Pod Save America - “Dems in Array.”

Episode Date: April 16, 2020

Democrats win a stunning upset in Wisconsin, Joe Biden wins the endorsements of Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren, and Data for Progress polling guru Charlotte Swasey joins Jon and Dan to break down brand new polling that details which arguments about Trump’s handling of the coronavirus are most persuasive to voters.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's pod, we've got some brand new polling about Trump's response to the coronavirus that we'll talk about with Charlotte Swayze from Data for Progress. We'll also talk about a huge win for Democrats in Wisconsin, the string of major endorsements Joe Biden received this week from Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren, and how the Democrats should talk about this crisis as we head into an election against Donald Trump. But first, don't miss Pod Save the World this week. Former Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus talks to Tommy about the

Navy captain who was fired for asking the government to protect his sailors from a coronavirus outbreak on board the USS Theodore Roosevelt. And then best friend of the pod, Samantha Power joins to talk about the failure of the UN and other global institutions in responding to this pandemic. Also, buy Sam's book, if you haven't already, The Education of an Idealist. It is fantastic. Finally, don't miss our two podcasts that dive into some of the non-political aspects

of coronavirus. Six Feet Apart with Alex Wagner and America Dissected Coronavirus with Dr. Abdul El-Sayed bring you stories from the front lines and expert analysis. Find them both wherever you get your podcasts. All right, Dan, we are going to start with something that is all too rare these days. Good news. What? Yes. Yes. Is this about the Jordan

documentary coming out this weekend? It is not about that. No. On Monday, we finally got the results from an election in Wisconsin that never should have happened. An election where Republican politicians and conservative judges forced tens of thousands of voters to risk their lives in order to cast their ballot. They did everything they could to make it harder to vote absentee. College kids who were sent home when the virus hit couldn't vote. 97% of all polling locations in the city of Milwaukee were closed. They pulled out all the stops so they could hold on to a state Supreme Court seat that would allow them to purge potentially hundreds of thousands of voters from the rolls before this November. And yet they lost.

Lost in a state that's been decided by less than a point for the last few elections. Jill Karofsky beat the Trump backed incumbent justice by over 10 points. A stunning upset in Wisconsin. Dan, how did this happen? Great. It was great. It was just great. I had convinced myself there was no I think everyone, frankly, had convinced themselves that there was no way the Democrats could win this. I mean, the Democrat, the Wisconsin Democrats and the DNC had a call on Election Day talking about how this was likely to be a stolen election. And we won. It was great.

I didn't even like, like usual with these special elections. I didn't even let myself hope that winning might be one of the possible outcomes here just because of like the conditions under which this election was held and the fact that, you know, more polling locations were closed down and in blue areas in the state. I was shocked. I think even Ben Wickler, hero, chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, was pretty shocked, too. The chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party was pretty shocked, too. Yeah, I mean, like I I eventually because I'm stuck at home and can't leave, got deep into the county by county data as the results were coming in. Just but not because I thought we could win, but because I wanted to see the effects of Republican voter suppression in Milwaukee County and elsewhere. the effects of Republican voter suppression in Milwaukee County and elsewhere. And as I'm preparing myself to be angry about the results, the more and more you look at it, the more and more it becomes clear that we might win a close race.

And then you look at the results and Joe Karofsky runs away with it. And it was amazing. And it is a credit to obviously Wisconsin voters, but to her campaign and Ben Wickler and the Wisconsin Democratic Party for coming up with a strategy to navigate probably the most challenging electoral environment in American history. So talk a little bit more about that strategy. How do you think Democrats ended up winning a race that seemed out of reach? Democrats ended up winning a race that seemed out of reach.

Even before the Supreme Court, the Wisconsin Supreme Court and others got involved in trying to steal the election for the Republicans, the Wisconsin Democratic Party had and the Karofsky campaign put in place a strategy to campaign during a quarantine, right? Like it's important for people to understand that almost every single campaign focuses all of their GOTV on person-to-person contact, right? Getting people in a room to make phone calls, getting people to knock doors, having town halls and rallies where you can see people and get them to sign voter cards or to volunteer. And all of those things are illegal. So what do you in a shelter-in-place situation? So what do you do? And there's a series of fascinating articles about this, one in the New York Times in particular

that goes through the digital techniques that the Wisconsin Democrats and the Krusty campaign used. Some very new stuff, like they recognize, like smaller state campaigns, like state Supreme Court campaign generally don't have the money to – it's not effective to run digital ads on like Hulu or YouTube. But because we're in a quarantine, the amount of people watching those services is so far up that it was a cost-effective spend. So they were buying ads, pre-rolls on YouTube and on Hulu, very effective. They went old school and did telephone town halls, which is something that no one has done in a long time. And the Krasnoye campaign was getting, according to some of these reports, 6,000 people on these telephone town halls, a product of obviously intense interest in the election

and people being at home with no ability to leave got them to get on these calls. And I think the other thing that was really important was – and Ben talks about this in some of the interviews he's done afterwards – is the Republican tactics were so brazen and so offensive. And the role the Supreme Court played was so partisan that it outraged people to get involved, to, you know, to turn their eyes. There was a backlash. There was a backlash to this voter suppression. And that helped move votes and get people fired up about an election they may not have otherwise been fired up about. Yeah, there was a backlash, especially in communities of color, Ben noted. communities of color, Ben noted, I mean, just the idea that Republicans were going to make it as difficult as humanly possible to vote safely in an election. So enraged so many voters,

especially voters in places like Milwaukee, that they either figured out a way to vote absentee for the first time in their lives. I mean, we should, or they, you know, risked their lives and stood in very, very long lines. I mean, we should say that, you know, usually absentee ballot voting in Wisconsin makes up like 10, 20% at most of the electorate. I think it was like 70 or 80%, which means that the Wisconsin Democratic Party and progressive organizers basically trained an entire electorate to vote absentee in the span of about 26 days. It was 26 days before the election that they realized that there was a shutdown, that they had to do this. And, you know, Ben said they reached out to voters literally millions of times via text, phone call, online. And so I just think that the effort was incredible.

And look, on the flip side, too, there was the Republican Party chairman in Monroe County in Wisconsin told The New York Times. He gave this excuse about why sort of Republican turnout was low. While Republicans encouraged early and absentee voting, many elderly either did not have the wherewithal to request absentee ballots or the inclination to vote in person on April 7th. So there wasn't only a backlash that caused more Democrats to want to vote. It was a backlash against their own voters because their own Republican voters themselves were either scared to go vote or couldn't figure out the absentee ballot program because the Republican politicians tried to make it harder to vote. It is, you know, along those lines, one of the things that the Wisconsin Democratic Party and

others were doing was they were literally doing organizers doing one-on-one FaceTime tutorials with voters on how to vote absentee. Yeah. Right. Leveraging every digital tool. The other thing that's notable is when we talked about this in previous podcasts, but the United States Supreme Court weighed in here in a partisan, Supreme Court weighed in here in a partisan, very disturbing 5-4 decision to force this election to happen and to prevent Democrats from making an all-male election or postponing the election. And if you want to demonstrate to voters in the most crystal clear way why a state Supreme Court election matters, have the United States Supreme Court try to steal that election. So I think that also helped draw very real attention to this and

helped demonstrate why this mattered, even if the primary that was on this date was essentially no longer contested by this point. So what, if anything, can the results on Tuesday tell us about November in Wisconsin? I have read a lot of stories that talk about how this is a super positive sign for Democrats and it means that the political environment is shifting. And I want to be cautious about that. But there is a lot of optimism there. So let me try to do this in a on-brand,

class half-full, class full that's gonna sort of way yeah so give us give us the wet blanket i'll give you the wet blanket which is and this is like a real window into my mentality these days is we were all texting about this and in the crooked media slack chains about how great this was everyone sharing the articles about the map of voter turnout and that was exactly what a winning Wisconsin turnout would be in November. And I went and tried – I'm such a sad person, but I tried to find the New York Times – I went to find the New York Times article from June 2012 because in 2012, the Democrats tried to recall Scott Walker. Right. And Scott Walker, despite being the subject of many, many protests in a very engaged race

between Democrats and Republicans, pretty easily was able to stay in office. And I wanted to read one of the New York Times story about that day was very similarly bullish about Republicans winning Wisconsin in 2012. And it turns out they were not because that's how far we've come in eight years is the only line about it is this gave some Republicans the possible idea that they might possibly maybe have a chance at being somewhat competitive in Wisconsin, which is how far Wisconsin's come in eight years. But like, so here's the things we should think about. One, it is a special election.

Two, and those are not necessarily predictive of anything. Two, there was a Democratic primary on this day. Even if the contest was largely over, this was still a time when Biden and Bernie supporters were turning out, mostly by mail. And there was not a similar Republican contest on the ballot, even though Trump did win his uncontested primary and the RNC and his own campaign congratulated him for it, which I think is pretty funny. Yeah. Congratulations. You beat no one. Well, I will say, though, even about that. So Trump received six hundred and seventeen thousand votes in his primary. Dan Kelly, who was the conservative justice that lost to Jill Karofsky, received six hundred and ninety two thousand votes. So it is a little interesting

that the conservative justice who lost still received more votes than Trump in a primary, which means there are some people who went to vote who voted for Dan Kelly and just decided not to even check the box for Donald Trump in his primary where he was uncontested. I would love to find those voters and survey them and try to figure out what the deal is there. Maybe they just forgot. But here's the very positive, like that's all context for why we should not get overconfident about this. But the important point here, and this is the part about these special elections that is transferable, is it was a gigantic test of the organization Ben Wickler of the Wisconsin Democratic Party has built. And they crushed that test. You talk about how it was like whatever it is, 27 days they had to figure all this out. But they could accomplish that in those 27 days because of all the work they've done for the last couple of years to have a real organization that was recruiting volunteers, that was engaging in activism from the very beginning to prepare for this moment. And in a close race, that could be all the difference.

all the difference. And so we should feel I think we should feel very bullish on the sort of organization Democrats are going to have in Wisconsin on election day, even if we this election may not tell us a ton about what Republican turnout would look like under a, you know, quote, unquote, return to normal electoral scenario. Yeah, I mean, look, you know, turnout was 52% of 2016. So it's a completely different electorate. But you know, you can start comparing turnout a little bit better to the election for a state Supreme Court seat that was held in April of 2019, which was an off-year election. And, you know, the liberal justice sort of improved, you know, across the board from the challenger back in April of 2019, which is a good sign. You look at counties like

Dane County, where Madison is, the college town, and turnout and Democratic margins were both up in Dane County, even as a lot of college students didn't vote this time. So that's a very good sign that a traditional Democratic stronghold is getting even bluer and turnout is up. So, you know, there are even with the caveat that turnout was much lower than it will be in November of 2020. There are signs in some of the suburban margins and some of the bluer places that Democratic turnout and Democratic margins specifically over Republicans in sort of the traditionally blue and some purple areas are improving as we get closer to November in Wisconsin, which is a very good sign. We should just say, explain why this matters so much, because some people might be saying, you guys are so fucking desperate for good news that you've just spent 20 minutes talking about

a Wisconsin Supreme Court race. Yeah, yeah, no, no, let's do that. And so state Supreme Courts matter a ton. Just as we think about how important it is for a progressive majority on the United States Supreme Court, for all the exact same reasons, state Supreme Courts matter. And Republicans had built up a huge majority on the Wisconsin State Supreme Court that had ruled many, many times in very partisan decisions that were very favorable to Governor Walker, the Koch brothers, and general Republican efforts to suppress the vote. But more specifically, in this situation, there is currently a case that has worked its way through the Wisconsin courts, where a conservative law firm is trying to force the state to purge 209,000 voters from the voter rolls. The state election commission has refused to do that

because they believe that based on the limits of their data, that would kick a lot of eligible voters off the voter rolls and therefore disenfranchising them. And so the conservatives have been pushing this. That case has been deadlocked on the Supreme Court, 3-3. Kelly had recused himself because he's on the ballot. And so with Karofsky replacing Kelly, there is a chance that we will end up with a 4-3 decision that could prevent that voter purge. So that's why these things matter. And it's just this important edict that we have to remind people all the time, which is the best way to win national elections is to win local elections first, because it gives you the best chance of having

a fair election day. Last question on this. What do you think this means for the political fight over whether we should give everyone the option of voting by mail in November? You would think in a normal, rational world that Republicans would look at this and say, man, that did not work out for us. We should obviously let people vote. Maybe they would be personally offended and disturbed by the images of these people standing in line, potentially getting coronavirus just because they decided to be assholes. I don't think that's what's going to happen.

I actually think it's going to cause them to double down on the suppression. The takeaway from this will not be, we didn't do vote by mail, therefore we need vote by mail. It'll be, what other suppression techniques can we do? What other voter purchase can we do? What other ways can we limit polling places in urban Democratic areas? What other ways can we make it harder for people to vote in a pandemic? And so it makes me, I never bet on the goodwill of Republicans. And I suspect that that will be a winning bet this time as well. as well. Which means that, you know, Democrats have leverage when it comes to the next economic relief bill. And we have launched sort of a call in campaigns that you can call your representatives and make sure the Democrats fight for voter protection resources in the next bill. Go to

votesaveamerica.com slash call. You can be connected via text or email or phone call via your representative. There's even a script we have for you. But the main things we want people to ask for are $2 billion in safe election money for states, more vote by mail, more early voting, and making sure that every in-person voting location should have what they need to run a safe election. This is what we're asking for. And it's very, very important that these measures end up in the next relief bill. All right. So Democrats got good news in Wisconsin. They also got some good news on the party unity front as Joe Biden won the endorsements this week of Bernie Sanders, Barack Obama and Elizabeth Warren. As Brian Schatz tweeted, and Elizabeth Warren, as Brian Schatz tweeted, Dems in array. Let's start with Bernie,

who endorsed Biden in a joint live video appearance on Monday. Here's a clip. We've got to make Trump a one-term president, and we need you in the White House. So I will do all that I can to see that that happens, Joe. And I know that there is an enormous responsibility on your shoulders right now. And it's imperative that all of us work together to do what has to be done, not only in this moment, but beyond this moment in the future of this country. So, Dan, I thought this was a very enthusiastic and heartfelt endorsement on Bernie's part. I can't imagine what more Biden would have wanted from this. What did you think? I thought it was great. I thought when I originally saw that they were going to do a Zoom conversation together, I was nervous that it would be

just awkward and strange. Like they're like you and I have known each other for well over a decade and we're doing this and it's still always a little awkward. So like Biden and Bernie, two people were competing against each other like three weeks ago. It seemed like it could be a recipe for disaster, but it actually went, I thought it went great, and it was compelling. And they had thought out how to do this. The first question that Bernie asked Biden about was about the minimum wage, because Biden has been a supporter of the $15 minimum wage for a long time. And it was an opportunity for Biden to say to Bernie supporters, like, here is an issue where we agree, right? They started with an area of agreement, which I thought was notable.

And I was also just struck by one, which Bernie, to his credit, has done this whole campaign, has talked about the stakes of beating Trump, whether he is a nominee or not, but also struck by the fact that there seems to be a very real respect and affection for each other that came through. This is not to say they're best friends or anything like that, but that there is a respect there and there was no sort of awkward grievance or tension or grudge. And I thought it was great. I think we have mostly rightly tended to downplay sort of the importance of personal relationships and politics over the years, you know, because partly because we dealt with everyone being like, you know, Barack Obama and John Boehner should go play golf and then they'll solve all the world's problems.

And you have a drink with Mitch McConnell. Right. You have a drink with McConnell. And obviously, that's not how politics mostly works. People are driven by sort of larger political and structural incentives. But I do think on the margins, in some cases, having good relationships with people in politics ends up paying off. Joe Biden is someone who has a lot of very strong, good personal relationships. And somewhat so far, the focus has been like, you know, his relationships with people on the other side of the aisle and how useful or not that is. But I think Barack Obama for a very long time has had a good relationship with Bernie Sanders. And Bernie Sanders likes Joe Biden and Joe Biden likes Bernie Sanders. And in what could have been a very contentious end to a primary. I think that, you know, there were larger forces at play, which is that Bernie Sanders

believes deeply that Donald Trump is the most dangerous threat to our country and thinks that beating him is the most important thing ever. But he also likes Joe Biden. And that that came through in that video. It's like good relationships between Democrats and Republicans is not going to cause Republicans to stop doing Republican things. Right. But good relationships within the party, particularly in the context of primary, can matter, right? Yeah. I was struck by how some of these stories talked about how one of the things that Bernie really liked about Biden is that when Bernie was new and he was either in the House or in the Senate, and Biden had been around for a long time, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Chairman of

the Foreign Relations, very senior member, that Biden was always very nice to him, right? Like, a lot of people have become very nice to Bernie and given him more attention and respect in the last few years since he's become the leader of an incredible political movement. But fewer people were respectful and friendly to him when he was just this democratic socialist who caucused with the Democrats and was often the lone voice opposing democratic ideas and the fact that he appreciated how Biden had treated him then and that bore fruit in this situation. All right, let's talk about our old boss who stepped into the 2020 campaign for the first time on Tuesday to endorse his former vice president in a 12-minute video where he praised Biden's leadership qualities, praised Bernie Sanders' progressive vision, and laid out the stakes in November. Here's a clip. the spirit of looking out for one another can't be restricted to our homes or our workplaces

or our neighborhoods or our houses of worship. It also has to be reflected in our national government. The kind of leadership that's guided by knowledge and experience, honesty and humility, empathy and grace. That kind of leadership doesn't just belong in our state capitals and mayor's offices. It belongs in the White House. And that's why I'm so proud to endorse Joe Biden for President of the United States. Choosing Joe to be my Vice President was one of the best decisions I ever made. And he became a close friend. And I believe Joe has all the qualities we need in a president

right now. Dan, what'd you think of the video? It was sort of an out-of-body experience. I felt like it's been so long since we've seen Barack Obama speak. Something that obviously we lived forever, every single day, several times a day like watching the speeches you writing as a speechist and be sometimes editing the speeches and to have him speak what like it was surreal and very comforting right it was like political comforting to see moving yeah i realize you're not going to expect anything else from us like the two is gonna be like i kind of hated the video that guy's boring you know what you know two former former Obama aides say they love Barack Obama's endorsement video. And you know what?

You can be biased and you can be right too. And we are both in this situation. Exactly right. And you know what? 95% of Democrats agree with us. So I'm cool with that. I mean, I thought he did a few things in that video that are notable. First, that he sort of situated Joe

Biden as uniquely suited for the moment that we're in. You know, he started talking about the pandemic, which also struck me because it's the first time we've seen Barack Obama tweet a few times about the pandemic, but it's the first time we've heard him speak about maybe the greatest crisis in our lifetimes. So that was interesting. But he sort of at the very beginning talks about in that clip that we heard how, you know, we're seeing the leadership we need at this moment in cities and in states and in our communities and the way we treat each other. And then he sort of, you know, slyly says, and we don't just need that leadership in all those places. It belongs

in the White House, meaning, yeah, it's not fucking there now. And Joe Biden is the guy to provide it, which I think was I think it was better than just him, you know, touting all Joe Biden's random qualities like he's trying to set up Biden as the candidate for this moment in time vis-a-vis Trump. Right. I thought that was a very effective part of the announcement, which was he took things that we have heard Barack Obama say about Joe Biden. We've heard Joe Biden make the case for himself along these lines about his life experiences, his advocacy for working class people, but Obama rooted it in this moment. And we've talked about how Biden's message that felt somewhat, I think, potentially outdated at times during the primary under a different political environment is very relevant in this moment.

And the context around it changes. And I thought Obama made that case in a very effective way. And yet I also find it notable that, you know, as he was talking about Bernie, you know, he said, if I were running today, I wouldn't run the same race or have the same platform as I did in 2008. Democrats need to be bold. He said the Affordable Care Act and the Paris Agreement aren't enough when it comes to health care and climate. Talked about how Biden has the most progressive platform of any Democrat in history. I thought that was sort of interesting because, yes, Biden has a lot of leadership qualities that are a perfect fit for this moment. And yet he wanted to remind Democrats that we have to be even bolder and more ambitious than when he ran for office, partly because the times have changed. And also partly because this pandemic and this crisis has sort of highlighted a lot of the inequality in our society that existed long before the pandemic. The other thing I'd say is Obama delivered the shit out of that video.

Yeah, he did. Tommy and I were talking about this yesterday on the live stream. How many times have we seen him record a video where he is either tired or annoyed that he has to record the video or maybe write it for the first time. And none of those things were apparent in the video he recorded for Biden. Well, just as a little bit of context on that is that for eight years, the last thing that Barack Obama did on almost every Friday was record the weekly YouTube address. And if he was going to sit down and record the weekly YouTube address, he would record other videos that had to be done.

And oftentimes that list would pile up with things that even under the best circumstances seemed, uh, maybe not like his favorite thing to do. So he would sit down and he would do the weekly address. And then it'd be like, and sir, next we have a video message to the local Elks club. to do. So he would sit down, he would do the weekly address and then be like, and sir, next,

we have a video message to the local Elks club and we have our birthday tribute to Patrick Leahy. And it was like probably in hindsight, putting his least favorite thing as the last thing he had to do every week before he went home to have dinner with his family was a scheduling mistake. But like when I saw what I, you know, you and I sort of came to understand that this would be part, maybe a 12 minute address. The idea that Barack Obama is going to sit there and deliver well, 12 minutes of direct to camera remarks seemed impossible to imagine, but you can sort of tell he's been, he had a lot that he wanted to get off his chest, both about Joe Biden and leadership in the White House and in the Republican Party.

And also, like the rest of us, he's been stuck at his house and not being able to talk to a lot of people. So he I think he relished the opportunity to communicate with the world in a way he hasn't done in a long time. I was pleasantly surprised by, you know, the extent to which he got a lot of that off his chest about Republicans. I mean, he said Republicans occupying the White House and running the Senate are not interested in progress. They're interested in power. He said the other side has a propaganda network with little regard for the truth. On the other hand, pandemics have a way of cutting through a lot of noise and spin to remind us of what is real and what is important. We need Americans of goodwill to unite in the great awakening against a politics that

too often has been characterized by corruption carelessness self-dealing disinformation ignorance and just plain meanness not mincing words it's great it was music it made me excited it made me excited for him to get out on the virtual campaign trail. Yeah, I can't wait for those Zoom rallies. I mean, let's talk about that. You know, the New York Times had the backstory on the endorsement reported that Obama tried to, quote, accelerate the endgame of the primary by having a few conversations with Bernie that helped him make the decision to end his campaign. What did you think of that whole story? It seemed like a story that tried to

make Obama sound like Thanos. I think the real takeaway of this is that against the recommendations of a lot of people, he stayed neutral throughout this process so that when the result was clear, he could be a person who was seen as not having put their thumb on the scale and could be involved in conversations about how do we get to where we already are, right? Which is Biden had locked it up. Was there someone in the party? And this was the challenge. I think this goes a little bit to 2016, one of the challenges. Obama eventually, in the end, in the 2016 election, after Clinton had blocked up the delegate race, helped play a role in bringing that campaign to a conclusion. But because Obama and Clinton were

so closely associated, it was believed that Obama had been so favorable to Hillary in that primary race, it was hard for him to play that role. This time, he stayed out of it and was able to bring us to a place of unity that isn't – it's worth putting this into context, which is in 2016, 2008, the Democratic primary ended and the opponent endorsed the nominee in the summer. And we have that process all wrapped up in April, which gives the Biden campaign a much longer runway to build the infrastructure and the campaign they need to take on Trump because they're not still fighting a war on their left flank throughout April, May, and June. So on that note, what do you think the best way for the Biden campaign to make the most of this largely unsurprising

endorsement by Obama? I mean, I think there's like two contexts to talk about this in. One is, let's say we return to normal and Obama can barnstorm the country. And look, Obama is this massive asset to the Biden campaign because he is someone who can draw huge crowds and draw huge press attention and is very popular in particularly with sets of voters who Biden needs to persuade. The 4 million Obama 2012 voters who sat out 2016, but also the Obama Trump voters. So you have people who supported Trump who are also favorable to Obama. You have people who are open to voting for Trump who are also favorable to Obama. So Obama can make the case to them. And I think the Biden campaign should pick moments where the two of them are

together because that will draw a lot of attention, both on the campaign trail or in an awkward Zoom conversation and an interview, right? Like you can see a moment where the two of them doing an interview together would get massive attention. And you could do that in a traditional way where you would do 60 minutes after the best football game you can find on the schedule, presuming there was football, which would get you huge ratings. get you huge ratings. Or you could just produce it on your own and get someone like Oprah or someone else to moderate that conversation and put it up on the internet to build, to sort of communicate more virally. But I think Obama can do two specific things in addition to being out there with Biden, which is one, testify to Joe Biden the person. And that is going to matter because for Trump to win, he has to tear down Joe Biden, the person.

Right. And the second thing is, which he also did in this video, which is raise the stakes on the election. I think no one better than Obama explains what's at stake in an election and explain what happens if we win and what happens if we lose, which will help motivate people who may not have been super enthusiastic about Joe Biden in this primary, young people who may not feel a direct connection to him, Obama can help explain why it matters that we elect Joe Biden. All right. The last major Biden endorsement of the week was from Senator Elizabeth Warren, who released a video of her own on Wednesday. Here is a clip. Among all the other candidates I competed with in the Democratic primary, there's no one I've agreed with 100% of the time over the years. But one thing I appreciate about Joe Biden is he will always tell you where he stands. When you disagree, he'll listen. And not just listen, but really hear you and treat you with respect no matter where you're coming from.

And he's shown throughout this campaign that when you come up with new facts or a good argument, he's not too afraid or too proud to be persuaded. So, Dan, I love this endorsement because she personalized it as someone who has disagreed with Biden, but still really respects him in part because he's willing to listen and learn and be open to new ideas. What did you think? I agree. I thought it was a phenomenal endorsement. It spoke directly to the people who may not be there for Biden yet. Because here you have Elizabeth Warren, a famous progressive, who became famous in part by battling with Joe Biden over economic issues,

explaining that Biden is someone who listens and that he is a good person and that he can be moved on these issues. And so I thought it was incredible. It was very well done video and it's very powerful message. I think it's very impactful with some of the Democratic voters that Joe Biden is going to need to persuade to get behind him and not just as voters, but as volunteers and donors. All right, we're gonna take a quick break. And when we come back, we'll have Charlotte Swayze from Data for Progress to talk to us about some brand new polling on Trump's handling of the coronavirus. election has unofficially begun. I want to talk about how much Trump's response to the pandemic might shape the race and what the most effective argument might be about how he's handled the crisis. So with us today is Charlotte Swayze, the vice president of polling and data at Data for

Progress, who completely nailed many of the primary polls this season. Charlotte, thanks for being here. Thanks so much for having me. So we talked to you guys a few weeks ago about doing a poll that tested a Trump argument about how great he's done handling this crisis against a few different progressive arguments to see which ones voters found most persuasive, like which caused them to say they're less likely to vote for Trump. Charlotte, do you want to talk about sort of how you guys went about conducting the poll? Yeah, absolutely. So we ran this as a message test. Basically, what that means is that we split voters into a couple of different random groups. We use a control group where we show them kind of a standard message.

In this case, we're using one that's like Trump is on Twitter too much, picking fights and not actually doing anything. And then we show them each of our different groups. We each show one of them our test message. So we tested a couple of different things this time. We tested his response to the pandemic is costing lives. We tested that the crisis shows we need structural economic change. And we tested one that says that he slashed the safety net in the middle of the crisis. And then as our dependent variable, we test a couple different things.

But the main one is we ask people if they're planning to vote for Trump or Biden in the general election. And because we've split them into random groups, we can actually look at the differences in the proportion of people who report intent to vote for Biden or Trump and figure out what the effect our messages had on that is. And just so people know, you know, so each respondent in the poll gets a Trump message. And I think the Trump message was Trump says he's done a great job leading the country through a crisis that no one saw coming. The pandemic would be much worse if he hadn't banned travel from China. And he passed the largest economic relief bill in history to save jobs and help workers. Democrats opposed the travel ban, held the economy hostage for a wish list of radical leftist policies and care more about blaming Trump than saving the country. So we gave Trump a pretty good argument that he actually uses. It was pretty fair.

Yeah, we try to make them as realistic as possible. So in this case, it was something that like you actually hear being said. So what did you find was the most effective argument of the various progressive arguments that you just mentioned that we tested? Yeah, so the one that was most effective in our experiment was the one hitting him on his failed corona response and how his response to the pandemic and failure to kind of lead properly is actually costing lives. Specifically, it talks about unavailability of tests, a lack of ventilators, the fact that he didn't sufficiently provide funds to let people have this pandemic response. And that's the one that did best, actually. And what was the effect of that argument on the horse race between Biden and Trump?

So we find like a 0.8% effect. It's a little tricky to interpret, but basically how you can interpret that is that it's moving people in that group, like shifting the overall top line between Biden and Trump by 0.8%. And that may not sound like a lot, but in the scheme of things, that's actually a pretty significant effect. Yeah, especially when you have a Trump message in there as well. And then what was the next most effective message? So the next most effective one was saying that he'd slashed the safety net during the pandemic. So cutting people off of food stamps, things like that. And so then the least effective was the one about structural economic change, which I said, I think it said, this crisis shows

we need to increase minimum wage, put workers on corporate boards, limit CEO pay, stuff like that. Yeah, that one actually had a little bit of backlash, where people become like more likely to support Trump as a result of hearing the message. Dan, what jumped out at you in the poll? And what did you think of the messages that were more effective here? Well, a couple things. One is that Trump actually has good arguments for himself, because with the arguments that are tested in the poll, where Trump is acting like a normal president, where you say, you know, Trump is working with Democrats to address the crisis. Trump is working with local officials. That actually is an effective argument. But the good news, so that's bad news for Democrats. The good news is

Trump is temperamentally incapable of acting like a normal president. But it does sort of, like, and this may even be something that you could interpret down the line as a positive in the political environment for Biden is there does seem to be in these very abnormal times a desire for a president to do the normal things presidents do in crises. The second is I was very struck by how Trump cutting the social safety net was a very effective argument. And it does – like this needs to be further explored down the line. But that the cruel Republican economic policies that predated this crisis are looked at in a new, more intense way in the context of this crisis. As we become to know more people who have lost their jobs or lost their wages. More people have a direct connection to the people

left behind in this economy right now than they did in 4% unemployment a few months ago. I think that there is an interesting roadmap here for Democrats. But the thing that I think the cautionary note I'd give everyone is that you go through all of this, and despite being in this incredibly historic time, with this massively fumbled response to a pandemic, to the economic crisis, where you're seeing 20 million people who have filed for unemployment claims over the last several weeks, is the race still remains a very, very close race. And the arguments don't yet change the overall dynamic of a very close race where Biden probably has a popular vote advantage and Trump has an electoral college advantage. And it's

what to see whether he can navigate that. But Biden has good arguments, but we're still in a very, very close race. Yeah, I mean, we should say the horse race in this was Biden 48, Trump 45. And, you know, that's obviously a national popular vote lead right there. But, you know, if you start doing a few of these arguments that move at 0.8 points or even a point or two in either direction, it is the difference between a popular vote lead that Trump could still win in the electoral college with and one that starts to become difficult for him to make up, even if he does better in some of these swing states. Charlotte, what did you why do you think the messages that tested most effective did so? Were you surprised? Do you have any idea, thoughts on why they might have been so effective?

I was actually fairly surprised by these results, as I often am with our message tests, honestly. I didn't entirely expect sort of going over the fact that Trump's actions are costing lives to be super effective with voters, just because like, I mean, I'm on Twitter, I see that all day, every day. And I kind of thought we'd hit saturation. But our results are really showing that that's not true. Like for voters, for people who are a little bit less online, like that is not fully sunk in yet. And it's not something that's fully baked into how they think about Trump. And it is still very effective to kind of highlight these of levied a judgment on him and his leadership itself. Right. Like there was the control one was about he's on Twitter too much and he's

not leading and he's pointing the finger at governors and he's playing politics, but they didn't have as many specifics about sort of why he's costing so many lives, why he didn't give states the equipment they needed. And then in the safety net, specific cuts to Social Security, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, food stamps, those seem to have a greater effect than just talking about Trump himself. Yeah. And that scans of what we've been seeing in our polling, like hitting him for not listening

to experts and going on Twitter and being erratic and unreliable, just does not really sink in with voters, especially persuadable voters. Like you have to remember that this is a fairly narrow segment of the population who's actually being moved in their opinion by this messaging. Whereas talking about his actions and what he's doing and the impacts is much more effective. Dan, what do you think about that? Because we've talked about how we've seen other polls where Trump's chaos and his picking fights actually did show some effect on voters. You know, I think it's a couple of things.

One, we have also seen in our battleground state polling that the more specific the argument, the better it does, right? Because people, I think, have a natural skepticism of political arguments. But if there is some detail that seems like it is well-researched and specific and not like wrapped in all this political rhetoric, then it has proven better. So that is consistent with what we've seen before. I think this raises a very important point for progressives, particularly the groups who will be out. The Biden campaign on the super PACs, I was making the argument is there has been this conversation happening among sort of the democratic political world about how

Trump's tweeting in his obsession with Twitter is this like sort of killer argument against Trump. And you see it in a lot of polling. But what I think is important is the tweeting itself is not the problem. Whenever we have that conversation, I always think like, how would we be thinking about this in a world where Trump just won? People would be like, did the Democrats really just spend a year making an argument about Trump being on Twitter too much? Like, no fucking wonder we lost. But Twitter, like the argument that we have seen that does work against Trump for Trump is that Trump is obsessed with himself. And Twitter is just the most visual manifestation of that. It's not that he's doing these things on Twitter, it's that he is doing them. It's not that he's saying these things on Twitter, it's that he's saying them. And so you have to connect Trump's incompetence,

his chaotic behaviors, obsession with himself with actual consequences for people. And the messages in here that did very well are ones where you understand the consequences, where he's not listening to experts, right? It's not just an act he did. It says something about him that he didn't listen to experts. It's consistent with a perception of a lot of voters have about him. Yeah, it seems like you have to make sure you nail the costs of the chaos and the costs of the tweeting and the costs of the focus on himself and the ego for actual people. And so to constantly keep the human costs of his decisions and his failure and his leadership failures sort of at the top of every argument for voters, right? Charlotte, is that what you would say too? Yeah, absolutely. Like, I think the describing his actions as terrible as they may be, unless you connect it specifically to something that happened, is not as persuasive to this

segment of the population. Whereas if you can be like, okay, he's erratic and didn't plan well, and is obsessed with his poll numbers. Therefore, people are literally dying because of a failure to act. That is just much more impactful. And I think it keeps it very real for people. Yeah. So you also gave voters a series of 12 statements about the latest developments in the federal government's coronavirus response and asked how concerned they were by each one. What are some of the main findings there? I mean, I think the main finding there is that it's a lot of it is pretty heavily driven by

partisanship. Like we find Democrats being very concerned about pretty much all of the sort of Trump action flavored things. So let me just grab like an example. So like Trump has refused to use his power to order American companies to build equipment like ventilators and masks. Like we find Democrats very concerned at like 70 percent, whereas Republicans were only seeing kind of 20 percent. And I think that comes back to one of the things we saw in these questions is this real reluctance to criticize Trump from Republicans. reluctance to criticize Trump from Republicans. Like even when we try to set up these frameworks where we're describing specific harms, we're describing like specifically failings that he has, people are just not really willing to take that step and say that they're concerned about it or say that they agree he should have acted differently. But describing those things to

them does make them more likely to support Democrats. So it is sinking in, in a way. Yeah. I noticed that because the, the, probably the most concern they were of any of the 12 statements had to do with testing and the lack of testing. Over 50% of voters find the lack of ample coronavirus testing to be very concerning. An additional 21% of voters find the situation somewhat concerning. So that's 71%. But notably the way that we phrased that one, Trump wasn't really part of it. So that's 71%. But notably, the way that we phrased that one, Trump wasn't really part of it. So they could be critical of the lack of testing. But they didn't, you didn't necessarily have to, you didn't have to make it as a result of

something that Trump specifically did. Just the administration hadn't basically kept that promise. Dan, what did you think about this group of testing? Yeah, I think that all of these issues, even if they are not moving a lot of numbers in the horse race, have levels of concern that are incredibly high for statements made in a partisan context. And yeah, I think Charlotte's exactly right about how Republicans react to these things. And it's also from an electoral context, we shouldn't really care about that because these are not, if you're thinking about this in the context of the Biden campaign or a Senate race is running in this world, those are not available voters to you. So whether those arguments work

with them or not, it doesn't really matter. What is nailing, what you have to nail is which arguments work best with what your persuadable universe is, right? Your persuadable universe can be, you know, quote unquote, independents in this group. It could be the soft Republicans or conservative Democrats who are deciding between candidates and also people deciding to vote. And you can see how some of these arguments can be delivered over time, particularly as the reality on the ground spreads more proportionally across the country can be very powerful. Charlotte, do you have any last sort of big takeaways from this set of polls for progressives looking to make an argument about Trump's handling of the crisis? I think the largest takeaway for me is just that the news is not as saturated for a lot of voters as it might feel.

And the people are still really learning about the effects of the pandemic. They're still learning about what parts of it were preventative, what parts of it are just sort of not preventable at this point. And so describing to them the fact that there are specific policy failures that can be connected to a cost in lives is really powerful. And that that is more powerful to them than criticizing Trump's approach to it. Like being able to tie it specifically to these just really terrible harms is the most effective thing. So, you know, arm people with a lot of specifics and details about the consequences of his

actions without putting a lot of spin on the ball when it comes to Trump himself seems like sort of the most effective strategy here. Yeah, absolutely. Well, Charlotte, thank you for joining us. Thank you for conducting this very useful poll. Thank you. When we come back, Dan and I will talk about how all this should shape Democrats to Trump's latest push to force people back to work before it's safe. OK, so based on what we just heard from Charlotte, let's talk about what argument

Democrats should be making to voters about why Trump shouldn't get another term and how the various ways he's responding to the coronavirus shapes that argument. You and I have talked before about how two areas of vulnerability for Trump are his ego and the general chaos he causes. Do you think that still holds? And what are some of the ways the pandemic highlights these flaws that we're talking about in the news this week? Like, as we talked about with Charlotte, the coronavirus has not fundamentally changed the contours of the election, but it has added additional salience to a lot of different arguments you would make. And it creates a different context to make them in.

And the persuadable voters that we need are, despite the predictions of a lot of people in resistance, Twitter and others we know, are not just one bad piece of information away from losing Trump. They know Trump is a bad person. They know that he is chaotic. They know that he tweets too much. But up until this crisis, they were able to create a mental permission structure that, while the economy is still doing fine, we're not at war with North Korea or anything else. And a lot of the predictions of doom and gloom that you hear from liberals have not come to pass.

And now that is obviously a very privileged view for a certain set of voters, because if you are someone in an immigrant community or a voter of color or LGBTQ, you're obviously suffering very specifically at these. But now we are seeing the life or death consequences of what it's like to have someone like Trump as president, right? Where it is the lying, the disregarding experts, the putting his own political and personal interests, his own ego ahead of what's best for the country. And so now you have these ways to demonstrate to people very specifically the consequences of having someone like Trump as leader. Senior IRS officials say that many Americans will have their stimulus checks delayed because Donald Trump wants his name on them. And also the IRS website that was set up to help people check the status of their checks basically collapsed under overwhelming demand from so many users when it launched on Wednesday. And people who could access the website often found it frustratingly unhelpful. And we actually have a few people who called into PSA and told us about their very, very frustrating experiences

trying to get their check. Let's take a listen. Hi, my name is Rebecca. So I went on to check my IRS stimulus payment status, and I found that they have the wrong bank account listed I know they have my correct bank account because I just got my tax refund like two weeks ago maybe and but nope they have the wrong information listed on the IRS website and you can't change it from what I can tell and you can't update your bank information because they're trying to prevent fraud. So what happens if my payment goes to somebody else? Do I just not get that payment? Who do I call? How do I get that fixed? Hi, my name is Allison. I'm calling from Meriden, Connecticut. I am

actually a medical practice manager and I was furloughed about two weeks ago. So I really, really need the money. When I heard people were getting some payments today, I logged back onto the government website only to see a message that said they couldn't determine my eligibility right now. I make way under the threshold, as does my partner, and we've filed tax returns. So I can't understand what the problem is. And there's no way to call or contact anyone about it. So I'm very fearful that we will never see this money. And to add insult to injury, Connecticut has been about five weeks behind in processing unemployment claims. So

I have no income right now. And the fear and anxiety is very high. This does seem like something that, you know, obviously, this story came out after we did that data for progress poll. But I would love to test something where the specifics and the human cost of Trump's ego, which is people actually not getting checks that they so badly need to put food on their table because of Donald Trump's ego. I mean, it's like the perfect fit of, you know, what, what pisses people off usually about Donald Trump in quote unquote normal times. Trump, particularly in the course of the coronavirus pandemic, gives us so much ammunition to make arguments against him. You essentially need an ongoing tracking poll at all times you

can add new questions in because we did the poll, as we discussed with Charlotte, there are devastating attacks on Trump in there, right? Like, you know, among many others, the fact that he was sending millions of masks to China weeks before the coronavirus hit America. Yes, that was very concerning to many people. Yes. And has the double impact of also undermining the argument he's making against Biden on China that you guys talked about last week. Yeah. But the Trump delaying stimulus checks to millions of Americans so he can be the first president in American history to sign the check. And the thing that's so funny is he's not legally allowed to sign the check.

Right. So he has to sign the memo line of the check, which is just so funny. So he has to sign the memo line of the check, which is just so funny. Basically the place where your grandmother used to write happy birthday on your check when you were a kid, Donald Trump is going to randomly sign his name. But it is the perfect, it is like, I would love to see polling on this. I'd love to see a bunch of really smart consultants and creative types make ads on this to test it. It seems to me on its face to be the perfect manifestation of how

Trump's message is not America first, it's Trump first. And I think this can be very powerful because it's something that people can easily understand and is very specific to Trump. Because a lot of times when you talk about Trump putting his political interests first or even his financial interests first, a lot of the persuadable voters who are pretty skeptical of politicians at both parties will say, well, that's what every politician does, right? Most politicians are kind of corrupt. Every politician cares more about their election than anyone else. But delaying a check so that they can write their name on it is something that is very specific to Trump, that is where Trump is uniquely bad in this area. And I'm very interested to see this

play itself out on the campaign trail. And again, and, you know, Charlotte pointed this out many times in the in the research. The key here is the delay of the checks, the inability to get the checks like Trump's idea to put his name on the checks in the first place is fucking absurd. But you in theory, you could see it as a smart political play that as people get their checks and they see the name Donald Trump, they say, oh, Donald Trump did this. He's the one that got me this check

and I feel good about that. And he's trying to fight for me in this bad economy. But the combination of the checks being delayed, which of course, Donald Trump denies, and the system for getting the checks being slow and not working and people like Steven Mnookin, I think was on television the other day saying, Oh, well, this this relief check should get people through the next 10 weeks. And you know, I don't think a lot of people think $1,200 is going to get them through the next 10 weeks. That's a fucking absurd. So I think as people continue to sadly struggle in this

economic crisis, the fact that Donald Trump can't seem to fix the situation that, you know, Republicans aren't appropriating more money and more relief for people and trying to block it. I think that is going to make this argument even more, you know, effective against Donald Trump. The other big thing that really bothers voters about Trump is the chaos he causes. And that has been on full display in this latest debate over when it is safe to leave our homes and go back to work. Trump will reportedly tell governors today that they can lift lockdowns if they want, even if there's no plan to ramp up testing or keep people safe at work. Yesterday, he announced that a bunch of business leaders were part of yet another White House Economic Council. There's like 50 of these.

But most of the business leaders then said the White House never notified them before Trump announced it. And on a call with Trump later, a bunch of them told them they aren't ready to bring people back to work until there's a plan to keep them safe and ramp up testing, which Trump doesn't have. How do you think Democrats should handle this? You know, Trump's already looking to blame Democrats and governors in the media for wanting to keep people safe during the pandemic. And some of his right wing pals are funding open our state protests in places like Michigan and North Carolina. What do you think about this? And we should be very clear. It's not his right wing pals. It is his corporate

pals, right? These are groups funded by billionaires like the DeVosses, which is, we've seen this play a thousand times. It is billionaire funded populist rhetoric for the purpose of plutocratic policies. And it's notable just to, not to go down a rabbit hole here, but the protests in Michigan, which is one of the absolute hotspots of the country. I saw this tweet of a person I will not remember to credit, but the top two stories on, I think it was the Detroit Free Press website yesterday, were one, groups protest Governor Whitmer's stay at home order. Two, Oakland County, Michigan, scouting ice rinks to store bodies. Oh my God.

Which speaks to this. So I'd say there are a couple of things about this. One is, I think that there is a trap here that Democrats can fall into because this is like this is being framed successfully by Trump as I want to open the economy. Democrats do not. Right. I want to help you economically. Democrats do not. And the best thing for Trump, the situation would be to never get his wish, right? Would be just seen as the person who pushed for it and then being stopped from by Democrats and egghead scientists and elites and everyone else. So he can say he fought for them without having to suffer the consequences of the decision he was fighting for. That's, that's, that's been his play since 2016, right? He, he doesn't care if that he can't deliver on any of the promises that he's made. He probably knows most of them are absurd.

He merely wants to be seen as fighting for the wall, even if he doesn't build the wall. Fighting China, even if he continues to get rolled by China. Like, it's all about perception. continues to get rolled by China. Like it's all about perception. He just wants to be perceived as the one fighting on behalf of the average person against all these elitist liberal forces. That's his whole fucking story. And so I think that this cannot be Trump wants to open it. Democrats want to keep it closed. It's everyone wants to get people back to work. But Democrats insist that Trump have a plan to do so. He does not have a plan. And he is not, in the months that we have been sheltered in place, Trump has not done

anything to build up the testing capacity we need to do this safely. It's not built up the infrastructure to do the sort of contact tracing you need to do this. That if you want to keep people safe, you need a plan to do so. So I think that's one part of the argument. The other part is, we should just be very clear, Trump does not want to quote unquote, let people go back to work. He wants to allow companies to force their employees to go to work in the middle of a pandemic. So you no longer have a choice between your paycheck and your health. And we know that that is what's happening here

because these very same groups who are funding these protests, who are pushing Trump to quote unquote, open the economy, are the same groups pushing Congress to pass a law that would prevent them from being sued if any of their employees get sick or die after they force them to go back to work,

which I think says everything about what is happening here. You shouldn't have to choose between your health and your paycheck. That's the message for Democrats. And Donald Trump and his corporate friends want you to have to make that choice. They want you to force you to choose between your job and your life. And Democrats believe there should be a plan in place so that everyone can go to work safely. And you can talk about all the possible ways that that plan could come into fruition, right? We have to ramp up testing. We have to ramp up contact tracing. Employers have a lot of responsibilities to make sure that the workplaces are safe for people.

And I do think that that refrain, where's the plan, where's the plan, is going to be the best way to sort of reframe this argument so it's not Donald Trump wants to fight to keep the economy open, Democrats don't. I did think this was interesting from this week's Navigator polling, which is a sort of consortium of progressive groups that have been doing a daily tracking poll. They asked, in thinking about the impact of coronavirus on you, which are you more worried about, you and your family's health and well-being, or you and your family's financial situation. Health won 72-28, and that includes 76% of Democrats and 69% of Republicans. But then they asked, are you more worried about the impact of

coronavirus on people's health or the impact on our economy as a whole? It's 55-45 health with a majority of Republicans and independents saying they're more worried about the impact on the broader economy, which I do think is a warning for Democrats to make sure that you, and again, it goes back to the polling conversation we had with Charlotte, to make sure you personalize the impact of what's happening on people's family, on their health, on their finances. It has to be more personalized than an argument about open the economy or don't open the economy. I think that's right. It is easy to look at the polling right now where you see huge majorities

of people, including huge majorities of Republicans, supporting the social distancing, saying that we should continue it for some period of time. And it's easy and important to look at these protests that are happening and to inform the public and inform reporters that this is not, in many cases, just a grassroots uprising of normal citizens. It is a billionaire funded grass tops operation. But I think we should not be overly sanguine about our political position over the long term. And so we have to, Democrats would be very specific that we want to open the economy. We have to frame who Trump is fighting for. It's for employers, not employees. And I think we need to set specific benchmarks

for what Trump needs to do in order to be able to, quote unquote, open the economy. And there are a bunch of different plans out there. CAP has a plan. There are other plans. But I think it would be helpful for us to come to a conclusion of we need X amount of tests available on a daily basis with turned around in Y amount of time. Or we need the following structure set up. Or we need this amount of funding to do this.

Because it's one thing to say, and this is where Trump benefits from his briefings and say, you need a plan that he goes up there and just spouts off a bunch of dishonest and out of context numbers about ventilators and testing kits and Abbott labs and all those things. But he currently is so far from what we actually need. We have to tell people what he actually needs so that it puts in context the numbers that he is spouting out at those briefings every day. Yeah, I think that's right. Where's the plan? All right.

That's all we have for today. Thanks again to Charlotte Swayze from Data for Progress for joining us. And we will talk to you guys on Monday. Bye, everyone. Bye. Pod Save America is a product of Cricket Media. The executive 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 Tanya Sominator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Caroline Reston, and Elisa Gutierrez for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Melkonian, Yale Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos every week.