No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - What's at stake in midterms
Episode Date: November 6, 2022Here's what’s at stake in our midterm elections. Brian interviews Senator Bernie Sanders about how to get young people out to vote, his message to those disaffected voters out there to get ...them to turn out, and his response to Republicans protecting oil companies while they’re ripping Americans off with record profits. And longtime Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg joins to discuss Republican efforts to flood the zone with favorable polls and what the early vote totals are telling us so far. 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.
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Today we're going to talk about what's at stake in these midterm elections on November 8th.
I interview Senator Bernie Sanders about how to get young people to vote, his message to those
disaffected voters out there to get them to turn out, and his response to those Republicans
protecting oil companies while they're ripping off Americans with record profits.
And I'm joined by longtime Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg to discuss Republican efforts
to flood the zone with favorable polls and what the early vote totals are telling us so far.
I'm Brian Taylor Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie.
Okay, well, this is it. This episode is being released on Sunday, November 6th, which means
depending on when you listen to this, we're probably still a few days away from the midterm
elections. And we've got two scenarios here. What will happen if Republicans take control
of Congress and governorships and state legislatures and what will happen if Democrats take
control? And I want to make this as clear as I can. First, if Republicans take control,
they'll pass legislation banning abortion nationwide. They'll pretend that it'll be left
up to the states that is bullshit. Lindsay Graham already introduced a nationwide abortion ban.
and he did it weeks before the election
when even voters in Kansas
rejected an anti-choice constitutional amendment
if they're willing to introduce that woefully unpopular
legislation before the election
just imagine what they're going to do when they don't have to face the voters
and I know a lot of my listeners are in blue states
if there is a nationwide ban
even laws in California and New York won't help
which leads to the inevitable response
that Joe Biden will just veto that legislation
and you're right we have President Biden for now
who will veto a nationwide abortion ban
but two places that won't help are, A, in the states where Republican legislatures and
Republican governors can and will ban abortion, and B, if a Republican Congress is in place,
they could refuse to certify any Democratic win in 2024.
And so while we have Joe Biden now, if Republicans pull the same shit that Trump pulled in 2020
and they control Congress this time, we could be stuck with an unelected Republican,
Trump even, in 2024, who would sign into law a nationwide abortion ban.
So this election is where they'll lay the groundwork for that.
This election is where they'll set the stage to fix what didn't go their way in 2020.
So if you plan on voting in the general in 2024 or you know someone who plans on voting in the general because they always vote in those elections but aren't really interested in voting in midterms, just know that voting now is what will make your vote count in that election.
If Republicans take control, they'll look to eliminate Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
A handful of Republicans have been threatening it for years.
Now they're coming out and saying it.
Rick Scott, the guy in charge of retaking the Senate for Republicans, he proposed suns setting all.
all federal legislation after five years, and if it's worth reauthorizing, Congress will
purportedly just pass it again. Ron Johnson went a step further, suggesting that everything
goes away after one year. This is the pretext to eliminate Medicare, Medicaid, and Social
Security, programs that you've spent your entire life paying into since your very first
paycheck. And they'll frame it as some socialist giveaway. It's not. It is your money. You worked
for it. You're entitled to it. They want it gone, and they'll make sure it doesn't last if they
take power. If Republicans take control, we will lose funding for climate, and instead we'll
see subsidies dumped into fossil fuels and dirty energy. We will lose the fight against climate change.
I'm trying to figure out a way to say that the future of the planet rests on what happens
here without sounding hysterical, but there is no way to say it without sounding hysterical.
So at this point, I think we just say it. If you want a habitable planet for your kids or
your grandkids, this matters. But let's just say that you're not swayed by the environmental
argument, that that's too amorphous for you, right?
From a job's perspective, just take a look at what investing in clean energy has led to in
just the last few months since the Inflation Reduction Act and the Chips Act were passed.
Toyota is investing $2.5 billion in manufacturing EV batteries.
First, solar is investing $1.2 billion in solar panels.
Sparks is building an electric battery factory.
Corning's investing $42.5 billion in fiber optic cables.
LG and Honda are investing $4.4 billion in EV batteries.
microns investing 40 billion in chips, Qualcomm, 4.5 billion in chips, Intel, $100 billion in chips.
That is hundreds of thousands, if not millions of jobs just right there alone.
That's the future.
We lose jobs in coal every year.
And yet, because that industry is what pays Republicans, that's the only one that they're looking out for.
Every year that we're not focusing on clean energy and renewables is another year of billions of dollars of investments lost and millions of jobs sacrifice.
Sacrifice to places like China.
Republicans will sacrifice every single one of those jobs
because they are only looking out for their own.
If Republicans take control, there will be no gun safety legislation.
Nothing to build on that first gun package passed in 30 years
where states got funding for red flag laws
and domestic abusers were blocked from owning guns
and background checks were expanded for 18 to 20-year-olds.
You've all seen the videos of what schools are like now,
mass shooting drills, SWAT teams going classroom to classroom.
And instead of doing anything meaningful,
Republicans are helping prop up cottage injure.
is selling bulletproof backpacks to kids.
Like, what the fuck are we doing?
We need common-sense gun safety reforms.
We need an assault weapons ban, and we need it now.
I would ask how many more shootings it'll take
before Republicans recognize that,
but there's no number.
The only number they care about is the one on the NRA check.
So for the sake of a traumatized generation,
do not let these people take power.
And, you know, that's to say nothing
of what will happen to LGBT Americans
who could lose their right to same-sex marriage.
It says nothing of losing our rights to contraception.
to say nothing of book bans, to say nothing of voting restrictions and continued efforts
to gerrymander the states, these people have already broadcast what their priorities are.
And they are tailor-made for a small minority of Americans who want a white Christian ethno state
fueled by dirty energy and dark money donors.
But with that said, I understand that it's not enough to just say what you're against,
that we have to say what we're for.
But instead of some theoretical list of policy positions,
I'll just say what Democrats did in the last two years with their razor-thin majority.
Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which included the biggest climate investment in history.
They allowed the government to negotiate lower drug prices so that we no longer pay 10 times more than everyone else on the planet for the exact same drugs.
They capped out of pocket health care costs for seniors at $2,000 a year, insulin at $35 a month.
They imposed a 15% corporate minimum tax onto a billion-dollar companies that pay nothing.
They beefed up IRS enforcement solely to catch ultra-rich tax cheats.
Pass the Chips Act to finally make semiconductor chips, which are used in everything from phones to EVs right here in the
the U.S., which, as I mentioned before, already has led to countless companies investing billions
of dollars and adding tens of thousands of jobs. They passed the PACT Act, giving health care
to sick veterans, forgave student loan debt for 43 million borrowers, passed an infrastructure
package that will upgrade roads and bridges and ports and waterways and add EV charging stations
across this entire country. They passed the first gun safety law in three decades, pardoned all
federal offenses for simple marijuana possession and started the process of removing cannabis
from the list of Schedule 1 drugs like heroin.
Passed the American Rescue Plan
that gave us all free COVID vaccines and tests
and kept our states and localities and businesses,
and yes, even police departments funded
when everything else was shut down from COVID.
They passed legislation funding baby formula,
which Republicans voted against.
Pass legislation preventing price gouging at the pump,
which Republicans voted against.
Pass legislation codifying same-sex marriage,
which Republicans voted against.
Past legislation protecting birth control,
which Republicans voted against.
Past legislation codifying Roe,
which Republicans voted against.
Again, I'm not.
here to make some nebulous argument about what the Democrats will or won't do or what the
Republicans will or won't do based on like vibes. This is all based on what the parties have
done. Don't listen to what these people say. Watch what they do. So I'll just end with this.
If you've spent the last few years engaged, then first off, thank you. And second, please take
the hour or so that it takes to vote. And more importantly, since I'm talking to an audience that's
already engaged and probably really likely to vote already, find people who didn't vote in
2020. People who might have just turned 18 or 19, or even people who voted Republican in the
past, who recognize now that women should have the right to make their own choice on what they do
with their own body. Find those people and bring them with you. Help them make a plan to vote.
You might have heard me say this before, but in Wisconsin, Biden won the 2020 election by three
votes per precinct. That's all. Had Trump flipped just three votes per precinct, he didn't won that
state. It doesn't take much to win these elections. Christy Smith, running in California's 27th,
lost our election by 333 votes in 2020.
So please do your part, find your people,
and let's continue building on the good work
that we've done so far.
Next step is my interview with Bernie Sanders.
Very proud to introduce today's guest,
US Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders.
Thank you so much for taking the time.
Brian, my pleasure to be with you.
Now, you've spent the last week out on a Get Out the Vote tour.
Since you've been on the road,
what's been your biggest takeaway from the tour
and do you feel like the enthusiasm,
matches up to 2018 and 2020 when Democrats were able to secure major victories?
Well, you know, this is a midterm election and I think there are a lot of folks out there
who really don't appreciate how important this election is and our consequential it is.
But we had really good turnouts in Oregon and in California and Texas.
And I think people are beginning to catch on that if you are concerned about the needs,
for a woman to control her own body. This election is important. If you're concerned about
climate change and leaving a planet to our kids, which is habitable, this election is very
important. If you're concerned about maintaining American democracy, this election is important.
And it's also important for a whole lot of economic reasons in that if Republicans
gain control of the House and the Senate, there will be really an assault on the
on the needs of working family.
So Brian, this is a really, really important election,
and I hope that people come out and vote in large numbers.
Obviously, one major contingent of that is young people,
and that's a constant point of concern
whether they'll show up to vote.
I believe that millennials like myself and Gen Zs
now make up the biggest voting block,
but we still vote in lower numbers than older generations.
Right.
What's your message to young people who feel like
the government isn't working for them?
Well, first of all, your point,
about lower turnouts among young people is sadly true.
And it's kind of ironic because the decisions that government make right now
are going to impact your generations for decades to come.
And furthermore, what bothers me a lot is that the younger generation,
people under 40, 45, are the most progressive generations
that we have ever seen in the history of this country.
These are generations that are anti-racism, they're anti-sexism, anti-homophobia, and these are folks out there that in many ways are experiencing a lower standard of living than their parents.
The economy is not working for them.
They have huge student debts.
They can't afford housing.
The wages they earn are not particularly good.
So politics should be of enormous importance to those generations, and we've got to make sure that they understand.
what the stakes are. So my hope is that if you are concerned as young people are about the
existential threat of climate change, you know, this is not some abstract idea. What kind of
planet are your kids and grandchildren are going to have? You should be concerned about it and
young people are. Whether you're concerned about gay rights or women's rights, you should be
concerned about it, and the younger generation is. And whether we have an economy that works for
all or just a few should be of concern to everybody.
So I really do hope that, you know, I know that a midterm election is not as sexy as a presidential
election, right? Presidential election, all the media is talking about this guy and that guy,
you have debates and all that stuff. But trust me, who controls the U.S. Senate and the U.S.
House is of enormous consequence. Please, Lord.
Now, there are progressives out there who supported you and who do feel like the Democrats
didn't go far enough this cycle. You know, I have friends myself who kind of lost confidence
in politics when you didn't win, or as big oil continued to retain its power, or as big
banks continue to consolidate and on and on, I'm certain that's something that you've heard
about, especially since you've been out on this tour yourself. How do you keep those people
in the fold? Like, how do you bring back the disaffected folks who you've always had a unique
ability to communicate with? Hey, guess what? I am disaffected. You know, and I'm a United States
Senate. I'm chairman of the Budget Committee. I am disaffected. You're unhappy with how the Democrats
function. I'm more unhappy with how the Democrats function. But in the real world, you've got to take a
look at where we are at this moment. And that is clearly we need major reforms in the Democratic Party.
And that's what I've been fighting for for years. We need a party that represents working people
that believes in economic justice, social justice, racial justice, that does not take huge amounts of
money from corporate packs. That's what we need. Are we there today? No, we are not. Have we made
progress in recent years? Yes, we have. And let me just say this. If you're kind of demoralized
out there, understand there will be more strong progressives in the U.S. House of Representatives
this coming January than has ever been in the modern history of this country. That's real.
And you made it happen. But, you know, politics and life, just
is you know this is not a question of instant gratification here yeah you know there were people
you know whether it was martin losing jr and others who struggled for decades for racial justice
women who died in the suffragette's movement fighting for women's right to vote real change
does not happen overnight we have to continue to struggle but i do want all of those people
say well you know democrats are not good enough and that's true that's true i want you to look at the
alternatives. Do you really want a political party in power that is trying to undermine
American democracy that is maintaining this big lie that Trump won the election? Do you know what
that means? Democracy is at stake. Get involved. Do you really want a party out there that does
not believe that women should be able to control their own bodies? I don't think you do. So I'm not here
to tell you. I'm the last guy on earth to tell you that the Democrats are doing what they should be
doing. They're not. We've got to reform the Democratic Party, make it stronger, make it more
aggressive in standing up to big money, interest, fighting for Medicare for all, canceling student
debt, making public colleges and universities tuition free, making sure that we end this,
this functional health care system, you know, so that all people have health care as a human
right, et cetera, et cetera. But you've got to get out and vote and we have to defeat Republicans
next Tuesday. Shell posted $9.5 billion in profits this quarter. Chevron posted $11 billion
in profits. ExxonMobil, almost $20 billion in profits. What's your message to these oil
companies that have opted to fleece Americans for record profits, all doing so under the guise of
inflation? Well, Brian, what they are doing is absolutely outrageous. And my Republican colleagues
are helping them do it. Look, first of all, you know, when
When Republicans talk about inflation, inflation is a very serious issue.
It's 8.2% in the United States.
People are having a hard time filling up their gas tanks when they go to the service station.
They're having a hard time buying the food they need, the prescription drugs they need,
the health care that they need.
It is a real serious problem for working families.
What are the causes of inflation?
Well, for a start, did Joe Biden do it all by himself?
why is it that in Europe, inflation is at 11%.
They got Joe Biden's fault.
In the UK, it's at 10.1%.
And it is higher in many parts of the world
than it is in the United States.
And the reason for that is that the pandemic
has resulted in the breakdown of supply chains.
That's number one.
The horrific war in the Ukraine, number two.
And as you've just indicated,
The major reason for inflation today, my Republican colleagues won't talk about this in a million years,
is the outrageous level of corporate greed we are now seeing.
You indicated some of the record-breaking profit margins that the oil companies are saying.
You could do the same with the pharmaceutical industry.
You can do the same with the health care industry.
You could say do the same with major food companies.
What these guys are doing, and you know, think about it from a moral perspective.
We've got a world in turmoil, the war, the pandemic, a breakdown in supply chains.
And these guys, instead of saying, my God, what can we do to stabilize things, help working people, keep prices low, right?
Might be a good thing to do.
What they see is, wow, all of this confusion out there, people won't notice it.
We can rip them off unconsciously.
Let's go for it.
Raise prices.
They're hell with working families.
Hell with the elderly.
Don't worry about them.
but just pay attention to our stockholders.
And that really stinks.
And in my view, what we need to do is institute a windfall profits tax on the success
of greed.
That's my view.
You touched on the Republican response to this.
You know, what do you say to these Republicans who basically enabled these oil companies
to do that because they were pretending that high prices were, like you said, all Joe
Biden's fault, basically scapegoating the Democrats and at the same time giving these oil.
companies cover to screw over America.
You got it.
That's exactly what is happening.
I want to say something else.
You know, when you're in my line of work, you read through dog whistles and code terms, right?
So Republicans are saying the real cause of inflation in America, despite the fact that it's
an international phenomenon, the real cause is government spending under the Democrats.
What they're talking about, frankly, is the $1.9 trillion.
American Rescue Plan that we passed in March 2021.
Now, I'm the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee.
I played an active role in passing that bill.
And you know what, Ryan?
I apologize to nobody for passing that bill.
Let us remember where we were.
I know sometimes people have short memories.
March 2021, we had a pandemic, sweeping the nation,
3,000 people every single day were dying.
We were in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
Millions of people lost their jobs, worried about addiction.
Hunger was higher than it had been for decades.
So I'm not going to apologize that we gave every American four, man, woman, a child,
$1,400 to get through that crisis, that we extended unemployment benefits,
that we expanded the child tax credit, that we made sure that hospitals in America
that were overwhelmed with COVID patients did not collapse.
Now, on the other hand, that's what we did.
On the other hand, you know what the Republicans want to do?
If they get power, they want to repeal the estate tax, which applies to the top one-tenth of one percent.
Elon Musk's family would have an $80 billion benefit from that tax.
Is that really where we want to go?
And then on top of that, because they give so much in tax breaks to the rich, they want to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
So the choices, I think, pretty clear for next Tuesday.
As a segue right off of that, you know, we've been subjected to months of these Republican
attacks about inflation and gas prices and the economy.
But what Republicans are trying to do by virtue of levying these attacks is to give the
impression that they're going to be the responsible stewards of all of those things.
What do you tell people who think that the way to combat high prices and get some economic
relief is by electing Republicans?
If you are a Republican or an independent, or maybe even a Democrat, think of a voting Republican,
you just ask yourself, do you think that the future should be giving massive?
We're talking about $1.75 trillion in tax breaks to a few thousand of the wealthiest families in America.
And do you think really the future in combating inflation is to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid,
and other programs. I don't think most Americans think that. I think what most Americans want
us to do, which the Republicans will never do, is to have the courage to take on the pharmaceutical
industry, which now charge us in some cases 10 times more for the prescription drugs we buy
than in any other country. What the American people want us to do is lower the cost
of child care in America, which is now outrageously high. They want to make public colleges
and universities tuition-free to help struggling students be able to get the higher education that they
need. So I think when you, you know, it's very easy if you're a Republican out there,
they're very easy. What they're doing is there are problems. They're talking about the problems.
Well, you know what? Real problems exist. Those problems are real. But then when you kind of corner
them, you say, what's your solution? You think Cunning Social Security is really the way we have to go?
Yeah. Well, then they get a little bit defensive. So I think Democrats, I've got to get on the
offensive and take it to them. Rick Scott had come out with a plan to sunset all federal legislation
after five years. And if it's worth keeping, then Congress will purportedly, you know, reauthorize it.
Ron Johnson won up him and said basically that all federal legislation should be reauthorized every
year. What does that mean for the programs that you had just spoken about for Medicare, Medicaid,
and Social Security? It means they're on the chopping block. I mean, that's basically what it means.
Either we believe that seniors in this country are entitled to social security.
And in my view, by the way, we should expand social security benefits by lifting the cap on income.
As you know right now, somebody who makes 140,000 a year pays the same amount into social security in taxes as somebody who makes $10 million.
That's absurd.
But we should expand social security benefits for the elderly.
We should move from Medicare for the elderly to Medicare for all.
But the bottom line is what Republicans are saying, and they've always said this, is that
programs, government programs that help working families, and it's not just social security,
Medicare and Medicaid, it's federal aid, education, it's environmental protection.
Those are programs that they don't want, and they are going to go after all of those programs
if they have a majority in the House and the Senate.
Yeah, and I say this every week with everybody I speak to,
but we ignore these things at our own peril
because the same people who were promising us
that nothing was going to happen to Roe
are now the same people promising us
that nothing's going to happen to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
No, I mean, I've got to give them credit, actually.
They have been more honest than usual.
You've got a bunch of them,
something like 150 members in the House
who have made it clear that they are willing,
by the way, to allow the United States
the default on our debt payments if they are unable to cut Social Security and Medicare.
So they're pretty overt about it. And, you know, you are right that people may not take
them seriously. But these are the guys who came within one vote of repealing the Affordable Care Act
a few years ago. You recall that. Which would have thrown 30 million people off the health
insurance they have. These are the guys who, when they had the power, gave huge tax breaks
to the wealthiest people in this country.
These are serious people.
They are focused.
And their goal is massive tax breaks for the rich, cuts in programs for the elderly,
the children, working families, low-income people.
That's what they want to do.
And, you know, they're pretty upfront about it.
Our job is to make sure that they don't get away with that.
So with that said, if we're able to expand our Senate majority by two seats and we're
able to hold the house, what happens in January of 2023?
Well, I'm not much into predictions, but I will tell you what I will do.
I think we have got to recognize that the American people are angry, and Brian, they were angry
for good reasons.
I don't know if a lot of people know this, but real inflation adjusted for wages today
are lower than they were 50 years ago, despite huge increases in worker productivity.
Meanwhile, while working families are struggling, the billionaire class is growing night and day during the pandemic alone.
These are a $2 trillion increase in their wealth.
Today we have more income and wealth inequality than any time in the history of America.
You know that?
I don't know that many people know it.
You got three people who want more wealth than the bottom half of American society.
So I think what Democrats have got to do is say, look, we have got to have the courage for once in our lives.
to take on the incredible power of the banks, the insurance companies, the drug companies,
the fossil fuel industry.
This is not easy because as we're seeing right now, these guys have unlimited amounts of money.
They're running all these super PACs and 30-second ads.
But if we want to restore faith in democracy and the government can work for working people,
that is what we have to do.
And as chairman of the Budget Committee, that is what I will be doing.
Now, we're a few days out from the election, obviously, from election day, but people are already voting.
There's a lot of tension about what our closing message should be.
And granted, Republicans have given Democrats, you know, a ton of options from attacks on democracy to supporting authoritarians abroad, abortion rights, threatening Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, coddling the rich, ignoring climate change, and on and on and on.
You've always been consistently on message with economic issues, probably the most on-message person that we have on-the-left.
How do you reconcile closing with an economic message if it means sleeping on some other
major issues like abortion and attacks on democracy?
No, no, no, Ryan, it's not a question of sleeping on him.
The right of women to control their own bodies to me is fundamental.
It is enormously important.
And what can we say about the importance of preserving American democracy?
And what can you say about whether or not we continue to have a planet which allows people
to live in a healthy way?
I mean, these are enormously important issues, so there's no pushing them aside.
But what I am saying is if you are a candidate out there, politician, and you're talking to ordinary people, you have got to recognize many people, 30% of our people live in paycheck to paycheck.
They go into the grocery store and they say, my God, you know, prices are going up.
I can't afford to buy the food I need to feed my families.
I can't afford rent.
Brent is soaring many parts of this country.
I can't afford health care.
Healthcare costs are going on.
Prescription drug costs are going on.
You cannot ignore that.
So I'm not saying turn you back on abortion or climate or democracy.
Of course, you've got to focus on those issues.
But you also have to understand that in poll after poll after poll, they say to the American League,
what are the most important issues facing you?
People say economics, I'm not making enough to live the way I want to live and inflation.
You've got to deal with those issues.
You can't push them aside.
Let's end with this.
What's the first thing you're going to do after election season's over?
Well, take a break.
Yeah.
Rest for a few days.
But then we have the midterm elections and as chairman of the Budget Committee.
I have some responsibilities that I'm going to have to deal with.
Great.
Well, we'll leave it there.
Thank you so much for taking the time.
And, you know, best of luck out there on that tour.
And thank you for what you're doing.
Keep up the good work.
Thank you, Brian.
We've got longtime Democratic strategist and a member of the team that helped flip the House
in 2018 with D-Triple-C, Simon Rosenberg.
Thanks so much for taking the time.
It's really great to be here.
Thanks for all that you do.
Well, you've been my go-to for all information polling in this pre-election period.
So thank you for being a source of good information amid the hellscape that is Twitter these days.
So now let's jump into it.
You've argued that Republicans have flooded the zone with bogus polls.
Can you speak on what's happening here?
to like just give a lay of the land?
Yeah, listen, I think that there's,
the big question this election always was,
would the strong democratic overperformance
that we saw in the Five House specials
and in Kansas earlier this year,
would that carry over to the general election?
And I think importantly, it is carrying over.
And we know that in two ways.
One is that the early vote is very, very strong,
frankly stronger than I think we could have anticipated.
we're overperforming 2020 nationally, we're overperforming, you know, in many, many of the most
important states, and in some of the states like Michigan and Pennsylvania and Georgia and Wisconsin,
we're overperforming by a huge amount, meaning that we're doing better than would have been
reasonably expected in this election in those states. And the second thing is we're also
overperforming in the, in the legitimate polling, in the independent media polls, not the partisan
polls on both sides, but the independent high-quality media polls like Marist, the New York Times,
and the Nevada, the independent, the polls that people sort of look to and that are important,
we're doing really well, actually, particularly in the Senate races. I mean, we just had a rash
of polling come out from Maris, which is one of the most respected pollsters in the country,
showing us in very comfortable leads in Arizona and Pennsylvania and very close in Georgia.
And every time those polls come out, and also the early vote, it contradicts the red wave narrative.
We can only be in a red wave if all the data everywhere was pointing in the same direction.
A wave means that it's universal, it's happening across the country.
And we know now that we have data showing that it's not happening, actually.
We know the early vote data shows that it's not happening, right?
And so I don't think there could be a red wave on election date, but it hasn't showed up yet.
And I think what the Republicans did is that, you know, they were having, they were getting a lot of pressure from their donors.
You know, they're having to compete in states like, you know, Iowa and North Carolina and Ohio, which they never thought they'd be competing in at this late.
And I think that in a moment of sort of desperation, they decided to flood the zone with a lot of, you know, plus three, plus four Republican polls that have shifted the averages and helped them create this narrative that the election is shifting at the end when there's actually a lot of compelling data showing that's actually not.
happening, right? And so I think that's what's going on. I mean, this is the kind of stuff they do
all the time, but it's just never been done at this volume. And with this many polls and this many
states, by this many different pollsters, it's clearly an orchestrated campaign to gain the polling
averages. Well, I would ask, as a follow-up to that, like, so what? You know, what's the
significance of that? Is it that they're trying to discourage Democrats from showing up by making it
look like a lost cause? I think it's both that they wanted to buck up their team, because
I'll tell you, imagine being a Republican political operative when you were supposed to win the House by 60 seats and that this was going to be a blowout election and you're working, working, working, and you're just not seeing that in your actual work.
And the donors are calling you and saying, why are you guys screwing up?
How can you can't be beating that old Biden guy, right?
They're under unbelievable pressure not to lose.
If these guys lose, they're going to be, you know, they're going to be disgraced in their business because this was like a layup election that they can't win.
And so there's just incredible internal pressure on the Republicans to make it feel better than it is.
And so I think that, one, this was done for voter enthusiasm on their side, for fundraising, for, and it's also some of this LOL, you know, shits and giggle stuff, right, that conservatives do that, you know, let's see if we can game the polling averages and manufacture a red wave narrative to suppress Democratic turnout, to create more negative sentiment in the Democratic world, to turn all the press against them.
And I think that it's all of that.
I mean, I think it's all of that.
And I think that what's the problem is, we just keep getting more and more data showing
that it's not happening.
And I think I've had some limited ability to break through in the national media on this.
But I think that they've been successful in basically conditioning and BSing their way
with the national media into declaring a red wave is here when, in fact, it isn't.
Not to give any free advice to Republican strategists and pollsters.
But one thing that they might want to consider is not taking stances that 70% of Americans disagree with
and stripping women of their bodily autonomy a few weeks before the election.
So, you know, just for starters.
I think I'm with you on that one.
No question.
You know, you look at these at the trend in these polls.
And what we've seen since 2016 is kind of a democratic bias that undercounts the number of Republicans
who've tended not to answer polling questions.
because of decreased trust in establishment media, among a number of reasons.
So in a way, isn't flooding the zone with Republican-weighted polls actually to some small
degree of fix for this pro-democratic bias?
It's a great question.
I really appreciate the thoughtfulness of that question, and here's my answer.
The polls weren't wrong in 2016, but they changed at the end.
And in fact, because of the FBI intervention in the election, and then the polls, you know, Hillary
collapsed when that happened. We know that, right? And so I don't, I'm a believer that the poll bias
you're talking about really only manifested in 2020. It wasn't there in 2016. It wasn't there in
2018. And so I do think that you're right that the entire kind of political ecosystem in
national politics has been terrified of replicating that undercounting of Republican votes that
happened, the shy Republican voter. It's possible, though, that everybody went too far and that they're
actually missing this cycle that the energized vote is actually on our side. And if you look at
what happened in those five House special elections, there was no poll showing that movement
and that, you know, there's no poll that was done in any of those races that predicted those
outcomes. We overperformed all the polling. And I'll give you an example. In New York 19 in
the House special, there were 10 public polls done. None of them showed us winning. Data for
progress, a Democratic firm had us losing by 10 points. Yeah. The D-T-T-T-CCC.
own internal polling had us losing three to four points, and we won by two and a half points.
And so, you know, in what has actual voting and not polling, we've overperformed. And we're seeing
that same overperformance showing up in the early vote. And it's why, you know, I would still rather
be us than them when it comes to this election. With that said, let's get into the actual votes
and the actual election right now. Can you give a snapshot of what their early vote data are saying?
like this is being recorded, you know, for viewers and listeners right now, this is being
recorded on Friday for a Sunday release. So, you know, I say this with two caveats.
One is that polls are only a snapshot of the past, and there may be new snapshots by the time
you read this. And also, you may be listening to this when we already have winners, so.
Yeah, I know. It's a great question. And it's a great caveat to your audience that things may
change, right, in the next couple days. But the early vote date has actually been remarkably
consistent over 10 days. I don't expect it going to change very much. Right now, as of today,
we're up 50 to 40, so, you know, by 10 points. That's two points better than where it was in 2020.
So we're overperforming 2020 by two points. We have 3.2 million more votes than the Republicans
do at this point, which is a lot. You know, it means that we're going to be going into election
day with a potentially, you know, four to five million vote lead, which you would rather be
us than them again, right? And then in many of the most important states, as I said earlier,
in places like, you know, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, you know, we have huge
performance way above 2020, 10, 15, 20 points above 2020. And that's in part because, you know,
I think what you have to recognize, when you look at the battlegrounds, Senate races, you know,
we're doing very well in the polling there. The early votes, very strong. We have spent a lot of
money in those states, right? We have built massive field organizations. We've done a lot of ads.
We have very strong candidates. These are also states that tend to have sort of strong parties
underneath them, long, traditionally strong parties. So you're seeing our early vote grassroots
campaign really produce extraordinary results. We are pushing the numbers up on purpose. This was
a plan, right? This was a strategy. And it's working, right? We should feel really good about it.
But we're also up by smaller numbers in places like Arizona and Washington and Texas.
And let me say one last thing is that what's important about for your listeners is that in the last week,
everything's actually gotten better.
While supposedly the election is bottoming out for us, according to the national media,
the early vote is actually improved by two points nationally for us.
And we've seen really meaningful improvement in four important states.
In Washington, in Arizona, North Carolina, and Texas.
We've seen substantial five or six point movements towards us just in the last few days.
So the early vote is actually getting better every day now.
And so I'm optimistic because I think, look, we couldn't go door to door in 2020, right?
That was a tool that was not available to us.
This is a core organizing tool.
And I think now that we've been able to restore our traditional way of talking to our voters,
our lower propensity voters, you're seeing that it's actually yielding, you know, significant results.
And so it's why I remain, I will tell you that if you, if you, if you had asked me, if I looked at this data two or three months ago, I would say there's no way we're going to be where we are now. This is too good. And so I think we have to be really optimistic about what we're seeing. Here's what I think is going to happen, right? We knew they were going to vote a lot? The question was, were we going to vote a lot? Was the anti-maga majority that showed up in such big numbers in the last two elections, where we're going to show up again? So far, we have reasons for optimism about that.
Are there any worries, though, that because early voting versus election day voting has become so politicized that the early vote data isn't necessarily like a harbinger for a big Democratic turnout, it's just that we're going to see all of our Democrats vote early and all of the Republicans vote on election day.
It's just like another indicator of partisanship.
No, I have a slightly different take.
I mean, we'll see, by the way.
You could be right.
And we'll find out in a couple days.
But it's more, I think what's more accurate is it's an indication of intensity, just in the way that our candidates have raised more money than their candidates.
We overperformed in Kansas and in the five-house specials.
We saw a huge spike in Democratic registration after Dobbs.
All of these indicators of intensity are all pointing in the same direction, which is that we're the party that's bringing intensity to the vote right now.
And the Republicans aren't, right?
Their candidates didn't raise a lot of money.
Their voter reg stuff really dropped off after Dobbs, right?
They did really poorly in all those elections.
And so where we head into election days, you'd rather be us than them here.
And also just to make sure people understand, when you move your early voters,
you know, your prime voters to vote early, that means you free up the entire grassroots organization
to turn out lower propensity voters.
And so we're now going to be talking to lower propensity voters to go get them to vote
for a week.
The Republicans are going to be talking to them for a day, right?
This strategy that we've employed is a better strategy than what the Republicans
are doing, it's much better to move people into early voting than to wait to election day.
And so it's another reason why I'm optimistic.
And I think it's one of the reasons you're seeing our numbers moving in the right direction
is that we're starting to hit lower propensity voters now and turning them out.
And which is a sign, it's really important because in a midterm election, you have more
people who are just not sure if they're going to vote.
And so our ability to have this extra tool to go reach these lower propensity voters
is really a powerful strategic and tactical advantage we have going into the final days.
Yeah, I'm so glad that you brought that up.
I would also add that you being able to vote early, freeze up time on election day.
So all of those long lines that we hear about, those four, five, six, seven, eight-hour lines that we're hearing about in Georgia,
every time that you submitted ballot early, that's another five minutes saved at the polling place.
Yeah, and it makes our elections work more smoothly, to your point.
I mean, there's been so much challenge to the system, I mean, it's amazing.
It's so, it's such an affirmation for the United States that so many people are voting early.
It's such a sign of the health of our democracy and people going.
And it makes it easier to count the votes.
It makes it far less likely there's any kind of election day disruption.
So, you know, voting early is just good.
And any of you who haven't voted who can vote early, please do before election day, right?
Some of you still have the opportunity to vote early.
Do it.
It makes it more likely we win, and it makes more likely the elections run smoothly on election day.
Perfectly put.
Are you worried about California at all?
Because California doesn't have any big, sexy Senate race to help drive turnout.
So, you know, we have a lot of important House races like Christy Smith and Will Rollins and Mike Levin, Katie Porter.
Yeah, I am worried about California.
I don't know enough about what's happening in the early boat turnout in those House races.
I now need to realize I need to go look and I haven't done it.
But I think the way to think about this is there's sort of three different elections happening
simultaneously right now in the United States.
We don't have a single nationalized election.
The Democrats actually didn't want the election to be nationalized around Biden.
And I don't think the Republicans successfully nationalized it.
And so one election is what's happening in the Senate battlegrounds where we're doing really well
and we should feel really good about where we are.
The second, though, in places like Rhode Island and New York and California and Oregon,
where MAGA is not a threat.
There's really no Republican Party in these places
and some of the issues around quality of life
and urban chaos and so on
have sort of taken on more of a life of their own.
Also, people frustrated with COVID.
Democrats are in charge.
And so I think in those states,
we could see some underperformance.
I mean, certainly we're seeing it
in New York and Oregon and California right now.
The early vote's a little off,
and we have to be worried about that.
The third, though, election we should be looking at
are states in the Midwest and Texas,
where MAGA is a threat, where abortion is under threat,
where the abortion extremism is in play.
And, you know, like what we saw in Kansas, right?
Texas is doing, the early vote is very strong for us there.
The early vote is very strong for us in Indiana and in Iowa,
and we're even a little bit ahead in Kansas.
And so there could be some surprises
in some of those red states or the Midwest, you know,
that like we saw in Kansas a few months ago,
that no one's counting on.
Certainly the fact that Donald Trump had to go to Iowa,
yesterday on Thursday to campaign for Grassley this late in the race, it's just an incredible sign
that they are just not where they want to be. That's not red wavy, as we would say, right?
That's a sign of, you know, that they're worried about this kind of winning in core Republican
states. That's the opposite of a red wave. I'm going to put you on the spot here. What's your,
what's going to be your surprise election night result? Oh, I think they're going to be a lot.
I mean, I think the House races are so close that I don't know, I don't know if that are, I don't
think we should be surprised by surprises, maybe is the right way to think about it. I mean,
is there one like underdog candidate that everyone else is written off? I'm really fascinated.
I'll tell you, the two races I'm sort of most fascinated by, and we're going to get data on in
earlier, Ohio and North Carolina. I mean, if we're really close in those races, you know,
laid into the night, the Republicans are going to be, have a bad night. And I don't, you know,
I think that those are probably really important bellwether is more so.
even then like Georgia and Pennsylvania.
I mean, obviously, you know, we're going to, I mean, because there are a lot of really
important East Coast races, we're going to have a lot of data pretty early, you know, in the,
and for those states that can count the early vote in the mail ballots before election day,
you know, we're going to get a lot of data.
Some of the states they can't, right?
And so, you know, we're going to know a lot about this election pretty early.
I mean, Georgia, Pennsylvania, New York.
you know, we're going to have East Coast data coming in early.
But we also have a lot of West Coast races that are really close.
I mean, Nevada, you know, Western races, Nevada, Arizona, right, California, as you mentioned, Oregon.
This is going to be a very late night.
And I guess I'm most intrigued by North Carolina and Ohio.
I just think everyone in our side kind of wrote them off.
And they're hanging in there.
McConnell spending a lot of money in the final week, meaning that they don't think it's in the bag.
And, you know, we should be really, again, I think all.
of us should realize if I can say one really important thing. Nobody thought we had a shot
in this election. The fact that we're this close, this late, that the grassroots of our party
have raised so much money for our candidates, that we're seeing unprecedented success in the
early vote, you know, it's really a testament to the grit and resilience and ambition and
passion of the Democratic Party. I mean, I'm so proud of our party right now. I'm so proud of the
people who've worked to make this possible. It's really an incredible achievement. Whatever
happens on election day, we should be really, really proud, and we should end this race on an
up note and really go fight like hell in the final days and bring it home for us, for our
candidates, and for the country. Really well said. I want to end with one more thing.
Can you just speak for a moment about youth turnout and what we're seeing just from the early
numbers so far? Yeah, I think we don't know yet. I mean, well, let me put it differently.
What we know is that the electorate at this point is much older than it was in 2020,
and we're still doing really well, right?
Which is incredible.
I mean, I did some calculations on this this morning, and the electorate is like nine of the under 50 vote,
which I'm going to put as youth.
I know people may laugh at that, but it's just us kids under 50.
I know, under 50, but there really is a break, though, between sort of late 40s and younger and then
late 40s and older, there's a huge kind of cultural break in there, right? It's essentially
people that came of age, you know, after the Cold War and after Reagan and Bush and Clinton.
I mean, the people that came of age after Clinton basically are much more democratic, right?
And so what we know is that the electorate today is about nine percentage points
less under 50 than it was at this point two years ago. It's kind of incredible.
We're about four to five points less under 50 than we were in 2018.
What we believe is that based on the Harvard IOP data,
that the young 18 and 29-year-olds are intending to vote at the same level
or higher than 2018.
But it's going to be late voting.
And young people tend to vote late.
It's what happened in 2018 and 2020.
And I think that there is some evidence.
I was talking to Tom Bonnier about this morning,
and he's actually going and crunching the numbers.
now, and if we get this, I'll put it up on my Twitter feed, is that I told him that I thought
that the under 50 vote a week ago was 18% of the electorate, now it's 23%. If that's true,
and I don't have access to that data, he's got to go pull it. That means that we're starting
to see a significant uptick of younger people coming into the electorate, and it should be
encouraging. It's particularly young women, by the way. I mean, I think the heroes of this election
for us may be, you know, Gen Z and millennial women at the end of the day, and who were the
heroes in Kansas and in some of the House specials.
And you've seen the huge voter registration spike that we've seen since Dobbs has been
disproportionately young women.
And what Tom will tell you is that new registrants who register in the year of an election
almost always vote.
They have an unbelievably high level of participation.
And so we have tens and tens of thousands.
of new female voters that are young who are going to be also, I assume,
be bringing all their friends to the polls and become a powerful magnet right
to increase turnout for us.
And so, you know, I think as Tom has been saying in his own writing,
the big wild card left in this election is what happens to young people.
And if they turn out in large numbers, we're going to have a great midterm.
If they don't, we may be disappointed.
Simon, how can we hear more from you?
Yes, Simon WDC on Twitter.
I tweet far too much, just have to warn you, in advance.
And that's really the best way.
Also my website, NDN.org, but I'm not really writing anything other than Twitter right now.
And I also have, I will promote the heck out of this podcast.
I appreciate it.
And I should say that I'm also hosting, co-hosting for through probably the end of the year,
Deep State Radio podcast of David Rothkopf.
We do every Thursday an election-oriented pod.
We had Cecil Richards talking about women and youth voting yesterday.
I do it with Tara McGowan and David.
It's a fun podcast, not as good as yours, obviously, but it's pretty good.
And that's another place where you can check in with our work.
But listen, everybody, just big thank you for, you know, being big citizens or, you know,
giving a crap enough to even watch a show like this and take time out of your day.
And, you know, just make sure that whatever you're going to do to help contribute to our win on Tuesday,
you just do more of it between now and Election Day.
But the single most important thing you can do if you can is to vote early.
That's the single most critical act you can take between now and election day.
We'll leave it there.
Simon, thank you so much for taking the time.
I appreciate it.
And thank you for all the work you do.
Again, I would highly recommend people watching and listening.
Definitely go follow Simon.
Thanks so much.
Good luck, everybody.
Thank you.
Thanks again to Simon.
That's it, guys.
Please go vote.
Let's bring this home and I'll 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.
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