Pod Save America - “A largely accurate affair.”

Episode Date: July 1, 2019

The President kisses the asses of three different murderous dictators during his trip abroad, Kamala Harris is having a moment, Joe Biden is having some issues, and strategists and pundits are worried that the Democratic Party is moving too far to the left. Then Ari Berman of Mother Jones talks to Jon Lovett about the Supreme Court’s gerrymandering decision.

Welcome to Pod Save America, I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. Later in the pod, Jon catches up with Ari Berman from Mother Jones about the recent Supreme Court rulings on partisan gerrymandering in the census. Before that, we're going to talk about Trump's dictator buddies, Kamala Harris's momentum and the direction of the Democratic Party. Light stuff. Also, the latest episode of This Land is out called The Land Grab. Big news on this podcast in general. The Supreme Court did not offer a decision on the Murphy case and has asked for it to be retried next term.

So now you have a little while longer to catch up on the podcast. Thislandpodcast.com. Subscribe, listen, and you can find out what is at stake in this incredibly compelling story that we're now going to have to wait a couple more months, maybe a year. We'll see to figure out what the Supreme Court's doing here. Fascinating. We have no information either about why they decided to retry it. We were afraid that the court would rule before you got to episode seven of the podcast, which was built as a cliffhanger for the ruling. Now the cliffhanger lasts. Now the cliffhanger lasts a couple months. But you know what? That's life. That's life. That's life.

But anyway, check it out. It's a fantastic podcast. Dan Pfeiffer will be talking to Colorado Senator Michael Bennett later today for the next installment of our 2020 Candidate Series. Almost at the end. Just a few more stragglers, plus Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden. Can't get Bernie or Biden in the studio. I think Bernie we're making some progress on, I think. Biden, I'll tell you.

It's a problem. Anyway, and then, so Dan's interview with Bennett will be going out later this week. Dan and I will also be recording a mailbag edition of the pod that will go out Thursday. We're going to probably do that on Tuesday, so please send us your questions on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Send us your questions. We'll answer them. Some of them, maybe. Also, love or leave it, you guys had a great show last week, and Instagram. Send us your questions. We'll answer them. Some of them, maybe. Also, love or leave it, you guys had a great show last week. We had a great show that's out now, but on Tuesday at the Improv, we're recording a July 4th special. It's just going to be me and Emily Heller.

It's going to be a great time. Fantastic. Buy some tickets. All right. Let's get to the news. Over the course of a relatively short trip abroad, the President of the United States kissed the asses of three different murderous tyrants. Vladimir Putin of Russia, who attacked our election.

Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, who ordered the murder of a Washington Post columnist. And Kim Jong-un of North Korea, who's trying to build nuclear weapons that can reach the United States. On Sunday, Trump became the first sitting United States President to ever set foot in North Korea. An impromptu meeting at the demilitarized zone that came about after Trump tweeted the following. If Chairman Kim of North Korea sees this, I would meet him at the border slash DMZ just to shake his hand and say, hello, parentheses, question mark, end parentheses, exclamation point. parentheses, question mark, end parentheses, exclamation point.

After their conversation, Trump said that he and Kim agreed to resume the nuclear talks that fell apart after Trump walked away from a deal in Hanoi four months ago and ended the talks. Lovett, how big of a deal is this? Did the meeting change anything? Historic first steps into north korea wow uh you know i saw a lot of people i saw some some journalism that lifted this moment up as being extraordinary and i suppose it is pretty nuts to have the president just walk across the dmz into north korea Korea to say hi to his buddy. Based on an impromptu.

Impromptu in quotes. Well, apparently Trump mentioned his impromptu meeting a week ago to The Hill, and then they had to get The Hill to not publish it because it was a security problem. Of course, Trump is a security problem, so what are you going to do? But, but, you know, it's a, it's an image, right? That Donald Trump thinks in images, his whole presidency for him is about images. He's a president for television. It's the only part of the job he cares about. So, so when he crosses into, into North Korea, it makes for a big photo op. That's what he wanted. But what I was struck by is it's a photo op without all the pieces of it that are supposed to make it big and important.

So, you know, I was thinking about other famous presidential moments, right? You think of Carter meeting with Egypt and Israel. You think of these, of Nixon in China, important moments. But what undergirds them is the diplomatic work and meetings and considerations that make the actual involvement of the American president valuable and part of the negotiations themselves. But less work went into a detente between Donald Trump and North Korea than between like Katy Perry and Taylor Swift. So like that, the diplomatic legwork that went into Katy Perry and Taylor Swift becoming friends in public had more of the look of a foreign policy apparatus than what Donald Trump is currently doing at the G-fucking-20. It was at least teased, you know.

It was teased. There were some underlying negotiations that had to take place first. They all understood the goals. They agreed to a set of conditions. There was the communique. I mean, here's where we are in North Korea. We had talked about how this is a very difficult challenge for any U.S. president, Democrat, Republican, or Trump. But where we are is Trump comes into office in 2017. They conduct a nuclear

test. You know, then Trump starts going nuts on twitter you know rocket man all the bad shit like you know bring us closer to war and then they start these negotiations and since then um basically we have a few hostages back some remains of u.s service members have been returned though that's on pause. We have suspended joint military exercises with the South Koreans, which North Korea wanted, but North Korea is still testing missiles. They're still developing nuclear weapons. They're still resisting any kind of inspection regime whatsoever.

So Trump is basically where every other president has been, except that North Korea has just further along in their nuclear program. And now they're talking about it. And been elevated by the American president. And they've been elevated by it. But even talking about the problem itself. So now that Trump has restarted the talks that he himself pulled out of, in the New York Times, David Sanger and Michael Crowley have this piece where they're reporting that the Trump administration is now hoping to negotiate some kind of a nuclear freeze where Kim proposes to stop developing nuclear material

at a number of different sites in exchange for sanction relief. So the Trump administration's goal at the beginning of the administration is the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and inspectors in there. It's verifiable, all this kind of stuff. They've basically given up on that and now are accepting the fact that North Korea will be a nuclear power, but they're just hoping that they don't make more weapons and in exchange may possibly give them sanctions relief. But you saw that John Bolton also went on Twitter to say that that's not true. So on top of all of this. Well, because I'm sure he's against it.

Yeah, well, for sure. Yeah, well, he's got a multiple choice test and there's only one answer. Again and again and again. That's John Bolton. Yeah, John Bolton's general checkers strategy is to flip the board over in 100% of games. And then attack it with a nuclear warhead. No, so it's, you know, what can I say, John? It's a mess. Here's a sampling of some of the headlines from this weekend.

Washington Post. Trump scores his biggest live show yet in North Korea. Politico, Trump's made-for-TV moment. And our favorite, ABC's Jonathan Karl, quote, In terms of sheer performance, this may be the biggest moment of the Trump presidency so far. I just want to ask you, do you think it's weird that certain journalists actually report on how they're getting manipulated by politicians with no sense of irony? Right. It's, it's, what is it?

So honestly, like that is, I feel like a too intellectual, a critique for how I feel about it because I don't even understand what the terms mean. His biggest show yet. Like, what are you, what are you talking about? Because even, so yes, you're exactly right. terms mean his biggest show yet what like what do you what are you talking about because even so yes you're exactly right like this is a pr stunt and they're saying what a pr stunt right and that's a problem serious this is a stunt to manipulate reporters and they're like boy have they ever done that wow the they got this worked on me because look at us we are just we are just going to broadcast images of this meeting over and over.

We're going to give you all the headlines that Trump wanted. Boy, have they fooled us. But but even before you get to that, it's it's I don't even buy I don't even buy the argument on their terms, because I think it I think it actually is it's naive in another way in that it fails to appreciate just how much Donald Trump has devalued the presidency and the artifice of his job altogether. So, okay, the American people turn on their television and they see Donald Trump meeting with Kim Jong-un. Maybe in another time, a better time, a worse time, a different time, people would think, wow, that's a big deal. What I'm seeing here is monumental. It is historic. But I don't think we put Trump's behavior into terms like that anymore. I think we see them exclusively on his terms. I think that so much of our political conversation is really kind of is swirling around his narcissism. So what we really see is a coup for Donald Trump personally. And everyone kind of understands that. How does

this play into Donald Trump's role in our politics, his reelection, his experience of the world? I don't think anybody sees this as anything having to do with America's interests at all. I don't think the Trump show and America show are one show to anyone, Republican or Democrat. I think they are for a lot of Republican voters because they, I don't know if you saw, oh my God, did you see the Fox and Friends clip where they open the show to talk about what happened in the meeting and they play DJ Khaled, All I Do Is Win? Like, seriously, they didn't play showing Trump and Kim Jong-un. So like, Trump's out there, but you're absolutely right that his foreign policy is all about him. It's about glorifying him as a leader. It's about saying that he's a winner.

Rejecting Obama. And then he's hoping to say that because I'm a winner, America's a winner, too. Even while, and Tommy always points this out, he is just getting worked on the world stage by every single bad actor out there, right? They are all manipulating him. They all know his number. He's getting nothing for the United States and our security. He's getting everything for either himself,

his reputation, his financial standing, his next election, right? Because he's got Putin and other countries maybe interfering our election for him. So he's getting a lot of shit for him, or at least he thinks he is. And he's getting nothing for us because these people know his fucking number but even though even though like like even laura ingram's heart doesn't seem to be in us you know oh what a win for donald trump he sat down with kim jong-un and the world will never

be the same i don't think she's buying it i honestly don't think it's it's a it's signaling to the audience to not be bothered by this and to treat it the way we treat everything else, which is just another partisan cudgel, right? Like what he's doing. Donald Trump is doing well. It doesn't matter how many times I said Barack Obama shouldn't meet with dictators. It doesn't matter what we've been pumping to you for a decade on this network about dealing with your adversaries. It doesn't, none of that matters. All that matters is here's the talking points for you. Here's how you should feel about it. Don't let it bother you. And we'll all move forward. So Trump also met with Putin where he playfully

warned him to not launch another attack on our election and joked about their shared disdain for journalists saying, quote, get rid of them. Fake news is a great term, isn't it? You don't have this problem in Russia, but we do. Yes, they don't. They don't have this problem in Russia, but we do. Yes, they don't have that problem in Russia because Putin controls the fake news media and also has journalists who question him murdered, so that's why they don't have that problem. Trump also made time for breakfast with Mohammed bin Salman, who he called a friend and congratulated him on doing a spectacular job. He said in a news conference that MBS was, quote, very angry and very unhappy about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and said absolutely nothing about the fact that our own intelligence community has overwhelming evidence that MBS ordered the killing himself. I want to understand what conservatives would do. I want to understand. I know it's become passe to even say

this, but I want to understand what conservatives would do if Barack Obama met with a dictator who had recently cut to pieces and disposed of the body of a National Review writer. What would they do? How would they react to that? How would they feel about it? It's just so – it's even like so beyond that. It's just so, it's even like so beyond that. Like the excuses he uses too, and this goes back to what we were just talking about with like his foreign policy being intensely personal and about himself. You know, he's like, well, here's the deal with Saudi Arabia.

They're buying lots of stuff. They're buying lots of weapons from us. They have great defense contracts and other stuff too. They're buying other goods too. So basically his thing is Saudi Arabia is helping make certain defense contractors and other businessmen in this country rich. So, you know, if they kill a few people, if they kill a few journalists, what are you going to do? We, we, we need them, you know, which is just like such a, well, it's, it's, it's like such a step beyond the kind of, you know, many liberals and many on the left have long critiqued America's bipartisan foreign policy for being too comfortable with some of the most despicable

dictators in the world, including Saudi Arabia. But this goes another step. It goes beyond that, right? Not just to disregard it, but to praise him, to welcome him, to make sure he faces no consequences because of his personal relationship to you and your son-in-law. What would another Democratic president or Republican president have done to Saudi Arabia if they were in office when Khashoggi was murdered? We don't know. We don't know how far they would have gone. But we know for certain that they wouldn't have had breakfast with the guy, said he was doing a spectacular job, called him a friend. They wouldn't have done that.

That is uniquely dangerous and uniquely Trumpian. Yeah, almost as if it's – and he's not unaware of this. He knows what he's doing. And Putin, by the way. We kind of skipped over the Putin thing too. Putin, who was like, yeah, so a reporter is is like you know uh did you ask him about election interference you tell him not to interfere in the election he's like oh all right i'll do it now don't you interfere in that election and then they both laughed what like what the fuck are you doing

it's uh i mean i think i think this is an issue that the democratic presidential candidates have not done enough to talk about i would be all over this all the time. Yeah, I mean, and yes. I noticed that Joe Biden's rapidly responding campaign put out a statement from Biden about North Korea just now. They got a lot on their plate this weekend. They did. A lot of tough weekends.

And I saw Kamala Harris and a couple other Democratic candidates tweeted about it, too. But I think this is sort of a sleeper issue that people, you know, Trump's friendships with dictators who wish us harm all around the world. Yeah. You know, doesn't seem great. It's not. It's not great, John. Well, you know, Helsinki did matter. It really did matter to people.

Well, you know, Helsinki did matter. It really did matter to people. It seemed to have broken through in a way other Donald Trump malfeasance hadn't. So I do think there's some meat on that bone. Before we move on, we should also talk about Trump's batshit crazy press conference on Saturday at the G20. Like, this is, we're just sitting here, like, the President of the United States, who is an international joke, went to the G20 and across virtually any issue you can name, made an abject fool of himself, achieved nothing for the United States, left only having damaged our reputation in the world.

And, oh, by the way, a bunch of foreign leaders had looks on their faces that just said, after this is over, we go to a quiet place and make fun of Ivanka for an hour. That's what my eyes saying.

I am the leader of Japan. My face has three facial expressions. One of them is serious. One of them is very serious And now introducing the third I'm gonna go fucking talk shit About Ivanka Those are my three faces

It's uh It's really inspiring I'd like to butt in I'm Ivanka They're just having a good conversation It's like that person who just comes up like oh I have a story not that person

who let her here $5,000 dress she doesn't even know what she's talking about so Trump at this press conference defends Putin defends MBS trashes Jimmy Carter trashes John Kerry, says he broke the law

trashes Hillary Clinton said Kamala Harris has, trashes John Kerry, says he broke the law, trashes Hillary Clinton, said Kamala Harris has gotten too much credit for her critique of Joe Biden. And he also responded the following way when a reporter asked him about Putin's attack on, quote, Western-style liberalism. Here's the answer from Donald Trump, quote, I guess you look at what's happening in Los Angeles, where it's so sad to look, and what's happening in San Francisco and a couple of other other cities which are run by an extraordinary group of liberal people. I don't know what they're thinking, but he does see things that are happening in the United States that would probably preclude him from saying how wonderful it is.

It is worth always remembering that we were beat by the dumbest fucking criminals. Worth always remembering that we were beat by the dumbest fucking criminals. Donald Trump just doesn't know about liberalism as a broader philosophy of governance. He thinks of it only in terms of American-style liberalism. That's all it means to him. He isn't aware of some larger philosophy of liberal values. It's sort of like how he thinks about democracy, which is a big inconvenience to him. It's not like he's some secret autocrat that's been plotting this all along.

He sort of fell into autocracy because he thinks it is the easier path to govern. Well, when I'm the president, I'm in charge. I should be able to get done whatever the fuck I want to get done. Why are we wasting time with Congress and people voting and all this bullshit? Yeah, he's a fascist savant.

It's up to and including when he's on stage at the military academy, he's like, look at these rippling muscles. It's very fascist. He wants... He wants to protect us from the 4th of July. They might not get him tanks, so they're going to get him armored vehicles. Yeah, because they don't want to ruin the sidewalks.

He doesn't know the difference either. He just wants fucking camo. Yeah, you get him fucking plastic tanks. He doesn't know the difference either. He just wants fucking camo. Yeah, you get him fucking plastic tanks. He wouldn't know the difference. He just wants some good desert beige or green machines. He wants Jonathan Karl to say it was a great made-for-TV moment on the 4th. That's what he wants. And I would not be surprised to hear Donald Trump just sort of riffing, being like, Hey, and when the troops walk, you know what would be cool?

What if they kept their legs straight? Like, have they ever thought about that? I think it would look really cool if their legs didn't, like, because it would imply a level of control from the state, that they're not walking naturally, and the rhythm of it, I think, would be very compelling. What if they walk like birds? You know, like ducks.

We call it duck walking, or, you know, like there's other kinds of, like the way geese walk, something like that. You know, like a bird walk. We call it duck walking. Or, you know, like there's other kinds of, like the way geese walk. Something like that. You know, like a bird walk. We call it bird walking. Maybe they could salute. Bird stepping. Maybe there's like a special salute they could do with their hand. Like a wave.

A special wave where you kind of hold your hand up. I think just it would look cool. And, like, I love the American flag. But, like, it represents all of the people. But what if there was one that really showed how loyal you were to the ground, the soil? People don't need all of those stars to count up the states. They know the states. You could just put my picture on it. It would be fine.

Also, by the way, they asked him about the controversy over busing from the debate. And they asked him what he thought of busing. And first of all, he said, well, just you wait. I got a plan for that coming in a couple of weeks. Jesus Christ. Yeah, I'm sure he does. That's alarming. And then they asked him, they pressed him on busing.

And he's like, yeah, well, you know, busing is something that happens. And I just don't know that there's that many other ways for kids to get to school. No idea. He has, which is interesting, right? It actually. It's too bad for him because he would love to shit on busing no right that's what's so surprising about it because there's no one who's had a fucking like donald trump has not really read the news since the 1980s

but when he was reading the news his fingers went right to the part of the new york post where white parents in boston were furious busing. Like he should know about busing because it right there in his fucking racial grievance of Raj in his own. Yeah, no shit. All right. Well, let's talk about 2020. So that's that's Donald Trump. He shouldn't be president. OK. OK. Update. Update. Listen, hot, hot fucking news out of the G20. He should not be president. It is a fucking joke. It is. And, you know, obviously we did 15 minutes on Trump being bad, but Brian Stelter noted this actually yesterday, which is like, is Trump being graded on a curve? Because we're about to have a conversation about the Democratic Party, the different

candidates, you know, who's doing well, who's not. And I do think we're sort of getting back to this 2016 vibe where you have two sides of a coin, right? And so there's a bunch of reporting and analysis about Donald Trump being crazy. But you have to balance that equally with, well, but the Democratic Party, I don't know if they're ready to beat him. They're in disarray. And look, you know, we've been critical of the party, too. But it's hard to have both Donald Trump and the eventual nominee or the candidates trying to replace him on that same plane. Yes. Well, you know, there was a, there was a,

there was an op-ed in the post that said none of the Democrats seem presidential. It's like, why did they not? Yeah. Give me a fucking break. And then the other, the other piece of this is the fact checkers have had a real problem here, right? Cause the fact checkers have spent the last two years sort of, you know, counting up Donald Trump's Pinocchios and other, I don't know, nose growths. I don't know how they measure lies anymore. But they had to go through the Democratic debate. And the Democratic debate was a largely accurate affair. These are people who were very, very careful with their words. You know, these are... That's our message for 2020. careful with their words.

You know, these are, these are. That's our message for 2020. Largely accurate affair. So, so Beto says things like, now, if Donald Trump were president, if Donald Trump were a Democrat, he is president, technically. If Donald Trump were a Democrat, he'd say, you know, they stole all your money and they gave it to the corporations, right? But Beto O'Rourke says the Republican tax cut favored corporations. And then they have to fact check it.

And they have to find a way to make favored corporations, which it clearly did in virtually every way, find the way in which it may be in some small way allied to the truth. Same thing with Bernie Sanders saying that three people control more wealth than the bottom 50%. And the fact check is hilarious because the fact check is like, well, actually, the reason the bottom of the 50% don't have as much wealth as the top three is that they're in a lot of debt. Yeah, and then on the other hand, that's not better.

They asked Donald Trump to explain busing, and he starts, like, singing Wheels on the Bus, you know? Well, that's also off, but in a different way. Yeah, it is. It's wild. Yeah, they're going to hold. Yeah, we're going to do the whole fucking cycle again. So we now have polling and fundraising evidence that Kamala Harris is gaining support after her strong debate performance in Miami last week, part of which involved challenging Joe Biden

about his past work with segregationist senators to oppose busing. The Harris campaign raised more than $2 million in the day after the debate, and a new poll by Morning Consult found that Harris has moved all the way up to third place in the Democratic field, gaining six percentage points from where she was right before the debate. That's doubling her support in a poll. Lovett, what does she do to build on the momentum here? Does she she has she found a line of criticism? Does she want to keep criticizing Biden or offer some other contrast with him on another issue? Or does she try something else here? That's a great question. And I don't know the answer. I do think it would be a lot if she comes to the next debate with like a ready to go hit on Joe Biden.

Yeah, that probably is a lot. You know, she also we don't know if they're going to be on the same stage. And that boy was actually my cousin. So it's a little bit further away, but still personal. It is a tough question for all of these candidates in a very large field and even a large field of front runners, really. Like even the top tier is pretty crowded compared to past elections. a very large field and even a large field of front runners, really. Like even the top tier is pretty crowded compared to past elections. And so you have to find these moments where you stand up because there's so much noise otherwise and the debates are the big moments left, you know, because everyone's done their

town halls and, you know, there's the power of the first town hall that you do on CNN or MSNBC sort of wears off after a while. It's not like your speeches are getting carried live. Attacking Trump doesn't necessarily get you a lot of attention. And it does seem like we're heading to the place in the primary, which happens every primary, where the way you get attention and the way you get noticed is to critique or at least offer contrast with your fellow primary candidates yeah no that's true i also i do think kamala is in a unique position compared to everyone else at which it which is that she is she is potentially about to go from being uh someone beneath the front runnersners to among the frontrunners. And in an odd way, she may be getting the look that Pete Buttigieg got that others have gotten. So it is actually a bigger

opportunity for her to flesh out her argument for her own candidacy in a bigger way. You know, this is something we said before the debate that we were looking forward to Kamala Harris on the debate stage, in part because she made so much of her candidacy about it. It's incredibly impressive that she rose to that moment, you know, that that's very, very difficult to do. But now that she has this spotlight, it can't just be about making that point again. There's a larger argument she needs to make about why she is the person to be the standard bearer of the Democratic Party that I don't think to this point she has well made. No. And I think I think part of the reason is she she eyes the field and and eyes the electorate and thinks she can potentially build maybe one of the biggest, broadest coalitions here of the Democratic base. And I think they have been trying to figure out how does she stand out?

And they've answered that question by saying, OK,'s a prosecutor she can prosecute the case against trump and by the way in these hearings and in these debates she's fucking stellar and can kick everyone's ass and that's a great great skill to have the question is can you put it all together and say again elizabeth warren you know in five seconds why she's running and what her story is you You know that to be true about Pete Buttigieg. Even if he doesn't have all the policies to back it up, you know it's generational change. And Kamala has not sort of nailed that story yet. And I would spend some time. And now look, that story doesn't get, nailing that story doesn't automatically get you press attention.

But I think if she's going to contrast herself with Joe Biden, it has to be more than about that one issue. And she has to make a larger argument why her and why not Joe Biden or even some of these other candidates probably in the coming week. Yeah. And it is sort of there, right? I mean, it is part of what Pete is saying. It's part of what Warren is saying. It's part of what Eric Swalwell is saying that it is that torch torch. I mean, the torch, the torch passing is part of this debate. That's change. We're talking about change. And she she can represent change in a way that Joe Biden can't. That's her argument. And she's to sort of articulate that vision, I think. Yeah. There's a New York Times story that Trump

and other Republicans are a little more nervous about Kamala than they were at first. Do we buy that? And why are they? They've gone to so many different, they're sort of like, I think they whiplash back and forth with the electorate and the news cycle. You know, first they're scared of Biden when Biden's up, now they're scared of Kamala when Kamala's up, you know. Yeah, I don't buy it. I didn't even bring my wallet. I don't, I'm not particularly interested in the kind of whatever reverse psychology of the of leaks from the Trump camp. Who are they worried about? Who are they pretending to be worried about? I don't, I don't think we should really be playing that game any more than we should be playing the game of listening to who lifelong Republicans think are driving them away. You know, I don't,

we gotta, we gotta focus, we gotta play our game, um, to use a sports term. We should mention one, one, yes, to use a sport. That's a very, we have to play our game, adept sports term. Very, we have to play the game we came here to play. That's not the game they want us to play. Right, Elijah? So what, what should Joe Biden be doing here? He, when he spoke at Jesse Jackson's rainbow push coalition in Chicago, uh, the day after the debate, he said that the discussion in this race quote, shouldn't be about the past. He does seem to be stuck in this dynamic where, like, now every story, anecdote, example he uses is sort of viewed through the prism of does he have outdated racial and social views? And he kind of can't get out of this now.

racial and social views. And he kind of can't get out of this now. And so I wonder what the buy... I mean, I saw some people saying, well, his strategy is take on Trump, ignore his rivals. Can he continue that strategy? I don't know.

I don't know. I will say to you, right now, yes, the tires are deep in the mud. He's pressing the accelerator. It is getting deeper. That's what is happening right now. And every word is being seen through this lens.

If he wants to be president, he needs to show that he's the right person to be president. And it's definitely not going to be defending opposing busing or your rationale for opposing busing. And the arguments about Joe Biden go to the core of his competence as a candidate. They go to the core of whether or not he can represent people today, whether he's too old, whether he's too establishment. These are the questions he has to answer. I don't know the right way for him to answer them, but they're legit. This isn't a side issue. That's the thing. This is an attack on the core of his argument for why he should be the Democratic nominee. And if he wants to be the Democratic nominee, he has to answer it. And he has to answer it not just by speaking to the critique,

but actually demonstrating that he isn't a candidate of the past. And that's really hard to do for somebody that's been in politics for 30 years. It's not impossible. Yeah. I mean, I think he has the right idea there with that line, this election shouldn't be about the past, and he can use that. Now, his rivals will say, but you have this record that you have to answer for, and I don't think he can avoid answering for it.

But I think his best hope is to continue pivoting to it. Because, look, I was even surprised that he raised his hand for some of the very progressive positions that they asked people to raise their hands for during the second debate. He has policy-wise, I think he's certainly not the furthest left in the field, but you wouldn't put him in sort of the moderate camp either. So he has fairly mainstream Democratic progressive policies that he's for today. But his opponents are going to make the whole race,

are going to try to make the whole race about his record and not his record during the Obama administration, his record as a Senator before that. It's interesting to look when I think, when I think of Joe Biden on the debate stage, what I picture is someone talking about himself and talking about his record and talking about the past. But I don't actually like,

he needs to say what he's going to do as president. Here are the things I want to do. Here's why I'm so excited to be in this race. Here's what we can do to make this opportunity. And I'm sorry, just and when he makes his closing statement, you know, this is a fight for the soul of the country. It it also does feel backward looking. Right. Like, OK, this is the we under like even his answer.

You know, what do you want to do as president? I want to beat Donald Trump. Right. It all goes to the past or what the past will be if he were to win. Right. The day we elect a Democratic president, we will have repudiated Trump. We will have successfully done something very, very hard. What's next?

Yeah. And I think to the extent that he hasn't, you know, he's not for Medicare for all. He's for more of a robust public option. To the extent that he has policy differences with other candidates who are a bit further to the left, I think he has to make the case for why. You can't just pretend okay, I'm going to sort of fuzz up

my positions to make it seem like I'm just as progressive as them and then I'm going to talk about beating Trump and I'm going to talk about my record and I'm not going to try to do anything beyond that. Because it's just playing prevent defense at that point. I don't think that works like didn't work. And by the way, it didn't work for Hillary Clinton in 2008 either. Well, that's the exactly. And so I think you have to make an actual case for your set of policies, your worldview going forward. That doesn't have to do necessarily with Trump and it doesn't necessarily

have to do with your record. What do other candidates have to do to break through at this point? There was news this morning that Pete Buttigieg raised $24.8 million this quarter. He now has 400,000 donors total. That is obviously much more than any of the Democratic candidates raised last quarter. It is around what Obama and Clinton were raising in 08 in a quarter. So that's, and we haven't seen anyone else's number yet. The quarter ended Sunday night, but that's a big deal. Yeah.

That's a lot of fucking money. And he's got like 22 million on hand, which is a lot, which means his burn rate, how much they're spending on the campaign is very low too. Look, the good news for Pete is, even if he's not the nominee, he is going to crush that South Bend re-election. That is so much money to spend to be re-elected.

I don't know if he can use that. No, let's hope he can, because, man, the billboards. I mean, I don't know what it costs to get a billboard in South Bend, Indiana, but it can't be, you can probably get at least 10 of them for $25 million. I'm just kidding. I mean, he's in this for the long haul for sure. That's what that means. He is a candidate, and he can be a candidate for a very long time.

And as he should be. I mean, I think he is – it's a lesson for the other candidates, and it's a lesson for Harris too, which is that the only thing stopping you from becoming a frontrunner is you, really. Honestly. It is. If you want to be. It's true.

That's why they tune in. That's why they tune in. But it's absolutely true. No excuses. People blame staff. They blame all this stuff. It's like you. Yes.

If you are truly talented. Because you could have said that about Kamala Harris. She had the staff. She had the organization. It happened because she performed at that debate. She did that for herself. Elizabeth Warren, who didn't have a lot of donors and was struggling on fundraising, her campaign was written off a bunch of times. She pulled herself out of that hole.

Yeah, and Pete Buttigieg, Chastain, and Liz Smith in the back of an Uber Black fucking made this happen. So, you know, hey, it's America. In parts of the country, democracy is alive and well. For now. But yeah, no, I think it's, you know, he's going to have to find, I think, probably a moment in future debates sort of like, or a couple moments, actually, sort of like Kamala had in this debate.

And I think that's tough because you don't get a lot of fucking speaking time when there's all that many people on stage. And you really have to figure out a way to sort of command the stage. I hate talking about debates like this is the only way because debates are a fucking dumb way to pick the president. They're all performance. But, you know, we are living in a media age and there's only so many ways to break through. And we know that breaking through in the media is, you know, it's probably not as important as having a really fucking great organization on the ground in Iowa. But clearly just having an organization on the ground in Iowa and having good retail politics in Iowa, New Hampshire isn't enough these days. And you know what? I'm not going to be embarrassed about caring about how these people hold the debate stage when one of them will likely have to face Donald Trump and will have huge implications for whether we win the election. Yeah, we're going to pick this president on television.

One last point on Pete. This is just my own personal reaction. When he shot that look at Eric Swalwell, I haven't think I, you know, I mean, you talked about this on the last part. I know, but I made a joke about it. But I think Pete was very strong in the debate. He, you know, held mean, you talk about this in the last part. I know, but I made a joke about it. But I think Pete was very strong in the debate. He held his own on that debate stage. But in that look, what I saw was the ambition of someone who is a mayor of South Bend, Indiana, running for president.

I saw the ambition. And, you know, we don't talk about ambition. And a lot of the times it's gendered. But every person on that stage has an incredible amount of ambition. And they try to hide it. Right. Because we don't like someone saying like, why are you running? It's like, well, cause ever since I was a little boy, I knew it was the fucking best, right? Like nobody, we don't like that. And yet in that look, in that intensity, you saw what you need in a candidate. So I am actually interested in seeing the other side of the kind of state and serious Pete Buttigieg. I'm interested. I'm interested in seeing the guy that is a mayor of a small town who looked at

this field and said, like, this is my moment. I mean, Obama used to talk about this. Even if you haven't been dreaming about this or planning this since you were a kid, if you run, if you are running for president, it is because you believe that out of a country of 300 million plus people, you are the best person to lead it. Right. So even if you just running for president, it is because you believe that out of a country of 300 million plus people, you are the best person to lead it. Right. So even if you just decided the week before the race that that's what you wanted to do,

it's still a fucking lot of ambition there. It just is, you know, you don't have to have done been in kindergarten planning your, uh, your run like, the Clinton campaign accused Obama of doing in that essay. In that essay.

I mean, look, you like Liz Warren is taking every fucking photo. She's calling people back in her car. She is working so hard. When Kamala Harris says, I'm going to win this race, you know that she means it. And she said that. I'm going to win this race. And you're like, yeah, I fucking believe that,

the way she said it. They had to replace Amy Klobuchar's podium because underneath it, she just broke pieces of it with her hands. Oh, my God. Because she's fucking in it. That's what I like. They're all in it to win it. All right.

So the other big narrative coming out of the debates is this idea that the Democratic Party is moving too far to the left, which was the subject of multiple op-eds and analysis pieces in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other outlets. Here's Alex Burns and Jay Mart in the Times, quote, vowing to eliminate private health insurance, decriminalize illegal immigration, and provide government health care benefits to undocumented immigrants. High-profile contenders like Senators Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Kamala Harris are wagering that they can energize voters eager to dismantle President Trump's hardline policies. But with moderate Democrats repeatedly drowned out or on the defensive in the debates, the sprint to the left has deeply unnerved establishment Democrats, who have largely picked the party nominees in recent decades. They fear that advocating...

And what a great job they've done. They fear that advocating a government-run health care system could alienate suburban and upper-income voters who are otherwise eager to eject Mr. Trump from office, while the most progressive immigration policies might turn off the working-class white voters who backed Mr. Trump after twice supporting former President Barack Obama. What do you think? I love that the Democratic Party establishment voices are always very concerned, but they're fucking

too cowardly to put their name on the record. That's the classic. One of the challenges is they don't always remember their own names because they've been, they only, they're actually in soundproof chambers that are unlocked

to give comments for these articles. Just sort of, it's this, it's one of those, you know, every once in a while somebody drowns in a sensory deprivation tank? Does that happen every once in a while?

Once in a while. Okay. They're in one of those. Yeah, okay. So, I think all of this makes a lot of assumptions about how people feel about progressive policies and makes a lot of assumptions about how people vote in America. And I think a lot of assumptions about which people vote which way. Because reading that paragraph, there's like a lot to untangle.

There's a lot of things that are sort of conflated there that I. That's what I mean. You have to really unpack it. So first of all, like on whether or not liberal policies will cost you. One of the things that's hardest for, I think, nonpartisan journalists to deal with is what do you do when the left wing policies actually pull quite well amongst Democrats, Republicans and independents? We've talked about this a lot, right? High taxes on the wealthy, expanding Medicare, expanding Medicaid. These things pull well, even in states

where Democrats can't win. You have Medicaid expansion in places like Idaho and Utah and Montana. So, you know, you look at the actual, where actual voters are, even in some of the most conservative parts of the country, and there is an openness to liberal policies. That's the first thing. The second thing that these articles always avoid dealing with is that there are also hardcore Democrats who need to be enthused and turn out to vote as well. This is a point you make all the time, which is, you know, electability, you can slice it in dices in a million ways, but fundamentally it is about turning out core people, people who are either lifelong, you know, engaged Democrats or the kind of voters who are

turned off by the fact that they don't believe politics goes far enough to help them. And the more moderates that you also need from these suburban places to turn out for you, you know, how do you prioritize? Who can excite while also keeping moderates coming to the table and supporting you? That's a really hard question. There are compromises involved in that, but this just sort of avoids half of the equation. Yeah, but going back to your first point about the policies, so you mentioned a number of policies that are wildly popular uh raising taxes on the wealthy wildly popular uh and it's something that i think you're right that the mainstream media doesn't

quite understand they they all call it like a populist are they going to turn off people on wall street because like you know people in the fucking acela corridor is who they talk to all the time and the truth is higher taxes on taxes on wealthy people, Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax is extremely popular, not only among Democrats, but among independents and even some Republicans. You talked about Medicaid expansion,

wildly popular among all parties, even Republicans, even some Republicans. Medicare for all is an interesting example that we've talked about a number of times, where if you ask people, do you think that everyone should be able to get Medicare and that we should have Medicare for number of times where if you ask people do you think that everyone should be able to get Medicare and then we should have

Medicare for everyone it's extremely popular it's a it's it's pulling over 50% easily when you tell people that Medicare for all will require the elimination of the private health insurance market and most likely middle class taxes to go up it becomes very unpopular now Medicare for all proponents will say, well, this private health insurance thing is sort of bullshit. And I've heard them make the point like, what people really want is not necessarily their insurance plan to keep, they want their doctor. And under Medicare for all, all doctors are in the same network. And so

if you're if we have a Medicare for all system, yeah, you're going to get your doctor no matter where you go. And then maybe people will like that more, right? But I guess my point is, if you are backing an unpopular policy, a policy that does not command wide majority support in this country, you still, it is incumbent on you as a politician, as someone advocating for this policy, to talk about it in a way that is most politically effective and popular, right? So you have to make the case for Medicare for All, a single-payer system, and why this problem is so important that only a single-payer system right away can solve it and not, for example, enrolling a bunch of people in Medicare and letting everyone in the country choose to enroll in Medicare. It is incumbent on you to make the case why the single-payer system is so much more important than a public option system or Medicare for America or any of these other alternatives where you can sort of enroll. You have to make that case. And the same thing is true on immigration, right? We talked about this in the last pod, but, you know, under the Affordable Care Act, Barack Obama promised that undocumented immigrants wouldn't be part of this health care system because it was tough to convince, it's not about Republican politicians, it was tough to convince a lot of Americans that their tax dollars should do that now again as we said there's an argument to be made for why

when an undocumented immigrant goes to the emergency room and they get treated it's going to end up costing taxpayers more than it would to make sure that that person has health insurance and is covered and has preventive care like you can make an argument but we got to make the argument and i worry that we're not quite making the argument. I think that's all true. But it's almost as if that's a separate point because the nuances of making the case for single payer, the nuances for making the case around immigration, don't go to the core of the kind of political concerns inside of this article. I don't believe that the moderate pundits would be less turned off today if anyone had made that kind of an argument.

That's probably true. These are people coming to the table for this, to make this argument. It's hard to disentangle all this because you almost have to start the argument by saying, fuck the moderate pundits, fuck the Bret Stephens column,

and fuck the idea that, oh, we must please Republican politicians because we need them. Like, all that aside, just think about the voters, right? Think about assembling a coalition in this country that can get you 270 electoral votes and they can get you a majority in the Senate. That's what you should be thinking about, right? Like, don't worry about what Brett Stevens thinks. Don't worry about what Republican politicians think. And how do you get that coalition?

thinking about, right? Like, don't worry about what Brett Stevens thinks. Don't worry about Republican politicians. How do you get that coalition? And I think, you know, we have, or at least some Democrats have convinced ourselves that all you need to do is increase turnout among the base and go after those voters who stayed home in 2016 or who voted for third party. And then you've magically got the coalition and that's good and i think that some other people some of these pundits have convinced themselves the only way to for democrats to win is to win back all these obama trump voters and i think that's incorrect as well but i think the point is it's not an easy call been losing for decades and decades. And the idea that sometimes we're like, oh, well, they're all sort of like racist Trump voters.

They're not because a third of them have been in our coalition through both Obama terms. And by the way, Hillary was actually a little less than one in three, but she still had a bunch too. And if it goes, if that, if we do worse among non-college whites than Hillary did, it doesn't matter how many other, how many, how much of our base we can turn out. It doesn't matter if we increase African-American turnout to Obama levels. It doesn't matter if we find a whole bunch of new voters. It's just the math. 44% of eligible voters in this country are non-college educated white voters. That is the largest block in the country. It's, um, I also think so much of this conversation gets, uh, uh, separated by, it's amazing how everyone's political preferences flow from their policy preferences. So that's like the inevitable Twitter debate, which is pretty unhelpful.

You know, this is the point about not trying to please the pundits, not trying to please anybody else. It's a genuine political strategic question, right? We can talk about the policy and talk about the moral argument for single payer. It's an, it's an argument I, I agree with, but you come down, you come, you come back to what is the best way to win? Now I'm, if the argument is here's why single payer and getting fully behind that and explaining it as the best way to win, I'm, I'm fine. I really am very comfortable with that. That's a great way to, that, if that, if, if having that big of a distinction is the, is the way we need to convince people that we're on their side. Yeah, look, and I think the same is true on immigration, right?

Like we know that there is a large majority of people in this country who are on board with a pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country, including the Dreamers but beyond the Dreamers, all 11 million people who are here, undocumented right now, that there is a large majority for ending family separations, for ending these mass detentions, for ending these mass deportations, for building a orderly immigration system in this country, where you can apply for citizenship, you can apply for asylum, you can get your case heard, it's efficient, we spend more resources at the border, not necessarily 1325, which decriminalizes immigration altogether on the last pod. And I think when I think about that proposal, the first thing that comes to mind is, well, the next Democratic president can achieve everything you want to achieve through that repeal, through executive action. So why necessarily do we need to make that a litmus test for every Democratic candidate for president when we know that the big challenge that we have is not only ending all of these awful

Trump immigration policies, but providing citizenship for all the people who are here as undocumented immigrants and, you know, making sure we have a better legal, more humane immigration system. Like that should be our number one concern. And so if you want to be for repeal of 1325, like that's fine. And I think there's good debates on why it's important, why it's not a good idea, why it's a bad idea. There's a lot of debates on that. But I don't think we should be in like litmus test territory on some of this stuff. Well, especially because it is the next president will face an emergency of undoing all the damage Donald Trump has done and the incredible challenge of building a coalition around comprehensive immigration reform. And the odds that this is part of that debate are actually quite small, to be honest.

Almost infinitesimal because you can achieve what you want to through executive action, right? Like, and we've been talking, we've been talking to all these candidates, will you get rid of the filibuster? Some of them will, some of them won't. But like, let's imagine what we have here. Say we win the Senate and we win the presidency

and there's 50 something seats. And what are you going to do? A lot of them, Elizabeth Warren, people like that, have said democracy reform. A lot of them talked about Medicare for all. So now we're going to get to immigration reform, which no one has said is going to be their first priority, which is too bad. I hope it's someone's first priority. Maybe it's Castro's. Maybe I could be mistaken.

But then you're going to get to immigration reform, and you're right. You have to get through. You have to get through, you have to get a bunch of Democratic senators on board from these red states for comprehensive immigration reform that legalizes 11 million people in this country, provides a pathway to citizenship, and sort of ends all of Trump's policies. Like, that's going to be a big task, to say the least. That's going to be a task. And I'm not saying, like, trim our sails and everything and stuff like that. I'm just saying, because we should be bold and we should be progressive and everything we say but like if you're going to embrace a policy that may not command majority support in the country think about i'm not saying don't do

that but think about how urgent is it that we pass this policy to solve one of the problems that we couldn't solve in another way yeah you know You know. OK, when we come back, we will have Lovett's interview with Ari Berman of Mother Jones. He is a senior reporter at Mother Jones and the author of Give Us the Ballot, the Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America. Ari Berman, welcome back to Pod Save America. Hey, John, thank you very much for having me back. All right, let's get into it here. The Supreme Court ruled on partisan gerrymandering. Not to put too fine a point on it, your piece called it a doomsday scenario for our democracy. Have you grown less alarmist since you wrote that?

Not really. I mean, it still feels like a Chernobyl situation for democracy because gerrymandering is getting worse and worse. But the Supreme Court is basically saying we can't do anything about it. And that was the remarkable part of the opinion was John Roberts didn't make an argument for gerrymandering. He just said, well, two bad guys. This is something that the courts, at least the federal courts, can't strike down. And so the message that sends to state legislatures, controlled by both parties, is basically, you guys can do anything you want. It can be as extreme as you want, and we're not going to strike it down. And we're entering a new redistricting cycle after the 2020 election. I think a lot of people don't realize the 2019 elections and the 2020 elections at the state level are going to determine who draws new

redistricting maps in 2021. So we're not that far away from this point. And the Supreme Court's basically saying to these states, do whatever you want. We're not going to strike it down. And I just think that sends the absolute worst message to politicians right now. And it raises the stakes for these state and local elections. It absolutely raises the stakes for these state and local elections. And what I'm hoping is that people actually start paying attention to what's happening in the states, because everyone is following the presidential election 24-7 a year before it's occurring. But nobody seems to be focusing on what's going on in 2019 or in 2020. And a lot of state legislatures are up for control. I mean, the Republicans have a huge advantage,

but it's not as big as you'd think. And I dug into this, and Democrats are only a few seats away from flipping a bunch of really important state legislative chambers. And in most states, that's who's going to draw the map. There are some states in which independent redistricting commissions will draw the map. There are some states where there's going to be divided government, but there's a bunch of really important swing states that are still under Republican control. And if Democrats don't take back those states, then Republicans are probably going to pass even more sophisticated gerrymanders compared to the gerrymandering we saw after the 2010 election, which was already really terrible and bad. So I suppose this was a natural place to plug votesaveamerica.com, where you can donate to our Fuck Jerry Fund to fight gerrymandering.

Also, legally, I'm supposed to say, Fuck Jerry Fund. I mean, fuck gerrymandering. Otherwise, we'll get sued. I set you up perfectly for that one. Yeah. So I want to talk a little bit about the, I want to come back to sort of the implications, but let's talk about the ruling itself, because as a lot of people noted, it's very hard to tell the difference in practice between a partisan gerrymander and a racial gerrymander. The court ruled against a racial gerrymander in Virginia and did so with some conservative votes, but they ruled on procedural issues. They seem to avoid the actual substance in the case. What are the implications for efforts to fight racially motivated gerrymandering? And how do you tell the

difference between a racially motivated gerrymander and a partisan one? Well, that's a really important point. And that's indeed the question. The Supreme Court has actually fairly consistently struck down racial gerrymandering, and not just in the Virginia case on procedural grounds, but in more substantive cases from places like North Carolina and Alabama, because even some of the conservative justices don't like when legislators consider race and redistricting. So whether it's Democrats doing it or Republicans doing it, they don't like when that goes on. And so if you can clearly show that the districts were drawn, for example, to try to hurt black voters, something like that, they might be more sympathetic to that. The problem is, where do you draw the line? Because what's going to happen now is states

are just going to say, well, we didn't draw a racial gerrymander, we drew a partisan gerrymander. And that's exactly what happened in North Carolina, which was one of the two cases along with Maryland before the Supreme Court just now. They passed this racial gerrymander. The court said it was one of the worst racial gerrymanders they'd ever seen. It was struck down. It went back to, they basically said, redraw the districts. And Republicans were so brazen. They basically said, the guy who drew the districts, the Republican member of the legislature in North Carolina who drew the districts said,

I want to make very clear this is a partisan gerrymander. That's actually what he said. I want to make very clear this is a partisan gerrymander. I would draw an 11 to 2 district for the congressional delegation, but instead I'm going to draw 10 to 3, 10 Republicans, 3 Democrats, because I can't draw 11 to 2. But he said that because he wanted to make very clear that it wasn't a racial gerrymander. So basically, if you just admit that you're doing this to disenfranchise Democrats, not African-Americans or Latinos, then the court's okay with it. The problem is many of those Democrats you're disenfranchising

are in fact African-Americans or Latinos. So they're basically doing racial gerrymandering by other means by calling it a partisan gerrymander. And that's why this decision is so problematic. So is that guidance? What I've been having trouble parsing is, is that guidance to people looking to challenge maps to say, even if Republicans are calling them partisan, look for the racial implications? Or is the court actually saying that only the motivations matter so that if a bunch of Republicans in a state decide to find the racial implications? Or do those racial implications not matter so long as the Republicans never used racial terms when drawing the maps?

Well, that's a good question. And that's going to be something that comes up because I'm sure Republicans are going to try to do the latter, right? They're going to try to gerrymander, and they're going to have more sophisticated technology than ever before in 2021. So they're going to be able to do things they couldn't do before. So they're just going to run the political data. They're not going to use the racial data. And they're going to say, this is just a partisan gerrymander. And basically, the people challenging these maps are going to have to either show based on intent, so based on statements, or based on outcomes, the effects that, in fact, it is a racial gerrymander. There's also going to be places where there's really bad gerrymandering that doesn't involve race. And if that happens,

there really is no recourse in the federal courts, other than to try to challenge it in state courts. And I don't know why John Roberts thought state courts are more equipped to deal with these things than the federal courts. But basically, he said, this is a state issue now. You can either fight it politically, which is going to be hard when there's really gerrymandered maps, because that was the whole reason you gerrymander, so people can't overthrow you for power. Basically, you either change the legislature, you pass independent redistricting commissions, which are becoming increasingly popular, but they're not going to pass anytime soon in a Republican-controlled state like Texas that doesn't even allow ballot initiatives, or you challenge them through state courts,

where a lot of state courts are also controlled by conservative judges. So what this means is, in some states, you will be able to challenge gerrymandering, and other states can be very, very difficult to do so at the state and local level. So, you know, one of the, as Justice Kagan pointed out in her dissent, this is a rare situation in which the court recognizes the constitutional problem while worrying over the fact that there's no clear standard for them to apply. How do you square not being able to figure out when a map is too partisan with not being able to figure out or with being constitutionally required and legally required to figure out that it is too disenfranchising towards, say, black voters?

Well, that's why it's kind of a ridiculous distinction. And honestly, the lower courts have figured this out. Lower courts have struck down gerrymandered maps in Wisconsin, in Pennsylvania, in North Carolina, in Michigan, in Ohio. There were just two cases recently in Michigan and Ohio that were unanimous opinions, where Democratic judges and Republican-appointed judges said that this was gerrymandering. I mean, so if the lower courts can figure it out, then John Roberts, with his two degrees from Harvard, should be able to figure it out as well. And I think the court is being purposely naive about how they're approaching this. And obtuse. It's obtuse. They know they can deal with it.

They just don't want to. And that's the problem here. Right. Because presumably they could have just said, you know, it's hard to define a clear standard, but you know, when you see it, right, you know, like the Wisconsin map is so is so if there is such a thing as partisan gerrymandering, it is the Wisconsin map. Right. You have a situation where Republicans for the state assembly in Wisconsin in 2018 got 45% of the votes, but 64% of seats. I mean, so there was a test, not to get too wonky here, but I mean, the lower courts were applying a test. They basically were saying, is there evidence of discriminatory intent? So were there statements in the record and the like that showed that this map was done for obvious gerrymandering reasons? Was there an effect of it? Basically, did it have the effect of gerrymandering? And was it durable? Did it last for a long time?

For example, like in Wisconsin, where there was this huge disconnect between the number of votes you're getting and the number of seats you're getting. That's not that complicated. And honestly, that would rule out all except for the worst gerrymanders. You'd only strike down like, you know, a few maps from a few different states under that standard. So it wouldn't have been that hard to do this. And the justices absolutely could do that. And they either didn't do it because of self-interest, they didn't want all these cases to be heard, or because they're very political. And they knew that Republicans

have done a lot more jurying than Democrats of late. Both parties are guilty of this, but Republicans have done it in far more places, in far more egregious ways since the 2010 election. They knew this was going to help the Republican Party. And by saying, oh, the courts can't review it, it made it seem high-minded. But really, all it did was ensure that the next redistricting cycle is even going to be more gerrymandered and more rigged than the last one. So do you think Democrats need to fight fire with fire in states where they control the ability to redraw the maps? Should Democrats now do their best to create partisan Democratic gerrymanders? I don't think so, because maybe I'm naive, but I look at this from the perspective of voting rights, and I don't like gerrymandering no matter who's doing it. So I was

just as hopeful that the Supreme Court would strike down the Democratic gerrymander in Maryland as I was hoping they would strike down the Republican gerrymander in North Carolina. I think it's bad for our democracy when either party is trying to rig the system. I think increasing the Democratic Party is moving in the direction of fair maps. You have Eric Holder's group, for example, saying that they want independent redistricting commissions, things like that. You have Barack Obama taking that position. So I think the Democrats are moving more and more towards a good government position on this. And you can say that's unilateral disarmament. And I'm sure there is some disconnect between the Obama people, some of the good government people, and some of the legislatures in these states who probably want to gerrymander now

to protect themselves. But that's not something that I support. I think gerrymandering is bad for our democracy, no matter who's doing it. But the implications there are that in states with Democratic control, you have fair districts. And in states with Democratic control, you have fair districts and in states with Republican control, you have unfair districts. So Republicans win in Democratic states and Republicans win in Republican states. Well, I totally understand what you're saying. I think you should take that position. I'm testing out. Listen, I get in trouble for I asked. I'm just asking questions. I'm a journalist. We're both journalists perspective from a voting rights perspective. I don't support that. I think gerrymandering is bad, regardless of who does it.

Now, you can make a Democratic Party argument that they should gerrymander. But I think a lot of Democrats even are going to have problems with that. You've actually talked to Eric Holder a fair amount recently. You just had a piece run. It's out now on Mother Jones. What did you learn in spending time with Eric Holder, whose organization is fighting gerrymandering and vote suppression on the local level? So I have a new feature out in the latest issue of Mother Jones. And basically, it's about the work of Democrats led by Eric Holder, former Attorney General under Obama, to fight gerrymandering. And essentially what happened is the Democrats lost nearly a thousand

state legislative seats under Obama. Republicans were able to take over a lot of key swing states, virtually every key swing state. The first thing they did was pass these really gerrymandered maps. And they're still in power in all of these states nearly a decade later in Wisconsin, North Carolina, in Pennsylvania, et cetera, et cetera. And one of the things that I'm really concerned about and what really motivated me to write the piece is that I don't think Democrats are aware that in 2019 and 2020, these elections are going to determine the next cycle of redistricting. And that if attention is not paid to it, 2020 could be a repeat of 2010, where Republicans run the map in all of these states because Democrats aren't paying attention to it.

Now, obviously, there were external factors in 2010 that might not exist in 2020, namely, you know, the economy was terrible. It was the first midterm under Obama, all of these things that you remember, of course, John. But still, you have to pay attention to these state races. They're not just going to magically flip if you don't do something about them. And what I saw spending time with Holder, for example, I went with him to Wisconsin, where he was trying to win this really important seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, so they could try to flip that court. Because remember, the Wisconsin Supreme Court has been one of the courts that's upheld,

for example, the voter suppression laws they've done in Wisconsin, just recently upheld the lame duck laws that strip power from the new Democratic governor. So he was trying to flip this really important state legislative seat in Wisconsin, and they lost the race by 6,000 votes. And the same Republican group that helped gerrymander the state legislature put a bunch of money behind this really right-wing candidate named Brian Hagedorn, who used to be a former counsel to Scott Walker. And what Holder told me was this is a wake-up call for Democrats,

that if we just focus solely on the presidential campaign and ignore these state races, we're going to be in huge trouble. That the party has made amazing strides. They've flipped nearly 300 state legislative seats in 2018. There was a lot of focus on down-ballot races in a way there wasn't in 2010. race and we don't spend the time and the resources on the state races, Republicans are going to control state power for the next decade after the redistricting cycle in 2021. So that's really the biggest takeaway I had from spending time with him. So let's talk about the census. The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the Trump administration needed a better argument for adding the citizenship question. Donald Trump's trying to buy time to let that happen, even though questionnaires have to be printed soon. What happens next with the census? It was a very convoluted opinion. It was kind of like, be racist better, essentially.

Right. You made it so hard for us. The paper trail is too obvious, and you lied to our faces. It made it impossible to help you. Exactly. If only you were a little bit better at lying, this would have been okay. Because essentially what John Roberts said in the census case was that you can add a citizenship question. It's lawful under the law, which the four liberals dissented from, but that you need a better reason for this. Because the Trump administration's rationale for adding the citizenship question was that they needed it to enforce the Voting Rights Act, which is absolutely ludicrous because the Trump administration hasn't filed a single lawsuit to enforce the Voting Rights Act. And everyone knows they're the last people in the world that want to enforce the Voting Rights Act

or protect voting rights. And from the very, very beginning, Wilbur Ross, the Commerce Secretary, who made this decision to add the question, was talking to people like Jeff Sessions and Chris Kobach and Steve Bannon, who are the most anti-immigrant, anti-voting rights people in the Republican Party. And that was even too much for John Roberts. And he said this argument that it's needed to enforce the Voting Rights Act, and John Roberts' phrase seems to be contrived, which was the understatement of a century, but nonetheless, nonetheless, an acknowledgement of reality. And so basically what happens now is he kicked it back to the Trump administration. He basically said, come up with a better reason. The problem for the Trump

administration is, A, I don't think they have a better reason, or they're not going to say what their real reason is. And that, B, time is running out because the Trump administration has argued over and over that the census forms need to be finalized by the end of June. Well, we've already reached that point. So they're going to have to delay this. The census is a huge $10 to $15 billion operation. It can't be moved easily. And then also, there are two other courts in New York and in Maryland that are looking at additional pieces of evidence, namely that a Republican redistricting mastermind, Tom Hoffler, that he pushed this question to try to help, in his words, Republicans and non-Hispanic whites. So there's all of this discriminatory evidence that the Supreme Court hasn't even considered yet. And Donald Trump's

talking about extending it, delaying the census, in his words, but the census is constitutionally mandated to begin in April of 2020. So for all of those reasons, it's very, very difficult to imagine a good faith way to put this question back on the census. That doesn't mean that the Supreme Court won't bail the Trump administration out in the fall or something like that in a replay of a travel ban case. But for now, it's hard to imagine under any normal procedure, this question getting back on there. It's interesting because the evidence that came out of that, I mean, this is the expert who passed away whose daughter found the materials, right? That revealed that there was both a partisan and racial intent. It actually goes

to the core of this problem and the kind of the path Robert is setting up, which is, if you want to do racially motivated exclusions, you need to come up with a believable partisan or justifiable rationale so that we can get away with letting you do what you want to do. Yeah, exactly. And that's what this late Republican strategist did. He basically said, this is going to help Republicans and whites. We need to say it's going to help enforce the Voting Rights Act, but we all know that's

not true. We all know it's going to harm Hispanics and other minority groups who are going to be less likely to respond to the census, and then they're going to be excluded from redistricting and other things that you can do as a result of the census. So this is going to be a really interesting test. It's kind of the same legitimacy test for John Roberts. Time and time again, he said that he values the legitimacy of the court, but he sided with the Republican Party and with white political power. He did it again in the gerrymandering cases. In the census case, he was not willing to do that, but he also didn't shut the door on this thing. And the fact that he didn't shut the door on it is making a lot of people nervous because

they think the Trump administration is going to do whatever they can to try to get this question on the census because they really want to be able to diminish the political power of immigrant communities, and by extension, the political power of Democrats, since many immigrants live in heavily Democratic areas, both economically and politically. And they're going to do whatever they want to try to get this question back on. And ultimately, the Supreme Court's going to be okay with it. That's the fear here, because this fight's not over. So one last question, just sort of stepping back around voter suppression, around gerrymander, on the census question. You know, we're in this position where for Democrats, the answer to all

of these anti-democratic maneuvers is more democracy, to turn out, to donate, to vote, to fight back. Do you worry at all about a point at which these anti-democratic measures will have been so successful that Democrats won't have, that overcoming them with democracy, with votes, with turning out, with enthusiasm, won't be able to surmount the obstacles against us? And do you view that as a line we're close to? I do. I think it's already happening, John. I think if you look at a place like Wisconsin, where every single cycle, Republicans are getting fewer votes for the state legislature, but a majority of seats, I think we've already crossed that point, at least with state legislative

elections in a bunch of states. We've seen this over and over and over, that democracy is not prevailing in places like Michigan and in places like North Carolina or Wisconsin. And that's why I think it's important not just to pay attention to elections, but to pay attention to the conditions under which the elections take place. I think a lot of times we don't do that. And one of my concerns in the 2016 cycle was after the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, it was the first presidential election in 50 years without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act. And there wasn't a single question about it in 25 presidential debates. There wasn't a single question about voting rights. So a lot of people didn't even know what was going on. And already in 2020, we had two debates. One of the debates

took place the same night as the census and gerrymandering decisions. And those decisions never even came up. So obviously, people can get their news in ways other than the debates. But I think it's indicative of the fact that we're spending so much time talking about polling, so much time talking about the elections, and not nearly enough time talking about the conditions under which the elections take place. So I think we often have to pay attention to these non-sexy structural issues because they, in many ways, are going to determine the outcome of the elections

that we spend so much time talking about. Ari Berman, thank you for joining us. Great to talk to you again. Thanks, John. Thanks to Ari Berman for joining us today. Thank you, Ari. Everyone have a great 4th. You know. Something happened with the Knicks.

Catch that parade. What happened with the Knicks? That's a story for another time. Love it. Something happened with the Knicks. All bad things happened to the Knicks. Bad things happened to the Knicks. My Knicks.

Not my Knicks. James Dolan is bad. Thanks, Elijah. Got our wesleyan bread over here all right everyone talk to you later