Lovett or Leave It - No Audience, No Problem

Episode Date: August 22, 2020

Senator Brian Schatz, Emily Heller, Naomi Ekperigin, and Josh Barro join to cover the Democratic convention, from Eva Longoria to Joe Biden, and everyone in between. What's the difference between a "crossroads" and a "fork in the road"? Will we be inspired to order calamari? Let's find out.

Welcome to the 24th episode of Love It or Leave It, back in the closet. On TV, we got no shortage on fools and stress. Only a shortage on masks and tape. That's why we're back in the closet until we're all clean. Back in the closet until the vaccine. Back in the closet until Fauci says it's safe to go out. Go back in the closet. It's everyone go back in the closet. Go for a show. That song, fantastic, was sent in by Matt Goodwin. We want to use a new one each week. If you want to make one, send it to us at leaveitatcrooked.com.

That's leaveitatcrooked.com, and maybe we'll use yours. It's a new dedicated email. Send a song, send an idea, send us whatever you want. Some housekeeping. Please check out Missing America, Ben Rhodes' new podcast. Ben was Obama's deputy national security advisor. It explores how problems like nationalism, authoritarianism, and disinformation have spread around the world and how we can fight back. It is an excellent podcast. It is fascinating to listen to. It is an incredibly helpful way

to think about these problems. And I think you'll really appreciate taking the time. So please subscribe and listen wherever you get your podcasts. This is our convention special. I recorded this with guests over the course of all four nights. I am coming to you Thursday night. We just saw Joe Biden close out what I think was an incredible achievement of a convention, given the impossible task of reorganizing what was supposed to be a giant in-person arena-filled event to Zooms and documentaries and remote speeches and panels. And I think all in all, it was it managed to turn an obstacle into an incredible asset. And I think that that's an amazing feat.

I'm also really pumped. And we just came out of this convention. And what we want everybody to do is go to votesaveamerica.com slash adopt. And if you came out of this convention feeling like you want to be involved, that you want to do something, we're going to have a weekend of action. We're in it right now. If you haven't picked a state to adopt, you can join me in Pennsylvania. You can choose one of the five others.

They're also okay. You know, we make jokes, but the other states are good to adopt to. That's just the truth. But if you haven't signed up yet, you know, we've hit 200,000 signups for volunteers. That's a huge, huge, huge number of people in each of these states. But that means a lot of people in each of these states. But that means a lot of you haven't done it yet. And if you haven't signed up to help, do it with us. I hope you can do it with a bunch of campaigns in your areas. But now is the time to get involved.

We really need your help. And I really believe you'll want to have said that you signed up and did something. So votesaveamerica.com slash adopt if you haven't picked a state yet. We're going to start with a conversation Emily Heller and I had on Wednesday night. Later in the show, we'll be joined by Senator Brian Schatz, Josh Barrow, and Naomi Ekperigan. But first, she's a comedian, award-winning writer, and the host of the worst segment we've ever done. Emily's Garden Show, of course. Oh my God, best segment you've ever done. Emily's Garden Show, of course. Oh, my God. Best segment you've ever done.

What a cruel. You're just this is I'm gonna get so attacked. There's really, you know, the Emily's Garden Show community started out quite kind, but it is growing into a bit of a toxic fandom. Anyway, she's here. Emily Heller. All you Heller's angels out there. She's here Emily Heller all you Heller's angels out there she's here Emily good to see you I think it's a little outrageous that you're surprised that a gardening fan base has grown oh my god we're starting strong well yeah you've really you have to you've nurtured them yeah fertilize them yep Yep. They thrive on bullshit. I really, I will say I'm incredibly proud of the work that we've done just as a community to terrorize you. Yeah.

Thank you. Thanks everybody. And by the way, I see the tweets. All right. I may not respond when you attack me, but I see them. All right.

I definitely see them. Let's get into it. What a week. The convention was this week, which means we've all been working very late every night, but don't worry, we've put a lot of time into these jokes. Here we go. This week, the Democratic Party held their convention, but boy, it was anything but conventional. Oh, little wordplay there. Terrible. Yeah. You know, we live, Emily, in a moment of worst case scenarios. And I'll caveat this by saying that we are recording this as the convention is still unfolding and much can go wrong. But I will say this,

there was a true, genuine chance that this was a total catastrophe, just a gaffe filled, kludgy, glitch ridden mess, live shots with like a two zoomed in Chuck Schumer saying, am I on? Am I on? I'm on. And Amy Klobuchar at a hot mic raging about a hair clip she left in the car. Jokes about Trump being returned to sender, but with dead fucking silence. Like all of that could have been our life. But on the whole, on the whole, it's working, I think. Yeah, it's working pretty well. Like even when they cut to Amy Klolobuchar like a few seconds before she realized

she was on i was like oh my god you know in jeopardy when alex trebek is introducing all three of the contestants and it shows them as he's like giving you their little bio like a school teacher from wilmington delaware she has been the three-day winner and it's just a steady shot of the contestant and they're just smiling the whole time and they can't decide what to do with their face they don't do anything I can't decide if it would have been worse for them to just all be smiling before they realize they're on camera for the whole time for like a good 10 seconds or if it's better to watch the face turn into a smile right it's um I. I guess it's really a matter of personal preference. Do you want your artifice pointed out to you

or are you just comfortable living inside of it? Right. You know? Yeah. And by the way, we've said that this is all going well. If you help pull this convention off, I tip my hat to you.

I'm incredibly grateful. And if between now and Saturday morning, the convention went off the rails, we'll just delete this. And so if you're hearing this, it weren't didn't we weren't fine. Yeah. And you know what? I still think there's some leeway for it to even get a little bit more screwed up and for us to still be impressed because like they've been doing the Oscars for like 80 years and they still screwed up the best picture like two years ago. Yeah. Like what if what if on Thursday night they accidentally give the nomination Eric Swalwell? They open up the envelope and it's like, wait a second. This can't be right.

This is a fuck up. I still would love to hear him accept the nomination for a while, even though he knows it's wrong the way those producers did. They're like, well, you know what? We're out. We've got the mic. I want to thank my wife. I want to thank my parents. I got to go.

Also on Tuesday, we learned that Dr. Jill Biden once punched a bully in the face and revealed her new catchphrase. When they go low, you pummel them in the face until it feels like dough and broken glass. I got these guns at SoulCycle, bitch. A lot has changed since 2016, Emily. Yeah, yeah. I really think that's what the swing voters needed to hear. Do you think it's too much to talk about pummeling a face until it has the consistency of dough and broken glass? No, I think you're putting it just in terms that the quarantine sourdough bakers need to understand it. And on Monday, President Trump tweeted, save the post office. From day one of this crisis, the president has bravely and repeatedly asked the United States Postal Service, why are you hitting yourself?

We're going to talk about the convention a lot, but there's a lot of other news that happened this week. After the move was met with criticism, a spokesperson for the Postal Service announced that the agency will put a halt to any additional changes that have slowed down mail and put the prospect of an election conducted in large part by mail at risk. The spokesperson said, we really regret that you found out about this. We're really sorry that this came to your attention on Monday. God, I just I just want you to know that whatever I don't even remember what was there before, but I changed it and I ruined it. You know what? I think getting to that punch line, much like our mail, just took longer than we expected it to. And there are mitigating circumstances that I'm taking into account. Thank you. Thank you. It wasn't ideological. It was just incompetence in this case. I also want to shout out the fact that like people protested outside that guy's

house. And I think that's a big part of why he changed his mind. So I just want to say score one for annoying someone in person. I think right now we actually don't truly know how ideologically committed DeJoy is to this mission that he's on. We know that he has some financial interests. We know he's obviously like a lot of sort of rich pro-Trump country club Republican donor types have a lot of dumb right wing ideas about how to do things. And he has investments that give him a conflict of interest and all of that. I think that's true. But at the same time, you know, Gordon Sondland was some hotelier from fucking Portland. It's like, I don't need this.

I don't want to go down for this. And I had to imagine this rich guy, DeJoy, not used to this level of scrutiny. You know, he was told when he took the job, you know, Benjamin Franklin once had this job. And now he's like, Benjamin Franklin thinks you're a fucking piece of shit. So I imagine that would get to you. I'm just surprised that more Trump appointees haven't done that math of just like, yeah, you have Benjamin Franklin's job. No one's going to think you're Benjamin Franklin the way you're doing it. Like Donald Trump is like the guy who runs for student council president with the promise to dismantle the student council. That's what he's doing. Yeah. Is that a bad analogy? I'm trying to think about it. I guess I made that sound a little bit too cool because only cool people do that.

That sounds awesome. It's like, you know, a pizza day. Yeah, it is interesting, right, how few people have turned on Trump even now, even in this late stage. Like how many people have made the calculus that he's good for business, whatever business may be, whether it's being an elected politician, being a propagandist, being just a corporate titan who views him as a useful idiot. It is striking how many have made that bargain and how few. Like, look, you don't have to like John Kasich. Thank you. No, you're welcome. And to everybody who felt like they had to like him. Let me let me get that idea right out of your head. You don't have to. I don't like John Kasich's politics. I'm a little uncomfortable with using Republicans as validators, too. But at the same time, like we don't have to like John casick to use him like we don't have to redeem

him to use him and the fact that you're morally opposed to him maybe that to you means that he's that what he represents is so morally reprehensible on issues like choice among others that it's not worth the political benefit of using him but at least i think it is a practical question as to whether or not these people have used to us right now. The key thing for me is, why is he so fucking special? Like everyone knows. I mean, that's the tragedy of this moment. You know, like we keep seeing these incredible speeches. Jill Biden's speech was incredible. Michelle Obama's speech was incredible. Bernie did a great, a really, really great job. Just a really clear, excellent case. I, you know, Barack Obama, the excerpts of that speech have just come out. They are excellent. But some of it is so it's I think one of the reasons that this era, this moment has

been so depleting for us is we are having this incredibly obvious, crystal clear debate where everyone, including most of the people arguing with us, know that Donald Trump is blatantly, brazenly unfit and despicable, a genuine monster. But it's just bad for business to say so. At least, look, there are plenty of liars in politics and there always have been. There's been plenty of frauds. Paul Ryan's a fraud. But fundamentally, it was two groups of people who believed they were right. But it's not supposed to be everybody agreeing that Trump's a piece of shit, but half of them thinking it's in their interest to pretend he's not. Everybody agreeing that Trump's a piece of shit, but half of them thinking it's in their interest to pretend he's not.

Yeah. And I think that there's a lot of like people who feel so much loyalty to their party. And I think that's where having Republican speakers, I guess that the point of that is like the people who feel like they have to vote for a Republican. Maybe they'll be like, oh, cool. The coolest guy ever, John Kasich, is switching. Maybe I'm allowed to. But I don't think they're watching our convention. That's the thing. I'm not sure they are. I think we don't know. Like, my hope is, I mean, look, Biden has to do two things. He has to appeal to those suburban moderates, particularly suburban women, the people that gave us the majority in 2018, the people that will help us in the swing states that we need. But even as we're going after those moderate voices, we still do have Bernie making a really

compelling argument from the left. So he has to do both, right? He has to reach the kind of swing voters, and then he has to reach the kind of base voters and the non-voters and get people energized and enthused and donating and voting. And I think it's about striking that balance. And my hope is, you know, Kasich and those like Kasich do their job for those voters while making clear via the policy platform with Bernie, with some of the other progressives, that Biden is not just trying to go back to normal, that he understands that we need a new normal. And hopefully, I think, I hope they're striking that balance. I mean, I will say, like, I don't know how effective Kasich's speech will be, but I will say that, like, if we're talking about clear messaging, I don't understand why he was talking about a crossroads while standing at a fork in the road. Which is also a metaphor he could have used and more clearly demonstrated by where he was standing. Right. It's funny to say that you're at a crossroads because a crossroads is either, it actually

is three options. Really, it's four options. We can go back from where we started. We can keep going straight. We can go left. We can go right. We really have two options ahead of us. Like, obviously, we can't go back in time.

We really should choose between one of two paths. I mean, I guess if you want to get hyper specific, really, there's an off ramp. Yeah. There's a road that we're on and it's fucking awful. And there's an off ramp and it takes us to surface streets. And we have to make a bunch of decisions when we get to those surface streets, because sometimes the sign says that there's a rest stop, but actually it's a little bit further away than you'd expect. We don't know where the rest stop is, but we should get off here. We got to get off here. That's the key thing. We need to get off the highway. We have to pee and we are out of gas.

I just don't know if like he had decided crossroads ahead of time and then his location scout just didn't do their job. Did anyone pitch change it to a fork in the road? I don't know. Maybe we'll never know. I just have questions about the messaging and i'm just hoping that the next couple nights we get a little bit clearer on our metaphors can we please just put a little time into the into the metaphors making sure they're just crystal clear applicable right yeah i'm trying to think of another metaphor that could be slightly wrong.

Here I am on a bridge over troubled cement. And they're like, it's an overpass. Also this week, President Trump announced that he would pardon Susan B. Anthony, the pioneering women's rights activist who was arrested for voting in 1872 when it was still illegal. Unfortunately, after all these years, Susan B. Anthony won't be able to vote because she owes the state of Florida a bunch of legal fees. When she heard the news, zombie Susan B.

Anthony crawled from beneath the soil at a gravesite in Rochester, New York and said, oh, no, thank you, and politely reburied herself. But just as she was closing the lid from her coffin, she shouted Black Lives Matter. And then the lid from her coffin she shouted black lives matter And then she said really quietly but women's lives matter more fuck you twitter and she was gone So the fascinating exchange there oh man yeah like i'm not one of those people that believes That trump is playing fourth dimensional chess but But if I did believe that, I would definitely consider that maybe he was trying to get us to cancel Susan B. Anthony in 2020. I think this is so stupid. I would like to meet a human American person whose vote or mind is

changed by the pardoning of Susan B. Anthony. I would like to meet this person and just sit down and have a conversation to understand where they are on certain issues, how this specific act turned their attention, changed their mind, moved them off the fence. Yeah. And are you imagining that this person decided to vote for Trump because of this,

or they decided to vote for Biden because they just could not believe that Trump had the audacity to pardon Susan B. Anthony, a criminal who belongs in jail? Listen, we can take issue with the fact that women were denied the right to vote, but the law is the law. Shame on President Trump. President Trump. California Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency in response to wildfires across the state,

a heat wave that is causing rolling blackouts, and of course the pandemic could be worse. At least a big earthquake on the San Andreas Fault hasn't cut off our access to fresh water

from the Colorado River or caused any other massive disruption in our society that our already cast-strap municipalities are in no position to handle because of the ongoing economic and health crisis. Should I not say that? Did that happen?

Are you tempting fate or did that happen? And I just haven't noticed yet because the water hasn't gotten here. I think that I think that if there was a massive earthquake on the San Andres fault that shut down water to Los Angeles, I think it would have crossed your phone by now. Yeah, that's probably true. But I will say that it just really makes me want to recommend that everyone listen to the last episode of Emily's Gardening Show, where we talked about ways that we can lessen our dependence on water imported from out of state. Meanwhile, in Mississippi, 71 out of 82 counties have reported coronavirus cases in schools, and over 400 teachers and students across the state have tested positive.

I hate to say it, but it seems like President Trump isn't doing nearly enough to hide these numbers. And MyPillow CEO and unflagging Trump supporter Mike Lindell has been tirelessly and baselessly promoting a dietary supplement as a cure for COVID-19, a treatment the MyPillow guy has used as access to pitch to an enthusiastic President Trump. Why? Lindell is a board member for the company that promotes the supplement, and Trump doesn't care if people live or die because none of us are real. This apparently has some similarities to the plot of the 2011 film Contagion, but I'll never know it because if you think i will ever ever in my life click play

on that movie again no fucking way that you would have to pry my eyes open like clockwork orange to get me to watch contagion outbreak no fucking way i will never i will never see gwyneth Paltrow die in that movie again. I will never watch Rene Russo at her fucking peak getting that virus from Kevin Spacey and Outback, the Mutaba virus. I remember every detail of that film. I haven't seen either movie. Should I watch them now? No, absolutely not. These were tough films before. Yeah. Were they tough because you were like, oh, I don't know what we'd do if that would happen? Because I feel like those movies were made sort of in a like, with the understanding that they would never happen. Am I wrong?

Outbreak to me is in that 90s disaster era movie. It goes in its outbreak, its deep impact, a few others that were like Armageddon. Let's game it out. All right. Let's see what happens when heroic Americans go up against a natural force and see what they could do despite corruption, despite the problems in our society to see if we can overcome it. But it was very much like, let's warn them. Let's warn them. Contagion is very much like, we need to show people how bad this could be. What I remember about Armageddon

is that Aerosmith sings a love song that's about Liv Tyler's character, who's Steven Tyler's daughter. And I've always thought that was a little weird. That is weird. That's gross. That's a weird thing. It was just like the music video.

It made the music video have kind of weird vibes to me. Because in the music video, isn't Ben Affleck like using animal crackers like on her stomach? It's like very, there's like real intimacy in that video. Doesn't that sound familiar? Am I getting that right? That's a weird thing to get wrong. That could be like any 90s music video. Can we just leave in this part with none of the context absolutely absolutely one last point

when i by the way i just want we may have cut this down but i just want you to know that i stopped recording because i really wanted to remember this point and then i remembered what it is here's the point teo leone makes an incredibly stupid fucking decision in the film Deep Impact. She decides to not go into the life-saving bunker, a spot she was awarded because of her important role of informing the people about important matters of national interest. And she decides to literally kill herself to hug her estranged father one more time before they get killed by a tidal wave. But it was completely unnecessary because if they had just gone inland, they would have lived.

It makes absolutely no sense. It is just as bad as Charlize Theron not running sideways from the fucking rolling spaceship in Prometheus. And it has bothered me since I was a child, since I was a little boy. Yeah, that's really stupid. Taya Leone's decision-making has made me fucking angry in that film. Also, she's an MSNBC correspondent because CNN said no to the tie-in.

On Tuesday, the president visited Cedar Rapids, the epicenter of the disastrous fallout from a storm that left thousands homeless and without power according to reports the visit was brief with the president never leaving the airport to survey the damage as is customary when asked why he didn't actually take the time to see what happened to these communities the president said oh I don't

care if you live or die because none of you are real picking up on an earlier theme that's it that's the end of the monologue that's the end I was waking up on an earlier theme. That's it. That's the end of the monologue. That's the end. Emily has agreed to stick around to play a game,

but when we come back, we'll have Josh Barrow and Naomi Ekperigan to talk a bit more about the Democratic Convention. Hey, don't go anywhere. There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up. And we're back. He's a writer for New York Magazine and host of KCRW's Left, Right, and Center. Josh Barrow, welcome. Hey, John.

How are you? And back again, comedian, actress, writer, and co-host of the Couple Therapies podcast, returning champion, Naomi Ekperigen. Always good to see your face and your COVID curls. And thank you. And Josh, I just want to return. I want to make an edit, not to the show, but to our conversation to call you a returning champion as well.

Incredibly insulting to have two returning guests and only acknowledge one as a champion. I regret it. I regret it instantly. All right. That's quite all right. So we are recording this Thursday night. Joe Biden just concluded his remarks and we end what was a historic Democratic convention. No crowd, no floor speech, no balloons. But to my mind,

what could have been an absolutely incredible disaster to me managed to turn many aspects of lacking an audience and being able to use documentary footage and preplanned clips into an asset. I want to go to each of you. I'm going to go to Josh second, because I'm afraid he's going to have a contrarian opinion that's going to make me upset. Oh, no. Sorry. No spoilers. So I'm going to go to Naomi first. We'll get into the individual speeches, but after four days of this, how are you feeling? I got to tell you, a little amped. I was I was, like, having some feels in a way that I did not expect to.

Yeah. Especially from Jojo Rabbit, you know? So it was, like, just really good. I was, like, surprised. I really was, like, you know, because the whole time everybody talking about how he day home boy. And Julia was like, he saw my magazine. And I was like, what are you going to say?

And he came through for me on an emotional level. Josh, what are you going to say? And he came through for me on an emotional level. Josh, what are your initial thoughts? You know, I thought the convention was good, especially under the circumstances. I mean, conventions always feel a little bit outdated, and they're always kind of boring, and it's always kind of like, you know, this many hours of this content. Who really wants to sit through and watch all of this? So I came into it. In general, I don't expect to like the convention. Then especially you take away the live audience

and any of the excitement that creates. And I thought they did a good job under the circumstances. I thought the roll call on Tuesday worked especially well with all of the states. That was actually a thing that I thought worked a lot better in a virtual format than it does in the hall. And it really allowed to, it really showed the diversity of the country in a lot of different ways and was compelling. I thought Biden was really good himself on Thursday night. And I thought his speech, I thought Michelle Obama's speech, a number of them were really, they really thought about, you know, well, what does a good speech look like in an environment with no audience? And they really adapted in a way such that it didn't feel like a speech weirdly delivered to an empty room. And then also, I mean, I think the important thing to remember with any convention is that it's really,

it's not done so much for the audience. It's done for people who will hear about what happened in the convention and news stories and other places. And I thought they did a good job generating the right news stories that create the right messages about what Joe Biden would do if he was president. So overall, I thought they did a good job with it. Naomi, I think the Republicans may have created some too low expectations when they've been hitting this message that Joe Biden would not be able to sort of string a sentence together. So far, the reaction to his speech is one of, I think, genuinely, I think people are pretty impressed with his delivery. To me, it feels as though he didn't just overcome

those dismal expectations, but actually did quite well. What'd you think? I think so too. I think there was definitely this feeling of like, uh-oh, baby, you got this? You got this? Who propping you up?

But it really did feel like he wasn't just reading, because that's what I also worried was going to happen. It was going to feel a little stiff, and it was going to be very, because, honey, you don't want him to go off book. But I felt like he was connecting to his script in a way that I felt like was really good. Josh, what do you think? Well, I mean, I've always thought Biden was good. I mean, you're you love Biden. You're you're ride or die, Joe Biden. You're you. I've been frankly, Joe tattoo on your lower back.

I've been frankly, pretty irritating about it the whole way along. I mean, you're irritating about you tend to be irritating about most of the positions that you hold well but but look i mean like i i'm not the most in touch person in the world right like i'm not really a man of the people i'm not like and yet how is it that like ben dreyfus and i were the only people in the media who like from day one were being like biden's good he's leading that. That probably means he's going to win. He's a good candidate who's appealing to people. He is not, he doesn't have dementia. Like he was impressive through the primaries too. I mean, he's, he's never been the smoothest speaker. I think people really overestimate the importance of that. I mean, I think liberals, frankly, have spent too much time making fun of the way the president talks.

The president talks like an idiot, but in a way that doesn't matter nearly as much as people tend to think that it does. And Joe Biden is a much better speaker than the president talks. I mean, the president talks like an idiot, but in a way that doesn't matter nearly as much as people tend to think that it does. And Joe Biden is a much better speaker than the president. And so I think that, you know, he really he connects with people, his fundamental decency comes through in a way that I think speaks to what a lot of people want right now. And I think that he is broadly acceptable to a lot of the country in a way that is great in this time. That's a good way to set yourself up for a position where you might win by nine points in the fall, which I think would be a really good thing for the Democratic Party and a good thing for the country, frankly, to have a president who lots of people

kind of like. I think it would be refreshing to have a president who people are maybe not that strongly emotionally invested in in either direction. I think part of what's going to make him a strong candidate is that there was this this pew poll and and people like to talk about enthusiasm trump's supporters like to say well we have all the enthusiasm but the question was would you be angry if the other guy won and like 61 of biden voters said they'd be angry if trump was re-elected only 37 of trump voters said they'd be angry if biden won and so i think interesting allowing people to feel kind of so so about a president for a while would be a good thing interesting naomi what's your response to that? I don't know. I'm like hearing this. I'm like,

interesting, because I will say that initially I started out and I was like, okay, I'm voting for John Lewis. You got my vote. Do you know what I mean? Like just from tonight, they were giving me that whole story where I was like, okay, I'm ready. I was like posthumous president. And so, but it's interesting because what I was responding to was that energy, you know what I mean? And that excitement, obviously, and that person who you see this history of putting your money where your mouth is. But I think also for someone who I felt this very so-so on tonight, I was like, OK, OK, Joe, like I might be feeling you. That's different because feeling him is going to get me to buy stamps and stand in line and like vote early. It's also been exacerbated by the fact that we are kind of in a long distance relationship with society right now. And so I

think a lot of us are anxious, we're angsty, we're angry, we're a little untethered, unmoored. And the primary into, you know, Joe Biden basically cinches the nomination as we head into the COVID-19. I mean, really, it was just like, you know, the last place, the last buffet I ate at was a hotel in Las Vegas before the caucus. You're a miracle. Two mornings in a row. Two mornings, it's lunch and dinner, so it's fine. But to me, like I have, I realized just from my own point of view, like I realized that I had gone from being critical of all the candidates and being unsure who the best person was to represent us to being worried. All right, now we're behind Joe Biden. I'm worried about that. I am. Just the way I would worry about any other candidate because this election is so

important. And to me, what this convention has done is remind me of Joe Biden's strengths. I mean, look, I started noticing it over the past couple of nights. During the gun violence section, during the section about violence against women, the descriptions, the experiences were incredibly explicit, far more so than you would normally hear in a convention. You see this mother talking about the pain she's experienced because her son had a grievous gunshot wound to the head and the recuperation and the lifelong disability that that will cause. You see this boy tonight talking about what it's like to try to overcome a disability that that will cause. You see this boy tonight talking about what it's like to try to overcome a stutter like Joe Biden. You hear women talking

about their experience being in violent relationships. And then you hear the grief that the Biden family has been through. And what all of a sudden it sort of dawned on me, oh, of course, this convention reflects Joe Biden, someone whose life has been defined by these things. And it almost becomes a kind of emergent property that these conventions look like the leader who is sitting atop the ticket in the same way that 2016 convention, the Republican convention was this dour, angry, bloody affair. This convention had a lot of empathy. It had a lot of heart. Josh, I want to ask you, I was I was one of those people that was like,

I find John Kasich annoying, all right? But I don't have to like him to use him. But tonight, I felt like, all right, with Bloomberg, I think we've now gilded the lily. We had Powell. We had Kasich. We had Cindy McCain. We had Bloomberg. What do you think? Well, Mike Bloomberg got the fourth most votes of any candidate in this primary, more votes combined than all of the candidates who came in behind him. And so, you know, look, you don't have to like Mike Bloomberg. You can be irritated about his promises to spend a lot of money that he does not seem to have spent yet in support of this election. But he, you know, like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren or other candidates in this race, he had apparently a constituency in the

primary. And so I think just from that perspective, dollar bills. Well, I mean, no, but I mean, you know, he he got it. He got a non-trivial number of votes like there were a lot of people who came out who voted for Mike Bloomberg in this primary who are going to be a small but key part of the coalition that will elect Joe Biden if he wins in November. And so I think any candidate who put in that performance in the primary, you would expect to get a speaking slot at the convention. One other speech I did want to touch on, because to me it was actually an important speech, was President Obama's speech on last night. The days seem endless. We've seen Barack Obama give many speeches. I had never seen him make such a plaintiff appeal, kind of like almost like kind of a beseeching, like, you know, please, like almost begging for people to take what he's saying to heart.

Naomi, what did you think of President Obama's speech? I know, you know, he's always had a tight rope to walk. So I'm always like there is more to him that we don't get to see by the nature of his position, you know, then as president and even now. And it felt like that was the closest I had seen to like some of that fire, some of that person, like that real like, this is not a game, people. And I felt that energy in a way that I feel like he hasn't been able to show us kind of up until now. Even throughout, you know, I kept wanting him to say more, you know, like when Biden like first stepped up and was just like, okay, like you're gonna do something. I was like, you're his number one black friend. You have to stand by him. And so I felt like he really did that this time. Josh, look, I'm coming out of these four days

blown away by how excellent it was. I am pumped. I want you to like kind of attack my enthusiasm, attack my confidence. What are some of the things you're worrying about at the end of this convention? Attack your enthusiasm for Biden as someone who would be a good president or your enthusiasm for the idea that he's going to win? Attack my sanguine response to the convention generally. Well, I mean, I think it's appropriate for you to be sanguine. I think Biden goes into this in a strong position. I mean, look, Donald Trump has been an unpopular president all the way along. The error that people make in their analysis about the 2016 election is the analysis is too much about Trump and not enough about Hillary Clinton. And Trump won because of the

very unique unpopularity that she had. And so I think the smart thing that Biden has done here, one of the smart things he has done here, is sort of not having too many characteristics and allowing himself to just be not Donald Trump. And I think that's a good message. It's especially a good message since the pandemic has hit. And since the social movements that we have seen this spring, the president's response to those has been extremely unpopular. So I think that the timing has made Biden's strategy even more apt than it was previously. But I think basically, the broad message, it's very simply that things are very wrong in the country right now.

And the president is both inept and malevolent in the way that he handles them. And that we should have a president who is normal and does different things. It's a simple message, but I think it is a compelling one. I don't think that it's a situation where you're too in the tank for thinking that that is a good and appealing message. What a relief. Yeah. Look, we all have to see what's going to come at the Republican National Convention next week, and we just wanted to preview for Josh and Naomi. We've been given a secret list of the people performing

who are going to appear, and I think we've got a really interesting list. Roger Stone's Nixon tattoo, Gary Glitter, Louis C.K., Ben Shapiro and the Ben Shapiro Five, a dog that's descended from a German shepherd that tried to bite John Lewis on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. A can of Goya beans, Joe Camel. Thanos. Jordan Peterson.

I'm sorry. Dr. Jordan Peterson. The three... Travis. The three producers who got fired from Ellen. Yes. Patriots. A toilet that can flush a whole bucket of golf balls.

The ramp, Tila tequila, a ventriloquist who a lot of people say looks like Jared Kushner, a can of hairspray from before CFCs were banned. Jared from subway Q. Who is Q? Chevy chase, baby nut,

a barbershop quartet. That's all conservative talk show guys who volunteered to be waterboarded in 2004. Roseanne bar Quinny, the hydroxychloroquine mascot, Andrew dice clay, the guy who does those paintings of Trump scoring a touchdown. I got to keep, I'm skipping. Don't worry. I'm skipping to the end. Martin Shkreli, Joyce Carol Oates' foot, the Babadook's homophobic parents, Eva Longoria, a Herman Cain hologram, Boats, a guy at a Jeep Gladiator

yelling at some day laborers outside of Home Depot. And finally, the keynote, the pillow that was used to murder Antonin Scalia. What a lineup. A cavalcade of stars. A lot of that's pre-taped. Naomi and Josh, thank you both for joining for the panel, but you've agreed

to stick around. So when we come back, OK Stop. Don't go anywhere. This is Love It or Leave It and there's more on the way. And we're back. Now it's time for OK Stop. We are coming to you Thursday night after the Democratic convention. We just watched Joe Biden's speech, and NAR has very quickly to cut together a few key moments from Joe Biden's speech to the convention. And so originally we had hoped there would be kind of one silly, zany, off-book moment. We didn't even get one.

All right. So we're just going to show you some of the key moments. Let's roll the clip. And the president keeps telling us the virus is going to disappear. He keeps waiting for a miracle. Well, I have news for him. No miracle is coming. OK, stop.

I thought this was an interesting line because, I mean, it's true that the president is being overconfident, but it's almost a weirdly pessimistic thing to be saying as a candidate. Right. Like, you know, don't believe in miracles. It's funny because the line worked, although it's like if you read it on paper, it feels like it shouldn't work. I loved it. I loved it. Whenever he was like dark and negative, I said, honey, it's day 160 of quarantine. You feel me. Yeah. Okay.

He is cutting the crap. He's like, we have to work. We have to do this. Oh, I definitely, I, I,

I, Josh, I had a similar reaction. I, I thought there was another sentence. There was, seems to be that there was a missing sentence after there will be no miracle, but we're coming. Right. Something good is coming. Well, I mean, the funny thing, and to the extent Donald Trump loses this election, he and Republicans are going to convince themselves

forever that everything was fine until the pandemic and he was going to win if this completely unforeseen thing hadn't happened to him and the Chinese hadn't done this. But then I think it's also when the president says that we might get a vaccine around November, that's to a first approximation, correct. We may see one or more vaccines approved by the end of this year. I don't think they're necessarily going to be a silver bullet, but it's quite possible the timing of this is going to be that the interventions are going to be quite effective starting in the first half of 2021. And it's kind of going to make Joe Biden look like a genius, even if a lot of this stuff is stuff that he had no particular responsibility for. So I think things will be a lot better next year than this year. And Joe Biden will have the good fortune to preside over that if he wins,

which I think he will. And so I think that it'll be, you know, that the miracle such as it is will come, but not this year. We lead the world in confirmed cases. We lead the world in deaths. Our economy is in tatters with Black, Latino, Asian American, Native American communities bearing the brunt of it. And after all this time, the president still does not have a plan. Okay, stop. One of the sort of striking realities of this convention, it really sort of, I don't know, something that was occurring to me again and again is we're making an obvious case. Right. We're making a trivially obvious case.

It is a sad, you know, somebody pointed out today that Donald Trump's approval rating last year was about, you know, the economy is growing. They're creating jobs. They've no one's ever heard of the pandemic. His approval rating is 41, 42 percent. We're here a year later. Society has been brought to its knees. Life has been upended.

Incredible horror and suffering, incredible pain. And he's still living at 41, 42%. And it is a stark part of our politics that we spend all this time trying to convey really simple, really trivial observations when there are so many Republicans themselves who would agree with us but can't because, well, it's just not good for business. Well, and the remarkable thing to me is certain aspects of what he has done this year,

his numbers are even worse than his overall approval numbers. But it doesn't seem to move his general job approval. People will say, oh, he's not handling the pandemic well. He's not handling race relations well. His approval numbers still, as you note, stay in the low 40s. Maybe Biden has gained a point or two in the horse race polls, but not a sea change. And so it is amazing to me how, like, for three years, not that much happened. I mean, obviously, there's always things happening, but it was, aside from the controversies the president himself caused, it was actually a fairly uneventful first three years of this presidency. And then we have gotten a deluge of news in this last year with really negative events happening that he's gravely mishandling.

It is amazing to me how little that has actually affected his political fortunes. And again, I think that there's going to be this idea that Biden only won because of the pandemic, when in fact, because of those poll numbers that were so stable and not good all the way through, I think it's very likely that he would have won anyway, even if this stuff hadn't happened. Look, I understand. I understand how hard it is to have any hope right now. On this summer night, let me take a moment to speak to those of you who have lost the most. I have some idea how it feels to lose someone you love. I know that deep... Okay, stop.

You know I cannot rewatch this part, okay? Because when Joe starts to... When he glistens, okay? When those eyes start glistening, I see that touch of pink. I just want to hold him close. I want to hold him close because I can feel it. I can feel what he's going through.

He is connecting with us. He is saying, I am a man. He says, I'm a white man, but I hurt too. And that's something we needed to hear. Okay. Well, we're going to have to, I can't edit the clip in real time, so we're just going to have to hear some more of it.

Okay. I know that deep black hole that opens up in the middle of your chest and you feel like you're being sucked into it. Yes. I know how mean and cruel and unfair life can be sometimes. Thank you.

But I've learned two things. First, your loved one may have left this earth, but they'll never leave your heart. They'll always be with you. You'll always hear them. And second, I found the best way through pain and loss and grief is to find purpose. Okay, stop. Everyone says this, but it is such a remarkable contrast between the depth of empathy that you get from Joe Biden and what you get from the president. And it's weird because I wouldn't

ordinarily, that wouldn't be the top of my list of qualifications for somebody to be president. It's certainly a good personal quality, but I think in this moment, it really connects with people that he's a human being with feelings. Yeah. And people would like that right now as compared to this, in addition to all the substantive ways

the president has mismanaged the country, just like him being such a dick about it the whole time. I think it's a refreshing contrast. I think that's exactly right. He's kind of talking to us again. We don't have our audience. This is a brave new convention. And I think you have to be, you cannot ever let people forget that.

The way we're sitting here, you know, watching this at home by yourself. You ain't seen a person in 42 days. He is talking to everybody, regardless of whether they've experienced a loss or not. And I think just tapping into that. And it's truly what Josh is saying. I think it's the compassion thing. You know, I'm not a big, I'm not a whole like president you want to have a beer with. Like, honestly, I'd never, I should never be able to have a beer with the president.

I shouldn't understand what he's saying ever. Like, I don't get that part. But it is such a contrast to the last, you know, three years of meanness. That was part of what was surprisingly moving about it. I am not a fan of the kind of president as familial figure, president who takes on a bunch of kind of royal qualities, royal state type qualities, not actually monarchical,

not like the King Trump would like to be, but I just mean sort of kind of the pomp and circumstance and the kind of national consoler. That piece of it has never been important to me. But I just mean sort of kind of the pomp and circumstance and the kind of national consoler. That piece of it has never been important to me. In fact, it kind of makes me uncomfortable because I want the presidency to be reduced in its reach. I want it to be seen of as more of a job. It's a really fucking hard job

and it has too many responsibilities and we should have a more honest conversation about the role itself. That said, for me, the last three and a half years, especially in the last six months, forget as a kind of observer of in the last six months forget as a kind of observer of politics i mean like as a citizen like for me being told by scientists and experts wear the mask don't leave the house it's the right thing to do and not having a

president say thank you like hey for everybody who's not doing what the instagram gays are doing just kidding hey hey instagram gays i'm just kidding kidding. It's not. I shouldn't call you out specifically. Actually, there's no evidence there's any extra gay fun right now. I just want you to know that I take it back completely. I don't mean it. I love you. They gonna come for your ass.

You know I love you, Insta gays. Just check out what Instagram gives me through its algorithm. They know I love Instagram gays. But what was I talking about? Oh, yeah. A know I love Instagram gays. But what was I talking about? Oh, yeah, a president who says, fucking thank you. Thanks for the work you're doing.

It's important. I'm supporting you. We're part of this thing together. Like, there was legitimate, practical value to having those qualities. That's all. That was my dumb point. Got sidetracked by the Instagram gays, per usual.

We have a great purpose as a nation to open the doors of opportunity to all americans to save our democracy with passion and purpose let us begin you and i together one nation under god unite our love for america united in our love for each other okayaddy. Yes. I would never. I don't really feel that way about him. But again, it is that. It is the fire. It's the passion. It is this like, again, he's laid this foundation.

He's like, okay, let's cut the crap. Stuff is tough right now. But if we all work, physically showing up to vote, as well as everything that comes after that we can get out of this i don't need anyone blowing smoke and being like we've we're the best country and everything's fine all the time and it's like you don't know my life you're just saying some crap and i just felt like he was like he was giving us the real and galvanizing in a way that i feel like i haven't seen him he's he's always felt low energy to me. And I say low energy in the way that like, I want the sense that my president is on top of shit.

You know what I'm saying? Spinning all them plates, boo. And I have never seen that until I vote like tonight. I don't want to see him spin plates. Yeah, this was fiery. And it's another example where like the president set expectations so low for Biden. Like you go around calling him Sleepy Joe for months and basically say he's going to drool all over himself.

And this performance was actually good, but it was it was it was so much better than that indicated that it made it even more effective because you have all these people. And it's the same line that you had from the Bernie Sanders people during the primary, basically about how he'd lost a step and everything. And then when he comes out and gives a merely good performance, it looks great because of those expectations. Absolutely. Absolutely. For love is more powerful than hate. Hope is more powerful than fear and light is more powerful than dark. This is our moment. This is our mission.

May history be able to say that the end of this chapter of American darkness began here tonight as love and hope and light join in the battle for the soul of the nation. And this is a battle we will win and we'll do it together. I promise you. Swoon. Yeah. Swoon City, he promised. I'm also surprised just how emotional I've been throughout this week,

just how I can be sentimental. I'm a sentimental gay. I am. I'll cry at surprising movie ends, like unexpected moments, really midway through a movie sometimes. But I was surprised over the course of this week realizing that, like, oh, I haven't – this is a real collective experience for a lot of people. It's our first big national political event that actually recognizes that we're in a state of crisis that's honest about it, that deals with the pain, that helps people process it. Josh, final thoughts on the convention. What surprised you?

I was surprised that it worked as well as it did in this format. And not all of it worked well. There were parts of it, if you actually tried to watch it gavel to gavel, where it was terrible Zoom audio and things that already would feel low energy in a regular convention that are sapped of that audience. But I thought there was a risk that it would have like this kind of cable access feel and that it would be sad, not just from the content, but because of the production quality. And I thought that it did a good job of adapting to the circumstances and actually put forward a compelling case in a very difficult format. Naomi, any final thoughts?

Anything surprise you? Well, you know what, honey? I was very nervous when Andrew Yang opened. I said, I need a hot opener. Give me fire. But then they really came back. They bounced back for me. You know I'm kind of feeling Papa Joe now.

I will say I don't need your granddaughters talking about ice cream. I get it. You're a family man. The whole ice cream back and forth had to go. We didn't need that. We could have, we could have ended on time. We could have ended on time.

Okay. But, um, I like, but, but I, but I felt it. I felt it in my bones.

Yeah. I kind of like the ice cream thing. I mean, it's basically, it's just another way of emphasizing that Joe Biden is a normal person. Yeah. Um, like he likes ice cream.

I like ice cream. I'm like Joe. I just like i just like all these family videos about like how how jill was introduced to the boys and how seriously they took it and like next week you're gonna have uh ivana trump telling the story of like we went skiing once and i got to the bottom of the hill too fast so he divorced me and like and and like eric trump being like i'll never forget when dad introduced us to melania he said uh if she signs she's gonna be your mother like oh gross josh barrow naomi ekperigan thank you so much for being here thank you thank you

friend we come back emily heller returns to play a game. And look, it seems hard to imagine a certain segment doesn't get forced on me. That's all I'll say. That's all I'll say. Hey, don't go anywhere. There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up. And we're back. On Monday, the DNC went live inside a PowerPoint presentation where the role of Clippy was performed by Eva Longoria. Now, Emily, I think Eva did an incredible job.

Genuinely, I will die on this hill. I was skeptical about having kind of Hollywood celebrities kind of leading the convention. But then when you actually see it in practice, it's like, oh, you really need a person with like real tv presence and charisma and i thought she did a phenomenal job of kind of being the master of ceremonies i thought that tracy ellis ross also did a phenomenal job and i was really glad that we had like true kind of people that know tv and are good on tv to kind of do that difficult task of like managing

the various emotional highs and lows and moving through the process i will defend them from the marco rubios of the world till with my dying breath emily but this is not the first time eva has taken on a tough role in an over-the-top drama that in lesser hands would have been a mess and of course we're talking about desperate housewives in fact emily we don't think you'll be able to tell the difference between Eva Longoria's performance as Gabby in Desperate Housewives and her role as the emcee in the Democratic National Convention in a game we're calling Desperate Housevotes. I think I watched two seasons of Desperate Housewives, and I'm really glad that that was not in vain. Here's how it works. I will say a quote from Eva Longoria, and Emily, you will have to tell us if she said it during the DNC or as Gabby on Desperate Housewives.

Are you ready? I'm as ready as I will ever be. We're not going to focus on what's wrong. We're going to talk about how to make it right. DNC. Correct. We understand that things are tough right now economically. DNC because everyone on Desperate Housewives was rich all DNC. Correct. We understand that things are tough right now economically. DNC because everyone on Desperate Housewives was rich all the time.

Correct. I have read the Constitution and it does not protect ugly people. Um, it has to be Desperate Housewives, right? You got it. We have to think about more than one party. Oh my God, that could easily be either one of them. Um, I think that that easily be either one of them. I think that that was the DNC.

Desperate Housewives. Desperate Housewives. Correct. I think there's nothing more difficult for us as moms than to see our children suffer. Ooh, DNC? Correct. I've been homeschooling my daughter and it's been a living hell. Desperate Housewives. Correct. If it comes up in school, Paul Revere was never president.

Desperate Housewives. Correct. This isn't about me. This is about our great nation. DNC. That was your first incorrect answer. It was from Desperate Housewives. Here's the full quote. This isn't about me. This is about our great nation. DNC. That was your first incorrect answer. It was from Desperate Housewives. Here's the full quote. This isn't about me. This is about our great nation. And I have no intention of sexually satisfying a man who isn't willing to stand up for and help spread the ideals and values of the United States of America.

Who is she sexually rejecting in that quote? I don't know. You're the fan. I've never seen Desperate. I have. Look, I never. I don't know. You're the fan. I have never seen Desperate. I have never. I don't know. You've never seen Desperate Housewives? John, what are you doing? I just didn't miss it. I missed it.

I watch certain things and not others. That's life. That's life in the content game. I don't know how that series ended, but it started so strong. And I think you'd be really into it. It's soapy and it's fun. And if you've ever been on the Universal Studios tour, you've seen where they live. I have.

This is our chance to unite across America. DNC. Correct. It's a scary thought and I'm sure a lot of farmers feel the same way. That was the DNC. Correct. We really want to join you and help with that diversity thing. Desperate Housewives.

Correct. Wow, wow, wow. It was either right after Michelle Obama's speech or when she saw the teenage gardener with his shirt off on Desperate Housewives. Sure, I'll give it to you. It was the DNC. Nobody cares about virginity in this country. It went out of style in the 50s. And trust me, honey, it ain't making a comeback. Desperate Housewives. Sure, money can buy happiness.

That's just a lie we tell poor people to keep them from rioting. Desperate Housewives. Correct. That's why I love America so much. Anything is possible, especially for pretty girls who aren't afraid to kiss a few ugly guys. Desperate Housewives. You got it. Yes. What a performance. ugly guys. Desperate Housewives. You got it. Yes. What a performance. Only one wrong. One wrong. One wrong. Emily Heller, you've won the game. Yes. When we come back, we'll be joined by Senator Brian Schatz. Schatz, Schatz, Schatz. Don't go anywhere. This is Love It or Leave It, and there's more on the way. Love It or Leave It is brought to you by the Cash App. Cash App is the simplest way to transfer money from one user to another. We love using it because it doesn't charge monthly fees or fees to send and

receive money. There's also an option to secure a free debit card that allows users to make transactions and withdraw the money that they have in their Cash App account. If you download the app and use the promo code CROOKED, you'll receive $10 and Cash App will send $10 to DonorsChoose, which is helping teachers in the classroom. We love the Cash App. Simplest and easiest way to pay people back or get paid back. You'll get $10. $10 goes to classrooms. Put in the code Crooked.

We're switching to the Cash App. And that's it. And we're back. He is a U.S. Senator from the state of Hawaii. Please welcome back Senator Brian Schatz. Thanks, John, for having me. Thanks for being here. So we are recording this.

It is Wednesday night. We just watched speeches by President Barack Obama and our vice presidential nominee, Kamala Harris. I guess I wanted to start from sort of stepping back. To your mind, what is the goal of the Democratic National Convention? Why do we do this with social distancing without it? What is the goal of this? And what are you hoping people watching take from it? Unity. I mean, that is the number one goal of any convention. I used to be the party chair

in the state of Hawaii, which is surprisingly difficult because it's just Democrat on Democrat violence. And so we have to kind of work to unite all the tribes of the Democratic Party. And I think the feeling we had in 2016, as inspired as we were to beat Donald Trump and as thrilled as we were about our candidate, we just knew the family hadn't worked out its own stuff. What I really like about this convention

is that there's very little of that kind of drama. You can sort of quibble with production value, or you can say, hey, so-and-so should have had more time, and why is that guy on TV? Fine. But the main thing is that as we start to communicate with those voters who are not like us, which is to say people who are living their lives and only now beginning to engage in the question in front of them about the presidency, they want to know that the party that is proposing to oust the president knows what they want to do and why. And this feels clean and good on that level. If you can hit a couple of additional marks like generate enthusiasm and have a few viral moments and raise tens of millions of dollars. That's great. But sort of job one is to not come stumbling out of it, still fighting with

yourselves. In terms of what we're actually trying to do to reach those people who may be tuning in for the first time, you know, one of the things we've talked about on Pod Save America is whether it's worth it to spend time building the case against Trump when, you know, we've been talking about Donald Trump nonstop for years, or if it is still needed, right, if it is still necessary to be part of the case that we're making. I think tonight, we saw in Barack Obama's speech, a really sort of stunning critique, not that he hasn't, you know, I think the media forgets that he campaigned in 2018. But in its seriousness, there was an incredible amount of emotion to his voice. Yet at the same time, I do think a lot of this convention is about reaching the people who know

Trump is bad and are seeing whether or not they're willing to go along with Joe Biden as an alternative. How are you thinking about that? The balance between the positive case and the negative case? Yeah, I guess I think like if you're running for city council or something, or frankly, you know, I ran for lieutenant governor, the goal there is like they need to know your name and they need to know like one or two good things about you. But the presidency is a different question. And most voters are capable of holding multiple thoughts in their own brain.

And so I think it's a little bit of a false choice to say, should we make the case against Trump or the case for Joe Biden, Kamala Harris? We really got to do both. We don't want to continue to say the same thing to the same people. And so those arguments that are most attractive to me in terms of being terrified about Donald Trump getting another four years may not be the ones that persuade certain voters to move over to our side. And there may be more mundane stuff like your mail's not getting delivered, right? Or they're literally trying to take away your health care during a pandemic. And so it may not be the stuff where we see

he's violating the emoluments clause, he's destroying American institutions, he appears to be in direct consultation and coordination still with agents of the Russian government. that's not moving a lot of additional votes. But there are still plenty of people who see his presidency and are open to persuasion about why he's so bad. And I, you know, the pollsters are sort of like, well, are you motivated to oust Trump or put in Biden? What a dumb question. I mean, of course people are motivated to oust Trump. And of course, anger is one of the best political emotions out there. Outrage is absolutely the appropriate way to feel. The question is whether you turn it into political action.

So, you know, to your point about appealing to people that may not approach these issues the same way as those of us who pay attention incredibly closely all the time. There's been this debate about the role Republicans have played at the convention. How do you think about that? Because there is this sort of dueling need to appeal to moderates and also to appeal to base voters, young voters who maybe don't feel like

the Democratic Party is progressive enough, fights hard enough. I'm with you. I think we're in the vote-getting business right now. We got 60 to 70 days to get as many votes as we can. And if Colin Powell or John Kasich or whomever, Meg Whitman, if they want to come in and say, we'll be part of your coalition, that's great. Now, that's a different question from saying, we'd like you to help us govern in a sort of power-sharing arrangement. That's a no. you to help us govern in a sort of power sharing arrangement? That's a no. But to be fair to them,

to be fair to these rock ribbed Republicans, they're not expecting that. Now, they may belly ache once we end up doing a bunch of progressive things upon winning, knock on wood. But to have them on stage reaching out to, you know, a sliver of voters that might be open to someone like Colin Powell, I think it's all to the good. And it would be different if we were only doing that. I think one of the things that Biden has gotten not enough credit for is coalition building. He is a senator, senator. And he knows that what you do if you want to pass a bill is you kind of get all the different stakeholders and you get working groups and you like hammer it out. This is boring stuff, right? Except that we now have the most ambitious climate plan ever from a presidential candidate. And we have covered the waterfront ideologically so that the Sunrise Movement is stoked. AOC was on board. I'm thrilled. Sheldon Whitehouse is thrilled.

We now have a climate plan that actually stands a chance of both mobilizing voters and being enacted. And that's because he did the work of coalition building. So if he didn't do that coalition building to kind of stitch together everyone from Bernie to, you know, Doug Jones, then it might be more worrisome that you stick Colin Powell on stage. But he did all the work. And that's why, you know, we have a movement here. I love what Kamala said, which is that this is really not about Joe and Kamala. This really is a movement. A buddy of mine always says a movement is faith in strangers.

That's what this feels like. This feels like, hey, this, you know, I'm a climate guy. I didn't come to politics caring about Black Lives Matter. And now I'm all in for Black Lives Matter. And now people who care about civil justice and racial justice are like, I get it. Climate is a racial justice issue. And that's what they mean by movement building, so that the movement is strong enough to buoy Joe and Kamala and all of the Senate candidates and all the down ballot people. But to actually get all this stuff done is what I think excites the base the most.

One of the things that Kamala said in the speech that I felt the same way that I thought, especially the closing of the speech was incredibly moving and uplifting. And it was, I think, a very heavy night on the whole. And President Obama's speech was incredibly searing. And then Kamala spoke, I think, in such a hopeful way. She talked about, we'll talk not about how we felt, but about what we did. The case that Barack Obama made, that Bernie made, that Michelle made, that Kamala made, these were incredibly clear, cogent, and in many ways, brazenly obvious cases, right? We are not in Milwaukee. I'd be eating cheese curds right now. Maybe I could have gotten you to come and meet me for cheese curds at Culver's. It's possible in Milwaukee.

But we're stuck at home. There's no crowd. You are in the Senate. And one thing that has been striking to me is one of the sort of most depleting aspects of these past few years is we have this debate. A lot of your Republican colleagues agree behind the scenes, right? A lot of this is kind of a dance of people pretending to disagree with the critique that Barack Obama made tonight of Donald Trump's unfitness.

And in many ways, that's discouraging. It is discouraging to have to make this argument when so many people are pretending not to agree with it. How do you reckon with that? How do you grapple with that? Especially as we head to the homestretch, it's kind of endless, like this sort of the bludgeoning of this political argument that is so clear, so obvious as the pandemic's unfolded? I have turned my attention totally away from

my Senate colleagues. Now, if there's a time to negotiate a COVID relief bill, obviously we'll engage as appropriate because people are desperate. But generally speaking, the idea that, you know, some number of Republicans are going to come in and save the Republicans, some sort of bipartisan coalition. It's just been destroyed by the evidence of the last three and a half years. And so I just think we have to focus on those people who didn't turn out last time, who voted for the Green Party last time. And most importantly, those people whose lives have been made worse by Donald Trump. Like you don't have to get too high of an altitude here and become a constitutional scholar to say he's screwing up the big things, right? The big things are the pandemic and the economy and health care and the environment and the conduct of a president which sets a tone for the whole country.

He's screwing up all of the things that matter on the most basic level for the presidency. And so you don't even have to get into an argument about some of the other stuff that we deeply care about, like the Supreme Court and everything else. But if we're going to win over certain parts of Maricopa County, if we're going to win over Florida, if we're going to win over Florida, if we're going to win the industrial Midwest, North Carolina, then I don't think we need to say very much more than the test of this president was how he would manage the pandemic from a humanitarian standpoint, from a healthcare standpoint, and from an economic standpoint. And the guy's not up to this job. And

not only that, but you literally couldn't wake up every morning and come up with a worse plan and have someone execute. Like, John, if you sat every morning and said, how can the president screw this up maximally today, and sent it over and they did it, it wouldn't be any worse than what they're currently doing. What a terrible thought. I just hope I wouldn't be creative enough to come up with what they've done. Yeah. But it's the old the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. Yeah. I think we have to stay united and basically prosecute the case against this president on the main thing that is happening to all of us, which is he's failing in keeping us safe and he's failing in allowing us to have some semblance of an operational economy or society.

Do you think we'll get money through to help the post office, save the post office, make sure that DeJoy can't pull out any more sorting machines and sell the parts? Yeah, I do think we will be able to provide resources to the post office. But understand that the post office does not need more money in order to deliver the mail on time in the next 90 days. They are using these fake budget numbers because as you know, there's a statute that requires that the post office and only the post office prepay healthcare and pension benefits for the next 75 years with cash, which no agency has to do and which, which no agency has to do and which no private sector company has to do. So they make it look like it's a dog financially. And then they make it like, oh, you're going to get them $25 billion so they can break even.

They don't need to break even. They are a public service like the DOT or the DOE or the DOD. And so all we have to do is block DeJoy from dismantling and removing postal infrastructure. We made some progress this week, but I think these next two hearings are going to tell us a lot about whether they're full of shit or not. Yeah. Well, I guess it's more about the money as a means of setting guardrails and making sure that they're not using the financial liabilities of the post office to cut hours, to mail trucks, leave empty, et cetera? Yeah. Listen, I think we will eventually win on this question. I would just say, yes, money is important, but we actually need statutory guardrails which say you may not remove sorting machines. Yeah, yeah. I mean, this makes sense,

right? And they've always done it this way, that they prioritize the ballots, right? That it's preposterous. And I do think this is a situation where, sure, the actions of Congress are important, but the noise made out there in the public is really what DeJoy responded to. And the Board of Governors of the Postal Service kind of freaked out and said, hey, DeJoy, what are you really doing here? But I wouldn't put it past them to be lying. So we need to find out whether or not they're going to follow through on backing off. Senator Brian Schatz, thank you so much for taking the time. Really appreciate it. I appreciate it. Thanks, John. When we come back, we'll end on a high note.

Hey, don't go anywhere. There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up. end on a high note. Hey, don't go anywhere. There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up. And we're back. Because we all need it this week, here it is, this week's high note submitted by you, our listeners. Hi, I'm John Costage from near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And my high note is that my friend Nikki Merritt won the runoff election in Georgia for State Senate District 9. Here we go to the general. Hi, Lovett. It's Shannon in Virginia, and I just wanted to say my high note this week is that I applied to be a poll worker, and they said it'll take a long time to get back to me because they have 10 times the amount of applications that they normally have.

Hi, I love it. It's Catherine from Ohio. I decided to call Latino that I had another sequence that I called my mom. And she is taking a virtual anti-racism class through our local church. And she said that there was about 20 people that logged in, and majority of them were over 40. And it was just really exciting and really exciting to hear. So just wanted to share that with you. Thanks. Bye. Hi, Lovett. This is Shannon calling from Arizona. And I just got done watching Vice President Biden's speech and I'm just so fired up for the election.

I want to encourage everyone to sign up for Arizona. Adopt Arizona as your state. It is hot and dusty here. We have no rain. It is sad. We are miserable. Please, please. My high note is for all of you who have decided to help get Mark Kelly elected here. So thanks a lot. Thanks, everybody who sent in those high notes. If you want to leave us a message about something that gave you hope, you can call us at 424-341-4193. Thank you, Emily Heller, for joining us, as always. Before we let you go, any final thoughts, any closing thoughts on the Democratic Convention? Yeah, I mean, I think that for the first time

in a while, I've been feeling something other than just absolute horror and dread. I think that the convention has been doing what we wanted it to do, which is fill us with hope.

But I know that it's hard right now because everyone wants to just fast forward to fall and there's stuff to do now and that's truer it's true in politics and you know what it's true in the garden it's 100 degrees outside right now come on it's too hot for me to do the gardening work that really needs to get done but if you don't get out there and weed the weeds will take over even though it's hot outside and if you want to reap the rewards and fall it it's not even a theme song.

You don't play the theme song. It's Emily's garden show for the garden things. You need to know if you want to talk soil, she's your girl. It's Emily's garden show. That was too produced. How did that get produced? Who produced that?

That had fucking backing vocals. What's going on here? It was really, I've lost control. Thank you everybody for listening. 73 days until the election. Sign up for Vote Save America right now to defeat Donald Trump, keep the House, win back the Senate. Thank you to Senator Brian Schatz, Naomi Perrigan, Josh Barrow and Emily Heller, I suppose.

Thank you. I think we all just want fall to be here sooner. And that's to our grocery workers, and that's no less true for gardeners than it is for voters. Delivery people, restaurant workers, flight attendants, teachers, administrators, everybody out there working during this pandemic. Thank you to our doctors, nurses, EMTs,

first responders, and thank you to our whole staff at Crooked Media working to keep this show going out and crooked going strong. And happy birthday to our researcher and writer, Peter Miller. And to uh, to all the hellers angels out there. Thank you as well. Uh, you know what? Play the full Emily's garden theme again. Play it again. Let's hear it again. It's Emily's garden show for the garden things you need to know. If you want to talk soil, to know. If you want to talk soil, she's your goyle. It's Emily's Garden Show. From lettuce to tomato, dirt and sun and the water flow. She's here to help your plants get real big. It's

Emily's Garden Show. If there's one thing we've learned from the protest outside Louis DeJoy's house, it's that personally annoying one single man who's standing in the way of the thing that you want is worth it. So keep showing up to Love It's House. Keep showing up. Do not come to my fucking house for Emily's Garden Show. Do not listen. That will not end well. We haven't talked about your landscaping, so I don't even know what's going on over there.

If you've got permeable watershed features built in or not yet. The show's over. Everybody go have a great weekend. Have a great weekend. We're done. We're done. We're done. See you at the RNC. Go to his house and tell me what's going on with his rain chains. Love It or Leave It is a Crooked Media production. It is written and produced by me, John Lovett, Elisa Gutierrez, Lee Eisenberg, and our head writer and the president of the East Side or Biden writers, Travis Helwick. Jocelyn Kaufman, Alicia Carroll, 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 McClain 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.