kind of good for the initiative. It's kind of
Speaker 3: good for it because Desas is like the polar opposite
Speaker 3: of charisma.
Speaker 1: Also, how is he polling well?
Speaker 3: He is now upside down in his fave n faves,
Speaker 3: where he was about sixty forty last year, he's now
Speaker 3: about forty five fifty five with fifty five unfave. That's
Speaker 3: headed south quickly, by the way. But look, I think
Speaker 3: that you are going to see that this is replicating
Speaker 3: a larger social moment in America on the question of abortion,
Speaker 3: on the question of how much do you want to
Speaker 3: have the white bro Republican dudes in Tallahassee or wherever
Speaker 3: you live, deciding on what birth control you can use
Speaker 3: or if you can have birth control at all, you know,
Speaker 3: whether you can have IVF or not.
Speaker 1: We've gone too far, Rick Wilson yet again, once again,
Speaker 1: Too damn far.
Speaker 3: That's the name of my a hit new show, Too
Speaker 3: Far with Rick Wilson.
Speaker 1: Spring is here and I bet you are trying to
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Speaker 3: Amanda Littman is the co founder of Run for Something.
Speaker 1: Welcome back, too Fast Politics, one of my favorite on
Speaker 1: the ground activists bringing democracy, really bringing democracy back to
Speaker 1: some red states and doing like really cool stuff. That
Speaker 1: really is where democracy starts.
Speaker 4: Amanda Lipman, thanks for having me, Molly So Amanda.
Speaker 1: You you have an organization called Run for Something and
Speaker 1: many listeners on this podcast have heard about Run for Something,
Speaker 1: but I'm wondering if you could just give us like
Speaker 1: a quick TLDR on.
Speaker 4: It, I would be delighted. So Run for Something recruits
Speaker 4: and supports young, diverse progressives running for local office all
Speaker 4: across the country. We launched back in twenty seventeen and
Speaker 4: since then have identified more than one hundred and fifty
Speaker 4: thousand young people who raise their hands to say yeah,
Speaker 4: think about running for something like school board or city
Speaker 4: council or state legislature. And we've helped a lot more
Speaker 4: than a thousand of them across nearly every state, mostly women,
Speaker 4: mostly people of color, who are remarkable and are doing real,
Speaker 4: meaningful stuff to make things better for people.
Speaker 1: We just had a bunch of primaries. Talk to me
Speaker 1: about where you are right now?
Speaker 4: Yes, so just earlier this week it was election day
Speaker 4: and a bunch of places. But for Run for Something,
Speaker 4: we had candidates in Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Arizona, and Alaska and
Speaker 4: we're still waiting for that Alaska race. To get college.
Speaker 4: Other things are looking good for Carl Jacobs, our school
Speaker 4: board candidate in Anchorage. But overall, we had fourteen folks
Speaker 4: win their elections, which is a fifty eight percent win rate.
Speaker 1: For the day.
Speaker 4: And these winners are amazing. So do you want to
Speaker 4: hear about a couple of them?
Speaker 1: Yes, talk about the candidates, but then also talk about
Speaker 1: your larger theory of the case and why a school
Speaker 1: board and Anchorage leads to a congressional seat, leads to
Speaker 1: a Senate seat, leads to flipping a state, or leads
Speaker 1: to change at a at a grassroots level.
Speaker 4: Well, our school board candidate in Angridge, Carl Jacobs, is
Speaker 4: actually running against a mom's for Liberty candidate. His race
Speaker 4: really matters for the community of Anchorage. And we've seen
Speaker 4: this over and over again. You know, in Wisconsin this
Speaker 4: week Kelly Leebold, who's a brain cancer survivor and a
Speaker 4: community leader and a young woman who really saw the
Speaker 4: need for youth representation on the Lacrosse County Board one
Speaker 4: against a guy who was the former and I believe
Speaker 4: still a party officer, the former Republican County Party chair
Speaker 4: who was a fake Trump elector one of the people
Speaker 4: who like try to submit his pledge to the Electoral
Speaker 4: College fraudulently. He was literally forced by a lawsuit to
Speaker 4: acknowledge that Biden won the election. She beat him in
Speaker 4: a really critical role for help that helps oversee the
Speaker 4: county and in some ways plays the role in administering
Speaker 4: the election. Also in Wisconsin, Stephanie nez want a seat
Speaker 4: on the Kenosha County Board. She's a college professor of chemistry.
Speaker 4: I believe she's been a fierce advocate for inclusion in
Speaker 4: the classroom. This is particularly important in Kenosha, where the
Speaker 4: county board was trying to make public libraries literally ban
Speaker 4: people under the age of eighteen from adult collections, which
Speaker 4: includes things like classics and research books and a whole
Speaker 4: ton of things that especially high school students should absolutely
Speaker 4: have access to.
Speaker 1: It really matters research, folks. I mean, I shouldn't laugh
Speaker 1: because the stakes are actually real fucking high, but it
Speaker 1: is insane how much these people are just like not
Speaker 1: very smart.
Speaker 4: No, they're really not. And I think it's compelling. You know,
Speaker 4: when we run, we can beat them. We just need
Speaker 4: to have kids on the ballot who can really make
Speaker 4: the case. You know. We had Sabrina Landry want to
Speaker 4: See on the Kenosha School Board. She was the one
Speaker 4: of the top three finishers, which ensured that not a
Speaker 4: single mom's for Liberty. Candidate won a seat in that office,
Speaker 4: which is awesome.
Speaker 1: Which means that if you have a kid in public
Speaker 1: school in Kenosha, they are not going to be subjected
Speaker 1: to don't say gay laws. They'll be able to like
Speaker 1: just read normal books.
Speaker 4: That's all we're asking for, just like keep it boring,
Speaker 4: keep it boring. Down in Arizona, we work with Casey Clothes,
Speaker 4: who's been a long time run for something. Candidate is
Speaker 4: our third time running and she want to see on
Speaker 4: the Salt River Project Agricultural Improvement and Power District, which
Speaker 4: is a very long name for what is one of
Speaker 4: the most powerful offices controlling one of the largest public
Speaker 4: utilities in the country. So this is a big win
Speaker 4: for climate change because when you're controlling look utility company.
Speaker 4: One of the reasons that she ran is because she's
Speaker 4: a climate scientist and activist. She knows stuff here and
Speaker 4: one of the things they want to do is make
Speaker 4: the public utility carbon free or at least carbon neutral.
Speaker 4: That's really, really, really important. It's been so cool to
Speaker 4: see these folks run and win and then know that
Speaker 4: they're going to make a real difference for people.
Speaker 1: One of the many reasons why I'm so obsessed with you.
Speaker 1: I'm so obsessed with run for something. Is because one
Speaker 1: of the things I've always felt like Democrats lack the
Speaker 1: ability to do is the like tiny nitty grit and
Speaker 1: it's not that tiny, right, Like these are actually big
Speaker 1: consequential positions, But it's a question of like finding the
Speaker 1: right person who wants the job and is willing to
Speaker 1: run for it and then can also do the job
Speaker 1: and is local and not you know, a carpetbager coming
Speaker 1: in like all the Republican Senate candidates. I would love
Speaker 1: you to talk about your theory, the case about why
Speaker 1: having normal people on a school board helps the up
Speaker 1: ballot races.
Speaker 4: Yes, we've done a bunch of research on this. No.
Speaker 4: Back in twenty twenty, we looked at state legislative racism
Speaker 4: in particular, because they're the easiest to measure, sort of
Speaker 4: apples to apples. We found that simply having a candidate
Speaker 4: on the ballot can increase turnout for the entire ticket,
Speaker 4: especially the top of the ticket, by anywhere from zero
Speaker 4: point three to two point three percent. That's a meaningful
Speaker 4: margin of victory for Joe Biden or in twenty twenty
Speaker 4: for the Georgia set race in particular, we found it
Speaker 4: was instrumental, and we actually did a little bit more
Speaker 4: research this year, especially knowing some of the challenges that
Speaker 4: President Biden has with younger voters, especially younger voters of color,
Speaker 4: and we asked them, you know, eighteen to twenty nine
Speaker 4: year olds in battleground states, if there was a young
Speaker 4: progressive running for state or local office in your community,
Speaker 4: how would that change your likelihood to vote? Sixty one
Speaker 4: percent of young Democrats told us that having a young
Speaker 4: progressive on the ballot would make them more likely to
Speaker 4: vote this fall.
Speaker 1: Right, those are crazy high numbers, But I also think
Speaker 1: it's a question of like, do you have agency right?
Speaker 1: One of the reasons that we have trouble getting young
Speaker 1: people to turn out is because they don't feel they
Speaker 1: have agency right.
Speaker 4: Totally right, and like they're looking at a federal government
Speaker 4: in Washington that is not or seems like it's not
Speaker 4: doing shit to make their lives better. And one of
Speaker 4: the things I think is the most obvious, the issue
Speaker 4: where it's often the most clear is housing, where it
Speaker 4: is such a revitalized issue and the experience of an
Speaker 4: eighteen to twenty nine year old or a thirty to
Speaker 4: forty year old in the housing market right now is
Speaker 4: wildly different from that of a fifty or sixty year old.
Speaker 4: It's almost incomprehensible.
Speaker 1: To you know.
Speaker 4: I think about like my grandma to understand what it
Speaker 4: was like when I was trying to find a you know,
Speaker 4: a room in a house on Craigslist. But we've seen
Speaker 4: run for something along in California and Ohio and New
Speaker 4: York and Massachusetts and Arizona and Rhode Island and Michigan,
Speaker 4: you know, all across the country, just in the last
Speaker 4: couple of weeks, take really concrete steps to fight for
Speaker 4: affordable housing, to make it easier for renters, to increase
Speaker 4: ten of protections, to make it harder to get evicted,
Speaker 4: to rezone communities. All of this makes people who like
Speaker 4: engage in these races feel the impact of them. It's like,
Speaker 4: you get to move into the apartment that the elected
Speaker 4: official you helped elect and made possible. You get to
Speaker 4: ride on the bike lane, you get to go to
Speaker 4: the restaurant, you get to send your kids to the school.
Speaker 4: It's so specific and personal, and it like makes government
Speaker 4: feel like a net good, which I think is really,
Speaker 4: really important for especially for young voters who feel creative,
Speaker 4: disillusioned by the whole things.
Speaker 1: Like I think so much about in Florida, where you
Speaker 1: have a convergence of like ballad initiatives, you have young people,
Speaker 1: you have a state party that is not killing it.
Speaker 1: You know, the Democratic State Party in Florida has not
Speaker 1: been great for a long time, but you have Nikki
Speaker 1: Friedez now is now running it, so that's new. And
Speaker 1: then you have some really great young progressives coming out
Speaker 1: of that state, like Maxwell Frost who's a member of Congress,
Speaker 1: and Anna Escimani, right, who's a state rep. So talk
Speaker 1: to me about that Florida.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think Florida is a really good example of
Speaker 4: how young people are leading the charge there. An Escamani's
Speaker 4: a run for something alone. In Indo Ventries, Driscol who's
Speaker 4: the minority leader in the state House, has a run
Speaker 4: for something alone. Even we have an alum who's running
Speaker 4: for Congress down in Miami. She was previously on the
Speaker 4: Miami Dade school Board. She was one of the fiercest
Speaker 4: advocates against some of the anti LGBTQ stuff that the
Speaker 4: DeSantis Master and we're trying to pass there and in
Speaker 4: some cases, did the leaders that you want I actually do.
Speaker 4: I say, for Florida, it is not too late to
Speaker 4: get on the ballot in Florida into a twenty four.
Speaker 4: The filing of the line is coming up, but it's
Speaker 4: not too late. So if you want to be on
Speaker 4: the ballot, especially in a moment where abortion is quite
Speaker 4: literally there and until his amendment passes, there is a
Speaker 4: six week band that goes into effect next month, which
Speaker 4: I think is devastating for people seeking care in the state.
Speaker 4: Legal weed will be on the ballot. Good thing. And
Speaker 4: we know the same theory behind the case of like
Speaker 4: why do these ballot initiatives seem to drive turnout time
Speaker 4: to bring people out? Same is true with local candidates.
Speaker 4: They can connect with voters on a different issue in
Speaker 4: a different way that maybe the top of the ticket
Speaker 4: just can't or doesn't be local folks, and these local
Speaker 4: issues really can And in Florida, there's an incredible opportunity
Speaker 4: this year to really further the case.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm really so impressed with the way that these
Speaker 1: down ballot races do actually change things in states. I'm
Speaker 1: wondering if you could talk a little bit one of
Speaker 1: the things that Moms for Liberty did was that it
Speaker 1: really showed us how important school boards were. Right, school
Speaker 1: boards had never been like a topic of like mainstream
Speaker 1: media focus, and all of a sudden, school boards are battlegrounds.
Speaker 1: And in Florida they really did. They were able to
Speaker 1: take over some of these schools. And you do find,
Speaker 1: you know, librarians quitting and teachers with bookshelves with red
Speaker 1: tape on them you know you can't, you know, and
Speaker 1: books removed. So I'm wondering, what are there of these
Speaker 1: sort of smaller down ballot races do you think are
Speaker 1: important and where you'd like to see more people running
Speaker 1: or you'd like to see more attention.
Speaker 4: I think it's you know, worth naming. There's no office
Speaker 4: that's unimportant, but there's some that I think are really underrated.
Speaker 1: As we're sleeper offices, We'll say.
Speaker 4: You know, in a lot of places you can get
Speaker 4: a library board. A lot of New York City I've
Speaker 4: looked into it. I was really love what in other
Speaker 4: places that you can run for a library board. And
Speaker 4: that's a position that often oversees the library budget and
Speaker 4: the community services that they offer, and libraries are often
Speaker 4: the primary only place people really the government. They are
Speaker 4: like a community hub and often the keeper of what
Speaker 4: it means to live in that place. It's really beautiful
Speaker 4: and it's really important. And boy do Republicans love taking
Speaker 4: over libraries and underfunding them, destroying them and the like.
Speaker 4: So librares around foreigner is another one that's sort of
Speaker 4: under discussed.
Speaker 1: Did you just say coroner? Sure did, I'm glad we've
Speaker 1: gotten to the coroner part of the interview.
Speaker 4: Now. This is something really came up during COVID, especially
Speaker 4: when people who were anti vaccine anti trying to be
Speaker 4: like deceptive about the numbers. You would see corner candidates
Speaker 4: and corner like elected to try and undercount some of
Speaker 4: the numbers there. We also have seen this in particular
Speaker 4: with things like homicide stats around trans people, which are
Speaker 4: unfortunately like disproportionately present in those kinds of numbers, trying
Speaker 4: to misgender people after death. All of this is abot
Speaker 4: a place where progressive values can really come to light
Speaker 4: if we allot people who really care. The third thing
Speaker 4: I think is really important that we don't talk about enough,
Speaker 4: especially as it relates to democracy, is these municipal offices.
Speaker 4: You know, elections are actually shared on the local level. This
Speaker 4: is a program run for something's been running for a
Speaker 4: couple of years now. We call it our clerk work
Speaker 4: Clerk with an E, work with an media. If you're
Speaker 4: feeling sassy, the idea of being met local election administrators,
Speaker 4: people like county clerks, town trustees. In some places, it's
Speaker 4: even things like tax assessor or unfortunately sheriff as a
Speaker 4: holdover from when property taxes helped shape whether or not
Speaker 4: you could or could not vote, have a role to
Speaker 4: play in administering the election. And we have seen the
Speaker 4: Republican Party and sort of the mag extremists over the
Speaker 4: last couple of years try and weasel their way into
Speaker 4: these positions to undermine democracy. No, we've helped been able
Speaker 4: to stop them in a number of places, but I
Speaker 4: think especially in twenty twenty four, you know it's going
Speaker 4: to be really really important to have pro democracy folks
Speaker 4: in these positions. Even if they win this November, some
Speaker 4: of them are going to take office like December. First
Speaker 4: presidential and other races are probably not going to be
Speaker 4: done by them. So you don't want to leave any
Speaker 4: opening for a malicious actor or an incompetent one, or
Speaker 4: a combination of the two to jump in and try
Speaker 4: and undermine the life.
Speaker 1: It's so scary. Let's go further on that and talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about like, aren't there some elected positions
Speaker 1: that are involved with elections totally?
Speaker 4: You know, elections are administered in some places on the
Speaker 4: town level and some places over the county level. In
Speaker 4: other places it's by party, So it's a little bit
Speaker 4: messy depending on where you are. But we've been really
Speaker 4: intentional about recruiting pro democracy candidates for these offices, especially
Speaker 4: in places where we know the election is likely to
Speaker 4: be really close. And so for exactly we did a
Speaker 4: ton of this work in Pennsylvania, where the county commissions
Speaker 4: actually oversee the elections budgets. One of my favorites isn't
Speaker 4: in Dauphin County, which is like around Harrisburg. We worked
Speaker 4: with a guy named Justin Douglas who's this incredible leader.
Speaker 4: He was a pastor, He worked with the homeless community there.
Speaker 4: He actually got fired from his congregation for being too
Speaker 4: welcoming to LGBTQ worshippers people who wanted to come be
Speaker 4: a part of there. We sent out a whole bunch
Speaker 4: of text mesterses, and calls to folks in the area
Speaker 4: being like, Hey, do you want to run for office.
Speaker 4: Here's a county commission race. It's really important for democracy.
Speaker 4: And he was like, Eh, I don't know. Let we
Speaker 4: have a conversation. Maybe I know someone, And we talked
Speaker 4: to him into running and got on the ballot. He
Speaker 4: was outspent something like ten to one. He was knocking doors,
Speaker 4: talking to voters, reminding them about the stakes of this race.
Speaker 4: Also talking really focused about the crisis and the jail
Speaker 4: system in the county which had let prisoners die out
Speaker 4: of neglect. In a way it was really heartbreaking. He
Speaker 4: was able to win his race, but I think ultimately
Speaker 4: the margin was about one hundred and forty one hundred
Speaker 4: and fifty votes. He helped flip the county Commission for
Speaker 4: the first time in over one hundred years. And one
Speaker 4: of the people he'd beat, or the person he beat,
Speaker 4: had been a really active fighter against things like making
Speaker 4: it easier for people to drop off their ballots, hearing
Speaker 4: ballots after election day, even certifying the election. So his
Speaker 4: presence on the Dauphin County Commission in Pennsylvania and election
Speaker 4: we won in twenty twenty three is going to make
Speaker 4: it easier for us to win the big elections in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: I mean, local is really how you a get people
Speaker 1: into politics and be how you get voters engaged, and
Speaker 1: also how you get young people engaged.
Speaker 4: Right absolutely. I mean we've heard this anecdotally from people
Speaker 4: doing youth organizing four years. You know, they think about
Speaker 4: local politics as the gateway. Maybe if someone doesn't give
Speaker 4: a shit about who's their member of Congress or the
Speaker 4: president presidential candidates, they're never going to meet them, They're
Speaker 4: never going to hear from them. The issues they talk
Speaker 4: about feel really abstract. But their city council candidate or
Speaker 4: their school board or candidate is someone they know, someone
Speaker 4: they meet, someone maybe they play basketball with at the
Speaker 4: gym where they see a school drop offline, or they
Speaker 4: went to college with, or work with at the local
Speaker 4: retail place, at the restaurant. It's someone they know. I
Speaker 4: think that is a really powerful driver. In fact, political
Speaker 4: science research has shown the strongest indicator that someone's going
Speaker 4: to show up to the polls is a personal relationship
Speaker 4: between candidate and voter. Everything else about it is meant
Speaker 4: to replicate that, try to recreate that intimacy but a
Speaker 4: personal relationship between candidate and voter is so powerful, and
Speaker 4: that's what local candidates can do in a way that's
Speaker 4: really genuine and authentic that the top of the ticket
Speaker 4: just can't, at least not the same way.
Speaker 1: When you say this, it does sound like the Biden
Speaker 1: campaign is opening hundreds of field offices in these swingy districts.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't that be a way for the top of the
Speaker 1: ticket to try to connect locally.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's a huge part of it, And
Speaker 4: a lot of our local candidates work out of those
Speaker 4: field offices, and many places they'll be coordinated campaign offices.
Speaker 4: And our local candidates have already been knocking doors in
Speaker 4: many places for the last six months to a year
Speaker 4: to longer. I get report outs from our states team
Speaker 4: and our campaigns team every week, and they'll talk about,
Speaker 4: you know, Katerina has been out knocking. She's not ten
Speaker 4: thousand doors. She's going through her universe three or four times.
Speaker 4: You know, Jose has been knocking doors since last summer.
Speaker 4: These are people who have really built relationships, So I
Speaker 4: think it all helps. No election exists in a vacuum.
Speaker 4: The doors that our school board candidates knock and our
Speaker 4: state legislative candidate's knock also help Biden and the ads
Speaker 4: that the Biden theme runs. The organizing they're doing also
Speaker 4: helps these local races. The I think sort of thing
Speaker 4: that sometimes people forget but is the places that the
Speaker 4: Biden campaign is going to focus, which as they should
Speaker 4: strategically based on where they need to win, and the
Speaker 4: places where some of the most dangerous Republican local candidates
Speaker 4: are running are not always the same.
Speaker 1: Right right, No, No, really important important point.
Speaker 4: On like a very practical level. You know, it's going
Speaker 4: to be incumbent on the Biden campaign to for example,
Speaker 4: really engage voters in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and in some
Speaker 4: really targeted suburbs, and some of the worst Republicans in
Speaker 4: Pennsylvania are running in places that are just not going
Speaker 4: to make sense for the Biden campaign to focus as
Speaker 4: much any resources or energy. The same is true in
Speaker 4: so many states across the country. And you know, especially
Speaker 4: when you think about some of the other races on
Speaker 4: the ballot like Shared Brown and Ohio and John Tester
Speaker 4: in Montana, it's going to be really really helpful that
Speaker 4: they have city council and school board candidates in those
Speaker 4: states knocking doors because it's just not where the national
Speaker 4: campaign is likely to be at all or as much
Speaker 4: as they need to be to help the rest of
Speaker 4: those candidates. So all that's to say, you know, you
Speaker 4: invest in these small races, you can win the big
Speaker 4: ones and also make a difference in people's lives. It's
Speaker 4: such a win win win in terms of your investment.
Speaker 1: Amanda, Thank you run for something. I hopefully will have
Speaker 1: you back a lot before the selection anytime.
Speaker 3: Jim Wallace is.
Speaker 2: The director of Georgetown University Center on Faith Injustice and
Speaker 2: the author of The False White Gospel, Rejecting Christian Nationalism,
Speaker 2: Reclaiming True Faith, and Refounding Democracy.
Speaker 1: Welcome Too Fast Politics.
Speaker 5: Jim Wallace, it's a blessing to be here for me.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Explain to us a little bit about this book you wrote,
Speaker 1: and I would love it if you could even it's
Speaker 1: called False White Gospel, but even before that, if you
Speaker 1: could just explain to us a little bit about your
Speaker 1: personal trajectory.
Speaker 5: Well, I am at Georgetown now. I was a founder
Speaker 5: of Sojournals and for fifty years now I'm named after
Speaker 5: my mentor. I'm the our Bishop Desmond Tutu, Chair of
Speaker 5: Faith and justice a Jewish set, which is a wonderful
Speaker 5: name for my friend and mentor of Desmond Tutu. And
Speaker 5: we do faith and justice. That's what we talk about.
Speaker 5: And so this book is saying we have a test
Speaker 5: before us. It's a clear test, certainly a test of democracy,
Speaker 5: as Molly you say so well and so often. It's
Speaker 5: also a test of faith, a test of our faith
Speaker 5: communities and whether they will stand up and speak the
Speaker 5: truth here. And it's talking about this white Christian nationalism,
Speaker 5: which the name spells the problem. First, the most welcoming
Speaker 5: inclusive gospel message in history is made white. But secondly
Speaker 5: it's Christian. But if they don't mean love and sacrifice
Speaker 5: and service, I mean domination, control for power, and finally nationalism,
Speaker 5: I mean Jesus gave a great commission to his disciples
Speaker 5: go into all the world, making disciples of every nation,
Speaker 5: teaching them to go or whatever I have commanded you.
Speaker 5: So the book is about six iconic biblical texts, ancient texts.
Speaker 5: I rephrase and reframe them that can apply to people,
Speaker 5: whether Christian or religious or not. I like Jesus saying
Speaker 5: you'll know the truth, and the truth will set you free.
Speaker 5: In John's Gospel. That means the opposite of truth isn't
Speaker 5: just less lying, it's captivity. And so truth and freedom
Speaker 5: are indivisible. So people are captive. So many people are
Speaker 5: captive to this increasingly religious talking, this false messiah. Now
Speaker 5: it's quite incredible of Donald Trump. And so I'm trying
Speaker 5: to let Jesus do the talking here and let's get
Speaker 5: back to these things that we say we believe and
Speaker 5: not just say what's wrong, but say here's a way forward.
Speaker 5: A lot of people are hungry for a better, different
Speaker 5: conversation and what I call the faith factor. In twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: Four, I mean, I really do think a lot about
Speaker 1: how former Vice President pens really did give evangelicals a
Speaker 1: permission structure to support Trump. Wasn't he sort of like
Speaker 1: a critical part of this whole organization.
Speaker 5: Yeah, A naming hands gave assurance to a lot of
Speaker 5: evangelicals that this was it was okay, and then Pence
Speaker 5: broke with them at that constitutional moment and now is
Speaker 5: in supporting them or endorsing him. So it's very interesting
Speaker 5: how this choice we're making now is a faith choice
Speaker 5: and not just This isn't just politics, isn't democratic republican
Speaker 5: left or right. It's really about what kind of country,
Speaker 5: what kind of people, what kind of nation do we
Speaker 5: want to be. So one of the texts that I
Speaker 5: have in this book that I love is imagine, while
Speaker 5: you and I are surrounded by political noise, the fact
Speaker 5: it's our vocation to listen to the noise and offer perspective.
Speaker 3: Right, you and I?
Speaker 1: Right, yes, it is. It happens to be in fact.
Speaker 5: So the first chapter, first book of the Bible, Genesis
Speaker 5: one twenty six says, in the middle of illinoise, I
Speaker 5: like to think. Then God said, like me, quiet noise.
Speaker 5: And then I said, let us create human kind, all
Speaker 5: of human kind after our own image and likeness. So
Speaker 5: right there is the foundation for all of our earthly
Speaker 5: talk of human rights and voting rights is a theological
Speaker 5: foundation that divinely created equality between all of us. So
Speaker 5: in the beginning, you might say God created all of us,
Speaker 5: all God's children, with God's image and dignity. And then
Speaker 5: beginning of the United States. However, it was a doctrine
Speaker 5: of discovery that led to the obliterating and the stealing
Speaker 5: of lands from indigenous people, then the kidnapping of Africans
Speaker 5: for slavery, So we were a slave holding republic. Now
Speaker 5: I didn't say democracy, and that is there, Molly. I
Speaker 5: think all that's coming to a crescendo now, a culmination
Speaker 5: what I call America's original sin is coming on the nation.
Speaker 5: They're fighting this. This is their their last fight, and
Speaker 5: they'll use any means necessary, any means. The trajectory of
Speaker 5: politics of fear and hate in violence, that's their trajectory.
Speaker 5: So we have to counter that, not just with partisan
Speaker 5: politics or our own our own hawking points. This is
Speaker 5: going to be confronted at a deep level with this
Speaker 5: is let's call it idolatry. That's a word that some
Speaker 5: of your listening quite know what it means. It means
Speaker 5: false worship, means working the nation and not worshiping God.
Speaker 5: He has a Bible he's selling for sixty bucks to
Speaker 5: pay his legal fees for his trials about a porn star,
Speaker 5: and on the front of the Bible says you bless
Speaker 5: Usa Bible in the front of the Bible. So and
Speaker 5: it's also heresy. Now that's a big word people will
Speaker 5: get scared by. Heresy is anything that draws us away
Speaker 5: from Christ. For Christians, draws us away well, this is
Speaker 5: his vision. His values are literally anti christ and that
Speaker 5: must be said. There are black evangelicals who are pretty different.
Speaker 5: For white evangelicals. The word white evangelical, the real word
Speaker 5: they're the big word is not evangelical. It's white. White
Speaker 5: dominates the phrase white Christian. So that's what we have
Speaker 5: to change and be transformed by, because people are captive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what I'm struck by is this sort of like
Speaker 1: white evangelicals. Even though Mike Pence did break with Trump
Speaker 1: eventually and is saying he won't support Trump or not endorsed,
Speaker 1: which strikes me as a big deal, evangelicals are not
Speaker 1: breaking with Trump.
Speaker 5: But again, let's let's clarify white evangelical right exactly. I
Speaker 5: was asking, why can Christians talk about race? I said, well,
Speaker 5: they they do. Black Christians do all the time. White
Speaker 5: Christians don't want to talk about that's so we've got
Speaker 5: to Really I'm from that evangelic tradition. I was raised
Speaker 5: in that, and I defined evangelical by Jesus opening Sermon
Speaker 5: at Nazareth, which I call is Nazareth Manifesto. He quoted
Speaker 5: Isaiah and he said, the spirit of the Lord is
Speaker 5: upon me because he has annoyed me to bring good
Speaker 5: news and the word for good news. There is evangel
Speaker 5: in the Greek good news to the poor. So any
Speaker 5: gospel that isn't good news to the poor is not
Speaker 5: the gospel of Jesus Christ. That's just period. That's a fact.
Speaker 5: So in the book I talked about how when Jesus
Speaker 5: says I was hungry, I was thirsty, I was naked,
Speaker 5: I was a stranger. The word means immigrant there in scriptures.
Speaker 5: I was sick, I was in prison. And what you
Speaker 5: do to the least of these, he says, you've done
Speaker 5: to me. He's saying it was me that Matthew twenty
Speaker 5: five Gospel test with was my conversion text out of
Speaker 5: the student movement back in the day that brought me
Speaker 5: to faith. And that is the economics of Jesus, which
Speaker 5: turns our politics literally upside down. So I want to
Speaker 5: talk about what the real Jesus is saying and doing.
Speaker 5: Jesus suffered identity theft on January sixth, with islands storming.
Speaker 5: Attackers lifted his flag and she like alongside a Confederate flag,
Speaker 5: and when they got to taking over the Senate, they
Speaker 5: shouted Jesus name in prayer. That's something that I, as
Speaker 5: a Christian, am not going to just accept that that's
Speaker 5: going to be directly fundamentally challenged. And so this book
Speaker 5: is an interrogation Molly of fate at a crisis time.
Speaker 5: It's interrogation of faith. So what I'm finding is there
Speaker 5: real hunger out there, you know, a hunger out there
Speaker 5: for a different kind of faith factor, a different kind
Speaker 5: of faith narrative in the middle of this critical twenty
Speaker 5: twenty four election season.
Speaker 1: So one of the things I've heard do you say
Speaker 1: when you're interviewed, is that this is actually a book
Speaker 1: for pastors. Will you talk to me a little bit
Speaker 1: about what that means.
Speaker 5: It's for pastors and all their congregants, and it's also
Speaker 5: for at George and I Love my classes and their
Speaker 5: students who usually they're in the none of the above category.
Speaker 5: They signal out for religious hiliation, they don't know about
Speaker 5: their faith, they're struggling. It's for all the people outside
Speaker 5: the church who are struggling with these things too. But
Speaker 5: pastors are facing literally molly. Pastors who want to say
Speaker 5: what they know is true are facing death threats, even
Speaker 5: from people in their own congregations.
Speaker 3: This is amazing and.
Speaker 5: Outdiede and others have totally politicized their gospel to be
Speaker 5: a Trump religion. So there's a battle going on. And
Speaker 5: the book hopefully provides for pastors or other congregational leaders,
Speaker 5: or just ordinary people in their small groups or Bible
Speaker 5: studies or community groups. Here are some texts, here is
Speaker 5: some language. Here is some way to apply ancient biblical texts,
Speaker 5: whether we're believers or not through this moment. And I
Speaker 5: want to take them on with the texts, and I
Speaker 5: don't want to just take them on with alternative media
Speaker 5: or something. So the title of the book was going
Speaker 5: to be do we believe this or not? There's been
Speaker 5: a political taco of the white evangelical world, not the
Speaker 5: black churches, but the white evangelical world.
Speaker 1: Yeah. One of the things that Trump did was Trump
Speaker 1: gave white evangelicals a permission structure for being significantly sort
Speaker 1: of their worst instincts in a way that you probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't have that permission structure for white evangelicals otherwise. Do
Speaker 1: you think that there's any way to sort of put
Speaker 1: that genie back in the bottle?
Speaker 5: You've said now this word permission structure twice, So let's
Speaker 5: unpack at bit. It goes again deep riven politics. Every nation,
Speaker 5: every nation, Bullius, you know, has its better angels and
Speaker 5: its worst teamons. And Trump isn't just He's a marketer,
Speaker 5: not a leader. He's a market He's marketing not only
Speaker 5: racial grievance. I would say Trump is marketing our worst demons.
Speaker 5: And those demons run very deep. And so what's at
Speaker 5: stake here is the integrity of faith communities, whether our
Speaker 5: demons in this nation will take them over, which is happening.
Speaker 5: And I call them mega mega churches, which are the
Speaker 5: big churches that are going for Trump. It's all politics now,
Speaker 5: it's all been politicized. So I want to challenge a
Speaker 5: lot of those Trumps surrogus to debates about the Bible.
Speaker 5: What does the Bible say. There's a lot of younger leaders,
Speaker 5: even white evangelically younger ones who are really unsettled. They're
Speaker 5: sometimes appalled by what's going on and the book. I
Speaker 5: talk about maybe a new what I'm calling remnant church,
Speaker 5: which would be white believers, parchic younger ones who want
Speaker 5: to join with black and brown church leaders to create
Speaker 5: really literally a new American church in this country. Now,
Speaker 5: how many of those Evangelicals will break with Trump. I
Speaker 5: don't know, but it's not these angelicals as mainline Protestants,
Speaker 5: as Catholics. The issue is whiteness, right white, and when
Speaker 5: whiteness has taken over, and that's literally an idolatry. So
Speaker 5: I want it, you know, as Jesus is saying about freedom,
Speaker 5: set people free from their captivity. As I've said that,
Speaker 5: you've heard me say, every every movement has to decide
Speaker 5: who they can persuade, but also who they must defeat,
Speaker 5: and I mean violently, I mean the ballot box. But
Speaker 5: this book says that'll be a controversial lie in his
Speaker 5: book because I want to persuade people, and some can
Speaker 5: be persuaded, so I think, But I want to give
Speaker 5: people the tools to defeat these people, to feed them
Speaker 5: at the ballot box. The religious political power people who
Speaker 5: are just going for power and using religion. To use
Speaker 5: religion to go for power is blasphemous, to use a
Speaker 5: religious world.
Speaker 1: So interesting, and also I would say, like so important
Speaker 1: what you're doing. One of the things that my husband,
Speaker 1: you know, we're both reform Jews. I grew up a Unitarian.
Speaker 1: My stepmom's a Unitarian minister. But you know, we raise
Speaker 1: our children reform jew but very liberal. We love our Rabbi.
Speaker 1: My daughter loves her so much because she did this
Speaker 1: whole asserment about how she doesn't believe everything happens for
Speaker 1: a reason. Very progressive and groovy. But one of the
Speaker 1: things that we often talk about is how the right
Speaker 1: has gotten very like if you look at the Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: they put Catholics on the court and not Protestants on
Speaker 1: the court because I think a lot of the thinking
Speaker 1: in the republican federalist society world is that Catholics are
Speaker 1: more open to this very regressive legislation when it comes
Speaker 1: to a lot of the rights and I'm thinking reproductive
Speaker 1: rights that we in this country have had taken for
Speaker 1: granted for so long. Do you do you think that
Speaker 1: Protestants have kind of gotten squeezed out of this Well.
Speaker 5: That's interesting. I think people are put there for their
Speaker 5: it's sorry to say, for their political ideology the federal level,
Speaker 5: and religion can come along with that. But you know,
Speaker 5: Pope Francis continues to encourage and inspire me. He doesn't
Speaker 5: even in the single issue politics, a worship being the
Speaker 5: only issue he talks about. A consistent ethic of life,
Speaker 5: where the death penalty is a life issue, and poverty
Speaker 5: is a life issue, and supporting families is a life issue.
Speaker 5: Nuclear weapons is a life issue. Has broader view which
Speaker 5: Renstance embodies is being narrowed and politicized in this country
Speaker 5: in some Catholic churches and some bishops. Some bishops are
Speaker 5: saying really powerful frances like things, and others are not.
Speaker 5: So the way they use ideology put together with religion.
Speaker 5: It's almost like the ideology of the America's original sin
Speaker 5: we've had for a very long time, and yet now
Speaker 5: there's a theology underneath that's a false theology. And so
Speaker 5: that's ideology and heresy go together at the same time.
Speaker 5: So that's being put together. So how can we some
Speaker 5: you know people you and I know some feel that
Speaker 5: the best answer to bad religion is no religion. I
Speaker 5: understand that certainly in some days he says with trump
Speaker 5: Bibles and all the rest. But I think the answer
Speaker 5: to bad religion is better religion, or good faith or
Speaker 5: true faith. The subtitle is the book is you know,
Speaker 5: it's rejecting Christian nationalism, reclaiming true faith, and refounding democracy.
Speaker 5: So I want to bring good faith, true faith into
Speaker 5: this and confront the bad faith on religious grounds and say, no,
Speaker 5: you got it wrong. Here's what Jesus said, Here's what
Speaker 5: the first book in the Bible, in Genesis says. Here's
Speaker 5: what the apostle Paul says in Galatians three twenty eight
Speaker 5: about breaking down barriers of race and class and gender
Speaker 5: which are always there. And this Galatians text was a
Speaker 5: baptismal formula in the early Church in Christ. There's no
Speaker 5: ge or gentile, bonder, free male or female. They read
Speaker 5: that at every baptism. They were saying, literally, we're followers
Speaker 5: in the side tenor at brownskin Palestinian rabbi who has
Speaker 5: us that we have to overcome these pillars, these divisive
Speaker 5: factors which are always there, as you know so well,
Speaker 5: always race, class, and gender.
Speaker 3: And they're saying, we're not.
Speaker 5: Perfect, but it's our vocation to overcome those things, not
Speaker 5: extracurricular or volunteer time. So they were saying, so, if
Speaker 5: you don't want to be hoarded that kind of community,
Speaker 5: you better go somewhere else. Now imagine if American churches
Speaker 5: we're using that Galicians text in all their baptisms. That
Speaker 5: text by the way I learned in my research here
Speaker 5: was Galatians three twenty eight was banned taken out of
Speaker 5: all the white slaveholder Bibles.
Speaker 1: We're out of time. I hope you'll come back, though.
Speaker 1: It's such a rich topic and I feel like we
Speaker 1: didn't even really scratch the service.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 5: I like your voice when I see you personally, so
Speaker 5: I'm happy to come back. And I think I'm hoping
Speaker 5: this what can be a tool to use to the
Speaker 5: persuadables and even those who we have to confront and
Speaker 5: really defeat them in the narrative about what good faith
Speaker 5: really means. No moment o fuck, Rick Wilson, Molly Jong fasts.
Speaker 3: Would you like a moment of fuckery?
Speaker 1: Yes, I.
Speaker 3: I've got one. I go Virginia. Republicans eat a giant
Speaker 3: sack of ass. You are not renaming Dulles International Airport
Speaker 3: after Donald Trump. Listen, if you want to name something
Speaker 3: after Donald Trump, it's going to be the laundry facility
Speaker 3: at the Florence ad X Supermax prison. It's gonna be
Speaker 3: it's gonna be a goddamn railyard in bumfuck as Crack, Oklahoma.
Speaker 3: You're not naming a goddamn international airport where people come
Speaker 3: from around the world after the worst president in the
Speaker 3: history of the United States. I will burn my own
Speaker 3: ass down before I see this happen. It is unbelievable, Molly.
Speaker 3: Can you imagine like people will be like, I'm flying
Speaker 3: the Trump Trump, Where are you flying it to Washington? Oh? Oh? National?
Speaker 3: Now it would be humiliating for this country.
Speaker 1: Okay, Now, Dulles is humiliating for this country. And it's
Speaker 1: also like two hours out of Washington. Honestly, I can't
Speaker 1: speak to Dallas because I've never flown through it.
Speaker 3: Dullas is a very lovely airport.
Speaker 1: You're welcome Dulles, and it's it's located somewhere near Washington, DC.
Speaker 3: It is located somewhere in the DC metroplex.
Speaker 1: Yes, I metroplex.
Speaker 3: By the way.
Speaker 1: Listen, you want to name an airport that no one
Speaker 1: goes to for Donald Trump? Maybe that's a good plan.
Speaker 3: Anyway, Listen, a lot of people go there though it's
Speaker 3: a big international HUBY fly in and out of there
Speaker 3: all the time.
Speaker 1: Yes, it is our moment of fuckery.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry if people don't find this moment of fuckery
Speaker 3: as exciting as other moments of fuckery. But honestly, I
Speaker 3: mean they renamed fucking highway in Florida after Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: I won't drive on it. Fuck them not do it?
Speaker 1: All right, Well, and that is our moment of fuckery.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
Speaker 1: every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds
Speaker 1: in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you
Speaker 1: enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend
Speaker 1: and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.