Pod Save America - “New tone, who dis?”

Episode Date: April 2, 2020

Donald Trump says he’ll have done a “great job” if the coronavirus death toll is between 100,000 and 240,000 Americans, some reporters praise his somber delivery of this news, and Nancy Pelosi begins to float ideas for a fourth economic relief bill as weekly jobless claims surpass six million. Then Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler talks to Jon about how he’s fighting to ensure a safe and fair election on April 7th, and the importance of voting by mail in November.Crooked has started a Coronavirus Relief Fund for organizations supporting food banks, health care workers, restaurant workers, seniors, kids who depend on school lunches, and others in need. Donate: crooked.com/coronavirus

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's pod, I check in with Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wickler about the election they're supposed to have on Tuesday and what can be done about voting in the middle of a pandemic. Before that, we'll talk about Trump's grim new coronavirus projections and what should be in Congress's next economic relief bill. But first, we have an announcement. In the midst of all this awfulness, in the span of about two weeks, we developed a brand new podcast for you people. Longtime friend of the pod and

brilliant journalist Alex Wagner is the host of Six Feet Apart, which will shine a light on the hidden worlds of this pandemic through interviews with everyone from grocery store workers to prisoners to immigrants and many others. These are the very human stories that the news doesn't always cover, that frankly, we don't always cover on other pods. And we're very excited that Alex is going to tackle this. So first episode is out now. The podcast is six feet apart.

You can get it wherever you listen to your podcasts. Isn't that exciting, Dan? New pod? Is that an homage to the HBO show? It is not, Dan? New pod. Is that an homage to the HBO show? It is. It is not, Dan. It is because we have to be six feet apart from each other.

All right. Well, it's like six feet apart, six feet under. There's like a very bleak. It's either an homage to an HBO show, a classic HBO show of the early 21st century or death. So I would take the former.

It's an homage to something. Also on this week's Pod Save the World, Tommy and Ben talk about how protest movements can survive coronavirus and how we can stop governments from using the pandemic to consolidate power and shut down the press. Again, this is a foreign policy show.

Then Tommy talks with former US ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, about political developments in Israel. And Ben talks with British Labour MP, David Lammy, about political developments in Israel. And Ben talks with British Labour MP David Lammy about the UK's coronavirus response. Finally, a big shout out to Akilah Hughes, Gideon Resnick, and the entire What Today team on their 100th episode, which is out today. Wow, I can't believe it's been 100 episodes already. If you aren't already subscribed, what are you waiting for? This is the best way to wake up and feel sane and informed and entertained.

It is a fantastic podcast. It is about 20 minutes long. It'll get you up to speed. So if you have not subscribed already, do it. New episodes drop daily on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. The team is fantastic. Akilah and Gideon are great. And they just, these guys work so hard every night, you know, five days a week to do this podcast.

So check it out. It's well worth it. Okay, Dan, let's talk about the day that Donald Trump finally became president. about the day that donald trump finally became president uh i think tuesday was one of the most stunning disturbing white house briefings maybe in history um because the president united states and his team told the country that in the best case scenario uh where we all follow strict social distancing measures and keep most of the economy shut down for months, we would lose between 100,000 and 240,000 American lives to the virus. Then, then Donald Trump said that if that historic and absolutely horrifying loss of life comes to pass, quote, we've done a great job. We've done a great job. That really happened, right, Dan?

What was your first reaction sort of watching that unfold? I mean, you say it happened, and I vaguely remember seeing it, but it seems impossible to imagine that it actually happened. I mean, it, I guess if there weren't graphs and charts, we wouldn't have known it for sure, but they had those. So I must be real. I mean, it, it was disturbing and upsetting and infuriating. And the thing that I think I took from it was like, we obviously had heard Fauci say this on the Sunday shows and we, you know, we have been consuming every bit of coronavirus news we could have.

And we know we've looked at, we've read the report. None of us have looked at an actual model, but we've read the reports of the models and we've looked at what the possibilities are. And you look at the numbers and this is what many people have suspected. It was one thing to hear Fauci say it on Sunday because he's sort of our beacon of hope that if he's saying it, then that means he's the person we as a nation have come to trust the most for this information. But then when you see Trump say it, it's a reminder that this is the person whose job it is to save us. And that is fucking scary.

Well, my first reaction was I became really angry thinking about where other countries are right now, like South Korea and Germany. You know, South Korea reported, I think, a couple hundred cases yesterday. You know, United States and South Korea both had the first infected person on the same day back in January. And their curve has not only flattened, it's almost almost gone now. And, you know, Germany's instituted mass testing. gone now um and you know germany's instituted mass testing and this this this isn't you know trump wants to treat this like it is something that no one ever saw coming that it's this natural disaster this wasn't a fucking earthquake right where even even or like a series of wildfires right where you can look back and say okay was the government prepared for this? No, they weren't. Right. And that's that's certainly true of of the Trump administration on this. It's that as the crisis hit,

they still fucked it up so badly. And we know that because other countries are handling this and have handled this better than we are. And then it also made me very angry that as he's saying this, and as they're showing us these charts, there are states at the time, there were states like Florida and Texas and other Southern states and other rural states that still haven't fucking issued

mandatory stay at home orders. You've got the trump administration saying that if everything goes well that if everyone abides by social distancing measures then we're going to have 100 to 240 000 dead americans and they're sitting up there and he hasn't put a fucking phone call in to ron desantis the governor of florida to tell him to keep people at florida in florida at home. And finally, that happened late in the day yesterday, long after that briefing happened. But it's just, it's un-fucking-believable to me.

Yeah, the numbers that Trump was talking about, the scale of human devastation that was being talked about somewhat blithely by the president, is so disconnected from the nature of the response. Right? We are on a schedule. Nearly 1,000 Americans died yesterday from coronavirus. As this continues, we're going to be in a situation in the not-too-distant future where we are having the equivalent of a Katrina or a 9-11 every single day in terms of the loss of Americans. And that would seem like a let's get serious, all hands on deck approach. And you don't see that from the Trump administration still. Maybe that they have finally publicly acknowledged the scale of devastation, but they have not scaled up their response to meet that.

There's such a lack of urgency in how this is being approached. The only thing that they are expressing urgency around are the public relations and the politics, not the public health response. Right. So he wants to basically frame hundreds of thousands of deaths as a win for him. This is, you know, we've done a great job is what he said. Now, in order for him to do this, he has to completely rewrite history. He keeps saying now that there were supposed to be two million deaths. And then, you know, he heroically took all these steps.

And now there's only supposed to be a few hundred thousand dead Americans. How does he get people to believe this? I don't think he can get people to believe it. And it like watching that argument, watching him make this argument was perhaps to me the most infuriating part of the entire briefing, which is, look, politicians, including our former boss, Barack Obama, often make straw man arguments, right? Like there are these people over here who have this completely extreme position, and then these people over here with this other extreme position, which therefore are based on these two extreme positions, which generally sometimes are like even the extreme version of the extreme.

But given those two extremes, my version makes complete sense. It's a straw man argument. And part of a straw man argument is you have to invent a straw man to make the argument. So Trump is making a straw man argument about these people, and the press is framing as a straw man argument about these people who thought we should do nothing or do very little and let it, it's only like the flu, we shouldn't panic. Except Donald Trump is the fucking straw man in the argument. He was the person making that argument. And he has to be called on it, right? I don't think eventually reality catches up to spin, right? There's no number of press briefings or tweets or

Fauci interviews that can spin hundreds of thousands of American deaths as a win. hundreds of thousands of American deaths as a win. But Trump will have the ability to rewrite history if all of us let him do that. Yeah, I mean, and on that note, there's a video I came across yesterday from, it's an ad from Republicans for the rule of law, and it just goes through all of the things that Trump has said about the virus and all the ways that he

downplayed it. And by the way, you know, we're going to play the clip now. As you listen to this, all the things he's saying here are in February and most of them are in March while the cases in the United States started going up the hundreds and then in the thousands. So here's the clip. Are the words about a pandemic at this point? No, we're not at all. How concerned are you? Well, we pretty much shut it down. A lot of people think that goes away in April. We have contained this, I won't say airtight,

but pretty close to airtight. It's gonna be down to close to zero. It's going to disappear. It's like a miracle, it will disappear. They're gonna have vaccines, I think, relatively soon. What can you say to Americans who are concerned that you're not taking this seriously enough? That's CNN. Fake news. The president say, for example, he's going to continue with political rallies.

Is this sending the right message? Going to a rally? There's no reason that you shouldn't go. It's really working out. The president stopped shaking hands. In our line of work, you shake hands. No, I don't take responsibility at all but it's something that we have tremendous control of how would you rate your response to this crisis

i'd rate it a 10 this is a pandemic i felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic so you can you can you can hear there all the different times that Trump told us not to worry about this, that it wasn't a big deal. I also think at the press briefing itself, he made a rather huge admission that, you know, wasn't really seen as that. Although the New York Times story that Peter Baker wrote about it sort of got this in the New York Times story that Peter Baker wrote about it sort of got this. In the New York Times, he wrote, Mr. Trump said he played down the seriousness of the threat because he chose to be reassuring. I want to give people hope. I mean, that right there is an admission from Trump that he did downplay the crisis because he wanted to be hopeful. But like what that's missing is the fact that because this is a virus

and if you downplay the virus and you tell people not to worry about it, they will go spread the fucking virus. They will leave their homes. They will travel. They will be around people when they shouldn't be around people, which could spread the virus.

Like by downplaying the virus in a way to give people hope, he was facilitating the spread of a deadly virus. By downplaying the virus in a way to give people hope, he was facilitating the spread of a deadly virus. And he basically admitted it in the briefing. I mean, the first rule of any crisis is you prepare for the worst and hope for the best. And Trump did the exact opposite here. And he did not prepare. And then he gave people false information, which put their lives and the lives of their loved ones at risk. And this is in a situation where there was like a range of expert opinions. And he picked some of the more optimistic ones. He ignored all of the advice of every single medical expert, every single epidemiologist,

every single scientist to tell people something that absolutely wasn't true, which led to thousands upon thousands of Americans getting sick in a way they did not need to. It facilitated the states like Florida and Georgia from doing the right thing. He polarized this issue in a partisan way, which made it so that Republican governors thought the Republican thing to do was to downplay the virus and people in their states will die because of that. The governor of Georgia, the Republican governor of Georgia, said today that he didn't know that asymptomatic people could spread the virus until yesterday. And that's why he didn't issue a shutdown order sooner. The fuckingdc is located in georgia and the republican government said he

didn't know this like i mean is he lying is he a fucking moron probably both um was he just getting all his news from donald trump and fox news probably like what the fuck i mean it's just like not that you need another reason to say elections matter, because Donald Trump reminds us of that at the briefing every single day. But I'm pretty sure Stacey Abrams would have checked the CDC website were she to be governor of Georgia right now, which she should have been if Brian Kemp had not stolen the election. So, you know, one problem is Trump may have some help rewriting history from his frenemies in the media. He showed up at the briefing and was able to, you know, somberly deliver the news that hundreds of thousands of Americans will probably die.

And as a result, multiple reporters remarked on his performance. Here are some of the highlights. Quote, this is an absolutely new message and new tone from Trump. Quote, the tone at this briefing feels different. Quote, this is the most effective job of communicating Trump has done during this crisis. And quote, this was a different Donald Trump tonight. I think he gets it. Dan, do you want to talk while I just quietly scream into the void here?

I think it was very nice of you to put no names by those quotes yeah yeah it is fucking nice of me yeah it's very generous i thought i thought of well i thought about it last night and i thought that we'll talk about this in a second but i thought overall there's a lot of reporters out there who were working really hard to report on this in very dangerous conditions and i don't want to sort of paint the media with a broad brush here. And I also respect a lot of the reporters who said these things. Some of them are quite smart

and usually quite good about this stuff. So I don't need to point people out right now, but come on. I mean, John, look, you got to see it from their perspective. Donald Trump, a man whose entire life is centered around the idea of serving the American people. And when he finds out that 100 to 200,000 of his fellow citizens that he serves so devotedly could be killed, of course, he's going to develop a new tone. Turn into Churchill, Roosevelt, Bartlett, Lincoln, of course.

Because that's one thing we know about. What is the bar here? Did they expect that he was going to laugh when he delivered this news? Did they expect him to be jovial when he talked about hundreds of thousands of Americans dying? What kind of tone did you think was going to accompany that kind of announcement? I mean, it's just, I'll say a couple things about this, which is, I mean, it's just I'll say a couple of things about this, which is one. We have to stop grading Trump on the steepest fucking curve in history.

Right. Because it is actually to your point, it is possible that Donald Trump could deliver it jovially or ridiculously or turn it into an argument about impeachment. That is actually on the table. And you can see how people who cover him on a daily basis might be surprised that he did not trip over the very low bar of expectations the press and the American public have set for him. But having said that, what I think drives these sorts of tweets, and we've seen this a thousand times, we've seen it for State of the Unions, we saw it after he launched that strike in Syria and a dozen other times over the course of this presidency where Donald Trump does the bare minimum of his job. That's true. But I think what drives it is this intense hunger for normalcy among the press, right? They desperately want Trump to be a normal person, to be something resembling a normal president. To be something resembling a normal president. And they have to recognize that you can't fit the square peg of a sociopath into the round hole of normalcy. And you're going to get burned every time you credit Trump for something because he is inevitably going to do something that is going to make your take look terrible within the next 12 hours. And in some cases, even in the case of this briefing, within 30 minutes, he did things that made those new tone takes look terrible. It's just also the need to judge everything a politician does by

style and performance, right? Like it's a bigger problem because I get that those reporters just want Donald Trump to be normal and to be a good president and to lead the country through performance, right? Like it's a bigger problem because I get that those reporters just want Donald Trump to be normal and to be a good president and to lead the country through what could be its most trying time in history. And I think a lot of people in the country want that too. Like I get that feeling, but if you walked away from that briefing thinking that the story was the tone and style of the president and not the news that he delivered. Like, you've lost the fucking plot. You know, like that, we've got to, even in the middle of a pandemic, we're still doing the fucking style critique? Really?

Like, we can't put that aside, maybe, just for the pandemic? I mean, policy is complicated. The trade-offs of how you respond in a pandemic are complicated. The fact-checking someone in real time is complicated. The lazy crutch of political reporting

is optics. I tried to figure out what the audio version of optics is. Like, is that, I mean, that's what tone is, right? Yeah, it's tone. Yeah, there you go. Yeah. But like that, you know, it, it, this has been a problem forever, right? It like, during pre, like, I almost called the BP oil spill a crisis, but I feel like that term has been redefined in our current period. But I mean, I think you remember that the, it was very hard for reporters to cover how you stop a oil spill

at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, which is a very complicated piece of engineering and physics and science. But it was easy to comment on whether Obama was mad enough about the crisis. Right. According to the media, he was not. He was not mad enough. No, no.

More anger would have plugged the hole. Yeah. Yes. Well, look, if you can't get a ventilator, a somber tone can help you breathe. And look, they have been burned before just a few weeks ago. March 17th, New York Times times why president trump changes his tone ap trump changes tone gets real cnn what drove trump's newfound somber tone uh this was the week before then he decided to uh go on a tear attacking democratic governors uh heads of

companies start twitter wars all that kind of shit um then thank god the daily beast had a story yesterday that um had trump aides telling uh the daily beast quote that for the last three years the president has laughed about how easy it is for him to trigger praise by acting nice during weighty moments he laughs at them he knows that when he does that, he's going to get good reviews and he laughs about it. If you're one of the anonymous people whose quotes John just read, hopefully this morning you wake up before your cup of coffee, you look in the mirror and you say, I got played by one of the dumbest men in history. um now one other development from that press briefing cnn didn't take trump's opening remarks live and then msnbc sort of cut away later at 1.2 basically only fox is the only one that's now taking the full briefings live for the full two hours now um do we count this as progress yeah i think it's progress and i mean, the briefings are dangerous misinformation. We've talked about the tragic example of the couple that thought they were taking the drug that Trump has been promising in contravention of science and FDA guidelines and where someone lost their life. And just in general, it's, you know, you see the asymmetry of Trump

saying his lies, like on live television. And then after you turn away from the briefing, because like we usually watch on CNN in our house, you see Daniel Dale, who's a tremendously talented fact checker immediately go through all of his lies, but you have a president briefing at a podium, and then you have a CNN reporter on a Zoom. And it's just you can't – like no one has figured out how to fact check him in real time. And therefore, as long as you show him or even quote him, you are in danger of passing misinformation along. And that is bad in general, and it has life or death consequences in a pandemic. How do you think the press has been covering the response overall? Phenomenal. And I think it's important to separate the coverage from the conversation.

All this about, all this political analysis, the tweets you mentioned, the cable panels, that's the conversation, right? The coverage, the stories written in the newspapers or on the websites or the pieces put together for the local and national news. That has been, I think, a tremendous triumph. And I think that's an important caveat to all of the complaining about the press, which is reporters are literally putting their lives on the line to cover the story, to be in some of the hot spots in New York and elsewhere to say what – or in Italy to say what's happening. The reporters who go to the briefing room whose questions sometimes frustrate us are putting themselves at risk by going in the briefing room. At least one White House correspondent has contracted coronavirus and believes he did so by being in the briefing room.

contracted coronavirus and believes he did so by being in the briefing room. And the coverage the press has done has sort of told us the stories of the heroes, the victims, and the villains of all of this. And I think some of the stories have actually prompted state and federal action by getting to the bottom of things that Trump's administration was unwilling to get to the bottom of. And the fact that they're all doing that at a time in which the disruption in the economy is crushing their industry. Los Angeles Times is doing great coverage of what's happening in California at the time that they're having to shrink their paper down in sections because advertising dollars are drying up. And so I just think it's worth noting that some of the reporters doing the best work here could very well be out of a job in a couple of months because a lot of particularly local outlets may not survive this crisis.

Yeah, no, it's very important. And, you know, the reason that we yell about the conversation instead of just the coverage is, you know, the conversation does have an impact, particularly it's not just on Twitter where a lot of people aren't, but reporters are on Twitter and the conversation also takes place on television. And there's a lot of people at home just watching their televisions right now, watching cable news. And so, you know, it does have an effect on people, which is why we yell about it. But it is, like you said, it's important to highlight the tremendous and courageous work of so many journalists in covering this. So let's talk about what effect all of this has on shaping public opinion about the response. We've been talking about how Trump has seen slightly higher approval ratings during this

crisis. According to FiveThirtyEight, he's currently at the highest average approval since the beginning of his presidency, though there have been a few recent polls that suggest his bounce may be leveling off. Why do you think that might be? I mean, reality is catching up here, right? Like, I would encourage everyone to check out the Navigator tracking poll on coronavirus. The Navigator polling is a collective of progressive groups who've been funding research projects over the last couple of years, and they're doing daily tracking polls on

coronavirus. funding research projects over the last couple of years, and they're doing daily tracking polls on coronavirus. And on a daily basis, you're seeing more and more people be personally affected by the virus. Either they know someone who has contracted it, or they know someone who has lost their job because of it. And as it gets more and more touches people's lives, it's going to take away from the sort of the rally around the flag effect that has affected Trump. And part of what has driven his approval ratings are increases in support from Democrats, who are most likely probably not going to vote for him in November. But the more he makes this partisan, the more he attacks Gretchen Whitmer and Andrew Cuomo and other governors, the more he's going to lose those people.

That doesn't mean that we should not, focusing on the election in November, pay very, very close attention to those numbers and be very nervous about them. But you're seeing them come back to earth a little bit as more and more information about Trump's performance is becoming more and more relevant to people's lives. How much do you think that, I've been wondering about this, Trump or Trump's opponents, us, how much can either do to shape public opinion about his handling of this crisis? How much of this is ultimately dictated by the reality of what's happening in the country versus arguments people are making, advertisements, organizing, all this other kind of stuff? Because I'm starting to think that more than almost any other scandal issue that we've

dealt with over the last several years with Donald Trump, this is something that he can't spin and we will have sort of limited ability to make an argument about and shape public opinion as well. Like it seems to me that the reality of the situation on the ground and how people are dealing with this in their own lives is going to be the most important factor in how they respond to this. This is something that people like you and I probably shouldn't admit publicly, which is even in normal times, the words that politicians say, the messages they have, the communication strategies they employ affect things on the margins, right? It's always the big things, right? It's what the economy is. It's how many people are legally allowed to vote in a certain state. How the demographics bear out on the electoral college is, right? That's what comes in in a close game and wins it.

And I think that's particularly true here. But I think because of how things are going, it is imperative that we do all of those things, all of the ads, the organizing, the messaging, the research to know what it is right now for two reasons. One, sure, is it possible that this is going to be one of those events that Trump handles either so great, seems unlikely thus far, that the American people will applaud him and he would win an easy re-election, or handle so poorly and the election will take place in a way that eludes the historical path towards polarization in the Electoral College of Republicans. And you see an election where Joe Biden wins by a margin much larger than you would suspect in normal times. Yes, that is possible. But I don't think we should plan for that.

for that. And I do think the most likely scenario is almost no matter what happens, this will still be an election that is decided by 100,000 votes spread out over four to five states. And given that sense, we have a lot of work to do. And I think the other thing, this is why all the advertising, all the messaging, all the organizing is so important right now, which is this is a moment of hyper-engagement where even people, voters you could never reach this far out from an election are paying attention. And so they're either paying attention to what Trump is saying and believing him, or they're going to pay attention to what we're saying to show why they shouldn't believe Trump. So if we were to take a step back and say, this is not the time for ads, this is not the time for politics, we would be making, I think, a potentially fatal error.

Because we're not really like, yes, I prefer when Trump's approval numbers are bad, because approval numbers are kind of what drives political conversations. If his numbers are bad, he will get worse coverage. I will be a happier person. But that's not really how we're going to win the election. What we're going to do right now is provide people with information that creates a context for the decision they'll make in October. And missing the opportunity right now when they are paying attention would be seeding the field to Trump. And I think that would be a tragedy. I also think there's sort of two options available

to Trump in how he deals with this crisis from a message standpoint. One is probably the more an option that most traditional politicians of either party might choose, which is, you know, he's going to say, look, this isn't as bad as it could have been. I stopped something worse from happening. Everything's actually better than you think it is. Yes, from happening. Everything's actually better than you think it is. Yes, we lost an untold number of Americans and the economy's in the shitter, but it wasn't my fault. No one could have seen this coming. I think that that sort of has a limited effectiveness. Like, I don't know that he can do that because people who have lost their jobs or lost loved ones from this crisis are going to say, well, it doesn't seem very good. But the other option that Trump can choose, which is much more Trumpian, is that he blames others for what's happening.

So we get to November and somehow he is blaming all the Democratic governors for the deaths in their states or for the job losses. He's blaming the media. He's blaming Democrats. I mean, you've already seen him start to do this. And I do wonder, like, yes, people are going I mean, people are going to be angry and furious and upset in a way that we haven't seen in decades, maybe a century by the time we go through this. decades, maybe a century by the time we go through this. And the question is, who are they angry at? And I think Donald Trump is going to try to tell a story that it's not my fault. I was fighting for you the whole time. It's all of these people's fault. And that, I think, is why everything that we do matters. The ads we run, the organizing we do, what we say, because he is going to try to rewrite history, not just to, you know, absolve himself of responsibility, but to actually point

the finger of blame towards someone else at a time when the country is going to be extremely angry. I, yeah, I think like that's something the strategy is going to have because he, in his most recent briefing, which yesterday, which I would note, was a different tone than the Tuesday briefing because we do our daily tone checks around here. But he blamed – you've seen Republicans blame impeachment. The new cause du jour on the right is that it's China's fault because they lied to us about it. Right. And the third thing that Trump was doing on Twitter this morning is blaming local officials for not preparing enough.

So ultimately, I don't think those three arguments are going to be effective. Impeachment is basically announcing that you cannot walk and chew gum at the same time. Seems like a bad idea. Yeah. Blaming China is essentially saying that, yes, I've branded myself as the tough on China president, but I got played by China. Oh, and by the way, I don't read my intelligence briefings. Not a good argument.

And the problem with blaming Democratic governors is, according to the Navigator coronavirus tracking poll this morning, by a margin of 54 to 33, the American public trusts local officials more than the Trump administration. And even 27% of Republicans trust local officials more than the Trump administration. And even 27% of Republicans trust local officials more than the Trump administration. What Trump can do, and this is where Democrats have the most work to do, is convince people that no one could have seen this coming. This was beyond his control. He did the best he could under a very difficult situation. And voters tend to give presidents a pass on these things for at least a period of time. As you and I remember working for Obama, that for it was, I think, almost a year and a half in our polling, voters would hold Bush and Wall Street more accountable

for the state of the economy than Obama. And that's what kept his approval numbers above where you would possibly imagine them to be at 10% unemployment. But so now, I think we're going to see a point like whose fault is the state of the economy? Coronavirus or Trump or how much you hold Trump responsible. We're going to have to make sure that enough of the voters that we care about hold Trump responsible for this. And we have to do it in a narrow window of time. And so that's why all the stuff about his failure to prepare, he's not listening to the warnings, his downplaying is so critical to the argument. All right, let's go from the historic public health crisis to something much cheerier,

which is the historic economic crisis. This week, more than six and a half million Americans applied for unemployment benefits. Another record after last week's record. It's now somewhere over 10 million at least people in the last two weeks have lost their jobs. The unemployment report on Friday, tomorrow, may well be the worst in American history. The sheer number of claims is overwhelming unemployment offices and crashing systems. Dan, one consequence of losing your job is losing your health insurance. And in response to that, the Trump administration announced that they won't even open a special enrollment period under the Affordable Care Act so that the newly unemployed can get health insurance at a time when people who are hospitalized for COVID without insurance face medical bills as high as seventy five thousand dollars. Why would they do that?

Because they are terrible people, John. That is why I think it is anything like doesn't doesn't cost money from the federal government doesn't require any just turning the fucking switch on and it would be good for the economy because if people had more money then they could continue to buy goods and pay for services which would mean fewer people lose their jobs but i think that the example of how they're handling healthcare is an important reminder that the completely fumbled response to coronavirus, both from a public health perspective, a governmental preparedness perspective, and an economic perspective is not simply an indictment of Donald Trump, the president. It's of republicanism as a political philosophy. Because here's one thing I fucking

know for sure. If Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Mike Pence, Tom Cotton, even resistance hero Mitt Romney were president right now, they would have done the exact same thing that Donald Trump did. is a sign of political weakness, and they would not have done it. And that is something that we should remind voters. And we should remind voters that in the middle of a pandemic, Republicans are right now, with the help of the Trump administration, in court trying to kick millions of Americans off their Affordable Care Act policies. You pointed out something yesterday morning to us that even though there's no special enrollment period, even though they shut that down, there is still a way for people who lose their jobs because of this to get insurance on the Affordable Care Act market. Can you talk about that? Yes. So it is morally abhorrent that Trump would not do something simple that would help people who are uninsured get insurance

during a pandemic. In part, also because during a pandemic, you want people to call their doctor when they have symptoms, right? Because you want them to find out if they potentially have coronavirus and they take the steps to isolate themselves. And if they don't have insurance, they can't do that, right? Telemedicine is not a thing that really works for the uninsured. And so you want them to do it. It is morally apparent. But if you are one of the nearly 10 million Americans who have, it's actually the number is much higher than that, but at least 10 million Americans who've lost their jobs and you are losing your health insurance with it, the Affordable Care Act allows you to apply for an Affordable Care Act plan under special circumstances. And losing your job

is a special circumstance. So you can still go to healthcare.gov and see what your options are for a plan. And if you're in a state that expanded Medicaid, you can get tremendous financial assistance where the cost of that plan could be de minimis, if not zero. And so I would encourage, like, I think we should tweet out the information about how people do this. But if you are one of those people who is going to lose their health care, because that you have 60 days to apply for an affordable care plan, you now importantly, you may need documentation that you've been laid off. So you should make sure you get that from your employer. But the option is there regardless

of what the Trump administration does with a special enrollment period or not. So a lot of people have been asking, you know, do you think this crisis makes Medicare for all more likely? Because one thing that this has taught us is that when your insurance is tied to your employer and your employer lays you off and then you don't have insurance in the middle of a pandemic that, to say the least, that is not a fucking ideal situation. And, you know, there have been some polls that show sort of support for Medicare for all has been up, you know, since this crisis began. What do you think about this? I mean, it's very hard to speculate about the politics of a piece of legislation on the back end of this pandemic. I think it was without a shadow of a doubt that America would be, and the American people would be in a much better position if we had

universal government provided healthcare right now. Yeah, obviously. Now, so I think that this is a reminder of the arguments that Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and the Medicare for All crowd have been making for a very long time, which is, as you said, when the power to whether you get healthcare or not lies in your employer and insurance companies, then you're always at risk. And that has never been more true than in a historic economic crisis. It's also an important point, though, for everyone who's saying that this is the time to pass Medicare for all is that even under Bernie Sanders' very aggressive timeline, there is a four-year transition. And so this could be a

response to ensure, and I hope people take it on, I hope there's a massive expansion of healthcare in this country. If you could get a single-payer plan, that would be great. If you can't, we should be very clear that the Biden public option plan would protect people in this situation as well. Maybe not to the same extent, but would be a huge improvement of where we currently are. But it is not a response to the immediate crisis right now. It's something we wish we had in place and could be a way to protect people in a future crisis. But right now, people need help and the available help is what the federal government can do for them right now. Yeah, I realize this is like a nuanced answer, which is not satisfying to a lot of people. But like you said, of course, we would be better off

in a single payer system right now. But sort of the main arguments, at least within the Democratic Party over Medicare for all, has never been about sort of the worthiness of the goal of Medicare for all, or the fact that a single payer system would be more efficient and more just. It would. We know that the debate has always been about that transition and about passing the bill in the first place and about funding the bill in the first place and how you do all of those things in a way that is also fair to working and middle class people and, you know, deals with the political realities of our current system. And I hope that at the tail end of this, there is more support, not only among Democrats, but independents and

Republicans as well for a single payer plan for truly universal coverage. But now I find myself wanting to do everything possible to make sure that, like we just said, people know that if you lose your job right now under the ACA, you can still apply and get insurance, that you can apply for Medicaid if you're in states that have expanded Medicaid, that if you're under a certain threshold of income, that you're going to get subsidies to help you pay for insurance on the Affordable Care Act exchanges. Yes, I know this is a Byzantine system. Yes, I know that it's way too complicated, but this is reality right now. This is what we have. And I think it would be really great if everyone just sort of did everything we can to make sure that people have care right now when they absolutely need it. And then, yes, I hope we have a debate

after this and that there is more support for the politically trickier decision to move to a fully single payer system, which again would obviously be better right now. I think just one addendum to that is, like, you are right that the good faith version of that debate is about what is politically feasible right now and how you get to single payer. I think people in the Medicare for All crowd who are approaching this with real seriousness would argue that in the context of the campaign, it didn't always happen in a good faith way. They're totally right. Yeah.

They're totally right. And that is totally right. But the argument between the various people, like policy people thinking about how you get there is about whether you start with something smaller or you go right to something bigger and what the political system can bear. And that's what the debate is. Yeah. I mean, this was my disappointment throughout the primaries. That's a lot of the arguments against Medicare for all were sort of political talking point based arguments and not substantive arguments about

the transition and financing, which I think are legitimate. And I think some of the political arguments were, you know, less legitimate, let's say. Yeah. So that's what Trump isn't doing about the economic crisis. Let's talk about what else Democrats want to do. Nancy Pelosi is already working on another economic relief bill known for some reason as phase four that she would try to pass in the House in late April at the earliest. She's already floated some ideas like more direct payments, more money for hospitals and medical equipment, more paid leave, a big investment in infrastructure jobs, lifting the limits on state and local deductions and a slew of other relief ideas. Mitch McConnell isn't so hot on the idea of a phase four. He said of Pelosi, quote, she needs to stand down. It would take a lot of convincing to convince me.

Dan, what do you think of Pelosi's strategy here of trying to sort of do phase four on her own? What do you think of the timing? And what do you think about some of the ideas that she floated? I think Pelosi is being smart about passing a House bill, right? You want, like last time we had to work off a text that McConnell and Mnookin did with some input from Schumer. But ultimately McConnell held the pen. And I think Pelosi, and I understand all the reasons why Pelosi approached it the way she did last time the House was out, the White House has frozen her out of things. She had already passed a bill. But in this situation, you want the debate between the Trump plan and a plan House Democrats want. That's how divided government should work. And so she should get out there and do it and move the window towards more progressive solutions

focused on middle and working class people. All of the suggestions that are talked about there make sense, even I think to a – I would put this much lower down the priority list, but the lifting of the state and local deduction cap. Because there's a – if you do that and you don't do a lot of things that help middle and working class people, then you have done your job poorly. But you also need to put money in the economy, right? And like, that is a part of stimulus is you need people buying goods and services so that

companies don't shut down and people don't lose their job. I think what I would put as the priorities in a bill, if we were in charge, which we are not, is the bill should have monthly checks to people with a trigger that turns off when the economy hits a certain level. he wants to hold the pen and not have Pelosi hold the pen. But he is correct that with every passing, every time you have to go back, the likelihood of success goes down significantly. And that is what happened in the economic crisis 2008, 2009, why it took much longer to get out of than it should have. And that's true no matter who's in charge. That's one. So the things that we put is monthly checks. I think we need forgiveness for rent payments, mortgage payments, student loan, and potentially others. But those are the three I would put because it is great that many Americans did not have to pay their rent yesterday or pay their mortgage

yesterday or pay their student loan bills, but that money is accruing. And even if it's accruing without interest, most people can't – they don't have the money to make three months from now, three rent payments at the same time. And so unless you offer them some forgiveness, American families are going to get into a hole that they could never get out of. I am concerned that Democrats are thinking too small and too traditional. And I realized that because we've been through this with a stimulus in 2009, the Recovery Act, that one of the challenges for lawmakers who are trying to stimulate the economy in a time of recession is how fast can we get money out the door and in the hands of people? Because to keep the economy going, you just need cash in people's

hands. And there are a number of existing avenues to do that. So unemployment insurance, money to state and local governments, which is very important. Things like lifting tax deductions, right? All this kind of bullshit. It becomes so it's sort of the fastest way to get money out the door. But I don't like we just saw six, six and a half million people file for unemployment, five million last week. I mean, this seems like it is going to be a recession that is deeper and scarier than anything we have ever seen in this country. seen in this country. And when you look to Europe right now, Denmark has agreed to compensate Danish employers for up to 90% of their workers' salaries. In the Netherlands, companies facing a loss of at least 20% of their revenue can apply for the government to cover 90% of the payroll. The UK announced that it would pay up to 80% of the wages for as many companies as needed to help with no cap on the total amount of public spending. Germany even chips in for part time workers. This is all from a New York Times

editorial last week. Like Europe has basically decided that their solution is going to be fairly simple, elegant and very ambitious and big, which is they're just going to pay people to stay home. Right. They're going to shut down the economy artificially and they're going to tell employers don't lay off a single person and we will pay their wages for as long as this goes. And I just can't help but wonder if we should be doing something like that here that is that big and ambitious that people can understand. And I was looking around for what people said about those kinds of proposals. I saw our friend Jason Furman, who was obviously in the Council of Economic Advisors in the Obama White House. You know, he said that what you're doing is attractive in some ways. He worries about some

smaller businesses who have to sort of pony up for their employees on the front end and pay their payroll and maybe don't have the cash to do that and then just wait to get reimbursed by the government. So obviously, I think there are a lot of considerations that go into figuring something like this out. But I worry both from a substantive and a political standpoint that, you know, we as Democrats are going to do what we usually do, which is try to find the most responsible, easy ways to get money out the door. And it ends up looking like a laundry list that no one can understand. And then we both, at the end of the day, weren't ambitious enough and didn't do everything we could to keep people whole during this pandemic. I mean, I think that is probably the starting principle that you outlined here is where everyone should begin, which is the federal government has asked

everyone, in some cases ordered everyone, to stop working and staying home. So because we did that, we are going to spend whatever it takes to keep everyone whole until this is over. And that is a simple principle that, like the implementation of it is quite complicated, so do not get me wrong. I get it. But like if you start there as opposed to a more piecemeal plan of Keynesian economics of putting money in the economy, plus bailouts for specifically affected industries, plus expansion of existing programs.

If you just say, this is our principle, this is what we are going to do. It is in everyone's interest to do that. It is in the interest of people who go into public service to care for middle class and working people, Democrats. It is in the interest of people who go into public service in order to expand their own political power, like Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump. It is in the interest of corporations whose bottom lines depend on people having enough money to buy their goods and services. That is in everyone's interest. And you say, well,

how do we pay for it? We can figure that out on the back end. And if you can decide to do that for a massive tax cut for millionaires and corporations two years ago, you can figure out how to do that now. Because I do think, and I've seen people like Jason talk about this, is the question is not how devastating is this going to be to GDP and unemployment. That is going to be terrible. When you shut down the economy, that is going to be terrible. The question is, how much pain are people going to have while it's happening, and how quickly can we get out of it? And those two questions are interrelated. And if you took a big, giant, aggressive approach, we would come out of this crisis much faster because people would be allowed to leave their homes and they would feel like they had enough

money and economic security to return to their normal lives. If you worked at a restaurant, your restaurant would still be there when you came back, right? If you worked at a hotel, the hotel would still be there when you came back or any small businesses. And then I really think you could come closer to the idea of turning the economy back on if people had that security. And it does bespeak sort of the narrow parameters of policymaking that that's not what the conversation is in this country. Well, it's also I mean, there's another issue here. You know, in the last big economic relief

bill, Democrats were criticized for trying to include a number of provisions that were unrelated to the emergency at hand. Things like, you know, money for the Kennedy Center, emissions restrictions for airplanes, money for Head Start, which is a worthy program. But all the Head Start programs are closed right now. And it wasn't just Republicans doing the criticizing here. Michael Grunwald, who covered the 2009 stimulus bill very well, in fact, wrote a book on it. He reported the other week that one former Obama official looked at the bill and said, what does all this shit have to do with anything?

Do Democrats need to be careful of this next time in phase four? Because I really think we do. Yeah. I mean, everything that you mentioned is incredibly worthy and important. And because politics is so broken primarily by Republicans, the opportunities to do things are so limited that when you see a train leaving the station, you want to put everything on it. Right. But the ability to – like if Pelosi passes a bill, it is going to be a political messaging

battle to convince McConnell and Trump to take as much of that bill as possible. And so you have to protect your flank when you do that. And so like there's going to be trade-offs there about what you put in, what you don't. I think having some overriding big principles that are very specific where the bulk of the bill is a few things, whether it's rent forgiveness, student loan forgiveness, these checks that go on for some people. Whatever those things are that people can understand is going to be much better. Like having five or six, that may be too many, but five or six big things that go to helping ease people's pain is going to

be an easier political battle to win than having 100 things to do it, right? Yeah, well, I mean, it's also important, I think, that whatever Democrats come out with, that it is it draws a stark political contrast with Republican priorities, not just that Republicans like McConnell don't want to do anything, but that they want to help this economy by helping their rich friends with more tax cuts for big companies and all. I mean, that was the other thing that we had to deal with at the last bill is that there were too many goodies for the rich in there. And we had to sign off because it was also a huge amount of relief for working people. And so, of course, it was responsible to to vote for that anyway. the bill in the House, shouldn't it be like a very tight message about Democratic priorities

focused squarely on the crisis at hand and the people who need the money the most and then let McConnell and Trump, you know, either oppose it or propose something ridiculous for big corporations or whatever the fuck they're going to do? Isn't sort of that the best way forward? I mean, Trump was already out there yesterday saying it's interesting the split between Trump and McConnell, which we should talk about is McConnell's like, I don't want to do another bill. And Trump's already saying, well, I want to do a two trillion dollar infrastructure bill. I mean, yes, you're right. And I think it's important that Democrats recognize that the bill they pass is first and foremost a political messaging document. It's both your first offer in what will be a very difficult negotiation with some pretty bad people,

but it's also going to be your message to the country about what governance would look like if Democrats were in charge of the entire government. This is what we would do. This is what we would do in this crisis. And if we had been in charge, and you should put us in charge, then your situation would be better off. And then we will go out and do these things if we were still in this mess come November. I am somewhat sympathetic to how hard the job that Pelosi has in this, which is you're a member and the United is headquartered in – you're a member from Illinois, and United is headquartered in – you're a member from Illinois and United is headquartered in your district. So in the middle of this crisis, you're going to vote for something that doesn't help the biggest – and you think about that not in terms of your campaign contributions first and foremost, but in terms of the thousands of workers in your district who are going to lose their jobs. So it's very hard, and it's always going to be a balance. But you're going to have to lean that balance towards what gives you the strongest hand with McConnell, and that's the cleanest, most easily understood,

most comprehensive approach. Yeah, I just think the biggest danger here is sort of short-term thinking, narrow thinking, small thinking, traditional thinking, and not realizing that the scale of devastation wrought by this crisis could change politics for a generation. It will, like, young people who are graduating college who might not be able to get jobs, people who are going to be out of work for a long time people are going to who are going to lose people in this like it is going to shape people's views of the political system for like 9-11 did like the financial crisis did maybe even more so and more so for sure more so and there's going to be such rage and anger and despair and a lot of it, you know, very, very warranted. And this is a moment for the Democratic Party to make clear that we stand on the side of the people who are going to be struggling for a long time because of this.

And everything we have to do to make that clear, we should do. And like, I, I'm, I get all the, the, the struggles that, that, you know, leaders have in times like this and trying to make government work and we're the responsible party. So we always try to do things responsibly and I get that, but like, I really hope we don't lose the forest for the trees on this one. Yeah. And I'd say one other thing about how Democrats should approach this, which is not just the next bill, but like, like Democrats are in a different place in this crisis than Republicans were in 2008, 2009. Republicans, because they controlled nothing, could sit back, vote against every bill, and

then blame Obama for everything that happened. Democrats control the House and have a responsibility gene. happened. Democrats control the House and have a responsibility gene, so they were never going to take that sort of, frankly, evil approach to helping their Americans. So we have our hand on the knife, right? But what I think is important here is the way to frame this is Democrats worked with Republicans to give the president what the president thought he needed to fix the economy. And he is now responsible for the implementation of that bill. So every bad loan, every giveaway to a special interest, every missed check, that is on Trump. That is on him. And that is where the political – like, we have to watch this like

a hawk. Every single mistake they make, they have to be held accountable for. Because if we don't hold them accountable, they're just going to continue making mistakes and hurting American people. And also, this is the important story to tell about what happens when you put incompetent, narcissistic people who hate government in charge of the government. Yes, this is the whole story. And Trump is uniquely bad at this. But we have seen this from Republicans from time on end. This is Bush fucking up Katrina. This is Bush fucking up Iraq. This is Republicans in the House almost taking the global economy over the dead ceiling. These people cannot be trusted

to be in charge of anything. And we have to make sure that people understand that if they do what we suspect they will do, which is mess it up because they hate helping people, they hate government, and they're really bad at what they do. Yeah. And the only other thing that I, the priority that I think Pelosi and the Democrats have to make sure gets in the next bill is doing something so that people can vote safely in November. And I know that is not directly related to the economics of this, but this is sort of trains leaving the station on this one. And, you know, I'm about to talk to Ben Wickler and what's happening in Wisconsin right now is a preview of what could be happening around the country in November, which is Republican state legislatures and Republicans, you know, trying to do whatever they can to prevent

people from voting, which is what they usually try to do anyway in a lot of these states. And now there's going to be, you know, we could possibly be in a situation where even in November, people are don't feel safe voting. And a lot of that's going to be universal vote by mail in some states that, you know, it's going to be just sort of protecting election workers and voters and everything like that. But I think that Democrats have to demand that that is in the next bill, because if we get to September or October, it's just going to be too late. It's going to be too late to do anything about this. And this is what Wisconsin is realizing right now. And it's going to be hard because it's Trump never bright enough to know what the quiet part is,

what the loud part is. Went on Fox and Friends last week and said, referring to the vote by mail provisions and what the House was talking about, that if they were to happen, Republicans would never win an election again. A state legislative leader in Georgia said the same thing last night, which he opposed vote by mail because it would increase turnout, which means Republicans would lose. I would say two things about that. One, if more people voting means you're going to lose,

maybe reassess your party's agenda. That'd be one. And two, I'm not even sure that's the case in this specific example, because if people who are over the age of 70 do not feel like they can go vote, I'm pretty sure I know which party that would hurt most and it's not ours. I'm pretty sure I know which party that would hurt most and it's not ours yeah so all right that's important um okay on that note when we come back I will be talking to the chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party Ben Wickler on today's pod the chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, Ben Wickler. Ben, how are you and your family doing? We are doing okay. I'm home with three kids who are currently watching Ready Jet Go on PBS Kids.

My wife is working, I'm working, but we're all safe, so we're very grateful. Other than the fact that there's an election in five days in Wisconsin. Yeah, so let's talk about that. You guys have elections scheduled on Tuesday. It's not just the Democratic primary. There are local and state elections, including a close race for the Supreme Court. You and other Democrats and now the governor have all called for postponing these elections since there's a statewide stay at home order. But somehow they're still scheduled. Why? So in Wisconsin, the Republican Party have made an art out of controlling election laws to try to prevent Democrats from voting. And they have at every turn for the last decade tried to stop

young people from voting, people of color from voting. They've done everything they could to restrict voter registration, to restrict people's ability to cast votes in normal ways. And now with this pandemic, they are absolutely refusing to move the election, to mail people ballots, to allow people to request absentee ballots without taking a photo of their voter ID. The wild thing is now they're also suppressing older voters because there are tons of older folks who don't know how to take a photo of their voter ID and upload it to a web form. I'm hearing from clerks that they're getting loads of selfies from old voters trying to request absentee ballots. But I think the GOP, frankly, I worry that when they look at this election, they're also noticing that Democrats are more

aware of the risk of COVID than Republicans. And we can see right now, both of the legislative leaders of the Republican Party are planning to be poll workers and are tweeting about how it's going to be safe because of the safeguards that are put in place. They control the election calendar. They control the date. They control the methods of registering and requesting an absentee ballot. And they're refusing to budge and they're intervening in court every time we at the Democratic Party of Wisconsin,

the DNC, mayors, civil rights groups, county clerks, anyone tries to do anything to make it easier to get an absentee ballot. So what is their, this is obviously their intention is to stop people from voting. We all know that. What's their official excuse that they're giving? Let's see. They've given a bunch. One of them is that changing the rules might be confusing to people, which is extraordinary because this is a moment, if there's any word to describe how

people feel, it's other than scared, it's confused. Polling locations are shutting down en masse because poll workers are dropping out because they're afraid for their health because most of them are older. So Waukesha, the heart of Republican Wisconsin, is going to have only one polling location for a city of 70,000 people. Milwaukee is down from 180 to 10 polling locations. I mean, everything is changing about this election already. And we have 1.1 million absentee ballot requests. The previous record for absentee ballots was in the fall presidential election in 2016. It was 249,000. So there's nothing normal about this.

But nonetheless, they're saying, you know, the process should go forward. We need the pandemic means we should have more democracy, not less. And it would be confusing to folks. They also, in the kind of lower register on, you know, county party Facebook pages and stuff, are accusing Democrats of trying to rig the election by making sure everyone can vote. And I think that goes to the heart of how Republicans see elections, which is they don't see the battlefield as getting more votes. It's who do you stop from voting successfully? So where does the legal fight stand right now? Yesterday, we had the hearing in federal court in the Western District of Wisconsin,

and the DNC, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, a bunch of civil rights groups, the League of Women Voters, all kind of rolled our lawsuits into one and made the case for the civil rights groups had standing to argue to postpone it. We argued for a bunch of changes to absentee ballots in support of the other group's claims. The judge basically said, look, this is on the legislature and governor. And frankly, you know, the governor would be more than happy to make voting accessible to everybody. It's the Republicans who are refusing to do anything in our state legislature. So he was mad. He said he didn't think he had the power to move the election. I am very hopeful that he'll grant some relief to stuff like being able to return an absentee ballot with a postmark on election day instead

of having it be received by election day, which would make life a lot easier for a lot of folks trying to vote. But he said he doesn't, he thinks he doesn't have the power to wholesale move the election day. So we're waiting for his ruling. And in the meantime, right now it's Thursday, April 2nd at 5 p.m. Central time today, it's the deadline to request an absentee ballot online. So even as the fight moves in the courts, we're doing everything we can to make sure people know how to request an absentee ballot. And we're just calling, texting, reaching out on Facebook, everything we can possibly do to make sure people know how to fill them out. Right now, they have to get a witness signature to cast an absentee ballot, kind of hard during social distancing if you live alone,

and then to help folks get those sent in before the deadline. So that's really important. So if you're listening right now and you're Wisconsin or you know someone in Wisconsin, it's 5 p.m. Central. Tonight is the deadline to request an absentee ballot. So say the judge does not postpone the election. You talked a little bit about how you're trying to push for expanded mailing voting. What are some of the other things you guys are trying to do to make the election work as best as possible if it is on Tuesday? So the Elections Commission has been working with public health experts to try to make in-person voting as safe as possible. They are

working in Wisconsin. Elections are administered by municipal clerks, we have 1850 of them across the state. So they have been training them, they've been, you know, finding personal protective equipment, sanitizer wipes, there's a PDF you can go through explaining that you should wipe down, you know, every surface people might touch every 10 to 15 minutes, there's all these things they're trying to do. So, you know, I hope that makes a difference. Poll workers are dropping out so much that the governor is now ready to deploy the National Guard to be poll workers on election day on Tuesday, which is, you know, younger than the average poll worker. But that that looks like part of how we'll close the gap there. Polling

locations have been consolidated. There are some cities that are offering drive-through voting. And in Milwaukee, there's actually drive-through absentee ballot witnessing. So you can pull up, someone will witness your absentee ballot, and then you can drop it off without getting out of your car. The guidance is for any clerk to allow people with symptoms who pull up to do drive-through voting. That'll be dependent, frankly, on how many poll workers they have to be able to process people inside and outside. And then what we're doing at the party is this just massive onslaught of pushing and supporting people doing absentee voting. There's a very proud tradition in Wisconsin of voting in person. We have same-day voter registration. That's been a big part of how elections work here.

voter registration. That's been a big part of how elections work here. All of our efforts are on voting by mail. And the mayor of Milwaukee, actually, he's on the ballot and he said, I don't want you to vote in person on Tuesday. This is unlike any election that I think anyone alive has ever seen. And it's happening in five days. Can you talk about why the Supreme Court election is so important? I think a lot of folks around the country look at this and they're like, well, other states have moved their primary. You know, the primary is less competitive now. Who really cares? But it seems like there's a very competitive Supreme Court election that's important on Tuesday. It has nothing to do with the primary.

Can you tell us a little bit about that? What happens between now and Tuesday with absentee votes and in-person votes will affect whether Trump is reelected in November. It's as simple as that. And the reason is that our state Supreme Court is going to rule on voting rights issues potentially multiple times between now and November that will affect who can cast a ballot to defeat Donald Trump. And whether Wisconsin goes blue or red could tilt the entire electoral college. So the way this works is our state right now, it has a 5-2 Republican, frankly, Republican majority, even though it's nonpartisan. These are Republican operatives on the state Supreme Court. Dan Kelly is kind of the worst, well, hard to say, one of the worst of the bunch. He sort of made his career by defending Scott Walker in corruption investigations and then defending gerrymandered maps in court. He was an appointed.

What a resume. Yeah. Right. Obviously, clearly someone dedicated to justice. Scott Walker then appointed him to fill a vacancy on the state Supreme Court. So this is the first time that he's faced voters. I have a mailing that I could grab from Americans for Prosperity that calls him independent, tough, and fair. That's what they send to people like me.

Obviously, they're sending a different message to other folks. But the reason the Koch brothers are behind him is the same reason that Trump endorsed him at his last rally in Wisconsin, which is that they want him to cast votes for things like purging voters from the voter rolls in Wisconsin. The case where this right-wing group sued to get 234,000 voters purged was petitioned up to the Supreme Court, and it deadlocked there. One Republican crossed over. Dan Kelly recused himself because I can only assume he knew it would be explosive for him to purge voters in his own election. He has now said to reporters that he would consider unrecusing himself after the

election, which there was a whole story about this where law professors said they'd never seen a judge unrecuse themselves from a case. But nonetheless, that is his pledge. And that is why I think Republicans see this as a path to rig the election to try to get Donald Trump into office. And it makes it hugely high stakes. And we are, even in this virtual environment, where people are trying to figure out how to make ends meet and get through the day, we are doing this incredibly

intensive virtual organizing operation to try to get every possible Democrat to cast an absentee ballot and vote for Jill Karofsky, who is great, who is running to unseat Dan Kelly. So thinking about November, what has all of this taught you about how Wisconsin and other states should get ready for a presidential election that could be held in the middle of a pandemic? The most important thing, and this is a hard fight, is to get universal vote by mail. Our governor called for everyone to be mailed a ballot, every registered voter. We have pushed for that. Democrats in our legislature are ready to do it. Republicans clearly see that as a threat. Trump said in a press conference that it would cause levels of voting that would mean no Republican would ever get elected, which is an incredible tell. Saying the quiet part out loud. any county or municipality where that's possible to do legally, and the whole country if we can

fight to make it happen. That would make the biggest difference just to make democracy actually function. It would move us a lot closer to having a real legitimate democracy in the United States of America. There are also a lot of other things we have to do. And the first is we have to get really good at virtual organizing. Right now, on this day, I was expecting to be out knocking on doors in every part of the state. We've had these neighborhood action teams we've been building since the spring of 2017 who were ready to mobilize a vast field operation to have neighbors talking to neighbors at their doorsteps.

That is our most powerful tool. It is totally off the table right now. And we are now, we're using phone calls, auto dialers, peer-to-peer text messages, relational organizing tools, friend banking, we're doing all these things. I know that groups are doing handwritten postcard campaigns, every possible medium that you can contact someone without interacting with them, we're using. And we're about to learn a lot about what things make the biggest difference. We've got to hone this art

to a fine point during the time between now and November, because it might be that in November, the thing that Democrats have always been strongest at relative to Republicans, the face-to-face conversations, might not be possible. And we have to invent other ways to make sure that we have the advantage on the ground game. And then we've got to overtop Republicans with meme warfare, because they are still coming really strong on that front. Yeah, how do you think about sort of underserved and rural areas where people and voters might not be as online as other places in a world where you have to organize like this? There are places in Wisconsin that don't have cell phone service, that don't have broadband internet. There are communities, especially communities of color that are most at the

economic margins that don't have access. Most people don't have access to printers and to things that you need to do by mail. What everyone still has is postal mail service. And one thing that that means is that making sure people get stuff in the mail, making sure that you find ways to reach out to people and help them to respond to things by mail, that can make an enormous difference. And I think we can't leave the oldest technology in the world. We can't leave that out in our planning. But that said, there are a lot of folks with landlines. You can call those landlines. Make sure that you have cell phones.

The DNC has been doing a lot of investing in getting fresh cell phone data so that you can text people. Texts have an enormous amount of reach. You just have to use every tool in the arsenal. And one of the things that I like about absentee ballots, at least in Wisconsin, is we can see who's requested them. We get the list every day. And that means we actually know the list of people and we can also see who's returned them. So we can go through that list and just over and over and over reach

out to everybody and ask them to fill it out, send it in, call them if they need help, see if someone needs to drive by and pick up their absentee ballot wearing gloves, like whatever it takes to get those absentee ballots in. So last question, it was just announced just before we started that the Democratic Convention, which is supposed to be held in Milwaukee, will now be postponed until August 17th. You feel good about that? I think it's a great and clear decision. And I've been in touch with a bunch of the folks today. The commitment that they have is one, to make sure that the convention is safe, and two, that it is Wisconsin-y. And if we do those two things, we can launch our nominee in the tipping point state and whatever the public health conditions are, we're going to do this in a way

that sets us up for November. All right, I'll let you go. But I guess what should anyone who's listening to this who is sort of freaked out by, you know, I guess what should anyone who's listening to this, who is sort of freaked out by everything you've just said about what's going on in Wisconsin for Tuesday, how can people help? So three things that I want to ask Pod Save America listeners to do. The first is if you're in Wisconsin or if you're not, tweet the link to request an absentee ballot, myvote.wi.gov. Post it on Facebook, actually, especially post it on Facebook, post it on anything you can, text it to anyone you know who might know someone who lives in

Wisconsin. We have to push that out. The second thing is if you have a minute, an hour, five days to volunteer, go to wisdems.org slash volunteer, fill out our form, and we'll start shifting you into slots, especially to phone bank to help people walk, to walk people through the process of getting their ballots filled out. And the last thing, I know a lot of people are in economic free fall right now. So not everyone is in a position to donate. If you are one of the lucky people who is, there are actually less people doing it and your money goes further. So if you go to wisdems.org forward, there's a page that we have up right now for this push, wisdems.org forward, and chip in a few bucks or make a recurring donation.

We're trying to figure out how we go the distance for these five days and through November. And knowing that we have resources to count on allows us to keep on expanding and keep our foot on the gas in the same way that Trump is doing on the other side. All right, everyone, do what Ben says. And good luck on Tuesday, man. I'm very glad that you're the one running the show out there. So stay safe, stay healthy. And thanks for joining us. Thank you so much. Thanks to Ben for joining us today and uh you know enjoy your quarantine everyone we will uh stay safe and healthy out there stay home don't be like uh you know ron desantis and and brian kemp and those idiots um and we will uh we'll see you on monday bye everyone Bye, everyone. Pod Save America is a product of Cricket Media.

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