Pod Save America - “Green Eggs and Covid Relief Plan."

Episode Date: March 11, 2021

Republicans respond to vaccine funding and $1400 check with Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head, Donald Trump fights with the Republican Party over the use of his name, and Democrats worry about what their 2020 performance among some Black and Latino voters might mean for the 2022 midterms.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/podsaveamerica. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include which podcast you would like.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's pod, we talk about why the Republican response to vaccine funding and $1,400 checks is Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head, why Donald Trump is fighting with the Republican National Committee over the use of his name, and why some Democratic strategists are worried that the party's 2020 performance among some Latino and Black voters may spell trouble for the 2022 midterms. Two quick notes before we get started. Crooked's new sports podcast, Take Line,

premieres on Tuesday, March 16th. Each week, Emmy award-winning host Jason Concepcion and two-time WNBA champion and Atlanta Dream co-owner Renee Montgomery will host a fast, funny, smart, thoughtful conversation about sports, culture, politics, and all the ways they intersect on and off the court. There's so much fun to listen to. It's going to be your new favorite show.

Go subscribe right now. Do you feel like a sense of inadequacy whenever you read Renee's bio in these pitches? Yeah, like it's like, you know, two-time WNBA champion and, oh, now I also co-own a basketball team. Yeah. It's like, oh, chief speechwriter, former communications director. That was cool for a minute. Also, I have to say Jason's pretty lucky that he won that Emmy because otherwise, you know, it's tough to keep up. That's right.

Tough to keep up. All right. While you're at it, be sure to subscribe and listen to What A Day. All right. While you're at it, be sure to subscribe and listen to What A Day. 20 minutes of all the news you need to know every morning, packed full of funny, witty insight from Akilah Hughes and Gideon Resnick. It is fantastic. It should be your morning news show. Go check it out and subscribe if you haven't already. All right. Let's get to the news. Now that President Biden is set to sign and then sell the incredibly popular American Rescue Plan,

you may be wondering what kind of arguments congressional Republicans are making to explain their unanimous opposition to the legislation. Well, we've had some performative deficit hypocrisy. We've heard it's a payoff to progressives, even though red states are getting just as much money and half of all Republican voters support the bill. But what Republicans and right wing media have spent the most time arguing over the last few weeks is this. Let's talk about Dr. Seuss. Dr. Seuss. Dr. Seuss. Dr. Seuss. Dr. Seuss. Dr. Seuss. Dr. Seuss. Dr. Seuss. Dr. Seuss. Dr. Seuss. Dr. Seuss. Dr. Seuss. Dr. Seuss. Dr. Seuss. So that's a that's a super cut from our friends at Media Matters about how Fox News has been handling this terrible controversy. It's also been on the mind of several Republican politicians. Here's a clip from CPAC. Look out, Mr. Potato Head. You're next. I'm sorry. I think now he's going by Potato X. There is nothing the radical left won't cancel. Hasbro now wants a gender neutral Mr. Potato Head.

These are the issues of our times, folks. And the minority leader of the House, Kevin McCarthy, who should be leading the opposition to the American Rescue Plan since this whole caucus voted against it, you'd think this would be on his mind. Here's what he had to say. I will eat them with a mouse. And I will eat them here and there, saying, I'll eat them anywhere. I do so like green eggs and ham thank you thank you sam i am enjoy your day enjoy your day is so funny um so i originally wanted to avoid this nonsense uh but it is the Republican message.

Media Matters found that Fox News spent over four hours in one week on Mr. Potato Head, Dr. Seuss, and Biden's Neanderthal comments. They spent just a few minutes on a $1.9 trillion piece of legislation. So, you know, if they want to go nuts, let's go nuts. Dan, why are all the woke libs ripping toys and books from the hands of America's children? I think you're buying the premise of the argument with that question. Keep them in Dr. Seuss books, Dan. Well, do you want to talk about the specifics of these faux controversies or the broader themes of them? Do you want to talk about the specifics of these faux controversies or the broader themes of them? I think we should start with very quickly going over the specifics of the controversies.

I do not want to dwell on them, but I do think like I was one person who was not paying much attention to either of these controversies and just heard Republicans screaming about Mr. Potato Head and Dr. Seuss getting canceled. And then as I dug in, unfortunately, into the details of the controversy, realized that most of what they're saying isn't even true. So we should probably start there. All right. All right, well, let's start with the potato head issue. And so Hasbro announced. We start Pod Save America in 2017 to fight Trumpism. Fast forward to March of 2021.

Let's start with the potato head issue. Well, as I get here, this is directly tied to Trumpism. So stay tuned, people. I know, I know, it is. The potato head issue is particularly dumb because Hasbro for years has sold a Mr. Potato Head and a Mrs. Potato Head. The potatoes available in those sets were identical. They look like potatoes, and they came with a different set of accessories. Now they are moving towards a simple potato head to which you could dress with either set of accessories.

And just they are lopping off the Mr. part in this just one potato head. Hard to explain why this is happening. Hard to explain why people like Ted Cruz care, but basically an elimination of redundancy. But also, I mean, just to be clear, there's still such a thing as a Mr.

Potato head and a Mrs. Potato head. Those still exist. You can get a Mr. Potato head. You can get a Mrs. Potato head. The larger brand is just going to be called Potato Head.

That's it. That's the only change. Yes. And this is important to tie this to a larger Republican strategic objective, which is a very aggressive, bigoted campaign against the trans community. That's what that's what that is. What is at the core of the Potato Head issue? The Dr. Seuss issue is even dumber. The short version is the corporation that owns the copyright and publishes the book,

that runs the Dr. Seuss business, that publishes the books, that licenses the characters for movies and TV and toys, decided to stop publishing six of his many books because of very clearly racist imagery. This has been a conversation we've been having for a very long time. The Republican response to this was to buy all of the Dr. Seuss books in protest of the people who, quote unquote, banned Dr. Seuss, therefore buying them from the people who made the decision to stop publishing these books and giving them more money. This is very similar to when they broke other Keurigs. It's a very similar sort of self-owned. But this is not – the Biden administration did not ban these books. The Hollywood elite did not ban these books. What we believe to be the Dr. Seuss

heirs decided to stop publishing six of his books that they believed, and many people agree, contained blatantly racist imagery. Books go in and out of publication all the time. That is not cancel culture. That is book banning. You can agree with it, disagree with it. There are some more complicated conversations about how you deal with books that have racist imagery, complicated histories. But this is not 1984. No. And again, Dr. Seuss has published like dozens of books, hundreds of books. We're talking about six books, six of his like lesser known books, by the way.

Can you still get Cat in the Hat? You can. Can you still get Green Eggs and Ham? Absolutely. Can you still get The Grinch Who Stole Christmas? A hundred percent. But there are six books that, and look, this is not like borderline cases here. These are, when you look into it, they are very racist images in those books,

which Dr. Seuss' estate decided on their own, they're not gonna publish. That's it. That's all that happened. That's all that we're dealing with. Huge controversy, Huge controversy. So before we talk about sort of like what effect this might have, whether this is politically effective or not, or all that, like, I'll talk about why Republicans are doing this. This is not how Republicans responded to the Recovery Act. It's not how they responded to the Recovery Act.

It's not how they responded to the Affordable Care Act back in the Obama era. In both of those cases, they made arguments that were at least loosely based on policy about government doing too much, government spending too much, government giving away too much to people who they believed were undeserving. Why do you think they aren't doing that now? Are Republicans focusing on culture wars and identity politics because they know how popular the American Rescue Plan is? Or do you think they'd be picking these fights regardless of the plan's popularity? It's a little bit of both. I think there are three things that make 2021 different than 2009. One, and perhaps more important than anything else, is that Joe Biden is a white man from Scranton, Pennsylvania,

and he is not Barack Hussein Obama from Hawaii via Indonesia. Right. That is the, the, so that's part one. We should say just on part one, that is not just us saying that like um a lot of conservatives have even been saying it like cpac and at trump rallies they can't sell merch making fun of joe biden they can't get people whipped up about him they can't get people really angry about him they're trying to sell anti-biden merch they can't do. They're still selling anti-Hillary stuff and Obama stuff because they can't get their own base to be that angry with older, moderate, white guy, Joe Biden. And it's not because Biden is more popular than Obama was then. Obama's approval ratings at this point in his presidency were 10 to 12 points higher than

Biden's. Biden's are still incredibly high. They're above 50%. They're very good. Politics is more polarized now. So there's a little bit of apples and oranges comparison, but it's not like Obama was this very divisive, unpopular president. I mean, he was incredibly popular. He just, the Republican base was more fired up about him for the reason we just said than they are about Joe Biden. Point number two is the American rescue plan is much more popular broadly and with Republicans than the Recovery Act was. The American Rescue Plan is polling north of 70% prior to passage. At the exact same time, the 2009 Recovery Act was polling 52%. And you have

upwards of half of Trump voters supporting the American Rescue Plan. So it's harder to pick a fight on that when half of your voters like it. And the third reason is that Republicans are divided. And we talked about this in previous podcasts, but there is a long history of political science research and common sense showing that cultural issues unite the Republican Party and divide Democrats, while economic issues unite Democrats and divide Republicans. And you have a very popular economic package on the plan that is incredibly divisive to Republicans. So they're going to talk about the thing that unites them, which are these cultural issues like, quote unquote, cancel culture.

I also think, you know, in the Obama years, sort of the central dividing line between the parties was this debate over the size and role of government, right? That was ostensibly what the Tea Party was about. We started talking about deficits and debt the whole time. This is what the entire 2012 election was about between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, makers and takers. This was the Paul Ryan thing. I think Republicans have essentially lost that argument. And in some cases, they've abandoned it, right? Like the Paul Ryan wing of the party does not have the same power influence it once had, not even close. And Trump does not really give a shit about the size and role of government. He's not

that kind of conservative, nor are a lot of the Trumpiest politicians. And the fact that, you know, Donald Trump passed a $2.2 trillion rescue package when he was president and also passed another huge tax cut and didn't care about the deficits much. Like, he doesn't care as much about that debate. The Republicans also have more of a working class base than they had before. So the idea that they're going to be the party that just pushes unpopular tax cuts for the rich and unpopular tax cuts for big corporations and cutting regulations that could protect air and water and stuff like that, like it's they know that it is those those policies aren't as popular, even though there's a lot of congressional Republicans like Mitch McConnell still pushing that shit, which we'll talk about.

But that doesn't really animate the party anymore. And they have sort of lost that debate over the size and role of government. And so therefore, all they have now are these cultural issues and not just cultural issues, but really it's it's identity. Right. Like politics has become for them pure identity. And I think the best example of this was in 2020, the Republican Party didn't even put out a policy platform. The policy platform was just whatever Donald Trump wants us to do. Your identity as a Republican voter is being for Donald Trump. It is not about your preference for a certain number of policy issues at all anymore. I think you're correct that sort of the debate about size of government has shifted in the decade since Obama passed the Recovery Act. And being in the middle of a pandemic

has also affected that because people have become, more people have become in more need of help from the government, whether that is financial help, that's a relief check, that's a shot. But every debate about size of government and deficits ultimately boils down to a debate about the redistribution of taxpayer dollars and political power from white people to non-white people. Ronald Reagan grew the government while it was on the defense side, but while arguing about welfare queens, which was a racist stereotype and a false and racist stereotype, that it's just easier to make that argument when it's Barack Obama at the front of it. And I just think that has to be understood in this. So that's one. Two,

the core elements of the Republican Party since Richard Nixon and the civil rights movement are shared victimhood and restorative nostalgia. And that's what this is about. Shared victimhood. This is about other, quote unquote, others, elites, non-white people coming to affect your life and to take your power away, to say the things that you care about, like these totems of a different era in America, Mr. slash Mrs. Potato Head and Dr. Seuss, are being taken away from you. And that is a proxy for the idea that as the country becomes more diverse, political power is shifting away from

the people who have always had it, white Christian men. And the Republicans, that's what Make America Great Again is. It's a restorative and salvage this idea that we are going to bring you back to that period. And that has always been their strength. And that is where they are trying to go. Whether it'll work or not is an open question we'll discuss, I think, a lot over the next couple of years. But that is what is at the core of cancel culture defined broadly. It's also, this is sort of a subtle difference, but it's not just about what's being taken away from you. Like they are, so like you said, they are trying to fuel grievance and resentment against elites, not just elites with economic power, but with cultural

influence, right? So they want to tell you that like these libs in the media and academia and corporate America now in Hollywood are canceling Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head because they think that your tastes and your beliefs and your traditions are racist and sexist and bigoted. who has read Dr. Seuss to your children or has a Dr. Seuss books or remember Dr. Seuss from your childhood, they want to tell you that liberals think you're racist because of that. And they will cancel, you know, see how they're canceling the books? They're going to come for you next if you dare say that you like a Dr. Seuss books. And so they want people, it's not just even about their own base anymore. They're now broadening it to anyone and saying if you like anything or have ever liked anything that the elite now decide in retrospect as time has gone on as we've all learned and grown decide is racist in nature has racial themes then you too are racist and they are calling you racist and that is sort of

i think the driving power of their argument, or at least what they think it is. Yeah, that makes sense. Now, the question is, do you think it has any appeal beyond the base? Obviously, this fires up the Republican base. Like, that is obvious. We know that. But does it have any appeal beyond the base? And does it need to for it to work, I guess, which are sort of two different questions. I don't believe it has appeal beyond the base, but it serves two functions that could potentially inure to the benefit of the Republicans in 2022 and beyond. Midterm elections are turnout elections. And so if this fires up the base, that is good.

That helps them win. So that's part one. Part two is it unites the Republican Party, which they need to do. They are divided and they are divided on a whole host of pretty fundamental areas. As you pointed out, there is an irreconcilable tension between a mostly working class base that has some populist economic leanings and a party leadership that is plutocratic and corporatist in nature and is funded by big corporations. That tension does not survive a conversation about the minimum wage. It does survive a conversation on a whole host of cultural issues with racial and misogynistic undertones.

So in that sense, it is useful. And the other thing it does is it blots out the sun. The right-wing media has a giant megaphone. We are talking about this. There's a lot of self-analysis about why we are talking about it, but it moves the conversation off of other things. And that is also of benefit to them when they are losing the argument by a pretty large margin on a whole bunch of other more relevant issues like the American Rescue Plan itself and just the general pace of vaccinations and the way President Biden is handling the COVID pandemic in ways that Donald Trump did not. Yeah, I would love to see some focus groups on this, particularly of people who've switched parties in recent elections and people who've switched between voting and not voting. So these kind of like uncommitted partisans.

And there's a couple of things you have to unpack with with these issues. One is like, is this information getting to people sort of through the funhouse mirror of conservative media, right? So, A, do people think about these issues in terms of, oh, I heard all of Dr. Stooges' books are getting canceled and Mr. Potato Head is going away, right? Because we need like a woker Potato Head or whatever it is. So, first of all, what they're hearing about the issue isn't necessarily true because it's coming at them through all the lies that Fox produces. So that's number two. Even if they agree with the Republicans on these issues, are they voting issues? So if there's a voter who says, yeah, I agree that cancel culture shouldn't come for Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head or whatever, but I care more about

a higher minimum wage and the rescue plan, So I'm going to vote with the Democrats. So it would be interesting to see both how these issues break through to people, what their views are on the issues and how much salience they attach to these issues. So are they actual voting issues? And the other question too is, is it any one of these issues that drives vote or is it sort of a larger worldview where you're living in a small town somewhere and the Republicans and Fox News get you to think that people in big cities just don't give a shit about you? Not just your economic interests, but like your culture, your way of life. They think they know better. They think you're dumb. They think you're racist. They think you're Neanderthal. And that's how blue America on the coast thinks about

small towns. Right. And in all of these issues, Dr. Seuss potato head are just another sort of proof point in that larger narrative. And does that larger narrative actually have some power in those smaller towns is a question I would love to know. Yeah, We need to see research, but a lot of Trump's success in 2016 is related to his ability to sell that latter narrative you just had. And that's the magic that they're trying to recapture. And it is very consistent with how Richard Nixon won in 68, 1972. It is very core to Ronald Reagan's message in 1980. This is this is we like to think these things are all new and that Donald Trump reinvented the Republican wheel. But it is Donald Trump is much closer to the standard Republican politician in terms of message and narrative than is comfortable for a lot of people to deal with. And last question on this before we move on.

How, if at all, should President Biden and Democrats respond to this cancel culture bullshit? So far, Joe Biden has studiously avoided talking about Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head. Imagine that. But, you know, this is going to keep coming up. I'm sure it'll come up in the 2022 midterms. I'm sure Biden will continue to get asked about it. So will Democrats. How do you think we should respond?

terms. I'm sure Biden will continue to get asked about it. So will Democrats. How do you think we should respond? There are two elements to this answer that are different for various participants. John Anzalone, who is Joe Biden's pollster, who was Barack Obama's pollster, and is really in his expertise as winning in red states, particularly in the South. He had a quote the other day that there was no upside in Joe Biden talking about this. He should focus on the pandemic, the economy, get right in the ship. And I think that is exactly right for Joe Biden. There is no upside in engaging this at all. The question will be for other Democrats who are on the ballot in 2022. I don't think Potato Head and Dr. Seuss are going to be issues that people are talking about, but the narrative. There's going to be other things that make that

point. And you're going to have to deal with that. And we used to say in the Trump era that we can't avoid the cultural fights that Donald Trump picks. We have to figure out how to win them. And I think that's going to be true for Democrats. You're going to have to take this and pivot off of it. Republicans care about this thing that is disconnected from your life while Democrats care about this. And you can't just pretend like you're operating in two different ecosystems and ignore what's happening. You're going to have to say, if the election were tomorrow, while Democrats in Congress are passing a bill that does X, Y, and Z, while Republicans are talking about this. I think we've always said this before, but you don't fall into the trap of playing their game.

You call out the game and explain why Republicans are making the case they are and how that affects your life and what they're trying to distract you from. Yeah. You know, some Democrats in the past have suggested strategies, you know, only talk about economic issues. I think that is both not wise to do. And it's also hard to just do. Right. Because Republicans are the ones, because you're not doing this in a vacuum. Republicans are going to keep talking about this. I think you ignore these individual blowups to whatever extent you can, especially if you don't have the power to control them. But you do stand up for equity and against discrimination more broadly, like,

for example, you know, Biden on his first day signs an executive order protecting gay and transgender Americans from discrimination in schools, health care and the workplace. So you stand up and be proud of these sort of larger values that most Americans would agree with while avoiding the dumb fucking controversies on Fox News about Mr. Potato Head and Dr. Seuss. That's that's sort of one way to both call, and also like you said, and call out the game that they're playing, right? Like you call out their game, you talk about your own values and what you believe. And then of course, you also talk about the issues where you get broad agreement among the electorate. So let's talk about the Republican Party and some issues they're having.

The party's various committees over the last week were sent a series of cease and desist letters from none other than Donald Trump, who demanded that they stop using his name and likeness to raise money. He also released a statement that declared, no more money for rhinos, and asked people to donate directly to his own PAC. Then Republican officials all went nuts and got Trump to issue a follow-up statement where he said, I fully support the Republican Party and important GOP committees, but I do not support rhinos and fools.

P.S. Part of the RNC's spring donor retreat has already been scheduled to take place at Mar-a-Lago, of course. How much anxiety do you think this caused Republicans? I'm sure it causes them a ton of anxiety because to the extent that they have a grassroots fundraising base, it is from Donald Trump. He created it. It's based on his name, his brand, his list. And so if they were to potentially lose that, that would be potentially very damaging to the party and their ability to keep up with Democrats. Because you really do, when you are, this is part of why our campaign finance system is so gross, but when you are out of power, you really have to rely on individuals who are not trying to buy access in order to raise money. Corporations give less money, lobbyists give less money for organizations that can't accept lobbyists, PACs for organizations that can't accept PACs give less money when you are not in a position to advocate for their agenda and you rely on

individual donors. And if those donors, if Trump takes that list home with him, then that would be problematic for the party for sure. So let's talk about why we think that Trump is trying to siphon donations away from the Republican Party. A few options here. Power. Greed. He just wants the money. PACs have very few limitations to how you can spend the money. So he could ostensibly pay himself and his family a salary with the money or both. What do you think? It's both. I think, you know, I remember a long time ago, Lovett once describing Donald Trump's sort of approach to negotiation as a guy trying to sell a countertop, basically. It's like to his real estate contractor days. And I think this is

a pure leverage play. It's definitely fueled by anger and petulance and stupidity. But this is his main point of leverage over the party is his list and the use of his name to raise money. To the extent that they have any sense that they may try to offer a little distance, he lords this over them. That's part of it. There's definitely grift involved. There's always grift involved with Trump. This PAC, I believe, would have to disclose its expenditures publicly. So we would theoretically know if he was just lining his own pockets from it. But the Trump campaign, which also had to disclose things, put a lot of money through shell corporations to make it harder to know exactly what's being spent. So he could, there's definitely going to be a lot of stuff happening. And it is, of course, fitting that that the, how does the RNC begin to mend fences with Trump? They give him money by putting their

event at Mar-a-Lago. I mean, let's talk about the implications of this first from a fundraising perspective. If Donald Trump is sort of vacuuming up all the small dollar donations in the party, like what does that mean for Republican politicians in general? How much do they need to rely on grassroots donors versus their traditional base of rich assholes and big corporations? You know, there was this big thought right after January 6th that Republicans were losing their corporate donation base. This is why, you know, this was a theory that I put forward, others did, about why Mitch McConnell was trying to have some separation with Trump. Why Kevin McCarthy originally thought he was open to censuring Trump was that all the donors said, we're not going to be with you. A bunch of big corporations and PACs put a pause on their donations.

If you pay close attention, that is quietly and quickly unwinding, and all the usual special interests are coming back to the Republican Party, but they still need it. They need both. And it is concerning. It is damaging. Will it be devastating? Probably not, but it's not a problem that you want if you're the RNC or the NRCC or the NRSC. And so you want to fix it because it's, you know, this is when you're out of power, raising money is harder than when you're in power. Those are the, so those are the fundraising implications. I do think the political implications here are another example of Trump maintaining an iron grip over this party. And like the idea, again, whether he, whether or not he runs in 2024, Again, whether or not he runs in 2024, this is still his party. He's going to exert tremendous influence over primary candidates in the 2022 midterms.

And you're not going to be able to have a successful future in the Republican Party if you do not at least pledge fealty to Donald Trump, you cannot, you know, like the idea that they're going to get all the excitement that Donald Trump generates among the Republican base. But none of the, you know, none of the horror he generates among a lot of suburban and independent voters by saying, oh, we loved his policies and we loved some of the things he accomplished. This is what Lindsey Graham does. But, you know, and sometimes he was a little too much. His character was a little too much. You can't do that. You're not gonna be able to you're not gonna be able to split the baby here. If you're a Republican, you are going to have to go full pro-Trump or be an anti-Trump guy and then be, you know, run out of the party when he tries to fund a primary challenger

against you. Right. Like, I don't think there's a middle ground. No, for sure. And I think the specific way in which this power play by Trump may play itself out is in the primaries that Trump wants against incumbent House members that voted for impeachment. Theoretically, the congressional campaign committees are incumbent protection operations. It is why under the previous regime, the DCCC blacklisted consultants who worked for primary challengers to incumbent Democrats. That has been unwound this cycle, but ultimately, it's funded a lot by members who pay dues. They protect members. So what happens for Liz Cheney here? In a normal world, the NRCC would

go all out to defend the number three Republican against a primary challenge. But Trump's not going to let him do that if they want to send emails with Trump's name. And so it's going to have some specific implications. And it could have implications in the kind of candidates who get nominated in some of these districts, where there may be a look at Georgia, where Trump sent out a statement via tweet encouraging Herschel Walker, the former Cowboys, Minnesota Vikings, and University of Georgia running back to run for Senate. I'm guessing that the NRSC would rather have David Perdue run again than Herschel Walker. But if they want to use Trump's name, they're not going to put

their muscle behind the candidate that they want to win. They're either going to have to step back or help Trump. And so I think it's not going to have this gigantic impact on how much money the party raises. It could have some, but it is going to have some more impact on more and more micro-level things. It could be decisive in whether Republicans take the House and the Senate. All right. Speaking of the midterms, let's talk about Democrats in the midterms. Thomas Edsel, who writes about politics and demographics for The New York Times, has a column this week titled Democrats are anxious about 2022. It starts in the wake of the 2020 election. Democratic strategists are worried, very worried about the future of the Hispanic vote. One in 10 Latinos who supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 switched to Donald Trump in 2020. So we've touched

on this topic before. What's changed is that we now have better data on what happened in 2020, more precinct level data, better surveys than the exit polls. And in some states, we even have individual level vote history. So what does all this data tell us? David Shore, who was on the Obama 2012 data team, laid it all out for New York magazine's Eric Levitz the other week. Between 2016 and 2020, Democrats gained less than 1% among non-college whites and 7% among white college graduates. So those were our gains. We lost a little over 1% among black voters and more than 8% among Latino voters. The story with Asian American voters is still out there

because we're still waiting for some of the California level precincts to come in. And that's where a lot of Asian-American voters are. Anyway, in one of the more dramatic examples that Shore cites, a precinct in Doral, which is a Venezuelan and Colombian neighborhood in South Florida that we focused on in the wilderness, swung from a 40 point Hillary Clinton win to a 10 point Donald Trump win. 40 point Hillary Clinton win to a 10 point Donald Trump win. So I want to stop there because we talked a few pods ago about the debate over whether Latinos in Texas turned out at different rates in 2020 or if they switched parties. It certainly seems from this data like it's a story about Latinos who voted for Hillary and then switched to Trump. What's sort of your reaction to to all that based on this data? This is fascinating. And you always have to have the important caveat when talking about the Latino vote, which is that it is incredibly diverse. And we're talking about huge disparities and

differences across geography and that what is true in Florida about the Latino vote has almost no connection to what is true about the Latino vote in Texas or Arizona or elsewhere. You're talking about people who, in some cases, are immigrant communities. Some cases are people who have been here so long that the border moved. They moved before the border. And so it's just a very complicated thing. And the Doral example and the sort of well-known and well-documented vote switching in Miami-Dade is a very specific thing about Florida. And communities of people from Colombian and Venezuelan descent, according to David Chor's view here, are much more sensitive to the socialism attacks from Republicans than necessarily someone of Mexican-American descent in Texas or Arizona. This is one of those things where all things are

true. There was definitely a difference in turnout. There were non-voting Republican Latinos who voted in 2020. And there were also people who voted for Hillary in 2016 and voted for Trump in 2020. Both those things happen. It's happening on the margins in a lot of cases, but the margins matter, particularly now as the electoral map has narrowed for Democrats and we're now more dependent on the Sun Belt where there is a higher Hispanic vote population than when we could count on being competitive in Ohio and Iowa. And so we have to pay attention to all of this and really dig deep and understand what has happened because slight shifts are the ballgame for us in 2022 and 2024. It's also tough because on one hand, like you said, you never want to overgeneralize about the Latino vote because it is so diverse and there are so many different Latino communities in different parts of the country.

On the other hand, some of these swings happen not just in Miami and in Florida or in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, but in precincts literally all across the country that are heavily Latino, including precincts in New York, including precincts in California, right? So it is a widespread problem, even though the causes of the problem could be different in different areas because the Latino vote is so diverse. So the big question is, why did these Latino voters switch? Or even, you know, like you said, both are true, right? So why did some Latino voters switch from Clinton to Trump? And why did other Latino voters stay home in 16 and then vote for Trump in 2020? Either way, Trump was getting a bunch more Latino votes in 20. Why did it happen?

So there's a bunch of data cited by Shore and Edsel that it has to do with self-reported ideology. that it has to do with self-reported ideology. So for a long time, black and Latino voters who self-identified as more conservative still tended to vote for Democrats by huge margins. Even if their self-identity was, I'm more conservative, but I'm still voting for a Democrat.

That has shifted. And now these more conservative voters of color are starting to vote for Republicans, especially black men and especially Latinos. Again, why? So Shor's theory, and now we're getting into survey data, so it's not quite as definitive, is that the Latino voters who switched from Clinton to Trump or who backed Trump in 20 tended to have more conservative views on crime, policing, and public safety.

He also said that these conservative Latinos have even more restrictive views on immigration. So, Dan, our friend Carlos Odio, another former Obama person who's now at Ekis Research, we had him on the pod before, he responded to Shore with a different view. He said that more conservative Latinos who may have agreed with Trump on issues like the wall still refuse to vote Republican in 16 or 18 because of policies like family separation or anti-immigrant rhetoric. In 2020, because immigration was no longer a centerpiece of the campaign like it was in 16 and 18, conservative Latinos focused more on their own economic insecurity and believed Trump, the businessman, could help them. And some other Latinos who cared a lot about immigration in 16 and 18 stayed home because

neither party made it a big issue in 20. So a lot to unpack there, but sort of what's your reaction to all of that and to sort of the debate between, and I don't even know if it's a real debate because there's a lot of overlap, but between Carlos's take on the situation and sort of David Shore's take on the situation and sort of David Shore's take on the situation. It's hard to know because we have not seen either data set, the survey data that led David Shore to argue one thing and then Carlos to argue essentially the opposite, right? In one case, if you really boil it down, David Shore is saying that Democrats lost conservative Latinos in part because we talked about immigration too much. And Carlos is saying we lost conservative Latinos because we because we talked about immigration too much. And Carlos is saying, we lost conservative Latinos because we didn't talk about immigration

enough. And so I don't know the answer to that. But what I think is important from this, whether you come down on Carlos's side or David Shore's side, and I don't want to imply that there's some gigantic disagreement between them, but there is this assumption among a lot of people in politics that Black voters and Latino voters are, by definition, more liberal than white voters. And that's not the case. About the same percentage of Black and brown voters identify as conservative as white voters. The only difference has been they voted for Democrats over the years. And I think it's

very important to understand why that shift happened. And there's more research to be done, but it is like, this is the ballgame. If we continue to either stay flat with working class white voters or continue to erode there, which is very possible, it may be that Joe Biden is the high watermark for the near future for Democrats with that group of voters, we cannot afford to lose any voters to still win. And so we have to understand what happened and why. I also think there, I mean, well, to bring this to sort of current day application, like how do you think this debate informs the way that Biden and the Democrats handle and talk about the influx of

migrants at the border right now? You know, I talked about this with Dara Lind on a recent podcast. Could have been last week, could have been last month. Time has no meaning. I think it was two weeks ago, but I'm not sure. And we knew this from the time in which Obama was president, which is the influx of migrant children is one of the toughest policy problems you're going to face because there are no good answers and it is inherently controversial. And I could offer a bunch of political messaging advice, and I'm not sure there is a good message for this. It's just to try to solve the problem as best as you can. And to the extent you have to talk about, I think being able to draw specific comparisons about what you were doing different

and better than Trump is right. And there has been this debate about when reporters and advocates would be able to see the facilities that the Biden administration is housing these unaccompanied migrant children in. And I think being able to show them that – and that is even more complicated by the fact that we are in a pandemic. And you have to be very careful about who you expose to this. But whatever way you can show people that you are doing what the best you can and you are improving upon what Trump did and try to compare yourself to the alternative, i.e. Trump, as opposed to what is the best possible solution to a very challenging problem. possible solution to a very challenging problem. I've been thinking about this, and there was something that Carlos said in his sort of tweet storm that I think probably overlaps with sort of what Shore was saying, too, which is like, we think about these issues, like immigration or policing, and we sort of overgeneralize about the issue when there are actually different policy

positions within each issue that matter a lot to different groups. So for example, and people feel cross pressured between those policy positions. So for example, when Carlos said, there's a bunch of conservative Latino voters who agree with Trump on the wall. And then he does family separation, or he starts deporting a bunch of people, or he calls Mexicans criminals and rapists, And they come out to vote against Donald Trump, even if they agree with him on the wall. And, you know, within immigration, there is majority support among all races for things like the Dreamers, for a path to citizenship, for stopping just, you know, deporting people who have been here for a long, long time. There is also majority support among people of all races for border security. And there's probably a majority of people who are against the idea of decriminalizing

all border crossings. Right. And so there's like same thing. And on the other side, the issue of policing, like defunding the police when you describe it like that is not popular not only with white voters but also with large segments of black voters and latino voters when you talk about police accountability when you talk about making sure that law enforcement treats everyone the same regardless of what they look like when you talk about holding police accountable for committing violence, then you get majority support across all races. And there are both policy positions and the way you talk about

these things that can sort of capture a majority of support from voters of all races. But you have to be careful and actually talk in a way and have policies that sort of persuade a majority of people. Basically, the idea is like everyone is a persuadable voter. We've talked about this before. Right. And like we should never assume that just because of someone's demographic that they are set in their policy ways and that they cannot be persuaded to sort of, you know, come to your side on a certain policy agreement. sort of, you know, come to your side on a certain policy agreement. You know, I am sure, for example, the Biden campaign data was much more sophisticated in this, but in a lot of cases, like in down ballot races, someone who is identified as Latino or lives in a primary Latino precinct is viewed as a GOTV target, a turnout target,

not a persuasion target. And that becomes a huge error. The other thing about this is, and I think you make a really good point, is there's sort of this shtick among people reacting whenever there's a conversation about defund the police or immigration and its impact in the 2020 election is, my view is Democrats should talk about popular unifying things and not talk about unpopular divisive things. Well, it's like, thank you, Twitter political expert. I wish it was that simple because it's not. Because even if, let's say we were to get concrete data that said Democrats talking about immigration was a net negative. You still have a situation of border you have to deal with, aren't going to have to

talk about it. We'll still be in the news. And so to your point, you have to find ways to talk about these things that are broadly appealing, with a broadly appealing message to that group. And you can't, and obviously you can't get sucked down into only talking about the things driven by the news. You have to, Biden's got to be out, as you guys talked about on Monday, selling the American Rescue Plan, pushing for these popular policies at the minimum wage, touting your successes. But there are times when you're going to have to talk about unpopular, divisive issues. And I'm not saying immigration is one, but if you were just to assume that it was for a second, that is going to come up all the time and you're going to have

to talk about it. You're going to have to figure out how to talk about it. You can't just say, the answer can't be, I'm going to raise the minimum wage. Or did you get your relief check? You have to talk about immigration. That is the nature of politics. I'll give an example. In the Obama years, the president, or after the Obama years, really, In the Obama years, the president or after the Obama years, really, the president got criticism for of immigrants was not just because he thought maybe he could get some Republican votes or even that he thought at all he could get some Republican votes for immigration reform. It's because he was trying to reflect the views of a majority of Americans who believe that, yes, undocumented immigrants who've been here for years should be allowed to become citizens in this country.

But we do have to have some kind of security at the border because there are a lot of people who come to this country and apply to become citizens or apply for asylum through proper channels. And if ultimately all we're going to say is you can just come across the border and stay and you don't have to go through the official channels and you don't have to apply to citizenship and you don't have to apply to asylum, you can just walk across and become a citizen. Then what does that say to all the people who've done it through the proper channels and who do that every single day? And so like it isn't, you know, like you do have to sort of balance these things and you have to at least start from a you have to meet the american people where they are right where most of the people in this country are which

is they want to provide a pathway to citizenship for people who've been here but they also want to make sure that we have borders that we you know can control on the other side of this if you are like dealing with a policy position that is maybe unpopular, you can also talk about it in a different way. A couple of pods ago, again, I don't remember how many ago, I talked to Savante Myrick, the mayor of Ithaca. He is- Literally last week. One week ago. It was the last week? Okay. There you go. There you go. Literally, he has literally proposed the most radical re-imagining of policing

in the country. Does he talk about defunding the police? He does not. He talks about how it's going to be more funding for public safety. Does he talk about how he's going to get rid of cops? He does not. He talks about how there's going to be more public safety officers. But the way he talks about it, the way he talks about this like fairly radical reimagining of the police department, which he is abolishing. He is abolishing the police department. But he's talking about it in terms of there's going to be more public safety. There's going to be better public safety. There's going to be more accountable public safety. We're going to work with people on this. Like his whole language, the way he talked about it

was in a way that sort of meets people where they are and also understands that some people have concerns that may be legitimate about this new proposal. And yet he's still bold enough to go forward with it, right? So I do think like when we forget that people and voters specifically can still be persuaded, we sort of fall into this, you know, belief that like, oh, nothing can be done and people are just going to vote based on their demographic or based on their party. And there's persuaded we sort of fall into this you know belief that like oh nothing can be done and people are just going to vote based on their demographic or based on their party and there's nothing we can all do so it's all just a turnout game and that's just not the way that the electoral works yeah and actually that is the one point that both carlos and david shore and tom edsel all make the all

say is that we actually won because we persuaded people. We lost some voters because Trump persuaded them, but we persuaded more. That 1% difference in white non-college voters is a huge deal. That is the difference in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, in every state that was so close. And so persuasion can, all politics is persuasion. And we have made such a fundamental mistake into shifting, into bifurcating the discussion of messaging into turnout and persuasion when everyone has a persuasion target in some way, shape or form. Yeah. I mean, and, you know, Stacey Abrams says this all the time. Like they, they, they, they signed up and registered a record number of elderly black Americans in Georgia, voters who had never voted in their entire life.

And then older black voters that said in this election, I'm going to vote. That's not just like turning out a base. That's just not just showing up at their house and saying, oh, yeah, you've just been waiting for an organizer to come and register to vote. you've just been waiting for an organizer to come and register to vote. There is a reason that those Georgians didn't vote before and that the organizers in Georgia persuaded them that in 2020, it was important enough for them to come out and cast a ballot. They might not have believed it was important otherwise, and they persuaded them to do so. And so that's why I think we should just, we have to remember to never give up. I think the lesson of all this is to never give up on persuasion.

So, and that's it. That's all we got for today, Dan. Whoa. Let's go. Yeah, we got no guests today. And so everyone have a good weekend. And, you know, buy up all your Dr. Seuss books. Hold them close.

You never know when Joe Biden might take them away. We made it through this podcast without Hallie going into labor, which was a huge win for everyone involved, especially Tommy, who was sitting in the wings waiting to fill in for me if that happened. Tommy texts Dan this morning and he's like, Dan, are you on the way to the hospital? Because Tommy was going to have to fill in if you were. And there was just long enough where you didn't reply that I know Tommy was getting pretty nervous. Well, the reason I didn't reply is in preparation for the arrival of her brother,

Kyla's decided to wake up before five 45 every day. So I was, I was fully parenting incredibly early hour. Yeah. That is an early hour. What I'm saying to you, John is it never gets easier. Oh, good. That's good. Something to look forward to. All right. Well. What I'm saying to you, John, is it never gets easier. Oh, good.

That's good. Something to look forward to. All right. Well, have a good weekend to you and to everyone else. We'll talk to you on Monday. 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 Sominator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Caroline Rustin, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Melkonian, Yale Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos every week.