Pod Save America - “Republicans not quite in array.”

Episode Date: November 11, 2021

The Republican Party is still more Marjorie Taylor Green than Glenn Youngkin, Washington Post columnist Perry Bacon joins to talk Democratic midterm strategy in the wake of last week’s elections, and Jon and Dan answer a few of your questions.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/podsaveamerica. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

The Supreme Court has had a busy summer loosening gun restrictions in states, overturning Roe versus Wade, and severely threatening our Miranda rights. I'm Leah Lippman, and each week on Strict Scrutiny, I'm joined by my co-hosts and fellow law professors, Melissa Murray and Kate Shaw, to break down the latest headlines and the biggest legal questions facing our country. It's more important than ever to understand the repercussions of these Supreme Court decisions and what we can do to fight back in the upcoming midterm elections. Listen to new episodes of Strict Scrutiny every Monday, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.

I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's pod, the Republican Party is still more Marjorie Taylor Greene than Glenn Youngkin. Washington Post columnist Perry Bacon joins us to talk Democratic midterm strategy in the wake of last week's elections. And later, Dan and I will answer a few of your questions but first check out my new weekly interview series offline with john favreau this week i talked to snapchat's peter hamby about how twitter ruined political journalism and what a healthy sustainable model of journalism might look like there's hope dan there really is um that was your takeaway from that conversation i'm'm just, you know, I'm trying. On Sunday, tune in.

I talked to soccer star Megan Rapinoe about how social media affects athletes' mental health and whether she should run for office. Check out that one right here on your PSA feed. Also, check out this week's Pod Save the World, where Ben calls in from the climate summit in Glasgow, where he's traveling with President Obama. He also speaks to climate activists, Hannah Martin and Louisa Neubauer, as well as former Secretary of State, John Kerry, about the intense climate negotiations he's involved in at the summit.

Excellent episode. Ben, we got a live correspondent from Glasgow. Check it out. It's great. And finally, Love It or Leave It is coming to the New York Comedy Festival at the Beacon Theater in New York City this Friday, November 12th.

You can still snag the last few tickets at cricket.com slash events. Go say hi to Love It. It'll be a fantastic show. All right, let's get to the news. Before we continue our conversation about Democratic strategy in the wake of last week's off-year elections, we thought we'd talk about some of the headlines the Republican Party has been making lately. So not only did House GOP leadership order its members to vote against a bipartisan infrastructure bill that will deliver jobs, roads, and clean water to millions of their own constituents, now they're looking to punish the 13 Republicans who voted for the bill by kicking them off their committees. Marjorie Taylor Greene is tweeting out their phone numbers.

Fred Upton, a moderate from Michigan who supported the bill, has been getting death threats. Meanwhile, Republican leaders haven't said a word about Congressman Paul Gosar tweeting an image of someone killing AOC. And a bunch of Republican members of Congress are now selling and wearing Let's Go Brandon merch, a phrase that for a very stupid reason means fuck Joe Biden. Dan, how are we losing to these people? That's the famous, I'm paraphrasing Harry Reid there. Remember when Harry Reid was running against Sharon Engel way, way back? And he was like, at one point he just said, how am I losing to this person? Because she was so crazy.

Well, maybe like Harry Reid, we're not losing to them. There you go. That's the upside. That's the silver lining. That's what I mean. We do have the House, the Senate, the White House. We have won the popular vote in all but one election since 1988. So we're not really losing to them all the time.

But we did just lose to them in Virginia, a state where we can blame no one but ourselves for that loss. how is it good politics to punish 13 house republicans for supporting a bill that mitch mcconnell and 18 other senate republicans voted for we're talking a lot about how all these like house republicans voted for it i'm not seeing a lot of commentary about the fact that like this is a fucking mitch mcconnell backed bill like first of all you don't strip away committee assignments from people who vote for a bill that you don't agree with. That just like doesn't happen. And usually now we're doing it on a bill that was supported by like over like almost half the Republican caucus in the Senate. I mean, this is a really tough question because there's a general rule in politics and life doing the opposite of Mitch McConnell is smart.

Like, don't be Mitch McConnell is like a really good thing. But in this case, I don't really know how to think about it. I mean, I guess one way to think about it, as I'm trying to figure this out live here on air, is that everything is good politics for Republicans until Democrats make it bad politics for them, right? You understand from their point of view that the Republican base, which is, to be clear these days, to the right of Donald Trump, right? As we saw from when they booed him for suggesting that people maybe get a vaccine in Alabama a few months ago, they feel that the Republicans are more likely to punish them

at the polls, the Republican base is more likely to punish them at the polls, the Democrats. And there is some, they are correct in the sense that because of gerrymandering and just geographic polarization, most of these people's biggest fear is a primary, not a general election. But it's also a very well-worn sense that Democrats will be unable to muster enough sort of messaging firepower and narrative cohesion to make them pay for this over the long term. Well, that brings up my next question, which is how should Democrats talk to voters about what Republicans did here? I mean, there are sort of two parts of this. The first part is like the short-term, how do you deal with this very specific thing? And then there's this much

longer-term question, which we're going to talk about maybe a little bit later in this pod and in the many months to come of like, what is the right contrast message for Republicans? And how much of that is part of our message, right? Versus what we've done or what we want to do and all of that. And there's a lot to learn from the voters that are going to be there in 2022 and the people who just voted last week to know what that is. But I think the way to think about this in the short term is we know from the polling that 7 in 10 Americans think the economy is going in the wrong direction. Majorities of them are concerned about the economy, inflation in particular. And you have the Republicans who not only voted against a bill to create jobs and help Americans deal with high costs, but are punishing those people who did support them. And I think that we have to put what happened in the context of where the

voters are and how they feel about the economy. And this is both how we frame what Biden and the Democrats are doing and what the Republicans are stopping us from doing, is that these are measures that are going to address the thing that voters are most concerned about and Republicans are standing by. They're an obstacle to progress on the stuff you're worried about. Yeah, and I think you have to figure out motivation, right? Why are Republicans, this is part of any sort of message about the opposition, why are Republicans doing what they're doing? What are they motivated by?

And what is believable to people about the Republican Party? Which, even though they won in Virginia and came close to New Jersey and won in a bunch of other places on Tuesdays, is still a very unpopular party, right? Like the Republican Party hasn't suddenly become very popular in the polls just because Joe Biden and the Democrats have become very unpopular party, right? Like the Republican Party hasn't suddenly become very popular in the polls

just because Joe Biden and the Democrats have become more unpopular. They're an unpopular party. So why are they an unpopular party? I think one of the reasons they're in a popular party is because people think that Republican politicians are in it for themselves, that their only motivation is to beat Democrats. They'd rather beat Democrats than give their own voters jobs and clean water and new roads and new bridges.

They care way more about their jobs than your job is one potential message. You know, like they they denying Joe Biden a win is so important to them that they'd rather deny you all the benefits of this infrastructure bill, jobs, roads, clean water. That's how much they care about winning. That's how much they care about power. And I do think that's like a believable message about the Republican Party because that's how they've acted for the last decade. This will be fun. We can have a little disagreement here. I have some skepticism about that as the motivation. on the bipartisan infrastructure framework, which is supported by corporations and easier on the jobs and climate plan or the jobs and family plan or the social spending plan, as the New York Times

would call it, is what is, I think, an easier, more believable message. I think voters, and we've seen this even in some stuff that we tested in 2011, 2012, when we were trying to reframe our economic message heading into the reelect, is do they only care about stopping Obama or do they want to help special interests? And there is some sense, I think, if people are even more cynical now than they were then, that you give politicians a discount for cynicism, right? Of course, that's what everyone wants to do. Democrats did the same thing to Trump, right? Is there something more nefarious that gets at, no, maybe not more nefarious, but there's something that's more believable that makes them like them less? And I think, you know, and obviously we're just two people shooting the shit here and not

holding reams of polling data in focus groups that we hope to have one day, but that the special interest message is going to be more effective than the partisanship message? Yeah, I just think it's not as believable as you pointed out on this. Yeah, yeah, for sure. For sure. For sure. It's just not. The problem with the special interest message, which again, polls through the roof all the time. We've seen all the polls. Republicans helped. The other thing people believe about the Republicans is absolutely true, is that they help the rich and the democrats do not and so i think as we're talking about sort of the broader message republicans helping themselves and their rich friends is probably the full message yep there yeah and we can point to their opposition

to the to the tax uh provisions in build back better as example of that fucking salt notwithstanding, which is one of the reasons that drives me nuts. But I think, you know, Republicans have basically said, right, like, what is true about why they oppose this bipartisan infrastructure bill? What do we know that's true? Let's start there. We know that they oppose it because they didn't want Joe Biden and the Democrats to have a win. And they told us that. So like you always start with a message about the opposition that's believable, that's true, that people know. And like they're all on record in a bunch of different places saying, why are we giving Joe Biden a win now? said that. That was Donald Trump's statement about the bill is, why are you giving Joe Biden a win when he's, and his poll numbers are so bad right now, you should vote against it. Oh, you should vote against the bill that's going to deliver goods to Republican voters all across the country because you don't want Joe Biden to have a win? Like, it just seems like it's a more believable

message to me on this issue. Speaking of Trump, he released a statement. His full statement on this said, why is it that old crow Mitch McConnell voted for a terrible Democrat socialist infrastructure plan and induced others in his party to do likewise when he was incapable of getting a great infrastructure plan wanting to be put forward by me and the Republican Party? It's got a real got a real Sarah Palin vibe to that statement. Yeah, it's real elliptical rhetoric, and I'm not sure what is going on there, because that doesn't even sound like Trump. It does, right. It sounds like Sarah Palin. I've been wondering what she's been up to, maybe

what she writes his tweets now, or his posts on... What's the name of his social media platform? I don't remember. Clearly not good brand. Yeah, that's right. I forgot. What do you think about old crow?

I mean, points for creativity. Like it later. Our side has just been doing the damn turtle thing for the last like 12 years. So, you know, I mean,

does he look more like it's better than Moscow? It's better than Moscow. Honestly, your favorite dumbest, dumbest thing we've done in a long time. I mean, obviously, it's not why he was reelected in Kentucky, but I find it like nails on a chalkboard. And every time I bring that up, people, I'm sure they're going to do it after this. Yell at me about it. But, you know, it's like, does he look more like a turtle than a crow?

Probably. These are the look. These are the important things that we debate on this program. This is going to be critical to the future of the Democratic Party. And that's why. Oh, you know what? Twitter poll. Isn't that what the social team wants?

They want to come up with things that we can Twitter poll. Amelia is so happy right now. This is going to be our Twitter poll about Mitch McConnell. So anyway, so Trump puts out that statement. He's fucking wading into this, of course. Few things going on with him, the 2024 GOP frontrunner for president this week. A federal judge has rejected Trump's attempt

to hide White House documents from the select committee investigating the January 6th insurrection, saying, quote, presidents are not kings and the plaintiff is not president. The Independent Office of Special Counsel has determined that 13 senior Trump administration officials violated federal law by campaigning for the former president's re-election

in 2020. And the New York Times reported that the district attorney in Atlanta is preparing to impanel a grand jury in her criminal investigation of election interference by Donald Trump and his goons, based in part on the former president's call to Georgia's secretary of state, where he famously asked him to, quote, find 11,780 votes to overturn the election. Now, if I were to read those sentences about any other frontrunner for president, Republican or Democrat, that person probably wouldn't be frontrunner for long. runner for president, Republican or Democrat, that person probably wouldn't be front runner for long. But here we are a week out from an election where one of the takes was don't talk so much about Trump. What do you think? What do we do here? What do we do with all this? Is any of this something?

Is it nothing? What do we do? That is a thing now, right? Is this something? Yes. Is this something? Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, there's a potential criminal investigation of the GOP frontrunner in 2024. Is that something? Are we just going to just like just sit around and let that happen? Because we don't want to talk too much about Trump. I think, I mean, it's worth noting that Trump did win despite multiple looming criminal investigations and almost won re-election despite even more criminal investigations. So they're not perhaps the political

anvils they once used to be. But I think this does, I'll try to take this to a constructive place, just I don't know, for fun, which is this does get your enthusiasm for constructiveness at this place in the pot. It's great. Sure, why not?

Is the- Might as well give the people what they're paying for. That's right. The question of should we talk about Trump or not talk about Trump is really a dumb one, right? Of course we have to talk about Trump. He's the former president. If the election were held tomorrow, he's probably the favorite to be president again. I hate to say that. And he's the front runner to run for president in 2024. He represents a political movement in this country as an existential threat to democracy. We have to talk about him. The question is how? And I don't know the right answer to that question, but I do know the wrong answer. And the wrong answer is the way Terry McAuliffe did it, right? You can't treat voters like they're stupid, right? Glenn Youngkin

was not Donald Trump. Did he share some of the dangerous beliefs of Donald Trump? Was he overly solicitous of Donald Trump and his supporters? Absolutely. But you can't just yell Glenn Trumpkin and think that is a narrative that voters are going to buy. We have to find a way to talk about Trump and the threat that his political movement, which is the Republican Party that he represents, without trying to make every candidate who is doing – who's trying very hard to separate themselves from Trump. We can't just – there are going to be candidates who seem a lot like Trump and there are going to be some who seem less like Trump. We're going to have to have some nuance lot like Trump and there are some who seem less like Trump. And we're going to have to have some nuance in the message. Right. Does that make sense?

No, I think that I think that totally makes sense. Like it sounds like a simple common sense thing to not treat voters like they're stupid. But we are Democratic strategists and Republicans, too. Republicans, too, are often not very good at it. You know, like I mean, look, same thing. I think you could have made an argument about Glenn Youngkin that it's like, look, Glenn Youngkin, you know, doesn't have Trump campaigning for him and stuff like that. Glenn Youngkin could have said, I don't want Trump's endorsement. He could have said, no, thank you. I'm different than Donald Trump. I want the Republican Party to go in a new direction.

And so I'm resisting that endorsement. He chose not to do that. Right. Like that's a real argument about Glenn Youngkin just saying, you know, if we elect Glenn Youngkin, Donald Trump's going to announce for president the next day. So don't don't vote for Glenn Youngkin, which is what how Terry McAuliffe closed his last speech. Like that's not really that believable, you know. So I totally agree with that point. And I do think we can get wrapped around the axle of sort of this is like more of a spectator sport watching these investigations into Donald Trump. I think we all learned this with the Mueller investigation. We learned this through two impeachments like this stuff's going to happen. Right. The Georgia investigation is going to happen. One, the one six committee stuff's going to happen. There's little influence that we can all have over the outcome of those investigations. Right. They will either happen

or they won't happen. I mean, I do think there's, you know, prodding the Democrats on the committee to make the best case against Trump possible in the one six committee. I think that's important. But like the Georgia investigation, whatever's going on there, like just keep up with the news, check it out. There's really nothing else we can do about that than just watch it unfold. And so it's not something that we should spend a ton of our time talking about and thinking about until we find out what happens. Like maybe there's something there, maybe there's something not there. It's in the hands of the Georgia DA, a grand jury and a courtroom, right? Like what we can't do anything about that. One thing we can do something about is Trump is busy endorsing Republican candidates who are just a little more extreme than Glenn Youngkin.

That's what he's been doing lately. Like Pennsylvania Senate candidate Sean Parnell, whose ex-wife just accused him in court of strangling her and beating their child. Or Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker, who's written about playing Russian roulette with a gun to his head and fantasizing about murdering someone who didn't deliver his car on time. Or Idaho gubernatorial candidate Janice McGeechan, who's close to a right wing militia leader who pled guilty to aiming a weapon at federal officers during the 2014 standoff at Ammon Bundy's Nevada ranch. That person endorsed her. She spoke at a rally for his militia group organized by the militia group. This is fucking nuts. These are obviously not candidates in the mold of Glenn Young and Dan. Many Republican strategists aren't happy about them. How much does that matter?

It could matter a lot. I mean, if you think back to 2010, when Democrats lost 63 house seats, we held on to the Senate. Now, we lost a bunch of Senate seats, but we held on the Senate in large part because the Tea Party Republicans nominated a bunch of people who could not win in battleground states. There is Sharon Engel, who ran against Harry Reid, who you mentioned. There is Christine O'Donnell, who won the primary against Mike Castle, who was a very popular former governor and congressman in the state of Delaware and would have walked into the Senate. Christine O'Donnell was a Tea Party candidate who was, I think it's fair to say, witchcraft adjacent, and she lost to Chris Coons, giving us the Chris Coons. A man who ran primarily just simply as a

political sacrifice to Mike Castle and has now been in the Senate for a decade because of it. And so who they nominate matters. Same thing in 2012. We won. Democrats held on to Senate seats in Missouri and Indiana, despite Obama losing pretty badly in those states because Republicans nominated terrible candidates. So it can make a huge difference. And there's a reason Republicans are not named Trump are sort of freaking out about some of these candidates because they could cost them a great shot at Senate control. Beyond these individual races, do you think that it's worth trying to make these candidates the face of the Republican Party? I mean, it's hard, right? Can you make the Senate Republican nominee in Pennsylvania the face of the Republican Party? Or even Herschel Walker,

a very famous NFL player who's running for Senate in Georgia to face it? Probably not. Can you have a narrative about Republicans being extreme and out of touch and out of the mainstream? Absolutely. And this is, when you get to the larger Republican branding questions, this is one path that a lot of people advocate, which is the way to sort of leverage – to keep people in our coalition and turn people out of presidential level is to talk – and this is not fear-mongering any way it should perform – about just how dangerous this Republican Party is. And these candidates are proof points in that, as is Donald Trump. And so that could be – like it's not that they are the face or we're going to make Marjorie Taylor Green the face or anything like that. It is I think they are proof points in a larger narrative about a party that is in the thralls of an extreme minority that's out of touch with American values and American mainstream thought, et cetera. And one data point on why this might be effective is

Republican strategists are afraid of it, right? Like they are working. There's Republican strategists are working behind the scenes to make sure that these kinds of candidates are not nominated. Like one of the reasons that Glenn Youngkin came out of that primary is that it wasn't really a primary, it was a convention. And Republican organizers and strategists worked really hard at that convention in Virginia to make sure that the Trumpier candidates didn't end up on the ballot facing Terry McAuliffe, that they could get the least Trumpy candidate possible on the ballot. And that's who they got. There were some real wackos in that primary in Virginia. And Virginia has run some, the Virginia Republicans have run some real

wackos in the past statewide, and they've suffered because of it. And they got smart this year and didn't have to have Glenn Youngkin face a primary electorate in Virginia that was probably very, very far to the right, but to come out of a convention. And they're not going to have that luxury in a lot of these other states. All right, when we come back, we will talk midterm strategy with The Washington Post's Perry Bacon. All right. Since we last spoke about the big off-year elections in Virginia and New Jersey, there have been a few thousand more takes floating around the Internet. But we now also have some good data and analysis about Democratic voters from Civis Analytics, Pew, Data for Progress, even Jacobin, that all points to how challenging it will be to

grow or even maintain the broad, diverse coalition that elected Joe Biden in 2020. Here to help us sort through the wreckage and talk about what's next, Washington Post columnist Perry Bacon. Perry, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, guys. Good to see you. So you succinctly articulated in the Post what I've been trying to say about last week's elections, which is that the results, quote, were fairly normal, and that's the scary thing. Can you elaborate on that and give us sort of your overall take on what happened last Tuesday? Correct. So usually what happens after a party wins the presidency is that they struggle in the off-year election. So 2017 and

then 2018, or in this case, 2021, maybe 2022. And that happens for two reasons. One is often the party that won the presidency, their base is motivated, but not as motivated. So their voters tend to stay home versus the other party's voters are usually extra mad. How dare the president of the other party do stuff? So they turn out in very high numbers. And then usually you have some amount of people who swing from the president's party, small number, but swing of the president's party to the other one. And so in some ways, this is kind of what normally happens is like the Virginia election usually goes to the party not in control of the presidency. The midterms usually go to the party not in control of the

presidency. I was hoping that that dynamic would not happen, that the Republicans had gone so crazy that people would think differently about that. And the result where you guys live in California was Gavin Newsom won by about the same amount in killing the recall that he won in 2018 when Trump was president. That was a data point for me to think, oh, maybe things have changed. Maybe these sort of normal rules are not there. And so I was hopeful Me too. Me too. parties, turnout is always lower in off years because we're at a presidential. What you saw in New Jersey and Virginia, though, was turnout was more depressed among Democrats than Republicans, and that differential turnout is important. And also, you saw some evidence of vote switching, and I think that's important as well, where it looks like some small number, but a number that matters of people, it appears, voted for Biden, but also voted for Youngkin. So those things, and that goes to, it goes to a couple things, I think. First of all,

despite the Democratic message, Youngkin is not Donald Trump. Youngkin is not a threat to democracy. It is not surprising some people do not think Youngkin is as bad as Trump. That's true. The other thing being is we're thinking that in a place like Virginia, particularly, there are some people who likely are, I'll call them Romney, Clinton, Biden voters, people who were probably consider themselves conservative and maybe Republican even, but don't think, but thought Trump was way over the line, but will probably be more likely to vote for sort of a normal Republican. So I think some of the swing away from Biden and the Democrats was kind of natural once a person less crazy than Trump, which would cover most Republicans,

candidly, was not on the ballot anymore. Dan, one thing that Perry just touched on, and we talked about last week, which is that, you know, Youngkin's win was due to a combination of winning support from some Biden voters and turning out more Republicans. But the Civis Analytics analysis and some others are starting to show just how much turnout mattered. Like they said that McAuliffe turned out 13 percent more voters than Ralph Northam did. But Youngkin won because he turned out 34% more voters than Ed Gillespie. So do you think we need a greater focus on why so many of those Biden voters didn't show up? I feel like a lot of the commentary has been focused on the vote switching, which definitely happened and certainly matters in a very close election.

But if the bulk of the difference was turnout, what would it look like to focus on that? Well, I've been thinking about this because the focus on the Youngkin Biden voters is very similar to the focus on the Obama Trump voters after 2016, where you spent 99% of our time talking about this small group of voters, consequential, but small that switch back and forth and not enough on the 4 million Barack Obama 2012 voters who did not vote in 2016. And so we always focus on the people who vote more than the people who don't vote, which is one of the great flaws in all political analysis. And so I've been thinking about what we did in the Obama campaign after 2010. And we did a huge study of Obama drop-off voters, people who voted for Obama

in 2008 who did not vote in the midterm elections where we got shellacked, to use Obama's words, and lost 63 seats to figure out what kept them from getting involved. And I'm positive this is happening probably in many places when the Democratic Party is, a really thorough qualitative focus group, quantitative polling analysis of who those voters are. But I think there's even one more piece of this, which is we need to stop treating these voters as two separate groups necessarily, and recognize that in almost every single state that's going to determine control of the Senate next year, all we have to do is turn out people who voted for Joe Biden last year, and we win. And so it is about persuading Biden voters, persuading them to stay with Democrats or

persuading them to turn out for Democrats as opposed to going to find people who were wearing red hats six months ago to get them to support Democrats. And so it's sort of like breaking down the walls between persuasion and GOTV and thinking about us persuading Biden voters to stay involved in a post-Trump era. Yeah. And again, and I think that you just made the point like it's it's much easier than what we were talking about after 2016, which is like, how do we win the Trump voters back? The question now is just how do we win Biden voters back? Right. How do you either get them to show up because they didn't or to vote for Democrats again when they voted for Republicans? So in some ways it should be an easier lift, though we haven't quite figured it out just yet. Perry, instead of getting into another debate about how much critical race theory mattered in Virginia, feels like there's plenty of those out there.

the excellent piece you wrote today in the Washington Post, where you argue that the flip side of Republicans practicing white grievance politics is Democrats practicing white appeasement politics. Can you talk a little bit about that? Sure. The idea is essentially that we're in a country where I think the electorate's about 70% white, non-Hispanic white. It's a white majority country, obviously. And so often what Democratic candidates do is two things. What I called white appeasement, I try to use a negative term intentionally here, is two things. One is they move to the right on racial issues or distance themselves from people of color. I think the best example we referred in the story is about Sister Soulja and Jesse Jackson and how Bill Clinton distanced himself from those two people in 1992, kind of symbolically trying to say, I am not sort of trapped by the black civil rights class and I can distance myself from that. So that's one thing Democrats distance. The second thing they do is just don't go as far as maybe they could and might be morally right on like civil rights issues.

You could talk about maybe police reform in this era, affirmative action in other eras where Democrats probably hold one one position, but they don't necessarily express them the most most forthright way as a way to avoid maybe a backlash among kind of white voters who are. I'm not talking about sort of like Trumpish voters or the deplorables that have you, I'm talking about more persuadable white voters who, and maybe it's probably some Latinos at this point as well, who can vote for a Democrat, but maybe are not going to vote for a Democrat who leans really far on racial issues. How do you think that's playing out in today's context? Obviously, you know, in the piece, you talk about all these historical examples, which obviously hold up. But how do you think that's happening today? Do you think it's

primarily centered around both the critical race theory debate and the defund the police debate? So I don't think it does. So I'll be honest. So in some ways, in writing a piece like this, I was working the piece before Virginia. But when I hear people make comments like Democrats are overcome by wokeness, it's like I don't know that Terry McAuliffe, Joe Biden and Phil Murphy, the major figures in last week's results are woke in any sort of definition of that term. I mean, they're older white men, first of all, they're not running around saying they're for reparations. I don't think that they talk about critical race theory very often. So when I hear that kind of thing, it sounds to me like there's a criticism of other people in the party.

And I, and so my concern in writing a piece is there, I sense a desire for Joe Biden or some other prominent Democrat to find people who support critical race theory. So academics who are Black, the squad, BLM, and do sort of criticize them to show, look, we're not that left the way those crazies are. And I think those kinds of things I'm a little worried about. And when I hear some of Abigail Spanberger's comments, both after last year's elections, remember last year she said defund the police, killed all the swing. You know, no candidate was for that. This year, she said Biden's trying to be too much like FDR. I thought the whole point of Democratic presidents was to be like FDR. That comment was insane. I thought the whole point of Democratic presidents was to be like FDR. That comment was insane. Like, you know, so I just think that where this sort of wokeness is is a muck can lead like should the Democrats shrink the sister soldier-like things of, you know, let's attack the squad, let's break from police reform. That's my concern. That's kind of what I wanted to write

to sort of encourage real thinking about what actually helps you win versus what seems like might help you win, but is mean to people and actually might not help you win anyway. One thing you, I think you tweeted this the other day that has stuck with me is that there's been so much commentary about Eric Adams winning the primary to be mayor of New York City when, you know, arguably the most impressive win from a black candidate over the last several years has been Raphael Warnock in Georgia, one in a red state, did even better than John Ossoff in the same election. One thing about Warnock that's interesting is I feel like he ran an unapologetically progressive campaign, progressive on economic issues, progressive on issues of racial justice as well. Though I also remember Warnock standing up at one of those

debates talking about his opposition to defunding the police, making it very explicit and accusing Kelly Loeffler of defunding the police with some of her votes in Congress. Like, how do you think about that? I think it might be worth defining our terms more like in some ways. It's like, what does woke mean? If woke means defund the police, I agree. No Democrat in a swing state should say that. If woke means I care about racial equality, I care about voting rights, Raphael Warnock is certainly woke. And I think that's why I don't love that term, because it often sort of obscures what we're really talking about. And so I think one thing

in the past, Democrats have often interpreted when I say white appeasement means we have to have a white candidate run in any area where the race is going to be hard. I think Barack Obama showed that, too. But that was like one example. But maybe you could imagine you could say Raphael, you know, Barack Obama was this extremely talented politician. That is true. But I think and maybe Raphael Warnock is, too. But I do think seeing the results in Georgia and how Warnock won should at least give people some pause. Like Georgia had this long record and most of the South had any Democrats in the South had any big race where Democrats really want to win. Let's find a white guy. And in this case, it was not

let's find a white guy. Let's let's embrace this candidate who in Warnock and Stacey Abrams and Ossoff and the whole party really tried to build a strategy around. Let's let's turn out the base. Let's turn out black people. Let's turn out minorities. Let's turn out the Atlanta area. Also try to win some swing voters. So don't say defund. But Warnock was very strongly for voting rights and and things like that. So that's kind of what I mean is like woke isn't telling me much. Like, what are we what should candidates not say and what should they say? And that's kind of the discussion. The more detailed discussion is the better. I think we are better off. We are. the more detailed discussion is, the better I think we are, better off we are. Yeah, I think defining these terms is so important. You know, woke falls victim to this, which is why I don't love using that word. I even think around critical race theory, too. Like, there's a difference between a curriculum that teach our kids about slavery and about the dark parts of American history and racism and systemic racism. And, you know, some of these DEI trainings

that happen with teachers where they're teaching, you know, some of these DEI trainings that happen with teachers where they're teaching, you know, Robin DiAngelo's book that could be a little out there, right? Like there's a difference between things, but we sort of conflate them all when we have this debate, and it probably isn't that helpful. Dan, you know, obviously Democrats don't need a coalition that includes a bunch of two-time Trump voters, as we said, but we do need a coalition that includes like older black women who always vote, young Latino men that don't always vote, white Biden-Yunkin voters, a lot of different demographic combinations. Have you been thinking about like what kind of messages appeal to all of those voters so that we're not sacrificing any of those groups since we can't? I mean, you're

exactly right. That is the math, right? We have to do – and both. We have to have great turnout. We have to hold on to voters who have moved in our direction in recent years. And so two things about this. The first is I think the Warnock example that you and Perry discussed is very important, is you cannot separate message from messenger. messenger. Obama was a great messenger. Stacey Abrams, although she lost, was a great messenger. And it's always hard to be like, this is what the message should be and what you should go adopt it, whether you're Raphael Warnock or Abigail Spanberger or whoever, the Democrat running against Young Kim in California. And it's going to depend on who you are. But more specifically is, in general, you want to focus your campaign on issues that unite your base and divide theirs. The issue that does that or the issue area that does it is economics. Republicans already use the term that we talked about a few weeks ago that Ian

Haney-Lopez uses, which is conflicted voters, people who are culturally conservative and may be conservative in ways that we find very odious on racial issues, right? Or reacting to some generic malicious definition of the term woke, but are populist and economic issues. So you want to move the campaign in that economic issue framework, because that does divide Republicans. You see that in all the polling of the Biden agenda, is that there is a group of voters who voted for Trump that is disproportionately working class that support the things that Joe Biden is trying to do in Congress. And so focusing the conversation on those populist economic issues is one way in which we can begin the process of keeping that coalition together. I want to talk about that because, you know, the Jacobin YouGov study I found interesting because it focused on 2000 working class voters of all races, which I think is important because, you know, even though we talk a lot about working class whites moving away from the Democratic Party, working class black and Latino voters, especially Latino voters, have started to move away from the party in recent elections as well.

Not as much as working class whites, but some we've started to notice. much as working class whites, but some we've started to notice. And what they found is that potentially Democratic working class voters did not shy away from candidates based on their race, gender, progressive ideology, or strong opposition to racism. But quote, candidates who framed that opposition in identity focused language fared significantly worse than candidates who embraced either populist or mainstream language. Perry, what did you think about those conclusions? candidates who embrace either populist or mainstream language. Perry, what did you think about those conclusions? I mean, I think my concern with, you know, this and I don't disagree with Dan, but I guess the question I might have is like, it's not, yes, Democrats should run on whatever they're going to run on and what he said makes sense. But Fox News, Facebook, so on,

they're going to define Democrats by race identity in the most divisive ways possible. And so I think that's got to be like, OK, well, you know, even Warnock faced this where Warnock did not run on his sermons or Warnock had said some more racially controversial things in his sermons. You know, Fox News, Kelly Lefner, they ran on those. So I think to some extent it is definitely correct that the persuadable voters are not looking to hear the most racially aggressive critical race theory message. I think the question might be more precisely, I think in my view is at least is when the Democratic candidate is like has those things pushed on him. What does he or she need to say? I don't know that the best response to one candidate says critical race theory is terrible. The other candidate says nobody I know is learning about critical race theory. I think you might want to have,

I just don't know how much does, I agree Terry should not run, McAuliffe should not run a campaign on critical race theory. Once the media is covering that issue, to me, one of the problems, one of the, I think the fallacies of this economic argument is not that it's not right, it's that the media covers the campaign. The media finds minimum wage increases kind of boring and discussions about race kind of interesting. Unfortunately, I'm in the media. So I would know who you guys are too at this point. So I would say if I was McAuliffe, I think, yes, focus on economic issues, too. But I think that what I always thought and maybe you guys are the campaign actors and I'm not. But teach about America's racial history.

Honestly, seems to me to be a message that probably polls well and means you can be in the discussion without trying to obscure the discussion. Yeah, I totally agree that you're on stage in a debate. Someone attacks you on critical race theory. You can't go back and be like, well, I'm for jobs. Like, ignore what he just said, because I'm for jobs, right? But I do think, I mean, look, I think one way to do it is they start attacking you on critical race theory and say, look, this is an attack designed to divide us against each other. And really what we all want are schools where no matter what you look like, where you come from, who you are, what zip code do you come from? Every single child has a world

class education, black, white, Latino, Asian, anyone. Like that's what we're trying to do. They're trying to divide us so that they can score points and win. We're trying to build a system where everyone succeeds from all races. And that way you're getting to an economic issue, but you're not ignoring race altogether, which seems like, as you said, very hard to do when obviously Republicans are going to inject that into every single campaign. Dan, what do you think? Yeah, I 100% agree with that. What do you think? Yeah, I 100% agree with that. That's actually my concern or slight objection to the Jacobin study is politics doesn't happen in a vacuum.

And all American politics is at its core about race, right? It's about who has power, what happens to that power. Every Republican economic argument is about scarcity and whether too much of what you have is going to black and brown people. That's what Welfare Queens was about. That's what Newt Gingrich calling Barack Obama the food stamp president was about. Basically, all of Trumpism was about that. And so you can't ignore that. And that's this idea that if we're going to talk about populist economics and ignore race, that even if the media environment was happening on the level, which it is not, that did not work in 2008, will never work. The question is, how do you navigate that? There is a roadmap to this. We've talked about it a thousand times on this podcast. It's the

race class narrative. It is acknowledging that why people are trying to divide you on racial lines is that's the pivot point, that? Who benefits from that racial division, right? It's not just racism. That is a big part of it. But it's also who wins, special interest corporations, et cetera, who hold the power in this country. And the other element of it is we have this world where there's policy politics and identity politics. And policy politics is somehow pure and noble. And if we just did it, we would all come together, Trump voters, Bernie Sanders voters, suburbanite resistance wine moms, we'd all come together and we would reflect the inherent goodness of American politics.

And that's just not the way it works, right? We said this before, all politics, identity politics. And so if you're going to make an economic argument, it has to be one based on identity, on who you are fighting for. That was what Obama did. That's why he succeeded. That is really what Bernie Sanders did in a lot of ways and could have worked for him. It's what Trump is doing in the most malicious, odious version of that. And so if we just go out and say, these are our policies, we'll give you $15 minimum wage, Republicans won't, that's not going to work because that's not how people think about politics. There was this focus group that was done, the results of which were live tweeted out, which these were Biden-Yunkin voters. And they asked

them who they agreed with on policy. And it was overwhelming that these voters agreed with Democrats on policy and overwhelmingly they agreed with Republicans on cultural and values issues. And we have to find a way to merge those two if we're going to have – because we have to have a moral power to our economic policy arguments or we will lose again. Because we've been winning the policy war in terms of public opinion for a very long time. We're just not getting the commensurate political gains to come with that victory. Let me ask – I mean you guys are are the only ask question is really here. I mean, sure. I don't remember in 08 in 2012 that every time a racial issue came up, Obama was like they're trying to distract it. Like I felt like during the primary, I know it's that's the Democratic only vote.

But during the primary, Barack Obama is this crazy pastor who says crazy things. The response was not, let's talk about economics. The response was, let's give a speech that discusses race openly, but in a way that puts it in our favor. I know in 2012, there was a lot of focus on Romney being a plutocrat, but there was some racial incidents during the 2012 general election too. And Obama, I thought was great at speaking to those moments in a way that was unifying. He didn't always sort of, I know that pivoting away and not focusing on race is smart, but I don't know that's always possible. And I guess, you know, as a Black person, I was proud of some of those moments where he sort of leaned into the issue and sort of spoke in a way

that sort of didn't duck it and tried to say, I think there's a majority of Americans that agree with the, let's call it the Black position. Is that, I don't mind the race class narrative. I worry that that sort of gets away from addressing the fundamental issues. Because I think the majority of Americans might agree with some of the things I think about racial issues. Well, I don't think you should pivot away. Like, I don't maybe the use of pivot is the wrong verb there. And maybe you didn't say that. Yeah, I almost certainly did.

So I will address it, which is it. So I will address it, which is, I think what was always core in Obama's argument, and he was navigating an incredibly challenging political environment. And given his political success, it's hard to put ourselves back in the 2007, 2008 mentality of how the hell is this country going to elect a black man named Barack Hussein Obama president, right? The fact that he won by so much now makes so much sense. But in the moment, all the polls had to be wrong because of the Bradley effect. And there's a whole different political context there in how his candidacy was viewed in the moment that it is in hindsight. But I think the way Obama viewed it, and he had,

you know, he obviously, as you wrote in your piece, had to be very careful about this. And, you know, and you talk in your piece about the part where he says, I'm not the president of black America, which is also a, it's one of those things that seems very notable. It's also 100% true as if every previous president said, I'm not the president of male America, right? Or Christian America or whatever that is. And, but it's not like, I do think we have the tendency to be like, there's a whole bunch of race in politics, right? There's a whole bunch of racial issues that are over here. And then there's a whole bunch of other issues over here when all the issues have a racial component and you have to think about them and talk about them in that way. If you try to ignore the obvious, particularly when the other side is being even more blatant

about their racial grievance appeals now than they are then, then you have to take it on. There is no other way, right? Pivot was probably the wrong word. You have to take it on and put it in the larger context of American politics and why people are trying to do it to go to the motivations of the people making it. I think, I don't know if Johnny had other things to say about that. Yeah. I will just say from like working with him on the Jeremiah Wright speech in, in, in 2008, seven, I can't remember. It was 2008. Yeah. So I can read it because I. Yeah. So all of the themes that we've been talking about are in that speech. And, you know, he wanted to address race specifically. We should say for some time, his advisers did not want him to give a big speech on race in the middle of the Iowa caucuses. He had wanted to give that speech. Finally, when the Reverend Wright incident happened, he said, well, we're giving that speech. Finally, when the Reverend Wright incident happened, he said, well, we're giving

that speech. It's not an option anymore. I want to do this. And I mean, one of the things when you wrote in your piece, sort of he separated himself from Wright a little bit. That wasn't just a political choice. What genuinely offended him or what he disagreed with fundamentally about Reverend Wright's sermons is that it basically, Reverend Wright spoke like racial progress wasn't possible or didn't happen in this country over years. And what Obama wanted to say is he understood Reverend Wright, how upset Reverend Wright was that there hasn't been enough racial progress and that there's been far too much racial subjugation over the course of a couple of centuries in America.

But progress actually is possible. And when we deny that and we deny our own agency to make that progress, we do a disservice to ourselves. And so he wanted to make that point. But then at the end of that speech, at the back end of that speech, he does start talking about how these divisions have been used to also sort of deny opportunity, not just to black Americans, but to black Americans, white Americans, Latino Americans, all Americans who could come together in a coalition and more working class coalition to sort of make everyone's lives better. And so

he starts talking about the things that bother white working class people and black working class people. But you're right. He didn't just say like all these all these attacks about Reverend Wright are just a distraction for me trying to pass health care and create jobs like that was not going to be enough for speech like the only way around this issue was through it which he understood especially if he was I mean I remember he called me after that speech and he said I don't know if I can get elected president saying the things I said today about race but I also know that I don't deserve to be president if I if I was too

afraid to say those things. So if it works, it works. And if it doesn't work, it doesn't work, you know, and he goes, and that's that's the price that I'm going to pay for trying to be the first black president of the United States. So last question, Perry, you know, I think the Biden people, as they're looking ahead to 22, you know, they think that like the larger mood music in the country, economic inflation, the pandemic still going like this is bill, we pass the economic plan to voters feel tangible effects in their lives, and that maybe we can buck these trends when everything gets better. How do you feel about that? You think that's possible? Or do you think that's, they need sort of another argument there? You know, I've been thinking about this a little bit. I mean, the short answer is it's not likely to work because of

just the nature of midterms and the other side often has more enthusiasm. But if you look at some of these polls, it's not just that Biden's approval rating is lower because the opposition, it looks like he's down among people who voted for him. Like if you think about where we are now, he's down among people who voted for him. Like if you think about where we are now, you know, a few months ago, he's at 54, 43. Now he's at about 43, 52. So basically 10% of people have went from liking him or proving to disapproving. So in other words, 90% of us are all where we were. So that 10%, I'm guessing is not people who candidly read the Washington Post political columns or listen to our podcast. I think that's probably a more disengaged group who's going to generally get the sense

Biden was less crazy than Trump. And I liked him and the vaccines are working. And now the news says he's kind of blah. And I don't know what's going on. So in some ways, I think, you know, and I was skeptical about this earlier, but I know Ron Klain is very much on the we should be competent and that's how we get things done. And look, I think that can leave aside some like they should work on this voting rights stuff and they should work on this gerrymandering stuff. And I think this is and I'm going to always say this year they sort of underdid that stuff. And it may be hard to win the midterms if the lines are drawn a certain way, even if you do everything right. win the midterms if the lines are drawn a certain way, even if you did everything right. But just looking at how his polling decline has went, I don't know that every voter who doesn't like him is like an inflation expert. I sort of think that if things get going again, if Spanberger and

Jayapal are not in the news every day saying how much nothing is getting done, if they just get some momentum, if they have two or three bills passed, do some executive orders, like those first few months, it seemed like every day Biden was doing stuff. And I think that, and I'm actually now I think about this, I meant to write about this a few years ago, but I thought that period in 2015 and 2016, Obama's poll ratings went up a lot in 2015. And that was in part because the campaign is happening and therefore people are checked out. But in part because he sort of went from, I'm trying to work on the Hill and I'm trying to like, I'm doing stuff, you know, I'm going to go and try to get the mayors to do something. I'm going to talk about gay marriage decisions. I'm going to just,

I think that the more it looks like Biden is winning and I, and you can define that in however you want it to, but the looks, the more it looks like he's active and he's making things better and he's not sort of a prisoner to events, but shaping events better off. Yes. And so I think that's entirely, I think to get back to 48, I think is possible. And I, but I think that involves him sort of being, I mean, you can, I'll be curious what Dan thinks, you guys are the experts, but I sort of feel like the feeling that he's sort of watching as opposed

to presidenting is useful. And I think if he gets to presidenting, that'll help. Dan? Well, I think I agree. Like, yes, that is all true. I think 85% of his problem right now are conditions on the ground, right? It is inflation, it's pandemic weariness, it's high gas prices, probably more than anything else. You can basically plot rises in gas prices and drops in presidential approval next to each other over the last 30 years of politics. And if those things don't get better, it doesn't matter anything else, we're going to be really up shit's creek heading into the midterms. Yes, I think that there is – he's in this really tough position. It's the same one Obama was in at exactly this point in his presidency, which he got elected president

to get things done. But to get things done, you have to be prime minister for a while. Americans elect presidents, they punish prime ministers. And so he has to get this bill done. He has to get to the other side of the bill. And he will have a chance to improve his standing by seeming more in charge, right? Congress gets – the voters do not like Congress. The more time you spend with Congress, the less popular you become. There's a whole bunch of atmospheric things you need to fix. This is not to say they've done everything perfectly message-wise or he could not seem more active. Of course he can. But the big problems are sort of out of his control right now, or they're either completely out of his control, or they're mostly in Joe Manchin's control. And if those can get better in the short term and the calendar

turns over next year, he has a chance to reset the narrative. Things get better on the ground. More and more kids get vaccinated, and you get sort of a virtuous news cycle. So people who are just opening up Facebook or whatever else don't just see story after story after story about Joe Biden not doing well, right, or failing or disappointing these people or divided Democrats. You start to see other stuff and that will help him. No, I think that's exactly right. And I definitely agree with Perry that it is about controlling events and not being controlled by events. I think that's the salient point for what a president needs to do or at least appear to be doing in order to win over voters' confidence. Perry Bacon, thank you so much for joining us today.

Thanks, guys. Thanks for having me. All right, let's get to the mailbag. We have just a few quick questions before we go. The first one comes from Max. Dan, we always talk about the biggest divide in politics being between people who do follow politics closely and those who don't. Democratic campaigns, progressives seem focused on the small group that follows it closely. But how can we start to cater campaigns to the majority who don't pay close attention? There is no easy answer to this question. It is a huge challenge.

And so I don't want to try to, I don't want to do it injustice by sort of making some stuff up. Because I would just say one specific problem we have that we could begin to address, which is right now we have a campaign fundraising model that is based on virality, right? It's like, what can we do that's going to get as much attention as possible from the most activist of Democrats? And sort of separating that out where we have a fundraising model that is still grassroots, still online, but sort of tries to build out a culture of sustainable giving where people are giving $10 a month instead of $100 because

they're really angry about something or they find something very viral or emotionally evocative. And sort of decoupling that. This was one of the biggest problems that a lot of primary campaigns had was that they were reverse engineering their messaging from what would raise money, which keeps the lights on. And so trying to find a way to decouple that, I would help us be able to have a more broad based appealing message. Very good answer. Eric on Instagram asks, on a scale from Parks and Rec to Handmaid's Tale, how fucked are we? And Yvette on Instagram asked a similar question. I'm burnt out from 20

and feel disappointed in Congress. How do we find motivation? How do we find motivation for 22? Dan, I know you were trying to figure out a television show that was somewhere on the scale from Parks and Rec to Handmaids. Did you find that at all? Are you still thinking about that? I mean, is it Invasion? I've never seen Invasion. I see the preview for it every time I turn on Apple TV, but it seems like it's just this side it's it's like what happens right before handmaid's tale i don't i don't know i kind of feel like succession i guess it's succession i was gonna say veep again too like veep ends like politics usually ends which is just everybody fucking up and now we're moving on all right on the on the burnout question because i've been hearing this a lot from people. I think that authoritarians, authoritarianism wins by dividing their enemies

and wearing people down. So if you get people fighting who should be allies, if you make people feel like the system is so rigged that there's nothing you can do to change it, then people eventually give up and that you win. Democracy is different than that. Democracy is not secured with each election. It's secured over a lifetime. I know we've said this a lot of times before, but there is no president and no Congress that will allow us to just sit back and say, we're done. We can go back to our lives. That's just that's not what democracy is about.

That's never what democracy is about. never what democracy is about. And I think that if we if we always believe that we are one election away from salvation, we will always be disappointed because like every single election requires us to be engaged all the time throughout our life. That's what democracy is. That's how it's always been. And like, look, we are we are the bosses of the people that we send to Washington. But being the boss of the people that we send to Washington means that we have to manage them constantly. And that means pushing them. That means firing them if necessary. That means replacing them if necessary.

And part of being in a democracy is if we want to fire them and hire new ones, like we also have to persuade the majority of the other 300 million plus people in this country to do the same thing. And that's hard. And like, yes, the system is stacked against us because of institutional racism and sexism and Facebook and Fox and gerrymandering and the Senate and all this kind of shit. It's all unfair, but that's the system that we're living in. And the options are to give up or to keep fighting. And I always think that there's just, there's too many people out there whose lives literally depend on it for us to give up. So that's why we keep fighting. And there's a lot of disappointment in those fights and there's a lot of setbacks, but you just got to keep doing it because that is the price of living in a democracy. That's a great answer. That's all I got.

You have a way with words. That's all I got. Amanda wants to know, what are you reading? I just finished last night Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead. Oh, nice. He's one of my favorite authors. Cool. And it's just because I always like to pair one thing I'm reading and one thing I'm reading over and over and over again to the kids is Kyla's favorite thing is favorite set of books

is the princess in black, which is about a princess who is also a superhero who protects her land from well meeting but misguided monsters. And they're great, great kids books. And we've read all of them. And we are anxiously awaiting the newest one to come out. She doesn't really understand that you can't get new books. New books don't come out tillbruary this book doesn't come out till february so we have to wait and that is a long wait for a three-year-old i'm so excited to get to the point where i can read like real children's books to charlie since he's only 15 months old and everything is just like here's elmo the big here's the big blue truck here's another version of the big blue truck here's a third version of the big blue truck or little blue truck i think it's a little blue

truck how should i say that every fucking night how did i forget the name of it little blue trucks halloween little we have we have the full little blue truck goes to the city the little truck valentine's day is a real winner yes little blue truck close to the city is a classic yes um so basically i'm just reading about the little blue truck uh i also started beautiful world where are you by sally rooney uh just to in my constant effort to try to read real books, which I always come up short on. Any pod, Julie wants to know if there's any podcasts outside Crooked that you listen to. Obviously the answer is no, but let's just entertain Julie's notion. Oh, and she also says, she says not, she goes, not you, Tommy Vitor, laughing emoji,

because we know that Tommy's favorite podcast. Yeah, you mean Tommy who, yeah, we also know that. We also know that no one consumes. Yeah. You mean Tommy? Yeah. Yeah. We all, we also know that. We also know that no one consumes more media than Tommy. It's impressive. Who's off. No one consumes. Did you guys hear the daily?

And I'm like, it's five 45. Like, what do you, how have you listened to Mike Barbaro at five 45? He listens to more podcasts than literally anyone. I know. I don't like, I,

I, does he just walk around? I got to ask Hannah. If he just walks around the house with, with AirPods and just listening to pods all day because he consumes a lot. Anyway, what are you listening to? The only non-crooked podcast that I would allow myself to listen to because I would never be disloyal to the media empire, but it's basketball season. There is no better basketball podcast, specifically for a Sixers fan, but no's basketball season. There is no better basketball

podcast, specifically for a Sixers fan, but no better basketball podcast, period, than the rights to Ricky Sanchez, which is a... I mention this, I think, every basketball season we have this conversation, but it is absolute must-listen to my favorite podcast. Cool. I'm listening to SmartList. I love SmartList with Jason Bateman, Will Arnett,

and Sean Hayes. Hot take. We had Amy Westervelt on. It's a climate pod. Amy is one of the hosts, and Mary Anais Hagler is her co-host. They talk about climate politics. It's like a PSA for climate politics. And, of course, Strict Scrutiny with our friend Melissa Murray, who's been on the pod a lot, Kate Shaw, and Leah Littman. Excellent podcast about the Supreme Court and all things legal.

So those have been some podcasts that I've been listening to. Thanks again to Perry Bacon for joining us today. Everyone have a fantastic weekend, and we'll talk to you next week. Bye, everyone. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Andy Gardner-Bernstein. Our producer is Haley Muse, and Olivia Martinez is our associate producer.

It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somanator, Sandy Gerard, Hallie Kiefer, Madison Holman, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah cone phoebe bradford milo kim and amelia montu our episodes are uploaded as videos at youtube.com crooked media