No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Democrats score big infrastructure win and suffer major Virginia loss

Episode Date: November 7, 2021

The infrastructure bill finally passes the House. Virginia's election results are in -- we discuss Democrats’ losses and how we can fix it moving forward. Brian interviews actor Bradley Whitford about a new documentary he produced about Ady Barkan called "Not Going Quietly." And FOX LA host Elex Michaelson joins to discuss the chaos surrounding Democrats trying to get their agenda passed and the messaging issues that led to Tuesday’s election losses.Donate to the "Don't Be A Mitch" fund: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/dontbeamitchShop merch: https://briantylercohen.com/shopYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/briantylercohenTwitter: https://twitter.com/briantylercohenFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/briantylercohenInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/briantylercohenPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/briantylercohenNewsletter: https://www.briantylercohen.com/sign-upWritten by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CASee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today we're going to talk about Democrats finally passing the bipartisan infrastructure package, along with the election results in Virginia, some reasons that might explain Democrats' losses and how we can fix it moving forward. I interview Bradley Whitford about a new documentary he executive produced about Adi Barkin called Not Going Quietly, and Fox LA host Alex Michelson joins to discuss the chaos surrounding Democrats trying to get their agenda passed and the messaging issues that led to Tuesday's election losses. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie.

Well, it is Infrastructure Week, like actually Infrastructure Week. The thing Trump promised for four years and couldn't manage to do, Democrats just got done in less than one. The House has passed the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package that had already passed the Senate, meaning it now goes to Biden's desk for his signature, if he hasn't already signed by the time you listen to this. Now, as far as progressives have been concerned, this bill, the BIF, the bipartisan infrastructure framework, needed to be linked with the Billback Better Act, the social spending program. While they didn't pass together, Progressives secured a vote on a procedural rule to line up the passage of the Billback Better Act in the House.

The good news is that the Billback Better Act will be passed out of the House by November 15th, according to the text of that rule. The bad news is, once it's out of the House, it still has to go through the Senate, where Mansion and Cinema could still take a chainsaw to it. Maybe this good faith agreement by Progressives to pass the infrastructure bill will be enough to placate those moderates? I hope that's the case. but we'll have an answer to that in a few weeks.

And I know a lot of people are saying, you know, just take the win. Democrats need something. First of all, we don't need something. We needed something prior to last week when Democrats got beaten Virginia in a race where they were asking voters to cast ballots for them after six months of dithering. And I'll dive into Virginia momentarily. But where did this sudden sense of urgency come from? We've been screwing around for months, but now suddenly today we have to pass the infrastructure bill

and not the billback better act? But we need a win. Okay, well, then let's pass the entirety of Biden's agenda. That will be a win. Yeah, but we need a win right now, and we can get that with infrastructure. Right, but if we pass that bill, then there's no leverage on moderates to pass the Billback Better Act. So would you rather have a 50% win today or a 100% win in two weeks?

Again, I'm not sure where the arbitrary deadline of today comes from, especially if Biden's ultimately undermined if his billback Better Act gets completely gutted. Now, this might all be moot if those moderates actually do. do manage to pass the Bill Back Better Act, and again, dear God, I hope they do, because at this point, our leverage is gone, so we're just relying on the good faith of Joe Manchin and Kirsten Cinema, so yeah. Now, with that said, having passed this infrastructure bill unto itself is a big deal. It is the biggest infrastructure investment in nearly a century, offers funding for bridges, transit, including zero emissions buses, Amtrak and rail repairs, EV charging stations, funds to

purchase electric school buses, ports, airports, safe drinking water, replacing lead pipes, broadband internet access, modernizing the electricity grid. The White House is projecting that this will add nearly two million jobs per year for the next 10 years. And so we can acknowledge how historic and transformative the bill to just pass is, while also recognizing the need for the billback Better Act to pass two. Both of those can be true at the same time. I just want to read some lines from this election victory speech. Quote, we are going to fix our inner cities and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals. We're going to rebuild our infrastructure, which will become, by the way, second to none,

and we will put millions of our people to work as we rebuild it. Oh, and that speech was delivered in 2016 by Donald Trump. He spent four years saying he would get infrastructure done and never did. Democrats got it done in 10 months. Something to remember, if anyone ever bothered to ask a Republican, why they didn't vote for this thing that their deity ran on. Republicans love the slogans, but when it comes time to actually enact some of these measures that would actually help people, more important for them is hurting Joe Biden than

helping Americans. Okay. Now, moving on to Virginia, here's my attempt at trying to diagnose some of what went wrong in the Virginia election after Democrats lost their races for governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general, along with their majority in the House of Delegates. And, you know, I may be way off here. I may not, but I think that it's important now to at least try and figure out what the problems were if we're going to try and come up with some solutions. And first of all, let's go right back to what I spoke about before, which is trying to win despite having failed to pass legislation, despite not showing Americans why they should put Democrats in office. Like, we're in control right now. We have majorities in the House,

the Senate, and the White House. We're almost a year in. And yet, we're still arguing about passing stuff like lowering prescription drug prices, which has the support of 90% of Americans. That's what voters see. Remember, not everyone's tuning in every day. Not everyone's following every inch of negotiations. And so when they do tune in, they're seeing dysfunction. They're seeing an inability to pass even the most popular provisions like lowering prescription drug prices, despite knowing that we have majorities. And just as a side note on that, since some legacy media folks like to think that this is all progressives' fault for being greedy by not just taking the win on infrastructure, that is a bullshit

argument. Biden didn't run on only fixing roads and bridges. That was a part, but it wasn't the whole mandate that he was elected on. Biden was elected because he promised to combat climate change, which is in the Billback Better Act. He promised to extend the child tax credit, which is in the Bill Back Better Act. He promised to fund child care and elder care and universal pre-K and housing and pandemic preparedness and ACA subsidies, college grants, paid family and medical leave, all of which are in the Bill Back Better Act. And granted, not everything that he promised is in the bill, but the point remains of the vast majority of what he ran on is in the bill.

The progressives were the only ones defending that, while two Senate moderates took a chainsaw to it every chance they got. And so progressives had no choice but to link these two bills and stand their ground because we all know that if we just trusted Mansion and Cinema to be good faith partners in this, the bill would end up being, you know, a one-time coupon for $5 off your medication at CVS and we'd call it a day. You can't have 96% of Democrats on board, basically two moderates blocking it, and then claim that it's the progressives who were obstructing. Okay, now onto the messaging front, Republicans made this race in Virginia.

Virginia, a referendum on critical race theory, which is to say on something that doesn't exist in K-12 schools. They managed to make a referendum on a non-existent phenomenon, and they did it with the help of a media that is so desperate to prove that it's not the liberal media, that it falls over itself to legitimize whatever bullshit talking points Republicans put forward. There was one outlet that posed the question in polling about parents having more of a say over what they want their kids to learn in schools. That question is predicated on critical race theory, on teaching something.

something that isn't being taught. And yet the media is happy to whitewash this lie, this non-existent phenomenon, by framing it as an issue of education. When Republicans air disinformation, the media not only fails to rebut it, they actually help Republicans by whitewashing it to sound like a reasonable position. And this isn't even new. Think back to how many times Benghazi was on the front page of every news outlet, because Republicans simply couldn't stomach the idea of four Americans needlessly dying.

And now remind me how many Americans died of COVID, and yet miraculously, no outrage, no calls for investigations, no demands for accountability. And the same media outlets who took the bait when Republicans pretended to be so utterly torn up over four dead Americans don't seem to mind that the GOP has suddenly lost their sympathy. Or what about Hillary's emails? Another front page story on every news outlet. No greater threat to national security than when Hillary Clinton used a personal email for sensitive government business. And yet, when Ivanka Trump sent hundreds of emails to White House aides, cabinet officials, and her assistance using a personal account, that story came and went like a fart in a hurricane. No calls for investigations, no wall-to-wall media coverage, nothing. Why?

Because Republicans weren't dictating that the media discuss it. And so the media didn't discuss it. Because the media doesn't determine its own coverage. They let Republicans and their faux outrage do it for them. And look, it could be all of those things. It could be none of those things. It could be the fact that Glenn Yonkin ran against Terry McAuliffe, and Terry McAuliffe basically ran against Trump. It could be that voters are tired of hearing about Trump and that he's not an effective boogeyman in a state that didn't really see this election as being a referendum on him.

It could be that Republican voters saw the critical race theory argument as, you know, a catch-all or a dog whistle to push back against all things diverse or woke in schools and that simply worked with whites in the base. Or maybe, simply enough, Virginia is a state that's voted the opposite of the party in power, all but one time in the last 44 years and that we shouldn't look that much into it. It could be all of those. It could be some combination. It could be none. But what we do know is that we have work to do.

We have work to do legislatively in terms of passing the bills that Americans expect them to pass, which means both the infrastructure bill and the Bill Back Better Act. And we have work to do with regard to messaging, which means that the Democratic Party has to learn how to go on the offense

and sell the shit out of this stuff instead of just waiting for Republicans to misrepresenting. it and then we desperately go on defense wailing about how, no, this isn't going to double your taxes or raise the cost of milk 10,000 percent or lead to death panels. When elections are about policy, when they're about the concrete ways that the government is able to help you, which the pending legislation would absolutely do, then Democrats win. When the elections are about culture wars and conspiracy theories and lies, then Republicans succeed.

We are on the brink, hopefully, of passing a raft of transform. formative legislation, but that won't mean anything if people don't know what's in it. So I hope that, A, we see this legislation pass in the coming weeks, and B, that Democrats are ready to host ticker tape parades every day from now until November 2020 once they do, because Virginia was the warning, but we have the opportunity right now to fix some of the mistakes that landed us here. Next up is my interview with Bradley Whitford. Today we've got actor and executive producer of the new film Not Going Quietly.

Bradley Whitford, thanks so much for coming on. It's a thrill to be here. I'm glad we could finally make this work. Yeah. So you're involved in the new film Not Going Quietly. That follows the activist Adi Barkin, who was diagnosed with ALS. Now, most people might have been introduced to Adi when he confronted Jeff Flake on an airplane, and that was while Republicans were trying to eliminate the ACA.

Right. Jeff Flake ultimately did vote to repeal. the ACA, but the larger effort failed. So why did you get involved in this project? Why was it important to you? You know, I met Adi. I had heard about Adi in sort of progressive activist circles. Everybody was kind of aware of him. He was part of an effort to reform the Federal Reserve. In fact, Hillary Clinton, before he was diagnosed, she was obviously going to win the presidency. and he was going to be the person. He had pointed out the glaring and obvious fact that there is no one on the Federal Reserve

who represents low-wage workers or unemployed workers. And the decisions they make, of course, affect the entire economy. So I had a vague sense of oddie hearing about that. I had not known about his diagnosis. And I was invited to participate in an action. We were taking on behalf of the dreamers at Senator Feinstein's office in West L.A. And that's where I met Adi. He could still walk at that point.

He could still speak with difficulty. And there was just this glorious, happy warrior aura around this guy. There were a bunch of counter-protesters. who were basically Trumpy, Nazis, anti-immigration people. And Adi said, put me in the wheelchair, get me out front, make him punch the guy with ALS. Yeah. And I immediately fell in love with him. And then I heard, he mentioned that there were Nicholas Bruckman and Amanda Roddy were filming him.

and that he had a record of his life since the diagnosis. I said, you know, I need to see this stuff. And I need to, I want to see this movie. I want this story to be told. I took it to the Duplas brothers who are friends of mine, who know the documentary space and are actually really terrific. You know, the fear with something like Adi is you need to do the subject. justice and the duplas brothers are and i mean this as a compliment fantastic middle school

football coaches it's like all fundamentals it's it's it's like what story are we telling the chalk boards out what story are we telling what's our beginning what's our middle what's our end and uh and then within those that fundamental framework there was a lot of freedom for Nicholas and Amanda to tell the story that the way they wanted to tell it. And I thought, I thought they did it absolutely beautifully because the movie became what I wanted it to be, which is, look, it's not sentimental. There's a great definition of sentiment that I think about a lot. I'm not the Unabomber.

I'm playing Ebenezer Scroo. And the, the thorny subject of sentimentality comes up. And I once heard a great definition of sentimentality, which is telling the audience to have an emotion without actually just taking them there. Adi's story is not a sentimental story. Adi is an incredibly effective activist and thinker. what was amazing is the footage that they have. Adi was so important in making the health care issue flip from a liability, which it shouldn't have been, but which it was politically for the Democrats,

to making it the issue that flip the house. You cannot look Audi in the face and tell us that everybody does not deserve. shouldn't have the right of access to health care in this country. So he's very effective. Well, building on exactly that, you know, the beauty of what Adi is doing, which is effectively fighting until his dying breath, is also, you know, what's so sad about it, because he's dying, he doesn't have a lot of time left.

And there was even a part in the film where he acknowledges that, you know, that the hardest part was missing out on time with his son, and he breaks down. Yes. What are your thoughts on this on reconciling, sharing the time, that he has left between the larger fight and also creating those moments, those memories with his family? You know, it's a brutally difficult choice. There are a few human beings who come along who are able not to transcend their suffering, but to find meaning and actual value in it by

using their suffering to alleviate it for people they don't even know. One of the excruciating choices that someone like Adi needs to make is about whether or not to get on a ventilator. And 90% of people, I believe it's 90% of people with ALS choose not to do that. It means you're never going to eat food again. It means you are probably in this country going to bankrupt. corrupt your family. What's interesting is, and I do believe it, somebody was asking a kind of leading question about sort of how is Adi today with a sort of wince in their voice. And the

truth is, this is a nightmare. Adi does not wish this on anyone. It's an unthinkable level of suffering to go through. But Adi is happy. He is actually wants the world to know that he is happy. And the difficulty, you know, I don't know the difficult discussions. I know his wife is a, Rachel is a, her strength is incredible. I think that she saw the inverse. that Adi got, that Adi has brought back with him to be able to find his voice ironically as

he was physically losing it. But yeah, a horrible, difficult choice to make. Well, now, you know, I mentioned earlier that Adi came into the public consciousness confronting Republicans like Jeff Flake, but Republicans have been universally opposed to expanding health coverage, we're still contending with some Democrats who are presenting themselves as obstacles to some of the most popular health care provisions in the country. So, like, you've got Kierston Cinema who campaigned on lowering prescription drug prices, who's now reportedly the sole obstacle in the Senate to exactly that. So what would your message to those Democrats be, whose priority seems to be this self-aggrandizing, performative contrarianism?

Audie is much more articulate about this than I am. I find what they are doing to be just completely obscene and morally bankrupt, and I find it difficult to find the words to express. That right there is a pretty good way to summarize. My outrage. What Audie would say is we need to let them know, not just that we are horrifically disappointed in them and that they're morally bankrupt, bought.

I mean, honestly, like, I just want to say to Kirsten's cinema, just become a lobbyist. Stop pretending. That way you can make a ton of money and you can continue to do your morally bankrupt thing. What Adi would say is, and what he was saying to Jeff Flake was not your Republican nightmare.

He was saying, be a hero. Imagine what the other side of this is. And he has said this publicly to Mansion and to cinema. Imagine what the political, if you're looking at this politically, the political power of doing the right thing.

I think it's 90% of all Americans. I think it's 80% of Republicans want Medicare to be able to negotiate drug prices. Kirsten Sinema needs to hear that, not just I think you're a morally bankrupt nightmare because it's fun for me to say, I believe it, but it's not helpful. It's something I, as somebody who's involved in these things, I notice it with Stacey Abrams as well. She will speak out strongly, but she's not saying to Joe Manchin, she is trying to show the power of the right choice to take it outside of the partisan framework that is such a trap. And again, Audie said very clearly, Joe Mansion, imagine Virginia with, you know, the Joe Mansion child care centers. People in Virginia all over the place.

Arizona, Kirsten Cinema, imagine what the seniors there, the power you would have. He is capable of doing that. You know, I'll tell you, like, obviously this is no way to govern, but I don't know. I don't know why you don't go to Joe Manchin. Somebody else said this. I think there's 19,000 minor. Yeah. Give me two million bucks.

Yeah, yeah. Put it in the thing. Then tell them Joe Manchin's blocking it. I've seen that going across Twitter. I've heard John Lovett say it. I mean, honestly, it would be a fraction of what the reconciliation. packages, make them all millionaires. Gladly.

Yeah. How big a damn do you want? Yeah. You know, for the sake of the planet, I would make that choice. I do think we are going to get something done. I think it's not going to have the horizon that it should. I think it's going to include I'm actually more hopeful now than I was last week. Now, I want to move over to the Westway.

You played Josh Lyman in the West Wing. This is obviously a role, but a lot of times the actors inform the characters and the characters inform the actors. So do you feel like you have a responsibility to be outspoken like Josh was? Like, is there an expectation of you that because Josh was a political warrior that you should be? No, I grew up in a, I grew up in a Quaker family where friends meeting had a real effect on me. Sunday school at a friend's meeting is basically political activism. The whole point that I picked up being raised Quaker was faith is not a possession or anesthesia to comfort us all.

It's something that needs to be put into action. So I grew up in that. I also grew up in a house where my brother almost went to jail, ended up finally getting alternative service because of his opposition to the war in Vietnam. So the consequences of political choices were there. I've always been, you know, when I was a kid, I would pick up, I wanted to read the political stuff before I wanted to read the sports page. I really truly believe that one of the reasons where there's many reasons why we have minority rule in this country, why everything you and I believe in, at least 60% of the country wants to deal with climate change responsibly, understands that access to health

care is a human right understands that women need to be able to make choices about their own body. We are at the obvious constitutional structural disadvantage, but we're at another disadvantage, I think, which is that the right understands for all their hypocrisy about small government, the right understands something I really truly believe to be true. And that is that government, that politics is the way you create your moral vision. We think it's what I do. Culture. Culture is very helpful.

Culture is very important. Culture informs politics. But will and grace won't help you if you have a preexisting condition. Yeah. And I think that politics is where the rubber meets the road. So, no, it's not some, I don't, you know, because I wore makeup and pretended to work on the White House. In fact, people often ask me if I want to run for office. And my standard answer is I have no capacity to act that much.

Yeah. So what's next for you? What are you working on? I am doing Ebenezer Scrooge. I am having the time of my life. It's this beautiful production. I did Matthew Warchis, who now runs the old Vic in London. He did a play called I did a play called Boeing Boeing on Broadway.

That was one of the greatest experiences of my life. And this production, it's a new adaptation that the old Vic did. And I couldn't speak afterwards. And when the opportunity came up to do it out here, I jumped at it. And we're actually, we're teching it. We're in Spokane, Phoenix, Las Vegas, for God's sake. And then here for the month of December. And it is a beautiful, beautiful thing.

Then I go back to Handmaid's Tale. I'm very lucky. That is the part of a lifetime. That is an incredible creative experience. And I'm going to be able to direct this year, which is terrifying and fun. So I have one last question. And, you know, I'd beat myself up if I didn't ask it. But could you please explain business ethics and how they're applied today?

Business ethics. Yeah. What was his name? Eric? It was Eric, right? Yeah. I know you don't have the gun to wave around right now. But unfortunately, you know, Eric is probably, you know, the ethics advisor for the Republican Party at this point.

It's pretty pathetic. You know, it is really amazing to me. I mean, the fakes thing about West Wing was we had rational Republicans. I mean, we, I think one thing that is very clear and that the press has it quite wrong. wrapped its head around yet is we only have one party. One could argue we have two parties. We have the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. We have the moderate, I call them timid, milk toast wing of the Democratic Party. But the Republican Party is just a bunch of neolists. I mean, it's like the beginning of clockwork orange. They're a bunch of, uh, they're not a functioning party. They have no solutions. Well, and you know, that was actually a question that that I had for you. I didn't know if we'd have time to ask, but you know, a major element of the West Wing is that there were, there were a number of Republicans with whom Democrats could find common ground. And I'm not sure

whether that was just because it was the early 2000s and, you know, we didn't live in today's hellscape or if it was, you know, just Aaron Sorkin-esque romanticism. But, you know, do you think that the show holds up given today's Republican Party? you know we're in a different time i mean uh you know the voting rights bill in i think it was 2006 unanimously you know all republicans voted past the senate 98 to nothing yeah 98 to nothing so it uh you know it did reflect a different time i think one thing the show got right i always felt like Josh's quandary that rang true politically

that the show got right back then was how, and I think about it when I see all the machinations going into this bill now. The question is, how dirty do your feet have to get without disappearing in the mud in order to get an inch

of what you really want? done. And it's very difficult in a functioning democracy. It's even harder in a dysfunctional democracy, which we have right now. You know, and everybody always talks about how Aaron painted this really rosy picture. I didn't think it was unreal to show a president who was surrounded by six or seven people who truly believed in him. I think that was true of Bush. Bush, one, two, Clinton, Trump. That was true.

I think one thing the show got done realistically was showing how difficult it is and how worthy the fight is in spite of the difficulty. I keep saying to young, One of the things they use against us is our own cynicism. And there is no one person, Stacey Abrams says it best. Voting and political participation is not magic. It's medicine.

If Bernie and Adi ran on a ticket and got elected, this would still be very difficult. We would not get everything, you know, everything we want. the problems of systemic racism, systemic inequality, greed, they are chronic issues. And the fight is a permanent one. And we need to find joy in that permanent fight and not get to the point where they want us to get, which is the system's rigged. I don't want to participate anymore. And to get inspiration for that, we have to look at people like,

Nelson Mandela, who was up against a fuck of a lot more than we're up against, who continued to fight. We need to look at all of the civil rights heroes here who were up against brick walls that we cannot imagine. And we need to find, as somebody like Adi does, under the most difficult, unimaginable circumstances, the energy and the joy to fight and to understand that action is the antidote to just. spare when we yeah when we are understandably brokenhearted about where we are right now i think that was perfectly put where can we watch not going quietly um you can watch it go to not going quietly uh com uh you can see it's i um it's on i know it's on um ironically um amazon i mean it was really Buddy, when we were going, you know, like we've got this incredible film and we're going out, like, you know, to these different places. And I remember thinking, and we ended up getting it out. It's available at all these different places, but we got it to the best place we could. Ultimately, it's going to be on PBS, which will, which everybody has access to, but the irony of this appearing on Amazon.

But you can see it on Amazon, but if you go to not going quietly.com, you can see the other places that it's streaming, and it will be on PBS for all to see in January. I really strongly recommend everybody to see it. It's not depressing. Yeah, I mean, I watched this film also, and it was, you know, inspiring and beautiful and compelling in a story that needed to be told. So thank you for, you know, using your platform and your talent to tell it and to be. people watching right now, I would say, you know, watch this film, watch this film, watch this film. Thank you so much. Bradley Whitford, thanks so much for coming on. I appreciate it. My pleasure. It's great to see you. We'll see you in real life. Come to the play. Thanks again to Bradley Whitford. Now we've got my good friend and host of Fox LA's The Issue is,

which airs across the state of California, Alex Michelson, who, by the way, also just had a birthday. So happy birthday, Alex. I know my... Ah, thank you very much. A few days late. but wanted to get it up on here. Thank you. So in the monologue of this episode, I laid out a bunch of reasons that I think contributed

to Democrats' loss in Virginia. And even despite Phil Murphy winning, a poor performance in New Jersey, too. So what do you think it was that ultimately put Democrats in the position that they're in right now? I think ultimately they lost control of the narrative.

You know, a lot of politics is determining what are the issues and highlighting the issues that really matter to people's lives. Obviously, Terry McCullough's comments about, you know, we don't want parents to have control of what your kids are learning, something to that effect, is not a helpful phrase to be out there. But, you know, big picture right now, the Democrats both nationally and on some of the local levels, you know, are not being very effective at talking about things that really impact people's lives. There can be a lot of discussion about BBB or BIF or, you know, filibuster. or all these different isoteric things

or January 6th commission. But what a lot of people are seeing in their lives every day right now are higher gas prices, higher price of food when they go to buy stuff, harder to get furniture if they got to move somewhere because stuff is delayed. They're seeing rising crime numbers. They're seeing their kids struggle.

Last year was a real struggle for kids doing remote learning and trying to figure that out and fights over mask mandates and vaccine mandates and potential people getting fired over that. And all of that is happening. Meanwhile, you see the Democrats having procedural fights. And there's a disconnect between some of what is being talked about on cable news or on Twitter and what is actually impacting people's everyday life right now.

And so it's a messaging problem for Democrats. And it may be a policy problem for Democrats, too. I mean, look, if you look at the actual aspects of the bills that Democrats are trying to pass, they're widely, widely, widely popular. But because there's such a mess in talking about them and explaining them, most people don't even know what's in them, not to mention the fact that they haven't been passed. Yeah. It's almost like we've squandered what was a good thing.

And it's so muddled right now in terms of the messaging in what is just simple, popular proposals, like lowering prescription drug prices, like offering paid family leave. And now, like you said, I mean, we are just so mired in the bullshit of whether we're going to have it linked, build back better with the bipartisan infrastructure proposal, and whether we're going to allow these procedural hurdles to be overcome, and whether we should, you know, allow one vote to take place before the other. And, you know, what should be a good process because we finally had the opportunity to pass popular, desperately needed legislation has been taken over.

by a pretty shitty outlook when it comes to what we're seeing right now. But just building on what you said, you know, you'd mention that, you know, a lot of this race was about education. Obviously, we saw Republicans tried to make this as much about critical race theory as possible, even despite the fact that critical race theory isn't even taught in K-12 schools, and yet they were effective at that messaging. So how did Democrats take on Republicans when it comes to messaging? Because if we do have a more popular agenda and they are pushing something

That doesn't even exist. Clearly, they're doing something right where they can even overcome the fact that they have a less popular agenda and yet are still succeeding in the messaging front. Republicans have been very, very good for a long time at making emotional appeals to people and also coming up with pretty simple messaging.

I mean, Trump was the best at that. Make America, create it here. Build a wall. Build a wall. I mean, these are all super easy things for most people to understand. and they connect to people on a on a base level. And frankly, a lot of what Trump has done is is about white identity politics at a time where race is a hot topic.

And they have used that to their advantage over the years as well. And so I think that, you know, maybe Democrats need to wake up that the woke stuff isn't that popular in terms of winning elections. And they should focus on what works. I mean, Joe Biden was elected, he was the most moderate of all of the Democrats that were running in the presidential primary. He was running to stop mean tweeting, to be more compassionate, to stop the crazy, and to say that we can do things in a bipartisan way and bring people together. And that messaging can work. But when you lose track of that and you have, you know, stories like what we saw, you know, in San Francisco while schools are shut down and the school board is having. a debate about taking Abraham Lincoln's, you know, name off of a school thinking, you know,

that they're focusing on a woke agenda. People remember that sort of thing. And there are cable news networks that are very good at picking out one or two of these things and then talking about them over and over and over and over and over again. So that's all that these people hear, night after night after night. And Democrats don't like to do that as much. And Democrats also, because they're so focused on sort of the minutia policy weeds within their own party are missing the bigger picture. Most people, frankly, I wish they were, aren't watching my show or listening to your show. I wish they were. You do exceptionally well.

What are the best, you know, highest scoring people on all of the Internet? You are in your space. I mean, what are the top people in the whole Internet? But there are still 299 million people that aren't listening to you. So if you think about it, you know, people need to go into different spaces and start communicating to people on their level and think about what impacts them on a day-to-day basis. What do people really at their gut care about? People that don't pay attention to stuff that much. They want to know that their kids are in a good school.

They want to feel safe when they come home from work and not be worried about their kids or other people being attacked. They don't want to see a bunch of trash on their street. They want to feel good in their community. They want to make sure that they feel like their job is being protected. They don't want to feel like they're being screwed over by other people in the process. And they want to feel like they're getting a fair shot not getting the raw end of the deal. And they want to feel like somebody is fighting for them and fighting for the issues they care about and not completely disconnected from their world.

Now, you had mentioned something that I believe might be kind of contradictory. And that is, you know, to stay away from the woke stuff, but that Republicans are still willing to cherry pick one little instance and then just repeated ad nauseum over and over and over and over again. Is it fair to say that Democrats are being woke if all it takes is one small piece of anecdotal data for Republicans to cling on to to make the entire election about when, you know, really this election wasn't about wokeness more broadly. I mean, Democrats tried to make this election a referendum on the big lie and the election

being stolen and also passing, you know, or attempting to pass the Billback Better Act, which is composed of a bunch of really popular provisions. But in order to do that, you've got to pass it. Yeah, I agree. You've got to put points on the board. And so they'll spend all these months. I mean, you know, and there's a debate about whether it's a good strategy or a bad strategy. But let's paint another thing out there, and you may disagree with me on this.

And I'm not even saying that I agree with this. I'm just throwing this out there as a hypothetical, right? There is a world where the Democrats pass the bipartisan. infrastructure bill in the Senate with a big Republican number as well, people like Mitch McConnell voting for it. And instead of House Progressives saying, we have to pair this with build back better, we're not going to pass it and go back and forth for months and months and months, that Nancy Pelosi brings that to a vote right after it passes in the Senate. And Joe Biden gets a giant win. And he does a big bill signing with Republicans there and Democrats there,

and then Democrats and Republicans can go back to their district and say, this project, this project, this project are all starting because of what we just did and hammer that home. And you see that bridge that's broken, we're fixing it. You see that road that doesn't make sense, we're fixing it. You see that Wi-Fi area where you're not getting good broadband, well, we're putting something in there. And then that could be the argument, the points on the board. Instead, they, you know, trying, and I understand, and there's a, there's a, there's a, an argument for the other side of why you want the leverage and they want the whole thing at

once. But in not doing that, in not giving Biden the win, in not showing that his strategy, which was if I'm elected, I can get both sides in the room and I'm the legislator. I'm the Senate guy. I can get something done. By depriving him of that and depriving the country of a bill that's widely popular, right now, you know, it looks like they're kind of getting nothing. And so they got the worst of all worlds in the process. And it's going to look like the bipartisan infrastructure bill is like limping over the finish line. And they may not even get the political credit for it. And then the rest of it just looks like a mess.

Yeah, I mean, obviously, I think I would disagree with that because the fact is that the Billback Better Act is Biden's agenda. Biden didn't just run on, you know, roads and bridges. I mean, that's a small part of his agenda. But the Bill Back Better Act is the rest of it. Like, we're talking $550 billion for climate change. We're talking hopefully paid family late, hopefully some iteration of lowering prescription drug prices, universal pre-K, child care and elder care.

I mean, these are the major provisions that he ran on. And so it would be a way bigger loss to miss out on that by surrendering progressives-only leverage. I'm not suggesting surrendering. I'm suggesting that the tactics may have been better. I'm suggesting that in politics, a lot of things are based off of momentum, and you've got to ride the wave, right? And they had a wave. They had a moment where they could get on the surfboard and ride that for a little bit.

And they chose to not because they tried to ride the 100-foot wave instead of riding the 15-foot wave, right? And it's a giant bet. Now, if you can catch the 100-foot wave, it's great. But there is an argument to be made that if they would have gotten a win, a win begets another win. I know progressive felt like once Joe Manchin gets his win, he's not going to care, and you give up all your leverage, and then you end up with nothing, and they get the infrastructure, and then we never get child care and the rest of it. And I understand that. But there's also an argument to be made that getting the win on infrastructure might have made it even easier to pass something because Biden's poll numbers could go up and the entire Democratic Party looks perfect.

Yeah, I can see your point. I still think that they were smart, you know, for a party that so often allows itself to be hoodwinked by those on the other side, I think finally for progressives to kind of learn their lesson, so to speak, and when we have these things right in front of us to finally allow ourselves to have the opportunity to win for once, I think, is good. And even if it means we have to wait a little bit longer, that's a tradeoff that we're willing to see. I do want to ask about the idea of disinformation that was obviously very present in this Virginia race. A lot of what we see and what we saw during the election

and more broadly on right-wing media is disinformation. And as a result, Democrats are always just pushing back from behind. They're always on defense, always batting back election theft lies and school curriculum lies and economy lies. Do you think it's even possible for Democrats to confront messaging when the message they're contending with is that much more potent because it's not even couched in reality. Like, think about it.

Of course, Republicans have more compelling stories because they're not restricted by facts or by reality. No, obviously, it's easier when you are just, you know... Not beholden to the truth. It's easier when your message is the government sucks and everybody's horrible. And that's a much easier. message, like Trump does, then we make government work and let's show you how. I mean, it's a harder thing to do. It is. But that being said, the Democrats can and should do a better job of

messaging what they're talking about. They need to make it simpler for people to understand, and they need to get on the same page. And they also need to understand that, you know, progressives and moderates are going to blow themselves out of the water if they don't come together and pass something and pass something pretty fast. Yeah. So do you think that this result that we saw out of Virginia, and yes, even the result that we saw out of New Jersey because we did see a double-digit swing?

Yeah. Do you think that this spells out doom for Democrats in 2022? I mean, I know that you had spoken with Adam Schiff, and he'd mentioned that there was already a correction in the 2020 election, that whereas the party that wins the presidency can usually bring about an even bigger majority in the House and Senate, that didn't happen for Democrats. We already saw that correction because it was Republicans who actually gained seats in the House and Republicans who were able to fend off some serious challenges

in the Senate. But do you buy that? Or do you think that this election result that we saw out of Virginia is more of a harbinger of things to come in 2022? Well, look, every historical precedent would indicate, or almost every historical precedent would indicate that the Republicans are probably going to win the House next year because they have a lot of, and usually the opposition party to the president on the first election, we'll pick up seats. And so you would think, I think most people in Washington, if you talk to them privately, both Democrats and Republicans are anticipating that the Republicans are going to win the House,

which is why there's so much urgency for Democrats do past stuff now. That being said, a lot can change in the year. A lot can change in a few months. And conditions on the ground can change. I mean, look at even the California recall election versus the Virginia governor election, you know, COVID was so much more present in the California recall election a couple months ago because at that moment, the Delta variant was really surging. And you saw tremendous amount of hospitalizations in Florida and Texas at that time.

And so Governor Newsom was able to make, you know, the Republican anti-vaccine mandate, anti-mask mandate agenda, the centerpiece of his race, make that issue. number one in that race, because at that time, that was the number one issue for people. If you were doing that same election now or a month from now, it might not be the number one issue because conditions on the ground have changed. Who would have thought at the start of 2020 that we would have a global pandemic, which would change everything? So there's a long way between now and next November to see what conditions on the ground change and how things shake up. But certainly, you know, Democrats being able to pass their legislation and focus on ways

that actually help people is a big thing. I mean, what Youngkin was able to do also was to sort of take Trump out of the election better than, say, Larry Elder was able to do in California. What we don't know is how much Trump will insert himself in the next year. You know, does Donald Trump, I mean, he stayed away and didn't rally with him and, you know, was able to do a little bit of the dance. You know, does Trump really start running for president? And does he start doing more rallies? Does he make himself more? What's going to come out of this January 6 commission?

What, you know, where does that go? All of those things could could be an impact on whether this, you know, anti-Trump message is more potent. If Trump is really a factor in everyday life, that's a much easier race to run than, you know, think about two years ago. Yeah. And I think just one thing that I picked up on is, you know, we saw, and I'm not trying to equate California and Virginia because I know the electorates are wildly different. But when Democrats were able to make coronavirus, which is a real issue, the centerpiece of that election in California, the differences that Democrats were able to capitalize on it because it was a real issue as opposed to when Republicans are able to steal the oxygen here and make it about critical race theory or whatever other. bullshit culture war issue they like to prop up, well, look at the difference in a race like that. So I think it just shows the importance of Democrats making this about a real issue.

I mean, COVID is an actual issue that's actually impacting people's lives. And when they're able to hammer away at the facts, when it's not just being on defense about critical race theory, about migrant caravans, about whatever it is that the right is going to inevitably prop up, we'll do better. But again, it's just going back to making sure that we have, that we, that we run the show when it comes to messaging. But then Team News from here in California, not getting too into the weeds. I mean, they were able to use a lot of the Republican strategies, too. You know, I mean, they said that Larry Elder was anti-vaccine.

He wasn't anti-vaccine. He's vaccinated himself. He's in favor of people getting the vaccine. He's anti-vaccine mandates. But the ads, it said anti-vax, anti-vax, Larry Elder. They made the election as much as they could also about Donald Trump. They made it about COVID and about Donald Trump. And Larry Elder did make that easy.

Right? No, he made it easier. The candidate made it easier. But, you know, they took aspects of some of that emotional appeal stuff, too. But they just were able to do it in a more aggressive and more effective way. Plus, they had an electorate that was way more Democratic. Well, it would be interesting to see. Hopefully Democrats can look at this and fix some of the mistakes that they have,

whether with regard to messaging or with regard to passing their agenda that they're working. on right now. So with that said, Alex, thank you so much for taking the time. Thank you, Brian. Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, I think a lot of it is just coming up with not only what are you against, but what are you for, and making that so simple, making that a sentence or two, and repeat it over and over and over again and let people understand it on an emotional level and hope that that thing that you pick is in line with things that they're really focused on care about. From your lips to the Democrats' ears. Alex, thanks. That's it for this episode. Talk to you next week. You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen. Produced by Sam Graber,

music by Wellesie, interviews captured and edited for YouTube and Facebook by Nicholas Nicotera, and recorded in Los Angeles, California. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app. Feel free to leave a five-star rating and a review, and check out Brian Tyler Cohen.com for links to all of my other channels. Thank you.