Pod Save America - “A good day.”

Episode Date: November 9, 2017

Democrats have the best Election Night in five years, dominating races up and down the ballot in a decisive rejection of Trump and Trumpism. Then Jon and Dan talk to Jason Kander about his new Crooked Media podcast, Majority 54, while DeRay and Tommy interview Philadelphia activists Johndai Harrell and Nicole Porter about criminal justice reform and re-entry programs. 

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On the pod today, we'll be talking to the host of Crooked Media's newest podcast, Majority 54, Jason Kander. We'll also be playing DeRay and Tommy's interview with Jean de Harrell and Nicole Porter from our Philadelphia show. They talk about criminal justice reform, reentry programs. It's a great interview from our last Thursday's second show. Also, check out the latest episode of Crooked Conversations. Dan, tell us about it.

It's one from you. It is one from me. I talked to Mark Leibovich of the New York Times, who is writing a book about the NFL, how the players, owners in the league actually operate. And we talked about how the NFL is dealing with being in the center of the political firestorm here in the Trump era, whether it's about the rules of the game, Colin Kaepernick, the protests that are taking place during the national anthem. It was a really fun conversation.

Mark's a great guy, and he has deeply reported how the NFL thinks about these issues. Yes, Mark is very smart and very funny, so I'm looking forward to listening to this Cricket Conversation. And everyone go subscribe. You haven't listened to it yet? It's been out for a day. What are you even doing? It's a lot of content, man.

You know, I'm just... All right. My drive to work is too short. I'm listening to Cricket Conversations like five minutes at a day. What have you been doing? It's a lot of content, man. You know, I'm just, my drive to work is too short. I'm trying to, I'm listening to career conversations like five minutes at a time. All right. I'm just saying, I listened to your pod the day it came out. I just finished, I just finished DeRay's episode on prosecutors, which was excellent. So yours is next. Yeah, it was. Next in the queue. All right, let's talk about the election. Dan, for the first time since you and I have been hosting a podcast, we can celebrate the results of an election. Oh my God, that's true.

Here's the sad thing. We've been hosting a podcast for 18 months now. Well, here's the sadder thing. Democrats haven't had a night this successful in five years since 2012 when Obama won re-election. We haven't had a non-presidential night that successful since 2006. 11 years ago. Remember when winning was just like what our life was like? It was like deja vu. When we won, I was like, oh, that's what that feels like. It's a good feeling. So good.

that's what that feels like it's a good feeling oh so good but let's uh let's rewind to how we all felt before the election dan how'd you feel going in this is you know we can't completely hide this now because tommy decided to tweet out our slack conversation yeah i was nervous and i'll be nervous for every election going forward for the rest of time. As we should be. I had been nervous, incredibly nervous and negative for every election of my entire life until 2016. And that didn't go well. I'm reverting back. I can attest to that.

Dan was always, even though we had a little mishap in 2016, Dan was always the darkest, most nervous person before an election, even 2008, 2012. It's just across the board. Yeah. And then you told me on our Thursday podcast after the 2016 election that one of the reasons you felt better was because I was so not nervous. That's right. So all nerves going forward. But on this one, I was nervous before we got to the very, very nervous just from in the worst way, which is I knew nothing. I was reading tweets and hot takes from pundits who also knew nothing. And that made me nervous.

And then being in Virginia made me feel better. Meeting Ralph Northam, Justin Fairfax and Mark Herring made me feel better. Going to those canvas kickoffs we Herring made me feel better going to those canvas kickoffs. We went off, made me feel better. And that lasted in approximately until I got on an airplane and flew back to California and started reading tweets and takes from pundits again. And then I started feeling nervous in the morning and particularly because the, the first sort of, it's not even like it used to be the, it was anecdotal information. Like my cousin went to the polling place to the polling place in this precinct and the lines were short and we'd all panic. But now it's because people are smarter about it.

So they're actually reporting vote totals within a precinct by a certain hour compared to the same time in previous elections. And the initial reports were alarming but got better as the day went on. So it was a roller coaster, I guess is the way I'd went on so it was a roller coaster i guess is the way i'd put it it was a roller coaster i felt nervous too just because of you know 2016 ptsd and because i don't really trust polls anymore which turns out in this election uh that trend continues because the polls in this election were further from the actual result than even the polls in 2016, which were very off, at least in the states. The national polls in 2016 weren't that off, but the state polls were really off.

And once again, these Virginia polls were quite off as well. But there is something liberating there in that you know what a poll nut that I am, but even me, as I'm reading the polls in the last couple of days before the election, I was like, well, you just really can't trust polls. So who the fuck knows? I did feel better being on the ground, too. I mean, our D.C. show, the number of people who were there who were saying that they were going to Virginia and canvassing and knocking on doors was really inspiring. The energy in Richmond was really inspiring. So that part felt good. But it's so hard to know the results of an

election or predict an election just based on like the feeling on the ground, because, you know, that can always be good right before the election. But I will say if if Ralph Northam had won by around five points or less, which is, you know, five points is what Hillary won Virginia by. And it was just a year ago. So there's not a ton of demographic change in one year, then I would have felt relieved and happy, but not this excited. You know, the fact that Ralph Northam won by nine points, something that almost no one predicted, is pretty incredible. This was a complete and total victory up and down the ballot across the country. Democrats won the governorship in New Jersey and took full control of the state government there. Democrats flipped a Senate seat in Washington, a state Senate seat in Washington, and took full

control of that state's government as well. Democrats flipped three states in the Georgia legislature, and they also ended the Republican Senate supermajority there. They flipped a seat in Pennsylvania, a seat in Michigan, a seat in New Hampshire. And of course, as we said, in the biggest race of the night, Ralph Northam defeated Ed Gillespie in Virginia and Democrats picked up at least 15 seats in the House of Delegates, nearly taking control of that chamber. There are still a few recounts to be done there. Let's start with the House of Delegates because I think, to me, this is the most important and inspiring story of Tuesday. Last time the Democrats won more than five seats in a single year in the Virginia House of Delegates,

1975. Some of these Republican seats haven't been contested by Democrats for years. And this year, we actually fielded candidates, some for the very first time. Most of them were young women, people of color, people who've never run before. A lot of Democrats, a lot of observers thought this will be a good night if we win five, six seats in the House of Delegates. The most optimistic activists thought 10 seats would be, at the far end, a really great night. I don't know anyone who thought that 15 was really possible. Do you?

No. Which sort of shows the poverty of ambition that the Democratic Party has had on state legislative races because in 15 of the districts, Hillary received 49% of the vote. So we were not running people repeatedly in districts where there are coin flip for Democrats in a state that's turning more blue. So just think about that for a sec. Yeah, which is crazy. I mean, that is, there's a whole bunch of things that Democrats need to do. As we've said many times, it's not like there's

one silver bullet here and there that's going to solve all of our problems. But one of those things we have to do is actually show up and fucking run candidates. That's like the most basic thing, right? You can talk about messaging problems. You can talk about policy you know, policy issues. But the most basic thing is to run a candidate in a district where there is a potentially competitive seat. That's step one. And then we did that in the House and Virginia House of Delegates in a big way. Yeah. And we picked up two seats in the Georgia state legislature that were so red that Democrats didn't run any candidates in in 2016. And we won them and won them pretty easily. And I think we should give a shout out to Amanda Littman,

who's a former Clinton campaign staffer, who took her frustration and disappointment in the election and turned around and formed an organization called Run for Something that has been encouraging people to run for office up and down the ballot, from school board to state legislature and everything above that and played a huge role in getting a lot of these people to run for office so let's say as you point out you can't you can't win an election you don't run in it's also it's also who the people were that won these seats that i thought was really inspiring the mostly

white old male republican incumbents in the House of Delegates were replaced by mostly women, African Americans, Latinos, millennials, first-time candidates. There were many firsts in the House of Delegates races. The first two Latinas ever elected to the House of Delegates, the first Asian American woman. Danica Rome became Virginia's first openly transgender legislator, beating the man who introduced a bill that would have prohibited transgender students from using the bathroom of their choice. A Democratic socialist beat the House Republican whip. Justin Fairfax, the next lieutenant governor, becomes the second African American to be elected statewide

since the Civil War. All across the country, there were stories like this. Sheila Oliver became the first African American woman to be elected lieutenant governor of New Jersey. New Jersey also elected its first Sikh American governor. A Liberian refugee was elected mayor of Helena, Montana. Seattle elected their first lesbian mayor. Again in the House of Delegates, a gun victim's boyfriend beat a Republican with an A rating from the NRA. In Philadelphia, civil rights lawyer Larry Krasner, who represented Black Lives Matter activists and sued the police department, is now Philadelphia's district attorney. A 32-year-old African-American woman, unseated, and New Jersey Republican who mocked the Women's March on Facebook. It was great.

It's just so inspiring to see all these stories. Yeah, it's Obama's America strikes back. It is the backlash to see all these stories. Yeah. It's Obama's America strikes back. It is the backlash to the backlash. Yes. The Danica Rome one is I mean, so many of these are so inspiring, whether it's, you know, you mentioned Chris Hurst, who it was his girlfriend who was the Virginia television reporter who was killed live on television, quit his job, started organizing for better gun safety laws and decided to run for office. And the sort of courage and strength that does to put yourself out there to do something like run for office after that is just so inspiring. Organic Rome and winning against the person, as you point out, who wrote the bathroom law, who could not have been more

bigoted towards trans people. And it is worth remembering that there was a moment after the 2016 elections when one of the real hot takes of centrist pundits in Washington was that Democrats lost because they fought too hard for trans people in the 2016 election. Right. And you know what, though? You listen to Danica Rome's speech after she won and she talked about why she decided to run. after she won. And she talked about why she decided to run. And she didn't actually make the race about her being the first transgender candidate to try to run in Virginia. She said, I ran because there was traffic congestion where I live, because I wanted to clean up traffic. She started talking about health care. She started talking about economic issues. She actually didn't make the race about these bread and butter economic issues and local issues that were important to people. And she didn't, didn't try to make it about who she was or, or, or only transgender issues, you know? So there is, there is a path there for

Democrats where sometimes you have some of these knucklehead observers who are like, oh, just because, you know, a transgender candidate runs, then Democrats want to make this all about transgender issues and not talk about anything else. Well, that's not really true. You know, RIP the takes. Yeah, RIP the takes for sure. You gave a shout out to Run for Something. A lot of other organizations, you know, that we've worked with, that we've been talking to since Trump won were heavily involved here. Flippable.org did great work.

Let America Vote. We'll be talking to Jason Kander soon. His organization, our friends at Indivisible, knocked down a ton of doors. And also, you know, we've been talking about this. Tom Perriello, who ran against Ralph Northam in the primary, you know, we were both Perriello fans. yellow fans he lost that race and he decided to throw everything he had into trying his hardest to elect ralph northam to elect justin fairfax to elect mark herring and to elect all of those house of delegates candidates and you know he could have complained he could have whined he could have tried to start some kind of you know party he could have fed the party divisions but

he didn't do any of that he just worked really hard and you know came through, you could have fed the party divisions, but he didn't do any of that. He just worked really hard and, you know, came through in a big way, I thought. Yeah, it's really, it was impressive. And Tom, Tom Perriello's work on behalf of the House of Delegates candidates was incredibly important because he, he invested or his political committee invested early in some of these districts that Democrats won, but people thought were impossible to compete in just six months ago after the primary was over. And so it, you know, he and all these organizations worked super hard to make a difference. And if you were to take one global positive of this, and we'll talk about more takeaways from the election, but is Democrats caring about both at both at the top of the party and the grassroots of the party caring about state legislative districts. We went to a house party for General Carol Foy who won her race.

It was incredibly impressive. She gave a little speech at that house party. There was about, what, 10 of us there. Yeah. And I was like, she's going places. I was like, she's going places. I was inspired. It was like a small house party, 10 people there. And she walks in and gives this little speech to all the canvassers to go out there and start knocking on doors. And it was great to watch.

This is someone who she found out that she was pregnant with twins two weeks after she decided to run for office. And then she kept it up all the way through Election Day. And at that house party, which was a – it was a canvas kickoff. Everyone was going to go out there and knock doors in our district. And we met people there who had been active in Virginia politics for 10 years, right, who got involved with Barack Obama in 2008 and have been doing these – hosting campus kickoffs ever since, but also people who via an organization called Sister District, which focused on legislative races, people who got on a bus in New York City and drove down to spend the last four or five days before the election knocking doors in a state legislative race in Virginia. And the fact that people will, the grassroots Democrats motivated by this election will

try to win state legislative races. It's such a hugely positive turn of events for the future of our party and in acting progressive policies at the state level. Yeah. I remember, and also there were people there, one woman I met, she said, you know, we were in Stafford, Virginia, and she said, this is, you know, it's a sort of a Republican leaning place. And there's a military, big military community. And she said, my husband's in the military. And, you know, I would say I was independent towards leaning Republican for most of my life.

And I've never really been involved in politics. I said, you know, so why are you here? And she said, Trump. Trump is why I'm here. And I've been knocking on doors and trying to elect people up and down the ballot because of him. So that's something we'll talk about soon. Let's talk about one other big issue that was on the ballot Tuesday night, and that's the Medicaid expansion in the state of Maine. So Governor Paul LePage, he has been vetoing Medicaid expansion in that state for some time. So the people of Maine put it on a ballot, a ballot initiative, and it passed with nearly 60 percent of the vote.

Not even close. This expansion to Medicaid would mean that 70,000 more people in Maine would have access to health insurance. Of course, the next day, crazy Paul LePage said that he would refuse to abide by the law and not implement the program. I'm guessing he will get sued, and that will not stand. What did you think of that, Dan? Well, I like that you've given Paul LePage a Trump-style nickname. He's fucking crazy. He's probably like the governor closest to Trump in style and personality, I would say. Yeah. He was probably the canary in the crazy coal mine that something like Trump could happen. Yeah, that's true.

Like Paul LePage can win Maine twice. Yeah. I think the news in Maine is great because it means more people are going to get health care. That is hopefully also going to end up being true in Virginia because there's a good chance, whether Democrats end up getting the full majority or not, there's a good chance they'll be able to expand Medicaid with Ralph Northam as the governor and more seats in the Democratic Party. It also shows that giving people access to affordable, quality health care is a good, strong message that Democrats should run on across the country. And, you know, there are a handful of states, including Florida, Missouri, Utah, and some others, where you could do the exact same thing we did in Maine, put it on a ballot and run on it and expand Medicaid in those states.

And if you were to do that in Florida, you would, because of the size of the uninsured population in that state, you would make a huge difference in the overall rate of uninsured in this country. In fact, I have a list of all the states where there is no Medicaid expansion right now, but the law says that you can put it on a ballot. You mentioned Florida, Idaho, Missouri, Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming. I would love to see ballot initiatives to expand Medicaid in all those states. You're right about health care. I mean, if I were running a Democratic campaign in 2018, the two issues that I would focus most on, health care and this gross, awful tax cut for millionaires that Republicans are trying to pass, which we'll talk about a little later.

I think it is the two stupidest moves the Republicans have made since Trump has taken office. And it is extraordinarily unpopular to take away people's health care and to give tax cuts to rich people. It is unpopular with Democrats. It is unpopular with independents. It is unpopular with some of Trump's base as well. I would add to that list guns. Yeah. I mean, it's not going to be true. It's not gonna be true in every district. And we have to understand that. But the I what I think one of the takeaways from across the country from Tuesday night is the NRA is not as powerful as we think it is. It is the NRA does very well in elections when Democrats don't turn out,

like 2014. When Democrats turn out in huge numbers, like they did on Tuesday night across the country, the NRA gets their ass kicked up and down the ballot. And that's what happened on Tuesday. And, you know, you have, there is some section of voters who are incredibly frustrated and upset by the lack of action on this issue over years, and we'll turn art for it, and we shouldn't be afraid of it. I agree with that. Because the NRA voters are going to turn out no matter what. That is the steady, right? That's what holds steady. The voter, the NRA voters, the, you know, the quote unquote gun voters, what goes up and down is the amount of Democratic and progressive voters who support gun safety measures. And so we got to give them a reason

to vote and you give them a reason to vote by being strong on this issue. Yeah. And if you're a Democrat who decides that you don't want to talk about gun control because you're afraid and you tell people how much you believe in gun rights and you own a gun and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Guess what? That's not going to stop the NRA from telling everyone that you're going to take away everyone's guns. So if you believe in gun control, if you believe in gun control legislation, make it known to people if you're running for office. I read a pretty great piece on Crooked Media about this about a month or so ago.

People should check out. It's an excellent piece. Go check it out. It's mine. I know that. Let's talk about the size of the Democrats' victory in Virginia. Year ago, Hillary Clinton won the state by 5.4%. In 2013, Terry McAuliffe won the governorship by 2.5%. Of course, Northam led by 3% in the Real Clear Politics average and won by 9%. Dan, what do you think happened? Why do you think Northam won by such a big margin? Well, I think the most important,

you know, like Trump is obviously a factor, right? But regardless of what caused people to turn out, people turned out at a presidential level. Democrats are not a presidential level. So Democrats made up 41 percent of the electorate on Tuesday night, which is about how much they turned out in 2012. And that's a five point increase from 2014 when Mark Warner barely won and a four point increase from 2013 when Terry McAuliffe won. So Democrats were fired up to turn out. And that makes a huge, that's the difference. That is always the difference, right? Republicans always turn out. It's just a question of which Democrats are going to get off the couch and go vote. And when they're inspired to do that, we win elections. It's like, none of this shit is rocket science. Yeah. I also noticed that Northam won 62 to 36 percent among

voters who decided in the last week which means that all those undecided a lot of those polls this is this is actually similar to what happened in 2016 and that when we look back on the polls and why they were so wrong one of the big explanations was there was just an unusually high number of undecideds and no one can figure out who those undecideds were going to break towards. In 2016, most of the undecideds broke towards Trump. More than usual, the break in a presidential race like that broke towards Trump. In this election, a huge, huge, huge number of undecideds broke towards Northam and broke towards Democrats everywhere, which is interesting because, you know, all the pundits were saying in the last

couple of weeks of the election, the news was so bad for Northam and, you know, it didn't feel good. And there was the MS-13 and the gangs and the Confederate statues and all that kind of stuff. But, you know, despite what the news environment was, undecideds at the end, the people who weren't paying that close attention to the race, but did want to vote, they broke towards Northam. Why do you think that is? Do you think that has to do with Trump? Well, it has to be. There's no other, there really is no other option because all like we spent a couple of days in the Virginia media markets and there is nothing but television ads on all the time. And it had been that way for a month.

So there was no new information about Gillespie or Northam that came out in those last few weeks that would move the numbers like that. And the reason I think it has to be Trump is normally in this situation, the undecideds will break against the incumbent party, right? And Northam was the quote unquote incumbent because he was replacing a Democratic governor. And the fact that they went so overwhelmingly against Gillespie really suggests that the only thing that I could possibly think of is it is that people really do not like Donald Trump. That is sophisticated analysis.

Yeah, that's right. I mean, there's data, there's polling, but it seems if your approval rating is hovering around 35, you're not doing great. Yeah, in the exit polls, I think his approval was, what, 40 in Virginia? So not going to do too well. A few other interesting stats from the exit polls. I thought college-educated white voters surged for Northam. It's also interesting to see the groups where Northam ran ahead of Clinton in 2016. He did 16 points better than Clinton among single women, 15 points better among 18 to 29 year old voters, eight points better among white college women and seven points better among white women in general.

Those were the sort of the four groups where he did have the biggest difference between him and Clinton share the vote. What did you think. What do you take away from that? Well, I think a motivated, inspired Democratic electorate is very important. And Trump certainly did that. I think some of the disgusting, shameful, racist tactics that Ed Gillespie used in the final stretch, which most of the pundits interpreted thought would be helpful to him, turned out to probably inspire some Democrats to turn out, to stand in what I understand to be pretty freezing rain on Tuesday night to vote. You know, I think that's important. I think it is very interesting also that, you know,

the view of a lot of people, myself included, was that Trump was the floor for how Republicans would do in suburban areas. And that Gillespie, by being a from northern Virginia, he's actually from New Jersey, but he moved to northern Virginia by a very large house with his lobbyist money. large house with his lobbyist money. But, you know, he was a more when he was not saying and doing racist things, he was a quote unquote, more normal Republican than Trump. And Northern Virginia is a suburb of the swamp. So some of the swamp like activities that offend people across the country are maybe less offensive there. So we thought Gillespie would do better than Hillary in Northern Virginia. But Gillespie actually did worse than Trump in a lot of Northern Virginia suburbs. Right. That's saying a lot. And that that is the thing that is a very interesting takeaway for for the 2018 House elections in particular. Yeah, I think that's right. Also, the fact that, I mean, not only did Northam dominate

among 18 to 29 year olds, but the share of 18 to 29 year old vote was up, which is really encouraging because as we know, in off year elections, we have a lot of trouble turning out 18 to 29 year olds and turning out younger voters. Usually they just show up in presidential election years. So the fact that the share of the vote was up and the Democrats dominated among that age group says a lot for the future. Yeah. What it means is those people who went and stood and protested for hours in Dulles Airport went out and voted. Right.

So I guess maybe I guess if protest is a new brunch, voting is a new happy hour. I don't know. What do young kids do these days days that made you sound really old i know i know number one issue among voters in virginia was health care 37 said it was their number one issue it blew away almost every other issue including things like immigration northam won those health care voters 78 to 21 um So again, we've been saying this throughout the episode, health care, health care, health care. Although I also woke up and saw that the Republicans are still trying to whip votes to see if they can repeal the individual mandate in this tax bill. So lesson not learned. What do you think Northam's win says about the

future of the Democratic Party or does it tell us anything? I don't think – well, if we force ourselves to live in a Washington, D.C. Twitter bubble where the most important issue in the world is what's in between the pages of Donna Brazile's book. Like what it tells me is that this – what is seen is this existential struggle between identity politics and centrism and populism and are we Sanders Democrats or Clinton Democrats or Obama Democrats is all stupid and it's the wrong conversation to have. Ralph Northam, who was a very, even if his history was more centrist, he ran on a very progressive platform. We interviewed him. He was very strong on health care and calling out racism and systemic racism. None of that mattered. What mattered is a Democrat running who was promising, was running on a progressive platform to make people's lives better. And it didn't matter whether he supported

Hillary or Bernie Sanders or he read down his book. It's just we get overly focused on this idea of a democratic if the Democratic Party is in the middle of a civil war, we would not have turned out at presidential level turnout in an off year gubernatorial election. Right. Yeah. I mean, look, Northam doesn't sound like or seem like Bernie Sanders in any way or even Elizabeth Warren or any kind of Democrat that's squarely in the progressive tradition. But his platform, $15 minimum wage, expanding Medicaid,

he opposed these pipelines, wanted a ban on right-to-work laws, free community college. It was an extraordinarily progressive platform. And so I think the Virginia results sort of scramble the debate a little bit among the party. And also, you know, like you had a Democratic socialist win in the House of Delegates. And then you had, you know, Ralph Northam, who, like you said, years ago was more of a moderate, win, you know, the governorship by nine points.

So, you know, I think sometimes we oversimplify these debates, which are still important. I think they are important debates, especially when you get down to the policy. I think they're less important when you get to personalities. Right. I think they are. They're they will play out in the 2020. They'll play out on Twitter because that's where dumb things happen. But they will play out in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, because that will be, we'll be making choices about what the future of the party looks like, and who we pick will say something about that. And it will matter,

as you point out, in the party platform. But in the day-to-day life of politics out in the country, those sort of debates are much less important than beating Republicans. And we have to remember that and we have to encourage that. Do you think Gillespie could have won with a different strategy if he did not embrace Trumpism? Of course, our genius Steve Bannon in The New York Times a couple days before the election said, you know, Gillespie's going to win or Gillespie's going to do well because he's going to prove that Trumpism without Trump still works. Now, Steve Bannon's, of course, like, no, I never liked Ed Gillespie. Well, you saw Breitbart after Trump, after Bannon said that the headline in Breitbart

on the after the election results was establishment candidate Ed Gillespie loses. Yeah, right. OK, that's why Coreyart said that he basically uh you know uh imitated his entire campaign ed gillespie in this political environment could not have won but if he had run less like trump he could probably sleep at night this was tim miller's good advice to republicans on the night of the election he's like you know run as, if you're not Trump, don't run as Trump.

You still might lose running as you, but you're going to feel better about yourself. And at least you can try to see if you can do better. You know, like if you're a Republican out there and you really believe that the answer to everything is a tax cuts for rich people and fewer regulations, go ahead and run on that platform. See how many votes you get. Uh,

look, I think gillespie could have made the race closer had he not run like trump because running like trump caused him to underperform ken cuccinelli who was mccall's opponent in 2013 in the suburbs and ken cuccinelli is a right-wing lunatic and if he had run as an established, I don't use establishment like part of what tip if he'd run as a typical Republican. Yeah, he probably would have come closer to the 2013 margin. The extra ass kicking was for being a racist. What are the results? Tell us, if anything, about 2018.

We should run candidates everywhere yeah okay that's number one we have a we have a real opportunity we have some work to do yeah in that just virginia is a state hillary clinton won by five it is not enough to win the districts that Hillary Clinton won by five and take the House. So we're going to have to do more than just run up the margins in the suburbs. And the question for Democrats, Nate Cohn of The New York Times, whose main job in life seems to be raining on Democratic parades, but is very smart and he's usually right about it. We should pay more attention to him in 2016, but makes the point that to take the house,

we have to, we have to do better in places that Trump did better. And there is some signs of hope because we outperformed in all those special elections that we lost in such soul crushing ways in very Republican areas. We just didn't outperform enough. But in those districts that are between the suburbs of Virginia and Kansas, you know, if we can do well there, we have a very real chance of taking back the House with the current political environment. Yeah, I think you can say that we are slight favorites to take back the House in 2018, light favorites to take back the house in 2018 just so people get an idea of why this is so 15 of 16 of the house of delegates seats that democrats captured in virginia came in districts that clinton carried in 2016 so you know you didn't have to say that was expected but you know

democrats had just won there a year ago. So it makes sense that with the right candidates, you could flip those districts. In southwestern Virginia, Northam actually underperformed. He ran behind McAuliffe and Obama in a lot of different places. In some districts, some he didn't. But in some of the Trump counties, Trump districts, you know, he didn't make up ground. And in some cases he ran behind. So what does that look like now when we look at the map in 2018?

So Democrats need 24 seats to take the House. There are 23 Republicans sitting in districts that Clinton carried. So even if you won every single one of those districts, we'd still need one more. carried. So even if you won every single one of those districts, we'd still need one more. 18 of those districts have more white college graduates than the national average, which is like Virginia, which is why Virginia is a trending Democratic state or one of the reasons why it is. Another 30 Republicans are sitting in seats that have higher than average numbers of white college graduates. But of course, only 11 of the Republican districts that Clinton carried are places where Clinton won by five or more. So even in those Republican districts that Clinton

won, some of them are really close. So like you said, I think obviously there's got to be a suburban strategy that we replicate that we ran on ran on in virginia across the country but that by itself is not going to guarantee the democrats uh pick up the house right if we do as well if we outperform republican districts by the same margin we've outperformed in the kansas special the montana special the south carolina special and even the georgia special that we have a very real shot at winning a lot of districts. But we have work to do. The one upside is Northam did not do as well as Obama and McAuliffe, but he did do better

than Hillary in a number of those important counties. And so that is worth something. And that's an open question that we're not going to know the answer to is, was that unique to Hillary because of who she is? You know, maybe some sex, of course, probably who she ran against, who she ran against or also Jim Comey, Russia. Like, was that or is there some number of those voters who are disappointed in Trump and willing to to consider a Democrat going forward? If that's the case, then there's some optimism there. Last question.

What impact do we think Tuesday night will have on legislative fights in Congress like tax reform? Well, you would think that if you just got wiped up and down the ballot. You would not. And if you get wiped up and down the ballot, you know that your best chance to hold on to the House is certainly to generate huge turnout among populist white working class voters that you wouldn't move forward with great speed on a massive corporate tax cut. But that's not what they're going to do. And Lindsey Graham, Trump's new golf partner, was pretty honest about why that is. He said if they don't pass this bill, the, quote, donations will dry up. Chris Collins, Republican from New York, said something similar just a couple days ago.

It's like a fucking disease now. They're all saying it. It's honesty. It's the most honest thing they've said. Chris Collins is like, we're not going to get any more money unless we cut the taxes of the people who are giving us the money. It's basically the quotes now. Gary Cohn, globalist Goldman Gary, was in an interview today where he said, the people who are most excited about tax reform are big CEOs. What is wrong with these people? What is wrong with these people?

Put this in an ad. I want to see an ad from all these rich Democratic donors who are spending whatever money on it. I don't know what they're spending money on. Put some money into some ads on Taxiform that show Gary Cohn's interview. Put Chris Collins' quote on the screen. Lindsey Graham's quote on the screen. And Paul Ryan saying, full speed ahead. Paul Ryan yesterday said, we've made our choice. We're with Trump.

Go ahead. Put it all put it all together and start running them everywhere. And take those take Gary Cohn's quotes about big CEOs and the value of trickle down economics and show that to Trump voters. Yeah. We'll see how they're not going to see whether they want to turn out and wait in line in the rain and cold in 2018 to vote for a bunch of establishment corrupt Republicans who are giving tax cuts to the wealthy in exchange for campaign contributions. Yeah. See how that works. I mean, I do think, you know, we've when we tried to pass the Affordable Care Act, we had some some electoral defeats in the midst of that process of that process, most notably when Scott Brown won in Massachusetts. And we pushed ahead because we deeply believed in the legislation we were fighting for and trying to provide more people the opportunity to buy health insurance that they could afford. So on one hand, you you say if these Republicans really, truly believe in tax cuts for rich people, that's what gets them up in the morning.

That's what they want more than anything else. Then they're going to go ahead and still try to fight to pass it because, you know, electoral consequences be damned. They're thinking either we go into this next election as failures who proposed taking away health care and proposed tax cuts for rich people but didn't get it done or we're going to go into that election saying you know here is our tax cut we did we passed it maybe it doesn't help you but we believe in it we passed it and so be it yeah i think that's right like i will i would prefer they didn't destroy the economy and make – Same. And dramatically exacerbate inequality in this country. But your ideal scenario for running for re-election is to put your name on popular legislation and then pass it. Right.

Your next best would be to put your name on unpopular legislation and then pass it. Your worst scenario, which is partially what led to what happened on Tuesday, is to put your name on unpopular legislation and fail to pass it. Your worst scenario, which is partially what led to what happened on Tuesday, is to put your name on unpopular legislation and fail to pass it, which is what they did on health care. And there's a chance they may end up doing on tax cuts. I suspect they will pass something because they want those donations, as Lindsey Graham said, but it may not be what they think it's going to be right now. There was some talk that they may just default to just a straight corporate tax cut, which would definitely solve all the problems in America. Because corporations are struggling mightily with this record stock market and record corporate profits that Trump tweets about all the time. Yeah.

And one lesson we should all take away is it was activism and organizing that stopped the repeal of the Affordable Care Act multiple times this past year. It was activism and organizing that won the election on Tuesday night. And so we might as well throw everything we have into stopping this awful, awful tax cut that would not just give rich people a big tax cut, but hurt a lot of other people by raising taxes on middle class people, leading to huge cuts in Medicaid and Medicare and education and, you know, clean energy and all the things that we care about. So, you know, in the coming weeks, we should throw everything we have into this tax cut fight, too. Hey, before we go, because I know you're about to do the transition to our interviews. Sure. Can I throw a wild card in here?

Sure. I didn't put this on the outline, but we should talk for 60 seconds about Doug Jones in Alabama, because a lot of people have been tweeting at us and saying the Democrats need to invest in this race. What are you know what's going to happen here? So I think the question is for you. How do you given what happened on Tuesday? How are you? Are you thinking about the Alabama Senate special election against Roy Moore any differently? I'm thinking that not any differently because I always believed, and we had Doug Jones on Pod Save America. You know, I always believed that you throw everything you have into it and you work really hard. You know, damn the poll. Who cares about what the polls say?

You fight for it and because and look it is fairly close and but also i think more than like a political imperative to beat roy moore we have a moral imperative to defeat roy moore because he is such an awful awful person who doesn't believe in the rule of law and you know believes that homosexuality should be illegal and you know just would flouts all kinds of supreme court decisions uh because he, you know, believes that homosexuality should be illegal and, you know, just would flouts all kinds of Supreme Court decisions because he thinks, you know, he knows better and thinks that 9-11 was God's punishment for, you know, us being in a moral country and all that bullshit.

So, yeah, I think we should work really hard to try to elect Doug Jones. I don't know. I think he has a chance. You know, I think he has a pretty good chance. I think he has a better chance than any Democrat has in Alabama in as long as we've been in the last 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years. Yeah, I think that's right. Look, we should be realistic about the odds of winning a Senate race in Alabama, but we should fight like hell for it. Not because we could win. We won in districts on Tuesday that people thought Democrats could never win it. Right. And so that's one. And two, if we're ever going to build

a sustainable national party infrastructure, it's going to have to happen. And by running well-funded, well-run grassroots campaigns all across the country. If people go to Alabama and they organize and they fight for Doug Jones and he wins, that's amazing. If he comes close, if he falls short, the next time there's a seat in Alabama, it doesn't have to be a Senate seat. It could be a school board seat. It could be a state legislature seat. It could be a mayor's race. There will be an infrastructure to go do that. And when we ignore races and just say we can't win him, so we're going to and just say we can't win him, so we're going to do nothing, we don't just hurt ourselves in that election. We hurt ourselves in

every subsequent election going forward. Dan, I'm also going to throw a breaking news grenade into our conversation about Roy Moore and Doug Jones. Breitbart has just run a story that starts like this. The Washington Post is imminently planning to run a piece targeting Judge Roy Moore, claiming that he engaged in inappropriate conduct with four teenage girls 34 years ago. The alleged incidents, all strongly denied by Moore, were said to have taken place between 1977 and 1982. Breitbart News obtained details of the forthcoming Post story from the newspaper's letter detailing the allegations sent to Moore's campaign for comment.

So that's something. Yeah, that is something. Jesus Christ. Yeah, stay tuned, I guess. I'm hesitant to jump in without knowing anything. I know. I wanted to read it because, of course, we're talking about this, and as soon as we finish recording this, everyone will tweet at us, did you do it before the story?

Yeah. So, yeah, no, we didn't. We're reading it now, but we're not going to go wildly speculate from a Breitbart story. Though, if they're writing the story based on a letter the Post sent for comment, it sounds like the story's coming out. Per my push notification, it seems like the Post just published it. Okay, well. All right, there you go.

Like we said, moral obligation to fight as hard as we can to make sure that Roy Moore does not come to the U.S. Senate. So throw everything you got into the Doug Jones campaign. When we come back, we will talk to our friend Jason Kander, the host of the new Crooked Media podcast, Majority 54. On the pod, we have the host of Crooked Media's newest podcast, Majority 54, and the president of Let America Vote, Jason Kander. Howdy, boys. Welcome to the Crooked Media family. Yeah, I'm very happy to be here.

Welcome to the Krug Media family. Yeah, I'm very happy to be here. I believe the first time I ever did a podcast was keeping it 1600. And I think, John, I think you said something like, we know you want to be a podcast host. Apparently you were right. Sure enough. I saw someone tweet that at you yesterday. Yeah. It's literally the only thing John got right in 2016.

Yikes. Well, this was post-November, so. It's literally the only thing John got right in 2016. Well, this was post-November, so we should start there and move forward for all of us. Yeah, I was going to say, let's talk about your new pod in a little bit. But I first wanted to get your thoughts on Tuesday's election. Because I know both just your political take and then also I know that Let America was heavily involved in a couple different races there. Yeah, sure. Well, just in general, I think the biggest thing politically to look at is the fact that you're talking about an off-year election where you had essentially the same sort of turnout numbers as a presidential year, which really speaks to just the level of

enthusiasm out there. And I've been in 30 states in 2017, keynoting democratic conventions and dinners and that kind of thing. And what I'm always reminding people from what I've seen through my travels is that this is real, what's happening, this level of enthusiasm. And it's a movement that is all across the country. And what's so exciting about it, I think, is that it's the kind of movement that's always been the most effective in the history of the country, which is the kind that goes to Washington instead of sort of a manufactured one that starts in Washington and they try and push it out. And the other thing I've seen, and we clearly saw this in Virginia, is the amount of country who are super involved and I'll ask them, you know, how many years have you been doing this? And they say years. I got involved on January 20th of this year. And you just see that everywhere.

And I think that's what we saw in Virginia. And it's a good omen. It's really exciting. And so, Jason, as John mentioned, Let America Vote was very involved in this campaign. Can you talk about a little bit what the organization did and where you had success? Sure. So, first of all, thank you to both of you. You're obviously both on the advisory board and you saw, speaking of the momentum, I think both of y'all, didn't you Skype in and do one of the Q&As with all our interns in Virginia? Yes, which was awesome. We actually met some of them too later when we were in Madison, Wisconsin. We did an event at

University of Madison and a couple of the students came up to us and they're like, you guys Skyped with us. We're Jason Kander people. We're Let America Vote interns. We're Jason Kander people. Yeah, man. I mean, they're just like a shot of energy, all of them. Awesome. Yeah. So Let America Vote, the mission is to create political consequences for politicians who push voter suppression. Basically, if you're one of these Republicans who's making it harder to vote, our mission is to make it a lot harder for you to get reelected. And we looked at Virginia this year. We said, OK, here's the state where they're one seat away from a veto-proof majority in their house. They have pushed all this voter suppression stuff that Governor McAuliffe had vetoed.

And now they were looking at putting in a Republican governor and maybe regardless having a veto proof majority. So I put out the call on Twitter for interns back in like May. And we had just hundreds of folks apply, people who were saying, yeah, I'll just I'll put everything aside and I'll go to Virginia if that's the place where we're needed and we'll get to work. And we got we ended up with over 130 people doing full-time door knocking in Virginia from all over the country. We picked nine legislative districts, eight of which, by the way, were held by Republicans. And as of now, one isn't a recount right now, but as of now, we won all nine. We flipped eight seats. We ended up, we also were really involved in the governor's race. So we ended up knocking 194,000 doors in Virginia and made 31,000 phone calls.

And it made a huge difference. And I'm really proud of – I shouldn't say kids, but I'm really proud of these kids. I mean a lot of them are college kids. And I think putting everything aside and going and doing that, that's patriotic and it's pretty inspiring. Very inspiring. That's patriotic and it's pretty inspiring. Very inspiring. So one thing we saw on Tuesday and we've been talking about this is the biggest wins for Democrats were in most of these suburban districts.

And in Virginia was a lot of districts where the Hillary carried in 2016 where either Democrats hadn't put up a challenger before or there wasn't – we didn't invest in the race enough. So it was great to see so many people turn out in some of the Trump districts and the Trump areas. You know, Democrats still didn't either flip seats or do as well as Clinton did in 2016. What do you think? I mean, being from Missouri, obviously, Claire McCaskill's up. She has a Senate race in 2018. What do you think, you know, Democrats should do to try to eat into some of those Trump margins in the redder areas? The most important thing, and this is what I've been talking about all over the country. And because, you know, you said I'm from Missouri because, you know, I'm the guy who outperformed the ticket by 16 points. People keep inviting me to come in and sort of talk about how I've done that, how I won statewide in 12 and all that kind of thing. And so what I always tell people is it's actually, there's no code to be cracked here. I mean, it's pretty simple. We have to make our argument. We

have to make it with courage. We have to make it to everybody. And that's true whether you're talking about politics or just life. You don't win arguments you don't make. I mean, Let America Vote is designed around the idea that we've not really made the argument about voting rights. So let's go out and make it. And that's what we got to do in campaigns. That's what we've got to do all the time. So what I mean is, you know, part of being a Democrat is I believe that what we want to do is better for everybody. I don't think that there's like some Americans who don't do as well when Democrats are in power. I think that whether you're rich or poor, man, woman, gay, straight, black, white, city, country, whatever, I think that you're going to do better with the things we want to do.

And if you believe that, you don't really have an excuse for skipping any voters. You got to make your argument to everybody. And that's what I've always done. That's what I think works. And the example I usually point to here lately is if you look at what happened with Obamacare, right? Like you all passed – I mean you in the Obama administration. So a democratic president, a democratic congress passed a law that extended healthcare to millions of people, saved lives and then a whole lot of democrats refused to defend it and we were all shocked when it became unpopular. And then November comes around of 16. You got a Republican in the White House, Republicans up and

down in Congress. And I got a friend who likes to say that courage is just the lack of any other options sometimes. And so Democrats all linked arms and said, we better go make our argument for this thing. And we did. And lo and behold, it became pretty popular. And again, we were all shocked. So to me, the lesson is, you know, we need to be on healthcare, for instance, making the argument for what we truly believe, which is that, you know, it should be treated as a right. And we ought to make that argument with the same level of passion that we've defended Obamacare and not slow down. And we ought to do that everywhere in the country because that's going to improve everybody's lives. Jason, looking at, you know, obviously,

as you mentioned, you were deeply involved in Virginia and has been pointed out. Virginia is, you know, it's still sort of Obama country, right? It's a state that, you know, despite how everything else went wrong in 2016, Hillary won by five points, doing as well, if not better than Obama did in previous elections. You know, what do you take from Virginia that we can be applied to those purple states? Like, how do you think, like, what lessons are there from that race for how Democrats should approach races all across the country, up and down the ballot? I think the biggest thing is turning the enormous energy that exists in the country into work. I mean, from when America vote, that's the biggest takeaway I have, right? Is that, you know, we knocked 194,000 doors.

It made a lot of difference. I mean, there's some state legislative races there that were won by 1,000, 2,000, less than 1,000 votes, where our people alone knocked over 30,000 doors in that district. If you look at, in addition to that, in Manchester, Joyce Craig just won the mayor's race there. Two years ago, she lost to the Republican by 64 votes. This year, she won by 1,500. We sent a rapid response team there. They knocked on 9,400 doors in the last couple of weeks. So, you know, look, our argument is the better argument. And so we just have to embrace it and then we have to go out and deliver it. And the best way to do that is to send people out to actually do it. And so that's why, you know, people always say, look, there's all this energy out there. How do we harness it? Well, the answer is we harness it.

We give people actual work to do. We don't, you know, people at some point, as you all well know, folks get a little tired of just being told to call their member in Congress over and over again. I mean, it's important. Absolutely. People should keep doing it. But we got to make sure that we have actual tangible stuff for folks to do because when we do that, we win elections. Yeah. And, you know, we were saying this the other night, and it's not a slog. We were in Virginia. We were on the ground there.

We went to a couple of canvas kickoffs. It's inspiring being on the ground. You're not in the DC Twitter media bubble cynicism cycle where everything is awful all the time. You're on the ground, and you hear people knocking on doors, and they're making arguments, and they're persuading people, and they're inspiring people to get out to the time. You're on the ground and you hear people knocking on doors and they're making arguments and they're persuading people and they're inspiring people to get out to the polls. And so it's not just like work that you have to go do. It's actually fun. And you're right on because when you were saying it's outside the sort of the social media

cynicism hall or the cable news thing. And because most of the folks who you meet, particularly the people who have been brought into the movement this year, they're not – it's not a politician on their TV that brought them in. Right. It's their neighbor down the street who is like, hey, I know we're in a really red district, but we're going to this town hall for our member of Congress and we're going to demand answers about health care. You want to go with us? Those are the kind of people who are bringing folks in. And so I remind people all the time that we all have a platform. You may not realize it, but you have a platform. You've got 100 friends on Facebook and you've got six co-workers. Well, then you've got a platform of 106 people. And that means you can expand it by

turning to the person in the grocery store behind you in line while they're looking at the tabloid about the alien baby and saying, hey, have you heard about what they're trying to do with these massive tax cuts for rich people and screw us over? You know, I mean, you can use your platform and then sort of grab an oar, which is how I refer to the world we're living in, like grab an oar and start rowing. In that territory that we're living in, we all have a responsibility to use that platform. And it's really inspiring when you get out there and you see people who are doing it every day. And they're not looking for accolades. They're just looking for change. Yeah, that's right. So tell us about Majority 54. You've been working on this for a while. You know, what's the thinking behind it?

Why do you want to do it? And what's it sound like? Well, I'm super excited about it. I appreciate the opportunity to do it with you all. And yeah, so look, Majority 54 is about the fact that 54% of us actually, the folks who voted 54% wanted somebody not named Donald Trump to be president. And that's the first part of it, because whenever people say to me, oh man, can you believe what's going on with this country? I always remind people of that, that he may have won the election, but he's not winning the argument about who we are or where we're going. And the format for the podcast comes out of the fact that one of the most common questions that I get as I've gone around the country is people asking me, how do I talk to my Republican aunt? How do I talk to my friend from high school who voted for Trump? And I love this person,

but I don't feel like we can have a conversation. I want to bring them over. But so I get that question all the time. And what I'm always responding to people with is I'm always saying, well, you know, because they'll bring up a certain subject. Let's say they bring up, you know, racial inequality and they want to talk about that issue with somebody. And I say, well, why do you believe what you believe about it? And initially they'll sort of come back at me with some statistic or something. I say, no, no, no, that's not why you believe it. Tell me about what's gone on in your life or who you met that led you to your point of view. And then once they do that and they tell me, I say, well, that's exactly what you should say to them. And that's the thing is sometimes it's

for those of us who have done politics a lot and have spent a lot of time with real people in campaigning, sometimes it's easy to forget that a lot of people haven't had that experience. And so for me, my politics is really informed by all these people that I've met. And it's their stories. And those are the stories that I relate to people when I talk about what I believe. And it's my own story because politics is actually a lot more introspective than people realize. You got to look inside yourself to know why you believe what you believe before you can be outward about your politics and convince people of things. And so that's what this is.

This is every episode will be a conversation with a single person to start with about a single issue. And it's really about getting to know them and their journey and how they came to believe what they believe. And it's somebody in each episode who is – it's not an issue to them. It's just their life. They are living it every day. And then after that, we're going to talk about some of the most common Republican talking points on the issue we're dealing with and how to respond to them. And we'll draw on the conversation we just had. But also I'll draw on my own experience and the ideas to help people go out and use their platform

and be able to have these conversations. That's exciting. So what are some of the examples of issues and people that we can look forward to hearing about? So the first episode, November 17th, so a week from tomorrow, is one that I'm obviously equally excited about all of them. But the first one is with a guy named Bruce Franks. Bruce is a friend of mine in St. Louis who is an activist.

He's a Ferguson activist. He's a – in addition to that, he's a rapper. He's a guy. He has tattoos on his face. He says himself that he thinks when people first meet him, they perceive him as a thug is how he puts it. And he was very involved as an activist in Ferguson. And then he decided that St. Louis needed an activist in the state legislature. So last year he ran and he won a seat in the state legislature.

But it's a really candid conversation with Bruce who – one of the most important things for the interview about Bruce is that he's a guy who – he's a Ferguson activist who went out and started an organization to improve the relationship between law enforcement and the community. And that's really what he's about. And so the conversation is about the issue of racial inequality but it's from the perspective of Bruce Franks and he's a very candid guy who said some pretty provocative and I think important things in the conversation. This is exciting. Well, I'm glad that this is coming out right in time for Thanksgiving so everyone can go listen to Majority 54. And then you can go home to your relatives and make all kinds of compelling arguments. So that's a bonus.

That is like the most common thing people have tweeted at me in the last 24 hours. They're just like, oh, my uncle. Thank you. That's what everyone's looking for, just a way to get through Thanksgiving dinner. Jason, we're very excited that you're doing this podcast and that you're hanging with the Crooked Media fam.

Everyone, please go subscribe to Majority 54 right now. It's already number two in the iTunes store. How about that? No pressure. Jason, thanks again for joining us. And we'll be talking again soon. Thank you.

All right, take care. Bye, buddy. Okay, thanks to Jason Kander. And when we come back, we will have DeRay and Tommy's interview with Jean de Harrell and Nicole Porter from our Philadelphia show about criminal justice reform and reentry programs. So we want to have a conversation today about the issue of mass incarceration because we live in a culture that loves to talk about how tough we can be on criminals. We chant at political rallies that we're going to lock them up. And there is almost no conversation that happens about how to help people reenter society

after they've paid their dues and done their time. There's almost no conversation about the systemic problems in our culture and our economy due to racism that leads more individuals to be locked up than others. So we are thrilled to have today Jundai Harrell, who's the executive director of the Center for Returning Citizens, and Nicole Porter. And Nicole Porter, the director of advocacy at the Sentencing Project.

Thank you both for being here. Great. Thank you both for being here. Great. Thank you for having us. So, John, I was hoping we could just start with you. If you could just tell us your story. What do you got all night? Basically, I came home in 2009 after doing 18 years of a 20-year sentence for bank robbery, weapons charges, and assorted acts of gangsterism because I was a serious gangster back in the day.

During the second year of my incarceration, I was blessed to come under the mentorship and into the circle of Dr. Mutula Shakur, the stepfather of Tupac Shakur, a wise African elder, and also one of the co-founders of the Nation of New Africa. And for the next 12 years through three federal penitentiaries, I was able to work side by side with him to try to help transform the minds and hearts of young men inside the prison so they could go back out into the world and have a positive impact on our communities. I came home in 2009, continued to do this work. I started the Center for Returning Citizens.

And it started out being a direct service organization to assist people in transitioning because it's extremely difficult. Michelle Alexander talks about being a second class citizen. We are the last second class citizens in this country. We're discriminated against in housing and jobs and education. We discriminate against in housing and jobs and education. Every other group is not discriminated against in the same way as returning citizens. So we began to look at all the areas that we needed to work in in the struggle against mass incarceration and social injustice. So we advocate, we go to Harrisburg to deal with the lawmakers because so many things are wrong with the system in pre-trial, sentencing,

how you're treated while you're incarcerated, and especially when you come home and you try to make your way in society. in society. And Nicole, you're at the Sentencing Project, and if you don't know anything about the Sentencing Project, you should Google them when you go home. Incredible, incredible organization. Let's do some building the foundation of this issue. Can you talk about the difference between the people in federal prison and jail and state and local prisons and jail? Sure. Well, there are 2.2 million people locked up in prisons or jails in the United States. Most of those folks are locked up in state prisons, although the federal prison system

is the largest single prison system in the country. Over 200,000 people are locked up in federal prison. When you're locked up in federal prison, obviously, you can be sent anywhere to any prison in any state around the country. In state prisons, most of those people are locked up in those jurisdictions, although there are some states where people get locked up and they get sent out of state. So, for example, Hawaii sends its prisoners to prisons in Oklahoma, even California, because they've been chronically overcrowded. Although the prison systems have come down, people in that state have also been sent out of state as well. But yeah, there are significant differences between the federal system and within state systems, and there's a lot of variety between states. So the highest incarceration

states would be, to no one's surprise, in the South, in the old Confederacy. In fact, if you look at the maps of the old Confederacy and the maps of where the highest incarceration states are in the country, they line up almost exactly. And the lowest incarceration states are states like Maine and Minnesota. There's a range of reasons for that that we can get into the weeds on. But even in states with low rates of incarceration, those rates of incarceration are much higher than other Western countries like Germany or Scandinavian nations, where the average rate of incarceration in a state like Maine may be 150 persons for every 100,000. Those numbers exceed the number of people or the rates of people who are locked up in western

states like Germany and Norway. And what's the difference between jail and prison? So generally in jail you're confined or you're either held pre-trial so you haven't been sentenced yet or you've been sentenced to a misdemeanor offense or a felony offense that may be a year in some jurisdictions, I think in Pennsylvania or Philadelphia, it may be two years or less and you're locked up locally in the local system. If you have a longer sentence than that, then you're sent to the state system. There are a handful of states like Delaware and New Hampshire where there's a combined

system. So people are in a state institution system that may have folks in prison for longer than a year and also jail detainees are locked up in those facilities as well. There's not a lot of political support behind better treatment of prisoners, sentencing reform, or supporting ex-offenders. But you have a politically focused group of people. What can they do to help push politicians

to the right place on these issues and get meaningful action at the state level, at the federal level? Sure. I mean, I think that obviously we have 2.2 million people locked up, and even though there's been a lot of energy and enthusiasm over the last couple of years to focus on mass incarceration, I think Michelle Alexander's book, The New Jim Crow, really opened up and created space for that. Activist movements like the Black Lives Matter movement have helped to create space

for that. And yet still, we have a lot of people cycling in and out of the system and people serving really lengthy prison terms. So what can people do is they can contact their state and local lawmaker and their federal lawmaker around their interest in seeing a smaller prison system. And they should know that there are states and even the feds have released tens of thousands of individuals in the last couple of years without crime going up and without compromising public safety. So there are practical solutions to substantially reducing state prison systems and even the federal system. Since 2011, California, for example, has released about 46,000 individuals as a result of a mix of change in policy and practice. And just yesterday, November 1st, the state of Louisiana released 1,400 state

prisoners from the state of Louisiana, which is the highest incarceration state in the country. So there are prison releases happening. People are returning to their families sooner than they were expecting. And showing that support, communicating to your state lawmaker, your federal lawmaker, that you support that and that you're encouraged by their activity on that is really important? I think, first of all, we must be clear about the issues and educate ourselves and those around us. Look at the reality of why mass incarceration exists. First is economic. It's a $90 billion a year business. Rural areas in this country are powered by mass incarceration. Whole towns are built around mass incarceration. It's also a form of social control, racial control that is a forerunner and a descendant of white supremacy,

oppression of black people, and slavery. What can we do about this is legislation. First of all, the 13th Amendment clearly says that slavery can only exist inside of prison walls. During the years that I was behind the wall in a federal prison, I was a slave, an economic slave, a physical slave. Slavery exists in this country. But as a nation, we refuse to recognize it.

There needs to be a constitutional amendment to reword the 13th Amendment so that economic slavery cannot exist in this country. We need to look at the conditions that create crime. In North Philadelphia, where I live, our community, we do not control the economics of our community. Most of the businesses are owned by persons of other races. What that means is that our young people cannot be employed by our community. So they turn to drug dealing. turn to drug dealing. And from the drug dealing comes violence, which allows the police to come into our community and treat it as a occupied zone. So the police brutality and the shootings

that you see are a reflection of the environment that is created. But we don't talk about that. We don't talk about bringing opportunity, business, and resources into urban areas as a solution for mass incarceration. Also, we do not honor and respect the voices of those who are formerly incarcerated. Mass incarceration and the struggle for social injustice is the new civil rights movement of our time. And it has to be led by the voices of those who have lived that experience. One of the things that we've been working on for the past three years in protests has been helping people think about these issues differently. So I think about the issue of the police is that a third of all the people killed in the country who are killed by strangers is actually killed by a police officer, which is fascinating. And people often don't know that.

Now, I bring that up because I want to talk to you about what are some myths that you encounter. So with you specifically, there are people who talk a lot about private prisons. Private prisons takes up a large part of the public conversation. And then there are also people who talk about, like, releasing every nonviolent drug offender. So I'd love for you to respond to those two issues. And for you, you talk to people all the time about issues of, like, what it's like to be incarcerated. And I want to believe that you probably hear things that just, like, aren't true about the system, either about returning back to society or about being inside. So I'd love to hear you both talk about those in terms of myth-busting. Sure. Well, working on private prisons is important, but it is over

inflated in terms of its impact on mass incarceration. Only about 8% of individuals are incarcerated in for-profit prisons around the country. In some states it's substantial. In New Mexico, for example, 42% of state prisoners in New Mexico are in a private prison facility. In the federal system, the for-profit prisons make up a substantial share of the people locked up in the federal prison. But some states have no people in a private prison. New York, for example, no people are locked up in a private prison. Funnily enough, or ironic, in southern states like Louisiana and North Carolina, there are no people in private prisons, but there are people profiting off of the prison system. Public institutions, public officials are profiting off of the prison system.

Public institutions, public officials are profiting off of the prison system in those states. But it's not an issue of a bad corporate monster who opposed the prison reform in the state of Louisiana and said, you know, we have to stop releasing people because the good ones, we don't even want to release the good ones because they help wash our cars and do our oil changes and things like that. So he's a public elected official who runs a county jail in the state of Louisiana that contracts out with the state in Louisiana to hold state prisoners locally. So he incentivizes, he is incentivized to do that. It's a similar situation in a state like Kentucky. Another issue that you asked about is nonviolent offenses and doing reform just focused on drug offenses and low-level property offenses. The reality is that even tomorrow if number 45 issued an

executive order and got all of the governors around the country to issue executive orders at the state level to release all the people in prison who had a drug offense, we would still have more people locked up today than we had locked up in 1980. At the state level, a substantial, the majority of people are locked up for violent offenses. Now, those violent offenses could be impacted by drugs, could be related to their participation in the drug war, but the reality is it's not just solving nonviolent offenses or reforming nonviolent offenses that's going to fix mass incarceration. And what's important to know is that there are practical ways

to divert people who would be otherwise bound for prison from prison into community-based alternatives, even if those people were convicted of violent offenses. You can target people convicted of armed robbery offenses, people convicted of offenses where a gun might be present. Changing their outcome from prison to a community-based alternative won't compromise public safety.

It'll be better for the individual. It'll be better for their families, and it'll be better for their communities, it'll be better for their families, and it'll be better for their communities, because it won't lead to the extraction of individuals, even if they committed offensive violence. I think it's really important, given the conversation we've been having over the last couple of years, when it comes to policing, and the targeting of black men, and the fatal interactions with black men, that even people who commit violence, there's a range of reasons and factors that may have contributed to that violent offense,

but that doesn't mean that that should marginalize them or isolate them from opportunity for the rest of their life. I think when you talk about prisons, you have to talk about what prisons are, what they could be, and the effect of mass incarceration on our society. What prisons are are punitive places for punishment. You are sent to prison, and for X amount of years, or for the rest of your life, you're deemed a person that society needs to be protected from. And how you are treated there is not conducive to your return. The fact is, 80% of prisoners who are incarcerated

will one day return to society. So what prison could be is a holistic place where for many prisoners, this is the first time in our life we're able to slow down, take a hard look at our lives, our situations, and begin to work on transforming ourselves, our situations, and begin to work on transforming ourselves, where programs could be created so that you can go to college, learn a skill, learn better time management, learn ethics, how to take care of yourself, how to respect people, parenting skills. There are so many skills that should be taught in prison, but they aren't. Last week, I had the unique opportunity to be on Penn State campus for a wonderful program put together by the Penn State School of Nursing, and it's called Enhancing the Care of Aging and Dying Prisoners, because there are 5,000 lifers in the state of

Pennsylvania, and a life sentence in our state, we call it death by incarceration. You're going to die in prison. As prisoners age out, it costs $80,000 a year to care for them. So this study was a study on how to holistically care for aging prisoners and do hospice as they're dying. We've also been working on legislation so that that program wouldn't be necessary. Why should people die in prison? When you give someone a life sentence, what you are saying is redemption is not possible. That over the course of years, they could not feel sorry for what they did.

Yes, you took a life, but at what point have you paid enough for that, and should you not be able to work toward your eventual release? On a final note, there's 83,000 children in the state of Pennsylvania whose parents are incarcerated. Think about that. 83,000 children growing up without a father's direction, without a mother's love. We need to look at the effect incarceration has on our society and begin to deal with that on all levels.

If you guys want to learn more about this issue, or if you want to support the organizations that Nicole and John Dye are leading, check out the Center for Returning Citizens and the Sentencing Project. Thank you both so much for being here. Really appreciate it. Give it up for a guest, John Dye and Nicole Porter. All right, That's all the time we have for today. We don't have Lovett here for the outro, so it will be brief. Lovett is in New York where he's doing two shows at the Beacon, two Love or Leave It shows this weekend. How did you possibly get him to do a second show?

That must have been hard. It's hard. It's hard to get him in front of a crowd. We'll see if he listens to this. I think he does. He listens to it because he wants to make sure he knows what the news is for his shows. Thank you again to Jason Kander.

Thanks to Jande Harrell and Nicole Porter for hanging with us in Philadelphia. And everyone go subscribe to Jason Kander's new show, Majority 54. And we will talk to you again on Monday. Bye, guys.