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 Governor Greg Abbott is in Asia
Speaker 1: while a hurricane pummells Texas shades of Ted Cruz. We
Speaker 1: have a great show for you today, Democracy dockets, Mark Elias,
Speaker 1: Factcheck's Republican claims that Democrats can't nominate a different candidate,
Speaker 1: and all the other things they're doing to try to
Speaker 1: undermine democracy. Then we'll talk to Semaphore's Dave Wigel about
Speaker 1: the lessons from twenty sixteen that are coming back to
Speaker 1: haunt all of us in twenty twenty four. But first
Speaker 1: we have the author of the Undertow scenes from a
Speaker 1: Slow Civil War as well as his amazing Substack newsletter,
Speaker 1: Jeff Charlotte. Welcome back to Fast Politics. Jeff Charlotte, thank
Speaker 1: you for joining us.
Speaker 2: Hi, MOLLI good to be with you.
Speaker 1: So, Jeff, I wanted to have you on because all
Speaker 1: the time what we cover effects may and Jesse and
Speaker 1: I just did this YouTube series which is coming out
Speaker 1: very soon everyone on Project twenty twenty five, and we
Speaker 1: interviewed all these academics and we started talking about what
Speaker 1: it looks like when fascism comes to America. You have
Speaker 1: written so well about this, I wanted to talk about this.
Speaker 1: So I wrote this column about my grandfather because my
Speaker 1: brother and I were talking on the phone. I live
Speaker 1: in a lot of anxiety about if Trump wins. And
Speaker 1: my brother said, well, you know, it could actually be
Speaker 1: great for your career. And he said, you know, Grandpa
Speaker 1: was never that famous until he went to jail. So
Speaker 1: I'm wondering if we could talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: that time and what it looked like McCarthyism.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And I think that's such a valuable column. Your grandfather,
Speaker 2: Howard Fast too. Some readers may know and some may not.
Speaker 2: People probably known Spartacus and so on. But what's so
Speaker 2: fascinating about that, And I think this is important for
Speaker 2: us to recognize in the current moment, is it wasn't
Speaker 2: that when he went to jail or I wrote about
Speaker 2: him in my book about.
Speaker 1: Talk about what you wrote about too, because that's interesting.
Speaker 2: Well, in nineteen forty nine, Paul Robeson, the Great Singer,
Speaker 2: was going to do a free concert along the river
Speaker 2: in Peakskill, New York, and the townspeople he was.
Speaker 1: Most famous for playing a fellow, and he was a
Speaker 1: civil rights hero. He was a little bit like Sidney Potier,
Speaker 1: but he ultimately was lost to history because he was
Speaker 1: a communist.
Speaker 2: He was a communist at the Russia loving Negro baritone,
Speaker 2: as the headline of the local newspaper put it, organizing
Speaker 2: the crowd and rally. And so they came out. The
Speaker 2: local veterans clubs came out, one hundred strong, backed by
Speaker 2: the police, to violently attack the concert. Your grandfather bravely
Speaker 2: attempted to hold the line, although they were backed right
Speaker 2: up to the stage. And that, to me, though, is
Speaker 2: such an example of what gets lost sometimes when we
Speaker 2: talk only about the national scale of Project twenty twenty five,
Speaker 2: your grandfather, but no one was sort of saying, get
Speaker 2: Howard Fast. The way fascism works is it happens locally.
Speaker 2: It happens Veterans organization and Peace Skill New York decides
Speaker 2: they're going to hurt people. A particular politician comes upon
Speaker 2: a particular writer, a journalist, and says, this one gets me.
Speaker 2: Fascism comes for everybody, and it is irregular. It is
Speaker 2: hard to predict. And I think your column is really
Speaker 2: valuable in that because I think a lot of liberals
Speaker 2: and leftists they want to sort of put this in
Speaker 2: a neat system. Well, first they're going to come for
Speaker 2: the trans folks, then they're going to come from the
Speaker 2: people of color. And there's some structural truth to that,
Speaker 2: But fascism happens as an explosion. The revenge that Trump
Speaker 2: has promised is going to trickle down to all the
Speaker 2: millions of little Trumps in your local school board, at
Speaker 2: your workplace, and revenge is going to come by surprise
Speaker 2: in many different places at once.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's so important because this was like the Muzzlim band, right,
Speaker 1: it was a fake war that Republicans hoped would help
Speaker 1: them Galvin the base, right, It's the same idea. Russia
Speaker 1: was the number one danger, even though they had recently
Speaker 1: helped to win World War Two, they were now the
Speaker 1: single biggest danger towards American life. And so these Republicans
Speaker 1: decided that you could be a domestic enemy. And the
Speaker 1: part about domestic enemy is in this November speech at
Speaker 1: Trump gave, he talked about domestic enemies and that is
Speaker 1: new for him. And I'm hoping you could talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about what that means domestic enemies.
Speaker 2: Or the enemy within. I've been going to Trump rallies
Speaker 2: since the beginning, and version was in twenty sixteen, early
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen in Youngstown, Ohio, and there's always been an
Speaker 2: enemy within. And I mean, your calm is very important
Speaker 2: because from the very beginning, one of the enemies within
Speaker 2: were journalists. The way that you go to a Trump rally,
Speaker 2: and if you go and agreed to go and participate
Speaker 2: as the press, which I don't want to get my
Speaker 2: tick in, I just wander in the crowd because I
Speaker 2: don't want to be put in a metal pen in
Speaker 2: the middle of the arena, at which point Trump will
Speaker 2: turn and say, look at those scums, Look at those scum,
Speaker 2: and the crowd turns on mass and to twin birds
Speaker 2: in the air, find their fingers and screaming and so on.
Speaker 2: And it's professional wrestling, it's showmanship. It's the performance of
Speaker 2: an enemy that is hard to identify. And I think
Speaker 2: sometimes we get stuck on the idea with the enemy within.
Speaker 2: Beginning of the Trump administration, it was Muslims. It still Muslims,
Speaker 2: but then it became quote illegals, it became trans folks.
Speaker 2: The enemy of fascism is always mutating, and that's a
Speaker 2: lesson we can learn back from the McCarthy period because
Speaker 2: they were always detecting a new possible subject who could
Speaker 2: be communists. And that's how communism worked too, because communism,
Speaker 2: your school teacher could be a Communist, your neighbor could
Speaker 2: be a Communist. Always be on the lookout. You know.
Speaker 2: There's another parallel to that moment that I think about.
Speaker 2: I wrote about your grandfather in this pitched riot, trying
Speaker 2: to defend himself and others against massive mob backed up
Speaker 2: by police. They tried to hold the concert again, by
Speaker 2: the way, and even a crowd of five thousand kin
Speaker 2: with New York State Police air power. They lent the
Speaker 2: rioting mob a helicopter to try and kill Paul Robeson
Speaker 2: and Pete seeger Woody Guthrie, your granddad. But when I
Speaker 2: dug into who these riders were, these veterans, these were
Speaker 2: a lot of this led by guys who had fought
Speaker 2: in Europe and they had been traumatized. They were terrorist.
Speaker 2: They didn't want any more trouble in their lives, and
Speaker 2: so the fascist message they came to them that said,
Speaker 2: attempts to improve the world, it's just more trouble it
Speaker 2: seemed very alarm to them. Well, compare that to the
Speaker 2: current moment, with the trauma of the pandemic not so
Speaker 2: distant for us, and that helps us understand the appeal
Speaker 2: of fascism. I'm going to shut up anything that reminds
Speaker 2: me of that pain and suffering, and I need a
Speaker 2: strong man who will bring the fists down hard quickly
Speaker 2: on any reminder of the pain, which, by the way,
Speaker 2: he was absolutely instrumental in causing.
Speaker 1: Yes, I mean so, I mean, I don't want to
Speaker 1: laugh because there's nothing to laugh about it. It's just
Speaker 1: deadly serious. But it is interesting to me that, you know,
Speaker 1: had Donald Trump handled the pandemic a little better and
Speaker 1: not made masks of partisan issue, he could have saved
Speaker 1: maybe five hundred thousand, maybe seven hundred thousand of his
Speaker 1: own people. I mean Red State Republicans lost their lives
Speaker 1: because Donald Trump told them not to believe in science.
Speaker 1: What happened here was very easily prevented. But somehow, I
Speaker 1: don't think they see it that way, right.
Speaker 2: I refer to this period that we're in now as
Speaker 2: the Trump is seen, the age of Trump. That's true,
Speaker 2: whether Trump is in power or not, he's shaping the
Speaker 2: rhetoric the political record of a lives just the way
Speaker 2: Reagan did. Rad Age historians will say the age of
Speaker 2: Reagan went from nineteen eighty to twenty sixteen. Even Democrats
Speaker 2: would friends ideas of what government could be according to Reagan,
Speaker 2: who now we're in the Trump is scene and his
Speaker 2: language creeps into ours. I'm not putting you on the spot,
Speaker 2: but I know she just said his people. He could
Speaker 2: have saved five hundred thousand of his people. He was
Speaker 2: president of the United States, the worst one in American history.
Speaker 2: But all of the people were supposed to be our people,
Speaker 2: his people. And he's got us thinking in terms of
Speaker 2: you know, he's already sort of started to split in
Speaker 2: American life. The sharksplit in American life. But to that
Speaker 2: point that there are those dead, and when I think
Speaker 2: about people saying, well, because we're hearing this now, right,
Speaker 2: we're hearing yeah, it would be bad, but he's not
Speaker 2: really gonna do all that much. How bad would it be?
Speaker 2: Half a million dead? A million dead bad? We want
Speaker 2: to talk about genocidal killing and we must. Trump, I argue,
Speaker 2: is responsible for a genocide scale death and a lot
Speaker 2: of us knew that a while ago, and somehow it's
Speaker 2: not in the rhetoric anymore. And I think this is
Speaker 2: key to fighting fascism, something that comes from studying, you know,
Speaker 2: the period of your grandfather and the ways in which
Speaker 2: the left of that time succeeded, and let's be honest,
Speaker 2: mostly failed. They were defeated, right, But then how they
Speaker 2: took inventory of those defeats. And one of that was
Speaker 2: if you don't mourn, if you don't acknowledge your losses,
Speaker 2: if you don't say, hey, this this really hurts. I
Speaker 2: got to think about that. I had this grief and
Speaker 2: it can curdle into anger, which becomes fascism or I
Speaker 2: feel too much Star Wars and you know Yoda's anger
Speaker 2: because but there is some truth to that. The grief, unprocessed, unmourned,
Speaker 2: becomes fascism. And I think that's a huge part. Like
Speaker 2: when you go amongst Trump's I'm about to use his
Speaker 2: language too, amongst Trump's people. Now you hear this sort
Speaker 2: of you know the way I illustrate this, if you
Speaker 2: think about climate change. We're not talking enough about Trump
Speaker 2: and climate change and the death he could bring to us.
Speaker 2: Ault you think about those Trump lovers who have those
Speaker 2: big trucks. They're called coal rollers, and they don't just
Speaker 2: burn a lot of gas, they'd burn an extra amount
Speaker 2: of gas. These people would rather pay more to show
Speaker 2: how much they don't believe in climate change. It reminds
Speaker 2: me of an old story. Now you've really got me
Speaker 2: thinking back on the thirties forties.
Speaker 1: Well, no, because I really believe and I feel like
Speaker 1: I'm the only person in the world who believes this.
Speaker 1: But you know, history rhymes, and the fact that we
Speaker 1: are dealing with this autocrat and we have had other
Speaker 1: periods in American life when autocracy has reared its ugly head,
Speaker 1: and we are not looking back to them for lessons. Instead,
Speaker 1: we're treating this as if it's business as usual. And
Speaker 1: I think it's really important. So any way, go on.
Speaker 1: That's enough for me.
Speaker 2: I was going to say, the guys in the coal
Speaker 2: rollers reminds me. There used to be something called the
Speaker 2: Yiddish anarchist ball. These were anarchists, our early twentieth century
Speaker 2: radical Jews. They spoke Yiddish and on Young Kipper they
Speaker 2: would have a feast, and not just a feast, they
Speaker 2: would have a pig roast. It's a little bit like
Speaker 2: shaking your fist and saying to God, see how much
Speaker 2: I don't believe in you. So this is my grand
Speaker 2: cold just saying see how much I don't believe in
Speaker 2: climate change. That's a grief statement and it seems comic.
Speaker 2: And the rhyming history, I think sometimes we miss it
Speaker 2: because it seems like, well the way it was actually
Speaker 2: is the first time tragedy and second time farst. This
Speaker 2: is a forest, this is a fool, this is funny.
Speaker 2: We've got the funny videos of the guys at Trump
Speaker 2: rallies and so on, first the fares, then the fist.
Speaker 2: As I think, how we best understand fascism and when
Speaker 2: would go back and look at look at that history,
Speaker 2: we realize that always fascism is derided and thought buffoonish
Speaker 2: and clownish at first. So our funny videos are not
Speaker 2: going to save us arm in arm and trying to
Speaker 2: hold the line like your granddad. I'm hoping we can
Speaker 2: sell some of Howard's fast books in this podcast.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know what's interesting about my grandfather, I
Speaker 1: think was he grew up very poor with an immigrant
Speaker 1: father and a dead mother. You know, he said to me,
Speaker 1: the reason he became a writer was A he needed
Speaker 1: money and B he was in the lot. You know,
Speaker 1: there was no place for him to go. So he
Speaker 1: went to the library and he read books because the
Speaker 1: library was free. And then he started writing his stories.
Speaker 1: And he started writing when he was sixteen, and he
Speaker 1: never stopped because you know, that was the way he
Speaker 1: processed the world. And I think a lot about why
Speaker 1: he fought for people who had less, because at the
Speaker 1: end he was quite successful. And the reality is is
Speaker 1: because this is what we are doing on this planet.
Speaker 1: You know, why even exist if we're not here to
Speaker 1: make it better for others. And I just appreciate what
Speaker 1: he did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's two warnings. There's two more wantings in that story.
Speaker 2: Look at that he became a writer to make money
Speaker 2: and at this point we could fall. But also and
Speaker 2: then he went to the library. Let's talk about that project.
Speaker 2: Twenty twenty five, we're talking about the big headline items.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about the national assault on libraries. The American
Speaker 2: Library Association just had a meeting in San Diego, and
Speaker 2: you know, they're trying to figure out what is going
Speaker 2: on and who is going to come to their aid.
Speaker 2: You know, we lost track of that habit of armed men,
Speaker 2: you know, whether they're oathkeepers or proud boys, or guns
Speaker 2: or whatever, lining up outside libraries during a story hour.
Speaker 2: Very very very reminiscent of the nineteen thirties nineteen forties
Speaker 2: period of right wing action, the kind of stuff that
Speaker 2: we were just talking about. When we look at book banning,
Speaker 2: one of the lessons that I would want us to
Speaker 2: pay attention to is again, fascism is not always going
Speaker 2: to come announcing itself clearly, so we see all these
Speaker 2: attempts at book bans. I attended a session with one
Speaker 2: of Texas's leading book banners last fall, and she was
Speaker 2: explaining she had this was a PowerPoint for others on
Speaker 2: how to do book bans, the formal book challenge. The
Speaker 2: formal book challenge. He said, that's a distraction that gets
Speaker 2: the local liberals all worked up. Where's the real action.
Speaker 2: She had a little slide show, so maybe they challenge
Speaker 2: a book like Alison Bechdeal's Great Fun Move, a queer
Speaker 2: memoir the Town, and they defend the book, and hooray,
Speaker 2: we held the line. And then she says, now here's
Speaker 2: a picture three months later of the library that the
Speaker 2: library and censored because the library and is scared, scared
Speaker 2: for their livelihood, scared for their safety in that community.
Speaker 2: They said, I got the book out of the library.
Speaker 2: I just removed. I did it quietly after the storm
Speaker 2: had passed. He says, that's what we're doing. She says,
Speaker 2: the books that were removing, a lot of them are
Speaker 2: not in the official band. And I think about that,
Speaker 2: your grandfather going to the library. I had a young
Speaker 2: student I teach fun Home House in Bechdel's fun Home
Speaker 2: to young writing students.
Speaker 1: You teach at dart mess Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a queer kid from Oklahoma. And this book blew
Speaker 2: their mind. And they said, if I had found this
Speaker 2: in my high school library when I was coming out
Speaker 2: to myself, this would have changed my life. But it
Speaker 2: wasn't in that library. Couldn't be in that library. And
Speaker 2: I said, well, let me, wasn't name your high school.
Speaker 2: I'll send them a copy, And I wrote, they can't
Speaker 2: accept copy. The library would love a copy. They can't
Speaker 2: have that the way folks of the past, special people
Speaker 2: without the money, the bid books that themselves free. That's
Speaker 2: being constricted, that's being constricted to the front line of fascism.
Speaker 2: Project twenty five it's national abortion laws, it's round them
Speaker 2: up undocumented camps. But it's also your local library, your
Speaker 2: little local library. Yep.
Speaker 1: And that's the goal. I want you to talk about
Speaker 1: the thousand points sort of people doing Trumpism themselves. So
Speaker 1: like one of the things that Timothy Schneider writes about
Speaker 1: in his book, this brilliant little book he did on
Speaker 1: how to Resist Fascism, I can't remember the title now,
Speaker 1: but he says, don't censor yourself in advance. It's something
Speaker 1: like that. Can you explain to us why that's important.
Speaker 2: You and I were talking about this before. The idea
Speaker 2: that we know that the majority of the American people,
Speaker 2: the majority of humans in all the world and all
Speaker 2: the countries that are under siege from this global fascism,
Speaker 2: they don't want fascism, they don't want these ideas. But
Speaker 2: the sad truth is we also know from history is
Speaker 2: that the majority will acquiesce, the majority will accept it.
Speaker 2: The majority will say, you know, wisdom, I better lay low,
Speaker 2: I'd better not stay. Oh that's the well. They're really
Speaker 2: beating up my coworker. They're maybe physically, but also maybe
Speaker 2: false charges. The kind of investigations that you write about
Speaker 2: the hospitel has talked about will become standard in the
Speaker 2: new regime. That's acquiescence. And so don't fool yourself if
Speaker 2: you're sitting out there and saying, well, no, no, I'm
Speaker 2: not accepting fascist. I'm keeping my powder dry. I'm staying wise.
Speaker 2: You hold the line. You hold the line at each step,
Speaker 2: and if you have to retreat, you do so because
Speaker 2: you have to, not because you've decided that. I'll just
Speaker 2: cleverly go hide here in the weeds until the stormtroopers pass.
Speaker 1: Jeff Charlotte, I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Spring is here, and I bet you are trying to
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Speaker 1: Mark Elias is the founder of Democracy Docket. Welcome back, Mark.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: I'm delighted. So the first thing I want to ask
Speaker 1: you is, because you are like all things voter law,
Speaker 1: I want you to explain to us if it did happen,
Speaker 1: if Biden did drop out of the race. Code Republicans
Speaker 1: because I've seen articles that say maybe they could try
Speaker 1: to keep a Democrat from getting on the ballot in
Speaker 1: certain states, or is there like really an okay path
Speaker 1: for a candidate that is not Joe Biden.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so look, I'm going to stay clear of the
Speaker 4: you know, the politics around this. What I can tell
Speaker 4: you is this that Republicans are are unsurprisingly not telling
Speaker 4: the truth that they can get somehow they can stop
Speaker 4: the Democratic Party from nominating the candidate they decide to nominate.
Speaker 2: The fact is that there won't be an.
Speaker 4: Official general election candidate or the Democratic Party until the delegates.
Speaker 2: Vote on who that is. So right now, neither.
Speaker 4: Donald Trump nor Joe Biden are the candidates of their
Speaker 4: parties for the general election. That is why we have conventions,
Speaker 4: right the convention That is why you know, in a
Speaker 4: normal year, we usually refer to it as the presumptive
Speaker 4: nominee of the party. And the reason why they're the
Speaker 4: presumptive nominee is that they don't actually become the nominee
Speaker 4: until after the convention.
Speaker 2: Is done doing its business, whether that is done in
Speaker 2: person or virtually, as we've seen in past years and
Speaker 2: maybe the case this year in the Democratic Party. At
Speaker 2: that point, there is.
Speaker 4: A nominee and that name gets forwarded onto all fifty
Speaker 4: states plus the District of Columbia, and that person would
Speaker 4: then get automatic ballot access as the Democrat as a
Speaker 4: major party candidate in all those states.
Speaker 1: But it is different for RFK Junior, as he is
Speaker 1: not from a major party. Can you just explain them?
Speaker 4: That is I think where the Republicans are purposely confusing things.
Speaker 4: And you think purposely because I think the Republicans, you know,
Speaker 4: are never interested in spreading good information. They always want
Speaker 4: to spread bad information. But the reason why it's different
Speaker 4: for whether it's RFK or Cornell West or whomever, is
Speaker 4: that they do not enjoy major party status. So basically,
Speaker 4: the states break ballot access into three categories. You have
Speaker 4: parties that historically have achieved a certain threshold of the vote,
Speaker 4: and those are the major parties, and their candidates automatically
Speaker 4: get put on one election after the next. That is
Speaker 4: the Democratic Party and the Republican Party in every state.
Speaker 4: In some states it is also the Libertarian Party or
Speaker 4: the Green Party. In New York it may be the
Speaker 4: Conservative Party and the Liberal Party.
Speaker 1: Or the Working Families Party.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, so that's category one. Category two are what
Speaker 4: some states refer to as minor parties. These are parties
Speaker 4: that have not historically met this threshold, but they are
Speaker 4: sort of of it as like farm team parties, and
Speaker 4: they usually have a somewhat harder process to get on it.
Speaker 4: And then finally there are just random people running who
Speaker 4: it as part of any party, and they typically in
Speaker 4: most states have the hardest time to get on because
Speaker 4: if you think about it, if you're a state, you
Speaker 4: don't want just everyone to be able to submit their
Speaker 4: name and say we want to be on the ballot.
Speaker 4: You'd have ballots that went on for pages and pages
Speaker 4: and pages. So that's why it's different for RFK or
Speaker 4: for Cornos that it even would be for for example,
Speaker 4: Jill Stein, he's running as the Green Party candidate, right
Speaker 4: that is sort of more established.
Speaker 2: But not that not a major party in most places.
Speaker 1: Now are Republicans right now making it harder to vote.
Speaker 1: So yesterday they tried to pass a bell it's never
Speaker 1: going to go anywhere in the House where the idea
Speaker 1: is that non citizens can't vote, which of course we
Speaker 1: all know is bullshit because non citizens cannot vote, so
Speaker 1: they're fixing something that doesn't need to be fixed. But
Speaker 1: I wondered if they were doing that in the hopes
Speaker 1: of opening the door to different voter roll purchase. And
Speaker 1: I was hoping you could talk about that, because when
Speaker 1: I heard them talking about it, I thought, well, there's
Speaker 1: only one reason this is.
Speaker 4: Happening, yes, right, So I think there are actually two
Speaker 4: reasons that's happening. So, first of all, to your point,
Speaker 4: there's already a federal law that prohibits non citizens from voting,
Speaker 4: So congratulations, Congress. There is a law that says that
Speaker 4: non citizens can't vote in federal elections. And there's also
Speaker 4: no history of non citizens voting in federals of any
Speaker 4: significant number.
Speaker 2: That's number one. But there are two reasons they're doing so.
Speaker 4: The first is, I do think there is a part
Speaker 4: of this that is just pure demagoguery.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: They are demonizing immigrants through every possible vehicle, and so
Speaker 2: this sort of gets nicely in that it allows them
Speaker 2: to demonize immigrants in yet another way, or migrants in
Speaker 2: another way that kind of fits with their overall message.
Speaker 2: But on the voter suppression front, the reason why they're
Speaker 2: doing it is because what they're actually trying to say
Speaker 2: is that you have to prove you are a citizen
Speaker 2: in order to register to vote. And so I'd ask
Speaker 2: how many people in the in the in the audience,
Speaker 2: how many of them have a.
Speaker 4: Passport handy right? How many of them have their birth certificate?
Speaker 2: Handy right?
Speaker 4: Because there aren't a lot of ways to prove that
Speaker 4: you are a US citizen other than a US passport
Speaker 4: or a birth certificate. So what it will actually do
Speaker 4: is prevent lots and lots of lawful voters, lots and
Speaker 4: lots of US citizens from being able to vote, by
Speaker 4: putting up obstacles to prove citizenship, which, if you think
Speaker 4: about it, you know, Molly, if I said to you,
Speaker 4: can you show me voter ID, you'd say, sure, I
Speaker 4: have the driver's license. I can show you know, a
Speaker 4: work idea government ID. Well, none of those prove citizenship.
Speaker 4: If I asked you, can you prove that you were
Speaker 4: born in Stanford, Connecticut? Like I mean, you weren't cognizant,
Speaker 4: you don't like, how would you prove it?
Speaker 2: Right? You'd have to have a bircher to good or
Speaker 2: a passport right.
Speaker 1: And remember that the people who get passports tend to
Speaker 1: be affluent people who go to Europe or go to
Speaker 1: you know, travel internationally, and they tend not to be
Speaker 1: poor people who can't write. Like what percentage of Americans
Speaker 1: have never been on an airplane, let alone to Europe.
Speaker 1: So it is actually meant to punish poor people, right, it.
Speaker 2: Is poor people.
Speaker 4: And also, and I think this is not to be overlooked,
Speaker 4: punish young people. A lot of these voter suppression laws
Speaker 4: are really targeting first time voters or young voters.
Speaker 2: And the reason why is think about it.
Speaker 4: You know, when I was coming of age and building
Speaker 4: a law practice and everything, I actually did have a
Speaker 4: need for my birth certificate.
Speaker 2: Right. This was like before the Internet age, you know,
Speaker 2: and people would need to know. You'd need to be
Speaker 2: able to for various things, you know, be able to
Speaker 2: prove who you were, and like a birth certificate was
Speaker 2: really relevant. A young person that doesn't really have the
Speaker 2: same need for per certificate. There are a myriad of ways.
Speaker 4: They could show a cable bill, you know, they could
Speaker 4: show a utility bill. They can show a student ID.
Speaker 4: I mean, when I was in college, I don't even
Speaker 4: if we had student id's. We did, they were probably
Speaker 4: written on paper, right, so that it is harder. Fewer
Speaker 4: young people tend to have these sort of critical family
Speaker 4: documents that older people. And of course when it comes
Speaker 4: to passports, you know, just older people are more affluent,
Speaker 4: they're also just more likely to have the free time
Speaker 4: to travel internationally relative to young people, so that the
Speaker 4: older people tend to have passports or diar rates.
Speaker 1: It's so interesting because it really is such a setup
Speaker 1: for Republicans making it harder for people to vote, which
Speaker 1: of course has always been the goal. Here we're in
Speaker 1: this run up to the twenty twenty for election. What
Speaker 1: are the things you're seeing that they're doing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so, look, I think you've hit half of it,
Speaker 4: and I want to focus on the other half, which
Speaker 4: is that they want to make it harder of an
Speaker 4: easier cheat. And you know, let's not look past the
Speaker 4: easier to cheat part, because what Donald Trump did after
Speaker 4: twenty twenty, after November was tried to cheat. First, he
Speaker 4: tried to cheat in the courts when he couldn't cheat
Speaker 4: in the courts. He tried to get Brad Rosenberger and
Speaker 4: others to cheat in the vote count. When he couldn't
Speaker 4: cheat in the vote count. He inspired a violent insurrection
Speaker 4: in the nation's capital right, which was an effort to
Speaker 4: cheat on the results. So we have to always keep
Speaker 4: in mind that, as distracted as we may be by
Speaker 4: other political events going on in the day, the Republicans
Speaker 4: are continuing their march towards making it harder easier to cheat.
Speaker 4: And we are seeing, you know, as we are recording this,
Speaker 4: the state of Nevada is in court suing Washaw County,
Speaker 4: which is the second largest county in the state. This
Speaker 4: is Reno, This is a swing county suing them because
Speaker 4: the Republicans on the canvassing board there are refusing to
Speaker 4: certify the election results in two local elections. Why are
Speaker 4: they refusing to certify elections in the local elections? These
Speaker 4: are dry runs for what they plan on doing this fall,
Speaker 4: which is to refuse to acknowledge that Joe Biden and
Speaker 4: the Democratic candidates up and down the ballot have won
Speaker 4: the election and refuse to certify fill out the paperwork necessary.
Speaker 4: There is a rule, a lawsuit in Georgia that Republicans
Speaker 4: have brought to try to make this law in Georgia.
Speaker 4: There's a proposed rule in Georgia to try to make
Speaker 4: this The rule in Georgia there is litigation in Arizona
Speaker 4: that Republicans have brought to try to facilitate this, and
Speaker 4: we saw this after twenty twenty two by law firm
Speaker 4: and I we had to suit Coache's County Arizona. We
Speaker 4: had to sue a couple of counties in Pennsylvania because
Speaker 4: the Republicans are refusing to certify accurate election results. And
Speaker 4: what I'm afraid, Molly, is that people right now are
Speaker 4: so caught up in the moment, and they are so
Speaker 4: caught up in the day to day politics that we
Speaker 4: will wake up the day after the election and people
Speaker 4: will be like, oh my god, you know what happened here?
Speaker 4: The Republicans are not certifying elections across the country. And
Speaker 4: my message is now is the time to focus on this,
Speaker 4: because the day after the election it's really hard to
Speaker 4: focus on this.
Speaker 2: Now is the time to focus.
Speaker 1: On Explain to us who are the people who certify elections?
Speaker 1: How can this be focused on right now?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: So this is really really important. So after the voting
Speaker 4: is done and begins what I call the pageantry of democracy, right,
Speaker 4: so you have the typically you know, older people who
Speaker 4: work the polls, and they are Democrats and Republicans working together,
Speaker 4: and at the end of the night they shake hands
Speaker 4: and say good job, and they call in or send
Speaker 4: in the election returns from their local precinct to.
Speaker 2: A town or to a county.
Speaker 4: Those town and county officials then collect those results and
Speaker 4: they put that on their website and they shake hands
Speaker 4: and congratulate themselves. Then typically the next day or the
Speaker 4: day after, what's called a canvassing board meets, and this
Speaker 4: is now the formal meeting of the county or the
Speaker 4: town on a bipartisan basis, to celebrate democracy, to say
Speaker 4: job well done, we have gotten these results. And essentially
Speaker 4: what they do is they simply tabulate the numbers that
Speaker 4: they've been given and put a seal and a stamp
Speaker 4: and their signatures on a big piece of paper, and
Speaker 4: they celebrate democracy. Those certificates then go to the state,
Speaker 4: and the state again on a bipartisan basis Democrats and Republicans,
Speaker 4: they hold the ceremony where they tally up the results
Speaker 4: from all the counties, put it in a big spreadsheet,
Speaker 4: put a big calligraphy certificate, they put a stamp on
Speaker 4: it and sign it and celebrate democracy. Then that goes
Speaker 4: to the governor and the Secretary of State, and they
Speaker 4: put it on a huge certificate, lots of calligraphy, and
Speaker 4: a big ceremony where the governor signs it. Those certificates
Speaker 4: then in the case of presidential elections, go to the
Speaker 4: floor of Congress in wooden boxes and those get opened
Speaker 4: on January sixth and the end of the pageantry of democracy. Well,
Speaker 4: think about it, Molly, we're fucked.
Speaker 1: I'm listening to you, and at every point I'm they.
Speaker 2: Were fucked, right, because think about it. In today's day
Speaker 2: and age, you actually don't need any of that, right,
Speaker 2: Like Excel spreadsheets could do all of that, Like there
Speaker 2: actually isn't a need for it. But the value of
Speaker 2: it is historically that it is a way that we
Speaker 2: show that whoever whichever candidate went or lost, is less
Speaker 2: important than the fact that democracy worked, and it is
Speaker 2: a celebration of democracy. Well, what Republicans are doing is
Speaker 2: they are weaponizing it. They have seen that this is
Speaker 2: a weak point.
Speaker 4: So what they are doing is they are appointing people
Speaker 4: to the boards of these ministerial acts, the people who
Speaker 4: do nothing but put the stamps and sign them. They
Speaker 4: are arguing that those people should be able to exercise
Speaker 4: their own judgment of their own content and not sign
Speaker 4: the certificates if they don't believe that they're accurate. And
Speaker 4: that is what we saw Donald Trunk do when he
Speaker 4: called the canvasson board in Wayne County with Ronald McDaniel
Speaker 4: in the aftermath of twenty and in Michigan, and it failed.
Speaker 4: And that's what we had to sue them over in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty two in Coachi's County because they were refusing
Speaker 4: to certify. And here's the really terrible news, Molly is
Speaker 4: states can't partially certify states.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: You can't be like, well, we have the results from
Speaker 4: most of the counties, we just don't have them from
Speaker 4: all the counties, right, so it becomes a fight for
Speaker 4: the lowest common denominator of election. And I are crazy.
Speaker 4: And so what we need everyone to do today? And
Speaker 4: I write about this on Democracy Docket constantly, but everyone
Speaker 4: needs to be finding out who and their local community
Speaker 4: are on these boards and they need to be publicizing
Speaker 4: and then and calling out and making holding those people
Speaker 4: accountable to do the right thing for their communities, not
Speaker 4: to do the right thing for the Magat movement.
Speaker 1: How does the Supreme Court and these enormous decisions. You know,
Speaker 1: they've given a lot of power to the executive So
Speaker 1: I'm hoping you could talk about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So look, I think there is no putting sugarcoating.
Speaker 4: The Supreme Court did the bidding of Donald Trump at
Speaker 4: the end of this term, and frankly, they did the
Speaker 4: bidding witting or unwitting of Project twenty twenty five at
Speaker 4: the end of this term. Let's review what we saw. First,
Speaker 4: we saw the Supreme Court say that Colorado couldn't kick
Speaker 4: Donald Trump off the ballot, and I was sending the
Speaker 4: plain text to the Fourteenth Amendment because they set soup.
Speaker 4: Then we saw the Supreme Court actually throw out and
Speaker 4: narrow the tool throw out some criminal charges and narrow
Speaker 4: the tools the DOJ has available to prosecute January sixth insurrectionists.
Speaker 4: Then we saw the Supreme Court in the lower case
Speaker 4: cut back on agency expertise difference. Right, when we talk
Speaker 4: about agency difference, we're not really capturing it. The reason
Speaker 4: why we have been giving deference to agencies is because
Speaker 4: agencies have an expert piece in what they governed. And
Speaker 4: then finally we saw them give near complete immunity to
Speaker 4: Donald Trump, not just for his past criminal conduct. But
Speaker 4: if he gets office for the past. Now, why do
Speaker 4: I tie all of those together? Because for Donald Trump
Speaker 4: to be a dictator for a day, and let's stipulate
Speaker 4: no one wants to be a dictator for a day,
Speaker 4: For him to be a dictator for a day, he
Speaker 4: needs to feel like he cannot be held accountable check.
Speaker 4: The people who work for him need to feel like
Speaker 4: they won't be held accountable check, and they need to
Speaker 4: feel like they can run rough shot over the executive branch,
Speaker 4: that they can essentially dictate who gets prosecuted, dictate what
Speaker 4: laws get enforced, what laws don't get it forced, fire
Speaker 4: civil servants, and replace some of their own cronies, and
Speaker 4: that all of this can be done without anyone being
Speaker 4: able to hold them accountable. Well, what have I just
Speaker 4: described Project twenty twenty five right? Project twenty twenty five
Speaker 4: is fundamentally a powergram.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: It has bad policies in it, don't get me wrong.
Speaker 4: It talks about banning abortion and other stuff. But I
Speaker 4: think that that is secondary to what Project twenty twenty
Speaker 4: five is really about, which is creating an authoritarian regime.
Speaker 4: Having Donald Trump have the ability to replace career experts
Speaker 4: with his own cronies, direct who gets audited by the IRS,
Speaker 4: who gets prosecuted, whose permits get granted and don't get
Speaker 4: granted by the Bureau of Land Management, who is stopped
Speaker 4: at the border by DHS, and who is let through right.
Speaker 4: He is able to command all aspects of the federal
Speaker 4: government and do it for whatever arbitrary, petty vengeance reason
Speaker 4: he has. And that is why Project twenty twenty five
Speaker 4: is so dangerous, and it's the reason why what the
Speaker 4: Supreme Court did is so dangerous. I don't love the fact,
Speaker 4: obviously that Donald Trump is make it away with the
Speaker 4: violent insurrection in twenty twenty and being immunized there. I
Speaker 4: am much more terrified though, about what this means if
Speaker 4: he gets in the Oval office again with immunity, and
Speaker 4: with the people working for him thinking that they because
Speaker 4: it is hardened power and because of the Supreme Court's attitudes,
Speaker 4: they too may have immedia.
Speaker 1: I think it was Feta Scott Paul who told me
Speaker 1: that one of the ways to ensure domestic political violence
Speaker 1: is to harden people who've done it, because then it
Speaker 1: creates permission structure. It just explodes because there's no culpability. Right,
Speaker 1: there's nothing to stop them, right.
Speaker 4: And there's nothing to stop them. And I don't want
Speaker 4: to earn this from dark to darker, but there's nothing
Speaker 4: that stops them inside of government, and there's nothing that
Speaker 4: stops them outside of government. So January sixth was fundamentally
Speaker 4: a mixture of government actors behaving treasonously and non government
Speaker 4: actors acting as part of an insurrection.
Speaker 2: So it was a mixture of those two. And I
Speaker 2: think that we are underestimating what a second Trump term
Speaker 2: will mean for that mixture. There was an article in
Speaker 2: the New York Times today about a Republican on Long
Speaker 2: Island who is building a militia. Okay, there is nothing
Speaker 2: that stops Donald Trump from having a permanent force of
Speaker 2: January sixth insurrectionists to be the outside force, because he
Speaker 2: can pardon them, and the Supreme Court is indicated not
Speaker 2: just a broad pardon power, but also remember, as I said,
Speaker 2: one of the things in my litany is they showed
Speaker 2: an unwillingness to read the existing statutes broadly enough to
Speaker 2: capture all of the bad conduct on January sixth.
Speaker 4: That was one of the bad rulings from this. At
Speaker 4: the same time that Project twenty twenty five is building
Speaker 4: the infrastructure. How they misuse inside power government power inside
Speaker 4: without accountability. And it is that mixture of you know,
Speaker 4: when Donald Trump said about the proud boys stand by
Speaker 4: and stand back or stand back and stand by, that
Speaker 4: you was speaking to one half of that equation. And
Speaker 4: I think we cannot sleep on that half of the
Speaker 4: equation that is going to be part of this, along
Speaker 4: with the cronies inside of government.
Speaker 1: It's just every time I interview anyone about this, it
Speaker 1: just gets worse and scarier and very stressful. I would
Speaker 1: like one day to do an interview and for the
Speaker 1: person to be like, you're getting too upset. It's not
Speaker 1: going to be nearly that bad, but you're completely right.
Speaker 1: Just give us two seconds on the Wisconsin dropboxes, because
Speaker 1: that is one win.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So look, we've seen actually a series of wins over
Speaker 4: the last few days, and so let me just rattle
Speaker 4: on the number one, the ballot drop box case in Wisconsin.
Speaker 4: Wisconsin had ballot drop boxes in place for twenty twenty.
Speaker 4: In twenty twenty two, conservative state Supreme Court bans ballot
Speaker 4: drop boxes. Well, my legal team and I brought a
Speaker 4: lawsuit in Wisconsin and the newly constituted state Supreme Court
Speaker 4: said ballot drop boxes are legal. They are going to
Speaker 4: be back in place for the twenty twenty four election.
Speaker 4: Another case out of Wisconsin just today, just today, the
Speaker 4: Wisconsin Court of Appeals and another case that my team
Speaker 4: brought said that arabs in the ballots will not be
Speaker 4: thrown out because the witness address, the witness, the witness,
Speaker 4: the absentee ballot when they fill out their address, doesn't
Speaker 4: put a zip code or doesn't put street or doesn't
Speaker 4: put road, as long as it they fill out there
Speaker 4: address enough that the clerk could know where they were
Speaker 4: or where they are located.
Speaker 2: It's going to count.
Speaker 4: And one more for you as a voters around here
Speaker 4: in Alabama. Today the Federal Court rejected the latest ever
Speaker 4: by the state of Alabama to discriminate against black voters
Speaker 4: under section to the Voting Rights Act. Said that there
Speaker 4: is the right of private citizens and groups to bring
Speaker 4: litigation to vindicate the rights of black voters on mean
Speaker 4: section of the Voting Rights Acts. So it's not all
Speaker 4: bad news. We're having success in court. It's just the
Speaker 4: Supreme Court is the real problem. And you know, the
Speaker 4: Republicans every day are hammering away at democracy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Republicans don't want democracy anymore. And the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: is in the tank for Donald Trump. But otherwise things
Speaker 1: are great.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Mark, Thank you.
Speaker 1: Dave Wiveall is a reporter at Samophore. Welcome back, Too
Speaker 1: Fast Politics, My friend Dave.
Speaker 3: It's good to be here. Thank you.
Speaker 1: It's always good to have you. And one of the
Speaker 1: many reasons that I appreciate you so much, besides the
Speaker 1: fact that you're such a good reporter, is that you
Speaker 1: go everywhere. You know, you are on the ground everywhere.
Speaker 1: Are you heading to Wiscon to Milwaukee after this?
Speaker 3: I am. I keep bragging to everybody we'll save money.
Speaker 3: I'm flying. Probably we'll pick elsil station, will piccking a frame.
Speaker 3: Both there money reasons and also it's just I think
Speaker 3: it's very lindy and predictional the take a frame convention,
Speaker 3: you know, waving, waving from the back of it into approach,
Speaker 3: getting that nature.
Speaker 1: So one of the things I wanted to ask you
Speaker 1: about is this is sort of the first year that
Speaker 1: I can remember, the first cycle where conventions feel enormous.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering why you think that is, and if you
Speaker 1: think that will continue, We're first going to have the
Speaker 1: Republican Convention and then like about three weeks later the.
Speaker 3: Democratic Yes, they failed bigger because well, one, we haven't
Speaker 3: had real ones in eight years. I was at the
Speaker 3: Charlotte and Milwaukee sunk down conrencens that basical for meeting.
Speaker 3: We had already ran a little site, so Democrats had
Speaker 3: a little nerd center war for a virtual convention, revelicens
Speaker 3: had there were mandatory boats and they had all the
Speaker 3: main events of DC. But we haven't had one in
Speaker 3: eight years. And the last time you had one, Trump
Speaker 3: was not believed man yet and Democrats were divided, so
Speaker 3: divine made a very different way, and they were actually
Speaker 3: there was a real divide. Deligates wouldn't stand each other,
Speaker 3: who blamed one faction of the party for rigging quote
Speaker 3: unclose to the primary, and just talking to Delius, lady,
Speaker 3: I think this one, it's more everyone was plowing in
Speaker 3: the same direction, but pless agreeing over whether they little followed.
Speaker 3: There's more happening and some still physic has been in
Speaker 3: a while.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, this is what I want to talk
Speaker 1: to you about, because you know I'm on the opinion
Speaker 1: side and I don't necessarily have to swing for every
Speaker 1: pitch the way that some opinion writers feel they must.
Speaker 1: And so I am really interested in having a few
Speaker 1: minutes with you to talk about twenty sixteen because I
Speaker 1: think that a huge lesson was learned by Democrats during
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen. I'm hoping you could talk a little more
Speaker 1: about that. Well, Culs these were large in by sixteen.
Speaker 3: So what one didn't get out of the way quickly
Speaker 3: is party changed the rules so that if they are
Speaker 3: used to this already, there are superdalla whelts, there are
Speaker 3: people who are automaticality that part of long and co
Speaker 3: looking gents, dog rules moves, et cetera, and they don't
Speaker 3: get a vote on the first ballot. The party change
Speaker 3: the rules because of the burning party protests over the game.
Speaker 3: If you're a party leader, you can lobby right now,
Speaker 3: but they all get to vote on that minion formal
Speaker 3: second ballots. The party has also changed the left is
Speaker 3: like a lot of the movements tend to in the
Speaker 3: two party system, but let's go a lot of what
Speaker 3: it want. Did term Deir Biden and not everything by
Speaker 3: any means. Leader the role and everybody is that nine
Speaker 3: months ago before the war in Gaza. There were a
Speaker 3: lot of set if that will Biden, if not el more.
Speaker 3: But they don't have to stay rolling the party. They've
Speaker 3: been falling off partly for the reason the does in
Speaker 3: the pet spending middle to people. So I sixteen has
Speaker 3: shaped how the party works and then the results. It's
Speaker 3: really more Bernie movements. I'm not saying it's over, but
Speaker 3: it transform party and that work has been done already.
Speaker 3: It's not in imposition chafe a party right now. You
Speaker 3: see that in the way well Bernie and AMC etc.
Speaker 3: Are talking about Biden. You're not in the front line
Speaker 3: people saying that Biden needs to go because they're more
Speaker 3: willing to compromise inside the party to get the things
Speaker 3: they want. They don't feel like they need to rebel
Speaker 3: or proteste.
Speaker 1: It's funny because it's like, that's actually what I want
Speaker 1: to talk to you about. We had Bernie Sanders on
Speaker 1: this podcast recently. He has gotten a lot of legislation
Speaker 1: he wanted past right, like thirty five dollars insulin and
Speaker 1: this sort of healthcare spending stuff. You know, the roots
Speaker 1: of progressimism. I say this as someone who feels very
Speaker 1: committed to progressive values are you know, at least financially
Speaker 1: happening in this admin. And so one of the first
Speaker 1: people to endorse, reindorse Biden for reelection was in fact
Speaker 1: Bernie and one of his strong his strongest allies, has
Speaker 1: been AOC. And so I just think it's quite interesting
Speaker 1: that the people who are really committed to progressive values
Speaker 1: are just like they have learned the lessons of twenty sixteen, right,
Speaker 1: they have decided that every descent helps Trump, whereas people
Speaker 1: movie stars and other white guys. I don't know if
Speaker 1: every person who's called on and again, I am not
Speaker 1: taking a I have no idea what Democrats should do,
Speaker 1: but I do think it's quite interesting that it seems
Speaker 1: like every single person who has called on Biden's step
Speaker 1: aside has been a white man. I mean, I'm sure
Speaker 1: there have been some women to like Maureen Dawd, but
Speaker 1: it just is it's sort of an interesting phenomenon because,
Speaker 1: as you and I both know, white man will do
Speaker 1: the best under a Trump presidency. Not that they're doing
Speaker 1: it because they want a Trump presidency, but just because
Speaker 1: they have the least to lose, is what I'm trying
Speaker 1: to say.
Speaker 3: People were talking about seeing themselves in very intersection all day.
Speaker 3: They really see the sea. So everyone who's calling for
Speaker 3: Biden from me for this reason for the age, oh
Speaker 3: we can't win a reason see's listening as a condition
Speaker 3: to win the election. On Cinta, Joe Biden. That was
Speaker 3: the change, and I really not trying to probably in
Speaker 3: ith I half satisfied that the reason the left it
Speaker 3: had Biden governed like Jimmy Parter and little was clashing
Speaker 3: with called progress at that point, collective liberals over national
Speaker 3: health insurance, disappointing people out abortion that had he been
Speaker 3: antagonistic towards the left, even on Gaza when he's protested,
Speaker 3: Biden has answers they don't like, but he's not back
Speaker 3: when count of equlums will get out there. They've been
Speaker 3: happy with what they feel is being allowed inside the
Speaker 3: tender Biden, which wasn't really happening under Hillery for lots
Speaker 3: of reasons, will stay that the Bellaery fermament was much stronger.
Speaker 3: She had a longer list of people who he owed
Speaker 3: things too were things and the left wasn't really getting
Speaker 3: at the tables. They've been at the table with Joe Biden,
Speaker 3: and so the progressives. One thing I've been asking you, Unt,
Speaker 3: I'm talking delegates and one of organizers. There's one main
Speaker 3: passes towards strain wile getting leave. They're not even that worry.
Speaker 3: I asked, are you worried about if Biden goes in
Speaker 3: takamalai eris Roy Cooper tape? Not really. They need to
Speaker 3: see that the impediments to progress of the Denmorbary Party
Speaker 3: now were Percy Sema and Joe Manchin, and they're both
Speaker 3: going to be gone now again if the saw off Basle,
Speaker 3: it's different by wibbing walls. But the the rest, they're
Speaker 3: not worried. They're going to all of their mind when
Speaker 3: they gets a democratic president. They worried, but there's nothing
Speaker 3: that believing will happen on the strump And I think
Speaker 3: one other business globe what would be a quoralizing than
Speaker 3: a ball hurt. But if you look at additional last day,
Speaker 3: the Democratic Centrals of America owning doors in the ALC,
Speaker 3: the tumult they had with with Chambo, the left isn't
Speaker 3: a weaker organizing position that it was in twenty seventeen
Speaker 3: to only eighteen. I bith I covered in s the
Speaker 3: want where Hillary lost. A lot of people in the
Speaker 3: inside the party gradually thought wan Berry could have won
Speaker 3: the election because in the conditions that time, and maybe
Speaker 3: there were a bunch of popular ideas that they they
Speaker 3: will adopt. And that's not fub the party feels anymore,
Speaker 3: and the Left doesn't have the organizable capacity used to.
Speaker 3: It's made all these games, but right now it's not.
Speaker 3: The Bowman race was meant to be a shot across
Speaker 3: the bout by the Impact saying that we can beat
Speaker 3: you league guys on primaries that steedd ploys and state
Speaker 3: they have been gaining ground beyond this book. They were
Speaker 3: winning electro They the party was listening to them and
Speaker 3: worried that they were going to wools young votes, black votes,
Speaker 3: his batic votes, and they did not go along with
Speaker 3: what actings will say, and they don't feel that well
Speaker 3: a little more, this is not really an outside force
Speaker 3: of the party. The only people can disagree with this
Speaker 3: are the people who don't believe in winning electros on.
Speaker 3: So we have a batch of people who can agree
Speaker 3: with party all facts people and support Cornell West. Some
Speaker 3: people in again this is mostly dossil centric, will be
Speaker 3: abandoned Biden Morgan for saying what rules the election, will
Speaker 3: fight from the opposition very little back while compared to
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen. Well really was a sense of twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3: And I remember talking with a lot of people at
Speaker 3: Fernie rallys and Soilalton worst that they need to over him.
Speaker 3: Oh if some guests in we're going to organize the
Speaker 3: four years and the progress a movable silence and that's
Speaker 3: not how people see a little more whatever they know
Speaker 3: about brought in flat plenty five. Let's say you're if
Speaker 3: your ears, if you are frands were delable trans rights,
Speaker 3: Biden will disappointed you in a couple of ways, mostly
Speaker 3: people of pressure from conservatives, for example not flying the
Speaker 3: bride to flight to embassies. This will compromise that in
Speaker 3: the NBAA after I'm just trying to put a bunch
Speaker 3: of different anti gay the LD and T writers said, Okay,
Speaker 3: we're gonna give no flights of cares. The administration will
Speaker 3: when asked if it supports a limit on gender surgeries
Speaker 3: for minors. If I went back and forth, it's did
Speaker 3: a lot of cover got site into the media, but
Speaker 3: or the advocate frankfully, but they ended up coming out
Speaker 3: with you know, for a days we look up twenty two.
Speaker 3: They want to use the letters of Policy and the
Speaker 3: executive branch to reverse all of the just the definition
Speaker 3: of gender, assent them from sex, stop any funds going
Speaker 3: to schools and support grass gender rights, stop any elfcare
Speaker 3: for gender firmatare period. Well we're nottal about surgery. We're
Speaker 3: talking all paraffe medication or theft are hormones. I think
Speaker 3: people who are in this movement actively looking at how
Speaker 3: needs power. There's much more honest about the states, and
Speaker 3: it's a pretty small even we look at rfka's vote
Speaker 3: is not really those people rm case voters at this point,
Speaker 3: very few Democrats I'm on them. Well yeah, but just
Speaker 3: the system is breaking in in ways that Democrats are
Speaker 3: never going to end. Nevers is not going to shut
Speaker 3: down the anlot we're going to do that. And so yeah,
Speaker 3: the leftis the leftis in a different position now where
Speaker 3: it just doesn't see what it can win under Trunk.
Speaker 3: It does see what win blonder will Biden or Democrats
Speaker 3: even the administration.
Speaker 1: Well that is I think a really important point because
Speaker 1: Jesse and I we were talking to someone who said
Speaker 1: you can't win if you alienate the left. The lesson
Speaker 1: of the Hillary Clinton debacle of twenty sixteen is that
Speaker 1: if you isolate an alien innate the left part of
Speaker 1: your party, you will not win because that is the base.
Speaker 1: One of the happy things I think for Democrats is
Speaker 1: that the Democratic base is filled with people who want
Speaker 1: free kindergarten, and there are Republican bases filled with people
Speaker 1: who want deportation squads. So the good news for Democrats
Speaker 1: is the things that they are people want are things
Speaker 1: that are morally okay and not morally abhorrent. Can you
Speaker 1: talk to us so you're tell us where you are
Speaker 1: right now and explain to us a little bit about
Speaker 1: what it is.
Speaker 3: Yes, I'm at the Network's Nation conference, which is better
Speaker 3: after two sales to six. It started as in gabbering
Speaker 3: of course era progressol Internet, rgules and bloggers, and it
Speaker 3: changed over the years and be a much more of
Speaker 3: an ecuable sting on microlical sectional bouthcranks and vorts pfetial
Speaker 3: I mean the people who develop software well currency, pop
Speaker 3: the road and people who canvas saying that those lords
Speaker 3: WoT speakle called fence. It's two thousand people. It used
Speaker 3: to be se as a presidential candida short case, maybe
Speaker 3: it will be again in the feature. Once it became
Speaker 3: more of an actistvent actually just kept interrupting the speeches
Speaker 3: and procession cadients. They'll stop fill up, So the Obama
Speaker 3: master would sending year to talk to progressives and calm
Speaker 3: things over. And the Biden wistration doesn't bother it is.
Speaker 3: It is a little bit of its own sad wall
Speaker 3: of the movement. I will here because I'm interested in
Speaker 3: what's going on right now with people who, like I said,
Speaker 3: don't know what the heck they're going to do. From
Speaker 3: fum this back to tower. I'm here not every year,
Speaker 3: but most years. I remember just the moon shift in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty one for all in Afghana stand which crashed
Speaker 3: Biden's phone numbers. See what was very happy with how
Speaker 3: much he was able to do this a lot. I
Speaker 3: had never seen the progressive movement even under Obama. There
Speaker 3: is more depressional about what was getting warm and between
Speaker 3: twenty judges all this stuff. People we are very good bold.
Speaker 3: So I'm kind of here who takes the tass sure
Speaker 3: of what people thinking, what they're worried about.
Speaker 1: One of the many things that I really appreciate about
Speaker 1: you is you go everywhere, and there really is value
Speaker 1: in that, especially right now in the time when people
Speaker 1: are not going anywhere. I'm wondering if you could talk
Speaker 1: for a minute about at the end of the session,
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court did a number of really insane decisions.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about Chavron deference. I'm thinking about this broad immunity.
Speaker 1: When the president does crimes, it's okay if he's doing
Speaker 1: it in the name of the presidency. And I'm wondering,
Speaker 1: do you think the base is just galvanized because Trump
Speaker 1: is so scary? I mean, in my mind, I'm fucking
Speaker 1: scared of another Trump presidency. Do you think the base
Speaker 1: is too or do you think the base is like eh.
Speaker 3: Progressions Party, the Democratic Party base, I feel like with
Speaker 3: analog employee apart from Dazo s ident wants to became
Speaker 3: an administration stations crymes so the African American base the
Speaker 3: party that's still very in fact. So when you say
Speaker 3: with the Democratic eniencils, well college educating liberals and the
Speaker 3: not white logans in this party, the first group has
Speaker 3: been more satisfied and more host more happy. Even elections.
Speaker 3: The Democrats with blad the law in local world wars
Speaker 3: are runoffs, special elections. We've seen just there's people being
Speaker 3: it tent and yunking their important most as New yorkle
Speaker 3: Hope bag Well, they're really organized and have not stopped
Speaker 3: keeping money. I think you're going to see this as
Speaker 3: people put up their campaign A finance supports that even
Speaker 3: as Biden's under pressure in the last they were just
Speaker 3: giving a ton of money to set it in house scanning.
Speaker 3: There's still very organised. Yet all we've never covered everything
Speaker 3: Likecense because he just so isolated to Biden's age, and
Speaker 3: I was in twenty sixteen again very different way. Someone
Speaker 3: already had little epics question around the server, the threat
Speaker 3: of the FBI and investigating, and were in retrospect. I
Speaker 3: think that even at the time it was over overbooked
Speaker 3: the Richess Schick, we're saying that Trump was saying, oh,
Speaker 3: it's gonna be in a POSTPU of Bude, you wouldn't
Speaker 3: have been turns out, I can't actually know what they
Speaker 3: think to a president office where people really worried about
Speaker 3: get selectors who going to need to ask for and
Speaker 3: now people think no, but we just like we need
Speaker 3: the candidate, we can be something unpopable, all beating. Why
Speaker 3: are we going down this route with our risk?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: No? I mean, look, there are a lot of good
Speaker 1: faith actors who are asking the question, is it a
Speaker 1: mistake to go with the very old guy? And I
Speaker 1: think that is something you have to talk about. But
Speaker 1: there are a lot of bad faith actors who are like,
Speaker 1: it'll be easier for Trump to win against someone who
Speaker 1: isn't an incumbent, And that is another question, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is you know, and the reality is none of
Speaker 1: us have enough information to make this decision. I mean
Speaker 1: some people think they do, but ultimately I'm not sure
Speaker 1: they have enough accurate information. But that is neither here
Speaker 1: nor there. Talk to me about you're going to the
Speaker 1: RNC next. I already see that Marjorie Taylor Green is speaking.
Speaker 1: They sort of have given up trying to appear normal.
Speaker 1: What is your sort of hot take on what you're
Speaker 1: going to look for and what that looks like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've been dealing with this on the platform invention
Speaker 3: planning angle. So there are Republican ACTI Wiles who are
Speaker 3: unhappy with I would say pandering that Trump is not
Speaker 3: due back up a little bit the whole discourse of
Speaker 3: a Project Life one five that's about can we trust
Speaker 3: the Trump administration to be staffed Will Magick and Sarah
Speaker 3: Wolves who will act and wat slow gentle. There is
Speaker 3: widespread confidence that he's going to do that. What has
Speaker 3: been annoying Republicans about the summer the platform is that
Speaker 3: Trump is too cautious to embrace stuff they know we
Speaker 3: will do. I'm not to Texans fear even pro life
Speaker 3: ers that we wouldn't point for light people that you've
Speaker 3: obsessed he did last poet.
Speaker 1: There's no question.
Speaker 3: Well they turn it by the executive orders for choice
Speaker 3: into pro license that, yeah, they will. They're pretty happy
Speaker 3: with Trump and Nicky Haley, who came in second the
Speaker 3: primary and will not even speaking. Will mention it was
Speaker 3: very confident at this Trump and his brand and his
Speaker 3: vision of the party, even the one that contradicts itself
Speaker 3: the rights and doesn't want to get close tough. They're
Speaker 3: very happy Buffalo. We'll see what's in the following or
Speaker 3: there is a rump of Republicans voter don't want him
Speaker 3: to be the nominally, it's pretty small. They're in people
Speaker 3: who protest a little forli They're just not representative invention.
Speaker 3: And you saw this there recording I cni's almost worst.
Speaker 3: But a lot of people who were fake electors are
Speaker 3: deligant style. The RNC members who were pretty full of trout,
Speaker 3: but four years ago if they were replaced by friend
Speaker 3: Trump one. So it's a very Trump party. That's not like,
Speaker 3: do not worry about him, not not saying if it
Speaker 3: may want they trust.
Speaker 1: Him, We're out of time. But I just want you
Speaker 1: to say that again. There are fake electors who are
Speaker 1: now Republican delegates.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well they were Reublican activists. Last time they got
Speaker 3: in trouble for their role in somewhere Neil elching On.
Speaker 3: In this Republican party, they were sold, Yeah, you're fine.
Speaker 3: Maturity for the USA. Joe Corns organization was very effective
Speaker 3: at changing who is in the RNC, and they've been
Speaker 3: celebrating that this is this is a very Magga built party.
Speaker 3: And what frustration Democrats have is that Trump doesn't get
Speaker 3: any flax for his less popular the parts of party
Speaker 3: that he's embraced that are unpopular local, how we're going
Speaker 3: to stand taxt stuts with a rich et cetera. They've
Speaker 3: had some being next to snick. That's not what the
Speaker 3: activists care about at this point. That's what the other
Speaker 3: skin revolt. But Trump is successful when just eating a rally,
Speaker 3: and it's not about that's fall. They're really happy with
Speaker 3: the Wayne. The party is Brandon underhand, even if he
Speaker 3: lost the popular low twice, even though his favorable rating
Speaker 3: is in the four eas and good day. Not worried
Speaker 3: at all. I don't think you're really not worrying at
Speaker 3: all about about that, as a lot of people finding that.
Speaker 1: I'm legal, Dave, thank you please come back.
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course, thank you for talking about.
Speaker 1: No mo.
Speaker 2: Jesse Cannon, my young fast.
Speaker 3: I have a new rule for the Internet.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna be Bill Maher over here. I got a
Speaker 2: new rule.
Speaker 1: Jesus.
Speaker 2: Twitter spaces are always bad.
Speaker 1: This was a Twitter space started by one Alex Jones
Speaker 1: and the title of it was assassinated President Biden. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: Isn't like threatening the murder of the president against the law.
Speaker 1: I seem to remember Kathy Griffin having her life ruined
Speaker 1: because she posed for a picture. But you know it
Speaker 1: only Democrats get in trouble for stuff like that.
Speaker 2: It's a good thing.
Speaker 3: Elon.
Speaker 2: Let him back on the platform.
Speaker 1: Yeah, great job, Elan. Another win for our sad, sad,
Speaker 1: dying democracy. 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.