Pod Save America - “November is coming.”

Episode Date: October 8, 2018

In the aftermath of Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation, Republicans feel energized, Democrats debate what’s next, and both parties hone their messages in the final month of the midterms. Then Democratic candidates Jesse Colvin, Abigail Spanberger, and Lauren Baer talk to Tommy about running for Congress with national security and military backgrounds.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Later in the pod, you'll hear from three candidates that Tommy interviewed for an upcoming episode of Pod Save the World that spotlights 2018 candidates with national security and military backgrounds. He talked with Jesse Colvin, the Democratic candidate in Maryland's 1st Congressional District, Abigail Spanberger from Virginia's 7th, and Lauren Baer in Florida's 18th. The full interviews will go out on Wednesday's Pod Save the World, but check out different portions of them today.

So, also, our first of four HBO specials will be Friday night in Miami. It will air at 11 p.m. Eastern. The next three specials will be in Austin, Philadelphia, and Irvine, California. We'll also be shifting the pod schedule a little bit during this run new episodes will come out on Monday and Wednesday afternoons for the next few weeks and then catch us on HBO on Friday nights at 11 and I believe it will also air again on Sunday nights at 1130 after John Oliver. Also, a whole bunch of states are coming up on their deadlines for voter registration. Check out, if your state's one of them,

at votesaveamerica.com. You'll also be able to learn about more opportunities to link up with people and do things where you live that will really make a difference. Check it out. All right, Dan. This is the last time I want to talk about Brett fucking Kavanaugh for a

while uh oh really because he's gonna be in our fucking lives for 30 years i know well we're gonna have to talk about him again but i at least want a break after this since we've been all kavanaugh all the time on this pod the man who responded to multiple allegations of sexual assault by blaming democrats and threatening that what goes around comes around, was nevertheless confirmed as the Supreme Court justice by the smallest margin of any nominee in 140 years. Two Republican no votes would have killed the nomination, but in the end, only one Republican senator was troubled by Kavanaugh's conduct, temperament, or ability to be impartial, Alaska's Lisa Murkowski.

Susan Collins, the only other potential swing vote, supported Kavanaugh and said she did not believe that he assaulted Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. After learning that Collins was a yes and that Kavanaugh would be confirmed no matter what, Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia also voted yes, and that was that. Dan, let's start with Susan Collins, who gave a speech explaining her vote on Friday afternoon.

What was your reaction to that speech? And do you think she was always a yes? That speech was essentially a very long, arduous recitation of Trump White House and McConnell Senate office talking points. It dealt with none of the major issues. It elided major facts. It cited cases that should have been an anathema to other things that Susan Collins's claim she believed in.

And she made a case for Susan Collins being a partisan Republican and not some sort of key swing vote, moderate voice of conscience in the Senate. She is what she is. And we have known this. You and I have talked about this. Susan Collins has been telling us for a month that she is a yes. Yeah. She was a yes before the allegations because she was the only person who sat down with Brett Kavanaugh and came away with the impression that he would preserve Roe v. Wade, which you had to really twist yourself into some sort of judicial pretzel to believe. But she did that nonetheless. She pointed out to all of us that she had voted for every Supreme Court nominee who would ever come

up from nominated by presidents of either party during her Senate tenure. And I think we ascribed like she was sort of a false Rorschach test for the folks like us who were desperate looking for hope and folks like the media who are desperately looking for some sort of hero in this or some sort of key, you know, sort of narrative figure about this. She was always going to be a yes. And there was, we know that nothing would get in her way, including very credible allegations of sexual assault, a partisan temper tantrum, and obvious documented lying under oath before the Senate on multiple occasions. Yeah. I mean, if you go back and look at every statement that Susan Collins has made since the moment that Brett Kavanaugh was nominated, it is hard to find any hint that she might have opposed his nomination.

And that's not true, by the way, with Lisa Murkowski's statements. Lisa Murkowski generally kept her own counsel during this and didn't make too many statements. But you could sort of tell that Murkowski could, like, I always thought that the most likely no's in order were Murkowski and then Flake, because who knows what Flake might do sometimes, and then Collins. And that's not because I thought Jeff Flake was going to end up being some hero. It's just because Collins, just everything she said seemed like she wanted to get to yes. And look, I read her speech last night. I didn't see it when she delivered it, but I sort of read it last night as we were preparing for the pod. I think there's a case to be made that she genuinely believes in her own mind that he won't overturn Roe v. Wade,

that he is this model of judicial temperament or whatever. She might have convinced herself of that. I don't know. But when you read that speech, she started the speech by attacking Democrats for opposing Kavanaugh when he was announced. Like the whole beginning of the speech was just an attack on Democrats.

It was incredibly partisan, especially for Susan Collins. She also talked about how she's always voted for Supreme Court nominees, whether they're liberal or conservative. And she did vote for Roberts, Alito, Sotomayor, Kagan, Gorsuch. So she does have this record of voting for Supreme Court nominees, no matter which party or no matter who they're nominated by, what the president's party is.

The exception, of course, is she didn't do much when fucking Mitch McConnell wouldn't give Merrick Garland a hearing. She didn't do anything. I would love to be there when Susan Collins hears about this whole merrick garland thing because she seems to have either been asleep during it or have conveniently forgotten about it because it was it is the context for all of this and she completely ignored it completely ignored it which you know mccon, when he did the Garland thing, part of that was giving some of his members cover, like Collins, to not have to face what an awful thing he did, because he's like, fuck it, I'll take the rap for this. I'm the majority leader. I'm the one who has all the power to not give Merrick Garland a hearing, and you can all say whatever you want.

That's what you do with power. And then also, and this is important, she didn't really say this in her speech so much, but she said this on CNN, that she believes that Dr. Christine Blasey Ford was attacked, sexually assaulted. She doesn't believe it was Brett Kavanaugh. So Susan Collins believes a theory that was almost universally condemned as a crazy conspiracy when it was floated by Ed Whalen, fucking Brett Kavanaugh's friend, who used to be at the Center on Ethics and Public Policy, or whatever the fuck it was called. The conspiracy theory that when Dr. Christine Blasey Ford said that she was 100% certain

that it was Brett Kavanaugh who attacked her, she was just suffering from a case of mistaken identity, and it was actually someone who looked like Brett Kavanaugh. That's what Susan Collins believes to be true. She didn't say, I actually don't know who's telling the truth and who's lying. She didn't say that. No, no. She went with the conspiracy theory about the Kavanaugh doppelganger. So, yeah, I'm pretty sure she was already in the yes camp.

This is an important point because you sort of have to call bullshit on what is happening here, which is put aside Trump and the far right MAGA heads. But what mainstream Republicans, to the extent that that's a term that still exists, want to do is have it both ways. They want to claim to be people who in the Me Too era believe victims and call Christine Ford credible. But they want to be able to say that and then also vote as if she was lying because it is one or the other. If you say she is credible, then you have to believe that she is correct when she says that she's 100% certain that brett kavanaugh attacked her and you can't have it both ways and people are getting susan collins is trying to get away with that yeah and it's just it's ridiculous it's the it's you know she might as well have pulled out her zillow maps um now i think i think two of the most politically difficult no votes were from Lisa Murkowski and from North Dakota's Heidi Heitkamp, who is the only 2018 Senate Democrat who's actually trailing in the polls right now.

What did you think about why they made the decisions they did, these two women? And what did you think about their reasoning? I think they did what they thought was right. And that is without regard for the political consequences. Heidi Heitkamp took a huge risk. She could have gone the Joe Manchin route and just voted yes when it wouldn't have affected the outcome. And she didn't do that. And Lisa Murkowski just stood up against a lot of pressure

from McConnell and Trump and everyone else and did the right thing. And we should applaud that. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. And, you know, especially Heitkamp too. I mean, Murkowski's up in 2022. She is sort of used to pissing off her party a little bit, right? She, and we've talked about this before, but she won her last race with a write-in campaign because a further right Republican won the Republican nomination and Murkowski still won just with a write-in campaign, which is pretty incredible. So she has somewhat of a track record of doing this. Heidi Heitkamp, I have to say, she has not in the past been known to make very politically tough decisions and votes being in deep, deep red North Dakota, a state that Trump won by what, 36 points, 40 points? Someone will correct me. It's a fucking lot.

And she's up. She's in the race of her life. She only won her last race by a couple tenths of a point and now she's in this race and she's trailing in the polls and every consultant every poll probably told her you know the smart thing to do is just uh vote yes on this and and move on she could have done what like you said she could have done what joe mentioned that she could have waited to see how collins voted realized that the nomination was going through anyway and said fuck it i'm just going to vote yes because this is going to be politically easy. And she didn't. And that is something very admirable and something very rare in politics.

I also thought it was interesting how Heitkamp's reasoning and Murkowski's reasoning both sort of centered around the inability of Kavanaugh to serve as an impartial justice on the court. And it went to his temperament in the hearings. Heitkamp said, in addition to the concerns about his past conduct, last Thursday's hearing called into question Judge Kavanaugh's temperament, honesty, and impartiality. And she later said on 60 Minutes, quote, I saw a level of anger and combativeness that I thought was not something that would qualify you to sit on the Supreme Court. Similarly, Murkowski said, quote, I have a very high standard. This judiciary must be perceived as independent, as nonpartisan, as fair and balanced.

And in my conscience, I could not conclude that Kavanaugh is the right person for the court at this time. So I think it's interesting sort of as a, almost a road not taken for Democrats. And we can talk about that later that, um, you know, while the issue of, uh, the sexual assault allegations became incredibly divisive, um, there was a way for red state Democrats and, and Republicans and purple states like Murkowski and Collins to look at the situation and say, whatever you believe about what happened 35 years ago, this man has proven over the last couple of weeks that he is not fit to sit on the court because he has threatened partisan revenge against Democrats and said that they made up this whole thing to attack him. Like, you know, I just,

I think that was an interesting set of reasons. Yeah, it, it absolutely was. And I think we should point out that we have been making the argument for months that voting against Kavanaugh is actually the best politics, no matter what state you're in for a Democrat, whether you're in a red state, a blue state or a purple state. And I think that it's still the case for Heitkamp, but it is a very close call for sure. And she did this against the advice of a lot of people. And we should applaud her for it. And it reminds me of when we were in the White House back in 2010 and the Affordable Care Act vote was coming up. And there were a lot of Democrats in pretty red districts who had a choice to make. And they were being told by a lot of political consultants and reporters that if

they voted for the Affordable Care Act, they would lose. And they did the right thing because they knew they might lose anyway. And if you're going to lose, you might as well be able to look yourself in the mirror for the rest of time. And I think Heidi Hedkamp did that. And we should applaud her and we should help her because she still has a shot to win this thing. And I think Heidi Hedkamp did that. And we should applaud her and we should help her because she still has a shot to win this thing. And it would be a one, she should be rewarded for doing the right thing. And two, it would be an important political lesson to Democrats coming forward that if she can win this race, that there is value in doing the right thing, not the political expedient thing. Trying to win the argument as opposed to avoid the argument,

which too often red state Democrats try to do. And I will say, too, when you look back at that Affordable Care Act vote, a lot of people who took a vote for the Affordable Care Act did end up losing, some Democrats. But some Democrats who voted against the Affordable Care Act in the House, some of the blue dogs, they lost, too. The politics of voting for or against it weren't necessarily clear in the context of an overall way of election where Democrats got crushed. Is that right? Yeah, that's exactly right. And you're in a similar situation here where were there no Kavanaugh vote, were there no Kavanaugh controversy, Heidi Heitkamp is favored to lose that race. Right. Heidi Heitkamp is favored to lose that race.

Right. Just because it's North Dakota and she won in a presidential election year where Democrats tend to do better. And so now we're in a midterm and it's North Dakota. And states like North Dakota have become even more polarized in the Trump era because it's a pretty homogeneously white state. And so she might have lost anyway. So you just don't know. Yeah. And what – we don't know what would have happened here either way. And so you got to just do the right thing because you live the day after election, win or lose, and you should feel good about your time in office.

Yeah. Now let's turn to two Democratic Senate candidates who ultimately supported Kavanaugh's nomination, West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin and Tennessee's Phil Bredesen. Manchin said that he had reservations about his vote because of the accusations and because of Kavanaugh's temperament, but found him to be a qualified jurist. That was a quote. As for Bredesen, he said that the allegations against Kavanaugh, quote, didn't rise to the level of being disqualifying. Dan, why do you think they voted this way? Well, I think in some cases we look at red state Democrats and we presume, and I've worked for a lot of red state Democrats, that they are true progressives who, were they in bluer states,

would feel more comfortable being progressive, right? They kind of sand the edges down. They make a bargain with themselves to get by in these red states. You're going to have to do a couple of things you don't really like or not do some things you want to do in order to continue to be in the Senate and give – make sure the Democrats control the Senate because the most important vote that any House or Senate member makes is for the leader, right? And for whether Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer have the gavel. I don't think Joe Manchin is one of those secret closet progressives who were there to be an influx of hipster millennials from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, who moved into West Virginia, he would all of a sudden become Bernie Sanders light. I don't think that is.

I think that this is who Joe Manchin is. Yeah. What do you think about Bredesen? It just, I think it's just, it is, I don't know. I mean, he, Joe, Phil Bredesen was when he was governor was very similar to Joe Manchin and maybe, and I don't even know that it's, it is, I think that there is a, I don't even know that it's – I think that there is a – I don't know enough to know whether they – like what their views are on Brett Kavanaugh specifically. But I think they simply do a little from column A, a little from column B when it comes to politics. A little from column red, a little from column blue. And this is something from the column red that they think will give them permission to do something around the Affordable Care Act, because that's the thing about Joe Manchin is he has had many opportunities even before the Affordable Care Act was implemented to torpedo it.

sort of done that under the table by giving his vote to someone who will likely rule against the Affordable Care Act in the Supreme Court. But so be it. And so, you know, it's really, I don't really know what to do. I'm really torn about this because if you can't stand up on the most important thing possible, like I've pointed this out to you the other day, but I did a little math and my daughter's four months old. And if Brett Kavanaugh served on the court until he was Ruth Bader Ginsburg's age, my daughter would be 32. And so if you can't stand up on an issue like this, what's the good of having you in the party? But if we don't have Joe Manchin and Phil Bredesen, we don't have a majority. And it's just Mitch McConnell for the rest of our lives. a majority and it's just Mitch McConnell for the rest of our lives. Right. I do think that, I mean, we can talk about whether this was good politics for them in their states. I think we don't know for sure, but if they thought that voting yes would endear them to Republicans in any way, at least Joe Manchin then got a surprise when any way. At least Joe Manchin then got a surprise when Donald Trump Jr., the brilliant Donald Trump Jr. tweeted, a real profile and courage from lion liberal Joe Manchin. Waited until Kavanaugh had

enough votes secured before he announced his support. I bet he had another press release ready to go if Collins went the other way. West Virginia vote for MAGA champion Patrick Morrissey. West Virginia vote for MAGA champion Patrick Morrissey, which just really illustrates the point that we have made on all of these tough votes. If, in fact, Democrats are taking votes with Trump or with Republicans in order to show that they're bipartisan or somehow stave off Republican attack ads on that particular issue, they're fooling themselves because the Republican attack ads are going to come no matter what. Yeah, that is exactly right. And this has always been true. This is not something new in the Trump era where, I mean, you look at all the Democrats who voted for the Iraq war, you know, in part to avoid being attacked as soft on terrorism. And then

Bush compared them to the Bush of then Bush compared them to – the Bush of the Republicans compared them to bin Laden in ads. And we have – like I can't say this enough. You cannot avoid a political argument. You have to learn how to win a political argument. And if you think – like you said, if you think voting for Kavanaugh is going to mean they're not going to attack you as obstructionists, then you have been asleep for the last 30 years of politics. And maybe Manchin and Bredesen thought

this was the right thing to do. I don't know. I'm disappointed in it. And I wish we lived in a world in which Senate power was allocated in a way in which we didn't depend on people who felt some compulsion to vote for people like Brett Kavanaugh to lifetime appointments on the Supreme Court. So back to your question, like, what should Democrats do about this? During the past several days, two significant liberal super PACs move on and Priorities USA announced they would no longer be supporting Manchin and Bredesen. Was that a good move? I'm really, I've been wrestling with this decision. I've been wrestling with this question for days now.

And I just, we need to win those Senate races. We do. I think I understand why Guy Cecil, the head of priorities, did what he did. And I think a lot of his donors probably feel that way, which is like we are liberal progressives. We wrote big checks to this organization and we don't want our checks to go support people who put Brett Kavanaugh on the court. I think that is a fair thing. You know, that may be donor pressure. I think it was a courageous move to do that. And I might have done the same thing in this position.

But I've tried to put myself in the position of if I was a West Virginia voter, right? And so I, progressive, love Richard Ojeda, hate Trump, hate Mitch McConnell, hate Brett Kavanaugh, and I'm going to the polls in 30 some days. And what do I do? And I think the answer is, and it's painful, is you got to vote for Joe Manchin this time. And then next time, we got to think about whether maybe someone should primary him. And maybe you never get that seat again. But I just don't know. There is an element of cutting off our nose to spite our face to have sent a message to Joe Manchin and Phil Bredesen. And Mitch McConnell has a Senate and we are – is in control of the Senate for another two years. And it can continue to flood the courts with Brett Kavanaugh lights.

And that is problematic. But none of this is fun. It's not. Look. It really is a bunch of hard calls. I've thought about this too a lot i'm not thrilled with either of them i think they were morally wrong and politically stupid votes um and i also think that since everyone involved in this election has limited time and limited resources if you want to donate your time and your money to other campaigns, I wouldn't blame

you. I don't know if I'd feel like working or volunteering for either of these guys in the next 30 days, but I'd certainly vote for them if I was in those states. I want them in the Senate next year. They, I mean, Bredesen and Manchin would vote to keep the Affordable Care Act. Their Republican opponents, if they win, could be the deciding votes to dismantle it. 20 million people would lose their health insurance, lose protections for pre-existing conditions, millions more. That will happen if there are two Republicans in those seats in 2019 instead of a Democratic majority. That will happen. Their Republican opponents would also build Trump's wall, oppose the DREAM Act, background checks, raising the minimum wage. Marsha Blackburn, Phil Bredesen's opponent, believes businesses

should be able to withhold services to same-sex couples. And Manchin and Bredesen are on the other side of all those issues I just mentioned. They're on the right side of even though they were on the very wrong side of the Kavanaugh issues. And like like you said, we are talking about a razor thin margin in the Senate where one race could mean the difference between Trump being able to appoint another Supreme Court justice or not. And so it's in terms of whether they should be there or not in the Senate, it is not hard for me. Because like, they didn't, they took a horrible, horrible vote. But it is very real that their two Republican opponents, Marsha Blackburn and Patrick Morrissey could go to the Senate and be deciding votes to take all kinds of protections and benefits away from a lot of

people in this country and cause a lot of people pain. And we just can't do that. We just can't let that happen. We're going to live in this world for a long time as Democrats because we have a Senate problem. And if you look at the, because of the, if you look, since California and Wyoming have the same amount of power in the Senate, if you just look at the states that Obama won in 2012 and you gave the Democrats both senators in those seats, we would only get to 52. And that includes Florida, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa, and Michigan, states that Hillary Clinton lost. And so there are some Susan Collinses out there. There are the Arizona seats. There are a couple of seats that are sort of are in pretty – are blue or purple-blueish states. But that's it.

Most of the Republicans are in rock-red states. And so to get to the numbers we need, we're going to have to have some Democrats in these red states, whether it's Heitkamp or Manchin or Bredesen or someone else. And until Texas becomes totally blue and then we can dominate politics for a generation. Look, and this is, you know, I talked about this in the wilderness a lot. Like this is, this is the main reason that Barack Obama was not able to pass even more progressive legislation during his tenure. It's not because he got to the White House and was like, oh, all I want to do is compromise with Republicans or I'm not going to be as liberal as I said I was going to be. No, he faced a Democratic Senate that was, first of all, barely Democratic. We only had a few seats margin and for a little only for a couple months

also. And he was working with people uh who were senators in red states who were very conservative more than we have now we have a more liberal caucus now in the senate but back then we had much more conservative senators we have to deal with these people all the time including fucking joe lieberman and a lot of p and a lot of democrats from these um you these mountain plain states. So it's a tough reality, but it is a reality. And I do think, like you said, I'm all for now having some good progressive primary challenger for Joe Manchin and Phil Bredesen if he gets the seat. And I think this is part of why priorities and move on decided what they did,

is we've got to get to the point where some of these senators in red states, these Democratic senators should fear what happens when the base and liberals decide to walk away from them, just as much as they fear what happens when the more moderate and conservative voters walk away from them. So they have to. I mean, this is just politics, right? Like they have, there has to be a balance between which constituents they fear the most. That's how politics works. And so I do think it's good if once in a while, you know, a super PAC like that says, Hey, you're going to vote like this. We're not going to be there for you. Or we have a primary challenger that maybe that primary challenger doesn't beat them, but at least makes them move to the left a little bit. I think that's a good thing. But as of right now,

when we're 30 days out from an election, we're control of the Senate's at stake, and we could be witnessing the end of the Affordable Care Act and health insurance for millions of people next year. Yeah, we should vote for them. And I will say too, it's not, I mean, you mentioned all the states that Obama won. Like, it's not just like Joe Manchin and Phil Bredesen in West Virginia and Tennessee states that a Democrat is probably not going to win in a presidential contest anytime soon. But, you know, we should be mad that Democrats didn't win Pat Toomey's seat in Pennsylvania in 2016. We should have a Democrat in Pat Toomey's seat. We should have a Democrat in Cory Gardner's seat in Colorado. That is a purple state.

Dean Heller's seat. Jackie Rosen should win in colorado that is a purple state dean heller c jackie rosen should win uh... in nevada that's a purple state that hillary one ron johnson seat in wisconsin we should be mad that fucking russ feingold didn't win in wisconsin in twenty sixteen we should have a democrat in wisconsin seat rob portman seat in ohio like a number of seats were republicans are holding them right now in purple states or even blue states that Democrats should take back. And, you know, we have a tough Senate map this year, but at least in 2020 and 22. Right. Yeah. I mean, there are seats to be had,

but we're going to be on the razor's edge for a long time. We just have a lot more safe seats than we do. Yeah. That's why D.C DC and Puerto Rico, we should make them states. That's right. A little cheer for Michael Martinez here, DC resident. So do you think there was anything that Democrats could have done differently to produce a different outcome here? I mean, obviously there are things that Democrats could have done better, but it's all on the margins. You know, we railed at the Senate about fighting here, and they fought. And Chuck Schumer held this caucus together until the very end, and he held everyone but Joe Manchin. And he held – and even Manchin, he held them – one of our big fears was that there would be a parade of red state Democrats who would come out early and say they would vote for Kavanaugh and take the pressure off of Collins, Murkowski, Flake. And they didn't do that. I mean, even Manchin,

who doesn't really listen to Senate leadership, like Chuck Schumer doesn't control Joe Manchin, waited until after the outcome was no longer in doubt. And I was going to say, We should just say that, right? I think if Susan Collins voted no on this nomination, there is no way that Joe Manchin would have been the deciding vote in favor of Brett Kavanaugh, right?

Yeah, I agree with that. It seemed very obvious that he was just waiting to see what she did. Joe Manchin did the most political thing of anyone here whereas he just literally like he wasn't going to be the deciding vote in favor or against he just wanted to wait and see what susan collins did so he could take a freebie he was in no way subtle about it either he's just like two seconds later yeah it was like the equivalent of when

senators send out their reaction to the state of the Union before the president gives the remarks just based on the excerpts that are on the evening news. He's just like done. Yeah. Donald Trump was probably right. Donald Trump Jr. was probably right. He probably had two versions of the press release. And that's just sort of who Joe Manchin is for better or for worse. Sometimes it's for worse.

I thought about what Democrats could have done differently, too. And I went through the whole hearing. I went through all of this. about what Democrats could have done differently too. And I went through the whole hearing. I went through all of this. And, you know, I do think that during the hearing, when Kavanaugh testified for the second time and Dr. Christine Blasey Ford did, I did think to myself that when he went off like a lunatic and started talking about revenge on behalf of the Clintons and what goes around comes around, there could have been a moment where a Democratic senator just kind of threw away their prepared questions and said, what did you just do? You're

about to sit on the highest court in the land. It's supposed to be impartial. You said that it's so important for judges to be independent and to be nonpartisan. And you just threatened an entire political party in front of the whole world. Like you could have been an interesting moment where the Democrats took it to that. But again, even when you go back and say, what could the Democrats could have done differently? The question is, what could they have done to change Susan Collins's mind? Because she was the only one that was possibly going to vote no on this nomination. And when you look at Susan Collins's reasoning, that she believes that it was a case of mistaken identity, that she liked Kavanaugh from the beginning, thought he was qualified, that she didn't think he would overturn Roe v. Wade.

I mean, she met with victims of sexual assault. There were protesters. There were her Democratic colleagues trying to convince her. Republican Lisa Murkowski, her good friend, voted against it. She couldn't convince her. I don't know what Democrats could have done differently to change Susan Collins's mind, which is what we're talking about when we say, what could Democrats have done differently? statements and more of their five minutes asking, or they coordinate better on what the questions are going to be. But there was never going to be like a moment from A Few Good Men where Brett Kavanaugh was just going to admit that he ordered the code red. Like that just wasn't going

to happen. And this all comes down to the fundamental problem with politics in America right now and why we need to change things in 2018 is the fate of the republic depends on the good faith of a handful of Republicans. And when that is the case, we are in deep, deep trouble. Yeah. There's literally every Democrat can do everything right and we still lose. And that's a problem. And it's a matter of we don't have power. problem. And it's a matter of, we don't have power. We have no more power today than we did on the day that Donald Trump was elected, at least in Congress. So I realize it's like incredibly

frustrating. It's like, oh, Democrats lost or Republicans won because everything is viewed through the prism of winning or losing. But it's all about power dynamics here. Mitch McConnell has all the power as long as he keeps his caucus together. And if you want to criticize, I'm all for criticizing Democrats when they fuck things up. If you want to criticize Democrats, wait till Democrats are in power and do stupid things. And could have made different choices because they have power and they decided to go one way or the other. That's when we should criticize Democrats. They have no power.

They did what they needed to do. It was what they all held together. They fought the nomination and they all voted no. We just didn't have the votes. We just didn't have the votes. That's right. I think that's so important because you saw all these exhausting pieces that were like how Democrats got outplayed on Kavanaugh, how Trump won, you know, all of this. And here's the thing. No, Dan. No, I didn't read those pieces this weekend. I was so angry. I knew it was coming. I was like, not reading the fucking Axios headline, not reading this John Harris piece

in Politico, not watching the Sunday shows because I knew exactly what they were all going to say. You just, they can't help. God love them. They can't help themselves. They can't help themselves. Everything is viewed through the prism of winning or losing. We could be in the second term. Trump could be rounding up people with his secret police. And if he rounded up enough people, they'd say big win for Trump this week, rounded up a whole bunch of people. Democrats't do anything that's how they do it i'm just that's the way they do it that's that's right i would have you know that i actually wrote

the outline on most of the outline on saturday afternoon and i had a section in there we were going to go where we were going to go through the tiktok pieces for the most annoying parts and then i saw your tweet about how you declared you weren't going to read them. I didn't really believe you when you set that out, but so I deleted it from the outline. Thank you. I read a whole bunch of news this week. I wrote, I read a couple of takes on Kavanaugh too, but I was not going to do the TikTok from the Beltway crew. All right. Question. Where do we go from here when it comes to the Supreme Court? Some have called on Democrats to continue investigating Kavanaugh if we win the House. Some have called on Democrats to impeach Kavanaugh.

And some have called for expanding the court to 11 seats if Democrats take power. Lovett and Tommy and I talked about this a little bit a couple pods ago, but what are your thoughts on this? I think I feel about impeaching Kavanaugh like I sort of feel about impeaching Trump, which it would be great if we could do it. What I mean is I think you investigate first and impeach second. And it seems pretty clear that the investigation done by the FBI was cursory at best. And that is based in part, at least on some of the limits that they allowed the White House to put on them. And it just seems impossible to imagine that you could investigate a claim of two competing versions of what happened and interview neither

of the people who were putting forward those versions. And so I think if the Democrats have the House or the Senate, I think the chair of the Judiciary Committee should investigate. I think they should subpoena the documents from the investigation. I think they should subpoena correspondence between Don McGahn and Christopher Wray, a Federalist Society bro of Brett Kavanaugh's. I think they should subpoena correspondence between Rod Rosenstein and Christopher Wray, Rod Rosenstein, another Federalist Society bro of Brett Kavanaugh's, and get to the bottom. Maybe nothing untoward happened here, but let's find out. And let's find out if there's more information to be had. Let's investigate the things the FBI

decided not to investigate. And let's get to the bottom of it. And maybe it will make no difference in the world, but it's the right thing to do. And I think the White House and the FBI should also know that their checks and balances are finally here and there will be oversight. Yeah. And I don't want this to be some Benghazi circus where the Republicans drag this on for years and years purely for politics, which they admitted, and made up all kinds of conspiracy theories around what was a very serious incident. But I just want to know the truth. I think it's important to know the truth. I think we owe that to Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. I think we owe that to Deborah Ramirez. I think we owe that to all the women who've come forward on this. I think I want to

know the truth about what happened. And if it doesn't lead to anywhere that's politically advantageous for Democrats, I don't care. I would just like to know. What do you think about expanding the court to 11 seats? I don't know. It's just, it's like, sure, why not? And then we'll expand it to 11 and then they'll expand it to 13. And eventually there will be more members of the Supreme Court than Congress. I just, I don't know what it accomplishes. I think the thing that Democrats need to do is there is an element of justice as it relates to Merrick Garland. And so if there is another Supreme Court vacancy, then it should be held open. And I don't care if it's held open for six fucking years. I really don't. So in the short term, that's what we need to do. Like, if you want to

expand it to 11, fine. I actually think, I mean, just maybe the Supreme Court should be 10 people, not nine. And if you have a tie, then it's probably too controversial a thing to change the law. But I don't know. I don't know. I don't just know what it is. It's just it does. I don't really know what it accomplishes. I'm much more interested in focusing our energy around winning elections, both the Senate and the White House, so that we can put people on the court. I am open to it. I'm still willing to hear arguments on both sides of it, only because for one reason, I think it's easier to do than impeaching Brett Kavanaugh. Impeaching him, you'd need 67 votes in the Senate,

which we're never going to get as we just talked about the Senate thing, unless something comes out that is definitive, right? And even then, who knows? But you could just pass a bill in the House and the Senate, sign it by a Democratic president, and suddenly you have two extra seats. I think it's important because we're getting to the point with this 5-4 majority. And again, we have a 5-4 conservative majority. Clarence Thomas is in his early 70s.

He is the next conservative that would retire because he's the oldest conservative on the bench. That is still a long time when you think that Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 85 years old. That could be 15 years of a 5-4 conservative majority. And that's, that's in the best case. Um, if you know, Clarence Thomas, uh, retires at 85 or something like that. So that's a long fucking time. And the next democratic president and the next democratic Congress, uh, they pass a slew of progressive legislation. You can be sure that the 5-4 majority that's conservative, which includes a couple of real partisan hacks in both Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas, are going to strike those pieces of legislation down.

And we're not going to have progressive governance in this country for a long, long time. And the fact that one of those seats, Gorsuch's seat, was basically stolen, and the second seat, Kavanaugh's seat, you can argue was illegitimate because they jammed in a partisan who'd been accused of sexual assault, I think there's a good argument for adding a couple seats. Yeah, okay, you've convinced me. You're right that Republicans would retaliate. I mean, that's my fear, too, is that next Republican president,

then that person adds two seats too but i also think you know we're sitting here republicans are probably going to add seats anyway republicans did change the makeup of the court um at the end of the obama administration they kept it to eight people for a year okay all right so there is no magic number you've convinced me i think we should do it i know i know people say it's crazy the end of democracy institutions, institutions, blah, blah, blah. The other idea I heard was Matt Iglesias from Vox said, instead of expanding the court to 11,

why don't you reduce it to 7, which you could do by passing a law. The law would say last in first out. Bye-bye Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh. We're down to 7. It seems great. That's even better. Let's do it.

And I also think the next Democrat or the next Democratic appointment in the Supreme Court, whenever that is, God willing that is soon, should be in their 30s. They should be a 30-year-old who recently ran a marathon and is vegan. Like, I want the healthiest fucking young person we possibly have. I want them to serve 60 years on the court. Daniel Gray for Supreme Court Justice. How about that? Done, done.

Great, starting the campaign now. Let's talk about where all of this leaves us one month from the midterms, where we are right now. Republicans are telling everybody that the Kavanaugh fight has fired up its base, especially in the Senate races. Also, I saw Greg Sargent at The Washington Post out with a piece this morning that said, you know, a Democratic strategist did tell him that they saw this fire up some Republicans and even Republican women in some of these red states, even though it was also hurting them in the House race. even though it was also hurting them in the House race.

So, and thanks to a few tightening Senate polls, basically the Washington media is entertaining this narrative about a new Republican advantage, at least in the Senate. Republicans are also telling everybody that the reason their base is so fired up is because a good man's reputation was destroyed by an angry left-wing mob of professional protesters funded by George Soros. Trump himself said during a rally this weekend, quote, you don't hand matches to an arsonist and you don't give power to an angry left wing mob. Mitch McConnell also used the mob language when he talked to The Washington Post,

said the opposition to Kavanaugh was a political gift to Republicans and that his caucus, quote, stood up to a mob. Dan, what do you think about this new narrative? And did Democrats overplay their hand in any way, which is the question that everyone's fucking asking in Washington? Oh, did Democrats decide that they were not going to ignore an allegation of sexual assault against someone speeding towards a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court? Like, what is the other fucking option? What were we supposed to do?

I mean. Just say, eh, just move on, vote, we'll all vote for him. There was no other option. This was the right thing to do. It was the only thing to do. And it, frankly, was the politically right thing to do, even though I don't think that's why Democrats did it, is because to ignore this and allow this to push forward

without doing their Senate duty to ask questions and have a hearing on it would have been a – also would have been a political – would have been a political suicide. I don't know what Democrats were supposed to do. And is this the new narrative? Or is this the new reality? It's definitely the new narrative. Is it the new reality? Who the fuck knows? I have no idea.

You know what else? I don't also, I also don't care because it doesn't matter what, like this is a forecast for what's going to happen in 30 days. That's what it is. It is saying that because this happened today, the outcome in 30 days will be different. We have 30 days to decide which narrative is right.

Is it a blue wave? Is it a red wave? Is it Kavanaugh momentum kavanaugh search whatever they call it is it something else like that's that is something for everyone listening and all of us to decide what is going to happen that is our choice it's a question of turnout enthusiasm volunteering campaigning hard it's all of those things And like elections aren't decided by what's written in Politico. And you know, it was 30 days ago, the anonymous hotbed. I mean, there are so many news cycles and so many narratives left between now and the election. It is head spinning. But look, I mean, do you think this new, we don't know if it will work, but

why do you think Republicans are going with this new narrative where they're sort of moving on from, they want to drag this out as long as possible, right? So now it's like moving from just about Kavanaugh and this poor man whose life was ruined, now who has a Supreme Court seat for life, quite a ruined life. Now it's moving from that to the angry left wing mob. And we saw this narrative, you know, back during the, uh, the great red hen incident of 2018. Um, you know, we're back, back to the civility, civility narrative where Republicans are going to go around and pick out, um, the angriest, um, you knowest protesters on the left. Whoever does something crazy on the left,

they're going to find that person and say, okay, this person represents all of the Democrats now and all the leftists. They're basically going full Nixon in 68, right? There's all these kind of rabble-rousers and mobs out there, and the Republican Party is the party of law and order. The party where the president of the United States has been implicated in two federal crimes, has possibly committed tax fraud, and his campaign manager, national security

advisor, and a host of other aides have pled guilty to crimes. Also, two congressmen, two congressmen indicted, Republican congressmen. Party of law and order. Yeah, it doesn't seem credible to me, but who knows? Who knows? I mean, look, they're doing this because fear is what motivates their voters, or at least that's what they believe motivates their voters. Fear of immigrants, fear of Black Lives Matter, fear of Colin Kaepernick kneeling fear of ms-13 and now it's fear of liberal mobs whatever that means and there's sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy here which is you

tell people that the base is fired up and the base gets a little more fired up and they're doing that and i just i'm sure like there is a i'm sure that the Republicans are more fired up. This is something for them to rally around. It is, as we've talked about before, the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh is something that hardcore Trump voters and soft Trump voters can unify around because they care about conservative governance on the court. unify around because they care about conservative governance on the court. It's just like, this is the same thing with the tax cut, right? Everyone, even the people who do not like Trump or begrudgingly vote for Trump,

find something they can get together. And everyone gets to feel like there's their, their part of their weird fucked up party together, right? It's like, it's like the good old days again. And so I'm sure that I'm sure that's happening. Well, that's a stand itself for 30 days. Who knows days who knows probably not it could we don't know

well uh for democrats how do you think democrats sort of wrestle back the narrative uh to issues and fights that are more favorable to us or not just more favorable to us because our base is pretty fired up too but obviously we know there are these, we've got non-voters who are wondering, you know, should I go to the polls? Will it make a difference? I don't usually vote. We've got some of these Obama Trump voters out there who've gone both ways. We've got some of these Romney Clinton voters out there. For those people who are trying to figure out, you know, which party to vote for, how do we sort of, for those undecided voters out there, how do we wrestle back the narrative? I think one, I know the spirit in which you intended this question, but I wouldn't worry about the narrative. The narrative is not a

real thing. The narrative is something you and I talk about. It's something that people who get Politico playbook or AxioCM in our inboxes who watch cable all day long. Like that's, we think about the narrative there is not, is not a real thing. If the narrative was a real thing, Hillary Clinton would be president because the narrative was Hillary Clinton was going to win. And so don't worry about the narrative. I think we have to continue to do what we have been doing.

And I think don't avoid, you know, you hear, you know, you're getting, we're getting like tutted by centrist Democrats saying Democrats should avoid cultural fights. We lose cultural fights. Get back to the economy or – yes, yes, we should do all those things.

But you don't get to ignore cultural fights either. You have to win them and pivot back to the issues that are best for us. And so we have – used Kavanaugh as a motivating factor for why Senate control matters, use it for why elections matter, and try to channel some of the anchor people have in it into more volunteers, more canvassers, more phone bankers, we just, we have to deal with it. There's not a world in which we're like, Oh, Kavanaugh's over, we're gonna knock the you know, knock the dirt off our jerseys, and we're gonna get up and we're gonna get right back to wage stagnation. Like it doesn't really work that way. We're going to knock the dirt off our jerseys. We're going to get up and we're going to get right back to wage stagnation. It doesn't really work that way. We have to deal with it

and pivot back to our issues. Yeah. I mean, I do think if I was advising, you're right about the narrative. If I was advising Democratic candidates, Democratic campaigns, people like us on the left who sort of talk about politics for a living. This election has to be about very big things. We have to make it about very big things. If this election turns on whether Brett Kavanaugh was victimized or not, or whether the angry left wing mobs are scary or not, then I don't think we do as well as if we make this election about very big issues that will affect the lives of millions of people. If the Republicans win, if they win Congress, it will be the end of the Affordable Care Act. 20 million people will lose health

insurance in this country. We just saw a story last night break because the UN climate report was released saying that now if we do not move heaven and earth basically to reduce warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius within the decade, by 2040, there will be a global crisis of people sort of fleeing the tropics, mass migration. You think the refugee crisis out of Syria is bad. What do you see in 2040 when the planet heats up and people aren't living in the tropics anymore? I mean, these are, you talked about your daughter, like our kids will be in college when this is happening, when the UN now and all the countries in the world say that the world is going to be facing serious, serious humanitarian crisis by 2040 if we don't act.

And we have one party in this country, which is the last political party on earth that doesn't even believe that climate change is real. There are very big issues at stake in this election. And if Republicans want to fucking talk about mobs and protesters and poor Brett Kavanaugh. We should let them do that. And we should talk about the fucking big issues that actually matter to people. That is very well said. And if you want to think about elections mattering is we we have the clock is ticking and we have pissed away two years. We were making progress on this issue, not fast enough, but we were making progress.

And we took a gigantic step back because we elected a man who believes climate change is a Chinese hoax and a party of people who ignore science because the Koch brothers pay them to ignore science. And that's what matters. We don't have time to fuck around here, right? We have to get people in office who take things seriously. and the Republicans are not a serious party. They're not. Whatever else, their views money from the Koch brothers at the risk of the planet and our children's future, then you are not, you're not a political party. You're not a serious institution. You're a joke, like a dangerous joke. Yeah. It is a cult centered around Donald Trump and the Koch brothers' money and nothing else. And we're all paying a huge price for it. Yeah. And let them go out there and crow about the economy and they can talk about the headlines and the financial press and the stock market.

And we should talk about how wages have barely moved and healthcare costs are rising. And most students in this country are drowning in debt right now. And that Republicans, if they take Congress back, they're ready to pass another tax cut for super rich people so that they can continue to cut education and Medicare and Medicaid and all the rest of it. Yes. I mean, this is this is what we should. And look, we do. It's tough because I'm sure campaigns are running these ads. Candidates are talking about this on the ground.

It does help when there is news hooks nationally for these issues. And I do think we have to be looking for opportunities to talk about some of this stuff. I mean, there's an ACA lawsuit in Texas where a court in Texas could rule that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional as early as this week. Democrats should be all over that talking about health care, things like this U.N. climate report. I mean mean insurance companies are sending out all kinds of notices about premiums uh for next year um so look there are going to be opportunities that we just need to look out for to talk about issues that actually affect most people's lives in this country and not get in battles with the right-wing twitter trolls

about you know whether someone's a fucking left-wing mob or not that's very not very constructive yeah are you saying just bear with me here are you saying to our audience that there is a time at which getting into a twitter battle is not constructive believe it or not that is what i'm I mean, most of the time it's constructive. But in this one very specific case, it's probably not a good use of your time. For the next 30 days, maybe not so much. And look, I have to say, too, Tommy and I went down and we visited Katie Porter's field office, one of her field offices, on Friday. And we were there right while Susan Collins was giving her

speech. So I didn't even know what was happening, except I was getting all these texts from my wife with a lot of four letter words. So I knew it wasn't good. But talking to all these volunteers, and I was asking them, like, you know, what are you guys hearing? How's everything going? And they were like, look, this is only anecdotal, but we've had Republican, this is Orange County. We've had Republican women coming in over the last couple of days to our office saying, I'm done with the party. I'm, I'm, you know, I want to help a Democrat win. We need to change stuff. And they were, they were like, they felt good. They were inspiring. And it just reminded me of, and you know, we always knew this when we were on campaigns and we were like stuck in headquarters looking at news all day versus being out in the field. When you go out to canvas, when

you go out to a field office and you volunteer, you realize that the energy on the ground is so much better and inspiring and more optimistic than if you are just sort of scrolling through news all day. And so it's just yet another reason why everyone should go out and volunteer and get involved in these last 30 days, because it will make you feel better and it will actually make a difference in the outcome of the election. Yeah, that is true. All right. That's that. When we come back, we will hear from Jesse Colvin, Abigail Spanberger, and Lauren Baer, all of whom are running for Congress and all have national security and military backgrounds. And they talked to Tommy last week. So you'll hear a portion of their interviews next.

Hey, guys, it's Tommy Vitor. I wanted to introduce this week's interview section. I did an episode of Pod Save the World that will come out this Wednesday where I talked to three candidates who are running for Congress this year who all served in national security positions. I talked to Jesse Colvin, who was an Army Ranger and U.S. intelligence officer, who's running in Maryland. I talked to Abigail Spanberger, who was a CIA officer, who's running in Maryland. I talked to Abigail Spanberger, who was a CIA officer who's running in Virginia. And I talked to Lauren Baer, who was at the State Department for several years and is now running for Congress in Florida. They are inspired to run and to get in the arena this year because of the work they did to protect our national security, to make us safer, to advance U.S. interests around the world.

And I found their stories to be so inspiring and motivating. And it got me excited all over again for these midterms because it's not just about winning elections. It's about the people who will then serve in these key roles and make our government better and a little more empathetic and a little smarter and a little more focused on not just our neighborhoods and what's going on immediately around us, but the world, because I feel like we've really lost touch with that. So for today's Pod Save America interview, I wanted to play some brief excerpts from those three interviews. The full episode will be much longer. It'll be on Pod Save the World this week, so download that, please.

But this is a brief excerpt from one question that I asked all of them, which was, what inspired you to run this year? Why is this the time for you to get into politics? And so we will kick it off with Jesse Colvin, who's running for Congress in Maryland and served in the Army. There are a lot of military veterans like me running for Congress this year. We volunteered for Iraq and Afghanistan, and we were sent there with no exit strategy. Many of us lost friends and colleagues. Many of us, when you come home, lose friends and colleagues with things like post-traumatic stress. I'm a little biased in that regard because my wife runs a nonprofit to prevent military veteran suicide. But you come home and you see a Congress

full of folks who are not only okay with the fray of talking ahead, screaming at each other on cable news, actually benefit from it. That's part of it. The other part is I don't think it's enough to be against something. My wife and I just had our first child. Our son is five months old. And I think like every soon-to-be parent, we started thinking about the world

that he was going to inherit and his kids were going to inherit. And then I turned to my wife and said, we've got to do something. The politics, the vision are ripping our country apart. And she runs this nonprofit, especially trans service dogs for vets coming back, post-traumatic stress, military sexual trauma.

She said, I'm doing pretty good work, so you go figure it out. I'm young, I'm 34, but I looked around the country at a guy like Conor Lamb up in Pennsylvania or some of the other veterans, and I looked at their war records, I looked at their business backgrounds, and I saw a lot of myself. And so that's how I got into this thing.

Do you feel like the idea of service or what service means is evolving during the Trump administration? Has it changed the way you think about it? That's a great question. I talk a lot about my military service and what I learned from it on the campaign trail because I think it reveals how I'm thinking about representing folks in our district. I'm a Democrat. I'm a very proud Democrat. We happen to be endorsed by a member of the GOP who held this seat for nine terms.

He's a Marine, and I'm an Army Ranger, so when we get a chance to spend time together, it takes about 30 minutes to figure out who's tougher because we're still arguing over it. But his endorsement speech was about integrity, and it was about service. We also happen to have the Chesapeake Bay and the way of life that is associated with Chesapeake Bay in our district, so he talked about those three things.

So I hope to be part of this new wave of veterans coming to Congress who talk about things like civility and integrity, because I think it's absolutely missing in this era. And I hope to be part of a new generation that brings change. And here's Abigail Spanberger, who is running in Virginia and was a CIA officer. I came down to a couple of things. One is my background, CIA, before that I was a federal agent. So my background's always been one of service. We, especially in both CIA and in law enforcement, we didn't talk about politics in the normal sense. I didn't know who was a Democrat. I didn't know who was a Republican. We just talked about the mission. We talked about what we needed to be

doing. We talked about how we could be helping each other, how we could be either executing a search warrant or collecting the intel that we needed. And that was it. And so there's a foundational piece that I find really troubling, which is there seems to be a step away from the notion of service. And politics has become just focused on politics. And it's about this particular issue or that particular ideology. And fundamentally, we're losing the piece of the conversation, which is what's best for the American people. And, you know, I think for so many of us who do have a background of service, whether it be, you know, with CIA or a lot of the military veterans, background of service, whether it be with CIA or a lot of the military veterans, our focus was on what's best for the country. How can we achieve that goal? Let's talk about all of the contingencies

that could occur, and let's talk about all the risks, and let's talk about all the benefits. And it wasn't partisan. That's the first piece of it. The second piece of it is I had an incredible experience as a CIA officer, but the foundation of what I was doing every single day was collecting information so that people could make good decisions. And sometimes that decision maker was me. Sometimes that decision maker was another CIA employee. Sometimes that decision maker was the president. And the notion that we have a Congress that has moved away from the value of informed decision-making is almost offensive to me. The fact that ideology weighs out over fact and that partisan politics outweighs real commitment to decisions, informed decisions, excuse me, is concerning. And so those are the, thematically, the two pieces that drove me to get involved in this race

because I think we need people who are committed to diving deep into problems and understanding complicated, challenging issues. And certainly that's my background. But committed to trying to find solutions and, you know, having hard conversations and certainly sitting across the table asking someone to commit espionage is about as hard of a conversation as you can possibly have. So, you know, I bring on, I say bring on the conversations related to healthcare and education and infrastructure issues.

You don't just tweet a lot and say, I alone can fix it. That's not how you solve problems. No. And finally, you're going to hear from Lauren Baer, who served in the State Department for several years at a very senior level and is now running for Congress in Florida. Yeah. I mean, this is something I never imagined that I would do. Very much a policy girl, not a politics girl. Never, you know, never worked a campaign, never wanted to really touch an election with a 10-foot pole. Shortest answer I can give, I gave birth to a daughter two weeks before Donald Trump was

elected president. And I thought she was being born into one world. And it turns out she was born into a very different world than I'd imagined. And I just think, you know, every single day about my responsibility to create the kind of country I want my daughter to live in. And then I have a mom who is one of 74,000 people in our district who stood to lose their health care when our current representative, Brian Mast, my opponent, voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act last May. So I had always wondered what I would do at a time when our values, our institutions were really under threat in this country. And the answer was I couldn't just sit on the sidelines. I had to get in the arena and fight. Your state brought us some of the leading conservative intellectuals, people like Ron DeSantis and Matt Geitz.

You went to Harvard University, Yale Law School. You have an M. Phil from the University of Oxford. I don't even know what that is. I'm not sure I know what it is. Do you think you're too smart to be in Congress, given the legacy of the Geitz's of the world? No. And look, I actually, I find it kind of disappointing that one of the things I hear frequently from constituents and frankly, people on both sides of the aisle is amazement at how qualified I am to be in Congress. What kind of commentary is that on our politics that it has become so debased that the assumption that anyone who has solid qualifications, and not just academic, because I mean, degrees don't qualify you alone for this, but being from the district, having longstanding ties, having actual government experience, the assumption that people who have very, very qualified to be doing other things, deciding that we don't want to give up on our government. We don't want to give up on Congress.

We are old enough to remember a time when Congress functioned better, and perhaps young enough to still be idealistic enough to believe that it can work that way again and that a new generation of leadership can take us there. Okay. So that was just an excerpt from these three conversations. We'll weave them together and release as Pod Save the World this week. Please listen to it because it was really one of my favorite episodes I've ever gotten to do because these people are just so smart and thoughtful and

their stories are so moving and real about the sacrifices they faced and the challenges they overcame to get to where they are today and how they would apply that work to the next job, to Congress. So check it out. You'll be fired up and ready to get out there and hit some doors and go to votesaveamerica.com to get involved. Thanks to Jesse Colvin, Abigail Spanberger, and Lauren Baer for joining Tommy. And Tommy and Lovett will have a new pod for you guys on Wednesday afternoon. And then we will all see you Friday night. Bye, everyone. Bye.