Lovett or Leave It - Cuomosexual Misconduct

Episode Date: March 6, 2021

Hari Kondabolu joins to break down the week's news, from smaller covid checks to faster covid vaccines. Plus we cover the fight to protect voting rights in Congress. Ezra Klein talks about polarization and local news. And Lovett auditions for Jeopardy and quizzes listeners on mayhem at gender reveal parties, which aren't really gender reveal parties, when you think about it.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/lovettorleaveit. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include which podcast you would like.

Welcome to Love It or Leave It,'re Vax. To the future. What you gonna do? Continue masking up until a critical mass of humanity has gotten vaccinated against this scourge. Then I'm going to try to keep this tiny little spark of hope alive in my heart that we can take what we learned in isolation to make this world more beautiful, more equitable place. Love you, bye. Because we're Vax. That song was by Linnea Moan. It was awesome.

Thank you so much for sending it in. Love the period vibe. If you want to make a Vax to the Future theme song, please send it to us at leaveitatcrooked.com, leaveitatcrooked.com. Before we get to the show, we have some very exciting Crooked news. You know and love Jason Concepcion

from Binge Mode and NBA Desktop. He is officially here at Crooked, and we can finally tell Jason Concepcion from Binge Mode and NBA Desktop. He is officially here at Crooked, and we can finally tell you what he's been up to. Jason will be hosting a brand new sports show called Take Line with former WNBA star and the new co-owner of the Atlanta Dream, Renee Montgomery. It's all about sports, culture, politics, and the way they intersect, and it's awesome. They are an incredible pair, and the show is very fun and fast-paced. You will love it. Check it out. The trailer is out right now. Subscribe today so you won't miss the series premiere on March 16th. Find Take Line on Apple Pods, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Please check it out.

This week on the show, we have a conversation with Ezra Klein about polarization in America, and then we play a couple of games with our listeners. But first, he's a comedian, writer, and co-host of the podcast Politically Reactive with W. Kamau Bell. Welcome back, returning champion, Hari Kondabolu. Oh, it's great to be back. Thank you, John. Where's my money? You said I was a returning champion. Is there money on the way? Yeah, sure. Yeah. All right. Okay, great.

Watch that movie. Okay. I think so. All right. I don't think like extra, but something. I want you to get your beak wet, you know? Yeah, yeah. So we like to start each week with the worst jokes submitted by our writers.

Are you ready? Man, way to throw them under the bus. Jeez. It's part of it. Oh, okay. It's part of it. All right. It's part of it.

Let's get into it. What a week. The world's first space hotel is set to be fully functional by 2027. Supposedly, their continental breakfast is out of this world. Oh, that's the punchline. That's it. There's an expression like, oh, that's out of this world, and it's happening in space. Yeah, yeah.

Why is it a continental breakfast then? You know, because we're beyond continents. We're into space at that point. That's a really fair point. I mean, I think in this context, continental breakfast is just your ordinary kind of juice, pastries. Right. Maybe there's a waffle maker that's just out to be used. Right. If you have your own mix, great.

Right. Maybe there's berries. Yeah. But the thing that threw me again is why would you have a continental breakfast when you no longer- No, I see the problem. I see the problem. It's a branding thing. I just don know what you know what you know what you know what what totally good note i'm just gonna do this again supposedly their breakfast buffet is out of this world it's just a tweak you're right yeah yeah continental throws you it throws you yeah

it introduces the same brain thing. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. You know? I was totally locked in the second time. Good edit. Good edit. Thanks to the Biden administration,

Merck has agreed to help Johnson & Johnson manufacture additional doses of their vaccine. That's more Johnson than I can handle, Hari. There's two of them. There's Johnson and Johnson. That's a lot of Johnson. Johnson. It's like penis and penis.

It's like penis and penis. Well, it's both the no more tears people, but Johnson can also mean penis. Fucking perverts. The vaccine rollout in Gila County, Arizona has been so effective that officials are offering shots to any resident over 18. Shots for anyone over 18. Is this a vaccine rollout or a party at Bryan Singer's house? Who's Bryan Singer?

He's that director around whom there's been a lot of scandal related to young men gallivanting at parties at his home. Wow. Bubbling up into various controversies over the years. Sort of a kind of a scandal in plain sight created some headlines in the wake of Me Too, leading to an examination of various figures and the ways in which they've used their power. In this case, Bryan Singer was exploiting young gay men, adding another layer of homophobia onto the way our society processes these kinds of power dynamics. I guess that was a good reference then. Yeah. Okay, hold on a second. I owe you one. Oh, Bryan Singer.

Ah, Bryan Singer. Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed an order allowing businesses to return to 100% capacity and lifted the state's mask mandate even as Texas trails most states in vaccine distribution. Governor Abbott added, I'm only trying to say that Texas is a summer state. We need summer dollars. Now, if people can't swim here, they'll be glad to swim in the beaches of Cape Cod, the Hamptons, Long Island. But that doesn't mean that we're going to serve them up like a smorgasbord, Hari. That's from a film called Jaws. The governors of Texas and Mississippi both made the decision to lift mask mandates in a move Biden called Neanderthal thinking. And Biden can say that because he knew some of those guys. He's old

because he's an old dude. He's been around a long time. He's been around a long time. He's friends with some Neanderthals from before humans killed them all. The Flintstones was a biopic to him. He's like, I knew those guys. He's like, you know, back in the day, we used to get a big thing of ribs, and it would push the car over onto its side. That's how big the ribs were, because they were from mammoths, and the car would be on its side because of the ribs.

Yeah, I'd sex with Wilma. Fred doesn't know. Fred can't know. That seems sacrilegious in a really weird way. That feels kind of sacrilegious, doesn't it? I just think, yeah, I mean, look, Barney and Betty, Wilma and Fred, I think some rocks shaped like keys went into a bowl.

That's all I'm saying. Yeah, I agree with you completely. And then the bird in the garbage disposal saw it and it was like, ugh, I hate my job, you know? Yeah, anybody under 21, Google this shit. Flintstones, shit's hilarious. Hanna-Barbera. Timeless. Shit's hilarious. Hannah Barbera. Timeless.

Check it out. New York will allow live performances again next month with masks and reduced capacity. And you know what that means? Louis C.K. is back. That's it. Yeah. The businesses that manage the intellectual property of Dr. Seuss announced that six of his books will go out of print due to their racist imagery. I guess Horton heard a really insightful NPR podcast about white privilege.

The books going out of print include Oh, the Places You'll Go, South of 125th Street, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Jew Fish. And of course, his infamous work, Green Eggs and You Can't Trust Japanese Americans. Yeah. What you're just revealing is a terrible truth we didn't want to hear. You're translating something that was not translated before because our third eyes were not open until now. Wow. Yeah.

You didn't know you were even doing that. I didn't. Got to manifest that third eye. I feel like, are you my spiritual leader? Do you lead me and a group of others on a journey to better understanding of ourselves and the world? I'm the only Indian guy here, so I guess so, yeah. It's going to have to be you.

A spokesman said of the books withdrawn, those titles aren't representative. Dr. Seuss should be celebrated for his compassion, his whimsy, and his skill at making up gibberish instead of finding actual rhymes, which is the hard part. Yeah, that is the hard part. The hard part is finding real rhymes. You can't just make up rhymes.

That's cheating. Yeah. I'll still read some of those books to my kids, though. Not the racist ones, but the non-racist ones. Of course. I loved, when I was a kid, I loved Fox and Socks. And my mother hated it. Why?

Because it's the tongue twister one. And so it would be like my almost like maniacal demand that she do this exercise of reading the tongue twister version of Dr. Seuss. Fox and Socks. I love Fox and Socks. Mom, I love Fox and Socks. You call me up. You want to read me Fox and Socks today.

I'm in. That sounds hot. You call me up. You want to read me Fox and Sox today. I'm in. That sounds hot. Kentucky Republican. No. Kentucky Republicans have said Mitch McConnell put together a list of like-minded successors in case he doesn't serve out his term. What's weird is the list only has two names, My Ghost and Krang from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Why was that? Why was that a bad joke? It's a Krang reference reference that's a great one ninja turtle are they still a thing people still like the ninja turtles i do shredder biden it was like a brain it's like a brain in that in that um that kind of goofy body yeah dimension x i like that krang and shredder have a really um kind of goofy body from Dimension X. I like that Krang and Shredder have a really, they don't like each other,

and they have very different working styles. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's also kind of a Palpatine, Darth Vader element to it that nobody ever discussed when I was younger, which is a shame, because that would have made for a vigorous discussion of two different classic series. I like Krang. I like Krang.

I like Krang. All he had was his wits. Wait a second. How come they didn't just push him over, and then the glass thing that held him in there would have just broken and he would have died? What gave him power? Palpatine had power. What did Krang have? Yeah, he's pretty vulnerable to, ha-ha, got you out of your body.

Yeah, exactly. Never really taken advantage of. President Biden has thrown his support behind the Amazon workers in Alabama in the midst of a vote on whether to unionize while denouncing Amazon's anti-union propaganda efforts because if anyone knows how important a bathroom break is, it's a 78-year-old. Because he's old!

He's old, man. He's old. Wilma! Wilma! I operate a crane that's a dinosaur. It's a brontosaurus. That's what I do at work. I point its little head at stuff. If he said it tomorrow, wouldn't be surprised.

Wouldn't be surprised if he was having flashbacks to that fake era. On Tuesday, FBI Director Chris Wray told lawmakers that there's no reason to think leftists disguise themselves as Trump supporters to storm the Capitol, adding, I don't even think they know where to buy wraparound Oakleys. That's a funny joke. It's a specific audience. Very specific.

But it's good. How did we lose patriotic imagery and Oakleys to these people? How did they get the don't tread on me flag and Oakleys? Do you know what it is? I think on the left, we use such things sparingly and not every single day. Right. With, you know, we're not going to wear USA jackets and have a don't tread on me bumper sticker and wear Oakley's every single day. And that really terrible one where you put it behind your head.

You know what I mean? It's as if you have a second set of eyes in the back of your head. We don't do shit like that. That's the problem. It's like the Under Armour shirt with the collared Under Armour shirt is such a symbol of these sorts of people. And I think it's because the Under Armour logo is aesthetically terrible. The way the letters overlap, the proportions

of it are terrible. I feel like it must have been something the company president came up with and nobody could be like, this is very fifth grade. Hey, let's try another idea. Let's try one more pitch on that shape. I like it the way it is. My kid made this. One more pitch on that shape, you know? Let's try.

I like it the way it is. My kid made this. I like it. All right. Well, you don't want to see it. I mean, we can keep it, but no harm in some new. I just compare it to something. Give me Steph Curry.

I don't care about this. Just give me Steph Curry. We'll sell a bunch of stuff. SpaceX Starship SN10 took off, flipped, landed, and then exploded due to a potential methane leak. In unrelated news, does anyone want to buy my Tesla? Can't get rid of this Tesla. Amy Klobuchar came out in favor of abolishing the filibuster, saying, we have a raw exercise of political power going on where people are making it harder to vote,

and you can't let that happen because of some old rules in the Senate. Then she turned to Pete Buttigieg and said, you see, the Senate is the upper chamber of Congress composed of 100 senators representing the 50 states, one of which you were the cute little mayor in. Because he's young and inexperienced. And she hates him. She hates his whole vibe.

Colin Jost went to Harvard with them and they lived in the same building, apparently. Interesting. Interesting. Yeah, I just learned that. I don't see them being friends. What did he do in the army? Pete? Yeah. I feel like he did some sort of

intelligence, perhaps. I'm not sure. So he wasn't, like, shooting stuff, right? I don't know. Was he a caterer? I don't think he was a caterer. I think he was some sort of intelligence officer, I believe. Oh, okay. Alright. I don't know. I think I've seen him with a gun. Okay. I think you have to learn to use a gun at some point in the process.

What does he do in transportation? Yeah, he's the Secretary of Transportation. Man, how many train lines in South Bend? How many bus lines they got there? I don't know. How many lanes of traffic? They got two lanes? Here's the thing. Cars can go in both directions? All right.

They're working on that, right? He was working on that before he left. You know what? I don't like this anti-South Bend bias you're bringing to this conversation. All right? They got real issues. They got sewer stuff. I've heard him talk about sewer stuff. I like Secretary May or PETA transportation because-

Secretary May. I like it. I like it because I feel like there's two big things we need the Secretary- There's a lot of big things we need the secretary of transportation to do. One of which is make sure that climate is central to everything that they do. And the other that's very important to me, it's a pet issue of mine,

is someone who's going to create processes for thinking about why infrastructure costs in the United States are so high. It's not even really that ideological. And I think he's the kind of person to dig into that. He's got that Hillary Hillary thing of like, I'm going to drill down on this one thing and like bore down till I reach hard stone.

And that makes me, that makes me hopeful for secretary mayor Pete. All right. You can take your fucking, you could take your red rose. All right. And you can, you can take it on a train the hell out of here.

Secretary mayor. It's, it's both respectful and condescending in a way and i really do like secretary mayor people i like it i'm saying it and it's endearing to me uh president biden has agreed to limit eligibility for stimulus checks in the coronavirus relief package according to income individuals earning below 80 000 and couples earning below 160 000 will receive stimulus checks while anyone earning above that threshold will receive a text from me about buying this Tesla.

It's a little callback. It's a callback. A little callback. Horny toads are disappearing, which I guess is why my DMs have been so quiet lately. You have sex with toads? No, they reach out to me. It doesn't imply that I'm not engaging. Oh, okay. I guess. All right. Fair enough.

Speaking of horny toads, Andrew Cuomo is under fire for something the front page of the New York Post called Cuomo sexual misconduct. Somebody had written that so long ago and finally got to use it. Yeah, there's like- No way that they were just- Yeah, there's, you know, the Gerald Ford died today. The New York Post has that version for headlines. Cuomo sexual misconduct.

Just waiting. Just waiting. You know, he also kind of deserves that. You remember what he's accused of doing during the Koch election? I think Koch was running for governor against his father, Mario Cuomo. And there were signs that were put up that said, vote for Cuomo, not the homo. And Andrew Cuomo was accused of homo. Yeah, yeah. And Andrew Cuomo was accused of the one

that perpetrated such a thing. So the Cuomo sexual pun, I guess, you know, probably upset him on several levels. Is it a portmanteau? I'm saying we got a portmanteau on our hands here. All right, portmanteau. Despite calls to resign from some members of his own party, Andrew Cuomo insists he did nothing wrong,

adding, can we go back he did nothing wrong, adding, Can we go back to focusing on the real issues, like finding whoever was undercounting all those dead nursing home residents? Yeah. It's real. It's real. He was too busy working on his one-man show that we had to watch every single day. I just, I've been watching the show Fargo. Have you seen Fargo? I have not yet, but I've heard it's very good.

I'm loving Fargo. I'm loving it. I'm in season, but I've heard it's very good. I'm loving Fargo. I'm loving it. I'm in season three. I got Ewan McGregor. I'm having a blast. It's really well-made TV. But I feel like it has this, there's this ethos running through it, which is basically like, don't press your luck.

Like, hey, does this seem too good to be true? Is this coincidence going to re-date? Like, are you a little, hey, chill the fuck out. And with Andrew Cuomo, it's like, you got this good press. Some of it really was, we had a COVID denialist monster in the White House. And just having governors in California and New York being like, this is real, this is serious, there was genuine value to it. I think it was overblown in how Cuomo was treating, but we needed voices like that at the time. But at the same time, it took some of his sort of bullying and kind of authoritarian tendencies and kind of was turned into a, uh, uh, from a bug into a feature during this

period. But, uh, Hey, like, you know, you have a little fun rapport with your brother. Okay. Okay. I wouldn't write a book about it. No, I wouldn't sit down and write a book about leadership mid, you know, you don't, you can't imagine like Patton publishing a book like 1943 called like How I Defeated the Axis Powers. You got to wait until the war is over just to see how you did, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Especially not live on air. Jeez. Hey, Chris, bring mama in here. Let's have a family reunion

in front of everybody. It's weird. A little weird. Speaking of horny toads, news broke this week that Representative Ronnie Jackson bullied his staff, made sexual comments, and abused drugs during his tenure as White House physician. And here's what I think about this. This is America, and we all deserve to have physicians who are loose with that prescription pad, but don't harass and bully people, all right? It's not Tylenol plus codeine plus attitude. That's what I want to say about that. We don't need, look, you're right. You're, you're taking an ambient

and handed an ambient out. No judgment for me. You got to be kind about it. Can't sexual harass people. Write those scripts. Have a great time. Treat people with respect. That's all I'm asking. I think this is the time to tell you that no one's recording and this is an intervention, tell you that no one's recording and this is an intervention john is it finally happening sydney now our kyle it's time to time to let him know matt dog face guy logo love it or leave it i think it's wow it's time we let him know this is surprising people on this zoom call we gotta let him know he needs help i did not know that this was going to happen today i am shocked uh but i'm prepared to listen it's weird weird because somehow Ronan didn't show up. No, Ronan, none of my family is here.

None of my, you know, many of my colleagues I consider friends, but none of my non-work people. So it's tough. It's tough. Because everyone's like, but that's what makes them fun. No, we're worried about you. All right. Well, see you.

No, okay. Neera Tanden's nomination to direct the Office of Management and Budget has been withdrawn after some senators were giant babies over mean tweets. So I think Neera needs to get on Twitter right now and just say, I'm back, bitches. Just own it. Just own it. Like, yeah, I'm here to mix it up.

You can be a senator. You can have five followers. It can be midday. It could be 9 p.m. I am ready to rumble. I mean, really, though, it's just so you're upset that a Democrat said a mean thing about you publicly. Should we go through all your tweets and public statements. Y'all said some mean stuff. They're senators. The whole point of Twitter, if it has a point, is to say things about senators in a way that reaches people and maybe them. That is why it exists. If you can't criticize senators on Twitter and hope to rise in the government, what does that say about the kind of speech that is allowed in our politics? You can't be mean. You can't make a senator feel bad?

Horseshit. Also, what are you upset about? Like, oh no, this Democratic appointee is being partisan. Like, what are you? This is consistent. What's your problem? It's just bullshit. And finally, the House passed H.R. 1, which is the wildly popular voting rights bill that codifies into law reforms for money and politics, the end of partisan gerrymandering and rules to stop vote suppression,

all of which will protect our democracy from Republican efforts to destroy it at the state level across the country. Now it's all up to Cobb and his team of dream bandits to incept the end of the filibuster into Joe Manchin's mind while he's catching some Zs tuckered out after shrinking the size of the COVID checks for no reason. No, Joe. You aren't a little boy playing catch with your dad while he talks about how proud he is that you decided to get rid of the filibuster. You're asleep in your bed. And wait, is that little boy getting tired from baseball and taking a nap himself?

Are we in a dream within a dream? Are we on the moon looking down on Earth? And is that your uncle, Antonio James Manchin, the former state treasurer of West Virginia who died 20 years ago? Is he in a spacesuit talking about how fragile the world is, how beautiful it is without borders, with a thin layer of shining atmosphere, and how proud of you he is that you support the Green New Deal? Is your mind the scene of the crime, Joe Manchin? Joe Manchin? More like Joe Studio Apartment. Because he's a little man and he's unimpressive. Joe Manchin? More like Joe Notion. He has a weak jaw and he's unimpressive. Joe Manchin, more like Joe No-chin, he has a weak jaw.

Can't take a punch. Can't take a punch, John. Here's the good news. Not from Neera. Here's the good news. In 2013, a bunch of Democrats went from we'll never end the filibuster to let's do this shit in a matter of months because Republicans have blocked so many judicial nominations. Bit by bit, Hari. All right.

We're going to wear him down because either we deliver for people and safeguard democracy while we have power or we'll lose, we'll deserve it, and Republicans will make it all but impossible for us to have power ever again. And my hope is that that is something we can help Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, and a bunch of other senators hiding behind them who also are not for removing the filibuster right now, that we can kind of work them and get them to the place where we can pass H.R. 1 and get some of this shit done. It's possible. It's possible. You have to believe it's possible. God, the Democrats are dummies that like rules.

But it's not Democrats right now. It's like six Democrats, which is far better than it was in the past, right? Like Amy Klobuchar came out for ending the filibuster. She's an institutionalist. Like Chris Coons opened the door. We have a bunch of, like this conversation is happening and moving really, really fast. So we are about to pass this big COVID bill, right? Which again, like with moderates all the way to the left. And I'm hopeful that in the next couple of months we can keep hammering away on this issue to make sure every Senate Democrats gets on board with. Because like Manchin's going to say, I will never abolish the filibuster. I will never abolish the filibuster. Fine. We will never abolish the filibuster either. We will do some other reform that doesn't abolish the filibuster, but still allows us to govern. We're moving the Overton window on the filibuster so that when we don't abolish it, the compromise position

is putting us in a place to still pass voting reforms, pass our minimum wage increase, pass immigration reform, pass statehood for DC and offer statehood to Puerto Rico and let Puerto Rico decide if they want statehood. We're trying to put ourselves in a position where we can get that done with some kind of reform to the Senate. And I am hopeful about it. I remain hopeful. Filibuster. I mean,

the name alone, what kind of Mary Poppins bullshit is this? Yeah. Horton, here's a filibuster. You know what I mean? Hari Kondabolu, thank you so much for being here.

Of course. Always so good to see you. It was good to see you, too. And everybody, check out the podcast, Politically Reactive. It's fantastic. And everybody should listen. You were on it. I was on it.

We had a great time. We had a great time. You know who else was on it? Nikki Giovanni. We got Nikki Giovanni on it. All right. Great. Good for you guys.

Okay, yeah. Okay. I think this is over. Yeah, it's done. We're done. When we come back, when we come back, I'm going to audition for Jeopardy.

It's happening. Hey, don't go anywhere. There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up. And we're back. As we all know, Alex Trebek is no longer the host of Jeopardy because he was canceled by God. That's know, Alex Trebek is no longer the host of Jeopardy! because he was canceled by God. That's right, Alex Trebek, another victim of cancer culture.

That one felt... That was tough. That was tough. But since his passing, the show has been auditioning new hosts of Jeopardy! each week to see if anyone sticks. And this got us thinking, at this point, look, I have game show hosting experience, okay? All right, not as much as Drew Carey, all right?

And not as much as that person who points and laughs at Travis in his nightmares while he struggles to get a six-foot sub, Ellen DeGeneres. And since I know they'll never ask me because I'm gay, I decided to take my own audition this week in a game we're calling Jeopardy, or in the form of a question, what is Andrew Cuomo's career currently in?

Here to play the game, we have two contestants. We have Ian. Hi, Ian. Hi, how are you? Welcome to this edition of, I'm sure a show we're not allowed to call Jeopardy for trademark reasons. And we have Jen.

Hi, Jen. Hi there. So here's how the game works. We have two categories of questions. Andrew Cuomo before 2020 and Andrew Cuomo after 2020. There are 100, 200, 300, and 500-point questions. You will choose your category and amount. I'll read the answer,

then you'll both have to guess in the form of a question. I'll flip a coin. I flipped it. Jen, you start by choosing your category and your number. Okay, I'll do after 2020 and 500. In February, a former aide alleged Cuomo pressure her to play this game aboard a flight in 2017. Buzz. Oh, buzz.

A buzz from Ian. Oh, it's going to be bad. What is hide the salami? That is incorrect. Jen, last chance. Buzz, what is in the bottle? No, the correct answer, what is strip poker? Close.

What is strip poker? Ian, over to you to choose a question. Before 2020, 100. On his first day in office, Cuomo reinstated a rule forbidding governors of New York from receiving donations from their own appointees. But a later investigation found this governor had still collected 890,000 from people he appointed. Jen?

Who is Cuomo? You got it. You got it. Great job. Sitting right there. Next question, Jen. I'll also do before and 200. In 2014, this governor established the Moreland Commission to expose government corruption, but disbanded it after it began looking into his own conduct.

Buzz? Ian? Who is Andrew Cuomo? You got it. You got it. Now, this is the part of Jeopardy, very important part of Jeopardy. This is when the host really shines. It's time for me to ask you both a little something about yourself. Are you ready? Ready. Here we go. I'll start with Ian. Ian, it says here you love skateboarding. Tell us about it. Oh, well, as a prodigy of Tony Hawk back in the day on, you know, PlayStation one, that sick soundtrack.

I mean, of course, why wouldn't I? And also other skaters that were there. Ian, Ian, I want to thank you so much for just going with that based on nothing over to you, Jen. It says here that it says here, I understand you're quite the opera lover. here that it says here uh i understand you're quite the opera lover um yeah i was in uh opera fan club in college and uh we'd get together on friday nights and get drunk and watch opera i want you to know something both of you thank you my assumption was that you would both look at me

like what are you talking about but instead you, you did some light improv, all right? And I appreciate that. Back to the game. Who got the last question right? That would be me. Ian. Yeah, I knew that. Fuck, Ian. We're going to edit this down when we send it in.

When we send it in to Alex Trebek's ghost. You just write, when you want to audition for Jeopardy right now, you record it on a DVD, and then you write Alex Trebek's ghost, and you can drop it in any mailbox. All right, you're up, Ian. After 2020, 500. I'll do for 300. In February, a Cuomo aide said the governor's administration deliberately delayed releasing data on COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes because it might have resulted in an investigation by this agency. What is the committee of New York?

What is the Committee of New York? No, that's nonsense. I said health. No, that's incorrect. Jen, over to you. Buzz, what is the Southern District of New York? No, both of you are wrong. It is the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice. Ian, you still have the conch. I don't think they call it that, but whatever. After 2020, 200.

In March of 2020, Cuomo announced New York State would be bottling this item using prison labor that pays inmates 65 cents an hour. Buzz, what is hand sanitizer? You got it. You got it. I'm learning that I would never try out for actual Jeopardy. No, you're... Hey, Jen, listen, here's the thing, all right? Here's the thing about Jeopardy. It's in here. It's about confidence, all right? I don't... You know, you're doing great, I think. Ian, last question. After Hurricane Sandy, Cuomo used $40 million of federal disaster relief funds on national TV ads that tried to lure businesses to the state with this slogan.

Buzz, what is come to New York? Oh, so close. So close. Ian? What is I love New York? No, it was what is new New York? Let's do one final question. In 2011, Andrew Cuomo secretly encouraged four New York state Democrats to form an alliance

that would allow this party to retain control of the state Senate, despite a Democratic majority in the chamber. Buzz. Ian. What are the Republicans? You got it. You got it. And here, now it is time for final

scores. Wow, it was so, Jen, don't, you know, it was very close, alright? Jen in second place, runner-up, if you will, with minus 1,000. Today's winner is Ian with minus 700. I'm a shooting star.

So, you just did so, he did so well, both of you. And, uh, we didn't think to come up with a final Jeopardy. Uh, so, um, uh, Ian, you won the game. Sweet. Thank you so much. And Jen, you know what? You've also won the game because on this edition of Jeopardy, there are no losers. Everybody gets there are no losers everybody gets the home game everybody gets the home game that was very fun thank you both for doing this thank you so much for having me yeah this is great i didn't get to the april show in atlanta so this was a good so close so close so close i think right when the pandemic started, I had tickets to see in Baltimore. So this is good. That is such a bummer. I am so ready to go back out and do tour shows and eat local foods. That's

all I want to do. When we come back, I talk to you, Ezra Klein. Don't go anywhere. This is Love It or Leave It, and there's more on the way. And we're back. He is a New York Times opinion writer and author of the book Why We're Polarized. Ezra Klein, welcome. Glad to be here. So I was very excited to talk to you. I'm trying to institute a new policy where I read the books before the conversations. Implemented, I would say, not faithfully.

First of all, I really recommend to everybody listening that they read the book. There's your book, there's Adam Jendelson's book, Killswitch, about the Senate. There's Heather McGee's book, The Sum of Us. And I feel like there's almost like a kind of unified field theory of how America is broken, who broke it, and how we can fix it. And your book is part of that. So I want to start just sort of stepping back. and how we can fix it. And your book is part of that. So I want to start just sort of stepping back. What is your definition of polarized? When you say we're polarized, who is polarized from what? What does it mean? Thank you for asking that. That's super important. So polarization, polarized, just means clustered around two poles. That is it, right? It's a concept from magnets.

And so when I say we're polarized, I do not mean we're disagreeing or we're disagreeable. I don't mean people are pissed off. I just mean that our, and political scientists mean, and whoever is using this term correctly just means, that our disagreements or some important feature, our policy opinions, our attitudes, are structured around two groups. And let me explain quickly, what is the alternative to that? So for a long time in American history, we had these very, very broad political parties. The Democratic Party had really conservative Southern racists in it, and it had liberal Northern Democrats in it. And this was not a period of time in America

where we didn't have very sharp disagreements. I mean, National Guardsmen were shooting student protesters in the streets. We had riots. We had the Civil Rights Movement. We had the Vietnam anti-war movement. There was a huge amount going on. But because the disagreements weren't structured by parties, we would not say they were polarized. We were just disagreeing with each other. Now what's going on is that our disagreements are really well sorted by our parties. Republicans and Democrats are ideologically different. They're really demographically different. They're religiously different. And as each one of these new dimensions of difference aligns around a party, we become more and more polarized.

One aspect of this that I found a fascinating way into this moment in politics is the nationalization of our identity. And when I was reading it, I was thinking, oh, that applies to me, right? And the way that I thought about it is that, like, I think, why am I an American? Well, what does it mean to me to be an American? It has to do with values. Like, what does New York mean to me? It's about restaurants, right? Like, there's this, that we associate values with the country and geography, beautiful mountains with where we're from. Can you talk a little bit about how we've moved away from caring about our states, our communities, our sort of local governance? Yeah, I love that you picked up on this. It's one of my

favorite pieces of the book. So this is coming from a book by, I believe, it's one of the, there are like 100 political scientists named Dan or Dave Hopkins. And so it's by Dan or Dave Hopkins, a book called These Increasingly United States. And he shows that when you ask people to explain what underlies their different geographic identities, so their identity is American, as you say, it'll be values. Like, what does it mean to be American? Why are you proud to be an American? Freedom, liberty, prosperity, whatever it is. Why are you proud to be a Californian or a San Franciscan or somebody from Missouri? People begin turning to geographic features. I love

the coastline. I like the mountains. I like the plains. I like the local landmark. I like the sports team. And one of the things he's proving in that book across a huge range of different experiments and research is that over a long period of time, we used to have much stronger state and local identities. And the reason this is actually important to the polarization story is the American system of government is set up under the idea that our primary attachments are going to be to our local spaces. I think it's Madison who says that the local identity will always and everywhere be the primary identity. And the entire system is built like that. So we elect members of Congress through districts. The Senate balances different states against each other, which makes sense if you think

the key thing you're doing is balancing the powers of big and small states. But now our primary political identities are nationalized political parties. And the way I always say it is this. Imagine that there was a vote tomorrow, as there should be, to make D.C. a state. Will Vermont and Wyoming vote together because D.C. is going to be a small state and is going to add to the small state caucus? And Texas and New York vote together because they want big states to retain their power? Or will New York and Vermont vote together because those are liberal blue states, and Texas and Wyoming will vote together because they're conservative red ones. And obviously, you know what the answer is.

So in a million different ways, there was a theory of how American government would work, which is that first and foremost, we would have representatives representing our particularistic geographic interests, and that would reduce party polarization and other kinds of factionalism. But instead, we don't. And over time, we've done everything we possibly can to nationalize politics from the way media has evolved all the way down to getting rid of earmarks, which now may be coming back under the Democrats. But that was just one more way of weakening the local politics.

So everything becomes this headline red-blue collision, as opposed to this issue of what your city needs. So do you see something different playing out right now on this question of party identity over local identity around COVID relief? Obviously, we just had a vote where every single Republican in the House voted against COVID relief, yet they did so in opposition to a lot of local Republican officials, a lot of state officials, a lot of local officials who want this money, who say, we need the state and local money. It's not a blue state bailout. We need the money.

So I'd like to hear what you think on this, because I think what the Biden administration is doing here is really interesting. So what they're saying is that unity is defined as Republicans and Democrats in polling supporting the bill, not Republicans in Congress voting for the bill. And weirdly, that actually is a way of understanding politics in a less polarizing way. There is, among political scientists, among people studying this, this huge endless debate about what they call mass polarization versus elite polarization. How polarized are just voters in terms of what they believe and how they feel versus how polarized are the people in Congress, people in the media, etc.? And you can go a lot of ways with debate, but the simple finding is elites are way more polarized than the public, particularly on

policy. The public is actually open to a lot of different approaches on policy. And the thing they do is trust their leaders to tell them what is the right approach. But Donald Trump can walk out. Paul Ryan was the standard bearer of the Republican Party a couple of years ago. And then one day Donald Trump walks out and is like, actually, we should do $2,000 checks. And $2,000 checks become a lot more popular among Republicans. There's a lot of movement that is possible among the mass public in terms of what policies would make sense. So then the question becomes, who are you trying to make a deal with? And the Biden administration is basically – the way they are trying to frame this is that they are trying to make a deal with what Republicans want, not with what Republican national politicians want.

And true or not true, you can sort of argue the almost semiotics of this, but it's, I think, a more correct way of thinking about the question. One of my endless frustrations with Washington is centrism is defined as choosing whatever is in the middle of the Senate as opposed to what is in the middle of public opinion, as opposed to what it is people want. So you endlessly have these, quote unquote, moderates or centrists who have unbelievably unpopular opinions, who are in fact much more radical than people who are considered more ideological actors in politics who have actually come up with popular positions. And that's, I think, been a very perverting thing on the system. I just saw a report yesterday that every morning, every single morning, Joe Manchin has a staffer text him the

number of the national death that day. And I think that's supposed to be some centrist aesthetic. That is not how anybody in this country thinks about politics or their lives. It's an incredibly extreme and unusual way to think about the national debt, about American politics. Annie Lowry, my partner, tweeted about this. She's like, maybe somebody could text him the daily child poverty rate and debt servicing costs, right? You could imagine other things here. But it's really important not to confuse centrism or political opinion with what members of Congress think or want, because they're playing a totally different game with totally weird incentives, and they definition, which I've joked about before, is argue from a shared set of facts, treat people with whom you disagree respectfully, don't burn the Capitol down. Seems like a pretty good set of rules.

But what I appreciate about this definition of unity is it doesn't give the power to create it to your opponents. If bipartisanship is defined as bills passed by the majority and the minority together, you are giving control over unity to people who have a vested interest in not providing you a unity talking point when you run for reelection. So I think that defangs one of their tools, which is to say, if you don't find a way to get me involved, this is partisan forever. It's finding a new definition of that, which I think is very good. Yeah, I have this endless debate with people. I just did an episode of The Argument where we're debating the filibuster. You know that filibuster is my endless bugaboo. Two things I've been

thinking a lot about related to that are, one, this fetishization of bipartisanship is very peculiarly American. If you follow Canadian politics or British politics or German politics, there isn't this idea that legislation is only credible if it has been passed with the governing party and also the opposition party. The job of opposition parties is understood as opposing. And the reason it could be understood that way is that to be in power means you have a governing majority. So you don't need the opposition party. The opposition party criticizes you and tries to convince the public they're right, and the public judges based on results and these arguments. So that's one thing. This idea of bipartisanship is pretty distinctively American, and it comes out of our political institutions, which require very high levels

of consensus or at least compromise to get anything done. We have a lot of veto points, supermajority requirements, etc. But the other thing that gets to this is there is this horrible fear of what I've come to call ricochet legislating. And not only by bad faith actors. I was on a TV show with Jon Tester, the Democratic senator from Montana, and I was ranting about the filibuster. And he said, well, the thing that would be really bad for the country is if Democrats do one thing and the Republicans come in and undo it. And I have exactly the opposite view. really bad for the country is if Democrats do one thing and the Republicans come in and undo it. And I have exactly the opposite view. For one thing, if Democrats do something the public hates and they elect Republicans to undo it, then Republicans should be able to undo it. But conversely, if you can't actually pass things in the first place, then the public can't really

decide they like what you did and keep you in power to do more of it or fix it or tweak it. And so we have in this country, I think, a deeper fear of the costs and consequences of getting things done than of not getting things done. There is a deep preference for the problems of inaction to the problems of action. And I just think that we're wrong about that. I think the problems of inaction, particularly at this point, are worse than the problems of action, so long as action is tied to a reasonable set of small-D democratic accountability mechanisms. Yeah, there does seem to be a kind of, I'd say two things about that.

One, it does seem there is a kind of fear of small-D democracy, as in, if we do these things, we cannot rely on the political system to protect them from these kind of vicissitudes. The other piece of this, which I find striking is we actually now, because of the way Congress has basically failed to work as an institution, we do now have that ricochet. We have it with executive actions. We have it with trampling out of the Iran deal. We have it with the Paris Climate Accord. We have it with a host of environmental regulations. We have it across our government, DREAMers. So we do have that ricochet. And by the way, it is very bad to be governed by ricocheting executive orders that you can't rely on. People's lives hang in the balance. This is such an important point. But one thing

about the ricochet on executive orders is it's a lot harder to ricochet in Congress. Executive orders are just like one guy with a pen, basically. Whereas I don't believe there is any chance at all that if the Dreamers Act, which had 59 votes in the Obama administration, I just want to note that 59, it was a big majority for the Dreamers Act. If that had passed, I don't think there's any chance Republicans would have actually legislatively repealed it under Trump. Dreamers were popular even among Republicans. Trump even talked as if he supported Dreamers and wanted to use them as part of a compromise. And similarly, you get this question from Democrats on things like Obamacare. Imagine if Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act, had been passed without a filibuster in the first

place. So it actually had been a better bill with a public option, better subsidies, better tax structure, and they could have revisited it a number of times along the way. But so you have a possibly better Obamacare to start, but even putting that aside, then Republicans come in, and let's imagine that, like, John McCain's thumb had gone the other way, and they had actually repealed the Affordable Care Act. It is my view that Americans are not such crap protectors of their own interests that they wouldn't have noticed 15 or 20 million people losing health insurance and had nothing to say about it. One of the things that the way we run the system right now ends up weirdly protecting everybody from is the consequences of their own actions and beliefs.

I don't think Republicans would have in the end repealed Obamacare, but if they did, I think they would have paid for it because I think health insurance is actually important to people and taking away things that people have and care about and rely on is really bad politics. And when you practice really bad politics, there are consequences from it. The reason the filibuster, which has been around for a very long time in American politics and been maligned in American politics for a very long time, is so important right now is it has become a tool of polarized parties, not of upset individuals or even of blocks. So for a long time, the filibuster is used by individuals. Then it's used by the Dixiecrats

as a southern block to stop civil rights and anti-lynching laws. It's a terrible, terrible history for that particular bit of senatorial obstruction. But then as the parties polarize and so they're able to act together in a consistent, unified way, the filibuster becomes a tool of parties. They're trying to make the other party fail at governance, and the filibuster is a way they can. And creating a system where you have zero-sum electoral incentives and then the party that benefits from the other party failing can make the other party fail is just a really weird way to run anything.

I was thinking about American exceptionalism in this specific way. run anything. I was thinking about American exceptionalism in this specific way. It is a strange thing when you hear people that claim to believe in American exceptionalism talk about it as American exceptionalism. They say, I believe in American exceptionalism. But wait a second, you just believe America is the best. People outside of that describe it as American exceptionalism, but you don't actually believe in an ideology of that exceptionalism being not fact-based. You believe it's fact-based. That's what it would mean to believe America is the best. And when I was thinking about polarization, I found myself thinking, like, you know, talking

about Obamacare, removing the public option made it worse. You wanted a more left-wing solution. You want the moderates in the Democratic Party to go along with basically more left-wing politics. You want a Democratic Party that is fighting harder, that is using their power more effectively. You, in some sense, want a more polarized Democratic Party, a more active, kind of ideologically consistent Democratic Party. And what I found myself thinking as I read the book is it's an incredible explanation of what

led to this moment, but that the framing makes it around polarization when part of me thinks, actually, the problem here, yeah, nationalization of news is a problem. Silos of information are a problem. These are all problems. But actually, what we're sort of circling, even this filibuster is a problem. But really, the issue is we have a radicalized group of Republicans. A half of the polarization story is the crisis, and everything else is kind of ancillary to it. That really like ultimately what you want is a polarized country in which Democrats have won. Well, yes and no. So there's a bunch of that.

Yeah, there's a lot of that. So one, I do just want to note that I don't think the public option, going back to our talk about centrism, it had 72% public support. Not having the public option did not make the bill more moderate. It made it more extreme in a way, again, using sort of the public actually as a barometer as opposed to like weird Washington journalism rules. So I do just want to note that. I don't think all this stuff is polarizing. In fact, I think a lot of things would be less polarizing under the system as I imagine it. That said, the radicalization of the Republican Party is a distinctive and super important phenomenon here. You can have responsibly polarized parties,

which simply means the parties disagree. And you can have irresponsibly polarized parties, which is to say the parties disagree, and what they disagree about is whether or not to burn down the Capitol. And having an irresponsibly polarized party, a radicalized Republican Party, that's key. So there's a bunch of the book about this, in particular the penultimate chapter. I think it is very, very hard to pin down causally what has happened to the Republican Party in every respect. But I would say there are two things here that are really important.

One is that the Republican Party, part of the way the parties have polarized is by demography. I talk about this a lot in the book. The Republican Party has become very white in the way that the Democratic Party has become very diverse. It has become very Christian, or at least remained very Christian, whereas the Democratic Party has become much more secularized, the single largest religious group in the Democratic Party is people without any religious affiliation at all. But the Democratic Party has a lot of different religious groups in it. And it's become very conservative, the Republican Party.

And so one of the things happening is the Republican Party feels itself under very profound demographic threat. The country is becoming less white, so that coalition is losing power. And it's becoming less Christian, and so that coalition is losing power. And those are two coalitions, white Christians, that have historically had unquestioned control over American politics. We always talk about identity politics as something that black Americans have or indigenous Americans have. But actually, majority groups have very powerful identity politics. And part of the primal scream on the Republican side is the weakening of the dominance of that form of identity politics.

So that's important. But then finally, and this goes again to the story of like polarization and institutions colliding with each other. The Republican Party could not survive in the way it currently operates if it was exposed to actual small D democracy. It would be wiped out. So no party in American history has lost a popular vote in seven

of eight presidential elections. That is a hugely bad losing record. If you look in the Senate, the 50 Democrats represent 41 million more people than the 50 Republicans. And the differences at the House level are not as wide, but they are wide. There is still Republican bias at the House level. And something I keep telling people is that one of the issues right now is that the Republican Party does not have to deal with the full consequences of its actions. If it did, say in 2016, the Republican Party would have nominated Donald Trump. Donald Trump would have gotten 3 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump would have lost the election, by the way, as would Senate Republicans. And Republicans would have been furious that they lost a winnable

election. And so the Trumpist faction in the Republican Party, rather than taking over the entire Republican Party, would have been discredited and potentially purged inside the Republican Party. When you don't force parties to deal with the consequences their actions actually have on public opinion, they can spin off into really weird and radicalized directions. So the Republican Party has become based on a vision of minority rule. And everything it is doing is trying to entrench minority rule, is trying to make it harder for public voting majorities to express themselves. I mean, Donald Trump in his CPAC speech, Greg Sargent, had a good piece on this in the Washington Post, who is very explicitly saying the whole thing we need to do in American politics right now is make it harder to vote or otherwise Republicans won't win in the future. So one of the reasons I actually

focus on a lot of these institutional dynamics is that if you can't do anything about the filibuster, you can't pass things like the For the People Act, D.C. statehood, offering statehood to Puerto Rico, etc., that would reduce the anti-democratic dimensions of the system. Do you feel like we're making enough of an argument not around H.R. 1, not around Republican intransigence, but about the functioning of the Senate itself? That like Sinema, Manchin, you care about this body. If you want the Senate to be powerful, you have to abolish the filibuster. I think that argument is being made aggressively and constantly. Let me give you the optimistic version of this and the pessimistic version of this. Exciting. You know how long I've been arguing about the filibuster.

In the Obama era, this was a quirky, idiosyncratic feature of my politics that, as far as I could tell, was shared by like three members of the U.S. Senate. And now, however many years later, it is the majority position of most Democratic senators with like three or four or five holdouts. I mean we don't know the exact number of holdouts right now, but I think it's pretty reasonable to say that if Democrats had 55 seats in the Senate, it's a pretty good shot the filibuster would be gone. I think a lot of people believe that, and I do too.

that and I do too. And so this conversation has accelerated in a profound way. The fact that Democrats made H.R. 1, the For the People Act, the first bill in House business in 2018, and then Senate Democrats did the same with the S-1 in 2020, that's a very big deal. So on the one hand, this has moved extraordinarily rapidly. It's an extraordinary victory for this argument that the Senate is broken and Adam Jentleson's kill switch is part of this. And there's a lot more discussion about it. I mean, you guys at Crooked have been banging this drum. It's a whole different discourse than it was 10 years ago. But the issue is that as Democrats get further and further behind the eight ball in the Senate, if they don't take the rare opportunity they have to actually utilize their power and change the underlying rules, they're not going to have another option.

So on the one hand, I want to say to you, we're probably still like five or six years away from this being like a unanimous view among Democratic senators. But there may not be five or six years, right? So Democrats, after Donald Trump just did a horrible job and got wiped out in 2018 and then like wiped out in 2022, they barely got 50 seats there. They barely got a working Senate majority. And that's only with Kamala Harris. Odds are in 2022, they're going to lose seats. That's both how the map looks and parties lose seats in midterms. It's going to be hard for them to build power from here. Not impossible, but very hard for them. So

by the time the last five get to the right answer on this, it may be another 12 years before you can do anything on that. And that means that's another 12 years in which America will not have done nearly enough on climate change, another 12 years in which we will not have done more to enshrine the right to vote, et cetera, et cetera. So I am stunned by how much traction this argument has gotten. I am unbelievably encouraged by that. But the problem is the interaction between the map and the timing and the argument. You kind of need to do things when you have the power to do them. Because I think Democrats are likely given, you know, in a world where we should, I think,

assume the Senate has something between a four to seven point Republican advantage. Democrats just naturally are not going to control the Senate very often, and they're not going to control the Senate very often. They're not going to have many opportunities to act on this. So I worry that they're missing an opportunity that's not going to come around for some time. But in terms of how much this new idea of the Senate has taken hold and this idea that the Senate is broken has taken hold, I am stunned by that. I don't, I've rarely seen an argument get this much elite acceptance this rapidly. It does feel as though we have this last period of time where there's, we have enough democracy to protect democracy. We have this last chance to do it. You know, you talk about sort of

steps people can take as individuals. What should people be doing? Obviously, everyone listening to this is going to do whatever they can to put pressure on Congress to pass H.R. 1. I don't know how many people here in West Virginia, you have a big, and Arizona, you have a lot of work to do. But like, what can people be doing to kind of address these underlying conditions that made our politics so broken? I mean, I think this is really hard. So obviously people can vote for good candidates and can call their senator and can call their member of Congress. Everybody needs to pay attention to political structure, not just political bills. Like this is a really important thing.

A litmus test for whether or not somebody is progressive, for instance, has to be that they want to change structures, not just pass good bills. And so being clear-eyed about what the blockages in politics are is really important because then you don't get into issues like the filibuster is blocking something and you keep yelling at Joe Biden for not leading hard enough. When you misplace blame, you get into a lot of trouble. I don't have an answer for how everybody listening to this show can fix politics. But one thing I would say is that in general, going back to something we talked about at the beginning here, one thing that would make a lot of politics healthier is if people did engage themselves locally. And that's not going to change a filibuster in the short term. But one

thing that really does matter is that politics rede redevelop some of these like local identities. It redevelops some of these local polls and people learn how to wield power and political power locally. And there are a lot of people living in places that are not highly democratic listening to the show. And like they have particular possibilities to to sort of just change the map. And that's not going to come from like elite national politics, like like beaming messages at people who are otherwise watching Fox News. It's going to come from elite national politics, like beaming messages at people who are otherwise watching Fox News. It's going to come through local organizing. It's going to come through people running for school board and running for mayor. I am just an endless proponent of people not being too nationalized, of getting involved where they are. I say in the

book that I grew up in Southern California, and we got the LA Times, and I cared about local politics. And what I wanted to do with my life was be involved in california politics and i think now if i were growing up i was that same kid with the same level political involvement i'd be listening to to love it or leave it and positive america and you know reading vox and so on and my california political identity would be a lot smaller and my nationalized political identity would be a lot bigger so it is great like if you're listening to this show i hope hope you listen to my podcast, The Ezra Klein Show. But if you're not involved in reading local political news, if you don't know who your state representative is, your state senator, people doing that en masse is actually an achievable thing that would make not just national politics

healthier, but often local politics healthier too. And over time, national politics ends up reflecting local politics. A lot of these folks in Congress, they came from somewhere and they came out of organizing that happened somewhere. And so being part of that organizing is important. Don't just engage yourself and your mental energy in the headline collisions in Congress. Actually know what are the fights around you and try to have an effect on those because you can have a much bigger effect on them. Yeah, that's what I was hoping you would sort of talk about because I did, I found that striking this idea of if we look back on this period and we laugh about how worried we were, it will be because we actually had victories in

smaller states, rural places, that we overcame the anti-democratic qualities in our system, not just by reforming it internally, but by winning electorally in the places we'd have to win to build a durable coalition. And my hope is the combination of this conversation that we're having nationally around the Senate, around the kind of anti-democratic forces in our politics, and COVID, which I think has had people look to their local leaders and their functioning of their local government in a way that I don't think they have maybe in their lifetimes. Hopefully, one thing that can come out of that is people start paying attention locally where their politics is actually created. Ezra, thank you so much for being here. The book is

Why We're Polarized, and the new podcast is The Ezra Klein Show. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it, man. When we come back, I quiz some listeners on so-called gender reveal parties gone bad. Hey, don't go anywhere. There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up. parties gone bad. Hey, don't go anywhere. There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up. And we're back. In 2020, we saw two causes of death increasing in frequency, gender reveal parties and banana bread fires. I don't remember anything else. But even the gender reveal parties that don't end in fatalities are not without issue. They're not even really gender reveal parties at all. They're sex reveal parties or genital reveal parties when what we really should do is have gender reveal parties later in life, like just a really fun party we all get to have, like maybe in our 20s,

when we basically say, I'm good with these pronouns for a while. And depending on how adventurous you are, we have a bar, a weed station, and the drug corner with the friend group that doesn't have kids but does have molly and cocaine now gender reveal parties are toxic and deadly and they've gotten so out of hand that there are now dozens of horror stories involving so much mayhem we don't think you'll be able to tell whether it happened at a gender reveal party or in an action movie in a game we're calling camera reel or gender reveal here to play the game game, we have Jamie and her sister, Mandy, has popped into frame to assist. Hi. Hi. Hi, Jamie. Hi, Mandy. They are in Florida and they're near my parents. That's what we've established in the small talk that took place

before we began. So are you familiar with gender reveal parties? Yes. Have people in your family done gender reveal parties? No. Interesting. You said that very emphatically. Look, I understand. I feel like it's gotten out of hand. I think like, you know, anyway. Well, here's how it's going to work. I'm going to read about some mishap and you have to tell us if this happened at a so-called gender reveal party or in an action movie. If it's a gender reveal party, say gender reveal. If it's an action movie, say action movie. Okay. Jamie, are you ready? Yes. Mandy, are you ready? Yes. All right. A pyrotechnic device ignited a fire that burned over 22,000 acres, destroying 10 structures and killing a firefighter. Well, that was Travis's gender reveal party. That was, got it. Wow. Two. Because it wasn't just a gender reveal party.

It was Travis's. Travis caused that. Please kick them off the Zoom. Kick them off the Zoom. Next question. Ignore that voice. A box of explosives was shot with a rifle, causing an explosion that was felt over two miles away.

I think that's gender reveal party. You got it. Brightly colored gas seeped out of an inflatable parade float, choking onlookers. Gender reveal party? Action movie Batman 1989 100% before the two of you were born. A box of explosives detonated on a porch leveling an entire house. Thankfully no one was seriously injured.

That's a gender reveal party. Action movie Furious 7. Okay. A car was transformed into a giant smoke bomb but the plan went off the rails when it came to a stop and burst into flames. Action movie, Furious 7. Okay. A car was transformed into a giant smoke bomb, but the plan went off the rails when it came to a stop and burst into flames. Action movie? Gender reveal party. Okay. A man hit a woman in the face with a baseball bat.

Gender reveal party. Correct. A baseball struck a grandpa in the face. Action movie? Gender reveal. Strapnil from a pipe bomb killed a grandma. Action movie? Gender reveal.

A man shot a giant tank of propane with a rifle, causing an explosion that filled the sky with smoke. Please say action movie. Action movie. The Bourne Identity. A prop plane stalled in midair, flipped over, then crashed, but both passengers survived with only minor injuries. Gender reveal.

You got it. A home invasion turned into a mass shooting in which eight were injured and one was killed. Action movie. Gender reveal. You got it. A home invasion turned into a mass shooting in which eight were injured and one was killed. Action movie. Gender reveal. A log rolled out of a basement fireplace burning down a house with three kids inside. No charges were filed. Action movie. Is Manchester by the Sea? It's Manchester by the Sea. That's awful. I never saw Manchester by the Sea, and it did look sad, and now I see why. I don't want to watch Manchester by the Sea. I didn't want to watch it when I saw the, you know, the moody poster, and now that I've seen this description, I'm not interested in it.

Yeah, I mean, I'm glad it didn't happen at a gender reveal, though. That's a good point. That's a very good point, Jamie. An oversized taxidermied polar bear was knocked over killing somebody. Action movie? Yep, that's Roadhouse. A brawl broke out between the customers and the staff at a casual dining restaurant chain. Action movie?

I feel like it could be both. Gender reveal. Probably could be both. I see what you're saying. Not specific enough. You're saying we could find an action movie where that happens. A man tried to kick a football, but he slipped and fractured his ankle. Gender reveal.

You got it. A bus was rigged so it would explode if its speed dropped below 50 miles per hour. Action movie. Yep, that's speed. An air cannon malfunctioned, striking a man in the testicles. Gender reveal. Yep. And finally, a housekeeper's breasts were accidentally set on fire.

Gender reveal? That feels like action. Okay. Well, it's an action movie. It was Mrs. Doubtfire. Oh, okay. I didn't see that one. Jamie, Mandy, you've won the game. Great job. Very exciting. So nice to see you. Bye. Thank you so much. When we come back, we'll end on a high note.

Don't go anywhere. This is Love It or Leave It, and there's more on the way. And we're back. Because we all need it this week, here it is, the high note. Hey, Love It. I'm Sebastiani. I'm calling from South Lake Tahoe, California. First, I just want to say it's awesome that there's a great gay voice in politics like you.

Thanks for that. And also, I put my quarantine hobbies to good use and started a sourdough mutual aid business here. We deliver fresh bread to your door, and all of your money goes to help the local food banks. So we just had our first weekend, and we raised $511, which is going to provide 320 meals. So I'm really excited. And thanks for everything you're doing. Bye-bye. Hi, Lovett. It's Parker calling from Minneapolis. My high note this week is actually two things. One, I was able to get my first dose of vaccine, which feels amazing. And I cannot wait until it's available to everybody. And my second high note is I was accepted to graduate school on the same day. So it's kind of a big deal. So I'm going to get my master's in social work and I really hope to

work with kids and families in school. So that is my high note. Thanks so much to you and the whole Cricket team for everything you do. Bye. Hey there, I love it. This is Alicia. I'm calling because my high note of the week is actually your interview with Fran Lewis. It brought a really big smile to my face. I was out shopping while I was listening and cackling the entire time. It's nice to hear someone be revered for being

unabashedly themselves as someone who struggles with that chronically. It was really inspiring. So thanks for everything you do. Thanks for being you and have a great day. Hi, I love it. This is Miranda calling from Mendocino County in Northern California. And my high note is today my 17-year-old son and I went and picked up a decree from the courthouse changing legally his name and his gender to match who he really is. This also happens to be the day

when there's a lot of really horrific anti-trans stuff going on around the nation. And I'm so, so grateful for all of the work and everybody who's done everything over all the years that made it possible for this to happen for me and my family today. Thanks. Thanks to everybody who called in. If you want to leave us a message about something that gave you hope, you can call us at 323-521-9455. Thank you to Hari Kondabolu, Ezra Klein, and everybody who called in. And there are only 612 days until the 2022 midterm election. So that's something to look forward to. Everybody, thanks for listening. Have a great weekend. Pallavi Gunalan and Peter Miller are the writers. Our assistant producer is Sydney Rapp. Bill Lance is our editor and Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Our theme song is written and performed by Sure Sure. Thanks to our designers, Jesse McLean and Jamie Skeel for creating and running all of our visuals, which you can't see because this is a podcast. And to our digital producers, Nar Melkonian and Milo Kim for filming and editing video each week so you can.