Pod Save America - “Davos confessions.”

Episode Date: January 23, 2020

Schiff makes the case against Trump, Trump confesses to obstruction and floats cuts to Medicare and Social Security in Davos, and Bernie gains momentum with less than two weeks until Iowa. Then Desmond Meade of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition talks to Dan about fighting the Republican effort to keep returning citizens from voting.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. In studio. In studio. What a pleasure. It's a real frequent occurrence here in 2020. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. In studio. In studio. What a pleasure. It's a real frequent occurrence here in 2020. I love it. On today's pod, we're going to talk about the first few days of Donald Trump's impeachment trial,

how it's affecting the 2020 primary, and where the race is with less than two weeks until Iowa. It's like one and a half. Holy shit, that's what I would say. I can't believe it. Later, you'll hear Dan's interview with Desmond Meade of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, who's fighting the Republican effort to keep returning citizens from voting. We also want to give a huge congratulations to DeRay, Brittany, Clint, Sam, and the entire Pod Save the People crew for taking home Best Political Podcast

at the iHeartRadio Podcast Awards last weekend. This crew is brilliant, inspiring. They're doing incredible work every week on their pod. So if you don't already, make sure you subscribe. Do it. Why aren't you subscribed? That's fucking crazy. That's a great question. This week, they talked to Brittany Young, who uses the Baltimore Dirt Bike community

to inspire interest in STEM. That was a plot twist. That was a plot. I bet you didn't see that coming. I did not. That's what happens on Positive to People. It's all kinds of interesting topics. Also, we have an announcement. We have a brand new newsletter coming from Crooked's editor-in-chief, Brian Boitler, called Big Tent.

Big Tent. Circus coverage. That's right. Every Friday, Brian will walk you through the latest developments in the Democratic Party's journey to take back the White House in 2020 and talk about all the debates within the party what matters and what's at stake the first newsletter comes out january 31st but you can subscribe today at crooked.com slash big tent i'm excited for this one i'm excited as well um dan you have an uh untrumping america announcement for us we we do because it's

2020 and it's before february 18th the date the book comes out wow that's that's coming this is almost like an you're telling me brother this is a this is like an announcement it's a pre-announcement i guess you will we will announce next week all the tour stops we are going to be traveling all over the country uh including many battleground states. Nice. Smart. Yes. It's important to go there. You don't want to miss one. So I've heard. But before that, I want to flag just two events because they were the first two events that are coming up relatively quickly, which is on February 19th, I will be at the 92nd Street

Y, New York City. And on February 20th, I will be at the Six and I Synagogue in Washington, D.C., two places that I was fortunate enough to visit during the last book tour. And they were great events. You can get your tickets now. You can find more information on those events and some of the other forthcoming ones at untrummingamerica.com slash tour. Excellent. All right, let's get into it. The House impeachment managers have begun their opening arguments. And here's the front page of the New York Times after the first day. Democrats present scathing case for convicting Trump.

I'll take that headline. Yeah, that's great. New York Times never got a headline wrong. As you know, once the headlines are right, we win. That's how it's worked in politics. I can feel the momentum shift in Starbucks. Actually, they don't even sell New York Times and Starbucks. Yeah, I don't know where you can find a hard copy.

Adam Schiff and six other impeachment managers presented about eight hours worth of evidence detailing Trump's scheme to cheat in the 2020 election by pressuring a foreign government to announce a phony investigation into Joe Biden. But the core of their argument on Wednesday was basically directed towards a handful of Republican senators who might vote with the Democrats to subpoena the documents and witnesses the White House has blocked. It was an argument made very powerfully by Adam Schiff, particularly in his closing statement. Let's play the clip. One of the things that's been so striking to me about that as I watch these witnesses like Maria Yovanovitch and Ambassador Taylor and David Holmes and others, Dr. Hill,

Master Taylor and David Holmes and others, Dr. Hill, is how much these dedicated officials were willing to risk their career, the beginning of their career, the middle of their career, or late in their career, when they had everything to lose. But people senior to them who have every advantage, who sit in positions of power, lack worked for Fiona Hill, who worked for John Bolton and Dr. Kupperman, why is it that they were willing to stick their neck out and answer lawful subpoenas when their bosses wouldn't? I don't know that I can answer that question, but I just can tell you I have such admiration

for the fact they did. I think, and I think this is some form of cosmic justice that this ambassador that was so ruthlessly smeared is now a hero for her courage. There is justice in that. But what will really vindicate that leap of faith that she took is if we show the same courage. They risked everything, their careers. And yes, I know what you're asked to decide may risk yours too. But if they could show the courage, so can we. Dan, how do you think the trial is going so far i actually have a lot of deep breath well yes deep breath i have a lot of i think complex emotions about it i watched a

bunch of it yesterday and i think the first emotion is pride and pride in the democrats from schiff on down everyone involved in this process, because they are standing in midst an epic shit show of dumb fuckery that is American politics in the Trump era. And they are treating their jobs with the utmost respect for the process, the constitution, the gravity of the moment. They are being serious. They're being thoughtful. the gravity of the moment. They are being serious. They're being thoughtful. They are performing their duties exactly as you would expect. Then it makes me fucking insane that the Republican Party gives zero fucks about any of this. Some of them can't even be bothered to sit in their chairs long enough to listen to it. They keep saying, I'm not hearing anything new while voting to prevent the introduction of new evidence.

Which is said to reporter after reporter, which is the stupidest spin I've ever heard in my entire life. And I would call it that, except it seems to be working on a whole fucking cohort in the media. It's getting regurgitated because stenography is a huge part of journalism in the Twitter age where you get a quote and then you tweet the quote out and where you can't put context in 280 characters. Then it makes me, I don't know, I guess fear is my third emotion on this, which is we're sitting here with like a crystal clear, perfect example of abuse of power, perfect example. And the evidence could not be more clear cut. The president's chief of staff has admitted it on camera. The president has admitted on camera. The president has tweeted it out for posterity.

We all know what happened. And one half of our political system, the part refuses to acknowledge that. And the reason that is scary is we are in a situation where a majority of the country believes this president committed a crime and should be removed from office. And that president received 3 million fewer votes, and he is being protected by a Senate majority that is represented by many fewer votes than the Democrats. And so you have this, you have sort of minority criminal immunity for a president who can't win the popular vote. And that says something about the state of American democracy that is much bigger, I think, than whether Trump is going to get a slap on the wrist or get removed from office. It says we have a giant problem in this country.

on the wrist or get removed from office. It says we have a giant problem in this country. Yeah. I mean, there's been a lot of debate since Trump became president about how our institutions have held up in the face of a quasi-authoritarian, at best, quasi. But the Republican Party is a major institution in American politics, and it has been completely destroyed. I mean, it is, they are, they're not even putting up any kind of legitimate defense. They're not trying. They're treating it as a joke. They are offering contradictory explanations every other day.

It's a fucking joke what they say. I mean, like, it is so completely obvious how guilty the president is of what they are alleging he did and they just don't fucking care and not even the people i mean like and you can see look susan collins lisa murkowski mitt romney maybe lamar alexander maybe a few others may vote for witnesses and documents but you can tell even if they take that vote, it is a vote to appear somewhat reasonable because they are going to take the ultimate vote to acquit the man. And they want to at least appear reasonable to get the documents and witnesses,

right? Like I don't see any, and we don't even know if they'll take that vote, but you can see their political strategies telling them, well, you need to be an independent voice. You need to look like you have some distance from Trump if you want to win a tough reelection, if you're Susan Collins or if you're Cory Gardner or maybe Martha McSally or Tom Tillis, but seems unlikely with those two. So here's one way to show some distance from Trump. Vote for the witnesses and documents and then vote to acquit. But it doesn't seem like I don't know unless like Mitt Romney surprises us or Lamar Alexander or someone who's not running again or who's very, very safe. I don't see anyone voting to convict this man. I agree with that. And I will also be fucking knocked on my ass shocked if they vote for witnesses.

If enough Republicans vote for witnesses, I will be. I still have a feeling they might. I hope you're right. The yin and yang of this podcast is your optimism, my pessimism.. I will be. I still have a feeling they might. I hope you're right. The yin and yang of this podcast is your optimism, my pessimism. So we will see. Not because I believe that they are like deep down courageous. No, no, no, no. I feel like they would be saying their comments would be different to reporters right now if they were going to vote against it.

Like they just I don't know why if you were at Romney and you were ultimately going to vote against it, you say things like, I want witnesses and I will probably vote for witnesses. Like, I don't know why you say that if you're going to not do it. And you could get like the ideal scenario that McConnell is working towards is giving Susan Collins and Cory Gardner a pass,

but not having witnesses. He has margin of error here. So he leans on like Lamar Alexander at the end to not do it. Ultimately, the color of the jersey is the most important thing here. And when McConnell goes to them and says, look, we have two options. We can either have the president who's at the top of the ticket while all of your friends here are up for reelection, deliver the State of the Union acquitted or deliver the State of the Union under the guise of impeachment. Right. You pick.

We sometimes think about Congress in these grand theories of constitutional obligation or even complex political strategy. And it's often, is the person you sit next, but lunch going to be nice to you, right? There are friendships at play here within parties that really impact things. And when people, particularly people like Lamar Alexander, who obviously is no fan of Trump and it's basically leaving the Senate to avoid working with Trump anymore. Um, his choice is to take a personal stand that could make life worse for Martha McSally or anyone else or cause Chuck Schumer to be the majority leader. My gut is he will do the opposite. I hope I'm wrong. I think we should pressure the living shit out of them because the only way to change it is to change the political calculus for everyone involved. The other observation I had over the

last couple of days is just, this is sort of a perfect example, this trial of how broken the media is. And I don't necessarily mean like reporters not writing headlines we want or like taking their spin or all this kind of stuff. But like, I was very busy the last couple of days and I did not have time to watch all of this unfold, like watch hours and hours of speeches on C-SPAN. And I remember thinking to myself, like myself like well what am i really missing like we have heard this case laid out in the house extremely well by adam schiff and others um and then prepping for the pod and yesterday i started watching some of it and found myself getting so outraged all over again at how right the case is against donald trump and i realized that like you know if every american sat down and actually watched even even if you just watched adam schiff's closing speech um you know and not the rest of it we'd be in a i i can't help but think we'd be in

a bit of a different place but like what's the I don't even know what the media is supposed to do. Because it's like every news channel is supposed to just like cover what's going on on the floor live constantly and offer no commentary and no stupid punditry and just like let it go the whole time. Because I don't even know if that would capture Americans' attention, you know. But I just, I guess what it said to me was, it's so difficult to capture anyone's attention in this country for a sustained period of time anymore. And that redounds to the benefit of Donald Trump and the Republican Party. That's right. If you were to design in a laboratory the absolute worst way to persuade people to take a position on an incredibly complex issue. The worst way would be nine hours of consecutive live television that takes place during the workday.

Yeah, for sure. I think the broadcast networks deserve credit for doing the right thing here. A lot of credit. For airing it. That costs them money. Given what the prospects of the outcome are, they have made what I think is the right... We talk a lot about how business drives journalism, but this is a decision that puts journalism over bottom line. So they should

get credit for that. I think 90% of the press coverage of impeachment going all the way back to when this broke six months ago, eight months ago, whenever that was, has been great. I think the coverage of the impeachment hearings that Schiff conducted and Nadler conducted were very, very good. There are obviously examples that are terrible that then we have that, like, I don't really know how to solve this problem, but a bad thing happens. And then we, like a bad story, a focus on whether Josh Hawley is being sincere when it comes to Jerry Nadler has hurt his feelings and then we all yell about it which then gives the algorithm to show it to more people this is

partly why I'm trying to yell less about this stuff yes at least on Twitter I yell about it here so but but you raise the biggest problem which is the way the system is currently working is advantaging Donald Trump and disadvantaging Democrats. And this is something I spent a lot of time on in my book. It's something I've been thinking about and wrestling with. It is driving my new year's resolution to not get engaged as often in specific media coverage, like complaints about specific stories or specific reporters or headlines and

more about the systemic problem with the media. But I think the big difference is Republicans understand how to hack the mainstream media, how to take advantage of its loopholes, its culture, its tendency for balance over accuracy to get their story out, but they don't rely on the mainstream media to get the story out. Right. Because they have their own communication channels that they built over the last couple of decades. Right. They have, obviously, Fox News, but these huge platform advantages on Facebook with these conservative pages with large numbers of followers that are showing their content

to more people. But they also had billionaires who were spending money to take a clip like we just used about Schiff, to take the reverse of that and show it to the voters they care about. And we are not doing that. And it's not because there aren't smart people who think that that's what we're supposed to do. It's that we are at a massive resource disadvantage. We are struggling collectively as a progressive universe to find the dollars we need to wage this presidential election alone, let alone, you know, so how do you also do this? I will say, just going back to Schiff's speech, which reminded me that even with everything we just said being true about the media, sometimes just a good speech is still very powerful. You

know, Chuck Schumer went on Rachel Maddow right after the trial ended yesterday and said, for all the like Republicans getting out of their seats, not paying attention, all this bullshit for the last 45 minutes sees schiff talking to reporters as he's walking by and stops and said um that was you know you did a really great job you're really well spoken which infuriates you obviously but is also you know it's it's pretty amazing um and i do and i do wonder for the people like murkowski and who this morning said to a reporter, it was very thorough, the presentation so far, did not say she was upset about anyone being mean or anything like that. You do wonder that with a few senators, does that have an effect in the end on whether they vote for witnesses and documents? Maybe not. Maybe not because everyone forgets everything that happened more than five minutes ago. Yeah. I think you guys talked some on Monday, and we've been talking off mic for a while now about McConnell's strategy here.

quote unquote real vote on witnesses later is it's a pretty common crisis communication strategy that I refer to as horizon extension which is in the heat of the moment immediately after Lev Parnas and everything else and Bolton saying he's going to do it there's

tremendous pressure to do it but if you can move the decision the result whatever it is to further- Kicking the can down the road. Kicking down the can. That's another way of putting it. Kicking the can down the road to further in the future when there is less pressure and

people can become more acclimated to the idea of no witness if you have a better chance to do it. We do not have to accept that reality as Democrats, as you guys talked about on Monday. There is a real role for Democrats to play here in the states with the core set of Republican senators who happen to be both potential votes for witnesses and very vulnerable to put pressure on them because those senators are going to need, to get reelected, are going to need the votes of some number of people who believe that Donald Trump should be removed and that there should be witnesses. So let's just talk about how the Republicans are handling this.

You know, on Tuesday night, they were whining that Jerry Nadler was being too mean because he accused them of recover up, which they're doing. By Wednesday morning, they were complaining that it was boring, that there was nothing new after they voted 10 times against new evidence and witnesses. They were complaining that nothing new. And then, you know, by the afternoon, some of them were just leaving the Senate floor. They were back in the chambers. They were just hanging out, not listening. Just from a political standpoint, don't you think the Republicans' behavior and resistance to witnesses and new evidence is more politically damaging than at least pretending to

take this seriously, sit down, listen to all the evidence and witnesses, and then vote to acquit him later and still vote to acquit him? Yes. I actually think McConnell, I know McConnell's always a genius because he's always an evil genius but i don't know that it's that even politically smart for them to act like this well i mean part of this is driven by the perverse incentive structures of of being a republican when donald trump was president right which is the obvious best way you bend the knee all the time right and you have to And if you don't, you will be beheaded. And it is like the Democrats went through a very similar situation with the Bill Clinton impeachment trial. Very similar. The outcome was never in doubt. for reasons that I can't really explain other than procrastination, I dug deep into the 1999 CNN USA Today Gallup poll about what voters thought about it. And it was something like eight in 10 voters thought Bill Clinton had committed perjury. A huge majority thought he had obstructed justice by trying to influence the testimony of Monica Lewinsky and others.

And two thirds of Americans thought he shouldn't be removed from office. So very similar political context in that way. Difference, second term, obviously. But there were differences in how Democrats in the Senate handled it. One, as we said before, Tom Daschle, who was a Senate Democratic leader at that time, refused to speak to the White House about anything. There was no coordination of strategy. at that time refused to speak to the white house about anything there was no coordination of strategy democrats also to a person said bill clinton's conduct was reprehensible but it but it didn't rise to the level of removal which and didn't bill clinton basically say that himself yes he eventually well after much obstruction uh i i can't remember this completely this is like one of my first political memories in high school. Yeah, he had to give.

So I have a vague memory of everything that happened in the Clinton era. He eventually admitted it in a nationally televised address. But was that after the impeachment hearing? It was prior to, I can't remember the exact timeline, but it was before the trial. Okay, so it was before the trial. I think it was after his, it was the day he had to give his deposition. It was before the trial okay um it was before the trial and i think it was after his it was the day he had to give his deposit it was before impeachment the day he had to give his deposition to ken star and admit well yeah i mean imagine what the place we'd be in if trump said i did something wrong i apologize and all the republicans say something wrong but it's not worth impeaching him over we wouldn't even i mean well that's that i guess that is to my that was sort of the point of this long discursive trip into your high school years, was the most obviously in a normal world politically preferable position for Republicans would be, I disagree with what he did.

I thought it was wrong. President shouldn't do that. But it did not reach the level of removal, particularly 10 months before an election like that that is even like i disagree with that position i think it flies in the face of what the founders intended but it is a position right like head in the sand is not a position no it's not it's fine i mean and and and you mentioned the polling back in the uh in the clinton years you know 69 of people want new witnesses including a plurality of Republicans. Pew came out with the poll yesterday. Trump's approval is at 40% approved, 58% disapprove, 70% say he acted

unethically, 63% say he broke the law, 51% say he should be removed from office. So it is like you said, it's funny that you go from 70 and 63 down to 51. But then, you know, there's now been some polling out in some of the states where Republican senators are up in 2020. Maine, for example, a Democratic pollster found that 53 percent of Maine voters believe that Trump is guilty of abusing his office. Independents believe that by 57 percent think he's guilty of abusing his office. 36 percent don't. And then 71 percent of Maine voters say it's important for senators to insist on documents and witnesses. You're Susan Collins and you see those numbers. What are you thinking? You're thinking.

Fuck it. I just am going to ride this out or no one's going to care by the time November comes around. Probably that. Probably no one's going to care by the time November. This is going to be flushed down the memory hole with everything else. And I think her bet is it's more likely that independent and moderate Democrats forget about her vote against witnesses than base Republican voters forget her vote against Trump. Yeah. And I guess, you know, someone pointed this out, but what a lot of these Republican senators are dealing with right now is timing, which is this is before the filing deadlines for primaries in a lot of these states.

So if they voted against Trump or voted to convict him or voted for new witnesses documents, they could all get primary challengers last minute. And they're sort of skeptical. It's sort of like someone to mount a campaign in like two or three months. It's kind of crazy. But I guess they're still in that. They still have those concerns. Although, my thing is, every one of these... Susan Collins, if you look at her own campaign messaging,

it's Susan Collins has been an independent voice. She's been bipartisan. She's different. All this kind of stuff. At least from her perspective, her campaign believes that in order to win this race, she needs to show some distance from Donald Trump. I think if she does what we think she's going to do, even if I think even if she votes for witnesses and documents and then John Bolton testifies that it was in fact a drug deal and then she votes to acquit Donald Trump,

like people may forget about it by November, but I'd be damn sure if I was a Democrat to do everything I possibly can to make sure they don't forget about it. And it becomes one piece of evidence in a larger case against Collins. This vote, the Kavanaugh vote, the tax cuts, everything else she's done to align herself with Donald Trump. I would make sure everyone knew that was happening every single day of the campaign between now and November. If I was Sarah Gideon or whoever else ends up running against Collins. The main example is interesting because it's going to be very hard for Susan Collins to run away from Trump. And maybe her team knows that too. There's a thing you can say in your television

ads, but ultimately, given how narrow the electoral college margin is likely to be, Trump cares a lot about the electoral vote in the second district of Maine. People forget Maine splits its electoral votes. That is a, although we won that district in 2018, that's traditionally been a Republican district, and he is a very Trumpy district demographically. And so he is going to be there campaigning and on the ballot. Cory Gardner, Trump is not going to campaign in Colorado. He is at least an opportunity to have some distance, but Donald Trump's going to show up in Maine most likely.

He will be, there will be Trump ads on the air in Maine. There will be Trump digital ads in the air. And so that is going to put her in a, I think in an interesting position that makes it where I think she may be casting her a lot with Trump. But I think like for some of these people, like, you know, Martha McSally in Arizona, that states, you know, a state that, she lost the election in 2018. She's only in this seat because she was appointed.

She lost it to Kyrsten Sinema, partly because Kyrsten Sinema was able to paint Martha McSally as someone who was too close to Donald Trump. And she's out there saying that, you know, a CNN reporter is a liberal hack and then posting videos so she can raise a bunch of money. Like, I'm sure it might raise money from her base right now, but I don't know if Martha McSally is playing it too smart either.

Like, when I did the Wilderness Focus group in Phoenix, it was with Romney Clinton voters, so these were more moderate people. And the one thing they kept saying was, not only did they not like Trump, but they couldn't believe that the party of John McCain, this is what they kept saying that, you know, the John McCain people in Arizona, they could not believe that Martha McSally and all these other Republicans were just blindly following Donald Trump, whatever he does. They just wanted some Republican to show some distance from Donald Trump. I think the question, I think it's a very real question, which is ticket splitting is at an all time low and getting lower. And so if you are Martha McSally, how many of those Clinton Romney voters are going to vote for you? How many people are going to vote Biden's Bernie, Pete, Klobuchar, Warren, whoever else, and McSally? Pete, Klobuchar, Warren, whoever else, and McSally. Isn't your better bet to strengthen Trump as much as you possibly can and make sure he gets as many votes as he possibly can so that

you can ride on those coattails? That is probably the best political strategy. And it could be political suicide for someone like Cory Gardner or Susan Collins. But that may be the best political strategy in an incredibly polarized political environment which is going to have record turnout like we have never seen ever. I mean, you saw the, I think it might have been that same Pew poll, but there is 71% enthusiasm

to vote in this election in January. That is almost twice what it has been in January of previous elections. So let's talk about how Trump is handling all of this. The president is in Davos, which is where you go when you're standing trial for extortion and cheating. And on Wednesday, he did himself and his defense team a real solid when he said, quote, I thought our team did a very good job, but honestly, we have all the material. They don't have the material.

Yeah, that's the whole fucking problem, dude. That's what you're standing trial for. Do you think he realized he basically confessed to withholding evidence and obstructing justice there? Or was he just bragging about it? Did he not mean that documents? I truly believe that Trump does not believe that laws apply to him. Well, yeah. Right. I mean, that has been his attitude his entire life.

And so it's like this is just a contest and I have the advantage. I'm doing what it takes to win. And here's why I'm winning. And without any concept of that, you were admitting to lawbreaking because winning is an end in of itself. I just couldn't believe that that's not all we're talking about today. It's like one, it's like we've had these moments where like Trump confesses something or Mick Mulvaney goes to a white house, you know, press conference and he confesses something. They just, they just don't give a shit. I mean, this is something we've talked about a lot in the Trump era, which is

the sort of institutional biases of the media prize things revealed in secret more than things in public. And so the whistleblower was a... The reason the whistleblower blew up was because it was this secret person who had revealed the secret thing that was being provided anonymously to people. And so there was this Watergate ask deep throat mystery to it. And when Trump admits the same thing publicly, like we've said this before, if you took Trump's tweets and turn them about pressuring Mueller, firing Mueller, getting rid of Sessions, if you turn those from tweets- To secret documents? Yeah, to secret documents, if you email them to John Podesta and then put them up on WikiLeaks, they'd be front page stories. But because Trump does it in public, we don't have a, we've never dealt with someone so brazen and so stupid to admit all their crimes in public,

so we don't know how to handle that as a political culture writ large. So while he was in Davos bragging to CEOs about how he's made them richer, Trump sat down for an interview with CNBC. And when he was asked if entitlements like Social Security and Medicare would ever be considered for cuts, Trump responded, quote, At some point they will be. It'll be toward the end of the year. The growth is going to be incredible. At the right time, we will take a look at that. It's crazy to think that the most politically damaging thing

Trump said yesterday might not have been when he confessed to obstruction of justice, but that when he said he was willing to cut Social Security and Medicare if he wins a second term right i mean i mean isn't that to the extent that trump has a subconscious it is possible that it does not want to be president because he keeps doing things that are essentially ritual political suicide for someone who runs on a populist a bullshit populist but a populist platform or a populist message i guess i mean it's insane

it is an insane thing to say it is 1000 times more insane to say in davos a gathering of the wealthiest people in the entire world i mean after he oh yeah he he right before that he was talking to the bank of america ceo and was like aren't you happy with your uh with your the stock market right now i should have bought some shares but i wasn't able to like bragging about how he's made them richer with his with the fucking tax cuts and the stock buybacks in davos in davos imagine if barack obama i can't i mean a reporter texted me uh two days ago and said, hey, my editor's asking, why did Obama never go to Davos? I mean, to the reporter's point, they knew it was sort of a rhetorical question, right? But it, yeah, I mean, like, never.

Could you imagine? I guess it's like Nixon in China, right? Like, only working class hero donald trump can truly go to davos yeah i think that's i think that is actually true it's actually and then we're just like this is amazing rich people who got massive tax cuts and freedom to pollute are happy with donald trump he's winning them over big win for donald trump's like you fucking morons have learned nothing since 2016 but look i i was screaming about this yesterday on the social security and medicare

thing and you know it was really good to see priorities usa which is the largest super pack on the democratic side right now say that you know they put out a whole memo about this of how damaging trump's uh position on social security and medic Medicare is not only with Democratic voters, but with Obama Trump voters, with other swing voters, independents, you name it. Except for Trump fans, Trump's base, it is extremely unpopular, maybe the most unpopular position he can take. And yet, and all the Democratic candidates made a statement on it, which was great also. But it's not something that when it happens we talk about a lot it's not one of those things that gets picked up on twitter like you don't get a lot of retweets for talking

about fucking social security and that is what guys but like these none of these things ever go viral right and i just i wonder like i don't know how many times we can say how important it is to talk about the fact that donald trump is going to take away people's health care cut social security and cut medicare and medicaid in this election and how politically damaging that is for all that we scream about everything else that he does, as we should. I mean, this is the challenge of being a Democrat is the things that matter the most to the voters that we need to persuade are things that do not benefit from the algorithmic choices of social media platforms. So the only solution is to put money behind it. Right. Right. And I have... Which, by the way, we should say,

the Democratic Party and Democratic candidates did very successfully in 2018. We talked about the caravan at the end. We talked about Brett Kavanaugh, right? Like that was the national media was basically consumed with both immigration and the Kavanaugh fight. But meanwhile, on the ground, every Democratic candidate was putting money behind health care ads and it worked. My suspicion is we will see money behind this both in the short term and in the long term when we have a nominee. And I suspect a huge part of the message will be that Trump wants to cut your social

security, cut your Medicare, cut Medicaid, raise your healthcare premiums to pay for more tax cuts for rich people like him. I suspect that that is going to be the thrust of the argument around him. I am struck as we talk about these things by something Josh Warren, who works for Priority, said, which is if you have an idea for a digital ad, can you also have an idea for where that money comes from for digital ads? So I do think about it sometimes where it's like, in all these places, there are very smart people doing these things. And this is not like when we yell about, why aren't there ads about this?

It's not really, it may sound like it, but it's not us yelling at democratic groups that exist that are working on this yeah it's sort of us yelling at super rich people well yeah it's yelling at super but also look at bernie sanders and elizabeth warren's campaign we're in the golden era of grassroots fundraising like you know if if if priorities usa or anyone else said hey there's a good idea for digital ad could we crowdfund this let's raise x amount of money by in 24 hours you know damn well they would raise that money maybe you know i mean i don't it depends on how many times you do that i mean this is a longer conversation i have a lot of thoughts about maybe some things we could do here to be helpful but it like i think that i think that

the press is not going to carry this message for us twitter is not going to carry this message for us. Twitter's not going to carry this message for us. Facebook's not going to carry this message for us. Democratic candidates, political organizations, party organizations are going to have to do it. And actually, I have confidence that they will. And I should say, it was very good news back on the impeachment front. It was good news to see Mike Bloomberg change all of his ads over to impeachment ads in the time being. Were they all of them? I don't know. Maybe I didn't read closely. I thought it was all of his ads over to impeachment ads in the time being? Were they all of them? I don't know. Maybe I didn't read closely. I thought it was all of them.

I really want to get to the bottom of this. Every time I read this story that says, whenever there is a gap in advertising, the Bloomberg team tells reporters that they're going to do their ads to it. And I've been watching a lot of football recently and a lot of basketball, and I see a lot of Bloomberg ads, and they're all pro-Bloomberg, which is 100% his right, his money, his campaign. I have yet to see a negative Trump ad on television. And that may be happening in- Like purely, yeah. Usually his ads have like 10 seconds about why Trump is bad, and then it pivots to Bloomberg. Yeah, it's like Trump is a person and I'm a better person. But it's not an anti-Trump spot.

Yeah. And I will periodically go into the Facebook ad library and try to find the- As one does. As one does, to try to find the negative ads. And there are some. So I would love just like some, it would be awesome for the next time there's a story about this to say, what states, what ads, how much, here's the ad. Like even putting the ad out would help it be seen because people would share it socially.

So like, I'd like to know what that means. And Bloomberg has an opportunity, a $10 million opportunity in two weeks to use a very large platform to carry a message. That's right. Well, we should tell everyone, if you don't have a couple billion dollars laying around to run ads on impeachment, you can put the maximum pressure

possible on, you know, Susan Collins and Cory Gardner and Tom Tillis and Martha McSally, Mitt Romney and Lamar Alexander, if you want as well. Like, I do think we already saw Mitch McConnell be forced to sort of shift the rules of the trial a little bit in Democrats favor. Not much, but a little. And, you know, the votes on new documents and witnesses is still very much up in the air. And you can make a difference by calling Congress and really putting the pressure on. Hopefully, as we get closer to the vote, there's also some rallies and, you know, people protesting as well, because I think that could have an effect. All right. Let's talk about how impeachment is affecting the Democratic primary. With less than two weeks until Iowa, Senators Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar are all stuck at the trial,

leaving the state to Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg. Meanwhile, primary polling hasn't given us much more clarity since we talked about it on Tuesday's episode. Less clarity. Less clarity, if that was even possible. There were four national polls released on Wednesday. Three show Biden in the lead, but CNN showed Bernie in the lead for the first time with a gain of seven points since their December poll. There have also been a couple of good, really good, in the case of the Wbur poll today um new hampshire polls for bernie but no new iowa polling though just as i was about to come record i think you were talking

desmond mead dan uh saturday saturday february 1st the last des moines register poll two days before the caucus not only just a poll released on the Des Moines Register site on Saturday, Dan, it's going to be a live television special on CNN. Cool. So we're going to be in Des Moines. We are going to be in Des Moines, yes. We're going. Why is it America's going? Will there be some local watch parties at the CNN show?

I mean, I just hope we can. That's going to be fun watching that, making fun of it too. If it's anything like, remember the CNN live show where they drew the debate? Yeah, but if you will remember, we were about to do a show. We were about to do a show. We were very dismissive of it. And then towards the end, we were 100% bought in for the final drawing. And then we talked about it for like 15 minutes.

So in the end, they were right and we were wrong, which is a hard thing to admit. And that may happen again. Yeah. So where do you think the race stands at this point, and what do you think about all the polling discrepancies? This seems like an obvious thing to say, but I have no idea, and no one does either. It seems like it is a – that there are four candidates with very realistic shots of winning Iowa, and I would sort of discount to a certain degree the New Hampshire polling, at least among the top four, which is what's going to happen in Iowa, I think is going

to have some pretty dramatic effects. It's going to cause some resorting. You may have candidates who don't get a delegate in Iowa drop out or lose support in New Hampshire. But it seems like this has come down to a very close race between two between four candidates biden bernie budaj warren with klobuchar still in the game with two weeks to go here um and bluebird just lurking out there at super super tuesday yes lurking just spending that money and and clearly biden and bernie have an advantage over the others. For sure. For sure.

I mean, just all the data points to that, even though it's very unclear. Yeah. And so I think that is where the race is. Things can move dramatically. I mean, in a sort of scary way, that Des Moines Register poll, it has a self-fulfilling prophecy to it. Yeah. It has a self-fulfilling prophecy to it, which is it can have an effect on sort of moving undecided voters or supporters of candidates who are not near the 15% viability threshold to head to the winner. And Obama actually benefited from that because two or three days before the Iowa caucus in 2008, the one registered poll came out with Obama up by seven.

And that was very influential. It creates a momentum narrative, which is very important at the end of a caucus. Well, speaking of momentum narratives, I do think that belongs to the Sanders campaign right now, whether it's warranted or not in the data, which if you know, there's plenty of ways to look at the data and plenty of the polls to look at to see that it is warranted that he does have the momentum right now. You pointed out yesterday an interesting Nate Cohn piece in The New York Times about why Bernie has been gaining ground and has fewer obstacles between here and the nomination than he did in 2016. Basically, no one attacked him. The media didn't take him too seriously again. And he raised an insane amount of money.

You agree with all that? Or is there anything else you want to add to that? I 100% agree with that. And it's very curious that we have no idea when any of these campaigns have cash on hand right now. Oh, yeah. That's interesting. Yeah. Like everyone had good second quarters.

Bernie obviously had an incredible second quarter. Biden had a much better second quarter than before. But Biden had $9 million cash on hand at the end of the previous reporting period. And Bernie had like $30 million. And that's a huge factor as we move forward. And to understand Biden's long-term viability post-Iowa, like if he can get to the states that are demographically better for him based on the current set of polling, does he have the money to get there? And we do not know the answer to that. And I think it's a big, big thing because Hillary Clinton in 2008 had a very similar trajectory to Biden financially in the sense that she raised good money, less money than

Obama, but she spent money at a very high rate and was basically bankrupt after Iowa, New Hampshire, and had very little in the tank to run real campaigns once you got to Super Tuesday and the caucus states that came after that. Which is basically why we won. That's correct. We've talked a lot about some of the other candidates and we've talked about Bernie in the primary. What do you think about Bernie Sanders as a general election candidate, since it is probably more likely now than it has been i mean this is a like this is a hard question and i would have that same sort of pause slash sigh for any of them for any of the people we've talked about because it's just funny because so much of the biden case from

the beginning has been well biden would be the strongest general election candidate and um you know a lot of people disagree with that mostly all the other campaigns but that's sort of been the narrative around biden we say and there's been polling evidence and there's been polling evidence yeah um but i think if even if you look at the polls the general election polls it's interesting that uh biden still has an advantage in the general election against Trump vis-a-vis all the other candidates. But right behind him is Bernie Sanders. If you're going to use polling to make the case that Biden changes all the time and all the caveats, like there's all the caveats, all the comments. But if you're using polling as the Biden campaign does, and I think fairly, they say like 70 consecutive polls have shown Biden beating Trump.

By that metric, Bernie Sanders is the second most electable candidate. There is a separation in many of these polls between Biden and Bernie and then between Bernie and whoever is next, usually Elizabeth Warren. conversation on Monday about the social security fight between these folks and the importance of having conversations around the general election vulnerabilities of the candidates. We should hash these things out now. And there were two things that I took away from that, that if I had been at the table, I would have interjected with and perhaps- Well, now you get your chance. That's the chance. And it's like, love it might walk in, so hurry up. Is one, all the stuff around impeachment that was sort of discussed about baggage for Biden, based on the metric we just mentioned, there's no evidence that it is actually baggage for Biden. He has not suffered at all in these general election matchups. Right. With all with basically a massive conservative nationally televised campaign by the Republicans to paint Biden as corrupt.

And an extremely high awareness among voters of that campaign. Yeah, it is a. So it's not like it's not people aren't paying attention. We have hashed it out. And I think it could change when there's billions of dollars spent on it. But as of right now, there is no evidence that the smear campaign against Biden and his son Hunter has made him less electable, whatever that means. I think it is also true that we have not, there has never been that conversation around Bernie, right? And Bernie does, like all these candidates, has vulnerabilities. And he has tried to address some of those around socialism, which is a, that is a real vulnerability. That is not- In fact, I would argue it's probably the

biggest and perhaps the biggest of any of the candidates running. It is now a vulnerability can be, and again, it's, it's, it is. And we should say why I don't necessarily think it's because his positions themselves are too far to the left. I've been thinking the last couple of weeks that if Bernie Sanders had just called himself an independent, maintain the exact same positions he's had his entire life, he would be more like Sherrod Brown running, you know, as a general election candidate, right? Just like a sort of gruff folder guy who's, you know, economic populism right from the get-go. And I said this back when, you know, Bernie Sanders gave what I thought was a very good speech

defending democratic socialism, minus the fact that he calls himself a democratic socialism because he placed himself squarely in their tradition of the democratic party FDR and and all the rest and he sounded like a democrat minus again calling himself a democratic socialist which you know has resonance with a lot of people in this country at least the word socialism because of what older people know socialism to be in the past. That's it. And it's hard to get around that. It's just a fact.

Now, it doesn't mean- You may be able to, but- Right. And I think that is the important thing, is we treat electability vulnerabilities as these things set in stone. Yes. And they are not. And if you had said back in 2007 that the best candidate to

run against John McCain, war hero, most popular politician in the country would be a- Black guy named Barack Hussein Obama. From the South side of Chicago, a few years removed from the Illinois State Senate, people thought you were fucking insane. And so candidate ability, campaign quality, and most importantly, larger factors of what's happening in the economy and the world will drive the outcome here. So I think Bernie Sanders can navigate, just like I think Elizabeth Warren can navigate the challenges people raise about her. Biden has challenges. Yeah. Klobuchar has challenges. Everyone except Andrew Yang has challenges. No, I mean, you know, I agree. And that's why people say, you know, who do you think is going to be strongest in general? All I can do is talk about the strengths

and weaknesses of each candidate. And I think we should be all of us should be clear eyed that whoever wins this thing, I do not think we should be sitting there saying like, oh, if only we had nominated this other one, you know, like they every single one of them, at least the major ones that we're talking about, has serious weaknesses in the general election, and all of them carry serious strengths, some of those strengths unique to that candidate that the other candidates don't have.

I really believe that about all of them. Right. And the best test of electability is winning elections. Yeah. Now, our primary process is not perfect. By any stretch of the imagination, the real questions about the demographic makeup of the states of the front end, all of that is true. But that is the process before us. And my bet would be the candidate who can best navigate

that process to the end is probably our best bet against Trump. Yeah, that's a good point. So let's talk about two of Bernie's rivals. How much of an advantage is it for Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg to have Iowa to themselves in this last week and a half? I think it's a huge advantage. If you will remember at the end of Iowa, the numbers of people involved are so small. And you're basically trying to move, in some cases, a few dozen people in a precinct to get 15% or to get one of your opponents under 15%. So at the end of every event down the stretch, President Obama, Mrs. Obama, would do events with undecided caucus members. They would meet with them. Yeah, small room. 12 people and would persuade them to sign cards right then and there to be what we would call a one, right? Someone who is a committed supporter of President Obama. And that makes a difference. And that is something that is available to Biden and Buttigieg that is not going to be available at the same volume to the others. they can do to sort of help their cause,

Bernie and Warren and Klobuchar. One is surrogates, and the other is doing a lot of television and press interviews from D.C. that get beamed back into Iowa. That is the best thing they can do. Do you think it's not the same as the person? Not the same. Because the candidates in Iowa can do both.

Right. You're going to have, like Biden's going to be there and Biden's surrogates are going to be there. Buttigieg's going to be there. Buttigieg's surrogates are going to be there. Biden and Buttigieg can also do cable TV from there. So I think it is a substitute, but it is not equivalent to what they can do. And you could not, like if this, let's say that they were there for, they were house members doing the impeachment hearing, or they were senators during a Supreme Court

confirmation where they could do something. They literally have to take a vow of silence and do nothing for 12 hours a day and they can't leave. So it is a very restrictive situation that they are in. I'll tell you the thing that I've been thinking about is just, you know, in our last couple of weeks in Iowa in 2007, I guess it was 2008 at this point. It wasn't. It was 2007. No, it was 2007 because the caucuses were what? January 3rd. January 3rd, right. Yeah. Okay. So it was 2007. The big question for us was, would the universe of caucus goers be what we thought it would be? Meaning, would we get expanded turnout? Because we knew that we could only win if turnout in the caucuses basically broke records and the other campaigns didn't think that we would break those records and i think about that now with bernie sanders

campaign or even if it turns out warren wins right or if it turns out buddha judge wins right like those are both all three of those candidates at least anecdotally and in some of the data you can see, like are trying to bring new people in to caucus. And, you know, particularly Bernie, because they just have done so much organizing on the ground for so long. And the big question I have in this last week and a half is like, does that materialize? Do all those new caucus growers turn out? Because if they do, and you break all kinds of records with turnout,

then I wonder if it benefits a more insurgent candidate. It does benefit the more insurgent candidate. You asked me earlier about the difference between the polls. Too many public media pollsters do not give us enough information to fully judge the poll.

You don't see crosstabs. You don't have a real view of weighting or universe. There are exceptions, people, folks like Nate Cohn who are very transparent about it. The Des Moines Register poll in 2008, it was actually 2007 because it came out New Year's Eve, it was our New Year's Eve present, that showed Obama up seven. The reason that that poll was much more favorable to Obama than a Mason-Dixon poll that had come out a week earlier that showed Obama, I think in third. Oh, really? I forgot about that. And there were a couple of very prominent endorsers who backed off when that poll came out.

They know who they are. Was Ann Seltzer, the Democratic pollster, gauge turnout correctly. And she had a less, a less restrictive view of who was a caucus goer than previous polls had done. And I'd be very curious to know the difference between the Des Moines Register poll that had Bernie winning and the Monmouth poll that had Biden winning. Like what the difference in methodology is there and whether the Des Moines Register is doing a better job of capturing these new caucus girls, which I think the assumption of everyone involved is that turnout will be at least as high, if not higher than 2008, which was the record. Wow.

All right. When we come back, we will have Dan's interview with Desmond Meade. Hey, everyone. Pod Save America and Love It or Leave It are going on tour for 2020. Between the news, this primary, and the general election. That's right. We're going to have a lot to talk about. So come see us live when we're in your town.

Get those tickets at crooked.com slash events and come hang out. That's crooked.com slash events. I'm joined by Desmond Meade, president of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, an organization run by and advocating for former convicted persons. The Florida Rights Restoration Coalition was instrumental in passing Amendment 4 in Florida in 2018 that restored the voting rights of about 1.4 million Floridians. Desmond, welcome to Pod Save America.

Hey, it's a pleasure, Ben. Thanks for having me. When Florida voters passed Amendment 4 in 2018, it was one of the single biggest acts of enfranchisement in the history of the United States. But since then, Republicans have pretty much pulled out all of the stops to undo the work that was done. Desmond, can you tell us what they have done and how the state Supreme Court weighed in last week? Yeah. So let me start by saying this, and I think it's very important that we don't gloss over what happened in November of 2018 when we passed Amendment 4. You know, over 5.1 million people voted yes for our amendment, and that was a million more people that voted for our amendment than voted for anybody that was on the ballot, right?

In addition to that, what we've seen was that over a million people who voted yes for Amendment 4 also voted for the current governor, which showed a broad cross-section of support for the amendment. And what was, I believe, probably the most beautiful thing of that evening was the fact that what we see was 5.1 million votes that was not based on hate, was not based on fear, but was rather based on love, forgiveness and redemption. And we were able to keep that campaign elevated above partisan politics, above racial insecurities and bring people together along the lines of humanity. And so the country actually got to see love winning the day. And then when you talk about we're just a few days removed from celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King, it reminds me how he once said that hate can't drive out hate, fear can't drive out fear, darkness can't drive out darkness but but love can really defeat all of those forces and so when we passed amendments for and and the legislators started getting involved it was very disheartening because we knew

once that happened that such a beautiful campaign and a beautiful application or a beautiful movement to move such an important issue was going to be drugged down into the cesspool of partisan politics. And what we've seen was a very strong attempt to really clarify or define, I should say, what completion of sentence was. We knew that Amendment 4 created three conditions that would trigger the right to vote, which is not being convicted of a murder, not being convicted of a felony sex offense, and completing a sentence that's ordered by a judge to include restitution. The legislation that was filed by the Republican legislators initially, it expanded on all of those definitions. And so we had serious problems

with that. And so the main fight moving forward has always been around what is completion of sentence. Does it include financial obligations? And if it does, what type of financial obligations do it include? Our position has always been that if it included financial obligations, it was only financial obligations that was attached to the crime that someone was convicted of, right? That it was the only financial obligations that was punitive in nature and not financial obligations that was administrative in nature. And so there was a bunch of back and forth there. And just recently, the Florida Supreme Court issued an advisory opinion to the governor that combines

the punitive financial obligations with the administrative financial obligations and requiring a person to pay all of those legal financial obligations before they can say their sentence is complete. Do you have an estimate on how many people that could impact? their sentence is complete. Do you have an estimate on how many people that could impact? Yeah, you know, unfortunately, you know, prior to the Supreme Court advisory opinion, we really relied on a lot of research that's been done by what we consider to be the platinum standard for felonies and franchisors, and that's by the Sentencing Project. And we determined that out of the 1.4 million Floridians that would have been immediately impacted by the passage of Amendment 4,

we believe that approximately 840,000 did not have any outstanding fines, fees, or restitution, right, which left approximately 560,000 that do. But with this Supreme Court advisory opinion, it seems now to shift that balance a little bit more. And now we believe that there's over 800,000 folks that total that all fines and fees and court costs that the Supreme Court is saying is now required to be paid. And so we know that the number of people without any financial obligations would be drastically reduced. But we don't have those figures yet. And where does the litigation go from here? Is there any chance this can get resolved in a favorable way by the 2020 election? I'm not heartened by the fact you're laughing.

No. What I tell folks is this. FRRC, Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, we're going to let the litigators litigate. We're going to let the legislators legislate, right? And we are going to continue to embrace the spirit of Amendment 4 and remain keenly focused on the people, right? Right now, the legislation that was signed into law in July of 2019 allows a couple different pathways for people with financial obligations. We've always said wherever people see obstacles, we see opportunities. that was signed into law, it allows the courts to be involved and to be able to modify a person's sentence that would remove the financial obligations as an impediment to registering the vote. We were able to do that in November. We had John Legend in Miami-Dade County in the

11th Judicial Circuit, where we were able to demonstrate that publicly to where people, no matter what they owed, had the opportunity to go before a judge, and that judge would basically issue a ruling that says that your financial obligations would no longer be an impediment to you being able to register to vote. And we were able to register people to vote right there in the courtroom. The other pathway is for a judge to actually take whatever is owed and convert them to community service hours. So someone who may not afford to pay whatever fines and fees

and court costs that are assessed to them, they have an opportunity to volunteer. And here's the beautiful part, I mean, to do community service hours. Here's the beautiful part. They can do community service hours by volunteering with an organization that's going out there registering people to vote, right? And so there's always, I believe, you know, if we search hard long enough, we could find silver linings in these dark clouds. We could find opportunities to take the lemons that's thrown at us and make lemonade.

With 2020 being the most pivotal election, the most crucial election that this country has ever seen, and this is not a hyperbole, this is real, that our primary purpose or what we feel should be the primary purpose, focus of many organizations and individuals is to engage as many of our fellow citizens as we can, get them registered to vote, and engage them in such a way that they actually turn out to vote in 2020. Florida historically has decided presidential elections by 100,000 or less votes, right? We strongly believe that just within the returning citizens community, we have more than 100,000 people who can register to vote and make a difference. But in addition to them, there are still about 3 million Americans who are eligible to register to vote that have not. And there are still about maybe 2.4 and upwards millions of people who are registered that don't historically vote.

And so we have an amazing opportunity to not get bogged down in litigation and not get bogged down in the legislation and really focus our energy and attention on getting people registered to vote and those who are registered, getting them out to the polls. So, Desmond, before I let you go, how can our listeners help with the work that you're doing and help people who don't have the money to pay the fees and other things standing in the way of their voting rights being restored listen that's a great question you know recently over the last few days i've been seeing a lot of chatter on social media where folks are challenging uh folks like bloomberg and sire to put the money where their mouth is and to really you know if, if you have the ability to write that check, you write that check and free folks or free democracy. Let's get people registered to vote and get it out there so folks can donate. We have a fines and fees fund that we started last summer.

that we started last summer. We raised over $400,000, but we need much more than that. But folks can donate to our Fires and Fees Fund, and those monies, 99% of that money will be used exclusively to help people pay fines and fees off so they're able to register to vote. Over the Christmas holidays, we were able to spend about $265,000 to be able to get a couple hundred people their right to vote back. Obviously, we need much more money than that, and there are people out there in the country that has a the ability to write large checks and even those who don't you know every little bit help people can go and they can text fees FES to eight to six to three and there's a link that would take them directly to the donation page or

they could also go to our website at floridarrc.com, and there's a link there to help people pay fines and fees. But together as a country, we can unlock democracy in the state of Florida. And I'll leave you with this, man. I can't remember. Maybe because I'm not old enough, but I cannot remember the last time somebody got into the White House without winning the state of Florida. And so this is a great opportunity for folks to help expand democracy in Florida and help drive out more people to the polls,

because we're going to need a humongous turnout to really make sure that we have an impact in this upcoming election. Desmond, thank you so much for joining us. Your optimism and activism is always so inspiring to us. Best of luck with all this, and we'll be sure to check in with you before Election Day. Thank you so much. Looking forward to it. Thanks to Desmond Meade for joining us today. One more announcement before you guys go. So Democrats have a chance to flip a really important seat in the Texas House of Representatives next week. Elise Markowitz is the Democratic candidate running in a special election on January 28th.

Why is it getting national attention, Dan? Because there is few things that are more important for Democrats than taking back the legislature in Texas. And Beto O'Rourke, our old friend in his new organization, Powered by People, has been down there working. Julian Castro was down there knocking doors. And it's incredibly important and would send a very powerful signal about what Democrats will do in 2020 if we can win this race. And it's important to flip the Texas legislature partly because, I mean, it's great to have a Democratic legislature in Texas, but also redistricting. That's right. We're heading into a redistricting year. And if Democrats

control the legislature, we can ensure that democracy is not gerrymandered out of existence. So very, very big. If you live in the Houston area and you can get out and volunteer this week for Elise, she needs your help. So go do that. Everyone else, we will talk to you on Monday. Bye, everyone. Go do that. Everyone else, we will talk to you on Monday. Bye, everyone. Pod Save America is a product of Crooked Media.

The senior producer is Michael Martinez. Our assistant producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Carolyn Reston, Tanya Somanator, and Katie Long for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Narmel Coney, and Yael Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as a video every week. Thank you.