Pod Save America - “Biden’s chance to go big.” (with Heather McGhee!)

Episode Date: March 25, 2021

Jon and Heather talk about how Biden’s next economic plan could be even more progressive and transformative than the last, the results from the latest Crooked Media/Change Research Pollercoaster series on voting rights in Arizona, and whether anything can get done on gun control. Then, they discuss their favorite under-the-radar headlines.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/podsaveamerica. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. And I'm Heather McGee. It's so good to have you here. I'm Jon Favreau. And I'm Heather McGee. It's so good to have you here. I am so glad to be here. You're now the New York Times bestselling author of The Sum of Us, What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. Congratulations. Thank you, Jon. Thanks so much.

I think, you know, it's time for us to be reading about how we can fix this country and doing it, too. It sure is. And it's a fantastic book. Everyone should go check it out. And the reason that Dan is out again today is because on Friday, March 19th at 2.36 a.m., Jack Edward Pfeiffer was born, weighing in at 7 pounds, 10 ounces. Holly's doing well. Kyla is very excited to be a big sister. Everyone is happy and healthy. And we are all overjoyed for the Pfeiffer family here at Crooked. So that's some fantastic news for the week, no matter what else happens.

OK, so today, a lot of news. We're going to talk about how the Democrats' next economic package might be even more progressive and transformative than the last. The results from our latest Polar Coaster series on voting rights in Arizona and whether Biden can finally be the president who does something about gun violence. We've also got another under the radar segment for all of you. Two quick housekeeping notes before we start. Check out this week's episode of Pod Save the People. DeRay McKesson and the crew are joined by author Cleo Wade to talk about her new book, What the Road Said. And if you haven't yet listened to our new sports podcast, Take Line with Jason Concepcion and Renee Montgomery, what are you waiting for? You can also check out the Take Line YouTube channel to watch the full video interviews

along with Jason's digital video series, All Caps NBA, which is a ton of fun for any NBA fan. Search Take Line on YouTube and smash that subscribe button for brand new content every week. Okay, let's get to the news. So the American Rescue Plan was great, but most of its spending only lasts for a year. That means that the next reconciliation bill, which of course only requires 51 votes to pass, might be the Democrats' last chance before the midterms to pass a progressive agenda that is both lasting and transformational. The two very big questions are, what should they put in the bill and how do they get it passed? New York Times started to answer the first question this week by reporting that President

Biden's economic advisors are pulling together a sweeping $3 trillion package to boost the economy, reduce carbon emissions, and narrow economic inequality, beginning with a giant infrastructure plan that may be financed in part through tax increases on corporations and the rich. Sounds good, doesn't really narrow it down. From a pure policy perspective, Heather, what do you think is most important to include in this bill, which is already being called Biden's Build Back Better bill? It's so great. This is really a moment when we've got a once in a generation, potentially once in a lifetime for us, chance to address climate change and do so in a way that reorders our economy, builds from the bottom up. reorders our economy, builds from the bottom up. So it's got to have things like money that is totally targeted towards the communities that have been underinvested strategically, building and greening infrastructure, childcare centers, community colleges. It's got to actually provide the soft infrastructure to enable people to work,

right? This is things like free community college, free universal pre-K, paid leave, right? We've seen what happens when we don't have the web of support, particularly for women and essential workers. We simply, you know, everything falls apart, right? If we don't have the care work that makes all other work possible. I'm like astonished at how good the vision has been so far from the campaign going through to what's been signaled from the White House. This has many of the key pieces that are necessary to actually build back better. I have some things I'd like to see in it that I know progressives are talking about it that are not necessarily part of the core that we've heard about. And, you know, maybe we get

to talk about those. Well, we should talk about those because I mean, like I you mentioned a bunch of provisions that have been floated for this. I've also noticed just looking at the New York Times story, advanced worker training, high speed broadband and rural broadband, making permanent the child tax credit that was in the American Rescue Plan, making permanent the expanded Affordable Care Act subsidies that were in the American Rescue Plan, allowing Medicare to negotiate for prescription drugs. subsidies that were in the American Rescue Plan, allowing Medicare to negotiate for prescription drugs. Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders, talking to Ezra Klein at the New York Times this week, added immigration reform, criminal justice, systemic racism as issues to tackle this too. There is a lot of possibility here. And obviously, we know that we can't get everything in there. Yeah. But I guess the question is, like, what should progressives, what should we be fighting for? What should we, you know, we don't want to narrow ourselves down at the start, but, like, what do we really want to push here?

Yeah, I think when you have the administration starting with something so good, progressives have to actually move to bring in more big ideas. Things that will fundamentally, you know, as I say, refill the pool of public goods for everyone. So I'm talking about something like a big public jobs program. This should be like not these weird little tax credits and job retraining, but every person in America should know how to walk down the street, go to a public jobs office, and get in a line to sign up for meaningful work to rebuild the country. And here's why I think that's so important, because it also could be a chance for us to heal the divides in our country, right? Have teams that are diverse, you know, building, you know, building new infrastructure,

making new parks, have kids from rural areas go into urban areas and vice versa. We've got to actually think about designing our policy in a way that creates and fosters some cross-racial solidarity, because that makes politics easier down the line. We're so fractured and divided. This could be an opportunity for us to actually dig up our sleeves and work together on making our country better. I want to come back to that point, because I think it's really important. First, I just want to get to the other big policy decision that Biden and Democrats have to make is, do you just spend another $3 trillion? Or do you try to finance that spending with tax increases on the rich and corporations? Senate Republicans have said that taxes are a deal breaker for them, no surprise there.

But pretty much every Democrat from Biden to Bernie to Manchin are leaning towards tax increases. What do you think and what kind of tax increases would you go for here? It's really amazing, right? Because if we assume that this is going to be through reconciliation, obviously all eyes are on folks like Manchin. And it's been not clear whether or not his, you know, sort of Republican leanings also include taxes. But he's been really vocal in saying, where do they think the money's going to come from? Of course we have to raise taxes. And if you look at the polling, taxes on the wealthy to pay for roads and bridges and schools is extremely popular, even with a plurality between 40 and 50% of Republican voters. So the fact that we've got billionaires and massive corporations that have, you know, made so much money during the pandemic,

have profited off the pandemic. We had, you know, the biggest corporations first in line for assistance through the CARES Act. There's a lot of populist messaging and policy to do. And then there are things that are like not that sexy, like giving more money to the IRS to actually collect the, you know, nearly $600 billion that's just being hidden by tax cheats. We've just got like a lot of change on the table, right? And things like Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax. I mean, maybe not sexy policy, but certainly popular, the idea of the government going after rich tax cheats. Yeah, no, that's exactly right. You know, like you think that would be, I mean, I do think I have heard so far, you know, a lot of pundits be like, oh, well, if Democrats are going to go for tax increases, Republicans are

going to jump on this. But I think, like you said, if you emphasize that the tax increases are going to be on the rich and the corporations and big corporations to make sure they pay their fair share, like every polling I've seen for my entire life shows that is an extremely popular policy, even more popular than some of the spending priorities that are popular as well. So if you and I were in the White House right now, right, you would be a policy guru and I'd be writing speeches and we would be sitting down thinking about this Build Back Better plan. And we'd be thinking specifically about how do we package this

and talk about this in a way that tells a story about sort of the Democrats' vision for governing and vision for the country. So like how to, especially I think the risk is with a bill that could include so many different provisions

from infrastructure to climate to some of the care economy provisions you were talking about that you sort of lose the forest for the trees. Like what is the story we should be telling about this bill? You know, in The Sum of Us, I talk about the way in which that this country has turned its back on the formula that helped create the greatest middle class the world had ever seen. Because we had a social contract that said that it was the government's job to make sure that our people have a high standard of living.

And that's what created the middle class. And yet after the civil rights movement, we saw the majority of white Americans turn away from that formula because it was promised to extend across the color line for the first time. So I talk about the drained public pool. This is not something I think that the president should say, but it's an important way of figuring out like why we got into this place, why it is that we need $3 trillion. You know, this country and all across the country, cities and towns drained

their public pools rather than integrate them. And when you think about why did we sort of turn our back on this formula that created this great middle class? Why did we usher in the inequality era? Why did we give away the store to the rich and corporations? And why have the majority of white people voted for that vision time and time again, even as it's cost them so many middle-class jobs and so much economic insecurity, this racial resentment piece is at the core. So how do you flip that on its head now that we're here? I think we have to tap into this unprecedented moment of a feeling of social solidarity, right? The pandemic taught us that we actually do need one another.

So that's when you make the protagonist in the story that the administration tells the people, right? Americans across race and place have proven that we pull through hard times by pulling together. We delivered meals and mutual aid. We voted in record numbers for new leaders to deliver relief for our families. Republicans refused to prevent and provide real relief we voted in record numbers for new leaders to deliver relief for our families. Republicans

refuse to prevent and provide real relief for this pandemic, and they want to keep money concentrated with the wealthy and the powerful, leaving millions of us shut out. The Democrats are the ones who are going to make sure that we deliver the vaccines, the jobs, the financial support, the green jobs, the care jobs that are going to create a new and brighter future for our children. It's like reminding people that there is such a thing as government and that we can do something together. That's got to be front and center. And I don't know when in our lifetimes that feeling has been so right under the surface, particularly for white Americans who are like actually going it alone was really terrible over the past year when we were left on our own. People died. We've got to do this together.

because one of the dynamics you have in politics today is Republicans are fighting this culture war, right? And everything is about identity to them. And sometimes you hear Democrats say, well, our economic policies are more popular. So if we can just layer on a bunch of popular economic policies, then we'll win the day. But the truth is, it seems like you need a story to tell about how all those economic policies add up to something larger, right? Like Republicans basically whiffed on attacking the COVID relief bill on the American Rescue Plan, which is incredibly popular with people. They didn't really have a good argument. It doesn't seem like they're going to make that mistake again. You know, they're already going after Republicans are basically raising taxes on you and spending money on someone else, right? Someone who is poor or non-white or non-citizen. again, you know, they're already going after Republicans are basically raising taxes on you

and spending money on someone else, right? Someone who is poor or non-white or non-citizen or some Green New Deal loving liberal elite in their sanctuary city, right? Like that is great. It's a much, it's a different than an economic argument. It's a cultural argument. This bill is not for you. It's for them. So how do we sort of turn that on its head? I think the first thing we need to do is call out what they're doing, right? We need to say that the Republicans are pointing the finger at new immigrants, brown and black people, while they pay back their wealthy corporate donors, right? We need to say that they're trying to divide us and they're trying to sell this story,

but who's profiting from it, right? Bring the populism back in, make it clear that this culture war only actually serves rich people. When the people are divided, it's the people who are already winning, who are going to win even more. That's the first piece. And then the second piece is, it is important to remind people, because these, like this zero-sum story that I point out, and the sum of us, is so much, like, the biggest impediment to our progress, this idea that progress for people of color has to come at the expense of white people. A dollar more in my pocket must mean a dollar less in yours. That's the problem. So we have to surface it.

Because once you actually mention it, it seems a little silly, but it's like this subterranean unconscious story. And most white people have that view, but they also have this aspirational view. They love hearing about how we've come together and rolled up our sleeves and sacrificed and that Americans can overcome these divisions. And so by both naming the bad guys, making clear that the culture war is actually a distraction for them to pick your pocket. It's a way of dividing us from the collective power that we need to change the rules to make all of our lives better. And then, you know, doing that kind of aspirational language about what we can do when we come together. And in fact, you know, government is how we do what we can't do on our

own. And this year, more than any has taught us there are so many things we can't do on our own. We can't keep the lights on in Texas on our own. We can't make our own electric grid, right? We can't prevent a pandemic. We can't create a vaccine. We can't actually educate our children each in our own living rooms. It's not working, right? We need these public goods. our children each in our own living rooms. It's not working, right? We need these public goods. Yeah. There's also a global competitiveness angle to the message potentially. Bill Galston, who's a Clinton policy guru, said that this bill could transform, quote, a country that has not invested in itself for a very long time, a country that is on the verge of losing its technological and economic superiority to the rising power at the other side of the Pacific. What do you think of that kind of argument? Well, I think hearing from

a Clintonite that it's a problem that we haven't invested in ourselves for a very long time is a watershed moment, right? Like it's very clear that the era of big government, which is what his boss was touting being over, you know, that that wing of the party is sort of, you know, calling surrender. And I think we have to recognize that that was really about drained political politics. That was about white Democrats responding to the way that the majority of white voters had turned their back on government once government wasn't just something that gave free stuff and benefits to white people, but that it gave, you know, free stuff and benefits to people

of color as well. Like that, that was so clearly a racial story, why suddenly white people turned their backs on government and why white Democrats felt like they had to respond in that way. I think the global competitiveness stuff is important, but I think it can't just be this like jingoistic, like us versus China. I think we've got to say, as President Obama said so well, you know, our, the source, our biggest superpower is our diversity, right? That's how it is that we are going to invest in our people, you know, no matter race and place, because what we've got here is the magic of all the nation's peoples coming together in this place, including Asian Americans and African Americans, right? So you can't make it like it's white people versus the Chinese, right? Which is

sort of a little bit of the flavor that sometimes comes out if you don't explicitly say who the we is in that we versus our competitors. Well, it's also not it's not zero sum us versus China either, right? Which is which is that that becomes the problem. It's about how does America succeed and compete and lead the world on its own with all of the wonderful resources and diversity we have in this country, which is something that we've sort of forgotten in the Trump era. Last big question is, how do you get this thing passed, right? Do you try to do all of this in one bill or do you split it up into multiple bills? And if so, what does that look like? Do you try to work with Republicans? And if not, how do you get every single Democrat on board? Prime Minister Manchin yesterday said that he supports an enormous

infrastructure push and criticized Republicans' reluctance to raise taxes. Because the question is, how do you keep him on board while still getting everything in this bill that we all want? Yeah. I mean, I think if they want to do a play with a straight infrastructure bill for Republicans, I wouldn't do that, right? Like, I don't think they're going to come along. I think it's also leaving money on the table because the majority of Americans really support taxing the rich to pay for infrastructure. So if they're not coming along on that, why would we leave our tax system so skewed?

I also think that if you just make these a series of small bills, you know who will be left behind? It's the people who don't live in West Virginia, right? That's the problem, right? That is what often happens. The administration came in and the Democratic majority came in on the backs of a multiracial, anti-racist coalition that absolutely rose to the arguments around racial justice needing to address systemic racism. And if we start with an end with what Joe Manchin will approve of, we might leave all the rest of that behind. And we didn't do that. You know, in fairness, the Biden administration didn't do that in the American Rescue Plan and actually got their full one point nine trillion, which I, which I didn't believe they would get even. That's right.

But, you know, it's interesting because I think there's no way they're going to get any Republicans on board for this thing. Republicans have already, like everyone from Susan Collins to McConnell to everyone else has ruled out tax increases. But they've also complained about deficit spending. So there's no other way to really spend the money. I did see a Biden advisor in Axios saying that it's possible with Senate procedures that they could get two reconciliation bills, two more reconciliation bills, one on spending and one on taxes. That I think would be OK if you wanted to split it up

that way. But I think the idea, look, they're going to have to go through the motions like they did with the American Rescue Plan just to keep Joe Manchin happy, to show that they were trying to reach out to Republicans. But this is going to be a reconciliation bill for all intents and purposes. Like, I don't imagine that any Republican is going to go on board. And so the idea of splitting it up so you have like an infrastructure bill that somehow you're going to get Republicans on, it just seems to me like it's not the surest path to go down. It's falling. It's falling. Are you are you worried about, you know, the one good thing about the American Rescue Plan is a lot of the benefits were delivered immediately and they were tangible. So people could feel them in there. They could

see the checks in their pockets and shots in arms and they feel their life getting better. I wonder if with some of this more long term investment, we run the risk of the midterms come around and people are like, I know they spent another $3 trillion on this Build Back Better thing. I haven't seen anything in my life yet. And Republicans, by the way, are telling me that my taxes are going to go up. Like, are there provisions we should focus on that are sort of more immediate and can be more tangible? Well, to be honest, when I think about, and I talked to progressives in the House about what they want to add to this bill, it is things that are more immediate

and clear and tangible. It should be done in tandem with student debt cancellation, which the administration has the authority to do. It should include that public jobs thing, right? If you really, I'm not going to go rapturous on public jobs again, but it's so necessary. People are like, really is my, they're graduating with a mountain of debt. And then they're saying like, great, I get a gig economy job delivering crap to people. And it's like,

no, people want meaningful work that is bigger than themselves. Another big idea that could be immediate and absolutely transformational, obviously, is including the child tax credit, making that permanent, which is a ton of money of the ways that white Americans were first in line for generations of free stuff. And then the spigot was turned off once black and brown Americans got in line. And so we need to do something to recognize that every family deserves a little bit of a cushion and a shot at meeting their needs and fulfilling their dreams. So what is a baby bond? It's the idea that every child born in America gets a savings account. And families with the lowest amount of net worth, home equity, savings, investments, get a bigger account to start out with. But that is just like an incredible investment in our future. And given where the job

market is going, you want people to have that cushion. And that really is the difference between families that are economically secure and those that are living paycheck to paycheck. And it's so much of a racial justice issue, but it's a kind of like targeted universalism. Every kid in America gets it, but the black and brown kids and low wealth, white, you know, poor and working class kids get even more. That's the kind of really exciting thing that I mean, what would Kamala cash, right? Biden box. I still love the Biden book. No, I mean, look, if you do baby bonds and permanent child tax credit or some combination of both, that is that's social security for kids right you just created

like a a brand new lasting progressive program that will last for generations and could reshape politics because of its universality it's a pro-family policy like that that's where you're talking something that anyone in the country can sort of understand can feel the difference and it's something that can unite people across lines of race, class, geography, partisanship, which is the kind of thing that helps helps Democrats and helps the country, of course, more importantly. OK, so let's talk about the the latest installment of the Crooked Media Change Research Polar Coaster series. This time we polled a little over a thousand voters in Arizona because Arizona is home to two things.

One of the most extreme voter suppression schemes in the country and Democratic Senator Kyrsten Sinema, who could stop that scheme if she's willing to reform the filibuster to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act. I will start with the good news and then we can move on to what I will call the challenging news. So the good news is Arizona voters list voting rights as a top issue. Most of them have heard of the For the People Act. Fifty seven percent of them support the For the People Act. The bill's individual provisions are in some cases even more popular than the overall bill, particularly the ones around campaign finance and ending gerrymandering. And at least 60% of voters are opposed to nearly all of the Republican voter suppression bills

in the Arizona legislature right now. That's the good news. The challenging news is that Arizona is still a very polarized, closely divided state. Joe Biden's approval is 47 percent approval, 50 percent disapproval. And when you tell people the Democrats want to pass this bill, support for For the People drops to 50 percent and opposition rises to 43 percent. What is your overall reaction to these numbers? And were there any others that sort of jumped out at you in terms of how Arizonans feel about voting rights? Well, when you have someone with the biggest megaphone in the world telling a big lie that happens to fit into a groove of racist stereotypes, right? The idea that black and brown people who are inherently criminal are doing something illegal by voting,

you know, that's going to shape popular opinion, and it's going to shape popular opinion on the right, and it's going to shape white popular opinion, and that is sort of where we are. Unfortunately, you know, that's not going away, because it's become, you know, completely the unifying feature of the Republican Party, because it's aligned with their electoral strategy and their economic strategy. But we also have to remember that what is democracy about? It's about the things we win when we come together to do things for our people. So yes, when we talk about Democrats and Republicans, it turns everybody who's not a Democrat

or Republican off, right? Like we are in a super partisan, negative partisanship space. But then you get things like the raising the minimum wage and, you know, survival checks and the child tax credit that are extremely popular. $2,000 a month checks are even popular with the majority of white people. Raising the minimum wage is extremely popular with the majority of white people, including with many Republicans. And so you start to like use democracy to say what we need to win and what the Republicans are trying to block that I think is super important. Yeah, I also found it very interesting that the most popular provisions in For the People are the provisions that sort of emphasize non-partisanship, emphasize that this is to protect all voters.

And so there's basically, we've tested a bunch of messages to see which was the most popular. And it's funny, the top three messages, the most effective messages in selling this bill, number one, ending partisan gerrymandering, which has sort of gotten lost in this because obviously, like protecting voting rights is so important and all these voter suppression bills are awful. But if we don't solve partisan gerrymandering, like we could lose the House just by Republicans

being able to draw their own districts with redistricting in 2021. So nonpartisan commissions to end gerrymandering was like the number one most popular provision. Number two, the campaign finance provisions to expose dark money in politics, which is again, it was framed as, you know, liberal billionaires and conservative billionaires shouldn't be able to hide the kind of money that they donate to races. So people like that. And then number three, most popular was framing this in the race class narrative that we've been talking about, which is like these voter provision should protect every voter of every background of all parties. It's the legacy of the civil rights and voting rights movement. And every American should

be protected no matter who you are, what you look like or where you come from. That was the third most popular. So it is interesting what sort of brings people together. And that last piece is so interesting to me. It's one of those places where racism has a cost for everyone because, of course, these huge blunt instruments, the 250 bills across the country that are having politicians try to pick their voters. They're obviously targeted at young people, at Black and Brown voters at the Democratic base, but they sweep, you know, tons of white voters into the margins as well. When Demos took an anti-voter purge lawsuit all the way to the Supreme Court, our lead plaintiff was Larry Harmon, who is a white middle-aged Ohio veteran who hadn't voted in a couple of election cycles,

but wanted to make sure that his voice was heard on a legalizing marijuana bill, you know, ballot initiative, right? So it's like these blunt instruments that the right wing are using to narrow the franchise have actually always, from the poll tax to today, hurt working class white folks as well. And so I think there is a gut level

when white and Republican voters understand what Republicans are trying to do to the ability to early vote, the ability to mail-in vote. They don't like it either. That's what we've got to really appeal to to create this sort of durable coalition that is in the favor of democracy yeah it's it's so interesting it's such an important point because like the messages about um if we don't pass this bill democrats will lose and

democrats won't win elections is not only um that doesn't only alienate republicans and independents when you test that message, it's ineffective even with Democrats. On the other, on the flip side, when you say this is about protecting every voter, no matter which party you're from, no matter where you belong, then it is like it rises to super, super popular levels. So I do think as Democrats talk about this, we have to emphasize sort of the universality of who we're trying to protect with these voting rights bills. And we can't forget that. So, of course, the only way that H.R. 1 passes is if Democrats reform or eliminate the filibuster. Arizona's senior senator has so far said she's opposed to doing that. Voters in this poll are not thrilled with Kyrsten Sinema. Biden and Mark

Kelly have favorability ratings that are just slightly underwater by a few points. Sinema's favorability rating is 17 points underwater in this poll, and it's driven mainly by Democrats just barely approving of her 40 to 36 percent. That is just among Democrats. So we asked voters what they'd think if Sinema killed the filibuster to pass H.R. 1. Here's what they said. Forty three percent of Democrats would be more likely to vote for her in the next primary. they said. 43% of Democrats would be more likely to vote for her in the next primary. 49% of all voters said that in the next general election, they'd either be more likely to vote for her or that it wouldn't make a difference. And then 44% of voters said they'd be less likely to vote for her. If you were going over this polling with Senator Sinema, what's the case you'd make to

her about why she should change her position on the filibuster? Two things. One, remember who got you here in the first place. You are a Democrat. There will be a Republican running against you. You have to have record Democratic enthusiasm, which was the anti-Trump, pro-Biden Harris wave that got you and Mark Kelly in the White House. wave that got you and Mark Kelly in the White House. If your own party activists and members don't like you because you are trying to be a Republican, you will be beat by a Republican. Second, this very strange love for the rules of a body that you just entered

have absolutely no bearing on what Americans need and want. This poll shows the filibuster is not as popular as you think it is, and that reforming it and getting it out of the way of the real relief people need is going to make you more popular. You can't be the one who becomes famous across the country and among your constituents for stopping the things that the American people desperately need. Yeah, no. And this is what right before we recorded, Manchin put out a statement about For the People Act. And he said pushing through legislation of this magnitude on a partisan basis may gain short term benefits, but will inevitably only exacerbate the distrust that millions of Americans harbor against the U.S. government. He said he likes the provisions around mandated early voting, campaign finance disclosure, and improved election security. Didn't say anything

about a lot of the other provisions, negative or positive, didn't even mention gerrymandering. What do we do now? Now we got Manchin who's still saying, I don't want to hurt the filibuster over this. I want a bipartisan pared down bill. I don't know where Democrats go from there. I mean, I would like Joe Manchin to follow up that statement with, and here are the three Republicans that are going to sign on that vision. I mean, what's his plan, right? Does he really think he's counting votes in a way that is different than Senator Schumer, who has said, this is a can't fail piece of legislation. This is a once in a generation time to renew our democracy. You've still got the Republican Party promulgating the big lie. So that's, if he thinks that the, it's problematic that so many Americans

don't trust our government, he should be talking to the Republicans about that. This bill is popular with the majority of the American people, and it is the kind of recommitment to a democracy that has really only been around in meaningful fashion for the last 50 plus years since the Voting Rights Act. You know, we had what is not a real democracy, because we had politicians trying to use the rules of the ballot to enforce white supremacy in this country until the Voting Rights Act. And as soon as the first African American president came into office, we had the Republicans take up many of those same tactics again. This is not an issue where there should be two sides. You should be for democracy or against

it. And Joe Manchin is living in a fictional world if he thinks that this Republican Party that sees it in their economic and political self-interest to shrink the electorate is going to come along if he shaves off some of the more important provisions of it. This is what I don't understand is like if if Joe Manchin said, yeah, there's like four provisions that I think are bipartisan that I can get Republicans for. Let's throw that in a bill and pass it. I'd be pissed because I think the whole bill is great, but I'd say, you know what? It's better than nothing if he refuses to reform the filibuster.

But I don't think he's gonna get that, right? Like I've never seen Republicans so unified in their opposition to this bill. Like even the possible senators you get, like a Mitt Romney or a Susan Collins, they're all sort of united against even compromising on this. There was a political story the other day where Roy Blunt was saying, like, I don't care that there's bipartisan provisions in this bill.

There's no room for compromise on it. So, like, I don't I don't know where Joe Manchin goes from there or how long we have to wait for him to, like, play this game where he tries to set up meetings with senators to, like, save the filibuster, which they can't even seem to schedule, apparently. I, you know, this is part of the game that we, you know, the clock is running out on this issue. The clock is running out on our democracy. We've got, you know, every day politicians, right wing politicians in states trying to

pick their voters instead of having their voters pick them. to pick their voters instead of having their voters pick them. We've got a real chance here to make sure that multiracial democracy exists on the planet. And it's not a given. It's not a given. It's something that, you know, is popular with most Americans when you talk about it in the right way. And I think your poll showed there is a populist streak to this, right? There's a sense of like the wealthy and powerful are rigging the rules in our economy and our democracy. And yeah, wealthy and powerful also include, you know, Democratic lobbyists and campaign contributors and politicians.

There's a part of Trump's appeal that still inexplicably to us is about the people versus the powerful. And I think that we've got to harness the high ground on that messaging. We can't trade away the campaign finance provisions. This bill would include small dollar matched fundraising for the U.S. Congress. That's unbelievable. That means that like a working class person, a teacher, a nurse, a waitress could actually run and doesn't need to know billionaires or suck up to billionaires in order to mount a campaign for the U.S. Congress. That's transformational. Yeah. Super popular, too. Super popular.

Speaking of legislation that can't pass unless Democrats nuke the filibuster, gun control is back in the political conversation after the country went through two mass shootings in the past week alone, one in Atlanta and one in Boulder. Joe Biden and Democratic leaders have called for an assault weapons ban, which a majority of Americans support, and universal background checks, which a super majority of Americans support. Not a single Senate Republican supports either measure. House Democrats passed universal background checks a few weeks ago. But despite the fact that Joe Manchin and Republican Pat Toomey have been co-sponsors of a background checks bill since 2013, even they don't support the House bill because they think it's too strict. And Manchin said he wouldn't even nuke the filibuster for his own background checks bill that he sponsored with Toomey back in 2013.

Why do you think that we were somehow closer to getting something done on guns back in 2013, even though, you know, 2020 saw more gun deaths than any other year in at least two decades in this country? And where do activists go from here? any other year in at least two decades in this country? And where do activists go from here? You know, this is really frustrating, particularly given the incredible movement building that has been done on this issue. An entire generation was radicalized after Parkland. We've got whole pieces of infrastructure on allowing people in this country to make their voices heard on gun safety that didn't exist a few years ago. We've got the NRA on the ropes, thanks to Letitia James, the New York Attorney General, fleeing to Texas to try to keep its corrupt practices intact. You know, I honestly don't know. Like, I try to have an answer for things, and I honestly don't know. This is a place, I think, where it's possible that, you know, the real uptick in gun purchases

and ammunition purchases during the pandemic and in reaction to the much-hyped street violence during the uprisings this summer, right? I mean, we had 95-plus percent of the demonstrations on racial justice were absolutely peaceful, if not so much as a property damage. And yet, you know, the news was addicted to the sites of conflict between armed police and unarmed protesters. And so that kind of like fear narrative always drives up gun sales. But honestly, I don't know. I know. And it's I mean, I know that groups like March for Our Lives and Moms Demand Action have had some success on the state level, both blocking worse gun bills and and getting some gun safety legislation passed. So, you know, you can talk about the state level, but of course, we have many states in this country completely controlled by Republicans where it's very, very difficult for progressive legislation to get a foothold or even sort of, you know,

middle of the road legislation on guns. So it's very, very tough. And every time something like this happens, it feels like we are just going through the motions again, where we get a good bill that is watered down, watered down, watered down, and then loses in Congress because people can't stand up for this. And it's very, very frustrating. All right. We are going to end with our under the radar segment where each of us throws out a quick take on a below the headlines story that has interested us for whatever reason. Give me a ping facility.

One ping only, please. Heather, what do you got? Heather, what do you got? So city of Jackson, Mississippi was without water and on a boil alert for over a month. And it's one of those issues where we've got our infrastructure is crumbling and particularly the drained public pool, right? The idea that black and brown communities just did not get the kind of public infrastructure investment that they needed to have. And so I think about this as in terms of like a huge humanitarian crisis, the water crisis, but I also think about it in terms of what the Biden

administration needs to do with this infrastructure bill. We need to make sure that every family in America can turn on their tap and have safe, reliable, clean drinking water. And we need to start in the communities that have been shortchanged for far too long. That's good. That's very important. And it's important to keep in mind, as like we said at the beginning, as you're messaging the bill, as you're telling the story, this is the kind of thing that we're trying to fix in this country. It is tangible. It can bring people together across racial and geographic lines. It's very, very key. Mine is, so David Leonard had a piece in the New York Times this week about a new study from a group of Dartmouth professors that shows the national U.S. media is especially biased towards negativity. They used COVID coverage as a case study and noticed that even when cases were falling, coverage focused on places where cases were rising. Even when vaccine research began showing positive results, coverage downplayed it. The national media coverage of COVID has been

significantly more negative than any other source the researchers analyzed, including scientific journals, major international publications, and regional U.S. media. So this is a national U.S. media thing. This is something that has bugged me for years, and it's been even more pronounced during COVID. And the problem is not like the very legitimate and important coverage of the government's failed response to the pandemic. We need that. The problem is headlines like I saw in Forbes this week that read, you know, three fully vaccinated people catch COVID-19 have been there have been a significant number of people in our lives who emily and i have had to beg to get the vaccine um after negative sensationalized coverage like this

like scared the shit out of them you know and did they die the vaccine no they were to stop you from getting covid it's supposed to stop you from getting hospitalized and dying from it. But it's just like what that like I realize that outrage and negativity drives clicks, but it's also making us angry and afraid and cynical. And that is that's bad for the country. That's bad for those of us who are trying to achieve a working multiracial democracy. And in the case of a pandemic, it's like bad for people's individual well-being. That's right. That's exactly right. It's such an under the radar story. We've got to turn this around because the media is how we understand, like we're a huge country. Most people have no interaction with other Americans outside of their communities. And it's how we understand

who we are. It's how we understand the horizon of what's possible. And the way it's become atomized and negative, it has always had, you know, racist stereotypes. There was just a new study in the Washington Post that was covered about how consistently Black families are portrayed in a negative light and an unreal, you know, an inaccurate way. These are the ways, it's the mirror we hold up, right? And so it's an essential part. And we haven't talked about media reform a lot, and we have to, we can't have a functioning multiracial democracy with the media the way that it is today. No, and a lot of, a lot of political journalists, when, you know, we complain, think that it is partisan in nature well the right

attacks us you know the left attacks us and so we must be doing something right because we're getting it from both sides but it is not i have i have ideological critiques as well but this is something different than ideology right this is this is you know promoting a level of cynicism among the public that i i believe that level of cynicism hurts progressives more than it hurts conservatives, because we are trying to tell people to come together and build something better, which is harder to do when you don't believe that government good government is possible. sort of hurts us all. And as we see democracy eroding, that is one of the big factors is that everyone watches the news every day. They feel helpless. They feel hopeless and they feel unhappy. And so they say, why bother? Right. Heather, thank you so much for joining us today. It was fantastic. Everyone go by, if you haven't already, The Sum of Us, What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. It is a brilliant book. I'm so glad you wrote it.

And thanks for coming on Pod Save America. Happy to be here. Thank you so much. Everyone have a great weekend. We'll be back next week. And congrats again to Dan and Holly. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez.

Our associate producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Sominator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Caroline Rustin, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Narmal Konian, Yale Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos every week.