Pod Save America - “Biden v. Florida Man.”

Episode Date: August 5, 2021

Joe Biden and Ron DeSantis fight over mask and vaccine requirements as Delta ravages Florida, Congressman Mondaire Jones talks to Jon Favreau about the new eviction moratorium and student debt relief, and as Democrats worry aloud about losing their majority in 2022, new polling from Data for Progress points to messages about Republicans that might just save the House.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/podsaveamerica. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Pfeiffer. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's pod, President Biden tells Republican governors who won't help end the pandemic to get out of the way. Congressman Mondaire Jones talks to me about the new eviction moratorium. And as House Democrats start to worry aloud about losing their majority in 2022, some new polling from Data for Progress tells us which messages just might save the House. But first, good news, you can now binge the entire season of Edith, a scripted podcast from Crooked and Q-Code. As Vulture puts it, Edith is a fiction podcast that stands as a really good time,

minute to minute, and that's no small feat. And don't miss the latest episode of America Dissected, where Dr. Abdul El-Sayed is joined by the author of The Green New Deal, Rihanna Gunn-Wright. Listen to Edith and America Dissected wherever you get your podcasts. All right, let's get to the news. Just last week, we were debating on this very podcast where the President Biden should come out in favor of vaccine requirements, which the White House had been hesitant to do. All that changed on Tuesday when the President

not only urged cities and states to require proof of vaccination for restaurants and other public spaces, he also called out Republican governors who've banned businesses and schools from acquiring vaccines or masks. Here's a clip. If some governors aren't willing to do the right thing to beat this pandemic, then they should allow businesses and universities who want to do the right thing to be able to do it. I say to these governors, please help. But you aren't going to help at least get out of the way of the people who are trying to do the right thing. So when we talked about this last Monday, Tommy and Lovett argued that Biden himself using the bully pulpit to push vaccine requirements might risk further polarizing the issue.

I disagreed. What do you think? Is it should I say you're both right or should I say you're both wrong? I mean, the hottest take would be that we're both wrong. And then you can you know, you can just slide right in. There is the right one. I think, I don't know whether you're both right or you're both wrong. It's not the most collegial answer, but it's the hottest take.

That's the goal, right? It's the hottest take. That's what we're doing here. Tell Elijah to get this clip ready, because it's going to be searing hot today. That's what we're doing here. Tell Elijah to get this clip ready because it's going to be searing on him. In all seriousness, it is definitely going to polarize the idea of vaccine mandates more. But I think that is also a risk worth taking. I don't think there's another choice.

In an era of negative polarization, Joe Biden, speaking about anything, will polarize it in some way among Republicans. If Biden were to come out and announce that he has decided the grass is green and the sky is blue, there are going to be some of the Republicans who are going to switch their opinion and think the sky is green and the grass is blue. That's just the world in which we live. But he should do it because it's the right thing to do. These governors are – they are killing people. I mean, it seems like a horrible thing to say, but people are going to die because of this. People are going to get sick because of it. People are going to lose their jobs because of it. Kids are going to miss out on school and have their education messed with because of it. And he should absolutely call it out because the people in the – Joe Biden is right

on the science. He's right on the medicine. And he is right politically. In these states, the majority of people agree with Joe Biden about mask mandates and vaccine mandates and those situations. But so he should absolutely call it out so that the residents of those states know whose fucking fault it is that this is happening. It's not Joe Biden's fault. It's not random unvaccinated people going around. It's a bunch of Republican politicians who are doing performative cruelty on behalf of a minority of their citizens who have a disproportionate amount of political power. And I am very worked up about this.

It is because you know who was being, this may seem obvious right now, but the people who are at most risk because of this are the kids who have no choice about being vaccinated. They're all going back to school. They're all at much greater risk. And there's obviously lots of questions about whether kids get it as often or they get it as bad. But that's not even really the point, is that by your choice to not get vaccinated, it's not just about you deciding to put yourself at risk. You're putting everyone else at risk, you deciding to put yourself at risk. You're putting everyone else at risk and you're putting children at risk. And I think the children aspect of this,

the risk that people are putting to kids should be pointed out more because that is what, that's what's coming to Florida schools. These kids are all going to go back to school in many cases without a mask mandate because Ron DeSantis said they can't do it. Even if you are a school or a city, you want to do the right thing. And so Biden calling that out as the right thing to do, I think it could in some ways put, it might polarize it some among people who already feel this way, but it could put political pressure on them to do something different. Yeah. My view on this is that I care a lot about polarization and persuasion when we are, when the goal is to try to get votes. We're not trying to get votes right now. We're trying to get shots in arms, right? So we're not, the persuasion thing the goal is to try to get votes. We're not trying to get votes right now. We're trying to get shots in arms, right?

So the persuasion thing has run its course. The goal is to get shots in arms. First and most importantly, vaccine requirements save lives and they work. There's consistently 6% to 7% of people in polls who say that they will not get the vaccine unless they are required to. And then if they're required to, they will. That translates to millions of people nationwide. France did this. And as soon as they announced a vaccine requirement, millions and millions of people signed up in the next 48 hours. It worked.

Second, like you said, vaccine requirements are popular. A poll of 20,000 adults in June found that 64% support a requirement that everyone get vaccinated, including 45 percent of Republicans. It is an issue that divides the Republican Party. 70 percent of all voters support a requirement for air travel and 61 percent support a vaccine requirement for schools. Second, even if they weren't popular or even if they cause a huge backlash from the right wing media ecosystem, I would argue that this would still be good politics for Joe Biden. And here's why. The White House has understood since day one that voters top priority is killing the pandemic and reviving the economy. And this is how you kill the pandemic. And like, I don't think you can crush the pandemic without a vaccine requirement at this point. Persuading vaccine hesitant Americans will only get you so far, and it will

definitely not get us anywhere close to herd immunity, which we may never reach anyway at this point. But vaccine requirements at this point are our only chance. And again, vaccine requirements are giving Americans choices. You got three choices. One, you can get a free, safe, life-saving vaccine. Two, you can pay out of your pocket to get regularly tested and wear a mask, perhaps for years indefinitely. Or three, you can stay home. Those are your three choices. The choice that you don't get is to endanger the rest of us by going out into public places unvaccinated and unmasked. That's your choice. It is just the conversation around this is so wild.

It's like no one has stopped to think about it for two fucking seconds. You know what's not revolutionary or new? Vaccine requirements. Kyla starts preschool this week. You and I have to do, I have to go to her doctor and get her doctor to sign a piece of paper where it says she's been vaccinated against a whole bunch of diseases that have been controlled for decades. Yet a whole bunch of people think they have a right to get on doctor to sign a piece of paper where it says she's been vaccinated against a whole bunch of diseases that have been controlled for decades. Yet a whole bunch of people think they have a right to get on a fucking airplane unvaccinated for a virus that is raging across the country right now.

If you go to college, you just require a vaccination, right? It is just absolutely right. You do not have unlimited freedom, right? There are privileges and requirements of citizenship. There's a reason you have to wear a seatbelt when you're in a car or you have to wear a helmet if you drive a motorcycle because your freedom to choose that costs us all this money because you end up getting injured, killed, ending up in the hospital. There are requirements. This is a basic thing. And you're right. If you want to stay home, you can stay home. Like you can do that, but you there do not have a right to get on airplane.

You don't have a right to bring a knife on an airplane or frankly, even a bottle of water through the airport security these days. And so the, it's just, it's we're like, this keeps being treated in the conversation around it as if this is some crazy thing that was just invented by George Soros and a bunch of Hollywood elites. It is just, it has been the common way in which we have done things since vaccines were invented and it's not radical to do it now. It's not. And Democrats should not shy away from this. I lean into this fight. Do not accept the Republican framing here that this is some fucking federal government mandate, blah, blah, blah, bullshit. We are the ones offering people a choice. Republicans are not offering people the choice to live in a country where it's safe to be in public.

Yeah. Do you know what's big government authoritarianism? Governors telling local cities and schools what they can teach in classroom or whether kids have to wear masks or not. That is not freedom or individualism. That is big government authoritarianism. And just, which, which, which brings us,

which brings us to these Republican governors that, that Joe Biden was talking about. They obviously didn't take too kindly to Biden's suggestion. Florida's Ron DeSantis, who signed an executive order this week, threatening to withhold funding from schools that require mask mandates amid a record number of COVID cases and hospitalizations in his state, including 21,000 infections among children just this week. He had this to say to President Biden. Joe Biden has taken to himself to try to single out Florida over COVID.

This is a guy who ran for president saying he was going to, quote, shut down the virus. And what has he done? He's imported more virus from around the world by having a wide open southern border. Why don't you do your job? Why don't you get this border secure? And until you do that, I don't want to hear a blip about COVID from you. Thank you. Now is the moment where I once again remind you all of the following Politico headline from March 18th, 2021. How Ron DeSantis won the pandemic. Dan, tell us how he did it. How did he win this pandemic by having record hospitalizations, record COVID cases months into the vaccination campaign? Must we insist on making all the same mistakes over again?

Right. This is. Yeah. It is like this. Ron DeSantis didn't win the pandemic. What happened was Republicans spent decades convincing the mainstream media that they had to swerve out of their way whenever there was a chance to possibly say Republicans were right and Democrats were wrong. And they put up a giant fucking journalistic mission accomplished

banner in Florida long before the virus was crushed. It's just absolute stupidity. And I mean, like that, like we make the jokes all the time. That's just like Fox News, right wing media, mad lips, right? Joe Biden, border people. Joe Biden's importing COVID across the southern border. What the fuck are you talking about? It's spreading in your state, which I would mind you is not on the border. You are surrounded by water unless you are worried about people coming in from Georgia and Alabama, right? Like it is just so stupid.

Everyone's like, yeah, what a smart thing to say. This is a Fox thing now. And it's, and it started showing up in some polls because they've done some polls on like, um, who is to blame for the rise in COVID cases. And the majority of Americans say the unvaccinated. But then when you look by party split, many Republicans, if not a majority of the party, I can't remember the poll, now say that foreign travelers or foreigners from into the United States are responsible for the rise in COVID cases. And sure enough, on Fox, you see all the time what DeSantis is saying is that somehow it is the it is this what's happening at the southern border and people coming in from Mexico that are bringing in COVID.

And that's why we have rising cases. Now, that's the new conspiracy theory floating around on the right, which, you know, neatly ties together COVID denialism with, you know, their immigration attacks. That always reminds me that Tom Cotton, double Harvard graduate in 2014 when he was running for Senate, threw out there the idea that ISIS was infecting undocumented immigrants with Ebola and sneaking them across the border as a bioweapon. Yeah, real bank shot there. That's the triple indie of right-wing paranoia right there. Jesus. I mean, it's not just DeSantis. You know, Jen Psaki pointed this out at the White House briefing. Seven states have both a statewide ban on mask mandates and a prohibition on school districts from requiring masks in schools.

In some states, as you pointed out, have even banned businesses and universities from requiring workers and students to be vaccinated. In Texas, a teacher can be fined if they ask a student if they're vaccinated or if they ask unvaccinated students to wear a mask. Un-fucking-believable. vaccinated, or if they ask unvaccinated students to wear a mask. Un-fucking-believable. My question is, like, how does Biden crush the pandemic when governors of big red states like Florida and Texas refuse to require masks or vaccines? He probably can't. I mean, what I think they are doing, and I think it's using the limited tools in their

toolbox, is they are now working aggressively to encourage businesses and others to put in place vaccine mandates. And so- And I think that's probably how he does it. He gets around these governors by just appealing directly to businesses, universities, and other private sector entities that could impose these vaccine requirements on their own. And he has been using the bully pulpit, if you will, to raise concerns about Delta. And we've seen that that is working, right? We are seeing record numbers of new vaccinations on a daily basis coming out of the White House

COVID team. And so people are – there was a group of people who were unwilling to be vaccinated prior to this who now see the spread of Delta and are worried about it and are getting vaccinated. Now, that's not happening at anywhere near the rate we need it to. And it's certainly not happening with the sort of geographic diversity that we need it to. Because one of the problems we have is this right now, where COVID is the worst, happens to be in the places that are least likely to get support from their local elected officials for mask mandates and for businesses to put in place vaccine mandates. And so this is very, very hard. It is like these people are – the Republican politicians are making it – they're screwing everyone for the – right?

Because what happens in Florida and Texas affects everyone else in the country. But Biden is doing what he can do. in Florida, Texas affects everyone else in the country. But Biden's doing what he can do, but we should be crystal clear that he has limited authority to do this. One thing that I think is interesting is that there was a report that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was looking at getting a vaccine mandate in place for all active duty troops. That would be a huge way of doing it. Every person vaccinated helps a lot. And so like you're going to sort of there's not one thing that you can do to get it done. But there's lots of things that are happening that are clearly having an impact. And I think part of the strategy in Biden's

speech and calling out Republican governors, which, you know, Biden doesn't tend to call out Republicans a lot, is to make it clear who's at fault here. And, you know, sure enough, is to make it clear who's at fault here. And sure enough, according to a new St. Pete poll in Florida, Ron DeSantis' approval went from 55-40 in May to 44-49 today. And you have to wonder if that has to do with the fact that his state is now seeing record COVID cases and hospitalizations and people are not that happy with the way he's handling the pandemic. I don't know what else it could be. What do you think? I think that's right. He's certainly suffering from the fact that I think a lot of people in Florida and around the country thought this was largely behind us, that we were on a sort of inexorable path towards normalcy. And now we

have taken a huge step back. It's just in people's lives, right? People are putting either because they have to or because they choose to wear masks. Kids are going back to school. And I think there was a lot of hope that that would feel much more normal. Maybe no masks, maybe much less fear of COVID, the world in which like one kid coughs and everyone is in a panic. If you've ever had to stick a Q-tip up your child's nose for an antigen test, that is a fucking horrible experience. And parents are having to deal with that.

And so that's obviously affecting him. What that means for 2022 or his role as the 2024 non-Trump front runner, I think is a very different question. But in the moment, it is clearly hurting him. We should also talk about how this latest COVID surge is maybe affecting Biden's approval. Five thirty eight has him at fifty point six percent average approval rating, which is the lowest of his presidency. And worse than that, Dan, Chris Eliza says that Biden just had the worst week of his presidency. So I don't know where he goes from there. He should probably quit now. A Politico Morning Consult poll from this week also found that 67 percent of voters believe that unvaccinated people bear the blame for the rising covid cases. But to me, again, we just talked about DeSantis, like the dip in Biden's approval still feels like people are cranky and

pissed off that this fucking pandemic is getting worse again they're not feeling great about the economy and they're taking it out on the guy in charge at least temporarily i don't know what do you think am i missing something there no you're not i think it's we should just i would put this in the worry about everything panic about nothing category um because 50.6 is his lowest, but I think his highest was like, when you get right past like the first week after inauguration, it was like 53. He's been in a very narrow band the whole time. There's been a lot of attention on this morning console poll, which showed this huge drop for Biden. But that poll had his

approval rating at 62, which was about, was, you know, 10 to 11 points higher than what his average was at the time. And this is a pretty typical thing that happens in media polling is you get this giant outlier that makes things look rosier than they are. And then it comes, you get a normal poll and all those coverages like, how did Biden lose 10 points in a week as opposed to the reality is your poll was wrong. And it works the other way too, right? Where it's, you get an outlier on the low side and then it's like, come back, come back kid, because it's comes back to the average. And but underneath the overall approval rating, to your point, there are some troubling or at least troubling or at least concerning trends worth looking at. In a different Politico Morning Consult poll, there's 59% of people blame Biden's policies for

inflation and the rising cost of things, as opposed to just people's returning to normal. And that includes 41% of Democrats. And so there was a lot of dismissing of the political concerns around inflation a few months ago. That seems to be pretty real politically, at least. And maybe inflation will come down. As time goes on, we don't know. But right now, it's a problem. And your point on COVID-related pessimism is the Navigator research folks have a poll out this morning. And they have this really interesting question where they ask people, is the worst of the pandemic ahead of us or behind us? And the number of people who think the worst of the pandemic is ahead of us has gone up double

digits among all groups since their last poll, which also makes sense right like if you just like if you were to just like teleport yourself back a few weeks and read the press coverage it's like hot fact summer every return to normalcy vacations birthday parties people are at baseball games and now things feel very different and maybe some of that can pretty pretty lukewarm vac summer right now. That's right. Lukewarm at best, Dan. Lukewarm at best. Like, is it even lukewarm?

I don't know. Getting colder. You know, like it's a fair question about whether people's, particularly vaccinated people's concerns outstrips the reality of what they should be concerned about. But that concern is real but again i think you know the the biden theory of the case since the beginning has been crush the pandemic that helps revive the economy that puts people in a good mood that is our best chance to govern and be successful in this administration and to potentially be reelected again in 2024. I think that is correct, which is why, going back to our original conversation,

that just getting more people vaccinated, as many people as possible, through whatever it takes, persuasion, requirements, incentives, carrot sticks, all of it, is the most important thing to do for them, right? Like that is, it's the substantively most important thing to do. It's the right thing to do, but it's also the politically smart thing for them to do for them, right? Like that is, it's the substantively most important thing to do. It's the right thing to do, but it's also the politically smart thing for them to do because if they can't fix the pandemic

and they can't fix the economy, then the whole rest of the, everything else goes to shit. Yeah, that's exactly right. So, all right. When we come back, I will talk to Congressman Mondaire Jones

about the new eviction moratorium. Last Saturday, the federal eviction moratorium expired, which had protected nearly 11 million Americans who'd fallen behind on rent during the pandemic from being thrown out of their homes. The Biden administration said they didn't think they had the legal authority to extend the moratorium on their own. Democratic leaders in Congress said they didn't have the votes to pass an extension because of the filibuster in the Senate. But a few members, led by Congresswoman Cori Bush, refused to take no for an answer,

protested and camped outside the Capitol. And on Tuesday, the CDC announced they were extending the moratorium for counties with high COVID infection rates until October 3rd, a move that President Biden said would cover up to 90 percent of renters. First term congressman Mondaire Jones of New York was one of the members protesting outside the Capitol. He joins us now to talk about how we got here and what happens next. Congressman, welcome to the pod. Thanks for having me, man. It's a pleasure. I'm a big fan. Well, thank you. We're happy to have you here.

Of all of the disappointing votes and decisions you've seen since you've been in Washington, why was this one so important for you to protest? It was so important to protest because as many as 11 million people stood to be evicted from their homes. And many of those people, in the words of Congresswoman Cori Bush, would have died, whether from the Delta variant or some other version of the COVID-19 virus, or from exposure to the elements or violence. And we're not just talking about parents. We're talking about children, in some instances, infant children. And the entire time, the White House had the authority to issue what ended up being a new moratorium.

And, of course, Congress should never have recessed without holding a vote on this question. And it's why, especially as someone who grew up in Section 8 housing himself and who knows what it's like to be housing insecure, people like Cori Bush and I and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez decide to take matters into our own hands through protests. Well, I'm glad you did. I think the question is what happens now, right? The new moratorium lasts until October 3rd. The courts could strike it down at any moment. It seemed like the Supreme Court had given a signal through Brett Kavanaugh that they would if the administration did something like this. So what's the plan between now and Octoberrd, to make sure we don't face this again. The plan is to disperse the approximately forty One of the challenges is that he has not dispersed the over $2 billion that he's been sitting on to people who urgently need rental assistance.

So this isn't even a red state issue. Do you have any idea why that is? We have blue state governors sitting on billions of dollars. Is this bureaucracy? I read a couple things about how some landlords were having trouble actually getting tenants to participate in the program because there's paperwork involved. Is there any idea what the source of this problem is here? To be sure, there are ways that we can improve upon the process of getting relief both to tenants and to landlords, right? I mean, one idea is empowering landlords to go to a governmental agency and get those funds directly so that people who are housing insecure

and are facing a variety of issues, including maybe insufficient resources to be able to navigate this process, don't have to be the one standing in the way of landlords being made whole and of securing housing for themselves that they are currently in. I'm not going to try to get into the mind of my governor, but I can tell you that there's no excuse for it. And it's why I, along with the rest of the New York congressional delegation, signed a letter recently calling on the state to administer those funds that have already been allocated by Congress.

And now, with respect to red state governors, they don't believe that government should be helping anybody. Right. Is there any plan? I mean, is this going to require legislation? Is there hope that legislation would pass? Can mean, is this going to require legislation? Is there hopes that legislation would pass? Can the administration itself do more on its own? What are some of the options? Well, one of the challenges is that even if Congress, specifically the House, had passed legislation creating or imposing a new eviction moratorium on Friday of last week, it would have died

likely in the Senate, where all good things go to die, which is why it was incumbent upon the White House to do what it could on at least a temporary basis if the Supreme Court ultimately does strike down the moratorium. But also, I will just note that the filibuster is something that the White House could take a public position on and help us get rid of. And so you don't get to say, like, it's on you, Congress, and then, you know, remove yourself from the legislative process when it comes to stuff like this and voting rights, but not a bipartisan infrastructure package. It all comes back to that damn filibuster, doesn't it? Unfortunately.

You pointed out that the pause on student loan collection will expire on September 30th. What's your sense on whether the Biden administration will extend that and how long do you think they should? You're speaking to someone who, along with people like Chuck Schumer, Elizabeth Warren, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Alma Adams and others, has said, Mr. President, you have clear authority under the Higher Education Act to cancel federally owned student debt, which accounts for the vast majority of student debt in this country. And you should use that authority to cancel up to $50,000 in student debt for every person who has it. We are in a situation where wages have been stagnant for literally decades, even as the cost of a four-year education, higher education, has skyrocketed. So I want to just say that for context. At a minimum,

we should be extending the pause on the collection on student debt, as well as the accrual of interest, which is the other thing that has been paused until such time as the pandemic is over. We know that the pandemic has exacerbated problems that pre-existed the coronavirus. And it's why even the Trump administration, in fact, it was the first administration to impose this pause. We've got to do better than the Trump administration. Would you make of Speaker Pelosi saying a couple of days ago that she doesn't believe that Biden has the executive authority to cancel up to $50,000 in debt? Well, many of us, myself included, have been working on this issue for a long time, including studying the issue of his legal authority. And so it was frustrated to hear her opine in that way. And my understanding is that her staff has since brought to her attention what legal scholars have been saying about this.

And I'll just leave that there. But the fact is the white house has already used the same authority most recently to cancel uh hundreds of millions of dollars uh in in fraudulent debt the the authority that it used to pause the collection that is going to expire on September 30th is the same authority from which it derives the ability to cancel debt altogether. And I'm calling on the White House to make public the legal opinion that it said it would request within the Department of Education many, many months ago on the subject of whether it has the authority to do so. Because I think the legal opinion will very clearly say that it has the authority. Okay. What will it take for you to support both the bipartisan infrastructure deal and the budget

reconciliation bill? I have no problem with voting for a bipartisan infrastructure package, so long as we have a larger reconciliation bill that meets the moment, that addresses the existential threat of climate change, that expands Medicare to include things like dental, vision, and hearing. And that makes child care affordable for literally every family in this country. I have a bill with Senator Elizabeth Warren called the Universal Child Care and Early Learning Act, which would make child care free for families making up to 200% of the federal poverty line, in addition to capping the annual cost of child care for every family in America at 7% of household income. As Senator Warren said famously during the DNC convention, child care is infrastructure. And so those are the things I'm looking to see. I'm not going to put a dollar amount on what the reconciliation package should be. I would love for it to be 3.5 trillion. In fact, I'd like for it to be even larger. But I don't want to focus on a number as much as what the

provisions of that bill must be in order to secure my support for a bipartisan infrastructure package. And I'm glad that Speaker Pelosi agrees with me on this. So if it comes over to the House at less than $3.5 trillion, as it seems like it may, listening to Sinema and Manchin and others, you could still support it provided that it spends money on the priorities that you mentioned sufficiently. And even Senator Manchin has not yet, and hopefully he will never, take issue with the $3.5 trillion number. Yeah, no, he hasn't drawn a line in the sand either, which is hopeful. Progressive caucus is a small but growing force in the House. Has what you all achieved this week changed your thinking in any way about how progressives in Congress can wield their influence to achieve policy victories? I think prior to certain reforms that the Progressive Caucus undertook last year, and also the reinforcements that people like myself and Cori Bush and Jamal Bowman and Richie Torres and others have provided, that there was not nearly as much of an appetite to flex. much of an appetite to flex. And now you've got a bunch of people who didn't come up in the traditional way that politicians do. Cori Bush was a Black Lives Matter activist.

I had never held elected office prior to making it to the United States Congress, and in fact, ran against the machine in my primary. We are not waiting to deliver real relief for the American people. And I think, in fact, I know that the policies we support are deeply popular. So I think this was a huge boost. I think it was an example of how you can get these kinds of wins in the space of executive action quite easily. That's what Senator Elizabeth Warren has been masterfully doing, if you look at her approach. And I also think that you're going to see people increasingly clamor for a vehicle to do this stuff legislatively, meaning filibuster reform or abolition once infrastructure is over, because everything else is going to get blocked.

And we have to save our democracy. So you, you know, if you listen, you know that I yell about this all the time, filibuster reform, just like you've been for the last couple of years. And, you know, I am just, I find myself constantly disappointed because every time I think maybe there's a chance that Joe Manchin might be willing to, you know, propose some or, you know, accept some sort of reform or maybe do a carve out or maybe go back to 41 on. Like, you've been a proponent of filibuster reform, of expanding the court, all kinds of democratic reforms that seem like they will not happen in this Congress as long as people like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are there. What's your thinking on sort of the ultimate path to these reforms? Well, I don't give up hope that senators Manchin and Sinema can come around on this issue. But it's not going to be in the absence of the president of the United States using his platform and the bully pulpit.

And, frankly, the resources available to him in negotiation in order to extract the concession of at least filibuster reform from these two individuals who are standing in the way of democracy. And it really is as stark and as dire as that. I mean, this is the party of insurrection. These people don't want to certify presidential elections. They feel as though their very existence is threatened by a changing America. They will do whatever it takes, and they are aided by the 6-3 far-right majority on the Supreme Court as an accomplice, a majority that is hostile to democracy itself. We have got to pass the For the People Act in order to stop these people. Last question. I'm wondering if you have any broader takeaway from the primary in Ohio this week between Chantal Brown and Nina Turner. I know the Progressive Caucus in the House supported

Nina Turner. Your colleague, Hakeem Jeffries, said to the New York Times yesterday, quote, the majority of Democratic voters recognize that Trumpism and the radical right is the real enemy, not us. Apparently, the extreme left hasn't figured that out. What's your reaction to that? Well, I don't know who the extreme left is, but I can tell you that in the affluent majority white suburbs of New York City, that in the affluent majority white suburbs of New York City, known as Westchester and Lackland counties, I crushed my opponents in the Democratic primary, including a state senator, a state assembly member, a self-funding billionaire, running as very clearly the most progressive candidate in that race. Jamal Bowman won his race as the most progressive candidate,

also in a district that includes a significant portion of Westchester County. I do not believe that the loss of Nina Turner in Ohio's 11th was due to her being progressive. I think there was a lot of money being spent, a lot of stuff that was said previously that was characterized in a certain way. But we are seeing progressives win campaigns all across this country. And of course, when we poll progressive policies, we know that communities are very supportive of them, including many Republicans. Yeah. No, it is interesting that you continue to poll progressive policies. You see that they're more popular. You see progressive policy victories like we saw this week. And yet sometimes progressive candidates in sort of tougher primaries don't do as well, minus what you're talking about with

yourself and some of your colleagues. Were you sort of surprised that the Congressional Black Caucus came in there and backed Chantel Brown and Congressman Clyburn? What was your sense of that? Well, Congressmember Clyburn, Majority Whip Clyburn, has been very open about why he got involved. And he said that it's because of certain negative comments that were made by the campaign that lost. And so I don't want to exaggerate or distort the public narrative about why it is that certain members of the Congressional Black Caucus felt the need to get involved in the race. But look, I mean, the Black community is not monolithic, and there is a divide within the caucus. I'm a very active member of the caucus,

and I'm proud to say that my colleagues within the caucus like me, even as we may disagree on certain policies, we are overall quite unified. And it's why you saw people like myself and Ayanna Pressley and others endorse Nina Turner and other members endorse Chantel Brown and we are still unified as a caucus. So, you know, I view it as a family and when you're in a family, not everybody agrees and I'm excited to welcome Chantel Brown to the United States Congress for that matter. Congressman Mondaire Jones, thank you so much for coming on Pod Save America. Come back soon. It was great talking to you. Thanks so much. I'd love to be back.

All right, let's talk about the midterms. Usually the party that's expected to lose seats in a midterm will put on a brave face and spin reporters with a lot of happy talk that everyone knows is bullshit. But not our Democrats, Dan. Not our Democrats. Politico reported this week that DCCC Chair Sean Patrick Maloney recently told his most vulnerable incumbents that if the election were held today, they would lose the majority. His prediction was based on new polling that showed Democrats falling behind Republicans by six points on a generic ballot in battleground districts. When asked about the data, the DCCC's executive director told Politico, we are not trying to hide this. The story was specifically focused on concern over the party's

message. What is that concern? And do you agree with it? Well, first, I want to just say kudos to Sean Patrick Maloney and the DCCC. This is the right thing to do, right? It is, yeah. I mean, I was thinking about this. Happy talk doesn't get you anywhere. Just telling everyone like, we're fine. We're going to win. It's great. Blah, blah, blah. Like, yeah. Everyone in the party, donors, activists, members need to be crystal clear about how steep a hill we have before us. And I was thinking back to, do you remember in 2010 when our friend and then White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs went on Meet the Press? And I think David Gregory was host at

the time. And he asked Gibbs whether there was a chance Democrats could lose the House. And Gibbs said yes, which was a patently obvious thing. It wasn't likely at the time in which he said it, but warning signs were everywhere. I mean, unemployment was 10%. Like it was pretty possible that this could happen. It wasn't great. And the house Democrats went bananas on him.

I think that Steny Hoyer held a press conference just to attack Robert Gibbs for it. I don't remember that. Yeah. It was brutal. They were so mad at him and he was right. Gibbs loved that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They were so mad at him. And he was right. Sure, Gibbs loved that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It was very contentious, if you will. There were a lot of meetings between Robert and the legislative affairs team around that time. But this is the right thing to do. People need to be aware of the challenge before us. And that's important. Now, the specific messaging question. In this story, Debbie Dingell, who is a congresswoman from Michigan, and I think one of the savviest members politically,

she was a Democratic operative for a long time, the widow of Congressman John Dingell, she serves in his seat. She said, our message is not breaking through. And that's exactly right. That is what's happening. We've talked about this before. I think this is a megaphone problem, not a message problem. It's not that we're saying the wrong things. It's that people are not hearing them because we do not have the apparatus to get to them. There is some good news on this, which is there was a report last week, I think, that Democratic groups were going to spend $100 million during the month of August on messaging around the bipartisan infrastructure

deal and the jobs and family plan to communicate to voters about it. And so there is some calvary coming. But yeah, people have every right to be concerned. It seems somewhat patently obvious that if the election were held today, we would lose the House because for first, think about this way. If Joe Biden's at 50.6, which is a very respectable and good approval rating for a president, what do we, and that's in a national poll that includes California, New York, et cetera, what do we think his approval rating is in districts that either Trump won or Biden did less well than his national numbers. And we know that generic Democrats underperformed Biden in these districts. And so this is somewhat obvious, but it's important to

say it because everyone needs to be aware of the work ahead of us. I do agree that we're not breaking through with our message. I sort of always agree with that. It's very hard to break through with the message. We've talked about that a million times. I sort of wonder if it's more of an economy problem, a general mood problem than it is a message problem. And I wonder that because of a couple of things from this polling. with swing voters in battleground districts, right? Not just like base Democrats. People love these plans. And yet only 42% of the people in these polls, battleground voters, trust Democrats on the economy.

And so, and they also, and you know, Debbie Dingell said that when she goes home to Michigan in her district, people said that Democrats aren't doing enough to boost the economy. So clearly it seems like there is some financial concerns around the country, economic concerns around the country, and people don't feel the economy is where it should be, and they don't see Democrats doing enough to fix it. Now, partly that can be solved by, you know, better messaging and spending a lot of money delivering

that message to voters and saying, oh, look, we are doing a lot to help you. Here's what we're, here's what we've already passed, and here's what we're fighting for now. I think that's that's a necessity. But I wonder if it doesn't truly get fixed until the economy gets fixed and things are going well and people say, oh, yeah, now I feel like I'm doing better in my own life and I'm looking around the economy and things are good. I don't know. I mean, Joe Biden mailed a thousand dollar check to tens of millions of people and it didn't affect his approval rating. That does speak to the limits of what can like what else are they going to do that's more popular, like the stuff in the or more impactful to people's lives? No, I guess what I'm saying is like until inflation comes, you know, until until people say, OK, inflation really isn't a long term problem. It was temporary. It's coming down. And now I'm in a better mood.

Like, I think that, you know, one thing you keep seeing in these polls and in some focus groups, too, is people just keep mentioning the inflation issue. And they're saying, yeah, maybe he gave me a thousand dollar check, but now prices are rising. So what the fuck? I which is something Joe Biden has very little control over. Almost nothing. Yeah, no, that's the challenge. Which is always the truth of the economy. The president gets all the blame and all the credit and has only limited influence on what actually happens. I mean, I remember us like watching like bank default rates in Greece being a really relevant reelection factor for Raghuram. I remember that. Wow, yeah. So you have a couple of choices here.

And I think we cannot leave this topic of keeping the house without pointing out that all of the messaging, billions of dollars in ads would be less impactful than passing a one-page bill in the Senate that banned partisan gerrymandering. That's the biggest problem. And that is not the DCCC's fault.

It's not Sean Patrick Mulling's fault. That's Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema's fault because everyone else is for that. They passed that. But that is – I had a choice between $100 billion in Democratic ads between now and November or passing the one-page ban on partisan gerrymandering about what would help us the most in keeping the House, it would definitely be the gerrymandering ban. I completely agree with that, though I was sort of thinking about it from the other perspective, which is, in a world, I don't want people to think that the reason that the House is in jeopardy

is only because of Republican gerrymandering, even though that's the biggest reason. That if there were no gerrymandering, we would still see polls like this where the Democratic challenger or the Democrat is six points behind a Republican in a battleground district. We have other problems to fix. So I don't want people just thinking like,

our message is perfect. And if only we just passed independent redistricting commissions, everything would be great. Yeah, we should undo independent redistricting commissions, everything would be great. Yeah, we should undo independent redistricting commissions and eliminate 10 Republican states in California as one possible fucking idea, which I think you can't actually do

because it's a passive ballot initiative, but you get my point. But the other thing, just not to be overly dark about this, but this is a poll of un-gerrymandered districts. We don't even know how gerrymandered the districts are. Right, that's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying.

This is best case scenario, people. We got a lot of problems. We got't even know how germane districts are. Right. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. This is best case scenario, people. We got a lot of problems. We got a lot of problems. But I think the other messaging question here is, and I think this will lead us into our next topic, is should we spend money and time and energy advertising what Democrats have done to make your life better? Or should we spend time and energy advertising what Republicans would do to make it worse? Great segue. Great segue. So in an effort to be constructive, instead of just us worrying out loud, we conducted a poll with our friends at Data for Progress, where we asked people how they felt about a bunch of shit

Republicans have done over the last few years. Here was the list. Striking down sections of the Voting Rights Act and making it harder to vote. Packing the judiciary with right wing judges. Cutting taxes for the rich. Blocking action on climate change. Trying to build a border wall. Supporting Trump. Repeating the big lie. Voting to overturn the 2020 election. And encouraging violent protests at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th. Here are the top five things that people disapprove of the most from that poll. Number one, inciting insurrection, 70 percent. Comforting. Comforting, that's number one. Number two, tax cuts for the rich, 58 percent disapproval. Number three, attacking voting rights, 57% disapproval. Number four, climate denialism, 55% approval. And number five, spreading the big lie, 54% disapproval.

What do you think about those results? And is there a message somewhere in there? Because that was a lot of different things. What I think this poll proves is that there is a huge opportunity to brand the Republicans in a negative light for voters. Generic Republican is not the anvil around the neck of the Republicans on the ballot that it can be and should be. And I don't think this poll yet answers the question of exactly what that should be, but it is very clear to me from looking at this.

And I recognize that I am doing the thing where I look at a poll and use it to confirm all of my prior opinions, but that it shows that – Yeah, it's so strange. That there is – people do not like Republicans. People will like Republicans even less the more they knew about them, and they don't know enough about Republicans. And so I think there is definitely – there are lots of opportunities here. I think what this poll shows is that there could be real benefit in a message that paints Republicans dramatically out of the mainstream. That's what a lot of this is, right? It's radical Republican is essentially the framework we would use of big lie, don't believe in the science around climate change, hang out with people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz. That is one narrative about the party that would I think have some impact with voters, particularly voters who maybe voted for Biden at the top of the ticket and a Republican on the congressional or Senate

level, that they could be persuaded that this party is a lot more Trump-like than they thought. Yeah, I should have said there were two things on that list that I left out, which was we also tested Matt Gaetz's scandal and Marjorie Taylor Greene's comparisons of the House mask mandate to the Holocaust. And of course, the disapproval for both of those was off the charts. And of course, the disapproval for both of those was off the charts. But yes, I didn't sort of include it because I seriously doubt that a Democrat running against a Republican in some far flung district is going to somehow successfully tie that specific Republican or condemning Matt Gates and Marjorie Taylor Greene, right? You can say you're part of this party. You didn't say, I think that's fine. You can do that.

But I doubt that's sort of a larger strategy available to the party to just pick out two scandals and make a bigger thing about it. Can I just push on that for a sec? Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Do you think the Republican strategy of putting AOC, Ilhan Omar, which is obviously an incredibly misogynistic and racist approach, or in using Nancy Pelosi for decades as the face of the Democratic Party, that that, like, do you think that works for them? And if it did work for them, why wouldn't it work for us? I don't think there's a ton of evidence that that worked for them um i think that they were a i think so in 2018 they did this a lot and it certainly didn't work for them in 2018 obviously in 2020 they did much better in the house than we thought they would

i think there may have been success at there may have been some some success framing the Democratic Party as more liberal or potentially more radical as a party than its standard bearer, Joe Biden. I don't know that specific attacks on AOC or Ilhan Omar sort of translated to some of these districts. I think some of the policy positions could have, you know, some of the policy positions that some Democrats or some activists staked out could have worked for Republicans. But I think the people themselves, uh, are, it's a little bit, I just think like, you know, a voter you're it's, it's, uh, it's Joe Smith versus Sally. And you're like, uh, and Joe Smith has nothing to do with Marjorie Taylor green and Matt Gates. And you spend a whole campaign saying, oh, but, but, but they're going to be in the same party as this person who did X. I don't know that it works as well on either side, Democrat or Republican. I think I agree with that. I certainly

think the individual people are, it's a little of what you think was the more important part. Was it radical socialists defund the police or in the Pelosi case over the years, Hollywood liberal. And Republicans, we should be very clear, it works more with their voters because they're weaponizing race and gender. And that is an effective tactic for them with a lot of their voters. We saw that with Hillary Clinton. We've seen it with Barack Obama. That is correct. I agree with that. But there are like, I think there's a nuance to maybe like having some avatars for that radicalism. It's not like saying like, it's not saying QOP or party of Q, like, I think that, that sells the voter short.

It sort of treats them as idiots, um, which is never a good political strategy in our opinion. Um, but there is some sense of like, like having some people who get a lot of press attention who are kind of scary to the voters we want is not the worst thing in the world. I think that's right. But I think where we probably agree is branding Republicans in general as extremists, and there's a lot of supporting evidence for that, is going to be effective. And I think that does span the gamut from everything that happened around the 2020 election, the insurrection, overturning the results, the big lie to climate change, denialism, you know, continuing to support tax cuts for the richest American as the middle

class is falling behind. Right. Like, I think that's what we're seeing in this poll is that when Republicans have staked out more extremist positions, people are more likely to disapprove of them, which is not like fucking lightning bolts, like not the biggest revelation. But it's worth remembering. And I also think it's worth noting, too, that, you know, it was not in that Trump. That top five is supporting Donald Trump, which I thought was kind of interesting. And yet the big lie, supporting the insurrection, attacking voting rights, that was those were all in the top five. So I do think it is it might be attempting shorthand to say, and we do this all the time. These are Trump Republicans. They're just like Trump. It's a clone of Trump. I think you have to go a little

bit further and say why they're like Trump, what positions they hold that are like Trump, what they have said and done that is like Trump, and not just expect people to believe that every Republican is like Trump and supporting Trump is automatically disqualifying, unfortunately. Yeah, Trump is such a unique figure in terms of personality and presence and just overt stupidity that it is sometimes hard to... It really is hard. Like you have some relatively generic college Republican Fox news, green room lunatic running for Congress somewhere. And it's sort of, they don't seem like Donald Trump. He is just this figure with this long history and presence, but Trump ism, right. And you, you could, you don't have to call it Trump

ism, but the ideas that lie at the heart of it that predate Trump, I think, can be really – I still think that we didn't really test this in this poll. There are some choices between crazy and corporatist that I don't know what the right answer to that is. I think in the long run, the number one goal of the Democratic Party should be separating Republicans from their working class base, because especially if we have reason to believe that working class base is becoming more diverse, if they're making gains with working class Black and Latino voters, that's the end of the game for us. So we got to stop that trend. we've looked at these disapproval ratings as sort of in the aggregate. And I wonder if there are some things that Republicans have done, like continue to push for tax cuts for the rich, that working class voters, white, black, and brown, disapprove of more than perhaps upper income voters. And then I do think there are voters in the suburbs, college educated voters

who may have been, you know, George Bush Republicans, Mitt Romney Republicans, and now they voted for Joe Biden for the first time. And they might care more about Republicans inciting insurrection, spreading the big lie,

trying to overturn the election. So it could be different messages work for different demographic groups that we need in the Democratic coalition. I do think we have to pick one of the two. And I think one of the lessons of politics in this sort of interconnected social media age is the, particularly given our media infrastructure deficit as Democrats, is we need one narrative about Republicans. And I think the, and that can be just like, you can look at the map and say, we're better off, you know, getting, because I do think these messages attract different people or dissuade different people. And you can sort of,

I don't know the answer to which is the right one to keep the house or to reelect Joe Biden in 2024 or whatever that is. But like, you want everyone saying the same thing about Republicans. Yeah. Because that gives additional throw rate behind the message because every Republican runs on the same message against Democrats. And that has worked to define the Democratic brand in the eyes of Republicans. And we tend to run, particularly in red districts, away from the party or run more specific campaigns about specific Republicans. It's like we need one narrative for them and then everyone should say it all the time. And this is one of the situations or run more specific campaigns about specific Republicans. It's like we need one narrative

for them and then everyone should say it all the time. And this is one of the situations where the only wrong choice, in my opinion, is no choice. Send us your narratives. Obviously, the best narratives are crowdsourced on social media. Yes. You know what? Actually, go through your Twitter timeline, find your tweets that got the most engagement, send those to us. That's what we're looking for. Thank you to Congressman Mondaire Jones for joining us today. And everyone have a great weekend.

And we'll talk to you next week. Bye, everyone. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Flavia Casas. Our associate producers are Jazzy Marine and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer.

Thanks to Tanya Somenator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Caroline Rustin, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, Yale Freed, and Narmel Konian, who film and share our episodes as videos every week.