Pod Save America - “Let the healing begin!”

Episode Date: June 11, 2020

Trump prepares for a potential speech on race and unity by attacking an elderly protester and defending Confederate-named buildings, Republicans feel the pressure on police reform, and Joe Biden opens up a big lead in the polls. Then Stacey Abrams talks to Jon about the voting disaster in Georgia and her new book, Our Time Is Now. 

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's pod, Stacey Abrams is here to talk about the voting clusterfuck in Georgia on Tuesday and her brand new book, Our Time Is Now. Before that, we'll talk about the mixed messages coming out of the White House and the Trump campaign on police violence and racism and why the president has grown, quote, malignantly crazy about his poll numbers against Joe Biden. But first, check out this week's Pod Save the World,

where Tommy and Ben talk about what policing looks like abroad, evidence there may not have been fraud in Bolivia's presidential election after all, Netanyahu's latest dangerous annexation push, and an interview with The Washington Post's David Ignatius. Also, big announcement. Crooked has a brand new podcast premiering tomorrow, June 12th. It is called Unholier Than Thou. We've had this one in the works for a while. Award-winning journalist and editor Philip Picardy is on a quest to better understand his relationship with spirituality by learning how faith plays a role

in other people's lives. The first two episodes are out tomorrow friday they are fantastic uh one includes an excellent conversation with the rector of saint john's episcopal church who was there when trump staged his photo op last week uh fascinating conversation so go subscribe to unholier than thou on apple podcast spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts exciting that's great dan i think you i think you have a new video too a new uh campaign campaign experts react i would note that that is not the title i would have chosen the title keeps changing every time i see it in documents on youtube i don't know what the title is. I, this is my overlords, Elijah and Yale, who really, um, they really, uh, ward their digital nativity over me all the time. And,

uh, or digital nativism. I don't know whatever it is they do. They say they're younger. Therefore they understand the internet better. And so when they offered the title campaign experts react, I said, you know, cricket's pretty good at naming things. Could we come up with some other titles? They said yes. They said yes, as long as it has the words Experts React in it. Oh, OK. It's like a thing.

I don't know. But anywho, Campaign Experts React. It's on YouTube. It's a series we're going to do every couple of weeks where we break down political ads. It's a series we're going to do every couple of weeks where we break down political ads. The most recent episode, which went up on Tuesday, includes Cornell Belcher, our old friend who was one of Barack Obama's pollsters, 2008, 2012. And we look at some ads from the Trump campaign, the Lincoln Project, and a Senate majority pack ad against Susan Collins. And dig into the question of whether it is possible for the Trump campaign to make being an asshole a political asset, which it seems to be their latest strategy. So check it out. It's a great one. It's

my favorite one yet. Cornell is fantastic. So check it out. All right, let's get to the news. So on Sunday, Donald Trump's top political advisors told Axios that, quote, their boss needs more hopeful, optimistic and unifying messages and that, quote, he has to tone down the most incendiary rhetoric. The White House was even telling reporters that Trump might deliver a speech on race and unity. And sure enough, the president spent the week testing out some new material, Dan. On Monday, he said that an elderly protester who was assaulted by police in Buffalo was actually an Antifa provocateur who faked the whole thing. On Wednesday, he stood up

for the ideal of naming military bases after Confederate leaders. And the White House just announced that Trump will be spending Juneteenth, our national commemoration of the end of slavery, by holding a campaign rally in Tulsa, the site of the single worst incident of racial violence in American history. Dan, let the healing begin. So I want to unpack all of this, starting with Trump's completely insane Antifa conspiracy theory about 75-year-old Martin Gugino, a Catholic peace activist who's still in the hospital recovering from a serious head wound that he got from the police in Buffalo. Where did this Antifa lunacy come from? It came from OAN, which is a network that was created on the idea that Fox was too sane.

Makes Fox look like MSNBC. I mean, like to fully understand, OAN is this fringe conservative television network that has minimal viewership that was started about six or seven years ago. And they rose to prominence in 2016 because they became very pro-Trump. Trump started amplifying them. He often threatens Fox with OAN and constantly touts them. They are completely insane. They put forward a whole series of conspiracy theories, and their whole modus operandi is Trump. They go out of their way to put forward content that they believe reinforces Donald Trump's worldview. to put forward content that they believe reinforces Donald Trump's worldview.

That is ultimately what this conspiracy theory that Martin Gugino, a social activist, Catholic social activist in his seventies was standing there, faked his fall first off. And secondly, it was there to disrupt police signals with this phone, I believe. I mean,

it's completely bananas, but there's a strategic ish, which is how I think, how I describe all things Trump does. It's strategic-ish. Strategic-ish purpose to this, which is Trump wants to show that somehow these protests are being led by or infiltrated by bad people that he can demonize. And so he's struggled so much to do that that he picked Martin Gugino. And then ultimately, this is part of a much bigger problem in American media in the Trump era, which is you have these media outlets, OAM, but also Fox and Breitbart, who know that they need Trump attention and Trump retweets to drive their business and drive their attention. So they put out content that they think Trump will like

and therefore share. And so you end up with this sort of Mobius strip of misinformation where they're putting out this information because they think Trump believes it, but then Trump believes it because they put it out and then he tweets it. And you end up in this cycle where it's not clear where Trump's brain begins or ends and the misinformation starts. Yeah. And, you know, and like all of these conspiracies, you know, the whole thing falls apart when you think about it for five seconds or when you watch the video, first of all, and you see that he was pushed to the ground and was not fucking faking it. And then you think to yourself, like, yeah, you know, Antifa is just sitting there and be like, we've got to send this 75 year old to Buffalo to disrupt the police communications equipment. That's that's how we're going to that's that's Antifa, antifa which by the way isn't a defined organization in the first place i mean it goes back to trump is very good at attacking imaginary enemies he needs imaginary enemies all the time um to keep his whole thing going like he can't fight with real people there's always like there's a caravan coming. There's antifas out to get you. And so it is part of his whole gestalt. I don't know. Is that is attacking a 75 year old man the best way to shore up the senior citizen vote? Look, it's been a while since I've been like actively working on campaigns, but I think not.

I mean, to give the numbers, Trump won seniors by five points in 2016. He is currently losing them by seven points, according to the polling average that Nate Cohn put together in a recent piece. He cannot win if he is losing seniors by seven. And I don't see the benefit in attacking a senior as a member of a quasi made up domestic terrorist group. in attacking a senior as a member of a quasi made up domestic terrorist group. So the reaction to Trump's tweet was a classic of the genre. Republicans in Congress all found different ways to pretend they didn't see it. But of course, none of them could out pathetic little Marco Rubio, who said, quote, I don't read Twitter. I only write on it. Which is so funny because everything that Marco Rubio has said or done to 2016 has been very clearly in response to his mentions right yeah he's deep in the mentions deep in the mentions

uh and a few sad white house staffers texted jonathan swan of axios to tell him that they're at quote wit's end and tweets like that make them wonder if Trump even wants to get reelected. Dan, what's a poor Trump White House staffer to do? Like, what did they think was going to happen? Was there some other period in their sad, depraved tenure where Trump was really behaving well and doing smart things? They chose to work for a man who rose to the White House by spreading depraved conspiracy theories. And so now they're sad he's doing the thing that he has always done. It's absurd.

And it's so funny because these staffers who are constantly talking to Jonathan Swan and others, it's like they're having this internal struggle where they're feeling some measure of discomfort with the way things are going, but not enough to do anything about it. So it's like they just, you know, maybe they don't have time to get to their therapist appointment. So they just call Jonathan Swan to make themselves feel better. But I thought it was very revealing when one of them said they wonder if Trump even wants to get reelected. It's not none of this is bothering them from a moral perspective. Oh, yeah. They just they're they're upset that he might not win, that it's not a politically wise

move. That's all they give a fuck about. Yeah. I mean, they have bet their reputations, their place in history on a four to eight year period of being able to share a table with Corey Lewandowski, David Bossie, and a member of the Five at the Trump Hotel. And if that ends in four years, then it probably wasn't a worthwhile investment. And, you know, and the same thing with these Republican senators running away. I mean, reporters had printed out the tweet. You know what? It took three and a half years, but good for you, Capitol reporters, for figuring that out. Good for you. And they still get it. And I saw there was a Washington Post story about a bunch of Republican senators and Republican strategists worried that Trump

would take down the Senate with them if he loses in November. And they're saying, you know, what's the best advice that you're giving your bosses? And someone was like, well, I would just tell them to like run away from Casey Hunt whenever you're in Capitol Hill, who's a reporter for NBC. It's just like great strategy. That's a great strategy. Very bold. I do want to get back to the larger conflict within the Republican Party and the White House and the Trump campaign itself over how to respond to both the protests and the massive shift in public opinion around police brutality and systemic racism that we've seen over the last few weeks. On one hand, you've got Senate Republicans

led by South Carolina Senator Tim Scott working on a very modest police reform bill, but certainly much further than they've ever gone. You've got the White House saying Trump might implement some of these reforms via executive order soon. Stephen Miller's hard at work on that speech about racism. He's for it, I guess. But then on Wednesday, after the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of the Army both said they'd be willing to rename the 10 army bases named after Confederate leaders, Trump says he won't even consider it. And it's not just him

tweeting. Here's White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany saying that it is official policy. Fort Bragg is known for the heroes within it that train there, that deployed from there. And it's an insult to say to the men and women who left there the last thing they saw on American soil before going overseas and in some cases losing their lives to tell them that what they left was inherently a racist institution because of a name. That's unacceptable to the president and rightfully so. And I would also note where do you draw the line here? I'm told that no longer can you find on HBO Gone with the Wind because somehow that is now offensive. Where do you draw

the line? Is it should George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and James Madison be erased from history? What about FDR and because of internment camps, you know, he should he be erased from history or Lyndon Johnson who has a history of documented racist statements. And finally, what about people that are alleged by the media to be segregationist? NBC tells us Joe Biden didn't just compromise with segregationists. He fought for their causes in schools, experts say. CNN tells us letters from Joe Biden reveal how he sought support of segregationists in the fight against busing. Washington Post tells us that Biden's tough talk on 1970 schools desegregation plans could get him new scrutiny and there are several more that

where that came from so i'll leave you with the question should we then rename the biden welcome center i got an idea let's start with people who fought for the confederacy let's start there then we'll see where we are people who seceded from the union for the cause of slavery uh let's start let's start there and then see where we go i mean it is wild although consistent with much of the uh post-civil war history the united states that we have a bunch of military bases named after generals who tried to defeat the U.S. military. And lost. To this day. And we have, and like, I mean, so that's, I mean, that's fucking, that's them. That's crazy.

Let's talk about the political dynamics. Like, first, and let's start with the Senate Republicans. Do you think they feel pressure to do something on police reform because of public opinion. Do you think it is an effort to separate themselves from Trump? Is it both? I think they do. And you can what made me think that there was something in their polling or something that is telling them they have to be seen as being for something and not against everything was John Cornyn, one of the truly worst people in all of

American politics tweeting about the need to deal with police violence against the black community. And I mean, this is someone who in the run up to the 2018 election, John Cornyn tweeted a article about how Texas was going to become a majority-minority state, where he was trying to make the point. His political philosophy in the Trump era has been to scare white people. And the fact that he did this, and he is in a race, in a state that is trending much bluer as it becomes more suburban. So his desire to be on record being for something that Trump is not was notable. I don't necessarily think it's a specific strategy to separate from Trump, but I think they, at least some of them, and McConnell was pushing this

for this, do not like a political dynamic where you have these millions of people peacefully protesting. You have Joe Biden and congressional Democrats pushing for something, knowing that the House is probably going to pass a bill. Trump demonizing it and just doing whatever insane shit he's doing that moment. And Republicans being there, at least I think they feel better somewhat in the middle of that dynamic as opposed to on the Trump side. Yeah, I mean, look, you know, are this is this is also an example of the power of protests and the power of changing public opinion. protests and the power of changing public opinion. Like, do I think most of these Republicans are serious about these reforms? No. Do I think a lot of the reforms they'll come up with are going to be worth much? Probably not. But they're scared. They're all scared of public opinion and the politics around this, which should tell everyone who's been in the streets and who's been

fighting these battles that it's working. It's working. Tom Cotton, Tom Cotton stood up at this at the Senate lunch, apparently, and said young black men have a very different experience with law enforcement in this nation than white people. And that's their impression and experience. And we need to be sensitive to that and do all we can to change it uh you know just just a week after he was ready to uh send in the american military um to attack uh some of those young black men who were protesting um he decides to say this i think one note about tom cotton's remarks that some context is he was actually holding james bennett's head when he said them. I mean, so it's like, again, fucking it's bullshit. It's coming from Tom Cotton.

But it shows you that even Tom Cotton, crazy right wing lunatic as he is, is scared. He's scared. And he sees where he sees where the country is. And he made sure that the press knew he said that because that was not this is a closed private lunch. And somehow some political reporters just happened to get a scoop about Tom Cotton's big West Wing moment in here. And so he felt after being on the side of invading American cities, that he had to sort of leaven that absurd position with saying one thing that was not terrible, which is very off brand for Tom Cotton. Yeah, the ultimate both sides there. And why do you think the White House and the Trump campaign are talking about unifying race speeches in police form one day and the next day they're defending the Confederacy and announcing a MAGA rally in Tulsa on Juneteenth?

You know, this division has manifested itself in some of the stories that have been written about sort of the state of the Trump campaign these days, which is, to be clear, not good. And there are some people who are – some of them are newer to Trump world. They're not necessarily veterans of the 2016 primary who are looking at the numbers. And the numbers are very clear, which is Trump is underperforming with seniors, which is related to a whole bunch of things, including coronavirus and the economy, and maybe his proposal to cut Medicare and Social Security and those sorts of things. But he also has a massive suburban problem and a problem with women. And his positions and racially divisive rhetoric are contributing to that. So they are trying to – there are some people who look at the data and say we cannot win with the same numbers we won in 2016.

We have to grow our support beyond the quote-unquote MAGA base. Therefore, we have to sand down the edges and make Trump slightly more broadly acceptable. This is not – like they need to get like three points more broadly acceptable. This is not like they need to get like three points more broadly acceptable. And then you have Trump's natural instincts in a set of people who feel like that approach of appealing to people, right, is inconsistent with how he won in 2016 and want to double down on the base. Now, I'm not really sure how the numbers work in that scenario. I sort of have a theory of how they could work. But if you're looking at polling, it is very clear that you need to sand the edges down here. And so I think that's that there's a push and pull between political professionals and the cable racist for profit that advise Trump on the side. Yeah. And you saw some of this play out, like you said, in some of these stories. There's an ABC

story about this that ran last night. Some of the base first people, the people who want him to remain in his racist roots are, you know, training their fire on Kushner. Jared Kushner, his son-in-law. ABC says Trump people believe Kushner is alienating the president's voter base because he is too moderate a force. And Jared assumes our base is going to go along with anything we say. It does set up a real challenge for him, for Trump, because like you said, his instincts are everything we've seen him tweet this week. This is who he is.

We've known this for years now. He's never going to be able to not be that guy that we've seen in those tweets. strategy and base plus where somehow they like win by registering a whole bunch of people who, you know, a lot of non-college educated white people in some of these swing states who didn't vote at all in 2016, but might be inclined to vote for Trump now who just haven't been registered. Because I don't know with this, like with these issues in the news, with the election being about both the pandemic, the recession, sort of the the racial and social upheaval in the country right now, like Donald Trump being who he is, tweeting like he does, is not going to win over a bunch of new people. Right. Well, do you want to know sort of my theory of how they can make that work? Yeah.

So I want to be very clear. I do not think this is a good political strategy, but if you were trying to divine a strategy that they could approach this way would be one one, nuke Joe Biden, right? And you nuke him in two ways, right? You knock down his numbers with seniors. Even if you don't win him by five like you did in 2016, you get that number closer to even, which is a doable proposition because these are people who have not been firmly in the Democratic camp for a long period of time.

And in the course of nuking Joe Biden, this is very similar to what they had some success with Hillary, which is you make him unacceptable and unexciting to some small percentage of Democratic base voters. So you take your base, you jack it up high, as high as you can, which is not that high, but you get turnout up. And there are large pockets in the battleground states of unregistered, likely Trump voters. So you get that up. And then you make Biden unacceptable to some number of voters. And that doesn't mean you move them to Trump. You move them into either some third party candidate, which that obvious vessel does not exist now like it did with Jill Stein and Gary Johnson, but also in a world in which vote voting requires you potentially

to go stand in line next to an unmasked MAGA person and maybe get coronavirus. You just don't go. So where you can reduce turnout among the both some Democratic base who Biden has still some challenges with and the group of Trump disapprovers who remain somewhat skeptical of Biden, right? That is a theory for how you could do this, and it does not work on a national scale. Trump still loses the popular vote by millions under that, but it is a world in which you could theoretically, theoretically, if everything goes right, win a very narrow electoral college victory. And it does seem like it is not just a strategy that happens because of Trump's instincts, that that's a big part of it, but that the campaign is, or at least some elements of

the campaign are coalescing around the strategy. I mean, do we think that any of them knew about the fact that they were going to hold the first MAGA rally in three months in Tulsa on Juneteenth? Do you think this was a purposeful thing? Do you think they were just morons? Again, this is the old incompetence versus malevolence debate. don't know how no one could have Googled that, researched it, understood the significance of both the date and the place. I don't know. What do you think? Well, look, John, as you know, Oklahoma is the state that traditionally decides presidential elections. And so you got to get there and you got to win that state. So I'm sure that's why he went to Oklahoma. Look, it is always possible that they

fucked up like that. Like that is and they are capable of making mistakes that are so bad that they seem impossible to just be mistakes. Right. But so that is possible. But I do think everyone, journalists, people on Twitter are letting them off the hook because the entire response to this from most people was, ha ha, look what happens when they have to Google this, right? Aren't they going to be shocked? And he's the president of the United States, someone who has run on an explicitly white nationalist message for years now. We are in the middle of a national conversation on systemic racism and state-sponsored violence against the Black community. And here you have the President of the United States going to a non-battleground state on a specific

day to have this rally. And so I don't think we can just let him off the hook. The burden of proof must be on Trump to prove that this was some sort of unbelievable coincidence and not a very specific attempt to send a very strong message to some portion of white people in America. And there is a history with this, which is in 1980, when Ronald Reagan was running for president, he gave one of his first speeches at the Neshoba County Fair in Mississippi, which is a stone's throw away from Philadelphia, Mississippi, which was the site of the Mississippi burning murders of civil rights workers, and gave a speech about states' rights. And that was based on reporting from inside the campaign at the time, a very explicit

message to white Southerners that Reagan was, that this California Hollywood governor was on your side. Because the only path to victory for Reagan was to get white people on the South to support him instead of Carter. And I think there was a very real possibility that this is the updated version of the Neshoba County fair speech. And we should look at it through that context. And I just presume that Trump and the people around him are idiots. Yes. And for, you know, for those of you who aren't familiar with all

the details of Tulsa, you know, you should look at it. You should look it up because it is one of the more horrific episodes in American history. It was in 1921. Basically, a mob of white citizens conspired with the city, with the National Guard to terrorize the black population of Tulsa at the time. There were murders. There were like houses were burned down, like generations of wealth were lost. It was a horrific incident, maybe the worst incident of racial violence in our history,

which is littered with incidents of very, very bad racial violence. So, you know, as much as we're talking about the politics of this, you should read up on that because it is truly horrific and especially more so now that Trump has decided that he wants to go there on Juneteenth of all days. And it is notably a racial incident that is not included in much of the history that is taught in American schools. No, and you're right. And then there was a commission that took a long time to actually figure out, to find out all the details and to discover what really happened there.

So it was a very long history there. So the Trump campaign also, on this note, released an attack ad yesterday, which also doesn't feel too unifying. Let's play the ad. Antifa is destroying our communities, rioting, looting. Yet Joe Biden kneels down and his staff sends money for bail. And Biden fails to stand up to the radical leftists

fighting to defund and abolish the police. With Biden kneeling to the left, we'd have chaos in the streets. President Trump is standing up for us, keeping our communities safe, protecting minority-owned businesses, and always standing for our flag. I'm Donald J. Trump, and I approve this message. Now, you can tell me if there's anything in this ad that is concerning to you, but the line, like biden kneeling to the left is going to lead to chaos in the streets is one of the dumbest lines i have heard in an ad because like it is so i mean we'll talk about this but it is such an ad directed only towards the most trumpy Trump voters who can put together the kneeling reference, the streets,

the Antifa stuff like it's a greatest hits of all of Trump's craziness and the rights craziness that you see on Fox News. I don't I can't imagine it's anything but an ad that would get MAGA folks excited and maybe raise some money. But I don't know what you think. I mean, in our poetically named YouTube series, Campaign Experts React, we've looked at a couple of Trump ads and this one fits with all the ads we've looked at, which is embedded in it is a measure of potentially effective strategy. It is just that strategy is executed incredibly poorly because these ads are made by people who only watch Fox and are therefore made for people who only watch Fox. Like you have to know a lot about what life is like

inside the right wing media ecosystem to understand what the fuck this is about, right? It is like, you got like Colin Kaepernick illusions and Antifa illusions. And the average person does not get that. A strategy that tries to make Biden unacceptable to some group of older moderate voters because he is in line with sort of a more radical element of the Democratic Party. You're going to see a lot of this in the conversation around socialism and trying to make that. Now, I think that is a very difficult thing to sell about Joe Biden, right? Like to the extent people know things about him is that he was a vice president for Barack Obama, that he is an old white guy and that he was probably somewhat more moderate than the

other Democrats running. Like that's sort of the general. That's like the thing you would remember about the primary if you're someone who casually pays attention to politics. So that is a hard thing to like the execution of that. And like the voiceovers in all of these Republican ads are so bad. Right. Like it's not it did like we discussed and we looked at a this other Trump ad Cornell and I did where basically it sounds like a Fox News buy gold commercial and how they sell it. And it's like, you know, it is like so it's I think there that is not a good execution of a strategy. It's a pretty bad ad, but you can sort of see where they're going. And they just don't have to move numbers en masse to make this a very close race. They only have to shave a few points off here and there. And we cannot forget that. Yeah, no, I think it's also an example of an ad that is sort of swimming against the tide of the prevailing media narrative, right? Like people know, or at least according to sort of all of the polling and research we have seen over the last

few weeks, people don't hold Joe Biden responsible for the chaos in the streets. In fact, people largely hold Donald Trump responsible for chaos. They think he has handled the protest wrong. They are on the side of the protesters over the police. They believe that systemic racism is a huge problem in the country. They do not think that Antifa is responsible for all this. Like they are one of the challenges for the Trump campaign in this moment is sort of the reality. And this has been their challenge for the last couple of months through the pandemic as well. The reality that people are feeling in their own lives and seeing on their television screens and their phone screens is very different than the narrative that Donald Trump and his campaign are trying to deliver to them. And I think that's really hard when you're running a campaign to be that opposed

to the predominant narrative. It's hard for Democrats when the narrative is different. But like in this instance, they're not doing a very good job of meeting people where they are in terms of the reality that they're experiencing right now. There's always too much spin on the ball. Like, if you go through all the, like, everything we've talked about here today besides the Antifa tweet, but the gone with the wind comments about the banning of gone with the wind, the toppling of the Confederate statues, getting rid of Christopher Columbus. What all of this is about is trying to send a message to a certain set of voters that change is happening, is scary, and it's happening too fast. And that Donald Trump is a break on that change. One of the things we've said about Joe Biden in the past is like whatever else you thought about him in the primary, he was perhaps the best fit for the electorate of all the other candidates.

And what Trump wants to do is make change seem like it's happening too fast and too scary. He'd be a break against that change. There is a way to do that message, but you have to do it in a way that is credible for who your opponent is. And making Joe Biden seem like an Antifa leader is not a credible way of doing it. Although maybe and maybe that was the whole point of the martin gajino tweet was yeah he's the same age same age right if martin gajino can be an antifa member it'll be an ad with biden's face on his body um trying to uh scam police equipment yes So let's talk about the state of the race. Over the last few weeks, Biden has opened up a significant lead over Trump, about eight points nationally right now, which would almost certainly be enough to also win the Electoral College if the race was today. As Nate Cohn of The New York Times pointed out this week, Trump's standing has eroded among most demographic groups, but particularly women, white voters without a college degree and seniors, which puts Biden in a stronger position to oust an incumbent president than any challenger since Bill Clinton in the summer of 1992.

Trump, per usual, is taking this in stride. One of his staffers told Vanity Fair's Gabe Sherman that the president is, quote, malignantly crazy about the bad poll numbers. I'm going to stop there because that's too much good news that I refuse to get excited by. Throw some cold water on the numbers for us, Dan. Well, most importantly. Campaign experts act like wet blankets. That's the next video series. Well, the most important point is the election is not today.

Right. Yeah. In fact, it's a couple months. Couple months. Wish it was today. Wish it was next week. As we pointed out last week, the distance between the Iowa caucus and today is shorter than the distance between today and the election. So a lot can happen. Even reading all these stories about Trump standing where it's like like this is his lowest rating since the government shutdown of 2019 i know it's like do you remember

that 2017 2017 no 2019 oh for some reason i thought that was in 2017 oh no that was a mini that that was when we shut the government down for a weekend that's when we shut that's right that's right yes but then trump himself shut it down for several months. We just basically didn't have a government for like three months. Yeah. And then there was like, that it's like the other time it was this low was in 20, in the, like the fall of 2019 during impeachment.

Also thing that happened. So like things are going to change and you can even see how they begin to feel more normal. Right. Even if we just as, this is not because we have a vaccine or a therapeutic, we figured out coronavirus.

It's more that we have just become numb to a situation where 800 to 1200 Americans die every day because it may not be happening in our community or in our lives at that one moment in time. And the press has sort of moved on from it. And the protests recede somewhat to the background.

I hope they don't, but that can happen. The economic news starts to feel a little bit better and people's anxiety leavens. And then the race reverts back to where it has been from the beginning, which is Joe Biden with a four to five point national poll lead, which means a very narrow, close electoral college race. Everyone on this podcast should stop looking at national polls because they give you a false

sense of comfort. Joe Biden can win the popular vote by four to five points and still not become president. Now, that is a huge indictment of our political system. But that is the reality in which we are living in. And so you look at these polls, like Biden is up by seven and a half points. That means Trump has to move the race to two and a half to three and a half points to be right back where he was in 2016. So we have to be prepared for an incredibly close race. Throughout the Trump presidency, there have been these, it has operated within this narrow band, where at his high point, it is a close race. And at his low point, he's going to lose by a lot, but it always seems to revert back. That may not happen, but we should presume like it will, because that is what the three and a half years of the Trump

presidency thus far have told us will happen. I think also, you know, one reason to be concerned are the demographic groups that are giving Biden some of this lead. So non-college educated white voters and seniors, right? Two groups that traditionally have been with Republicans have not shown that they were moving away from Republicans in recent years. In fact, have shown over the last several election cycles that they've moved towards Republicans. So that's sort of where the demographics are going. So the fact that, you know, like Hillary Clinton did worse among white voters without a college degree than Barack Obama did in 18. It's not like a lot of the candidates in even in 18 in the midterms made up much ground with white voters without a college education.

So it is unusual that Joe Biden is doing well among those voters right now, which means it's even easier to see them going back to Donald Trump. You might say the same thing about senior citizens, senior voters. The other thing is, you know, Biden made no gains among men or non-white voters, and he's pretty flat with young voters, meaning he's probably now getting the same share of the youth vote as Hillary Clinton did. But with non-white voters, Biden has not made up much ground. Even if you look at 2018, huge Democratic year. The states that we need to win. Let's say we win Michigan, we win Pennsylvania.

We have to win either Arizona or Wisconsin to get over 270. In Wisconsin, in this amazing Democratic year, Tony Evers barely won the governorship. Kyrsten Sinema barely beat Martha McSally. So even with everything going our way, the battleground states are still incredibly close. Like Michigan, the polling in Michigan has been overwhelmingly in Biden's favor. It is demographically and partisan makeup-wise of all the states that Trump flipped, the one most likely to flip back, followed by Pennsylvania. But even if those move in our direction, Wisconsin and Arizona are going to be very close. And it doesn't matter what anything else says.

It doesn't matter what the polls say. We are in 2016. Even in 2012, many of the battleground states barely tipped. I don't know if you remember if you were there for this, but 2011, we did this off-site White House retreat. And Plouffe did a presentation of the 2008 election data and the small increments of change that would flip the white house to Republicans in 2012, it was just like a 2% drop in youth vote in this state, a,

you know, moving our independent numbers by four points. And all of a sudden we're losing, uh, you're in all of a sudden the Republicans are getting 300 electoral votes. And so like these things are happening in these very, very narrow spaces. And like,

if we were a normal country where the person with the most votes in the country became president, this would not be a problem because we have this fucked up electoral consciousness which overweights voters most likely to be Republicans. We are forced that we're going to have to scrap our way across the finish line. So let's talk about the best way for Biden to maintain or even build this lead. Some Democrats believe he should lay low. Former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe was heard on tape this week telling Democrats, quote, he's fine in the basement. Let Trump keep doing what Trump's doing. Biden hasn't necessarily been taking that advice.

He was in Houston earlier this week meeting with George Floyd's family, and he's participating in an economic roundtable in Philadelphia today. and he's participating in an economic roundtable in Philadelphia today. I will say that Biden's biggest lead in the race has happened during a period where he's been seen in public more than any time in months. So I don't think it's certainly certainly hasn't hurt him. But what do you think? Yeah, I mean, that's right. He has been out there. He has been. And I think over the last two and a half weeks, three weeks, whatever it's been, it has been by far the best stretch of the Biden campaign since he got in the race in 2019. Right. They have he has he has met the moment.

He was very good on The Daily Show last night. And they're doing I think they're doing a very good job in a very challenging situation. But they're like what McAuliffe is hinting at is this view of Trump is hurting himself, so we should get out of the way. And I would imagine – Termakov knows a lot about politics, and he probably has a more nuanced view than what we heard in that one audio snippet. But this referendum choice thing is a false debate. Yes, the election is ultimately going to be most influenced by people's opinions of Trump. But it just makes no sense to think that their opinions of Biden do not interact with their opinions in vote choice in the election.

And we are right now in a race to see who is going to define Joe Biden first, the Republicans with ads like the one we played earlier, or Joe Biden, the Biden campaign. And Trump still can define Biden as unacceptable to enough voters to win the election. He has the ability to do that. We know from polling that Joe Biden remains particularly undefined to the persuadable voters that we're talking about, which includes sort of the seniors, those white working class voters who are unfavorable to Trump and younger voters and particularly younger voters of color. And there was Trump can get Trump gets them before Biden does. Then he could win this race. win this race. And look, you know, I saw some sort of data analysts and journalists talk about,

well, you know, when Trump is the focus of the news cycle, it's bad for Trump and Trump does worse in the horse race. When the news cycle is focused on Biden, like when it was focused on Hillary in 2016, Trump does better. Biden or Hillary or whoever his opponent is does worse. Right. And I think that's true. That has been borne out. But that's the media narrative which you can't fully control as a campaign. What you can control is your candidate's message and your ads and where you compete and what you say and all that.

There was a great study by political scientists David Brookman and Joshua Kala this week that looked at the effect of pro-Biden ads and anti-Trump ads on the horse race. Here's what they found. Overall information about Biden, whether pro or anti, is around twice as effective at moving vote choice in the presidential election than messaging about Trump, whether pro or anti. The positive information about Biden appears to be broadly persuasive across all voters, but it is especially clear among Republicans and independents. This effect isn't just a case of Democrats coming home after a contested primary who might have come home later anyway.

It appears that pro Biden information can cause people who would otherwise have voted for Trump to instead vote for Biden. Seems pretty clear cut. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. We've been saying this for a long time. Seems pretty clear cut. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. We've been saying this for a long time. And there are enough voters who do not want to vote for Trump to win this election for Joe Biden.

But he has to convince those voters. He has to give them, as we always say, a permission structure to be for something other than Trump. You have to create an acceptable alternative. And Joe Biden, it is pushing on an open door with Joe Biden. He does not bear the baggage of 30 years of Republican attacks like Hillary Clinton did. He is not under, as of yet, at least, depending on what Bill Barr's plans are for the day, under FBI investigation. He is a mainstream Democratic politician who is associated with a president who has an approval rating around the 60s with the general electorate. And so that, like, but that can be changed. And I mean, and so it is, it's not just on the Biden campaign.

It's not just on the super PACs. It's on all of us to help define Joe Biden. Because here's the challenge that he and his campaign have. They have a lot less money than Donald Trump. And their ability to get access to the airwaves through free media is incredibly limited because of Trump's domination of the media. We talked about this last week. The media did not cover some of Biden's

events. He gave a big set of remarks on Jobs Day, was not covered live. MSNBC, the liberal network, MSDNC, covered Trump's insane remarks about the economy and did not cover Biden's. That seems like a problem. And so what are the strategies you can do with less money, less paid media, less earned media to define yourself before your opponent defines you? And that is where I think people can play an important role. Yeah. And one other thing that they found, which is specific pro-Biden messages were better than vague messages. And I do think as we get to not just what the Biden campaign should do, but what we can do, I think in the coming weeks, as you know, a lot of these,

there's these unity policy councils with sort of Bernie Sanders staffers that they're working on, they're going to come out with more policies, Joe Biden will be rolling out more policies and proposals from now through when he's nominated. There will be a lot of information about his biography, about who he is, about what he believes, what he's going to do for the country. I think as specific as we can be in sharing information about what Joe Biden stands for, what he pledges to do, I think that's going to really help. And it's not just about getting ads up there. It's about sharing this information with your friends, your family, people on Facebook, colleagues, neighbors, whatever it may be. or people who are listening right now who pay really close attention to politics. It is people who do vote or have voted in the past or who might vote who just don't spend a lot of time paying attention to politics and just don't know that much information

about who Joe Biden is and what he's proposed. I mean, there is a we've seen this in all of the polling that we have done various which is the most influential messages are ones that have specific information. Because the media environment is so overwhelming and so confusing that getting specific information is very hard. And even for like, we are, sadly, I would say, professional news consumers. And it can be very challenging just to get one very specific piece of information that you're looking for because you are overwhelmed with content, right?

And everyone's running an SEO game. And you just can't find the one specific thing you want. Because a lot of political coverage is written in this very narrative form that is just telling the story of the Trump advisor, which is good for the political junkies who are often serviced by political coverage these days. But for a specific voter wanting a specific piece of information, that is very hard to get. And this is a thing that I have been thinking about and trying to figure out the right way to do for a very long time, which is Trump has more money. He has a propaganda operation.

He has a domination of traditional media, even progressive media, ourselves, like ourselves, spend a ton of time talking about Trump. Even progressive media, ourselves, like ourselves, spend a ton of time talking about Trump. How do we turn all of our supporters who are walking around with a phone with access to the Internet and on average a couple hundred contacts through their phone contacts, Facebook, Instagram, whatever else in their pocket? How do we give those people the information and the tools they need to share information at scale, right? How do we get them? And so they're doing like, people are very engaged. And they are tweeting about a lot of stuff. And they're posting a lot of stuff on Facebook, like our activist types, but most of that is Trump information. And the study is really interesting, because it that even specific specific information about trump will change people's opinion about how about trump on an issue like if they find out that he jacked up the deficit by a trillion dollars to pay for a tax cut that will

that they will they will raise concerns about how he handles the deficit fiscal responsibility issues but it doesn't change their mind on voting right Right. Right. And then we are even, even democratic activists online are caught up in this, um, this Trump news cycle of Trump does something outrageous. We react to it. And by reacting to it and retweeting him or sharing his content with outrage, we are showing it to more people and playing their game. And they're probably in Trump's a moron, but his staff is pretty clever about how to use internet trolling to generate virality for their content. And I've always struck by this piece of content they did last year. Last year.

It could have been two weeks ago. I'm not entirely sure. But it was when Trump attacked Greta Thunberg and his staff – and now people were outraged like Trump is attacking a teenager, which is disgusting. But then his campaign did a Facebook post of that attack. But then they appended a bunch of Trump's rhetoric on energy and the economy to it. And so all these liberals got angry. It was a delivery device for specific information, which I think is what we need to figure out how to do. And I think one thing that campaigns can do, this isn't just about Biden, it could be any

campaign that has some set of supporters, is like sort of moving in some ways to this open source campaigning idea where you're going to put your polling information out there very explicitly. Like you don't have to let all the state secrets out. But like if the Biden campaign were to put out a memo or a video with Jenna Malley Dillon or Anita Dunn or any of their advisors that said, we just came out with you with this poll, and we know that the following four things are the best way to persuade people that Joe Biden is the right choice, people would take that and go share those things. You would give them specific language. You would give them specific language. You would give them, you know, specific issues. And I think, you know, we've done a bunch of this polling at Kirk and I thought about this a lot with that poll we wrote on that poll we did on Michigan. And the thing I, in the memo I wrote about is that too often we think about that in me

in particular, like I write that memo and in my head, the audience is politicos in Michigan or at super PACs or the DNC who will read that like back when I was a person who did things for a living. And then put – influence their strategy when instead what we should be doing is finding out how can we ourselves at Crooked Media Ponce America give information to our millions of listeners and the tens of thousands of people who are most engaged in our activism activities, the exact information they need to go do things on their own. Right. Yeah. And I think that that's a real, like that is part of the next turn of the wheel and how you make campaigns work and compete in this modern media environment is that how do you turn all of your supporters into messengers?

How do you do distributed communications? And like, that's the thing I'm going to that we will keep figuring out. I'm looking forward to other Democrats trying to figure out. You were a campaign expert. Now you're a campaign expert who reacts. Yes, that's right. That's right. Just I mean, just to put a finer point out like and when we part of this is when we say specific pro Biden messages, it is not it is obvious that people are not.

Some people are, which is great, hungry for policy details, the minutia of policy details. I wish more people were. But a lot of voters, when we say specifics, just like what's your big three point plan on creating jobs? That's that's what we're talking about. Like people, basic information about what he stands for and what he's proposing. You don't even need to get into like super detailed stuff that even, you know, we talk about on the pod. And I think figuring out what that is, what that information is that moves people and sharing it and how to share it and how to make sure it goes far and wide, like you said, is is not just a challenge for the Biden campaign. It's not just about advice. It is a challenge for all of us. It is a responsibility for all of us in this campaign. OK, when we come back, Iatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. She's also the author of the new book. Our time is now, which is out now. Thanks for coming back on the show.

Thank you for having me once again. Of course. So Georgia primary on Tuesday, disaster for voting rights, broken machines, not enough ballots, people in line until after midnight. What can we do right now to fix these problems in Georgia and elsewhere before November? So the reason for Fair Fight 2020, the national work that we're doing, is that we anticipated there would be multiple iterations of voter suppression in 2020. What we didn't know is what they would do in November, but the best way to find out would be to be on the ground in all of these battleground states during their primaries. And as grotesque as these primaries have been, they've been the perfect proof points that we need so we know what needs to be done. We know that we need federal action to invest in and scale up vote by mail

across the country. We know that we need an adequate number of polling places, especially in the midst of COVID-19, because pushing people together into crowded spaces is a bad idea. We know we need early voting. We need at least 15 days of it so that people have the opportunity to vote when their schedules allow. And we know that we have to have fully staffed in-person voting on election day, which means secretaries of state and local election administrators have to be working together to ensure that this happens, because you cannot put this all on local administrators who have limited budgets, limited reach. It is the reason that every state in the

union has a Secretary of State, someone who oversees the elections. And the most important piece is that because we've been on the ground since 2019, watching, preparing, advocating, organizing, we can now move into the agitation stage, which is that now that we know what the problem is, now that we can prove what the problem does, we can start demanding legislative action, legal action, and hopefully we can get administrative solutions that will help make sure elections work in November. elections work in November. You mentioned federal action. It seems like, you know, the Heroes Act, which is sort of the otherwise known as phase four stimulus, has vote by mail and voter protections in it. You know, hopefully we see some action there. I worry about that with Donald Trump in the White House and him signing another bill. Absent federal action, do you feel confident that via legislation in the states or litigation, we can sort of protect the right to vote in all the states we need before November? We can do the basics, and we can even do slightly better than the basics. The reason the

HEROES Act is so critical is that states are collapsing under the weight of the economic disaster that we're in. And so to get those states prepared to reach the scale of vote by mail that will be necessary in the midst of the second phase of COVID that is coming, we need to have the resources made available to those states. That's why we're asking for it. Because 34 states have vote by mail. 16 have it. So 34 states have it with no excuses. 16 states have it, but with limited access. But no one has done it at this scale with the exceptions of the five states that do universal vote by mail. Washington, Oregon, Utah, Colorado, and Hawaii.

Everyone else has a hybrid model. And the reality is that those hybrid models are not ready for the scale of November when so many people are going to need to use it because otherwise they have to stand in line. That's why the HEROES Act is so important. But saving that, we do have 34 states that have vote by mail with no excuses. So one of the pieces that we're part of is the National Coalition of Organizations, making sure people know about the right to vote by mail, making sure they know what the rules are where they live. There's the litigation that's helping to make certain that folks can get access. But then

there's a litigation that's just trying to remove the barriers that we know exist in different states for wholly asinine reasons. And that's being led by Mark Elias, the Lawyers Committee, the ACLU, Fair Fight is part of this. I serve on the Board of Priorities and we're helping fund a lot of this. But we also know that Republicans have agreed to put in $20 million to fight to keep these barriers in place. And so I don't know what the outcome will be, but I do know that if we don't fight, the outcome will be. But I do know that if we don't fight, we will not mitigate the harm we know they intend. So speaking of potential nightmares in November, I don't know that I've been more terrified during the Trump presidency than last week when he threatened to deploy the military against protesters. And right after he did, and I saw that I saw you tweet the final

act of authoritarians is to dissolve the bonds of democracy, militarize police, and crush the vote. Trump is near his endgame. And then I thought to myself, all right, if Stacey's this worried, now I'm even more worried. You know, I take it you were as alarmed as I was. How close do you think we are to something truly dark? We are near the precipice. truly dark? We are near the precipice. I mean, the benefit of the structures we do have, we saw the military refused to comply. The National Guard that was deployed with the exception of a few, I mean, the amorphous case of what happened in Washington, D.C.,

but by and large, governors had to call in the National Guard, not federal deployment, which is what we were concerned about. But let's take a step back. What Duarte in the Philippines has done, what we have seen happen with Erdogan and what's happened with Victor Orban, what we've seen happen around the world is that democracies have weakened and fallen because of the authoritarian actions of their presidents that were aided by legislators who have refused to take steps to block them. So yes, I'm worried. In fact, I dedicate a whole chapter to this deep worry because it has deep impact not only on us here in America, but our national or international position, but also the coalition of global willingness that when COVID-19 continues into 2021, we can't be by ourselves. Clearly, we are not doing that well on our own. Yeah. I want to ask you about the protests. When you were a college

student, you led a protest at Spelman in response to the news that the police who beat Rodney King were quitted. What did you learn from that experience about the power of protest to change minds and laws? And what advice would you give people who are on the streets for the first time today? Protest works. It's not a solution to all ills. It does not directly translate into every action. to all ills. It does not directly translate into every action. But the first step to solving problems, the first step to curing disease is diagnosis. And demonstrations are the diagnosis. What has been so remarkable about the demonstrations and protests we've seen

in the last few weeks is the longevity. And it's the multicultural, multi-ethnic, multi-generational nature of those protests. Protests not only put into sharp relief what we need, they help us start to identify what the symptoms are, but also what the treatments can be. And so my two pieces of advice are keep going. Do not presume that because you've been out there for 13 or 14 days that your work is done. Unfortunately, in my era, we protested, we were promised, and then promises fell apart. And so there is something to be said, particularly juxtaposed with the upcoming election, with the persistence of this protest. But at the same time, we have to recognize that the cure, the cure that is voting, the cure that is policy change, like any other cure, it takes time. There is no magic pill. The magic pill does not exist. The magic pill is the process they tell you you have to follow. It's the chemo. It's the radiation. And so we have to eradicate and irradiate bigotry by removing bigots from our politics. We have to irradiate those policies that are stymieing our humanity from being recognized. And so the second piece is voting feels inadequate, but it is absolutely necessary. It is painful. It is sometimes retrograde. It sometimes takes us in the wrong direction. It is sometimes retrograde.

It sometimes takes us in the wrong direction. But we will absolutely die from this if we do not continue to pursue the cure. Speaking of policies, you know, there's been quite a range of police reform proposals over the last several weeks, everything from abolition and defunding to some of the use of force restrictions being considered in Congress right now. What do you think the best solutions are from a policy perspective? How would you like to sort of reimagine the way public safety and the police are in this country? So we have to recognize that we must do the direct action of reformation and the macro responsibility of transformation. And so the eight steps, the removing chokeholds, the de-escalation, those practical practices

for when police are necessary in a space, those must be adopted. Those reforms must become the law and the rule. It must be embedded in our training. So those clear prescriptions for how police behave are necessary. But the transformation is how we think about the role of public safety writ large. But the transformation is how we think about the role of public safety writ large. That is that we have to allocate necessary funding so that we are addressing the systemic inequities that lead to the increase in crime or the increase in the lack of safety. But we also have to address health issues like mental health illnesses and drug addiction.

We have to address the recidivism rates that occur because when you get out of jail, you don't get healthcare, you can't get housing, you can't get a job, and therefore you're going to recidivate. We have to address the carceral system in a country that says that the solution to every problem is to lock it away. And so transformation is a part of this conversation. I know we are getting hung up on the language, but the message and the method is what's the most critical piece. And so my urgency is that we don't adopt the false choice of one or the other, but recognize that we have to do both and. So you have a new book out this week, Our Time Is Now. I started reading it last night. It is excellent. Because you're also a novelist,

you don't write like a politician, you write brilliantly, which is such a pleasure to read. Everyone should buy this book. You tell this very moving story at the beginning about how your grandmother was actually scared to go vote the first time she had the chance. And you write that even though she understood the meaning of the Voting Rights Act, quote, she also knew not to expect immediate change. And she was right. You were just referencing this in your

other answer. I think about this tension all the time in terms of getting people to participate in politics and keep participating, even though the reality of our system means that the change we're fighting for usually comes in fits and starts and not for a long time, often. How do you deal with that tension with so many people who are impatient for change and go to a protest and work hard and then they vote and maybe they get a little change, but they don't get enough and they say, well, now I feel cynical and I don't want to keep going. Politicians have to stop lying about the speed of change. So the first responsibility is to tell the truth. These are deep systemic problems, and the systems were designed to maintain them. So anything we do to fix them is going to be going against what was intended. Number two,

that we have to be held accountable not only when you vote, but when we're in office. And that responsibility rests on the politician to communicate what's happening and why and how, but it also rests on the voters and the citizens to push back and say, what have you done? Have you done enough? And how can I help? I say that politicians are like, you know, 13, 15 year old girls. We respond to money, peer pressure, and attention. And the responsibility we have is that we need to make sure all three levers are working to make our system better. But fundamentally, cynicism comes about because despair overwhelms hope. And despair sets in when what you believe should happen seems impossible. And what I say is it is possible, but it's going to take time, and I can't do it alone.

And anyone who tells you that they can fix the problem is not telling you the truth. So we need authenticity from our politicians. We need engagement from our constituents. And we need to understand that the system is not this disembodied set of ideas. It is people making choices. And we have to change the people who are making the choices. I am not going to ask you about VP stuff because you get enough questions about that from everyone else. I do want to ask you. I feel like everyone else has got that covered.

I do want to ask you to offer some messaging advice to the Biden campaign. We spoke for the wilderness and you had this great line. You said, if all you offer is darkness, then people don't know where you're going. Explain what the darkness is, but then offer what the light should be. I want Democrats to talk about why we win America. What kind of light should Joe Biden and other Democrats running be talking about right now at this moment? How do we win America?

I will actually say that I think we're doing a pretty good job of it right now, in part because from the vice president across the spectrum, we are talking about the anger and the legitimacy of anger and pain. We're talking about the legitimacy of protest. I've disagreed with some of the characterizations made by some politicians, but actually, I think Vice President Biden has done an excellent job of listening, of offering solutions, but more importantly, of saying he's made mistakes. And I think that's the important piece, because people don't trust the light if it could be an oncoming car. They want to know that it's authentic.

And so I think we have to not lose the honesty of this moment, that we have to keep talking about it, but we have to enlarge the conversation. George Floyd is a tragedy, a travesty. But the extrajudicial killing that he faced, also faced Breonna Taylor. And right now, Louisville is not being held accountable. Ahmaud Arbery was murdered in the streets, and his assailants were given 74 days of freedom before they were held to account. But we also have trans women and men who are being murdered because there are no hate crimes laws in too many states that actually recognize their humanity. And so part of the light is making sure that we

use this moment to enlarge the conversation, not lose the narrative and not lose the urgency of this conversation about justice and police brutality, but that we also, as Democrats, acknowledge that for a lot of folks, what they see may not be exactly what they feel, but it's emblematic of things they fear. And we have to be able to say we see that as well. You've been in the fight to protect voting rights for some time now. What is making you hopeful as you look ahead towards November? So the Republicans love to bludgeon me with this narrative that because I had, I turned out unprecedented numbers of voters in my 2018 campaign, that that's proof that there is no suppression. I think what we saw on Tuesday does a better job of belying that than anything I could say. Because what we know is that suppression and turnout and participation can coexist.

But what gives me such hope is that so many people are voting who have not voted before. So many people are braving COVID-19. What we saw in Wisconsin was that people said the future was more important to them than their lives. Because they knew that what they were doing was setting the course. What we saw happen in Georgia, the same. And so I'm hopeful because people are angry about voter suppression, but they're not defeated by it. We have to keep fighting. And as long as we keep fighting, we have hope of success. Stacey Abrams, your new book is Our Time Is Now. Everyone, please go buy it. It's an outstanding book.

Thank you always for coming by Pod Save America and come back again soon. John, thank you for having me. And it's always a delight. Thanks to Stacey Abrams for joining us today. Have a good weekend. We'll see you next week. Bye, everyone. Pod Save America is a product of Cricut Media.

The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our assistant producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somanator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Caroline Reston, and Elisa Gutierrez for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Melkonian, Yale Freed, and Milo Kemp, who film and upload these episodes as videos every week. Thank you.