Pod Save America - “A-holes in the Outfield.”

Episode Date: April 5, 2021

Major League Baseball pulls the All-Star game out of Georgia as the battle over voting rights intensifies, the push to legalize marijuana gets a lift from Chuck Schumer, and Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler talks to Jon Favreau about how Democrats can flip the Senate seat currently held by America’s Dumbest Senator, Ron Johnson. Then, Tommy breaks down the Championsh*t game of Pod Save America’s March Badness tournament.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/podsaveamerica. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Levitt. I'm Tommy Vitor. And here's a quick message from a leading Republican. Ted Cruz, go fuck yourself. How many Merlots deep do you think he was there? That was Jon Boehner, for anyone who didn't recognize his dulcet tones. And we're going to have that clip just at the ready throughout Pod Save America forever, just in case we need it.

I agree with that. And we'll just have Kyle hit play whenever we talk about Ted Cruz. the ready throughout pod save america forever just in case we need it i agree with that and we'll just have we'll just have kyle hit play whenever we talk about ted cruz let's test it out ted cruz ted cruz go fuck yourself that's what i'm talking about i think the response time could have been a little bit faster well we're working on it we're working on latency issues with the zoom that's what it is on today pod, the battle over voting rights intensifies as Major League Baseball pulls the All-Star game out of Atlanta. The push to legalize marijuana gets a lift from Chuck Schumer.

And Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wickler talks to me about how we can flip the Senate seat currently held by America's dumbest senator, Ron Johnson. Ben, Tommy helps us break down the championship game of our March Badness Tournament. Thank you for that. You're welcome. Love it. How was Love It or Leave It this week? Josh Gondelman.

Hilarious. Josh Sharp played the devil to talk about his video with Lil Nas X. Hilarious. Great conversation with Theo Henderson, who has a podcast called We The Unhoused. And we talked about the housing crisis in the country and about why we need more conversations that hear from unhoused people directly. It was a great conversation and everybody should support We the Unhoused. Cool. Also, don't miss Rubicon, our series about Biden's first hundred days with Crooked

editor-in-chief Brian Boitler. He just talked to FiveThirtyEight's Perry Bacon about what Biden can do to curb voter suppression. Sizz yeah it was really good perry perry is very smart i said it was a sizzling conversation yeah what oh oh god that's oh my oh my save save that for the ads man i support it love it it's been a long a long year. It's been a long year. We need some more puns. I don't want to lard out the intro, you know. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

Sorry, Perry. And he recently talked to Representative Ruben Gallego of Arizona about border politics. Great show. Check it out. Finally, something to keep in mind as we talk about voting rights on today's show. This week, activists are hosting a For the People Week of Action that includes virtual advocacy visits with senators and democracy teach-ins, where you can learn more about issues like gerrymandering, voter suppression, and how to get big money out of politics. Check it out, votesaveamerica.com slash forthepeople.

All right, let's get to the news. On Friday, Major League Baseball announced that they're moving the All-Star Game and the draft out of Georgia as a result of the Republicans' new voter suppression law that restricts ballot access and essentially gives the GOP legislature control of the state's elections. The Republican reaction was predictable. Governor Brian Kemp blasted cancel culture. Mitch McConnell threatened corporations who speak out with, quote, serious consequences. And Donald Trump called on Republicans to boycott Coca-Cola, Delta and a long list of other companies before wishing everyone a happy Easter. The Democratic reaction was a little different. Voting rights activists and national leaders like Joe Biden and Barack Obama praised the decision,

but Georgia Democrats like Stacey Abrams, John Ossoff, and Raphael Warnock had a more nuanced reaction, best summed up by Terry Inulwitz, a state representative from Cobb County, where the All-Star Game would have been held. She said, quote, I'm disappointed that the game was moved from Georgia. I'm also intensely frustrated by our GOP leadership here in Georgia. I hope other major events don't leave Georgia. This only hurts working Georgians. We talked a bit about the possibility of boycotts last week. Lovett, what's your reaction to MLB's decision here? week. Love it. What's your reaction to MLB's decision here? I feel like Stacey Abrams is trying to strike a really delicate balance because it is ultimately, I think, it is bad for people in Georgia that businesses are going to not do business in Georgia or leave Georgia. It is bad

politics for Republicans. We've seen this in other states when Republicans create these kinds of controversies and people see it as harming the economy, especially when it's not actually solving the problem. And I do think, though, on the whole, we have seen that this kind of like big corporate response does matter. It impacts politics. It impacts people's perceptions. And also, I think it just reflects the fact that you don't, gerrymandering the electoral college, the outsized power of rural white voters, that may be true in our democratic system, but it's not true in our economic system. And I think a lot of Republicans are quite frustrated to see that while they have been able to successfully limit the power of cosmopolitan, younger, more urban America, they have not been able to do the same in terms of that group's economic power, both inside of corporations and as consumers in the economy. And I think that is the fundamental dynamic here, which is that the political system is behind the culture and these corporations better represent what America actually looks like. Tommy, what do you think? I mean, I think it's just really good that we're having a sustained

conversation about voter suppression in this country because the Georgia bill is just the beginning of what will be a bunch of sustained Republican efforts to use the big lie about the 2020 election, that there was some sort of major electoral fraud. They're going to use that to try to make it harder to vote in lots of states. And I'm glad that corporations are being forced to view this as a moral issue. And I find it very funny when Republicans act like the all star game is not going to happen this year. I mean, they're all criticizing corporations now, but Republican state legislators in Georgia immediately tried to penalize Delta Airlines when they spoke out about this law. So there's hypocrisy all over this conversation. Boycotts can be very effective

when sustained, right? The Montgomery bus boycott, boycotts of South Africa, the boycott of North Carolina's so-called bathroom bill that target LGBT people. You know, sometimes boycotts are less about, you know, a long-term fix and they are short-term press attention. Like time will tell what's happening here. But I have a list for you guys of things that Donald Trump has called on his supporters to boycott if you want to hear it briefly. Okay. Ready to rock? Please. Okay. Yeah, sure. Yeah, sure. Major League Baseball, Coke, Delta, woke companies, Goodyear Tire, Harley Davidson, Apple, all Apple products, CNN, AT&T, Megyn Kelly's show on Fox, Macy's, Rolling Stone magazine, HBO, Mexico, the entire country, Italy, the entire country, Glenn Fittich, the Scotch, Oreos, Bic pens. One of those is fake. Can you tell?

Oreos. Bic pens? John Lovett wins with Bic pens. No. Oreos, he called on a boycott of Oreos because they were moving operations to Mexico at one point. So, yeah, I mean, look, these guys are against Donald Trump, the king of cancel culture king. They're against cancel culture when it's against their interests. You know, the hypocrisy is old. And so, look, I look bottom line. Often these voter suppression bills happen under the radar. We don't talk about them. And then we see the consequences in an election. It's good. We're talking about it now. Yeah, my view is everyone who can should speak out and draw attention to this law and put pressure on Georgia Republicans.

I think that some of these companies were a little late to the game on this. They sort of spoke out after the law had already passed. I think if you want to prevent the legislature from passing some of these laws, you speak out beforehand. But I'm glad they did belatedly. I do think, Tommy, as you mentioned, this is just the first of many, many voter suppression bills that could come into existence. They're happening in states all across the country. There's a particularly onerous one in Texas being debated right now. I think other states could have second thoughts on passing these bills after what has happened in Georgia. happened in Georgia. It is tough. You can you can see Stacey Abrams and a lot of these Georgia Democrats, John Ossoff, Raphael Warnock, sort of walking this this this line because it does these boycotts do end up hurting people in the state. You know, North Carolina lost about four billion

dollars in business because of the boycott in that state. Indiana lost billions in business after there was a boycott in that state, after there was a, you know, they basically legalized discrimination against gay couples in Indiana. But, you know, they can have an effect. Eventually, in North Carolina, they repealed the so-called bathroom bill, though it was only a partial repeal that didn't really please anyone. But, you know, it still took a lot of time and it still sort of sucked a lot of money out of the state. I think the important thing is, and you see this in sort of Stacey's comments and some of these other Democrats, what they're saying is Georgia Republicans are the one driving businesses away because they're trying to take control of our elections just months after their presidential candidate tried to steal an election. So it is

unfortunate that businesses are boycotting the state. But whose fault is that? It's the fault of the Republicans who passed the voter suppression laws. Yeah, I mean, I think that's why you see Kemp trying to blame Democrats for this happening. That's why I think it's actually like lamenting the situation, being the position of Georgia Democrats seems like the right one politically, right? Because they're not owning the fact that these companies are taking business away from the state. They're saying basically Republicans created a controversy over a lie. They're not solving a problem. They're creating a problem. And I think that's what has the most in common with North Carolina, because ultimately I think Republicans

in that state were punished in part because they created a giant controversy. They cost the state a lot of money and it wasn't to solve a problem. It was to, it was to kind of draft on a, on a controversy. And like, if, if voters in that state look at this and say, these Republicans are hurting us and they're not addressing anything I see in my life, like they're solving a lie. They're trying to use a lie to do something that's going to hurt the state. And ultimately, I think that's why you see also Republicans coming out and saying, like, we're going to need to do consequences. We're going to need to punish these these corporations because they're looking at the situation and seeing that these corporations are deciding in their own self-interest, their amoral self-interest, that they'll do better to side with people who are angry about this law than siding with Republicans trying to restrict voting rights. Well, it's interesting. So Georgia Republicans,

strategists, politicians, all of them are saying that the boycott helps Governor Kemp fend off a primary challenge that he might get because he refused to help Trump overturn the election in Georgia. They're saying this unifies the Republican base. Some are saying it's going to hurt Democrats. I saw Eric Erickson tweet, oh, Brian Kemp just won reelection and Raphael Warnock lost in 2022. We obviously don't know what effect this will have on 2022. But Tommy, did the politics of this give you any anxiety or do you feel like the politics are on Democrats? Yeah, a Pinochet fan, Eric Erickson, who when not tweeting about this is dreaming about throwing liberals out of helicopters because he's that good of a guy.

I have zero anxiety about this for a couple of reasons. One, Brian Kemp and his likely primary opponent, Doug Collins, both suck. I would be equally unhappy with either of them in office. In some ways, I think you could argue that Kemp winning this primary would be a rejection of Trump and a rejection of Trumpism because Trump is going to go after him so hard.

So you could spin a whole bunch of like 4D chess takes on the outcome of this election. When it comes to the general election, it's just a lifetime away. You know what I mean? And I'm personally far more worried about the impact of this bill and the likely outcome of suppressing black voters that I am right now about how it's playing for Trump or whether it's bringing the Republican Party together. It's just like if we've learned nothing in these past few election cycles is that assuming what's happening now is going to be relevant in a month or six months or a couple of years is just it's ridiculous. Love it. What do you think? Yeah, I mean, I think there's three things. One, what is the political impact of this controversy around the boycotts? To Tommy's point, we have no fucking idea and election is a long time away. Two, what is the impact of the actual vote suppression inside of the law?

We can debate that and what the impact will be. And the fact that when you have a lot of attention on vote suppression, you can organize and overcome it and educate people about what they need to do to vote. And then three, I think the part that is the least examined is what is the impact of the parts of the law that change who is responsible for elections and who decides the outcomes of elections. And I think like those are the three areas I think we need to talk about. And I am actually right now most worried. We talked about this before. I'm most worried about the parts of this law that actually have nothing to do with stopping

people from voting or from this controversy. I'm talking about like the parts where they take away the power from state officials and give it to the legislature may change the outcome of elections. And that part's the most terrifying. Yeah, I mean, look, I think substantively it is incredibly important to fight this bill with everything we have for all the reasons you mentioned. But even if you get to the like, you know, Republicans are trying to take this issue and frame it as part of their culture wars as they are with everything else, even if you take it to that plane, I think Democrats being on the side of more people voting, more people having easier access to voting, no matter who they are, no matter which party they're from, is just a more popular position than Republicans driving a bunch of businesses out of the state because they're curtailing voting access.

So like even if they want to run around saying it's a bunch of woke corporations, you know, try, you know, listening to national Democrats and try and trying to cancel this and that and the other shit. If Democrats maintain the message that we are for voting for everyone, we are for easier access for everyone. We are for nonpartisan elections for everyone. And by the way, the Republican Party's last presidential candidate tried to steal the last election and incited an insurrection because of it. Then I think we're on pretty good political ground. And if we're not on politically good ground there, I don't know what else we can do. Like there's nothing else we can do at that point. So, you know, we should talk about the fact that Democrats and voting rights activists are also being accused of exaggerating the dangers of the new law,

not just by Republicans, but by some reporters and analysts. Nate Cohn wrote in the New York Times on Saturday that Georgia's law is, quote, unlikely to significantly affect turnout or Democratic chances. He argues that while the Republicans' intent might have been to make voting harder, and while the law succeeds at making absentee voting harder, research shows that making voting more convenient doesn't necessarily translate into more votes. Tommy, what's your reaction to Nate's argument? The first thing I just want to say is I fundamentally agree with Levitt that the scariest piece of this bill is this unprecedented power grabbed by the Republican legislature to steal a bunch of power from local elections officials. But setting that aside, because it's sort of a

related but separate issues, a few thoughts on that analysis from Nate. A lot of the stories about the Georgia bill include some line like, you know, at the end of the day, this bill might motivate Democrats and help them win and drive turnout. That take drives me crazy because I think it normalizes racist voter suppression tactics. Like it's just politics rather than a truly immoral act, which is I think what it is. And I think Democrats shouldn't have to organize to overcome this stuff. Second, like with all due respect to the data journalism gurus, they are not very good at predicting the future. Why? Because none of us are. So I don't know that we should try here. Like what we do know for sure is the intent of these kinds of laws and what they are based on, right? It's based on the big

lie that there was voter fraud in 2020 when there was not. And the intent is to hurt Democrats by making it harder for the Democratic base, mostly black voters, to vote. Now, the final version of this bill is not as brazen as earlier drafts, but it is still bad. The Atlanta area will go from having 94 ballot drop boxes to 23. They won't be open 24 hours a day. You will have less time to get an absentee ballot, and elections officials are no longer allowed to send out applications to every voter. Clearly, that's a reaction to the fact that Biden got 65% of absentee votes in 2020. The runoff time is shortened. Absentee votes now require a driver's license of some sort. Republicans have gotten sneakier over time about how they scope and pursue these bills. But if you look at recent history, even in Georgia, in 2005,

Georgia passed an anti-fraud bill, quote unquote, that exempted absentee votes from ID laws because they argued it was more secure than in-person voting. Now, at the time, you'll be shocked to hear that absentee voters were mostly white, right? So that bill was so bad that Bush's DOJ recommended that it be struck down. And at the time, the chief sponsor of the bill said that if black voters in her district, quote, are not paid to vote, they don't go to the polls. So I guess that context is just to say, we can't ignore the history of voter ID laws and laws like this in Georgia or North Carolina, which was even more egregious. And these bills have been like incubated for so long that there

are now best practices, basically. They're getting traded around by Republican groups in Washington. So the intent is clear. They want fewer Democrats to be able to vote. I don't think we should look at political science data and be okay with that. I think we should fight about the moral elements and the clear intent of these legislators. I would say three things about Nate's argument. He has a paragraph in that piece where he says, quote, that doesn't mean the Georgia law or other such laws are without consequence. Perhaps the disenfranchisement of even a single voter merits outrage and opposition, especially if the law is passed on dubious or even fabricated grounds. And with Jim Crow mass disenfranchisement as a historical backdrop. Yes, it does merit outrage and opposition. It's like we don't know. We don't

know how many voters will be disenfranchised by this law. It is possible that even by making absentee ballots harder to come by and harder to cast and and early voting, essentially, maybe that's unchanged, even that you still could get some voters who are disenfranchised, who are more likely to be voters of color. And even a small number, even a small number that doesn't affect the outcome of the election is just wrong. To go back to the point that both of you have been making about the elections administration, this is what it looks like. This is what it could look like when Republicans control the state board of elections. So they can appoint whoever they want. They can

appoint a majority members to the state board of elections, right? They say that the people can't have held elected office or donated to politicians, but they could find some partisan hack who hasn't donated to run that board. Not only does the board have power over sort of the state elections, they have the power to fire county officials. So if there are county officials in DeKalb or Fulton or any of these big democratic counties, now the state board, when Donald Trump or the next Donald Trump says there's been fraud in this county, the state board without any reason can just fire those county officials and install some hack. It is incredibly dangerous. And I also think like we can't forget that this whole this bill was in response to a fucking lie. Republican

Brad Raffensperger, the current secretary of state, said that Georgia's elections, quote, have never been more safe and secure. This is what a Republican said about the last set of elections in Georgia. Never been more safe and secure. And then they passed this bill. Why? Like, I think you can't divorce the intent from the whole. They lost their power. Yeah. I mean, the other piece of it, too, is like, you know, Nate goes to this data and say, like, look at how minimal the impact is on turnout. And the two problems with that, beyond just the fact that it's wrong, even if it doesn't affect the outcome, is what about close elections, man? We have a lot of them and they matter. And the outcome- Especially in Georgia. We just went through one. It was incredibly close. The other piece of this is, look at Pennsylvania. Republicans in Pennsylvania were hell-bent on disenfranchising a lot of people. They sought ridiculous rules around absentee ballots. Remember, there was a whole thing you had to, if you signed the wrong place, your ballot was invalidated. You had to put it inside the secrecy sleeve or it wouldn't count. or it wouldn't count. Democrats and activists in Pennsylvania did an incredible job educating people to make sure that didn't matter. So I imagine in the data, you would find that that

effort to suppress the vote didn't matter, quote unquote, didn't matter. Why is if you create an incredible hurdle and you have to force a bunch of people to figure out how to overcome that hurdle just to vote. That's not a success story. Again, it's it's a creating a hurdle to solve a problem that doesn't exist. It's to solve a problem that was made up by the last presidential candidate that the entire party went along with and ended up causing an insurrection. That's what the fucking law is designed to do. And the Republican rejoinder is basically, well, in 2020, Democratic state legislators changed all these laws to make absentee voting easier. It's like, guys, there was a global pandemic. We wanted to make it so that voting wasn't a death sentence. That's why this happened. passed in 2013 that was eventually struck down was preceded by staffers for Republican-controlled

legislature sending emails to the board of election asking for data about turnout by race, by type of vote, early versus election day. They asked for data about a breakdown by race, which voters did or didn't have a driver's license. And then surprise, surprise, the eventual law they passed found all the ways to manipulate that data to suppress black votes. That is what's happened time and time and time again. And in the suggestion that we should just organize through it, like, yeah, ultimately, that's what we'll do. But first, we have to talk about the moral element of what's happening here. And I'm glad that that's why the language here has been very, very clear. It's been very direct.

here has been very, very clear. It's been very direct. Well, you know, Kemp and the Republicans, they love saying, oh, well, you know, as far as early voting is concerned, we've actually expanded early voting hours in some places. Yeah. You know where? Rural counties. You know who's in rural counties? Fucking Republican voters. So even like they were playing with turnout in this law. You can tell. And like you said, some of the more onerous restrictions were included in the bill. But what they wanted to do is make sure that their voters could have easy access to voting in this bill. So it's like the turnout voting access stuff you have to look at carefully. Like it's not clear, of course, who it helps. But what they definitely want to do is take control of the elections, the Republicans, because they want to make sure in another close election that they can fuck around and make sure they steal it.

All right. A few big developments last week on an issue that hasn't gotten much attention lately. On Wednesday, New York became the 15th state to legalize recreational marijuana. The same day, New Mexico's legislature voted to allow recreational marijuana use, a bill the Democratic governor said she'll sign. And Virginia Governor Ralph Northam said he's pushing the statehouse to pass legalization by July 1st. Voters in New Jersey, Arizona, Montana, and South Dakota all voted to legalize weed in November. And Mississippi voted to legalize it for medical use. The big question now is whether President Biden and the Democratic Congress will take action since marijuana remains illegal under federal law,

which leaves people who sell it and use it vulnerable to federal prosecution, even in states where it's legal. On that front, Chuck Schumer made news last week when he said that the Democratic Senate will move forward on legalization with or without the president. the Democratic Senate will move forward on legalization with or without the president. OK, so before we dig into the politics, what have we learned about the benefits of legalization from the states that have passed these laws? And have there been any drawbacks? Tommy? I mean, look, Phish album streams are way up. Maureen Dowd had a rough weekend in Colorado, but she seems to have recovered. No, look, have recovered. I am not aware of some increased

incidents of marauding bans of edible users, like breaking laws or increasing crime rates. The New York law is expected to raise $350 million in revenue. It's going to create jobs. So I think a lot of these states have seen an economic benefit from legalization that I suspect that their neighboring states are jealous of at this point. What do you think, Lovett? I mean, aside from all the people who want to enjoy legal weed, like why is this such an important thing to get done? Yeah, I mean, I would just add to like there are there is now data because we've had a number of states that have legalized it, even though it remains a federal crime. And two of the fears is one,

you'd see more under the influence driving. And two is that you'd see an uptick in kids using it. And the data is kind of murky in part because they started looking for drivers using weed after they legalize it. But even still, you don't see the kind of increase I think people were worried about. The same thing with use of the teens. Like that hasn't, they haven't seen some big spike and in fact, some places for some reason it's gone down. So I think that like some of the fears have not come to pass and, you know, it's a popular issue. It's a, it's an issue that has like, it's a 70-30 issue in this country. It is supported by virtually everybody except Republicans. And even among Republicans,

it's almost at a majority in terms of support. Everywhere it's on the ballot, it passes. Medical marijuana in Mississippi, legal marijuana in a lot of other places. So it's a winning political issue and is also correcting a deep injustice of a lot of people of color who have been arrested for using weed, while millions and millions of people who have not been ensnared in our judicial system have used it as if it were legal for a very long time. So, you know, to me, that's the most important aspect of this. I mean, a lot of the states who have legalized marijuana have also engaged in expunging criminal records and sometimes pardons for people who

were in prison because of this. In 2018, 40% of all drug arrests were for cannabis. 40%. In 2017, there were more arrests for marijuana possession than arrests for all violent crimes combined. Like you mentioned, Lovett, Black Americans are four times as likely to be arrested for marijuana violations than white Americans, even though both use it equally. And more than 200,000 students have lost federal financial aid because of a drug conviction.

There are people serving life in prison right now for something that's legal in some form in 33 states. It is an outrage that we arrest people for this right now, an outrage, and that people are in jail and people have this on their records. I think you have to understand the history of the war on drugs. This is a quote from John Ehrlichman, who is Nixon's chief domestic advisor when he announced the war on drugs in 1971. I think this quote came out in a book in the early 90s. Direct quote, the Nixon White House after that had two enemies, the anti-war left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their

leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did. That is the genesis and the legacy of the war on drugs. And now it wasn't just Nixon. It wasn't just Reagan. It was a bunch of Democrats too, including Joe Biden, who passed a whole bunch of dracon to right those wrongs. Because yes, it is an outrage that you have black and brown men mostly, or black and brown communities sitting in jail for activities that are now legal in 40% of the country. Love it. What do we know about Joe Biden's evolution on this issue and where he is now? He's just, well, he's currently thinking about it. He's in a thought, he's thinking about it. You know, he is a older, more moderate Democrat. He is behind the country. He's even behind Chuck Schumer. But ultimately, this issue is moving faster than he is. days ago and basically asked, like, are you going to move this forward regardless of Joe Biden? He basically said, yes, Kamala Harris, one of the lead sponsors of legalization when she was in the Senate. I don't believe Joe Biden is going to issue his first veto on marijuana legalization or decriminalization. I find that very, very hard to believe. So, you know, I think he'll,

as always, you know, as often as the case, Joe Biden is a consensus figure. He will be where the Democratic consensus is. And the Democratic consensus is no longer for allowing states to legalize a drug while pretending there's no law against it at the federal level, even though it continues to be a Schedule 1 drug punishable by, you know, serious jail time if you're caught with it. Yeah. And so he hasn't had a great record through his career, but he's now pretty close. Here's where he ended up during the campaign. He you know, this is a statement he released like well into the campaign in 2020. No one should be in jail for marijuana use, decriminalize recreational marijuana use and automatically expunge prior convictions, legalize medical marijuana, allow states to legalize recreational marijuana, and reschedule marijuana so researchers can study its health

impact. So he is basically for everything, but he's not yet for legalizing recreational marijuana on the federal level, though, as you mentioned, Kamala Harris certainly is the vice president. So he's getting close. You know, this sort of came back into the news. And Tommy, I know that you and Ben talked about this on Pod Save the World the other week because of the White House drug policy. At least five staff members lost their jobs because they used marijuana in the past, even though the White House told incoming staffers that prior use wouldn't disqualify them. So not what the Biden administration wanted to be in the news for in terms of the debate over marijuana legalization, certainly. in the news for in terms of the debate over marijuana legalization, certainly. And I think it is incumbent upon them now, like if I were them, I would not get dragged into this because Chuck Schumer said, all right, I'm going with or without you. I would, as Joe Biden did back in the

day on gay marriage, go out and make a really strong statement about this, that this is a culture issue that you're ready to put in the past and that we've like we've moved on from at this point. Yeah, I mean, I do I do think getting to legalizing recreational use is really important. And look, you're right. Biden has shown willingness to evolve and grow on a lot of issues. Hopefully that'll continue here. And I do think, you know, he should maybe feel an obligation to sort of repair some of the damage from these these older laws. But, you know, if you can get to allowing recreational use, you can then use the tax dollars from that money to go to drug treatment, to go to supporting ownership of cannabis businesses for communities of color that were disproportionately hurt by these laws.

You should expunge all these records. It's nuts. But it's not just marijuana where Biden's policies can feel little dated. Ben and I talked about this on Pod Save the World, but Biden also supports a program by the Colombian government to spray cocoa crops from the air with like crop dusters. And like these programs have been around forever. They're totally ineffective. They tend to hurt small farmers, not the cartels, because you're just like spraying Roundup, the weed killer, all over everything. So it's killing all kinds of crops.

You know, it's like these are subsistence farmers. So, you know, I do think we need to move past these kind of like 80s and 90s era war on drugs laws that have just utterly failed by any measure. So there's a couple of ways that this can get done. The Moore Act passed the House, which is legalization in December. It died in the Senate at the time because McConnell were in the Senate. Now, now the Democrats are in the Senate. So Schumer could take this up so you could pass a bill through the Senate. Of course, you would need you can't do it through reconciliation. You'd need 60 votes.

So you need a couple of Republicans on this. You also need someone like Joe Manchin. We don't know necessarily where he stands. But if I was Schumer, I would definitely put on the floor, like you said, Levitt, this is an excellent political issue. I mean, we've talked about why morally it's the right issue, but it's a great political issue for Democrats because you have almost half Republicans, half Republican voters in the country who are for this. You have very deep red states passing legalization, fucking South Dakota. So I would make sure that every one of these Republican senators were on record, whether

they wanted to be fought against it and some of the more conservative Democratic senators as well. Yeah. I'd also just say, too, like the position that like marijuana should be left up to the states, but we shouldn't decriminalize it at the federal level is like completely incoherent. Totally. It's nonsense. It's nonsense.

And and, you know, haven't we like like, are we not going to, we should learn from what happens when you give power to a president, even if they don't use it. Like, we are fortunate that Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump did not decide to target marijuana use, but they had the power to do it. They're free to do it at any moment. It is a power that currently is in the hands of the federal government. The other thing I would add, too, is there's a lot of evidence that marijuana is something that can help people who have opiate addiction. There's a lot of evidence that this can do real good for people. And a lot of these laws make that harder.

So we're not in the prediction business, which has been good for us because we would have been wrong a lot. But I think this is one of those things where you could see a lot of Republicans get on board. I think it's possible. Yeah, I do, too. So there's a couple other possible strategies there. Some people have suggested that this could get done if you fold it into a larger criminal justice reform bill, because you do have a lot of these Republican senators who've been on the record and even in the Trump era were for some kind of criminal justice reform. So maybe you sneak it in that way if just passing the Moore Act in the Senate doesn't work. There's also, by the way, executive action that Biden

can take himself. He can try to start the process of descheduling or rescheduling marijuana so that the criminal penalties are not as high. So that's a different schedule. Now, that is actually somewhat complicated, too. And it's not like he can just wave a magic wand and get that done. But again, this is about if he went out and made a clear statement about where his administration stands and says that he believes it should be legalized, he could at least start the process of some of these federal agencies looking at this. And he could maybe make some progress on this through executive action if you get a roadblock in the Senate because of some of these Republicans. So there is the point here is it's great that Schumer gave that interview and it's great. There's

a lot of Democrats on board and that the House has passed this. But there's a lot more that Democrats and especially Joe Biden can do on this issue before you get to any kind of Republican blockade. Also, I just want to, you know, look, I don't want to press our luck, but we should probably get mushrooms in there, too. I'm not I'm not kidding either. That's that's starting to happen. Right. I mean, in some I know a couple of states have done this already. There's serious problems with addiction in this country. And, you know, punitive schedule one rules around a bunch of different drugs based on a completely outdated notion of drug use and how you can stop it.

Like, we should stop acting like that's, we know it's morally wrong. We know it's bad policy. It's not good politics. What are we doing? Yeah. And people are being people are in prison right now for this, which is just makes no sense whatsoever. And it's a horrible injustice. All right, Tommy.

Yeah. Tell us about the championship game here in March badness. We've come so far. Here we are, guys. This is at the moment everyone's been waiting for the national champion shit game uh for those of you who have not been listening to our march badness tournament so far shame on you you've let us down but here's the gist so we had a list of eight republicans uh this is all a joke so don't take it seriously but it was the eight worst republicans

we narrowed that down to a fascist four. And now the final two are competing. Speaking of which, how'd you guys like that? Gonzaga UCLA final. Great buzzer beater, huh? That was an incredible game. I'll be honest. I did not have a chance to watch too many games in this tournament. And I watched that one.

And wow. Love it. Great. Great shot or lucky shot. What's your take? So I was actually, and this is not a joke, watching a Scandinavian film called Babette's Feast while this game was going on. It's the story of a group of puritanical, isolated Danes who receive a visit from a French woman asking for help. And the story of how their lives intersected

over 50 years and two French revolutions. It's a beautiful film and I recommend it. Okay. Sounds like something I might watch at Baylor. Okay. So here are two finalists. We have Senator Mitch McConnell. Okay, Mitch.

Nobody wants to see Mitch in March or in this case, early April. When it comes to confirming unqualified Republican judges, Mitch plays Nobody wants to see Mitch in March or in this case, early April. When it comes to confirming unqualified Republican judges, Mitch plays an up-tempo game, so much so that it's led to rumors that he might get a little assist from time to time, if you know what I mean. But speedball is not just his style of play, guys. No, what do you mean? What do you mean? What do you mean? Speedball is not just his style of play. Like Gonzaga, Mitch is chasing perfection this year.

All of you guys have supported him throughout the tournament. And the question is, is a person coming out of the U.S. Senate just used to inferior competition, or can he step up his game on the big stage? So that's what we're looking at for Mitch. Now, thanks to the results of our very scientific Twitter poll, Mitch will go up against Fox News' primetime white nationalist, Tucker Carlson. Carlson beat out Mark Zuckerberg for this spot. Tucker's career has been Rick Pitino-like in that he's achieved the highest heights

and the lowest lows after being fired and humiliated and having his banner ripped down at CNN. But this is a big moment for Tucker here. So that's it, guys. This is the final game. Mitch McConnell, stalwart defender versus Tucker Carlson, hapless, blow-dried white nationalist who was born rich, got fired and rejected by the CIA, by CNN, filled his way up to Fox primetime. What is your call?

You know, it's difficult. It's difficult because I don't want to talk about Tucker Carlson anymore, but he makes it so hard not to. So, uh, I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking about it. I think this is a very competitive championship.

I don't, I don't even know that the spread has to be really tight on this. I think that, um, as much as I've been sort of promoting tucker through this as a real threat especially in the in 2024 he could be there i could see him being the republican nominee that's not out of the question um at the end of the day i still don't think he's proven himself as much as cocaine mitch mcconnell has. And that guy is sinister.

He is scheming. He's got a track record, like you said, on judges and other things. That guy, he's the most cynical person in politics. And he is the most powerful elected Republican today. So at the end of the day, I'm going to give it to Mitch. Okay.

Yeah, I think that's right. I think that has to be right because, you know, is Tucker Carlson a great player or is there a system that helps shits like Tucker Carlson look good? System quarterback, yeah. The rules that help someone like that win, and who created those rules? It's Mitch McConnell. All right. So Tucker's young legs are defeated by Mitch's decaying hands.

That's it. Our national championship in 2021 is Mitch McConnell. Great work, everybody. Thanks for, you know, wasting five minutes an episode with us. It's been fun. I feel a little like Babette looking back on her time in the village. Okay. When we come back, when we come back, we will have the Wisconsin Democratic Party chair,

friend of the pod, Ben Wickler. he's the chair of the wisconsin democratic party and a good friend of the pod ben wickler welcome back to pod save america great to be with you john always a pleasure so uh i haven't really had a chance to catch up with you since the election so the polls in Wisconsin were wildly off again. But I remember that every time I talked to you during the campaign, you would tell me it feels really, really close here. What were you picking up that the polls didn't? And do you see Wisconsin remaining basically a 50-50 state for the foreseeable future? So I see Wisconsin as a state that is democracy enchained. It's a state that would be a bluish shade of purple if we didn't have these hideous voter suppression laws in place that make it harder to register voters, make it harder

for people to get ballots, make it harder to cast your vote. If we, when we win a democratic trifecta and change the laws and make this a pro-voter state, I think that we could become more like a Colorado where you don't have to freak out about it every election night. But for the foreseeable future, for the moment, we've now had four presidential elections out of the last six come down to less than one percentage point. We've had the blue wave of 2018. We swept every statewide office, but we won by like 1.1 percentage points in the governor's race for Governor Evers. In 2019, we had a state Supreme Court race that came down to less than

6,000 votes. So it's on a knife's edge. And you could see across Wisconsin, Trump came here 10 times in 2020. He came over and over. He held mega rallies despite the COVID pandemic, dominated every local newscast, which is still the main way most people get their news here. And you could just see that there was a ton of energy on the other side. And what we saw on election day was that the Trump vote jumped 15% from 2016 to 2020. After everything that happened in the midst of this deadly pandemic with Wisconsin having one of the worst outbreaks in the country, he got 15% more votes than he did the previous time. And we won because with folks, I mean, we had 30,000 volunteers who were throwing their backs into it in Wisconsin and with help from across the country, this massive effort

drove up the number of votes for Biden relative to Clinton in every single county in the state. And we jumped 18 percent. And that is how we won by a hair's breadth. But it took everyone and everything to be able to do it. Two questions on that. One, do you think the energy on the other side, how much do you think it was connected to Trump himself? Or do you see, do you think that like in 2021, 2022 and beyond, it's still going to be there? So they're sort of separate questions. So the, the, to how much it was connected to Trump himself, it was deeply connected to Trump. There was a poll we were involved with after the election that found that like 90% of the voters for Trump said that they were voting for Trump, not against Biden. This

was a referendum on Trump for them. For voters on our side, half said they were voting for Biden, half said they were voting against Trump. So this was like Trump effect in full effect. And see it at the warrant level. You can talk to voters and see it. But we just don't know how many of the anti-Trump voters are going to come back when Trump's not there and how many of the pro-Trump voters are going to come back when Trump's not there. And, like, the history is, you know, 12 out of the last 14 midterms under a new president, the president's party's lost ground. So we have to defy political gravity to make gains in 22. I think we can do that. I think Biden and Harris and the Democratic Senate and House are delivering the kinds of changes in people's lives that you can actually run and win on in a midterm election, even when conditions are normally so unfavorable. But it's going to take, you know, once again, all of us doing everything we can do to not have this go down the way things usually do in history and instead actually make gains.

You made the point that on our side, you know, organizing everyone everywhere is how we ended up winning. Obviously, it was 20,000 votes was the margin. Are there specific places and regions and groups of voters that you think put Democrats over the top that you're looking at for future elections? So it's interesting that the answer is yes, but the answer is each of the groups of voters who had different kinds of challenges. So Republicans target voter suppression in Wisconsin and everywhere, specifically against Black and Brown voters and young voters. Those are voters that they think will vote for Democrats who they don't want to have the franchise. So in Wisconsin, if you look at the places where the most Black people live in our state, it was a huge fight. Early voting was cut.

Access to get IDs that you need for voting ID laws was made harder by the COVID pandemic. Transportation was harder for folks. There were all these barriers in people's way. And they fought and they held steady and went up, notched up in terms of turnout in the face of these intense barriers. The voters Republicans tried to make our voting system perfectly suited to were a lot of the suburban areas that in Wisconsin are traditionally very red outside of Milwaukee. Those swung enormously and the barriers in front of those voters were much lower. So there was a tremendous swing in public opinion polling. And also it was easier for folks to turn that swing into votes. That's where the biggest margin changes were. Madison and the area surrounding it had this,

where I am joining you from right now and where I grew up, had this enormous wave of turnout, mind-blowing numbers of voters and margin, but also in rural areas across the state. I was talking to the chair of Vilas County, one of the reddest parts of Wisconsin, and we had an improvement of three percentage points in the margin towards Biden, much larger than the swing in the state overall in Vilas County. And so I think it's easy to look at the map and say, oh, look at all these red rural areas. But actually, we got more votes in every single county. And we increased our vote share in 65 out of 72 counties. And if it hadn't been for the organizing in some of the reddest places, the fact that

they were like state-ledged candidates fighting in totally gerrymandered districts to turn out extra voters, we would have lost the 20,000 votes we needed to flip the state. So as we look forward now, we're doing a kind of all of the above strategy again. And we're building a coalitions team to keep up the kind of outreach and partnership building work in the Black community, the Latino community, with Asian American Pacific Islanders in Wisconsin. There's a significant Hmong population. We also just launched a rural advisory council that's working with a bunch of rural leaders across the state. We're building our partnerships and relationships with tribal governments. The highest jump in turnout in Wisconsin came from Menominee County, which is

also the location of the Menominee Nation Reservation. They had an explosive jump, and they had also the highest margin for Biden. It was 84% Biden in Menominee County. Wow. Yeah. And it's like, that's this. What do you think, what do you think the overall balance was between, you know, performance due to bringing out new voters and turnout and sort of converting voters who backed Trump in 16? Because you talked to a lot of Democratic strategists nationally and data nerds, and they say, Wisconsin's one of these states that's more of a persuasion state. Like both sides have really sort of registered all the voters they're going to register mostly.

And it's all about sort of changing minds there. But it seems like clearly in some of these counties, you guys just smash turnout records. Yeah, I think it's I think it's clearly both in Wisconsin. There's I mean, you know, there's there's the idea of the mythical swing voter. There are clearly both in Wisconsin. There's, I mean, you know, there's the idea of the mythical swing voter. There are swing voters in Wisconsin. There are ticket splitters in Wisconsin who vote simultaneously. Like Ron Kind was elected to Congress in a district that went for Trump. And people, that wouldn't be possible if there weren't a bunch of people who were voting for a Democrat for Congress and Trump for president.

And the reverse is even more true. So you really do have to do both. And I think my ideal messages are ones that actually are both mobilizing messages and persuasion messages. And I think the stimulus bills are a great example of that, that that really does energize our base. And it's something that's a concrete reason for people to vote for Democrats. If you look at Ron Johnson, he voted against the American Rescue Plan. He voted against your stimulus check. He voted against your child tax credit. And getting rid of him is something

that motivates just about everybody. So I look for things that have both of those qualities, but I think you just can't win here with a pure mobilization play and you can't win with a pure persuasion play um and the other side knows that too and acts on that also like it's it's a it's so it's so incredibly closely divided more than any other state in the country um this is a couple of three states have had two elections out of the last six come down to one percentage point or less

i'm gonna work for like because of that you just have to you have to play with every tool at your disposal. Speaking of America's dumbest senator, two questions on Ron Johnson. One, what do you think the chances are that he actually runs again? So if I'm Ron Johnson, which to be clear, I am not. You're not Ron Johnson. So deeply not Ron Johnson, which to be clear, I am not. You're not Ron Johnson. So deeply not Ron Johnson. But if I were Ron Johnson, I imagine what I'd be thinking is I got elected. I'm going to switch to the third person tense, actually. He got elected on the Tea Party wave in 2010 when there was this backlash, resurgent right attack on Obama.

And he co-hosted it. He rode that to victory. In 2016, he got elected on the Trump wave turning out. And like both times everyone counted him out. He said, they said he couldn't win. And then there was this kind of right-wing insurgency that he was able to grab onto and ride to victory. I think he's looking for that in 2022 and he plans to ride that to victory again. And he is like waving both hands and saying Mercer family, Steve Bannon, you know, Oh, and like America's one American news network, whatever I'm your dude. And his hope is that then when this, you know,

red wave crashes over our state, he's going to be the guy waving from the surfboard on top of it. And that's his big strategy. And so he doesn't want to decide until he knows whether that wave is happening or not. Now, I also think he's not very good at reading the room. So he might believe that it's there because everyone he talks to tells him that it is whether or not it is, but he's, I think I would, I would guess that he's not going to decide until sometime in 2022. And I would guess right now that he will conclude that he's had thousands of people telling him that they're too afraid to say it publicly, but they

totally support him and he needs to fight for them and make sure that they're heard in the Senate. And so he's going to go for it, especially given that he promised not to run for a third term when he ran for a second term. And now he's saying things have changed. I never thought total Democrat control of the government would be at stake. So, you know, he is the the white knight, if you will, for the for this right wing movement that he he thinks that he's the guy for. So I know you guys are already, you know, fundraising against him, organizing against him. I see you've got billboards up, which I love. I'm interested in the messaging. You know, the billboards sort of focus on him voting against the stimulus checks. You talked just about him voting against the stimulus checks.

I'm interested in your decision to go with that message over the, you know, Ron Johnson is a crazy ass conspiracy theorist message. Can you talk a little bit about that choice? Well, I will say that after the insurrection and when he was, you know, full of apologies for it, after he fomented it and held a hearing, you know, conspiracy mongering. We ran the first TV ad of the twenty two twenty twenty two election cycle in the country statewide on local TV channels across the state of Wisconsin, hammering him for his role in the insurrection. And that was a moment when, you know, people were calling us and saying they were lifelong Republicans who wanted to join the Democratic Party. Like people were like infuriated by it. Some people were excited in the most terrible way on the far right. But a lot of people saw that and reeled back in horror. And we wanted to make sure people knew that he was, as Chuck Todd put it, you know, he was the arsonist who set the fire. So it's not just that we want to

talk about his votes and their relationship to people's concrete lives. But I do think that it's really clear that there's a message that resonates across race, whether you're white, black, or brown, across geography in rural areas and suburbs and cities alike, that the help that people need that they're now going to get, Johnson tried to do everything he could to stop it from happening. He was objecting to stimulus money when Trump was president. He demanded that they read this phone book-sized legislative text in order to delay just a few more hours from these checks going through. And our strategy is we look for these things that he does that are so inflammatory for folks that we want to sear in their memory,

Johnson is against you. Like he is showing you who he is. And we want to make sure that people remember that and be able to repeat it often enough that when it comes to election time, we're not introducing new information suddenly in the last few weeks that we're reminding people of memories that they already have when they when they looked at this guy and what he's doing and said him being in office hurts me because he does. He actually does make life worse for people. He's not going to get he's not going to win. We talked on Thursday's pod about the Republican effort ongoing to rebrand themselves as the working class party, you know, which to them involves embracing a Trumpian cultural populism that tells people immigrants are stealing their jobs. China's stealing their jobs. Coastal elites are canceling them.

You know, all the science nerds are COVID lockdowns, you know, hurt working people. The media is lying to them. Big tech is censoring them. What do you think the best response to sort of that populism is? Because I know you just mentioned part of the message about Ron Johnson is he's not on your side. Their message, of course, is going to be for a number of reasons. Democrats aren't on your side. They're fighting for all these other entities and people who don't look like you. The Republican playbook that they go back to every time and they do it every time in Wisconsin is to try to divide people by race so that they can pick the pockets

of people of every race. And Johnson, you know, he's pretty intentional with his kind of racist gaslighting. He goes out and he says, I wasn't afraid of the protesters in the insurrection, but if they've been Black Lives Matter protesters, I would have been afraid. This is that wasn't. Why would you call me racist? People are calling everything racist. And his goal is to polarize people by race and make white people think that he's on their side and that other people aren't. And I think being explicit that that's his strategy and that Republicans try to divide people by race in order to, you know, as Heather McGee said, on the pot, let's drain the swimming pool economics to pull money out of the public sphere, out of the goods that people need as a way to benefit people at the very top. They wield racism to do that. And so we have to be race explicit, like speak to the fact that

they're doing this, because if Democrats and progressives just try to run away from talking about race, it gives the right total control of that conversation. But you also, you can't stop at pointing out that they're being racist. You have to explain why they're doing it, which is always that they're attacking white working class people as well as black and brown working class people and trying to take benefits and move them to people at the very top. People like Ron Johnson, for example, who benefits enormously from this due to the company that his family bequeathed to him.

So this is like, you know, the essential thing is that people get why Johnson's doing it and get how it hits them. And if you do that, he doesn't have a path to win re-election. And if you do that, he doesn't have a path to win reelection. Republican legislatures all over the country are responding to losing the last election by redoubling their efforts to try to steal the next one. What kind of trouble is the Wisconsin legislature been up to and what do Democrats have to do to avoid danger in 2022? What other what other races are you looking at even between now and then? So the first thing I'll say is Wisconsin has an election on Tuesday. So if you're listening to this on Monday and you are in Wisconsin,

then you need to vote. You need to vote tomorrow. Horton, go vote. Go vote. I am wearing a vote t-shirt right now. I actually turned in my ballot absentee ballot today, which was very satisfying experience right after getting my vaccine jab. Thank you, governor. Look at that. Congrats. President Biden. If you're not in Wisconsin,

you can go to wistems.org slash volunteer and you can get on our virtual phone banks to mobilize voters. This is an election for the head of public schools in Wisconsin for superintendent

of public instruction. And Jill Underly is our candidate. It's a nonpartisan race. She is the one candidate in the race who consistently, strongly champions public education. There's another candidate who was endorsed by Scott Walker in the primary, and Betsy DeVos's super PAC has been running ads to support, who is mouthing national right-wing talking points about education stuff. And that's the person we don't want to win. So I'm going to

just say Jill Underly's name a couple of times, because Jill Underly is the one you want to win. So I'm going to just say Jill Underly's name a couple of times because Jill Underly is the one you want to vote for. That race is, it's both a kind of a lab test for Republican messaging about whether they can weaponize a bunch of school-related issues to go after Democrats on the culture war front, on the COVID front, all this stuff. But it's also this opportunity to organize and reconnect with this huge number of voters we had last year. There are two special state legislative elections. Melissa Winker is running for state Senate and Carl Yeager is running for state assembly. And we're supporting both of them. There are judicial elections, city council elections, all these local races. I think Democrats everywhere should work on every race in every place. Like that's how we build the muscle of democracy and also show people who have the courage

to put their name on the ballot that they will have backup when they do that. That lays the groundwork. It's our last statewide election until 22. And then we have this one race alongside Ron Johnson, this one race in Wisconsin that is actually a hinge point for American democracy, which is the race for governor in Wisconsin. We have Tony Evers, who's a terrific governor, who's one of the top vaccinators, governors in the nation right now. But he's our last line of defense against voter suppression. And Republicans in Wisconsin, they just love what they're seeing out of Republicans in Georgia. They have, Wisconsin Republicans have 10 different voter suppression bills that they've already proposed in our state legislature. If Wisconsin Republicans can grab the governorship,

if they can beat Tony Evers, then they will pass voter suppression bills in Wisconsin in 2023 to tip the tipping point state in the electoral college in 2024. And that's why the Republican Governors Association is targeting Tony Evers. It's why the combined might of the right wing machine will come at us in our state in Wisconsin. And it's why whether or not you live in Wisconsin, reelecting Tony Evers has to be a massive priority because his ability to veto Republican voter suppression bills is the thing that stands between a 2020 where we win the presidency and 2016 where Wisconsin goes the other way and it gets really dark. Ben Wickler, as nervous as I was all through the 2020 campaign, knowing that you were the chair

of the Wisconsin Democratic Party made me sleep a little easier. Not much, a little easier because I was up all night anyway. But every time I thought of Wisconsin, I was like, all right, Wickler's there. So we got it covered. Thank you for all the work that you did.

And thank you for all the work that you keep doing. And thanks for joining us on PSA. Thank you. I love the chance to join. And I will say I'm running for chair again. My chair reelection is in June. And I hope folks will, if you're in Wisconsin, join the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. Get involved.

It's all hands on deck every year because democracy is what we make of it. It's not a spectator sport. Thank you, John. Thanks to Ben Wickley for joining us today. Thanks to Tommy for taking us through our March Badness Tournament. And thanks to all of you for participating and giving us your thoughts. We will talk to you again soon. And I'll just say, you know, I think one of the lessons from Babette's Feast is really it's about it's about art and its value, right? Are you going to make art for the purposes of capitalistic success or for the decency and good it can provide? Where they go. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production.

The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our associate producers are Jordan Waller, Jazzy Marine, and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somenator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Caroline Rustin, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Narmal Konian, Yale Freed, and Milo Kim,

who film and upload these episodes as videos every week.