No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Republicans go full anti-vax

Episode Date: July 11, 2021

Fox News and Republicans undergo a coordinated effort to discourage their own supporters from getting the life-saving COVID vaccine. Brian interviews Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm about the likelihood of the American Jobs Plan passing, whether McConnell’s bad faith behavior is pushing the White House away from seeking bipartisanship, and whether the bill does enough to combat climate change in the wake of record heat. And longtime Capitol Hill veteran Stuart Perelmuter joins to discuss Virginia’s Republican gubernatorial candidate getting caught giving his real views on abortion. 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 Fox News and Republicans' coordinated effort to stop their own supporters from getting a life-saving vaccine and what the consequences from that are already looking like. I interview Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm about the likelihood of the American jobs plan passing, whether McConnell's bad faith behavior is pushing the White House away from seeking bipartisanship, and whether the bill does enough to combat climate change in the wake of record heat. And I chat with longtime Capitol Hill veteran Stuart Perlmutter about Virginia's Republican

candidate for governor getting caught giving his real views on the future. on abortion. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. So, from the people who brought you pretending the virus wasn't real and then refusing testing and contact tracing and fomenting protests against stay-at-home orders and scoffing at social distancing and politicizing masks, we now have vaccine skepticism. The natural progression for a Republican Party whose official position seems to be, we will not be satisfied until the most people possible die. And look, I want to make the caveat that, of course, not all Republicans are anti-vaxers,

but effectively all anti-vaxers are Republicans. New polling shows that 93% of Democrats say they've either been vaccinated or planned to get vaccinated compared to just 49% of Republicans. And that's played out on a statewide level, too. 20 states have reached the 70% mark for vaccinations. Vermont, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, New Mexico, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Maryland, California, Washington, New Hampshire, New York, Illinois, Virginia, Delaware, Minnesota, Colorado, and Oregon.

Every single one of those states voted for Biden in the last election. Everyone. And so, clearly there's a political divide here. And that's not exactly surprising when you hear how it's being presented on the right. Tucker Carlson compared vaccinations to forced sterilizations. Fox and Friends host Brian Kilmead said that the focus of this administration on the vaccination is mind-boggling. One of the guests on Fox said outright that no one under 30 should get vaccinated.

Charlie Kirk likened it to apartheid. Marjorie Taylor Green, of course, compared it to the Holocaust. Madison Cawthorne suggested that the entire effort is affront so that the Biden administration could do this. And now they're starting to talk about going door to door to be able to take vaccines to the people. Think about the mechanisms they would have to build to be able to actually execute that massive of a thing. And then think about what those mechanisms could be used for. They could then go door or door to take your guns. They can again go door or door to take your Bibles.

I mean, dear God, like, the guy is a walking monument to the fact that literally anyone can get elected to Congress. But what's crazy is all of this is under the backdrop of the fact that the vaccine is incredibly safe and effective. In May, only 0.1% of people who were hospitalized for COVID were fully vaccinated, which means that 99.9% of people who were hospitalized were hospitalized were those who didn't get the vaccine. And look, this isn't. to bash everyone who doesn't get the vaccine because there are people who have legitimate excuses. And beyond that, you know what? Everyone else, the people who are skeptical, are listening to people like Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Green and all the other Republican thought leaders. And it's them who should know better. It's them, the people with platforms

who should have at least a shred of integrity and should be able to say, oh, virtually every single person still ending up hospitalized from COVID is unvaccinated. I wonder if there's a correlation there. Like, it didn't have to be this way either. All Republicans had to do was talk up Trump's efforts to get a vaccine out there. They could have played up every vaccinated American as a win for Trump. But they didn't because more important for the right and Fox News is opposing Joe Biden and everything he does. And since Biden's focus is getting Americans vaccinated, then it's more important to just oppose that altogether. Like they've turned what should be a public health issue into a culture war issue because that's the way they operate. That's how Fox News is

trained its viewers to see every single subject. And they're doing it now, yet again, even though doing so will actively put their own viewers' lives at risk. That's how committed to the bit they are. Now, of course, there's also the fact that Trump positioned himself as a science skeptic, and everything in the GOP happens with Trump in mind. That's it. They follow the leader. Trump says science is bad, and so all of these people who know better have to pretend because the entire party is predicated on it's fealty to him. Like, I know people call it a cult of personality, but it's literally a cult of personality.

Like, basically, this is where the Republican Party planted its flag. And so, of course, they're not going to change their positions because that would basically be conceding defeat. And if there is anything we've learned from the Trump era, is that Republicans will never say they're wrong. And so because they're too proud to admit they screwed up, instead they'll just dig in their heels, and it's the rest of us who have to deal with the fallout from that.

It's the American people who are left suffering the consequences of a pandemic that will not end, all because a few Republicans don't want to have to suffer the momentary inconvenience of admitting that aligning yourself against a life-saving vaccine in the middle of a pandemic might not have been the smartest move. And now that the base is bought in, you better believe that these elected officials are dug in, too, because these elected officials on the right don't lead, they follow. They follow the most extreme factions of their base. Like, the fact that they can't even admit Joe Biden won the last election is proof of that.

They stand for nothing other than looking out for their own political futures. So look, this should go without saying, but get the vaccine. Encourage your friends and families and loved ones to get it. And please, do not take health advice from a TV network or a political party that is only capable of opposing a life-saving vaccine because the guy who beat their guy is supporting it. They've already proven that they don't care about your survival, so defer instead to the people who do. Still coming up is my discussion with longtime Capitol Hill veteran Stuart Perlmutter, but first, Secretary of Energy, Jennifer Granholm. Today we've got the Secretary of Energy, Jennifer Granholm. Thanks for coming on.

You bet. Happy to be here. So we've got this two-track infrastructure process happening. You know, the bipartisan deal struck. Democrats reiterate that the reconciliation package is moving in tandem. Republicans have a collective fainting spell, that the thing Democrats said they were going to do from the start is still what Democrats are doing. So what's the state of negotiations for the American Jobs Plan right now?

Well, clearly that they're on break right now as we speak. But they're coming back, and it's, in fact, I think I want to say encouraging. There is some hope and a lot of support for the bipartisan infrastructure plan from both sides of the aisle, and there is support, a strong support among the progressive community and the Democrats for a reconciliation bill that takes us the rest of the way to get the president's full American jobs plan or what we're calling the build back better plan through.

So I am, now granted, I am an optimist and I am new to D.C. So it hasn't crushed my soul yet. but I am excited about the fact that there seems to be momentum toward investing in our country, finally. So the presence of the reconciliation package hasn't been, you know, a poison pill, hasn't killed the prospect of the bipartisan package thus far. Well, we had a little hiccup on the right and the left, which tells you that, you know, maybe it's going to happen because there were some that weren't happy on either side.

But I do think that there's been a lot of work to try to keep, everybody at the table. And so, well, it's not going to, you know, and who knows, it may be, it may have a bigger margin than even what some are predicting, but it's going to be close. I do think it's going to pass, though, because I do think that, you know, the polls that we've seen recently, just on Republicans, independents, and of course, Democrats, people support this investment in the bones of our country. And I think people will, those who don't vote for it will, I think have to answer to that back home. Well, there's this fear that there's going to be too much deference paid to Republicans, even though Democrats have the majority. So are progressives going to

have to concede any top agenda items in the American Jobs Plan? Yeah, we're, we are absolutely committed to all parts of the president's build back better agenda, particularly, can I just say, as the Secretary of Energy, the parts that take on climate change. So that bipartisan infrastructure framework includes a down payment, if you will, on investments that are needed to take on climate change, for example, record investments to get clean energy on the transmission grid, to expand the capacity of the grid, and in building out those 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations. But we have to do more. And so the administration staked out its commitment to do that, to fighting for additional climate elements in the second piece,

the reconciliation piece, which would be to add, which is very exciting. It's the long pole in the tent is the clean energy standard, including clean energy tax credits on a variety, not just wind and solar, but on other things as well, including the manufacturing of clean energy products inside the United States. And a civilian conservation corps, which is very cool to be able to get a whole next generation of people who are in the fight to ensure that we save our planet. I have a bunch of questions on climate change. I do want to stick with the American Jobs Plan just for one quick sec.

And that is to ask, you know, if Republicans do bail at the last minute on the bipartisan package, are Democrats prepared to pass everything in the American Jobs Plan through reconciliation? I'm not going to bite on the question, not even going to bite. The Republicans, they're not going to bail on it. The Democrats are not going to bail on it. We are working. I mean, I just got off the question.

phone with another member of Congress. I've got another two lined up after you. We are working to make sure everybody stays. So I think we're going to get it through. We're not going to assume the Republicans are going to bail. All right. See how long that optimism lasts out there. Don't crush me now. Yeah, yeah. McConnell had come out against linking the Democrat only bill with the bipartisan bill, even though he knew for weeks that they were advancing in tandem. Does that kind of bad faith behavior push the White House away from seeking bipartisanship? You know what? The president has said all along he wants to get this agenda passed on these two tracks, which is a bipartisan effort, and then the parallel effort through the majority vote reconciliation process.

That's not going to be a surprise to anyone. It's not going to be a surprise to anyone on the Republican side. We got this group of 21 senators. now we have 11 Republicans and 10 Democrats who are working to, you know, take this framework and turn it into legislative language right now. And the president really believes it's, you know, the bipartisan effort to address these big challenges is super important. It's important here in America, but I would say it's important.

And I say this because I talk to a lot of my counterparts in other countries who went through the past four years and are like, you know, it was such, America was so absent in this area of climate change. And now that we're back and, and they feel like, God, this is so fantastic. It's fantastic for climate change. It's also fantastic in this argument about whether we're going to support democracy or autocracy. And democracies have to work. And that means you have to get something through Congress in a bipartisan way. And so it's, you know, we're hopeful for many reasons that we're going to have a component of this that is bipartisan. And it looks like we are. Okay. So let's talk about climate change here. You know, we are seeing record temperatures all

across the Pacific Northwest in Oregon, Washington, even Canada. I think Canada went from 113 degree record one day. The very next day, they had 116. The following day after that, they had 121 degrees. So, you know, breaking the record by eight degrees Fahrenheit, does the American Jobs Plan go far enough to combat climate change? Well, clearly the, I mean, first of all, these record weather events, and that includes Texas from a couple of months ago, right? Yeah. It should be like a flashing red light that our hair should be on fire, that this is an emergency. When the president says that he wants to get to 100% clean electricity, by 2035. That's just a massive statement. It's hard. It's going to be hard to get there.

It's going to be hard to get to net zero carbon emissions by 2050. These are what we call big, hairy, audacious goals. And so what does he put on the table to be able to get there is this clean energy standard is a huge step in that direction. If we can get a federal clean energy standard, that will go a long way toward reducing, obviously, our responsibility as a country. And now we've got to do the same thing by persuading other countries to do the same. I know everybody talks about how China's building coal plants, et cetera. So we've got to use our allies and a whole wraparound strategy on other countries as well. But we've got to do our part. We've got to stand up and be the example. And that's why, as I say, this clean energy standard that's

in the American Jobs Plan or in the Build Back Better Plan is really the key, the foundational piece of how we're going to get there. I know there's a lot to prepare us to combat or deal with the worst impacts of climate change, but what specific climate provisions are actually included to reduce emissions so that we're not only reacting? Yeah. So number one, you've got to set out the goal, right? So the net zero carbon emissions is the goal. And the Paris, in the intergovern panel on climate change at Paris, it wisely stated that all of these technologies are necessary to get to that goal. And so there's obviously biological, there's ecological ways of capturing carbon and reduce it. There is technological ways as well, carbon capture and

sequestration. There is this whole push now among the global communities for clean hydrogen, which is really exciting because it's generated through renewable energies. It's transportable and it could be baseload power. There's obviously very significant investments. There's significant investments in that also in energy storage. The whole goal here is to try to get baseload dispatchable clean power. And since the sun doesn't shine at night and the wind doesn't always blow, you have to figure out, right, how you can get that power where it needs to go.

So you have to have a transmission grid that takes it from places, where that power is generated to places where it's used, but you also have to be able to store it for the times you need it. And so the investments in battery technology that the American Jobs plan makes are great. The investments that we are doing at DOE and doing the research necessary to get to huge cost reductions in energy storage, that's really great. And obviously, the investments in deploying, deploying, those clean energy solutions, very important. Now, how would you for people who don't know describe carbon capture? And is it ready to be, you know, deployed at some type of a mass scale in the U.S. to actually have some impact? Yeah. So for folks who may not

be aware of what it is. So you want to remove CO2, carbon, right, greenhouse gas emissions from the atmosphere. And if you can capture it before it gets out at a power plant or at an industrial site, and you take it and you put it underground in geologic caverns that will never see the light of day. That means you can actually generate power, but you can do it in a way that doesn't release CO2 emissions. Now, the question that you asked is, is that technology ready? It's ready, but it is still expensive. So, you know, for some technology, so for some fossil fuel generation like coal, it's more challenging because the economics don't often mesh. It's difficult to pencil it in and make a profit, if you will, when you're burning coal and attaching this

technology. However, there have been advances in carbon capture that does bring the cost down so that you might be able to see it happening on natural gas, for example. But natural gas has other problems, which includes methane emissions, which is an even more potent greenhouse gas emissions. So what's the Biden administration doing on that? Biden administration is taking really aggressive steps to regulate methane emissions. The Trump administration basically let it go. The Biden administration came in and said, no, we're going to regulate it. You have to make sure that those methane, that the pipes don't leak, that you're not seeing flaring, as they say, so that that stuff is being released. And by the way, there's a whole bunch of other methane emitters.

that are out there, like oil and gas wells that are abandoned, that the American jobs plan is going to cap. So greenhouse gas emissions overall, whether it's carbon or methane, this plan tackles. And the technology, if you take it to scale, will pencil out in some places, but not in all. Now, will there be any plans to link Texas's power grid to the rest of the nations, you know, after, like you mentioned before, you know, after it's become clear that the state isn't prepared for the challenges posed by the changing climate. Yeah, it's a really great question. And as your question begs the explanation, which is for your viewers,

Texas often has an ethos of being independent, right? And so their power grid, it's called ERCOT, is not connected. Their transmission lines are not connected to anywhere else in the country, except for a very small portion of Texas. And that's the way they like it. The problem is, is that when they're in trouble, that means because they're not connected, we can't send power to them when they need it, nor can they, and they're the number two state in the country for solar power, for example. They can't send that solar power out if they wanted to even make a profit off it and sell it out. They can't do that. So we've offered, we said, you know, let's connect. We're happy to extend a hand of friendship, a technology, a transmission grid connection, if you would accept it. They haven't taken. taken us up on it yet, but I will say this, that they did just decide last week, that they were

going to invest the amount that was necessary to weatherize their grid. They were told a decade ago that they needed to weatherize their grid and they didn't do it. So now they have committed to doing that. So hopefully they'll be able to withstand another really cold snap like they did earlier this year. It's more than a cold snap, that serious weather event. Yeah. Now, there are currently 41,000 electric vehicle charging stations in the U.S. A major concern for people who want to buy EVs is that they'll get stranded, right? A component of the American Jobs Plan is electric vehicle charging stations, but can you quantify that for me? Like, what will this mean in terms of the actual number of charging stations

for drivers who are considering or already own electric vehicles? Yeah, the Biden plan is a great question, really important if we want to really escalate the uptake in electric vehicles. So people, we don't have range anxiety. So the Biden plan is to install 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations in areas in the country where there are gaps. And so a lot of the gaps include where there are along the freeways, for example, where it's long distances to be able to charge. Or it might include areas where there's not a huge EV penetration yet, electric vehicle penetration, maybe in horror areas where people aren't buying electric vehicles yet. And so it's a chicken and egg question, right? You're not going to

buy an electric vehicle if there's no place to charge it. And you want to make sure that you put charging stations in places that have electric vehicles. So what we want to do is to say the federal government is going to buy down the risk of that. And we're going to help to subsidize the installation of charging stations, even in areas where you don't have a huge volume yet. If you build it, they will come energy happening here. Right. I think that's true. Okay. So last question here, and that is what specific jobs would be either created or facilitated with the American Jobs Plan? And how are those going to be marketed to blue-collar workers who work in fossil fuel-related industries, for example, whose jobs are on the chopping block?

Because so often those are the people, you know, who Republicans will exploit in fear-mongering against moving toward renewable energy? It's a really great question because, first of all, it's going to create millions of jobs. Why? Because the energy sector is so diverse. So, for example, people who are mining for coal, they could also be mining for geothermal, which is the heat beneath your feet that could be pulled up, which, by the way, is clean, dispatchable, reliable power. We've got to do more of that. And so this creates all kinds of jobs for all kinds of people, in all pockets of the And these are good paying union jobs in many places. It's what's really exciting about it is that there was a report that was done out of Georgetown that analyzed the jobs that would be created. 90% of these jobs in the clean energy sector are jobs that require a high school degree with maybe just a bit of training. You don't have to have a four-year college degree.

And so it includes people who are going to build wind turbines or solar panels, people who will be installing the technologies, people who will be maintaining and ensuring that the technologies are working, people who will be doing upgrades to buildings to make sure that the buildings are energy efficient. That's a lot of building trades, carpenters, you know, people who move earth pipeline layers in those fossil fuel communities, the technologies associated with removing CO2 like carbon capture. That's big technology that has. to be installed. You have to build pipes to take it deep into the Earth, the CO2. This is, it's, it is a huge job creator for those who like to build things and also for the people who like logistics

and who want to help move equipment with electric vehicles. All of that. It's a, it's all kinds of jobs for all kinds of people. Yeah, well, that's great. And you know, you have a lot of people here pushing to help make it happen. So, you know, more power to you. With that said, Secretary Granholm, thank you so much for taking the time. I appreciate it. You bet. Glad to be on. Thanks so much. Thanks again to Secretary Granholm. Now we have a 14-year Capitol Hill veteran, the founder of OD Action and At Advocacy, and a dear friend, Stu Perlmutter. Stu, thanks for coming on. Hey, thanks for having me, Brian.

Okay, so I want to jump into a topic that I'm sure is not going to cause anybody outrage, and that is that Marjorie Taylor Green has now likened door-to-door vaccinating. efforts to brown shirt, which is another Nazi reference. And this comes three weeks after she announced that she'd learned the error of her ways and that nothing compares to the Holocaust. So that went well. And of course, you know, Fox has jumped on this. And now the entire right-wing media ecosystem is pretending that they're all basically

Holocaust victims because people are encouraging them to get vaccinated from the deadly virus. Well, nothing screams Nazis like trying to save lives. Trying to help you survive. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But here's what gets me. We know that these issues that they're bringing up are bullshit. They know what they're saying is bullshit. Do you think that there's a point where the perpetual manufactured outrage gets old and people realize that it's just exhausting and that they're being manipulated and pretending to be outraged? Or is this just the tried and true formula of keeping people angry and that's how you keep people engaged? And so Republicans are going to stick by it. I think the only thing that gets old on Fox News is the viewers. Look, no, this is a strategy that predates Fox News even. This is the idea that the next thing that Democrats are doing is the downfall of civilization. Mitch McConnell said that Obamacare was the worst piece of legislation in 50 years. And obviously, they continue to try to repeal it, but nobody's talking about this as the downfall of society because obviously it wasn't the downfall society.

It gave 20 million people health care. Which, hey, if you're a Republican, if you're a Republican, that is pretty bad. It probably feels like the end of the world. I will grant you that. Right. I assume those caravans of migrants have made it here and by now destroyed our country. Yeah, it obviously, it's complete hot air. It will never get old until people start to pay attention.

And honestly, that's why what you do is so good, right? It's why it's so important because you're saying, wake up, look at it. Look at this. It's the same playbook that Republicans have been using for at least half a century. To build on your point, when they passed the ACA, you know, we heard about death panels, that death panels were going to be deciding who lived and died when Democrats were trying to pass gay marriage. They said that it would destroy the sanctity of marriage. And, you know, other than forcing us all to get gay married, it's really not that much different, you know? Yeah, yeah. I mean, my forced gay marriage is pleasant.

Yeah, you're, you're doing fine. People like Newt Gingrich talking about the sanctity of marriage being somehow undone by gay people having the freedom to marry the people that they love, while he is cheating on his dying wife, is a special kind of awful. Yeah. And they rely on their viewers being ignorant. If it was a business, the business model would be, let's just hope people aren't paying attention and keep doing things that don't make sense.

Yeah, but what blows my mind? mind is how each of these threats is the worst threat imaginable, the worst threat that was ever posed to humanity. And as soon as it's debunked, as soon as it's shown to be complete bullshit, as soon as we realize that, okay, your kids are not getting indoctrinated with critical race theory in K through 12 schools because literally no kids are learning critical race theory in schools, it disappears and they move right on to the next thing. Well, you're assuming that encouraging people to get vaccinated is not going to result in the systematic annihilation of 12 million innocent people right i mean just just the fact that now the biggest threat facing humanity is

the prospect of vaccinating people against the virus that has already killed 600,000 americans that that's what they've landed on to rile people up to scare people the vaccine to protect you even in the face of 600,000 deaths. Yeah, and 4 million worldwide. And let's not forget here that it's not just rhetoric to stop Democrats' agenda. It is actually literally killing people. They are actually killing people with these lies that they know. I mean, Donald Trump, he just said last week, if you say things enough over and over again,

people will eventually start to believe that it's true. If Marjorie Taylor Green was looking for something to compare to Nazism, might I suggest that quote right there? That would probably be in more apt comparison than... Probably closer than life-saving vaccines. Yeah. Yeah, I would think so. But it has real world consequences and until people start to say, let's see how that pans out

and maybe we'll judge people's credibility by how their predictions have fared next time. They're just going to keep doing it. So I want to use this to segue into the next topic here, and that is Virginia's Republican gubernatorial candidate, Glenn Yonkin, had told donors that he's basically hiding his real position on abortion. He said this. He said, quote, when I'm governor, we can go on offense, but as a campaign topic, sadly, that won't win my independent votes that I have to get. I guess my question for you would be, will this have any impact? I mean, look, Terry McCullough is an incredibly popular former governor, and he doesn't need that kind of an unforced error to take back the governor's mansion.

I look at it more as a symptom than something that will have impact, and it's a symptom of something, to be quite honest, that Democrats have been doing for a really long time, which is calculating our positions based on what we think the public wants to hear instead of standing up, fighting for the things that we know to be right and helpful in people's lives. The fact that Democrats increasingly have stopped doing that, that you're seeing an end to those kind of calculations, especially in southern states, where you see people like Jamie Harrison and both Georgia senators who came out and said, the progressive vision of the future is what the people need. You weren't seeing that only a few years ago. In Kentucky, you weren't

seeing that last year with Amy McGrath. You were seeing calculation. What do the people want to see? What do the people want to hear? And nobody is fighting for progressive values. Charles Booker's not doing that. Charles Booker's saying, here's how we can help. I want to help the people. And the trend right now is what we're seeing more and more, Democrats saying, you may not want to hear this, but this is the truth. And people listen and they're moved by it. And Republicans are the ones playing defense saying my abortion position, my party's abortion position is really unpopular. Maybe I shouldn't talk about that. I mean, it's a great point.

When you have to hide your position because it's not palatable enough for people to actually vote for you if you were to be honest, what does that say about your position? And, you know, harkening back to your point about Amy McGrath, if voters want a Republican, if they want somebody espousing Republican positions, they're going to vote for a Republican. Exactly. You don't need to be a Republican light. in hopes of, you know, that's not going to, it's not going to fire up any voters. It's not going to get your base excited to vote for you.

And so much of what we saw in this last election was enthusiasm. It's getting people off their asses to go vote and giving them a reason to do that. And the reason is not going to be, well, I'm basically the same thing as a Republican candidate in all of my positions, but I have a D next to my name. And so maybe, you know, I'll concede one or two positions. It's a bad strategy that has been tried over and over and over again. Right. It makes Democrats complacent because we're not excited to vote for that.

It doesn't win over Republicans because, like you said, they've got a Republican to vote for. They don't need to vote for somebody who's pretending to be a Republican. And if you look at the wave of 2018, the reason that we won in such huge numbers is because Democrats stopped trying to pretend to be anything that we weren't. We talked about health care. We talked about race. we talked about lifting up the people who were the most vulnerable in society and stopping corporations from trampling on people's lives. The electorate responded to that. You know, it also confirms the Republican position as the default position, as the correct

position. When you have, you know, the Amy McGrath of the Democratic Party saying that, you know, she stands for a lot of these things that Republicans stands for, it gives them, it's a permission structure for Republicans to basically say, see, you know, if even the Democrats are espousing this, this. This is the starting point. This is what's correct. It's them who's running away from their agenda and toward ours. It gives them that benefit, that talking point.

You know, this is all a messaging war in the end. That's right. And I don't mean to slam Mae McGrath too much because she's also a victim of that, right? Because in Kentucky, for a decade or more, people were doing that. People were saying, well, we can't be too progressive. We can't say that this is what we really think. And as a result, if she were to come out and say, I want a $15 minimum wage, I don't think Kavanaugh should be on the Supreme Court because he's been credibly accused of sexual assault.

She would have been a voice in the wilderness in a lot of these communities. It would have looked like an outside the mainstream opinion because nobody else has been talking about it. Somebody like Charles Booker comes along, top of the ticket, talking about our values, speaking the truth about the environment, about race, about economics and people's lives. whatever happens in his race, and I think he's got a very good chance, the next person who comes along won't be the first, it won't be the first time voters are hearing about this. Right. It creates a new baseline, a new floor for these people so that they don't have to

trudge through the mud and basically just trying to bring these things into the mainstream. It's already been done. And by the way, Bernie Sanders did a ton of that in the 2016 election cycle into the 2020 election cycle. Look at the things that became mainstream, Democratic positions because he was the only one basically espousing them in 2016. You're right. I mean, a lot of things that, I mean, the needle has moved in positive ways on a lot of issues. Bernie gets a lot of credit for that. A lot of progressive outspoken progressive leaders get credit for that. But you think about things like legalizing marijuana and prison reform and things that are overwhelmingly popular now because we finally had the guts to say that

it was the right thing to do. Right. And by the way, every single one of these positions from income inequality to women's reproductive rights, to climate change, to a $15 minimum wage. Every single one of them is popular. It's popular in red states. It's popular in blue states. There's a reason that Florida passed a $15 minimum wage by a higher margin than, you know, what was it, a 14 point margin higher than the Democrat, than Joe Biden got in the state. So, you know, these positions are popular. It's just a matter of bringing Democrats on board so that there's no gap between the policies they espouse and the candidates who espouse them. Yeah, and when Republicans are going to call things like that a progressive wish list,

keep talking, keep calling at that because the more you associate these things that people like with progressives and with Democrats, the better we're going to fare. Perfectly put. Stu, always a pleasure talking to you. Thanks so much for taking the time. Thanks for having me, Brian. Thanks again to Stu. Quick update on the Don't Be a Mitch Fund.

we've broken $385,000 and are so close to 400K. I know things slow down in the summer, but if we're able to put in the work now, when it is slow, we will reap the rewards down the line. It worked in Georgia, it can work everywhere else. So if you haven't yet donated and you want to support voter registration and voter outreach groups in nine swing states ahead of 2022, check out the link in the episode notes.

You can also buy merch on my website, Brian Tyler Cohen.com, and profits from all Mitch-related merchant. are also donated to the fund. Okay, 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.