Pod Save America - “President-elect Joe Biden.”

Episode Date: November 9, 2020

President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris deliver victory speeches after the race is called, two-time popular vote loser and soon-to-be one-term President Donald Trump refuses to concede, and Democrats debate how to govern and win in a divided Washington. Then Black Voters Matter co-founder LaTosha Brown talks to Jon Lovett about the power of organizing and the Georgia Senate runoffs.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's pod, Lovett talks to LaT Latasha Brown of Black Voters Matter about the organizing that helped win this election and how it can help us in the Georgia Senate runoffs. Before that, we'll talk about the victory speeches from President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris after the race was called by every news outlet. We'll also talk about Donald Trump's continued refusal to concede and what's next as

Biden prepares to take office in January. But first, love it. How was your celebratory pod this weekend? I had a great time talking to Alyssa. We were very loose. Ben Wickler talked about winning Wisconsin. Then I talked to Zainab Tufekci because you know what? It has been a long election and I felt we deserved it. I wanted to talk about models and polls. So we did. I finally got a chance to talk about why I'm bothered by the models. It was a very cathartic episode.

Check it out. Check it out, Nate Silver. I don't blame Nate Silver. I blame the people that misuse the models. People misuse the models. None of us blame Nate Silver. We all love FiveThirtyEight. One more quick note.

We mentioned this in the last pod, but coming soon, Adopt a State Georgia. For those of you who want to get involved in the two Senate runoffs, but you can already request your mail ballot if you're a Georgia voter, and you can donate directly

to John Ossoff and Raphael Warnock at votesaveamerica.com slash get Mitch and stay tuned. Soon, soon, soon. Adopt-a-State Georgia will be coming. I just feel like it's a little bit like someone just finished a marathon

and they're kind of like leaning over and breathing and you just tell them, you go like, hey, I just have some really bad news. There's a tiger right behind you. No, no, it's like I parked the car two miles away.

We got to go get it, yeah. We're so close. I hear you. I hear you. All right, let's get to the news. On Saturday morning, after America collectively watched nearly 96 consecutive hours of cable news, every major news outlet followed Crooked Media

and finally called Pennsylvania and the presidency for Joe Biden. Then on Saturday night, the president-elect and vice president-elect Kamala Harris delivered their victory speeches to a drive-in rally full of supporters in Wilmington, Delaware. Before we get to the speeches, how about those spontaneous celebrations all over the country after the race was called and the congratulations from quite a few foreign leaders. What did you guys think? It was just the best. It was just the best.

I finally left my couch after 400 straight hours of watching cable to drive to the liquor store, as one does after winning a historic collection. When I saw people on the corners chanting Joe Biden's name up on Santa Monica, hyping people up, just pure joy. It was the most unbelievable sense of relief. I've not felt that way in four years. I really haven't. Love it. Yeah, I felt the same way. I felt as though the victory was meted out in pieces starting Tuesday night. Tuesday night comes, feels like deeply unsatisfying because the results are coming in slowly. We know there's a red mirage and yet it still looks like a real place that you can go. You know, it's like, I'm still trying to drink the sand, you know,

then Wednesday morning, things are looking brighter. The, the, the colors are, are coming back into, um, you know, the world, uh, Thursday, you start to feel Friday. And by Saturday, it was just a reminder too that the term president-elect is not a term of art. There's no magical moment where you become president-elect. We call him president-elect because there's a collective appreciation of the fact that this is now done, right? And it is so resounding that it doesn't matter that Trump didn't give in. It matters that the media calls it. It does because this is a democracy where we do rely on the press. Like all the institutions that Trump has spent so long assaulting, undermining, you really felt on Saturday that we have hard fights to come. There are fake legal challenges to come,

but you felt those institutions do their job and a collective sigh of relief and millions of people, especially in cities that have been called names and delegitimized and attacked and told they're not real Americans for so long, come out into the street in like big cities across the country and say like, it's our fucking country too. It's our country too. And we won and we won and it felt fucking great. It was cathartic more than anything. it was interesting when they called it saturday morning i of course missed it i was uh i was putting charlie down for a nap i just been watching cable non-stop for five days and the five seconds i'm away from the tv i missed it you're like when walter you're like when walter motho turns away from the plant and dennis the menace you know

don't worry about it. So, Emily and I are watching it, and we're, like, very happy, but it didn't really hit me until outside. I started to, like, people were walking up, and we're in a pretty quiet neighborhood, and then people were, like, people were walking up and down the street, banging pots and pans, screaming,

and that's when it hit me. And then we took a drive through the swing district of West Hollywood on Santa Monica Boulevard. and that's when it hit me and then we took a drive through the um swing district of west hollywood on santa monica boulevard it was fucking mayhem like people leaning out their cars people who weren't like some people were in biden harris stuff but some people were not and just like walk along the streets but if you beeped at them they'd give you a thumbs up it was like a knowing excitement from everyone you ran into yeah it was like the allies liberating paris after world war ii it was just yeah it was unbelievable well that's the difference is in that case the fascists did surrender well we'll get to that tell me i i

don't know if i was surprised but i was certainly like very happy to see all the foreign leaders rush to congratulate him what did you what did you think about that from like a foreign policy perspective that was pretty sweet right yeah i mean it was very even bb even bb and the saudis his best friends they took their sweet ass time and trust me i noticed but you know you had you had boris johnson coming out of the gate pretty fast on saturday you had like real, you had Modi in India putting out a statement pretty quickly. Like people who have built relationships with Trump,

who have aligned themselves with Trump were pretty fast out of the gate telling him, you know, nice knowing you. It's been fun. It was great. It's almost as if they weren't motivated by a deep sense of loyalty to him as a person. Right.

And more were using a relationship with a goon. It was a real sort of spell has been broken moment. Yes. It felt like once. All right. So then later that night, we had the speeches in Wilmington, Delaware at the drive-in rally. Let's listen to a clip from Vice President-elect Kamala Harris's victory speech. But while I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last.

Because every little girl watching tonight sees that this is a country of possibilities. And to the children of our country, regardless of your gender, our country has sent you a clear message. Dream with ambition. Lead with conviction. And see yourselves in a way that others may not simply because they've never seen it before but know that we will applaud you every step of the way i feel like kamala harris's barrier-breaking history-making candidacy here was something we spoke about when she was selected

as vice president. And then all of a sudden we won and I saw her up there and it's like, oh, yeah, this election was history making. Right. Like it just sort of like it was totally under the radar for a couple of months. And it was just so wonderful to see. What did you guys think of her speech? It was a great speech. Look, I know I swim in a liberal bubble, but I heard from so many people who are toasting, who are cheering, who are crying, who are just like beyond proud, who are overjoyed watching Kamala Harris speak. And then also just to step back for a second, I think folks should think about the fact that Kamala Harris spoke for a second.

The truth is most politicians are petty. They don't want to get upstaged by their vice president or anybody else. And Joe Biden knows damn well what a great speaker she is. And he knew there was a chance that people might come away more excited about her remarks than his. And he didn't care. He's confident in himself. He's confident in their partnership.

He wanted to celebrate the historic nature of her candidacy. And she delivered, man. I mean, that was a hell of a speech. It was inspiring. Goosebumps, tears, the whole thing. Yeah. I was struck by it too. I felt the same way. I felt like it was, I think, subsumed by the scale of how much of a threat Trump himself posed. But seeing her up there, the first woman, first woman of color, what I really thought when I saw it was we're never going to have an all white or all male Democratic ticket again. And I thought, what an extraordinary thing that it was subsumed by the nature of this moment, that what mattered, that she was pathbreaking and she did talk about it and it was inspiring, but that what was overwhelming too, when seeing them both up there, is that we have these two righteous, capable,

moral leaders who have been saying these things about what they wanted to do, speaking all in the right ways. But now they were doing it with the power of the presidency behind them for the first time. And you felt like they didn't mention Donald Trump by name. And I didn't notice. I didn't even notice. It's like he's disappearing. He's disappearing like a photo, like he's from in a photo from Back to the Future. He's just fading out. And that to me was like, it was, I'm surprised at each moment by just how much I am feeling the emotions of every step, right? Like at every step, it is hitting me that about how important it is that they won and what it represents. That's all. It just, it, it just felt so good to have a happy moment. Like, and a moment that wasn't, like you said, it wasn't just a, you know, there were plenty of Trump is gone, anti-Trump moments.

Those speeches, Kamala's speech and Biden's speech, I thought were pure moments of this is just a positive, unifying, good thing happening. And you don't have to think about Trump. Kamala Harris being elevated to the vice presidency is just wonderful on its own, has nothing to do with Donald Trump. And so here's a clip from President-elect Joe Biden's speech. It's time to put away the harsh rhetoric, lower the temperature, see each other again, listen to each other again.

And to make progress, we have to stop treating our opponents as our enemies. They are not our enemies. They are Americans. They're Americans. The Bible tells us, to everything there is a season, a time to build, a time to reap and a time to sow and a time to heal.

This is the time to heal in America. It just struck me that once again, this was Joe Biden's message from the very first day that he entered the Democratic primary. And it is once again, a very fitting message for the moment. I also thought it was interesting that, you know, we played the clip where he talked about a time to heal to and Democrats, which is, you know, sometimes he gets criticized for. It was about coming together as a nation in all of our diversity, you know, and he sort of spoke about the broad diversity of his coalition and then ended by saying, and especially the African-American community that was there for me when I was down and I'll be there for you too. And I thought that was a really nice moment because sometimes unity can paper over other important issues, which is, you know, something that he mentioned. What did you guys think of Biden's speech? You know, I wrote down one thing about Biden's speech was that it could have been his announcement speech. You know, I too was struck by the consistency and the narrative that he's pulled through. And I think, look, there will be some people on the left who will maybe be frustrated by that, interpret it as not wanting to fight. I did not interpret it that way. I interpreted it as reading the room and understanding that the nation has just been through four years of trauma and now wants to heal and wants to come together, even if there's factions on either side who don't. And yeah, I also was struck by the inclusiveness of the speech. Jake Tapper did a great segment where he pointed out that Biden's speech spoke directly to the disabled community. And for a lot of activists, they felt like that

was the first time they'd ever heard themselves represented in a speech at this high of a level and how big and meaningful that was for him. And, you know, it just shows the care and the thought and the decency that went into the crafting of the speech and the candidacy. And, you know, there's just, it was the happiest I've been in a very long time. And it was so nice to just sort of like soak the whole thing. And I felt so proud for Joe Biden. I could not stop thinking about Beau Biden and how proud he would have been of his dad and how, you know, how much that family has dealt with the past several months between all the shit from Rudy Giuliani and the Trump campaign and how unbelievably proud they must have been. It was just an incredible moment. Yeah, there was a there

was someone was holding up a sign in the crowd that was on CNN right before the speech that said you kept your promise to Bo. I saw that. And I was like, yeah, that got me, broke me. Yeah. I also say, too, you know, yeah, that got me. Broke me. Yeah. I'll also say too, you know, he also mentioned trans people. Yeah. Just another, another, another first. And, and it's, it reminded me of the convention too, that, you know, around disability rights, around LGBTQ rights that, you know, Joe Biden as a kind of avuncular, safe, white, moderate, right? So much like undergirding, like kind of a part of the electability argument that was like a little bit pernicious during the primary. But you see him up there talking about unity. You see him

using compassion and grief and kind of the values that have made him safe as a means to reach out to trans people, talk about criminal justice reform, talk about Black Lives Matter, kind of the values that have made him safe as a means to reach out to trans people. Talk about criminal justice reform. Talk about Black Lives Matter. Kind of showing how you can have an incredibly progressive policy platform while at the same time being this unity figure, being this sort of figure of normalcy,

I think speaks to kind of, I don't know, that is to me ultimately like the great victory of his campaign and you felt it there. It also speaks to the coalition that got him elected. Right. That is the absolutely not. As we dig into the results more, you know, there was some he improved on Clinton's margins in some of these places, especially some rural places by a little bit.

But this is the coalition that came out in 2018, you know, two years after Trump. And it is the most diverse coalition that the Democratic Party has ever had. Yeah. I just one other one other piece of it, too. I also think what he said about the pandemic and also today what he said about the pandemic just before we recorded. Right. Just like a serious adult talking about this using reality and science, right? Pfizer announces that a vaccine may be successful. He's like, this is great news. Here are the reasons to be concerned. Here's why we still have to do these things. I know I was thinking about this because like we talked about in the last debate how the bar was set so low for Trump because Trump was so bad that if Trump was just somewhat normal,

he would like jump right over that bar. But it's also true that because Trump was so bad, Joe Biden, just by doing things that normal presidents do, just baseline shit, have a have a covid task force that has scientists and health experts on it. There's nothing special about that. Of course, you should have health experts and scientists on your fucking yeah not not a reality not a radiologist you saw on newsmax you know but it seems like refreshing and and and brilliant wonderful because like we haven't had that for four years right you know all right so i want to talk about all the challenges facing the incoming biden harris administration but their most immediate is former reality TV star Donald Trump, the two-time popular vote loser and soon-to-be one-term president,

is refusing to concede the race because of his fragile ego. And so he's tweeting out conspiracies about voter fraud and threatening frivolous legal actions, none of which would change the outcome of the race, even if a judge ruled in Trump's favor. Nevertheless, Trump is also reportedly planning to hold a series of campaign style rallies in order to undermine the integrity of the election, though there's another report this morning that maybe they will just be spontaneous

rallies that he doesn't appear at. And he's he's also getting help from most elected Republicans who have either refused to congratulate Joe Biden or parroted Trump's conspiracies like Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham did all weekend. Basically, in the Senate, all we have is Mitt Romney, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski congratulating President-elect Joe Biden. That's all we got. Big surprise. All right. First question, Tommy, how serious are these legal challenges? I am not taking the legal challenges seriously at all. It's a lot of them have been laughed out of court since we last talked about this. It seems pretty clear that a lot of them would maybe shave down the vote at the margins. But there's just there is no legal pathway that we've seen articulated that would overturn the results of the election.

Jared Kushner's efforts to find a Jim Baker like figure, former White House chief of staff, Treasury secretary, secretary of state, statesman of all statesman's that they worship in Washington, D.C. Ended with David Bossie, the Citizens United guy who is not a lawyer. So that's the crack legal team leading this. So Tommy, they had wanted Jim Baker, but they accidentally got Jim Baker total landscaping. Oh, we got it. We got it. We'll talk about that. And then, you know, I'll shut up about the legal thing, but we should talk about the transition at some point because that's more concerning.

Lovett, what do you think about the legal challenges? Look, here's what we know. Rudy Giuliani found out while live on television that all the networks had called it. He then looked up and prayed to God and then introduced a registered sex offender to lie about what happened in Philadelphia. I am not particularly concerned about it.

I think it is much, it's like, you know, I mean, has there ever been a fall from grace more profound and full? I mean, yes, there have. Yes, there have been others that are worse. But my goodness, Rudy Giuliani. Yikes. But so no, I look, I think I think what is sad about all of this, it is it should be deeply, deeply worrying that people like Ted Cruz, people like Lindsey Graham are signing on to this. And then a bunch of kind of invisible Republicans are putting out mealy mouth statements that are like, we should count all legal votes and no illegal votes, which of course is what we've already done. It should be alarming to us because it would mean that if this

election had been closer, if it didn't turn out after the vote counting was done, that we had really won ultimately the states we planned, plus Arizona, plus Georgia, that it was undeniable we'd be in a much different situation because they might be in a better position to actually steal this election. That should be terrifying. Also, it is dangerous. It is dangerous that they're not accepting the result. We can talk about how dangerous it is for the transition, but it is going to be dangerous when you see a bunch of right-wing leaders telling millions upon millions of people that this is not a not a legitimate outcome. We've talked about stochastic terrorism, stochastic fascism in the past. If enough people hear that, a few of them will take this literally. And it is fucking dangerous. It is dangerous, even if it's stupid and doesn't work. Well, it's not only dangerous. It is the most

predictable thing in the world. Everyone predicted this before it happened months before it happened. No one ever thought that Trump would concede. Everyone knew that Trump would peddle conspiracies about the stolen election. And we all know by now, after four years, that that works with his base. Not just because everyone believes what Trump said, because he has an entire fucking propaganda network that does that. That is poisoning people's brains in this country so that at least half the country is going to go on believing that this election was stolen. It's just it was like it is shocking and horrifying. Also inevitable. Yeah. And just, you know, this is not a contested election. Joe Biden's margin over Donald Trump in the states that swung the election, Michigan,

Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, is already 220,000 000 votes which is far more than the uh just under 80 000 votes where that donald trump beat hillary clinton by you look at every single lawsuit he has filed even if he won all these lawsuits it would not shave nearly enough off any of the states let alone the multiple states he needs to win this election he has gone oh and 10 in post-election litigation oh and 10 according to mark elias just getting like lawsuits thrown out left and right he's getting laughed out of courts even courts with republican judges he's getting laughed out of so like this is the annoying this is what's really fucking infuriating about ted cruz and lindsey graham and all these republicans who are like well and even sus even Susan Collins in her statement was like, the president should be afforded all of his

opportunities to challenge this in courts. Yeah. If it was like, we're not talking about 500 votes in Florida in 2000 here, right? We're talking about losing lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit, and then just keeping them going like when through December, how many times does he get to challenge the results? He's been, he's already been losing. Like, he's just going to do this forever for the next fucking month. He's going to do this until the electors sit in the Electoral College. Like what is this? It's also, you know, these Republicans that are humoring Trump either because they plan on running

themselves and want to claim that they did or because they're just profound cowards, whatever the reason is that they're doing this. They are living in the largesse our democracy has afforded them that we can handle this undermining of those institutions. They are relying on the strength of our system itself to be robust enough that what they're doing doesn't matter. Because we've been through so many elections where the first step wasn't the certification of the electoral college, wasn't the certification of the results. It was institutions like the press calling it and then individuals accepting it, calling and conceding, not because there aren't inexhaustible legal remedies that you can pretend exist before you, but because they understood it was the right thing to do. We will be fine because

we can handle one asshole whose ego and narcissism prevents him from doing this. And a bunch of cowards who will go along because of the economics of their media environment are so heinous. But just because it will come to nothing doesn't mean it shouldn't be incredibly sad and alarming. Yeah, like on one hand, I don't really care what Donald Trump tweets at this point. I don't really care that Rudy Giuliani, Pam Bondi, Corey Lewandowski showed up at a place called Four Seasons Total Landscaping after the president tweeted out that there's going to be an important press conference at the Four Seasons and then had to correct himself and say it was Four Seasons Total Landscaping, which is next to an erotic bookshop that hosts dildo madness sales. And then Rudy Giuliani at that press conference, as you said, love it, invited someone who he claimed was a Republican poll watcher in Philadelphia who'd been obstructed from the poll watching process.

Turns out that person is actually just a registered sex offender. You know, and by the way, I just want to know why. Which is just like perfect. It just symbolizes the entire legal effort right there. Way to do your due diligence, Rudy. And how am I finding about this dildo sale from you? What are we doing here? Tommy, how much does it matter whether or not Trump concedes this race?

We were just mentioning the transition. Why don't you talk about that? Yeah. So look, the transition, the period between the election and inauguration is quite short there. And so, you know, you have a lot to do. You have to pick heads of agencies. You have to name a million staffers. You have to lay out policy proposals. You have to draft executive orders. Like it's complicated stuff that takes time and takes manpower. And so the thing that's concerning to me is that the head of the GSA, the sort of government body that oversees all these resources for the transition, has not certified Joe Biden the winner yet because she is scared of Donald Trump. She's a political appointee. And that means they can't get access to

office space, resources, classified information, all the things you really need to do to plan this stuff. Like I flew from Chicago to DC like two or three days after the election to work on the transition team. I suddenly found myself parked in some, I think it was like an FBI office building or something downtown where we're all just like cobbled together and started churning. But, you know, that was a new environment for me. But by law, you have to have been working on this stuff since like May 1st, you had to name a transition director. By mid-September, you had to name a secession plan and you had to find, you know, all these individuals to run

agencies like this stuff takes time. It takes effort. It's like grinding it out. You know, it's work that requires people and manpower and a place to do it, especially on the national security side where like you can't even get access to the information you need until you start the transition process. So it's still pretty early. Like I think, you know, the Biden team can catch up here, but it's something to watch because that's a real world implication. And it's something that happens and they're not able to, like, I don't know, do some national security planning, like vet intelligence, get danger of the last four years. Right. Like Trump can tweet and do whatever he want and yell and hold his fucking rallies and spew his bullshit and all that stuff. But if the entire Republican Party just goes along with him and starts spewing these same conspiracy theories, allowing him not to let Joe Biden launch his transition, potentially fucking with the, you know, the GOP legislature is fucking with the electors like then then we're in some shit, you know. And so I do think there needs to be a lot of pressure on Republicans and elected Republicans in these next couple of weeks to push push Trump out the door here, because that, that's not great. And it also do just like, once again, here we are in a situation where we are confronted by the fact that protections were not legal, they were social,

they were political, they were moral, like the GSA acknowledging that the transition has begun depending on the concession of the president when the president is one term president and won't do it, right? Like, oh, that's an interesting problem. We had relied on the fact that people can see George H.W. Bush famously, you know, delivered an incredibly warm concession and letter to Bill Clinton, right? It's like a part of our story. And so like now we're in a situation where we have to have this kind of informal transition. My hope and expectation is that the people around Joe Biden, the people that will become the leaders of his administration, are going to do their best to begin the transition despite the obstacles Trump

puts in front of them. But it's yet again something else we have to look at after Trump is gone to sort of strengthen and put in guardrails against these kinds of abuses. That's all. so uh let's talk about what's next for the incoming biden harris administration uh despite trump preventing them from really launching the transition uh they do have a website up and running and they're starting to think about staffing and executive actions uh this morning they announced biden's coronavirus task force we mentioned, made up entirely of, you know, doctors and health experts. Again, just fucking wild shit here. And of course, the thinly sourced gossip about who's getting which cabinet position has already begun a tradition, a very normal tradition that happens before every administration. So, Tommy, first question, what are some of the

quick consequential moves that Biden can make without Congress? So you could do a lot of stuff when it comes to executive action. One of the things they're talking about is that Biden will send a letter to the United Nations indicating that we are going to rejoin the Paris Climate Accord. So that walks back Trump's decision to step away from Paris. The great news all along has been that that action by Trump didn't really go into force until right now. So finally, we'll be back in Paris. I think that's an enormously consequential decision. It sounds like on day one, he's going to create some sort of national supply chain commander to take on the pandemic to make sure we

have all the stuff we need. So there's a bunch of actions like that that he can do quickly. He can get rid of the Muslim ban. So you can walk back a lot of the Trump agenda. You know, things you have to do through Congress is a whole separate matter. But there are things we should all be excited about that he's going to be able to do pretty quickly. Permanently end family separation. I mean, one of the, you know, and this was the problem with the last four years, just about every single thing that Trump did around immigration was via executive action.

He didn't do anything about immigration with Congress. So, you know, Muslim ban immigration. I just saw that Schumer the other day said, Biden can cancel the first $50,000 in student debt via executive order and plans to do so in the first hundred days. That is transformative idea for people. Yeah, I didn't either. I saw that right before we were going to record. Yeah. And and by the way, also just dreamers no longer have to worry that the president is going to use them and treat them like like an enemy.

I mean, that is an extraordinary relief. And those people that have been through the absolute ringer being threatened by this president over and over again. You know, I want to see what happens with Trump's efforts to remove trans people from the military. Let's see how quickly Joe Biden can resolve that. So, you know, there's a number of places where day one undoing the damage of Trump that Trump has done, I think, is extraordinary environmental regulations that have probably not that some of which have gone into effect, some of which haven't gone into effect can be rescinded. I mean, there's just it's a long, long list of really positive changes that can happen almost instantaneously.

I am hopeful that Biden will push as hard as he can on executive actions, just to sort of set expectations. The challenge is going to be with the Supreme Court the way it is and the courts the way they are. You know, he should try as much as he can and then see what gets struck down and what doesn't. But at the very least, undoing the damage that Trump did with his executive orders should be doable. So there is already a list of names being floated for cabinet positions. Obviously, quite a few considerations here. What kind of experience people have, what the cabinet looks like in terms of both diversity and ideology. And of course, one

complicating factor is that if the Senate is controlled by Republicans, Mitch McConnell might be able to have veto power over any of Biden's choices for the cabinet. There's already been some reporting that McConnell might force him to have a more moderate cabinet because of this. Tommy, how do you think Biden should think about his cabinet and sort of handle the appointment process? Yeah, I mean, when I think back to our transition, the narrative around our cabinet was team of rivals. It was because there was a book on Abraham Lincoln out with that same name, but it also was because he kept on Bob Gates of the Department of Defense, who was a Republican from the Bush administration and named his chief rival in the primary, Hillary Clinton,

the Bush administration and named his chief rival in the primary, Hillary Clinton, to be Secretary of State. So it was viewed as an attempt to be bipartisan, to touch various constituency groups. And a lot of it was like selling a narrative of this sort of bipartisan effort to lead the country. I think in hindsight, picking your cabinet for messaging purposes, for optics purposes, is not a good strategy. For example, keeping Bob Gates at the Department of Defense got you a day or two of good headlines and then two years of headaches because you had a Republican and a fire-breathing Republican staff around him still a DOD. So I think that Joe Biden should pick the most progressive, the most competent, the best people he could find, and name them. And if Mitch McConnell wants to be an obstructionist and block everyone, make him do that.

Make him leave the country unprepared to run the military or run the State Department. Move swiftly, move quickly, use power, name competent people who are going to get the shit done that you want. Don't worry about the Department of Transportation having a Republican head just so you can say you have a bipartisan cabinet. No one gives a shit. I'm convinced that no one gives a shit. I mean, the challenge, of course, is Mitch McConnell can block it and say, I don't care. And then you don't have a cabinet. But then I would like him to be creative about the Vacancies Act, too, as well. Right.

We've seen that's what I'm seeing. Donald Trump used the Vacancies Act in really gross ways. I would like to see Joe Biden parrot some of that and say you were cool with this then. Why is it not OK now? Yeah, it's interesting, right? You see Mitch McConnell and his people already kind of try to putting the word out there that they're going to try to get Joe Biden to not nominate some on the left in advance, right? And like all of this is kind of posturing, right? Like they're doing that to get Joe Biden to not nominate the people that Joe Biden wants. I think, and so like we have to not play that game. Right. Like he should put forward the cabinet that he wants. I think it

I think that does mean we need to go into it with eyes open that like these are going to be fights and some of them we might not win. Right. McConnell does have the ability to prevent Joe Biden from putting people on the cabinet. You know, that happened during the Obama administration. Right. Like, you know, Elizabeth Warren was going to run the CF famously, right? So I think it's going to be a lot of those fights. I agree on using the Vacancies Act. I do think too, like, you know, one of my hopes that I do think one of, obviously we have to fight like hell to win the Senate and win those Georgia runoffs. I will say that's something I said before this election is something I continue to believe. It is a, it is that the fact that we know that Mitch McConnell is going to be intransigent and make legislating so difficult,

then puts it on the onus on Joe Biden to use the powers of the presidency, which has been a kind of pattern we've had for the last several decades, which has expanded the kind of legislative role that the, that the presidency plays. Donald Trump has made that worse with the abuse of the vacancy act. It should make us all concerned. It is a sad statement that we're at this point where like these levers are so broken by Republican blockade of legislating in Congress. But I just think it's the reality that we're in. My hope is that Joe Biden has quite a few progressives in his cabinet and that the cabinet truly looks like Americaica like i know that because it's joe biden and because of what his message was and how he ran it's not going to be a cabinet

full of progressives that's just who he is like forget about mitch mcconnell um but i do agree that he should not be basing these decisions on fucking threats from that asshole right like like go with the p and then look the thing that's also under discussed in cabinet appointments they're all about ideology and posturing right and a lot of the times it's just like he needs a lot of experienced people who are ready to hit the ground running during what we're a great crisis that we're facing right now in both the pandemic and the economy and so i'm sure that as they're picking uh cabinet appointments a lot of it's going to just come down to who can really do this job that's out there right now.

But no, I'm very excited to get creative about the Vacancies Act. I mean, I think you can have some of these appointments for 210 days, I think was the number, which is, you know, if you can get through your first hundred days agenda with the cabinet that you want, not the cabinet that Mitch McConnell wants you to have. I think that would be. Yeah, I'm sorry if you didn't sound the alarm about Rick Grinnell, a literal Twitter troll being head of the DNI, then I don't want to hear what you have to say about Joe Biden's cabinet selections. And just the competency point is so important. I mean, think about what Bill Barr has been able to do compared to Jeff Sessions, like knowing your way around the building. Yeah. How to get stuff done is so crucial.

Yeah, we need people to get into the nooks and crannies, get in there, you know, like we need that. I also will say though, Tommy, to your point about whether or not Joe, like, you know, Joe Biden wants to appoint one Republican member in his cabinet. I know, he's gonna do it. Norman Mineta, what are you up to, Norm?

Yeah, and look like- All you can hope is that it's a, it's like one of the best republics you can get in a cabinet position that doesn't matter that much. Yeah. Yeah. I just think like it, it very well could rhyme with Macech.

You know what I mean? Like we just, it's just, it's, it look, it's a tradition. Joe Biden, like. You know what I'm thinking about? Like we had Ray LaHood at transportation. Oh, that's what I was thinking. Totally fine. Mineta was a DemocratHood at transportation. Oh, that's what I was thinking. Totally fine.

Manetta was a Democrat in the Republican administration. Yeah, no, Ray LaHood, perfectly fine at transportation. All right. Well, on that note about sort of ideological debates within the cabinet, we should also talk about the coming debate within the Democratic Party over how to expand our House majority and flip the Senate, starting with the two Georgia runoffs. over how to expand our House majority and flip the Senate, starting with the two Georgia runoffs. There were a pair of New York Times interviews over the last few days that Astead Herndon did with AOC and Conor Lamb, who just squeaked out a victory in his western Pennsylvania district. AOC took objection to the idea voiced by Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger on a phone call with Democrats last week. Spanberger said that policies like Medicare for All and the Green New Deal cost Democrats their seats in more conservative districts.

AOC instead pointed out that these Democrats didn't focus enough on digital advertising and organizing. And she specifically mentioned Conor Lamb. Lamb said that was wrong and that in his experience, his constituents kept telling him that they were, quote, extremely frustrated by the messaging of defunding the police and banning fracking. All right. We're off to the races. What did you think about this? It's fast. What did you think about this debate?

And is there a way to resolve it successfully? Resolve it? No. This debate is the conversation we will have. And that's a good conversation. This is a good this is the conversation. I think there's ways to have it. Do I think Spanberger getting angry on a conference call leading to AOC doing a Times interview, leading to Conor Lamb doing a Times interview is the most productive way to conduct

this very important conversation where tempers are high and there's legitimate, sincere disagreement? Probably not. Probably not. You know what I kept thinking is like, imagine if instead of doing telephone through a Stead Herndon in the New York Times, AOC and Conor Lamb just like got on a Zoom that was like broadcast live to everyone and then just like sort of talk to each other there.

Perhaps moderated by a media company that tries to create a place where all these different factions can come together. But no, what I. The Young Turks? Yeah, I'm talking to the Young Turks. Yeah, I mean, look what I thought. First of all, I thought like this feels quick, like the exit polls are completely unreliable. Like I want to see more information. I want like the full vote counting to be done. I found one of the more interesting parts of the Conor Lamb interview is he basically points out

like, wait, hold, my constituents are really bringing this up. I think we should take him at his word. But but then the question is, well, you know, Joe Biden doesn't embrace that. Nancy Pelosi doesn't embrace that. The vast majority of Democrats don't. What exactly? Neither did Conor Lamb. Neither did Conor Lamb. So what? So like I understand being frustrated by feeling like you're being that a slogan or policies you don't hold are coming into your district and creating a problem for you. But when he was asked, what should have the Democrats do differently on that? He didn't really have an answer because a lot of what he's talking about are attacks that are deeply, deeply unfair. He's talking about misinformation about him.

He's talking about, you know, attacks in bad faith against him and other Democrats. And that is a problem for every part of the Democratic coalition from AOC to Joe Manchin is misinformation and attacks that mislead about the positions that Democrats take. So now that I was gonna say that that to me was the missing piece of this whole debate is that the role that Republicans, their propaganda machine play in these attacks. Tommy, what did you think? Yeah, I mean, look, I just I can't stress enough to all listeners that if you see some hot take on Twitter or in a column or something about how people voted this year and why you should really read it with a grain of salt, because the exit polls are normally

bad this early. They have to be reweighted to match the actual outcome before you can really learn from them. But this year we did them so differently that they're likely to be reweighted to match the actual outcome before you can really learn from them. But this year, we did them so differently that they're likely to be even more off. And, you know, in 2016, there was this misnomer that 53% of white women voted for Trump. When they went back and really dug into the numbers, it was actually 47% of white women voting for Trump. That's a huge difference, but a narrative that was set and, you know, was sort of never never fixed. So look, I read The Lamb and AOC back and forth. I didn't love reading it, but I'm a person that lives in this space, so I probably care more than the average person. I agree that all elections are basically nationalized going forward. All news stories are national news stories because of the internet. And so I don't think

there's a scenario where Conor Lamb can tell AOC not to fight for and believe in the things she wants to believe in, and where AOC can tell Conor Lamb what people care about in his district. I think we have to trust everybody to voice the concerns of their own districts and to be able to believe what they want to believe and do what they want to do. That's why they got elected. I think their jobs, our jobs as the Democratic Party, is to figure out how to win those elections in the face of dishonest attacks, nationalized elections. And so there's a lot of things we're really going to need to dig into. I really want to better understand some of these heavily Latino districts that swung hard to Trump. I think we should ignore the national numbers, but we should look at South Florida. We should look at the Texas Rio Grande Valley counties and really try to do a deep dive

that will involve like on the ground, face to face interviews with hundreds, if not thousands of people to try to hear from them to sort this stuff out, because it's going to be crucial going forward. But then I also think like part of this will be reimagining the map going forward. Like maybe Georgia is going to have to be absolutely central to our strategy to win the White House, win the Senate, you know, redistrict a bunch of House seats to get back a majority. Because things are about to get pretty tough when we go through another round of redistricting again. Like that's the real bummer of this election. So I've been thinking about this. 2018, we win all these seats in the House, even in sort of more conservative rural districts. Conor Lamb was one of them. In 2018, there was a big debate over Abolish ICE, which in polls was an incredibly unpopular position. And there were a lot of frontline Democrats in some of these swing districts that were very nervous about abolish ICE. It did not matter at the end of the day. Conor Lamb won and a lot and Abigail Spanberger

won. A lot of these these congresspeople won. So what changed between 2018 and 2020? As Tommy said, we don't know demographically yet because the exit polls are sort of fucked. And so we have to hold on that. What we do know is that Republican turnout surged in a lot of these places. There were just more people who voted for Donald Trump who didn't vote for him in 2016, who didn't vote at all in 2016 and came out. So if you have a bunch of Trump voters in your district that weren't there in 2018, you're going to have a harder time. And if that ends up being like a big part of the explanation, then it's not necessarily about a lot of these ideological debates within the party. It's about the fact that there's a whole bunch more Republicans in your fucking district that you have to deal with.

And that means that we have to sort of double down, like you said, Tommy, on in organizing and turning out and registering voters in some of these states that demographically are starting to look better for us. Like Georgia, like Georgia, like Arizona. Like, you know, we didn't get there in Texas this time, but I guarantee like looking at the margins in Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania, knife's edge, those margins, and did not swing that much between 2016 and 2020. Arizona swung a lot between 16 and 20. Georgia swung a lot between 16 and 20. And swung a lot between 16 and 20. And Texas swung a little bit too, just not enough to close it. So if I was thinking about like what to do in 2020, I'd start organizing on the fucking ground in Texas, like Petto and a whole bunch of others

have been last couple of years, because if we need to replace Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania four years from now, if they get even more conservative, like Texas would be able to replace them with electoral votes. And then we need to hold Georgia and Arizona. But that is the it's sort of on the ground. That's that's where I do agree with AOC. Like a lot of this is canvassing, organizing digital strategy like we've got. We do have to figure out a way to get even better at that. Yeah. I also, by the way, like defund the police and abolish ICE. You know, they played a similar role in the national conversation in the sense that like we need people to be on the vanguard of these conversations. It does begin to move the Overton window when you have people saying defund the police and then you have Democrats, more moderate Democrats, like see the reform

ideas that I can get behind right now. Here are the places where I think we need to make changes or abolish ICE leads to a conversation about a reformer immigration system. Like this is politics, right? This is how we shift the Overton window. This is something Republicans have been extraordinarily good at for a really long time. So like we need to do both and we need to be able to win while there are more progressive, further left candidates on the edge, sort of pushing our politics forward, pushing further and more radical ideas because we want that while making space for Democrats to win in more moderate parts of the country. We just have to do both. You guys, real quick, I just saw a tweet. David Bossie tested positive for the coronavirus on Sunday. So that I guarantee you he too was at

the White House victory party, victory party with Ben Carson. So they may have another super spreader event on their hands. Great work, guys. Way to learn the lessons. Unreal. And you guys said this, like, look, I understand. I've seen the polling how unpopular Defund the Police is, right? There's no Democrat that, like, ran on Defund the Police as a platform. Activists have talked about Defund the Police. Even if it was the right thing to do to tell the activists not to embrace Defund the Police, which it's not because they're activists and they believe in it and the organizers believe in it. And so like, you're never going to be able to do

that. You're never going to be able to tell people in the streets to not support something, right? Like that, like you think they're going to listen to Conor Lamb and, and, and, or even Joe Biden or anyone in the party to not like fight for what they deeply believe in? No. So you're gonna need to figure out a way around that. That's, that's sort of where I believe in? No. So you're going to need to figure out a way around that. That's that's sort of where I come down on this. Like you're just people are going to believe the things they do and talk about things they do. And the right wing is going to twist the positions around and spread misinformation. And that's how we have to figure out. That's that's what we have to combat. Look, some of the tactical stuff was silly. Like,

I'm not sure it makes sense to criticize like Conor Lamb's digital advertising expenditures when he just won the campaign. I like big picture. I agree that like less TV ad spending, more early investment in organizing is important and more digital organizing is important. That said, I, you know, I've talked to some people over the weekend. I do think we may be underestimated how much it hurt Biden and Democrats not to be knocking on doors. Because I talked to some folks who said that after they started knocking on doors, their contact rates at the doors were through the roof and they were reaching people that they were just not getting on the phone. And that might have been part of why we just didn't have the

visibility into what the electorate really looked like based on all the crappy polls that were also trying to reach people on the phone and on the internet. And look, I was someone who poo-pooed that decision. I think it was probably the right thing to do for a while for health reasons. But there was seemingly an electoral impact that was hard. That is such a, by the way, just like stepping back to like, I think that that's so important because I also think like before there's plenty of infighting we need to do and have. I'm in.

I'm in for it. I said, you know, once the selection is done, let's infight. That's exciting to me. But like there are going to be pieces of this that will be sui generis to the pandemic that we just ran a campaign in the middle of. And that and that will be in some ways unique to Trump. And we have to unpack that, too. There's just a lot that we don't know still. That's all. Yeah. And well, the one thing that will absolutely help us regardless of any kind of ideological debate is on the ground organizing. And on that note, when we come back, we'll have Lovett's conversation with one of the best in the business, LaTosha Brown of Black Voters Matter.

She is an organizer and a co-founder of the Black Voters Matter Fund. Welcome back to Pod Save America, Latasha Brown. Hi, thank you for having me. It's a good day to be alive in America. It is a good day, as was yesterday, as was Saturday. Each day seems to get a little bit brighter. So Saturday night, we watch President-elect Joe Biden, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris speak to the nation. Before we get to analysis, before we get to anything else, how did it feel? It felt great. It's interesting. I was so happy. I thought, I went through every emotion. Don't listen. I went through every

emotion you could have this week because when you were saying going through the days, I was like, Friday, I was like, I don't know, Friday and Thursday was a little shaky. Wednesday, I had a complete meltdown. Tuesday, I felt really confident. I was like, we got this. And then and I knew that the vote that the votes will come in. But I think what really shocked me and it's funny because on Wednesday, I knew that Biden and the Harris Biden and Harris ticket was going to win. that 75 million people voted for this bully, this man who has just been so unkind to people in this country and racist and misogynist and, you know, just a liar, like the fact that 75 million people would vote, would support him really, like, I actually had a meltdown. I actually cried on Wednesday. I was like, what are we doing where people don't love each other? Like, because for me, he has been so rooted in hate and division and fear. You know, it just, you know, it was a, it was a, a somber moment for me,

but I will say, and then each day went by, I was like, all right, I know the number's coming, but y'all need to come on now and hurry up, you know, and then so Saturday, what I felt is I felt resolved. I felt like all of this work that we've done and so many other groups have been doing for the last four years and some of us even more than a decade that this moment um this this moment was all resulting from the coalition of people who love democracy coming together and saying we're going to defeat hate we're going to feed big organizing that had been going on for years. Organization You Help Lead, organization Stacey Abrams Help Lead. You know, you were so bullish about Georgia.

You were saying, keep an eye on Georgia, watch Georgia. Can you just talk about the moment when it finally happened and we saw the numbers change and the votes had been counted and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had taken the lead in Georgia. And we knew that John Ossoff and Reverend Warnock were going to run off. Well, what I'm going to say first, John, is I'm never going to tell you I told you so. Did I say I told you so? I'm not going to say it, but just in case. You didn't say it. Just in case. I just know because I would never tell you I told you so, but just in case. You didn't say it. You won't say it. Why would you say it? I did say it because I saw it. I kept telling people. I kept saying, yes, the South is red until it ain't, right? And so that has been my mantra for actually years, because I know the organizing power in the South,

what we've seen is, you know, the South isn't red or blue, the South has been underinvested. And so when you look at who makes up the South, and when you look at the diversity of the South, you would know that the potential has always been there. It wasn't by accident of what we saw on that calendar. But I can tell you what I felt. What happened is I was watching Kornacki and his, you know, right on the screen as the rest of us were doing, right, being fascinated with. I was like, oh, I want one of those screens at home. That what was interesting is when they were talking about Georgia, Fulton County, there

were several counties that were still out. It was Chatham about Georgia, Fulton County, there were several counties that were still out. It was Chatham, it was Fulton County, and Clayton County. And I was like, oh, game over. Like at that point, I was like, game over, because I knew the work that had been done with Fulton County. I knew the voters who were in Fulton County and what the projected numbers were. And so when I saw that, like before it's like, you know, when I saw that, I knew when I saw the numbers coming in, I wish I could say I was surprised, but I wasn't like, I, because you told us, I told you all that. So, you know, I,

I wasn't surprised. I felt like I felt affirmed and resolved. I felt like I want to tell everybody, I just want to go on Twitter and say, I told y'all, didn't I tell y'all You know, and so that's what I felt. I felt like the power that I knew the power that is here. That we had that certainly there was something that has been changing in in Georgia and the piece that I also want to kind of lift up is poetic justice, that in the state that was ground zero for voter suppression, and I've worked all over this nation, in particular, I'm from Alabama, right, so I can tell you a little bit about voter suppression. kind of voter suppression that I witnessed and I saw in the state of Georgia, right, just two years ago. And I knew for this to be the state that was really the turning point, even in the election predictions, to be the state that Black voters would come out and mask and actually are on the brink of delivering, right, a balance, at least two seats to the Democratic Party, there was something very poetic about that. I'm one of those people, I'm one of those folks that I believe in signs,

yes, I'm her, I'm that person. And I was like, this is a sign, y'all, I told y'all, I was at a, we were campaigning on Monday, no, Tuesday. On Tuesday, we were campaigning and I'm it was on the street corner yelling we're trying to get it in and we were standing on Victory Boulevard and then I look over and it's like this Walmart shopping park cart I mean on Plaza and it's Victory Square and I drive people crazy around signs I was like I told y'all I was like we're gonna win and they were like well how you don't go win I was like we're on Victory Boulevard, I was like, we're going to win. And they were like, well, how you don't go win? I was like, well, I'm Victory Boulevard. I told you we're going to win. So it was right.

So I was right. The sign was right. So, you know, you mentioned this, that one of, I think early on, especially, you know, as we were watching the vote numbers come in, we saw that Trump had turned out, Republicans had turned out an extraordinary turnout, second only to the turnout of Democrats across the country, the most extraordinary turnout in modern history. You know, you helped do that organizing. It is very clear that we're in a tough fight here, right? We have to keep up this momentum. We have to keep making sure that people feel invested in the process. We have these two runoffs coming up. One thing you said,

that you had mentioned this on NBC, that one thing you learned through the Obama years was that we have to keep demanding policies of significance to black communities after this election is done. How do we keep this momentum going? How do we make sure that people feel invested in winning these Senate runoffs and invested in the success of this presidency of those that we helped elect so that we keep this turnout going because it's so clear that we're going to need it. You know, I think there's a couple of things. I think part of it is in the messaging that even for us, we had a message that said this was bigger than Biden, that while certainly we wanted to see the president-elect Biden

in office and Vice President Kamala Harris, that sounds so good. I love saying that, in office that what was important for us to know is that this was a real opportunity for us to beat back fascism, that we had to recommit ourselves to building a reflective democracy. And in order to do that, we can't just be transactional. And so if we think that we're just going to vote this election and everything is going to be fine, you know, we can't just be transactional. And so if we think that we're just going to vote this election and everything is going to be fine, you know, we are delusional. The truth of the matter is that as long as there are 38 million people in this country that are in poverty, in the wealthiest country in the world, that fundamentally we have to have major structural

changes for America to be the nation that we believe that we deserve. And in order to have that, you have to have a healthy democracy. And in order to have a healthy democracy, you have to have an engaged electorate. And so what I think that we have to think about is that while this election was key, I hope that we don't see this as a transaction moment, that we reduce it. This was just about getting Trump out of office. No, what this is really about is we have to shape the future going forward, not just because Trump was in office. What Trump did, the gift that Trump did bring us, because he did bring us something. What Trump brought us is Trump made it real for us to understand the fragility of this democracy. of this democracy, right? Trump made it real for us to recognize. We start seeing, you know, it's kind of like,

even in my home, in my home during quarantine, I started looking at my walls and started noticing imperfections in the wall that I never saw before. I thought my wall was fine in my office. I was like, my wall is fine. And I started seeing these little imperfections in the wall because I was forced to sit in here during quarantine and pay attention. Trump forced us to pay attention to what is really happening in America.

We can no longer just go about our day-to-day lives and we're going to go to our jobs and go to school and everything is fine. And we do not worry about politics. They'll take care of that, right? We have to recognize that he has forced us to sit in this room, to look at these walls, to look at the shape of democracy, to look at the vulnerability that in this moment of COVID-19, if there's ever a time

that we should be having a discussion around comprehensive healthcare and healthcare access, it would be now. If there's any a time that we're supposed to be really thinking about this economy, like think about this, John. This is the wealthiest nation on the planet, right? And here it is. She could not even sustain her people for two months without screaming and yelling, I'm not going to make it. Something is wrong. If you are a wealthy person and you fall on bad times for two months and you get something, your finances ain't developed. Something is not right.

My point is there are some economic structural economic issues that we've got to deal with this in this, in this country as well. And then I think when we're talking about racism, you know, it's just not enough for us. And I do think that there was this sense of American exceptionalism that has had everybody lulled to sleep for years, that, you know, there was this belief, just like we kind of look at the market, oh, if you have a free market economy, it'll correct itself, right? We looked at this thing around democracy. Oh, yeah, okay, there are Republicans are doing voter suppression to Black people, right? But don't worry about it. Democracy will correct itself until millions of white people in this country got a taste of what

it feels to feel disenfranchised, until white people in this country realize that the very thing, because I remember one of my friends, very good friend of mine in California, who I love to death was saying early on in the Trump, when, when Trump first went into office, there was some things that I said he was going to do. And she was like, he can't do that. He won't, he he's not allowed to do that. And he did it. And I said, you know what? The reason why I know that is because I'm from the deep south and we live with Trump every day. Like Trump is not a new phenomenon to us. There are many Trumps, i.e. Lindsey Graham, i.e. I can go down the list. of us can be disenfranchised just by having a bad leader that puts himself in a position and abuses his power in a way that he undermines democracy. None of us are immune from that

when we let the very fabric of protecting democracy be unraveled. And so when we don't fight for the voting rights of African Americans or Native Americans or any American in this country, we leave ourselves, all of us vulnerable to not just voter suppression, but vulnerable to the dismantling of democracy. So I'm hoping that we recognize in this moment how critical it is for us to shift how we show up. Because on some level, we have been complicit in where we found ourselves these last four years. So we have beaten back this one threat, this threat of Trump, right? We will remove him. And now everybody is paying attention. You're right. There are millions of white people who

got a taste of disenfranchisement and they hated it and they're paying attention. And this big, beautiful coalition is paying attention. Where do you want that attention to go next? After you take a break and get a chance to, we all get a chance to catch our breath. What is to you the next place you want to direct this big coalition towards the work that we still have to do? You know, I got a million policy ideas I can put on the table, but I'll just tell you what's coming up in my spirit right now to say that at the end of the day, what I want people to do, if they could just take this one phrase and let this start driving our politics, for the love of humanity, what would policy look like if we start operating and saying, I'm going to support this policy for the love of

humanity. And what I mean by that is even when I vote, I don't vote based on what I think about my tax bracket, like not like I'm at some high tax bracket or anything, I'm implying. But the fact of the matter is when I vote, I am always voting for the most vulnerable in my community because I know that if there's a safety net for the most vulnerable of my community, because I know that if there's a safety net for the most vulnerable of us, then the rest of us will also benefit from that. And so I am hoping that in this moment, that what this coalition will see themselves as is beyond the confinements of a party affiliation, beyond the confinements of what we see ourselves as race and gender, that beyond that, that at the end of the day, at the core of our humanity, that as we go forward talking about

governance, that we govern in the way for the love of humanity, that we create and demand policies that all people, what's so wrong with everybody having healthcare? I'm so confused around that. I don't even understand why that's a debate. Why would we not want everybody to have healthcare? At the end of the day, worst case scenario, people could get sick, people could get well. I mean, like, at the end of the day, it's ludicrous for me, because I think part of what has happened is that we have been taught that it is okay to be selfish in our politics, right? Not just in terms of just the political parties, but it's been selfish in our politics. And in some ways, we have been a tool and a proxy of actually providing more power, getting caught up in the parties, right, than we have around

people. And so everything gets defined within the context of a party paradigm, right? It's either you're on the blue team or you're on the red team. No, I'm on the humanity team. That's what team I'm on. And so I really want people to shift their paradigm of why we're doing this, that we're getting so caught up in fights and so caught up in even the very notion that my rights as a voter is safer, whether it's one party or another party in office. Now, I know that that's true because of what the political landscape in right now, because the Republicans right now are just crazy. There's nothing else I can say. Right. But to allow a man who has just been vicious. Right. Allow a man who has left our country vulnerable in the midst of the largest health pandemic. They are complicit. And I'm not going to, and I'm not saying that because they're Republican,

I'm saying it because that is inhumane. And if the Democrats did that, and to the extent they do that, I will call that out too. And so we're going to have to have some courage to move back to really be able to force the parties to be responsible and accountable to us instead of the opposite.

We can no longer just continue to get caught up in this football game of which team you are, on the red or the blue team. We can no longer just continue to get caught up in this football game of which team you are on, the red or the blue team. We got to be on the humanity team and we got to be on the rainbow team. And so I think that is really important for us in this moment. You know, I want to just share this little story that I always talk about around diamond and glass, that if you know how a diamond is created, that all a diamond is is a piece of coal that under extreme pressure over time becomes a diamond.

That glass, all glass is is sand that's been compacted, right, with heat, and it becomes glass. And we know both of those things, what make both of those elements significant to us is that their properties is because they become clear. They have clarity that, in fact, the pressure created a circumstances and change transformed them, that they became clear substances. I think that we've got to do that in this moment. We got to take all of this pain and this trauma that Trump has created in this moment. And

that pressure, I'm hoping that pressure doesn't say, well, we got Trump out of office, let's go back home. But that pressure transforms us, that we have more clarity about what we need to bring a nation together, that what really healing is going to mean. Like, we're ready for healing tomorrow. No, we're not. We're not ready for healing because we haven't been honest about where the pain. We got to stop the pain. If you want to start healing, stop the pain. If 38 million Americans are in poverty, stop the pain. When you've got a prison industrial complex that we are seeing millions of folks more than any place in the world that are locking folks up and throwing away the key and acting like they're not human beings, stop the pain. If we want to see folks, hundreds of thousands of people

that are dying for COVID-19, stop the pain. When you got 68% of black women who are voting, who are working low wage jobs that don't have any economic security, but continuously show up for this nation to save America for herself, stop the pain. And so I want us to also feel a certain level of discomfort and pressure in this moment that we take this opportunity to really be able to shape policies boldly and force the political parties, right, to literally not go back to their comfort position, because this ain't about the Democratic Party getting power for me. Now, for some folks, it may be, right? For me, it is about people having a say, and that people being taken care of, and that the agenda that works, the agenda that has worked the best and been the most responsive for us has been the agenda

by the Democratic Party, but it doesn't go far enough. And they've not done enough. And so we have to pressure ourselves because I'm not asking folks to call to put pressure on anybody else. I'm saying me, I've not done enough. And I work, I work 16, 18 hours a week, right? And so even as much as I've done, I've been very reflective of how I've been complicit in what America has become, right? And so even as much as I've done, I've been very reflective of how I've been complicit in what America has become, right? And so even my own behavior, I'm looking at as a consumer, have I treated the earth well when I'm looking at climate change? Have I been a good steward of the earth? Have I been a good neighbor? Have I been a good friend? Have I just been a good

human being? And so I think I so want us to make this moment be beyond politics, that I want us to make this moment be centered in, and I know it as corny as it may sound to some, but literally within the quotations for the love of humanity. to some, but literally within the quotations for the love of humanity. Latasha Brown, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Yeah.

And make sure you celebrate. We still got, we still got something left. I was to celebrate before we hit the ground and do this all over again. Yeah. We got to take a break and then get back to it, right? We get a break. You got to celebrate the wins you it makes it sustainable i do want to tell people that like we jump right in like what we got to do next take the time just to say america thank you those that good and had courage thank you this while black people literally and i think black women were on the forefront black women

and black men were on the forefront and led this charge. This was a collective victory. This is what happens when we work together. And just like we were able to defeat this regime or whatever he is, whatever he called himself, right, that fundamentally, we can literally radically reimagine this nation and create it to be what we want it to be, not what the political parties feed us, but what we want it to be. Not what the political parties feed us, but what we want it to be. So I'm just asking us to lean into this moment to celebrate and to really reorient ourselves and recommit ourselves to literally creating the America that we all deserve. Natasha Brown, couldn't say it better. Thank you so much for being here. Have a good one. Yeah. Bye-bye.

Thanks to Latasha for joining us. And great Monday, guys. What a Monday. This was, it was nice to have a weekend after Saturday to kind of like get some sleep, think about it, let it sink in so we could have this conversation. That was nice. Yeah. That was nice. It was nice. Now let's, I'll give we could have this conversation. That was nice. Yeah. That was nice. It was nice.

Now I'll give until it hurts in Georgia. That's right. Bye, guys. Pod Save America is a Cricket Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our associate producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer.

Thanks to Tanya Sominator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Quinn Lewis, Brian Semel, Caroline Reston, and Elisa Gutierrez for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Melkonian, Yale Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos every week.