Pod Save America - “Biden takes on the Big Lie.”

Episode Date: January 6, 2022

President Biden marks the anniversary of the January 6th attack with a pointed speech about the Big Lie, Donald Trump decides to shut up and cancel his press conference, Congress debates voting rights and the Electoral Count Act, and Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman joins to talk about how redistricting is going much better for Democrats than expected.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

The Supreme Court has had a busy summer loosening gun restrictions in states, overturning Roe versus Wade, and severely threatening our Miranda rights. I'm Leah Lippman, and each week on Strict Scrutiny, I'm joined by my co-hosts and fellow law professors, Melissa Murray and Kate Shaw, to break down the latest headlines and the biggest legal questions facing our country. It's more important than ever to understand the repercussions of these Supreme Court decisions and what we can do to fight back in the upcoming midterm elections. Listen to new episodes of Strict Scrutiny every Monday, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.

I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's pod, President Biden marks the anniversary of the January 6th attack with a pointed speech about the big lie. Donald Trump decides to shut up and cancel his press conference. Congress debates voting rights and the Electoral Count Act. In Cook Political Reports, Dave Wasserman joins to talk about how redistricting is going much better for Democrats than expected. Still not great. Better than expected.

That's where we're going. That's our standard these days. But first, two cricket pods to check out in 2022 if you haven't yet. X-Ray Vision from Jason Concepcion, where this month he'll be covering the finale of Hawkeye, exploring the post-apocalyptic miniseries Station Eleven, and diving into the new series, The Book of Boba Fett, for which I, Jon Favreau, have been getting lots of accolades on Twitter. Just my mentions are flooded with people who really like it.

This is what happens when Jon Favreau, the other Jon Favreau does something great. I just I just bathe in adoration. How bad do you think his mentions are? His mentions are perfect, actually. People love people love what he's doing. That's what I that's what I get. So you can catch new episodes of X-Ray Vision every Friday and on Wednesdays. Don't miskeep it this week uh lewis and aida are joined by guest host guy branham to talk about what movies and tv shows they're looking forward to in 2022 plus they process the recent losses of betty white joan didion

and bell hooks check it out um all right let's get to the news uh one year ago we all watched donald trump rile up a mob of angry supporters who then broke into the U.S. Capitol, violently assaulted the Capitol police with stun guns, pepper spray, baseball bats and flagpoles and hunted down members of Congress and the vice president in order to stop them for certifying the presidential election for Joe Biden. election for Joe Biden, all while Trump happily watched the scene unfold from the White House. At least seven people died, dozens more were injured, and so far 70 of the attackers have been sentenced for the crimes they committed. It was an attempted overthrow of American democracy, and on Thursday morning, the president marked the anniversary with a speech that made clear who he holds accountable for the attack and why he thinks the threat to democracy still exists. For the first time in our history, a president had not just lost an election. He tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power as a violent mob breached the Capitol.

We didn't see a former president who had just rallied the mob to attack, sitting in the private dining room off the Oval Office in the White House, watching it all on television and doing nothing for hours as police were assaulted, lives at risk, the nation's capital under siege. You can't love your country only when you win. You can't obey the law only when it's convenient. You can't be patriotic when you embrace and enable lies. So I thought this was Biden's most powerful speech since the inaugural address a year ago. I'm interested, though.

A few weeks ago, Biden told reporters, I don't think about the former president. Clearly, this speech, this was I was even surprised. I had like whiplash from this speech because he has been so he has avoided for so long talking about Trump. And it's this sort of like, you know, joke among the staff and sometimes on Twitter. They call him the former guy. Right. It's a whole thing. And he spent a lot of time on this speech talking about Trump. What do you think got into him? I'm getting the sense he said a lot.

He wanted to get off his chest for a very long time about the quote unquote former guy. And it's not just that they were opponents and maybe opponents again. It's like Joe Biden is someone with sort of this deeply held moral code about honesty, integrity, how you treat people, how you treat politics, public service. And there's just no question that Donald Trump offends Joe Biden to his core and never more so than how he handled the election, where you put yourself over your country. And I think that this speech does potentially at least mark a turning point in how Biden is going to approach this because Joe Biden ran on a message of unity. And that is something that is not like bullshit. It is like core to who he is.

Like he wants to bring people together. He wants to work with Republicans. He wants compromise. He wants cooperation. And like that part of Joe Biden's personality can be deeply frustrating to us at a time, where even he will see opportunities to work with people that we find abhorrent, like Mitch McConnell. opportunities to work with people that we find abhorrent like Mitch McConnell.

But I think that what this speech was and doing this so powerfully and aggressively from the Capitol on this day is sort of this acknowledgement from President Biden that unifying the country means you have to take on the people who are trying to divide it for partisan gain and profit, right? That you cannot turn the other cheek when there are people who are actively spreading lies and conspiracy theories and trying to divide Americans and incite violence, right? And that is, and that threat is around the corner and coming closer. I also think you can make an argument that the preservation of democracy has always been even more important to Joe Biden than this theme of unity. Oh, of course. We have sort of lost focus of this in the last year because Joe Biden has dealt with quite a few challenges and, you know, has been

through some really tough political times, has disappointed some people, has angered some people, all this kind of stuff. But if you look at like why Joe Biden ran for president in the first place, talked about Charlottesville, talked about the fact that Trump was in the race, talked about the soul of America, talked about the preservation of democracy. It's clear that you're right. He has a sort of he's offended by Donald Trump, I think is how you put it. But I think it isn't just personal and it's much bigger than Donald Trump. I think that you can tell when someone's giving a speech if they really, truly believe in what they're saying, if they care about the speech, or if they're just sort of reciting what's on the page or on the prompter. And Joe Biden cared about that speech. He cared

deeply about the inaugural address. He cared deeply about the parts of his convention speech when he was talking about the preservation of democracy. This is something that animates him. And I also think it's like the challenge of our time right now. I mean, that is the fight. since November has been about the election and democracy and voting, not in ways that we like, not in ways that are true, in ways that are completely dangerous. But that's his message. And the anti-democratic faction that he's leading, that's what they care about too. And we have, I think, bemoaned on this podcast how you take know, you take polls of, you know, way more Republicans think that democracy is threatened right now than Democrats. And I think in terms of voters, and I think that, and polls show that, Joe Biden today tried to join the debate that Donald Trump has been having and saying this is the most important issue of our time, that if we do not have democracy, if we don't fight to save democracy,

nothing else matters. We're not going to make progress on climate change, on student debt, on police violence, on anything else that we care about. There will be zero progress if we do not preserve democracy first. And whether that's Donald Trump attacking it, whether it's the people who attack the Capitol, whether it's Ron DeSantis, whoever else comes along, the preservation of democracy is foundational to all the other progress we want to achieve in this country. that a politician has wanted to give for a long time and hasn't been able to for whatever reason, right? Their political advisor said it was the wrong time. You're trying to get through your legislative agenda or you have to wait until – like he – like I think when I saw Biden give the speech, I thought a little bit about how Obama delivered the race speech in 2008, which is a speech he'd wanted to give for a very long time. Everyone had told him probably incorrectly

not to do it. The moment forced it. And he gave it this. I sort of watched this thinking Joe Biden has wanted to say this for a very, very long time and could not or did not. And now I got the chance to and he did it with gusto. And I think it played very well, in my opinion. Yeah. And I hope he talks about it more. And look, like the circumstances don't always allow you to give a speech like this all the time. He's dealing with a million other issues that as president of the United States, he has to grapple with. So it's not like every week he can go out and give a democracy speech. I'm not Pollyannish like that. But I do think it has to be core to his message as president.

I think one of the reasons I'm sure political advisors have been nervous about him talking about all the time is, you know, it doesn't connect to directly to people's lives. Or at least when you ask voters about it doesn't connect directly to their lives. And maybe they care more about their jobs and the economy and their financial well-being. And I get that all that is probably true with voters. But this is the threat we're facing. So you have to make the case for it. You have to make the case why it's important. And I think you have to connect why it's important to people's everyday lives. And that's a challenging task. But it's a task that I think that the White

House and all Democrats and all of us actually need to need to fulfill. Like knowing how these things play out in the White House, I'm sure there's this view that's like, once we get Build Back Better behind us and the pandemic's in a better place, we will focus on voting rights and democracy. And then it's like Joe Manchin still sitting out there making it difficult. Oh, the pandemic's back. I remember this. We had all these things we wanted to do in early 2010 that we will do once healthcare is behind us. And then healthcare was not behind us for so long that you never get to. And I think what January 6th gave him the opportunity or the reason to give the speech, I think the White House and he had wanted to give for a while now. So Trump had a press conference scheduled for today that he canceled at the last minute

in a statement where he promised to say whatever he was going to say today at his January 15th rally in Arizona. Tune in. What do you think happened there? What do you think happened with Trump? Well, whenever Trump does anything, there are sort of two potential reasons why. There's, I guess, technically a third one, which we can discard because it's impossible, which is like, it's the right thing to do, or it's never that, right?

So it's either because he views it as good strategy or it's pure selfishness, right? The good strategy take here would be, yeah, the party, Republican Party still love, voters still love Trump. They agree with his bullshit about the election being stolen. What they don't like is people violently assaulting

the Capitol. So it seems like a bad day to pop your head up and remind everyone that you fomented that. It would, it's going to, it would invariably, if he were to have given that press conference, it would have led to, you know, a bunch of bad press coverage,

which he actually does hate. And it would force some Republicans to attack him, right? And elected Republicans. And not just Liz Cheney's, but it would be, it's, it would be divisive within the party. The other reason is one that Maggie Haberman reported out on Twitter

the other day, which is Trump found out that the networks were unlikely to cover his press conference live, so he canceled it. So I'm going to guess in this case, it was not that he's gotten smarter. It's just he wasn't going to get the attention that the rest of us crave and need like oxygen. So he canceled it. Here's my theory. And I think that Maggie also tweeted this, and I saw some other reporters tweet this too, that like, yes, reporters were going to cover and show up at this speech. I think that his advisors knew it was stupid for him to do. Oh, yeah. Tried to convince him that it was stupid to do, but thought that it would be more effective to tell him that he was not going to get the coverage that he wanted so that he could blame the media who he hates than to tell him the truth, which is that people would not like him doing this because they

don't want to tell him that what he wants to do is a bad idea. What they want to tell him is that he is going to be a victim of media bias against him. And that's a much better way to get him not to do so. Yeah, same, same. Right. I think I agree with you of media bias against him. And that's a much better way to get him not to do so. Yeah, same, same, right? I think I agree with you on what his advisors thought. And I agree that, but the ultimate decision point for Trump was because of the television. And I mean, it was a politically smart decision, whether he made it knowingly or not, whether the advisors, at least, that told him not to to speak up it was politically smart because i think if you first of

all the i think the reaction to joe biden's speech was very positive it was i was i rarely watched cable it was positive on the whole cnn panel everyone was very happy with it um and i think focus group of americans right there Gloria Borger, thumbs up. So I think that like if we had this, you know, Joe Biden giving this serious speech about democracy, everyone giving their, you know, doing their memorials and all this like seriousness, stuff like that. And then that buffoon gets up and starts saying something crazy. Yeah, I think it would have been very bad for him. It's such a funny way to use the term smart to describe this decision, however he came to it, right? Is it smart or is it just not incredibly fucking stupid

to hold a press conference to celebrate the lowest political moment of your life? Well, but the lowest political moment that he has, he is trying to turn into you know something to that everyone should be proud of that's the way he's handling it he's not trying to memory hole it he's trying to now like celebrate it i mean i noticed that he of course he's put out like three statements since biden's speech and one thing i noticed about the last statement is it's like five paragraphs long and like four paragraphs are all about the fucking 2020

election and his grievances. And the last paragraph is about what he calls, you know, Biden administration's failures. And I'm thinking like most Republican strategists would probably look at that last paragraph and think like that's an effective message against Joe Biden. Not the first four paragraphs are fucking crazy, but that's what you get with Donald Trump. I need some reporting on the person who has to take dictation on these statements. I love that story. I love that story. All right. So a year later, we are still dealing with the fallout from the January 6th attack. And I want to start with the legal fallout, move on to the latest in the congressional investigation, and then end with the broader

political impact. On the legal front, Attorney General Merrick Garland gave a speech this week where he said the following about the Justice Department's criminal investigation into the attack. The Justice Department remains committed to holding all January 6th perpetrators at any level accountable under law, whether they were present that day or were otherwise criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy. So Democratic Congressman Ruben Gallego of Arizona had criticized Garland before the speech, before the speech, for being, quote, extremely weak, feckless and, quote, not helpful in terms of preserving our democracy. Wow. Tell us what you really think. What do you make of the debate over whether Garland has been aggressive enough on this issue? I think we don't know the answer to that yet. The Justice Department moves slow and it's going to move particularly slow in a situation that is politically sensitive like this.

And I think it's going to move even slower because one thing that Garland is very committed to is restoring the reputation of independence and integrity of the Department of Justice. So in a case where they are investigating associates and maybe the former president, they are going to make sure that every I is dotted, every T is crossed, every protocol is followed. And I know it can be extremely frustrating. But the fact that it's moving slow shouldn't be a surprise. You can only judge this when it comes to an end. What is going to happen with the criminal referrals on contempt of Congress? What other charges will be brought? But I don't think we should be super surprised that Garland

is moving so carefully because whatever charges are brought must be or indictments are had, it's going to have to be completely on paper trail, career prosecutors, everything has to be completely sort of buttoned up so that it cannot – it will withstand the tremendous scrutiny that it will get from a lot of very bad faith actors in the Republicans in Congress. I think that if Merrick Garland and people at the Justice Department are declining to bring charges or declining to focus on potential criminality because they are concerned about the perception of bias or politicization or stuff like that, then that is a problem and that is wrong. That is clearly what the Mueller team was worried about during that investigation. And we saw how that turned out. But if they are being cautious and taking time for the reasons that you suggest, then you're right. I think we should just deal with that and wait, right? Like part of what

we're fighting for here is the preservation of democracy and the rule of law and institutions. And we want a justice department that takes the time to get it right and actually goes after criminality and wrongdoing and doesn't just prosecute political enemies because everyone wants them to. So, you know, and we don't know, like you said, we don't know what's going on yet. I do know there is some, you know, we have seen before within law enforcement, within the Justice Department, you know, within bureaucracies, people not just doing their jobs, but also deciding to be sort of political communication strategists and wondering how things will play. That becomes problematic, right? You're not a

political communication strategist. You are legal and you should be following the law where it takes you. John, that is incorrect. As you know, from me working in politics, that the only thing you need to be a political communication strategist is to have read a newspaper or have access to the internet. Everyone else can do it at that point. Twitter feed, you're good to go. What do you think he was getting at in that speech? Do think that that that clip that we played do you think that was basically that that line that paragraph was in response to some of the criticism i mean he says you know at any level meaning maybe the maybe the former president of the united states whether they were present that day or were otherwise criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy, which also makes me think not just

the people who strummed the Capitol, but potentially the people who planned January 6th. I don't think he is making promises about the sorts of people who will be charged, but I think he is saying, stay tuned. We are doing more than you think we're doing. We are doing it seriously and we're doing it aggressively, and we hope to have more information for you soon. So there's one development in the House investigation we should talk about, which is that the committee is asking Sean Hannity questions about his communications with Trump and his staff in the days around the attack because they have text messages from Hannity to Mark Meadows warning him that there could be mass resignations from the White House counsel's office if Trump went through with his plan to get Mike Pence to overturn the election.

In one example, Hannity texted, I do not see January 6th happening the way he is being told. No shit. First of all, how cool must it be to work in a White House where you just coordinate daily messaging directly with the hosts of the country's most popular cable news shows? Hey, Jen Psaki, our DMs are open. We can do this for you. Get Joe Biden on the pod. Like, I mean, I'm sure, you know, I'm sure there are plenty of Republicans. There are plenty of people on the right who think that happens.

That like in the Obama White House, you guys were like calling, you know, you were calling Rachel Maddow to coordinator Chris Hayes. I laugh about it because it's so, it is so silly to me. Like, I'll tell you the cable news host I really like, like Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow. They don't always do shows that I think are beneficial to the Democratic Party, nor should they be. That's not their job. We do shows. We are a progressive media company who are former Obama staffers. We say stuff that probably pisses the White House off. You say that probably pisses the White House off.

You say stuff that pisses the White House off. It's amazing to think that as a White House, when you're trying to control your message, you just pick up the phone and coordinate with cable hosts. It's amazing. I mean, this is sort of amusing because it's caught up in this specific investigation. But we already knew from other reporting that Trump would dial Lou Dobbs into policy meetings in the White House. He took advice on a military strike against Iran from Tucker Carlson, who actually argued against the strike, if I remember correctly. There were Fox personalities that he wanted to appoint to the cabinet. There are no lines between Fox and the Trump White House. And so the fact

that Sean Hannity is acting as shadow chief of staff to Trump, it's interesting, but it's not surprising, I guess. It reveals more about just how fake even the thinnest veneer of journalistic integrity at Fox is and how just poorly run the Trump White House is, is that these bozos would be offering you political advice that would be taken very seriously. I think it also goes to a point that you and I have talked about before that I think it's worth talking about again, especially today, which is a lot of these Fox hosts seemed, as it was happening, very worried about the attack and the attempted coup from the messages that we've seen sent to Mark Meadows from Hannity, from Laura Ingraham, from people like that. We also saw around that time, Trump cabinet secretaries resign. Republican leaders in Congress, including fucking Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy, were openly blaming Trump for the insurrection. Lindsey Graham goes on the floor, says, I'm out. Count me out. I'm done. Trump's approval rating fell into the 30s. And yet, here we are a year later, and he is the clear favorite for the Republican nomination in 2024. He's got like a 90% favorability rating among Republican voters. He's got Republican members

of Congress endorsing him, urging him to run again. What do you think happened? Well, let's take Fox and the Republican Party slightly separately here. We know what happened with Fox. They did sort of break with Trump, right? They called Arizona for Biden. They began sort of pushing back on the big lie afterwards pretty aggressively, and they lost their viewers. The ratings went down. progressively and they lost their viewers. The ratings went down. And so what did they do? They swerved completely in the other direction and got more pro-Trump. They cut back on news and put in place more pro-Trump opinion. They purged the people who called the election for Biden. The political staff, they fired them as some sort of sacrifice on a MAGA altar for Trump. And it's like, we know

that Rupert Murdoch and his kids are right-wing ideologues. We know they want to elect Republican politicians because that's what they believe in and they know it's good for them financially. They're also greedy assholes. And so this is where the money is, right? Tucker Carlson wants to make tens of millions of dollars a year. He has to get 5 million people to watch the show. How does he get 5 million people to watch the show? By being a performative, preppy, white supremacist conspiracy theorist. Like that's where the market is.

Republican Party, same thing, right? Where McConnell, with the great courage of anonymity, suggests through Jonathan Martin that he would like to, of the New York Times,ity, suggests through Jonathan Martin that he would like to, of the New York Times, ask Trump to resign. Same thing with McCarthy. Gets like a couple of mean emails from some Republican supporters. And next thing you know, Rick Scott of the National Republican Senatorial Committee that Mitch McConnell controls is giving Trump a fake trophy. And what they will all say is this is where the base is. This is what the base wants. Well, this is what the base wants is because you don't ever give them anything else. No one has the courage to actually stand up and say this is wrong for more than five fucking seconds at a time.

And if people actually stood up, not just Liz Cheney, but if McConnell and McCarthy had stood up and fought back, if other Republicans had fought back, you might have a different situation. But they all popped their head up, took a shot, and then went right back in. Well, partly because who has more sway with the Republican base? Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy or Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham? And Ben Shapiro and whatever, Dan Bongino and all these fucking Steve Bannon. Like that's that's who has the power over the base. And so like, you know, Kevin McCarthy, Mitch McConnell are no match for those people. They can't do it.

That's in the look. And also, you know, to be a Republican right now, it's not a question of ideology anymore. It's a question of identity. And when the identity is tied up with Donald Trump and when Donald Trump says the election was rigged and I have been wronged and so have you, that becomes an issue of identity, which is much stronger than ideology and much harder to puncture. If you're some Republican elected official who, for some reason, wants to do the right thing, of which there are vanishingly few. And look what happened to the 10 Republicans in the House that impeached him. They voted to impeach. You know, they're either not, they're either retired or not running or have primary challenges.

They got death threats. Like, that's what happens. So this is the party now. And then I guess the question is, like, would you say that Trump and the big lie have an even greater hold on Republican politicians and Republican voters today than they did then back in than a year ago? Yes, much greater. than back in a year ago? Yes, much greater. And in part for the Republican Party politicians,

think about this. Most of them, the elected officials, the party leaders, never liked Trump, right? Particularly the ones in Congress. They thought he was an idiot. He was embarrassing. They were just sort of expecting and waiting for him to lose in 2016. And then he didn't.

And they kind of kept waiting for him to light himself on fire all the time. But the fact that he lost an election, was impeached twice, fomented a violent insurrection on the Capitol, committed multiple crimes, and is still powerful today, says to them, you cannot beat this guy. We have no hope. his his his grip is much much stronger than before and again how do you run against donald trump if you also embrace the lie that he was cheated in the last election because if you embrace the lie that he was cheated in the last election, then he's the rightful winner and he should get to win again. They're all so dumb.

Sometimes I do think a smart Republican would say, like, you know, I don't know for sure if there was fraud in the last election. Maybe there was. But the real question is, why did Donald Trump let the election get close enough for Joe Biden to steal? And start inserting some doubt that maybe Donald Trump shouldn't have let it get that close because he was a fucking loser. Which is basically Chris Christie's message now. You know, Chris Christie, who just is saying he doesn't believe in the big lie. And he's saying, you know, Donald Trump's a loser and stuff like that. But you can't call Donald Trump a loser if you're a Republican running against him unless you say that the election was legitimate.

The Republicans have been making the same mistake since the 2016 Republican primary, which is they just keep waiting for Donald Trump to go away on his own, to drop out of the race, to quit, to light himself on fire. And so they never make an argument against him. They just make his argument in the hope that when he goes away, they'll be the person doing the best Donald Trump karaoke impression for the base. And you need a different argument. I think the best thing to do is call him a loser. Republicans have been caricaturing and attacking Joe Biden for two years now. And we obviously think that that character is completely wrong, but in the hermetically sealed Republican information ecosystem, Joe Biden is a doddering, sleepy old man who can do nothing. And he beat Donald Trump by 8 million fucking votes.

What a loser he is, Trump is. what? Yeah, like like Trump. Christie is the absolute worst person to make that argument because Donald Trump kicked his ass not too long ago. But if someone really wanted to beat Trump and someone like Ron DeSantis, like that's how you would do it. I just don't think anyone

have the courage to do it. Shouldn't have let the election get close enough for Joe Biden to steal. That's the that's the anti-Trump message. If any of you guys want it. But here's so there's if you want to read more about this, by the way, there's two, I think, excellent pieces. The New York Times and The Washington Post did great pieces about how Trump's grip over the Republican Party strengthened from over the last year. I know

Maggie Haberman wrote The New York Times one and Ashley Parker wrote The Washington Post one. There are other reporters I'm forgetting now, but they laid out like at least 163 Republicans who have embraced Trump's false claims are running for statewide statewide positions that would give them authority over the administration of elections. According to a Washington Post tally, the list includes 69 candidates for governor in 30 states, as well as 55 candidates for the U.S. Senate, 13 candidates for state attorney general and 18 for secretary of state. Senate, 13 candidates for state attorney general and 18 for secretary of state. At least five candidates for the U.S. House were at the Capitol during this January 6th riots. They're running for the fucking house. So that part's pretty scary. Then there's an interesting part in the Washington Post story that says one prominent Republican consultant who has advised clients on getting Trump's endorsement said he increasingly counsels candidates to walk a fine line. The former president, quote, isn't going to endorse you if you say he's wrong and there was no fraud, but you don't want to make your whole campaign about that either, the consultant said.

What do you make of that? That like you have all these candidates running on the big lie and a lot of scary positions, and then you have consultants advising them, yeah, but it's not super popular in a general election in a swing district or a swing state to get too close to Trump or talk too much about Trump. large portions of the Republican Party believe that the election was stolen in some way, shape, or form. Either they believe, they want to believe, or they're willing to tell pollsters some version of the big lie. The efforts to steal the election violently, extra-legally, otherwise are incredibly unpopular. Data for Progress did one of their polls. They looked at four swing congressional districts in the state of Georgia. In the state of Georgia, only 52% of the voters think Joe Biden won the election legitimately, which is basically his margin plus a couple points, right?

And I think it's like 17% of Republicans think the election was legitimate. But the people who stormed the Capitol, what happened in the Capitol that day have a negative 60 approval rating. And so you have to fight, walk this line. If you're a Republican, like you definitely need Trump's endorsement, or at least you think you do. We'll find out later this year if that really matters as much as people think it does. But you have to sort of be, and this is the Youngkin approach, you have to be just Trumpy enough, but not so Trumpy that you turn off the large, strong, enduring anti-Trump majority in this country. So what do we do as Democrats or anyone who wants to save democracy, you don't have to be a Democrat, about a party that is in thrall to the big lie and donald trump more tweeting more tweeting rting rting is fine smashing the like button also fine

um you know all that kind of stuff will do it posting i don't want to just say tweet to post post some stuff on instagram that'll work yeah that's right. All the social platforms. There's probably there's like one silver bullet TikTok that someone just has to come up with. It will end this whole problem. Or or get really angry at Eric Adams on Twitter. Also works well. Also very effective. OK, that's it. That's people. That's a joke. Tweeting is not going to solve this problem. It's not going to exacerbate it necessarily either. Feel free to post. But the thing to understand about this is that has been there from the beginning of time. What is different now and more dangerous now is, one, they have a leader in Donald Trump, someone who just recently was President of the United States. And our political system,

both by flaw designed by the founders and ruthless exploitation from the modern Republican Party, have given that distinct minority more political power than they have had in a very long time. Whether it's the geographic bias of the Senate, the Republican bias of the Electoral College, all of them is that the parts of the American population that make up this dangerous faction are dramatically overrepresented in our system. And we have to understand that we are not going to convince them to change their minds, right? There's not an argument. There is not reason. What I think we really have to do, and it's really hard and really unsatisfying. And many of the solutions run into the same Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema problem. But the way to address this problem over the medium term and the long term is make our system more democratic, small d, right? Make it more

representative of the anti-Trump majority in this country. The anti-Trump majority means the millions of people who voted against him in 2016, 2020, but also the 40% or so of our population that does not vote. Do we bring them in? It's everything from fighting back against voter suppression, expanding access to the ballot to as many eligible voters as possible, making it as easy as possible to vote, making DC a state, giving Puerto Rico the opportunity to be a state, doing those sorts of things that have a political system that much better represents the America we really are, not the America that is trying to be destroyed by this small, dangerous group. I completely agree with all that. I would say that before we can do that,

before we can actually make those reforms, we have to beat them at the ballot box. We have to beat them within the, blah. We do not yet have the power to change this very unfair system. So we have to beat them within the system like we did in 2020. The good news is that faction that you said whose minds were not going to change, we do not have to convince them to win. We do have to convince and persuade the coalition that showed up to the polls in 2020. And the way that we have to beat them, the way that to beat Republicans is to persuade people to vote with us. People who do not agree with Democrats on every issue. People who may be disappointed with Democrats on plenty of issues. People who do not think like us. People who do not have all of our opinions. And we have to do whatever it takes to persuade these people to vote with us and join us, because if we can't persuade them, the fascists win. That's it. And I think sometimes we forget

about this because it is hard work to do persuasion. It is hard work to persuade people who do not think like you, who do not believe everything you believe. And sometimes it is uncomfortable because you have to compromise with people who you don't necessarily agree with all the time. But we are in a fight for the future of democracy. Everything is at stake. So whether it's making peace with the far left, the center left, former Republicans, independents, people who don't vote, whatever it may be, our job is to assemble that coalition and to keep it together in the next couple years, even when it is uncomfortable, even when it is difficult, even when it is fucking annoying. Because that's the only option we have, is to beat them at the ballot box. And the idea that

there's a law that's going to fix this, that we can pass, that there's some one person we can elect that's going to let us all go back to our lives is fantasy. It's fantasy. The only way to get this done is to actually go and talk to people who disagree with you and persuade them. That's it. If I could be in charge of the Democratic Party for one day, one thing I would do on my first day is ban the verb turnout from our lexicon. Persuade, right? Whether we're talking about a swing voter, a non-voter, someone who has voted for Democrats in the last seven elections, we are persuading them to vote. We are persuading them to vote for us.

We are not turning them out. Turning them out implies that we're just going to inform them of the time and place of their voting and assume they will show up. Well, there's also a very reductionist view of turnout that there's a bunch of people who don't vote, and they don't vote because Democrats don't espouse progressive enough policies. And if only we show up to their doors and tell them we actually espouse more progressive policies on every issue, they're

going to get out their door. They're going to go out the door and vote. And sometimes that's true with some voters. Absolutely. Not a lot of other voters. Some voters want Democrats to be way more progressive on one issue and way less progressive on another issue. And what I think we have not understood yet is that a lot of voters, particularly voters who do not vote often, and those voters are disproportionately younger and disproportionately voters of color, and there is an assumption, which is understandable, that a lot of these voters are naturally more progressive with their values. And again, on some things, they absolutely are. But a lot of voters are really fucking complicated,

and especially voters who don't pay close attention to politics and don't pay close attention to the news are complicated in the positions they hold and the ideologies they have. And that is something I think we ignore at our peril. Got to persuade. Not happening right now. I feel like Joe Biden, you had a lot to get off your chest there i you know it's again with offline i'm tweeting me less but i'm seeing a lot of it and it's just it's not great dan

it's not great yeah i always think like the a liberal rejoinder to Bush's war on terror was that brute force was the wrong answer and that what we really have to do long term is win hearts and minds in the Middle East, in Afghanistan and places like that. And I hate to say that that's what's happening at home now, but it is like this is a this is a battle for the hearts and minds of the American people. And honestly, that's what that's what Trump and his goons see it as. They're not offering policies. They're not like offering to like tangibly make people's lives better. They are trying to they are trying to make their narrative the popular narrative in America to make their story the story that is popular. And we have to start telling a story that is just as popular. And that's bigger than policies. That's bigger than anything else. It is a larger story about why we believe this democracy should

exist. And it's a lot of work we have ahead of us. President Biden and Vice President Harris also pushed for the passage of voting rights in their speeches. And Chuck Schumer has said that the Senate will take up the Freedom to Vote Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and filibuster reform by January 17th. Joe Manchin made some news on the issue this week in one of his patented press gaggles that is both indecipherable and enraging. You don't know what the fuck he was saying, but you're really mad anyway. what the fuck he was saying, but you're really mad anyway. He said he'd be open to modest filibuster reforms, such as changing the threshold

from 60 votes to three-fifths of senators present in the chamber. So it goes under 60 if people are not there. But he also said he doesn't want to make those changes unless some Republicans agree.

No takers yet, but a new bipartisan group of senators has been meeting to talk about reforming the Electoral Count Act of 1887 to clarify the role that the vice president and Congress play in certifying the elections. But the White House, Democratic leaders and activists are worried that this would be a distraction from passing voting rights. Dan, let's start with voting rights. Do Manchin's comments make you think we're any closer to passing something? mansion's comments make you think we're any closer to passing something these days my eyes see joe mansion when he speaks but in my head i just hear adam sandler giving the speech in billy madison i have no idea what you said and we're all dumber for having heard it like i have no idea what any

of those words he said means like it it certainly doesn't make me feel good about anything i guess the victory is I don't feel any worse than I felt before about the prospects being quite, quite low. I think that – I guess if you were trying to assign meaning to this centrist pablum that Joe Manchin offers, it is – he thinks there are problems with the filibuster. He is open to some very, very moderate solutions that would make things somewhat would make the Senate function better, but would have zero impact on the passage of legislation that only one party supports. Yeah, because also, again, what he's trying to do is let's pass reforms that are so mild that Republicans will go along with them. If Republicans are willing to go along with them, then they're too mild to help us pass voting rights. That's sort of the, that is the, that's, that's the, where we've been stuck, where we've been stuck for the last several months.

What's your take on the effort to reform the Electoral Count Act? So this is, I think, pretty interesting because it sort of rolled out in the way a lot of McConnell's position changes roll out, which is you hear some rumors he might be open to it, and then there's a leak to his chosen stenographers at Politico to tell us what he's open to. And then the trial balloon floats up, and we find out what happens. And then we find out today that there was a Zoom call, a bipartisan Zoom call, an electoral counts effort organized by Susan Collins, which is just a sentence that makes me want to bang my head against the desk. Designed to trigger, specifically designed to trigger.

What I think is happening here is, with Mitch McConnell, who is the human embodiment of cynicism, he obviously doesn't, he's not doing this because he thinks it's the right thing, the patriotic thing, the thing that's good for democracy or the system. You just have to think very specifically about – with all things McConnell, you have to ask, how does this help him? believes that if he could create some momentum around a fix for the Electoral Counts Act, which needs to get fixed because it is the loophole that Trump and his MAGA acolytes tried to exploit on a year ago today. If you get some momentum around that, it would forestall the slight possibility that Democrats could convince Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to pass the Freedom to Vote Act. The reason Mitch McConnell cares so passionately about the Freedom to Vote Act is not just that he hates democracy as part

of his core being, it is that he wants to be majority leader more than anything else. To be majority leader, he has to win Arizona and Georgia, two states whose voting laws have been changed since Democrats won those states two years ago. And so anything he can do to prevent, to ensure that there's no chance that the voter suppression laws in place will be undone, he will do. And this is one way to do it. And as people have compared it to his decision to sort of back bipartisan infrastructure talks in the sense that that would take momentum out of the sales of the Build Back Better Act. I think there's a similar thing at play here. I think that preventing election subversion, not what happens before the votes are cast, but after, preventing people from literally overturning the election, overturning the will of the voters, is maybe one of the most important

challenges we face. So if we can do something about that, we should do it. I think it's the top priority. There is a very real scenario we have seen. We saw it play out in 2020, could happen very easily happen again in 2024, where you have, you know, Republican state legislatures, Republican secretaries of state, Republican governors refusing to certify, people sending two slates of electors to Congress, Republicans in Congress voting to not certify the election, all that kinds of mischief. If we can stop that, we should. I think the question is, does reforming the Electoral Count Act actually do enough to prevent election subversion? So say you reform the law and you say the vice president's role is purely ministerial, right? Like the vice president has no power to overturn the election. And you because now you have to

spell that out after what Trump tried to get Pence to do. So you reform that. Say you also have in the law, OK, it takes two thirds of a majority in each house to reject the electors from any given state. So therefore, it's not purely partisan or it's less likely that it's purely partisan. And so now you basically get rid of all the mischief that can happen in Congress. You tie Congress's hands, you tie the vice president's hands so they can't do anything to fuck with the election. Great. Now we reform the Electoral Count Act. Now what happens when a Republican state controlled by a Republican governor, Republican secretary of state, Republican legislature that the Democrat wins in 2024 says we're going to send our slate of Trump electors to Congress.

Fuck whatever happened in the state election. Now it's actually harder for Congress and anyone else to do anything about that because you reformed the electoral count act. And the real problem was the state legislature sending the wrong slate of electors. So this is why like, it's less about for me, at least it's less about like, oh, it's a trap.

Mitch McConnell wants us to do the ECA and now we're not going to get the Freedom to Vote Act or the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. Like, frankly, it's going to be really hard to get those done anyway for the reasons we just talked about with Joe Manchin. more concerned that an actual reform of the Electoral Count Act won't necessarily solve the problem of election subversion and potentially may make it more difficult because it doesn't focus on what's going on in the states, which is the real threat. Yeah, I read about this in Messagebox today, which is the sort of I've been like searching, like, what what do we do to stop the Republicans from stealing the election, which they are advertising they're doing, right? This is the least well-hidden plan in the history of American crime.

It's happening right before our eyes. And there's, you know, and everyone's like, well, we've got to keep the House. That's really hard. We've got to keep the Senate. That's going to be challenging. And we've got to pass voting rights. And Joe Manchin sucks. And it's just, it's like, goddammit, like, it's so hard.

Well, like, what's like, what are some like actionable things you can do? One thing is that the six states that decided the election in 2020, one of the reasons why Republicans can steal the election is that of those six states, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Georgia, Arizona, four of them had Democratic governors, even though they had Republican legislatures, which said, all your plans end there. At the end of the day, the governor can stop you from doing what you want to do. And the two Republican governors who were there were thought that it was still good politics to be on the side of vote counting,

Brian Kemp and David Ducey. There is a very real possibility. All six of those states are up. Governorships are up in 2022. It's a very, we have a chance to win all six of them. We also have the possibility of losing all six of them. The Cook Report is all of them, says all of them are toss-ups. And so if you're like, what is one thing we can do that's even more effective in the short term than fixing the Electoral Counts Act? It is elect those governors to do everything we can to protect the will of the voters in those states. And along with those governors, secretaries of state in those. Yeah, exactly. Because again, and we've talked state legislature, too, but we've talked about how state legislatures are even more gerrymandered than congressional districts. But secretaries of state, governors in purple states, very winnable.

They should be. And that's where we should focus. All right. When we come back, Dave Wasserman talks to Dan about the surprisingly not horrible maps that are coming out of the redistricting process. Joining us on the pod to talk all things redistricting is Mr. Redistrict himself, Dave Wasserman, The Cook Report. Dave, welcome back to Pod Save America. It's great to be back. Thanks. Dave Wasserman, The Cook Report. Dave, welcome back to Positive America. It's great to be back. Thanks. So you recently released an analysis of the redistricting process to date, which had some surprising news, I think, for Democrats who have been dreading this redistricting process, where you say that despite Democratic fears, this process is currently producing a congressional map that is slightly less biased in the GOP's favor than last decades, and that redistricting is turning out to be a wash. How did that happen? And how do you come

to that analysis? Well, those of us who have been reading the Cook Political Report closely in the past year, know that we never thought this was going to be a wipeout for Democrats. There are a variety of reasons why this cycle is actually modestly better for Democrats than 2011. And keep in mind that many of the states Republicans control in redistricting, they already got to gerrymander 10 years ago. But part of it was the census, the fact that the urban and suburban areas had more people than initial estimates suggested and that rural areas lost more population, part of it's been the process. The fact is Democrats got to draw the maps they wanted in Illinois, New Mexico, Oregon. They got the maps that they wanted out of commissions, especially in California, but

also in New Jersey and Michigan. Whereas Republicans, they've been mostly defensive in the gerrymanders that they've passed. Texas is exhibit A, where they shored up nine of their own incumbents, didn't really go after any Democratic seats except one in the Rio Grande Valley. But the net result is a more secure Republican map because they purged a lot of Democrats and minorities from their own districts rather than trying to seize a lot of new Democratic seats. The same thing is true in a number of smaller states, including Indiana and Iowa, and it's looking like Missouri and Kentucky as well. So the end result is a House map that is less biased in favor of Republicans and more equitable for the parties. I would

strongly caveat that by saying this is also a less competitive map than the current one. We're seeing a decline in the number of swing seats, which means that the House throughout the decade is likely to come down to a pretty small set of districts. And most voters aren't really going to have a say by the time November comes around. Yeah, that's, I think, an under-discussed point, because we've been talking about this redistricting process about Democrats, Republicans, who it benefits, but there is a question about what it means for democracy and that there will be, can you sort of quantify how many fewer swing seats there will be this time

around than there have been in the past? Yeah. So seats that were decided by less than 10 points in the 2020 election for either Biden or Trump, there are in the states that have completed new maps, that number has declined from 62 districts to 46. So that's a 26 percent drop. If you narrow that range to districts that were within five points either way in 2020, they've declined from 39 to 23, so a 41% drop. So by the time this process is over and we're about two-thirds of the way through pending lawsuits, then I would expect to see about a third of the current swing seats eliminated from the map. And what that means, I think, for sort of our listeners to think about is that you're going to be in a situation where for the vast majority, and even more than in the past, members of Congress, their greatest political threat is in their primary, not the general election. Is that correct? That's right. We're seeing a rise in ideological cul-de-sac districts where

the vicious cycle is already underway, where the political parties don't really care about recruiting candidates with broader appeal. And so the winner in those districts, the foregone conclusion districts, are people who have the most viral appeal on social media, whether it's left or right. Before we started this off with a optimistic-ish take for how this process has played out thus far for Democrats, you also say in your analysis that the GOP is still a big favorite to take the House. And so could you sort of square those two things between the fact that as you state in your analysis, there will be more districts that Biden won in 2022 than 2020 if this process continues at a pace, but Republicans are still a big favorite? Why is that? But so many of them are going to be narrowly won Biden districts. We're talking places Biden only won with 50, 51, 52 percent, or even some cases less than 51% of the vote to today when he's at 43%, 44%. Obviously, it's not an apples to apples comparison, but you get the point. A number of those very close

districts would flip red if Biden remains that low. And you added a stat in your analysis, and if you can't do this off the top of your head, I won't blame you, but I will be slightly surprised, about the number of districts that Trump won in 2016 that he then lost in 2018 and how that shift affects us Democrats in 2022. Yeah. In 2018, Democrats didn't pick up a single district that gave Trump more than 55% of the vote, but they still picked up 40 seats. So that goes to show you just, you know, the narrow trading range that exists, it can still swing a lot. Now, there are 48 districts currently that Biden won with less than 55% of the vote. And I would expect that number,

or I should say actually Democrats hold 48 seats in the House that Biden won or lost, but received less than 55% of the vote. So I expect that number to be similar after new maps are passed, which means that there is still a ripe battlefield for Republicans to take the majority. Keep in mind, they only need

five seats to take control. When you go back to 2018, Democrats needed 24 seats to take control. So the fact that Republicans only need a fifth as many, they're starting from a better place. In your analysis, you talk about how the question of who's, quote unquote, winning redistricting can be looked at on a couple of different measures. One is, which you mentioned, the number of seats that Joe Biden or Donald Trump won in 2020. That is one that shows the Democrats may be, quote unquote, winning or doing better. But there's another one about seats you have or seats you can get that I thought was very interesting. Could you help explain that? Yeah. So, you know, if we're just judging the underlying partisan distribution of the House

without factoring in which party currently holds those seats, redistricting is a net positive for Democrats. You know, you're going to have more Democratic leaning seats after this is over than you had before, in part because, you know, we've got more commissions. Democrats also have a pretty big state they control, New York State, which hasn't drawn its lines yet. And Republicans have been defensive. But when you factor in who controls those seats now, Democrats control most of the most marginal districts that are both getting bluer and most of the marginal districts that are getting redder. And so when a seat gets bluer and gets taken off the battlefield, well, you know, that is a positive for Democrats, but it doesn't add to Democrats total in the House. When a seat gets redder, it increases Republicans' chances of picking up those seats. So when you factor that in, the practical effect of these new maps is still likely to benefit Republicans. And I'll give you a quick example, the state of New Jersey, you know, the commission in New Jersey picked the Democrats map, and it's a

good trade for Democrats in the sense that it shores up three of their vulnerable incumbents and makes only one of their vulnerable incumbents even worse off. And yet, the practical effect of that map is likely to be a 9-3 Democratic split out of New Jersey, which is down one from the current 10-2. Right. And so, as you said, this process is two-thirds of the way done. There are some really big states that could really affect the process still underway. What are the things that this, what are you still watching for? And what are the states you're watching or the court rulings that are out there that could change this dynamic and push it more in the favor of one party or the other? Yeah, there are four big states that I'm watching. And the first up are North Carolina and Ohio. These are both places where Republicans passed really, really brutal gerrymanders that could get them upwards of 80% of the seats in those states. And yet there's good reason to believe that state Supreme Courts will overturn those maps

on state constitutional grounds. Keep in mind that the Supreme Court ruled that you can't bring a federal claim, but you still can bring a state-based claim, or you can bring a federal racial gerrymandering claim, and we'll see a couple of those adjudicated. But if the state Supreme Courts in Ohio and North Carolina strike down those Republican maps, it could mean an extra two or three Democratic seats in those states over the maps that Republicans have passed. And then you get to Florida, which is Republicans' biggest redistricting weapon. Republicans there could potentially convert that delegation from 16-11 to as wide as 19-9

in Republicans' favor. The only thing stopping them, though, is the threat of Florida's anti-gerrymandering law, which voters passed in 2010 and has to be interpreted by the Florida Supreme Court. And so far, the proposals that Republicans have unveiled actually aren't that bad for Democrats, which has led some Republicans to accuse their own party of surrendering. And then you get to New York State. And this is really the Mac daddy of them all. New York currently has 19 Democrats and eight Republicans. And even though it's losing a seat, it is the single biggest redistricting weapon for either party in the country.

Democrats could conceivably draw a map that's as lopsided as 23 to 3 in their favor. Of course, to do so, they'd have to link Staten Island to Park Slope and a bunch of other things that probably don't make a lot of cultural sense. However, if Democrats get that map through in February, then the redistricting outlook would look even better for them. I think all of those things would need to go Democrats' way to give them a realistic chance of holding on to the majority. But even if they were to go Democrats' way, Biden's approval rating would need to get much closer to 50% for them to hold on. And so last question for you. We're talking a lot about how this is going to affect this cycle, right? And we saw that, you know, Democrats took the House

in 2018 on a pretty gerrymandered map that from 2011. Are there anything you're looking at in terms of demographic changes or population changes over the rest of this decade that could change how these maps look for the various parties or what the risks are for the parties as they're constituting them? Yeah, there's no doubt that demographic change can overtake the best laid plans of partisan mapmakers towards the end of a decade. And what we saw was that a number of Republican drawn maps in Texas and Georgia and Michigan, they unraveled in 2018, in part because of demographic change, in part because Republicans drew their advantage in many districts to be too thin to maximize their seats.

What we're seeing this time is Republicans are kind of piling up the sandbags even higher, so to speak, where instead of just drawing a Trump plus 10 district, in Texas, they drew a lot of Trump plus 20 districts. And that is essentially trying to guard against this demographic tidal wave that has threatened Republicans the past decade. What we could see, though, is in California, there are a number of seats that are long-term opportunities for Democrats over the course of the next decade. We could see the same thing play out in Maryland, in a seat that was essentially tied between Biden and Trump. But if enough black voters move into kind of the hinterlands outlying Baltimore and DC, maybe that district gets more competitive. So there is long-term upside for Democrats in new maps. It just may take a while

or a good political cycle for that to be realized. Dave Wasserman, thank you so much for joining us and for all of this information. We will keep following you very closely as this process plays out over the coming months. Thank you. You got it, Dan. Thanks to Dave Wasserman for joining us today. Everyone have a great weekend and we'll see you next week. Bye, Dan. and Olivia Martinez is our associate producer. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somanator, Sandy Gerrard, Hallie Kiefer, Madison Holman, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team,

Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montooth. Our episodes are uploaded as videos at youtube.com slash crookedmedia.