No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - The uncertain future of the For The People Act

Episode Date: June 27, 2021

We look to next steps on the For The People Act now that Republicans have blocked debate on the bill, as well as the dual infrastructure proposals making their way through Congress. Brian interviews a member of the Pennsylvania state House, Brian Sims, about his viral moment when Republicans cut his mic, along with the possibility of an Arizona-style audit in PA. And Brian chats with the host of FOX LA, Elex Michaelson, about the infrastructure bills and what’s next for Joe Manchin and the filibuster.Donate to the Don't Be A Mitch fund: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/dontbeamitchSign up for Indivisible’s Truth Brigade: https://act.indivisible.org/signup/indivisible-truth-brigadeWritten by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CAhttps://www.briantylercohen.com/podcast/See 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 the next steps on the For the People Act now that Republicans block debate on the bill, as well as the two-track infrastructure proposals making their way through Congress. I interview a member of the Pennsylvania State House, Brian Sims, about his viral moment where Republicans cut his mic, along with the possibility of an Arizona-style audit in PA. And I chat with the host of Fox L.A. Alex Michelson about the infrastructure package and what's next for Joe Manchin and the filibuster. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. So we spoke last week about the fact that Joe Manchin came out in support of a number of provisions in S1, the For the People Act, and that he would vote to move forward with debate on the bill. And we spoke about how this would probably be moot anyway, because, thanks to the filibuster, it would require 10 Republicans to also vote to open debate.

And not only weren't there 10 Republicans, there wasn't even one Republican, and so S1 wasn't able to move forward. But here's why I think this doesn't mean it's the end of the line for S1. The fact is that we were never going to get 60 votes on that bill at any point. And the filibuster was going to remain intact until at least Republicans got caught abusing it because Joe Manchin is dead set on giving Republicans the opportunity to prove him right when he says that the Senate can still function with the filibuster in place. Now, we all know that the Senate can't function. We all know that Republicans aren't interested in the Senate functioning.

But, but Manchin threw down that marker. And so, of course, he's not going to change his position for no reason. So, in effect, we needed Republicans to prove Manchin wrong. We needed them to broadcast that, in fact, they're not interested in bipartisanship, because, in my opinion, that's going to serve as the necessary pretext for Manchin to change his position. And I hope I'm right. I hope that Manchin's able to say, you know, well, I tried. I gave them every opportunity.

My reluctance to reform the filibuster or create a carve-out on voting rights was predicated on Republicans meeting me halfway. They didn't, so I had to take action. I hope that's what happens. And frankly, I have no choice but to hope that because we've got a 50-50 majority and we need every senator on board, including Mansion. And the shitty as it is, the fact is that we're not going to get him to change his mind by screaming at him or lobbing threats at him, if anything, that's going to help the guy in West Virginia. So the option we're left with is then saying to him, look, you laid down that marker for Republicans,

you gave them every opportunity, you got caught trying. So now, knowing that they're not interested in bipartisanship and knowing that we need to pass voting, rights legislation, and knowing that you've exhausted every other avenue, let's figure out what we're going to do about the filibuster so that we can pass some legislation, legislation that's not only common sense, not only supported by you already, but desperately needed ahead of 2022. Is it ideal? Of course not. But, you know, for better or for worse, we have a razor-fin majority, and so if the process has to play out that way to eventually get where we need to go, then we've got no choice but to let it. Now, another piece of news is that we're now looking at a two-track

infrastructure proposal. We've got the bipartisan infrastructure package that focuses on hard infrastructure and then a democratic proposal that would pass through reconciliation, presumably with only Democrats, and that focuses on everything else, what's being called human infrastructure, meaning the care economy, education, environment, stuff like that. Now, so that we're clear, the bipartisan bill isn't enough. A bill that doesn't address climate change today in 2021 is not enough. A bill that doesn't provide care for children and the elderly so that people can be freed up to go get jobs and stimulate the economy, which should be a no-brainer, isn't enough. And so it was understood that these two bills, the bipartisan infrastructure package and the budget

resolution, would advance in tandem. In fact, Democrats had been saying this from the very beginning. But still, just to reiterate, after the bipartisan agreement was announced, Pelosi came out and said this. In fact, I use the word ain't. There ain't going to be an infrastructure bill unless we have the reconciliation bill passed by the United States Senate. And that sentiment was echoed by Biden. I expect that in the coming months this summer, before the fiscal year is over, that we will have voted on this bill, as well, the infrastructure bill, as well as voted on the budget resolution. And that's when, you know, but if only one,

comes to me, if this is the only meaning that comes to me, I'm not signing it. It's in tandem. Which is good because, remember, Democrats are in the majority and could pass all of this through reconciliation anyway. So the fact that Republicans are being involved in this bill at all means that they're just getting free credit for legislation that they'll then use to get reelected back in their states and districts. Like, see that road, that bridge, that broadband, that clean water, they'll get to take credit for all of that. They were given that gift as the minority party. And yet instead of taking it, now, after hearing Democratic leadership,

reiterate that the two measures would advance together in tandem, Republicans are clutching their pearls and pretending that they had no clue. One bill was contingent on the other. And now the Republicans are threatening to bail even on their bipartisan measure, meaning that because we apparently needed bipartisanship for what, the sake of bipartisanship, somehow, even in the majority, Democrats are still allowing themselves to get steamrolled by Republicans who just so were clear are in the minority. Like, I understand that Biden and Mansion and Cinema want bipartisanship, but the fact is that this has already gone on for far too long.

Like, one, we've wasted precious time, and two, we're seeing now that Republicans are realizing that a plan might actually pass and they needed to cook up some bullshit excuse to back out, thereby proving that the whole point was to waste time. Like, I've talked about how rare it is to have unified control of government. It's been a decade since it last happened. This is a precious slice of time that we have right now. Everything in the American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan should and could pass through reconciliation. This entire package is feasible with a simple majority, which we have. And yet somehow Republicans are still dictating the terms. So look, on the off chance that those Republicans and the bipartisan group of senators were negotiating in good faith,

knowing that Democrats could also get their soft infrastructure priorities passed through reconciliation shouldn't stop them from passing this bill because they always knew that Democrats could pass a reconciliation bill. Like it's not a secret. We're in the majority. Enough with the performative outrage. But if that bipartisan bill falls apart because the performative outrage was just too good for them to avoid, then Mansion and Cinema and the rest of the party all the way up to Joe Biden should go at it alone because people do not care about process. They care about results. No one's going to qualify their support. of better roads and expanded broadband and EV charging stations and educational investments and child care depending on how bipartisan the bill was.

So let's get it done because if it's a choice between a transformational agenda or trying to get a party whose entire governing philosophy revolves around breaking government to somehow help make government work, I think the answer here is obvious. In the meantime, we clearly need to expand our Senate majority so that Joe Manchin and Kirsten Cinema and whatever other Democrats are so desperate to hand over, every ounce of leverage we have to Republicans don't get to dictate the rules anymore. So donate to the Don't Be a Mitch Fund

and let's flip Senate seats in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, and Iowa, and keep our seats in Georgia and Arizona. The link, as always, is in the episode notes. Still coming up is my chat with Fox L.A. host, Alex Michelson, but first, my interview with Pennsylvania's Brian Sims. Okay, today we've got a member

of the Pennsylvania State House and candidate for lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania, Brian Sims. Thanks for coming on. Brian, thank you. haven't. Of course. So you made headlines a couple of weeks ago, and it was for this speech. I'll play a quick clip. It is not lost on me, and I'm sure it's not lost on many of the members here today, that this legislation is just one more unnecessary overreach in a grossly, predictably misogynistic agenda. An agenda pursued by a house that by a party that is 100%

white in a chamber that is 70% male. Oh, you're booed. Mr. Speaker, that's enough. Your booze mean nothing to me. I've seen who you cheer for. The gentleman will suspend. Mr. Speaker. For what purpose does the majority leader rise? I believe these comments are inflammatory to our members

and to this esteem chamber. We have tried to give latitude on this issue, both yesterday and today, but I will not have our members impugned or insulted or this kind of behavior on this floor. Are you not 100% white? Gentleman is out of order. 100% white, 70% male.

Mr. Speaker, turn off his mic. Republicans ultimately did cut your mic, which talk about the Streisand effect, right? Like a good way to get the entire country to pay attention was to try and ensure that you couldn't have a voice. What's the response from your speech been like? It's not the first time I've been cut off

from speaking on the House floor. Over the years, the Republicans that control our General Assembly through gerrymandering have really sort of their bastardization of our rules has led them to even cut off remarks that they don't like. I mean, in this case, they struck a fact from the record, but they generally use the rules to really keep us from speaking or keeping sort of continuity from happening on the House floor. And so I've grown somewhat accustomed to that part. My very first term, when marriage equality passed, I rose on the House floor to speak about it,

and my mic was cut. And it caused a firestorm that was really critically important for me at the time in getting to meet more of my Republican colleagues and to sort of expose what homophobia looked like. And I would have thought my Republican colleagues would have learned from that, but I know better. And so, you know, a week and a half ago, at the tail end of really what had been my women colleagues sharing deeply emotional, personal stories about their bodies and their families and love and life and loss and all of those things. I got up really to remind the room who they were and what we had just listened to. And, you know, as I, as you pointed out, I pointed out that they were 100% white, the Republican Party in that room, and the House Republicans are 100% white, and the room itself is 70% male.

And, you know, for a whole bunch of reasons, the demographics included, that is not a group of people that should be making decisions about anybody's personal health care. And, you know, when they cut me off, it did 2,000. things. One, it reminded people once again of just how wicked, how heinous this far-right radical streak within state legislatures in the Republican Party has gone. And it also, it highlighted just exactly how radical their individualized behavior on this particular issue was. You know, that that bill that we were debating was essentially an abortion and ectopic pregnancy and a miscarriage registry and fine system that forces women to either have the,

fetal tissue cremated or buried. And that's just as overreaching as a government entity can be. And, you know, as I pointed out in that speech, it's sort of par for the course from what we've learned to expect from a lot of Republicans across the country and mine included. Well, you know, this is a problem that's been exacerbated by those gerrymanders, as you just mentioned. So, you know, just a side note here, who controls redistricting in Pennsylvania in that we're going to see, you know, a round of redistricting coming up. before the 2022 midterms? One of the great underlying factors

in contemporary Pennsylvania politics has been our gerrymandering. In Barack Obama's seventh state of the union address, he talked about just the massive impact that statewide politics has on our understanding really of sort of Americana and the body of civil rights, but also the impact that gerrymandering

was having on that body of law and that body of understanding. And nowhere has it played out more aggressively than it has here. In Pennsylvania, there are about 800,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans. But for the better part of 30 years, Republicans have controlled the redistricting process. And the reason that is, is that as people know, every 10 years, we have a census. And based on that census data, there is a redrawing of districts to meet that census data. But Republicans in my state control the process. The Republicans that control the House and the Senate through gerrymandering have been able to draw those lines

and really aggressively continue to re-jerrymander them. Now, back in 2012, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court said that when they looked at those maps, that they were the most gerrymander they'd ever seen, it was a 10. But if they dialed it back to a nine, it would be okay, which is what they did. In the interim, then, that same Supreme Court ruled that Pennsylvania's federal maps, which are also drawn with the same algorithms with the same gerrymander, were gerrymandered illegally, unconstitutionally. And in getting rid of that, it gained us four new women,

representing Pennsylvania and Congress. And so the effort has been that there should be an independent commission that draws line, that it should focus on math and demographics, not on politics, policies, and frankly, the party in power should be electing its own, its own voters, voters should be electing them. And that's been one of the major problems. I'll say this last thing about it is in the last election, we came close to overcoming that gerrymander unnaturally, just by how many more Democratic votes there are. We're at a place where, kind of like Virginia, as soon as we do overcome this gerrymander

or we see state or federal legislation or state or federal Supreme Court decisions that overturn it, you know, Republicans are going to continue to have this really massive unnatural lead, but the moment that we're able to overcome it and just fix the state and so that it is naturally, authentically represented

based on the four or five criteria in the Constitution, we're going to see the Democrats have a pretty substantial lead in the General Assembly. and the whole mountain of progressive politics, women's rights, reproductive rights, racial and ethnic justice, all of that becomes sort of natural politics in this state like they did in Virginia. I mean, we're talking about Pennsylvania here. That state has a predisposition to all of those issues anyway. So, I mean, it's just artificially being held back by virtue of the fact that Republicans have, you know, gerrymandered themselves into positions of power. But, you know, that really does underscore the importance of passing S-1, H-R-1, the For the People Act. And we'll get to that. shortly, but I did want to just go right back to what we were speaking about previously, and that was your speech on the floor. And I was just wondering, what was the feedback from that moment when your mic was cut from Pennsylvanians, both who you represent and the people from your

state more broadly? You sort of pointed out earlier on that I had a, I have a track record in my legislature of sort of stepping up in these moments and oftentimes saying things that are really uncomfortable to hear or things that it's unfair to make others have to say. I'm a civil rights attorney by trade, and from the moment I was elected, I knew that I represent a huge portion of the privileges in this world that I fight against, or they're trying to teach people to combat. But one of the advantages of having these false privileges in America is that the people who share them with me are more inclined to hear them from them, meaning it is unfair for me to make the women colleagues that I have get up to have to share these gut-wrenching stories just to make a white man empathize with them to make the right decision, or my colleagues of color to have to have to have to share these gut-wrenching stories just to make a white man empathize with them to make the right decision, or my colleagues of color to have to have. to talk so deeply about their families, their communities, their culture, again, just to make white men understand them that I would get up and I would say those things and I would push back in those ways. And so to some extent, you know, my comments so we can have go, we're expected. That's part

of the role that I play in our legislature. You know, the women, people of color, LGBTQ people, were used to sort of being the tip of the sphere in a lot of places. And that's one of the roles that I play. I will tell you, there was also one of the frustrations of that moment is that it really distracted from what we were there fighting about. And that was a massive attack on reproductive rights. And yes, it became a bit of a referendum on how the right behaves and how Republicans in Pennsylvania specifically behave. But many of those discussions drowned out the realities that colleagues of mine like

Jen O'Meara, colleagues of mine like Maureen Madden, got up and shared very personal, deep stories that had almost no impact on the vote in that room. And that's wrong. And that deserved to be front and center. Well said. Moving to a different topic. Now, there have been Republican lawmakers in the state Senate calling for an Arizona-style audit in Pennsylvania. What's the appetite for something like that among the Pennsylvania Republican Party and I guess the state more broadly? We're all wondering that as well, right? Does Pennsylvania want our own fraud? Do we want to spend the money for a performative sort of song and dance?

I think part of the answer about part of the reason we don't is that because Pennsylvania was uniquely on the front lines in and around the November election up through the January swearing in, you know, the majority of the Republicans in my General Assembly, aided by the leadership, sent a letter to Congress trying to get them to overrule our electoral college selections. You know, that they literally tried to overturn the popular vote of the people that they said voted to send them there. their elections were good, but the presidential election was wrong. Now, because of that, we had a lot of lawsuits here. You know, people famously remember Rudy Giuliani's sweating his hair to eye out here, and they remember him standing out in front of a lawnmower company or, you know, like a landscaping business. And there was a lot that played out here legally. What followed with the sort of performative dance of those radical right Republicans was one of them was this series of hearings that took place in a committee that I serve on here in the state house. And those hearings went from being, first of all, 20 or 30

hearings down to probably 12 or 14. And really what was verified without those hearings is that there was not only was there nothing wrong with Pennsylvania's elections, that these were among the best elections that had happened in contemporary history. More people participated. More people's voices were heard. More people got to vote. Those votes counted than it ever before in Pennsylvania. The last thing I'll say is that Pennsylvania's election law, I just explained how Republicans control this state. Well, Republicans have controlled our election law. All of the laws by which people voted in in Pennsylvania, all the drop boxes, the mail-in ballots, all of that was dictated by Republican leadership in the House and Senate.

And so it inherently looked really foolish for these people to be saying that the structure of these elections were wrong when they were the people that were the architects of the structure. Pennsylvania Republicans actually just recently have passed their own voter suppression bill. they passed it by a vote of 29 to 21. Now, luckily, the governor, Tom Wolfe is going to veto it. But have Republicans in Pennsylvania resign themselves to the fact that the only way they can win moving forward is to prevent people who might not vote for them from voting at all? Is that the natural progression, the natural conclusion of what we're seeing Pennsylvania, just like everywhere else around the country? It's even a little bit more than that, Brian. You know, at some point or another, when, as I mentioned earlier, when Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that what they had done was illegal on constitutional.

gerrymandering, what Pennsylvania's Republicans proposed was gerrymandering the courts. And they tried to push through legislation here that would gerrymander our Supreme Court when the Supreme Court ruled that they had gerrymandered our congressional seats. That's how deeply entrenched and sort of how wicked this leadership is. So the social and political science tell us that states that have natural Republican or natural Democratic leadership, lean Republican or lean Democrat in their policies and ideology. That makes so much sense. course it does. But that same social political science tells us that states that are gerrymandered, rather than that false leadership trying to soften its edges to sort of appeal to the actual majority,

they dig their heels in. They get much, much worse. And it's why in Pennsylvania, we see, you know, these attacks on trans kids in sports or in bathrooms or on their health care. And it's why we won't raise the minimum wage. It's why we're the state that has the biggest, the most disparate gap between are poorly funded and are well-funded school districts. You know, this, this, Pennsylvania's Republicans, in 20 or 30 years, when we're, when we're teaching about them, we're studying them and just how, how aggressively bad they behaved with this power, maybe then it'll feel esoteric. But right now, in the moment, it is, it is the single thing that underlines every single

advancement, I believe that this state is ready for, whether it's in education funding, whether it's in meds and eds, whether it's in green technology, whether it's in transportation, all of it is being held back by this sort of deep, dark Republican gerrymander. I feel like John Fetterman would get pretty upset if we didn't also mention the legalization of marijuana in Pennsylvania, or lack thereof, rather. Lack thereof. You know, I live in Philadelphia where our current mayor, when he was in city council, decriminalized marijuana, decriminalized cannabis in the city. And the sky didn't fall. Nothing happened.

You know, we're the economic engine of the entire Commonwealth. We're the battery of the Commonwealth. And if we have found that decriminalizing cannabis use was something that we could do and stop hurting parts of our population or using it as a pretext to hurt black and brown people, that we could move forward with our politics. It's a, and it made a lot of sense. Pennsylvanians want it. Our neighbors are already doing this. The governor wants it. the lieutenant governor really showed why it's a good idea. I think we're going to see that hopefully in the next year or two. But I do credit the lieutenant governor with really making the voice of the people heard on this issue.

Just to build on your point a little bit, you know, we spend so much energy just pushing back against baseless fearmongering from Republicans that the sky is going to fall whenever we tried to implement any good policy from the ACA, which they fearmongered would just basically devolve into death panels for people to, gay marriage, that it would destroy the sanctity of marriage. And, you know, issue to issue to issue, it's just the same exact story that, you know, it's just the politics of fear. And I think when when people are able to actually see the results of good policy, I mean, they realize that that fearmongery is completely baseless. But then, you know, of course, by the time, by the time you've realized that gay marriage is not going to destroy the sanctity of marriage, that the ACA is not going to lead to death panels en masse in America, they're already up to their, to their next topic. It's fearmongering about, you know, migrant caravans or critical race theory is going to

indoctrinate our white kids to hate themselves or whatever it is. So it's just the constant, you know, chasing after these Republicans on their, on their baseless fearmongering. Yeah, it's, it still remains, you know, fascinating to me that the best politics that you have are about sort of hate and divisiveness that you somehow think that you should be in charge of anything. You know, I, listen, I, I understand wholly that it's, it's true that. hate and anger and the passion that come from them tend to make more people act overtly than

love and kindness and empathy and sympathy. But the truth is, the policies that grow from them are so significantly better. Listen, as a progressive, as a liberal Democrat from the sixth largest city in the country, an extremely diversity, a city that thrives and it drives a state based on that diversity, it's never once lost on me that this state, there's sort of something about the Republicans in the state hating Philadelphia so much is just another reflection of the types of the bad places where their policies come from. And it's not just policy of selfishness. It's not just policies of keeping themselves in place. It's really policies of keeping everybody else down with the implication that that somehow keeps you elevated. And I don't know that that's true either.

Now, what's your message here? You know, we had just spoken about the voter suppression bill coming up in Pennsylvania. What's your message for national Democrats in the face of these voter suppression bills? You know, there's a couple of things that I really hope that more Democrats at the statewide level, and of course, at the congressional level, understand, with respect to voter suppression. That is that we don't get another chance to get this right all at once. You know, I understand that Department of Justice is going to start taking these things more seriously, and I'm excited to hear that.

But the truth of the matter is that if we wait a way, 10 years for these bills to become law and then to get challenged in court and those court cases to be worked out and those appeals to get worked out, what we're going to find is that we have an aggressively falsely represented, representative democracy that is falsely represented with the intention of doing bad things with it. We need to be pushing back as hard as we can right now. Now, I'm glad that I get attention sometimes for how hard I push back against my Republican colleagues, But we are not at a place right now in the American politics where platitudes and performative bipartisanship are more important than stopping the bad things that are happening and promoting

more good things in public policy. And I think that there is nothing. There's no higher calling right now for Democratic legislators than to ensure that the vote is protected and that is sacrosan. And this is the new path for far-right conservatives, for extremists, for extremists, conservatives in the United States to sow division and to maintain power. And we can do something about it. And what we can do about it is reflect the better ideals, the best ideals of our representative democracy. We should be doing this and we need to do it. I mean, I say it on a daily basis. It's not

going to matter what we stand for from women's reproductive rights to health care to the environment if we can't get voting rights figured out because Democrats are going to be legislated out of government anyway. And so, you know, everything is born out of the foundational element that we're talking about here. Now, you're running for lieutenant governor in Pennsylvania. What's your pitch to voters? Why should Pennsylvania's vote for you? You know, Lieutenant Governor is an interesting position for a lot of people. Most people don't know who their own lieutenant governor is or a lieutenant governor in another state. And that's somewhat different here in Pennsylvania, especially over the last number of years, because as somebody you mentioned earlier, John

Fetterman. Fetterman, our current lieutenant governor who is running for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Pat Toomey has done a really fantastic job here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania of bringing a significantly more progressive voice to Harrisburg than our governor or obviously than our General Assembly is at it. It's for kind of a unique reason for one of those states in the United States that elects our lieutenant governors in primaries that then join the ticket with the governor after the primary election. And because, of that, our lieutenant governors are by and large selected by Democratic primary voters. And so what we see is that it's one of the few positions we can elect statewide, where instead

of being centrist or moderate, we're being center-left the way that a majority of Pennsylvanians are, we can have somebody in that position. I have 10 years of experience in our legislature, which in and of itself, I think, would in part qualify me for this. But I've got 10 years being, as I said earlier, sort of the tip of the spear and pushing back against some of the most aggressive Republicans in the entire country. Part of this job as a lieutenant governor is overseeing the Senate. In the last couple of years, our Senate went from being the more moderate of our two bodies to one of the most extreme in the United States. One of our current senators was a participant in the January 6th insurrection. And so I think both my experience generally in Pennsylvania's

General Assembly over the last 10 gerrymandered years, but specifically my experiences, pushing back, sort of fighting back and standing up for the issues that I do, I think will serve me really, really well in the Senate. The other two parts of the job are the Emergency Management Commission and the parole board. And I've got lots of thoughts on both. And I think my experience as a Philadelphia and as a progressive Democrat would be really useful in both of those. So how could my listeners and viewers help? I tell people all the time, we are a significantly kinder, brighter, happier,

gentler state than you would think from our General Assembly. And one of the things that I think is really helpful is for people just to hear more about the work that I'm doing, the work that House Democrats, Senate Democrats are doing, it's, you know, listen, supporting candidates always has to come with, the asks always come with sort of financial assets and knocking on doors. But right now, I think the best thing that people can do, both for them and for me, share the good work that I'm doing, share the good work my colleagues are doing. I chair a couple of different committees in the General Assembly. I are a couple of caucuses in the General Assembly. I've got 18, 19 bills out right now that range from banning police officers from buying and wearing camouflage when they're on duty to covering up their badges to equality legislation. And if there's there's things that I'm working on that people like, help me amplify those

things. The campaign stuff will happen naturally. It's the policies and the issues that I want to lead with. And I want people to see first from me. Well, that is a, that's a refreshing position. So, Brian, thank you so much for taking the time. You know, you've got a lot of people pulling for you. We've got a lot of fans here, so thank you. Thank you. Very flattered by that. I really appreciate the time.

When we get through this budget and we move a little bit more to the summer, let's revisit this conversation and see where we're going nationally. Thanks again to Brian Sims. Now we've got my good friend and frequent guest host of Fox LA's The Issue is Alex Michelson. Welcome back. What up, Brian? How are you?

All right. So, Alex, we've got this two-track infrastructure process upon us now. It looks like we've got a bipartisan deal on hard infrastructure, meaning roads and bridges. And yet, Joe Biden and Democratic leaders have said that the bill won't pass unless it's paired with a bill that includes the rest of Democrats' priorities, like the care economy, for example. All of this could have passed through reconciliation anyway, but we kind of went through the whole song and dance because bipartisanship. So do you think that Democrats handed Republicans a prize by now being able to take credit

for something that was going to pass anyway? Or is bipartisanship something that Americans actually want to see? and that will ultimately help Democrats. Well, you're assuming that this could have just passed anyways because, and that would mean that all 50 Democrats would be behind it and everybody in the House would be behind it. And that is not true. I mean, Joe Manchin and Kristen Cinema and perhaps others too

who didn't want to say it would not, are not down for the idea of let's spend $6 trillion on budget reconciliation, not even try to work with together. So they didn't have the problem. votes. I mean, if you had, you know, 60 Democratic votes in the Senate like they did back when Barack Obama was president at the beginning, you maybe could have passed it on reconciliation and let a few of the more moderate people take a pass on you. But they don't have any room for that. So, you know, for somebody like Joe Manchin, who is a senator from the most Republican state in the country, he believes in bipartisanship in his gut and thinks that he has

to do bipartisanship politically because he thinks it's good politics. So he needs to go down this, what you call song and dance number. Let me just ask you this. Now that they've invested all of this time doing this whole two-track process, even if they didn't, even if they weren't doing it predicated on the idea that it was going to be a two-track process, regardless, now that they've invested all of this time in the bipartisan aspect of this, would you imagine that the mansions and cinemas of the Democratic Party that it would be harder for them to vote against the infrastructure package

if it is paired with a less palatable reconciliation package meaning like, okay, if progressives in the Democratic Party say the only way that we're going to vote for the bipartisan bill is if you also pass this reconciliation process, well now they've invested so much time and energy in the bipartisan aspect of it, the hard infrastructure aspect of it, doesn't it kind of increase the progressives leverage on the moderate Democrats like Manchin and Cinema?

Well, I mean, the complicated part of having 50 votes is that any one person can be the most powerful person in the Senate. It's often thought of that it's going to be Joe Manchin, but it could also be Bernie Sanders or it could be Elizabeth Warren. It could be somebody else that holds it up. And so you're going to see, you know, if we really go forward with this two-track thing, somebody like Mansion and Cinema wanting that reconciliation bill

to be something like $2 trillion, dollars and somebody like Bernie wanted it to be six trillion dollars and that's a big difference in money a lot of things you can do with four trillion dollars and so there's going to be a debate in the party there in terms of finding it out i mean joe biden used that phrase we have a deal which you know is a great phrase politically but the truth is that they're not really even close to having a deal yet um they've worked out some vague framework but even if they're going to pass that in a in a truly bipartisan way, he only had five Republican senators with him at the White House this week. You need five more. Who are those people going to be? And if Mitch McConnell is really

intent on killing this thing, which he probably will be, he could keep those people from joining. Yeah, that's a good point. Well, I know this is going to surprise you, but this might be the cynic in me. Do you think that having Republicans allow themselves to vote for infrastructure could be viewed as a purposeful tactic to diminish outrage at the fact that they didn't vote for the For the People Act. Like, them relenting on infrastructure kind of takes the wind out of Democrats' sales when Democrats say, you know, Republicans are filibustering everything. We have to get rid of the filibuster.

Well, now they can turn around and say, well, look, we're on the precipice of passing bipartisan legislation for infrastructure. I think that politically you're right. The problem is they're not enough Democrats. in the Senate that agree with your take on the filibuster, and so they're not thinking the same way that you are. So if you have now written multiple op-eds in your local paper saying that the filibuster is the way to go and the filibuster is here to stay, you're invested in showing that bipartisanship can work because that's where you have staked your claim. That's your flag

in this. And so, you know, the cinemas and mansions of the world have more incentives to giving the Republicans an exit ramp to show that bipartisanship works, then, you know, forcing progressive agenda down their throats because Democrats have power and could end up not having power for a very long time. You know, a lot of politics is all about your calculus and what's most important to you and where are you being motivated by? And the challenge for Chuck Schumer as the majority leader in a caucus of 50 Democrats or Nancy Pelosi with only a four-seat majority in the House is there are so many different

agendas. And Democrats, by their nature, are so much worse at falling in line than Republicans are. Republicans by their nature are much more comfortable with sort of following the leader and being, you know, like the Borg were in Star Trek. There's like one mind. And you follow that and you get your way. Democrats, by their nature, as people who naturally propose, protest, who naturally challenge, who naturally, you know, go against a lot of those sort of things, have a really hard time with that. And I think that makes it harder for Democrats to legislate. Yeah, yeah, I agree. Well, you know, the Republican Party voted this past week against opening debate for S-1 for the People Act. Now, I know it's crazy asking you to get inside of

Joe Manchin's head, but do you think that by virtue of Manchin saying that he's predicated his support for the filibuster on the assumption that Republicans will be bipartisan, and then Republicans not being bipartisan, that he's creating a permission structure for himself to be able to say, my support for the filibuster hinged on them doing their part. They didn't want to play ball, so I won't either. I do think that there's a possibility

that there might be some movement on some sort of filibuster reform somehow. So does it move from 60 votes to 55 votes that you've got to get to? Do they change the way that you've got to filibuster something, meaning you've got to do it in person, is there some sort of rule change where there's an exception for voting rights legislation, the way that the Republicans had carved out exceptions for judges in the past? I think that there is behind the scenes some

thought about, okay, we're giving you everything you want, they're putting it out there, and if you really, really, really don't work with us on anything, that there are some other places to go. I would imagine that that would be the natural progression. And me, as a Democrat, as a progressive, is, I mean, I'm trying to convince myself that that's the reality. But at the same time, you know, you look at the fact that McConnell has opposed everything and continues to oppose everything.

And so it doesn't seem like Republicans are actually afraid that this is going to be a reality. The fact is that we're not going to be able to pressure Joe Manchin into bending to our will as progressives. So if anything, that actually gives him more cred in a state, like you said, that Donald Trump is won by, what, almost 40 points. So I think, you know, like, that is a kind of a silly route to take as much as, you know, our natural inclination is just to scream into the ether and want to grab him by the

shoulders and say, how do you not understand what's happening here? But I think at the end of the day, all we can do, and I've said this, you know, on previous episodes lately, is just let this. process play out. You know, it was Joe Manchin himself who came out and said that there are 10 good people on the other side, that he, you know, he's committed to making sure that there is fair access to voting in this country, that he's certain that we could find 10 good people on the other side. But we needed to let that vote on S1 play out. We needed to show that not only weren't there 10 good people, but there wasn't even one good person who was willing to vote for it.

So he put that test forward and they failed his test. And so I think, at this point, you know, we just have to allow this process to play out, but the steps are important. Yeah, and that he, to give him some space that he didn't start doing this yesterday and he, you know, there's a process. I think what you're saying. You know, in the next few months are going to be just insane on Capitol Hill. I mean, there's an opportunity now to do extraordinary amount of legislating in a really short amount of time. When you're talking about both those tracks for infrastructure, some, you know, $6 trillion potentially on the line. Other big pieces of legislation, Congresswoman Karen Bass, here in Southern California,

Corey Booker, Tim Scott putting out a statement this week that they've come to an agreement on police reform bills or framework for that. You could see that legislation coming through. And then all the other issues that the Biden administration is having to deal with, They're going to have to raise the debt ceiling and do other sorts of spending as well. I mean, there's just going to be a lot of activity all happening at once in the next few months. And at the end of it, you could end up seeing a scenario where Democrats, you know, are really putting forward a real, true democratic agenda. And wouldn't that be something for the Democrats to run on the midterms for bills that they're proud of, that they believe in?

I mean, the challenge, when you look back at Barack Obama, when he was president and they passed Obamacare, which is really not what anybody in the Democratic Party really wanted. It was a really Republican bill that was a compromise bill that they passed because that's what they could get the votes for. And it changed health care a lot, but it was not a true Democratic bill in the way that, like, a Bernie Sanders would write, a true aggressive bill. Right. You know, the Democrats have an opportunity now with this legislation, depending on how they do it, if they really do this two-track system, the past real democratic priorities and then run on those. And that hasn't happened in generations. Yes, but there obviously is the worry that amid all of this happening,

you know, our legislative track record won't be enough because if the For the People Act isn't passed, if partisan gerrymandering isn't confronted head on, then we're going up against the rig system. And so, you know, you could have an agenda that's popular. 99% to 1%, but if the system is inherently rigged against you, then it doesn't matter how many people are coming out to attempt to vote. It doesn't matter how many people are supportive of your agenda. If the rules of the game are so inherently rigged against you that you're destined to lose, that you're predestined to lose. There is no doubt that there are a lot

of real concerns about those laws in Georgia and Texas. And there's no doubt that you can't look at that objectively and see that the whole reason for doing that is to make it harder for Democrats to have a vote. That is just an objective truth. That's the reason why they're doing these laws. That being said, those laws all make it harder to vote, but they don't make it impossible to vote. Make it a lot harder, harder than it was last time the way. And I think that Democratic activists, which are probably most of the people that listen to your podcast, are just can have to work that much harder and find a way, find a way to get to the polls, find a way to get people out there, find a way to get people accurate, because it's not making it illegal

to vote, it's just making it more challenging to do so. And that's going to be the challenge. The other thing that we don't know what's going to happen, another big news item this week is the Justice Department launching a lawsuit against the state of Georgia for their voting bill. and probably will do something similar with the Texas bill if that passes. And, you know, what will happen with that? What happens in the court with that? Does it get to the Supreme Court and how do they rule? We think we know how they're going to rule based off of, you know, the conservative makeup,

but Supreme Court doesn't always rule just along party lines. A lot of their rulings recently have been unanimous in different ways. And so that's a big question, too, going forward, what happens with that? That was a real significant story this week. Yeah. Well, a lot to look forward to. And also, you know, with your point about activism, I'm sure my viewers know well about the Don't Be a Mitch fund, and that's to raise money for voter outreach and voter registration groups

in nine states, a lot of which have these bills being introduced. But having said that, you know, we've raised over $350,000 to this point. So with that said, Alex, this is your favorite point in the chat here. So where can my listeners hear more from you? Are you saying my favorite point is to self-promote? Is that what you're saying? After you just self-promoted your own fund. Don't be a Mitch.

People can donate to that. By the way, has Mitch McConnell responded? Have you heard anything from the Senate in Kentucky about your fund? I'll keep peppering his office, but shockingly, I'm not getting much of a response. Not a response or an interview. You know, I would love to see the two of you together. I think that would be fun. But how do people find me?

The issue is, is a show that I host in California. It's in all the different markets in California. You can go to the issue is show.com. See me on YouTube. YouTube.com slash Elex Michelson or on Twitter at Elex underscore Michelson. That's Elex with an E. And if you happen to live in Los Angeles, I anchor the Fox 11 News at 5, 6, 7, and 10 o'clock every week in it. So lots of ways to check in.

We'd love to hear from you. And if you have something to say or disagree with me, whatever, we'd love if you reach out to me in social media and keep the conversation going. Alex, as always, thank you. you so much for coming on. It's great talking to you. Brian, you are never a Mitch. Thanks again to Elex. 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 Tylercoen.com for links to all of my other channels. Thank you.