Pod Save America - "Democracy in a headlock."

Episode Date: October 10, 2018

Tommy and Lovett talk about Nikki Haley’s abrupt departure from her UN role, a frightening new report about climate change, and where the battles for the House and Senate stand just a few weeks before Election Day. Then they speak with Kansas congressional candidate Sharice Davids. 

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Jon Lovett. Jon Favreau is either in Florida or en route to Florida, you will know by the tenor of his tweets. Poor Jon had a long travel day. Nine and a half hours at LAX. Yeah, he was at LAX all day. We had a whole day at work. Whole day. Whole day. We're just sitting there and then he responded to something like 9.30 p.m. Still... About to get on a red eye. Yeah. Brutal.

Today is Wednesday, October 10th. As you may have noticed, we've shifted the podcast schedule to Mondays and Wednesdays this month because starting this Friday, we're doing the first of four one-hour election specials on HBO. So please tune in to HBO this Friday at 11 p.m. right after Bill Maher. Watch it on your HBO Go. Watch it on your HBO Now. Tell your friends we're heading to Miami later today to record that show. There are lots of critically important voter registration

deadlines, a fast approaching and fewer and fewer opportunities to get out in Canvas. So go to votesaveamerica.com, get registered, hit some doors, get three friends to join you. Maybe you'll even see Love It at your Canvas location. Hell yeah. I'll be the one making sure it's documented so I can put it on social media. It looked beautiful. Love It. Love It at your Canvas location. Hell yeah. I'll be the one making sure it's documented so I can put it on social media. It looked beautiful. Love It. Love It or Leave It is still going this month, but there's some changes, right? Yes.

So we have four election specials. They will be hosted by Guy Branum and Aaron Ryan. The funniest guests you've... The all-star guests, tournament of champion guests. I'm really excited. They're going to host the shows in studio with a bunch of really awesome guests we have lined up. So tune in for that. Those are going to be great.

I can't wait. I'll miss you, though. Thanks, buddy. Pod Save the World this week. Check it out. You'll hear from three really inspiring, awesome congressional candidates with national security backgrounds that will make you excited not just about winning elections, but the people who are going to do these jobs once they get to Congress.

So check out Pod Save the World. Okay. Today on the pod, we're going to talk about Nikki Haley's decision to resign from her role as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, a terrifying new U.N. report about climate change, and a quick snapshot of the current political climate, and maybe a little fun op-ed that President Trump wrote, you know, just for kicks. Good job, USA Today. Yeah, thanks for running that. Then later in the pod- Way to slip some lies under hotel room doors. Later in the pod, you'll hear our conversation with Sharice Davids,

a congressional candidate and MMA fighter in Kansas. It's pretty cool. We did that interview a little differently. We pre-taped it and then Lovett and I talked about some of the things she stands for and cares about throughout. So we hope you like it. Give it a listen. I love it.

Yesterday, even top Trump aides like National Security Advisor John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo were surprised when Axios' Jonathan Swan broke the news that Nikki Haley had offered a resignation and will be leaving at the end of the year. She's one of the most high profile women in Trump's cabinet. And she made that standard transition from anti-Trump to MAGA dead ender and is now quitting. Two part question for you. Does anything from Haley's tenure at the U.N. stand out to you? And were you surprised by the timing of her departure? It's a little weird to have a cabinet official leave right before an election, right? Especially a popular one. It is strange. I think, you know, it's like a little bit like being, you know,

the old joke, you know, show up sober, they make you foreman. Like Nikki Haley, you know, she is not as bad as who could have been in that job. Totally. She has had some moments where she has said the right things. She has had moments where she has looked the other way for horrible Trump behavior. I mean, fundamentally, the problem with being a Trump cabinet official is you cannot do the job without acceding to some of the worst behavior and worst policy instincts. And especially when you're at the UN, look, right now, we are dealing with the fact that Saudi Arabia may have brazenly killed a journalist, while Donald Trump and Jared Kushner have been sucking up to Saudi Arabia, maybe for their own personal interest, probably

for their own personal interest for years. So how can you be in this administration and be respected and seen as a good actor when you have to represent Donald Trump's views in that way? So, you know, I agree with every Democratic senator who has praised Nikki Haley by saying she's not as bad as what could have been there otherwise. But that's not a really good standard in terms of leaving. It's fucking weird. Maybe it's nothing, but we don't know the facts yet. Yeah. Maybe think about 2006 when Don Rumsfeld was the defense secretary. He was super unpopular, extremely controversial. The Iraq war was a disaster, but Bush still waited after the midterms to cut him loose, which is not a great decision. I remember that day. I remember right after that election.

We were in the Senate. Yeah, I remember we were just sitting there, and we had won the House, and we had won the Senate, and it was this incredible victory. And then the very next morning, we saw all of this exodus, and it was like, is this happening? This is cool. This is amazing. Yeah, so it's really weird. Super weird. And I have not seen anything other than just sort of idle speculation about the reasons. Well, yeah. So it is notable that it did seem like a happy, conscious uncoupling.

Right. There was a rare scene of them like doing a press spay together, announcing her departure. And it wasn't just, you know, Reince Priebus quitting, hugging it out with his bro, Donald Trump on Air Force One. Then again, blasted via tweet and like sent home in a van. So interesting. Apparently, she said she wanted to leave that her departure didn't look like it was tied to potentially bad election results. She's burned out. It's also notable that some ethics watchdog groups have been raising the fact that she accepted multiple flights on private jets owned by South Carolina businessmen. Right, which has never stopped a Trump cabinet official from serving in the past. They all love it. They love private jets over there. And who doesn't? No, but, you know, I think something that really captures the problem of Nikki Haley

and the unfair credit she gets is what she said around Donald Trump and his various allegations of sexual misconduct against women, which is she was given, you know, pundit plaudits for just for simply saying that those women deserve to be heard as opposed to with a Trump official position, which is it never happened. It's false. But as with Susan Collins, as with Nikki Haley. OK, you've heard them, but no action, no behavioral change that if you hear these people like it's again this problem of doing more than the reprehensible behavior of the worst actors in American politics gets you points, but it shouldn't. Yeah. In her resignation letter, Haley pointed to successes.

Some of them were getting sanctions against North Korea, standing up for Israel, some nebulous U.N. reforms. This one I thought was kind of funny. Speaking out, quote, resolutely against dictatorships in Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and yes, Russia. I mean, my take, I think this is a pretty mixed bag. I do think they deserve credit for getting tough sanctions against North Korea. And if that turns into a nuclear free peninsula, I will praise them to the rooftops. I think every administration spends a bunch of time defending Israel against efforts to attack it and criticize them at the UN. So that's sort of par for the course. You mentioned Saudi Arabia. I mean, the notion that Trump has stood up to dictatorship, certainly they've gone

after Iran, but they've never criticized Russia. Venezuela is still a disaster. I mean, as you noted, this journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, was murdered reportedly in a Saudi diplomatic facility in Istanbul. So, you know, was murdered reportedly in a Saudi diplomatic facility in Istanbul. So, you know, maybe a little maybe a mixed bag here. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, she's got she's been sorted into the maddest category of people we're lucky to have in this administration. And I guess it's just it's we have to keep two things in our mind at once. On the one hand, yeah, that's there is some truth to that. And I'm not you know, I am I think in this debate about whether or not we should give

people a little generosity for serving the Trump administration, for stopping bad things. I am very, very skeptical of that argument, but probably a little less skeptical than a lot of people. I think I'm less skeptical than like you and John, a little less skeptical than Brian Boitler. I give them a little bit more latitude because I do think that there is some truth to it. But again, you look at what's happening with Saudi Arabia, look at what's happening with Russia. There's just, there's no way to serve this administration and not be giving up the most basic American values.

Yeah. I know. You know what? I agree with you. You're right about this one. I mean, a fun note here, the Washington Post, the one other thing I talked about is how we're more respected in the world. The Washington Post noted that in only four countries, it doesn't include the U.S., Trump's approach is viewed positively. Only four countries. So not that great. And the truth is, I think Nikki Haley gets a lot of credit simply because she is incredibly charismatic. She is very smart. She is a very good speaker.

She does a very good job of representing herself. That's a very good job of representing herself. And it's a very good point. And, you know, we may we may turn out that there's some secret reason that she left or as she has done throughout this. She is just carefully managing her position. And the thing about working for Donald Trump is when there's an opening to leave where it doesn't look like you're doing it because of corruption, a scandal, a sex assault, a fucking Mueller probe, some other awful story that would look like you had a reason to go. Maybe sometimes you just fucking take it because like that's three or four days a year. That's good. This was fun. As she left, Haley said a couple of things that caught my eye. First, that Jared Kushner is, quote, such a hidden genius that no one understands. Yeah, that's funny. It's like, yeah, even Harvard couldn't find it. I guess Jared joins Kanye as just another misunderstood Trump loving genius. The second is that she felt the need to explicitly say that she will not be a candidate for any office in 2020.

Did you think that was weird? I think she was dealing with the speculation. But again, like this is this is another way in which we see the joke of I'm here to stop bad things that we hear from people like Nikki Haley and Madison others. here to stop bad things that we hear from people like Nikki Haley and Mattis and others. If you believe that that your role was to prevent Donald Trump from his worst instincts and actually do some good despite the awfulness of this person. And you don't have to take my word for it. Take Nikki Haley's word for it. Take what Nikki Haley said about Donald Trump before she worked with administration at face value. And then they leave and they immediately say, I'll be campaigning like crazy for him because Nikki Haley will someday run as a Republican again.

And when she does, she will run in a party that has it gives Donald Trump an 80 or 90 percent approval rating. Yeah. Regarding Jared being a genius. Like I love I love to slap this guy around. But I mean, it's worth noting that we are still waiting for his long promised Middle East peace plan. And also that entire plan is predicated on support from Saudi Arabia doing whatever the Saudis want. He's the guy who pushed us all in on this Mohammed bin Salman strategy, who is the one kind of. We're the responsible ones. We're trying to stop Bannon. Then we're trying to stop Stephen Miller. Then we're trying to stop whoever. And it's like, OK, well, you know, what do you got?

You know, it's not we're now in this for two years. Where are the results? What are you talking about? What do you think you've done? How you know, when you're the president of the United States, you're not like it's not like you're painting a beautiful portrait that you reveal after four years. It's not gonna be some unveiling of Donald Trump's accomplishments. If Jared's a hidden genius, it means he's not getting results. Where's the outcomes here? Where are they? It's so stupid.

The notion that anyone could primary Trump is just ridiculous. I don't even know why we could reporters speculate about this. But now it is time to play everyone's favorite game, wild speculation about who comes next. This is the closest thing to a job Trump is actually qualified for, which is reality show producer. He told reporters on Air Force One that there are five names on the short list.

One is your friend and your mentor, former Deputy National Security Advisor, Dinah Powell. Dinah Powell, yeah. Dinah, sorry. Just one real quick. Another name's been floated is unhinged Twitter troll and current US ambassador to Germany, Rick Grinnell.

Yeah, Rick Grinnell, man. There's somebody who has failed up, lucked up. I mean, somebody who talked to reporters about him and they say this is a guy that is so undiplomatic, so hard to deal with. And now, of course, because the sorting inside the Republican Party let a lot of people who were more qualified to avoid it. He's somebody on a short list, which he would never have been on another administration's list. Although, you know what? Ezra Klein pointed this out. There are ways in which the Donald Trump administration is looking a hell of a lot like the George W. Bush administration. You've got John Bolton at National Security Advisor. You have Dina Powell, potentially at UN. You have crazy high deficits. You have a giant corporate tax cut. I mean, in a lot of ways, what we're seeing is George W. Bush administration with Donald Trump's personality. Hilariously, Trump also said that there's no one

more competent in the world than Ivanka, but he can't choose her because he'd be accused of nepotism, apparently forgetting that she currently works in the white house it's it is one of those funny things he's like he's like i should pick ivanka she'd be the best it's like why she's not the most qualified that's so stupid but then i'd be accused of nepotism i don't know i don't know so the risk of sounding glib like do you think it's important who comes next like what's your take on on this i i don't know i like as i know i just don't know. I like as I just don't know. Like, obviously, I would prefer it to be someone who is not a flamethrowing nutball like John Bolton. Like, but again, like what we have seen over the last two years is the names change, but the outcomes are the same. That's exactly right.

I struggled with this question, too, because I do think Trump blots out the stun, but there's still a bunch of stuff that matters and happens that Trump never even learns about. And that's probably especially true with the U.N. because out of sight, out of mind. So if you name someone that's going to work with other countries and build relationships, that is a good thing. If you put a John Bolton type, as you said, that person just lives to piss the world off. That's not great. Yeah.

And again, one other point that a lot of stories have made about Nikki Haley is she was somebody people could go to to find out what the fuck is going on with Donald Trump's something crazy, which is, again, a reminder of the fact that we are in this crazy universe where there are two parallel administrations, the one that emanates from Donald Trump's face and the real day to day work that's actually going on. And that's incredibly unhealthy and dangerous. But in that circumstance, which we find ourselves, it is important to have someone up there who is not one of the worst Republicans in the world. I don't know what there is to say else. One last sort of interesting note on this. When Haley goes, there will only be five women left in cabinet level positions. We have Linda McMahon at Small Business Administration, Gina Haspel at CIA, Betsy DeVos at Education, Elaine Chao at Transportation, Kirsten Nielsen at DHS. That is shocking out of 23, I believe, cabinet level roles. Yeah.

But in the same way where you have the White House intern photo released and it's basically all white, I'm glad Donald Trump doesn't have the cover of diversity to hide the fact that he's anti-woman. In the same way, I'm glad he doesn't have the cover of diversity to hide the fact that he's racist. Yeah. Last point on this before we move on. You forget the turnover rate in this White House administration generally is absurdly high. to hide the fact that he's racist. Yeah. Last point on this before we move on. Like, you forget,

the turnover rate in this White House administration generally is absurdly high. In his first year, it was 34%, which Brookings said was the highest in 40 years. More recently, you know, we have Haley leaving. We have Trump announcing. White House counsel Don McGahn will be leaving via tweet, which surprised Don McGahn.

Scott Pruitt was the most corrupt human being in Washington, not named Trump. Rex Tillerson was fired on the toilet. Bolton forced out all the senior NSC staff. Seb Gorka was fired because no one realized he worked there. He had nothing to do. There was that mooch guy. Like we're dulled by this constant barrage of news, but isn't it a big deal to have huge bureaucracies turning over all the time? You know, we don't have a president. We have a weird semi-president, you know, fantasy nightmare. So yeah, I don't don't know people are people get sick of it yeah i would too sorry all right on to something uh a little different we may not know the name of the

next u.s ambassador to the u.n but we do know which horrifying U.N. report they will soon be ignoring. The U.N. Scientific Panel on Climate Change released a truly frightening report that says if we stay on our current course, world temperatures could rise by as much as 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2040. We could see food shortages, wildfires, a mass dios of coral reefs. Avoiding the worst damages requires transforming the world economy very quickly at massive cost. It would require highly unlikely political choices. Trump is repeatedly called climate change a hoax invented by the Chinese and pulled us out of the Paris Climate Accords. Love it. Holy shit.

Like, how do you process something this dire? So, first of all, everybody should read David Roberts on this issue because he's one of the smartest reporters and one of the great writers on climate. And he wrote a really great explanation of what it would take given these new findings, which are harrowing and terrible. But at the end of that piece, he said something which is basically like the political will to actually do what we need to do is not there. The odds that we overshoot are basically nil. there. The odds that we overshoot are basically nil. And therefore, what has been true about climate policy before is true now. We just have to keep doing as much as we can. And that is absolutely true. But I actually think reveals something central about the problem of this issue. We know this in our own lives. When you don't believe you can solve a problem in your life,

you ignore it. Yes. When you don't believe you can get off of a drug, when you don't believe you can get healthy, when you don't believe you can get out of a bad relationship, you just ignore the problem and you just live with it. I wrote 10 years of speeches about energy and climate. I really was from like 2006 for a decade working on the speeches where Democrats were trying to grapple with how to make the best case of this issue. And something I always go back to is Hillary Clinton in 2007 went to Cedar Rapids and gave a speech about energy and climate. It's one of the speeches I'm most proud to have worked on. And we talked about climate change. There's a line in it about how there's no climate change skeptics inside the Arctic Circle. But what happened was Hillary was expert on the issue, but Bill Clinton had gone so deep on energy.

He really cared about it. It was something that he believed that, you know, he had this notion that every generation has to come up with this way of generating millions of new jobs. He thought energy was the way that we would do that. And he just was personally excited and passionate about it. And so at 2 in the morning, I got a bunch of edits from Bill Clinton out of an event. It was a fax because everything was faxed. So I got a computer program so that somebody could fax something so I could get it on my laptop. And he wrote in a chicken scratch so I couldn't understand it.

And so one of his guys, I think John Davidson, called me to walk me through Bill Clinton's line edits. And something he did at the end of that speech I always think about, which is he added this language that said, this is going to be an adventure. That solving this problem, addressing this problem is going to be one of the great American adventures, something like that. And you can go find the speech and see it. And I always think about that because this is such a tough issue and it always feels unsolvable, but we have to get back to talking about it in a way that makes people feel like it's addressable, that makes people feel like that it's not hopeless, that it's not an amorphous and impossible monster coming for us. And that's such a good point, because Democrats, we've flailed around about how to message this,

like, oh, it's a it's a green job panacea that will save the economy. It's a national security issue. It's the moral issue of our time. And I guess the reality is, it's all of it. But this report that we're talking about was commissioned as part of the Paris Climate Agreement. That agreement agreed to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius increase over a certain timeframe. The UN, as part of that agreement, they asked the IPCC, which is a bunch of scientists who did this to figure out what it would take to decrease that warming by 0.5 degrees Celsius to limit the damage even more. And they did this massive study and they found that we need to cut greenhouse gas emissions 45% below 2010 levels by 2030

and reach net zero by 2050, which is just a massive industrial change. It's cutting coal consumption by a third and this has to happen, they said, in 12 years. Yeah, and the truth is that's not gonna happen. And so it's just not. Everybody knows that. So there's climate

change denialism, which is becoming a more and more fringe idea, even as there's a propaganda apparatus to support it, in part because some of the companies that originally were behind trying to stir up controversy about whether or not climate change was real have kind of abandoned that. Like ExxonMobil, out of self-interest, came out in favor of a carbon tax. Now, they want some regulatory certainty. They also want to get rid of some regulations, but they acknowledge the problem. Some of the best models about the kind of changes we need to see come from oil companies like Shell. David Roberts writes about one of the ways in which you could possibly hit a 1.5 threshold involves carbon sequestration, removing carbon from the air, which comes from a model built by Shell. I would like to see the

next Democratic presidential candidate finally be honest about the issue. And I think a lot of Democrats have talked about, like, you know, we've talked about moonshots for all kinds of issues. And one of the ideas was around, you know, around renewal energy, around efficiency. And I think that's important. I think we need to start talking more about mitigation. I think we need to start talking more about removing carbon from the atmosphere and investments in the kinds of technologies that will make that possible. And the other piece of this... At least that's cool and hopeful and exciting sounding. Yeah. Even as we see this report, we admit to the scale of the challenge. All of human history, all of the ingenuity, all of the greed, all of the genius, all of it

led to this problem. Our entire economy runs on something that will kill us all. And it will take not just ingenuity, but also greed and genius and zeal and overcoming human flaws to address it. It is a huge fucking test. And so far, we have failed it completely. And I think we should be honest about that. And then I think it's about. I don't know. That's it. No, it's good. I mean, it's like it's hard not to hear about this and feel like the politics might be even harder than the science. And, you know, despite the recent hurricanes and flooding and fires, there are very few Democrats actually running on climate change. I mean, presumably that's because it doesn't poll as a top priority. According to Civis Analytics, really smart data science folks, they did a survey and they found that 45% of Democrats say healthcare is the issue they want the party to tackle most of they get power. 7% said climate. Do you think this is like a chicken or the egg problem where

candidates need to talk about climate to get voters to care more? Like what's the sequence? I know that we have it a little bit backwards that you don't convince people that there's a problem and then show them how to solve it. You show them that there are changes and patterns they're already seeing. For instance, somebody rides a bike all the time. They'll start to see that bikes are pretty great and that they want to be part of a solution. You know, show people that renewable energy creates jobs, let them see that. And they'll start to believe that renewable energy is an important thing that they believe in. So I think it's less about talking about the problem and then offering the solution. It's about starting at the solution and then letting people come to realize that they're part of solving the problem. The other piece of this is I think we need to, it's not

about ignoring this result. It's not about that. None of us behave as if this problem is real. I mean, I drive a Jeep, I eat red meat, I fly constantly. Right. I don't live my life like climate change is the biggest crisis we face. I don't. And I also don't clearly don't believe in a politics that's going to, you know, if I wanted to live by change, I would change and I don't want to. I am part of the problem. I would like to see Democrats say, here's how we get to zero, not here's how we can slowly begin to solve the problem. Here's how we get to... It's all so confusing. I think we just need to embrace, we need to get to zero carbon in our electricity. We need to get to... You're right. I mean, I also think that we need to do a better job, I think, of helping people understand how much dirty corporate money is

backing climate change skepticism. It is astroturf. It is bullshit. And I think hopefully that would actually make people mad because they're predisposed to hate corporations. We also have some lonely people out there like Al Gore and Tom Steyer who are sounding the alarm and trying to elevate the issue. I hope we can double down on that work a little bit, get some more rich liberals in the game, try to educate people. Because Trump is proof that if you repeat something enough, people believe it.

Yeah, that's true. But look, we may still hit our climate targets, even though the Trump administration has abandoned us because some of the changes we're already seeing. But hitting the Paris targets isn't enough. And the whole world, as a planet, we are not on target to hit the Paris climate goals. We've been struggling about how to talk about this issue

for such a long time. I think it's going to take, we're waiting. We're waiting for somebody who's good at talking about this. We're waiting for a presidential candidate who can make people care about this. It's just not on people's minds. It is a problem designed to be hard to solve. It comes on slowly. No one can do it individually. We have to solve it as a planet. I mean, we need a global carbon tax to address this issue. We need to change to solve it as a planet. I mean, we need a global carbon tax to address this issue. We need to change the kind of food we eat. I mean, what like, I guess part of it, too, is I would like to see us talk more about the low hanging fruit.

You know, one of the things that would help reduce our climate footprint in the long term would be to make sure that women around the world have access to family planning and control over their own bodies. And that would actually help women, but also help reduce unplanned pregnancies and give women more power in societies. I think an incredible investment and focus and goal to find ways to remove carbon from the air. Even the best ideas right now for getting carbon out of the air are so fucking unsatisfying. You're telling me what you're gonna do is you're gonna bury it in the ground do you know how many times we've tried to solve a problem by burying it in the ground holy shit that will throw the trash in the ocean we'll bury the garbage we'll bury it that's our answer that's the best humanity can do ah we'll burn all the coal and then we'll take it out of the air we'll bury it yeah great fucking great you mentioned president trump um i think he's been silent so far on this

report but behind the scenes this administration is making things worse on august 2nd they announced plans to freeze obama-era regulations to make cars more efficient they're also screwing with california's ability to set its own emission standards. They're letting states and not the federal government now regulate coal. They also are still pulling out of Paris. Like, is it possible to do this? It is not. And Republicans are also, by the way, have been against allowing the EPA to regulate carbon as a pollutant. Right. Which is, you know, there is this loophole. The idea that basically carbon isn't pollution, I think, is wrong. And so we need the regulation to treat carbon as a pollutant. It's the thorniest problem in the world.

Even if America didn't have a climate change denier in the White House, even if a massive propaganda apparatus hadn't succeeded in turning a big part of one of our two political parties into a kind of, you know, anti-environmental movement. It would be hard to solve even without that. I know, because there's plenty of Republicans that care about the land and environmentalism. I mean, I do think states can work around Trump to some extent. You're seeing cities say, like, we're staying in Paris. We think this is important. We're going to innovate and figure it out. It is, again, like this is a key issue where it's almost hard to calculate the cost of a total lack of U.S. leadership on the issue because this is a global problem.

We need a global solution. You see this in other areas. Like we're not standing up for press freedom. We're not standing up for human rights. You know, we're not. Other countries see that and, you know, they take advantage of the vacuum of leadership? Yeah, I would say just one sort of place for hope is each of the pieces of this that feel really, really hard have ancillary benefits that are unrelated to the climate. Shifting to more renewable energy does create millions of new jobs. Making our economy more efficient does mean

that people save money. Reducing red meat and other meat consumption does make people healthier. And by the way, taking out carbon from our economy does save lives, reduce asthma, reduces pollution that causes incredible harm. So I think probably we need to get big and we need to get small. We need to get big and be honest about the problem in a way I don't think we have in the past. And I think we need to get small and relate this to people's everyday lives. And as part of that, it is not a seating at all to any kind of debate as to whether climate change is real. That debate doesn't exist on planet Earth. It exists in one place only, and it's Washington, D.C., and we just don't have to have it. Don't have it. Someone denies climate change, you don't have to acknowledge it. You don't have to address

it. What are we going to do to solve the threat to our environment caused by carbon pollution? What are you going to do to reduce the harm that pollution is going to do to our environment caused by carbon pollution? What are you going to do to reduce the harm that pollution is going to do to our children's lives? How would you advise a Democratic candidate to talk about climate change, to sell voters on how important this is? You know, I know that I've been kind of negative as we've been talking about this, because that's my headspace. But here's what I would say. I would like to see Democratic candidates say, basically, we can do it. I know that the predictions seem dire,

but we can do it. That we've faced problems like this in the past, and we've done it before. That there have been problems in American history that seemed so far beyond our reach that we would never do it, but we did it anyway. And you know what? Maybe that's not totally true right now. Maybe that's a bit too optimistic. But you know what? Sometimes leadership is being too optimistic and then making it true. Whether it's like people thought the ozone hole was an impossible thing. Acid rain. Acid rain. People thought that, you know, the Grand Canyon was filled with smog. The Cuyahoga River caught on fucking fire. So there have been environmental problems in the past that seemed like something that would be with us forever. And then we figured out a way to solve them. Not

completely, not perfectly, but we figured out a way to solve them. So I would like to see people not dive into the direness of the prediction as a reason to act, but the solvability of the problem. Because simply by talking about the problem as being solvable, you actually ironically make it more solvable. We can do it. We can get to zero emissions.

We can create millions of jobs doing that. And we can save this planet for our children. It can be one of the greatest accomplishments in human history. You're moving me on this one. Inconvenient truth three, fucking John Lovett, get out there. Yeah, sure. It's emotional. It is.

It's a tough one. Okay. So the only way to avoid a global catastrophe is to destroy the climate change denying party in these upcoming elections. So let's take a look at some of these polls. Yeah, that's by the way, one last point about that. That's actually really true. The single most important thing you can do in the next 30 days,

if you care about the environment at all, is to get Republicans out of office. Because even if we cannot pass things with Donald Trump in the White House, we can hold them accountable. You got the administrator of the EPA or the acting administrator of the EPA fucking posting racist memes. There'll never be a fucking hearing on it. Scott Pruitt, before he had to leave, the real corruption,

the big corruption, is what they think they're supposed to do in that job, which is hand over the parks, hand over our air, hand over our water to the interests that put them there. So you don't need to read every detail. You don't need to know what's going to happen to the coral reefs. It's not fucking good.

They're fucked. Vote. Vote. Okay, some good news on that front. The Washington Post did a survey of likely voters who live in 69 battleground house districts across the country. That survey found that those likely voters favor Democrats by a margin of 50 to 46. By comparison, in 2016, these same districts favored Republicans by 15 points.

Not surprisingly, women are driving the Democratic advantage, favoring Democrats by 54 to 40. So love it. Done deal, right? Blue wave is coming. This thing is over. Here's what I'm going to do, Tommy.

I'm not going to read one more fucking poll between now and election day. This poll that you're calling, I'm hearing about it from you. Great. I skipped it. Cool. Because it doesn't fucking matter. None of them matter. Get out there.

I'm with you. We don't want to get on the polar coaster. It's the worst. But it does, I think, speak to how stacked the decks are against us because of these 69 districts in the survey, 63 are held by Republicans, 66 are held by Democrats. Trump carried 48 of those districts. Hillary carried 21. So we need to pick up a net of 23 to gain control of the House. So the fact that we're doing so well is hopeful, but we literally need every single available vote. And we have 27 days until the election, which is a political lifetime. Yes, I think, you know, the only thing I will take away from polls right now is we will learn after Election Day whether or not this Kavanaugh fucking nightmare fight and confirmation led to increased Democratic enthusiasm, increased Republican enthusiasm,

or both. The truth is it doesn't so much matter. The one way I would care about what the polls say is just to know just how much the anti-women hearings that we saw are going to drive out women voters. I would be and ideally male voters, but for some reason we never talked about it that way. But I would like to know that and whether or not it's something we should hear a little bit more on the trail from Democratic candidates trying to get out Democratic voters. But beyond that, I think it's all just sort of. It's all noise. It's all noise. But interesting on that line, because I do think we can try to learn from these polls. There's a CNN poll recently that found this huge gender advantage for Democrats. Sixty three percent of registered women voters said they'd be more likely to vote for a Democrat.

Verse thirty three said they'd be more likely to vote for Republican. So like you were saying, coming off the Kavanaugh hearings, Republicans were trying to sell this backlash narrative that suggested women were just as worried about their sons being falsely accused as their daughters. I mean, that spin was certainly taken hook, line and sinker by a lot in the media. But it felt to me like that could actually be damaging in and of itself when people pick up the paper and read that kind of argument. Yeah, absolutely. You know, absolutely. I think that's right. So that was the House. I mean, the outlook in the Senate is much more difficult. Absolutely. I think that's right. So that was the House. I mean, the outlook in the Senate is much more difficult.

Five thirty eight has the chances Republicans keeping the Senate at seventy nine percent. We have to win at least one of the four tough races that's that's currently modeled as lean Republican. Those are North Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, the Mississippi special election. So I guess my question is, like, love it. You're a pod save America listener who is listening and you're thinking the Monday. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I listen to both. I know I only listen to Thursday actually, cause now I'm on Monday. Um, you're listening and you're thinking I got a hundred bucks. I want to give it to a candidate this cycle, but I don't know where to give, like, would you give to a Senate candidate? Would you go to house candidate? Like, is that the wrong way to think about it? You know, I don't know.

I think that people should give to the people they're passionate about and reward the candidates that they think they care about. I think the one thing I would caution is there are exciting races and there are races that aren't as exciting, but they both are one vote in the Senate. Bill Nelson winning and Beto O'Rourke winning are worth the same amount in the vote for majority leader. So keep that in mind. Like, obviously, you might feel a little more stirred by Beto O'Rourke than, say, some other candidates. You may feel that way about, say, a Bredesen in Tennessee who decided to put out a statement saying that he would have voted for fucking Kavanaugh. That sucks. I get it. But we need every single one of them. to put out a statement saying that he would have voted for fucking Kavanaugh. That sucks.

I get it. But we need every single one of them. You know, interestingly, one way you could help Bill Nelson is to help out Andrew Gillum, who's running for governor in Florida. Yep. Because he can help turn people out. I mean, I'm with you. I think, I don't know, I was thinking about this last night. I guess where I would land is, I just think winning the House is so much more

likely. And it's so important to control one of these bodies that I think I would probably put my money and my time there. Yeah, I would say also like your money obviously can only one candidate or another. But wherever you are, there is a swing House race near you. Go and help that House candidate win. You will help other Democrats up and down the ballot when you're there, too. If you're in Texas and you're going to knock on doors, you're going to knock on doors for house candidates or Beto, but either way, you're going to help turn out the democratic vote. The same if you're in Florida, same if you're anywhere that has a close Senate race. So with your dollars, obviously you have to choose, but in terms of what you're going to do in the next 30 days and canvassing and phone banking and knocking on doors and getting out

the vote is actually going to be the much more important thing. Everything you do helps up and down the ballot. Yep. So go to votesaveamerica.com. You can find out if you're registered, you can find volunteer opportunities next to you. And I think that's it for the show. Love it. We're about to go to LAX. We're getting on a plane to Miami. It was very smart of us to have a show in hurricane season Miami. We first and foremost hope that everyone is okay. This thing is fucking scary, but we will be there. And to the point about climate change, I've seen now Rick Scott,

I've seen other Republicans talk about how this storm seems to be unprecedented. Yeah, it is unprecedented. We're going to see more and more unprecedented weather. Maybe you guys could wake up to the problem. All right. So after the break, you'll hear our interview with Kansas congressional candidate Sharice David.

So love it. Yes. In our ongoing efforts to talk to really cool, exciting candidates who are running in places where Democrats don't usually run. We have a great interview today. With who? Sharice Davids. She's running for Congress in Kansas's third district. The fighting third, as Stephen Colbert would say. I'm Sharice Davids, and I am the Democratic nominee in the Kansas third congressional district. We're in the Kansas City metro area on the Kansas side. And I'm running against Representative Kevin Yoder. As you know, Kansas is, you know, it's rock chalk liberal politics is the saying, I think. You know, I've heard this rock chalk business. End of thought. Jayhawk.

So a little bit about Sharice. She was raised by a single mom who served in the army, who was actually a drill sergeant. I definitely think that there's probably a lot of lessons that I learned around a work ethic. Watching your mom on her own raise three kids, I have two little brothers, certainly shows you what hard work looks like. Probably something about seeing your mom in an army uniform growing up. And then when she's a drill sergeant watching her, you know, I did get to see my mom at work sometimes. And it's really cool to see that your mom is a drill instructor for a group of young people who have just joined the military.

And so I would say she never had to say drop and give me 20 because I certainly was not trying to upset my mom. Sharice's mom was tough, but Sharice was pretty tough herself. She was obsessed with Bruce Lee as a kid and actually decided to become an MMA fighter. I grew up, you know, just running around constantly kicking and punching in the air. And martial arts is kind of expensive for a single mom with three kids. So I didn't get the chance to really take up martial arts as a child. But when I was 19, at some point I realized, wait a minute, I could just sign up for martial arts on my own now. I can pay for it myself.

I started doing capoeira, which is a Brazilian martial art. I did that for six years and was just sold. I was kind of obsessive about it, you know, training four times a week and then going to the gyms on the off days. And I just fell in love with martial arts. I saw footage of an MMA fighter jumping out of the ring to attack someone who is not an MMA fighter. Is that something that she has done? That happened like this weekend. You're very up on an MMA fighter. Is that something that she has done? That happened like this weekend. You're very up on your MMA news. It was that guy that's constantly throwing metal at people.

Conor McGregor. The last time I heard of him, he was throwing a chair at a bus. He threw, yeah, he threw like a, yeah. Or a filing cabinet, a chair. I think it was one of those things you use to carry a filing cabinet. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever, a dolly. So Sharice Davids.

So Sharice, she worked her way through college. She wasn't sure what she wanted to do with her life. And then she attended a diversity the more of us that do something that is slightly different than what we've seen before or vastly different than what we've seen before, the more normal it will seem and the more expected it will be, which is actually kind of what running for office looks like as well. It's a tough state, right? Sam Brownback, Chris Kobach, like those are... What's the matter with Kansas? Charisse Davids has joined the pool of candidates running for the third congressional district in Kansas, a first-time candidate. My mom was in the Army from before I was born until after I got out of high school. If elected, she would be the second woman to ever hold a job in the U.S. House, where less than 20% of representatives are women.

She, I mean, she's an interesting story because, you know, she's not someone I think whoever thought about running for office, but she looked around at the people who are representing her and none of them looked like her or were representing communities she came from. So she figured, what the hell? We are definitely a lot of pragmatic, reasonable folks, I would say, who are interested in, you know, I think interested in getting away from some of the partisan politics that we've been seeing. So that's probably one of the biggest things that I've seen in my conversations with folks is that they're interested in electing people who aren't towing the party line, I guess, and are looking to be pragmatic and just get stuff done. Sharice makes the case that people in Kansas are largely pragmatic. That may be true. I don't know. But they've also had to deal with some very extreme politicians, starting with Governor Sam Brownback,

who rammed through this massive tax cut that just bankrupted the state. I mean, this was your classic attempt at trickle down supply side economics that was an absolute disaster for the state to the point where Republican legislators in Kansas ultimately had to vote to raise income taxes again to end this horrendous five-year experiment with extreme anti-tax agendas. One of the things that I am very excited about is that people will hopefully turn toward the middle of the country and look at Kansas and see that we're a lot more than just like Sam Brownback and Chris Kobach, that Kansas has, you know, we have some progressive

roots out here. I think it's exciting. I also think it's exciting to see people taking a chance on racism in places like Kansas, because there's been a lot of hand-wringing about how, you know, oh, Democrats are only in the cities and, oh, it's so undemocratic. There's all these problems. And if your answer to that is change the Constitution and not win in places like Kansas, you're not thinking clearly. We've got, you know, just a lot more interesting stories and people who often aren't heard in this national conversation. And I'm excited for people to see that in Kansas this year, you know, maybe you didn't know which little red rectangle we were before, but, you know, we have the opportunity this year to flip this seat and elect someone who is going to fight for our community.

I looked at the slate of candidates that we had in the Democratic primary. And although some of them had been in the race for eight months, we didn't have a woman in the race. And we also had just come off of this election cycle where Hillary Clinton won this district. And we had a Democratic candidate that lost by 11 points. And I just couldn't stand the idea of that happening again. One of the things she told me is that, you know, since she made this decision to run, she's been hearing from a lot of women who who felt exactly like she did, like they weren't represented in Congress, like their voice wasn't being heard. There's a lot of young women who will tell me that they

are, you know, it just it's feels empowering to them to see someone who is like me or is like them running for office. I remember one of our key volunteers or interns she interned over the summer said that she feels more seen and more safe in this community than she did before I decided to run. And it's an intangible thing that will be, that I think is the effect of so many candidates across the country, myself included. The number of people who have put in so many hours and financial resources, heart resources and soul resources and time resources, that effect is, it's what's permeating, I think, across this country. It's the thing that is spreading out like a ripple across so many different campaigns. out like a ripple across so many different campaigns. And it makes me feel like, I mean, the only reason that I can do this is because of all of the people who are helping to make that ripple effect happen. We will see a more reflective Congress after this midterm.

I really believe we're going to see a lot of change in this midterm. I do think that dynamic helps us. There is a huge swath of people that just want Congress to be basically functional, do something. Right. And I think part of running as a Democrat in Kansas right now is convincing people that you're not like the Democrats that they don't like. You're not George Soros. Well, yeah. I mean, look, we can, you know, part of that is I'm sure that's in part how she feels. It is also the way a lot of Democrats have successfully run in more conservative places.

You can point to Democrats who've taken votes we don't agree with. And, you know, that's just part of what it takes. who've taken votes we don't agree with. And, you know, that's just part of what it takes. But I think like one thing we've seen in just the past couple of months is there are policy positions that appeal to people, even in conservative states. We've seen a pro-union vote in Missouri that was incredibly persuasive. We saw protests for teachers. So there is this problem where you have constituencies of people who don't feel represented, who feel like they do want, you know, basic government services, kind of a restoration of, you know, just government function. While at the same time feeling as though they don't like democratic politics as a brand.

Yeah. You can moderate your tone and then have some very progressive policy positions and do pretty well. Yeah. I mean, I think one of the things I really enjoyed about my conversation with Charisse was just imagining her walking through the halls of Congress. She is so unlike so many of these career politicians or, you know, millionaires or billionaires who run for office based on their ability to self-fund a campaign. I mean, she's a lawyer. Which we love. She's a lawyer, an MMA fighter, someone with this unique background and perspective that I think will bring with it empathy.

She'll put our problems in a headlock. We actually, she and I had a little MMA term riff. I'm excited about your race. I think we are going to choke out special interests. We're going to knee bar the permanent Republican majority.

I'm Googling MMA terms. Well, my go-to is a triangle. Oh, what's that one? It's a choke. It's a chokehold. Well, let's do that metaphorically to Paul Ryan's super bet. She'll tap out on pre-existing conditions. She's cool. I like her. She'll go out on preexisting conditions. She's cool. I like her. She'll go to the mat for you. I hope you guys enjoyed hearing from Sharice.

She is an exciting candidate. If you want to support her campaign, go to her website, check her out on Twitter, spread the word. and go to her website, check her out on Twitter, spread the word. She is part of a broader story this cycle where there are more women running than ever before. There are more people of color, more people from the LGBT community. And, you know, if we are able to actually have a blue wave and take a whole bunch of seats in Congress, we'll have a group of people representing us in Washington

who look a hell of a lot more like the broader country than the current crop we have now. And boy, do I think that would be a good thing. That's it for this Wednesday edition of Pod Save America. And I just want to say, Bill Nelson went to fucking space. And that's cool. And you didn't go to space. No. Beto O'Rourke didn't go to fucking space.

No. No. He's been on the Earth the whole time. You know how many times he's been in Earth's orbit? How many? Zero times. You know how many times he's floated? You know how many times he's looked down on a blue orb?

None. Zero fucking times. Thanks for listening. Please watch the HBO show. It'll be great. We're excited about it. See you guys next week? Yeah. Bye.