Pod Save America - “Live and Let Die.”

Episode Date: May 7, 2020

Trump surrenders in the War Against the Invisible Enemy, pivots to a message about rebuilding the economy, and tries to make the race about Joe Biden. Then Jon and Dan break down the latest polls, answer some listener questions, and Dan interviews Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias about his legal battles to protect our right to vote in November.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's pod, Dan talks to Mark Elias, one of the best election lawyers in the country, who's fighting day by day, state by state, court by court, to protect your right to vote in November. I imagine Elias just going to every courtroom virtually in the country and fighting off bad election laws. Before that, we'll talk about Trump's surrender and the war against the invisible enemy, this week's terrifying unemployment news, and

some new 2020 polling. We're also going to answer a few of your questions. But first, check out this week's Pod Save the World, where Tommy and Ben talk about a bunch of ragtag mercenaries who tried to invade Venezuela over the weekend and start a coup. Yes, that really happened.

It did not go well. Then Asia expert Danny Russell joins to discuss Trump's plan to punish China over the coronavirus and Kim Jong-un's reemergence after weeks of rumors about his health. Can I offer a very uneducated prediction? Please do. So I have not listened to Pod Save the World yet. That's on the agenda for today. I have not read any of the articles about this.

So I know nothing. But I would lay a marker down right now that somehow these mercenaries have some involvement, official or unofficial, with Trump. Do you think their names are Don Jr. and Eric? I mean, if Don Jr. and Eric thought invading Venezuela, a two-man invasion of Venezuela would get them a hug from their father, yes, I think they would do that. Also, go to Spotify and please subscribe and follow our new series,

Wind of Change, where journalist Patrick Radden Keefe investigates a rumor that the Scorpion song Wind of Change was actually written by the CIA. It's like, this is Spinal Tap meets All the President's Men. How's that for a pitch, Dan? I would have gone with House of Cards meets Spies Like Us. Okay.

It's so good. I was just listening to the third episode today and it's like such a great combination of like spy intrigue with just good music. I mean, I'm really excited about it. You can binge the whole series on Spotify starting this Monday, May 11th. You get the whole series if you go on Spotify. It's great.

One last note. There are two special elections for open house seats coming up Tuesday, May 12th. You heard me interview California State Assemblywoman Christy Smith last week on PSA. She's running to serve the rest of former Congresswoman Katie Hill's term in California's 25th Congressional District. Republicans are pouring tons of money

into this race. It is incredibly close. And a big reason why is that Democrats aren't returning their ballots. So if you live in the 25th district, get those ballots in. If you know someone there, nag them about it. If you want to donate or volunteer, go to votesaveamerica.com slash CA25. There's also a special election in Wisconsin's 7th congressional district, a tough race where Democrat Tricia Zunker would be the first Native American member of Congress from the state of Wisconsin. Very exciting. Find out more at VoteSaveAmerica dot com slash Wisconsin. All right, let's get to the news. not most parts of the country, even as they fall to single and double digits in places like South Korea, Germany, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, all places that have been able to test a much,

much higher percentage of their people than we have. And in the midst of all this, Donald Trump has basically declared victory. He floated shutting down the White House Coronavirus Task Force before being forced to walk it back. And then he left the White House for the first time in many weeks to tour a manufacturing plant in Arizona without a mask on while the Guns N' Roses song Live and Let Die played in the background. And when he was asked by ABC's David Muir how voters should judge his performance in November, the president said this. I think in a certain way, maybe our best work has been on what we've done with COVID-19.

Dan, why is Trump trying to just give up on managing the response to the pandemic? The Associated Press also reported this morning he even blocked the release of CDC guidelines that are supposed to help local governments safely reopen. headlines uh that are supposed to help local governments safely reopen try to try to get in donald trump's head i mean when i when i hear you read all of that out loud it's even worse than i read it in the outline and as i've interpreted it through the news. It's really bad.

And I think- It would be funny if it wasn't so fucking tragic, but it is the most absurd parts of the Trump presidency overlaid on a national tragedy of epic proportions. That's where we're at. That long pause there for my deep, perhaps characteristic sigh, was to choose between laughing and crying. Yeah. Because that is ultimately where we are. But if we're to try to figure out why Trump is

acting the way he is, because on paper, if for a normal human, even a normal human up for reelection, you would think the best way to get reelected would be to deal with the problem. But Trump will not do that because dealing with the problem is hard. And given a choice between solving a problem and demagoguing a problem, Trump will always default towards demagoguing it because it fits better with his natural skill set than marshalling the country in the world to take on a very complex problem. That is not something that he is naturally good at, and so he's avoided it. And there is a debate about whether that can work politically,

but this is what happens when you elect a president who has no interest in the job of president outside of appearing in rallies. in the job of president outside of appearing in rallies. I think it's also that his only skill, if you want to even say that he has this skill, is trying to sell people on something, right? The guy never actually built anything in his life. He didn't really build his businesses. He was like a marketer.

He slapped his name on shit. And all he's thinking about now is how do I sell the country on the idea that the coronavirus has been fixed, that the public health crisis has been solved, and that now I'm working on solving the economy. Doesn't matter if the virus is not stopped, if it continues to spread in real life. It doesn't matter if people are still out of work and unemployment's in double digits by November in real life. If Donald Trump tells us everything is fine and Fox News tells us everything is fine and the rest of his propaganda machine and the Republican Party tell us everything is fine, that's all enough. And that's going to be enough to get him

reelected because he knows that at least his base is sort of trapped in an information bubble where all they're going to hear is that everything's fine, that COVID's gone away, that the economy's coming back. So at least if he can get capture the people who are already in that information bubble, that'll get him to, you know, 42, 43 42 43 44 percent and then he can just bullshit his way through the rest it seems like that's where that's where he's going right yeah i mean i think that's exactly right and i think you're you're slapping his name on things uh example is how we should think about this which is much like he slapped his name on buildings, mediocre stakes, shitty wines, a fraudulent university, and sold it as high luxury or the epitome of success,

he's slapping a giant gold label on America that says normal. And the question will be, can people distinguish between that and reality? And this is a real test because you're exactly right. reality. And this is a real test because like, you're exactly right. He like, he has this propaganda machine, this ability to put his, keep his supporters in this bubble, but there is reality bumping up against this, right? Like when you were talking about the theoretical threat of immigration or the theoretical threat of demographic change or the theoretical threat of Hollywood elites and university professors overtaking too much control of America, that is different than trying to tell people that

something that is real and affecting their lives and infecting or killing their relatives or causing them to lose their jobs or their businesses. It's easier to tell someone that something might happen than to tell someone that something is happening, isn't happening. And that's the sort of the position he's in. Yeah, it is a it's a reality show presidency that was always designed for the show and not necessarily the reality. Yeah, that's right.

And we I mean, we remember when Barack Obama was president, like a big part of that job is just eating shit constantly and making really hard decisions that could have short term political costs that you make anyway, because, you know, in the long term, the country is going to be better off and you want to do the right thing. want to do the right thing. And, you know, a great example of that was in 2014 with the Ebola crisis, when, you know, Donald Trump and a bunch of others were telling Barack Obama, like, if you don't close the borders right now, you know, there's going to be disaster. We're going to have an epidemic in this country. It's going to be horrible. And Barack Obama said, you know, the right thing to do, what science is telling me, what, you know, diplomats are telling me, public officials, everyone else, is to not close the borders and to send, you know, help to Africa to stop the outbreak there before it comes here. And that wasn't a politically advantageous thing to do for Barack Obama at the time. But he did it because he thought in the long term, we're going to be better off because of this. And like Donald Trump just has this debilitating short termism that's not even beneficial to himself politically, because all he's trying to do is get through the news cycle.

And he's not even thinking like, you know, two, three weeks ahead, a couple months ahead. He's just he can't see beyond the day he's in. And I guess it sort of posits the question to the country writ large. Can we look beyond the news cycle? Can the media look beyond the news cycle? Is the devastation from a public health and an economic perspective so overwhelming that we can't really fathom it? And then we'll talk about that when we talk about the economy a little later in this podcast. out of it. And then we'll talk about that when we talk about the economy a little later in this podcast. But there is this desire for a return to normalcy that he is, it's an open door he is

pushing against. And for some people, that will seem insane, because they are currently in a hot spot, or they have lost their job. And for other people, it may make more sense. I, you know, you picked the 2014 Ebola examples, though, as what reminded you of this, I actually was thinking about 2010. And the sort of quasi famous story of when we were trying to pass the Affordable Care Act, and we were in the middle of the political and legislative morass of doing it. And Obama, we were in a meeting, and Obama was lamenting how difficult this was, and why it was harder than it should be. And David Axelrod said to Obama, hard things are hard, which Obama, we all sort of looked at Axelrod and Obama laughed very hard at him.

And then we all laughed because no shit hard things are hard. But it sounds obvious, but there's a point, which is challenging things are going to be difficult. They're going to take hard work. And that sort of became a saying of Obama's because it kind of described what the presidency was. It's a lot of hard things that are hard. And as a joke, when Axelrod left, as you know, he gave Obama a little plaque for his desk that said hard things are hard. And I think I like, I think the way Trump, the plaque that should go on Trump's desk would be hard things are for other people. And that's been the story of his life, right? Like is he doesn't do the hard things. He takes

the shortcut. And when you're a reality TV star or a fake businessman or whatever his previous jobs have been, that's fine. When you're president that has life or death consequences, consequences. His approach here is going to kill a lot of people. It's going to mean more people will lose their jobs. That is just a simple fact. And we shouldn't allow that just because it's difficult to say the president is willing to kill people for a political argument. I think what's infuriating about it is Donald Trump is trying to make this a forced choice between keeping people safe and opening the economy up. Right. And getting the economy moving. And he keeps saying, you know, we can't have the country close like this. And if we open up, yeah, there could be some death and some people could be affected badly, is what he said, which means dying.

death and some people could be affected badly is what he said, which means dying. And he's trying to make it this forced, I would argue, false choice. The media once again seems to be playing along. I've even seen Democrats do it, too. Like what drives me nuts is like he could just ramp up testing and contact tracing like other countries so people can actually feel safe going back to work. We can do. We are the wealthiest country in the world, the most powerful country on Earth. We can do what South Korea and Germany and Hong Kong and Taiwan and Australia and New Zealand. We can do what these countries have done and thus make it safe for people to leave their homes and go back to work and stop the spread of the virus and restart the economy. We can have both.

Why doesn't he want to do that? I mean, the choice is not stay closed or open up. It's open up with a plan or open up without a plan. And Trump doesn't have a plan. And that is a place where, I mean, yes, the media has bought in some, not all, but like that's sort of how the discussion is framed because that's how Trump is framing it. There has been limited pushback from Democrats about that framing. And the way you push back on that framing is to lay out what a plan should look like, right? What are the five criteria we need to open up, right? And lay those out and demand

that Trump has those. So at least you make it clear that you make it harder for Trump to engage in the straw man argument about that he does with some great success that, you know, scientists and Democrats want you to stay in your house for years. And I want to open up the economy so you can get back to work. Like, that's not the choice. And we shouldn't let that be the choice. Yeah. And he it's in his interest to polarize this and to demagogue this. And it it partly it feels so weird because, you know, since this has been going on, like I try to watch Gavin Newsom's briefings to see what's going on in California. I try to watch Eric Garcetti's briefings because it's L.A. I try to watch Barbara Ferrer, the county health commissioner in L.A.

And and they sort of prove every day that it's not a choice between opening up and staying home. You know, they're sitting there like this Friday. There's a bunch of businesses in Los Angeles that can now do like curbside pickup. They're opening up trails. You know, they're opening up some parks. They said, okay, in a couple of weeks, we're gonna have more guidance

for how to open up an office. And, you know, they're talking about how everyone still has to be careful and now masks are required at LAX and on buses. And they're taking all the, it's a plan. Like you said, it's like they're laying out a plan that like, we're still going to have to be careful, but we're going to open up slowly. And by the way, if we open up and we see the cases start skyrocketing again, we're going

to start closing more things. And this is how we're ramping up testing. And this is how we're going to hire a bunch of contact tracers. And like, this is happening in states all over the country. I was listening to our friend Alex Wagner's podcast on Crooked Media Six Feet Apart this morning, and she interviewed Steve Bullock, who is the governor of Montana in a state that Trump won by 20 points. And he's got like plenty of people who voted for Trump in the state. And he's wildly popular, even though he closed down the state

earlier than most red states, closed down schools earlier than most, did a stay at home order earlier than most, because he is effectively communicating to people exactly what's going to happen every single day and sort of asking for their patience. And it's working and people are listening. It doesn't have to be polarized like Donald Trump is polarizing this. Same with Lori Lightfoot, the mayor of Chicago she interviewed, who's doing the same thing in Chicago. Like it doesn't have to be political

and partisan and divisive. He is making it that way and he's doing it because he's lazy. He's got this short-termism and because it's the only way he knows how to win. Yeah, it's like why does a duck quack, right? That's what they do. And he, like we've sort of always known this, and this is one of the things that scared us when we were in the White

House about a massive financial crisis, the crashing of the global economy, a pandemic, a 9-11-style terrorist attack was, is the country too polarized to deal with the problem? Is Congress too polarized? Is the media too polarized? Is the American people too polarized? And it is one of America's great weaknesses that we are a very politically polarized country with governing structures that demand compromise. That is our Achilles heel as a country. And a leader has a choice to either try to conquer that polarization by bringing people together or exacerbate it. And Trump has chosen to exacerbate it on every dimension, right? Like you brought up the idea of wearing the mask. Like that is a perfect example of where our president can model good behavior for Republicans

and Democrats. Because it isn't Trump's interest for people to wear masks. But he's decided because of some MAGA yahoos on Fox that wearing a mask means you're listening to a scientist, which means you're therefore weak or some insane fucking logic like that. And if you make wearing a mask that prevents you from getting and giving a potentially fatal virus to people a partisan issue, you are making the situation much harder to solve. And it is the exact opposite of what other presidents have done, right? Yeah. Like, I mean, for every horrible, terrible thing that should be said about George W. Bush's presidency,

he had a choice right after 9-11. And he went to that mosque to try to send a message to people about that we were at war with Al-Qaeda and not Muslims. And now, many things he did after that dramatically undermine that message. So I'm not here to get Ellen, but you know, when Obama during H1N1 got his flu shot, which was flu vaccine, which there was a huge conspiracy theory around whether it was fatal and release the picture of a president getting a shot in his arm,

which was very unusual at the time to try to conquer that division of that polarization. Trump is doing the exact fucking opposite of that. And it's going to make the situation much worse. And what also drives me nuts is that, you know, a lot of the political press will write about this as if like the country is inevitably polarized. Like that's the starting point. You know, everyone loves to say on Twitter, like partisanship is a hell like that's the starting point um you know everyone loves to say on twitter like partisanship is a hell of a drug you know and that is that is not

the starting point here when this when this began you saw like huge majorities of the american public saying yes we should all stay home yes we want to sacrifice to help each other. Right. Like the spirit of cooperation was there. And now because of Trump, because of fucking Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh and all the rest of the Yahoo's out there, you know, our friends at Change Research just did a poll in the six battleground states. They compare Republicans versus Democrats on whether the following activities are safe right now. Restaurant dining, 70 percent of Republicans say it's safe. Only 5 percent of Democrats say it's safe. Bars, 52 percent of Republicans, 4 percent of Democrats. And then what we were just talking about, face masks in public, 90 percent of Democrats say yes, 47 percent of Republicans like and you know, and you mentioned so Trump didn't wear the face mask, the cloth covering when he was on in that Arizona factory. AP reported that Trump has told advisors that he believes wearing a face mask would, quote, send the wrong message. And Trump said doing so

would make it seem like he's preoccupied with health instead of focused on reopening the economy, which is so fucking crazy because one of the ways we're going to be able to reopen the economy, or at least partially be able to feel safe when we go back to work, is face masks, right? There was a study out the other day that said like if 80% of people wear face masks, cloth coverings, that are about 60% effective, we could stop the transmission of the disease or we could dramatically slow it, right? This is something simple. This isn't like some big sacrifice for everyone. It's a mild inconvenience to wear a fucking mask when you go

out in public. And by doing that, we could save a ton of lives. And now we're going to polarize this. We're going to make this a fucking partisan thing when it is the most simple thing you could do that is the most minor convenience. I mean, just we should be very clear. Like, like we're you even you and I are having this discussion about Republicans think this thing is safe and Democrats think this thing is dangerous. And on most of the things you listed, but primarily face masks, it's not a question of who thinks what is safe. It's who believes the guidelines put forward by Trump's own Center for Diseases Control. Right. This is not like Nancy Pelosi's position versus Trump's position.

This is the consensus. Who believes the consensus position signed off on by Mr. No Face Mask Wearing Himself? Right. So like it's even more fucking bonkers than you think. These aren't opinions. These are who agrees with the scientific consensus of the Trump administration, not a bunch of egghead scientists somewhere, the Trump administration. And we still can't get that right. And that is in large part because of the president and the folks at Fox News who follow his lead as much as he follows theirs. And testing, another example of what you're saying,

you know, Trump's like, oh, there's some people who believe in testing and there's some people who don't. And he's also said, you know, when we do a lot of testing, we look bad because the numbers go up. Right. So, you know, it's like a political issue. So he's trying to sow doubts about the efficacy of testing. And yet we read reports about how in the White House, Trump and all the people around him who go in the same room with him are tested constantly on a daily basis. And that is how the White House and his government is able to function because they're all constantly tested.

And, you know, his valet apparently was tested positive today, one of the guys around him. And so now we know who that person is. That person is going to be isolated because we're going to go through all their contacts in the White House. We're going to isolate them. That system works. We just need to scale it up on a national scale. We just need to scale it up on a national scale. Right. We just need to scale it up nationally. And just Trump refuses to do it again because it's hard, because it might entail some political risk, because it requires just a little bit more work than fucking tweeting and yelling about.

I mean, Trump's position is testing for us, disease for you. Right. So while he was in Arizona, Trump sat down for his first non-Fox television interview since the crisis began. I think for television, I think for network news, it was the first since June of 2019. The first time he's done a non-Fox interview. He did it with ABC's David Murr. Trump acknowledged that forcing people back to work too soon could cost lives. He lied a lot, especially about testing. And he blamed his failure to adequately prepare for the pandemic on everything from Obama to impeachment,

saying at one point, quote, I'll be honest, I have a lot of things going on. Why do you think he did this interview with ABC, with a non-Fox outlet? He's probably seen David Muir conduct an interview before. Ouch. My next question was going to be, how do you think Muir did as an interviewer? He did. Because the media critics from CNN,

Oliver Darcy at CNN, The Washington Post, Eric Wemple, all kinds of folks were saying he didn't really challenge Trump's lies and he let him off the hook too easily. I mean, don't take my word for it. Take the word of ABC staffers who staffed Muir for the interview, told Lloyd Grove of the Daily Beast they thought he did a terrible job. And he did.

Yeah. And there are a couple of reasons for that. One is anchors should not interview people. That is not their job. David Muir's job is to read the news. That's what he does. And like, there are some anchors who are good interviewers. Lester Holt got Trump to admit to like nine crimes in like 35 seconds a couple years ago,

which is probably why he was not chosen for this interview. And it's just, it's not something that David Muir does. And so interviewing any president is hard. Interviewing this president is particularly hard because he runs, he lies, he exists in a completely alternative reality. And it is challenging to bring people living alternative realities into your reality to have a conversation about it. And it was just a terrible decision to have him do this. And according to the reporting, the Trump White House chose Muir over George Stephanopoulos, who, as the host of GMA, interviews people every day and on the Sunday shows for years and years and years. Every day and on and on the Sunday shows for years and years and years.

And ABC never should have given Trump that choice. They had not just a general responsibility to their viewers, but as the first non Fox News Network interview in nearly a year, they had a utmost responsibility to everyone else in the non Fox media to do a good job. And they failed miserably. non-fox media to do a good job and they failed miserably and like it's just something about the the way you interview trump that i am surprised that even someone who doesn't interview people a lot like mirror hasn't understood by now which is you drill down on one topic and even if you have to sacrifice questions on a number of other topics you do that because he is going to lie and and move on to the next topic and say something nonsensical and you just have to keep going back to that same like if like pick testing right just pin him down on testing and ask over and over and over again about the testing. Know where he's going to go on all the lies and then just keep going.

And like we've seen, like you said, Lester Holt has gotten him in situations like that. Jake Tapper is very good at that kind of thing. Katie Couric did that with Sarah Palin back in 08, right? Like this is not it's not impossible to do that with politicians like Donald Trump. But you just have to have the discipline to pick one area and stick with it. And I just don't understand. I don't understand why everyone hasn't learned that by now. It is I mean, Donald Trump is a pathological liar, but he's not a creative liar. He has the same lies every single day.

And it is a somewhat effective strategy in the context of giving rallies and going to the White House briefing because reporters in that sense just get tired of challenging them. Like he says all the time that we have done more tests in the entire world. Not true. Right. Right. Like a thousand things he said are true. Not even close to true. He's been claiming for three years now to have passed a veterans health bill that passed in 2014, passed by a senator who is no longer alive and a president who's no longer in office. And he just keeps saying it, right? But in the context of an interview, you know what lies to prepare for. He didn't spring some new lie on David Muir. He did the same lie he had used earlier that day,

and he still was not prepared for it. And it's just we have to stop with the deification of network news anchors. Like that – like we – like send an interviewer, not an anchor. And anchors also – just like you and I remember this from like how Obama used to do a lunch with network anchors on the day of the State of the Union. It's this longtime tradition. All the anchors come in. And we would do the three networks, Fox, CNN, Telemundo, Univision, a couple others, and BET back when I think they were doing more news. And one of the things we took away was that the network anchors were so disconnected from the day-to-day of politics. Yeah. Because that's not their job, right?

They are the mascot of the network. They read the news. They are celebrities, right? They are not in the day-to-day. And sending someone who was not in the day-to-day to interview a president is like taking a NBA commentator off the broadcast booth and putting them in the game and wondering why they didn't do a good job. Like that's just, you have to have reps. And these anchors don't have reps in this.

And this is a long-running hobby horse of mine that I will get off of right now. But it was a mistake. And it's pretty clear that everyone at ABC is aware of that. And look, if they'd sent an interviewer and he had grilled him and Donald Trump had screwed up, that would be it. That would be the election. We'd win. That's right. I mean, like, yes, those Democrats always want reporters, whether in the briefing room or interviewing Trump, to treat him like Kamala Harris or treat Bill Barr.

But that's not the anchor's job. But I do think we can ask for the bare minimum of challenging his lies. Yeah, no, we can. He doesn't have to meet our test, but he did meet ABC's test either. All right, let's talk about the economy that Trump thinks he's sacrificing people to save. On Tuesday, the monthly report from the private payroll company ADP showed that 20 million people lost their jobs in April, 8.6 million from the leisure and hospitality sectors alone. That is the worst monthly job loss in American history, far worse than the 800,000 we lost in one month of the Great Recession. The U.S. Labor Department's monthly jobs report is due on Friday. It's expected to show an unemployment rate of over 15 percent,

by far the worst since the Great Depression, probably the worst on record. Dan, despite all this happening on Trump's watch, despite the fact that Trump's overall job approval is down and he's trailing Joe Biden by about six points in the polls, his economic approval rating is still pretty decent, over 50 percent in many polls, and he's seen as more trusted than Biden to manage the economy. Why do you think this is? This is a place where I think Democrats have frequently underestimated Trump, which is partisan Democrats correctly point out that Trump is basically a fake businessman. Yeah. And if you think Trump is a good businessman, then you should think Kim Kardashian is a great businesswoman. Right, because it's the same.

It's a connection between celebrity and – like his business is being famous and he was very good at that. But voters give Trump the benefit of the doubt on the economy because they think he is a businessman and they think he understands the economy in a way a typical politician would not. So that's one. He has had enduring strength here throughout this presidency, right, where regardless of where you fall on the spectrum of how you think about Trump's economic performance, like on the right end, which is the left, this terribly broken Obama economy, which was technically stronger than the economy was pre-COVID, but that's neither here nor there. But even in the middle, voters give Trump credit for not ruining Barack Obama's economy, right? Where it's like, you Democrats said he'd be a complete disaster, but look, unemployment's

still low. It's, you know, even if there were structural things wrong with the economy and it's not super fair, he didn't screw anything up. And that's why his economic approval rating is the only measure of any kind of positive attribute that has been above 50 for Trump consistently throughout his presidency. And so he has a reservoir of strength here that we should not underestimate. And we need an actual plan to deal with, even in a difficult economy. We should not assume that just because the economy collapses that Trump's economic

advantage will collapse in the same way. I saw this, heard this in the focus groups I did. I remember one woman outside of Philadelphia, registered Democrat, voted for Obama twice. And she voted for Trump in 16 and is considering voting for him again. And she said, my most important, she goes, I vote for Democrats up and down the ballot, except for Donald Trump. And I vote for Democrats everywhere else because a woman's right to choose is important to me and gay rights is important to me. And I think Donald Trump is a total buffoon. But, you know, my like he has he has fooled enough people still into thinking he is this successful. I mean, I remember during the 2016 campaign, he said, you know, I've been I've been selfish for me all my life and now I'm going to be selfish for America. I've been I've made myself rich all my life and now I'm going to make America rich. And a lot of people look at that and they're like, yeah, OK, he's an asshole, but maybe that's right. Maybe he will make me rich.

He'll be an asshole for me. He's going to be an asshole for me. And I think you're right. That is the risk. And so let's talk about what Democrats should do there. Because Trump still has these decent economic approval ratings, he's now leaning into a new campaign message that he built the greatest economy in history before this pandemic. And now he's the best person to rebuild it. That's sort of the line. He said that and he's got a new ad called American Comeback that basically has that message.

Kellyanne Conway has been saying that. So, you know that they've pulled it. How effective do you think that message is and what should Democrats do to counter it? What should Joe Biden do? Well, I think for the reasons we just mentioned, it has potential to be quite effective. And that ad is objectively terrible. I mean, it looked like it just his campaign is as of yet incapable of having one message per ad, which is how you communicate messages. It's like Joe Biden loves China and he's got dementia.

Yeah, that's right. But buried in that ad is this message that Trump is the best person to rebuild the American economy. And like that has potential and we have to watch that. So I think there are four strategic imperatives that Democrats have to undertake to take Trump on the economy. The first is we have to do the work of connecting Trump's failure to prepare for take Trump on the economy. The first is, we have to do the work of connecting Trump's failure to prepare for and respond to the coronavirus with the economic consequences, right? We have to explain to people that if we had enough tests, if we had an actual plan, then we wouldn't be in a position where tens of millions of Americans lost their job. We wouldn't have had to, quote unquote, shut down the economy for months at a time. It could have been handled much more like South Korea or Germany. Second is we have

to show how Trump's response to this economy is part of his larger pattern of putting the interest of corporations and the wealthy above middle working class, poor Americans and small businesses, right? And that can be done in a whole host of ways. Some of the proposals that he has talked about, like giving legal immunity to corporations if they kill their workers that we talked about last week, who some of these loans have gone to that there are 10s of 1000s, if not more family and business around this country who can't get a PPP loan, but the Lakers got one. Seems like a sort of example. Yep. Third, Baker's got one. Seems like a sort of example. Third, Democrats have to continue to focus on health care. Just yesterday, Trump once again said that he wants to get rid of the Affordable Care Act. I think the saliency of that already powerful issue goes up even further in a situation

where tens of millions of Americans have potentially lost their employer-based health care. And the idea that Trump is trying to eliminate the Affordable Care Act and kick Americans off their health insurance in the middle of a pandemic seems to me like it might be a good argument. And then the last point is we need an alternative. We need to show, and this is where Biden has to lead the way, what would Biden be doing right now to deal with this economy that Trump is not doing? What would his policies be? How would he help middle and working class people? And so those are sort of the four things that I think about when I think about how Democrats should handle this. I read it in the New York Times that the Biden folks are really pushing his management of the Recovery Act and the Obama administration as

a selling point for Joe Biden. And I think I think that's wise, you know, because I do think like we we had a great recession in 2009. Barack Obama put Joe Biden in charge of managing the recovery. He did a great job of that. But I think that it's not sufficient to make this an argument about who can who do you trust to just manage the recovery? It's what kind of recovery do you want? What kind of economy do you want? Do you want an economy that favors the people who are already doing the best before this crisis hit? Do you want an economy that is for rich investors

and big corporations and the people that donate to Donald Trump and the Republicans and the people that have been whispering in their ear the whole time? Or do you want an economy that is that recognizes the sacrifice and the struggles of American workers and small business owners? And that is the difference in this election. And again, like that sort of Democrats message all the time, right? Like that.

That's sort of Democrats' message all the time, right? But now they're pushing on an open door because for all the reasons you gave, there's just so many examples. And we've seen this in polls, too. When you give people new information, it helps make the case. Well, there's plenty of new information here from Donald Trump saying on camera yesterday he wants to terminate the Affordable Care Act. The fact that they want to cut or they don't want to re-upstate and local aid the republicans um you know or even extend unemployment insurance lindsey graham the other day said that he would extend unemployment insurance over our dead bodies this is like for people who are out of work through no fault of their own sitting at home because they have been asked to stay home by the federal government to protect everyone's health.

And you're not going to extend unemployment insurance to them. Why? What is the purpose of that? Can you imagine how unpopular that is? And then like the liability protection. Someone finally did a poll on the liability protection. Someone finally did a poll on the liability protection. Almost 70% of voters oppose giving corporations liability protection to force their employees to come back to work in unsafe conditions, including a majority of Trump voters oppose that.

Change did a poll on this, too, in that poll we were talking about earlier in six battleground states. Majority say it's important for small businesses and people who've lost jobs or wages to receive relief. That's 97% for small businesses, 94% for people who lost jobs and wages. 74% of Americans support recurring direct payments to individuals until the pandemic ends. 74% and 66% support relief to state and local governments. Also, by the way, just 21% say that Trump's policies in response to COVID favor the middle class and small businesses most. This, to me, is going to be the fall, right? This is the debate in this election. And this goes back to our earlier conversation. One of the reasons I don't want this to become a false choice between our health and the economy is because Democrats have such a powerful case to

make on the economic part that we cannot just cede that to Trump and make it seem like, OK, he's the guy pressing the economy, but we care about people's health. No, no, we care about both. And the idea is his vision of the economy is a vision of the economy for people like Donald Trump. It is not a vision of the economy for the rest of the country that is struggling right now. And so far, I just like, Democrats haven't really broken through with that message yet. And I don't know that the Biden campaign has either,

but I do think we need to sort of get on that because that's gonna be the big fight going forward. Just on the legal liability thing, it's not just that they want legal liability, is that it is currently the position of Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell that if we do not give want legal liability, is that it is currently the position of Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell that if we do not give companies legal liability, then they will cut off aid to every teacher, firefighter, cop, essential worker, American family, and small business. Their view is

no more economic aid, no more unemployment insurance, nothing if we don't get this SOP for corporations. They are holding the entire American economy hostage to give a giant gift to corporations. It's not great, Dan. I mean, it could be great if we put it in a fucking ad. Yeah, I would like to see that. All right. Let's talk about where the presidential race stands right now. Monmouth had a poll out this week and they are a very high quality pollster. They found Joe Biden ahead of Donald Trump by 50 to 41 percent, a nine point margin that's even bigger than Biden's four point margin in their April poll. The RealClearPolitics average right now has Biden up by a little over five nationally,

a little over two and a half in Wisconsin, five and a half in Michigan, six and a half in Pennsylvania, and a little over three in Florida. So obviously a bit closer in the battleground states. And of course, we know this is an election to get to 270 that happens in the battleground states. We will say this 50,000 times between now and November. So obviously, Dan, polls are not great for predicting. We don't use them for that here. But they are a good snapshot of where the candidates stand right now.

How strong is Joe Biden's position? And looking at some of these numbers, what would worry you if you were in his campaign? So I think the change of the last eight weeks or whatever it's been since coronavirusaviruses that Trump went from a slight favorite to be reelected to a slight underdog. Like you look at these polls, the election were held today, they are very suggestive of the fact that Biden would win a narrow race. Which that could be a large electoral college margin, but a narrow margin within states like Wisconsin, Arizona, and Florida, which are the states he needs. He needs one of those three states to put him over 270, if you believe, based on these polls, that he's stronger in Pennsylvania and Michigan.

I just think one thing that we should also say 50,000 times between now and the election is it is highly likely that Biden will be leading in national polls every day from now until Election Day and could still not win the presidency. Yeah. Much like Hillary Clinton. Much like Hillary Clinton, which is he – a three-to-four-point lead in the national polls, depending on sort of turnout around the country, is also consistent with a scenario where Trump could narrowly win Wisconsin, Arizona, Florida. You basically have to get to a five or six point national lead, which is what he has right now, to almost guarantee that you'll win the electoral college. Yeah.

And different prognosticators and data nerds will tell you different numbers. Some say it's four, some say it that is, frankly, any national poll. But don't look at a national poll that's three to four points and feel fucking great about yourself because you should not. Definitely not. Look at a Wisconsin poll. Look at a Florida poll. Look at an Arizona poll. Look at these other battleground state polls. So I think Biden should feel good about his political standing right now. But I think we should also recognize that despite Biden having a political advantage in

the moment, according to the polls, Trump maintains a very significant electoral college advantage. He has the largest resource advantage that any incumbent president has ever had, and probably will ever have. I mean, he has got, you know, potentially $5 for every $1 Biden currently has. And that does not include the massive Republican super PAC advantages does not include the $100 million that Trump has already spent building up a massive database of his voters and potential voters for himself. And he has a massive media advantage. And so Biden's in a strong political position, but he there's a lot of swimming upstream to get to a point where you can take advantage of that.

The other thing, and a bunch of us were talking about this yesterday, is if you look at their favorability ratings, Donald Trump's favorability is underwater by anywhere from, I don't know, 8 to 15 points. I think Monmouth had him at like 40, 53. Joe Biden's approval in the Monmouth poll is 41 approved, 44 disapproved. We said this before, but Barack Obama may have been the last Democratic candidate

to have run for the presidency with an approval rating that is above water. And that is not something particularly special about Barack Obama, but it is because of sort of the polarized nature of politics now and the fact that negative partisanship, which is sort of just voting because you want to get rid of the opponent and not necessarily because you feel strongly about the person running in your own party is much more prevalent. Would you say it's a hell of a drug? I would say it's a hell of a drug. I would say partisanship is a hell of a drug.

And just the way we are now, you know, like every other Democrat that ran for president this time around, none of them have above water approval ratings. Not Elizabeth Warren, not Bernie Sanders, like none of them did. And that could only get worse. Now, you know, the difference is when Hillary Clinton ran, she was the second most unpopular candidate to ever run for the presidency. Donald Trump was the most unpopular candidate to ever run for the presidency. There was a good chunk of voters who didn't approve of either of them, who didn't like

either of them. Donald Trump won those voters by 17 points. Right now, at least, people who don't like Joe Biden or Donald Trump are voting for Joe Biden by like 30, 40 points. That's the case now. But again, you just said Donald Trump has a lot of money. They're just starting the negative ad campaign now. And so they are going to try to define Joe Biden and to drive his approval ratings down even more. to define Joe Biden and to drive his approval ratings down even more. And it does seem like,

at the very least, Joe Biden is a blank slate for a lot of voters, which is why you have this approval rating of 41, disapproval of 44, and a bunch of people who haven't made up their mind at all about Joe Biden, which is opportunity for the Biden campaign, but also danger, right? which is opportunity for the Biden campaign, but also danger, right? Yeah, that's exactly right, which is Biden is in a situation somewhat similar to what Hillary Clinton was in before, which is 100% name ID, a general base of knowledge, right? It's not just they know his name, they know he was vice president. I think they have some general sense that he's been in politics for a long time. I think there's a general sense he's probably a nice guy, and probably some general sense that he's been in politics for a long time. I think there's a general sense he's probably a nice guy. And probably some general sense that he's more moderate than some of the other Democrats running. But other than that, there is very, particularly among the voters, you're going to

need to persuade either sort of the quote unquote, swing voters and the people you're trying to convince to engage in politics, perhaps for the first time, there's a real lack of knowledge. And Biden is operating a sort of generic Democrat plus right now. And the battle for the presidency is in part over that last 15% of people who don't yet have an opinion on Biden, depending on what poll you look at. And Trump has the ability, if Biden lets him, to define Biden before Biden defines himself. And so, you know, back to the answer Trump gave David Muir when he asked whether he's comfortable with the 2020 race becoming a referendum on his response to the coronavirus, Trump starts by saying, well, I am

and I'm not. I hope it's not solely on what i've done here because this is a very this is like rubber it's very very amorphous i don't know what the fuck that means um so it doesn't seem like trump wants this to be a referendum do you think it will be and should biden try to make it one you and i have talked about this before. I find the referendum versus choice discussion to be a bit of a one-dimensional framework for something that happens in three dimensions, which is, yes, of course, every presidential election for an incumbent is in some cases a referendum on that president's performance because the most important driving factors that dictate the parameters of the political debate are around the president's approval rating and the state of the economy under that president, right? Those are historically drivers of what happens. But ultimately, unlike for House, Senate, and even governor, presidents or elections are always a choice.

Someone still has to sit at their kitchen table with their mail ballot or go into a booth and decide between two people. And Biden does not get to decide it's a referendum. That's not his choice. The incumbent decides. And the incumbent always makes it a choice. Mitt Romney thought this was going to be a referendum against Obama. Every speech, ad, tweet, awkward statement was about Obama.

He spent all his time trying to convince people that Barack Obama was a bad president. He spent no time trying to convince people that Mitt Romney would be a good president. So when our campaign decided to explain to the American people what kind of President Mitt Romney would be, we got to have that conversation before Mitt Romney did. So I think if the Biden campaign, I don't have any reason to believe they're going to do this. And I have actually reason to believe they're not going to do it. But you see this a lot from political strategists on Twitter and cable, which is make this a referendum, make it all about Trump. And I think that that is a mistake against any income. And I think it's

particularly a mistake against Trump because the negative information about Trump is often baked into the cake already because it's so evident every day. And he dominates the media so much that you have to work extra hard to communicate about yourself. And so I think Biden has to lean into making it a choice to protect himself against Trump doing that, if that makes sense. I think that makes a lot of sense because I think that sort of it sort of illuminates the reality of this of this debate, which is that, like, yes, if the election becomes a referendum on Donald Trump. is that like, yes, if the election becomes a referendum on Donald Trump, and it may be that just because of the circumstances that we're living through, then that will be good for Joe Biden and bad for Donald Trump. But if you're Joe Biden and you have a finite amount of resources and a finite amount of time, how do you want to spend it? Do you want to talk constantly about how bad Donald Trump is, which is something that most people are living through every day?

Or do you want to say, by the way, I'm the acceptable alternative and talk about your economic plan, your vision? Here's the contrast. Knowing that Donald Trump is going to be dumping millions and millions and millions of dollars of ads on you every single day. And that the most important thing to do is to make yourself a credible challenger so that if it is a referendum on Trump and a bunch of people have decided, OK, I want to fire Donald Trump, but I'm not sure if I want to hire Joe Biden, you can say, yes, no, I am an acceptable alternative. Yeah, I've seen a bunch of polling done for various Democratic organizations and campaigns over the last few weeks.

And there are a couple of points that are pretty clear. One is that voters are willing to fire Trump. But it is also true that they do not know, as of yet, know enough about Biden to be sure that he is the right alternative. And so as of yet, know enough about Biden to be sure that he is the right alternative. And so they just don't know enough. And so that is a blank that Biden's going to have to paint in. The second point that I think is really important for all of us to remember, which is huge swaths of voters, particularly the ones who are going to decide this election, this universe of voters we call up for grabs voters in sort of Obama campaign parlance,

side this election, this universe of voters we call up for grabs voters in sort of Obama campaign parlance, believe that two terms is the default for a president. And there is a higher burden for firing. And that higher burden is not just about their performance. It's also about the person you want to put in the seat when you fire that president. And we just have to remember that because you have to try to put yourself into the mind of the voters who are going to side this election. And they do not think Trump is as dumb as we do. They do not think he's a fake businessman. They think he has at least a right to make a case for himself for a second term. And if you try to run against the MSNBC, Twitter,

Pod Save America version of Trump, which I think is the accurate version of Trump, you're running against a different Trump than the voters see. And that is another mistake Mitt Romney made. He ran against the Fox News caricature of Obama, not the actual Obama that swing voters saw, which was someone who they trusted, they thought was honest, and they thought was doing his best in a difficult situation. Yeah, a lot of these voters are disappointed with Trump, but they are not disgusted with Trump. And that might not be emotionally satisfying to all of us, but it is the reality. And winning a vote from someone who was disappointed with Trump counts the same as winning a vote from someone who was disgusted with Trump. So just go for it. Yeah. You know, like it counts the same,

but it requires a different argument. It does. A different tone. Right. Okay. So before we get to your interview with Mark Elias, we do have some listener questions that came to us um so we'll just go through a few of them um julie mckellar asks where to donate with limited resources to get the biggest bang for donation buck uh to one of the in-place senate campaigns to flip it biden super pack i'm bombarded every day with multiple requests i give but i can't get give every day to every ask. Thanks. I mean, I don't know what you think. I would say either, like Brian Schatz always says, adopt a Senate race. And, you know, he said this to love it on Pod Save America, I thought was really smart. He said, you know, don't just give to sort of the most popular Senate candidate, or at least the Senate candidate who's running against the Republican you hate the most, because we have a lot of chances now and a lot of paths to flip the

Senate. And we want to make sure that we, as Barack Obama would say, spread the wealth around to all the that's a deep cut down to all the different to all the different potential Senate races. One way you can do that by the way is to go to uh our get mitch or die trying fund um that you can find on vote save america.com and if you donate it will automatically split your donation to all the different all to the most competitive senate races so you can do it that way and i also think that joe biden's campaign which we've been talking about nonstop, is behind Donald Trump in the money chase. They absolutely need money. So donate to Joe Biden if you can.

I think that's both of those things are more effective than donating to super PACs, only because for super PACs, like like billionaires can write gigantic checks and you can write an unlimited amount of money. So like grassroots donations don't need to be going to places where some super rich person could donate a fuckload of money. You should be donating grassroots donations. Grassroots donations should be going to candidates where there's an actual donation limit. I agree with all of that.

And I'm for everything you just said and donating to all those groups. I agree with all of that. And I'm for everything you just said and donating to all those groups. I think also I would look at if this is if you want sort of a hipster choice of what do that, that goes through all the chambers that we Democrats have a chance to flip in 2020. And so either giving to the DLCC, or to some of the individual campaigns in those states, or to run for something, which helps recruit and train candidates for down ballot races, like that is a place where your $50 is going to go exponentially farther. Your $5, your tenant, whatever it is you feel like you can give is going to go farther in a race with a smaller budget than in one with a giant budget.

So that's another thing to think about, but all is good, right? It's not, there's not one better than the other. It's sort of where you want to have your impact. Joel Dodge asks, how much should Massachusetts having a Republican governor caution against Biden picking Elizabeth Warren?

What is the current procedure for filling her Senate seat? I like Warren, but the semi-recent history of Senate special elections in Massachusetts makes me nervous. What do you think, Dan? This is a fixable problem.

What's that? Well, the Democrats in the Massachusetts legislature, if I understand it correctly, have a veto-approved majority. So they could pass a bill that says that the governor is required to appoint someone who is of the same party of the departing senator. This is something that the folks in North Carolina did to both make it harder for Democratic Governor Roy Cooper to have political power and also allow Richard Burr to engage in a large amount of insider trading without fear of losing his seat to a Democrat. So, yeah, I mean, that's I didn't realize that, too, that I should have because it's Massachusetts and I'm from there and I've seen the legislature. But, yeah, they have a super majority So they can they can they can change the law there. At some point, the vacancy so that so they would they could they could compel Charlie

Baker, the governor of Massachusetts, to appoint a Democrat to fill her seat. At some point, there would still have to be a special election. The other thing that Elizabeth Warren could do is she could time this, she could give her letter of resignation in advance after Biden selects her in July, or she could even wait till November and then basically say, I will resign on X date in the future and, and push this and make sure that the special election is, you know, early in January so that you can hopefully get a Democrat to fill her seat or she could push it past the first three months. You know, like there's different ways that she can actually control her destiny there and win the win the special election is and sort of coordinate it with whatever. Hopefully President Biden's governing agenda is and how many Senate votes he needs for that agenda in the first 100 days. And it's like, obviously, there is a very challenging history of filling special election Senate seats in Massachusetts, which we know quite well from Scott Brown winning Ted Kennedy's seat

and derailing the Affordable Care Act briefly, which did lead to Elizabeth Warren becoming a senator. So that's also good, I guess. That's true. In the long run. Great. But we should also not be overly sanguine about the selection of a Democratic senator in a swing state with a Democratic governor. If Biden were to pick Tammy Baldwin or Amy Klobuchar,

yes, the Democratic governors could appoint a Democrat to serve for whatever the law is there, but you're still putting yourself in a challenging situation to win a Senate seat in a swing state in what is always a very tough election for the party in power the first midterm. Doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, but. No, but you're right're right i mean like an ab clobish our pick means that there's another there's a special election in minnesota a tougher state than massachusetts in 2021 or 2022 yeah which is i think we have to look at the laws but i think in most i don't know about those specific in often cases it means the person fills out the until the next election so that you would have someone until 2022. So you have them on the ballot in that first midterm, which is historically challenging. Right. Especially, you know, President Joe Biden in in 2022, when we still have double digit unemployment,

having to midterm there is going to be challenging. It never ends, people. Steve Lindley asks, which congressional Republican losing in November would bring you the most joy? Do you have an answer? I do. What's yours? Susan Collins. Susan Collins is a good answer.

I'm going with who's actually... I mean, there's plenty of Republicans I hate more than Susan Collins. But I'm talking about like likelihood to actually lose. And when we're talking the Senate and we're talking all the seats we pick up like a lot of these Republican senators are just fucking terrible, but like not in any special way. Susan Collins just, you know, pretending that she's some independent moderate voice through the Trump administration has driven me fucking crazy, especially after Kavanaugh, especially after all the other things she's just given in on

to Trump. And then she gets so angry when anyone suggests that she may be just covering for Donald Trump or impeachment, right? She gets so angry that people think that she's just a Trump apologist when that is what her record shows. So yeah, I'd be super psyched for Susan Collins to lose. I mean, that's a good answer, but that's not the right answer. Okay, what is it? The right answer is Mitch McConnell. Oh, oh, that's right. Yeah, obviously Susan Collins losing is much more likely than Mitch McConnell, but like

Mitch McConnell losing would be fucking amazing. Do you think there's a real chance for Amy Mc mcgrath to beat mitch mcconnell i think it is a very very hard race i think she is a good candidate to run that race but this was not which republican do you think it's going to lose which republicans you want to lose right okay all right well the the other one in that case too is um jamie harrison that was my second choice yeah and jamie harrison is running a fantastic campaign. And I think they just moved that seat from like safe Republican to likely Republican or whatever. And so, you know, there's it's again, it's a real tough one, just like Kentucky. But, you know, it would be fun to watch Lindsey Graham lose to the demographics in South Carolina are moving faster than people think.

That's good news. I like that. All right. Jeffrey Watcher asks, I haven't heard much on the podcast about the Postal Service. As a postal worker, I'm concerned that while a few Democrats have commented in favor of funding the U.S. Postal Service, it doesn't seem to be a priority or item of high interest in negotiations with GOP. What can I do to bring this issue to the forefront? Read John's T-shirt, which says call Congress for those

of you who are watching this on YouTube. I mean, the good news is I saw a report this week somewhere that the Democratic leadership, Nancy Pelosi, has committed to including $25 billion for the post office in whatever the next stimulus bill is. So that is good news. I saw a bunch of senators wrote a letter to Mnuchin because basically what's happening right now is Treasury is saying, all right, we'll give the post office a $10 billion loan, but only under these conditions. And one of those conditions is Donald Trump thinks they should be charging Amazon and other shippers more to use their service instead of like having the taxpayers bail them out, which is an absurd thing to say because the post office is competing with the prices that FedEx and UPS are also charging places like Amazon. So the post office raising their shipping prices is not going to help the

post office. It's going to lose them business to FedEx and UPS, and they're just going to end up being more fucked. So like, it's an absurd, it's Trump not understanding how the fucking post office works. I mean, I'm shocked to find out he doesn't fully understand that,

but, and he also just today appointed some Republican hack donor to be post office works. I mean, I'm shocked to find out he doesn't fully understand that. But, and he also just today appointed some Republican hack donor to be postmaster general. Yeah. Which is a longer conversation. I think Democrats will do the right thing here. I also think if you live

in a district with a Republican, put pressure on them to not have mail stop running. Like that seems like your basic fucking job as a public servant is ensure the mail still arrives. Right. And guess who really needs the mail to arrive, especially because places like,

you know, FedEx and UPS don't reach them. Rural areas where there are Republican voters, senior citizens who are stuck home right now who need their medications delivered, people who need their fucking ballots delivered in november yeah the post office is pretty fucking important it's also incredibly popular another thing that across party lines everyone loves the post office north of 70 percent of americans so yeah call congress um and uh it looks like the democrats are going to put this in the bill but you know it's got to survive negotiations. So keep on your representatives. Kelsey Breen asks, have you ever heard Obama say fuck?

Yes. Yes. Not a ton. He's not, he doesn't like throw it around like we do on the podcast. I mean, you weren't there in 2014. That was a tough year. Oh yeah, that's right. I left before things got really bad.

Jake Van Curson asks, was a tough year oh yeah that's right i left before things got really bad um uh jake van kersen asks dan last dance is making me want to get into the nba when it resumes which team should i follow context i've lived in chicago since 2004 and was born and raised in michigan this is a great question and i love this question i would say it is somewhat similar to someone saying, hey, Dan, I've been watching Top Chef. I want to get into food. What do you think? And so to me, it's a question of what kind of experience do you want? I would just point out to you, Mr. Questioner,

that probably the two franchises that may be in the worst current position in terms of future prospects and talent and cap and everything else are the Chicago Bulls and the Detroit Pistons. So maybe you don't want to go with the hometown there. And so it's like, what do you want? Do you want longtime excellence? Do you want scrappy underdog? Do you want exciting?

Do you want defense? Do you want the tortured experience of being a Philadelphia 76ers fan? So I would say based on geography and the fact that you like the last dance, I would suggest, one, Sixers have the best fans

and you're welcome to be a Sixers fan with me. I'm not, I don't know I can good conscience recommend that as a easy first step in a basketball fandom, but based on the geography of somebody who lives in Chicago, who they do not want to be a Chicago Bulls fan, I would recommend picking up the Bucks of Milwaukee. They have the best player in the NBA. They have Giannis Antetokounmpo is both reigning MVP will win MVP this year. If we ever finish the season, and is just like an amazing story and amazing guy. So he would be very fun to root for probably for the same reasons

why you've enjoyed watching The Last Dance. So that's my recommendation. Great answer. Last question, Mary Chris Arcuri asks, John, what are your thoughts on Francesca and Harry? Are you as shocked as I am that they're still together? Who are those people? on francesca and harry are you as shocked as i am that they're still together who are those people well dan francesca and harry are the um the hero and heroine from the netflix reality show

too hot to handle oh so did we just spoil too hot to handle for millions of listeners um i wouldn't use the word spoil necessarily because i'm not sure it's a show that can be spoiled. But I will say much like the Trump presidency, it is shocking but not surprising that they're still together. Francesca is, of course, a Canadian model. Harry is someone from Australia. They met on the set of Too Hot to Handle. They broke many of the rules of the show, and yet they ended up together. I just read, I think on some trashy website, that there's going to be a Too Hot to Handle reunion episode this Friday.

So I know what I'm doing Friday night. And they met during the show i guess they broke up for eight months and now they're back together and they they may even be engaged as the rumor um can't believe this is uh this is something that i know something about that's tells you tells you about my quarantine schedule well i mean this was fascinating i love that you said francesca is of course, a Canadian model. If you don't know that. Anyone who knows too much to handle knows her background.

I would know just, I'm making fun of you for this, but I want you to know, all of our listeners, I'm not doing it from the perspective of a TV snob. I like equally bad TV, just different bad TV. Yeah, that's right. I mean, you and Howley introduced us to Below Deck. Yep, we are big fans of the Below Deck extended universe.

All right, when we come back, Dan will talk to Democratic election lawyer Mark Elias. So we asked all you guys to send us uh videos about why it's so important for you to be able to vote safely in november as we try to make sure that the next economic relief bill includes protections for safe voting so many of you sent videos we really appreciate it um here are a couple of testimonials from people about why it's so important that they're able to vote safely in November before you hear Dan's interview with Mark Elias. Wisconsin legislature and Supreme Court handled our election earlier this April would be an understatement because really I am furious. It's our constitutional right to vote and we should never have to choose between that right and the health and wellness of ourselves or of our loved

ones. But I'm not just angry on principle. This reckless disregard that our state showed for voter security is very personal because it directly affects my family. My mom has an autoimmune condition called myasthenia gravis, which means that her muscles tire quickly, including her respiratory muscles. If she were to contract COVID, she would be a high-risk case and she would very likely need to be intubated. Knowing that, she and my dad and my brother still went to the polls earlier this month because they never received their absentee ballots. If she were to have to do that again, I honestly don't know if she would be so lucky to not get infected, and that really scares me. We need to have voter protections put in place, and we need to have them as soon as possible. Please. Hi there. My name is Caitlin Kahn. I live in Madison, Wisconsin, and I need safer voting

options because I'm a poll worker and I have a suppressed immune system. So working the poll on April 7th was very, it was very scary and I couldn't see my family for two weeks afterwards because of self-isolation. And I would just like safer voting options so that we don't have to risk our lives to exercise our right to vote. I'm now joined by attorney Mark Elias, a lawyer and voting rights advocate who's been working hard to make sure that everyone can vote safely and securely in November. Elias, how you doing, buddy? Good. How are you? You know, all things considered, doing pretty good for not having left my house in a few months. Yeah, I know. It feels

longer, actually. Yeah, that's right. Every day takes forever, but it's hard to believe we've been here for eight weeks already. Let's start. I imagine your vision for a safe and fair election looks nothing like what we saw in Wisconsin last month. Uh, how do you think a safe and fair election can take place with the backdrop of coronavirus? Yeah, look, I mean, the, the challenges of coronavirus are just accelerating the problems that we had in voting even before. In order to have a fair and open and safe election, we need two things. Number one, everyone who wants to vote by mail needs to be able to do so without unnecessary restrictions. And number two, we need to provide safe in-person voting.

And the way you provide safe in-person voting is you increase the number of polling locations. You increase the number of days over which you have in-person early voting. And by doing those two things, along with expanding the pool of people to work election day and curbside voting, you can have people vote in person. But the biggest key is to drive as many people to vote by mail as possible so that you can keep down the crowds of people who need to vote in person. What do you want to see in a legislative package that originates in the Democratic House in terms of helping states vote by mail and have safe elections? Yeah, that's a great question. So there's two pieces

to what Democrats need to do. The first is money. I say to people, I am not usually in the business of telling people that state election officials need more money to administer elections. I usually sue state election officials. So I'm not usually their advocate. But in this case, the first and highest need is for states to get the resources necessary to increase vote by mail and other kinds of voting. You know, what a lot of people in your audience probably don't realize is that unlike the federal government, they could just print money. States oftentimes operate under a balanced budget requirements. So if they don't, you know, have the money to spend, they don't have the money to spend. And so getting funding for elections is probably the biggest thing. There are some other things that would be

helpful as well, mandating that states provide for vote by mail. There are still states that don't allow automatic no-excuse absentee voting, so things like that. You have written about and talked about the difference between vote by mail and the most fair version of vote by mail. What are some of the things we need in vote by mail to ensure that people aren't disenfranchised? Yeah, I'm really glad you asked that question because one thing about vote by mail is that unlike in-person voting where the rate of rejection of in-person ballots is virtually zero, right? You go, you show up. If your ballot doesn't scan

into the machine before you leave, you fix it. One of the problems with vote by mail is that you have some significant number of ballots that get mailed in that don't get counted. They get rejected. And just to give you a couple of statistics on that, there was a study by Dan Smith out of Florida that showed that mail ballots cast by 18 to 21-year-olds in 2018 in Florida, 5.4 percent of them were rejected. If you look at the number for over 65, it was 0.6%. So that means one out of every 20 young voters had their mail ballot rejected. One out of every 200 mail voters who are over 65 had them rejected. So there's an unevenness to this. So there are four things that I've said we need to do to make sure that we, to use a phrase, flatten the curve of rejection.

And that our number one, free postage to make sure that people who want to vote by mail don't have to try to go out in coronavirus and find stamps. Number two, that we ensure that ballots that are postmarked by election day count, even if they are received afterwards. That small change, by the way, was one of the things we won in Wisconsin, and 142,000 ballots counted that would have otherwise been rejected. Think about that for a second. 142,000 ballots were cast that were postmarked by Election Day but received afterwards. Had we not won the victory that we did under Wisconsin law, those ballots would not have counted. The third is signature match law reforms. States typically match the signature on the back of the return envelope

of a mail ballot with a signature on file from when someone registered. And we see sky-high rejection rates, particularly, again, among young voters and minority voters. And there are things states can do to make sure that those rejection rates are lower and that voters are given an opportunity to be notified and fix any problems. And then finally, allowing community organizations to collect and return sealed mail ballots. This is very important, for example, among Native American populations and some rural areas where there is not reliable mail service. And therefore, it's the only way

to make sure that their ballots are getting in at all. You know, you could see how to some people would suggest that given the pandemic and the dangers of going in public and the challenges of social distancing while waiting in line to vote at a high school gym or a church or wherever else, people might say, well, why don't we conduct elections only by mail? Can you help explain why we need in-person voting as well? Yeah, so a couple of reasons. The first is that the states that have gone to all vote by mail, which is really Colorado, Washington, Oregon, they did so over a long time horizon. So we could have a longer discussion about whether or not for 2022, 2024, 2026, states ought to be moving in that direction. But the fact is, getting that in place for 2020

would be challenging for most states. And when you do that, the problems are basically twofold. Number one, it requires the states to have really, really accurate lists of who all their registered voters are. And when you see that transition take place, and let us done really thoughtfully, you tend to miss transient populations, particularly young voters, but other types of transient populations tend to get left out, number one. Number two, for many people, and this is true, there are demographic differences, particularly African Americans have a higher propensity to vote in person. And geographically, you know, if you spent any time in Vermont or New Hampshire, you know that

they very much engage in democracy as an in-person act. They still have town meetings where whole towns get together. So there are, you know, it's important that we have safe in-person act. They still have town meetings where whole towns get together. So it's important that we have safe in-person voting options because there are going to be people for whom voting by mail is simply either not an option because they don't have reliable mail service or where they just don't have confidence in the vote byby-mail system because of the rejection rates. And they just want to vote in person. We need to make that available for them. Given what you just said about some of the populations that prefer in-person voting,

obviously, there is a moral argument for why vote-by-mail should be an option in any time in a pandemic. But given the demographics of the average Republican voter and the demographics of people most affected by coronavirus and the demographics of people who use the mail, can you help me understand why Republicans like Mitch McConnell have such an opposition to vote by mail? So it's a great question. I think it is born more out of desperation than data. It's a little bit like a lot of things that the Republicans right now do. It's not based nearly as scientifically based on the data of vote by mail, because you're right, vote by mail, you know, on its face doesn't have a skew that is particularly democratic. have a skew that is particularly democratic. I remind people that when Colorado went to all vote by mail in 2014, we lost the U.S. Senate race in Colorado. But I think that the reason is that, to put what I think is really going on, is that the president is constantly insisting he is the victim of some kind of voter fraud. And so first, the voter fraud was 3 million undocumented voters in California.

I don't want your audience to forget that, that that was actually the first thing we were told, is that there were 3 million undocumented voters in one state in California. And that's what happened. Then he set up a fraud commission with a different set of theories, and that fell apart. And now his latest one is that it's a problem of vote by mail. And I do think that to the extent there is any rationality to what McConnell is thinking, it is this, that COVID is coextensive with urbanity, as are Democratic voters, right? So you know this better than anyone that, you know, the more

highly dense a population center you live in, the more likely you are to be a Democratic voter, whether white or black compared to more rural areas or Hispanic or other. Close in-person voting locations due to COVID, which is what we saw in Milwaukee, where there are only five polling locations open in the entire city, where normally there's more than 180. And you're not having that same impact on more rural in-person voting. hurting Democrats more because their voters need them more in those urban centers than the Republican voters need them in less densely populated areas. You brought up Trump questioning the legitimacy of the election that he won. Which is kind of unusual, right? Yeah, it is unusual. And it does not bode well for what would happen in a situation where he does not win. What keeps you up at night in terms of what Trump could do to. Delegitimize or even invalidate the counting of votes or the election in 2020?

Yeah. So let me first start with something that I get asked a lot, which is that Trump can't move the election. So I get asked this question all the time. I wrote a piece about this on my website, Democracy Docket, where I take apart the legal arguments about moving the election date. And that's set by act of Congress. So that's not moving. Okay. So the good news and the bad news is we're going to have an election on November 3rd. So what are the things that I worry about? I worry mostly that because elections are administered at the state level, that you will have Republican governors or local election officials who will do what we saw happened in Wisconsin, which is there will be five polling locations open in the largest city in the state.

If there are only five in-person voting locations open in Milwaukee, it's going to be very, very difficult for Democrats to win in Wisconsin. And if you pile on top of that restrictions on vote by mail, then it becomes impossible. on top of that, restrictions on vote by mail, then it becomes impossible. So what I am worried about is that Trump will, number one, underfund the Postal Service, which, as you know, has its own budget problems. And there was just a story that he put, he installed one of his donors to be in charge of the Postal Service, that the Postal Service won't be able to adequately handle a surge in mail ballots. That will disproportionately affect Democrats.

The in-person voting will be harder in urban centers and easier in rural areas. And therefore, what you'll wind up with is a really skewed electorate. So this is something you know. But if you look at the election results from 2004 to 2016, high turnout is about 58% and low turnout's about 54%. That's kind of the swing. We're talking about relatively narrow numbers. I think the Trump strategy is to drive those numbers down into the low 50s or high 40s. I think that's what keeps me up at night. And you think that helps them? I think it does if it's uneven, right? Like it wouldn't be if it was, if those numbers were lower because

of an excitement issue, then it would be different. But if it's that way because there are only five because the lines in Milwaukee are five and a half hour long and people are lined up in masks, then yeah, that worries me because you'll simply have longer lines and more barriers to voting in cities than you will in more rural areas. You have been in court all across the country over the last few months, but particularly the last few weeks since COVID, fighting just recently in Nevada to ensure that voters get sent ballots and things like that. How have you found the courts receptive to arguments for expanded vote by mail and expanded access? So look, it's a mixed bag and it's early. We've had some important victories, but the trial courts are very close to the communities.

So they are experiencing, and you'll hear judges say it. I was on a hearing with a federal judge in Nevada, actually, where she began by saying, no one needs to spend time talking about the fact that there's a health crisis. We're aware of that. The risk is, and this is what we saw in Wisconsin, is that when the cases move from the trial judges who are hearing testimony and seeing facts on the ground up to the Court of Appeals and then the Supreme Court where they are more remote from those realities, that that's where the problems can be. So far, the courts have been good. I've been pleasantly surprised. The ACLU actually had a great victory in Virginia, which is a state I live in. And we've been having our successes as well.

But there's a long road ahead. And the RNC has committed more than $10 million to fight us in court. And there are a variety of right-wing groups that are showing up in case after case. You brought up the Supreme Court decision in Wisconsin, which most people were very upset about. But there was this element that you mentioned about ballots that arrive after election day, postmarked before election day, but arrive afterwards. Do you believe that really to be specific to Wisconsin or a standard that the Supreme Court perhaps accidentally set for elections going forward? Yeah, it's a good question. So I think it's a little of both.

I think that the Supreme Court's decision to take this case was an unfortunate one. It actually signaled that they have more of a willingness and an interest in taking cases in this area. I mean, there was nothing compelling about a judicial as important as the state Supreme Court in, in Wisconsin is. There was no reason why the U.S. Supreme Court needed to weigh in there, but they did. Um, but I pointed out the night of that ruling that, um, though the RNC was, you know, boasting that it had won and everyone was portraying this as an unmitigated loss for our side, that there was in fact this significant silver lining for the future, which was that the Supreme Court ruled that for Wisconsin, ballots postmarked by Election Day would count even if they came in afterwards, notwithstanding the fact that Wisconsin law said they had to be received on Election Day. Now, we are citing that throughout the country. We've cited that in any number of cases. We'll see whether that's a durable rule for the U.S. Supreme Court,

or it was only in that circumstance. The Bush v. Gore standard would suggest that precedent is flexible in Republican elections. Correct, Correct. Yes. I'm not saying it's lock solid. I'm saying it's helpful. And look, it's helpful. It's certainly helpful to show lower courts who want to do the right thing that the Supreme Court did this. So what the Supreme Court would do if they got it back, we'd wait and see. Before I let you go you go mark and get back to whatever court you have to zoom into next um for folks who are now who are listening to this who are now going to be staying awake at night thinking about all the things that you've been worrying about what's the best way to that they could support your efforts to fight for voting rights around the country look i mean

keep pressure on congress to appropriate money i I mean, number one, that's like super important because without funds, the states are not going to be able to administer elections. And the second is, you know, talk out and educate your friends and your colleagues about the importance of voting and making sure that their vote count. You know, my motto for this election, you know, in the past we said everyone needs to vote. This time, everyone needs to make sure their vote counts, because I'm afraid otherwise we're going to have that 5.4 percent in Florida who cast their ballot, got their little sticker, but their ballot didn't count. So people really need to pay attention to that. And obviously, you know, every bit of support helps. Mark Elias, thank you so much for joining us today and for everything you're doing to fight for free and for elections. And we will talk to you soon. Great. Thanks so much.

Thanks to Mark Elias for joining us today. And everyone have a good weekend. Bye, everyone. a good weekend. Bye everyone. We nailed that. 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,

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