Pod Save America - “Nate Nate…Dont Tell Me!”

Episode Date: November 7, 2022

Democrats and Republicans hold dueling rallies in Pennsylvania as the midterm campaign comes to a close. Jon, Jon and Tommy touch down in Nevada to talk to candidates and Vote Save America volunteers. And later, a game that asks whether an $8 Twitter subscription could ever be worth it. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast. 

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's show, our final pre-election pod. We'll talk about how both parties closed with dueling rallies in Pennsylvania featuring Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump. What we'll be watching for on election night and what it felt like on the ground in Nevada this weekend. You'll also hear from some of the organizers and candidates we talked to in Las Vegas.

And later, we'll play a little game about Elon Musk's Twitter. It should be fun. But first, if you are listening to this before the polls have closed, you can still make a difference in this election. We are heading down to Irvine after we finish recording to help get out the vote for Katie Porter. If you go to votesaveamerica.com slash volunteer, we'll have all kinds of ways for you to channel your anxiety into actual useful action right up until the polls closed. So do it right now. It matters. Come right down to the wire in a whole bunch of different races. All right, let's get to the news. Three presidents, two parties, one perennial battleground state of Pennsylvania. It's where all the action was on the final weekend of the 2022 midterms. In Philadelphia, Presidents Biden and Obama spoke at a rally for Josh Shapiro,

who was a healthy lead over Doug Mastriano in the governor's race, and John Fetterman, who was somehow basically tied with Dr. Oz. Here's some of what they said at the event. Oz and Pennsylvania? Look, I've lived in Pennsylvania longer than Oz i lived in pennsylvania longer than oz has lived in pennsylvania and i moved away when i was 10 years old this guy loves to talk a good game about freedom right let me tell you something it's not freedom to tell women what they're allowed to do with their bodies. That's not freedom. It's not freedom to tell our children what books they're allowed to read.

It's not freedom when he gets to decide who you're allowed to marry. I say love is love. It's about fundamental values that my grandparents from Kansas taught me. Values I grew up with. Values you grew up with. Values we try to teach our kids. Values we learn in churches and mosques and synagogues and temples. Honesty, fairness, and synagogues and temples, honesty, fairness, opportunity, hard work, values that Josh Shapiro and John Spetterman stand for, values that Joe Biden stands for. What'd you guys think of the Democrats' final rally in Philly that, uh, the Josh Shapiro speech got quite a bit of traction? Yeah, it seems like, uh, uh, uh, that's one message box subscriber that we can count at least. That was a very Pfeiffer riff. Yeah, it was great that's one message box subscriber that we can count at least. That was a very Pfeiffer riff. but I'm glad to see because he's been doing a riff like that for quite some time and it was nice to see it get a little national attention because I think it wasn't just that it was on

message and covering a lot of issues that we all think is important. It was sort of to me like, oh, when we talk in the abstract about Democrats trying to take the mantle of freedom and using that as a big part of our argument, it's easy to imagine it. It's nice to see it in actual practice. And it was like, oh, that is like a really powerful argument, a broad, big argument for a kind of like kind of freedom politics that I think is very exciting for us to use going forward, regardless of what happens. Yeah, I mean, he's a good candidate. And it was great to see him. I also think there's some truth to the fact that you can use the same lines on a bigger stage, and it just sounds bigger and better when you have 7,000 people or whatever it was cheering for you.

I also thought Biden sounded great at this event. The line about Dr. Oz not living in Pennsylvania any longer than Biden did and Biden moved when he was 10 was funny and effective and a good hit. Obama was great. So, yeah, it was exciting to see a big event with a lot of energy at the end of the campaign. It's one of Biden's best lines in the campaign. It was great. So yeah, I was, uh, it was exciting to see like a big event with a lot of energy at the end of the campaign. It's one of Biden's best lines in the campaign. It was great. Uh, on the Josh Shapiro thing yet, we have talked a lot about John Fetterman because it's been such an exciting candidate. Josh Shapiro has been running a fantastic race. You're right. He's had an opponent who is extreme, uh, has not like spent any money on television ads has been sort of one of the few Republicans that's been kind of sort of abandoned by the national party because he said he was going to do 40 days of

prayer yeah i mean he is like uh yeah he's like confederate cosplay and everything he's not he's not a not a great candidate but i would say like you heard that riff from shapiro in the clip we just played there was another one where he also said like if you don't look like doug mastriano if you don't vote like him if you don't read like Doug Mastriano, if you don't vote like him, if you don't read the books he reads, he doesn't respect you. You're not for him. And I just think it was a great – we talk a lot about how to make democracy real and tangible for people and how political identity has become so powerful as an indicator in this country of what you do. And that was a way to sort of use identity, but also do it broadly. Right. And so there is a wide swath of people that Josh Shapiro is trying to appeal to

there by saying, like, look, I'm the one, the Democrats are the one who are tolerant of every kind of person here. And Doug Mastriano is the one who just wants people exactly like him. And it's funny, because I talked to Josh Shapiro a couple weeks ago when we were in, I guess that was the Philly show. And he used all those lines in conversation you know he used all those riffs in conversation and it's a good example of just a politician who's just been working it on the stump and kind of grinding it out and figuring out what works because i saw you know i saw him do those lines and i saw them really really work unlike just sort of philadelphia our kind of progressive audience. But clearly, like, I think he has been kind of very, you know, smartly kind

of really honing this message quietly for the last six months. And he's just so disciplined. Even when we talk, when you talk to him, you just see that he is just a incredibly disciplined politician. We talked to him on Pod Save America. Couldn't get him off message. Couldn't get him off message. And we're like, oh man, that guy couldn't america couldn't get him off message couldn't get him off message and we're like oh man that guy couldn't we couldn't get him off message that was uh that was uh uh you know as hard as we pushed reminds me of what in 04 when i would be in the office and obama would walk up to me and be like we worship an awesome god in the blue states and i'd be like right but room for cream yeah or you take it and he was like hey hey out of many one right like just again tomm. Tommy, I could know sooner or just own my grandmother.

To Obama's point that he made to us in the Pod Save America interview, which got a lot of traction when he talked about the Democratic Party sometimes being a buzzkill. The antithesis of that was Josh Shapiro's message. That we are the party that is like open to everyone. That is open to everyone. And Doug Mastriano's party is the buzzkill because they only want you to think exactly like they do like that was such a good example of that on the other side of the state just outside pittsburgh donald trump spoke at a rally for mastriano and oz where he of course focused almost entirely on his own ambitions and petty grievances here's a clip

they must think i'm going to announce the president tonight. That's a lot. That's a lot of people. I promise you, in the very next very, very, very short period of time, you're going to be so happy. Okay. Trump at 71. Ron DeSanctimonious at 10%. Mike Pence at seven%. Oh, Mike's doing better than I thought. Mike's doing better than I thought. It's so funny. First of all, I saw so much coverage of just sort of giddy, sort of rock-hard journalists saying, he called him

the sanctimonious. He called him the sanctimonious. And I thought it was like, when I went to watch the clip, I was like, oh, he's going to be at a riff. But no, he just sort of tested it out and threw it in. He looked away from the camera while he did it. He didn't want a clip of it. He was just trying to just sprinkle it in. It's it's it's the difference between like so many politicians who they got a good line from their speechwriter or someone and then they deliver it and then look like I like he just sort of.

Yeah. Oz has been trying to fool people into thinking he's a moderate why do you think he decided to show up with Donald Trump the weekend before the election I don't think he had a choice I think Donald Trump does what even Donald Trump wants credit for any and all victories and he's starting to smell blood in the water so he's going to show up wherever he wants to show up to claim credit is my guess yeah but like I mean also Dr. Oz is not smart he told people that same rally, tomorrow morning I want you to contact 10 people,

do it before the Steelers game. Steelers have a bye this week. That was amazing. That's outrageous. It's disgusting. Everybody fucking knows that. I heard about that from more people than I did. Everybody knows the Steelers have a bye game.

The Steelers suck, but they had a bye week. They have a bye week. They couldn't lose. I think someone would let him know that. You'd think. I mean, look. He also went to the credit thing. Yeah, it's it's also part of the sort of dynamic that we've seen for the last couple of weeks, which is Republicans are viewing kind of base events that turn out their base as worth it, even if they're in some ways alienating to some of the independents. You have these big rallies for J.D. Vance. You have Trump out there, but then Tim Ryan doesn't want the Democrats out there. It's just they're playing for different

people. And I think what we've all said, if Republicans have this massive turnout machine in the midterms, and if we can match it, we can match it. But they're relying on trying to get that whole, whole base out. Yeah, they're relying on a base only strategy. Yeah. And especially Dr. Oz, because Dr. Oz took him some time to consolidate the Republican base longer than a lot of the other Republican candidates, so he probably felt like he needed this in the end. And their bet is probably that, like,

if he ends up winning independents, it's going to be larger forces that help him win the independents, like people just being pissed about the economy. And so whether Trump is there or not is not going to make a huge difference to him. NBC reported that Trump very seriously considered announcing for president at that rally, but advisers convinced him not to,

though, as you heard, he did say he will very, very probably do it. And also, we're recording this Monday morning. I just saw Jonathan Swan from Axios report that a bunch of Republicans think that he possibly, Trump possibly could announce that he's running today or tonight at the J.D. Vance rally in Ohio. I think they got like he's a TV guy. He's a TV producer. He just likes to tease and tease and tease. But at this point, it's like, you know, when you're watching a show that was written for network or for some sort of like a show with commercials and you're watching on Netflix and it'll repeat the last like minute of whatever you just watched after the where the commercial break was supposed to be. That's what I feel like with Trump.

Every time. Yeah. Repeating, teasing, teasing. It's not going to happen. He's going to do it. At some point, he's going to do it. Well, look, I just think that there's, like, um. We've been wondering.

Lost in the, like, last couple weeks of the midterms is, like, Donald Trump's going to run for president. Yeah, like, the paperwork he's sending in to the FEC is going to, like, pass the Justice Department paperwork justice department paperwork in the mail but they're like he's in a race against time yeah look i i do think that like if he's not it'd be i'd be very surprised you know prove me wrong this this whole episode's gonna turn into a fucking brown banana in seven seconds anyway but uh but uh like if you're gonna announce you don't know it's monday night you know it's on tuesday night when the whole country's watching he's seeing good returns come in. He goes to the mic and he does it. But he clearly wants to do it fast because if he's going to get indicted, he wants to be indicted for political purposes.

Yeah. Or he can do it after he gets indicted. Either way, there's a case for him. Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of people like, we got to indict him first. I'm like, guys. No, I'm not saying they have to indict him first. So everyone else knows because we have been getting some questions about that.

It's like, no, no. If he gets indicted, he's still going to run for president. It's not going to slow him down at all. Oh, he's going to be chastened? Speaking of chastened, do you think Ron DeSantis is chastened after that? I heard a lot of Republicans close to Ron DeSantis who were outraged, outraged that Trump did this. Republicans love sanctimonious politicians. What are you talking about?

Have you seen Mike Pence? They're all sanctimonious. That's not a criticism. You know what? I know we've gone back and forth a few times, at least I have on like, could DeSantis do it? Could DeSantis take Trump down? It doesn't seem like he's even going to run at this point. Tom Cotton's out. I love that Tom Cotton's out. I like that Tom Cotton thinks he decided to not become president as opposed to the entire country being like, you have a repellent personality. Yeah. don't know i mean we'll see we'll see what the we see what happens with the sanctimonious it was it was good timing i wonder if trump saw that uh that video that the santa the desantis campaign

made saying that god created ron desantis on the eighth day which is uh one of the most sanctimonious things i've ever seen in my entire life so it was a a fitting nickname two sets of footsteps one of them ronda santos yeah oh bob was carrying on the eighth day imagine imagine your job is to pave roads and keep the schools funded and you put out a fucking ad that says on the eighth day god created me what did you read the game is peeing? Is he negging the voters? It's like peacocking. It's a disgusting thing. He's a weird guy.

Yeah. It is a nickname that does draw quite a distinction with the charisma that Donald Trump has versus the lack of charisma that Ron DeSantis has. I still like Miss Florida. Yeah. I think you can be sanctimonious with a lot of charisma. Look at every Bible-thumping preacher on TV on Sunday, right? I mean, I don't know. We'll see.

We'll see if this sticks. All right. We got one last set of polls and predictions from pollsters and forecasters over the weekend. The consensus is that Republicans are favored to win the House, though the forecast for the number of seats ranges from the low teens to the 40s. So everyone knows the average loss for a president's party in their first midterm is 27. Clinton lost 54. Obama lost 63. And Trump lost 40. But the generic ballot polling average right now also has Republicans ahead by just one point. So who knows? The Senate is a real toss up with

margin of error races for Democratic incumbents in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and New Hampshire, as well as the open Senate seat in Pennsylvania. There are also tight governor's races in Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, and even New Mexico and Oregon. We, of course, don't do predictions here. Nope, not a damn one. Never, not. So instead, I will ask you guys how you're feeling and what you're watching for on election night. What races are you going to be paying close attention to? What trends are you looking for? What are some of the big questions you want answered?

I mean, I'm emotionally prepared for some losses. I'm just going to throw that out there because that tends to happen in the first midterm of a president's first term. So I'm really watching closely Pennsylvania because I feel like there's a sort of choose your own adventure vibe to the polling coming out of Pennsylvania, the Senate race there in Georgia. We just got back from Nevada. We got to meet some really great candidates. I want all of them to win. Dina Titus, Susie Lee, we saw Jackie Rosen while we were eating some tater tots at a restaurant near the airport. So I don't know, those are the races I'm watching. I'm also watching to see the hijinks that occur in the days after the election when we're still counting mail-in votes and I'm getting increasingly anxious about that yeah uh I'm I want to understand

I know we won't know this for a while but I'm most interested in seeing in detail how uh abortion and choice played out and where it drove engagement and where it didn't. We've been talking about this in a couple different places that you start to see that we had hoped, I think, especially right after DOMS when there was this moment of enthusiasm that it really might lead to kind of a wave of engagement and voting for people coming to kind of protect abortion rights.

And my concern is in places where, like California, where we can put Prop 1 through and protect abortion rights in the states, did it not have as big of an impact on other national races? In a lot of places, you see kind of signaling from Republican politicians to let their voters to let voters know that they're not as big of a threat to abortion rights as national. Republicans are like, will that have an impact? Are people voting this as a values thing, as a practical protection in where they live thing or some combination? So that's like the, I want to understand how that plays out because especially if Republicans take the House

and or the Senate, we will have national Republicans pushing for a nationwide ban. I just want to understand how important and salient that's going to be for people. And the other piece of it is, you know, you see these polls. They are have not been great. But like I want to I'm I'm curious how Gen Z turns out in this midterm.

Do they overperform? Do they underperform? Do they hit what we expected? That is the thing that I am most interested in. I so you have all the the forecasters and the polls and stuff like that. There's also political scientists do these predictions and they do it like a year in advance. And it's based on sort of the president's approval, historic trends, the economy. And for this midterm with inflation like this and it being President Biden's first term, they predict like, you know, 40 something seats that Democrats would lose.

Right. And then lose the Senate for sure. And so I am very interested. And I would say also that in the last couple elections, basically ever since 2016, 2016, 2018, 2020, I think sometimes at the end of the race, the narrative and the polls sort of mismatch the fundamentals. And so like in 18, we thought it was going to be a huge blue wave. And it ended up like the Republicans kept the Senate. In 20, it suddenly looked like Biden was like up by 8, 9, 10. And some of these states ended up being a super close race. So the standard of like where the baseline for this race is Democrats lose up to 40 seats and probably the Senate. If we beat that, it's going to be interesting to see how much candidate quality really matters, because we have talked all through this election season that we have nominated some really fantastic Democratic candidates. I'm especially watching Fetterman in Pennsylvania, Warnock in Georgia.

We all love Katie Porter here in California, right, in Southern California. And they have nominated some truly terrible candidates, especially in the Senate. we all love Katie Porter here in California, right? In Southern California. And, um, and they have nominated some truly terrible candidates, especially in the Senate. And the question is, how much does candidate quality matter? Or is this just going to depend on the national environment and for larger forces? New Hampshire is a big example of that too. Don Baldick is a certified lunatic up at the Republican running up there. And by the way, I mean, it's, it's not just that Republicans have nominated terrible people in the Senate. They've nominated absolutely abysmal candidates in the House. And you even have Mitch McConnell when he was asked, why is Kevin McCarthy seeming

to be doing better in the polls than you are? And he said, well, because the candidate quality in the Senate matters. What he was saying is, oh, Kevin McCarthy is running a bunch of fucking morons, dopes and goons, but nobody knows who's running for the House. They vote more like by the ticket. Yeah. Blake Masters. But guys, forget about the House, the Senate, the future of the democracy. The pollsters are the ones on the hot seat Tuesday night.

You know what I mean? The Nates are on the hot seat. Harry Enten, we're watching you. G. Eliot guy, the economist. G. Eliot guy. Sleep with one eye open, pal. I think that basically I think all the Nates

I think there's what, 10 Nates at this point, right? Whatever number of Nates It ebbs and flows by the day I think that all Nates You should have a long board And the edge of the board Should be hanging over a pool

And you should be standing on the board And they should have to take a step further and further out on the board should be hanging over a pool, and you should be standing on the board, and they should have to take a step further and further out on the board as the night moves along, and whoever's model is better gets to walk back off, but otherwise you just jump off your side of the board. I'm sorry, are you a pirate? Are they walking the plank? It's a pool.

I'm not trying to kill anybody. So it's just a refreshing dip. Yeah, it's just a kind of dunk tank situation. I was interested in more in-circuit song, good fun. That sounds fun. One serious note on the poles. If they are wrong again in the same way they were wrong in 2018 and 2020 like come on people and everyone's like well they were pretty right in 2020 yeah in 2018 yeah they were pretty accurate

in 2018 except in certain places where then they were very wrong again in 2020 and had been wrong in the same it's non-response bias with non-college educated voters if we have that problem again it's time to fucking we're so to do what what do you want them to do john well just admit that that's the problem because every time after the election a bunch of uh you'll heal from a bunch of nates that are like yeah well it's just sometimes the directions the polling errors in the other direction it's like it hasn't been in the other direction for a while yeah i just don't know what i want to understand we'll see but it's a sort of like like like it just seems like each time they should be correcting for that. And the next time it shouldn't be as bad for it.

I'm also wondering, like, does the 2018 anti Trump coalition show up right in a midterm? It was a record turnout in 2018. And people who turned out people turned out in the midterm that usually just turn out in presidential elections on the Democratic side. Will those folks still show up? Will the Trump voters from 16 and 20, who often don't vote in midterms, show up and then make it another extremely high turnout election? Obviously, I'm going to be looking at how many election deniers win. Very interested. And this is one where it'll also take some time to figure out how do Democrats do with working class voters, especially working class Latino voters and black men

who we've seen some losses with in recent elections? And then do we have trouble in blue places like Oregon, New York, the mayor's race here in Los Angeles, which I know is between two Democrats. Yeah, they were in big trouble. I mean, the mayor's race

here in Los Angeles speaks to the broader problem that we're all just inert to and don't talk about anymore, which is the utterly broken campaign finance process that we have that leads to a Georgia Senate race, I think, costing $250 million all in. Yeah, a quarter of a billion dollars. A quarter of a billion dollars. And it's going to go to a runoff. Very likely to go to a runoff. Oh, God, it's going to runoff.

I'm going to keep getting more emails. It's like, hi, John, it's Raphael. i'm holding a dachshund off the edge of a cliff will you donate seven dollars and fifty cents right now guys i gotta admit something really embarrassing i i saw an email in my um my gmail the other day from adam schiff and it was like hey hope you're well uh got caught and the trick-or-treaters you know have been fun and i was like oh cool adam schiff emailed me fundraising and you know that's not jennifer lopez in your dms right even though she did send an old picture of her weird usually when usually when people text you they send a picture of themselves right in the text and they don't ask they don't ask for so let's do something useful for people listening like when should people expect to know the results

in some of these big races uh go to bed wake up do a day of work go to bed and then wake up and then we should know okay that's good i good. I have a list. Big states will know on election night. New Hampshire, Florida, Virginia. They'll count the votes pretty fast. We'll probably know everything. In Virginia, there'll be some swingy districts that will give us a signal about where everything's going. Very important what Tommy just said. Dave Wasserman says these are the ones to watch in Virginia. So if Elaine Luria holds on in Virginia too, it should be a better night for Democrats than expected. If Abigail Spanberger loses in Virginia seven,

it's likely that Republicans win over 20 seats. If Annie Koester in New Hampshire or Jennifer Wexton in Virginia lose, Republicans are likely to win over 30 seats. This is all according to Dave Wasserman, who has seen enough. John could have slipped in a fake race there and we would have no idea no clue those are the big ones we'll know on election night uh wednesday not until wednesday pennsylvania georgia michigan wisconsin it's likely that not until election day or even on wednesday some of those states can even start counting their mail-in ballots and absentee ballots because of which republicans passing laws to make it so that pennsylvania republicans yeah and then even longer than wednesday nevada their count ballots up until november 15th arizona which is basically a mostly mail-in state and right here in california for sure california the mayor's race the congressional race is here

it could be a couple weeks. So just so everyone knows. There are going to be some hot takes about what's happening in California. Some will come from us. Some from us. Ignore them. We'll try to keep them cooler. If it's really close and we need to do kind of like a Brooks Brothers riot insurrection kind of thing, meet you at Blue Ribbon Sushi at the Grove.

Yeah, for sure. What kind of insurrection? We're just doing a sit-in at the Grove. No, no, no. Look, if it's looking like Caruso's winning, we're going to be like, we were always for Rick Caruso, our wonderful mayor. I'm not going to the Grove? Yeah, for sure. What kind of insurrection? We're just doing a sit-in. No, no, no. Look, if it's looking like Caruso's winning, we're going to be like, we were always for Rick Caruso, our wonderful mayor. I'm not going to the Grove anymore. Yeah, we're going to the Grove. It's where we keep our Cheesecake Factory.

Yeah. It's a great Cheesecake Factory. Also, there's one of the Americana. So, there's two of them. Alright, we're about to hear from some of the organizers, volunteers, and candidates we talked to in Nevada over the weekend. Before we do, we should talk a bit about how it felt on the ground out there. What did you guys think?

It felt good out there. I mean, I don't know. We met a lot of really great volunteers. Democracy feels better on the ground when you're not on Twitter yelling at Nates. And we met a lot of really awesome volunteers who were, you know, in campaign offices at 9 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday getting ready to knock doors for Susie Lee and for Dina Titus and the Nevada Democratic Party. Yeah, it's like we were talking to one activist.

She has a full-time job. She has two kids and she's organizing to pass the Equal Rights Amendment in Nevada and doing endorsements and knocking on doors. And it's like, like god what a bunch of lazy oafs we are yeah we're good people no cynicism everywhere everyone's so excited it's just like i know it sounds cheesy when we say like oh it makes you go feel better to go knock on doors but you know we left that event sunday morning with suzy lee and all those volunteers were like

yeah like obviously the bigger picture looks pretty bleak right now, but these people, they're turning out. They're working hard. It was great. Love it got in a pitched battle with an Amherst sophomore. Yeah, you'll be hearing that. Which college is cooler, Williams or Amherst? In the package. Stay tuned for that, for the battle.

It's a debate where everybody loses. Kid got the last one. We should also say, by the way. He was great, by the way. We've warned you against looking too much into the early vote, but we've kept saying that the exception is Nevada and John Ralston, who knows the data in that state better than almost anyone and has accurately predicted most of the big races over the last decade. masto holds on that steve sisolak the democratic governor loses and that uh democrats hold two of the three house seats uh he thinks that suzy lee doesn't doesn't eke it out which would piss me off because she was wonderful and then he does think that dems win the uh secretary of state and ag races which is good because there's a bunch of crazy fucking election deniers

so we'll see ralston could be wrong from from Ralston's lips to God's ears, as we always say. That's what we always say here. Follow John Ralston, the Nevada Independent. He's a great reporter. All right. With that, let's hear more from some of the folks that we met in Las Vegas. This is producer Olivia Martinez. We're here in campaign headquarters. We've got a big sign that says days until election day three. Another sign that says Trump Putin 24. Shay, get out. Shay, Shay, Shay. Hi, your name is Shay? It is. My name is Shay.

So wait, why did you want to come here and knock on doors? It's been on my to-do list to Canvas, and I've been kicking myself to do it for the past three or four months. And I realized today is this weekend's last opportunity. And I woke up at 855 and it's 931 and I'm here. And just because it's an audio medium, I do want people to understand that Shay is wearing Saturday morning sunglasses indoors. Oh, I you're lucky I brush my teeth. I wouldn't be doing this interview if I forgot to do that. Hell yeah. Really close. What gets you up to kind of come here? What what issues are like the most important to you personally? Abortion access and a woman's right to choose is a huge

issue. But every time I listen to the news and they talk about the democracy stuff, January 6th stuff, that affects everything. So that democracy is the number one issue. My name is Margie Feldman, and I am the chapter lead of Nevada Jewish Stems. I'm here for so many reasons today, and it gives me a lot of energy to not be afraid, but actually go out there and talk to people. And then we find most people want the freedoms, even if they're not willing to say that or put that sign on their front lawn. What keeps me in the fight is I know what the world can be. I know what freedom feels like.

I know what democracy feels like. And it's important that we don't give that up. We're here at the Nevada Victory Democratic Headquarters. There's a lot of really excited canvassers. We're just so fired up. Can we get your name and what you do here? Yeah, so my name is Hutch. I'm the Deputy GOTV Director here at Nevada Democratic Victory. That's my title, but I run the high school program. Awesome. Can you tell us a little more about the high school program and how it came to be?

Yeah, so I mean, really, we just knew that going out into this community specifically was going to make or break this entire election, right? So it was really important to do that kind of early investment here and making sure that we had good messengers to do that investment. And these kids were basically, you can't think of anybody better to do that, right? So 90% of our program is bilingual. Everybody is from this neighborhood specifically and everybody, you know, a lot of time they might knock on the door where they know their aunt, they know their mom, something like that, that lives in that neighborhood. So we knew that that was going to be really important. And so we started investing in this program all the way back in July. You know, our first shift, we only had like 20 kids at it.

And now we're doing like 40 every three hours. I mean, this is the selection is way too important to sit out. Right. I mean, Republicans, right. Their solution to inflation, things like that, are to take your grandma's health insurance and make it harder for women to buy, get health care, really. Right. So they're not a serious party that has serious solutions. We are, right? We've got to be the adults in this room. We've got to fight against rising healthcare costs.

We've got to make sure we're bringing good jobs here in Nevada. And I know that these candidates are doing that, and these kids are just the best messenger we could ever possibly ask to do that for us. Love it. Where are we at? We are in Henderson, Nevada. We are now in a strip mall parking lot waiting for a ride share to take us to a diner. To take us to a diner. Thanks so much.

Hi, I'm John. What's your name? Sander. And you're here today to knock on some doors? I'm here today to knock on some doors. I actually go to Amherst, so I thought you would not be pleased. Some two-bit college in Massachusetts. Yeah, so I came out for the election to knock on some doors to get some votes. I couldn't stay back in Massachusetts where we know what's going to happen,

so I wanted to come out and help. What year are you? Sophomore. Look at this. Look how young sophomores are now. Look at how young they've become. This sucks. It goes to some dump in Massachusetts that only the worst people go to. I could say the same about Williams.

This interview is over. All right, so we're in the car. We are heading from, we're in the east side? Yes, we're in the east side of Las Vegas. We're heading on the east side of Las Vegas to the 2 p.m. event with Congresswoman Titus. Love, it's fading fast. Those four espresso shots not holding you over. Hi, nice to meet you. How you guys doing? Everyone here understands the stakes in this election. Everyone here understands that choice is at stake,

that protecting Medicare and Social Security is at stake, that having people that will actually fight to lower costs for people versus fighting for the richest and biggest corporation in this country is at stake. Everyone here understands what's at stake. You know, we host this show, Pod Save America. We started this media company because we were frustrated. We were frustrated because we felt like the big outlets don't really tell people the stakes. They treat it like a game. And on top of that, we have all this noise on social media that confuses and confounds and spreads misinformation. And then on top of that,

we have Fox News and all of its satellites that are drowning us in misleading and deceptive information to try to scare people, divide people, drive people to focus on our worst instincts rather than our best. And we have tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars of dark money dropping on top of us every single day. And so whose job is it to tell people what's really at stake? Because we know if they understood, if they really got what's on the ballot, that we would win. I see moms demand action, that people would understand the stakes between gun safety and deregulation. So who is going to do that work? Well, it's going to be us in the homestretch of this election knocking on doors. The media won't do it. There's a lot of people trying to hurt, not help. But if we go door to door and have the most effective interactions that anyone can have, which is face-to-face interactions or or

person-to-person interactions if we can do that you know here in Nevada if we can do that across the country we will win so thank you all for coming out to do that work to close that gap because everybody here gets it now it's our job to go make sure our friends and our family and our neighbors get it so thank you so much and our family and our neighbors get it. So thank you so much. My name is Vanita Starks, and I live here in Henderson, Nevada.

And I would like to say this. If you don't want to find yourself behind the eight ball in January, and you don't want to see your Social Security benefits chopped, your health care chopped, your right to choose, ladies, your right to choose, chopped. If you don't want to see your taxes go up and the top 1% get that big giant cut again, let's not go backward. Let's move forward. You know, I'd like to see Nevada move forward. And so that's why I vote a blue ticket all the way down. And I'm going to continue to do that. And let's go Nevada. My name is Mark, and I'm out today with EDF Action. It's the advocacy partner of the Environmental Defense Fund. And the thing about living in Vegas is I think we're living in the middle of a desert

and we're acutely aware that our water supply is finite. If we don't do some pretty drastic things to deal with that, this whole swath of the country may be uninhabitable in 20 years. And some of our elected leaders here in Las Vegas have made tremendous steps, and we've got to keep electing leaders who are going to keep pushing that and fighting that and spreading those changes. Here with Congressman Dina Titus in the home stretch. How's it going out there? How's it feel? What are the vibes? Well, it's been a tough election and that's why we're working so hard

to get all the voters out that we need. Some is mail-in, some is coming to the polls. That'll happen on Tuesday, of course, but I'm feeling more optimistic because we got so many people on the ground. We got a good game going. Everybody, unions are working. I think it's going to pull it through. If you have one thing you'd want to say to people who are listening who either live in Nevada or have family and friends out there, what would you say to them? It's Monday night. I'd say it's critical to turn out because the issues are so clear and the differences are so stark between what we stand for and what they stand for. If you want to move forward, come out and vote for us. If you want to slide back to the good old days that weren't that damn good for a lot of people, they're your candidates. I got you

a vote today. Let me tell you how. I hit my limit on the ATM. So I had to get a cash advance. And I was talking to the cashier at the casino. And she saw my hat. And she said, you think I should vote on Tuesday? I'm pretty busy on Tuesday. She's like, I always vote for the Democrats.

And I said, have you seen some of these people that Dina Titus is up against? That Catherine Cortez Mazda is up against? She's like, yeah like yeah they're pretty nuts aren't they? I guess maybe I should make some time to vote. So I just want you to know because I lost so much, so quickly, I got you a vote. And he intends to go to every casino on the strip. And I'll do that everywhere. I'll go door to door. So I went to the bathroom for one minute and and I come out, and my coworkers, my partners, my co-hosts, best friends are doing a pop-up press conference with Apple. Yeah, sorry. The congresswoman showed up, and she's like, aren't there supposed to be three of you? Isn't one called Tommy?

Yeah. Tommy came back and then took pictures of us because he thinks it's funny when he sees us pretending to be like politicians and we find it extremely embarrassing but nonetheless uh look i think uh we did a great job and um we did it we closed the deal we closed the deal for nevada and uh that's the most important thing all right before we go uh we're going to play a little game, and we have with us our fearless producer, Hallie Kiefer, who's going to run it. Oh, hi. Thank you for having me. Thanks for coming back. Of course. Well, yeah, I was like, I refuse,

but you begged me to have him back on, and I agreed. This is true. But on the lighter side of things, I guess hypothetically, by which I mean the light of the burning pyre that is Twitter, Elon Musk has officially paused the rollout of his new Twitter Blue, which of course famously is going to be $7.99 for a monthly subscription to get a check. It was initially scheduled to start today. They kind of soft launched it over the weekend. It didn't really go well.

But fortunately, the new abomination will reportedly go live number ninth providing twitter successful and allegedly trying to hire back a lot of the people they fired apparently they're doing that so things are going great over there and i just wanted to add before we play the game did you see his tweet to like who he thinks you should vote for and why yeah and i just want to read it for the in case a viewer if you're not on twitter um he tweeted shared power curbs the worst excesses of both party therefore i, I recommend voting for a Republican Congress, given that the presidency is Democratic. That might be the craziest thing

he's ever said. Oh, I don't know at this point. He's a real asshole. He's just a low information voter who thinks he's a high information voter. And I do think Lovett should be put on trial at The Hague forever on lowly ever saying that he's a genius, which has come up, and I think it should be put to task. the Hague forever. I'd lowly ever say that he's a genius, which has come up,

and I think it should be put to task. I'm sorry. I reject. The car drives itself. I reject the liberal dogma that says that you must hate everyone absolutely if you disagree with them politically. The guy didn't start a rocket company.

Well, I think he's smart. And so I love him. I think just because... You don't have to love him. He started a rocket company. He's good at building rockets and electric cars, and he's bad at politics and communication. You can be a genius asshole.

Yes, and that's what we're talking about. I don't like him. I don't think he's stupid. You love him. You love him. I love him. You drive your car. Own that.

I do. Thank you. Love it already paid for Twitter blue. Actually, that's a good segue right now. Wait, is that true? Did you? No. Okay.

Obviously, Love It is vowed on this very podcast not to pay. That's right. Because he doesn't want to be doused in a creamy New England clam chowder or a delicious etouffee by a morally upright stranger, as if he was a Van Gogh. But I do think I could talk one of you into Shelly Got Your Heart in Cash if you were actually getting something of value. So I'm just going to give you a couple scenarios. This was crowdsourced from everyone here at Crooked.

So I would say these fall into political, realistic features. And then a category I would describe as simply horny. So I'm going to try to pick from each and you guys can react. The first one, will you tell me which way you think it lands? So Twitter blue is, okay, it is $7.99 a month. But if you get it, you do get Matt Iglesias tweets a whole hour earlier

Matt Iglesias tweet window no I don't think that's worth I mean yeah I read his sub stack all the time so why do I need the tweets I'm leaving oh wow we got a slow boring head over here.

Okay, great. I think you guys made the right choices. Oh, so here's another one. You'll tell me if this is enough. Twitter blue. Yes, it is $7.99 a month, but you get a feature that turns off all discourse so you can just enjoy the jokes.

Oh, absolutely. That's great. I'd pay $100 a month. Oh, if there was a switch, if there was like a politics on, politics off, like sports on, sports off jokes, I would pay for that in a heartbeat. But it's got to be the good jokes, though. I don't want any of these lame political people who think that they just came up with a good joke or the people who are like, oh, I'm going to be the first one to make this joke, even though it was made by 10,000 other people. Even when that's me. Yeah, I was going to say, it's hard because I feel like some of the people,

oh, they are political, but then occasionally they'll have a banger. Like once every six months. The thing about it is that you either die funny or you live long enough to become this. Right. Louder for people in the back. Or you carry a sink to your new job to do caretops. I'm more mis-

Depraved. One thing that- Just putting this right here. That, you know, Twitter at its best and worst, it's everybody having the one conversation. Elon buying Twitter has made Twitter as bad a place to be as it's ever been. There is way too little outside of that. And it just, like, it used to be for so many years, like, there was just a kind of steady hum of weird Twitter being funny and strange and interesting and, like, these little kind of paths you could go down and find these, like, strange little pockets of really interesting,

funny people. And I think all those people lost their minds. And no new people came to replace them. Some of the best minds of our generation have been lost on Twitter. Yeah. I'll tell you, they're mostly past generations. Yeah. There's a certain kind of, listen, there's a certain kind of people that you would have

thought as like brilliant minds that were absolutely rotted out by the internet, just completely destroyed by it. So I really wish if Twitter is going to survive, it's not going to be because Elon is tweeting weird political things or kind of trolling fucking Kathy Griffin. The whole conversation about Twitter used to be a conversation about Donald Trump for a while, which was not great, but it was at least somewhat understandable because he was president of the United States and held a lot of power. Now the whole thing is a fucking conversation about Elon Musk.

It sucks. It's very boring. Well, that in mind, I have one of the horny ones. Good, good, good. So, yes, Twitter blue. You pay for it. It's very boring well that in mind i have one of the horny ones um good good good good so yes twitter blue you pay for it it's 7.99 a month but if you do you get to experience the the chaotic energy uh around that one uh beto tweet that one time and you get to whatever you want you get to like have it sort of a black mirror type of situation where like at any point in time

you get to feel the chaos we all felt back in 2018, which I do think was a demarcating line in terms of political horniness on Twitter we never recovered from. Wait, is this the— I will read the text. Some people might not have heard this tweet. Oh, no. I mean, I could recite it from memory, but you— I mean, if you want to. If you have kids in the car, I know we swear too much, this is your warning to really turn down the volume.

And if you're alone in the car, pull the wheel into oncoming traffic. I thought you were going to say pull over and enjoy yourself. I thought he was going to go there too. Yeah, sorry. That's all right. I only put the worst part of it in my notes here. Here we go. Thank you, knowyourmeme.com.

Here we go. So this is a tweet. I'm not going to name the person because we've all been here. We've all thought this about something. We all thought don't put it on Twitter. Just think it yourself. Think a weird thought. Instead, this woman said, no, today is my day.

And she's talking about Ojeda, I believe, is that how you pronounce the candidate? Ojeda and Avenatti as candidates are like the guy who thinks good sex is pumping away while you're making a gross list in your head, wondering when he'll be done. O'Rourke was like the guy who was all sweet and nerdy, but holds you down and makes you come until your calves cramp. Oh my god. Oh.

That, I remember that. I was like, we have passed the Rubicon. This is like a, and I think that's where, I mean, you know, maybe it's my algorithm, but I feel like this weekend was just like, oh, it is no holds barred. Everyone is saying whatever they want, both politically and personally. So we're paying $7.99 a month for that to feel that feeling

that feeling for your calves to cramp oh well oh oh okay yeah I think you have to pay more for that

in the actual experience I'm saying that every month you pay and that tweet or whatever it could be a tweet

of similar insanity is wiped from your head black mirror style and once a month you get to experience it all over again. And it's new to you. Uh,

yeah, I'll do it. Sure. Yeah. That's a good laugh. 95 bucks a year for a good laugh. That's more valuable than a check Mark for sure. Um,

uh, we have to have a couple more here. We actually have dozens. I'm trying to figure out which ones are most applicable, but every time Twitter blue is seven, nine, nine a month. But every time you retweet a politician, you were texted or email one last time from their campaign where they're begging and screaming at you to give them three dollars.

I don't want one less time. I would pay for it if I could just shut that off. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, RT for unsubscribe. Yeah. Yeah. I agree with that for sure.

Just I have two left here. I'm going to go. Twitter blue is $7.99 per month, but all internet slang before 2020 is automatically muted. You never have to see doggo again. And I will also say- Can we do 2021? 2021. I'm adding it to the algorithms.

2021. There's some bad ones in there. Because I feel like that's, you know, when we came up in the internet, there was so much of that, and I still occasionally see it. It's like, we're not doing that. Just call it a dog. I love that. Someone says kiddos or doggos. Yeah.

I'm out. I also don't want to ever see the word Dobby. I understand people loved Harry Potter. If I see that little gross man's name, or whatever it is, a goblin or something. What are the other ones? Yeah, a word that you're like, never make me see this again. Just the phrases are so bad. yeah a word that you're like never make me see this again just the phrases are so bad this you this you louder for the people in the back all the cliches yeah i don't know who needs to hear this oh i don't know who needs to hear this is the sure you do you just tweeted it yeah you know exactly who's here it's actually nobody's seeing this

yeah that's the problem yeah i'd love to eradicate all of that language. Yep, I'm in. Great. Normalize X. A lot of normalizing. Yeah. And finally, you do get the URL for Elon's secret alt account, and he does post frequent nudes for $7.99. However, it's actually very humanizing and makes you like him more, which you feel more complicated about. No.

I'm paying $8 a month for Elon nudes, and I have to like him more at the end? You don't have to. It's just sort of a natural process. You see a part of himself you didn't expect to ever see. You're like, I guess you are a person, and you have whatever weird thing you have, but don't we all? But don't we all? Don't we all?

That's really what I would pay for. I'd like to pay $7.99 a month to not be reminded that every person on the other end of a Twitter account is a person. Wow. I'd like to continue to see them as... Sort of the experience we have now.

Right. That's true, yeah. We get to experience that for free. Sometimes it's not, I guess, sort of bots. Yeah.

Do it, carry Elon's water now. Try to get out of this whole transaction because there's bots. I knew I'd bring you back around to it. Do we have one more?

Yeah, definitely. Let's see. Let's do one more. Let's do one more. Let's do one more. The Krasensteins come back. Oh, yeah. Get them back. Let's do one more. Let's do one more. Let's do one more. Um, the Krasensteins come back. Oh yeah. Get them back.

I'm paying for that. I'm paying to get the Krasensteins back. You're paying. And that money's going right in their pocket. Think of the joy that that will bring to so many people. You know, they've been a little bit. How many, how many texts will send about the Krasenstein tweets? They've been a little bit usurped by the Occupy Democrats people that are like, uh, you know, uh, uh, Don Jr. is a piece of shit with a bad haircut

and he just insulted Josh Shapiro. Retweet if you think Don Jr. is a piece of shit. That's better than what they do. That was good. And then just in general, I just wanted to ask, is Twitter important? Is what is happening to it important?

Because I feel like as people who are on it, it's like, oh, no. But if you're not on it, it's sort of like, like you said, going in person to Canvas and do things is much more important. And then we sort of have this myopic platform that's being destabilized. How do we look at it, sort of, from 60,000 feet? Do you guys have any feelings about that? I would say that it has outsized influence because every journalist in the world is on it. And so much of the media coverage that people base their information off of and make decisions off of is shaped by Twitter.

So unfortunately, it has an outsized impact, even though it is does not have as many people as many other most other social media platforms. So and I think it's useful to have some kind of a national conversation going. Unfortunately, it has become shitty over the last several years and Elon is driving it into the ground as fast as he can. Yeah, I would say, I would say Twitter is important insofar as a group of people who help shape the national conversation, view it as a place where people come to shape the national conversation, but there will be a hinge point and it it could be we don't know when it will be. It could be soon based on how quickly Elon is sort of eviscerating the place that all of a sudden, if it's just journalists

who don't feel like they're getting a sense of what the lefty pundits are saying and what the what the right pundits are saying, it doesn't't feel like that kind of like bleeding edge of a national political conversation where people come to kind of hear from like, you know, the 1000 people who shape the political debate, if that doesn't feel like what it is, I think all of a sudden it'll stop being useful and then it won't be important to be there and then everyone will have to go somewhere else because we do want that space. That space is valuable. It just doesn't have to be Twitter. Yeah, it was never as important as some people thought it was, especially the Twitter founders who thought they were responsible for the Arab Spring and stuff like, I was rolled so far back into my head that I nearly died. I

think its importance was waning long before Elon Musk came around, because there's other platforms where you can reach way more people instead of talking to a chat room full of losers. But again, if you brought back Brian Krasenstein, you could get content like well many of you are likely yelling go patriots or go rams i'm yelling go robert muller and the rule of law that's good that is gold i'd pay to experience that tweet i guess i'll see y'all on tiktok see you there thank you for playing great game hella keifer thanks for joining pod save america thanks to everyone we talked to in Nevada who's out there knocking on doors. Be one of those people in these final hours before the election. And we'll talk to you on the other side.

Bye, everyone. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Andy Gardner Bernstein. Our producers are Haley Muse and Olivia Martinez. Thank you. Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montu. Our episodes are uploaded as videos at youtube.com slash pod save America.