Pod Save America - AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy

Episode Date: December 18, 2024

House Democrats choose not to elevate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, arguably the party's most compelling messenger, to Ranking Member on the House Oversight Committee—instead selecting 74-year-old Gerry Connolly, a committee lifer with no national reach. Jon and Dan discuss the magnitude of this missed opportunity, House Republicans laying the groundwork for an FBI investigation of Liz Cheney, whether Democrats should play ball on government funding, and a new effort to clamp down on progressive fundraising spam. Then, longtime immigration advocate Cecilia Muñoz stops by to talk with Jon about how Democrats found themselves out of the mainstream on the issue, and how we can win back voters' trust without compromising our values.

Welcome to Pod Save America, I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. I know what you're thinking. Dan and I together on a Wednesday, not a Friday. Is there a polling emergency? Turns out only for Ann Seltzer. Yes, yes. We are here together because Friday's episode

is our annual Pundee show, where all four of us debate the worst takes of the year, including ours. Then we're off for the holiday break. So Dan and I thought we'd do one last normal episode here in the very abnormal year of 2024. Are you as excited as I am, Dan? John, I was just so worried that my takes were just gonna be stuck in the fridge for weeks

and I had to get them out before they started to smell. I know, well, you don't put them on social media as much anymore, so. I know I should, but. Because you're smart. Because you're smart. I watch what happens to you on social media and it's an object lesson.

You're a walking, scared, straight for your own podcast offline. Canary in the coal mine. Okay, so we are gonna talk about how house Democrats voted to a Passover AOC for the top job on the Oversight Committee, and whether it says anything about the party's broader strategy over the next few years. We also potentially have some good news. There's reportedly an effort afoot to stop Democratic fundraising spam. How about that? And then later you'll hear my interview with Cecilia Muñoz, a 20-year veteran of the immigration

fight about why she thinks Democrats lost their way on the issue and how we can build a majority for real reform. But first, we have talked a lot in recent weeks about Trump's revenge tour and how scared his critics should be. Looks like we're starting to get our answer. On Wednesday, House Republicans released a 128 page report that unsurprisingly tries to pin the blame for January 6th on Democrats instead of Donald Trump. People will be surprised to learn that. But Republicans quote top finding was this quote former

representative Liz Cheney colluded with star witness Cassidy Hutchinson without Hutchinson's attorney's knowledge. Cheney should be investigated for potential criminal witness tampering by the FBI and might have broken, quote, numerous federal laws. Cheney called the allegations, quote, defamatory and said that no reputable lawyer, legislator, or judge would take this seriously. Someone who is taking it seriously, Donald Trump, who posted at 3 a.m.

a statement that started, Liz Cheney could be in a lot of trouble. So this is obviously bullshit, and we know that it was Cassidy Hutchinson who reached out to Liz Cheney, not the other way around. Cheney talked to her in her capacity as a member of Congress, not a lawyer. And most importantly, when Republicans criticized Cheney for this meeting months and months ago, maybe years ago, they merely said that she had a

quote, ethical responsibility to have Hutchinson's lawyer present for the meeting. Didn't say anything about any laws being broken. But that of course was before Donald Trump and Cash Patel, the person he wants to run the FBI, campaigned on locking up Liz Cheney and the rest of the January 6th committee. Dan, how serious do you take this threat, not only for Cheney, but for all of Trump's critics? Incredibly seriously. This is exactly how it happens.

You get a pretext for an investigation run by a bunch of political cronies who will do what the authoritarian wants. We see this happen all over the world and Trump told us it was going to happen. He appointed the people who would follow through on the things he told us he was going to do, and now they are doing it. It's incredibly dangerous. I also think it's interesting that they singled out Cheney. She's a former member of Congress and they didn't single out yet.

All the other members of the January 6th committee. And I think part of that is like that, that what's scaring me most about it is that it is a concerted strategy to not like if they came out and said, we're, we're, we're going after every member of the January 6th committee and all the staffers and we're investigating all of them, you know, then you would have more of an uproar, but to like go after one person who's not in Congress anymore and is now just a private citizen,

shows that they're really, they're gonna try to do this so that it doesn't garner a lot of attention, I think. It feels like we're on the cusp of something very dangerous and most people are unwilling to reckon with just how dangerous it is. So Senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut agrees, he had a compelling, if alarming thread on all of this. He painted a picture where Cash Patel and the DOJ

charged Cheney, right? Cause they have the power to do that. And then are the courts going to save her? Judge is going to save her? Well, they can find a jurisdiction with a MAGA judge to try her. And then Murphy tied it to Trump's larger effort to stifle dissent by he's now

officially sued Ann Seltzer in the Des Moines register. He is of course, intimidating media outlets. ABC News we talked about on the last show, settled for $15 million. Murphy talks about how Trump has, uh, and his new potential FCC commissioners threatened media outlets, take away their broadcast licenses. Uh, it's threatened other lawsuits against media figures, media outlets.

Whether or not any of this succeeds is beside the point, Murphy points out, because now, you know, everyone will be scared to say or write anything that Donald Trump doesn't like, including put out a poll where he's not ahead or his approval rating is low. What did you make of Murphy's threat? Once again, I think he nails it.

The suing of Ann Selzer in the Des Moines Register is stupid. Like even the most maga judge I think is gonna struggle to find the harm that Donald Trump suffered from a bad poll in a state that he eventually won by more than he won in 2020 and 2016. So that's just, that is pure idiocy. It's almost, it's so dumb. It's almost a cause for relief

about how he's gonna proceed down this path because he's clearly easily distracted. But I think it's important to understand, and you guys talked about this, I thought very well as it relates to the ABC News settlement, is you have two problems with media outlets that Donald Trump is exploiting here. One is, like ABC, most of them are run

by much larger corporations that have many interests before the government. And particularly in these, whether it's Comcast owning NBC, or Paramount owning CBS, or Jeff Bezos owning The Washington Post. And the news business is such a minor part, and often a money loser for these larger entities that they are not going to take on water

on the businesses they care about to get on Donald Trump's wrong side to the Fed. If ABC News was on its own, a independent company, it would have fought that case to the very end. But because Disney has a million items of business before the government, they don't want to be in a fight with Donald Trump for the next year. For a part of the business that is so small that Bob Iger suggested selling it at a loss

a few years ago. And then the other media companies don't have the resources to fight these lawsuits. It is amusing that he's suing Ansells. He's also suing the New York Register, a struggling newspaper that's part of a struggling newspaper chain that does not have the resources to do that in any way, shape or form. And it used to be, there used to be an old saying that was, you never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel, right?

You never pick a fight with the press because they will beat you in the end. But the press itself can barely afford to buy ink by the barrel right now. And so they don't, they can be, many of these companies, many of these newspapers or local television stations or other outlets could be bankrupted by just the idea of fighting an absurd lawsuit against Trump. Yeah, there was a New York Times story as well today that sort of dug into why Disney decided to settle. And they listed a couple of reasons.

One, as we've been saying, and you just said that, you know, $15 million for Disney is like Trump change compared to, you know, what they would have to potentially pay if, if, if Trump won and, and they just didn't need the headache. And so it's, it's, in some ways it's a business decision and it almost, almost makes sense as a business decision. Right. But then they were worried about a jury in South Florida and a judge in South

Florida, because that's, you know, MAGA territory now. So they were worried that they wouldn't get a fair hearing. And then they were worried reportedly that it would go all the way to the Supreme court and you know, you've had Clarence Thomas on the Supreme court. And others say maybe the Supreme Court precedent on press freedom, like the foundational case Sullivan, that allows the freedom of the press and has the standard of actual malice for libel and defamation suits, that maybe it could get overturned. And I think that just shows not only like

how screwed we are with Trump and what he's doing, but with the fact that the judiciary has, you know, been tilted so far right over the last several years. Yeah, and just another point on why this was a business decision for ABC is the way they structured the settlement as a tax write-off, because it's a contribution to Trump's future foundation, which just notable, ABC News is giving $15 million to fund a monument

to the most anti press president in American history. But they get to write the taxes off. So that's cool. I mean, it was interesting to me that, that, that Senator Murphy did this thread because he said, you know, he's a US Senator Democrat. It's not like us talking about it on Pod Save America. I sort of wonder, there's a lot of people sort of sounding the alarms, raising awareness for all this. Like, I don't know what to do about it. But you know, like, I mean, there's obviously, just thinking about Cheney again, right?

I think this is obviously another argument in favor of Biden issuing preemptive pardons, not just for Cheney, but for other members of the January 6th committee and staff, as well as potential Trump targets the Department of Justice. But I think there's like a broader strategic question here. We have talked a lot since the election about how Democrats in the broader pro-democracy movement can't just spend our time being defenders of institutions and that we have to talk about things that directly impact voters' lives.

I can't imagine a fight to defend Liz Cheney or ABC News or the Des Moines Register fits into that category, but I think we would also agree that a show trial against one of Trump's opponents or lawsuits that are completely frivolous and baseless against media companies is crossing a pretty dangerous Rubicon. So what do we do? That's a very tough question, John. I'm not going to lie. I know.

It's something I'm thinking. Because I wanted to use the example because I feel like we've all become very comfortable to be like, Democrats can't defend the status quo and we can't defend institutions and we gotta be for the party reform, blah, blah, blah. And then something like this happens, it's like, okay, so do we just say, well, that's pretty scary,

but I'll see you later. I think the, we all, you cannot see that you can't walk away from a such an important fight. You absolutely cannot do that. And because walking away from that fight, even if you can't win it from such an important fight. You absolutely cannot do that. And because walking away from that fight, even if you can't win it, even if you have limited levers to pull as Democrats do here,

sometimes in politics, often times in politics, fighting and losing is better than not fighting at all. And I would put this in that category. I think there are three parts of what Democrats would do here. The first is we have to do everything we can with the limited power we have to fight Trump.

Vote against his nominees, use legislative tactics that we have to try to expose them to longer debates or a longer process or more investigation or whatever it is. And use our bully pulpit as small as it may be. Second, we have to focus on how we get more power. And that is to realize that the most important thing that Democrats can do over the next two years here

is take back the house in 2026. That is a very doable thing. And that, so take back the house in 2026, focus on state legislator and the governor's races in 2025. But wherever we can get power, we have to get power because that allows us to create additional bulwarks against Trump's offenses here, get power, we have to get power because that allows us to create additional bulwarks against Trump's offenses here, but also sends a message to other Republicans about the dangers of Trump,

if the voters are rejecting it at the ballot box. And the third thing we have to do is we have to not just be against Trump, we have to be for stuff. That's the one thing that got lost in the last resistance is that we opposed everything Trump did. We thought our best strategy and it was a successful strategy in the moment was to shine all the spotlight on Trump, let him show the public why he was unfit and dangerous, and then reap the rewards. That was sufficient to win the House and the Senate and sneak through a very very close White House victory in the middle of a pandemic, but it's clearly not enough to win again. It's not enough to actually build a governing majority in this country. And so we have to have an agenda. And it is within that

agenda that we must demonstrate that we are not defenders of the status quo. That must be an agenda that is populist in broadly defined populist economically, but also populist in the sense that in the classic term of we are reformers of government, right? We are looking to get to deal with corporate influence, money in politics, concentrated wealth. And if we can do all of those things, we have a shot here. Well, I completely agree. And on that note, I also think it matters

how we frame these fights when we take them on. And so what does the average person care about the Des Moines register or ABC news backing away from Trump? What do they care about Liz Cheney on trial or someone at the DOJ or Merrick Garland or whoever? Well, Donald Trump over the next couple of years is hanging around with a bunch of billionaires and they are going to try to enrich themselves at every possible chance. They're going to take every possible chance to

enrich themselves and they're going to try to screw everyone else, take away your health care so they can pay for tax cuts for rich people, all kinds of corruption. You're going to have to pay more in prices and they want you not to know about it. They don't want any critics. And then when they do this, when there's, when

the, when the press tries to report about it, or when someone tries to complain, a democratic politician or anyone else, they want to throw them in jail or they want to sue them. And so they want a country where they can get away with whatever they want and enrich themselves and screw you and have no one find out about it. And I do think that like just it's subtle and it's nuanced, but I think how we frame these fights matters. And so that it's not necessarily about our democratic institutions under attack,

but it's about Trump trying to get away with a lot of shit with a lot of, with Elon Musk and all of his billionaires around him. Yep. Let's talk about Democrats who were dealing with their own congressional drama. On Wednesday, House Democrats voted to give 74 year old Jerry Connolly of Virginia,

the top Democratic spot on the Oversight Committee, instead of 35-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, widely regarded as one of the party's best messengers, certainly the one with the biggest reach. The vote was 131 to 84. Connolly has been a longtime member of Oversight, which is primarily responsible for investigations, though he did sadly announce in November

that he has esophageal cancer. This means the Democrats will be replacing 61 year old Jamie Raskin, who will now be the top Democrat on judiciary, with someone even older. Though, as Connolly ally, Congressman Don Beyer said, Jerry's a young 74 cancer, not withstanding. It's quite a quote.

Dan on last Friday's episode, we were both encouraged by reporting that AOC basically had the votes to get the gig and we're pretty excited about it. What do you think happened? Nancy Pelosi. Oh man. Reportedly Nancy Pelosi was lobbying for Jerry Connolly, a long time ally of hers, in part because he is an ally of Pelosi, but also because I think she believes in the seniority

system, which I'm sure we'll talk about. And it's one of the most bananas decisions I've ever seen in my life. It's just such a misunderstanding of how, of what matters in politics. Picking seniority over the ability to deliver a message is exactly how we've gotten this mess to begin with. It's how we end up with the gerontocracy

of leading the Democratic party that cannot communicate clearly or in any sort of modern way that it reaches the actual voters who decide elections. Can I just say Nancy Pelosi obviously has still, even though she's not speaker anymore, a lot of sway over Democrats, but she's not speaker anymore or minority leader in this case.

181 Democrats voted for Connolly. And you know, if you're sort of a younger, newer Democrat to Congress, is it really like lobbying from Nancy Pelosi that's going to sway your vote? Like, do you think there was anything else at play here? I look the someone, a very experienced Capitol Hill person once described to me the politics of leadership elections in the house as akin to how decisions are made in high school student government elections, where it's all about cliques and friendships and relationships and there's no collective interest

at play here and I think that's part of what happened here. Obviously when they first came into Congress, there was a lot of tension between AOC and members of the quote unquote squad and other members of Congress. They're, you know, I think that there is a, there are people who do value seniority because at a time in which almost when 90 some percent

of incumbents get reelected all the time, you can rise to power simply by staying alive. I mean, if you just stay, a lot of people will have not and will have not had a competitive election since their first primary and are not gonna have another one for the foreseeable future.

And so they can one day become the ranking member or the chair of something simply by exercising and eating well. I mean, I think this is crazy as do you, but let's give the arguments for Connolly their due here because there's plenty of Democrats talking about why the party did what it did. Retiring representative Annie Custer, who heads the centrist New Democrats group in the house, said some of her vulnerable members had concerns about AOC's record of supporting primary challenges to her colleagues, even though AOC promised to stop doing that as part of her campaign for the role. There also was a fear apparently about her going too hard at divisive cultural issues. According to Politico, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, age 84,

made the case for seniority on behalf of Pelosi. And basically his argument was being senior shouldn't mean you automatically get the job, though it should at least be a tiebreaker between qualified candidates. Congressman Lloyd Doggett, age 77, said, I think that there are challenges in totally abandoning the seniority system here because if seniority is not the rule, money becomes the rule. What do you make of all those arguments? It's like I said.

Seniority is essentially a participation trophy for members of Congress. You just have to be there, and you eventually get something. I think there is value in experience, particularly leading substantive committees in the majority, someone who knows what they are doing. Do I really care if the chair of the Ag committee is an amazing communicator or not?

Not really. No one's ever gonna see that person on camera. You would have to go searching for that person. There is one role that where communications matters the most, or two roles, I guess, where communication matters the most, two roles, I guess, it were communication matters the most in Congress. And it is on the judiciary committee and the oversight committee. And so let's use our brains and try to think strategically about who we

should put in those positions. I'm sure there are members who are mad, who are friends with Elliott Engel or other people who have lost primaries who are mad at AOC and other people who support the primaries. I'm sure that's the high school lunchroom politics at play here. But the idea that somehow she is a problem for vulnerable Democrats is insane. You think NRCC is going to just forget she's a member of Congress and not run ads against her. It is true that Jerry Connolly is unlikely to show up in any ads against vulnerable members of Congress. That's because no one's gonna know who he is. He will never get attention.

I was gonna say, like, I have nothing negative to say about Jerry Connolly because I, like 99% of Americans have no idea who he is. It is almost impossible for a member of Congress to get sufficient attention to actually be heard by voters who decide elections. There is a list of one member of Congress in the Democratic caucus who meets that test, and it is AOC.

The best job for someone who can actually get attention is to be the ranking member on the oversight committee when these fucking MAGA goons are using this committee to try to do things like gin up charges against Liz Cheney. Yeah. And AOC, she, she is good at what she's like, what she says is the, is good. Like she has a good message. She's good.

But what is even more important than that, cause there are a lot of members who are pretty good messengers. What distinguishes her from other people is she can message is good. But what is even more important than that, because there are a lot of members who are pretty good messengers. What distinguishes her from other people is she can actually get attention. She understands how to communicate in a modern way. The fact that Republicans hate her and are triggered by her is a plus because it means that there will be conflict around the thing she says, which means they will get more coverage. It just, it is, we are just making a decision to not be heard.

And that is exactly how we got into this mess. Politics is a war for attention. AOC can get attention. She has proven that when she has attention, she can deliver a more compelling message than most people in the party. But she's going to be denied that for a series of very dumb, self-defeating reasons.

I will say two things here too. I think there is some angst among a lot of house Democrats that I think is quite misplaced, where I think they're like, oh, squad, unpopular with the broader electorate, DSA, all that kind of stuff. I would say that AOC, particularly over the last several years, I'm not going to say she has moderated her message or anything like that, because I do not think that, but

I think she has been very smart, especially in recent years on which battles to pick, how to talk to voters, open to people who have different opinions. I think that like, she's just, she's very, very thoughtful. And she's like, really? I mean, I was always impressed with her, but she's impressed me even more the longer she's been in Congress. So that's number one. Number two, I think from her perspective, whether she's the top Democrat on

oversight or not, she's going to get hurt, right? Like there can be a fucking five hours of hearings on C-SPAN that no one will ever see. And if AOC picks up her phone and does an Instagram live, she's going to reach more people. And she's still going to be on oversight, right? Cause she was on oversight before. And if they're fucking smart, Jerry Connolly and others on oversight, you know, during these hearings,

she'll be given plenty of time to speak. So that'll be okay. What really bothers me about it, right? Is that it just, this gets to your point. It reveals a mindset among Democrats that they are missing, that attention is the only thing that matters right now. Or not the only thing that matters,

but attention is the first thing that matters. Because if you cannot get attention in this media environment, your message cannot be heard. And if your message cannot be heard, you cannot persuade people. If you can't persuade people, you can't win. If you can't win, you can't cover. So like, I think that the Democratic Party has still not figured out how important it is to get attention and what is required to get attention. And even if you're a more moderate member, what's required to get attention is not, I've heard some of them think just yelling and screaming about Republicans and, and, and in showing the most outrage and this or that, like, look, it's tough.

You've got to be creative. You've got to talk like a normal fucking human being, uh, and not like a politician who's been there for 40 years. And by the way, I don't just want to make it an age thing. There's old politicians who know how to communicate. There's young politicians. And there's plenty of young politicians who are unbelievably boring and do not just to be very

honest. So it's not necessarily about age, but everyone needs to know that like, if you cannot get attention and attention is not like putting out your press releases and giving your board and press conference and doing something at the whatever, like then you're just not going to be heard and we're just not going to win. So even though Democrats don't control the White House or Congress, we may actually have more leverage to fight back than people might think.

As we've mentioned before, Speaker Mike Johnson will have an incredibly narrow margin in the House next year, which will require nearly every House Republican to support him on nearly every vote, if Trump and Republicans want to get anything done, at least legislatively. And right now, Johnson is already struggling to get that support. He is currently trying to pass a bill to keep the government funded for just three months, given up on a full year. He's just trying to do three months. But all the usual MAGA troublemakers in his caucus are once again threatening to oppose the bill because it's not crazy enough for them. Unfortunately, one of those MAGA troublemakers,

unfortunately for Johnson, one of those MAGA troublemakers is now Doge Master Elon Musk, who weighed in with a tweet saying, this bill should not pass. And another with a photo of a huge stack of printed out papers that are supposedly the bill with the caption, ever seen a bigger piece of pork. It's also funny by the way, that, uh, Fox and

friends broke this news about Elon Musk to Mike Johnson, uh, live on air and Johnson had to say, well, I know where Elon stands on this and he knows where I stand and fake called me last night. And he knows what, what a tough spot I'm in. And we just need to wait till Donald Trump is in charge next year and then everyone will get in line. But the question is what Democrats will do, not just in this fight,

but in next year's funding fight, the fight on taxes, immigration, energy, all the fights that are coming up in Congress next year. Do Democrats use their leverage to extract concessions from Johnson, in this case in exchange for helping him keep the government open? Or do Democrats just sit back and let Republicans fail? Because, you know, like I said, even if he gets the votes for this three month funding bill, which he may in the end, he's going to have to do this many, many more times when Trump is president. What do you think Democrats should do here? more times when Trump is president. What do you think Democrats should do here? My understanding and my understanding

equates to my having read Punchball this morning, is that Democrats actually did a pretty good job of getting a bunch of concessions from Johnson in this bill. Like Johnson understood that he was going to need a bunch of Democrats to vote for this, to get it passed, and he's given them a bunch of things. If we wanted to play good,

but probably like kind of hackish politics right now, we would make a giant issue of the fact that there is a pay increase for members of Congress in this bill, the first one in 15 years. Yeah. And that is deeply unpopular. And I am willing to bet that this was a, I'm just guessing here, so don't hold me to this,

but I'm guessing that this was sort of a bargain struck between all the leaders. Because remember this is the thing, every member wants, no one wants to say it. And when members run for leadership, they often say they will support pay raise, and substantively, we should actually pay members of Congress more.

But if you wanted to find an issue that would galvanize people against the Republican Party, the pay increase would be one of them, even if it is not the most substance-responsible thing we would do. And we should say why there's an argument for paying them more. And it comes from like some Democrats, liberals,

progressives, and it's because basically we have a system now where because members of Congress are paid the salaries they are, you have to be like independently wealthy, which especially many members of the Senate are, in order to run for Congress, because a lot of these guys, it doesn't matter that they have a low salary for Congress

because they're rich otherwise. But if we want people to go to Congress who are working class, who represent the incomes of most people in this country, then it needs to be a little more attractive as a salary. And if people, it just, I would just add one more thing. That is that people will look at that salary and be like, that's a lot more than the median American makes.

It is, yeah. That is absolutely true. But you also have to have two homes in this situation. You have to maintain a residence in your district and you have to have a place to sleep in Washington state, which is why some people actually sleep in their office, but that's probably not particularly viable. They particularly for people with families. Yeah, but anyway, so that's some people actually sleep in their office, but that's probably not particularly viable, particularly for people with families.

Yeah, but anyway, so that's one thing that's in there. But I was gonna say going forward, so let's get through the, if this bill, as I understand it, pretty good for Democrats, then we should do what we can, get across the finish line, take the wins we got in here, and then next year, we should be, Hakeem Javid should hold all his votes until he gets what he wants for the, at least for the first few months, it's going

to be a one seat majority, most likely. Presuming that Trump's nominees, uh, get confirmed and head to that and leave the house. So until those special elections happens, he wants a one seat majority. And so we use all that leverage possible to get as much as we possibly can. Or, you know, I look, I am usually- Are you calling for a shutdown? Are you about to call for a shutdown? Are you gonna shut down the government?

I'm not gonna shut down the government. But just for discussion purposes, right? Okay. We've talked about shutdowns and what Democrats can do and using their leverage in the context of Trump's president, Democrats control the Senate, Trump's president, Democrats control the House, We've talked about shutdowns and what Democrats can do in using their leverage in the context of Trump's president, Democrats control the Senate, Trump's president, Democrats control the House, Biden's president, Republicans in the Congress. We are now going to have a situation where Republicans control everything.

They control everything. Every level of power they are in charge of. The House, the Senate, the White House. Donald Trump has more power than any president has ever had. Got a Supreme Court that he has shaped. And I wonder if next year when some of these bills come up, I'm thinking of especially like the tax bill, which I'm sure most Democrats will vote against anyway, but again, you can imagine a scenario where, you know, the tax bill is gonna be a must pass bill, right? Because the Trump tax cuts are set to expire next year.

And so Trump wants to, of course, double down on his tax cuts, not just renew the tax cuts, but also like make the corporate tax rate even lower, give a bigger tax cut to corporations. You could imagine a scenario where, because Mike Johnson may need democratic votes, that we extract some concessions and get some good middle class tax cuts, right? Beef up the middle class tax cuts. Or you can imagine Democrats saying, look, you guys run Washington. You have all the votes. You have powerful Donald Trump here. And we're not going to sit here and help you gut people's healthcare, take away their health insurance so you can give tax cuts to

rich people. Like you find the votes for that because we're not, we're not going to stand for that. This is important distinction you're making. I was answering that question in the context of government funding. Well, I mean, I think, I think it depends on what's in the funding bill too. But if that funding bill, which I imagine it will be under full Republican control is gutting a bunch of priorities for Democrats and it's going to hurt a lot of people. They throw like Medicaid funding in there and they got Medicaid funding or they got

the subsidies for the ACA that Democrats got to do. Instead of getting like compromising so you get a little bit more of the subsidies and maybe you save a little bit more of the Medicaid cuts. I also think you could be like, look, they wanna fund the government. They wanna pass something that's gonna keep the government open, but screw people who are gonna lose their fucking healthcare. Go for it.

You find the votes. So let's take these things. This is relatively and surprisingly interesting conversation about congressional strategy. Just trying my best. I'm trying my best. So let's do the government funding first. Now the way this is gonna play out,

there's obviously gonna be some house versions of the bill. The Democrats are gonna be terrible because they're gonna have to keep going further to the right to get every person from Barry Lauder Milk who I discovered existed yesterday to, you know. He's the one who put out the report to target Cheney. Yes, it's an amazing name. But what eventually will come back is a bill

that got at least seven Senate Democratic votes. Oh yeah. And so they're like, in that case, and that is probably a Thune Schumer negotiation to get something that gets a sufficient, a large number of senators that then comes back to the house. And then that is something that is probably,

unless something has gone horribly wrong in the Senate, is something that we would probably be okay with, or as okay as we could possibly be in comparison to a shutdown when the Republicans control all the levers of power. Now on the tax bill, this is incredibly important. No Democrat should vote for the tax bill. Certainly coming out of the House.

Absolutely, we should say none. Not a single one. Now, there may be one person who breaks, but that should be, we have to treat this like Harry Reid treated social security privatization in 2005, which I know is an incredibly- You write it, you get the votes, you pass it, it's on you.

We're not gonna be there, we're not there, we're not negotiating everything, you go do it. And let's see if they can actually get it done. But we are, do not give them anything for this. And this is incredibly important because we want to shine a light on the fact that Donald Trump ran to cut costs and one of his first acts is going to be cut taxes for the richest people in America. No, I, yeah, I just look, I've been, I've been thinking about this because you can see even with the government funded, that's correct on the tax bill for sure. Even on the government funding bill,

you can see a situation where Democrats are like, well, we want to, uh, we want to work with Republicans where we agree and, and, you know, extract some concessions and then stand up where we don't agree. And then Republicans end up keeping the government open, but they do a bunch of bad shit in the funding bill and Democrats go, well, we got this concession and no one knows because no one pays attention to Congress. And all the people maybe understand about Congress right now or Washington in general, forget about Congress, is, oh, Donald Trump controls all of Washington. Donald Trump's in power and anything that goes wrong, it's Donald Trump's fault.

But in order for that to happen, Democrats have to be like, yeah, no, they're doing it all themselves. Sorry to harp on to keep talking about this because I am shockingly interested in it, But in order for that to happen, Democrats have to be like, yeah, no, they're doing it all themselves. Just sorry to harp on to keep talking about this because I am shockingly interested in it, but we cannot consider keeping the government open and a give to us. Right.

That is their job. Which they have done in the Biden era. With the debt ceiling, the keeping the government open, that is not a give to us because we care about people's lives, that is a give to us because we care about people's lives. That is a gift to them because they run Washington. Yes, totally agree. All right, finally, we like to cover good news

when we see it, which isn't all that often right now. Something that caught our eye this morning, a piece from our friend Sam Stein at the Bulwark about more than 100 Democrats pushing for reform at ActBlue. ActBlue is the main online engine for small dollar donations to progressive candidates and causes and Democrats and all kinds of the whole broader democratic universe. It is also, these Democrats argue, a key culprit in all of the fundraising spam and grifty

no-name appeals that drive us all crazy in our text messages, our emails, everything. Some of the changes this group of democratic operatives and staffers all want to see. No more solicitations from shady groups pretending to be official party entities when they're not. No more outlandish promises of a 500% match if you give now and it's so urgent, you must give now by the deadline. They also want to see changes to the ways ActBlue sells or shares donor information. What do you think? I think this is the least we can do on this. I mean, in fairness to full disclosure here, I talked to the organizers of this effort several times

over the last couple of months. I think this is incredibly important. Good job. There are, all I did was read the things that the very good work they did. And I just, primarily as someone who has complained loudly about abuses of the fundraising system by democratic organizations, and particularly Scampacks, which there are a lot on our side.

This is very important. The problem always is there's a collective action problem where the DNC, like even where if the DNC or the presidential nominee or the individual senators were responsible in how they use their lists, everyone else isn't, right? And the most donors don't, they're not like counting, like Hakeem Jeffries has only emailed me three times, but something called Turnout Pack has texted me

7,000 fucking times, no matter how many times I hit stop, it never works. It's just the Democrats, it's all the Democrats. And ActBlue is the one place where you can actually have levers to pull to affect all of this. And so this is all very good stuff. We should do it. It is, it's just, it's so sketchy when you get like Barack Obama has spoken and it's like a quote from Barack Obama and like it makes you think that Obama or Michelle Obama or Joe Biden or Kamala Harris has endorsed this pack,

whatever it is you've never heard of from people you've never heard of and you've never seen them expend money in any way, shape or form. And so this is a very challenging problem. This is a set of reforms that can make things better. It doesn't mean that we're gonna stop getting annoying texts, but we may get fewer of them

and the ones we get may be better aligned with actual organizations that are doing the work we want done. Yes, I would go beyond this too. I mean, yes, let's get rid of all the scam packs and have not as many of those texts. But we gotta really think about the people who are writing these fundraising emails,

these texts, like that strategy from the campaigns themselves. And by the way, from the campaigns themselves. And by the way, sometimes the campaigns outsource it to like some digital fundraising, you know, firm or whatever else, like just the language that's used. I mean, I fucking start from scratch here. It's like some of the appeals seem ridiculous. Like I, we believe, and we've done this through,

you know, vote, save America here, but like we believe that there is a way to help, you know, direct people's donations and figure out where to give that's smart and where it's needed, even in a way that like makes sense to people that doesn't sound like a bot blowing up your phone and is actually like a real fundraising appeal

and maybe even use some humor and maybe you just sound a little more authentic. Like I just think that the entire business of democratic digital fundraising, like it could use a real overhaul and that goes just beyond the scam packs. I don't wanna depress you, but they do these things because they test them rigorously

and they work, right? They are AB testing. Yeah, well, you know, I know. I know they test the open rates. And so when they say like, Maddow segment freaked me out. And then everyone like opens the fucking thing. And I get that, but like, I don't know.

I think that the testing is different from the like, okay, it's gonna get some money, but how many people is it gonna turn off? No, it's all short term, right? It's all short term. It is about- That's exactly right. No one is thinking, because all these campaigns only care about their list

through election day, so they will burn it to the ground. And all they care about is their list. They don't think about the fact that the people on their list are on 700 other lists. And so when you're burning your list to the ground, you're affecting all of your other Senate colleagues or the DSCC or whoever else. And these are good questions that we should ask the DNC.

Not that the DNC is in charge of all of this, but they do have some influence here. We can talk to them about how they're thinking about this as part of the DNC chair race coming up. It's a good idea. Okay, when we come back from the break, you're gonna hear my conversation with Cecilia Muñoz about what it's been like to watch from the inside

as the immigration conversation drifted farther and farther to the left. Quick plug before we do that. I know a lot of us have holiday trips coming up, maybe long flights. If you're traveling or you just need to escape from your family for a bit, I don't know why that would be. A reminder that you can binge

Crooked's award-winning limited series. Podcasts like Dissident at the Doorstep about the shocking transformation of a Chinese civil rights activist into a MAGA figurehead, Killing Justice, which digs into the mystery of the death of a prominent Indian judge, and our most recent, Empire City, the untold origin story of the NYPD, about the secret history of America's largest police force, which was named one of the top podcasts of 2024 by Time Magazine, Vulture, and the New York Times.

You can find all these limited series at Cricut.com slash limiteds or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back, Cecilia Muñoz. Joining us today, she spent two decades focusing on civil rights and immigration at the nation's largest Hispanic advocacy organization before overseeing all domestic policy in Barack Obama's White House, the first Latina to do so, Cecilia Muñoz. Welcome back to Pod Save America. Thank you so much. It is good to see you.

Good to see you too. You wrote a piece in the Atlantic called How Democrats Lost Their Way on Immigration with Frank Sherry, an advocate like you, who ran pro-immigrant organizations for more than three decades and also advised the Harris campaign. I think the piece is very much worth a read, and I want to talk to you a little bit about the piece itself. But first, for people who don't know your background, can you talk a little bit about what led you to immigration advocacy and ultimately the White House? Yeah. So I'm the daughter of immigrants and the wife of an immigrant. And I've been working on immigration really since I was a graduate student, first as providing services to immigrants. I ran a legalization program back in the 80s, which is the last time we legalized undocumented

people in significant numbers. And so I've kind of been doing policy and advocacy ever since. It's kind of fundamental to who I am. In your piece, you and Frank write, quote, we believe that immigration has become a losing issue for Democrats over the past decade because elected leaders have followed progressive advocates

to the left beyond the political space available to them. Voters feeling unheard and frustrated may have squirmed at Trump's racism and radicalism, but they also saw him as someone who took the problem seriously and was trying to address it. Now I've seen, I shared the piece, you can imagine a lot of response. I'm sure you're getting a lot of response to it.

I've seen a lot of activists and a few immigration reporters argue in response, wait a minute, Biden relied on some Trump era policies to keep out the huge influx of migrants and asylum seekers during his first term. And then Kamala Harris ran on a border proposal so tough that it was written by a conservative Republican. So how does that qualify as elected Democrats following progressive advocates to the left? So I think it's pretty well understood that the Biden administration was slow. I think voters saw the Biden administration as being slow to respond to the situation at the border. I'm obviously close to the folks in the Biden administration. I know they worked incredibly hard.

I think they ultimately landed on some, some pretty thoughtful policy and policy, which turned out to be pretty effective in the end. But by the time they got there, it was too late to persuade voters that they were serious and they had endured by that point, years of hammering away at how much of a crisis this is and, you know, all of the crazy, tough ways that Donald Trump was going to address it. And the thing which is uncomfortable, I think both in the advocacy community and therefore uncomfortable for the administration, was saying out loud that they believe this was

a thing that needed to be controlled. It is really, really easy to push back on immigration enforcement. I spent a lot of years of my career doing it as well. It is really hard to have a vision for how enforcement should happen. And politically, for a Democrat in office, it's a world of pain if you stand up and say this is how we should enforce the law. But at the end of the day, especially because the situation at the border is unlike anything we have experienced before in our history, I think the public expects their leaders to have a theory of the case for how to do it and to be assertive about it. And I think the, I have a lot of praise for the Biden administration and a lot of

affection for the Biden administration. But I think it was pretty clear that he didn't want to talk about this issue until he had to, because it's a world of pain. But at the end of the day, I think we need to accept that the American public expects its officials to bring order and fairness to the border. And I think if we can be persuasive that we can bring order and fairness to the border, the American public is also prepared to be really to be generous. And that's why in the Obama years, the comprehensive immigration reform frame won the majority

of the public by a lot, had tremendous public support. And that's why we argue a balanced approach that includes a theory of the case for how to manage the border, along with a path to permanent status for people who are here illegally and openings and legal immigration. That's a balance which I think can win the public. But for the time being, we have lost the public on this issue. Democrats have lost the public. And that's a catastrophe. So what do you think President Biden and Vice President Harris could have done differently over the last four years to deal with the border in a way that

more Americans would have supported? I think ultimately the policy formulation that they landed on is a really good one. We know that it's effective because actually the pressure at the border, the number of folks entering unlawfully has gone down, but they didn't start talking about it until too late. So I think an aggressive approach that said from the beginning, we recognize that this is a challenge. Here's how we're going to handle it in the region, in the hemisphere. They actually adopted a lot of really solid policy to give people

the ability to get to safety without making the dangerous journey to the United States. They created mechanisms to move people from entering in between ports of entry and channeling them to ports of entry. They got a lot of pushback for doing that, but ultimately that allowed them to regulate how many people can come in a day. They got there, but they got there kind of late, and they were, I think, reluctant to make a forceful case,

in part because if you, if Democrat makes a forceful case, there's, you get a lot of pushback from, from within the family. And so I think the mistakes were not so much policy mistakes. They, I think started from the point of view that they did not want to talk about it. I think the sense was any day that this is the thing in the news that we're talking about is a bad day.

And I think that was the mistake. It's funny because last night as I was preparing for this interview, I sort of went back on the whole timeline of everything that happened in the Biden administration around immigration. And because, you know, some people are arguing, look, they use Title 42, which Trump had used right from the beginning of the administration. Title 42 is a public health provision that allowed both the Trump administration and Biden administration to turn away migrants and asylum seekers because of COVID. And so they had that in place. And then after that was taken away, then they tried to do the border bill.

And then after that, they finally arrived at the executive action that essentially closed the border, that resulted in many fewer crossings. But when I look back at Biden's statements and speeches and remarks, there was almost nothing. I mean, when he announced a new measure, he would talk about it, but not much in the state of the unions, not any kind of big immigration speeches. And it does seem like even as we talk about what the right message or wrong message was there just wasn't much of a message at all and

On an issue that ended up being you know the number two issue from for most voters and not just Republican voters that seems like a Missed opportunity to say absolutely I mean the the the argument that Frank and I are trying to make in the piece that we wrote is that Democrats should lean in. And I think that the instinct that has taken hold is to run away from the issue. But there is history that demonstrates that when the frame is who's going to be tough, this is Donald Trump's frame, right? Who's going to be tough as opposed to not tough, that we have a hard time competing with

that. But the frame that works for Democrats is leaning in and with an approach that actually solves the problem. When the frame is fix it versus chaos, Democrats tend to do well. And we have been having this debate on Donald Trump's frame for way too long. And the way to move it back to our frame is to lean in and with a theory of the case on how to address this. And I think the good news is the policy part is available. It's, it's right. It's not, this isn't an intractable problem.

This is a problem with policy solutions, but we have to be willing to talk about them and embrace them and they include enforcement, which is uncomfortable. But obviously that's preferable to what we're all about to endure. Over the next four years. Yes. And I want to get to that, but first I want to go back for a second because I think a lot of our listeners, a second because I think a lot of our listeners, a lot of Democrats, a lot of people who've just sort of been involved and paying attention to politics sort of started at 2016 when Trump won. And I think the history and

the context is really important to this debate to understand where we've been. The most common reaction when I shared your piece was activists on the left who said something to the effect of, well, you and Cecilia, you both worked for the deporter in chief, so we don't really trust you on this issue. Can you talk a little bit about the politics of immigration when you were in the Obama White House, sort of your reaction to, you know, the deporter in chief criticism and what you guys in the policy part of the White House had to deal with there. Yeah. President Obama had the kind of balanced approach that Frank, Sherry, and I are advocating for

in that he had a theory of the case that included an approach to immigration enforcement, but also a path to citizenship for undocumented people and expansions to legal immigration. And that was from the public point of view, the desirable policy, right? 70, 80, 85% of the public supported that approach. He also had a theory of the case on how to conduct immigration enforcement. I think it's a fair criticism to say that it took us too long to land on the right approach. There was a lot of trial and error from 2010 when we really started tweaking how enforcement happens to 2014. But essentially, the premise was you have to conduct immigration

enforcement, but how you do it matters. And instead of concentrating on people in the interior who have been here for a long time, the priorities should be new arrivals, people who haven't set down roots yet, and folks with serious criminal convictions. And ultimately, that's the set of enforcement choices that makes sense, that's also the most humane. But because the removal numbers were high and the removal numbers were high because there were a lot of new entrants that the Obama administration removed. He got named by my former boss, the deporter-in-chief,

and that has stuck. What happened in the advocacy world from that era onward is that folks moved to the left and focused very heavily on immigration enforcement. So their request to Secretary Clinton when she was running was to move away from immigration enforcement. She did. She did an interview with Jorge Ramos, which essentially backed away from the kind of enforcement infrastructure that President Obama had outlined. It was enforcement, immigration enforcement was barely mentioned in her platform at all. They extracted a promise from Joe Biden when he was running to do a moratorium on enforcement, which he did, which he announced, but which ultimately did not withstand legal scrutiny. And the candidates that were running for the Democratic nomination were all asked about

decriminalizing border crossings. The entire conversation moved to the left, away from immigration enforcement, and created the impression that Democrats were not serious about imposing order and fairness at the border. And I think that has cost us very, very dearly. It's not a comfortable subject. Look, I'm a Latina, I'm an immigration policy expert. It is a very uncomfortable subject. But honestly, John, the reason that Frank and I wrote this piece, I feel very strongly, I am not convinced we're going to be able to take our country back from the autocrats if we don't get our arms around this issue. What's happening at the border is happening at a scale that the country has not seen

before ever, and it is not a short-term emergency. It is the beginning of what's coming because of climate change and other things. If we do not have a theory of a case for how to do this in an orderly way that allows us to welcome folks, but with conditions, I really fear for our ability to take the country back from the autocrats. Yeah. And I know you and Frank have both made this point, but look, the job of, as you know, very well, the job of an advocate and an activist is to push on politicians, right? Yeah. It's also the job of the elected leaders to take in that advice and that pressure, but also do what's best for the country and for their other constituents and to continue to

garner support so they can govern. The moment that I sort of realized that things had really shifted in a way that could potentially down the road be troubling is in that 2020 primary. Now you know this because how many speeches do we work on, immigration speeches in the Obama White House, where Obama would always say, we are a nation of immigrants, we are also a nation of laws. And then he would say, we really want people who have been here in the shadows for decades,

who were working hard and paying taxes and contributing to the community and have families here, we wanna give them a pathway to citizenship. And we wanna say that if we're gonna give you this path, then there's a lot of other people who are going through the legal processes to become immigrants. And so you'll have to pay a fine, get to get to the back of the line. And then we'll give you the pathway to citizenship. So he said that all the time and there was no controversy around that at all.

At least the way he said that. And then, in one of the primary debates, Joe Biden uses that language about getting to the back of the line. And there's this outcry that it was offensive, that he shouldn't say this. He had to meet with immigrant groups and, and Latino groups, and he had to like apologize and do these round tables.

And I remember thinking like, this was like so s just standard language. And also now, after we just went through this last election, and we heard from so many people in focus groups and voters and just, you know, interviews, Latinos, immigrants, recent immigrants, who are saying, look, the one thing that bothers me is it took me years to become a citizen in this country.

And now someone just came over the border last week and suddenly they get all these benefits and I'm still been waiting for citizenship for 10 years. So I do I wonder why why do you think the immigration activist community sort of went this route after after 2012 I guess? I think a couple things happened as I mentioned they focused very heavily on enforcement and that became kind of the center. The situation of undocumented people, which is work well worth doing, and the risks of

immigration enforcement to them became kind of the focal point of the move to the left. And we stopped having a conversation that included advocates and folks who were governing or folks who were seeking to govern about how can this actually work. And advocates instead landed in a place where they focused on the trade-offs that were part of the comprehensive immigration reform model, right? The getting to the back of the line, the fact that some people legalize but not everybody, and decided that that was trading off a benefit for some people at the expense of other people, and that they in fact tossed out the entire comprehensive immigration reform model and began really to focus pretty heavily on enforcement. And then of course, there was a heck of a lot of terrible to respond to in the Trump years.

Yeah. And that, I think, the response to Trump, I think, contributed to the singular focus of where the advocacy community landed. And look, that is heroic work. It was incredibly difficult work, incredibly emotional work. They took people's children. And the advocates that I'm talking about were at the front lines of addressing

that. I have nothing but respect for that work and for the people who do it. But the, when you were describing, you know, the job of advocates is to push and the job of people who are governing is to govern. When we do it really well, all of those people's jobs is also to be in a conversation about what the policy solution is to the problem at hand. And as an advocate, you are of course pushing for the best possible outcome, but you're in the conversation. And that conversation has really broken down. And as a result, Democrats don't have a working theory of the case that they can say out loud about how to address the border situation. And that's tragic because this democratic administration

is actually kind of doing it pretty well, but we can't talk about it because of the, you just, you get shot at. Well, you mentioned that a lot of this was sort of in relation to the response to Trump when he won the first time. I think the reason why it's so important now is because there's going to be another Trump term and another potential reaction from Democrats. He seems pretty intent on carrying out mass deportations.

He's threatened to use the military, especially in blue states and sanctuary cities that may refuse to help ICE. He will try to end birthright citizenship. He seems ready to go far beyond only deporting undocumented immigrants who've broken the law while in this country or pose a threat to public safety or, or just arrived here recently. We're looking at deportations of people who've been here for decades, who work and pay taxes and contribute and have family who are US citizens.

How do you think Democrats should react this time around? And what lessons do we learn from last time, knowing that this time could be far more extreme than what we saw last time? Yeah, it's going to be worse. We know that. Maybe not in all the ways that he has promised, but because some of the stuff he wants to do is going to be pretty hard for him to do, but it's going to be worse. I think the thing we didn't do as well as I would have liked last time is have a consistent

narrative that makes it clear that there is a goal that generally the American public agrees on, which is to bring order and fairness to this system. That goal is valid. We didn't say that. But there's a right way and a wrong way to go about achieving it. And we're about to see a lot of what the wrong way looks like. The harms of what the Trump administration is about to do, the greatest harms are likely to be visited on children.

I think we're likely to see workplace rates, for example. We saw those in the George W. Bush era. What that looks like is kids go to school in the morning and when they come back at the end of the day, their parents are gone. So those kinds of, we know, we know that that's what happens. We are sadly, tragically, about to be able to tell the story to the American public about what it costs those families, what it costs those kids, what it costs those

communities, and what it costs all of us. That narrative should also include that this is the wrong way to go about accomplishing the country's goals, but there is a right way. And the goal is not the problem. It's how we're going about trying to accomplish it. To lay the predicate for that frame that I was talking about, that Democrats need to own the, we're the ones who know how to fix challenging problems. These guys create chaos and harm and they harm really vulnerable people that most of the country, I hope, believes we shouldn't be harming. But we have to lean

in and we have to be prepared to say that the goal that the American people want, which is an orderly and fair system, is legit. Yeah. My fear is that they are going to start by, they would love nothing more than to pick fights with blue state governors, mayors over deporting undocumented immigrants who are threats to public safety. Uh, and you know, obviously this is a tiny percentage, but they have made these folks famous in the last campaign, and they would like nothing more than for Democrats to react with outrage to the deportation

of either recent arrivals or people who have, you know, broken laws and potentially violent criminals here in the United States. And I do wonder like how we, part of what I think this conversation requires is us to sort of have the discipline and wherewithal to think about when these horrific stories, much like the ones you just mentioned, when that happens, that we lift up those stories and that we don't necessarily overreact when they try to deport violent criminals that they should deport because I think that they're going to try to make this about what they've just made the last campaign about. Yes, and try to force us into a position of appearing to make the argument that no one

should ever be deported ever. And that's not good policy, is not where the public is, and it's not where we should be either. But you're right that it will require, I think, discipline to not have this debate on Donald Trump's terms, but to swing the debate back to our terms because we need to win elections and we need to get this policy challenge addressed. Yeah. Well, to that point, I mean, we are so, last question on this, like we are so far

from having the votes to pass comprehensive immigration reform. And, you know, if the filibuster is still around, we would need 60 votes in the Senate. I don't even know how Democrats get 60 votes in the Senate at this point with this map. If we get rid of the filibuster, we still need 51 votes. That's still a challenge at this point

when you look at the states that are up in the next two elections. What do you think a Democrat running for president in 2028 can realistically promise? And what should they run on knowing that part of the challenge has also been Democrats running on comprehensive immigration reform making these promises and then they get into power. We don't have the votes Can't pass immigration reform because of the Republicans and then they get into power, we don't have the votes, can't pass immigration reform because of the Republicans and then Democrats get blamed for it. Yeah, no, it's an enormous challenge.

It's not a short-term thing. We're not gonna fix this in the short-term because Congress is a catastrophe. I think it starts with having a vision for what needs to happen and being able to persuade the American public that that's the right vision. Look, I think the, we have, honestly, the debate is happening around the extremes and I think the public really wants there to be a center and we need to provide it for starters

and create the momentum so that it's safe for Democrats to have a conversation about enforcement and safe for at least some number of Republicans to have a conversation about the kind of immigration system that we want to have. I fear that we are now in a situation where the kind of permission structure to allow us to get to that conversation requires that we successfully manage the situation at the border. I think that is true now in a way that was not true a decade ago when, you know, in the Obama years when we passed immigration and comprehensive reform through the Senate. The situation at the border was not then what it is now. And the country expects it to be addressed. So I now think that has to be kind of the primary piece.

But I also think if you can be persuasive that that is manageable, and I do believe that's possible, then I still believe the American public is prepared to have a conversation about a pathway to permanent status for the people who are here on temporary statuses or without status at all. status for the people who are here on temporary statuses or without status at all. And even an expansion of legal immigration. I mean, the great irony is the business community knows we need immigrants. They know we need more of them. It's not just that we will be cooking our own goose economically if we deport people who are here now. It's that we're going to need more generous immigration for the long term, and the business community knows it.

They're just terrified of saying anything out loud. So we need to make it safe again to have this conversation. But I think as an advocate or a former advocate or whatever, I don't know if the advocacy world would embrace me any longer, but we need to do a better job of listening to where the public is. As a Latina, honestly, I think we haven't even done enough listening to where our own community is, as this election shows. And we have to fix that. And that requires some humility. I think it requires some listening and willing to make some hard

hard policy choices in order to get to the outcomes that we need. And honestly, I really think the fate of democracy in the United States depends on this. Yeah, no, I, I completely agree. And it's not just something that's happening here. We're seeing it all over the world. Um, as, as we're seeing mass migration, especially from the global south to the North. And so I think a lot of countries in Europe are dealing with this exact same thing.

So this is not just a United States problem. Cecilia, thank you so much for joining. Thank you for writing that to try to start this conversation, have an honest conversation. I know not easy for you as someone who cares so much about immigration and has been an advocate for so long, but I'm really glad that you and Frank started the conversation as contentious as it may get, because I think we need to have it.

So thank you and it was good talking to you. Thank you so much, appreciate it. All right, that's our show for today. Dan, Tommy Lovett and I will convene on Friday to hand out this year's Pundies, our awards for the very worst takes and tweets. Talk to everyone then. Bye everyone. If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad free or get access to our subscriber discord and exclusive podcasts, consider joining our Friends of the Pod community at crooked.com slash friends or subscribe on Apple podcasts

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