Pod Save America - “Daunte Wright should be alive today.”

Episode Date: April 15, 2021

The Biden Administration’s focus on the pandemic and the economy is interrupted by multiple new challenges, Democrats analyze how to poll and advertise better in the next election, and Pod Save the People’s Sam Sinyangwe joins us to talk about police reform after another devastating killing in Minnesota.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 show, the Biden administration's focus on the pandemic and the economy is interrupted by multiple new challenges. Democrats analyze how to poll and advertise better in the next election. And Pod Save the People's Sam Sinyangwe joins us to talk about police reform after another devastating killing in Minnesota. Dan, let's start with the Biden administration, which is nearing its first hundred days. The president's average approval rating with voters stands at 53 percent, with 42 percent disapproving. That is much higher than Donald Trump's 41 percent average approval, slightly below Barack Obama's at this point in his term. Part of this administration's success

has been their ability to zero in on one simple overarching message over the last few months. Here it is. Shots in arms and money in pockets. Shots in arms and money in pockets. But of course, as you and I are painfully aware, even the most successful White House message is inevitably interrupted by events beyond your control. In just the last week, the Biden administration has had to deal with an influx of migrants at the border, tensions between Israel and Iran, a timeline for withdrawal in Afghanistan, a Russian military buildup near Ukraine, another black man killed by police in Minnesota, a fourth wave of COVID cases in states like Michigan, and the request from the FDA and

CDC on Tuesday for states to temporarily pause the use of the J&J vaccine after six women experienced extremely rare blood clots. So much for the prediction that the Biden presidency would be boring, huh? Well, I think the boring part was how the president would respond to these news events, not that the news events were bad. The boring part is Biden. Yes, and it's not even boring. I think the right term is normal. Right. Normal. Right. Yeah. Not the world.

The world is still crazy. But the president in office is not making it crazier, at least. I wanted to talk about the J&J news. What was your reaction to the news? Some self-appointed Twitter experts and some real experts thought the pause was a mistake because this was so far only six out of over seven million who got the vaccine. And there's a concern that this news will only increase vaccine hesitancy. Well, I think it's important that you and I weigh in here because what a lot of people don't know is before we were podcasters, before we were in politics, we had a long career in epidemiology.

We did studies. Yeah, we were big, big epidemiologists. Yes, we did a number of studies on vaccine hesitancy all over the world. So we're true experts. You should take what we say very seriously. I studied under Dr. Fauci at Holy Cross, both of us. Yes, you know what my PhD is? The blue checkmark by my name. I mean, I have no idea whether this is the right decision or not. I would say that the Biden administration, the FDA are highly incentivized to get as many people vaccinated as quickly as possible.

So if they are making the decision to take the pause, they have a pretty good reason to do so. And I am willing to be like Joe Biden and trust the science on this one. Joe Biden, and trust the science on this one? I kind of just think you get to a point where there's only bad options when a crisis or a problem like this occurs. And we've been there in the White House a million times. So instead of thinking like, was this the right or wrong decision? Think about what the alternative was. So the alternative to this decision is six people so far, we don't know, perhaps more as the weeks go on, develop these blood clots. It comes to the attention of the FDA and the CDC. Imagine if they knew about it, the news leaked out, they said, we're not concerned, continue to get your shots. And

then the news continues to leak out that more people are getting blood clots. I mean, does that make, if the problem that we're worried about is vaccine hesitancy, does that help vaccine hesitancy to have the FDA and the CDC just telling everyone as they hear about more blood clots, don't worry about it. Or do you study the issue, not only because you're going to, that's a better way to make sure people trust the vaccine, but also because you want to save lives if there's a problem. Let's not forget that very important goal. And in this case, the FDA and CDC have said that this is as much a message for doctors and providers as it is for people who are taking the vaccine, because apparently the way to treat this very rare blood clot is completely different than how you would treat other blood clots. And so they want to make sure that doctors and providers know what to look out for and know what treatment to provide if this very, very, very extremely rare blood clot happens. Now,

they of course have to weigh that with the fact that the longer this pause goes on, the more people are going to be distrustful of the J&J vaccine. And that is, of course, something to weigh heavily. And they met on Wednesday. And I think just about everyone hoped this would be resolved on Wednesday. It was not. They're going to try to meet now next week. I do think the longer this goes on, the bigger problems they have with trust in the J&J vaccine. And you were already seeing that in some of the polling about this. But again, I just I can't figure out what the other options would be that are better than this.

Yeah, I agree with that. And you're sort of trying to analyze and argue a counterfactual, but I agree with you that on the question of vaccine hesitancy, the worst problem would be a situation where you sort of see how this plays out in the media, because the primary method of covering the pandemic is panic porn, right? Where it's like, another person had a blood clot clot and therefore, why won't the FDA intervene? Why won't they look at this? What is going on? That would do more, I think, to increase hesitancy than a situation where a bunch of scientists, including Dr. Fauci,

the most trusted person in America by some measures, looks at it and then comes out and says, we looked at it. Here's what it is. And it is okay. That seems to be the better of two bad choices, as you point out. That's what being president is, is choosing between two bad options. I remember someone telling Barack Obama after he won, congratulations, now you get to spend the next 48 years choosing between two terrible choices. And that's sort of what this situation. I think we should also, you know, there was this poll by Echelon Insights, which is a Republican polling firm run by one-time Republican pollster, current Twitter troll Patrick Ruffini, that basically tested whether this increased or decreased vaccine hesitancy and actually turned out that it had the opposite of what you thought. It made people trust it more or it didn't really cause people to panic about it.

But what he was testing was the exact truthful message, like how many people it is, what they're doing. And that's just not how people are going to get information. And we shouldn't think this is only going to affect people's willingness to get the J&J shot because they're surfing the news. All they hear is pause on vaccine. Does every person know it's J&J as opposed to Pfizer or Moderna? Absolutely not. And so this will certainly have an impact. I just don't think there was another choice. And it is particularly problematic that it is J&J because that is the shot that was being used by a lot of states and localities to get to the hardest to reach populations. A lot of cities are using J&J

on the homeless population because you only have to do it once. Healthcare providers are using it on homebound patients, so you only have to do it once. And so if you lose that weapon in your arsenal for a week, two weeks, whatever else, that matters. But this is still, I think, the only choice that the Biden administration had before them. And certainly imagine a world where the FDA recommended it and then Joe Biden overruled it, right? That would be the exact opposite of what we did. Well, I saw, of course, we basically guessed it before it happened. But the Politico headline about this was Biden's trust the science approach hits a political snag. I'm just like, are you fucking kidding me like yes yes i'm sorry he's trusting the science and it may cause a political problem for him so be it so be it he's would you rather

him not trust the science to not hit a political snag it just shows how fucking broken some political coverage is trust the science is not a political strategy. It is not an approach. It's just a belief. It's what you do, right? And look, I don't want to downplay the challenge of vaccine hesitancy that will come from this and was already a problem before this.

I mean, look, I got the j and j vaccine um i feel great i'm not worried about it i'm not losing sleep over it but i do i have someone else in my life who um we had to convince for quite a few weeks to get the vaccine she was very nervous about it she finally got it she got j and j how's emily? No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Emily got Moderna. But when I saw this friend yesterday and I had to, you know, talk about this story and like really convince her everything was OK, it's hard because like vaccine hesitancy is real. And look, one of the worries about this was like, is this going to pause the vaccination program? Is this going to be a supply issue? Is this going to be a supply issue?

Is this going to slow down the campaign? That I think we don't have to worry about. We are already seeing now in some states up to 30 percent supply that is going unused to vaccines. So we are we are very rapidly approaching the point where the supply of vaccines is going to soon outstrip the demand. And then the question is what to do about everyone who hasn't taken it yet. Monmouth did a poll the other day this week that said, you know, 51% said they've already received the vaccine in the poll. That's how you know the poll is fairly accurate.

The CDC number is about 49% have received a first dose. 14% said as soon as it's allowed, they'll receive it. So that brings you up to about 65% of people. But we need anywhere between 70% and 90% to hit herd immunity. There's another 12% that'll say, I'm going to see how it goes. And 21% still who will say they'll likely never get the vaccine. Now, who are those people? Well, 45% are Republicans. 36% are people under 35 years old. And those are the two biggest groups.

Also men, white, non-college and Hispanics are also overrepresented in that category, but mainly it's Republicans and people under 35 years old. So like, what does the Biden administration do about that? That's a lot of work to get that last. I mean, if you end up with 10, 20% who don't get the vaccine, that's not ideal, but it's probably not fatal to herd immunity. But you do have to get to like 70 to 80%. And I do think that's going to be a lot of work. And there's limits to what the Biden administration can do. Just because of the way how America is polarized, how filter bubbles in the information ecosystem currently operate, it's very, very hard for Joe Biden or Anthony Fauci to convince that 45% of Republicans to

get the vaccine. In fact, a lot of studies show it has the opposite effect. The mere fact that Joe Biden is talking about it makes them less likely to believe it. The more it's on CNN or the New York Times, the less likely they are to get it because of how they've been conditioned to trust or distrust these institutions by a bunch of very malicious grifters in the Republican Party for a long period of time. If someone really wanted to do something about this, that person would be Rupert Murdoch, who was one of the first people on the planet to get vaccinated, yet his network is spreading vaccine conspiracies left

and right. Tucker Carlson, the most watched show seen by 5 million people, and then a gazillion more people via Mark Zuckerberg's very dangerous algorithm is fanning the flames of these conspiracy theories. And so you need trusted messengers to do it. That can be nonpartisan people in your community, like your doctor or your nurse or someone like that. But it also needs to be people within your ideological in-group. And the Republicans and the right-wingers are doing the opposite of what – generally in politics, you want your voters to live long enough to vote for you. And so this approach seems somewhat counterintuitive. But you need people on the right to step up. Like there was this PSA that was done, public service announcement, not Ponce of America, that was done a few weeks ago that included the former presidents, Obama, Clinton, Bush, talking about the vaccine.

The problem is Trump is not in that PSA. And that – so actually having Bush, Clinton, and Obama talk about it does nothing to get any of these Republicans. Now, there are lots of people who are not Republican who are also still vaccine-hesitant. And there's this telethon that's coming that's going to include a lot of celebrities, and the Obamas are going to be involved, and I think the Biden administration is going to be involved. That can help raise awareness and convince people to do it. Athletes doing it like there is a PSA that Bill Russell has been doing on NBA games that I think could be very effective. But for that, 45 percent of Republicans, they're going to people in the Republican Party and the right wing movement are going to have to step up or the problem is not going to be solved. Yeah. And I think there's a lot of studies show that like depoliticizing this as much as possible is the most effective route. So like even more important than Republican politician messengers to Republican voters are like your

doctor. Or there was a there was a fact that was shown to a focus group that like 97 percent of doctors took the shot when offered to it. And that actually moved people more than anything else. I do think this it's it's a great example of the contrast, one of the many contrasts between the Biden administration, the Trump administration, that this J&J news happens. Biden basically, you know, he gives a statement, says, don't worry, we have enough vaccine for every single person in America, basically sends the medical team out, the science team out to talk about the details. Biden sort of recedes into the background. Meanwhile, Trump puts out a statement saying basically charging some, you know, saying it's a conspiracy and this is a Pfizer-led conspiracy. I'm not even going to go into what Trump said, but basically made this, it tried to make the situation worse with his statement. It goes to a larger question here about how Biden has been able to maintain a healthy approval rating at an extremely polarizing time. Dave Weigel of the Washington Post laid out a theory this week that Biden's success is due to the fact that he has been

less visible than his predecessors, spoken less in public than his predecessors, and most importantly, hasn't really picked any fights like Trump or weighed in on a lot of the Republicans' favorite culture war controversies. What did you think about that theory from Dave? I think there is some truth to that, for sure. Definitely taking a different approach than Trump seems like a pretty good way to keep your approval rating high. One guy had the lowest approval rating in modern polling history, so don't do what that guy does. Seems like a pretty solid approach. Biden's approval rating on average is right around his vote share in the election. Right. And so that is what it's basically saying is he is doing things that his voters like he's delivering on his campaign promises. And that is a that's how you stay popular. It is, you know, what I think is true

and Dave talks in here about some political science research that shows that presidents actually, the bully pulp is quite limited. There's very little presidents can do to persuade the other side. And there's been, there's other research that, that was done. A real blow to a, real blow to speechwriters

and communication staffers, Dan. Look, here's what we can do. We can keep you at 52%. What we can't do is get you to 60%. So we can give you an office. Literally like, literally most of the work we've done our entire lives. I remember, I remember this from 2012, right? Obama talked about this study. Yeah. There, I think that I had to, I often in the, in the Obama years had to write sort of memos during dark periods of time about sort of what changes we could make in our messaging or communication strategy to solve problems.

And around – I think it was after the 2010 elections, I wrote one that was using some of these backlash analysis to show the limits of the bully pulpit. There was very little the president could do to actually change it. And when it circulated around among – and it was for like a big strategy session for how we bounce back from the midterms. And when it circulated around the senior staff, David Axelrod came into my office and he said, hey, brother, I'm not sure you should send a memo to the president saying your job is irrelevant. I was like, it's a fair point. This isn't that complicated. Joe Biden has done and talked about popular things. And even more than what his messaging has been, he's delivered on his agenda. Americans have gotten checks in the mail. Half of Americans have gotten shots. You can very well

see what the vaccine situation was when Biden came into office. And you can see what it is now. And just how chaotic and impossible it was for anyone who was trying to came into office, and you can see what it is now. And just how chaotic and impossible it was for anyone who was trying to get their parents' vaccine appointments in the early days, and you had to be online at the exact moment they opened or you couldn't get them. And to where it is now, where while there's still lots of kinks in the system, it's so much better. And so he's delivering, and that is helping. It's also smart to not lean into divisive issues. That's not always your choice. That is going to sometimes those issues come to your table, whether you like them or not. But there, you know, I think the analysis is interesting and helps

show that the benefits of a very disciplined communications approach on top of a successful governing, which is the key to high performance. I do think there's one more interesting thing in the numbers here, which is, you know, Biden's average disapproval rating is 42%, right? So you're right that his approval rating is close to the vote share, but his disapproval is lower than Trump's vote share, significantly lower. And, you know And Weigel points out in his piece that by this time in the Trump administration, you had the Women's March, you had protests at the airports after the Muslim ban, right? There was already an organized, large resistance to Donald Trump that was passionate and energized. We were part of it. At this point in the Obama administration, you already had the first wave of Tea Party protests against Obama.

There has been no organized right wing sort of groundswell of protest against Joe Biden and his administration just yet. Why do you think that is? just yet. Why do you think that is? So two things about this. It is true that the Tea Party had started in this part of the Obama administration. It didn't really get going until August. And Obama's approval ratings were quite high and his disapproval rating was quite low at this point in time. And so it wasn't at all like Trump. The Republicans have struggled from the very beginning of the campaign to demonize Biden. And part of this is they have spent the last several decades demonizing people of color and women. And they, all of a sudden they found themselves with a white guy from Scranton at

the top of the ticket and they didn't know what to do about it. And that has continued to bedevil them. And Biden's been very deft about how he has handled all of this. So that's part one. Part two is, while I think it is, yes, it is true, there are not Tea Party rallies or those sorts of things, there aren't much people donning tri-corner hats and showing up at town halls right now. But we may not be getting the full picture of what is going to happen later for two reasons. One, the pandemic. There's less happening out in the public. And I always think back to that piece that Kevin Roos wrote in the New York Times about Facebook during the 2020 race,

where it seems like Biden's up by 12, and we're doing great and all of this. And he's like, well, go on Facebook, people, because shit is crazy there. And then it turns out a lot of that really manifested itself in the election. And so there's probably a lot of things that in 2009 were happening in the public square that are happening on Facebook in 2021. And so I just think it's too early to declare victory on the Democrats and Joe Biden's ability to completely avoid Republican backlash to a Democratic president, if that makes sense. It's early. Two big political challenges for Biden and the Democratic Party in advance of another existential midterm election are to improve the accuracy of our polling and the effectiveness of our advertising. Democratic strategists released analysis on both fronts this week, starting with a report from five major polling firms about why the polls were so off in 2020, specifically why they tended to overestimate Democratic support up and down the ballot. Turns out they don't think there's a, quote, single definitive answer,

which is the kind of helpful thing you want to read in a report with a heading. So what went wrong? But they do have a few theories that they offered. One, their turnout models were wrong because among low propensity voters, people who rarely vote, there were a lot more Republicans who turned out than Democrats. Second, voters who had more progressive attitudes on COVID-19 were not only more likely to wear masks and stay home, but more likely to answer a pollster's call. So that was skewing it. So that was skewing it. And third, Trump's strongest supporters tend to be more distrustful of all other authority figures and institutions, making them less likely to answer a call from a pollster in the first place. What do you think about the report and especially the conclusion that these Democratic pollsters aren't really sure how to fix the problem? We know a lot of these pollsters and they're, I mean, they're obviously all friends. They've all worked together, but they're also competitors. They're always bidding

against each other for working on various campaigns or various initiatives. And so the fact that they all came together as a pretty big deal and sort of speaks to the size of the problem and the lack of trust that exists post 2020 between the people who pay for polls, the people who get paid to do polls. And we've seen a lot of these theories. We talked many months ago about some of the theories that David Shore, a Democratic data strategist, talked about. I think all of these make sense. There's two parts that are noteworthy in here that I think are worthy of further exploration. One is, as you say, they have no answer, right? We don't really know what to do. And they float some things

that are worth it, like, should you test multiple turnout models, as opposed to just picking one? You know, is there value in experimenting beyond, you know, there's been this theory forever that live interview polls are the best polls. You know, a 538 analysis suggests that 2020 undermined that fact. And some of the better pollsters did things like robo polls and purely online surveys. Also, some of the worst pollsters did that too. So open question as to what the right answer is there. But like what I think they're essentially saying is we are going to revisit our model of how we do business to try to get accurate answers. And I think that is a very big thing, because a lot of them were quite – I was on a couple of panels with pollsters after the 2016 election,

and many of them were very resistant to the idea that basically it was a weighting issue. You just had to change how you thought about the electorate, not how you went and got the information to begin with. The second thing that I think I really wonder about is they make the point that this may be a problem unique to Trump being on the ballot. Because we've had three elections, 2016, 2018, 2020. They were more accurate in 2018 than 2016 and 2020. The difference between those is Trump wasn't on the ballot. So in 2022, Trump is not going to be on the ballot unless he's going to run for governor of Georgia or something. And so we'll go back to being somewhat more normal.

I am skeptical of that because I don't, I think. I'm very skeptical of that because guess which polls were very off in 2018? Florida? Remember, Andrew Gillum was supposed to be governor. And I will say in Wisconsin, in Michigan, in Ohio. The same places. The polls were closer, but they overstated Tony Evers' vote share in Wisconsin. They overstated slightly Gretchen Whitmer's vote share in Michigan.

And in Ohio, they showed a closer race than it was in both the governors and Senate races there. So I think this is a problem beyond Trump. Yeah. And so this is why there's going to need to be a solution. Like I think the – and these pollsters make it kind of clear this is the beginning of the process. And there is, to their credit, some transparency in putting this report out publicly and having some humility about what they know and they don't know. But there's a lot of work to do here. You raised a point that I do want to bring up because every time we have done a poll since the election or we've talked about polls, you know, a lot of folks on Twitter say, why are we still caring about polls when the polls were so often 2020? And usually the polls we're talking about are about issues. And I do, you mentioned that Pew did a study that somehow issue polls are still more accurate, even when

horse race polls in an elections may be off. Why is that? While I have a long career in epidemiology, my career in statistics is much shorter, so I will probably butcher this explanation. But basically what they did is they compared what the difference was in opinions on issues if Biden was winning by what the polls expected and what he actually won by and found that the gap between the vote share and the issue opinion was much smaller. In other words, the percentage of people who supported the minimum wage or supported social distancing or vaccines or whatever else did not change by nearly as much, by actually a fraction of what the horse race did. Now, that tells us two things. There can either take an optimistic or pessimistic view of that. The optimistic part is Americans are actually more united on issues than we think. The pessimistic view of that is that our political preference is more important than the issue we support. And that we've seen for a while now, which is a problem.

Yeah, well, I mean, and that's why you have things like the $15 minimum wage getting 60% of the vote in Florida and the person who opposes the idea of a federal minimum wage getting the majority of votes in the Florida presidential election. But I think that gives us some, like we should take every poll with a grain of salt. People, we demand a level of accuracy in polling that is never true. Even in the best of scenarios, even in the pre-Trump era, there was a margin of error. It's often three or four points in either direction. And in close races, either outcome is very possible within the margin of error. And so when the average has candidate A winning and then candidate B wins, but the difference is the margin of error,

the poll's not wrong. I think it should give us some measure of confidence that as we look at the popularity of the American Jobs Plan, American Rescue Plan, HR1, we can have confidence in those results based on issue polling that we would not have in horse race polls as of yet, if that makes sense. No, it does make sense. And look, it's somewhat comforting because I think that we need polling to work. We cannot be flying blind. And I say that not just because I am one of these people that we need polling to work so

that everyone can like refresh 538 every five seconds during a campaign to see who's going to win or who they think is going to win. That's not why we need to fix polling. We need to fix polling from, I'll put my Democratic strategist hat on, like for Democrats on a campaign, you have to make decisions about where you're going to spend your money, where you're going to send your staff resourcing. And we need an accurate read on the electorate in order to run campaigns effectively. And so it is critical that, you know, I'm glad these Democratic pollsters got together and put this statement out as a start, but I really hope that they continue to do the work and so does everyone else so that we can actually fix this problem because we can't be flying blind. We can't be flying blind because otherwise what that's going to be is just like, you know, a bunch

of people on Twitter, just assuming that their opinion about the state of the electorate is correct. I'm sure accurate polling will solve that problem. Yeah. Well, I was going to say the accurate polling will not solve that problem, but without the polling, that's all you got. And I'll tell you, that's not very useful. That is not very useful. So the other big 2020 memo that came out this week was from Priorities USA, one of the leading Democratic super PACs. It was titled, How Democrats Can Optimize Media Spending and Stop Wasting Millions. Priorities analyzed $5.4 billion in spending by Democrats and Republicans on elections, both from campaigns and from outside groups,

and found that even though Democrats outspent Republicans in 2020, much of that spending was inefficient. It often came too late, was delivered through the wrong medium, targeted the wrong voters, and didn't focus enough on mobilization. Lovely.

Specifically, they found that 10% of Democrats' total ad budget likely reached people who had already voted. 75% of late-in-the-cycle TV ads in House races aired outside of the district they were targeting. And Democrats spent 77% of their advertising money on traditional media, despite the fact that Americans now spend significantly more time engaging with digital media. Dan, how does something like this happen happen and what can Democrats do about it? There are a couple of reasons for this, and they're all somewhat connected to the conversation we just had, which is we were operating with an inaccurate measure of who was going to vote, who our targeted voters were, and where they were.

So that's part one. going to vote, who our targeted voters were, and where they were. So that's part one. I think prior to the 2020 election, there was a big debate about TV spending versus digital spending. And a lot of younger Democratic strategists were arguing that the balance was completely out of whack, and it was the product of sort of older, dyed-in-the-wool political consultants who were kind of both out of an economic model that benefited them and muscle memory continuing to use this outdated, inefficient method of television advertising. But then something happened in the election. And while I think as a priorities USA study notes, digital spending increased dramatically, and that was very good. But there were three factors that

drove the tremendous inefficient television spending. The first is for much of this campaign, based on the polling, and there was some accuracy to this, but that the core part of Biden's success was he was doing better than Democrats had done in a very long time with older voters. So we're seeing like 10, 15 point shifts. And this is an oversimplification, but generally, the older a voter is, the more likely we are to reach them through traditional linear television. They're less likely to be watching YouTube TV or YouTube or Hulu or any of these other platforms that you would use. So you would still get them through advertising during the local news, for instance, or 60 Minutes or sort of these programs that skew older. And so that drove it. And then it caused a lot of Democrats who were running behind Biden to chase those same voters. So they put their money towards the V. The second

thing that happened was money came in way too late. Democrats were doing well on fundraising a lot of places. But after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as we know through the Crooked Media Get, Mature, Die, Trying Fund, money poured in like never before. And these candidates got this huge bunch of money at the very end. And there's not that much you can do with money. And then some candidates had more money than they know what to do with. And so you have to spend it. You don't really get to keep it.

And so you saw candidates like Sarah Gideon and Jamie Harrison, who had so much money, they just bought every piece of television you possibly could. In some cases, national cable buys that were being seen by a fraction of their people. Biden had tremendous resources and was buying national broadcasts, like during the University of Florida, University of Georgia football games to reach voters in Florida and Georgia. And then there's a third element here that I think has changed in the – which has made television advertising less efficient for Democrats is we have – as the Democratic Party has become more suburban, more of the districts that we're competing in are the ones that are adjacent to the biggest, most expensive media markets.

So a district outside of Cleveland, you're buying Cleveland TV, right? Like in Andy Kim or Tom Malinowski's district, you're buying either New York or Philadelphia TV, as opposed to when we represented more rural districts where the primary media market your district is in is a smaller secondary market that represents more of your district. So you're getting just a fraction of it. I think the recommendations in this report, which we can talk about are quite good. And I think it was a real service and priorities to do this. So talk about some of the recommendations, because it does sound like this is an oversimplification, but top line,

like donating money earlier, funding these campaigns earlier and not at the end, and more consistently throughout will allow the campaigns to plan how to spend the money better and more efficiently. And also fixing the polling. It's obviously going to be a big issue, too, because that's going to fix the traditional TV spending digital split. Yes, I think that is the most important thing. It's something that you have seen our friend Ben Wickler and the Wisconsin Democratic Party do, which is to try to get people to give monthly so that these campaigns, it starts early and they know they have a steady stream of money coming in so they can plan around it, as opposed to just getting a giant check that you

don't expect at the end. At the end. And then forces you to spend it. And digital spending, if it's done strategically and smartly, happens over a longer period of time than television advertising. That's part one. Part two is we did not do a good enough job of adjusting our strategy for how many Democrats were going to vote early. And that had a lot to do with – it's hard to fully blame people for how they respond to the first election that happens in a pandemic where the incumbent president is trying to steal the election by rigging the Postal Service. Yeah, some unique circumstances. I hope. Yes, we hope. But voting behavior is

habit-forming. So the people who voted early in person or through Dropboxes are probably likely to do that next time. And so thinking about how you schedule your GOTV spending around an earlier election cycle where the bulk of your voters are voting early and then shifting some of your dollars to persuasion towards your target audience, your persuasion audience. Persuasion meaning non-voters to voters as well as swing voters, is an important part of this as well. One of the biggest stories in America this week was the killing of Dante Wright, the 20-year-old man who was fatally shot by a police officer during a traffic stop in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, just miles away from the courtroom where former police officer Derek Chauvin stands trial for the death of George Floyd. Joining us to talk about this tragic violence and how we can fundamentally reimagine policing in America, the co-host of Pod Save the

People, co-founder of Campaign Zero, and just a brilliant data scientist and policy analyst, Sam Sinyangwe. Sam, welcome. Thank you. It's good to be here. Thanks for being here. Before we dive into police reform, I do want to take a minute to talk about Dante Wright, who's the father of a two-year-old boy, also named Dante. His loved ones describe him as an adoring dad, full of laughter, who liked playing sports, celebrating the Fourth of July. He was on the phone with his mother when police pulled him over for driving with expired license plates and hanging an air freshener from his rearview mirror. And when he tried to get back in the car after they arrested him for

an outstanding warrant, Officer Kim Potter shot and killed him. Potter, who later resigned along with Brooklyn Center Police Chief Tim Gannon, has also been charged with second degree manslaughter after officials alleged that she meant to fire a taser and not a gun. Sam, you've analyzed thousands of instances of police violence, so you've certainly seen your fair share of stories like this. But this has been a particularly heavy week. The killing of Dante Wright, Derek Chauvin's trial, the Kenosha officer who killed Jacob Blake returning to the force, and the Virginia police officer who pepper sprayed a black army officer. What's been running through your mind these past few days?

So I think, you know, a lot of the conversation has focused on like these individual cases, and there's been sort of this back and forth around, particularly, you know, in the context of Daunte Wright's killing, this idea that was this an accident, was this intentional, and talking about the officer being the president of the police union. But this is not actually an isolated incident. This isn't something that is unrepresentative of a broader dynamic that we've seen play out for years now. So, you know, we just crunched the numbers for killings by police in 2020 last year. We found that there were 121 people killed by police after a traffic stop last year.

So, you know, that's every three days the police kill somebody at a traffic stop. So this isn't, you know, this isn't like a case that is an outlier or we need to really dive into the particulars of whether this was an accident or not. This was actually the rule and not the exception. And this happens with alarming frequency. Indeed, like even zooming out more broadly, the majority of people killed by police in America are killed in incidents that begin with these low level issues, traffic stops, mental health calls, you know, trespassing, people who are homeless, like all of these small things that the police are called to be, that the police intervene within and escalate to the point where people are being killed. And so I think part of this is like we're in this moment again, and we've been

in this moment before so many times, too many times. And now it's just about like looking at the big picture, understanding that this is the way in which this system is functioning, has been functioning for quite some time, and that we need to be thinking about radical transformative changes that can remove the police from these situations and create different alternative responses that are far more effective and far more safe for the people who interact with them. Yeah, it certainly seems that for all the media attention on, you know, whether or not Potter's use of her weapon was intentional or accidental, there was a systemic policing failure that led to that moment, just pulling him over in the first place, just having a taser or a gun on you as you're going to do that. Can you talk about some of the systemic failure that led to

them even pulling him over? Yeah. I mean, there were so many different things. So, I mean, you talk about the fact that the police were there enforcing a traffic violation in the first place. So, expired tags, like that is a choice to have an armed agent of the state pull people over and stop them with the threat of force, even deadly force, for an expired vehicle tag. That is a policy choice and a policy failure. There are different models of dealing with this. So you have in Berkeley right now, they have just passed legislation, city council, to move away from the policing

of traffic offenses. And instead, what they're going to do is have an unarmed civilian unit that will be responding to those issues in ways that are not going to lead to people being killed. And so again, I think this is a policy choice. The police shouldn't have been there

in the first place. But even then, like, that was just the initial, you know, encounter. Then you have the questions around the warrant, right? So we're talking about a warrant that was outstanding for, I think it was, like, minor marijuana possession. It was, like, the smallest thing. And then on top of that, apparently they sent the information to the wrong address. So he wasn't able to actually update his information in time to be in compliance with that.

So again, I think the system again and again and again difficult system that can have you arrested for the smallest of things and issue warrants for small delays that was actually the problem of the institution itself sending the actual letter to the wrong place. So I think all of that is happening in the context of one incident. And then you even deal with the issue of she was the police union president, right? She wasn't like an ordinary everyday officer. She represented the police officers of that police force. Like she was the police union president. She had the influence to determine what structures would be in place to hold police accountable. She had the power to actually negotiate a police union contract that makes it more difficult to hold officers accountable. So she was part of that system, a key part of

structuring the system in a way that will make it difficult even to hold her accountable for it. So all of this sort of from start to finish is problematic. And we're just get, we haven't even got into, like she was just recently charged and arrested. We haven't got into the issues with the trial. We see some of those issues in the context of the Derek Chauvin trial and how difficult it can be to actually secure a conviction. So, so, so much wrong with the situation. Well, that was going to be my last follow-up there. Just from a data perspective, how often do we see police officers face any consequences for killings, violence, or excessive force? It's exceedingly rare.

So we've tracked this going back to 2013 all the way through the present. And in any given year, between 1% and 2% of officers who kill people are charged with a crime, between 1% and 2%. And of those who are charged, not all of them get convicted. So only about half a percent of officers are convicted. So that's one in 200 killings by the police results in an officer being convicted of a crime, not murder necessarily. Sometimes it is a lesser crime because prosecutors chose not to charge with a higher offense because they didn't think they could secure a conviction. means is murder is essentially decriminalized if you're a police officer in almost all cases. And that is a problem that encourages the type of behavior that we saw with Derek Chauvin. It encourages the type of behavior that we saw in Brooklyn Center, where, you know, again, that officer was not only the police union president, she was a trainer. She was training the other officers as Derek Chauvin was. So like this is part of creating this culture of violence and maintaining and expanding upon that culture of violence that causes real harm to people,

especially black people. Dan, I want to ask about the politics of police reform. There was historic momentum behind reform during the protests last summer, both in terms of public opinion and actual legislation. House Democrats passed the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act. Even Republican Tim Scott felt compelled to introduce very watered down legislation of his own. How has the political environment changed since then? And do you think the events of the last few weeks could give reform the same kind of momentum it had last summer? Well, I certainly hope it gives it that momentum because for all the reasons that Sam cited, this is absolutely essential. And we can't rely just on a small handful of localities to make bold changes because things are easier to do on this level

in a place like Berkeley than they are in other parts around the country politically. And so we need some federal guidelines to do this. I think a couple of things have changed, and it's incumbent upon Democrats to push back on that. We talked about this earlier in the podcast, but there are still a lot of questions about why 2020 happened the way it did. But one of the narratives that came out of it that was pushed by a lot of moderate Democrats is Democrats down ballot, particularly in the House, did less well than they thought they would because they were labeled with this defund the police attack from the Republicans. And I think the danger in a situation like this politically is for Democrats to be too scared to talk about what they are for.

And there's nothing the Republicans and the right-wing media machine likes more than a vacuum. And if we don't talk about what our plans are, they're going to give them the most malicious and false sort of label on them. And we have to be bold about what we were for and talk about, because I think we have certainly a moral obligation as Democrats to speak out about what happened, to speak about the systemic failures that Sam so eloquently talked about. But we also have a political obligation to talk about what we believe the solution is and what the policy changes need to be. Because if we don't talk about what our plan is, Republicans will label it. And that will make it harder to get something done. So just to dive into here, I think this is so complex

a problem. And oftentimes, we think about the federal government needs to be creating a solution that will end police violence all across the country. And the problem with that is like policing is so decentralized. You have 18,000 different law enforcement agencies across the country, most of which are pretty small. They all have their own police leadership, their own policies, their own practices, their own funding streams. And so it's very difficult to sort of create sweeping change across the board absent a Supreme Court precedent, which could actually do that. But of course, we have to pack the courts or do something with the courts first, because that doesn't seem to be in the offing. But I think big picture, so much of this will have to change at the local and state level. And the federal government can

play a role in encouraging and providing a roadmap for what those changes can look like. But the challenge with it is that many people, when you look at police violence, what would be the biggest, big picture changes that can make a huge difference in saving lives? Those changes involve dramatically restricting the role of the police in society. They recognize that the majority of cases that people are being killed by the police and the vast majority of cases in which people have force used against them are arrested or are stopped by the police are for low-level, minor, nonviolent offenses. That's what we're talking about. And so we're talking about the state intervening in those situations in a way that is escalating and killing people.

And states can decriminalize those offenses. States can fund alternative responses to those offenses. States can actually step up and, as Colorado is trying to do, they're considering legislation right now that would actually prohibit police from making arrests for misdemeanors, for municipal infractions, for traffic violations. That would dramatically change these dynamics. violations, that would dramatically change these dynamics. So again, I think we can, that type of change though, like these are crimes in the state code, right? And so we need to go after this at the state level through state legislation. These are some crimes in the municipal code as well. And there are approaches to enforcement of those offenses as well that are determined municipally. So a lot of this is going to necessarily take action at every level of government.

The federal government creating a roadmap for what can happen, what needs to happen, creating guidelines, using their federal funding streams to encourage or discourage particular behaviors or policies. But states and cities have to step up in this moment because if they don't, we're not going to see the transformative change that communities deserve. So excellent point on how the change

needs to come from states and localities more than anything else. On the federal level, I do want to talk about President Biden's response to this and what he can do. He was asked during a meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus on Tuesday what he could offer in terms of solutions on police reform. He said, quote, a lot, and I will tell you guys later. Sam, what steps do you want to see from the Biden administration and the Democratic Congress, both in terms of legislation and other actions that Biden could take without Congress? So, you know, while the federal government is limited, there are key areas that the federal government can play a role in making a big difference. So one has to do with demilitarization of the police. So this flow of military weapons from the Department of Defense,

from the Department of Homeland Security, from a range of different agencies, not just the 1033 program at the Department of Defense, that funnels all kinds of military equipment, tanks, armored personnel carriers, AR-15s, assault weapons, all kinds of things to police departments across the country. They can cut that off. And so far, they have made some minor changes to some of the most egregious types of weapons. But those make up a tiny proportion of the overall amount of weaponry that's being transferred to departments across the country. So they need to go much further in just cutting off that flow entirely. Similarly, there is a huge role that the Department of Justice can play in opening pattern and practice investigations of police

departments. So Vice News did an analysis of pattern and practice investigations that have been open over, I think, about the past decade or so. They got access to police shootings data, both fatal and non-fatal, for about the 50 largest jurisdictions in the country. And what they found was that those jurisdictions that had federal intervention had significantly fewer police shootings after that intervention than jurisdictions that didn't have those interventions, about a 20% reduction in police shootings after that intervention. The problem is there are only enough resources currently to open about three of those investigations a year. That's like the high watermark. Even the Obama administration was

averaging three pattern and practice investigations a year, three departments. Under Trump, they didn't do that at all, like any of those, but three isn't exactly a win. So there are 18,000 agencies. We need to see this approached at scale. Now, the Biden administration can do this administratively, and Congress can also vote to add additional funding and resource that pattern and practice unit to do more of these investigations as well. But we should be talking about on the order of hundreds or thousands of departments being investigated, not three. And we have the data now to identify which departments should be investigated. We have the data on killings by police going back several years. We have now additional data that's being collected on broader forms of use of force,

non-fatal force, on traffic stops. There's data on arrest and arrest disparities reported by almost every agency in this country. So there's more than enough data to identify places that have a pattern and practice of discriminatory, potentially discriminatory conduct, certainly places that have egregious racial disparities in policing. The problem is that the Department of Justice just simply hasn't decided to approach this issue at scale, tends to be reacting in a reactive way. So waiting for an uprising or high profile incident to open investigation rather than thinking proactively about, here are all the places where we think the next incident is most likely to occur. And we want to, across the board, change all of these agencies. So I think that's the type

of sweeping change that the federal government can play a role in, but they have yet to step up and do it. I think the Justice and Policing Act contains provisions that would strengthen that pattern and practice unit, would restrict the flow of military weapons, and do a host of other things that could be helpful. But ultimately, you know, the Biden administration has the authority to do a lot of this right now. Dan, how do you think the Biden administration and the president has been handling this issue of police violence since taking office? They have basically decided, you know, Biden had proposed a police oversight commission during the campaign. They have since said they're basically going to set that aside. Some civil rights activists have

praised that decision because they thought the commission would be a delaying tactic. Anyway, they're saying that the House passed legislation is what they're pushing for. We know, of course, that the House passed legislation will end up stuck in the Senate for the same reason a whole bunch of other stuff is stuck in the Senate because of the filibuster. So how do you think Biden's navigating this and how should he be navigating it? I think it is too early to draw a true verdict on it. I mean, his attorney general has been in office for a couple of weeks. There are still key parts of the Department of Justice that are not there yet. So I think it's I don't want to it's an incomplete grade. And I think ultimately the question on police reform

legislation, on so many other things is, is it so important that you are willing to push hard and publicly to get rid of the filibuster? And I know all of our conversations seem to default to that. But if you want to do something, you're going to have to do that. I think it could be easy to trip over the bar of low expectations of simply being better than Trump or being better or Merrick Garland being better than Jeff Sessions or Bill Barr or whoever else and to really use your political credibility, use the full weight of your office to talk about it, make the executive action decisions that you can make and push for legislation. But to simply talking about it, I think it's going to be sufficient. And we're going to have to see where this goes. But I think there's a real, there's going to be real pressure on Biden to do as much as he can, as I think there should be. Yeah. Sam, you were talking about how some of the better news has been sort of outside of Washington in the states. I wanted to talk about one example. The

Maryland legislature passed a series of police reforms over the veto of Republican Governor Larry Hogan this week. What's your take on these reforms? So Maryland really, you know, this past week has stepped up in a huge way. So Maryland was the first state to enact a police bill of rights law. This was decades ago. The police bill of rights law has now created a wave across the country where there are 20 states that have police bill of rights laws now. And Maryland just became the first state to repeal it. So we've come full circle where Maryland created this wave of anti police accountability legislation across the country. And, you know, we're talking about laws that completely remove communities from the process of being able to hold police accountable. And even from being able to

have basic transparency into officer personnel files, disciplinary records, the ability to investigate disciplined officers, all of those things are structured by these laws that are designed to basically put the police in charge of policing themselves. And we've seen that that doesn't work. So what Maryland did was they completely repealed that law and they replaced it with a community-centered model, like the opposite model.

This model now has a civilian police accountability board in every county. And that civilian police accountability board nomin county. And that civilian police accountability board nominates the members to a charging committee that will have the power to formally charge officers with misconduct. Then once they charge those officers, the police chief can either discipline officers according with that charge in the disciplinary matrix or higher. So they can either be as accountable as community wants or more, but not less. And they also don't allow for these sort of arcane disciplinary appeal processes where officers get

their jobs back after being fired. Instead, the officer can appeal, but they have to appeal to a trial board that has two civilians and one officer. So again, communities have a majority stake in this process throughout. And I think that that is really key to thinking about how the system could be structured differently. Now, there are still 20 states that have these laws in place. So I think there's a lot of work that needs to be done. Particularly, a lot of these states are very, quote unquotequote progressive states. California has one of the worst police bill of rights laws in the whole country, and you have a Democratic supermajority, like, they wouldn't even need to overcome, they had to overcome a veto from a Republican governor to pass this in Maryland. You don't have that problem in California, and still we don't see the legislature step up and act as

boldly. So I think there's a lot of opportunity now that Maryland has stepped up and created that precedent for other places that should have the votes to do this, to follow through on what communities deserve, to repeal these laws, and to replace them with a structure that is community-centered, that is focused on accountability, that has complete transparency around disciplinary records, which they now have in Maryland for the first time, and that can get to work actually holding these offices accountable. Sounds like a good opportunity for some of our California listeners to put some pressure on the California legislature and the governor here. Dan, what would you say to Democratic politicians

at every level who genuinely want to do the right thing on police reform, but are scared of these defund the police attacks from Republicans that you were speaking about earlier? I think you have to lean into the pitch. You have to, if you ignore the issue, you're going to allow the Republicans to define you. And so the actual reforms, like what happened in Maryland and elsewhere we've seen are quite popular when they were explained. And so the actual reforms, like what happened in Maryland and elsewhere we've seen, are quite popular when they were explained. And so it was incumbent upon these Democratic politicians to explain what they want to do and to be bold advocates for their positions. Because if you hide from it, if you're scared from it, if you try to change the subject, you're going to allow your opponent to define you. And as Sam has pointed out, these police unions are incredibly powerful, there is a very disturbing, you know, centuries, century long, sort of

pop culture and advantage that has gone to the police and the sort of discussions. And so having taking it on and doing it with forthrightly and transparently is going to give you your best chance of success. And I think there is a I think there's another way to think about this too. And this sort of goes to Biden and congressional Democrats is you were elected in the wake of the uprising around the murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. And if two years from now, four years from now, little to nothing is done, then you have sent a message to those activists, a lot of people who got involved because of what happened there and who registered to vote at those protests, your message to them is that politics does not matter, that your participation does not matter. So there is the right thing to do here, but you also have a political obligation

to deliver on what you said you were going to deliver. And that is not easy. There are structural forces in Congress that make that hard. There are political impediments at the state and local level. But you have to demonstrate progress if you want the people to believe that their vote matters, their participation matters. Sam, what would you say? So I would say you got to lean into it, right? Just echoing what Dan said. You have to lean into this because it's the right thing to do. The data demonstrates that if you create alternatives to the police, you remove the police from this aggressive enforcement of these low-level minor issues, that you can not only keep communities safe, but you can save lives. And even some police departments are starting to acknowledge this. So this isn't a new conversation necessarily, right?

We've been talking about this issue for quite some time now, and some cities in the context of that conversation have begun to step up and pilot some of those alternative models. And we're starting to get the results back in. So the results are pretty clear. You look at the Denver Star program where they're responding to mental health crises. You know, last year the police killed nearly 100 people in response to a mental health crisis. In Denver, they're responding to them with 100% success rate, zero arrests, zero use of force.

They're connecting people to services rather than policing and incarceration. Similarly, the L.A. Sheriff's Department just released an evaluation of their mental health evaluation team, which is a co-responder model where you have the mental health provider who sort of takes the lead on the scene and the officer sort of plays backup. Now, I'm a fan of having it just be the mental health provider. Having any officer on the scene can escalate things. But even when you just have the mental health provider as an addition to the mix, it makes a difference. Because what the L.A. Sheriff's

Department report said, and they admitted that over the course of a year, a one-year period, they evaluated the 2018 period, that there were over 600 use of force incidents that they said their officers would have committed if not for the mental health provider being on the scene. They literally said in the context of the report that there were people they would have killed if not for the mental health provider being on the scene. This is the police saying this. So, you know, I mean, there is consensus now when you look at the data, that data continues to come out, as the results continue to be demonstrated by cities that are beginning to do this all across the country, and I'm thinking about places like San Francisco, Oakland that are starting to pilot this model. You already have it in some places in Oregon. It's being scaled in Portland. In Baltimore, you know, state's attorney Mosby has announced that she's just not even going to prosecute low-level offenses, so decriminalizing low-level offenses. So this is happening sort of piecemeal in different haphazardly all across the country. But when you actually look at the results of those programs, it is compelling. So it's up to us to

lift those results up, to use that in our advocacy, to push those policymakers to see the truth, to move past sort of the fear about something new and to recognize that actually this isn't that new at all. It's already working in some places. Yeah, I would just echo your point that when we, the politics are tough, but when we lift up examples of what has worked and what is working now, the politics become easier, right? Republicans want to make this a fight over a slogan. They want to keep it this culture war. What doesn't work for them is when we come armed, one of the reasons we wanted to have you on today, when we come armed with data about what is working in places across the country,

where reforms are saving lives, where reforms are making sure that police are held accountable, when you tell people that they are more likely to go along with these reforms. And so I do think that instead of running away from the issue, Democrats need to talk more about where reform is working, places like whether it's the Maryland law, whether it's what you're talking about in Denver, whether it's all kinds of cities and localities across the country, that's a really important thing to do. Sam, thank you so much for coming on the pod. We really appreciate it. And we'd love you to come on again soon absolutely thanks for having me on

thanks for joining us today one last thing before we go uh we talked about how the filibuster is one big obstacle in the way of passing the george floyd justice and policing act we've talked a million times about how it's an obstacle in the way of passing the For the People Act. I am wearing my Abolish the Filibuster merch today. Very important. We think it is now time for Senate Democrats who are still filibuster friendly or filibuster curious to hear from their constituents. That means all of you, if you go to votesaveamerica.com slash for the people, you can check out our brand new whip count where you can see in their own words where your senators stand on eliminating the filibuster. And if they're on the fence, you can give them a call using our call tool. If you're nervous about calling or you need some practice, or if you just have a good pitch you want to share with the world, we got you covered.

Or if you just have a good pitch you want to share with the world, we got you covered. You can now send a voice note to PSA at Crooked.com. That's PSA at Crooked.com. And let us know if you had a chance to make your case to Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema or any other Senate Democrat on why we need to abolish the filibuster. What would you say? Give us your best pitch. Maybe Joe Manchin will hear it. We know he's a huge PSA fan.

It's coming on any day now. And if you need a little inspiration, here's a message from our very own John Lovett. Hi, Senator Manchin. First time, long time. Just wanted to say I've been loving the will they or won't they thing you've been doing on democracy. The filibuster doesn't make the two parties compromise. It makes the two parties scorched earth, bloodthirsty enemies. And I know you hate that because you are so great. We have 575 days to protect people's votes and earn people's votes. Help us, Joe Manchin. You're our only hope. What do you think, Dan?

I thought that was pretty good from Lovett. It was great. Let's send him to Washington. Let's get him a meeting with Joe Manchin. John Lovett on Joe Manchin. You're great. That's a meeting with Joe Manchin. John Lovett on Joe Manchin. You're great. That's a social clip we should send out. That's the Politico headline from that message. Again, that's psa.cricket.com. Please send us your voice notes. Who knows? We might play it

on a future pod and maybe it can help some people convince their senators. Thanks, everyone. Have a great weekend and we'll talk to you next week. Bye, everyone. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Flavia Casas. Our associate producers are Jordan Waller, Jazzy Marine, and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somenator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Caroline Rustin, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Narmal Konian, Yale Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos every week.