Pod Save America - “How to Dougie.”

Episode Date: December 14, 2017

Alabama gives America hope, and Democrats a path to power. Senator-elect Doug Jones talks with Jon and Dan about his improbable victory over Roy Moore and whether he should be seated before the tax vote, and Senator Cory Booker joins to discuss the results in Alabama and the fight over funding CHIP and protecting the DREAMers from deportation. 

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On the pod today, we have Senator Cory Booker and the Senator-elect from the state of Alabama, Doug Jones. Big day. Big week for Doug Jones. Also, we're going on tour. Everyone go to cricket.com slash events to see where we're going to be. Right after the new year, we're doing a quick trip to Europe.

John, Tommy, and I are going to be in London, Stockholm, Oslo, and Amsterdam. So sign up for tickets there. And then when we come back, Dan, you'll be joining us and we'll be going to, we'll be right here in LA on February 3rd at the Dolby Theater. And then in February, we got Vegas, Phoenix, and Denver. So go get some tickets, cricket.com slash events. I will be the designated survivor while you guys are in Europe to make sure America will always have one Pod Save America host. Because it's very possible Trump could close the borders on you. I know.

I know. Well, then you've got two episodes a week, Dan. So congratulations. Yep. Guys, we also have a new podcast. Keep It with Ira Madison III, Daily Beast writer, Crooked contributor. It's a podcast about pop culture and politics which ira has referred to as fox and friends but without the racism um the trailer is up on itunes you can subscribe today it should

be coming soon a couple weeks away i think but uh it's gonna be a great podcast ira's been doing practice podcasts here in the studio for the last month. It's outstanding. It's hilarious. Check it out. Also, the deadline for signing up for healthcare at healthcare.gov is the 15th, which is Friday. So if you want to sign up for healthcare, if you know someone who needs to sign up for healthcare, if you know someone who knows someone who needs to sign up for healthcare, please let them know that they to sign up for health care if you know someone who knows someone who needs to sign up for health care please let them know that they can sign up you can get a very affordable plan this year the prices are great and you know donald trump and the administration don't want you

to know about this but signups have outpaced the pace of signups in other years but we're going to fall far short of other years because they've cut the enrollment period drastically. So over the next couple of days, if you can post on Facebook, if you can send out messages on Twitter, do everything you can to remind the people in your life to sign up at healthcare.gov. It's very, very important. All right. Let's talk about Alabama, Dan. Winning. Winning. It's so nice. In the single most consequential election since Donald Trump won the presidency, Doug Jones became the first Democrat in 25 years to win a Senate seat in Alabama,

defeating the favored candidate of Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee, accused child molester Roy Moore. The Republicans' margin in the Senate is down to a single seat, and control of the chamber is now a toss-up, along with the House in 2018. Dan, you knew this was coming all along, right? I've been predicting it for weeks. In fact, it probably got cut out of a podcast a few months ago, but long before even the Roy Moore allegations came out, I was like, Doug Jordan's going to win. Yeah, no, that's what we've been saying here all the time. So what were you thinking leading up to the big win?

Where were you? We were all here at the office watching the needle of doom, which ended up becoming the needle of hope. Well, I had two ways of thinking about it. I went through my normal election night process in the Trump era, which is Nate Cohn gets me incredibly excited about the possibility a Democrat is going to win a seat they shouldn't win. Seems like you'd rather be Doug Jones. I was like, fucking Nate Cohn is going to do it to me again. And but it turned out like you were watching it come in and it was very it was just it was just great. I still thought that we would have victory stolen from us just because the world is cruel. And we, you know, and Virginia, New Jersey went so well. I will say the one reason I thought Doug Jones might win,

this is not based on data analytics or years in politics, is that I had an amazing tweet that I was going to send if Roy Moore won. So you're like either way you win, yeah. Well, I mean, I don't want to equate the two because I don't think they're the same. But the tweet was, but I did think that like it just seemed right that because I was so excited about this tweet that I would not get to send it, which was I was going to take the – whoever declared the race first and just – and do Senator Roy Moore parentheses R dash Kelly parentheses.

That would have been the title of our really sad episode the next day. I know. But now we're going to have to go with something happier. But now I get to do it both ways. Doug Jones wins and I get to tell everyone how funny I thought I was. So it's great. That's the best outcome for America, I think. It was weird. I felt good about everything that I was seeing,

but I couldn't get out of my head that this was taking place in Alabama. even if you get a bunch of Republicans to peel away because Roy Moore is an accused child molester, you know, that works in a state like Virginia or even maybe a state like Ohio or, you know, other states that Trump won. But, you know, Alabama, one of the reddest states in the entire country with unbelievable numbers of Republican voters, you know, Donald Trump wins it by 28 points. It's not like Donald Trump won it by five points, you know, it's just like, that is a, that is a climb. But I remember talking to our, you know, our friend Harry Enten from FiveThirtyEight. And, you know, Harry was saying, look, the polls have it within two and a half points. The average Senate poll dating back to 1998 has been, the final poll average has been off by you know an average of

five points so he's like we are well within the margin of a polling error here that would have jones win this thing and then so then so i had that in my mind but i was like don't let yourselves get your hope don't get your hopes up too much then i see the exit polls come out of course you're not supposed to pay attention to the exit polls but it says 30 african american turnout of course as we knew we were hoping for something like 25 26 that's when we knew it would be a that's when that's what jones campaign was hoping for 25 or 26 obama gets 28 and 2012 in a presidential year and then 30 of the electorates african-american for doug jones and so i allowed myself to get a little hopeful then. But then when the rest of the exit poll data came in and the returns start coming in, I see the CNN panel.

And it's, you know, including Axe and Psaki and everyone else. They're on there and they're looking at the white vote and the percentage in the white vote. And they're like, I think even withan-american vote turning out like this i don't know if the white vote's going to be enough for doug jones because he did not do that well among white voters and so there was some real pessimism at the beginning of the night on on cable at least but then then the needle started going and then here at headquarters everyone stayed and everyone was eyes were sort of glued to the needle and uh every five seconds so it was it was exciting it was pretty exciting yeah i mentioned this on twitter but i brought the needle up and hallie was like nope that's going down you're not looking at

the because it's like it's so cruel it's like it's pretty one minute like roy moore is definitely winning and then uh then doug jones is winning and then like one county comes in and i was listening to i might have been john king on cnn's make this point but alabama is so racially polarized in its geographically that when precincts come in they come in very strongly one where even if the. Even if the overall county is split, the precincts within the county are very strongly Jones or Moore. And so as a chunk of precincts would come in, it would move the needle dramatically because the models sort of expect the count.

They think of that these five counties are, or these five precincts are 30% of this county, but they're not on average, right? Yeah. And so it was moving. were just like no this is too cruel we can't do this and but you know it was the thing that was interesting about is i had the similar i had conversations with people who had some experience in trying to win races in states not as as red as alabama but southern. And the math is just so hard between the number of Republicans you need to win, how highly African-American turnout has to be, etc.

And it really feels like drawing an inside straight. But that presumes equal turnout on both sides. Right. It presumes that all white people are turning out at the same rate, not conservative whites and moderate whites or liberal whites. And just like Virginia, what has been clear here is the Trump base is deflated. And it's Republicans, conservative Republicans are not turning out at the same rate as Democrats are. And that's why Doug Jones wins.

That's why the margin in Virginia was much bigger than the polls expected. And I saw a stat yesterday that Democrats are out – in every race that's happened thus far, Democrats have outperformed their historic party average by 12 points on average among all those races. And that's a huge deal and just speaks to a real enthusiasm. And sometimes that'll be enough like it was in Alabama. Sometimes it will not be enough like Georgia 6, but it's a very positive sign going forward. Yeah, I mean, just to put it in perspective, Doug Jones got about 95%, a little more than 95%, of Hillary Clinton's raw vote total. That is, I mean, Hillary Clinton's vote was in a presidential year where turnout is so much bigger than a midterm election, never mind a special election. And so he gets almost 95, more than 95% of Hillary's raw vote total. And Roy Moore got about half of Trump's. So Patrick Ruffini, the Republican pollster ran the numbers here compared to the midterm in 2014, which is a

comparable turnout scenario. 200,000 Republicans didn't vote. 200,000. You know, Jones's victory is about 2,000 votes, a little more than 2,000 votes. 200,000 Republicans didn't vote. So if even half of those Republicans turned out to vote, Jones wouldn't have won. I mean, I think that the collapse in Republican turnout has to be one of the big stories of what happened on Tuesday night. Now, because they didn't turn out, the coalition that shows up for Jones mattered a lot. And that coalition, like we said, is made up of 29% of the electorate was African Americans.

They broke for Doug Jones by 96 to 4, which is incredible. I think black women were like 98 to 2, and I think black men were 90 to something. So huge, huge, huge turnout from African Americans. And then you look at some of these counties like where Huntsville is, you know, it was Republicans won by 17 points in 2016. Doug Jones wins by 17 points on Tuesday night. Huge, huge swing. Birmingham was Democrats plus 7 in 16. It was Democrats plus 38 on Tuesday night. And then Shelby County, which is the Birmingham suburbs, Republicans won by 53 points in 2016.

Tuesday night, it was only 14 points. won by 53 points in 2016. Tuesday night, it was only 14 points. So just cutting into those margins in the suburbs and in the cities in Alabama was really the story of this race. Yeah, and I think the other important story is African-American turnout. Dave Wasserman tweeted,

these were sort of raw numbers during the election, but that turnout in heavily African-American counties was 72 to 77 percent of turnout from the 16 presidential race, which is unbelievable. That would be unbelievable in a midterm, let alone a special election. But there's another side of the turnout was only 55 to 60 percent in rural white counties. So, you know, there were a gazillion stories in the days leading up to the election about our African American voters engaged. And I would hope there was quite a, and there was a lot of those stories were laced with pessimism about the answer to that. That was the whole,

the whole point is they are not engaged. And, and the, you saw the same stories in Virginia, all the things is when will Northam's not reaching out to African-American voters. Doug Jones is not reaching out to African-American voters. We went to Virginia or Alabama. We found five black people and we asked them about the election and they didn't know it. So that means African-American voters are not turning out. And that is just – we should stop having those stories because there's two parts of those stories. those stories, because there's two parts of those stories. One is African Americans and African American women have been driving the Democratic electoral victories in the past, but also

particularly in 2017. Second, it's also important to remember that African Americans are turning out at high levels, and they're doing it despite systemic actions taken by states like Alabama to suppress their vote. And then the third thing here is that there's like this pre-blame casting, which is, well, if African-Americans don't, you know, they don't just decide to go vote, then Democrats will lose and it's on them. And so we always try to, we pre-blame them, you know,ame them, but the media pre-blames them for potential losses and then doesn't give them the credit when they actually deliver the victory as they did here. And as a part of that, we also don't – in the cases where African-American turnout is not the levels at which you need it to be to win. That's also on the candidate, right? The candidate has to give them a reason to vote.

And Doug Jones did that. Ralph Northam did that. Justin Fairfax and Mark Herring did that. So I just think it's like, can we RIP the takes on, the pre-election takes on African-American vote in this country? I certainly hope so. Also, it's like, it doesn't just, this isn't just magic that African-Americans suddenly wake up and turn out and go to the polls. They're incredibly organized. There was an incredible organization on the ground. I African-American vote from within the African-American vote since it has certainly delivered

this unbelievably important election to the party. But I also, you know, I also think that like this idea about, you know, this debate, this raging debate, whether we should focus on the African-American vote or we should focus on the white vote or we should focus on women's vote. Like, I think to win a majority in any of these states, you need to do all of the above, you know, and you need to have a message that can somehow attract African-American voters and make them decide that they should go to the polls and organize, but also do the same for white voters and for college-educated white voters and, you know, at least try to battle to a draw with Republicans or not get beat too, too, too badly among non-college-educated white voters, which, you know, Doug Jones did better. He certainly lost white voters by a lot. He even

lost college-educated white voters in a state like Alabama, but he did better than other Democrats had in the past among those voters, along with tremendous turnout and tremendous margins among African-American voters and Latino voters as well. A small but important population of Latino voters in Alabama as well, 5 percent, I think. Yeah, and what Doug Jones did, I think, to his credit is he focused his campaign and his words on, quote-unquote, kitchen table issues. That's right. focused his campaign and his words on quote-unquote kitchen table issues that's right and kitchen table issues whether that's the economy that's education that's health care matter to all voters right and this is one of the problems of politics in the quote-unquote data analytics age right is you are almost burdened by too much information, right? Which is like these are the three things that married African-American women over 50 care about.

And these are the three slightly different or very different things that married white women with college degrees care about. Right. And you have to tell a coherent story that is is broadly appealing there can be there are very specific issues that doug jones did not shy away from they're very specific to the african-american community around voter suppression and other things i mean you also talk in alabama story yeah in alabama he you know his the thing you heard from him all the time was how he prosecuted the KKK for the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing with, you know, with four little African-American girls. He talked about that every

single day. He didn't shy away from that because it had a racial element to that issue. He talked about it everywhere. And, you know, it's he did better among white voters than previous Democrats did. So that should tell you something, you know? Yeah, I think the other thing I'd say about what Doug Jones did very well is he ran as his authentic self. Doug Jones is a progressive Democrat. He didn't look for a quote-unquote sister soldier moment

where he tried to do some, you know, sacrifice some progressive cause on the altar for conservative voters. He just ran as himself, and that was appealing to enough people to win. And that's sort of like, politics is not as complicated as we make it. If you run as yourself, and you run a good campaign, and who you are is appealing to enough voters, you can win. And where you get in trouble is when you try to change who you are to appeal to try to get votes. And it's to his credit.

There were a lot of ways a Democrat could have run in this race that it would have been a disaster. And Doug Jones just ran as Doug Jones. And it sounds simple, but it's not what we do often enough in politics. I think that's incredibly important. And the other thing he did was he exhibited incredible message discipline. He was tweeting right up until the last day. I started this campaign talking about kitchen table issues. I'm going to end it that way. When all the bullshit was in the news about Roy Moore, every new development,

Steve Bannon comes down and says X about this person, and Donald Trump comes to Pensacola, and this new story breaks, and this accuser. He could have taken the bait so many times on so many different issues that were in the headlines in D.C., on Twitter, things that we were all talking about, and he didn't take the bait because he knew his message was, here's who I am. Here's what I did with my life. Here's what I'm proud of in terms of my record. And also, these are the issues that I've been talking to people in Alabama about all over the state. And these are the issues that I'm campaigning on. And he was relentless in that message. And I think sometimes in this media age and campaigns, it's very tempting for Democrats to

respond to the headline of the day, the headline that is being discussed on cable news, the attack of the day, all that other bullshit, because, you know, a lot of them grew up in this rapid response environment where as soon as something happens, you have to hit back and hit back hard and talk about every single controversy that's out there. And the Doug Jones campaign didn't do that. They had message discipline every single day because they knew that that's what people in Alabama cared about. They wanted him to talk about their issues.

They didn't want him to talk about the bullshit that was in the headlines all the time. And you know what? Just thank you, Doug Jones, because we needed this. I mean, you and I, Pod Save America, we needed it just because we care about this. and i pod save america we needed it just because we care about this but i just like try to picture the alternative scenario where proud bigot accused child molester wins the senate and like what that says to everyone about america like we we walked right up to the brink of heading into something even more terrible than we're currently in and doug Jones, by being a good guy and a very good candidate, did something that was going to give us all something to feel hope for.

And it's really because it's not just like, yes, we want Doug Jones's vote in the Senate. That's incredibly important. It makes it easier to win the Senate in 2018, which also incredibly important. Senate in 2018, which is also incredibly important. But it's also we do not have to live in a country where a disgusting human being like Roy Moore is in the United States Senate every day. And that is something we can all be grateful for. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, this is a win for every single person who gave money to Doug Jones, who went to Alabama, who knocked on doors, who's cared about this race, who's asked us about this race, how do we get involved. We've heard from so many people, sent us pictures of themselves campaigning in Alabama.

And this goes to show you that even when victory seems improbable, if you are willing to work for it and to fight for it uh it can happen and you know there's going to be other bad days like uh like there were when trump won and there's going to be bad days from now until 2018 and from now until 2020 but you got to take those bad days and just move past them and keep on working because then you get days like tuesday night and that's that's a big message it's such an argument for running for office, no matter what the odds. Yeah. I sort of think about Barack Obama in 2007 talking about his decision to run, which it all seems like it makes complete sense now because he won.

But at the time, everyone thought he was moving too fast, right? That it was too soon. He was in a hurry. He was picking the wrong time. But you can't win if you don't run. And so you got to get in the race. You don't know what's going to happen. I also think about Chris Coons, who's the center from my home state of Delaware, who – he decided to run against Mike Castle, Castle, who had been the House member of Delaware forever and was –

everyone assumed would crush him. But he was like, I'm just going to run because I have stuff to say and I'm going to get out there. And then Mike Castle loses a crazy primary and Chris Coons beats Christine O'Donnell, a Tea Party crazy candidate, and wins. And it's like you don't know when you get in the race what the race is going to look like a year later, six months later. It's just if you run, you definitely can't win if you don't run.

So you might as well run. Yeah, I totally agree. And if you want to run for office, if you're thinking about something, check out Run for Something. We had one of the founders, Amanda Lippman, on the pod on Thanksgiving. And it's an inspiring organization that's helping first-time candidates run. So definitely check that out. So let's talk about what this means for our good friend Donald Trump.

Two-time loser. One of the only presidents in history who somehow endorsed twice in an election and lost both times. He endorsed Luther Strange, lost that one because Roy Moore won, and then he decided to back Roy Moore, and then he lost that one. Good job, Donald Trump. It's almost as if Donald Trump won the presidency by accident with the help of Russia, and it wasn't the case that he was a political genius who understood the far right in his base better than anyone possible. Yeah, or that his political Svengali, Steve Bannon, is a political genius. Steve Bannon's great political genius is a strategy where you basically tell scared white people that dark-skinned foreigners are the cause of all their problems. That's it. That's Steve Bannon's brilliance.

He really came to that conclusion that you can scare people about dark-skinned hordes taking their jobs away. It's a real first. No one's ever done that that he is not chagrined by backing a child molester basically scary he has no shame he's not chagrined he lies all the time who cares at all he's just he's just like no this is i mean he blamed mitch mcconnell for this loss which like i enjoy anyone blaming mitch mcconnell for anything because mitch mcconnell is terrible and well we have some things to say about that later. But what is interesting about what Bannon did, it wasn't just that he backed Roy Moore. Because, I mean, that's just, I mean, it's morally disgusting. And plenty of Republicans backed Roy Moore, by the way, that it weren't Steve Bannon and Donald Trump.

Looking at you, Republican National Committee and like half the Senate. committee and like half the senate can we just pause for one second on the republican national committee that that donald trump made rana romney mcdaniel remove the romney from her name yeah she gave up her name and decided to throw her party's weight behind an alleged child molester big win Big win. Big win for Ronna McDaniel. Formerly Romney McDaniel. So, I mean, just it's a someone I wish I remember who put this, who tweeted this. But what it is that Trump does not take people's dignity. He makes them hand it over willingly. So it's like. And they do.

I'm going to back. It's just so terrible. But so Bannon, you would think this would reduce Bannon's power in Washington. But it's not going to. It's just not. Because what Bannon actually did was he scared – there were things the Republicans could have done to save this seat, right? Yeah. They could have gotten Roy Moore to drop out, which one of the reasons he did not do is that Bannon and Hannity were on his side.

Right. Because Hannity was close to telling – Hannity basically almost called on Roy Moore to drop out and then Bannon called Hannity and told him to stop. And Hannity just taking his marching orders from Bannon decides not to do that. So Hannity stays in the race – or Moore stays in the race. And then there could have been a write-in campaign, right, where they could have got Luther Strange or Jeff Sessions or someone else to be a write-in candidate because at least we give you a shot at at least like the the fear for republicans that would cause you to lose the race because you

split the republican vote but what it would have done is you would have lost the race but you would have been it made it very clear that you were opposing an accused child you would have had they would have been able to hold their heads high in the Republican Party for once in the last 10, 15 years. Yeah. And that is a very reasonable – some Democrats are like, why won't you endorse Doug Jones? And I sort of understand that if you endorse someone else other than Roy Moore, right? Right. If you say we want Luther Strange, he's probably going to lose, but that's who we're going to spend money on, we're going to fight for. But they didn't do that. So they found themselves with the

Steve Bannon with the Republican Party and Donald Trump in the worst of all worlds, where they have endorsed an accused child molester who was also a bigot towards homosexuals, other races, doesn't believe women can vote, doesn't believe Muslims can be in Congress. I mean, you can do the bill of particulars on his horribleness, and they still don't get his vote for tax cuts, which is what they really wanted. So great job, Steve Bannon. Great job, Donald Trump. Yeah. And it's funny, you know, Steve Bannon's like, oh, Mitch McConnell and the establishment got the Democrat they wanted. But it's, you know, it's funny for Bannon to say that, but it's not really true because a lot of these Republicans, you know,

you got people like Jeff Flake who donated to Doug Jones, some other people in the party who said, you know, obviously he shouldn't come to the Senate. Good for them. They did the right thing. There's a whole bunch of Republicans who did want him to come to the Senate and who didn't want Doug Jones to win. And they're going to have to live with that for the rest of their political careers and their lives. I mean, for 2018, for 2020, the Republican Party cannot hide from the fact that their party, the RNC, their party and their president and many of their senators and congressmen endorsed an alleged child molester, homophobic, thinks homosexuality should be illegal, all the bill of particulars, Muslims shouldn't serve in Congress, women shouldn't vote. Most amendments after the Bill of Rights shouldn't be in the Constitution. They wanted that person to serve in the United States Senate.

They cannot walk away from that. For the rest of time. That is a political burden, and that is a moral burden, and that is something that they will have to explain forever. And it's our job to make them continue to explain it, but that is on Mitch McConnell. He had a choice. He could have tried to defeat Roy Moore.

He has a super PAC at his beck and call. He didn't do that. His hope was he could say some bad things about Roy Moore and still get his vote because Mitch McConnell will always pick the most cynical, least moral option in any particular case. And so he chose that. And he owns that. And they all own it.

And even if they didn't endorse him and campaign for him like Donald Trump did, they made a choice and they own that choice. So what does this tell us about 2018? You wrote in the outline, is it a positive sign or is this an outlier because Moore was a racist clown? To which my answer is, there's going to be a whole lot more racist clowns in 2018 if Steve Bannon and the Republican base get their way. Like, you look in Nevada, and if we think that, you know, Dirty Dean Heller is going to survive a primary against Danny Tarkanian, who's the, you know, Bannon-backed candidate that's running against him.

I don't know, Heller's one of the least popular senators in the country right now. And then you've got Danny Tarkanian, who he called Roy Moore's accusers liars, paid for by the Washington Post. He just campaigned with a pimp who owns brothels in Vegas. I mean, we've got another crazy in fucking Nevada. We've got Kelly Ward in Arizona, who's the Bannon-backed candidate, who is an InfoWars guest, who held a town hall with constituents who thought that, you know, the government was spraying chemtrails on them and trying to poison them. There's some government conspiracy about that, that she was entertaining at a town hall. I mean,

I don't think we've seen the last of Roy Moore type candidates, even if they're not quite as disgusting as Roy Moore. I mean, you got a lot of Roy Moores without the child sexual abuse allegations running out there. And we know as you list, as we talk about the fact that Donald Trump's in the White House, Steve Bannon's calling the shots, Danny Tarkanian, InfoWars guests running, Roy Moore being backed by the bulk of the Republicans. Here's the fact, which is the Republican Party is a zombie party. It is dead. and it just doesn't know it yet. Now, it controls all the levers of power, so that is a weird paradox of our times.

But, you know, this is the – David Brooks wrote this, and it pains me to quote David Brooks on this podcast, but every once in a while he's right. He talked about the party is rotting. I think he actually understated the case. It is rotted. It is over. The modern Republican Party that Tim Miller belongs to or in hopes for, that Paul Ryan thinks he's in charge of, that's dead. That is gone. The future is Steve Bannon and Roy Moore

and all of that. They made this choice. They actually made it years ago, long before Donald Trump came on the scene. They made this choice when they decided they wanted the votes of birthers more than they were willing to call out birtherism. They decided this when they wanted the votes of racists who objected to Barack Obama as opposed to calling out racism. And that is where we are now. That is the Republican Party. We need two parties. But right now, the Republican Party is dead for as far as the eye can see. They may still win power because of gerrymandering and a massive financial advantage from a hollowed out campaign finance system. But the idea that this is the party of Reagan or supply side economics or all of that, that shit is long gone. It's a party of racial animus, full stop. Yeah. No, and the question is, can that party or how long can that party hold on to power and where can it hold on to power? Because I think you can make an argument that if the, we always used to talk about the Obama coalition showing up, but now we talk about, let's talk about the Trump coalition. If the Trump coalition which is basically mostly mostly non-college educated white voters with some college educated white voters that's about it that's the trump coalition um and the college educated voters are very very republican and if that coalition shows up in the numbers it did in 2016, then Republicans can continue to win states like Ohio, Iowa,

possibly Michigan and Pennsylvania, you know, in states like that, that won Donald Trump the presidency. And that becomes very problematic. And states like Missouri that, you know, where Claire McCaskill's up in 2018, you've got Joe Manchin up in West Virginia. You've got a tough race in Indiana. So, you know, there's still a threat to hold on to power. But what we've seen in Alabama and what we saw in Virginia is that this coalition just isn't showing up, that they're not turning out to vote. And I don't know, you know, how to gauge that kind of turnout, the Republican turnout in 2018, 2020 and beyond, because I don't think it's certainly not automatic for us. And it's hard to determine how many of those voters show up or don't show up. But it does seem like our fate in some ways

hinges on that. Yes, we need because we don't make choices on the basis of national popular vote, right? If we if it was just we're going to have a national election and then we're going to take the popular vote and we're going to allocate that Congress among that vote. Yeah, we'd be fine. Democrats are going to win that. Right. The problem is two things. One is just straight. It's not even gerrymandering.

It's straight population distribution. You have more younger people who tend to be Democrats moving to cities. Right. And so their vote there, they are diluting their vote by living and the southeast and even the south, including Texas, is moving slower than the turning red of the Rust Belt. And that was a recipe to get Donald Trump over 270. Now, the question will be, can we turn out at a high enough number to overcome those two barriers, both in 2018 and 2020? It is very possible because Donald Trump won the presidency, but it's actually – it's an amazing thing. It's actually probably easier to win the presidency than it is to win the House because of the presidency is now gerrymandered. Right. And now what's interesting about 2018 is it may be an easier path for us than usual because the road to the House majority runs through places like California where there's, you know, we have the Crooked Seven, these seven Republicans who are in districts where Hillary Clinton won their districts with a lot of the same college educated white voters who have been peeling away from Republicans in recent elections. It runs through places like the suburbs of Texas cities like Austin and Dallas and Houston,

in places like North Carolina, in places like Florida. So a lot of these sort of sunbelt districts, and then of course and for senate races in places like arizona and nevada so a lot of these places that have been trending bluer over the years are exactly where we need to win house seats back in 2018 to retake the house you know the senate map proves a challenge not because of the states we now have to flip to win the majority which is nevada and arizona which you know are trending bl bluer. Nevada is a blue state. But, you know, some of these states where Donald Trump won, where Democrats are trying to hold on to their seats, which, you know, Democratic incumbent senators tend to have an advantage and tend to rarely lose

in elections where the opposite party is in power. So we do have that going for us. But, you know, those are some those are some pretty tough states that we're trying to hang on to in the Senate map. I think Alabama, if we just get back to like what Alabama specifically means for 2018, is that the coalition that delivered, part of the take after Virginia was it's Virginia. It's a state Hillary won.

You know, it has been proved resistance to Trump politics because of the allocation within the state population of white voters with a college education. And so it doesn't really tell you anything. It's sort of where the Democrats are holding serve. Rory Moore is a particularly bad candidate and Doug Jones probably doesn't win against someone else. But that is the same argument the Democrats, including someone this podcast made about Scott Brown's win in Massachusetts in 2010, right? Was that Scott Brown took Ken Kennedy's seat, that Martha Coakley was a particularly bad candidate, unemployment was very high, and we tried to treat it as a black swan event. But it actually foretold the voters that delivered Massachusetts to Scott Brown were the same voters who delivered the House to Republicans nine months later. Right. And so I'd be very worried about the Republican. Doesn't mean Democrats are going to take the House.

Democrats are going to take the House. But if you stand – a million things happen to you now and then, but if you stand here today, I'd be very concerned about how amped up Democrats are and how deflated the Trump base is for people not named Trump. And that is – it's an interesting thing because you get a lot in the – when Obama was president about, well, Obama can't – does great when he's on the ballot but can't turn out his voters for other people. can't – does great when he's on the ballot but can't turn out as voters for other people. And we may be seeing a bigger thing here about – they may say more or less about Obama or Trump and something about just how amped up turnout is among those in the opposition and subdued it is by people who are not. And it's also worth noting that Donald Trump's approval rating is bad. He was in the exit polls, had a net favorability of zero in Alabama, a state he won by 30 points. Yeah, exactly. If that's your net in Alabama, you're in trouble. So Republicans know that they're in trouble.

They are trying to take whatever they can on their way out the door by rushing this tax bill, this awful fucking tax bill, through Congress as fast as possible. Mitch McConnell is not wasting any time. It seems like the House and the Senate have a deal, a tentative deal, on how to reconcile the two different bills and reconcile the differences. It looks like the package that's emerging from the conference committee cuts taxes for rich people by even more. I guess the compromise was the Senate cut taxes for rich people by X amount, the House cut it by this amount, and they decided to go lower than, even more than both chambers, an even bigger tax cut. So the top rate goes from 39.6 to 37. The corporate tax rate is going to be a 21% from 35 instead of 20. State and local tax deduction is at 10. It's not eliminated, but it's at 10,000, first 10,000 for property and income. The mortgage deduction,

the cap there is $750,000 for new homes. The estate tax exemption is doubled to $10 million as opposed to eliminated altogether. And then they have eliminated some of these awful, you know, they were going to take away the deductions for, you know, graduate students and medical expenses. And I guess they're keeping those in there. Those are some of the more unpopular provisions. So still a really shitty bill uh that's cutting taxes for rich people by you know hundreds of billions of dollars um you know raising middle class taxes on some people not giving a ton of people almost any tax cut at all you know and uh and increasing the deficit so that's what we got yeah wonderful i mean it's i mean it's they took a they

put aside the policy implications of how bad the house and senate versions were and they were really fucking bad but they actually managed to forge together they lose the alabama senate seat right after losing virginia after staring down the barrel of terrible poll numbers and they look, they took two bills that were shitty politically and decided that their response would be to put them together to make an even shittier bill politically. This is actually a this bill will be less popular and more easy for Democrats to run on than the other two bills, which were really unpopular and really easy for Democrats to run on. Yeah, and that's because this entire process wasn't about policymaking. It was about cobbling together just enough votes to pass the bill. And so when that's your primary strategy, all you're doing is going to individual senators or House members and saying, what do you need to get to yes, and then they just throw that in the bill, whatever it is.

I mean, that's all this is about, right? Yeah. And it's also interesting that a lot of times the way that process works is people try to deliver things that help them with voters in their states or districts. Like, please remove this provision that hurts widget manufacturing because the largest widget manufacturer is in my district. But that's not how the Republicans approached this. They approached it with, I need to do this favor for this group of donors.

So please add that in. So it became like that to get people to yes, they had to make it more favorable to Sheldon Adelson, the Kochs. Hedge fund managers. Exactly, right? And so this was not about buying, helping, finding ways to, like the sort of horse trading for provisions that are helpful

to individual states and districts usually is also not a good policymaking process, but you kind of understand the logic of some group of people are gonna be helped, even if, you know, so you're arguing for that. That's not what's happening here. It it is we need to give as many billionaires as many things as they need so they can give us enough money to try to survive the democratic wave in 2018 yeah that's right and uh so the the schedule here is they're not telling people the

exact details though you know a lot of them have leaked out um but they're not telling people the exact details, though a lot of them have leaked out, but they're not telling all the senators and members these details until Friday. They want to vote on Monday. We'll see if they're ready by then. And so now there's this whole thing where they're not seating. They want to do the vote before Doug Jones is seated because if Doug Jones is seated, then they only have one vote to spare. Corker's a no, they can only lose three votes, they could only lose two more.

And now they've lost Luther Strange if Doug Jones is seated. And then, you know, they've promised Collins all of these provisions on health care to make up for the fact that they're trying to partially repeal Obamacare. So they're trying to pass these provisions to shore up subsidies and get more money that she demanded. And so far, they're not voting on those provisions first. And so, you know, now they're refusing to seat Doug Jones, which is insane because in 2010, when Scott Brown won the Senate seat, they decided not to vote on the Affordable Care Act

until Scott Brown was seated when he won a special election. And Scott Brown said, seat me without delay. And Republicans, of course, they all argued for that. And, you know, even Democrats stood up and said, yeah, we should wait until Scott Brown is seated to continue on this legislation. So there's ample precedent to seat the new senator in a special election right away, especially when there's a vote of such consequence coming up. And yet Mitch McConnell is charging ahead. I also vaguely recall a man who looked a lot like Mitch McConnell holding open a Supreme Court seat for an entire fucking year because he, quote, wanted the voters to have their voices heard on who

this Supreme Court justice was. And in this case, by the well-known McConnell-Garland standard, the voters of Alabama fucking voted. And they voted for someone who did not support this tax bill over someone who did. And their vote is going to be nullified by Mitch McConnell to jam this thing through. And the fact how little the press in the political world is an upal cynicism from Mitch McConnell that it's like, of course he would do that. Why would he wait? And they benefit from that because the bar of expectations is so low for how they behave that it's just like, yeah, of course he's going to do it. Right?

And like we were – I was complaining about on Twitter and a bunch of reporters like, why would McConnell wait? He held open a Supreme court seat. That's not the fucking point. If Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi did a similar thing, the press would be in fucking up in arms over it because they expect the Democrats to play by the rules. And we just now presume Republicans don't give a fuck about the rules. It's like, so we're just going to let him get away with it.

It's fairly – I mean, it's terrible. I'm very worked up about this. The cynicism is baked in. Well, it also – but it speaks to something else now. I mean, at the same time we're talking about this, we have a debate about a government shutdown. We have a debate about a government shutdown. And the Democrats, as we've said many times on this podcast, have all the leverage here. The Republicans need Democratic votes to fund the government for a full year beyond, you know, a couple weeks at a time or a couple months at a time, which is what they've been doing. So they need Democratic votes.

Republicans and Donald Trump have promised to vote on the DREAM Act because 800,000 young Americans are at risk of deportation when March rolls around. And yet, I am seeing everywhere Democrats backing off their promise to withhold their votes for government funding unless they get a vote on the DREAM Act. Why is that happening? Because they're worried that they'll be blamed for a government shutdown do you think fucking mitch mcconnell is worried that he's going to get blamed for not seating doug jones that he's going to get charged with the process foul from the press he doesn't give a fuck why are democrats so worried about this like i know i know they're looking at polls and say yes the dream act is widely popular it's got bipartisan support throughout the country and even in congress but But if you ask people, should you shut the government down over the Dream Act?

It's not as popular. Right. I get that. I also bet if you polled people and said, should the newly elected senator of Alabama have a voice in the Senate and be seated, or should he be delayed until the Republicans get to take a vote on their very unpopular tax bill? That would also be, we know what the results of that poll would be as well. But Mitch McConnell doesn't give a fuck. Here would be my message to the Democrats. The Morning Joe panel is not your base. Who that is not like here's who wants you to stand up and fight here. It is the people who knocked doors, who made phone calls, who made

millions of dollars in small dollar donations for people like Doug Jones and Ralph Northam and everyone else. Who cares what the Washington press says about this? It is not going to matter if you stand up and fight because you can win. It's like no one in Washington knows what leverage they have. Lisa Murkowski. Thank you, Lisa Murkowski, for saving health care. I appreciate that. But last night she tweets, I care so much about chip. I will do everything in my power to make sure chip is fully funded.

Oh, really? How about don't vote for the tax bill until chip is funded? Because they can't do it without you. That's leverage. Why don't you do that? That definitely falls under the category of everything in your power. Marco Rubio too.

Marco Rubio saying he wants, you know, a bigger child tax credit. He's been wanting that forever. Good for Marco Rubio. It's a right policy to want a bigger child tax credit. So someone asked him yesterday, you know, do you get it? What's going to happen?

He said, if they don't do something about this, leadership knows where I stand. Yeah, they do. You stand with them no matter what they do because you never vote against this bill and everyone knows it. Though you could, Marco Rubio, if he wanted to get that in the bill,

he could easily threaten that he wouldn't vote for the bill. He'd get it. Yeah, Marco Rubio is a passive participant in his own political career it's like he doesn't believe he has any agency he's just like this is what i said and i said it sadly yeah it's like do something oh people make me so mad sometimes we should be happy doug jones won i know and look i mean on it's i think that i mean democrats were on the floor yesterday screaming about McConnell needing to seat Doug Jones and they should. But, you know, it is in it is in Mitch McConnell's hand and he can only be shamed out of doing this.

And Democrats are shaming him. You know, I saw it where it was Doug Jones about it, but it doesn't seem like Doug Jones wants to push this at all. We saw him on The Today Show. He was sort of waffling on this. But, you know, at the end of the day, it's in Mitch McConnell's hands. And like you said, certainly the press isn't making a big deal of it. So because they just expect him to do something this diabolical. So that's what we got. But everyone should keep keep yelling about it. Yeah, I'm going to make one. I just want to make one caveat on the shutdown stuff with Democrats. We are basing what we are saying on reports and not actual statements from Democratic leaders. And so it could it could be. That's right. Everyone should hold them accountable and listen to it. And it could be and it's actually very possible that Nancy Pelosi and

Chuck Schumer have a plan here. And there have been many times over the years, you know, Schumer was not the leader when Obama was president, but Nancy Pelosi was leader the whole time. And there are many times I would sort of look at what Nancy Pelosi was doing and be like, what? I don't get this. This is wrong. And then in the end, because she is a master legislator, she had a plan all along and it was the right plan.

legislator. She had a plan all along and it was the right plan. So if Democrats do what reports in Politico and elsewhere are suggesting they're going to do, I think that is a mistake. If they have a plan different than that, then I look forward to seeing that plan. Right. No, we should say that, you know, all these stories also say that there are ongoing negotiations here. So maybe there is a plan. And, you know, we know from you and I being in the White House on the inside that sometimes you can't talk about what's going on and you know there's going to be a good outcome and you're getting all kinds of pressure for not speaking out or doing something earlier. But you're like, OK, well, we have to do this because this negotiation is happening and we're going to have a good outcome. So I get that. I think if the

Democrats keep if we keep pushing these government funding deadlines like we keep vote to keep the government open for another month and then wait to have this fight in another month or in another month after that you know i think it's a mistake to keep punting it but i don't think that's the ultimate mistake the ultimate mistake would be if the democrats vote for a year-long funding bill without getting this vote on the dream act that to me is like like, I don't know. You know, if they take that vote only with the promise that, yeah, in the future there'll be a vote on the Dream Act,

I see that as a huge fucking mistake. But, you know, from now until then, they are trying to negotiate something, you know, and they do so in good faith and they figure this out, then great. But they have a lot. All I'm saying is Democrats have a lot of leverage right now, and they should use it. Donald Trump is a liar and a con man. Yeah, don't trust him. Taking a promise for a vote later based on something Donald Trump said to you,

that ain't good enough for me. Right. Okay, well, we have a senator-elect and a senator coming up, so we will ask both of them about all of this. When we come back, we will talk with Senator-elect Doug Jones. On the pod today, we have the newest senator from the state of Alabama, Senator-elect Doug Jones. Doug, congratulations. Thank you. Thanks very much. An exciting time. I appreciate you guys having me back home.

Absolutely. So there's a lot of Democratic candidates running in red or purple states who are looking at your win right now in Alabama and asking, how do I become the next Doug Jones? What do you tell them? What advice do you have for folks running in red states like Alabama? Well, you know, I don't know. Every state is different. And, you know, what we just decided early on in this race was that we were going to stay true to ourself and stay true to what we believe in our core principles. And I think that that helped. I think people are tired of folks running one way in a primary and a different way in the general election and we stayed very true to who we are and I think people are looking for that because if you stay true but also talk to people about how you can,

you know, your whole mantra is to try to find common ground. I think that that helps a lot because everyone knows that there's no way in the world that someone is going to agree with you on 100% of your positions. And if you approach them by saying and recognizing that and say, you know, look, but we can find common ground on a lot of them, but on the ones that we can't, you know, let's just agree to disagree, but not be disagreeable. And, you know, we'll find it on something else. And I really think at least so many of the people in Alabama were looking for that kind of approach. You know, so much of the political discussion around the country, and even as we were talking

about the Alabama race, is centered around the quote-unquote Trump base and then the quote-unquote resistance. But this election and the elections in Virginia, in New Jersey recently, were not decided by that. I'm just curious, as you were traveling the state and just talking to average, everyday people in Alabama, what were you hearing from them about how they feel things are going on in the country and how they're sort of viewing Washington in the Trump era here? Well, I think that they're tired of the dysfunction. I think that they really want to see something happening. I think what we saw back in the summer was that people started looking at these health care bills and these proposals that were coming out that were strictly repeal

and replace, and the replacements just weren't sitting very well with folks. A lot of people were going to be uninsured. It seemed to be more of a political score rather than really a score for the people. And so I think folks started really focusing on those issues a lot. And you get past who you might have voted for in the past. You get past the party label. Now, you've still got a base on both sides of the political world out there. But I think the middle increased exponentially in Alabama over the course of this election. That seems to be what we heard and what we saw. People just really wanted, they don't like what they're seeing going on up there. This is a pretty conservative state, but at the the same time they want somebody that can be effective for them and not just be a lapdog for any

one party or another. So I think that helped us a great deal was really focusing on issues, what we call those kitchen table issues that spoke to people directly about their everyday lives. So African Americans turned out for you in record numbers certainly put you over the top, helped you win the election. You also did better among white voters than previous Democrats had in Alabama. How do you hold that coalition together going forward? And what can you do in the Senate to make sure that black voters feel as though they made the right decision? Well, you know, look, I think that in terms of Alabama, I think my background and my history with the African-American community in the state helped a lot. There was there's still a lot of just incredible, wonderful feelings I get in the African-American community about the church bombing case that was prosecuted when I was U.S.

attorney. But I've also been there on other things, and I've spoken up for, you know, disadvantaged minorities in this state all along. So I think going forward, I think it's going to be important to try to work with Congresswoman Terry Sewell, who represents that black belt area down there, and, you know, through Hale County and those, Bullitt County and those folks to try to get their education system up to par, to get the workforce development. And there's a lot of programs down there that I think we can work on. And I think just being seen and trying to be a partner, as I said I would, with those

folks is going to be especially important. Holding coalitions together is always a challenge because, you know, one coalition might not like something that another coalition does. Again, I think the issue for me is being out there and being able to listen and learn and taking all of it in to try to find those areas where we can agree to move forward. It's a fragile coalition. I recognize that. But at the fragile coalition. I recognize that. But at the same time, I think that this state is also moving in a direction in which people are getting a lot of those divisive issues behind us. And those coalitions are a lot easier in a state

like Alabama when you can put certain divisive issues aside and say, you know, I respect your opinion on that. We might not agree. Let's talk about your kid's education. Let's talk about your job and see if I can get you a higher wage. And let's talk about that health care, because you know what? You've got a parent or aunt and uncle or someone in a nursing home. You've got your own preexisting conditions. Let's talk about those issues and see what we can do to fix health care. I think that if we focus on those issues and continue to focus on those issues, those coalitions can stick together and hopefully build on. One of the things on Pod Save America we're always trying to do is encourage people to run for office. And I'm curious about your thinking when you originally decided to run for this race because it had to feel like at best a long shot and probably people telling you it's a fool's errand for a Democrat to run for Senate in Alabama.

Sort of what was your mindset going into and what made you want to run to begin with? Well, look, I appreciate that question because it's very simple. I did hear all of that. It was a long shot. It was a, you know, my early contributions were from friends who said, Doug, there's no way that you can win this, but we appreciate what you're doing and you're our friend. So here's some money. What I have told people in this state for a long time, in a state in which we have seen Democrats conceding far too many races, not just on a state level, but even on a local level for the House and the Senate and for county commission races and things like that, that, you know, we've got to start building a bench. And before you can ever have any success, good people need to run for office.

They need to put themselves out there knowing that it's an uphill battle, knowing that it's a long shot. But if we don't start having folks get out there and start really, again, staying true to yourself on what you believe and not listen to a bunch of people telling you, oh, my Lord, if you can just move all the way as far to the right as your opponent, then you can win this race. Just don't do that. Stay in your lane on what you believe, and let's start building platforms. And you may not win this race, but you might set the stage. You know, my friend Joe Biden, who came down and campaigned for me, told me one time with a small group,

and he's told a lot of people this, the story of how when he was elected at age 29, and since in the intervening years, people come to him all the time that want to run for office or are running and said, you know, what is it that I can say that will win this race? And he says, you're asking the wrong question. The question is, what are you going to say in which you're prepared to lose? And I've told people all the time, you need to be able to stay true to yourself, be prepared to lose and hope for the best. So that was my mindset going in. I knew it was an uphill battle, but I knew we had a very thin bench in Alabama. Things needed to be said. People need to be given some hope that there are actually people out there that believe in them,

that want to work for them. And as much as anything, I felt like the timing was right to have that message to try to reach across as many people as we can. And I will tell you guys, even before the disturbing allegations against Roy Moore, we were getting traction with that message from people from all walks of life in areas that we never dreamed that we would get. Doug, you ran a very Alabama-centric race. As you said here, it was very, and your message and your agenda is very Alabama-centric. But you have also become, by virtue of your victory, a hero to Democrats all across the country. I saw photos of people who wrote Roll Tide on the, you know, on subway signs in New York. The Golden

State Warriors played Sweet Home Alabama at their practice yesterday in tribute to you. How does the, I'm just curious how you feel about that, about this role that's been thrust upon you as a hero to forlorn Democrats across the country? Well, that's pretty overwhelming. It's humbling. I am honored. I've never seen it that way. I knew that if we could win this race, it would send a positive message, not just to Democrats, but everyone, that we can put a lot of divisiveness behind us. We wanted to focus on Alabama because it has been a tough state for Democrats to win in. But also, I truly believe that we have so much more in common.

And I think what you're seeing, that demonstration from people around the country proves that the people of this country have more in common than we have to divide us. And our politics have gotten so divisive. We just need to put some of that on a shelf for a little bit. And let's talk about those things we have in common so that we can work together. So Doug, in 2010, after Scott Brown won a special election to fill Ted Kennedy's seat, he argued that he should be seated without delay. And senators in both parties, Republicans and Democrats, agreed with him. And they all waited to vote on the Affordable Care Act until he was seated. A couple days ago, the people of Alabama voted to replace a senator who was for the tax bill with you, who campaigned against it. You said you were troubled by the tax cuts for the wealthy.

It also includes partial Obamacare repeal. You talked about people being upset about health care. This could leave millions more uninsured. Don't you think that the people of Alabama's voice should be heard by making sure that you get a vote on this bill that's going to affect their lives in such a big way? Well, you know, look, I think you can certainly look at it that way for sure. You know, I haven't tried to interfere with any of that at this point. We've still got a process in Alabama that we have to go through to certify the election results and to make sure that everything is there. And I am absolutely 100 percent confident that our margin of victory is

likely to increase rather than decrease once provisionals are looked at and military ballots come in. So I'm confident of the win, but I also know how things move in Washington, D.C. and the timing with regard to the holidays is an important consideration here. So, you know, sure, I want to get up there. I want to be sworn in as soon as I can. I think the people of Alabama deserve that. But I'm not going to push one way or another. I'm going to let this process play out a little bit.

I'm not sure, quite frankly, the vote will even be needed. But we'll see how that goes. I'm just excited to even be in the middle of this discussion right now. But you would like to be able to vote on this tax bill if the Alabama Secretary of State certified the election, wouldn't you? You'd probably like to be seated as soon as possible, right? Well, obviously, you would like to be seated as soon as possible. This is a special election, so there is no term. I do think the circumstances are a little bit different with Scott Brown because of the timing. But yeah, obviously, I'd like to be up there as soon as possible to start making any decisions that I can on behalf of the people of this state. We'll just see how that plays out. Okay. Doug Jones, thank you so much

for joining us. We appreciate it. And again, congratulations on the big win. Dan, did you have anything else? I just wanted to mention to Doug that many, many years ago, I worked with your son-in-law Rip on the Gore campaign together. Awesome. He was phenomenal. And I was very excited to see him sitting on stage behind you on Tuesday night. Well, he and I talked this morning, and it's wonderful for our family. And as famous as his father-in-law is now, I think that beautiful little four-year-old daughter of his stole a show on the stage the other night and is an internet sensation on her own. So thank you for saying that. Thanks, Doug. Take care.

All right, guys. Thanks again, and I hope to do it again with you. Okay. Bye-bye bye on the pod today we have back again senator cory booker senator thanks for joining us it's so good to be on thank Thank you for having me again. Absolutely. So I know you were down in Alabama campaigning with Doug Jones. Big win there. We're all excited about. I've seen a few Democrats say, look at the results and say that Alabama shows us that the Democratic Party doesn't have to focus so much on winning white, non-college educated

voters anymore, that the results teach us that. What do you think of that argument? I don't know what they're looking at in Alabama. Alabama was a race where Doug Jones and the campaign down there did everything. And they didn't give up one vote and they didn't cede one county. They won the counties they needed to by huge margins and cut into the margins in counties even that they lost. This was a comprehensive campaign.

And even to reduce it to just a left versus right, I really think this was a right versus wrong campaign. And there's a lot to learn. I think the black voter engagement efforts we did, finally, and I got involved very early for this reason because I wanted to see us making sure we were really doing the kind of grassroots mobilizing. I was really proud of that effort.

But this is something that Doug Jones and his campaign won because they were able to convince Republicans to come out and support them. They were able to convince white rural whites to support them. And they were obviously able to hit a lot of our base really, really well. We so we just we just spoke with Doug Jones and asked him about, you know, doesn't he think he should be seated without delay, especially before this tax vote? And he said, you know, well, I'll let everyone in Washington work that out. He didn't really take a position. What do you think about that? Alabama, as a state, the people of Alabama have spoken.

He should be seated right away. And again, I know they have some processes to go through down there. Either he should be seated right away or we should wait before we make a vote, especially as consequential as rewriting the entire tax code, shifting hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars to the wealthiest corporations, the wealthiest individuals, blowing a $1.5 trillion hole in our deficit, the damaging impact, far-reaching impact, not just to this generation, but generations yet unborn. This is so big that Alabama has made their decision, made their voice clear. Their representative in the Senate is Doug Jones. He should be here for something so important. Senator, you've made a pledge against funding

the government with absent action on the DREAM Act. There have been some reports in recent days that the Democrats in Senate and Congress are maybe willing to fund the government without demanding action on the DREAM Act. Do you stand by your pledge? And what can you tell us about the emerging Democratic strategy here? I can't tell you much. I know there's a scrum.

I talk to leadership as often as I can. I'm part of a leadership group that meets with Schumer on Tuesday mornings. I know that this is a priority to him. I know that Dick Durbin, frankly, there's no one in the Democratic caucus who's fought harder, stood up more and longer than Dick Durbin has for Dreamers. And he is one of our highest ranking people that's in these negotiations. Urban has for Dreamers, and he is one of our highest ranking people that's in these negotiations. So I know this is a priority for us. And for me, again, this is one of those larger issues that is about the soul of our country. These are folks in my state, I have Dreamers who are first responders, Dreamers who have started businesses. I talked about one from the Senate floor, have started businesses. I talked about one from the Senate floor, employees like 800 people. These are folks that wear our uniforms, 900 in the United States military. They are American citizens in every way except for a piece of paper. To send them back is to break up families, send many of them back to countries where they don't even speak the language. They don't have any memory whatsoever. It is unjust. It is a surrendering

of our values. It's an assault. And for me, knowing that we are a nation that has always had to overcome the denial of full citizenship rights for women, for African-Americans, for others, we should not be denying citizenship rights for these folks who have proven their patriotism, not with their words or their pledges, but how they're living their lives, the sacrifices they're making, the contributions to our country, and frankly, even just the economic analysis of the billions of dollars they're contributing to our economy. To remove them would be a self-inflicted wound, not just to our economy, but to our moral values themselves. But you, just to follow up, you will not vote to fund the government without action on the Dreamers, regardless of what the rest of the Senate leadership decides to do?

Again, I voted against the last CR. This is something I'm going to probably vote against if it doesn't have – this is something I will vote against if it doesn't have the Dreamers in it. It should not come to that. There should be a way to make a deal. in it. It should not come to that. There should be a way to make a deal. But again, I cannot allow ourselves to go into the new year without having addressed what I think is a moral issue in our country. I stand with Dreamers. And I will use, I'm just one senator, but I'm going to use every bit of leverage I have on the upcoming vote. Do you feel the same way about the fully funding for the children's

health insurance program? I know that's been held up. And do you see a path forward on that? Do you see making a deal on that? I know the House bill that's come over has all kinds of cuts in other health care programs as a precondition of extending CHIP. Do you think we'll get a clean vote on CHIP or at least clean funding? Well, you know that this is absolutely, again, something that is outrageous to our values. I was happy to hear Doug Jones speak about that in his concession speech clean funding? Well, you know that this is absolutely, again, something that is outrageous to our values. I was happy to hear Doug Jones speak about that in his concession speech. So here we are two months into having the reauthorization expire. This is outrageous that we are not providing healthcare for these millions of American children who, by the way,

again, the moral right thing to do is often the economically right thing to do. Investing in the healthcare of children saves money in their long term over their lives. This is absolutely outrageous that we're not doing it. I hate the fact that this isn't a negotiation Republicans might be trying to lord over us to say, okay, we're going to give you healthcare for kids if you give us, you know, what, another tax break for the wealthiest amongst us. It's ridiculous. We should be doing this. This is a bipartisan effort.

Its origins are bipartisan. This should be bipartisan. The fact that we're about to pass a major tax bill that is going to give corporations who are already at an 80-year high in corporate profits under this theory that it's going to somehow trickle down when we know what the corporation is doing with 80%, 90% of their profits, which is dividend payments, stock buybacks. The fact that somehow we haven't had the time to do what is morally right for my Christian evangelical colleagues, for my fiscally conservative colleagues, things that's in the line with all of them is unacceptable.

And so I'm again fighting. These are you're hitting all the pain points here from DACA to Chip. We need to get these things done before we go home or we should stay. Senator, as you know, today's the five year anniversary of Sandy Hook. And in those five years, there have been exactly zero legislative actions taken to prevent something like Sandy Hook from happening again. You know, obviously, we know this is the fault of Republicans in the NRA and others. But what can Democrats do to change the equation?

And what would your message be to voters, to the public, who are so frustrated by the inaction on guns? And just because I'm on a show of friends, you know I just want to call out to you the fact that I'm very, very pained. I literally wept when Sandy Hook happened. But you know we have a mass murder in the United States, an effective mass murder in the United States every single day if you aggregate all the people that get shot. Yeah. And they live – often these are concentrated in communities like the one in which I live in. I'm the – I think the only senator maybe ever that's gone home to an inner city majority-minority community below the poverty line or at least median income in my area is about $14,000. I had a shooting on my block earlier this year right across the street from where I live. across the street from where I live. I know that we focus in on these mass shootings and we seem not to give attention to, or in my opinion, sufficient attention to every single day,

people, children are being murdered in this country. Often they're poor, often the minority, but every single life matters. And our moral outrage in how preventable this is. When I was mayor, I used to get so upset that one of the leading groups that were murdered in my city were women who are victims of domestic violence. And in states that just do the common sense thing of having background checks, thorough background checks, which the overwhelming majority of NRA members agree on, you see 40% reductions in murder of people by their intimates, by their partners. And so I know we want to use this anniversary, but for those of us that live in communities where gunfire is heard too damn often, every day should be a day that we recognize it is absolutely unacceptable that this country has not done what over 80% of us believe needs to be done.

Common sense gun safety, things like background checks, so that known criminals, spousal abusers, terrorists can't go on the internet or go to a gun show and fill up with a trunkful of weapons and kill people, which happens every single day. So I say this to folks all the time that ask me, why can't Congress get this done? And my response is the civil rights movement didn't wait for Congress to get it done or for Strom Thurmond to suddenly decide that, hey, maybe blacks deserve the right to vote. that, hey, maybe blacks deserve the right to vote. The suffrage movement didn't wait for Congress, for the men in Congress to give their, to somehow charitably give the rights for women in this country to vote. It was people that were sick and tired, fed up,

fought and demanded it and brought that change. And that's what we need more of. Anger, outrage, and letting folks know that we're holding you accountable if you don't do the most common sense thing. This isn't about reversing the Heller decision. It's not about taking away people's guns. It's about doing the most basic things we should be doing to protect the lives of children, of women, of American citizens. It is crazy that we have not done it. And our outrage should drive

us to keep working until the day that the legislation passes in the Senate and the House. It is crazy. I mean, do you think there's a path, you know, at the state level, at the local level in passing some laws while we, you know, wait for and work for a Congress that's actually going to pass these laws? I mean, you know, what do you say to all the people that say we need some kind of action now? The House's priority on guns. I know. To try to make concealed carry reciprocity. I mean, that's their focus right now.

And I know you're asking me about the states, but you're seeing the gun industry that thrives on an environment where they could sell guns to people that maybe not should buy them, driving so much of this. And they are overpunching their weight. They are not the majority. Again, as I said, the majority of NRA members believe in common sense reform. So we should fight everywhere on this. We should fight in cities.

We should fight in counties, state level. This should be something to protect human life because we are all one of these mass murders or, frankly, as I've seen, too many folks get caught in gunfire, too many folks. Nobody should be dying in this way. So I'm hoping that all of us keep this in mind as we go into the midterm elections to make this a priority in our voting and a priority in our small dollar contributions to candidates. Senator, you introduced a bill along with Lindsey Graham that would require the Attorney General to get permission from a federal court before firing the special counsel. Over the last week, we've seen Republicans and a lot of folks in the right-wing media trying to imply that the FBI is somehow corrupt, trying to say that we need a second special counsel to investigate the special counsel. How worried are you about all this? And

do you see any progress in making sure that Mueller's investigation is protected? Yeah, well, look, there's an insidious attack going on, a campaign going on, trying to delegitimize a guy who is one of those folks who has one of those careers that's beyond reproach. It's unfortunate. And I think it shows that they're worried and they're concerned that this could lead into one of the handful of real constitutional crises we have, we've had in American history. And the problem is, what really frustrates me is we get closer to another major election. I just had a meeting earlier today about what foreign interference in our election. The Russians are still working, not just in our country, but in Latvia, Lithuania, France, England,

they're still working to undermine Western democracy as we know it. And so as opposed to joining in a bipartisan effort to hold people accountable, to defend our country, and to stop the Russians from shaking our democracy. We're playing into this by creating more mass confusion, less confidence in our institutions, less confidence in the rule of law. And it's just, it's despicable to me. And so I'm very grateful for that for Lindsey Graham, that he and I both understand that for now and for the future, we should create a common sense checks and balances on the special counsel law and make sure that there is a true cause should a special counsel be removed. And I know having a lot of conversations with others

trying to get more support, more bipartisan support behind this bill, and I'm hoping that we can move it forward. And again, as you know, that will all come to the test of whether Mitch McConnell would be willing to put something like this on the floor. And last question, just to go back to Alabama. I know you were down there campaigning pretty hard. It was an improbable victory. But what does it tell you about what the Democratic Party should say and do moving forward? What kind of what impressions do you take from the Alabama race? Well, first of all, you pick great candidates. And Doug Jones is an extraordinary person. I can't wait for America to get to know him better. And a lot of credit has to go to him and his team. But I'm just somebody, I wouldn't be on this interview with you right now.

When I ran my first election, we were running against the incumbent establishment in Newark, New Jersey. And we didn't have the kind of resources for TV, didn't have money for a poll. We just went to everybody's doors, had real substantive contact. That's what they did. There's a name that should be being talked about more in the press, but Rich McDaniel, who was a field director, when I hit the ground there for a crazy intense marathon weekend of campaigning, when he started breaking down the numbers of direct face-to-face contacts, the million-plus phone calls, the mobilization that was going, turning activist groups. I mean, you literally saw former sharecroppers out there driving people to the polls. As one report my staff just showed me

just an incredible grassroots effort. That's how you win elections. And we've got to replicate that now. And there's a lot to learn from this election in terms of just mobilizing, energizing, and substantively engaging. And as a guy that's, and I'll confess this to you, I fly all around the country trying to help candidates out. And the thing when I go into, especially a black community, and I hear from ministers and they say to me, why do folk only show up when it's election time? I know that that's a major problem. You know, democracies, the work of our democracy can't be an every two-year thing or every four-year thing. It has to be an everyday thing where we're engaging communities in substantive ways on issues that matter to them and getting folks to the polls.

And when you can build that kind of trust with people – and by the way, we're a nation that has a common pain, but we fail to have a common purpose. But if you really can connect with people on that larger sense of purpose, I think we're going to see what we've seen in Virginia, what we saw in New Jersey, what we definitely saw in Alabama, in Virginia, what we saw in New Jersey, what we definitely saw in Alabama is a renewal of our democracy, a reflourishing of our democracy, where people are beginning to understand that it's not a spectator sport. You can't just sit on the sideline and nonchalantly root for your team, red or blue, but it's a full contact participatory endeavor. When good people don't vote, bad things happen. And sometimes as we saw in Alabama, bad people could be elected. But when good people vote and participate, good things happen. And we've got to get back to communicating that at the grassroots level through constant working in the garden of our democracy. We do

that. We're going to reap a harvest that the entire country will benefit from. That, to me, is what Alabama indicates. And I hope it's a strategy. It's one that I'm pushing around here all the time, that we've got to get back to connecting to voters where they are on issues that matter to them. Well, we couldn't agree more. Thank you so much, Senator Booker, for joining us. And please come back again soon. No, thank you. Thank you, guys. Your podcast nurtures, nourishes, energizes, fires me up, as well as informs me. So i just want to thank you all for doing what you do really this is a tremendous service you're providing and i said this when i

was talking to radio stations down in alabama in american history and and black history in particular uh radio and which is i guess a modern version of that is podcasts really was a one of the more powerful forces for social change and you guys what you guys are doing are so important. And I love the fact that you guys have become a little bit of rock stars. I'm watching you on your public events these days. So I know that you're not in it for that at all, guys. But 2017 has been a weird year, Senator, a weird year. But what you're doing is really important to a lot of folks who are looking for hope

and looking for light. I know Alabama, I think, is the first ray of a new day to come. But you guys are doing a lot of work in helping to keep hope alive, frankly. So thank you. Well, that's very kind of you to say. Thank you. And keep up the fight in the Senate. You're doing great work there, too.

Thank you, guys. All the best. Take care. All right. That's our show for today. Thank you again to Doug Jones and Senator Cory Booker for joining us. And we'll see you again next week. Bye, guys. All the best. Take care. All right. That's our show for today. Thank you again to Doug Jones and Senator Cory Booker for joining us. And we'll see you again next week. Bye, guys. Bye. I'm