Pod Save America - “Melania’s Last Christmas” (Holiday mailbag!)

Episode Date: December 21, 2020

Jon F. and Dan answer your questions on the Senate majority, redistricting, what they hate about Twitter and like about Taylor Swift’s new albums.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Welcome to our annual holiday mailbag episode. Thank you to everyone who sent in questions. We will try to answer the ones we know, make up the rest. Let's dive in, shall we, Dan? Sure. I love a mailbag episode. It's my favorite part of the year. Me too. Me too.

All right. Do you want to know why, though? Here's the key. Why? We are offloading the work of doing the outline onto the listeners. On the other hand, we recorded this last week, which meant that I've recorded four pods this week. That's been a lot of podcasting going on right now. All right. We got a series of questions from Colin Tobias, Marie Stevenson and someone on Twitter named Patches.

They were all about which Trump appointments and executive orders can and can't be reversed by Biden. They specifically mentioned all of Trump's last minute appointments to the Department of Defense and the Defense Policy Board, Federal Elections Committee. Someone's very incensed about Kellyanne Conway's appointment to the United States Air Force Academy Board of Visitors, which is something that happened. What do you think, Dan? I'm against Kellyanne Conway being on the board of the Air Force Academy. Was that the question? Unfortunately, it's a three-year appointment by law. I looked this up. So I'll tell you, I looked up also what the United States Air Force Academy Board of Visitors does. And it seems like they just talk a lot about what happens at the Air Force Academy. Yeah. A couple of times a year. I mean, ultimately what should happen is that Kellyanne Conway and

the rest of these people will be drummed out of polite society for engaging in some of the worst governance, biggest lies, incredible corruption, enabling of crimes, all of the above. But there is like, put Kelly and Conway aside for a second, but there's been this big concern. Happily. Yes. Done. Thank you. The people of Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Georgia. Thank you so much. And Wisconsin, sorry. There's like, you see a lot of concern around around these people being put on the defense policy board. Does that mean they get to command troops? Are they going to have access to drones?

Yeah, yeah. He's installing Corey Lewandowski so that Corey can pull off a military coup in the last couple of weeks. Yeah, that's what's going to happen. The way to think about these is they have no actual operational influence. no actual operational influence. Basically, what Trump did was he gave Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie the opportunity to make more money selling access in the swamp, because now they get to add this to the website of their completely sketchy lobbying firms. Yeah. And so all of the, so there was two sets of defense, Department of Defense moves. There was the Defense Policy Board, which is just like a board of advisors that advises the Defense Department doesn't have any real power. And

Trump fired all the people who are on that board. They were like Democrats and Republicans, former secretaries of state, like just fired them all, put all of his cronies on and Biden can instantly fire all those people too when he gets in. He can also change all of the appointments to the Department of Defense that Trump made at the very end immediately. Basically, any political appointee from Trump, Biden can remove as soon as he gets into office. The only exceptions are, you know, there's a practice known as borrowing. I think we talked about this on the pod before, where you convert someone who's a political appointee to a civil servant. So then it's harder to fire them.

That happens from time to time between every administration. Or like when an administration's leaving, they try to do that sometimes. Trump has been trying to do it a bit. So there's a few appointments there that might be hard. Appointments to the Federal Reserve, the Federal Election Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, Federal Election Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, and the Post Office Board of Governors are all appointments for a set number of years or a term. I mentioned the Post Office because someone asked if Biden could fire DeJoy. Remember that villain from the election, Louis DeJoy? He can't because the Post Office Board of Governors chooses the Postmaster

General, and that board is filled for a little while with a Republican majority that Biden can't really change. So those ones that are often like Senate confirmed positions that have a term just like judges, which have a lifetime term. Those are things that Biden can't change. But all of the political appointments and sort of board appointments he can get rid of pretty fast. Cody Hudson asks, how quickly can Governor Newsom replace Senator Harris? Is it possible to appoint and install someone on January 20th? Not only is it possible, he has to. He's got to pick an appointment or replacement by January 20th. So it will be soon. And he will pick someone and then that person could be sworn in five minutes later. He could dispatch someone to D.C., announce that they could walk into the Senate, and Mike Pence would be forced to swear that person in up until January 20th.

And then it would be Kamala Harris. Is it true that you're on the shortlist to replace Kamala Harris? It is not. It is not. Okay, we're confirming that here. Good. I just wanted to make sure no one has informed me of that. But I would not I would not expect it. You're not expected. OK, well, Josh asks if Georgia elects two Democrats in the Senate is split 50 50. Will Schumer become majority leader and determine which legislation gets a vote? Yes. Yes, he will. That's the whole point of this. There have been a lot. I've gotten a lot of questions about this, about what the 50-50 means and how that gets picked. And so everyone knows the tie-breaking vote is the vice president.

The vice president come next month will be Kamala Harris. And so the Democrats will be in charge. They get to do 50-50 with the vice presidency is operationally the same as 70-30. You are the majority leader. You pick what goes to the floor. That's how fucked up the Senate is. But if we do our job in Georgia, it's going to work to our advantage. And so everything that McConnell's been able to do to block Democrats and bring things

on the floor or jam judges through all those things. Democrats will have that power if we win Georgia, whether if it's at 50-50. It's such a big deal. As much as everyone's talking about Georgia, I think it's still an undercovered race because like the next four years in a scenario where Democrats win Georgia versus one where they don't is like to say night and day is an understatement. The fate of the planet, the economy, the judiciary, health care, everything. Yeah, it's a it's a big deal. Speaking of which, Bethany Mager asks, will we know the outcome of the Georgia races on January 5th or wait longer for all votes to be counted like the general? What do you think?

I think it's unlikely we'll know that night because I'm presuming these are close. Which I think is a very safe assumption given how close they were and how close Georgia was even at the presidential level in November. There will be fewer number, even if turnout seems like it's going to be quite high for a runoff, it's going to be, you know, I assume significantly less than the presidential. And so it will not take us long to count votes, but it will still take time. Yeah, it could. When did we know that Biden was ahead in Georgia? It was like the next day or the day after? No, it was the same day that he the same day about of Pennsylvania. So I think it was Friday.

Wow. OK, yeah. So it could be it could be a little while and turnout already seems we don't know. I mean, the first two days of voting in Georgia, we're recording this on Wednesday, the week before, have already been bigger than the first two days of early in-person voting in the general. That said, something like 98 percent of the voters voted in the general. So it's not like a bunch of new voters yet. But that's, I think it's gonna be a pretty, pretty big turnout. Yeah.

I mean, there's a half a billion dollars of ads on the air there. So I don't think anyone's missing. It's gonna be caught off guard that there's a Senate election happening. Adam Kellman asks, what are the Dems' chances in the Senate in 2022? Both Wisconsin and Pennsylvania seem like a good shot to win. CC John Fetterman, I guess Adam wants the lieutenant governor to run for Senate in Pennsylvania. That's not a bad idea. I support that.

Did you just endorse him? Yeah. Dan, I think primaries are healthy. So everyone get into the primary. That's my position. What do you think? Well, this is this is an interesting question that is, I think, a little bit bigger than just the Senate. But we have Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Pennsylvania is an open seat. Wisconsin could be an open seat because Ron Johnson has not yet said whether he's running. Johnson could be an open seat because Ron Johnson has not yet said whether he's running. I think we would be better off running against Ron Johnson than some other generic Republican because Ron Johnson is currently, as we were doing this, having a complete insane conspiracy-fueled meltdown during his Senate hearings on election integrity. Although conspiracy-fueled meltdowns are what excites the Republican base these days. That's true. That is what gets them going. It's not, it used to be, in the old days, it was tax cuts and cutting regulations. Well, I will say, because it is relevant here, is that the primary conspiracy-fueled meltdowner

underperformed generic Republicans across the country. So maybe a generic Republican might do better. But so you have Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina, open seat because Burr is retiring. And then you have Florida where Marco Rubio, perhaps in a primary challenge with Roger Stone and Ivanka Trump. But if that happens, we may have to just go down to Florida for the last couple of months and just not of the general of the Republican primary and just watch it. Just hang out and hang out in Florida. I mean. So that is two states. The Democrats won narrowly, but won and have won at the presidential level in almost every election other than 2016. The memory. Florida, which just breaks our hearts all the time, and North Carolina, which has been very,

very close every year since 2008. And Democrats reelected their governor by a pretty big margin. So a Democrat can win there. The downside argument is presidents normally struggle in their first midterm. As it was described to me by someone the other day is the other side thinks the president is on the ballot and the president's side doesn't. Like in 18, we thought Trump was on the ballot. Trump voters did not really think Trump was on the ballot enough to turn out. But I do think there is a different one, potential different circumstance here is I don't think we have full – you sort of think like historically it's going to be a tough economy. Biden is going to be in – even if we get to the Senate, going to be in trench warfare with Republicans. His approval ratings, which are higher than Trump's but not sky high, like it's not like he's got a lot of room to give here are going to struggle.

But I don't think we are thinking fully about how much euphoria there could be in this country when things return to normal and the economy improves. Yeah. Just imagine a 2022 where we're going to baseball games and you're going to movies and you're traveling and your restaurants are opening again. And that could have some effects on the political environment. And just as, you know, if you're president and there's a recession, you know, you get blamed for that. If you're president and things are going better and things start improving, you get credit

for that, whether you had something to do with it or not. I mean, I think this is all those states that you mentioned where we have pickup opportunities are it's like we're right back to the 2020 election. They're just incredibly close states. The interesting thing about Wisconsin is so in 2016, we had an incredibly close presidential race. Hillary Clinton narrowly, narrowly losing that state. In 2018, Tony Evers wins the governorship against Scott Walker again extremely narrow victory 2020 extremely narrow Biden victory in Wisconsin so it's just a very very tight state and then in 2018 you have Tammy Baldwin a very progressive senator in

Wisconsin win by 11 points it just sort of like sticks out so like there's there's clearly a path for a candidate in wisconsin and i imagine this is true about pennsylvania as well for a candidate that like regardless of political ideology just really knows the state and is a good fit for that state and i do think that nominating candidates in those races that are like just really good fits for their state is incredibly important. Now, what does a good fit mean? That's sort of for the people in those states and the voters in those states to figure out because they know the states best. But it's interesting to me that even in close states, you have some senators that like no matter what their political ideology is, are

just like just end up outperforming sort of other Democratic candidates in that state consistently. OK, Jessica Apanir asks, hello from insanely gerrymandered Wisconsin. Just talking about that state. What's the timeline for redistricting following the census? Is it different for each state? Will this help or hurt us in picking up future seats and holding the ones we've got? Yes, the timing is different for every state. The gating issue here is you need the census count to be finished, and then they reallocate congressional districts in the electoral college based on population shifts. Some states will gain seats. Some states will lose seats. Most states will stay the same. Every state has a different process and it is tied to, in some cases,

there's an independent commission, like California's independent commission, where it meets and makes decisions bipartisan. It is the right way to do things. The states that don't do that, it is tied to the legislative session. They need to get the maps done in time for people to run on them. In 2022, it is more complicated in states that lose seats because there's a game of musical chairs and one member of the congressional delegation is going to be standing when the music stops. have a party split in government where Democrats control either the governorship and not the legislature or one house of the legislature. And you're forced to have some pretty tough and brutal negotiations over what the map looks like, because obviously everyone has an interest in how this looks. And there are winners and losers in both sides. And so this is an incredibly important thing that we have to pay a ton of attention to next year.

And we can have some influence on it, particularly in the states where you have that split, where you draw attention to it, you buck up and support the Democrats who are fighting back against a Republican governor or a Republican governor who is fighting back against a Republican legislature where there's not a veto-proof majority. So this is going to be the big, huge political issue of 2021 that will have consequences for a decade. What happens in those states where there is a split? Like what could public pressure affect in those states if there's a Democratic governor in a Republican legislature, say? Well, I just think sunlight is helpful here where Republicans want to do their voter suppression and their anti-democracy in the dark. And so if you just shine a light on it and talk about it and argue about it and you provide support to the Democrats who are going to be, in some cases, a tremendous pressure to give in to Republican demands. And like, look, the best way to influence this would have been to flip all those state legislatures a month ago. We did not do that. So we're playing with a less than ideal hand.

But we still have some agency here. And I think even more broadly, a huge imperative for the Democratic Party is to make the Republican anti-democracy agenda part of our message. And here you're going to have real concrete. We'll have plenty of chances. Yes. It'll be a target rich environment. M. Ahu asks,

what lessons for funding candidates to the DNC take away from this election? How much is enough funding given that Sarah Gideon hasn't even been able to use all she got. Should the model change? I believe Sarah Gideon ended her race with $13, $14 million in the bank. I think it was $15. That's a lot of money. It was a $15.

Oh, it was $15. Cool, cool, cool. It was a lot of money. Yeah. So what do we do about that? That's a lot of money. Now, usually candidates, we should say that I think Susan Collins ended with almost $3 million in the bank. Susan Collins ended with almost $3 million in the bank and candidates on average in their campaign with Senate candidates with $2 million in the bank, which is still just a lot of money. and PACs and others pour money into safe seats, right, for influential senators for access,

which speaks to another flaw in the system. And so someone who has a non-competitive race often gets way more money than they need and then has no reason to spend it. And they carry that over to their next election. You can be transferred to a presidential campaign. Kirsten Gillibrand had $10 million, I think, left in her Senate account and used it to fund her presidential campaign. Sarah Gideon could theoretically run for president and use that money in that campaign or in another federal campaign for Congress or Senate or whatever. I think there are a couple of important points made by this. One is no one person or one entity decided that Sarah Gideon should have all this money or Jimmy Harrison should have all this money. Yeah, I will say like just you see this in just the way that this person framed the question to like what lessons for funding candidates did the DNC take away from this election?

You know, the DNC is just it's really not this sort of all powerful organization running, running things behind the scenes, pulling strings. It's it's just not going to say I'm not going to be critical of the DNC or it strings. It's just not. I'm not going to say anything. I'm not going to be critical of the DNC. It's just not. And so it's not about, look, I think party committees, they have some responsibility here. They certainly make mistakes.

There are a million different ways to criticize both the DCCC and the DSCC, which is the Senate Campaign Committee. It's not the DNC that has to do with Senate races. But this money situation is not a party committee issue as much as it just a lot of money came in. Yeah. All this money is grassroots. And even when you look at the DSCC, you can look at how the DSCC spent money it raised and where it spent it and say, they should have spent more here. They should like Iowa, for instance, was never as close as we thought. That was a mistake. And you're going to have that in every cycle. But what happened here was there was a huge wave of enthusiasm to run against Trump anyway. Sarah Gideon raised millions and millions of dollars

before she even was officially the nominee because people poured money into funds two years ago when Susan Collins voted for Brett Kavanaugh in a fund like our Unify or Die fund at Kirk Media that would go to the eventual nominee. And then on top of that, you had, after the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the Republicans jamming through Amy Coney Barrett, more money poured in at the last minute, like an incredible amount of money. And it's all people individually giving money to the candidates they care about, and not necessarily Sarah Gideon's campaign or Jimmy Harrison's campaign saying, I need $70 million to run in this state. The broader lesson, I think, for all of us, people encouraging donations, people making donations, the party writ large, is we need to take some of that money that we give in large amounts on aggregate in election years and start moving

it into non-election years. How can you invest in sustainable, progressive infrastructure? Like Ben Wickler in Wisconsin has been encouraging people to become recurring donors now so that the party will always have a source of funding, even in odd years, so they can do the organizing in 2021 that will help them win that Ron Johnson seat in 2022. That is how New Georgia Project and all those groups flipped Georgia over the long term was having a steady source of money and organizing in the off years. And so I think that is part of the lesson is we as a party have to break the boom or bust cycle where we give all of our money to campaigns that disappear the day after election and think more about how we do things in a sustainable way.

Look, I think some people could be listening and still think like, well, then why did we all give all those donations after Ruth Bader Ginsburg died to all those Senate candidates if they didn't really need them? And the answer is we didn't know that they didn't need them because the one thing you don't like money doesn't guarantee that you're going to win an election, but you really don't want to get outspent. What was happening towards the end of 2020 was there was a lot of really rich Republican donors and super PACs that were just pouring money into the Senate races and threatened to sort of bury some of these Democratic candidates under an avalanche of last minute big money donations. And so we were forced to sort of keep up, even if at the end of the day, both the Democratic candidate and the Republican candidate in some of these races had more money than they could spend. Right. I mean, that was the problem. It was not it's not Sarah Gideon's fault that she spent like every dollar she could possibly spend and still had more money left over. It's not like she was not reserving as much time as possible for her television ads or spending money on get out the vote operations or whatever

it may be. Like there's diminishing marginal returns to money in campaigns at some point, which is one reason why, by the way, as we've been urging people to give in Georgia, we've been urging people not just to give to Ossoff and Warnick, but to a lot of these organizations on the ground, grassroots organizations in Georgia that have been working on voter registration, getting out the vote, fighting voter suppression. And they've been on the ground for a while because I think, like you said, Dan, it's both about making sure this money is spread out over multiple years and not just during an election and making sure the money is spread out to as many sort of grassroots organizations on the ground that are doing really

good work as possible. So it's not just in the hands of grassroots organizations on the ground that are doing really good work as possible. So it's not just in the hands of the candidates and the committees themselves. And I think spending and fundraising on the Democratic side is never going to be as logical just on the Republican side, because we are a grassroots funded party for the most part. Yeah. Which is a good thing. It is definitely a good thing.

And this is what we're up against, is Democrat, when all that money poured into the coffers of these Senate Democrats, Mitch McConnell's super PAC went to Sheldon Adelson and Sheldon Adelson's wife wrote a $75 million check. Right. When all, when Republicans, I think, assumed or hope that enthusiasm on the Democratic side was going to diminish after the election and we wouldn't, and there wouldn't be all this grassroots fundraising in Georgia that continued. So Mitch McConnell's super PAC went in order to compete, went out and raised $40 million in the first month. I'm sorry, I take that back. They raised $70-some million in the first month in increments of $15 million from hedge fund tycoons. That's what we're up against. And so it's never going to be as precise as we would like it to be. I think it's incumbent on people

like us to talk to people about other ways, in addition to keep making sure our candidates can compete, other ways in which we can ensure their victory with things like the Every Last Vote Fund and some of that other stuff. Yeah. I mean, look, I mean, on the flip side here, you know, Martha McSally did not outspend Mark Kelly and Mark Kelly won in Arizona. We have a new senator from Arizona, partly because he he all those grassroots donations. Same thing with John Hickenlooper in Colorado. Gary Peters, by the way, Gary Peters in Michigan. Same thing, by the way, with Joe Biden winning Arizona and Georgia, two states that he was able to compete in because the Biden campaign was incredibly well funded,

probably more so than they thought at the beginning of the campaign. And and some of the stuff we did in Vote Save America, too, like in Arizona, we worked with groups on the ground who were registering Native Americans who hadn't registered to vote before and making sure they were turned out. And the donations that helped some of those local organizations, you know, Joe Biden won by 10,000 votes in Arizona. So it made a huge difference. So like, people should still have faith that their donations matter. We all like you said, we all need to do a better job of being more strategic about when we give and where we give. nick meyer says democrats have to do better in ex-urban and rural areas in order to win congressional majorities and state legislatures what are the right messages and who are the right messengers for this task how should the party approach our brand problem in those areas i was

i was talking last night um my uh my in-laws are here um and i was talking about the mailbag and my mother-in-law was like, tell me some of the questions you have. Uh, cause I was like trying to figure out which ones to pick. And I told her that question. She's like, well, that's sort of everything that is literally goes. If you can answer that question, you've solved all of our problems. So I'd love to hear the answer. Is this the point where we inform everyone that what's to come is not the definitive answer to that question?

We have not solved all the problems. Right. Yeah. Well, she's also, you know, lives in, lives in Ohio. So it's a, a place with many ex-servants in rural. What is her answer, Charlie's grandmother? Her answer, you know, her answer, Marty's answer is just to keep turning, you know, Cincinnati and Columbus blue, I guess. I don't know. That's, that's, that's what we've been trying to do in Ohio for a while, but it's tough. No, but I mean, look, there are it clearly that was the essential problem in the 2020 election for Democrats is we crushed it in urban areas.

We crushed it in suburbs that are close to urban areas. In many parts of the country, most of the parts of the country and not just rural areas, but like places like Ohio with a lot of small towns and small cities, which Republicans keep winning. What do we do? I think there are three things we need to work on as a part of this. One is we need a populist economic message that speaks specifically to the needs of those communities. And that is not just here are our white papers, right? And we just tell them, you know, here's our job training plan. Here's what we're going to teach you about a code and all this other stuff that makes sense substantively, but is not viscerally evocative. So it has to be a populist economic narrative with good guys and bad guys. And we have to firmly position the Republicans on the side of the bad guys.

The voters in these towns, and frankly, across the country, disagree with the Republicans on the core elements of their economic agenda. They do not want to cut Social Security and Medicare to pay for tax cuts for the rich people who've been fucking over their towns for decades. They do not support, I mean, it's the old chestnut, tax cuts for companies that ship jobs overseas. But you know who does support that? Republicans. And it has to be a story with populism. As I said, good guys and bad guys, let's be compelling. And we got to work on it. The second thing is we have to organize, per the previous point, we have to organize in these communities 24-7, 365. Like that, we cannot, it cannot be, this was even harder than normal because of the diminished door-to-door canvassing and candidate travel. Like in a normal world, Biden, I think, would

have gone out of his way to visit some of those smaller towns to make a point of being there. That was part of Obama's great success in 2008, 2012, was he always left the major media markets and did things in the – not just the suburbs, but the exurbs to prove a point, right, and to be there. And then the third thing is we have to recognize that national Democrats are not trusted messengers to these communities. are not trusted messengers to these communities. We have to find people from the community, and I mean that both geographically and culturally, who can speak to the concerns, who can vouch for Democratic politicians, Democratic policies, and our party. And that is a lot of work, and it's going to take a lot of fine-tuning and a lot of investment. But we absolutely have to do that because we will not ever be in charge of the Senate for by more than zero votes for as far as I can see, if we do not solve that problem. One more thing on this. I think when some people hear we need to reach out to Democrats, need to reach out to rural America with an economically populist message, they think, like white MAGA voters or

white Trump voters in rural America. And if you look at the results of 2020, one thing that we've noticed is in rural areas where there are heavy black populations, Latino populations, Native American populations, in some cases, there was a swing towards Donald Trump and the Republicans. And what we have to start asking ourselves, what does it say if Latinos and black Americans in rural areas are starting to vote more like white Americans in rural Americans than they are black Americans and Latino Americans in cities and suburbs and white Americans in cities and suburbs. And what does it say that the geographic divide and the education divide is becoming perhaps more salient politically

than the racial divide? And when we talk about an economic populist message, it's not an economically populist message just for white Americans. It's an economically populist message for Black Americans, Latino Americans, and Native Americans, and Asian Americans as well. And that if we're the party that wants to build a true multiracial coalition and in a multiracial democracy that works, then we need a message that sort of unites people across races and geography around an economic message where the villain in that message is rich, wealthy elites that the Republicans are fighting for. So two things on this, right? Because I just want to be clear about it. One, we are not arguing for moving the Democratic agenda to the right. I think that would be a mistake. Second, also not arguing for ignoring race as the context for all of this. I think that is a gigantic mistake. You and I have talked about the work of the race class narrative before. I think you have to take that issue head on. And you're going to lose some voters for whom the idea of a demographically changing country is the issue for them. We didn't

get them this time. We're not going to get them next time. We're never going to get them. But we have to explain why Republican politicians want to divide Americans by race. We want to talk about why corporations give their money to Republicans to divide Americans by race. And so I think we have to take that on. But like you said, this is one of the more diverse counties in the country that Trump won, partly because of a heavy Native American population there that voted for Trump in 2016, voted for him by even more in 2020. And there's also a significant black population in that county as well. And the whole story kind of goes through how it is that Trump was able to increase his margin in that county between 16 and 20. And part of the answer is showing up and organizing. I mean, the Trump campaign showed up there early and kept going back and they got the president there, too. And, you know, showing up matters. Showing up really matters. This is you hear Stacey Abrams talk about this in Georgia. Beto talked about this in his 2018 race in Texas. Like Democrats need to the message is important, but but just the first step is just showing up in a lot of these rural and exurban areas, which, again, was hard during a pandemic, will not be the same in the future, hopefully.

Two other questions along these lines came from Elizabeth Hernandez and Ali Elliott, and they basically were asking why Republicans are so much better at communications and messaging and storytelling than Democrats and what we can do about it. career in politics. But mostly San Francisco, Hollywood, Manhattan. You get into those fundraisers with those people, the first question is, why are they so much better at it than us? You should have just asked this question first and then

talked about it for two straight hours because we could. We could do a whole show on this. Let's stipulate the Democrats could be better at all of these things. Yes. Absolutely. Of course.

Absolutely true. We could have a tighter message. We could have better talking points. We could have more people on more shows saying more smart things. And all of that would be good. It is also really, really hard to do this well when you don't have the White House. Right? That creates the organizing principle for the party.

You have a person with a very large megaphone who can set the stage. It is why when there were battles between congressional Republicans and Obama over ACA, the debt ceiling, Obama generally won those because he had a bigger megaphone and the party could follow his lead. the debt ceiling. Obama generally won those because he had a bigger megaphone and the party could follow his lead. Having said that, the problem is much more complicated than better talking points or better surrogates or whatever. I mean, one is Republicans are a ideologically, demographically, and increasingly geographically homogenous party. Yes. Democrats are incredibly diverse. It is our strength, but it is also our Achilles heel when it comes to branding and messaging. We need something

that encompasses everyone from AOC to Joe Manchin and everyone in the middle, because we need all of those voters to have a governing majority in this country. And so what is our version of MAGA or lower taxes, smaller government? All of that is much more complicated when you're trying to encompass all of that. And what happens is, by the way, it's more complicated. And because you are trying to get, remember, Joe Biden got 80 million votes. And if 40,000 had gone the other way in a few swing states, Donald Trump is president, which means that

you need to get like everyone who's a fan of the Justice Democrats and everyone who's a fan of the fucking Lincoln Project on the same page voting for the same candidates. So when you try to do that, you end up with

lowest common denominator messaging that can appease everyone, but excite very few. This is the central challenge. Which is why Joe Biden outperformed Democrats and Republicans outperformed Trump. Because Joe Biden can tell a story about Joe Biden, right? They can be more broad. It's much harder to tell a story than it comes to all the people you just talked about.

So that's one. But I think the bigger problem is, and we cannot overstate this enough, is that there's just a massive asymmetry when it comes to messaging firepower. Republicans own the means of distribution for their message. It comes out of Donald Trump's mouth, there's Twitter feed, even Mitch McConnell's mouth, and then it is put in front of voters by Fox News, Breitbart, Wall Street Journal editorial page, whatever else, by people who share a political interest with Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump. Joe Biden says something, Nancy Pelosi says something. And the primary way in

which we can get to voters without paying for it is to rely on the goodwill of Jeff Zucker, of Dean McKay, of other people who do not share our interest, right? They put our message through a filter. They water it down. We do not have the ability to communicate with our voters organically at scale. We depend on other people to do it. And that is such a gigantic disadvantage for us. I can't even say this is why every problem we have comes back to that situation, which is the fault of Rupert Murdoch. It's a fault of Roger Ailes. It's increasingly the fault of Mark Zuckerberg. And we're not going to solve that problem tomorrow. We're not going to solve it in a year or two years, but it is the single priority we have to do to be able to compete nationally in politics.

And by the way, going back to the last question we got, it's easier to sell a caricature of Democrats in some of these rural and exurban areas where local news sources have been decimated and where they get their information from is increasingly Facebook and Fox and Sinclair owned local news. You know, I mean, Barack Obama talks about this all the time. And he talked about he wrote about this in his in his book, which is like when he was running, he could go to downstate Illinois or Iowa and show up to places and people would get that he was not the madrasa educated secret Muslim terrorist that Fox News was telling everyone he was because they could see him and meet him and experience him.

Right. And now, like a lot of those places, they don't see the candidate. They don't hear messaging from the candidates. They don't get good, like mainstream news. It's all like Fox and propaganda bullshit. And so it is easier to sell a caricature of national Democrats in a lot of these places. And if we do not fight against that, if we do not have some competition there, we're not going to be able to deliver our message. And we can't just hope that like we shut down Fox and shut down Sinclair and stuff like that, like that.

Because then, as we've seen, Newsmax will pop up or OAN will pop up in its place. Like the right wing propaganda machine is always going to be there. Like we have to find ways to counter that or else we're not going to be able to compete. Think about the difference between how Fox News describes Democrats and how the New York Times describes Republicans. Yeah, don't. I get so angry. Yeah. Don't. I get so angry. Well, the idea that the New York Times and Washington Post and CNN are like liberal propaganda is, yeah. Are you kidding me?

It's not even, and I say that not as a critique of the New York Times. It's not the New York Times' job to convince voters. Right. But it is how our voters, and I use the New York Times broadly. It could be New York Times. It could be local news. It could be local newspaper. There is no difference between how Donald Trump and the Republican Party describe Democrats in their campaign ads in 2020 and how Fox News does it. The difference between, and then think about all the articles about trips to MAGA diners.

We are at such a gigantic disadvantage. The article is about trips to MAGA diners. And we are at such a gigantic disadvantage. And I think the greatest failing from a political infrastructure building perspective of the last four years is the party did not invest. And I don't mean the party like the DNC. I mean, Democrats writ large, billionaires, people with money did not invest enough money in this. And the thing with the difference between Democrats and Republicans, Republicans are right now in the places that don't have local news, where the local newspaper

has collapsed or it's on its last legs, are putting up benign sounding local propaganda sites to push conservative messaging into the community. And that is being funded by Republican billionaires who want to continue to profit off pollution, lower tax rates, all of that. And Democratic billionaires are buying dying mainstream publications and trying to prop them up, whether it's Time Magazine or The Atlantic or things like that. And that's just a fundamental different approach. We have not invested in our information arsenal, and it is devastating. I will make one more point about the Democratic and Republican messages and how they flow from each party's ideology. Republican message is easy, and I could write it all day long because

what they do is lie about shit to make you angry and afraid and cynical about politics. So they are pushing on an open door, right? They don't believe that government has a role to help people in this country. And they want to show you that government is fucked up and beyond help. And they get to prove that every day by fucking up government and trying to shrink it and trying to make people angry and afraid of each other.

And again, they lie all the time. When you can lie all the time, when you are shameless, when you are unable to be shamed, it is easier for you to whip people up and get them angry and pissed off every day. It's just an easier thing to do. Our ideology is about self-sacrifice and the obligation we have to one another and making government work for everyone and making sure that everyone is equal in the eyes of the law.

And in a country of 330 million people of like every different ideology and background and race and religion, that's really tough. It is easier to burn down the fucking barn than to build something. And that's why always the Republicans will have an advantage with their message. And it'll always be harder for us to get people to like, come together and build something together. No, it's easier to say to say change is bad than to explain why change is good. Yeah, we have to I mean, it's and this was our this was our primary challenge in messaging and communication during the Obama administration when we were in charge, right? Like everything that goes wrong with the federal government,

everything goes wrong with politics and the government, you get blamed for. And that redounds to the benefit of the party that has always been saying government is bad anyway, and that politics is fucked up anyway, and that everyone should just sit back and let Mitch McConnell and all the rich people just run the show because they know best. I swear this is the last thing I'll say about this. Like I said, we could have done this for two hours. But what is interesting about, and this is something where I think there's fair criticism of how we approach things over eight years, is Republicans find ways to use what's happening to prove their larger point. So the oil spill is viewed not as a failure of rapacious energy companies mining the earth for profit.

It is seen as a failure of government to plug the hole, not the fault of the oil company for making the hole. The Obamacare website is a proof that government failed. I think one thing that we have, we made an argument for the purpose of winning the presidential election that what happened in this pandemic, the failure of the government to prepare for and respond to was the fault of the particularly bad president we had, not the fault of a larger conservative philosophy that believes government doesn't have a role. the fault of a larger conservative philosophy that believes government doesn't have a role. And we have 2020 is the is the year that has proven we need better, smarter government.

We need it on the economy. We need in the pandemic. The Russians just hacked our entire government, which if that had happened to President Obama or President Biden, that would be an argument for a failure of government. But so like that's the thing to think about. And not just not just smarter, better government, though. Government that is fair and more equitable as well. And I do think this is a key. And this is where, you know, I really agree with a lot of folks on the left. Like, you do need a villain in these stories. And the right has plenty of villains.

Yes. And sometimes when we say that this is the fault of Republicans and their rich friends and their donors and stuff like that, you get a lot of the more center left Democrats and folks in the media being like, oh, populism is bad. And you don't want to you don't want to be angry at rich people and all that. Don't demonize private equity. Don't demonize private equity. Right. Everyone gets very upset about that. It's like, no, that's actually what like. Well, first of all, like you don't want to again, we don't want to be like them. We don't want to lie and spread conspiracies. But we do want to point to what the source of the problem is and who Republican politicians are trying to protect and trying to work for.

And also like this, the pandemic and the mismanagement of the pandemic wasn't just an indictment of incompetent government, but it's an indictment of the Republican philosophy forever, right? Like the idea that I don't have to wear a fucking mask to protect you because freedom means I can do whatever the fuck I want, take however much money I want, profit as much as I want, do whatever the hell I want and not care about anyone else. This idea that like, that's what freedom is. And and that's what America stands for is just rugged individualism and nothing else. And we have always had another story at our best as Democrats that government and that politics and that this country is about actually looking out for one another and having an obligation to one another and coming together to solve our biggest challenges. And like that's the message that we need to get back to. And that is the indictment that we should make against not just Trump, but the Republican Party for what they did in the pandemic. Anyway, like you said, we could talk about this for an hour.

Here's some fun questions. Amber asks, if you could have any cabinet level position, what would it be? I mean, the answer to this question is so obvious. Really? I have to think about it. I want to hear yours then. Treasury secretary. Three reasons.

Get your name on the money. Can eliminate the penny. And at least a small chance your life story will be told in the form of a hit hip hop musical at some point. I think hands down, treasury secretary., I have treasury or attorney general, because I think treasury, you, I mean, you do have a, you have a ton of power as treasury secretary. Um, and you know, people talked about this when Yellen was picked because she is a climate hawk as well, but like just on her own sort of the things you can do, whether it's a national green bank or some financing around or some, you know, sort of pressuring fossil fuel

industries with certain regulations within the Treasury, like you can do a lot just on your own as Treasury Secretary. I like Attorney General because in this hypothetical question, I don't know the president that I'm working for. Right. And so I think probably no one has more independence or at least no one should have more independence in the cabinet than the attorney general. And there's a lot of things that you can do on your own as an attorney general around sentencing and criminal justice reform. And then on the other end, sort of, you know, making sure that we that the IRS goes back to auditing rich people that you can sort of prosecute Wall Street crime, white collar crime. Like so I'm kind of interested in AG, too. Can I just point out that it may be you lost this point, but this question was in the section of the outline titled Fun Questions. Well, we get to. Well, Dan, I hate to break it to you. I don't

think that either of us is ever getting confirmed for a cabinet appointment. So it is sort of a fantasy. Well, I mean, look, I. Can you imagine? Poor Neera is going to be run through the ringer over her bad tweets. Can you imagine if we were ever nominated? What they would do with other with Pod Save America episodes? I am not getting confirmed for anything. I'm not putting myself up for confirmation,

but they can see Hack My Ass into a job, people. Ainsley asks, what's your least favorite Hackneyed speech Twitter line? Mine is make no mistake. So I have a lot of these, Dan. Yeah, let me hear them. This is really your bailiwick. For speeches, it is basically all the uh cliches that

are similar to make no mistake make no mistake let's be clear my friends my fellow americans here's the truth let's speak the truth like i don't know and i've i'm totally guilty of this as a speechwriter myself i don't know why politicians need to preface what they're about to say with a signal that they're about to say it and they do it in speeches and they do it in tweets and i just don't get it just say it just say it don't don't don't lead with let me be clear or my friends or this like you don't need the throat clearing but they do it anyway on twitter on twitter here's what i hate okay rt if you agree this just gonna leave this here i don't know who needs to hear this but let that sink in louder for the people in the back do better rethink this that

ain't it chief hold my beer said no one ever not a good look bad look jokes about the writers this season and the fucking jennifer lawrence laughing meme those are the ones that i really hate the most you you put a lot of effort into this question. Because I hate so many of these things on Twitter and almost every single fucking clapping hand emoji. I'll throw that one in too. I think my speech, I agree with you, as a man with many verbal tics, I can't really criticize others. Who among us is one? I say look all the time. I mean, that is Barack Obama's fault and no one else. I know.

That is his fault. It's sort of like people eventually start looking like they're dogs. We eventually started speaking like Barack Obama, unfortunately, in just a terrible imitation. The Twitter one is the pointing down finger emoji is my least favorite. That goes with this. This pointing down. And that's least favorite. That goes with this. This pointing down. And that's the tweet.

That's the other one. Oh, that's it. Oh, I forgot that's the tweet. Yeah. How did I forget that one? That sucks too. Okay. Megan Dombrowski asks,

were you guys excited for Taylor Swift's new secret album drop? Lots of questions about Evermore. Dan, this is obviously for you. Yeah. I have a question for you. Sure. Has Charlie ever listened to any music that was not performed by Taylor Swift? Yeah, all the stupid fucking kids music that comes in all these toys,

like the Purple Elephant song and all that shit that is now stuck in my head. But other than that so folklore was released on charlie's birthday uh the day they were and when we were from the moment we were in the hospital until we came home all through august we probably listened to folklore i don't know a million times you know what the um the spotify does the like artists you listen to most and all that kind of stuff emily is in the point oh oh oh one percent top one percent of people who listen to taylor swift on spotify which which seems like it's not not believable but apparently i've seen the numbers myself i mean i not a lot of taylor swift in this house these days or any days frankly which is not a no dig on taylor swift i appreciate

all of our efforts to people can be able to register to vote, but not a lot of folklore evermore. Any of that in our house? A lot of, a lot of evermore, a lot of folklore. And now we're enjoying evermore very much. Love the album. Big Swifty. Switching gears. David Greger asks, will the 76ers additions of Doc Rivers, Seth Curry and Danny Green and keeping Ben Simmons at point guard be enough to get them over the hump? What does over the hump mean?

Does that mean getting out of the second round of the playoffs? It seems possible. I did watch the first preseason game last night against the Celtics, if you will. It's all a preseason game. It doesn't count. But it was very nice to see the Sixers look like a normal basketball team with multiple players who can dribble the ball and shoot and not sort of running an offense as if, as if they were all locked in a very small closet under the basket together.

So I'm very happy with where the Sixers are. A lot of questions about whether we're going to trade for James Harden or not. It's very, very exciting time. And I could honestly, the fact that the NBA is coming back next week is a great end of pandemic gift yeah over the hump relative relative term you can just take it however you want yes can they get out of the second round with it i like to think they can great switching gears again dan matt squazillo asks who's the top chef goat okay i'm so glad you asked this question i can talk about this even longer than our discussion on messaging um but i will or the sixers yes or the sixers uh i actually

have more to say it it's a less fraught topic for me personally to talk about top chef which is very very emotionally challenging particularly talking to a celtics fan at the time um and i don't know anything about top chef so you just say whatever i not going to get failing on your part. I know. I know. But feel free to just forward this clip to the development department at Crooked. It can go along with my forthcoming email about my Top Chef recap pod I'm pitching. OK, perfect. Guys, I hope you're listening to this. Let's do it. Probably doesn't listen to it. There are lots of different people who could have this role. Richard Blaze, who won the All-Star season and came in second once. Could be Michael Voltaggio, who steamrolled the competition in Vegas.

Could be Kristen Kish, who won in Seattle. But I think the answer, and this could be recency bias, is Melissa King, who just won this most recent season. The Final Four was one of the best Final Fours ever. She crushed it. She's a local chef here in the Bay Area and is fascinating. And she was about to open a restaurant that I was going to attend and then a pandemic hit.

So I don't know where that stands. Oh, that's tough. Paul Santamore asks me, who is the greatest College of the Holy Cross graduate of all time? Obviously, I'm taking myself out of the running here. So Dan, here are the most notable College of the holy cross graduate of all time uh obviously i'm taking myself out of the running here so dan here's some here are the most notable college of the holy cross graduates um bob koozie uh clarence thomas uh bill simmons chris matthews and tony fauci Oh, it's got to be Fauci. It's clearly Tony Fauci now.

It was Fauci, then Bob Cousy, and then you and Bill and Chris Matthews can figure it out. And then there's like 75 people who failed out, a guy who probably vomited himself at a party, and then Clarence Thomas, in that order. We had a, Holy Cross has a DC internship program. That's how I got started in politics. I was interning for John Kerry, but every class of Holy cross interns that does the DC program gets a tour of the Supreme court, a personal tour from Clarence Thomas and Claire. I saw, I met Clarence Thomas in college and he gave us a tour of the Supreme court. Um, and, uh, so that was, that was nice of him and that's all I can say about him ever.

Um, but yeah, you know, he's, he's the most notorious grant of Holy cross for sure. Um, Tess Kearns asked, did you guys eat chicken tenders on election night to keep the Obama tradition going? I did. That's all you think. I don't, I don't, I never ate chicken tenders on election night. Yeah. I refer, it was mostly, it was big nights.

So this is a process we started during the debates in 2007, 2008. Continued in the White House for State of the Union's national addresses. And then election nights. Did not eat them in 2016. Donald Trump became president. The government was hollowed out. A pandemic raged across the country. Figured, I like chicken tenders anyway, so let's not leave nothing to chance. And Joe Biden won. I didn't eat anything. I didn't eat a thing on election night because I was too nervous and I could barely breathe until Fox called Arizona. And then I took a few more breaths when the big dump of votes came in Milwaukee at 2.30 a.m.

I was so convinced. Pacific time. One, a lot of people right now are yelling at you for being one of those people who can't eat when they're stressed as opposed to the rest of the world. I know, yeah, no, that happens too. Two, the Arizona thing did nothing for me because as a veteran of the Gore campaign,

when Florida was called for Gore and then lots of people were saying they called it too early and then you watch those numbers shrink. I was pretty nervous that we were seeing a repeat of horrible, horrible history. But then Milwaukee votes saved us.

There you go. Sandy Chase asks, does Dan have a dog? I do not have a dog, John. I don't. When's Kyla getting a dog? Well, she wants a dog. It was on the list for her second birthday.

Boy, do I think she deserves one. It was on the list for Christmas. Every time we do this podcast, she asks me if I've seen, if during the podcast I've seen Leo. She also asks about Emily and baby Charlie a lot. You rarely ask about nothing personal, but not to break news here, but instead of giving her a dog,

she's going to get a baby brother in March. Yes. Congrats. Congrats. That's so exciting. That's a great way to break news. Yeah. Does she also,

but does she probably, does she still want a dog? I think she is very, very focused on the baby brother. So she's very, very excited about it. She does it. Congrats to you and Holly. She's excited at the concept of it. She talks about it all the time. Like every week you do the thing where you find out how big the baby is in measured against a vegetable or a fruit and so like we have to go get that fruit or vegetable so this week the baby's the size of a kale so there's been a lot of kale

discussion in our house and but the one thing i will say is when we ask her if she will share her various toys with them she's deviously clever thinks, no, her toys are too big. So we have to get separate smaller toys for the fourth. Very shrewd. Very shrewd. She is a master negotiator. And it is alarming. I like that.

At a very young age. Well, that is fantastic. We're very, very excited. Final question. Paulette Arazzo asks, do you guys each have a favorite white house memory from christmas my favorite white house memory for christmas do you have one i mean i got to bring my parents to one of the white house holiday parties which is the coolest thing ever to get to bring your parents to the White House

and see that. And also the White, you know, back in the days when there wasn't a pandemic, like, you know, the White House really goes all out for Christmas parties and you get to see the decorations and the Christmas tree.

And sometimes, you know, the president comes and speaks to everyone for a few minutes. And that's really cool. One of the funnier memories I have is, so they have like a senior staff dinner every year when we were in the white house. This was going to be,

this was going to be mine. Yeah. And they usually have a special guest come for the senior staff dinner. And I think it was the first year that we did it. The Rockettes came and there is, I don't want anyone to really see this picture, but there is an incredibly embarrassing picture of all the Rockettes and me and Alyssa.

And I think we're all like kicking our legs. But Alyssa loves this picture and has sent it around so many times. I would highly recommend you text her before this pod drops to make it very clear that you really meant it when you said you didn't want that photo out. That was, that was an amazing one because two other, there were two other special guests

that year. They really, they really went out. Uh, Jon Bon Jovi sang. Oh yeah. And Will Ferrell read the night before Christmas. Oh right. Long before you began starring in, um, remakes of Will Ferrell movies. Yes. Uh, but but he he read it but in what i thought was

a moment of incredible comic genius is he made no jokes he just read it right which was just so straight read fucking funny that he did it that way because everyone kept waiting for it and it was just done and he walked off stage it great. My favorite, like that night was always like this, this special, this senior staff party would have, which was a much smaller group of people. We said you had a dinner, there was a performer, the president and the first lady both gave very, just very meaningful remarks about the relationships

that all of us had with them and the work we had done that year. Pete Souza would put together these books that had photos from the whole year. They were a yearbook. And then the president would give us each one of those for the holidays. And each of those books are some of my most treasured White House possessions. So look back at them and understand that year. But I brought my mom one year.

It was, I think, either the last year, the second to last year. And it was just like to bring your mom to this incredibly fancy thing at the White House. And the president and the first lady were so nice to her. And Joe Biden came up and talked to her for a long time about Delaware, obviously. It was just like a really, it was always like a really special night. And so that night would probably be my favorite holiday memory. And the food at the larger White House holiday parties are fucking great. The lamb chops. Yeah.

The lockies. Oh yeah. Very, very boozy eggnog. I'm sure all the Trump holiday parties were like that this year too. Well, I mean, it was so hard to like drink the eggnog with all those masks on.

Right. Happy holidays, everyone. Um, from all of us here at pod save america hope you have a good christmas if you celebrate christmas just some time off uh if you can and um we will have a new year's episode next week with me and love it and tommy that will be out on monday of next week and then we'll be back to our normal schedule the week after that so have a great holiday everyone stay safe and get some rest bye everyone stay safe happy holidays pod save america is a crooked media production the executive producer is michael martinez our associate producer is jordan waller it's mixed and edited by andrew chadwick

kyle seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Sominator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Quinn Lewis, Caroline Rustin, and Justine Howe for production support.

And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Melkonian, Yale Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos every week.