Pod Save America - “Norway, if you’re listening.”

Episode Date: June 13, 2019

The President says he’d accept foreign assistance to win in 2020, Democrats hold contempt votes over the Census scandal, Joe Biden and Donald Trump tear into each other, and Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders deliver two big speeches. Then Congresswoman Ilhan Omar talks to Ana Marie Cox about her new plan to relieve student debt.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Later in the pod, you'll hear the conversation that Congresswoman Ilhan Omar had with Anna Marie Cox during last Friday's Pod Save America in Minneapolis. Before all that, we've got a lot of news to talk about, from the president saying he'd accept foreign assistance to win in 2020, to his feud with Joe Biden, to a couple of big speeches delivered by Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders. You should also check out this week's episode of Pod Save the World,

where Tommy and Ben dig into Mayor Pete's speech, all the foreign policy there, and also talked about the huge protests in Hong Kong and Russia. On Friday, we'll release Tommy's interview with Andrew Yang as a bonus Pod Save America. Yang was here at Cricket headquarters the other day. And big news about our Los Angeles show at the Greek Theater on August 17th. We'll be joined by Emmy Award-winning journalist Jamel Hill. There will be special performances by Amanda Seals, Best Coast, and Jim James. And proceeds from the show will be donated to four organizations that are protecting your right to vote. Vote.org, Election Protection, the National Redistricting Foundation, and Think Social Impact. So, go get your tickets now at Crooked.com slash The Greek.

It's going to be a great show in August. Alright, let's get to the news. On Wednesday, the President of the United States made it clear that he will gladly collude with foreign governments if they're willing to help him win the 2020 election. When Trump was asked by George Stephanopoulos whether his campaign would accept damaging information on his 2020 opponent from countries like China or Russia, he said the following, quote, I think you might want to listen. There isn't anything wrong with listening. If somebody called from Norway and said, we have information on your opponent, oh, I think I'd want to hear it.

Norway and said, we have information on your opponent. Oh, I think I'd want to hear it. And when Stephanopoulos reminded Trump that FBI Director Chris Wray said that anyone in possession of such information should alert the FBI, Trump said, quote, the FBI director is wrong. Dan, what are the implications of what Trump is saying here? I think we ought to put this in perspective first, which is, you know, the people who commit crimes, take selfies of themselves committing crimes, and then post those selfies on the internet and then wonder why they're in police custody. That's what this is. This is the United States promising to commit a crime, saying that if I have given the opportunity to commit a crime and accepting anything of value, whether it's money or information

from a foreign source, is a crime. And the president said that he would commit a crime and he would not tell the FBI about it. It's also, I know this is weird to say, but it's more than a crime. I mean, the president is willing to betray the country he took an oath to protect and betray the Constitution, betray his oath of office in order to win an election. Because everything comes back to Donald Trump, who will do whatever it takes to win, whatever it takes to enrich himself, whatever it takes to make it all about Trump. He will do anything.

He will commit crimes. He will betray his country. He doesn't give a shit. And look, by saying this publicly, by doing this out in the open, Kendall Indian at NBC tweeted, Trump is essentially inviting foreign intelligence services to spy on his political adversaries and send him information. If you were the Chinese government, if you were the Russian government, if you were any other government that out there that wishes us harm, why wouldn't you take Trump's statement as a green light

to use your spy services to hack into more Democrats' emails, to spy on us, to do whatever it takes to steal more information and fuck with our next election? Why wouldn't you do that? Because you know the President of the United States said he is willing to receive that information. That's right. Trump is an incredibly transactional human. His very close relationship with Saudi Arabia isn't just based on whatever financial interest he has in Saudi Arabia. It's also based on the fact that they projected an image of him on a building when he went there and he was flattered by it. Countries are getting federal benefits and favorable policy decisions because they are spending money at Trump hotels,

because they say nice things about him. And so obviously, if you want to curry favor with Trump, what better way to do it than help him get reelected? It is a tiny investment with a huge payoff for any country who has a real stake in Trump being president over a Democrat come 2021. I mean, the president of the United States is a serious national security threat to the country. That's where we are right now. It's not a fucking exaggeration. He is a national security threat and one of the world's dumbest criminals. I mean, question for you. If you were working for a Democratic presidential candidate right now, would you say or do anything in response to this aside from what many of them did last night, which is tweet out, you know, reiterate their calls for impeachment via tweet or statement?

I mean, if I haven't done it already, I would put two-factor authentication on all of my phones and get all of my staff to start using Signal or other encrypted apps because the threat is coming. I don't know. There's not much else you can do other than, I think, what these candidates did. I do think that there is something more important than the tweet of the moment or the statement of the moment about this. It is to use this as an opportunity to tell a bigger story about just how dangerous a moment we were in in American democracy. And that is a story that I'm not sure any candidate has yet hit on that, that covers, that encompasses the gravity

of the moment, the stakes for our country and what could happen going forward if Trump were to win. And I think that this is as good a reason to tell that story as there is. And I hope candidates do that. Yeah. I mean, I, for some reason I started thinking about this last night, like if this was 08 and this was happening, and I feel like we all would have gotten on a call last night. And then today, Obama might have gone out and given a speech or at least, you know, a topper on a speech or an insert in a speech where he sort of laid out, you know, it's not just about impeaching Trump at this point. It is about the fact that the president of the United States is a national security threat, that we now cannot be sure that we will have fair and free elections in 2020 because the president has refused to defend our electoral system. And Mitch McConnell, by the way,

has blocked every single piece of bipartisan election security legislation that has come through the Senate right now. And if I was one of the candidates running for president who was a senator who had some power, I would do whatever it took. And I would call up Chuck Schumer and say, like, let's shut the Senate down until we pass some election security bills. Or I don't know if they can shut it down, but let's make a big deal of this. It's one of these moments where we can all flip out on Twitter about it. We can say, I'm going to impeach him, impeach him, which we're going to get to. But there's something

bigger at stake here, which is the sanctity of our elections. And I do think that probably matters to the American people even more than this debate over impeachment. to the American people even more than this debate over impeachment. And you're correct that it is the sanctity of this specific election. And that is obviously incredibly critical. We've had one election interfered with in our very recent past. But I think there's even something bigger than that. It is about more than one specific threat to an upcoming election. It is an idea that the president of the United States can go on national television, invite foreign countries and other outside players to interfere in our elections to essentially

suggest that he is open for business, for criminal conduct, and that there is no accountability for that. business, for criminal conduct, and that there is no accountability for that. If that is to be rewarded by the voters, either on the level or not on the level, depending on if we can protect our elections, but if that is to be rewarded and that is allowed to continue, that is a setback to American democracy that we may not come back from. How our government operates, how our country thinks of itself, as imperfect as it has been in its history, is something that will forever be different. That is like what is at stake in this election. And I think that that is all these individual things that we talk about

here, whether it's what Trump said, what Mitch McConnell is doing, what we're going to talk about in the census in a minute, are proof points for a larger threat that extends well beyond this election. And that would, I think, be the message that would come out of the hypothetical call that we would have if this were the 08 campaign. And that is the story that I think the candidate who can weave all of this in together into a broader story that's about more than just Donald Trump, but it's about this moment of danger in American democracy as I think the candidate who has the best chance of succeeding. Yeah. And it's about the fact that democracy is at stake right now, that nothing less than our democracy is at stake

in all the ways it is. And you see a couple of different candidates sort of dancing around this. You know, I mean, we're going to talk about Bernie's speech. He kind of gets there from the economic standpoint, as does Elizabeth Warren. You heard Joe Biden talk about it in Iowa when he said the president's a national security threat. You hear Beto O'Rourke talk about it all the time when he says, you know, we're going to lose our democracy if we don't impeach him. But none of them have really sort of put all of the puzzle pieces together and into a one argument about how, you know, under Donald Trump, our foreign policy, our democracy, everything is up for sale and up for grabs. Because know, under Donald Trump, our foreign policy, our democracy, everything is up for sale and up for grabs. Because if you flatter Donald Trump, if it means that Donald

Trump can win something, if it means that Donald Trump can get richer, then it happens. If it doesn't, then fuck you, right? Like every it's he again, he ran on an America first policy. And really, it's Trump first and everyone else last. That's that seems to be the message. And it's, you know, I think it could be a powerful message. And also, like, the moment we're in is very dangerous, and people should call that out. Should this move more Democratic House members towards impeachment? It should. If the evidence is what was going to be the factor that moved Democrats to impeachment, there would be impeachment inquiries right now. There is more than enough evidence.

There are crimes and corruption and abuses of power. There are crimes and misdemeanors high and low all over the place that are a very obvious, very credible pretext for an impeachment inquiry. So I don't know that another piece of evidence is going to move us there. know that another piece of evidence is going to move us there. I watched Nancy Pelosi's press conference that she did just a few minutes ago, and she seemed no closer to impeachment than she was last week or the week before that. You would think there'd be some movement, but we have an entire 400-page report, which is essentially an impeachment inquiry wrapped in a bow, and that hasn't moved House Democrats in the right direction yet. So color me skeptical. Yeah, I mean, look, I saw, you know, our friend Neera Tanden on Twitter last night saying, you know,

don't yell at Pelosi about this. Impeachment is not about removing Trump for office. It's not going to stop this. It's not going to stop him from accepting foreign information in 2020. And she's right about that. accepting foreign information in 2020. And she's right about that. But I also think that this is a moment when we have to do everything we can do

and use every tool that we have and sort of, again, focus the country's attention on just what this president, not just what this president did in the past and the crimes he committed in the past, but what he may do in the future. And I think impeachment is sort of the last best tool we have to do that right now. And I also think that, look, the strategy of conducting a whole bunch of investigations and oversight of

Donald Trump, I understand that strategy. I understood it when Nancy Pelosi first started that strategy. I disagreed with it, but I understood where she was coming from. That strategy has failed. It's been a couple months now. It has failed. They had a hearing earlier this week. They had John Dean at the hearing, you know, former Nixon counsel. They had a couple other federal prosecutors who believed that, you know, Donald Trump should be impeached. All people who, by the way, have been saying this for a long time on cable news, so it was like nothing new there, didn't get that much attention. The Democrats keep thinking

when they win these court victories here and there that that's somehow moving the process forward. But again, this isn't about the process. This is about sort of the communication strategy. And it's about sort of who's owning the message here and who's taking up all who's owning the message here and who's taking up all the oxygen the media oxygen and there's no message getting through from the democrats right now there's no message on either why the president united states is unfit for office and should be

impeached or a message on health care and all the other issues the democrats say they want to focus on so right now we're getting the worst of all worlds. I just don't see that this strategy is bearing fruit in any way. Do you? No, it is not. You're right. The alternative approach that Pelosi and the Democratic leadership offered after the Mueller report came out was, on paper, a credible alternative approach.

You don't have to agree with it, but an idea of a long series of high-profile hearings would get a credible alternative approach. You don't have to agree with it, but an idea of a long series of high-profile hearings would get a lot of attention as a potential pretext to impeachment inquiry was credible. But that has not happened. That cannot happen. That is not going to happen. And therefore, we are living in a world where the press coverage is about why Democrats are afraid to impeach Trump and Bill Barr, Lindsey Graham, and Donald Trump running an aggressive act of public investigation to try to discredit the Mueller investigation. And so there is no argument that the Democrats are making that's

consistent, and that argument is not getting through. So the only options here, in my view, are we have to either begin impeachment inquiries and have that argument on a wide array of issues, as we have talked about, that go above and beyond what was ensconced in the Mueller report, or move on. Because having a debate about impeachment every day is the worst of all worlds. It is the exact world the Republicans were in in 1998 with Bill Clinton when they got their asses handed to them in the election. It is that they had voted to launch an impeachment inquiry, held no hearings, delivered no message, made no argument, and then got destroyed in the polls. And Bill Clinton's approval rating ended up going up to like 73. Then got destroyed in the polls and Bill Clinton's approval rating ended up going up to like 73. And so now if there are voters who are upset at the mere idea of impeachment, we've put that on the table.

But if there are voters who could be persuaded by the evidence that would be unveiled in an impeachment inquiry, that is not happening. Those voters will not be persuaded. So the whole thing is stupid and frustrating. And the pressure mounts every day only in the sense that Trump gives you more ammunition to the pro-impeachment side of this argument every time he opens his mouth. Yeah. And look, and the polls bear this out, too. I mean, there was a new poll out yesterday that said 44% of the American people are now in favor of impeachment, but only 30% believe that impeachment proceedings should begin. Only 30 percent believe that impeachment proceedings should begin. So the 44 percent think he deserves impeachment and 32 percent believe that impeachment hearings should begin.

Among Democrats, 85 percent of Democrats believe that Donald Trump deserves to be impeached. 60 percent, 62 percent believe that impeachment proceedings should begin. That gap right there is the fucking Democratic consultant gap between every as everyone is a pundit now right where people believe the president should be like someone made this point i think adam jenelson made this point on twitter yesterday harry reid's former w chief of staff um that you cannot find one democratic member of congress right now who believes that donald trump should not be impeached every single one of them are unanimous in believing that Donald Trump should be impeached. And yet they are all too afraid to actually vote to begin impeachment proceedings because they don't want to do the hard work of going back to their districts

and convincing their voters, convincing the people that they represent, that even if you're not with us on impeachment, even if you think that this proceeding is a bad idea, it's the right thing to do. It's a good idea. And I'm willing to make the case for it. They're not willing to do that and so but i agree with you like if they're not willing to do that then just tell us just you know what get up at a fucking press conference and say we all believe that this president deserves to be impeached but we are too afraid to do it because

we looked at the polls and we don't think you agree with it so we're all moving on just say that i'd at least respect that there is a true a truism in politics that you can never win an argument when you're arguing against the thing you believe. And so if the Democratic position is, we believe Donald Trump should be impeached, but we're going to try to convince the people that he shouldn't be impeached, you're going to lose that argument. There is no moral or rhetorical or political force behind that argument. And that is where they are. And it's essentially a strategic decision to decide to live in the worst of all worlds. Yeah, it's bad. Let's talk more about how the Democrat strategy of investigating instead

of impeaching is working. On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee voted to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt of Congress. The vote came after the president invoked executive privilege to block the disclosure of documents and information relevant to the Trump administration's decision to add a question about citizenship to next year's census. One clue about their reasoning for why they added this question came from evidence found on the computer of a recently deceased Republican strategist who suggested that rigging

the census with a citizenship question could, quote, be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites. The Supreme Court will be deciding on the legality of the question this month. Dan, you talked to Ari Berman of Mother Jones about this on the pod a few weeks ago. Can you remind us why a citizenship question would be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites. And talk about why in general this is such a big deal. So the census is used to do many things, but it is designed to help us decide where people live so we can therefore allocate political power proportional to the population. So the census results, which happen

every 10 years, are used to decide how many electoral votes every state has, how many congressional seats those states have, how the power, how the congressional seats and the state legislative seats are allocated within those states. And so therefore, it's critically important that it be accurate. And the census itself estimates that there would be a 6% undercount if this question is added. And that's because a lot of people who will decide not to respond to the census, particularly in communities of color, where people have very legitimate fears about how that information would be used against them with this president.

And so what that means is that communities of color, which are traditionally democratic, will be undercounted and therefore receive less political power. And if that were to happen, that means that our government will be operating based on a false premise for a decade. There is not any easy or obvious way to fix this if this is allowed to happen. This is very specifically designed, as indicated in these documents that were found on this Republican's computer, that say that obviously if communities of color do not respond at the right rate, then they will have less political power, and that will shift the political power in favor of more white and traditionally Republican areas.

Yeah. I mean, and let's talk about what this is really about, too. This is about counting undocumented immigrants as part of the census, which the census is supposed to be a count of all persons in the United States, there's a reason that undocumented immigrants are part of that is because they are human beings and people in this country who pay taxes, who own homes, who work, right? Like, we need a count of all the people in this country. It's not saying that, you know, they should have voting rights if they're undocumented, but they need to be counted as people. Because by the way, they live in communities with other people, with American citizens too. And if those communities aren't counted correctly, then those communities filled with immigrants, undocumented immigrants, American citizens, whoever, will have less political power in this country. They will

have less federal resources in this country. And so, you know, the communities that will be undercounted, the states where they will be undercounting are states with large minority populations like California, Texas, New Mexico, Nevada, Georgia, New York, Florida. They think those are the states that would be most undercounted. Those states will lose federal resources. They will lose representation in Congress. They will lose electoral power. The Republicans know this. They know that those are not traditionally, most of them, Republican states. And so they are happy to sap those states of political power and federal resources. If you live in one of those states or you live in a community that is diverse,

you could be affected here. It's a very, very big deal. And there's a very specific point you said about federal resources, which I think is important, which is the overall population per community is how a lot of federal funding is allocated. It's allocated by population. So if a population has – if a community has 1 million people, it will get X federal dollars for education or healthcare or homeland security. And if it has 2 million people, it'll get 2x the funding. And so if that number is wrong, then that is going to affect, as you point out, will affect everyone in that community. So just be very specific. This is about more than just who gets to vote. It is about the education, healthcare, and welfare of the entire community,

not just the non-citizens in that community, which includes a large number of people who are here completely legally with the permission and understanding of the federal government. That's exactly correct. Yeah, these are not like all undocumented immigrants in the shadows. These are people who have green cards. These are people, you know, but if you provide your information, your personal information to the federal government, especially this federal government that's deporting people left and right

without much regard to, you their status sometimes then yeah you would be afraid to to fill out the census um so will this contempt vote have any practical effects and what else can the democrats do here especially if the supreme court rules in favor of trump what is the point of this whole exercise? We're fucked. I mean, like, there is not an obvious or easy solution. The contempt vote is mildly helpful. It can sometimes be a way to force negotiation around some of these additional documents. And I actually worked with the Judiciary Committee's contempt citation on William Barr as related to the Mueller report. But we have to be very clear about what is happening here. The rigging of the census is part of a very specific, long-term plot by conservatives in this country to ensure that a shrinking, plutocrative,

conservative minority rules a growing, diverse, populist, progressive majority. That is what this is about. That is as we are quickly headed to a world where there are more Democrats and Republicans living in this country, they'll have more political power if their votes are allowed to count, if their population is allowed to count, and they are trying to stop that. It is what voter suppression is about. It is what gerrymandering is about. It's what stealing Merrick Garland's Supreme Court seat is about. And that's what this is about. And I really wish there was an easy solution. That was the hardest part about my conversation with Ari Berman, who has been screaming from the rooftops about this for

a long time, is that there is not an easy or obvious solution if the Republicans are allowed to rig the census. I mean, essentially, maybe a Democratic Senate, Democratic president could redo the census, but that would be something that would be entirely unprecedented in the history of time. And I think what the Democrats are trying to do here, all they can do is, you know, use this information to build that case for impeachment, as we've been talking about, that it's not just the Mueller report. It's a lot of other things. Because if, you know, the Supreme Court can decide how the Supreme Court decides, the Supreme Court, which is now filled with, you know, partisan Republicans

as well. But, you know, if the Congress can at least expose more documents like the one found on this deceased Republican strategist's computer, it says they didn't add the citizenship question to the census in order to enforce the Voting Rights Act, which is their excuse. But they did it because they just wanted to rig the census so that Republicans gain more political power. Then perhaps they can expose the corruption at the heart of the Republican Party. And this will add to the argument for why Donald Trump should is unfit for office and should be impeached. That's sort of the best case scenario here, which, again, is not the greatest case because they could still get their citizenship question. And we're not. And we have an open impeachment inquiry.

Right. Of course. No, because the investigations are going to handle themselves. It's just going to magically win the election for the Democrats. All right, let's talk about 2020. Joe Biden and Donald Trump sucked up most of the oxygen in this week's news cycle by going after each other on the campaign trail in Iowa. Biden tore into Trump on tariffs, taxes, health care, foreign policy, and just about everything else, saying that the president is, quote, literally an existential threat to America.

Trump's been telling his staff to call Biden old, feeble, and stupid. And on Tuesday, he said, quote, he's a different guy. He looks different than he used to. He acts different than he used to. He's even slower than he used to be. Dan, besides this tit for tat, than he used to. He acts different than he used to. He's even slower than he used to be. Dan, besides this tit for tat making you want to blast yourself into outer space,

what did this exchange tell us about the strategies of these two candidates? So for Trump, it says that he wants to rerun the 2016 campaign against Biden. He wants to paint him as a corrupt member of the establishment. He wants to use unfounded rumors. And dog whistles also suggest his opponent is unwell or infirm, which is ironic as all get out, given Trump's age and his infirmities. But that is what he's trying to do. He is rerunning the exact same play. And the only question is whether Democrats and many in the media who uncritically echoed Trump's rumor mongering and false statements will learn any lessons from 2016. We are living in Groundhog Day meets end of tomorrow. And it's fucking annoying for Biden.

Like this is, this is what he wants. Biden wants to, if he can just fight with Trump until Super Tuesday, that is great for him. It elevates him above the rest of the field. It allows him to continue to communicate the currently held perception among a lot of voters

that he is the most electable Democrat. And it avoids him having to respond. If he is battling the person that Democrats hate most in Trump, that is much easier than battling a bunch of other people, whether it's Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders or Kamala Harris, who Democrats really like. And so this is Trump fighting with Biden is an in-kind contribution to the Biden for president campaign. So let me ask, what did you think of Biden's message? Right. So that's the that's definitely the strategy. That's what the Biden folks are thinking. How how effective do you think it played out at least this week? I mean, as a message to ensure that Biden maintains the lead in the Democratic primary, it was effective.

He just sort of opened the kitchen sink against Trump and said as many things about Trump as he possibly could. All right. Like all correct in that Trump is an existential threat. He's a now security threat. He's bad. He's corrupt. All of that is correct and good messaging and not that different from what most Democrats say about him. And I don't know that he has fully captured what the best general election message is against Trump. Right now he's sparring with a hologram of Trump for the thrills and likes of Democratic voters when he has to actually try to persuade either non-voters becoming voters or independents or soft Republicans to vote for him. That's a different question. that's a different question. And I think that's a different challenge. I think he has to be much more specific and concise about. I had a worrying flashback to, uh, any number of Hillary Clinton speeches in 2016, where

she would get up there and give an entire speech about how Donald Trump is a racist or how Donald Trump is a threat to national security. And she would make most of the speech entirely about Donald Trump. And it would just hammer him on every single issue under the sun. And they were usually well-written speeches and they got great applause. And I will fully admit, I was one of the people that when she'd give that speech, you'd be like, yeah, she got them. Great. And then, you know, he'd say whatever he said about Hillary Clinton and the headlines would look and the leads and all the newspapers would look just like they did this week. You know, Hillary and Hillary and Trump traded barbs and they went back and forth on each other and blah, blah, blah. And there's just something about it where I don't know that the Democrat who gets sucked into this vortex going into a back and forth with

Trump actually succeeds in getting his or her message out beyond the message that Trump is bad. And, you know, there was a woman interviewed at the end of the New York Times piece about this, who said, we all know we don't like Trump. I want to hear Biden talk more about his plans. And look, this is a very, this is not an easy thing to fix. This is, you know, like for the people who are in this campaign, they're all smart people. It's not easy to figure out your way out of this because like you said, it does help Biden. It elevates Biden to go one-on-one with Trump here. But at the same time, I think this moment requires very creative communication strategies and messaging to sort of figure out how to pick the lock on how to deal with Trump. And I don't, you know, if I was in the Biden

campaign and Trump was out there calling me, you know, old and feeble and all these other kind of names, you could say something like, you know, of course he's talking about me because he doesn't want to talk about the people who are suffering from his trade war. He doesn't want to talk about the people who lost their health insurance because he sabotaged Obamacare. He doesn't want to talk about the children that he ripped away from families. You know, he doesn't care about the people in this country. He only cares about himself.

He only cares about winning reelection so he can make more money. You know, like there's got to be a way to sort of respond to Trump without making it a fight between you and Trump. I think that's right. It's a hard challenge because the incentives in the primary push you entirely in the wrong direction. Yes. Like it is a huge benefit. Like if any one of these other candidates who are well behind Biden or some of the other Yes. to pick a fight with Trump to help yourself in the Democratic primary, even if it's just a very tactical thing like generating some virality before the fundraising deadline in a couple of weeks, is very appealing. And it's just different than the incentives you need to – or different than the strategies and tactics you need to defeat Trump in the actual general election.

This is why Kirsten Gillibrand did her campaign kickoff outside of Trump headquarters, which is a – like it's an idea that seems clever on its face, but it's actually a perfect metaphor for all the struggles the Democratic Party has had trying to get its message out in the Trump era, which is allowing him to define the four corners of the conversation. The Democrats who I think have been most successful beneath Biden are the ones who have spent the least amount of time talking about Trump, or at least trying to pick a fight with him. And that would be Elizabeth Warren and Mayor Pete have really don't talk about him that often, or at least Warren doesn't talk, rarely talks about him. Pete talks about him more in sort of an analysis of the political situation and talks about him. And he does talk about him in saying how he's not going to talk about him in terms of like his change the channel line. But just like going toe to toe with Trump, like those, like a boxer or it just it's not this is not a gladiator match it's not the way to do it

but where biden is in the campaign right now he doesn't yet have all of his plans laid out this is a place to go and the temptation of trump being in the state at the same time was probably too much to pass and i don't't like, it makes sense tactically. The question is, is this going to be, is this a tactic or is this the strategy? And we'll know that over the course of time. Yeah. I think the temptation is like, you know, it's a, it's a sugar rush. Like you said, in the short term, you get, you get coverage, you get tweets, maybe Trump attacks you, you send out a fundraising email, you get some money. Maybe Trump attacks you, you send out a fundraising email, you get some money.

But in the long term, if you do it too much, I think it sort of degrades your brand as a campaign and who you are and what you stand for. And you become defined as opposition to Trump and not who you are and what you stand for. So I think I can see it being useful in certain circumstances, but I think it's a very dangerous well to go to too many times. I just want to say one more thing about this, which is when someone is challenging an incumbent, the conventional wisdom of the strategy is that you want to make it a referendum on the incumbent as opposed to a choice between two candidates. And it is the incumbent's interest to make it a choice. Right. I think in this election against Trump, that needs to be flipped on its head, and that the Democratic nominee wants it to be a choice between two candidates. Because we talk about Trump all the time. And I don't mean we, Positive America, but the entire country.

All of Trump's flaws and the consequences of having his president are all there for the eye to see. You're not going to reveal some piece of information the public doesn't have. The question is, are you an alternative to that, particularly in a good economy? And so I think there's even more incentive to talk about yourself, to tell your story, to talk about your policies and your visions and your character than in any other reelection case campaign in recent history, in that the Trump side of the ledger is very well stocked. The question is, are you going to stock yours? And look, we started this podcast by talking about, or at least I was advocating that Democratic candidates should go out today and give a speech about how, you know, democracy is on the line in this election. Even if I were giving that speech,

I would use Trump's name sparingly. I wouldn't make it all about, can you believe that crazy thing he said on ABC and he's awful and blah, blah, blah, and he should be impeached. It's because, by the way, Trump isn't the, Trump himself isn't the only threat to our democracy. He is a threat to our democracy, but like it's everything from him to the Republican Party to, you know, all kinds of forces around the world. Like there are plenty of things to talk about that aren't just about Trump, where you're where you can make a pretty good case for yourself and your platform and what you believe in, where you don't have to just say his name 50 times, you know. All right. So the other criticisms leveled at Joe Biden this week

were from fellow Democrats after the vice president reiterated his belief that if Trump is defeated in 2020, Republicans will be willing to compromise with Democrats. Quote, With Trump gone, you're going to begin to see things change because these folks know better. They know this isn't what they're supposed to be doing. Dan, what's going on here? Why? Why does he think this? Biden is an old school institutionalist. He believes something about politics and politicians that was believed to be true for a very long time, may never have been true. And it's just a view of politics I fundamentally disagree with. There is this sense

that politics is about personal relationships, that if you can get along with a Republican and build some sort of bond with them, you can convince them to do something different than they are otherwise doing. And this is the genesis of all of the – if Obama would only have more drinks with Mitch McConnell or play golf with Boehner, then he would have accomplished more things. The problem with that is – and that's a deeply naive assessment I think about what drives politics in this age. On the margins, personal relationships could matter. If you have a very specific – and I think this is true in Congress where candidate – where members of Congress have a very specific project that is sort of non-ideological. You can get help with that. But on the big issues that are the ones that we elect our presidents for on, the economy, health care, civil rights, politicians operate from their political incentives.

And I do think this has become more true over time. I think it's become more true over time because the Republican Party has become more radicalized and politics has become more polarized. And Republican politicians now don't just answer to their constituents. They answer to a conservative media propaganda apparatus that punishes them for any hint of compromise. And it's not about their personalities and what they want. Like you said, it is about structural political incentives. And campaign finance laws, where now the Koch brothers can spend a million dollars in your district right up until Election Day

if you violate what they consider to be what it means to be a Republican. Yeah. And look, I mean, you know, Biden gives the example of the Recovery Act. And he said, you know, we got three Republican votes for the Recovery Act. Biden was, you know, met with all those Republican senators. He knew them. I think he, you know, probably persuaded some of them. He, you know, he persuaded. I think he played a key role in persuading Republican Senator, then Republican Senator Arlen Specter to switch parties and become a Democrat, which he did at the beginning of Obama's time in office. And that was instrumental. So like in Biden's mind,

I really do believe he thinks that politics are essentially about personal relationships. He is the creature of the Senate. He has been there a long time. He's had relationships with Republican senators that are good. And so he thinks he can bring them over. But I always remember Barack Obama telling the story of almost doing immigration reform with John Boehner. And John Boehner, and you probably remember this, John Boehner met with Obama and said, I want to do immigration

reform with you. I want to help pass it through the House. Let's do it. And they had a good relationship. They didn't golf all the time or have drinks all the time, but they had a good working relationship and John Boehner wanted to do this. And then, you know, Eric Cantor loses a primary race in Virginia to a Tea Party guy. And all of a sudden, Boehner gets cold feet and says, you know what? I'd still love to do immigration reform personally, but I have a caucus where most of my Republicans in the House live in districts that are 90% white or more. They don't have a lot of immigrants in their district. They don't have a lot of Latinos in their district. And so they don't give a shit about this. And if I push immigration reform through the House, then I'm

not going to be Speaker anymore. So while I like you and i like the idea of immigration reform i'm not going to do it and that's how it really works it's not about personalities and personal relationships it's about structural political incentives and i have a real fear that joe biden doesn't understand that yeah i think that is completely fair and i and i this sympathetic – so there's two ways to look at what Biden said. One is he's wrong. Like he sincerely believes this and he is just wrong. And that sincere belief is based on his 50 years in politics and he overweights the first 40 years and underweights the last 10 years. years and underweights the last 10 years. Or he is not naive and thinks he can probably make more progress than others because he knows the Senate better than anyone else running and better than

Obama did, but says this as a way to explain how he's going to get things done. Because explaining how you're going to get things done in this environment is very challenging. And probably thinks that he could make some marginal progress that others couldn't, and therefore would be better at the job than everyone else running. But his actual assessment is probably more balanced than his initial comments suggest. And his longer explanation of this, when he got asked about it by a reporter on the rope line, sort of splits the difference between the two. So I don't really know. I think the question for the Democrats running against him is, what is the right way to use this in the campaign? And I think we're going to see if people use the debate to jump on this.

And I think they have to be careful too, because the other thing that Biden's people pointed to is the recent CNN poll that, you know, they asked Democrats in the poll. OK, here's a bunch of different qualities, which is most important in deciding who you're going to vote for in the primary. 68 percent of Democrats said that a willingness to work with Republicans to get things done is either very or extremely important in deciding who to vote for. The only qualities they listed as more important are the right experience to be president and has a good chance of beating Trump. And below willingness to work with Republicans to get things done, just below it, I think it's 65%, is holds progressive positions and then just below that was represents the future of the party. So now polling is polling at the snapshot in time. It can change, you know, over time. It

can also change depending on how you word it. But there is clearly this is the problem is you poll Democrats on issues and positions. And I and look, I noticed this when I talked to those focus groups of Obama, Trump voters and Obama third party voters during the wilderness. You ask them about issues and they are more progressive than you'd imagine. Even people who had voted for Trump, some of them were saying, yeah, I want Medicare for all. I want a huge infrastructure bill. Great. And you're like, oh, wow, these people are pretty progressive. And then you say, well, do you want someone who's going to work with Republicans or do you want someone who's going to sort of stick to their principles and really fight for these issues? And they all say, oh, I really want someone who's going to work with Republicans or do you want someone who's going to sort of stick to their principles and really fight for these issues? And they all say, oh, I really want

someone who's going to work with Republicans. I'm really sick of the gridlock. I'm sick of the, you know, the political endless war in Washington. I'm sick of everyone fighting. I just want people to get along and get stuff done. And so there's this gap between what people want in terms of what they want, what kind of policy they want to see coming out of Washington, which is actually more progressive than you'd imagine, and the style they want in politicians, which is more conciliatory. At least, and you see this in polls, at least half the party, right? There's probably another half of the party, we're probably more in this half of the party, that say like, fuck that, we don't want to compromise with them. We want to, you know, win elections and push this shit forwards because we know how the system works. But what do you do

about all those voters who sort of want compromise and want people to work with Republicans? I mean, this is really hard. It is, and voters have a complicated set of emotions. It's like the same voters who say they want the budget cut, but don't cut any of the programs I like. set of emotions. It's like the same voters who say they want the budget cut, but don't cut any of the programs I like. And so I think the way to do this, and I think this is an important point that you make that I just think we ought to flesh out, is that for the politics of it, even within the context of the Democratic primary, Biden's rhetoric is more appealing, as at least at this moment in time, than the more war footing-esque rhetoric of other Democrats. The way – if I was advising a campaign, I would try to split the needle between – if I was advising a campaign, the way I would try to thread the needle there would be to talk about in very realistic, honest terms about who the current Republicans in Congress are, most notably Mitch McConnell, the things they are doing to enrich themselves, enrich their donors,

to undermine democracy, while at the same time trying to unify the country writ large. It suggests that put aside the furthest right, most rabid parts of the Trump base, that the vast majority of people in this country want a president who will at least try to unify them, who will try to focus, who will not spend all of their time trying to divide us via Twitter and outrageous statements, who will try to heal the wounds of the Trump era. And so you can appeal to broader national unity while being realistic about the challenges of it, while still being honest about who the Republicans in Washington are, and the sorts of steps you will take to ensure that Mitch McConnell cannot hold your presidency hostage. And by that, I specifically mean working to eliminate the filibuster.

That's how I would do it. Yeah. And look, I would also I mean, Elizabeth Warren, I think in her first event in Iowa on the campaign, talked about this, you know, bipartisan piece of legislation that helped funding for hearing aids that she worked with on a Republican. And she talked about all the other Republican Republicans she co-sponsored legislation with. Bernie Sanders has, you know, has a practical streak from being in the Senate for a long time and has talked in the past about, uh, the different Republicans he's worked with to co-sponsor bills. You know, like, I think there's a way to say, yeah, like I'm happy to work with Republicans when Republicans want to cooperate on, you know, uh, issues that really matter to people. And when they're willing to work with us, then great. Like, I'm willing to extend a hand to the Republican Party, but I'm not going

to be foolish about it. I'm not going to ignore what's been happening in the Senate and in the House and the presidency when Republicans control it for the last couple decades. I'm going to look at it with, I'm going to be realistic about it and figure out, look, I'll work with them when it makes sense to work with them, and I'll work around them when they refuse to work with us. And I'll do both, you know? I think there's a way to sort of split the baby on this one. Yeah, you can be, nuance is still an acceptable way of talking about politics in America. Well, that brings us to, I mean, I will say the other campaigns are being much smarter about how they handle Biden than a lot of the Twitter warriors out there. So in Iowa this week, the vice president said, quote, I promise you, if I'm elected president, you're going to see the single most important thing that changes in America.

We're going to cure cancer. In response, he was ridiculed by Twitter people on the right and the left. Some of them made fun of him for having a secret cure for cancer. Like, how is this different from saying, if I'm elected president, I'm going to pass Medicare for all. Or if I'm elected president, I'm going to give every child a world-class education. Is that not the most standard formulation for any campaign promise? Yes, it is people looking for a cudgel to beat Biden over the head with. And yes, it does seem unlikely

that we will cure cancer in four to eight years, but it is no less unlikely than passing Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, or even the naming of a fucking post office if you are not for getting rid of the filibuster. So I think that if any other candidate in the field, if Mayor Pete had said that, or Elizabeth Warren or Kamala Harris, no one would have attacked them. But because Biden is the front runner and has become an avatar for a lot of things that a lot of very vocal people on Twitter

think are wrong with the Democratic Party, they're beating them up with it. Yeah, I mean, I saw some of the arguments on this and some people making the case that for people who have cancer, have dealt with cancer in their family, false promises or overly optimistic promises or however you want to you, you know, you want to describe the giving a false hope is, you know, is wrong and, you know, it can be painful. I very sympathetic to that. But I just we have to put this in context and perspective, along with lots of other presidents who are politicians who have made very bold promises, some of which have not come true. And it also has to be put in the context of the personal toll that cancer has had very recently on Vice President Biden's family. Well, look, and it also has to be put in the context of in the last State of the Union in 2016, Barack Obama said, let's be the country that cures cancer. I'm going to put

our, my vice president, Joe Biden in charge of a cancer moonshot initiative. And we think that if we have enough federal funding that we can actually, and look, I mean, you can have scientists and researchers about this. It's not like there's probably going to be a single cure for all cancers. Cancer is a disease where there's, you know, many different kinds of cancer. But scientists and researchers do think they're getting closer to having an effective, what's an effective cure for cancer, or at least helping people live with it or reducing its incidence or whatever it may be. And then Biden, when he left office, started the Biden Cancer Initiative, and he has spent a lot of time working on this issue.

Now, maybe it would have been smarter for him to actually do a separate event on it and said, okay, we're going to cure cancer in eight years. I think we can do it. Here's the scientists and researchers who think we can do it. Here's what we need to do it and like lay it all out. But like you said, I mean, I worry about some folks who were against Biden right now, having some kind of Biden derangement syndrome where you decide that every word he says is somehow further evidence that he's a bad candidate and increasingly a bad person and I don't just think that's that's wrong I actually think it's a pretty dumb way of persuading people to vote against him if that's your plan because you have to understand that's not what they're trying to do yeah twitter is not for persuasion no it's not it's not but that's like you know

what look to your favorite campaigns look to your other candidates you don't see bernie sanders going after biden like this you don't see elizabeth warren going after biden like this because they're fucking smart and they know that a lot of people in the democratic party whether they want joe biden to be president or not, have a favorable view of Joe Biden. And if you're going to decide that every time Joe Biden says something, every time he has a gap, every time he says something that makes him sound, you know, a little off, which happens a lot. If you're going to decide that that's the end of the world and you're going to fucking turn it up to an 11, every time Joe Biden says something that you don't agree with, people aren't going to take you seriously.

You know? It's just like, it's just fucking smart politics if that's all you're willing to listen to as opposed to just being the right thing to do also. I don't know. Twitter is fucking awful. Yeah, it's just,

you make this point about a moonshot for cancer, which Biden was in charge of. That's what the moonshot means. It is picking an audacious goal at an unrealistic timeline and then trying to marshal the entire country to achieve that goal. That is exactly what Kennedy did with the moon. That's what it means. It is not setting a super realistic goal. The whole thing is very frustrating. And now I'm completely worked up about something so incredibly fucking stupid while the president is committing crimes, Kellyanne Conway is committing crimes.

And we are arguing about a bunch of people on Twitter. We're not even arguing. We're just yelling into a fucking void about a bunch of people on Twitter yelling at Joe Biden into a different void. Yeah. And I honestly just brought it up because because it is it didn't get like much coverage. It was a fucking entirely, you know, Twitter based fight about this. But i do see this trend among people who don't want biden to be the nominee where they're not just debating him or they're not just pointing out what he says that's wrong but they're trying to disqualify him um as much as possible and i think a that's counterproductive and b you know if joe biden ends up the nominee, then he's our nominee and I'm going to be out there fucking cheering for him and trying to get him elected. And that's true.

If Bernie Sanders is the nominee, Elizabeth Warren's the nominee, if any of them are the nominee. And I think we got to remember that. All right. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Talk about one of the relationships you're proudest of in your life and how you worked on yourself or the relationship to make it what it is today. I go to Starbucks every morning and I have a great relationship with the people who work there. And that's where I feel like going today. I love that. They keep refusing to come with me to therapy. And so I'm going to have to just do it from FaceTime there. And your therapist won't make you a good coffee. No, that's what they say. You don't go to therapy for the coffee. You don't go to coffee for therapy, right? It's like museum food.

That's what they say. A common misconception about relationships is that they have to be easy to be right stuff. But sometimes the best ones happen when both people put in the work to make them great. Right, Tommy? Damn right. Like you and me. That's right. Therapy can be a place to work through the challenges you face in all your relationships. Hey, we should go on therapy in 2018. Whether they're friends, work, your significant other, or anyone, if you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapists anytime at no additional charge. Become your own soulmate. Whether you're looking for one or not, visit betterhelp.com slash PSA today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp,

H-E-L-P dot com slash PSA. Let's talk about Mayor Pete, who delivered a major foreign policy speech from Indiana University in Bloomington. In his remarks, Buttigieg went through a list of specific priorities, including reentering the Iran nuclear agreement and rejoining the Paris climate accord, ending the war in Afghanistan and withholding aid from Israel if it annexes settlements in the West Bank. He also said, quote, For the better part of my lifetime, it has been difficult to identify a consistent foreign policy in the Democratic Party. Democrats can no more turn the clock back to the 1990s than Republicans can return us to the 1950s, and we shouldn't try.

So Tommy and Ben got into the policy details on Pod Save the World this week, and it's definitely worth a listen. They do a great job. But I want to talk quickly with you about the politics around this speech. Why do you think Pete delivered this speech, and do you think it was effective? What was he trying to do here? I'm pretty curious to hear what you say about this because I did not originally put this on the outline, and then you responded you wanted to add it to the outline because you wanted to talk about the politics of it. So I'll let you go first.

Sure. I mean, so here's my view. And then you responded you wanted to add it to the outline because you wanted a 37-year-old mayor who wants to be in charge of our national security. And I think when you read that speech, you think, okay, he had a lot of really smart foreign policy advisors that helped him work on this speech. He knows what the fuck he's talking about on a lot of these issues. So great. So in that sense, I think it did him a lot of favors. And I found myself agreeing with just about everything he said in the speech. But despite the fact that he said we can't turn back the clock or the Democrats haven't had a consistent foreign policy, which I think you could certainly make an argument for, it was basically a speech that Obama could have given at the end of his term and mostly did.

And that's fine. Like, it's totally fine to do that. But, you know, Pete's doing this thing where he's saying, you know, part of his appeal is that he is new and different. Right. He says, I think at this moment in time, we need something totally different. And I think what he has to decide is, is what's different him as a person and his story, or does he have different ideas? If he's going to say, if you're going to say that the Democratic Party hasn't had a consistent foreign policy over the last couple decades, well, then what do you mean by that? And how is your foreign policy different than what the democratic foreign policy was? If you're saying we can't go back, then what is your new idea? And like, I understand this problem, because we dealt with this problem in 2007 and 2008. And that campaign with Barack Obama, and, you know, the Hillary people would say,

oh, you know, Barack Obama is just this new shiny object. And he's talking about his biography and he only relies on his story. And there's no real substance there and there's no real difference. And I think that was that could have been a real danger for our campaign. But we sat there and thought, OK, what is it that really makes Obama different? What is he what is he saying about the Democratic Party? And, you know, he ended up with this argument that I got the Iraq war right when the Democratic Party decided that they needed to rush to war because they were afraid of looking weak and they felt like they needed to be tough. And so they went along with the Iraq war and it was a huge mistake. And I

don't think we should be afraid of what the Republicans say about us. And that's why when there was a question in debate about would you talk to leaders you don't like and negotiate with leaders you don't like and Hillary said no and the other candidates said no, Obama said of course I would talk to leaders we don't like. This is part of what's wrong with the Democratic Party is they're too afraid of getting attacked by Republicans to do what they know is right. So he made a real coherent case and he had some proof points there. And I think what Pete needs to do, what Mayor Pete needs to do if he wants to be the nominee and he wants to really flesh out the case that he is new and different, is actually to put some substance behind that argument that he is new and different.

And I think like Elizabeth Warren is actually the candidate who's put out a ton of new ideas that are different than ideas that you just hear from the Democratic Party all the time. She's actually done it without critiquing the Democratic Party. But I think if you're going to make that critique, then your foreign policy or your health care policy or whatever it may be has to truly be different. That's interesting. So I have some thoughts on this. that's interesting so i have some thoughts on this um i like like you said speech well written well delivered thoughtful largely these campaign foreign policy speeches are more vision than policy right it's just like that that is how they are there is definitely specific policy in there and pete is as much specific policy as Obama had in his 08 speeches. And Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren have had in their speeches earlier this year. But largely they are about vision and they're standing in front at a podium in a suit in front of a bunch of flags and looking like you can play the part. looking like you can play the part.

Yeah. Right? Like, you can be the commander-in-chief. Obama had to pass that test. As you also point out, Obama had a huge advantage, which was on the signature foreign policy question of his generation, he got it right, and everyone he was running against got it wrong, with the exception of Dennis Kucinich and Mike Revell.

My apologies to their candidacies. But what I found interesting about Pete's foreign policy speech, which is indicative of a larger part of his campaign, is that he like Obama ran against. Clintonism as a form of democratic politics, right, sort of the poll testing school uniforms, caution that defined a lot of Bill Clinton's policies. Mayor Pete is also running against the Clinton version of the Democratic Party. Like when he says, take us back to the 90s, no one is arguing for that. There is no one saying that we should return to the Democratic Party or the America of the 1990s. It's a straw man argument. It's a very effective one because it in which Barack Obama was never president. And I just think it's very,

it is very interesting. And like, there is a very legitimate critique, some of which we would obviously vehemently disagree with, some we disagree with. Very legitimate critique of the Democratic Party under Barack Obama, of Barack Obama's, of Obamaism, if you will. Bernie Sanders had ran on that a lot in 2016 and some in this election that has been implicit, if not explicit, in some of Elizabeth Warren's policies. But Pete has not done that. He has run a critique of the Democrats. It's just not a Democratic Party that I recognize. So that's one. The second thing is, it is to the great credit of Pete Buttigieg as a politician and to his campaign that the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, who is now firmly ensconced in the top tier of the democratic primary he is in third or fourth place like essentially a four-way tie for second uh in most polls that the 37 year old mayor of

south bend is giving his first policy speech in the middle of june there is like that is a the fact that he was able to pull that trick off is incredible the fact that in this election, he's able to get to June, give a foreign policy speech where he lists climate change as the greatest threat facing the country and not have a specific climate change plan. Where the full extent of what he has laid out on climate change is he generally agrees with the principles, but not the specifics of the Green New Deal. And to be completely fair, in a normal world, this is still pretty early for candidates who have laid out most of their agenda. Elizabeth Warren, by virtue of her aggressiveness in policy, has pulled forward the policy primary. But now the question for Pete is he is going to

have to lay out a series of speeches where he's going to have to get specific about which Medicare for all plan he supports. What climate, what is his climate change plan? Where is he different than Elizabeth Warren or Joe Biden or Beto O'Rourke? Where is he different on criminal justice reform than Kamala Harris? You know, like the, the next step for his candidacy, because now when you are in second or third place in the polls, when you are going to probably raise more money than any Democrat running this cycle, if he gets less than $30 million this quarter, I will be shocked. Yeah, me too. Once you do that, that now being an incredible spokesperson with a great story is not enough. And we face this with Obama. We had a great first few months.

We cruised. We outraged Hillary. We were the best story in the business. And then our summer sucked. And we got raked over the coals because now all of a sudden the questions come. And you have to start picking a side and putting yourself in one of two sides on contentious intra-party debates. And how Pete navigates that will be very, very interesting to see. Yeah. And look, it's indicative of the speech too. I thought the way he framed a lot of foreign

policy issues was very effective and I found it compelling. You know, and Tommy and Ben mentioned this, the way he talked about terrorism, you know, I thought was great too. I just, there was, I don't think there was anything in his speech that many of the other candidates in the field would disagree with or hadn't already said before. Like when he said that, you know, the president shouldn't have as much power to conduct war and that Congress should be, you know, like other candidates have come out for that position as well. And so, yeah, I'm just I'm interested to see what differentiates him in a more substantive way from the rest of the field. Another candidate who delivered a big speech this week was Bernie Sanders, who argued that the United States must choose the path known as democratic socialism, was the quote from the speech. He said that, quote, economic rights are human rights and that the unfinished business of the Democratic Party is

to, quote, take up the unfinished business of the New Deal. Sanders proposed a 21st century economic bill of rights that would include the right to a decent job that pays a living wage, quality health care, a complete education, affordable housing, a secure retirement, and a clean environment. Dan, what'd you think of the speech? retirement and a clean environment. Dan, what'd you think of the speech? I really wish I could have watched the speech in a vacuum where I did not know, where no one had told me what the quote unquote purpose of the speech was. Because I thought the speech in and of itself was a pretty valiant effort to take Bernie Sanders's aggressively populist and progressive proposals and put

them within the mainstream tradition of a Democratic Party dating back to Franklin Roosevelt. I thought it was an interesting way of pointing out that Republicans are going to call him socialist. They called Obama socialist. They called Franklin Roosevelt socialist. Whoever the Democratic nominee is, they're going to be called socialist. What I do have no idea was why they told the press that this was a defense of Democratic socialism, that it would be explained why he called himself a Democratic socialist,

explain what Democratic socialism is. It did none. As far as I could tell, it did none of those things. And so you took what would be a very good speech where he proposes an economic bill of rights, which is a great fucking policy, campaign policy idea. It's a great way to lay out your agenda, to frame it in a way that people can understand. It took all of that and, but branded it in this thing that it didn't do. do. And I don't, I think this was a communications failure on behalf of the campaign that I think this was a, I don't know, it wasn't helpful and it may have been hurtful. It was one of the best defenses of New Deal liberalism that any candidate has ever given. But that's what it was. It was a

defense of the New Deal and new deal liberalism it was not a defense of democratic socialism you know like i mean he taught he and in in addition to that he went on this whole riff about how you know whether it was the children's health insurance program or social security or medicare or the recovery act um things that democrats have put forward have always been attacked as socialist. And it's like, well, yeah, that's right. That's the problem. But actually, they're not socialists. They're just firmly within the tradition of New Deal liberalism and the Democratic Party. So then why are you calling yourself a democratic socialist? That's

what we don't understand. Because if you took out the couple of times he said the phrase democratic socialist in that speech, Barack Obama could have delivered that exact speech and has in various forms. And so have many other progressive Democrats. Many other progressive Democrats have said that. I actually think the way Bernie put it together in that speech was very effective and compelling. I mean, like, it was funny to talking about the Economic Bill of Rights, the Second Bill of Rights. I mean, it's a favorite. It's a famous FDR quote when he said, we have one Bill of Rights and now we need the unfinished. We need to finish the unfinished business of the New Deal. We need to have an Economic Bill of Rights, a Second Bill of Rights.

I titled the episode about economics in the wilderness, the Second Bill of Rights. And it was a defense of why the Democratic party needs to be talking more about economic rights. And I believe that we do. And I found myself agreeing with just about everything Bernie said in that speech, except it was, it did not explain why he calls himself a democratic socialist. It does not explain why Bernie Sanders went from a mayor of Burlington, Vermont, who actually advocated the nationalization of certain industries like banking and other industries in this country actually was like a real socialist would. And why he sort of moved over the years to not advocating for the nationalization of most industries in this country. But basically now he's just a progressive Democrat. And for some reason he just doesn't want to call himself that.

I mean, he's a victim of his own success. Like there was a war. Like, let's go back to 2016. He could have given a version of the speech in 2016 where he said, I am a Democratic socialist because I believe in single payer government health care. I believe that college should be free. I believe that Social Security should be expanded. And those are not the positions of the Democratic Party. The problem for Bernie is he won the debate. Those are now the positions of most of the people in the Democratic Party. And what is a real challenge for him is that polls are pretty clear that there's wide skepticism in the electorate more generally and specifically the Democratic Party about voting for a quote unquote socialist.

anti-Wall Street, anti-corporation agenda who calls herself a capitalist. And then you have Bernie Sanders with the same agenda who calls himself a democratic socialist. And I still have not heard, and would love to hear an explanation for why one is a capitalist and one is a democratic socialist. Like, what is the fundamental difference?

And I remember this from Lovett's interview with AOC right after she won the primary. And he asked her, he basically said, you believe in Medicare for all, free college, et cetera, and you call yourself a democratic socialist. I believe in those things, Elizabeth Warren believes in those things, and calls herself, and believes in the social media capitalists. What's the difference? And that's still a question that I think has become a very hard one for that wing of the party to answer in a world in which the debate is not Medicare single payer or nothing. It is the transition time for that single payer. It is the gravity.

Like if it was Bernie against Biden or Bernie against Hickenlooper, whoever else, that would be – that's a real debate. But once you bring in all the other top tier candidates support some version of Medicare for all, including our co-sponsors of his own plan, I think this gets much more challenging. Yeah. And I think it's a result of, you know, some of the, it's interesting sort of reading lefty Twitter because there's a whole bunch of lefties, you know, work at the intercept, other places who were like, I don't understand why he did that either. I don't understand why he leaned into the Democratic Socialist label and tried to say there's a whole speech about Democratic Socialism when he basically defended FDR, the New Deal and liberalism. I think it's because there's probably some people in his campaign and there's certainly a lot of people, you know, lefty Twitter people, lefty journalists, lefty pundits, who seem to want the fight with the Democratic Party more than they want to win the fight.

And like you said, like they've moved the party to the left. And part of politics is saying, okay, now that you agree with me, come join my movement and come, you know, you believe in my policies now. Well, let's, let's join together and sort of build a movement. And some of these people, they don't want you as part of their movement because they just want to yell at you on Twitter. That's what makes them feel good. There's a lot of them are like, oh, centrist democratic heads are going to be exploding over this speech. No, I agree with, I found myself agreeing with almost every word. What I couldn't understand is why, like you said, they build it as a speech about him defending democratic socialism and his label as democratic socialism when it didn't really do that.

That's the problem. Yeah, it, I understand, like having, you know, we've worked on a lot of campaigns and I understand the world where you are sitting around the table and you probably have done focus groups or whatever, and you understand that Bernie's decision to call himself a democratic socialist poses some political problems. Either it's a proxy for electability, there's some number of sort of the voters he needs to expand to grow his base with have skepticism about that. It's either confusing or they have a natural aversion to it. So you have to deal with it. And so just the problem is, so I understand like why you would give a speech to address a campaign weakness to try to reframe it. I just don't think that's what they did. Or like the better thing, it's also interesting. I just don't think that's what they did. Or the better thing, it's also interesting. I saw this in one of those Twitter threads, is Bernie Sanders has two,

there are two labels that he's chosen for himself, democratic socialist and independent. And the independent one is much more appealing and drove his, I think it was a huge driver of a lot of his success in 2016. And he chose the other one, the least popular, more problematic one to deal with. I don't know that I have a great solution, like to be perfectly fair to him. I don't know that I have a great solution for how Bernie Sanders answers the question of why he calls himself a democratic socialist while he's running for the democratic nomination and a large portion of the people running agree with his vision for the country. And it's not an easy thing to answer. I just think that this speech did not accomplish that. And they raised the expectations that it would. And if he had just been giving a speech

about an economic bill of rights, and then this speech would have been a home run. But because they framed it a certain way with the press, then the coverage was not indicative of what the speech was. And then when that happens, there's always a problem. Here's the way you do it. You start the speech by saying, I've had many labels in life that I've called myself. I've called myself a democratic socialist. I've called myself an independent. Here's what i actually believe about the economy here's what i believe about our country and then he lays out the thing and says that if you believe that too whether you're a democrat whether you're a democratic socialist whether you're an independent whether you're a republican then you should join my campaign and you should vote for me and you should be part of

this movement that's that's what he should have done and then make it less about the label and more about the fucking philosophy and the policies you know it's just like they're hung up on the label which is just so silly to me um okay when we come back we'll have anna marie cox's interview with congresswoman ilhan omar Hi, I'm Anna Marie Cox. And I'd like to introduce our interview for the night. She is a member of the United States House, currently representing Minnesota's 5th Congressional District. Your Congresswoman and mine, please give a warm welcome to Ilhan Omar. Thank you so much. So I'll just wrangle you backstage for some constituent service stuff that I've got.

We can do it now. I'm tempted. But you're hard to get a meeting with. You're very popular. All right, we have to fix that. Well, no, we want you to stay popular. Okay. So earlier this week, we'll start with news.

Earlier this week, the House passed the Dream and Promise Act. Yes! Yes! Which, if made law, would give 2.5 million unauthorized immigrants a path to citizenship. Which is awesome. But, of course, the key phrase there is, if made law. So I guess my question is, what does it feel like to be the unstoppable force crashing into Mitch McConnell's immovable object?

force crashing into Mitch McConnell's immovable object. What is the purpose of doing these amazing pieces of legislation knowing that they're not going to get somewhere? There's so much purpose behind it, really. So Tuesday was Eid, which is the end of Ramadan. Tuesday was Eid, which is the end of Ramadan. And I had this very conflicting choice I had to make, whether to stay here to celebrate with my children and family, which I have not missed one single Eid since they were born in celebrating with them,

or go and be part of a very historic vote to really assure that the dreams and the promises of this country are still alive for so many people. And so I prayed with the kids, told my little one that I was going to go to D.C. to go vote, and she said, what's more important than us? She's a feisty one. She sounds like she'd be good at corporate PR. Yeah, I think so. She's got a future somewhere.

And I passed for a second because it wasn't that there was something important than her, but it was also true that there were other six-year-olds that were also as important that needed to have their parents to have the opportunity to stay with them and continue to celebrate with them. And so when I think about the constituents that I have that are with the status of DED or TPS, I think about the kind of shattered dreams that they have in knowing that they might not get to celebrate

every single holiday with their kids because they might get deported. And so we get to be purposeful in saying, you matter, we see you, this is your country, you're our neighbor, we're going to do everything that we can to put a piece of legislation together that validates your existence in this country. together that validates your existence in this country. And so I also know, right, that that bill happened because they organized. And I always say you get what you organize for. So they got the

opportunity to get that bill passed. And I know with their help, we will make sure that Mitch McConnell gets to give that bill a hearing or not have a seat again in the Senate. And I know that this particular graveyard, the legislative graveyard that the Senate has become... Crypt Keeper McConnell, yes, is one that is not going to exist for another two years. So I'm really excited for the opportunity for us to organize for the America that we deserve in one where we're protecting and guaranteeing prosperity for all of us. You've spoken before quite eloquently about the perspective you bring to Congress as an immigrant, as a refugee.

I confess I'm curious about the perspective you bring to Congress as a Minnesotan. Are you able to go in D.C. winters without a coat? bring to Congress as a Minnesotan? Are you able to go in DC Winners without a coat? Do you bring hot dish to the Congress to share? Do you do potlucks? So I was the second runner up for the hot dish contest. So I brought my Minnesotan skills. her up for the hot dish contest. So... Wow. Brought my Minnesotan skills.

It's mad hot dish skills. Yeah. What was it? It was mogadishu dish. Oh, I get it. Okay, yeah. Hot mogadishu. And it was sambusas

mixed with tater tots. And we didn't, get this, get this, you'll love this, we didn't place number one

because they said it was too flavorful for Minnesota. And I said, the fifth is too flavorful for Minnesota, so that makes sense. It's perfect. Oh, wow. Yes.

You're a spicy meatball. But Amy Klobuchar was asked once, how come... You can clap for our senator. How come, you can clap for our senator. She was asked once how come she shows up to all of these press conferences in the middle of the winter without a jacket. And she said, because I'm Minnesotan. And so even though the sub-Saharan heat in me has not totally transcended to the Minnesota in me, I have been known to walk

around in D.C. without a jacket. I felt a little shameful in trying to bring a coat. Gotta represent. You're part of a particularly diverse and young class of representatives and I am sure that you are learning a lot from the men and women that have preceded you

I am curious though if you think there's anything you have to teach them I mean so you have to teach them. I mean, so with age comes wisdom. Sure. Let's just pause it. Okay, like, yeah, fine. Right, that's great.

But what don't they know? They don't know urgency. And a lot of them don't know urgency. And a lot of them don't know hunger. A lot of them don't know fear. And most of them have not known courage really lately. So a lot of us are, like many Americans, we're coming in there with lots of hunger and urgency and courage to really change the trajectory

that our country is currently on. CHEERING There are so many issues I feel like young people are more plugged in on than are me I'm old Me too Let's not So I was able to observe your primary

of course since I'm like a constituent and you did take care during the primary to point out that you were the only candidate that had student debt which is one of those things that maybe the older people in Congress have either not known or forgotten about? I mean, I am part of the 45 million people who are shackled with the burdens of student debt. And what that does really is it stops, I think, prosperity for all of us. It stops us from having the opportunity to purchase a home. It stops us from the opportunity to starting that business. It stops us from the opportunity of even economically participating in small ways within our communities.

Starting a family. I mean, I was fortunate enough to do that. Maybe not so wise enough to do that. Would you rather you look at it? You took a flyer on it. It compounds it, right? When you are a parent with student debt, there's compounding of that struggle, that economic struggle. I should point out, actually, most people probably don't realize that most students in college today,

like there are many, many, the atypical student is now the typical student. A student with children, a married student, a student at a community college. So you're speaking to a huge portion of people going to school. Exactly, exactly. speaking to a huge portion of people going to school. Exactly, exactly. And I think it is really important for us to recognize that we have to provide relief for this 45 million. And that relief must come in the form of a bailout for them. And so what we are proposing is complete debt cancellation of federal and private student loans. Complete cancellation. And, you know, proponents of this would say, you know, you're canceling out student debt for people who can afford it to pay back their debt.

And we know, right? Like the children of Trump are not going to benefit from this because people like that don't have student debt. And so we recognize that most people who have student debt are low income. They are folks who are struggling to make sure that they get that prosperity that was guaranteed to them because education was the gateway to that. And right now, that's not happening for them. And so the $1.5 trillion that it would cost for us to cancel out would pay for itself within 10 years, which is very different than the tax cut that we just gave to corporations.

And so if we're saying we really care about making sure that we're growing the middle class and we're investing in people, this is the way to go. All right, thanks to Congresswoman Omar for joining us in Minneapolis, and we will see you next week. Bye, everyone.

Bye. Bye. Bye. Thank you.