Pod Save America - “Build Back Meta.”

Episode Date: October 28, 2021

Democrats are on the cusp of passing the most progressive piece of legislation in decades that still leaves out some of the party’s most important priorities, Virginia organizer Tram Nguyen gives a report from the field with just a few days left of an uncomfortably close race, and Dan and Jon break down the closing arguments and strategies from the McAuliffe and Youngkin campaigns.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. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's pod, Democrats are on the cusp of passing the most progressive piece of legislation in decades, one that still leaves out some of the party's most important priorities. Virginia organizer Tram Nguyen gives a report from the field with just a few days left of an uncomfortably close race. And Dan and I break down the closing arguments and strategies from the McAuliffe and Youngkin campaigns. They break down the closing arguments and strategies from the McAuliffe and Youngkin campaigns. But first, if you want to make sure we're registering new voters now instead of panicking a few weeks before the next election, please donate to our No Off Years Fund. Every penny will go towards registering voters in places like Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin.

We've raised $270,000 so far. Thank you to everyone who donated. And we're almost halfway to our goal of reaching $600,000 by the end of October. I haven't checked what the date is, but it seems like it's close to the end of October, so we could really use your help. If you would go to votesaveamerica.com slash donate and give what you can, we would really appreciate it. And so would democracy. One more note before we start. Crooked smash hit video series campaign experts react is back.

Dan, what have you and Elijah cooked up this time? We had our friend Peter Hamby from Snapchatchat and puck news to break down the ads in the virginia governor's race it is a must watch and it's very important everyone watches because i am fighting a battle against elijah who is still trying to cancel campaign experts react i can i'm looking at elijah in the studio here and he's he's flustered as he he's he it's the uh the vigorous response from the campaign experts react fans out there have him shook. He's really wishing there was a microphone in front of him right now, but Dan has somehow made sure that it's been taken away. Okay, let's spoke to the nation about the nearly, hopefully, final framework for his economic plan.

I'm calling it an economic plan still because hope springs eternal, even though what the press is calling it is garbage. Anyway, here's what's included in the final framework. The biggest investment in climate and clean energy in the final framework. of a family's income, another year of the child tax credit to cut child poverty in half, an expansion of the Affordable Care Act that would cover millions of uninsured Americans, an expansion of Medicare to cover the cost of hearing, and hundreds of billions of dollars in elder care, home care, and affordable housing. All of this is paid for by new taxes on multimillionaires and billionaires, by new taxes on profitable corporations that currently pay zero dollars in taxes or ship jobs overseas, by new taxes on corporate stock buybacks and by going after tax cheats.

Here's what's not included that Biden and most Democrats wanted, but Manchin and or Sinema killed. Biden and most Democrats wanted, but Manchin and or Sinema killed. Paid family and medical leave, prescription drug reform, two years of free community college, and an expansion of Medicare to include dental and vision. The president spoke about the new framework today before leaving for Europe for the climate summit. Here's a clip. We spent hours and hours and hours over months and months working on this. No one got everything they wanted, including me. But that's what compromise is.

That's consensus. And that's what I ran on. All right, Dan. How are you feeling about what policies are in the bill? Fucking great, John. There we go. There's some optimism. Yes.

Now, talk a little bit more about that before everyone calls us shills for the Biden administration. Look, in all seriousness, I understand that this process was painful. The people involved, mainly Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, Josh Gottheimer as well, could not have been more annoying along the way. gosh, God, hi, Marina, as well, could not have been more annoying along the way. It is the exact opposite of the way you would design a process to ensure maximum political and messaging impact for something this important. And I don't think there's anything – there are people out there who are very happy about this. People out there are very mad about paid leave, the fact that some of the climate provisions that we care so much about are not in there, community college. There's nothing constructive about telling people not to be

mad, right? Everything like, what did you think was going to happen? Did you not see Joe Manchin on Fox News Sunday three months ago? He told us it would happen, right? Like that is not a helpful way to do it. But the way I have reached this level of optimism, which as you know, is not- It's hard for you. It's very hard. It's not my natural state of being right. Pushing a big boulder up a hill. Right. But I have been trying to do some visualization exercises and I tried to put myself in. So imagine this.

Imagine it is one year ago today. We are heading into the presidential election and someone visits us from the future. And the polls are telling us oh yeah fucking joe biden's gonna win by 10 points and we're gonna sweep huge majorities into congress because the polls are awesome so someone do you have any access to grant against pollsters yeah i am because we're gonna talk about this in virginia soon but yeah okay all right anywho let me get back to my positive, optimistic visualization exercise. Sorry. Sorry. I mean, we are so, we moved the pod recording time one hour and we're the yin and the yang are off kilter here. Look, any, so imagine it is one year ago today,

you were heading into the election. Someone visits us from the future and says, I got some good news, some bad news, and then some great news and says, here got some good news, some bad news, and then some great news. And says, here is the good news. Joe Biden wins. Here's the bad news. That's not the great news? No, that's not the great news. The bad news is those polls were all wrong. He wins by a small margin, a margin so small the election is contested for months uh in a way that ends in violence we do not get the 55 seat senate majority we had imagined as it turns out those deeply red states did not vote for democratic senators we end up with 50 senate seats and thank you thank you thank you cal cunningham and sarah gideon and a whole other group of other people and not only that we

lose so many seats in the House that we have three or four votes to play with on any given day. But despite that, Joe Biden is going to pass a nearly $2 trillion rescue plan that is going to send checks to millions of Americans. It's going to expand the child tax credit in a way that will halve childhood poverty. He will follow that up with a near trillion dollar infrastructure plan, which, oh, by the way, is passed on a large bipartisan vote. Then on top of that, he is going to pass a large jobs and climate plan that will invest a half a trillion dollars in saving the planet, have universal pre-K, will have childcare, will expand Medicare, will strengthen the Affordable Care Act, all of those things. And if you were to say that that would happen, you say,

that is an incredible outcome. I cannot believe that happened. If you remove ourselves from the what might have been of the three and a half trillion, all these things in legislative process of the last few months, this is a remarkable achievement. I recognize it's not fair to ask everyone to look at it that way, but we cannot lose the success of what we are on the cusp of getting based on what we thought we might have gotten months ago. And it is without a doubt, if this bill, as we imagine it is, ends up on his desk, a historic legislative achievement, one of the most consequential pieces of legislation passed in decades, full stop. I completely agree with all of that.

I have three points to add. I think that two of the biggest challenges facing humanity are climate change and massive inequality. And the policies in this bill do more to combat both of those than any bill I've seen passed in my 40 years on this earth now. Number two, I think to get a bill this ambitious passed with, as you said, only three votes to spare in the House and 50 Democratic senators, including two Democratic senators who are conservative and refuse to kill

the filibuster would be an incredible achievement. I say would be because we are not there yet. We will talk about that in a second. And especially considering that now that we've been through these negotiations over the course of several months or a couple of lifetimes, perhaps the central dynamic of these negotiations has been that passing nothing is more acceptable to Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema than it is to almost any other Democrat in Congress or the White House, which gives those two senators more leverage over the final bill than anyone else in Washington. I think that a lot of people, I include myself there, believed at the beginning of this process that progressives and not just progressives, just about every other Democrat in Congress and the White House had more leverage over these negotiations than we thought, because I thought that Manchin and Sinema wouldn't want to walk away with nothing. It has become clear over the course of these negotiations, while they didn't necessarily want to walk away with nothing,

it was much more acceptable to them to go home and say, we didn't pass anything. And I'd rather vote for nothing than I would for what the rest of the party wanted. That's what they, that's basically what they decided. And so once you know that that's the central dynamic of the negotiations, which clearly every other Democrat in Congress on the White House came around to, which is why Bernie is negotiating directly with Joe Manchin, which is why Elizabeth Warren is pulling him into an elevator to talk to him, which is why Pramila Jayapal is calling Kyrsten Sinema, right? Like, they all get that this is the dynamic and that as much as it fucking sucks, that there's no amount of screaming and yelling and arm

twisting that was going to change Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema's mind on the fact that they, at the end of the day, were more willing to walk away than almost anyone else in the caucus and in the White House. And I think that's an important dynamic. Did anyone try tweeting at them? Right. No, we're tweeting. We ran ads. Joe Biden twisted their arms. Everyone else twisted their arms. Joe Manchin, right? There may not be another Democrat elected from the state of West Virginia in our lifetime. And so he is either running again in a state that Trump won by 30 points, in which case all Joe Manchin cares about is winning over a bunch of Republicans,

or he's not running again, in which case there is no such thing as political pressure on him because he's about to retire and he doesn't give a fuck. Right? So that's Joe Manchin. Kyrsten Sinema clearly thinks it's in her political interest to do this. I don't agree with that. I think that we could run a primary opponent against her in 2024 that could beat her. But again, that's not till 2024. And we're sitting here in 2021. So that's the dynamic that we're dealing with them. The final point I want to make is I think that if we want to pass more ambitious progressive policies, which I badly want to, the only option, and I have thought about this for days and days and days and nights and nights and nights, is to replace Manchin, Sinema, and a few other members in the House with more progressive candidates.

And that requires us to run those candidates and win those elections in those states. That is it. That is the only other option here. And I know that is incredibly frustrating to everyone who's worked so hard in 2016 and 2018 and 2020 and all these elections and knocked on doors and called voters. And it's like really, really hard to say, like, why do we have to keep doing this? Unfortunately, the situation that we're in is that we're gonna have to keep doing this for the rest of our lives, because that's what democracy is. And that is especially what democracy is in a situation where it's under threat by another party, which we haven't talked about yet, that is busy trying to destroy democracy,

while we're all busy trying to argue over the best possible legislation to pass to improve people's lives. And that's the situation that we're in right now. And it's a tough situation, and it makes you really frustrated and pissed off a lot. Makes me pissed off and frustrated a lot. But then I think to myself, wow, think of the families whose lives are going to be changed by the fact that now they can send their three and four year olds to preschool, universal preschool in this country, just like you send them to public school and high school, public high school. Think about the families that aren't going to have to pay more than 7% of their income in child care costs who really need help with child care right now. Think about like future generations that are going to grow up in a country that has transitioned to clean energy because we spent half a trillion dollars on climate. These are big things.

These are big things. These aren't just like, let's accept half a loaf kind of things. These are big, ambitious policies. Again, they're not everything we wanted, but they're big. I also have spent a lot of time thinking about this and just having conversations with people in your life who maybe got engaged in politics over the last four years or so trying to understand why this is so hard. Because they never lived in it. Like they either – they were too young or they didn't care about politics. And the last time Democrats had control to actually do stuff.

And so explaining why this is so hard is a deeply unsatisfying thing to do, right? Because it's just like, we worked our tails off, we're in control, why can't we do the things we want to do? And it's like, well, Joe Manchin, like, what do we do about Joe Manchin? Everyone just throws up their arms because there's nothing to do about Joe Manchin. And this is as equally dissatisfying an answer to it, but it's not like we should definitely just, under all scenarios, run a primary opponent against Kyrsten Sinema. She has broken faith with people who elected her and worked hard to elect her. There is no policy. There is no principle. It's just chaos there. We can run 1,000 primary opponents against Joe Manchin, and it don't matter.

primary opponents against Joe Manchin, and it don't matter. Joe Manchin is, as you said, he will – it's not even like an if. That is the last Democratic senator from West Virginia for maybe ever, frankly. The next one will be – either be a Republican or a member of the Forward Party will be the next two options, I think. But it is – well, this is – it is an uphill battle for sure. And we will be undoubtedly facing a lot of political headwinds. But there is nothing that says we cannot come back in 2023 with 52 Democratic senators. That is the map, right? Like we can, we can defeat Ron Johnson, we can pick up the Pennsylvania seat, there's a seat in North Carolina, we have to,

we have to defend a lot of our seats and the history in those sorts of elections is not great, but it can be done. And I think your choice is if you are angry and disappointed about what happened, because you care passionately, as you should, about even more aggressive climate policy or about paid family leave or about community college, you can either disengage or you can double down. Disengaging guarantees we will never accomplish anything as good as this before. And the things you care about will never get done because it is 99% of Democrats who want to do them and 0% of Republicans. What we need is more Democrats. And so if we double down, we might get to a point where if we had 52 Democratic senators, if Cal Cunningham and

Sarah Gideon had won, we would not care one iota what Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema felt about these things. And that, to me, is a reason to work hard. I think we could even probably promise the listeners of this podcast, if everyone works their tails off and we return to 52 senators, that we would just ban the words Manchin and Sinema from this podcast. We would never talk about them again. Right. Right? Like that. I mean mean like well look like be angry for sure i'm

angry like but just direct your anger towards the right people and towards the right strategies here that's all that's all i ask because he a lot of shorthanding that like democrats did this democratic leadership did this why did democrats democrats democrats Democrats, Democrats? It's Joe Manchin. It's Kyrsten Sinema. And it is a few House members specifically on the prescription drug stuff who tried to kill prescription drug reform along with Sinema. And in the House, too, primary some of those people, right? Some of the people who killed prescription drug reform, which is one of the most popular proposals polled and something Democrats have been running on for fucking 15 years. Some of the people who killed that in the House are in very safe blue districts and could easily have a primary opponent.

Right. So do that. But but like, let's make sure we are we are directing our anger towards the right people, the people who are responsible for not getting everything we wanted. And don't punish people like Raphael Warnock or John Ossoff or Mark Kelly or Maggie Hassan or, you know, Catherine Cortez Masto. I'm listing all the people who are up, the senators who are up in 2022, or all of the House members, some of the House members who, Democratic House members who are in frontline districts, vulnerable Democratic House members who have wanted all of the stuff that Joe Biden and a lot of the progressives proposed from the very beginning and are taking a political risk by voting for it and pushing for it and have already been on the

record for it, even if it doesn't end up in the final bill. Those people took risks and we should support them. And the people who tried to kill this stuff and their names are all over the reports. You can find them. Get mad at them and start running primaries against them for sure, for sure. I do want to zero in on the nearly half a trillion dollars of investment in climate and clean energy that's in this bill, which makes it the biggest part of this economic plan and makes it the biggest climate bill in human history. bill in human history. It is mostly carrots and no sticks, credits, grants, loans to help the industrial and agricultural sectors transition to the use of clean energy. Do you think that's enough to reach Biden's goal of cutting our carbon emissions in half by 2030? Is it at least enough for the president to not get booed out of the climate summit in Glasgow? I certainly hope it's

enough for him not to get booed. It's a big deal. And I think there are two elements of this that I think are worth noting. One is Biden clearly prioritized climate over everything else in this bill. When Joe Manchin nixed the clean energy standard, he took that money and put it back into climate.

It didn't go to anything else, right? And he fought for climate. I think that is just something that is incredibly notable because during the primary, Joe Biden had one of the least ambitious climate plans of the people running. Ambitious compared to everything that came before it, but compared to Sanders and Warren and Jay Inslee and others, it was less ambitious. In the general election, he listened to Bernie Sanders and he listened to activists and he had a climate working group with AOC and John Kerry, and they put in place this very ambitious general election climate plan. And he fought with it. And it sort of shows a couple of things about, it's a tribute to Joe Biden and his team,

but also to climate activists who kept pressuring him. And so I think that's really notable. in his team, but also to climate activists who kept pressuring him. And so I think that's really notable. Is it enough on its own to reach his goal? No. But climate experts who've looked at this think that paired with aggressive executive action can get us there. And so it's not the way you would design it if you did not have to appease Joe Manchin, but it is an incredibly important historic investment. And just to think about it in context, in the Recovery Act in 2009, there was, I think, $92 billion of climate funding. That alone, by all accounts, revolutionized the clean energy market in this country. And so we're talking to something several times larger than that,

that can have a dramatic impact. And that funding was ridiculed at the time, but the fact that we sit here today and Tesla is a trillion dollar company is not disconnected from the fact that we made investments in battery technology and solar research and all of the above that was part of that bill. And so you're seeing something much larger here. So is it an absolutely huge deal? Is it enough on its own? No, but it is really, really, really important. Yeah. And just to get a little wonky on this, I talked to Dave Roberts this morning. He's a climate reporter expert, has been covering this for a long time. And he was telling me a couple of different environmental groups, climate groups modeled this. And the tax credits in the

original proposal were actually doing most of the work when it came to hitting Biden's very ambitious climate goal of cutting half our emissions by 2030. Only about 30% of the emissions reductions were coming from the clean energy standard and the methane rule and the methane provision in the bill. And so like you said, they took that money and they methane provision in the bill. And so, like you said, they took that money and they didn't put it elsewhere. They put it back into climate. So they put it into more credits and loans and grants. And what they've modeled is they think that they can,

that will almost make up the difference of the 30%. And then the rest will be made up if Biden, if the administration and the EPA can do a rule on methane through regulations and a couple of their executive actions that are administration and the EPA can do a rule on methane through regulations and a couple of their executive actions that are regulations through the EPA. So there is a belief that among experts that study this, that you could get very close to the emissions goal, because what ends up happening is instead of a standard, which penalizes companies for not hitting certain emissions goals, you basically are just flooding the market with so much clean energy money or money for transitioning to clean energy

that it becomes more profitable for utilities to run on clean energy than coal and natural gas. And the utilities end up making the decisions on their own to shut down coal and natural gas because it's just more profitable to run on clean energy because now there's just this gigantic market for clean energy. And just as an example, I think in the Obama administration, we passed about $60 billion worth of clean energy investments and tax credits. And that created a huge market for clean energy that has led to some of the progress we've seen over the last several years now imagine 500 billion dollars half a trillion dollars and what that would do to create a clean energy market so there's a lot of hope on the climate stuff and that's i think why you're seeing a lot of uh climate groups climate experts the democratic politicians who care about

climate like brian shots sort of happy about this part of the bill. Let's talk about where this all goes from here. And again, we are recording at 1130 a.m. Pacific time on Thursday. So all of this could change. The House still wants to hold a vote on the infrastructure bill today. Pelosi wants to hold the vote today. So hopefully it can pass before Biden leaves for the climate summit. House progressives are saying they still want to see legislative language, not just a framework, though they have now come out and said they are supportive of the framework. But they want to see two things, legislative language, and they want a promise from Joe Biden that he's got all 50 Democratic senators on board so that Manchin and Sinema don't try to pull anything. Meanwhile, Sinema released a statement this morning on the new framework calling it, quote, significant progress and saying,

quote, she looks forward to getting this done. Manchin was asked by reporters what he thinks. He said, quote, this is all in the hands of the House right now. And I'm not going that's all I'm going to say for today. So he's being uncharacteristically quiet. Bernie Sanders said the new framework is, quote, the most consequential bill since the 1960s. So that's favorable, but has major gaps in it, which is what we have just been saying, and that he's continuing to fight for more Medicare expansion and prescription drug reform before the House votes on the infrastructure bill. Can you figure out what's going on here and how this might play out no i cannot i i am so mystified by the desire from pelosi to pass biff i know i know to pass the bipartisan infrastructure i know framework uh do as i

whatever uh i don't really understand doesn't seem like there's any chance that's going to happen. I don't think that that is at all relevant to the sort of reception Joe Biden is going to receive abroad. It's weird. That was a big deal this morning. She wants to do it. She's going to call the vote. Joe Biden went to the caucus, pitched the framework, did not call for them to pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill today. He just wants to pass the whole thing. There is just like something missing here. I said this to our producers this morning. I said the same thing. I'm like, something is missing, and I can't figure it out. Because everyone's looking at Sinema and Manchin's statements, and they're like, that is not 100% supportive. They're sort of lukewarm at best. Manchin's being uncharacteristically quiet. What's going on? Obviously, we don't trust those two. But I will say they have not been shy in the past, either of them, in saying what they don't like about a bill. So it feels like they're

supportive. But if they are supportive, why wouldn't they put out a supportive statement? I don't know what's going on there. My one completely unfounded guess is that as part of the deal that they struck for this framework was some commitment to try to get the bipartisan bill passed today or this week, which is that is the only thing I can possibly fathom that Manchin meant when he said it's up to the House now. And I think that the progressives might understand that because you're not hearing from them. We're not going to vote for the bipartisan infrastructure package, and we still don't like the framework. You're hearing, and Jayapal said this today, we want to see the text. We want to vote for both bills. We want to know that the Senate Democrats are all on board.

That's what they want. Which, by the way, seems fairly reasonable to me. I don't know why we wouldn't get the assurance from all 50 Senate Democrats. I don't know why Manchin, like if Manchin and Sinema still have problems with the framework, they should just say what they are. They don't have to say it publicly. I don't, we don't all need to fucking know. But they, but they should tell the White House and they should tell Pelosi and Jayapal,

like, and they should work out those last few differences, right? Yeah, I, it just, it seems like you're sort of setting yourself up for failure to do this when the progressives have been incredibly clear that they're not going to do it. And I think not trusting Sinema and Manchin is a completely fair position to take. Now, I saw someone say that, like, Pelosi could just start the vote and it could be like a vote that's held open longer than any vote we've seen in a while. Right. So what she could do is say, all right right i'm holding the vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill let's start every democrat who wants to vote for it now without seeing the text can vote for it if any republicans want to vote for it they can vote for it since it is the fucking bipartisan infrastructure bill

though all the house republicans are probably going to vote against it because they're fucking assholes um so she could then hold it open and the progressives aren't going to vote against it they're just not going to vote for it. And then you just keep holding open the bill, which I guess pressures everyone to come to a final agreement so that then you can finally all the progressives can vote yes because they've seen the text and got the assurance that everyone's on board. That's the only thing I can think of. Seems like it's complicated and simple of like, let's just write the text. Right. Get right.

And everyone a little, a little, a little uh little less tweeting little fewer press conferences more writing you know let's get that let's get everyone in a room and start uh start crossing the t's and dotting the i's there okay when we come back we will talk to the co-executive director of new virginia majority tram win Election day in Virginia is Tuesday, and the 538 polling average has Terry McAuliffe ahead of Glenn Youngkin by only one and a half points in a state that Joe Biden just won by 10 points less than a year ago. In the closing weeks, Democrats like Biden, Barack Obama and Stacey Abrams have campaigned for McAuliffe, while Donald Trump has threatened to campaign for Glenn Youngkin, but as of right now has no plans to show up before Tuesday. Still, Youngkin is closing with very Trumpy messages about opposing vaccine requirements and preventing schools from teaching

kids about racism. Specifically, Youngkin is running an ad attacking McAuliffe for a controversy over Toni Morrison's classic book, Beloved. To help us sort through all this nonsense and tell us what's actually happening on the ground, we are joined by the co-executive director of New Virginia Majority, Tram Nguyen. Tram, welcome to the pod. Hey, thanks for having me. So, how long have you been knocking on doors in Virginia, And around how many voters are you talking to each day? Well, we've been on the doors actually since January

because we knew that, you know, with still being in pandemic and still being in COVID, that it was going to take a little bit longer to reach all the voters we needed to. So we've been on the door since January. We've made almost half a million door knocks and about 780,000 phone calls. And we're still going pretty strong, just trying to reach every voter we can until November 2nd. That is so many doors. Does the race feel as close as the polling?

Well, I'll say this. I live in a state of perpetual anxiety. I will not rest easy until the polls close on Tuesday. And we know what the results are, right? It feels close in some ways, and it doesn't feel close in other ways. I don't know if that makes sense. There's a lot of noise. The other side is certainly louder. And so it makes it feel like they have more urgency. But when we're on the doors and we're actually talking to people, our folks are pretty excited and they're actually tapped in. They love the direction that Virginia is going in and they want to keep it moving forward. And, you know, maybe they're not as loud, but they're certainly voting and we can already see that in the early vote numbers. I am also a resident of that state of perpetual anxiety,

so I'm right with you. Dan too. Yes, of course. So there are two schools of thought about how to know what's going on in a race. One is to look at Twitter. The other is to talk to voters. And you and your volunteers are out there talking to the voters every day on the phones and doors. What issues are sort of front of mind for the Virginia voters you're talking to? It probably won't surprise you that the number one issue that folks have been talking about has been health care. I mean, we are still in this pandemic, right? And so folks are worried about what happens if they get sick or somebody in their family gets sick and they're not able to pay bills. We did expand Medicaid a couple of years ago, which, you know, allowed over 500,000 Virginians to get access to health care.

And it was a great step. But there's more work that we have to do. People care about, you know, parents care about the fact that their kids are back in school. And thankfully, children will be able to get vaccinated soon. But, you know, they're worried, right? What happens if they get that phone call from their teacher or the principal saying there's been exposure? Your child has to quarantine for 14 days. And then they're scrambling on, oh, gosh, how do I take time off work for 14 days? Like, what am I supposed to do? And so when they bring up these issues, we're able to

talk to them about some of the plans we have, right? Like Democrats have a plan to pass paid family and medical leave, right, in Virginia next year. And so those are the things that people really care about, like these bread and butter issues, which I know we say like every election cycle, but it's actually true. If you were to read the press coverage of the race or look at the ads or some of the stuff that the Youngkin campaign is saying, that the central biggest issue is this story, is this controversy mostly trumped up and made up about critical race theory, teaching racism in schools and beloved. Are you hearing any of that from voters? Is that a real thing? It seems

to be the main message of the Youngkin campaign for weeks now. Is that reflected in what you're hearing? It's the loudest message, certainly in the media and in the space. But again, when we're actually talking to voters one-on-one, they're not talking about that. They really aren't. That's not the thing that they bring up at all. Because we don't just go to voters and say, hey, do you plan on voting? And can we count on you to vote for, you know, so-and-so Democratic candidate or so-and-so other candidate? We actually ask them first, like, what's on your mind? You know, do you know that there's an election coming up? What's at stake for you? And so that way, they're proactively telling us what is their number one issue. And critical race theory, all of that stuff does not come up. It almost feels in many ways manufactured. or have either who haven't yet decided whether they're going to vote or who haven't decided who they're going to vote for? What are some of the issues on their mind where they're trying to

decide between candidates or between staying home and voting? Like what do they talk about more than more than anything? That's a great question. I think that for a lot of voters who are undecided, I think in part it's because they weren't aware that an election is actually here, which, you know, for those of us in this world, we're like, are you kidding? We have elections in Virginia every year. Like, of course there's an election coming up. But for some folks that we talked to, they're like, oh, there's an election coming up. I wasn't aware. Let me look into it a little bit more and, you know, find out a little bit more about the candidates and where they stand on my issues. And, you know, I can't tell you who I'm going to vote for today, which is totally fair and totally

fine. But, you know, again, when we remind people, when we know what issue they care about, we remind people of all the progress that we've made, right? In the last two years, we have made progress on every front, whether that's voting rights, making sure we raise the minimum wage and protecting workers' rights. We have done a lot of reform in the criminal justice space, abolishing the death penalty, legalizing marijuana. When you talk about these things, and then people are like, oh yeah, we really like all of that, but that's still like it's not enough. You're like, well, of course it's not enough. We are talking about needing to undo generations of barriers that have left many of us behind. It's not going to happen overnight.

But you know what? If you choose a team that's going to actually work with us to continue to make that progress, that's what's at stake here. And I think those types of conversations are what's motivating a lot of folks to pay attention more to these state level races that people sometimes don't necessarily pay attention to. And they are hopefully going to vote on Tuesday or before Tuesday. The other media narrative that you hear a lot is the sort of dysfunction or the legislative mess in Washington and national issues and Biden's approval rating and all that are affecting the race in Virginia. Are you hearing

that at all when you talk to voters? I think it depends on the region, right? So of course, Northern Virginia is very much like DC's backyard. And I think a lot of folks in Northern Virginia obviously pay a lot more attention about what's happening in Congress. Anything less so in other parts of the state, although people are certainly paying attention. I think it's too simplistic, though, just to be like, oh, the federal level, they can't get the bill back better plan and the reconciliation bill through. It's like, well, most people don't actually know the difference between the infrastructure bill and the reconciliation bill or what all of that really is, right? And so I don't think it's as black and white as that.

But I do think that people are hungry for Congress to act, right? There's a lot that needs to be fixed in this country. And there's a lot of progress that we need on all fronts. And they are really looking forward for Congress to act. And hopefully they can soon. One of the themes of the four years Trump was president was an incredibly fired up base of Democratic activists. Just know it was very easy for people to volunteer, people joined Swing Left, people traveled to Virginia in 2017 to campaign for state house races. One of the things people

have been very curious about is whether that enthusiasm would stay with Trump, not on the ballot at least. What is the level of enthusiasm? Has it been harder to fire up Democratic activists this time around? I think the activists are actually quite fired up. We still have folks coming from out of state to help us. We have a group based in Seattle that's amazing. And they actually have come out to Virginia already to canvas with us, and they're coming back this weekend for the final stretch. All of our most of our phone banking actually is from out of state volunteers. Right. So folks are volunteering in the state.

Our volunteers are canvassing. I mean, it's not as. I mean, I'm not going to lie. It's not as much as we've seen in 2019. Right. And I think that's, you know, that could be based on a couple of different factors. I mean, we're all tired. Right. Like not even just tired from elections, you know, work life and everything else, folks are tired. And so, you know, it's been harder to get folks to volunteer their precious time. But that's not to say that, you know, people aren't doing it. Like I said, we've got volunteers from all over the country that are supporting us now. So we have a lot of listeners who are going to be volunteering and phone banking over the next

few days. What would you tell them is the most important message to deliver to folks that they're on the phone with who may have not decided what they're going to do yet on Tuesday? Oh my gosh. I think it's about what's at stake. I mean, I live in a state of perpetual anxiety, not because of who's going to win and who's going to lose on election night, but because of what's actually at stake for our communities, right? Less about the candidates, but we have made so much progress and we cannot afford to turn back the clock and we cannot afford to play defense, right? We have only started, you know, tip of the iceberg and we got to keep it going. So it's it's really about that. And I think, again, with all the Virginia voters that we're talking to, we remind people of the progress we've made on all fronts and they want to keep it going. So I think that's the message that's resonating the most and that we've got a bold vision to keep going.

We really do. There's I've got a whole list of things that, you know, we still got a bold vision to keep going. We really do. There's, I've got a whole list of things that, you know, we still got to get done. So. Well, I think that's a, I think that's a great message. Tram Wynn, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for all the work you're doing and, and good luck in these final days. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. All right, Dan, let's talk about what we just heard from Tram and what we think about the closing strategies in this race. The Democratic message seems to be that Glenn Youngkin is far more extreme than he appears. Here's our old boss and President Biden making that case this week. Biden making that case this week. You can't run ads telling me you're a regular old hoops playing, dishwashing, fleece wearing guy, but quietly cultivate support from those who seek to tear down our democracy. Terry's opponent has made all of his private pledges of loyalty to Donald Trump.

But what's really interesting to me, he won't stand next to Donald Trump now that the campaign's on. Think about it. Is there a problem with Trump being here? Is he embarrassed? Really brings you back, especially hearing Obama doing his riff there. Is this the right closing message?

Yeah, it is the right closing message. I mean, Virginia is the prototypical state that exemplifies the shift in the electoral coalitions post-Trump. It is a state that has an incredibly high percentage of college-educated voters, many of them living in the suburbs. It is a state that moved from a very close battleground state in 2012 to a state that Hillary Clinton won easily in 2016, and then Biden won by even more in 2020. So it is critical. It is a good strategy to nationalize the race, to make it be about Trump, and send a message to those voters who voted for Mitt Romney in 2012 and Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020 that Clinton Youngkin is not one of those Republicans you used to vote for. He is the exact kind of Republican who made you switch and start voting for Democrats. Yeah. Biden seemed to be baiting Trump there into getting involved in this

race. Trump, being Trump, took the bait, released a statement soon afterwards saying he'd see Virginians soon. I'm sure Glenn Youngkin was super excited about that. Then last night, Wednesday night, the Trump folks walked it back and said that the former president wouldn't be in Virginia before Tuesday. What do you think that was all about? I'm sure there was a party wide effort to use toddler level reverse psychology to convince Trump he should not go. I mean, the amount of panic that must have gone bad. Too bad. I mean, it would have been amazing, but I'm sure I know what they did is they went to Trump and said, look, we got the poll in here, and I think this guy's going down. And the last thing you want to do is stand with that loser three days before he loses to Joe Biden's friend. Oh, interesting. Interesting.

Well, that would be smart if they did that. Yeah. I mean, that's how they sort of got him not to get into some races in 2018 as well. So I think that's probably what and they promised him World Series tickets because he's going to game for the World Series. I know I saw that, too. Wonderful. There's always a there's a balance there, right? Because I'm sure and this is why Glenn Youngkin has sort of like walked this tightrope the whole campaign that in some ways donald trump not coming to northern virginia but maybe uh southern southern or western virginia and like rallying the trump base to come out and vote for glenn yunkin is is has some value to yunkin but of course i think that the statement that trump put out was like i'll see you in Arlington or see you in Alexandria.

Like Donald Trump coming to Northern Virginia for Glenn Youngkin. I'm not a I'm not a field organizer or a polling expert or anything like that. But I'm going to say that's bad. That's bad for Glenn Youngkin. But it's like the Trump is such a divisive figure, particularly in that state where if he he went anywhere, right, it's not like the DC media market, which is what covers Northern Virginia, would not spend days covering the pending Trump rally if he was in Southwest Virginia or wherever else. And so the Yunkin people clearly made a decision, which I think was probably the right decision a long time ago, that whatever benefits they would get in terms of turnout from Trump appearing in a very MAGA-friendly part of the state would be massively overwhelmed by the backlash it would face against the exact.

But he has to win a bunch of Biden voters, right? Like, that's the math. To win, he's got to win one in 10 Biden voters. And so that's why they, I'm sure, begged him not to come. Yeah. So Youngkin and the Republicans are definitely going more local in their closing argument. No Trump for now. Not a lot about national politics even. Instead, they released the ad we referenced earlier where a Fairfax County mother and conservative activist attacks

Terry McAuliffe for vetoing a bill when he was governor that would have forced schools to notify parents when teachers assigned books with sexually explicit content, in this case, Toni Morrison's Beloved, so that parents could choose substitute assignments for their children if they chose. Here's a clip. So when my son showed me his reading assignment, my heart sunk. It was some of the most explicit material you can imagine. I met with lawmakers. They couldn't believe what I was showing them. Their faces turned bright red with embarrassment. Okay. So first of all, when did you read Beloved? I read it in high school. I remember there being, it's a wonderful book first of all there are some like dark parts of the book i don't i mean i don't remember i don't know i don't remember a sexually

explicit material jumping out at me or what the fuck are they talking about i also read it in high school but i'm gonna let you in on the secret you don't think it's about that? I don't think this kid, no, I don't think this kid read Beloved. Right? Oh, it gave me nightmares, mom.

It's like, replace Beloved with To Kill a Mockingbird. This also gave me nightmares. Replace To Kill a Mockingbird with, Jane Eyre, right? There's a whole generation of kids who are now going to just claim nightmares to get out of having to read long, challenging books in high school.

Also, you're in high school. No one's making a kindergartner read Beloved, right? Why? Okay. Still in a pandemic. The economy is still struggling to recover. Why is Youngkin closing with this? Because this is the way to appeal to Trump voters without standing with Trump.

It is a message of racial grievance. It is to say that history... Because the very specific thing is about Beloved in this case, not an accident written by Toni Morrison, one of America's most prominent, if not the most prominent Black authors. But it is all about this completely trumped up, no – actually, yes, pun intended, controversy about critical race theory being taught in schools. That is the wave they are trying to surf here that shows that America is changing. That change is bad for you white people. And I, like Donald Trump, am going to stand as a bulwark against that change. And this is not a dog whistle. It is a

bullhorn. Yes, they want to localize the race versus nationalize it, but they're doing it by hitting a very national theme. Here's where i'm not sure i totally agree with that we see this ad uh all it takes is for you to google this woman uh you know in five seconds you get from google that she led the fight against uh this book and that you know that it was. By googling it. You know that it's about Beloved. And you know that it's about Toni Morrison. And then you think. Oh okay.

I get what's going on. If you're just a Virginian. Sitting home watching the ad. You have no idea it's about Beloved. You have no idea it's about Toni Morrison. All you know. Is that this woman is complaining. That Terry McCullough forced her son.

To read sexually explicit material. And so it is then incumbent upon you to go to your computer get on your phone and find out what the whole controversy is so i do wonder if there's another intention from republicans running this ad which is maybe more of a dog whistle than a bullhorn or maybe maybe neither which is just like terry mcculliffe and Democrats think that they get to control what happens in your school. By the way, wink, wink. There's also been a fight about critical race theory and teaching racism in school. So that's part of the dog whistle as well. I just don't know if it's as explicit as the Tony Morrison beloved thing, since it's just not mentioned in the. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think we're saying the same thing, right?

Which is the, you have to put this ad in the context of the fact that Youngkin has been campaigning on banning critical race theory from schools for months now. And this- Which of course is not being taught in Virginia schools.

Yeah, yeah, it's like, I can't say that enough. It's completely and totally made up. It only exists in the Fox News metaverse, if you will. And we should also say, because sometimes this isn't enough to just say, oh, it's not being taught in schools. What is being taught in schools to children is the history of racism in America. And that seems to be what Republicans truly have a problem with and not critical race theory, which is like a boogeyman that they use. I guess maybe the context here is there are these two votes you mentioned that McCullough vetoed as governor. And then he had a statement in the last debate about how parents

shouldn't decide what is taught in schools. That was viewed as a gaffe. They want to make that the central theme of the race. And so this ad is a way, very effectively, as evidenced by the conversation you're currently having, shifting the conversation in the final days to the thing they want to focus on. Because if you look at some of the polling, like there's a Fox News poll, which does issue differences, like who you trust on the issues. And McAuliffe has a decent advantage on almost all the issues over Youngkin. Education is pretty close to tied, but they also ask the question. And this is a dramatically oversimplistic version of how you would ask the question, but it says,

should parents have a say in what their kids are taught in school? So this is a Fox News poll that McAuliffe is winning by a few points, and it's 50-45, yes, they should have a say. And so you want to close a campaign on your issue, not theirs. And they have, at least for the time being, successfully shifted it to that issue. Whether that is enough to win, whether that it really matters to people, open question. But the media conversation, social media conversation is on what they want to be talking about, not what McAuliffe wants to be talking about. Well, I think the interesting thing here is the Democrats haven't chosen to say, OK, that's what they want to be talking about. We want to be talking about Youngkin's ties to Trump or his opposition to vaccine requirements or anything like that. We're going to talk about this, too. They don't they don't just think this

ad is stupid. They think that clearly Republicans made a mistake with this ad. McAuliffe has been accusing Youngkin of wanting to ban books and silence black authors. His staff passed out copies of Beloved during the Biden rally, and he's out with this video today. Books teaching our kids about Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks should never be banned. School officials should never be subject to death threats and intimidation. I know the chaos is meant to distract me. I will not sit down. I will vote. I will vote.

I will vote. My daughter and my community need a better example. So I'll say this i think the handing out beloved uh at the rally that is a that is a tactic for people who are super online and super engaged in what's going on in this race and are following all the contours of the race reporters activists everyone else is online and i was not sure like i'm like how is this going to break through This is basically just to get reporters to tweet about this. That ad, that's for people who may not know this whole controversy over Beloved, the book, Toni Morrison, all the rest of it stuff. But I think it's very effective because it's sort of

turning around Youngkin's ad and then saying, look, Glenn Youngkin basically wants to like ban books, thinks there's two sides to the Holocaust tied to Trump. Like that seems like it's more fertile territory for McAuliffe's message and the contrast McAuliffe's is trying to make. And it doesn't require you to know about this controversy, which I'm sure a lot of people in Virginia may not know about. Yeah, the handing, like I'm for mass distribution of Beloved. Like it's a great book.

We should have more people. Yeah, that's just a good thing to hand out to people everyone should read it yeah but that's it's a press gimmick no one who has not decided who they're going to vote for or whether they're going to vote is ever going to know about that or care about it so it's just it's just like a press gimmick an idea someone had and they did it and it's fine i don't i don't think it's good or bad necessarily other than the general benefit of exposing more people to Toni Morrison. But I think there's sort of two ways to think about how the McCullough folks have responded to this. seem like an out-of-the-mainstream, extreme Trumpist Republican. And they see, I believe, an opportunity to do that here on what is, according to polling, Youngkin's strongest issue, which is education. So that is a very well-worn school of political thought, which is

take your opponent's political strength and make it their weakness. And so you could see that happening here. The thing I worry about in the execution thus far, and it's important to note that all the execution is happening sort of in the Twitter media bubble. That ad is a very, very good ad and it works even if you knew nothing about that original Yunkin ad or what it's about. It just works as it fits their strategic imperative. The danger is getting too in the weeds on this making it about specifically silencing tony morrison or books and you're sort of i worry you could potentially lose the thread there and take it well i thought it was very refreshing to just talk to tram yeah um and and hear what we we don't do nearly enough of this.

I find myself thinking like, how do you and I unlearn the lessons we've learned through however many campaigns we've been on, which is like ignore the media narratives and the Twitter bubble

and everything online and like listen to what people are hearing on doors from voters. But somehow I always unlearn it because here we are trapped in the Twitterverse talking about politics all the time. But it was so refreshing to hear her be like, oh yeah are trapped in the twitterverse talking about politics all the time but it was so refreshing to hear her be like oh yeah you know people are talking about

health care which is not sure about health care one single goddamn national story about that race for months not one they're like they're juggling costs they're worried about health care they're worried about job worry but they like they're all kinds of normal things that people voters are always worried about when you talk to voters. No one was like, hey, I have a question about the controversy over Beloved and Toni Morrison. And that's how, I mean, like, it's just, it gets a little ridiculous how these races sort of like take on a life of their own.

And there's just this like momentum, especially in the final weeks of a race where everything does feel a little sillier and removed from what actual voters are talking about on the ground john i would like to remind you that four years ago this week washington i don't even tell me when i know insane and because donna brazil former four years ago oh yeah four years ago i was gonna like pull back something you said about an election four years ago we had that no i do not do that i thought you were gonna be i i didn't hear four years in my mind i thought a year ago because before the 2020 election i thought we were going to talk about like hunter's laptop which i think what we were talking about a

year ago at this time but so four years ago at this time, in the run-up to the Virginia gubernatorial election, the first major battle post-Trump's victory, there was a collective freakout because Donna Brazile, the former DNC chair, released a book critical of the Democratic Party. And there were real people who still have jobs in media today. They were all on the set of Morning Joe. Complaining, saying that this was going to cost Democrats the election. Yep. There's a great clip of it. I'll tweet up the clip at some point. So it was just like, we all have to take a step back.

It was the Donna Brazile book, plus MS-13 attacks are working and Ed Gillespie. I'm glad you brought this up because this sort of gets to our last question I wanted to ask you, which is like, why is this race so close? And do you actually buy that this race is so close? Because in 2017, when it was Ralph Northam against Ed Gillespie, the polling average was very close. It was maybe, we're now at one and a half. McAuliffe's up one and a half. I think Northam and Gillespie by the end were two. Northam was up two, three maybe.

Not much more than this. There were a couple polls. There was a poll or two that showed Gillespie in the lead. And then the Morning Joe set famously in this clip. Donna Brazile's book has turned the race against Northam. The MS-13 attacks have turned the race against Northam. And then Ralph Northam wins by nine points. Nine points. And again, I don't want to, who knows what the polls are, whether the polls are

right or not. There's something that has in my gut told me that it's not, it might not be as close. But I think that's only because if I very very much believe that if glenn yunkin pulls this out it's not just like a warning sign for democrats i think it's a fucking catastrophe because and this is not like a point and a half race in georgia arizona wisconsin pennsylvania all states that joe biden won but that were close if we were like a one and a half point race there and then we ended up losing i'd be like yeah know, party out of power tends to do worse and off your elections. There's a lot of headwinds that Joe Biden and Democrats are facing. So I get why we lose. Joe Biden won Virginia by 10 points. And the composition of the electorate and polarization

we know have been more predictive than anything else since 2016. so yeah do you expect um uh do you expect terry mccullough to win by less than joe biden maybe less than ralph northam yeah probably four or five six points whatever but if he loses yeah that's that's that's something that's something bigger there's there's bigger problems there which is making me feel like there's something going on with the polling here, but I don't know. Yeah, I mean, we do not know. We're not on the ground. We don't see internal polling.

We're looking at media polls and sort of we're looking out of a cracked, fogged up window trying to see what's happening out there. And so predictions don't make any sense. They were bad before. They're even worse now. I mean, there are reasons to believe that structurally, McAuliffe should win this race, right? He has margin of error given the partisan lean of the state. But there are warning signs all over the place, right? The body language of the campaigns, I think, suggests that Youngkin, at least in their internal polling, it seems as close as

maybe the public polls suggest. There is a consistent theme in the polling that Youngkin's voters are more fired up than ours. That also tracks with history. That is almost always true that the party question is, do those suburban voters go back to voting for Republicans? And if that is the case, and Democrats do- And not just some of them, a lot of them, like you said.Trump party and the midterms, and Democrats do not bounce back to the level of white working class voters that they had in 2012 and get back to the level of black and Latino working class voters they had in 2012 and 2016, we cannot win anywhere. That is the math. So I'm just going to choose to- And that's, and that's, and by the way, we cannot win anywhere yeah right that is that is the math so i'm just going to choose and that's and that's and by the way we cannot win anywhere that's like pretend there weren't voting restrictions

pretend there weren't gerrymandering yeah there's no which there's no voter there's no voting restrictions there's no voting restrictions in virginia right no one came in and put up a bunch of voter restrictions in fact it's got some of the best easiest most accessible voting in the nation. Thanks to Terry McAuliffe and Ralph Northam. So there's no excuses there. Yeah, it is. Terry McAuliffe should win. He should win. Yeah.

And I will say one more thing. The California recall. At one point, the polling average had Newsom surviving the recall by two points. By the end, right before Election Day, the polling average was 16 points in favor of Newsom. And so you think, OK, well, the polls figured it out. He ended up winning by 23, 24 points. The polls were off. Even though they said he was going to win, the polls were off by eight points in California.

That is a gigantic miss so the idea that the polling problems that we had in 2020 have been solved is crazy yeah unless they are accurate in this one and then i guess they have been solved or they have been solved but i just just because your clock that broke at 1 p.m is correct twice a day does not mean uh that your clock is well it's just because Newsom won and survived the recall. No one really talked about what happened in California. But an eight point miss in the polls is fucking huge. And as notable as the poll miss is that it basically ended almost at exactly Newsom's 2018 margin.

2018 margin which goes back to my original point which is the polarization and composition of the electorate is just it matters a lot more than it ever has because the country is so polarized right now and so like yeah you go from 2018 in california all the way to 2021 and in three years it's like nothing happened newsom gets the the same margin, same number of votes almost, than he did in 2018. After everything that's happened between 2018 and 2021. So, you know, again, we'll see what happens in Renew. But if you are living in a state of anxiety, like Tram said she was, or we are, then the best thing to do is, you know, not wonder what's going to happen, but make it happen. Which is to volunteer and do some phone bank shifts. I did one last weekend. I know you've been doing them.

Hopefully we'll do some more before Tuesday. But, yeah, we've got to win this one. Thanks to TramWin for joining us today and giving us a report about Virginia. And everyone have a great weekend. We will see you next week. Bye, everyone.

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