No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Democrats seize on winning formula just in time for 2024

Episode Date: November 26, 2023

Democrats finally seize on a winning formula just in time for 2024. Brian interviews Congressman Jamie Raskin about the Trump disqualification case in Colorado, Speaker Johnson's embrace of the Biden impeachment effort, and how to best engage with hesitant Democrats ahead of 2024.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 seizing on a winning formula just in time for 2024. And I interview Congressman Jamie Raskin about the Trump disqualification case in Colorado, Speaker Johnson's embrace of the Biden impeachment effort, and had to best engage with hesitant Democrats ahead of 2024. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. We've got a pretty seismic update with Democrats finally seizing on a winning formula heading into 2024. So up to now, when abortion rights have been on the ballot, Democrats have won. weeks ago in this off-year election cycle, voters in Ohio voted to enshrine abortion rights

into the state constitution in a state that's been trending away from Democrats for a decade. On the same day, voters in Virginia rejected Governor Glenn Youngens proposed 15-week abortion ban by stripping him of control of both chambers of the state legislature. Pennsylvania voters overwhelmingly elected a liberal state Supreme Court justice in a race that was largely predicated on abortion. So that was the 2023 election cycle. Going back to the midterms in 22, voters in California, Michigan, and Vermont, passed a state constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to abortion.

Voters in Kentucky and Kansas rejected amending their state constitutions to include language opposing abortion protections, and voters in Montana rejected a measure threatening medical workers with criminal charges if they didn't intervene in attempted abortions. All of which is to say, in the nearly dozen elections with abortion, either directly or indirectly on the ballot, Democrats and the pro-choice contingent have won all of them. Their streak is unbroken, regardless of how otherwise conservative a state is. Like from Kentucky to Ohio to Kansas, voters are not here for the GOP's extremism on abortion rights. And so here's the good news.

Now, pro-choice advocates are working to get abortion measures on the ballots in a staggering nine more states in 2024, which would obviously have major up-ballot implications for Democrats. And some of those states are ones in which Democrats desperately need the help. In Missouri, for example, there are currently as many as 11 different amendments taking different approaches to expanding abortion rights in that state with the most promising one, being a constitutional amendment to legalize abortion up to the point of fetal viability. And if it makes it on the ballot, that will coincide with one of the Democrats' only pick-up opportunities in the U.S. Senate. And that's where Democrat Lucas Coontz is taking on

the least popular Republican senator currently running for re-election anywhere in the country. And of course, that's Josh Hawley. There's also an effort in Florida to amend the state constitution to ban abortion restrictions up until fetal viability. And of course, that's another state with a pickup opportunity for Democrats as far as the U.S. Senate is concerned. In Arizona, same situation. They're seeking to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot to create a right to abortion care up until fetal viability. In that state, Republican Kerry Lake will likely be facing off against Democrat Rubin Gallego

in one of the country's closest must-win Senate races for Democrats. In Nevada, advocates are seeking their own constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights until fetal viability and to restrict the ability of lawmakers to undo those protections. And Nevada is yet another state with a close Senate race coming up. And, by the way, the only state where Democrats lost the gubernatorial race, in 2022, making that something of a blinking red light for Democrats. So this ballot measure would be desperately needed. Then we head over to New York, where the measure is already on the 2024 ballot.

That's a sure thing. But this is a state where we expect maps to be redrawn in time for 2024, meaning we could see a swing of as many as six House seats for Democrats, but that's only if people turn out. An abortion measure on that ballot would clearly help accomplish exactly that. And then you add in Maryland, Colorado, and efforts in Nebraska and South Dakota. and Democrats seem to have finally seized on a winning formula ahead of 2024. Because for as much doom forecasting as we're seeing from the media,

the truth is that when abortion rights are on the ballot, Democrats win. Yes, even with Joe Biden as president, old age and all. Because despite the polls, despite the punditry, despite the media coverage writ large, Americans are able to recognize that there is one party out there seeking to strip away your rights and there's another party looking to protect them. That's what's important. We know that the choice here is binary, right?

and while people may be able to recognize that Democrats are not perfect, that these elections don't happen in a vacuum. They are a choice between two parties. And one party is currently trying to strip you of your bodily autonomy, and people tend to recognize that when they're casting their ballots. So as long as Republicans want to continue plowing ahead with their extremist policies, Democrats should make sure that this question is put in front of as many voters in as many states as possible. And luckily, they're not only doing that in 2024, but they're doing it in states where the stakes could not be higher. Next up is my interview with Congressman Jamie Raskin. Now I've got Congressman Jamie Raskin. Thanks so much for coming back on.

My pleasure. So let's go into the latest court case, this Colorado case. A Colorado judge has issued two rulings in the 14th Amendment case regarding Trump being disqualified from the ballot that Trump did incite an insurrection and also that the ban doesn't apply to presidents. So I want to take on the second part first. Do you agree with Judge Wallace's ruling that the language about banning officers of the United States doesn't apply to a president of the United States? I totally do not agree with that. You know, you would have to believe that the framers of the

14th Amendment specifically banned people from becoming electors for president and vice president that is being in the electoral college, but not banning the president himself or herself. It just makes no sense. The president is the person who, as we saw, on January 6, 2021, poses the most danger if he decides to overthrow the constitutional order and seize the presidency. So there's no textual exclusion for the president. The language is written as comprehensive a way as possible. And it seems clear to me that the framers, the 14th Amendment wanted to sweep in the president along with members of Congress, members of the Electoral College, you know, in any other civil or military office, it just seems sweeping

and comprehensive. And there would be no logic for saying that it shouldn't apply to the president when the president is potentially the most dangerous actor and has the resources at his disposal as the commander-in-chief of armed forces in times of insurrection and in times of war. So I don't agree with that. I do think that Judge Wallace did reason properly when it came to Trump having actually participated in insurrection. And that's just an airtight and detailed and comprehensive part of the opinion.

And she herself says that, you know, it might sound preposterous to say that it shouldn't cover the president. But that was her reading. And it's all based on the idea that. The president takes an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, whereas other people take an oath to support the Constitution. And Section 3 says that nobody shall hold an office who has previously taken oath to support the Constitution. And so that's a very thin read to hang it on. And obviously swearing to uphold and defend the Constitution is swearing to support the Constitution.

Right. Well, can you talk about why Section 3 of the 14th Amendment was put in place originally? Because I think the history here is especially important. Yeah, I mean, the history is revealing this is right after the Civil War. It's during the reconstruction period. There were Confederates all over the South, former Confederates who were planning a restoration of their power. and wanted to get back into office. And originally, the legislative history is fascinating because originally the House wrote Section 3

that was far more sweeping, and it said that anybody who participated in insurrection shall not be allowed to hold office or vote again at all. And when it got over the Senate, they said that is way too broad. We want to zero in on the bull's eye core of people who really pose the greatest danger to the Republic. And so they said, we're not going to make it about suffrage and franchise. We'll make it about holding office, and it will only be those people who actually held office

before swore an oath and then violated the oath by engaging in insurrection or rebellion. So you can see how it got dramatically, drastically whittled down. But Donald Trump is right there in the center of the bullseye court. Right. I mean, to your exact point earlier, if the authors of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment went to all the trouble of preventing those who've engaged in or aided an insurrection from taking office, why would they also make the conscious decision to include who you said would be the most powerful person in office to exclude them from, you know, from this exact same provision?

I mean, you'd have to believe that they thought that Jefferson Davis could have served as president of the United States after the war or Judah Benjamin or, you know, someone who had been a vice president in the Confederacy. And it just makes no sense. I mean, John Breckenridge was a guy from Kentucky who was a U.S. senator before the war. He was vice president before the war. And he was expelled from the Senate for treason. On this theory, you know, had he been, well, I guess as vice, as senator, she would say he'd be covered. But if he had just been vice president or president, she'd say he wouldn't be covered. And it just seems incoherent.

I mean, it almost makes me believe that, well, maybe she was on the fence and she was ambivalent and she decided at her level of the courts, it is too much not only to find that Trump had engaged in insurrection, thus agreeing with the House of Representatives, agreeing with a majority of the Senate agreeing with the January 6th committee, but also that he would actually be denied a place on the ballot. And she may have just punted and said, let's, I'm going to leave this up to the Colorado Supreme Court. Well, okay, to that exact point, this judge, Judge Wallace, said just a few weeks back that she was concerned about her own safety. So to what extent do you believe that Trump's intimidating tactics, for example, may have influenced her decision here?

Yeah, I was not aware of that, Brian. So that that's alarming. that she said that, look, you know, we're living in the time of violent threats, death threats, actual, you know, people like Paul Pelosi being assaulted and beaten up. And so that intensifies the climate for decision making. And we are talking about him having participated in insurrection. So that's serious business. I mean, there were more than 140. police officers who were wounded with broken fingers, broken toes, legs, noses, jaws,

you name it, heart attacks, mace in the face, bear mace. So, you know, that may have figured into it, but it's also just possible that she thought, look, this is going to be appealed regardless of what I do. And maybe she could contribute most by offering a. really meticulous factual recitation of what happened, not just on January 6th, but in the weeks leading up to January 6th, because, of course, the Constitution here talks about insurrection against the Constitution, not insurrection against the government. And Donald Trump was trying to overthrow the constitutional order and the 2020 presidential election for weeks. He was

trying to do it in the states. He was trying to do it with state officials like Brad Raffensberger in Georgia. He was trying to do it at the Justice Department. Then, of course, it all came down to trying to force Vice President Pence to step outside of his constitutional role and essentially just declare Donald Trump the victor or kick it into the House for a contingent election. But the bottom line is that he, you know, nobody has ever ruled this way before. and no president has ever done this before. It is a case of first impression. And so she may have thought, well, I'm going to leave it to the Supreme Court to make the final analysis.

That's actually was my next question is how much weight are you giving this, given that it's already been appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court and will most likely end up at the U.S. Supreme Court anyway? Well, you know, deference is given to the fact-finding judge, the district court judge, on the facts. So it would be a pretty radical statement for either the Colorado Supreme Court or the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the facts as opposed to change the law. So again, I think that Wallace has done the country a big favor in having very meticulous presentation of the different witnesses who was credible, who was not credible, and her best reconstruction of what happened leading up to January 6th. And then Donald Trump's very clear incitement of the mob to go and fight like hell where you're not going to have a country anymore. So I thought she did an excellent job on that.

And the other thing is a case of first impression with respect to an issue of law. And so the Colorado Supreme Court was going to have to rule on it one way or another. And the U.S. Supreme Court will have to rule on that one way or another. And the question is, you know, I don't think it's remotely ambiguous or inscrutable. I just think it's clear. It's comprehensive. But if you were to think it was any kind of a tie of, you know, interpretive methodology, surely the tie has got to go to constitutional democracy, by which I mean not what Trump's people are saying, which is, well, just let the voters decide. No, it's got to go to constitutional democracy in the determination of the framers of the 14th Amendment to disqualify people. who've been in office and then tried to destroy the republic. Now, while this case is working its way through the courts, Donald Trump has been on the campaign trail himself,

echoing language used by the most vile dictators in history. So what was your reaction to Trump echoing the likes of Hitler and Mussolini by vowing to root out his opponents, whom he called vermin? Well, it's all unvarnished now. They understand that Trump's not bringing over any moderate voters anymore, you know, there are very few swing voters. I mean, it's not like there are seven million people who voted for Biden who were going to change their minds. And, you know, Biden beat Trump by his seven million votes. And so it's not like there's seven million people

saying, oh, that Trump guy, well, he really deserves second chance, you know. So what that means is that Trump is throwing caution to the winds. I mean, he's waging war on the federal courts, on the state courts, on district attorneys, on the rule of law, on the Justice Department. He's set himself at war against our whole constitutional system. And it's repeatedly said that it's more important that he'd get back in office than that we would follow the dictates of the Constitution and is called for it to be set aside repeatedly. So, you know, the best one could hope for in a Donald Trump return to power would be something like Putin, but he's also talking about, you know, setting up camps for undocumented immigrants

for 10 million people in the country, mass roundups and deportations. He's calling his political enemies vermin, and he's openly saying that he is going to weaponize the Department of Justice and unleashed prosecutors on people who he thinks are beating him in the polls. He seems to think that he's going to be running endlessly, as well as assuming, of course, that he's going to win, which seems like an unthinkable outcome from the standpoint of the survival of democracy and our country. Well, not asking you to do the impossible and get in Donald Trump's head, but what do you presume is the strategy here by virtue of kind of doubling down on the same kind of rhetoric that

would presumably alienate all of those people in the middle who he need to actually win? Or is it just to really double, triple down on his base and hope that they're as energized as possible so that they actually end up going to the polls and just hoping that there's depressed turnout on the left? Yeah, they don't have a majority strategy. They have a strategy of galvanizing their base, turning them out, and then suppress. assessing other votes through unlawful and lawful means, gerrymandering as many districts as possible,

installing and then exploiting the right-wing pro-Trump judges in the federal judiciary. They learned a lesson from Bush v. Gore, of course, about the Supreme Court intervening to stop the counting of ballots. And so, you know, it will be, well, they anticipate a hand-to-hand combat in the streets, but it will certainly be a massive litigation struggle all over the country as they try to disqualify voters, drive people from the polls, challenge voters.

You notice that the Voting Rights Act has been dismembered in Shelby County versus Holder. The preclearance requirement is essentially gone. and now they're taking after Section 2. So they really do want to thoroughly trash the Voting Rights Act, so it's just not a factor anymore. And they have made it very difficult to sue constitutionally to vindicate the right to vote, which, of course, is not a textual right that applies to everybody.

What we have is anti-discrimination amendments like the 15th and the 19th. Moving over to the House, Speaker Johnson has now indicated that he's throwing his support behind the Biden impeachment effort because, well, because apparently he enjoys the masochism. So what was your reaction to hearing that the abject humiliation that was this impeachment effort just got Speaker Johnson's blessing? Well, I mean, he's got a four-vote majority, if and when George Santos goes next week, that's down to a three-vote majority. we've seen repeatedly, it's ungovernable on the Republican side. And so he, you know, like his predecessors, is just selling off large parts of the farm. And so there are people who want to pursue the, you know, impeachment theater of the absurd. But there, of course, there's nothing there, you know, after thousands and thousands of pages of documents and bank records and

suspicious activity reports they haven't laid a glove on joe biden and um everything seems to be you know blowing up in their face they just keep stepping on the rake no matter where they go um so it doesn't trouble us except that um at a time of so many serious problems um in the world in our uh country we could be doing real legislation there's real work that could be done i mean the gun violence crisis alone should be commanding our attention after yet another nightmare of a massacre in Maine. But the Republicans just don't want to do anything, thoughts and prayers, but no action and no legislation. Well, to that exact point, we are now a year out. What's your plan to convince an electorate that is looking more and more hesitant to back Joe Biden and the Democrats in 2024?

I mean, I think that people have to get over the idea that with a president, were picking, you know, a leading actor for a movie or something like that. I mean, you're picking a president, a vice president, a cabinet, a political party to move into the future. And they just got a great record in terms of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, $1.2 trillion in fusion of money into the bridges and the roads and the highways and the ports and the airports and the metro stations and rural broadband and, you know, high-speed Internet. I mean, the Democrats did that and the Chips and Science Act and the inflation reduction act, dramatic reductions in prescription drug costs for people

in Medicare. I had constituents who were spending $1,000 a month for their insulin shots, and now it's kept at $35 a month. And we did that without any Republican votes. So people have got to think programmatically. about where we're going as a country. And we just did two contrasting public philosophies. On the one side, you've got Joe Biden,

who really is anchored in the New Deal, the great society, the civilizing movements of our time, the civil rights movement, the women's movement, the LGBT movement. And he believes with our party that the government must be an instrument for the common good of all. And then you've got Donald Trump

who believes that the government is an instrument of private moneymaking for the president, his family, and his private corporations. And it's just an absolute rip-off. And that puts us in the company of the plutocrats and the kleptocrats from all over the world. And, you know, the autocrats and the theocrats. I mean, that's the coalition of people conspiring against the common good that the Democrats have to stand against. And the good news, though, is that we are a big majority. Hillary beat him by two and a half million votes. Biden beat him by seven million votes. We have another 12 to 15 million young people coming onto the roles. And our job is to connect with them, to listen to them, to hear them, to

participate with them, to get them engaged in politics as quickly as possible, because we've got to defend our freedom. We've got to defend our democracy. And we've got to get back to work again on climate change, which is the overhanging nightmare that we need to confront. Perfectly put as always. Let's finish off with this. This interview is being recorded just before Thanksgiving because I've been doing my show for a few years now, and I'd be more likely to get drafted into the NFL this week than lands an interview the Friday after Thanksgiving.

So do you have any plans for Thanksgiving? Well, yes, indeed. I mean, you know, our family goes to my sister's house. And so my sister is a brilliant hostess. And so she hosts 29 members of our family. And every year I bring a surprise guest. So I've got a really good surprise guest for them. But I can't tell you.

I was going to say this isn't coming out until after Thanksgiving. So you can, I mean, I'll be the only person that knows if you want to, if you want to reveal it. All right. Well, let's, well, you don't have to. You don't have to. I'll tell you afterwards. but it'll definitely peak your interest. So call me on Friday.

And then that... It sounds good. Augustman, happy Thanksgiving. Thanks so much for taking the time. Happy Thanksgiving to you, Brian, and to all of your great participants out there. Thanks again to Jamie Raskin. And for everybody listening,

I hope you had a great Thanksgiving holiday. All right, 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 briantylercoen.com for links to all of my other channels.