Pod Save America - “Stimulus checks and balances.”

Episode Date: December 17, 2020

Mitch McConnell agrees to stimulus checks because he’s worried about losing Georgia, Covid relief nears the finish line, and Democrats ponder why they lost the Senate race in Maine. Then, in an excerpt of his interview on this week’s Pod Save the World, Barack Obama talks to Tommy and Ben about his tensions with the Pentagon over Afghanistan and his thoughts about the rise of right-wing nationalism. Listen and subscribe to Gaining Ground: The New Georgia at gaininggroundpodcast.com. 

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's pod, we'll talk about the pandemic relief bill that may finally pass Congress. And we'll also do a deep dive on why Democrats came up short in what looks like a very winnable Senate race in Maine. After that, a special treat. You'll hear a portion of the fascinating conversation that Tommy and Ben had with Barack Obama on this week's Pod Save the World. Or as Barack Obama calls it, Podcast the World, including a discussion about Obama's tensions with the Pentagon over Afghanistan

and his thoughts about the rise of right-wing nationalism. It is an outstanding conversation. I highly recommend you check it out if you haven't already. He's loose. The boss is loose. You know, we watched it on YouTube. You're welcome, Elijah. Because in my house, we've smashed that subscribe button. And my takeaway from watching that interview was the gap between how Barack Obama talked to us in private, like in a meeting, and how he talks in public is dramatically narrowed in the book phase of his life, which I think is great. So before we start, we have a brand new podcast to tell you about.

It's called Gaining Ground, The New Georgia. We will be releasing this in collaboration with Tenderfoot TV. It's hosted by Atlanta natives Jewel Wicker and Rembrandt Brown, and it tells the story of the massively important Georgia runoff, as well as the struggles and triumphs that led to this moment. You'll hear from the organizers, strategists, and voters on the ground in Georgia, hoping to change the South forever. The trailer and episode one are out right now, so go check it out. Subscribe to Gaining Ground, the new Georgia, wherever you get your podcasts. Exciting stuff. stuff also check out a very special episode of unholier than thou tomorrow where phil will be joined by friend of the pod britney

packman cunningham uh with christmas fast approaching uh phil and britney will talk about the idea of jesus christ in the modern context as a social justice warrior so check it out uh it's out tomorrow make sure to subscribe to Unholier Than Thou wherever you get your podcasts. All right, let's get to the news. We just may have a deal on a second coronavirus relief bill, a $900 billion package that includes about $300 billion for small businesses, $25 billion in rental assistance, a few billion for vaccine distribution, tens of billions for schools and transportation systems, and an extra $300 per week in unemployment benefits. The corporate liability shield is gone, but so is the $160 billion for state and local governments. Instead, there will be an additional round of direct payments of around $600 per person. Dan, what do you think? Better than nothing?

Better than nothing. That's what we got. It is better than nothing. I think it is. I mean, we said this. We've been talking about this for a long time because it's been on the cusp of happening for a long time. And our take the whole time has been this is not a half a loaf. It's not a quarter loaf.

It is a fraction of what the country needs at this time. And our take the whole time has been this is not a half a loaf. It's not a quarter loaf. It is a fraction of what the country needs at this time. We saw another 900,000 people this morning apply for unemployment insurance. And so the problem is getting worse. I saw a report that if this were not passed and unemployment were not extended, 5 million more Americans would fall into poverty at the end of this month. And so that at least speaks to the urgency of doing something, even if it is far from what we would do in a world in which Mitch McConnell did not have the ability to control what happens in a large part of this country. And again, 8 million people have fallen into poverty just since the summer. As a lot of folks have pointed out, it's already too late for a lot of people whose benefits expire the day after Christmas, because even if we pass

this thing now, it's going to take a few weeks, even a month or so for the unemployment programs in the states to get up and running again. It'll take a while for those checks to go out. So there's already people who, you know, are going to lose some benefits and they're a couple hundred dollars away from, you know, being laid on rent or a mortgage or being able to pay their bills and could fall into poverty. So it is a very dire situation and something has to get passed as fast as possible, even though, as you say, this is woefully insufficient. Bernie Sanders, still not a fan. Here's what he told the Washington Post about a disagreement he had with Joe Manchin over the compromise on a Democratic caucus conference call.

Quote, when you had Mnookin talking about 1.8 trillion and this large heroes bill, which is about 2.2 trillion, I don't know how Democrats started accepting a framework of only $900 billion. So do you think we could have gotten a better deal, Dan? I don't know. I'm not sure we could, because the period of time which Bernie Sanders was talking about was before the election. And at that point in time, Trump kind of sort of said he wanted a deal. Mnuchin wanted a deal. But as we know, Mnuchin has basically no juice. Mitch McConnell said no, said no to everything, no to any potential compromise. And so I don't know what situation could have put in

place that would have changed McConnell's political calculus. It's hard to say something could never possibly happen, but no one has ever articulated to me the path that got us to something better. Yeah, I kind of think the same thing. I mean, when you're, a lot of people keep talking about, you know, the White House deal was higher, the White House deal was higher. Right, but it doesn't pass without McConnell in the Senate. McConnell was stuck at $500 billion for a long time and didn't want to budge off 500 billion. And presumably McConnell didn't want to budge off 500 billion because he didn't have the votes in his caucus to go beyond 500 billion. Or at least he certainly didn't want to divide the Republican caucus. So either way, it was going to be dead on arrival in the Senate if it was over that.

So all this talk about, well, the White House was going to give 1.2 trillion and all this kind of stuff. Yeah, that's that's all fantasy until Mitch McConnell says yes to that. So all this talk about, well, the White House was going to give $1.2 trillion and all this kind of stuff. Yeah, that's all fantasy until Mitch McConnell says yes to that. Now, look, there were no direct payments in the original bipartisan compromise deal, and now there are direct payments. And so why did that happen? Well, Bernie Sanders in the Senate and a lot of the progressive members of the House pushed really hard for those direct payments. But it wasn't it also wasn't because Democrats alone pushed for direct payments. You had Josh Hawley in the Senate working with Bernie Sanders to get these direct payments into the bill. And then then you got Mitch McConnell on board with the direct payments so uh as our as our what a day newsletter noted last night senate humanitarian leader mitch mcconnell came around to

the idea of including stimulus checks after witnessing the plight of america's most vulnerable population rich republican senators from georgia mcconnell explicitly linked the direct payments to the georgia runoffs on a call with Republican senators saying, quote, Kelly and David are getting hammered because they've been fighting against direct payments for months. Sure seems like Mitch and the Republicans think their months long blockade of any additional pandemic relief could cause them the Senate, doesn't it? I mean, he said as much. And it is one of the most revealing comments that, as is always true with Republicans, things are shocking but not surprising. And the sole motivating factor for Republicans is electing other Republicans. And if Mitch

McConnell thought blocking aid, making sure that 5 million Americans fell into poverty would help Kelly and David return to the Senate. Mitch McConnell would keep the gavel and he would sure as hell do that. I do want to go back to one thing really fast, though, that I think that McConnell's comment does bring up, which is it is possible when you say, was there a way to get another deal? possible when you say, was there a way to get another deal? There could have been a world in which there was a House Democrats-Trump deal. This is a very hypothetical situation where it was passed and then forced McConnell to vote it up or down. And that could have been one of two things. It could have gotten you a deal. And we can speculate about the political consequences of what that deal would have had at the presidential level. Or it could have put it in a situation where more Republicans

than Kelly and David were in trouble because they've just voted down a bipartisan relief deal. Like that is the hindsight is 2020 potential scenario. Why do you think that Pelosi just didn't negotiate directly with Mnuchin then on something like that? I think, I don't know. I mean, I don't want to, it's hard to, the reporting on it's not completely clear, hard to speculate. There's probably a sense that Mnuchin cannot deliver a deal. Trump is too distracted and dumb to actually be behind a deal. And therefore, now you're just giving the Republicans the patina of bipartisan compromise without ever actually delivering what you want to deliver. I think that would be the argument against it.

I am fascinated by the fact that McConnell seems incredibly worried about Loeffler and Perdue's position in Georgia, particularly over the direct payments and over blocking relief. Because I had always suspected that this could be a big issue in the Georgia runoffs. And sure enough, you know, Ossoff and Warnock are both running ads that hammer Purdue and Loeffler, as McConnell said, over a lack of direct payments and over blocking COVID relief in general. And that makes me think, alone, that maybe we could have gotten a better deal by hammering the shit out of Senate Republicans and particularly Kelly and David for blocking relief for Georgians during a pandemic and a recession. Yeah, I think that, I mean, it is I mean, all of these are counterfactuals, but I agree with your premise. Here's the tough part that we always wrestle with is.

They are hostage takers in the Republican Party, and they are fine with a result where people don't get any relief and that they just play chicken with Democrats. And at the end of the day, there's no deal and no one gets extension of unemployment benefits and no one gets relief. Republicans don't really give a shit. We do. So the consequence of, you know, pushing for a better deal because we think that Republicans would accept a better deal because they're worried about Georgia. And then Republicans saying, you know what, fuck you, no deal, is millions and millions of people hurting and falling into poverty.

And so there's real world consequences to playing the game of chicken with Republicans in this that we care about and they don't necessarily care about, which gives them an advantage in negotiations. I don't hear that as much from people, but that seems to be the truth. Yeah. I mean, this is why Democrats always get criticized for not getting the best deal possible because we do not want the hostage to be shot and the Republicans are willing to shoot the hostage in these legislative negotiations. And it is a dangerous game of chicken to play with 5 million people falling into poverty in two weeks. That is what we are talking about here. And so that limits your leverage. If you're not willing to see people get hurt, then you're always going to be at a

slight disadvantage of these. And I don't have a solution to that problem in situations like this, because we would have to be people that we are not to, as a party, and our leaders would have to be people they are not, to be as impractical and as cynical and as dangerous as the Republicans are in this situation. And again, in terms of what it means for the health of the economy and for the millions and millions of Americans who are struggling and falling into poverty, it is better to get a smaller deal now than a bigger deal later. Because if you lose your benefits now and fall into poverty and have less money to spend in

the economy, the economy gets worse, then more people lose their jobs benefits now and fall into poverty and have less money to spend in the economy, the economy gets worse, then more people lose their jobs and more people fall into poverty, like it becomes a vicious cycle. And so time is of the essence in terms of breaking that cycle with some relief. Just to the people who said, well, you know, if we don't get the deal now, we can hope to win Georgia and then get a bigger deal when Joe Biden becomes president in late January and February. Well, then how many more million people fall into poverty by then?

It's a real cost and it's a real consequence. Well, it's also our leverage point is the Georgia elections to the extent we have one. And so what happens come January 6th and you're like, hey, Mitch McConnell, we want it. We want to do another deal or let's now let's do something else. And he does not care because Kelly and David are either off on their yachts or back in the Senate. So if Loeffler and Perdue are able to tell voters that they just voted for a bipartisan compromise to deliver relief to Georgians, could that cost Democrats the Senate?

Yeah, it could. Yeah. So a lot of people, to step back for a second, a lot of people criticized Pelosi before the election for not taking a deal and perhaps not taking a big deal. I was one of those people. And we just talked about one of the substantive reasons that she may not have taken the deal is, well, it was maybe a deal with the White House, but McConnell didn't really want the deal. There was a political reason that I had always been worried about, which is if the election was closer than we thought it would be, it was. And Donald Trump went into the election just a few weeks out being able to say, look at me,

I just passed a bipartisan compromise that delivered more checks and more relief to the American people. That might have been enough to get Donald Trump over the top in a close election with swing voters. I kind of think now it would have. Again, counterfactual, so no idea, no idea. But I would not have wanted to make that bet with the results the way they were. Like you said, counterfactual. I was someone who made the argument that for political and substantive reasons, Pelosi and Democrats should at least pursue the deal as far as they can do it. And the political reason we'll argue, like, I could argue that if they had done the deal, we'd win. You could argue if they had not done the deal, we would lose.

Like, we don't know. Maybe you're probably more right than I am on that. But on the substantive, the argument was, even in a world in which we win the Senate, the earliest we would get aid to people would be next year, which is sort of what we're looking at. We're going to be off by a week. And millions of people have lost their jobs. They have lost their savings. They're maybe in the process of losing their homes in the time in which those negotiations started and now. And that was the choice. I think the end result here is that we'll never know. I don't think – there was not an actual deal for Pelosi to turn out, which is a very important thing to say. It wasn't. They were like, sign on the dotted line here, Nancy Pelosi, put it up for a vote, and we're going to send checks to people.

That wasn't what happened. It was Steve Mnookin wanted to have a bunch of meetings with no actual ability to deliver something. And so she made a judgment based on that, which is different than what we were accusing McConnell of potentially doing, which is cynically not helping people to win elections, right? That is not what Pelosi did. I imagine what Pelosi's calculations were. And again, I can't get inside Pelosi's head, but it was she understood what the political consequences of passing a deal may be. She also genuinely wanted to pass relief to help Americans. If it looked like the chances that she was actually going to get a deal, meaning not just from the White House, but from the Senate, if it looked like the chances were really high, she would have gone forward, damn the political consequences.

But if it didn't look like the chances were that high, does she really want to risk the political consequences of pushing really hard for something that's not as good as she might get after the election. So it was not, again, none of these, I think the important thing is, there's just a lot of punditry on Pelosi, on, you know, what the left is asking for. And like, all of these decisions are very difficult. They are not easy, both the substance and the politics of them. And also, it's not clear what the consequences are going to be all the time. Like, we can't predict the future on this stuff. So people are trying to operate with the best information they have. That said, so we pass a deal now, and

we do it because substantively, we really want people to get help, even though politically it may have helped us more to not have a deal and then hammer Kelly and David over this. In the short term, yes. In the short term. So how should Ossoff and Warnock talk about the bill in a way that prevents Loeffler and Perdue from using it to their advantage? How do they make do of the situation? their advantage? How do they make do of the situation? I think the best way to do it is to make the case for, were it not for Kelly and David and Republican control of the Senate, you would have gotten $1,200 in this check. Unemployment would have been this. The state of Georgia would have gotten more money to distribute vaccines. That is because of these

corrupt, wealthy Republicans looking out for their donors. Georgians are denied a bunch of economic help. You're going to get the vaccine slower. And you have to, it's not like we're once again in the world of making a counterfactual argument, but you can blame them on the fact that this is something, but it's far from enough. and the reason it's not enough is Kelly and David. I would fucking light this deal on fire if I was John Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. I would say it's shit. I would.

I would say, and I would also attach motive, cynical motive to the Republicans for doing this to Loeffler and Perdue. And you were talking about a loaf or half a loaf. I would say they threw you some crumbs because they are afraid you'll vote them out. And if you don't vote them out, you won't be getting any more. That's what they've promised. They are running scared. They wanted to give you a few bucks. How much is $500 going to do for your family? How much is cutting unemployment benefits in half going to do for your family, which is what they did in this deal? Cut unemployment benefits in half and cut your

checks in half from last time because they're worried that you're going to vote them out. And if you don't, you won't see another dime no matter how bad this recession gets and you won't see any more help for the vaccine or for stopping COVID. That's what they've promised. That's what they want to do. You know, like I would be much more on the side of this is not, this is not great. And look what Washington did. Yeah. I think that is probably the best play.

And I, I think your, your whole crumbs bread thing would lend itself to a lot of really good digital. A lot of different metaphors. We can pay. Yeah. We can do carbs.

We can do other stuff, whatever. That's right. This isn't necessarily, I think, an argument that's going to win you a runoff in Georgia. But just stepping back for a minute, the entire conversation we're having here is such an argument for why we need control the Senate, because what a stupid fucking situation we are in that we are arguing between nothing and barely enough in the middle of a raging pandemic and in a recession. It is insane that this is the approach to it. But you know what? Like that that anger that you just expressed is you're right. Like you have to tailor it for Georgia and not make it about process and Mitch and Trump and all the rest of it. But that that anger is what Ossoff, Warnock and Democrats in general should be channeling. And, you know,

and Bernie's been doing this right. Like you see when and I think Bernie has said he doesn't like the deal. And, you know, you may think, well, OK, if would Bernie really vote against the deal if it meant that no relief was going to anyone? I don't know if he would. I think Bernie cares that relief gets to people, even if it's not enough. But every interview he gives about this, he's pretty angry, you know, and like he should be angry because people are really hurting right now for no fault of their own because we're in the middle of a pandemic and the Republicans have held up relief for months because they don't fucking give a shit. And we should be angry about that. And we should say like, and if you want that to change, you got to vote. That's it. Or else it's never going to change. The other point I think

that Warnock, Ossoff and Democrats can make here is the fact that the Republicans insisted taking out money that would have gone to preserve the jobs of teachers, cops, firefighters. That's the state and local money. And too often in shorthand, we call it funding for states and cities or states and localities. No one knows what that is. I mean, no one really gets what that is. It's not humanized in any way. Yes.

And this is something we're going to have to deal with next year because these states are in a situation, unlike the federal government, where they cannot run a deficit or are going to have to make dramatic cuts. We saw this in 2009, back when there actually was a decent amount of state and local money, money for cops, firefighters, and teachers in the Recovery Act. this in a way that puts real pressure on Republicans, because what Brian Kemp is doing, what Ron DeSantis is doing, what these Republican governors all in the country are doing is they are opposing something that would keep people, essential workers in their states, on the job. Even in the world of blue state bailouts and Fox News and everything else, laying off teachers, firefighters, cops, EMTs is not popular. And you can make Republicans pay a price for it. You just got to do it aggressively.

And that is something that I think could happen here that they could do in the Georgia race in these coming weeks if this deal is passed. And I do think, you know, as Joe Biden takes over and the Biden administration comes in, like, I think that his, you know, his message of like, I think I can get things done with Republicans. That should be a means, not an end. Right. Like bipartisanship and unity in Washington is not the goal here.

And and Democrats and Biden can't lose sight of that. And I don't think there's evidence they are yet. But like this is an incredibly dark time for the country, as Biden has said many times, both because of the pandemic and the recession. And I think the anger and the pain that people are feeling needs to drive the message on behalf of Democrats that we are there fighting for these people. That is the end. However, we get there depends, right? If we win the two Senate seats in Georgia, then we tell Mitch McConnell to fuck off and we pass a bunch of stuff. If we don't, then sometimes we may have to compromise with Republicans. But again, it's all in service of helping people who are struggling right now. And that, I think, has to be the

overarching message. And they have to be able to channel that anger and that pain that's in the country right now. Joe Biden has, because of his message and the coalition he put together to win, he has a political obligation to extend his hand to Republicans. If Mitch McConnell decides to smack that hand away, that's on Mitch McConnell. Then it's incumbent upon Joe Biden and all of us to hold Republicans accountable for doing that. Joe Biden can get caught trying with bipartisan if he succeeds. God bless him. And that's a huge achievement.

But if he fails, if he tries and fails, that is on Mitch McConnell. That is on the Republicans. And we have the opportunity in 2022 to hold them accountable for that decision. Yeah, I agree. So we're going to try over the next few months to do an occasional segment called What the Hell Happened in 2020, where we dive into the election results and figure out what they can tell us about how to win next time. So today we're going to kick it off with the Senate race in Maine, where Susan Collins defeated Sarah Gideon in a contest where Democrats had been favored for the

entire campaign. Gideon led every single poll. She was around five points ahead on election day, but she ultimately lost to Collins by nearly 9% after being five points ahead on election day, but she ultimately lost to Collins by nearly nine percent after being five points ahead in the polls, even as Joe Biden won the state of Maine by nine percent. Gideon lost by nine percent. Joe Biden won by nine percent, which, by the way, was six points bigger than Hillary Clinton's win in 2016. Democratic Congressman Jared Golden also won reelection in Maine's conservative second congressional district, which Trump carried twice, and Golden improved on his 2018 win by a few points. Gideon's loss left Maine as the only state in the country that didn't vote for a

president and senator of the same party. Dan. Sarah Gideon ran for office in a blue state where she outraised and outspent Susan Collins by so much that she ended the campaign with $15 million in the bank. What happened? Well, in many cases, you would say that a candidate who ended with $15 million in the bank should have spent more money,

but I don't think that's the case here. She had more money than she possibly spent. As much money as she possibly could. Both of us were reading a lot about this in preparation to talk about this. And like every single piece talked about voters who were so sick of seeing Gideon ads, Gideon flyers, Gideon mail pieces, Gideon digital ads. She ran all the ads she possibly could. I read approximately 1,000 articles about this over the last 36 hours.

Me too. And there's definitely a... We're experts. Ask us anything. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Have I been to Maine in six years? No.

But have I read some tweets? Yes, you have. You went to my wedding. Oh, yeah, that's right. That was in Maine, huh? You know what? I would have really bet... I got married there, man. I really would have bet if you'd asked me, like, I remember going

to Maine for your wedding. I had a delicious lobster roll on the way there and on the way back. But I kind of would have guessed based on how 2020 has gone, you've been married for like eight years. So that's true. Yeah, no, it's only been a little over three years. So wow. That's really something. So, yes, I have been to Maine recently. And I know people who have homes in Maine, like your in-laws. So there we go. There you go. But I do think some of the articles and analysis of this that have been written are written through the perspective of Susan Collins' victory.

You interview all these voters. I'm so sick of the Gideon ads. I'm so sick of the Gideon ads. I'm so sick of the Gideon fires. Well, guess what? Susan Collins and the Republicans spent just as much as Sarah Gideon, right? There were just as many Susan Collins ads. There was just as much outside money on the Susan Collins side that, and if Sarah Gideon had won, you probably would not be interviewing a whole bunch of voters in Maine diners saying, I'm so sick of the ads, right? Like, why didn't you vote for Sarah Gideon? Because I saw some ads. So there is always this bias in coverage that is sort of reverse engineered from the results.

I do think there are a couple of things to take away from this. And one big giant caveat. from this. And one big giant caveat. One is there are some lessons to learn for other races, but Maine seems to be a real anomaly in a way that does not apply everywhere else. It is just like there was a period of time in politics more than a decade ago where you had lots of states where the Republicans won at the presidential level and Democrats had the Senate seats. I know this seems impossible to imagine now. Recently it's 2004. The Democrats had all four seats in the Dakotas.

We had all four? My God. Kent Conrad, Byron Dorgan, Tim Johnson, Tom Daschle. I worked for two of those four men. Yes.

I couldn't, I didn't even, for a long time, I didn't even know that Kent Conrad and Byron Dorgan were two different people. Yeah. We had both Senate seats in Arkansas, both Senate seats in Louisiana, a Senate seat in Alaska. It's just a very different world where senators, there's a discount between the presidential and Senate vote.

That has not been true for a very long time. And certainly was not true anywhere else in this election. And Maine seems to be the one exception there. And I think that there is a little bit of an anachronism in Maine that may not be applicable in other places. Well, and I don't necessarily just think it's Maine and the electorate in Maine. A lot of this has to do with Susan Collins, who like, let's be honest, I mean, I wanted to beat Susan Collins more than almost anyone else, right? Because I think that she poses as a moderate, but during the Trump era, she was not a moderate.

And she voted for Brett Kavanaugh, and she voted for Trump's tax cuts, and she just did not speak up against Trump almost ever. And I don't think she showed any kind of political courage. That's my view. I am a liberal who lives in los angeles okay but like she has a 24 year reputation as a moderate voice in maine to the people of maine right they looked at her and said okay maybe they didn't agree with all of her decisions in fact it seems like the electorate in ma did not, right? Like, let's not forget, in her last election, she won with almost 70% of the vote.

She won with 51% of the vote here. So she did lose a bunch of people who thought that she, you know, strayed from her moderate past. But they see her vote to save the Affordable Care Act, which she did. And then to bookend that, they saw her vote against Amy Coney Barrett right before the election, which she did. They saw her not fully embrace Donald Trump. Was it politically courageous to, like, not come out one way or the other to say if you supported Donald Trump? No, it wasn't courageous at all. But people in Maine are like, they knew what was going on.

They're like, she doesn't really like Trump. She's not saying it. Okay, that makes me feel better. And so I'll go vote for Joe Biden because I want him to be president. Then we won't have Donald Trump. And then Susan Collins maybe can go back to being a martyr itself. I mean, it doesn't sound like a crazy thing if you're just a regular voter in Maine, does it? Seems crazy to me. Seems crazy to me too. I'm a fucking liberal in los angeles i mean that is that is part of the problem and so i think there are a couple of different elements here there is one funny

thing in these stories which is that a big part of the of the race was uh susan collins's main roots versus this newcomer sarah gideon so i was like when did sarah you know is she a carpet bag or did she just buy a home in chapacla 16 years she's lived there yes if she was born there she'd be driving a car she's not someone that like chuck schumer shipped into maine she was the speaker of the house in the main state which is like but again like it's your job on a campaign to both define your opponent and define yourself and prevent yourself from being defined by your opponent. And it is clear that Collins used all of the outside money that Gideon was getting, which, of course, Susan Collins got a fuckload of outside money, too. was getting to develop a narrative about her that she was some liberal transplant who was,

you know, placed there by outsiders and that she was trying to take out our senator, which I put in quotes because this was like the sign and part of the branding all over Maine about Susan Collins. She was our senator and Sarah Gideon was other and Susan Collins was ours, which is probably a smart, it's a smart narrative. I mean, the outside money thing is so ridiculous because a large bulk of the money that Sarah Gideon raised was, sure it was out of state as it is for every candidate everywhere, but it was grassroots money. Susan Collins had more than $50 million in Republican super PAC money spent on her behalf. So it is an absurd thing. I would say there's a couple of things here, and I'll give another

caveat here just as we sort of... It is very hard in the Citizens United era to judge and hold accountable a specific campaign for how the campaign plays out. So Sarah Gideon spent $40 million on her campaign. And some of those ads were good. Some of them may not have been. It's an absurd amount of money. But there were $50 million spent on her behalf by other people, by outside groups that she's legally prohibited to speak with. So you add $9 million spent in pro-Gideon ads. I imagine, although I haven't looked at that, much of that is from the DSCC and the Democratic Super PAC, Democratic Senate Super PAC. And then you add $51 million spent in negative Susan Collins ads. And one of the challenges here is none of those groups are from Maine.

They don't have any real sense of Maine politics. They're often cases raising their money on the internet. Their ads look a lot like the Lincoln Project ads. And so it's very hard to paint a coherent narrative when you have $50 million in ads against Susan Collins that are sometimes reverse engineered to raise money online. And that is one of the problems with some of the messaging here is when you were, as you pointed out, Susan Collins got 69% of the vote six years ago. She got 60% in the six years prior to that. So in order to win, Seragitti needed to convince a large number of people who had previously voted for Susan

Collins to do something different this time. And when you are trying to run against an incumbent who has been long supported in a state, you have to create a permission structure for people to change their mind. And you can do that in two ways. One is you can say that person has changed, or you can say the context has changed. And what you can't do is tell people that they were wrong for their previous vote. So they were stupid to do that. And the model on how to do this right is a lot of the ways in which the Biden campaign ran ads targeted towards people who supported Trump in 2016 and the way the Republican Voters Against Trump organization ran ads with Trump people talking about how they, with Trump voters, talking about how they changed their minds. What is not the way to do it is just paint Susan

Collins as this corrupt Trump stooge because people who voted for her before, who have known her for this very long time, are never going to believe that. This is my problem is we don't do subtlety well as Democrats sometimes in politics, right? Like, and you can, and this happens in campaigns and clearly Republicans don't either. They're much worse about this. But there is like, sometimes you can lean into hyperbole too much, right? Which is like, it is possible to say that Susan Collins for a long time was an independent voice and she has strayed. Right. She has forgotten her Maine roots. She has gone Washington. Right. And she's stopped caring about us after being around for so long.

And don't we want someone to actually care about people in Maine? And she votes with all these other Republicans and Donald Trump way too much. And she never used to do that. And she's she's starting to change. And I love Susan Collins. I voted for her a lot. But you know what? I just I just don't like her. I think she's forgotten us. Right. Like run ads like that. You could do that. Or you could say she's fucking McConnell and Trump stooge, which, like you said, a lot of people are going to scratch their heads and be like, is she? Because she doesn't seem like it. She did vote to save the ACA. She did vote against Amy Coney Barrett. So is she a stooge for Trump and McConnell? Doesn't really make sense to me.

The Amy Coney Barrett vote, in a race she won by such a large margin, it's hard to say that's the one reason why Sarah Gideon lost. that people had mobilized against her was her vote for Brett Kavanaugh two years ago. And then five days or whatever it was before the election, she gets to do the exact opposite of that in a high profile way and reaffirm her independent anti-Trump, if you will, credentials. That's a very hard thing to overcome. Yeah. The other, when you read a lot of these pieces, is people complain that Gideon did not really define herself ever, that she was running against Collins, that her ads were very negative about Collins, that it was all about Collins and tying Collins to Trump and McConnell, and that Gideon didn't really talk enough about herself and what she stood for and the issues that she was going to fight for. Now, again, this is like to your first point,

people sometimes look in the rearview mirror after a campaign and, you know, the losing campaign has done everything wrong and the winning campaign has done everything right. So I don't know. I wasn't in Maine. I didn't see all the Gideon ads. I didn't go to all the Gideon speeches. So I'm not sure if that's all right. But it seems to, this is the problem with operating in the Citizens United environment, which is $50 million in outside money spent in Maine to elect Sarah Gideon. Of that 50, $41 million was negative Susan Collins attack ads. So even if Sarah Gideon's ads were 70-30 positive or 60-40 positive, an average voter, despite the standby your ad disclaimer rules, does not distinguish between, did the Gideon campaign run this ad? Did the Senate Majority Pack do it? Did the Lincoln Project? Did this other grifting

super PAC? And one of the challenges is the first real sense of how you raise money in the post-Trump era was against Susan Collins for her vote against Brett Kavanaugh. That was when – or no, it was actually going back to the tax cut in Susan Collins' vote to vote for that bill and eliminate the eventual mandate, gutting portions of Obamacare, was when people started raising huge amounts of monies into a generic fund for whoever the nominee was going to be to run against Collins. And there was huge incentives to raise and spend money attacking Susan Collins. It was a way to excite liberal donors, to excite grassroots donors. And so you end up with all of this negative money.

And it definitely swamped whatever positive message, whether it was sufficient or insufficient, that Sarah Gideon had. Because you know what's really hard to do is to get a bunch of people to give $5 online to run ads talking about Sarah Gideon's legislative record. What you can raise a lot of money for is ads attacking Susan Collins. And I do think as we, going forward as outside groups think about how they can be most helpful in the 2022 race, we have to really think about what the overall picture of spending is, how much is positive, how much is negative. And these groups have to think, like you have a little bit of a collective action problem where they can't speak to each other, they can't speak to the candidate,

but they can look, they know what the ad traffic is. They can look at it and make decisions about whether they are being helpful or hurtful by running negative and positive ads. And we're going to have to really think about that. And it's a tough decision because I don't, I don't think the answer is no more negative ads, all positive ads, right? There is a mix. We were just talking about how we believe it will be politically useful in 2022 to run against Mitch McConnell and the Republicans blocking, if they do that, Democratic majority to Congress or vote for a Democratic Senate and flip the Senate, depending on what happens in Georgia. These are the things that will happen, right? This is the vision. These are the policies that Joe Biden will be able to pass to make your life better. Like, what is the balance of that? And this is where you can,

it is very, very important to learn lessons from where we came up short and also understanding that Ron Johnson, were he to run again, is not Susan Collins. Right. Marco Rubio is not Susan Collins. Susan Collins is a very unique figure in American politics. No one, literally no one is like Susan Collins, except maybe Lisa Murkowski in Alaska. Yeah, but she's in a Republican state. So she has. Right. You know, there is not a Democrat.

I get, you know, who the John Tester is the closest thing to Susan Collins left. Right. And he won in 18. And Bullock did not win in 20 in Montana. What could Democrats have argued instead? I mean, you know, it's easy to talk about what the campaign might've done wrong. If you're in Sarah Gideon's position, you see all these outside groups running all these ads that you really don't have control over.

You see the race tilting a little bit too much towards, you know, hyperbole and painting Collins as some Trump McConnell stooge. What do you do? What could she have done? I mean, obviously, you shift the balance more towards positive ads for yourself and let others carry the negative. You could speak out against the third party groups. That is an old tactic that's sort of fallen by the wayside, which is the outside money ban where you ask your opponent to agree to ban outside money. You actually have no control over that, but you can. But I mean, candidates have had influence on it in the past. Obama could not control super PACs in 2008, or could not control outside groups in 2008. Super PACs didn't exist as we currently understand

them, Presidents of the United. And people didn't give money to them for that reason, and there was not outside money on Obama's behalf. Collins did, I think, to a better extent than Gideon, as I understand it, is weaponize the outside money against her. And I think Gideon might have been able to push back on that more. the grain of salt, given all the results bias we've talked about here is this ad with this famous Maine sportscaster talking about the Susan Collins he knew and how these outsiders who don't understand Maine were talking about it. And he's a registered Democrat. Yes. I mean, it is a classic permission structure ad to get people to do something that they want to do but are hesitant to do. We can ascribe motive to the outside groups on the Republican side, right? These are corporate funded. They are billionaire funded. They want lower taxes. They want less regulation. They want to be able to pollute and all of those things. And you may not be able to ascribe that

to the Susan Collins that people know because I think you get a little close to a caricature that's unbelievable to people who have voted for her many times. But you can do that with the control of the Senate, right? And what Republicans want and what Susan Collins' election would mean. Even if she wants to do better than that, it ultimately means that the corporations that have polluted Maine or have shipped Maine jobs overseas, manufacturing jobs in Maine overseas, they are the people who benefit from that election, even if that's not what Susan Collins wants. And she has not been strong enough to stop those things from happening despite her independent streak. Yeah, I think it is. I

mean, it's what Collins ended up doing to Gideon, which is painting Susan Collins more as more as an outsider. Right. She she. Yes, she served Maine. You could even if you want to do a permission structure message, it's Susan Collins has served Maine well for a long time, but she's forgotten about Maine and she's gone Washington. And we need we need to change. We need someone new who's actually going to fight for us and fight for the things that we need. Because, you know, Susan Collins forgotten about us. She spends more time with Mitch and Donald Trump and the rest of them down in Washington. And she's forgotten about where she came from. Like that. That might have been a better.

Yeah. And there was there was some of that in their messaging for sure. I think there's even softer version. If you remember the message that scared the living shit out of us in 2012, which was – Yeah, I was just thinking about that. Was Obama is a good guy. He tried his best. He's not up to the task.

Romney never did that ad because he was too busy sort of running a proto-Trumpian immigration campaign. I know he's our hero now, but that campaign sucked and was filled with unsubtle racial messages. Sorry. Sorry, Resistance Twitter. I know. I know. You're a big Mitt Romney fan. But what that did was it separated what people were positive of, which was Obama was a good guy who really did have the best interests of the American people at heart, and separated that from the result people saw, which was the economy was not as good as we wanted it to be.

People were still hurting. And I think you could have possibly done something similar with Collins, which is, look, Susan Collins, she's a good person. She has worked hard for Maine for a very long time. But either politics has changed or she's just been unable to deliver because her voice is not, she's not been able to use her quote unquote independent voice to actually deliver for Maine because of the following things that happened under Trump that the people of Maine clearly disagree with because they voted against Trump at a, by a pretty large margin.

Well, part of the interesting story of what happened in Maine too also involves Jared Golden, um, who won the second congressional district in Maine in 2018 for the first time in an extremely narrow race. I believe it was it went into it was a ranked choice voting race that ended up he ended up with 50.5 percent of the vote. And then this time around, 2020, when a bunch of frontline Democrats who flipped seats in 2018 lost because of a surge of Trump voters, Jared Golden not only won again, but increased his margin to 53% in a year where a bunch of his colleagues were defeated and Sarah Gideon lost in the state in Maine. So what can we learn about Jared Golden's

win? We should get Jared Golden on this pod and have him explain it to us. That's why it was my first thought. Let's get some of that Jared Golden magic, right? And so people know just by the way about the Maine second congressional district, those two congressional districts in Maine, the first district is Southern Maine, where a lot of the population is in portland and the second district is the rest of the state and it is just like other trumpier districts and states across the country it is a lot of non-college educated white voters It is very white in general. It is more rural. It is exurban. And so that is sort of the feel of closed mill towns. That's sort of the feel of the second congressional district in Maine. I mean, Golden clearly found a message that

resonated with the exact voters that Democrats need to persuade in rural areas across New England and the Midwest. And it certainly was economic in nature. It was less overtly partisan in nature. And, you know, we can, there's a longer conversation about whether that's the right or the wrong thing to do in the long term. But he was able to pitch himself as a populist advocate for Maine, with in a way that seemed open and accepting of people who had different political views, which is how he got a relatively unprecedented level of ticket splitting

and a very highly polarized presidential election. I didn't realize this. Do you know that Jared Golden supports Medicare for All? He was the sponsor of Medicare for All. Yes, I know. The Jayapal version in the house. So you had a this is I mean, this is you know, I understand why the left gets very annoyed at the party sometimes. Like you had Sarah Gideon, who is not a supporter for Medicare for all of Medicare for all, lose the entire state by nine points.

And then you had Jared Golden win the conservative Trumpy district by three points, supporting Medicare for all. Now, we should say it is not like Jared Golden is liberal across the board, right? Like he, one of the final press releases he put out in October was a bill he voted for that increased penalties for hurting cops. Did not talk about defund the police, did not talk about Green New Deal, but did talk about the environment a lot and talk about climate, but talked about protecting Maine's environment as a place where you hunt and fish, sustaining

farms, which there's some farming in Maine and also sustaining especially the water in Maine and the ocean because there's, of course, a ton of fishing in Maine. So like talked about a lot of these issues, but not in a national of fishing in Maine. So, like, talked about a lot of these issues, but not in a national sense as they were being debated in the national sense and didn't talk much about Trump. Talked about all of them in the context of Maine and the concerns that people in Maine had about these issues. Yeah, I mean, it is an incredible political feat what he pulled off. Truly. Yeah. And it is something that we should i mean it look i will say though in maine that gideon gideon's loss was not a typical of the loss and you said

this at the beginning of a lot of democrats across the country it wasn't that she just got swamped in rural and ex-urban areas and completely ran up the score in urban areas and liberal areas like lewiston second biggest city in maine it is in the second congressional district um biden easily wins it so does jared golden gideon loses lewiston by two points in southern maine around portland all the beach towns, York, Saco, Old Orchard Beach, this is all where Emily's parents live. Biden wins by 20 points or more. Gideon only wins by five to seven points. So she lost everywhere or she underperformed everywhere.

It was not the story of like a bunch of Trump voters coming out and with turnout that we didn't expect and swamping her. Like she lost voters. She should have won. I mean, Maine is when you describe it that way, it is a place frozen in Amber from a different time in politics. Yeah. I mean,

we just don't see that anywhere else in that level of ticket splitting. I mean, we should also stipulate Maine's other senator is an independent. Their governor, who was their governor for two terms, he was followed by an insane governor who made Trump look normal, who then got reelected, then Maine passed Medicaid expansion. Like it is a unique political state, if you will. unique political state, if you will. Well, and also, Portland was the sixth biggest swing against Trump of any metro area in the country. So on the other side, you had like this huge swing against Trump in Portland.

Because again, remember, Biden does better than Hillary does in Maine. So in some ways, the state trended bluer. And actually, in most ways, the state trended bluer. And actually, in most ways, the state trended bluer because, of course, Collins won by less than she did. But it wasn't enough. And I think Maine is unique in many ways. But also, Susan Collins, like we said, is very unique. And I think looking forward, Collins retires.

I think that is a prime pickup opportunity for Democrats. Like, I do not know that the next Republican that runs for the Senate in Maine after Collins has anywhere near the kind of support that she has with people in Maine. No, it is in these states that are trending in one direction in an era of polarization, there is often the last Democratic or Republican senator from that state. Like, I hate to say this. I was going to say, yeah, Joe Manchin. Joe Manchin is the last Democratic senator from West Virginia for a long time.

John Tester, I hope he serves until he's 112th. But he is the last Democratic senator in Montana, probably for a long time. Montana, I wonder about. I mean, there's young people moving to Bozeman. Well, I say that under – let me give two caveats to a bold prediction, which is something I do not do anymore. like Doug Jones in Alabama, Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota a few years ago, where it's just the stars align and someone comes in well against the partisan trend of that state and wins and serves a term and then loses. The other way is I say that under the assumption that we continue on the same trend in terms of the coalitions that make up the parties.

And that is not necessarily the case in either direction. Democrats could improve, they could gain with some of the voters that make up the second district of Maine or Montana or those states by improving, by learning whatever secret sauce Jared Golden has and taking it nationally. And Republicans can improve, you know, if this is a real trend with Republicans improving with non-white voters, like we saw in Robeson County, in North Carolina, in Texas, in Florida, then they can flip states that are on the margins now. So I don't want to overstate how this is, but to your point, Maine is incredibly unique. Susan Collins may be the last Democratic senator from Maine for a long time. Republican senator.

Yeah. Yes, yes, yes, yes. It's also an example of how perilous our situation is in the Senate as Democrats, because there is now there's a very dwindling number of Republican senators still sitting in states that Joe Biden won. Right. And there, of course, there's who are the Democratic senators sitting in states that Trump won at this point? Manchin and Tester? We have Manchin, Tester, Sherrod Brown.

Oh, Sherrod. Yes. Sherrod's also got to stay there forever. Manchin, Tester, no one in the upper west no i think i think that's it so many people will tell us what we missed so the obvious thing we missed but right but anyway it is dwindling and when you if you just look at the the biden map into the trump map and you assign democratic and republican senators to each candidate based on the states that they won, like we don't have the majority we need. No, this is the problem. And so, like you said, that what has to change is sort of

the entire context of the electoral coalitions that we have. That's the only way. No, I mean, you have you have to be in a situation like it doesn't have to be this exact map, but a world in which you could actually have a governing majority of Democrats is you get back to Obama 2012 levels in Midwestern states like Iowa and Ohio, and you have your Sunbelt expansion in Arizona, where we already have the senators. So there's no game there, Georgia, and then you eventually one day hope that sooner or later Texas moves in that direction. And North Carolina is this thing we have to figure out. North Carolina, like Obama won.

Maybe we'll do North Carolina next in our little series. We actually should because in North Carolina, it should not just be 2020. It's like what has happened from 08 when Obama won it. Like how does Roy Cooper win it twice? How do we not win it? There's a lot to be talked there. Yeah. Okay.

Well, we'll talk about all this more in the weeks and months to come. When we come back, you'll hear Tommy and Ben's interview with Barack Obama. We are thrilled and honored to welcome on our guest today, President Barack Obama, the author of the new book, A Promised Land. President Obama, it's great to see you. It is great to see you.

More importantly, the guy who launched Podcast The World. Let's face it. I get no royalties, but I am proud of you guys. Sir, the check is in the mail. So Václav Havel is a surprise star in this book. And for those who don't know, Havel is a playwright. He's a dissident. He became the first president of the Czech Republic. And in the book, we first encounter him during this stop in Prague on one of your foreign trips. You guys have a brief meeting. And I remember I was on that trip. And I remember that meeting so well because I had read Summer Meditations in college. And I brought along my copy of the book right here with me on the trip because I naively thought that

spokespeople on foreign trips with the president have time to read books. That is not how it works. But Havel is prescient in the way he warns you about the double-edged sword of high expectations and then how autocrats had evolved and how the economic crisis was strengthening the forces of nationalism. And then you mentioned him again in the context of the Cairo speech. And then again, after your conversation with Prime Minister Singh about Hindu nationalism and anti-Muslim sentiment in India. And so I guess my question to you is just, what drew you to Havel?

And did you find it depressing talking with him about the rise of nationalism and how easy it was to predict and yet so difficult to prevent? Well, look, what drew me to him was what had drawn you to him. I had read his works in college. And as I write about, he was the example of someone who had grown out of a mass movement, a social movement from the bottom up, had then entered politics and his

soul had remained intact, right? So, you know, there were a handful of political leaders that I look to as an example, because as I described, my inspiration wasn't JFK or, you know, some other elected official. My inspiration, you know, was Gandhi and Lekhvalessa and, you know, the civil rights workers in SNCC. And it took me a while to feel comfortable with the idea that you could bring about change through electoral politics, because I had the sort of skepticism that I think a lot of young people, at least growing up in America, had towards politicians. And so when I see Havel and Mandela, really those were the two where I thought, oh, you can make that transition, retain some sense of connection to the mass movement that produced you, and still enter into government. So that was why I was keen on meeting him.

on meeting him. It's interesting when I, when I, when I met him, it was early enough in my presidency that I found the meeting inspiring, but not depressing because I thought that the caution he gave me, which was that, you know, you're, you're going to be burdened by high expectations, people thinking that you're going to wave a magic wand and suddenly a lot of these historical forces are going to go away. But also his warning that there was an illusion that somehow after the Berlin Wall came down, after the Berlin Wall came down, that somehow all issues of nationalism and, you know, conflict in Europe were gone. You know, those were things that I understood intellectually, but I think it was early enough in my presidency where I felt like, yeah, I see that, but I'll be able to overcome those things. And the reason I think that it recurs as a theme throughout the book is because I keep on

coming back to it and I start saying, yeah, this is harder and deeper. And there's more stubborn resistance to a vision of a inclusive, democratic, liberal order than maybe I had anticipated. And so that becomes sort of a marker for me that I, you know, find myself drawn back to in a number of circumstances throughout my presidency. You spend a lot of time in the book talking about the war in Afghanistan. You spend a lot of time in your first term working on the war in Afghanistan. In 2009, in particular, the White House conducted two separate reviews of the policy, one of which was quite extensive. It was chaired by you personally. And you ended up sending additional troops to Afghanistan twice that year. So two questions for you. I mean,

first, you're very candid in the book about tensions that developed between you and the White House and Pentagon leadership during that process, especially Bob Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen. And I was hoping you could tell the story of that contentious Oval Office meeting, and maybe just what it felt like in the moment to feel, I think, jammed is the word that was used most often, by the Pentagon as a decision as significant as sending more troops into harm's way. And then second, I mean, when we sit here today and we look at the war in Afghanistan and how it's going, you know, 11 years after you took office, which was well after the war started, how it's going, you know, 11 years after you took office, which was well after the war started. Is there part of you that wonders whether, you know, we could have sent fewer troops into battle and the conditions would be the same? We could have

further resisted some of the demands from the Pentagon for more, more, more? Well, the tension was, I think, well-meaning on all sides. Afghanistan was a tough problem. And I think, as I describe in the book, a lot of the tensions arose out of the fact that Washington policymakers had embarked on a bad policy in Iraq, diverted a huge amount of resources from Afghanistan. And so by the time we get in, we've essentially, I won't say lost six years, but six years in which it might have been possible immediately after driving the Taliban out to make a big investment in Afghanistan, to essentially do some nation building there,

so that you could consolidate some of the gains that had been made in terms of development and education and anti-corruption efforts. That's not what had happened. What had occurred, though, in Iraq was because of some of the screw-ups by folks like Bremer and Rumsfeld and others, essentially the Bush administration had turned over the keys to the generals. administration had turned over the keys to the generals. And they had done a pretty extraordinary job just of stabilizing Iraq. And, you know, Petraeus genuinely did make significant gains in stemming the bloodshed, in part with the assistance of folks like Ryan Crocker and the diplomatic work and the brokering of deals with Sunni tribal leaders in Iraq and so forth. But what happens is more and more the Pentagon essentially is making policy, sometimes in conjunction with the

CIA, but you have less civilian control of the policymaking apparatus in Iraq. Those habits built up. So by the time we come in, in some ways, the path has been charted for Iraq, right? There's going to be a wind down. And the question for me is just, how do we execute and implement and stay on track with that. But in Afghanistan now, the impulse, I think, is to duplicate what, from the Pentagon's view at least, worked in Iraq, which is let's just put more in and we will double down. And, you know, as you guys will recall, the phrase that was repeated again and again was, you know, you got to listen to the generals on the ground. They know better. Write them a check and get out of the way. That's what I was resisting. And so, you know, the tensions I had with Bob Gates and Mike Mullen, in part also growing out of statements made by Dave Petraeus and General McChrystal and others. I didn't doubt their sincerity, right? They genuinely believed that we had to initiate what was called a coin strategy, a full coin strategy in Afghanistan to be successful, meaning a counterinsurgency strategy, a lot more resources, a lot more troops, a lot more money.

But the problem was that those habits of not having civilian interference and asking questions, hey, you know, this is going to cost us an extra 10, 20, 30 billion dollars. What does this mean we can't do with respect to our national security if we're making that huge of a commitment in Afghanistan? Those kinds of questions hadn't been asked for a while. And so the assumption was once the generals made a decision, then that was sort of the end of the conversation. That's what I resisted. What I try to reflect in that chapter is not any ill will on anybody's side, but as you point out, there does come a point in which I call in Gates and I call in Mullen and I say to him, listen, when I ask for a deliberative process to figure out what we're going to do on this very difficult strategy, I don't expect it to be litigated in the press. And to some degree, that helped stop that. But as I record in a later chapter, I think General McChrystal still had those habits. And he was an extraordinary warrior

who had taken over in Afghanistan, had done some incredible work in Iraq. I actually thought very highly of him. But when, you know, he does this Rolling Stone article, revealing this general skepticism towards all civilian restraint or control, I had to relieve him of his duties, and that was a very difficult decision. As far as the substance of Afghanistan, look, at the time, I had to ask myself the question, how much of a difference will these additional troops make? So I continue to ask that question. I continue to ask that question. My instinct is that things were perilous enough, tenuous enough at the time, that if we really would have or could have overrun the major urban areas in Afghanistan. And that outcome at the time was not tolerable, given the fact that al Qaeda was

still active and the prospect of Afghanistan once again being a base for terrorist activity against the homeland was not a position that I was willing to take. What I think always made the decision difficult was that I knew even with those additional troops, we were not going to remake Afghanistan. But it did purchase us the time to engage in the strategic defeat of Al-Qaeda and to some degree stabilize Afghanistan enough where in fact, we now start drawing down troops all the way, there is at least the possibility, the prospect that Afghan security forces can maybe engage enough with the Taliban and other forces there to get a stalemate and to keep terrorism from re-blasping in that region. But nowhere is the uncertainties of the presidency

greater than when you're talking about a situation like Afghanistan in terms of seeing how it's going to play out and trying to engage in counterfactuals about what would have happened if you had made a different decision at any given point. Well, there are so many more things we could have asked you about in the book. There's the bin Laden operation, the Arab Spring, the Middle East peace talks. There is great just family stuff. There's Reggie stories. Couldn't get enough of those. There's Iowa. But you have been incredibly gracious with your time, President Obama. So thank you so much. Everyone should check out A Promised Land. It was great to talk to you. It was fun. Thank you, guys.

thanks everyone we will have an episode next week on monday it will be a mailbag episode with me and dan and then you'll hear the monday after there will be a special uh new year's episode with uh john and tommy and me so tune in happy holidays, everyone. Bye, everyone. Pod Save America is a Crooked 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, Caroline Rustin, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Narm Melkonian, Yale Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos every week.