Pod Save America - “Go Big or Lose Small.”

Episode Date: January 28, 2021

Senate Republicans seem likely to exonerate the man who incited a mob that almost killed them, and our new Crooked Media/Change Research Pollercoaster series shows that Joe Biden’s agenda is extremely popular and MAGA media continues to radicalize its audience. Then Ezra Klein of The New York Times talks to Jon about ending the filibuster and the future of democracy.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's pod, Ezra Klein is here to talk about how we finally get rid of the filibuster. Before that, Dan and I will talk about the second impeachment of former President Donald Trump and then dig into our brand new polar coaster results to find out what voters want from the first hundred days of Joe Biden's presidency. But first, two other Crooked Pods to check out this week. Rubicon, where Crooked's editor-in-chief Brian Boitler talks to Chris Hayes about what it will take for Biden to successfully execute his COVID plan. That episode drops tomorrow, Friday.

And on this week's With Friends Like These, Anna is joined by Rebecca Traister to discuss all the latest news through her progressive feminist lens. That is also out on Friday. So check those out. All right. Let's get to the news. If any of you placed a bet that Republican senators would hold Donald Trump accountable for inciting a deadly mob who tried to kill them and their colleagues, you should probably get ready to part with your wager. Even though the Senate impeachment trial isn't scheduled to start until February 8th,

on Tuesday, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul forced his colleagues to vote on whether they believed that the trial itself is constitutional since Trump isn't in office anymore. All but five Republican senators said the trial is unconstitutional. was unconstitutional. 45 senators, Republicans, said it was unconstitutional, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who said, quote, well, the trial hasn't started yet, and I intend to participate in that and listen to the evidence. Sure. That's why he and 44 other Republicans voted to say that the trial is unconstitutional. Where does this leave us, Dan? In a deeply dangerous place for democracy, where you have 90% of Republicans who are totally fine with their former president inciting a mob to go to their workplace and murder them. That's where we are. I mean, it's like, it really, this whole thing is taking the, you know, I could go out into the middle of Fifth Ave and shoot someone and my supporters wouldn't leave me to like a whole new level.

Yeah, it's Pennsylvania Avenue is where he could go and shoot someone. Right. And instead of it's and instead of it's a supporters, it's like the the the Senate Republicans and House Republicans that he almost got killed. Republicans that he almost got killed. There is a much broader discussion about this, but every sort of excuse making that was made for the Republicans over the last few years has to be thrown in. This idea that somehow they were putting up with all of this because they just cared so passionately about unqualified right wing judges or tax cuts for corporations. He is out of the judge business. He is out of the tax cut business. And that's a judge he's going to deal with probably presiding over his case. And yet still they revert to who they are,

which is Trumpists. Like that is what we are. That is Mitch McConnell. That is all but five Senate Republicans. Well, I was going to, so first of all, we should talk about why the trial is constitutional to do this, of course, because we are going to hear a lot now about the constitutionality of a trial of a former

president, because this is the argument that all these Republicans are going to latch on to. And so you're going to have an impeachment trial where the House managers are going to prosecute the case and talk about what happened on January 6th and how Donald Trump incited this mob and the damage that they did and the danger that still remains. And then on the other side, you're just going to hear, why are we doing this? This is unconstitutional, blah, blah, blah. But there are all these fucking legal scholars telling us this and that and the other thing. So we should say from the outset, it is constitutional.

There are, of course, a few scholars that don't think it is, but the vast majority of legal and constitutional scholars believe it is constitutional to hold a trial of a former president impeachment trial former president. We know that because in the past they have held impeachment trials of former senators and former cabinet officials just by common sense. The reason it's constitutional is you could commit a horrible crime and then immediately resign, avoid impeachment by resigning, and then run again. That's why you can't. It's why it's a little bit of a loophole there you can't take advantage of. Or commit a crime in your last day in office. It's not immunity. The following things cannot be true. Sitting presidents can't be immune from prosecution, and former presidents cannot be immune from impeachment and removal if they commit crimes in the waning days in office. That's just, it's not how the system is designed. It's not how it works. The quote unquote legal scholars who are putting this

argument forth are right-wing hacks. They are reverse engineering a legal argument to help Donald Trump. That is what they are doing. Well, it's also, if you don't believe that he should be held accountable for inciting the riot or you didn't believe that he incited the riot, just fucking say it. Have the balls to just say it.

Don't hide behind some fucking constitutional argument that you know that's like you get your trot out your stupid legal scholars oh we can't we just can't hold the trial just stand up and say i don't think that donald trump did anything wrong just say it say it but they don't want to i mean some of them do some of them are some of them are perfectly fine with saying it but but a bunch of them just don't want to. What do you think happened to our boy Mitch? So it was just a few weeks ago that he and his staff refused to challenge a New York Times story that said McConnell believed Trump committed an impeachable offense. And he saw impeachment as an opportunity to purge Trump from the party.

impeachable offense. And he saw impeachment as an opportunity to purge Trump from the party. And then, in case you didn't believe the whole New York Times story, he went to the Senate floor publicly and McConnell said that Trump, quote, provoked the mob. So McConnell's on record saying that. And then you've got the New York Times story that they never shot down. So what happened to McConnell? Now, of course, he still says he's going to, like, listen to the arguments. He still, but he voted with he's going to like listen to the arguments. But he voted with Rand Paul that the trial is unconstitutional. He voted not to hear the arguments. That is what he voted for.

So I'm getting the sense he might be full of shit. To go back to that New York Times story a few weeks ago, which I don't know how time is still crawling because it feels like 17 months ago, but I think it was three weeks ago. Yeah. That is a classic trial balloon. Mitch McConnell was debating two outcomes. One is taking advantage of an opportunity to rid Trump from the party. And the other is to double down on Trumpism. So he floated it out there. And a trial balloon is when a public figure, usually a politician, floats an idea with some plausible deniability. It's from AIDS on back. Now, you neither confirm nor deny it. Just let it sit up there and see who shoots it down, right? That's the trial balloon. That's what this was. It's pretty clear that the response

from the right and from probably members of his own caucus, the insurrectionist wing of the Republican Party, which apparently is 90% of Senate Republicans, responded in a way that caused Mitch McConnell to back down off of that, to give him the choice between abandoning Trump and doubling down on Trump. He stuck his finger in the wind and the wind was blowing towards doubling down on Trump. Yeah. I mean, look, what republicans want in the senate is to keep their jobs and they only keep their jobs if the base is happy and the base is only happy if you support uh insurrectionist donald trump and um and the base is riled up and controlled by Fox and Newsmax and OAN. That's the story. Like Mitch McConnell and all those Senate Republicans could have tried to stand up against Donald Trump and impeached him or convicted.

Or, you know, they could have tried to stand up against Donald Trump and convicted him. But we know what would have happened if they did. Primary challenges. But we know what would have happened if they did. Primary challenges, the whole primetime Fox lineup telling them that they're rhinos, Newsmax, OAN, worse online, worse on Facebook, death threats, you know, like the whole party would have fallen apart. I mean, honestly, like politically, it's probably the right move for them. That is the exact right point. If you put aside morality, patriotism, public service. No, this was smart. This was smart politics. It is a rational decision to do this, which is the thing that we as Democrats have to understand because Republicans are following their political incentives. Politicians follow their political incentives. If we can replace the individual Republicans, we can yell about them, we can tweet at them.

But even if we beat Josh Hawley or he loses in a primary to a more moderate Republican or Ted Cruz is gone, in the end, the incentives that push the Republicans inexorably in this direction will continue. Because the polling is clear on this. People want Trump to be held accountable. They want to move on from this era. They have deep concerns about Trump. Definitely the American people are anti-insurrection, the majority of them.

But this- Good news. Good news. Thank goodness. For now. We have to watch the polling. But right now, the insurrection argument loses. the insurrection argument loses. The Republican Party is captive to a distinct minority of the American population. And the only thing we can do to make them behave differently is to change

their political incentives, because that minority has a massively disproportionate share of political power. And this is why we'll talk about this when we talk about polling and the For the People Act and the filibuster and all of that. But if you want to stop the Republicans from appealing to this distinct minority, you have to change your political structures. So they have to appeal to the majority. And I was going to say, to put it simply, you have to beat them. Democrats have to beat them in general elections up and down the ballot because right now they fear the primary challenge from the right more than they fear the general election opponent who's a Democrat. I think it's even more than that.

And that's been the case for a while. I think we lived in this world that we believe that there's this theory that the way you change a party's direction is you beat them three times in a row. That is how the Democrats, we can debate some of the value of those changes, but Democrats changed strategy after losing in 80, 84, 88. And they moved to the middle and that won them the election in 1992. I think a lot of us believe that if the Republicans had lost in 2016, that's when they would have had the proverbial come to Jesus moment, maybe adopted the autopsy report of 2012. But I think it's bigger than that. Beating them is not enough.

I think we have to beat them and then use that political power to make American politics more democratic. Because the only thing that will change them is them having to appeal to the majority of Americans. Because the only thing that will change them is them having to appeal to the majority of Americans. If Ted Cruz had to actually appeal to all Texans, not just the Texans that can slip through the massive voter suppression in Texas, then he would have to take it. He could not be pro-insurrection and win. Right. The same thing is true of all these Republicans, at least in purple and bluish states. I completely agree with that.

And I think that would improve our chances of beating them too. It's also the right thing to do. But I will say if we also have to beat them by a lot, you know, like I mean, and I know it's yes, Joe Biden won by 7 million votes. But if you look at the states that add up to 270, he was, I don't know, a few 30, 40,000 votes away. If like 30,000 votes went the other way, 40,000 votes went the other way in three states, Donald Trump would be president right now. So I think Republicans look at that map and they're like, you know, we lost to Joe Biden, but we were close. We were close enough that we might've been able to steal it if we were a little closer in a couple of states. That's a system problem. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. No, like, and they're looking at the house in the house in 22. And they're like,

you know, Dave Wasserman, Cook Political Report just did his first redistricting outlook and said Republicans could pick up six house seats just by drawing new maps alone. The house, six house seats they need to take back the house in 22 just by redrawing the maps, which is, again, an argument for ending partisan gerrymandering. But like they're looking at that map and they're like, yeah, we just lost the House, the Senate and the presidency thanks to Donald Trump over the last over the last four years. But we're still pretty close. And so our strategy of riling up the base and getting the base out, not giving a shit about like middle of the road voters, swing voters. It's pretty close. It's pretty close.

We might be able to win with that. I think we're saying the same thing, but I just want to put a finer point on what I think we're both trying to say, which is this is not about a Democratic, different Democratic campaign strategy. It's not about having a better message or better ads or better organizing. We need all of those things. The Republican electoral college advantage is getting worse for us if we stay on the same trajectory. The Republican Senate advantage is getting dramatically worse for us very quickly. And if you want to actually be in a position where our seven, eight, nine million person presidential popular vote win is reflecting electoral college, you're going to have to make some changes in how these things are done. You're going to have to

change. And we can't change electoral college without a constitutional amendment, but you can make it easier for people to vote in these states. You can reduce voter suppression. You can do all of those things. And it's not going to happen naturally. And this is, it takes using the political power we have to invest in future political power and invest in democracy. Yeah. And all I'm saying is it also takes us winning in the shitty minority rule system that we have. Yeah. Absent some pretty dramatic changes that we will talk about in a bit. Yes. Okay. So back to impeachment. Big question now is what should Democrats do next? So Senator Tim Kaine said he's working

on a censure resolution, either as an alternative to a trial, which would be time consuming and ultimately fail to get a conviction, or either a censure or he could do a censure resolution after the trial. It's not clear which one they're going to go with yet or thinking about going with yet. And the hope there would be that you get more Republican senators to sign on to a censure of Trump. And so people know a censure is basically an official resolution to just like, say that Donald Trump's an asshole. I don't know. It seems so quaint, like a censure resolution. We hereby condemn Donald Trump. And then it goes in the history books. Donald Trump condemned by the Congress. Wow. Man, he's going to learn his lesson. I don't know. What do you think about that? I love Tim Kaine.

Great guy. I do too. Great senator. Would have been a great vice president. Tim Kaine, develop an inner monologue. Maybe talk to your colleagues about this. Work behind the scenes. Let's maybe start the trial before we start

throwing the white flag of surrender here. This is probably where we're going to end up. And I am actually very sympathetic to the point that Tim Kaine makes, which is we have a lot of shit to do as a Senate. And it's clear we're not getting a conviction because of that vote. I mean, I get he shouldn't have said it out loud, but it's pretty fucking obvious to anyone who saw the vote that if you only have five Republicans who think that the trial is constitutional and you need 17 to convict Donald Trump, do the fucking math. Yeah. I'm very torn on this because we knew when we were advocates for Donald Trump being impeached back in 2019, 2020, he was going to get acquitted. That was almost a guarantee.

He was going to get acquitted. That was almost a guarantee. But we thought there was value in putting on a public display of his crimes. It's not clear whether that value measured up to what we thought it would or just got flushed down the memory hole or lost in a pandemic. It's hard to say. The value- Yeah, well, the memory hole in this country lasts about 24 hours now. So yes, it did get flushed down the memory hole.

We had an attack on the Capitol a couple of weeks ago and people are like, where's the unity? We are like, we can't fucking keep anything in our heads for more than a day. If that. A day is a lot at this point. Anyway. But the looming election was an argument for going through the process even if the game was rigged. That does not exist now. So it is – I don't know what the right answer is.

Can a president actively incite a mob to attack the Capitol and get away with nothing more than a symbolic slap on the wrist? Are we just going to – well, Republicans are against accountability, so we let it go. It's a very, it's very hard. John Barrasso, Senator from Wyoming, Republican Senator from Wyoming, was asked about this today. He was asked about, he said, yeah, it's not happening. He's not getting a conviction. Look at the math. And then he was asked, well, what about a censure resolution?

He's like, no, no, no, we're not going to do censure either. Like, why? He's like, well, he was impeached twice. That's going going in the history books he'll be the first president who got impeached twice so there that's it that's enough for john barrasso i mean this is why but i i was saying this weeks ago i think that not that this would have changed anything but the argument for convicting donald trump now that he's out of office is to prevent him from running for office again. The man incited a mob. The man is dangerous. He's thinking of running for president again in 2024. Do we want to allow an authoritarian who has incited violence when he had the seat of power

in this country to do it again? And you look forward and you talk about the future. And for some reason, that wasn't the overall message. I heard some Democrats, elected Democrats, who I think are smart and respect and like some Democratic strategists be like, I don't really think we should do the he shouldn't run again argument because like I'm happy to have him run again and beat him again. Or I think we can beat again. I'm not worried about that. Like what? I'm not taking that bet. I want that man barred from ever running for office again. That's why that's the only reason I actually think this is worth it. Yes,

I agree with that. I certainly am not willing to take the risk that Donald Trump could stumble ass backwards in the presidency. Again, we barely survived. We played that game. We played that game. We all lost. You don't often get to, to decide whether to play Russian roulette twice. We played that game. We played that game. We all lost. You don't often get to decide

whether to play Russian roulette twice. The fuck? Yeah. But the problem with that argument is once again, it is very compelling to us and 60% of the country or maybe more,

but it has the exact opposite effect with the voters these Republican senators are most responsive to because they want Donald Trump to run again. He is their first choice right now. I mean, except the ones who might want to run themselves. Well, I also think, by the way, that, you know, Brian Boitler wrote about this in the New York Times a couple weeks ago.

And I saw a couple people bring this up recently. There is the 14th Amendment route, which would only require a majority vote. The 14th Amendment bars any person who's sworn an oath to the Constitution and subsequently, quote, engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof from ever holding office again. Now, again, few scholars here and there, they're like, I don't know if it can be used, but like, I don't know. It only requires a majority vote. That's 51 votes in the Senate. You've got five Republican senators who are willing to at least hear the trial and possibly convict Donald Trump. I would think about going the 14th Amendment route because if you can bar him from office again, then I don't mind as much that he doesn't get convicted a second time. I think it's at least getting people on record is a useful thing to do. I mean, you have to balance all of these things against the days not spent passing the Biden agenda. Right. Well, that to me, that's making that's even quicker. Put it on the floor. Take a vote. Let's move on to COVID relief. So the question is, Dan, if we go ahead with the trial, which does seem likely, it doesn't seem like we're backing down from the trial now, fine. How can Democrats make it worthwhile knowing the outcome is all but certain,

knowing that this isn't like the last impeachment where the House prosecutors were also making a case to the public about why Donald Trump shouldn't be reelected? about why Donald Trump shouldn't be reelected? To the extent that there is political value in this, it is in drawing the lines between what Trump did and what the Republicans pushed. They are all guilty. Trump may be the one on trial, but they're all part of the conspiracy. They all pushed this lie. Mitch McConnell, who was so horrified by what Trump did, waited an entire month before acknowledging the electoral results because he thought it would help him in Georgia. And so Trump is the one who would be convicted here, but you want to put the entire party on

trial before the public. But you should do it expeditiously. You should do it expeditiously. I know there's a question of whether you call witnesses because, of course, witnesses could take more time and both parties could call witnesses. And I would not drag this out because I do think we should move on to COVID relief as fast as we can. But, you know, we said at the beginning, like Donald Trump almost had a lot of Republicans and Democrats, members of Congress killed. People were killed in this. Five people, five Americans died. One of them was a police officer. There were other police officers who were horribly injured. There are people who stormed the Capitol on record saying, I'm here because my president told me to be here. Right. Like I would just connect a few of the dots for the public just to remind people. I know, again, it might like people might forget about it

within a couple of weeks, but if we're going to have the trial, you might as well make the best case possible that you're right, that not only Donald Trump, but much of the Republican Party was complicit in this attack and that we're still in danger, that House Democrats right now are running around really scared that they're getting threats. A guy was arrested this morning with 20 rounds of ammo outside the Capitol building. Like these threats are ongoing. You know, as much as you can sort of push everything forward so that it is, this trial isn't really about relitigating the past, but talking about what kind of future we're going to have. Are we going to have one where we allow Donald Trump to run again and put us in

danger? Are we going to have one where we allow the Republican Party to put us in danger, to put their own colleagues in danger because of this kind of crazy and horrible rhetoric that they keep spouting and these lies that they keep telling. hold Trump accountable, the Department of Homeland Security put out a terror alert that there was potential terrorist attacks on US government facilities incited by and inspired by the riot on the Capitol that was, of course, incited by Trump. So just if you want to, this is not a theoretical thing. There is an actual ongoing danger from this, not just to the members of Congress, which would be horrible enough in and of itself, but to people all around the country. And this is the choice the Republican Party is making is we're going to do nothing about it.

We're going to say it is OK that it happened. Matt Gaetz, who wants to be in House leadership, is going to Wyoming to put on some stunt to piss off Liz Cheney and like sending a text to his supporters like, hey, I'm going to stand up to Liz Cheney. Come on, patriots, come with me. Like what? After what just happened, you're trying to like build a crowd to put pressure on Liz Cheney? Kevin McCarthy is meeting with Donald Trump as we speak to make sure everything's OK and they're all still friends and that he will still be a part of the Republican Party. Yeah, it is. He tried to have them murdered.

People almost died because of this. It is by the grace of God that something even worse than the horrible thing happened did not happen. Their lives were at risk. Their staffs were at risk. And the response to that is, hey, Donald Trump, sorry that we got a little briefly mad about that. Are we still cool? Like that is the response. They were chanting, hang Mike Pence, hang Mike Pence. And you can only get five of them in the Senate to convict or they were saying, hang Mike Pence. And then we think like, we think 10 of them are going to jump on board

Biden's COVID relief plan. Like what fucking universe are we in right now? Well, no, John, I don't know if you've read the New York Times editorial. Biden should stop doing executive actions

and start using his years of Senate experience to peel off five insurrectionists to support his COVID plan. That is from the fucking geniuses at the New York Times editorial board. They're not going to protect their Republican vice president who a mob was outside chanting, hang Mike Pence. But they're going to they're going to sign on for that extra extra billion dollars and trillion dollars in COVID relief. Yeah, that makes sense. It's just,

I don't know. So just from our poll, before we move off on this, like, you know, we asked people, should Congress focus on this impeachment trial? Should they prioritize COVID relief? Should they try to do both? I actually thought that both would win there. But I actually thought that both would win there. But prioritizing COVID relief won a plurality. And then it was both. And it was something like only 7% thought that they should prioritize the impeachment trial. So there is sort of a warning for Democrats there that the trial is important. I called for it.

I agree with it, but like it does have to happen fast because people do not want the Congress to spend a lot of time on this. Just one, I think point for people to understand is the way this is likely to proceed, even if there was no trial was the house would act first, send something to the Senate, which is what preserves her ability to do budget reconciliation. So it's, it is not as if there's a whole... Yes, the Senate could be doing things. There certainly could be confirming more of Biden's nominees. We're in a pandemic. We don't have an HHS secretary. There's an ongoing terror threat

from an insurrectionist. We don't have a DHS secretary. So there are confirmations that could happen. But in terms of COVID relief, it is a little bit of a sequential process that does not suffer greatly from the trial plan as we understand it. Yeah. Though viewers at home will be told that it's suffering greatly by Republicans who will say, look at what Democrats are doing as opposed to helping you. Yes. Yes, yes, yes. There is risk here. That will be a message that we have to push back on. we have to push back on. All right, let's talk about the poll. So together with our friends at Change Research, we surveyed 1,742 registered voters nationwide from January 22nd to 23rd to find out what people want President Biden and Congress to

get done in these first 100 days and what they think of the plans that have been proposed so far. Let's start with people's top priorities, which we asked in the form of an open-ended question, and then we asked as a list of options from which they could choose three. And we found that in both sets of questions, the top priorities are controlling the virus, distributing the vaccine, and getting economic relief. Makes sense. Anything jump out at you in terms of what people prioritized, either in the open-ended question or in the multiple choice list? The difference between Republicans in the multiple choice list in the open end was very interesting. And it speaks to what is top of mind in their information ecosystem. In the open end, they were more likely to say COVID.

But when they were presented with election reform to deal with voter fraud, they leapt at that answer. And it was very high on their priority list, which I think speaks to just existing in a Fox News role. It's so funny, but not something that they came up with on their own, which is why I love the idea of an open-ended question. Like, what are your priorities for the new government? glimpse of what if we lived in a world without like all of that sort of partisan reasoning thrown in there, right? Where you're given all these options like voter fraud or debt and deficit was the other one. Debt and deficit was only mentioned eight times, not 8%, eight times out of 1700 plus people in the open-ended question. In the multiple choice question, Trump voters chose debt and deficits as their second highest priority after the voter fraud that you mentioned. Unbelievable. I mean, it goes to what

we have been talking about for a long time, which is the greatest challenge we have to having a functioning democracy is our completely broken information ecosystem. Yeah. And I will say for the Biden voters, there was an interesting one too, which is not in the open-ended question, you know, the Biden voters naturally gravitated to COVID answers that we talked about, healthcare, immigration, climate. But in the multiple choice question, the second highest priority for the Biden voters after the COVID stuff was holding Trump accountable, which, again, was not something that people brought up on their own and open ended question.

So it does not to be both sides. It does happen on both sides. I mean, one is a completely fake thing and one is very real thing. But that is. Yeah, one is one is laudable. And then I think it is. I thought it was interesting that infrastructure and health care were still up there as top priorities and health care for the open ended as well. I thought that was important to note that people on their own and is often considered in these, when people see economic relief to voters, we've often seen in focus groups and other research formats, that means healthcare to them too. They see healthcare as an economic issue, even when it gets sectioned out sometimes in polls. So it ends up kind of, when they say economic relief, they also mean

their finances, which means lower healthcare costs. Yeah. Let's talk about Biden and the Democratic agenda. Good news. Very, very popular. Sixty nine percent of voters support Biden's one point nine trillion dollar rescue plan, including four out of 10 Trump voters. Fifty five percent of voters support raising the minimum wage to fifteen dollars, including nearly one in five Trump voters. Fifty of voters support raising the minimum wage to $15, including nearly one in five Trump voters. 55% support Biden's proposal to forgive $10,000 of student loan debt. And 52% support progressive Democrats' proposal to forgive $50,000 of debt. So not much difference in the two, the 10 versus 50, even though there's a big fight about it online. 65% of voters, including 35% of Trump voters, again, support the For the

People Act. And this is huge. That is the Democratic Reform Bill that was described in our poll as one that would end dark money in politics, end partisan gerrymandering, automatically register citizens to vote if they're eligible, expand in-person early voting, make voting by mail simpler, and enhance election security with a paper trail for every ballot. I would say that's an unusually popular agenda. What about you? Incredibly unusual. 69% of anyone agreeing on anything in America right now is a gigantic deal. Four out of 10 Trump voters. That's as we'll talk about this in a bit. That's way more Trump voters than actually thought Biden won the election. Biden's election is so unpopular that even people who incorrectly believe he stole the election want him to put his agenda

in place. That is amazing. That's amazing. So let's pass it, right? Yeah, it's easy. That is amazing. That's amazing. So let's pass it, right? Yeah, it's easy. Is there anything about the support for Biden's agenda that you found notable before we move on to sort of what we need to do about it? The numbers around the economic relief and COVID stuff are higher than I think I would have guessed, but it makes sense. We're in a pandemic, a recession.

People like and want to get out of this mess. The minimum wage we've always known to be popular. We know that even in Florida, as Trump is winning, 60% of Floridians passed a ballot initiative to raise it to $15. That is consistent with previous results and intuitively obvious, I think. The For the People Act and the democracy reform stuff is really interesting. And I think we need to explore it more and test various iterations of it. But there is an opportunity here. And I do wonder when I look at how the question was answered, whether the paper trail election security part brings you Republicans you would not have already had, since huge percentages of them think the election was stolen. And so that is potential for Democrats as they think about how they're going to put together either the state level or not federally, a democracy reform voting rights agenda is pairing election security with greater access to the ballot box as a way

that's not going to bring you necessarily partisan legislative Republicans, but it could bring you more support from Republican voters. So it's interesting. The other one like that, that stuck out at me is end dark money in politics. That is something that cuts across traditionally in polling has cut across party lines, even though Republican politicians love dark money in politics. But voters across the political spectrum do not like that. And I think starting with end dark money in politics might have boosted support for that a little bit. I will say even describing the rescue plan, we should just let everyone know, we described the rescue plan in the poll as a $1.9 trillion rescue plan. We put the price tag on there, which is a big price tag. Did not scare people away. Did not scare Trump voters away.

price tag on there, which is a big price tag. Did not scare people away. Did not scare Trump voters away. We did talk about the $1,400 checks in the description. We talked about childcare subsidies. We talked about vaccination money. We talked about 100,000 public health workers as part of the plan. So, you know, we kind of gave it a good description of everything that's in Biden's plan. But it was definitely one of the more popular things that we've ever tested in our polling, that plan, the economic plan. I will say on the For the People Act, I think that Democrats probably need to do a better job communicating why that reform is important. So when we, back to the priorities list, when voters were asked what they thought the Biden administration's top priority should be, only 8% selected those types of voting reforms from the multiple choice list, which is very low. And they were barely mentioned in the open-ended question. We only had five mentions

of the filibuster, my heart breaks, one mention of the Supreme Court, two mentions of DC statehood, and a smaller percentage of people prioritized policies that would expand voting, that was the 8% in the multiple choice list, than people who prioritized going after voter fraud, 26%. Those are, of course, mostly Trump voters. So we do have some work to do convincing people that voting reforms and democracy reforms need to be a legislative priority for Biden in this Congress. That is, you have hit on, I think, perhaps the biggest challenge that Democrats have writ large is Republicans care more about breaking democracy than Democrats do about fixing it. And this is not yelling at Schumer or Biden or Joe Manchin or anyone else. This is our voters. It's yelling at the voters. Yeah, right.

And when there is impetus and enthusiasm from the voters, politicians will respond. We do not have that for the things that are absolutely essential. And to your point, we have to connect those reforms to real things that people want and explain why they are blocking better, more affordable health care, a minimum wage, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And that's the ballgame right there. So we also paired a positive description of each Biden plan or policy with the description you might hear on Fox News. And when we describe each Biden plan, everyone gets between 58 and 64 percent support. So majority support, well over majority.

COVID relief plan, his Build Back Better jobs plan and his racial justice plans were the three most popular. were the three most popular. But when each plan is given the Fox News framing, support drops closer to 50-50 for everything, except the COVID relief plan, which is still like a net 12 points popular, which tells you how popular that plan is. What does that tell you about how Democrats should sell these plans? Were you surprised that it dropped to 50-50? Did you think it would go lower than that? Democrats should be emboldened by these results because the framing we used, we did the Fox day side message, which is debt and deficits. The Fox night, the Fox primetime message is radical socialist, white supremacist, cancel

culture, mad libs shit, which is the art, which is the one you're going to hear most from Republicans running for office is debt deficit. And the one that the reporters are much more likely to echo that will without a doubt become part of the Morning Joe roundtable, playbook, New York Times editorial. Yeah. I mean, and we saw the power of that argument in 2009, 2010, when Obama was trying to pass his economic recovery agenda. And the fact that you can make a straight up argument against Biden's policies that is going to raise the deficit and it keeps it at majority or above support is a sign that the appetite for austerity politics, fear of deficits is so drowned out by the need for help for the economy and the pandemic right now.

So the other big strategic question we tested in the poll is whether Biden and Democrats should go big and ambitious, even if it means doing it without Republican support, or whether they should go smaller and compromise to get Republican votes. Dan, you wrote this morning's message box about this. What did the poll tell you? What does the message box say? As I wrote in the message box, and before I get to a poll set, I just want to do one quick plug, because if you subscribe to messagebox.substack.com between now and the end of the month, your first month subscription will go entirely to Run for Something, one of our favorite organizations that is already recruiting young progressives to run for office up and down

the ballot. So between now and February 1st, messagebox.substack.com. Let's help Amanda Lippman and run for something, continue to flourish in this post-Trump era. Okay, plug. Done. And what I took from all of the polling in here is that every decision in politics is a risk-benefit analysis. And what the poll tells us right now is the much bigger risk for Democrats is doing too little rather than doing too much. Biden's policies are popular.

There is a huge appetite for action. That appetite is bipartisan. There is no patience for obstruction. there is very limited, there is no patience for obstruction. People want bipartisanship and compromise in theory, but not at the expense of the relief they need. And so it's going to be choppy waters. We're already seeing it in the New York Times editorial board, the media today about unity and progress and bipartisanship. And is Susan Collins happy? People don't give a shit about that. They want their help right now. And that is what Biden and Democrats are going to be judged on. I really believe, I mean, our bias is on our sleeves about the things we care about, how we feel about bipartisanship and the filibuster and all of that. But when you

look at the numbers in this poll, as we sit here today and things can change, When you look at the numbers in this poll, as we sit here today, and things can change, people want big action and they want it now. And so as Democrats make decisions about how long do we try to see if we can get five insurrectionists to come over and help us pass our agenda? Or what do we do through budget reconciliation? Or should it be 1.9 or 1 trillion or all of those things? More is better. Sooner is better.

And I think that is just that is the opposite take that a lot of the blue dog Democrats and others took heading into the 2010 elections. Their belief was we did too much. TARP, Recovery Act, health care. The reality on the ground is what is going to matter based on this poll. And so take advantage of momentum you have and go get it done, even if it's going to cause some carping from Republicans. And I will say there is some power in the argument on the other side.

And this was crystallized in sort of two questions that we asked. And one question we asked was like, do you want Democrats to pass their agenda and their priorities with no compromise whatsoever, but they get all their priorities? Or do you want Democrats to get fewer of their priorities, but compromise and get Republican votes? And people in the poll said compromise by a 64 to 27 margin. So you're like, oh, shit. Then we asked it, do you want Democrats to pass a bill with more relief that gets no Republican support or less relief that gets Republican votes? And they wanted more relief with no Republican votes by 46 to 38. And, of course, the media will frame it as Democrats winning or losing, Republicans winning or losing, Republican priorities versus Democratic priorities, Joe Biden versus Mitch McConnell. Like that's how the media coverage is shaped.

What we can't forget is that this is about delivering as much relief to people as possible, as fast as possible. And what voters want is relief and they want more of it. And they care more about getting a lot of relief in the middle of this recession, in the middle of this pandemic, than they do about getting Republican votes. But if it's only framed to them as Democrats aren't playing nice and Democrats won't compromise on the shit that Democrats want, then they're going to say, oh yeah, they probably should compromise. So it really is a messaging war here. It's a messaging war that happens in two parts. The first part is about getting caught trying. Like, I do not believe, I know you do not believe, that there is a deal that can get 10

Senate Republicans that is substantial enough to meet the need. And if that is the case, we are doing a dance until we get to the part where we're going to have to pass this on a 50 vote budget reconciliation measure. And so this is what Biden has been doing. This is his message. We're going to try, we're going to reach out and he's going to have to do that. But then the second part is when you make that turn to having to do this on a 50 vote, which I think is very important to note, does not mean it is only partisan. It is still, Republicans can still vote for budget reconciliation. You can still get those five votes. And Biden, I think, would very much want to get some of those Republican votes. And

we'll try very hard to get some of the five people who are anti-violent mob, five Senate Republicans anti-violent mob to come over and vote for it. But once you make that turn, you have to be able to demonstrate to voters what would have been lost specifically had they gone the other route, the quote unquote compromise route. Like what were the demands Republicans are making? Take out the $15 minimum wage, cut vaccine funding, which uncertainly would have been it, cut money for teachers and firefighters. Like you're going to have to explain the cost of going one direction versus the benefits of going the other direction. That's going to, that's the messaging challenge. I think. I think at some point you've got to push Republicans in Congress to say, okay,

you don't like this bill. What do you want? Tell us your plan. Tell us what you would do without in this $1.9 trillion plan. Like lay it out. Be specific. Because then the onus is on them. And they look like the ones who want to deliver less relief to people. You know, I think it's really important to get to that point. And it's tough because obviously the Biden White House doesn't want to like kick the shit out of Republicans because, you know, new tone. When I understand that, right, like that's the right move. But at some point you have to be and you don't have to do it in a snarky way. But you have to point out that the reason

Republicans don't support your bill is because they don't want they don't want to deliver that much relief to Americans. And that's not going to be popular. So I'm going to talk about the filibuster because we did pull on the filibuster. Without mentioning a specific issue, 49% of voters support eliminating the filibuster and 40% are opposed. Then we asked a question tying it to the minimum wage and raising the minimum wage to $15. And we said, would you support eliminating the filibuster if it's being used to block an increase in the minimum wage to $15 an hour? 53% of voters supported ending the filibuster in that scenario. So support rose from 49 to 53, which I do think shows that this argument

of the filibuster can't happen as some theoretical argument that we all talk about. It has to be tied to a specific issue. And I just, you know, I hope Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema are listening. As they do, as they do every week. I know that. I know they're just like... Joe Manchin right now is sitting somewhere in West Virginia, just sipping coffee from his dug on a mug cup and with his friend of the pod shirt on, getting ready to go. Hey, he's been on the pod before. We've had both of them on the pod before. We'll get them back on. We can never...

I forgot we had Joe Manchin on the pod. Kirsten Sinema, Joe Manchin, come on. Anytime we can talk about the filibuster. Happy to. But yeah, no, that's so a majority of voters do support getting rid of the filibuster for something else that everyone or at least a lot of the media is framing as some kind of like partisan provision in the bill, which is raising the minimum wage to fifteen dollars, which has majority support, including support among almost one in five Trump voters. I don't know. I don't know. But I do think what do you think about how the we haven't talked about this, how the filibuster, the filibuster standoff ended this week?

It was one of those really tiresome inside D.C. debates where everyone is debating who won or who lost. And it was basically, I think, a stalemate. Now, I would note, we still do not yet have an organizing resolution. Mitch McConnell is still in charge of the Senate. Republicans are still in charge of the committees. So it hasn't actually resolved itself yet. We are where we were in the beginning. No Democrat changed their position. Chuck Schumer did not make some sort of pledge to McConnell. I don't think a whole lot changed. It just sort of laid down the reality of the situation we're in. And having been through this in 2013, when the Democrats did what is called the nuclear option, but where they repealed the filibuster for

judicial appointments below Supreme Court and executive appointments, everyone was against changing the rules up until Mitch McConnell decided that newly elected President Barack Obama would not be allowed to have a labor secretary, a EPA administrator, and any number of key judicial appointments, and Democrats changed the rules. And so we're going to focus on Manchin and Sinema and all of that. But ultimately, I think the reality about whether the filibuster comes or goes is going to be on Mitch McConnell. We can't just treat his obstruction as if it's a given, like it's gravity and it's up to Democrats to figure out how to fly.

How he approaches this, we'll decide. If he doesn't want the rules changed, then he's got to work in good faith with Democrats. And I think that is the – I mean that's the missed opportunity of Manchin and Sinema being unwilling to put a caveat in their remarks like Jon Tester did. But even with that, regardless of what they said right now, what happens when important COVID relief or we are six months from now and important things that need to get done are not getting done, a budget is being blocked because budget reconciliation is already gone. getting done. A budget is being blocked because budget reconciliation is already gone. The rubber is going to hit the road at some point. And I do believe Mitch McConnell cannot have his obstruction and the filibuster. He's going to have to pick between the two of them. Yeah. Well, so final thing to note in this poll before we go, probably the most disturbing, just 9% of Trump voters acknowledge that Biden won more votes. Nine percent. And it's a number that varies

by news source. Just three percent of OAN and Newsmax viewers think that Biden won more votes. Seventeen percent of Fox viewers think that Biden won. There's libs over there watching Fox. And 25 percent of Trump voters who consume at least one mainstream news source think Biden won. We saw the same split on support for Biden's rescue plan. Trump voters who watch Fox and mainstream sources support the rescue plan. OAN Newsmax viewers do not.

14% of the OAN Newsmax crowd is also favorable towards QAnon, though fortunately a majority of Trump voters haven't heard of QAnon, so small blessings. And then the last one, Mike Pence's approval rating among Republicans has gone from 90% favorable, 5% unfavorable

in our last pre-election poll in October to now 54% favorable, 27% unfavorable. Mike Pence was almost assassinated by an angry mob, survived it, and his approval rating is lower. A lot lower. Seems like the rise of Newsmax and OAN could make everything worse, huh? Yeah, it doesn't seem like they're going to have a positive contribution to American democracy. There is a question about whether this is a self-selection issue.

It always has been, right? Yeah. Are OAN and Newsmax radicalizing voters or radicalized voters turning to OAN and Newsmax? Because they've gotten their tolerance and appetite for the conspiracy theories, the white supremacy, the anger and hatred of Fox News just got so high that Hannity just wasn't doing it for him anymore. So they had to go find a stronger hit is I think part of it. Because up until a month, two months ago, these outlets had tiny audiences that were a tiny fraction of anything. And so they've grown because people got mad at Fox and went looking elsewhere.

And of course, Fox's response to that is to become more like OAN and Newsmax. Oh, yeah. Tucker the other night was defending QAnon. Hannity was out there spreading doubts about the vaccine, saying, oh, my friends tell me I shouldn't take the vaccine. Maybe I won't. Don't. You get tucked. Fox is getting worse. The existing primetime lineup is getting worse. They are adding more conspiracy nuts to the primetime lineup. And so they are clearly the Fox decision.

Fox's reaction to OAN and Newsmax taking their audience is we're going to continue to go after that audience by becoming even crazier, which is a very bad development. Whenever a party is divided, there's an opportunity for the opposition. And there is an opportunity here. And we see it in this polling, which is Trump voters who make less than $50,000 a year are much more favorable to Biden's economic agenda than Trump voters, overall Trump voters. 42% of Trump voters make under $50,000 a year, support the American Rescue Plan. 28% support the Student Debt Plan, and 29% support raising the minimum wage to $15.

What is interesting about this is Trump changed the Republican coalition by bringing in more working class voters, some of them new voters getting involved in politics for the same time, some were Obama 2012 voters that he brought over. It's one poll. It has to be explored much deeper. It could be a passing thing. But I do think that there is potentially an opportunity here for Democrats with a populist economic agenda to go win back some of those voters who were more attracted to Trump than the, that was a real, uh, drumpf, kefefi moment for me. Yeah, there you go. That was a resistance Twitter brain, uh, thing. RT, if you agree. Yeah. The, um, but there was an opportunity for Democrats to potentially go bring some of these voters back as with Trump gone, the Republican party has kept his racism, his conspiracy theories, his QAnon, all of that. But it looks more

corporatist and plutocratic than it did with Trump. He is a much better messenger for the quote-unquote American first agenda than any of these other Republicans that are standing out there, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Mitch McConnell, et cetera. And so there may be a role to go get some voters and bring them back into the fold by running on this populist economic agenda. Well, it's also interesting. It points to the possibility that some of the most, the fringiest, most radical Trump voters are the least economically anxious. Oh, yes. Which we saw in the attack on the Capitol, that a lot of the people who went to the Capitol that planned to go to the Capitol, that planned some of the events, were actually very wealthy Trump supporters.

Some of them took private jets. They took our private jets. And it is interesting that maybe, you know, despite the stereotypes and the people in the diners and all that, that some of the people who actually are struggling the most who voted for Trump might be more open to the Democratic agenda or to Joe Biden's agenda than some of the more extreme Trump supporters who were at the Capitol. So that just tells you a little. It does. We talk all the time in polling about the education divide, college versus non-college, you know, and all of that. I do think we also have to dig into the

income divide, too, and look at that. It's not just one singular factor that is the greatest predictor. We have to look at all of them and it differs. It's also more complicated than one single factor like that. Yeah. And geography too is a big one. Okay. When we come back, I will talk to Ezra Klein of the New York Times. I'm now joined by New York Times opinion writer and the author of Why We're Polarized, Ezra Klein. His new podcast, The Ezra Klein Show, launched this week. How you doing, man? I'm all right. How are you? I'm COVID good, is what I always say. Yeah, I'll take COVID good. I'm COVID good. How are you? I'm COVID good, is what I always say. Yeah, I'll take COVID good.

I'm COVID good. How's being a New York Times columnist? It's a trip. There's something very strange about writing a piece and then seeing that and your face at the New York Times. It imbues everything with an authority it probably doesn't deserve to have. I was talking to somebody, they're like, your work is so much better now. And I was like, no, no, my work isn't better. The font, the font is just much more authoritative. This is the same work I've always

been doing. No, now I read it now and there's a lot more authority behind it. So I'm- Yeah, don't I seem twice as old? Congratulations. You do. Yeah. Well, we're all, we're both old now. So you wrote a piece in The Times last week that I think everyone should read titled, Democrats, Here's How to Lose in 2022 and Deserve It. And your basic argument is that the biggest threat to democracy and the fastest path back to another Trump is ineffective, gridlocked government. Why do you think that is? So this is something that did not get well hashed out in the great economic anxiety versus racism

wars. But globally and historically, something that right wing populist authoritarian figures feed on is simply ineffective government is a sense that the government does not work, not just on behalf of the people, but really at all. And Terry, Moe and Howell have a great book on this. It's Presidents, Populism, and Something. But I quote it in the piece. But one of the points they make is simply take Donald Trump at his word. He came out and he said, I alone can fix it, right?

All these people are making these terrible deals. I think something, a lot of liberals got Donald Trump mediated through liberal media, right? And so what they mostly got was the most outrageous and often racist parts of his long rallies and everything. But if you went and listened to these whole hour, two hour riffs he did, a lot of it was about his claim to effectiveness, right? His claim as a businessman, as a guy who doesn't take shit from anybody, to be able to cut the deals that the current politicians who are selling you out couldn't. So it is really, really important, one, that people understand that as part of how he rose

to power, but two, that he did it in a context after the Obama years. You and me, we were there, you were doing it. I was covering in 2009, 2010, when a ton of legislation happened under Obama and the Democratic Congress. But then there was six years, six years, where almost no legislative progress was made, not literally none, but almost none. And that does create an inability to say to people credibly, if you are from that party, right, if you're Hillary Clinton running in 2016, elect me and things will change. We will make things happen differently. It really deprives you of an ability to run as a change candidate again, because if it wasn't changing under your administration, why will it change under you? Well, and also, I mean, I've thought about this for a long, long time because this is part of

the message that Obama ran on in 2008. Like the most compelling part of the argument, aside from, you know, it wasn't just bringing the country together for the sake of bringing the country together. It was bringing people together to sort of break the gridlock in Washington. And even in our polling, like the most potent part of the message was things aren't getting done in Washington. Washington is broken. And it is whether it's been captured by lobbyists, whether it's, you know, partisanship, whatever it may be, nothing's coming out of D.C. And so it certainly wasn't for a lack of trying on our part to try to get things done, because

we were very aware through both terms that like we were going to be judged and the sort of the stability of democracy depended on, at least that's what Obama believed, the stability of democracy depended on government actually delivering for people and making a tangible difference in their lives. But that is a very hard thing to accomplish in this political system. And in addition to that, one of the problems that Obama faced, and in a very real way, this is what I'm trying to write about, and the people I am trying to convince in this op-ed, we say the Democratic Party as if it is a singular entity. I'm sitting here talking into a microphone and a lamp, and they're one thing. I can pick the microphone up and I can put it down.

The Democratic Party is not one thing, particularly not in Congress, although not in the country either. And a really important question in how it functions is what are the constraints imposed on it, and for that matter, on its president, when it has a president, by the members who will cast the key hinge votes. So the Affordable Care Act is a different bill because Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman and Mary Landrieu and a couple other Democratic, Democratic, importantly, members of the U.S. Senate insisted that it could not have a public option. It is a different and worse bill. It is a different bill because a bunch of so-called moderate members said it had to be under a trillion dollars.

And so that led to this weird budget gimmick where it didn't start for four years because then its 10-year price tag would be under a trillion dollars. But that also meant the subsidies and the help was a lot less than it otherwise could have been. So one of the key things here is that Democrats who are in these key seats who think that the way to get reelected is to make things smaller and make them slower and cut them up and make them more complex, they got wiped out for the most part in 2010. There's still a couple people who fit that description around, and we can talk about

them. But one thing I'm really trying to push at these kinds of Democrats is this is a failed political theory. You have to come up with a different one. This idea that you will make everything a little bit worse, but you will survive the fact that nobody likes your party, that doesn't work in a world where there's a 94%, 94% correlation between how people vote for the Senate candidate and their presidential candidate. Well, the, the, the few Democrats in Congress who still believe that, like they are the whole problem right now. Like I was, I was trying to

think about a way to make this conversation something other than like two filibuster haters convincing each other how right we are because we've both been this is a call longer than me even yeah right well and i realized that that is part of the larger that's part of the problem of the larger debate over the filibuster like there's a lot of passionate choir preaching out there when it comes to the filibuster. And right now it seems like the only people that we really need to convince are Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema and like two or three other Senate Democrats. I mean, on one hand, I do think that is progress because, you know, people who are just paying attention to politics today might not see that as progress. But like the fact that Chris Coons and Michael Bennett and all these other Senate Democrats, John Tester left the door open, right? Like all these Senate Democrats who you never would have thought would have given any, uh, you would have ever agreed to get rid of the

filibuster or now at least open to it. But like, what do you, how do you convince mansion cinema, whoever else there may be that's still, uh, that's still resistant to this, if you're Chuck Schumer. Well, if I knew, they'd probably be convinced. But let me try to come at this from even a slightly different angle than the filibuster. I'm trying to say three things in this piece and with this line of argument. But it doesn't begin with a filibuster. Process and the way systems work reflect the outcomes you want to get from them. That's, I think, a really important point. And something I'm always trying to say to people is that there is a way we think a democracy, for whatever its rules are, should work, which is that the public elects people based on their agendas. Those agendas get passed or some rough facsimile of them get passed, then the public judges the results, and then they can throw the governing party out if they don't like them or bring them back if they do. And so just on a first round question, do people think that's how it should work instead of this weird way we do it now where the public votes for the agenda and the people they like

better? Those people may or may not take office depending on what happens in the electoral college or house gerrymandering, whatever it is, then those people probably can't govern even if they do take office. And then people fight about why nothing got done. So one, I just think it is important because I've watched this happen with Democrats before. I watched it happen through much of the Obama years. The Democrats take seriously the commitments they have made to the public as actual promises, that it is something that feels unacceptable to them to campaign to the public in a way that is lying to them, such that it will increase their disillusionment when the people they voted into office fail. If you run for office and you say, we all support a $15 minimum wage, and then you say,

well, we all did except for those three people. And so now you don't get anything. People are going to be disillusioned. They will not believe in you in the future. And so that's one reason why in this particular piece, I did frame things around this question of depriving populist authoritarians like Donald Trump from getting power again. I think something that the mansions of the world, the cinemas of the world really do believe in is that they are part of a project to protect liberal democracy. And something that the mansions of the world, the cinemas of the world really do believe in, is they are part of a project to protect liberal democracy. And something that Howell and Moe talk about is that a very common conceptual mistake that, quote unquote, normal political figures make after defeating a would-be authoritarian is because they see themselves as defenders of the

system, they snap back to defending the very kinds of dysfunction and ineffectiveness that gave the authoritarian power in the first place. They leave being upset about the fact that the system doesn't work for you to authoritarians, thinking that somehow they need to be the opposite of the authoritarian in all ways. And it's really the opposite, that in the aftermath of a near-death for American democracy experience like Donald Trump, what you do is not revert to your pre-Donald Trump understanding of the status quo. What you need to do is try to think about what led somebody like him to get power and knowing that the party that, by the way, in the House, a majority of

them voted to overturn the election, the party that still reflects Trumpism and will reflect it only more in the years to come, they have this electoral advantage in the House, this huge electoral advantage in the Senate, in the Electoral College. And as such, you cannot let them quickly come back into power. They need to be defeated after this for some period of time. And the only way to do that, or at least one of the only ways to do that, is to actually do the things that you promised people would do when they chose you in a landslide margin over the other party. And if you don't, then you are opening the door back up. I know. The idea that the response to Trump and what has happened to politics is that we've got to try harder to work together with

the other side is so deeply ingrained, right? Like it's something that, you know, I've been yelling about for years, but like Manchin told the New York Times back in November, like, I don't know why anyone was surprised by what Manchin said this week about not getting, wanting to get rid of the filibuster. Back in November, he did an interview with the Times and he said that ending the filibuster would break the Senate, that the minority should have input or else the Senate would just become a glorified house. We've heard that argument before. And then he was specifically asked, well, what if there was a badly needed coronavirus stimulus package and Republicans won't make a deal? Would

you at least make an exception for that? And he said, no, if we can't come together, God help us. Chuck Schumer can work with anyone. He'll be able to work with Mitch. Like, I don't, I assume that that is coming from a good faith place with Joe Manchin. Like, I think Joe Manchin genuinely believes that. And I don't know how you disabuse him of that notion when it's not just like Manchin's coming up with that idea on his own. Like, that's also a lot of the mainstream media has that view. Like, the Times had an editorial today where they're like, don't sign so many executive orders, Joe Biden, like work with other people on stuff. And I'm just like, well, you guys know what's going on here. You witnessed the last four years. Like I don't know how we sort of move past that way of thinking.

So I think there are a couple of things here. You've probably seen this a lot over the years, but it was over time something I came to realize and that influences my thinking very, very heavily. The worst guides to the dynamics of Congress are members of Congress. Oh, yeah, for sure. And that is because they experience everyone else in Congress as individuals. because they experience everyone else in Congress as individuals. And as individuals, they seem really, really, really reasonable until they cast that vote at the end of the day. I have never covered like any major issue where at the beginning, it didn't seem like you could get a lot of compromise. I mean, my God, like the Lucy and the football dynamics of the Affordable Care Act, where, you know, right up until basically the end, Chuck Grassley was saying

the individual mandate can get support from both parties. Obama wrote about that in his book. Yeah, he was just right about that. And so, but one thing to take it very seriously is that one of the things that is, that fools a guy like Joe Manchin, and fools may be too strong a word here, but one way he experiences Congress differently than I do is he spends a lot of time with his counterparts on the Republican side. And I spend some time with them.

I'm a reporter. I talk to them. And everybody is more reasonable when they are talking to you than when they are voting. Like, everybody. And something that really, really parts me from Senator Manchin is I have come to the view that even if you believe it is really important to have minority input on bills, and I'm not sure I actually think it is important. The way other systems work doesn't work that way, but nevertheless, let's say it is. The filibuster makes it worse. The core thing that people need

to get about this is that the great myth in American governance is that bipartisanship, myth in American governance is that bipartisanship, bipartisan input, is something the minority wants and the majority has to be incentivized to offer, when it is precisely the reverse. Bipartisanship is something the majority wants, the minority has to be heavily incentivized to offer, because the majority is really helped by bipartisanship. If you can pass a bill and it's got a huge bipartisan backing, then you can run around the country and say, you're great at governing and you should be reelected. And then you get reelected and the minority loses even more seats. I mean, you're really asking them to act against interests, which, by the way, is why other systems don't work like this, because it's a crazy way to set up incentives.

But the minority is every incentive to sabotage the majority. So if they are going to play ball, they need real incentives to do so. The filibuster is an incentive in the other direction. It gives them this capacity. You can imagine an incentive list where number one is you want to get reelected and number two is you want to get the majority back. If you let them kill bills, it lets them possibly get the majority back by sabotaging you. If they can't kill bills, at least to get reelected, maybe they need to show they're getting something done and participate on bills in order to get earmarks, pork, you know, things they need in the bills. Like at least it creates a constructive channel.

But the filibuster creates a channel for them to get the majority back by simply killing everything. So it does not incentivize compromise. It incentivizes sabotage. I mean, Dan and I were just talking about this before we started this interview. killing everything. So it does not incentivize compromise. It incentivizes sabotage. I mean, Dan and I were just talking about this before we started this interview. Like, we, they just, Rand Paul forced a vote where they could only get five Republican senators to say that a trial was constitutional for the guy who incited a mob that almost killed them and their colleagues. And yet we think we're going to pick off 10 of them to work on a COVID relief plan. Like, I don't. And here's the thing, like,

you were saying this earlier, like, I hate saying, like, Democrats have to be better about this, or Democrats have to do this, because you think Democrats, and it's like, we've actually come a long way. Like, the Biden White House is probably more, despite all of his rhetoric on unity and bipartisanship, I think the Biden White House as a whole is more clear-eyed about this than we were in the Obama White House because they learned the lessons that we did. I think that our caucus is far more progressive and far more clear-eyed than it's ever been in the Senate. And of course, I think the House is in a great place too. So we've actually made huge strides. But like the real fear I have is one that you voiced, which is like, if the entire agenda is held up because Joe Manchin and Kyrsten

Sinema decide not to eliminate the filibuster, like voters aren't going to get that it's their fault. Voters are going to say like, fuck, the Democrats just didn't do anything again and they didn't pass anything and they didn't improve my life. And so, yeah, maybe I'll take a listen to the next populace. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And by the way, I will say that I think Manchin and Sinema are out there taking some heat for others who want to be quieter. But we're both in California. The senior senator from California, Dianne Feinstein, has also come out this way, which

I think is an embarrassment, frankly. How many more do you think there are besides Feinstein? I think the question is not, it's always hard to tell where people's bottom lines are, if they would fold under pressure. That is where I think the Democratic Party, as you say, moving dramatically on this issue matters, because pressure can get people to do things they wouldn't otherwise want to do, or that's not their first choice in doing it. A lot of the people we've talked about, they've been persuaded over time, this is not where they started. Michael Bennett was a huge opponent of doing anything on the filibuster for many, many, many years. And I think he's moved a lot on that issue. So have a

bunch of them. The Democratic Party, though, has everything you say about it, it has to start from the simple fact that the Democratic Party is behind the eight ball in American politics. In the Senate, there is a six to seven point advantage for Republicans because the kind of median Senate state is six to seven points to the right of the median voter. So Democrats have to win these huge landslides, the 50-50 majority, I'm sorry, the 50-50 split in the Senate right now. The 50 Democrats represent 41 million people, 41 million more than the 50 Republicans, 41 million. In the House, the number is not that big, but it's quite large. And then obviously, the Electoral College could have flipped with

a shift of 40,000 votes, even as Joe Biden won by 7 million votes. So the Democratic Party is in a way that is historically unprecedented, really, really disadvantaged by the way American politics weights geography. So then the problem is that the hinge senator, your Manchins, your Sinemas, et cetera, if Democrats had power in relationship to their votes, Joe Manchin would not be the last Democrat. There would be eight Democrats there who could be that 51st vote. And the issue right now is Joe Manchin. And I do want to say, I give him credit on this. Joe Manchin is doing something incredibly difficult in American politics, which almost no one is able to do, which is remaining a Democrat from an extraordinarily red state. There are very few of those people out there right now. And the Democratic majority would not exist without Joe

Manchin. So he has some idea. He only won by three points in 2018 after winning by a lot more than that in the last several years. Like he you know, I don't know that Joe Manchin gets elected again in 2024 from West Virginia. And I think he probably knows that. Yeah. And so when I think about him, I think of two things. One is that I do still think it is more likely he gets elected if Democrats are seen as governing well rather than poorly. Nobody cares about whether or not the filibuster exists. And then number two, look, even if you didn't get reelected, at least you did something, right? I mean, some political scientists, and I love my political scientists, have come back at me and said, well, you know, like it actually isn't always true that passing good policy is good politics. And I know, like I've, I've like, I've, I've read the

policy feedback literature too, but you know what, if you do it and you get like, you get knocked out of office or you don't get the majority back next time, at least you helped a lot of people rather than losing and not helping a lot of people. That would look that that was Obama's thought when it looked like the ACA was gonna die and and rom and everyone was like you're gonna lose in 2012 if you keep pushing this monstrous bill and it's gonna be bad and blah blah blah and he was like if i lose i lose like then like i promised i would try to do health care and that and i'm not gonna like put my approval rating up on a shelf and admire it like i'm just gonna do it which is also partly why i thought to myself like joe manchin's gotta look at this seat and gotta think about 2024 and think like am i really

gonna win again in west virginia like why don't i just help like you can tell the guy genuinely wants to help people in west virginia from what he's saying unless you're just a really good liar but like i believe that he does um you know people like cinema i i sort of wonder even a little bit more because i'm like she's in a pretty competitive state that is turning bluer. I don't quite know where her resistance is coming from. But like, let's say Manchin and Sinema don't budge for a while, but we still have a White House, a House and most of a Senate that want to do a lot to help people fast in these next two years. What does that look like to you? And do you think do you think it could be enough to sort of avoid a disaster in 2022? Let me come back to the disaster in 2022 question, because that's actually harder than the first part. So the first thing to say here is that

budget reconciliation is going to be everything. And you guys have talked about this on the show, but the very quick version is budget reconciliation is this weird process from the 1974 budget act which created a fast track approval process to reconcile budgets between the house and the senate then somebody realized you could just put anything in that process um and that would get around the filibuster but you can only use it once a year there's some there's some static around that but i think that's basically right so then the senate did this new thing they they created a set of constraints on it called the Byrd Rule. So anything that goes through budget reconciliation has got to be mainly about taxing and spending.

And it can increase deficits outside of 10 years. Okay. And it can't touch Social Security. So one is that you can do quite a lot there on economics. So a lot of other things you can't. So one of my big concerns is I think democracy promotion and democracy deepening is really important. House Democrats have H.R.1. Democrats have S.R.1, the For the People Act. It's a great bill. It cannot go through budget reconciliation. It will be filibustered immediately. So that's one thing you can't do. But you can, say, do checks through budget reconciliation. You could expand the child tax credit to budget reconciliation. You could do great things on health care through budget reconciliation. You could do great things on health care through budget reconciliation. But the other thing you could do if your mansions and cinemas don't want to vote to get rid of the filibuster, but do want to actually get things done. The way budget reconciliation works is you do something and then let's say that it doesn't fit. Right. It's not about taxing and spending. So somebody raises a point of order and then the parliamentarian rules and advises a vice president and like, OK, like that's that's the end of that. You could vote to overrule the point of order, right? You could just vote to say, nope, we actually think this fits in budget reconciliation. And what the Republicans are going to run on.

This was abusive of the budget reconciliation process in a way us putting and we're drilling and tax cuts. What like nobody cares. So one thing you could do is use budget reconciliation and expand its boundaries. This is, I should say, Bernie Sanders is very explicit plan. It's what he talked about in the campaign. Yeah, that's why I remember interviewing him about the filibuster and feeling I didn't understand why Bernie, of all people, was so for keeping the filibuster. But he had this whole budget reconciliation, overrule the parliamentarian plan that sounds very complex, but really isn't. Like you said,

like the way this works is, all right, $15 minimum wage. Does it affect the budget or not? Let's try. Let's throw it in with the rest of the COVID relief pill. Someone raises a point of order. Parliamentarian says, no, it doesn't fit. Kamala Harris says, yeah, it does. And then that's that. Then it goes in. And then there's got to be a vote because they can do the thing. But if Democrats are willing to vote for it, they can do quite a lot through there. And as weird as it sounds, if you are a listener and you're like, John and Ezra sound like they're explaining something completely ludicrous. This is a crazy way for something to work. You are right. If you feel like you have gotten drunk and left earth, that is correct. This is not the way you should run a government. I really do not

like any of these outcomes. But the Senate does stuff like this all the time. I mean, budget reconciliation being used in any way the way it is now is this, right? This is not – budget reconciliation is not for any of this, but the Republicans do it. The Democrats do it. So the Senate has a tendency to not solve problems directly, but instead to come up with unbelievably complex ways of working around them sometimes indirectly. So this would be really fitting. I always say gridlock.

You're in LA. I always say gridlock is a very apt metaphor because when things get gridlocked, it's not that nobody goes anywhere. You start taking really weird side street shortcuts that are not shortcuts and that are very inefficient and use up a lot of gas. And that's the way we legislate now. It's gridlocked, so we do all this weird stuff on side streets, but it's better than not doing anything at all.

I do want to make one other just quick point though on policy construction, because it's not just that they need to get rid of the filibuster, but, and I know how much you want to talk about this, but they need the stuff they do to be simple and to help people fast before 2022. That's part of not having a disaster in 2022. You mean like not giving people tax cuts and having them show up by like changing the withholding tables

and your checks like we did in the Recovery Act? Yeah, exactly. So make and work pay was designed to be invisible, right? Don't do that. Checks are a great example here. You can do a lot on healthcare that happens really quickly. Obamacare did actually,

the political theory behind it that it would eventually become popular was true, but it took a long time because the bill took a long time to give benefits. Do things that are quick that people feel and that they can trace back to government for a very, I think this is a super important point that people underplay. For a very long time, in order to get bipartisan support, Democrats have preferred doing private public hybrid options where the government is doing something, but in a way that it looks like the private sector is doing it, like the government is spending money to get

people health insurance, but it's being done in this complicated way through private insurance systems. Do not do that. You cannot, you cannot govern in the way meant to get Republican support if you cannot get Republican support, because then you're just getting really bad things into your bill that are complex and make people not like the government and make it hard for things to be used. But you're also not getting the bipartisan cover. So then Chuck Grassley turns around and says your individual mandate is unconstitutional. And now you've got Chuck Grassley's program and Chuck Grassley's criticisms. Like, don't do that. Be simple, fast, big. Yeah. And look, is it going too far for Donald Trump to like sign the checks,

the stimulus checks? Yes, of course. But honestly, like that's the like you do. I do think Democrats forget once we're governing to like sufficiently advertise that the benefits we deliver are coming from the leadership in charge. Like every time I would drive around in 2010, 11 and see a construction project and there was like a little recovery acting on it, like should have been like a big picture of Barack Obama or something when a road is finished or a bridge is finished. You know, like I do think that they need to Democrats need to spend more time connecting the dots for people because people don't don't see government in their lives often. No, they don't. And and one, just rebuilding that is important. And I will say something that I think is important and makes this a very different period

than 2009 to 2010 is the Biden administration has the ability to more directly make a government operation part of people's lives and a massive improvement of lives through the vaccine program, through the vaccine rollout than any administration since the major war, right? I mean, they could have FEMA and National Guard operations operating everywhere doing 24-7 vaccination sites. And at the end of that, you can hug your family again, right? I mean, nobody comes into office with this kind of ability to use the power of the government to actually make lives better. So that's going to be something they can do without that much congressional help and how they do it is really going to matter. But yes, you need to rebuild

the connection between people and the government. Look, we're talking a lot about the Democratic Party, but I will just say that one reason this is important is American politics is not going to function without a more sensible and real Republican Party. And one way you push the Republican Party into some level of reform is Democrats have to compete against it harder. They have a handicap against them. It's really, really hard, but they cannot give the Republican Party inches it has not earned. And creating complex, slow-moving programs where people do not feel the government moves in their lives quickly and is helpful, it allows Republicans to continue demonizing the government, right?

Like you go back to like the old Bill Clinton, the era of big government is over. Somebody was tweeting the other day that the era of the era of big government is over, is over. And like, this is a moment like people are really seeing it is scary when the government cannot help you and you need it. Joe Biden comes into office at a time that is unlike any since the New Deal, World War II, maybe a couple other small exceptions, where he can make clear that the government is there to help you when you need it and you need them there when you need it.

And that's a pretty big opportunity. It's a big opportunity. And just to close it all out, it might be the last opportunity, partly because the way the House map is, the Senate map, the Electoral College getting worse, like all of this stuff is getting to a point where I actually do believe that if we don't use the opportunity we have now in these next two years or four years, we might find ourselves governing in a minority or at least operating in a political system that gives an undue advantage to the minority, a party that's

governing to minority for many, many years to come, which is a problem. This is 100% true. This is also, I will, I know I'm just going back to preaching the choir on the filibuster here, but this is why democracy reform is important. It just is. Democrats are in a position where if they just let the current trends take over, it doesn't, like they are going to be asked to win by such unrealistic margins. They're going to be either semi-permanently in the minority, or they're going to permit

a Republican Party, which is true for Trump's Republican Party, that could never compete for a majority of the public, to win with an ethno-nationalist appeal to a minority of the public. And that's a really dangerous place to be in. Whereas if you get rid of the filibuster or you create some other pathway and you pass things like H.R.1 and S.R.1, you give statehood to D.C., which it richly deserves because that is the right thing to do, not because it is a power grab. You at least offer statehood to Puerto Rico, give them self-determination.

Maybe they choose it, maybe they don't. But you can do a lot to create a fair playing field. And you know what? This seems like the most obvious thing to say, but for the party with democracy basically in its name, democracy is a good system and making sure we live in one is a worthwhile and principled political goal. I mean, I've been saying this since like right after John Lewis died, thinking like, you know, rename it the John Lewis, John Lewis Civil Rights Act and let McConnell, let the Republicans filibuster that. Let that be the one that they filibuster. Make them go to the

floor, filibuster the John Lewis voting rights bill or democracy reform. We'll put all these different democracy reforms in the bill. And H.R. 1 now is sort of beefed up from what it was. And make that be the one that we break the filibuster on. Because like that is probably you probably get the get the most emotional punch from that. And it probably will be the easiest for people to understand that they're actually filibustering a desire to make voting easier. Yeah. And to get money out of politics and to do a bunch of things. It isn't even that any of these ideas would fix all the problems. Like if you added DC and Puerto Rico to states, the Senate would still have a big pro-Republican bias.

Like it would still be not an even fight over there, but it would matter. And so this is like maybe in the end analysis, like what I would say to the mansions and the cinemas of the world. Like they are consigning themselves to the minority in the future. They are consigning the voters who have put their faith in them, like who have put their faith in them to make their lives better, to not having that trust returned. I understand for how long politicians have operated, putting first the aesthetics and performance of a small d democratic political system before the actual work and conflict necessary to get it.

small d democratic political system before the actual work and conflict necessary to get it. But to those who prefer like the decorum of a political system to actual democracy, like I don't think that is a moral standpoint. And I don't think it is how Senator Sinema or Senator Manchin like think of themselves, but it is what they are doing. Like they are consigning the voters who trusted them to powerlessness or to a system that is not going to represent them unnecessarily. There is no, there is no reason for this and there is no defense of it. Well, I'm sure they're listening to this and we just changed their mind. So mission accomplished. Ezra Klein from the New York Times, thank you so much for joining. Everyone check out Ezra's podcast, The Ezra Klein Show, launched with the New York Times this week. And pick up his book,

Why We're Polarized. Outstanding book. Thanks for joining. Thank you. Always a pleasure. Thanks to Ezra for joining us today. And everyone have a good weekend. We will see you next week.

Bye, everyone. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our associate producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somenator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Caroline Rustin, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Narmal Konian,

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