Pod Save America - That's the Ticket Episode 2: Paving the Way

Episode Date: July 3, 2020

On the second episode of That's the Ticket, Dan and Alyssa talk through Biden's pledge to select a woman as his running mate and how the candidacies of Geraldine Ferraro and Sarah Palin got us to where we are today. Then, Alyssa talks to writer Rebecca Traister about what media challenges the eventual nominee will face.

Welcome back to That's the Ticket, a Pod Save America miniseries where we explore what goes into the vice presidential selection process. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. And I'm Alyssa Mastromonaco. On last week's episode, we dug into the vetting and announcement process, why everything is kept so secret. If you missed that episode, you can go take a listen in the Pod Save America feed, which you obviously know where to find since you're listening to this right now. Today, we're going to focus on Joe Biden's announcement that he will pick a woman, how it has changed the vice presidential selection process, and how the candidacies of Geraldine Ferraro and Sarah Palin got us to where we are today.

We are also going to talk to New York Magazine and the cut writer Rebecca Traister about Biden's decision and what obstacles the nominee will face from the media. Next week, we're going to talk about how the protests over systemic racism and the coronavirus pandemic are impacting Biden's decision-making process, as well as the push for Biden to choose a black woman as his running mate. I also talked to FiveThirtyEight writer Perry Bacon Jr. about what the polling is telling us about who Biden should choose and the impact of past vice presidential selections on the election. Alyssa, before we get into it, how are you doing?

Buddy, I'm great. How are you? Yeah, I mean, all things considered, I'm pretty good. How do you feel now that we have one of these under our belt? I'm going to be very vulnerable right now and say that we got such extraordinarily great feedback that people said they didn't know how we could top the first episode. And so I've been thinking about it a lot. So I'm bringing my A game today. Do you feel a lot of pressure? I do feel pressure. I don't want to let our fans who care about the vice presidential selection process down. Yeah, this is, you know, sequels are hard, is what I would say. So everyone keep that in mind.

Could be Godfather 2. Could be Beverly Hills Cop 2. We don't know. Or it could be Godfather 3. That was my joke for the next episode of Earth. This is really a trilogy, but it's okay. I bet you didn't think I knew, though, that Godfather 3 won Oscars. You know what? I did think you knew that. Okay. All right. Now let's really get into it now that we have this fascinating and infectious small talk out of the way. Back in March, right before the entire

country went into coronavirus lockdown, March was three months ago. Feels like three decades ago. The DNC held its final presidential primary debate between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. On stage, Joe Biden made a historic commitment and provided the most memorable moment of the night. Let's take a listen. If I'm elected president, my cabinet, my administration will look like the country. And I commit that I will, in fact, appoint a, I'll pick a woman to be vice president. There are a number of women who are qualified to be president tomorrow. I would pick a woman to be my vice president. Listen, I want to separate two things. The decision to put a woman on the ticket and the decision to announce you're going to put a woman on the ticket in advance. What was your reaction when you heard Biden say that? And why do you think he made that announcement when he did? up front that I tend to find Joe Biden to be a very sincere person, right? So I didn't love it.

I didn't love, like I love, I appreciate that he understands that it's important for women to see themselves in executive office, to feel invested in the process and that it's time. However, doing it at a debate felt like such a stunt that it cheapened, it cheapened it. I think, you know, it made it feel like a stunt and it's women are 50% of the population. I think it's, it's more than reasonable that a woman would be picked to be a running mate. But yeah, I thought that the, it's obviously good that a woman will be, you know, vice president for the first time ever. But I thought that doing it in the debate felt stuntish. It's, I's interesting. There were a lot of people who shared your view, who expressed that afterwards. And the announcement itself can't be separated from the context in which it's happening, which is, as I mentioned, it's the final debate

on stage that night where Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, and only Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. And at the time, they were competing for the votes of a number of talented women who had not made it as far in the process, most notably Elizabeth Warren, who had dropped out, I believe, the week prior. And they were both courting her endorsement and her supporters. And so there was that political overhang on it. So I think if you were to ask the Biden campaign, beyond just the debate strategy of wanting to have the moment of debate and drive in the conversation, which they certainly did here, because all the news was about a truly historic announcement, not the disagreements

between Biden and Bernie on Medicare for all or the Iraq war or the other issues of the campaign. But I think other than that, the other argument that I think folks on the Biden side would make is that question was going to hang over the entire process no matter what. And Biden had already come to the conclusion that that's what he was going to do. So why be coy about it? I think that would be their case. But you can see the argument where doing it that way potentially lifts up the idea of women in politics broadly, but may has the potential to be diminishing to the individual woman who was

selected. Right. And the other thing I'd say though, too, is that because there would have been pressure, I completely understand why he did it. You didn't really want to do it and you got forced into doing it. So that's why I say I find him to be an incredibly sincere person. So I like, that's why I say like, I find him to be an incredibly sincere person. So I don't think, you know, it felt, it feels stuntish, but I know that, you know, either way it would have, there, there would have been criticism. Right. How do you think that that pronouncement has affected the process thus far? Well, you know, the thing that we always talk about for people like you and I, who have watched this closely for years and years, you know that going back to the beginning of our memory, these things can be called a beauty contest. There's like a very different weird feeling

though when it's just all women being compared to each other that the beauty contest analogy takes on like an even more uncomfortable sort of feeling. But no, I mean, my perspective is that it's been largely the same as all the other sort of machinations and reporting around other VP selections, except this is just all women. Joe Biden's decision to put a woman on the ticket will be only the third time in American history that a woman has been the vice presidential nominee for a major party. Last week, we talked about Sarah Palin in the context of vetting, and we're going to get back to her candidacy later in the show. But I want to talk about Geraldine Ferraro first. For those who do not know or may not remember, Geraldine Ferraro was a

three-term New York congresswoman and former prosecutor who was chosen by Walter Mondale as his running mate in the 1984 presidential election. It was a historic choice at the time. Mondale had signaled he was considering multiple women, which was notable certainly at the time, but he had not committed to choosing a woman before Ferraro was announced as his running mate. Now, we're talking about this because I think it's an important part of history for people to understand. But also, when you and I had our first conversation a couple months ago about potentially doing a project around the vice presidential selection process, the first thing you said to me was that you wanted to talk about Geraldine Ferraro.

What is it that has made you so fascinated by that part of American history? So I think, you know, you and I are the exact same age, which means we were like eight when the seven or eight, when this was all happening. So I remember that this, I remember this was happening, but I never remembered all of the stories and the real history around it. And so a couple of years ago, I just started doing a lot of research and I just think it's all, she is, first of all, you know, let's go back to the beginning of time, 1983. The ERA had just failed. And the National Organization of Women now, which younger people may not remember now, but it was probably one of the most important

feminist organizations back ever. They held their national convention and at their convention, they passed a resolution. The resolution said the vice president must be a woman. Democrats must put a woman on the ticket or the national organization of women will urge a floor fight at the convention in 1984. And so it was taken pretty seriously because this was sort of the beginning of the point where women weren't seen as a special interest group, but as like 50% of the country that they were. And so people, it was taken seriously and the National Organization of Women had endorsed Mondale before any of this was happening.

But then when he became the nominee, he understood that this could really be a historic moment. And so he considered women and, you know, women like Dianne Feinstein was on the short list. Barbara Mikulski, one of my Senate icons, was on the list. And and Tip O'Neill, who was speaker of the House at the time, urged Mondale to consider Geraldine Ferraro because she was, you know, for lack of a better description, she was a, well, her history, she was an Italian, the daughter of illiterate Italian immigrants. She was working class. She had put herself through law school.

She graduated in the top 10%. She went on to be ADA assistant district attorney in Queens County. And you know my favorite fun fact about her, actually established what was then called the Special Victims Bureau, SVU, law and order for those of you who watch. But Tip O'Neill thought that she had incredible political chops. She knew how to get things done. She could represent the women, but she also really got along with the men. And the men appreciated her because when she talked about feminism, she didn't say it was anything.

She didn't make it about men. She just made it about all of them working together and being equal. So Tip O'Neill was really sort of instrumental in getting her the consideration that she was due. I'm really glad that you pushed us to talk about this because, you know, like you, I was quite young for this election. And the 1984 election is sort of an election for a lot of political junkies that's lost to history. You know, to history. Democrats don't like discussing an election where we lost the Electoral College 525 to 13, where the Mondale ticket only won Minnesota and the District of Columbia. But it also sort of was the last election before it became sort of part of the process where

every election would be filled with a bunch of tell-all books. It was in the 1988 election where Richard Ben Cramer wrote what it takes, the all-time greatest political campaign book. And every election since then has been filled with these insider accounts. That's sort of missing in 1984. But when you go back and you read the history about it and you look what happened, it really was, and particularly around the selection of Geraldine Ferraro, it both helps explain how we get to the situation we're in. It was the beginning of a lot of really important movement in American politics, writ large in the Democratic Party specifically. And there are a couple of political factors here that I think are really interesting about how Geraldine Ferraro ended up on the ticket. One, in 1980, even though Reagan beat Carter, Carter did better with women than men.

And so this was the beginning of what is known as the gender gap, which has been a factor in American politics ever since, where Democrats do better with women. And groups like now, like you mentioned, emphasize that and use that as a pressure point on Democratic politicians to do the right thing and take women seriously. But also, someone who played an important role in this and talked about a lot is Jesse Jackson. Because Jesse Jackson got in the race and he pledged to pick a woman if he was the nominee, which changed the conversation around Mondale, who was a former vice president, was the front runner, and put pressure on. And you can see what happened with Mondale. We'll talk about this with Palin and how it applies to Joe Biden's decision as we go through this podcast. But it shows that

a lot has changed over time, but not enough when you look at the treatment of it. So a lot of women like Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi and women who ran up and down the ballot and just followed politics were inspired by Mondale's selection of Ferraro, the 1984 convention, and Ferraro's speech is incredibly moving. I'd recommend checking out the documentary, Geraldine Ferraro, Paving the Way, if you want to learn more about this. In that documentary, one of my favorite moments is the response to the pick from Congresswoman and future Senator Barbara Mikulski. This is how she responded to the news. I'm home in Baltimore, and the phone rings at seven o'clock in the morning. It was Congresswoman Barbara Kennelly saying to me, she got the call. She got the call. And there's the press, and they wanted to interview me. And there I am, you know, in my sleeping togs, picking up the window, yelling down at the media

saying, Mazel Tov, it's a girl. Mazel Tov, it's a girl. Alyssa, how do you think Geraldine Ferraro's candidacy served as inspiration for a lot of women in politics? Well, I think, you know, in the same, it was sort of true when we worked for the Obama campaign in 2007 and 2008. It's impossible to dream something if you can't get all the way to the top, I guess you're powerful. And like, you know, we've seen a lot in our time. And even when I watch her give her speech accepting the nomination at the convention in San Francisco in 1984, it's very emotional because it still hasn't happened, right? Like, I mean, Hillary, of course, ran for president, but she hasn't won. And so I think that

back then, the idea that it was possible, well, one, and just in practicality, it inspired more women to run and to participate in the process and just also be really hopeful that they actually were being looked at as like 50% of the actual population and not just women. I mean, it is a, when you see, when you read about and you watch the response, not just among women politicians like Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi and others, but you see the response among women around the country in that moment. I mean, Geraldine Farrar became an instant national celebrity. She was sort of a much bigger draw on the campaign trail at times than Mondale himself. It does show that representation matters,

right? That having a woman on the ticket said something to a lot of men and women, frankly, about what women could do. And, you know, I think that that should never be discounted, the importance of it. Even, you know, and it had, you know, to be very clear, Mondale was a massive underdog the entire campaign. Reagan was quite popular. He seemed cruising to re-election. The Mondale campaign was down 15 points prior to the Ferraro selection. And after picking Geraldine Ferraro, they roared into essentially a tie.

Now, it obviously didn't end that way, but I think the response to with misogyny, right? In media, in politics, in the populace. And some of the responses to Ferraro, you know, maybe they seem incredibly out of date now, but they're actually not that unfamiliar to what Hillary Clinton faced in 2008, 2016, that all of the women who ran for president in 2020 faced. And so, you know, it's pretty clear in 1984 that the treatment for our received on the campaign trail was pretty sexist. She got asked on meet the press if she was quote, strong enough to push the button, referring to her willingness to deploy nuclear weapons during the Cold War. Ferraro later talked about the press coverage itself telling a documentary in this press was very hard. on me. Very hard. Especially the white men.

It's always like taking an exam. Do you have an exam on foreign policy? Because, Jerry, you're now going to take it. And the stuff about, are you tough enough to push the button? My response was also, I'm tough enough to make sure that I have policies in place where you don't have to push the button. Listen, it wasn't just the press or even white men that had a very sexist response to Geraldine Ferraro. There was in a documentary, it's this amazing clip of Ferraro campaigning in Mississippi where she's sitting next to a much older white politician who is not named who turns and asks her, can you make blueberry muffins?

To which she- Little lady. Yeah, little lady. Yes, little lady, can you make blueberry muffins? And she, at first, is obviously taken back a little bit, but without sort of missing a beat, turns to him and says, yes, I can. Can you? Which I thought was an absolutely great response. But there's also a pretty famous story about Barbara Bush. Do you want to tell that story? Sure. Well, and Barbara Bush. So the interesting thing though, too, I think just to go back

one beat that I don't want to miss the point on is that in 1984, women thought, miss the point on is that in 1984, women thought the women of the Mondale campaign and like feminist leaders did take the choice so deadly serious because they didn't want it to be seen as symbolic, right? They wanted whoever ran to really be able to sort of take the punches and be a real contender. And so Geraldine Ferraro, I think did match the moment in that regard. And so Geraldine Ferraro, I think, did match the moment in that regard. And like you said, down in Mississippi, they ask her, can she make muffins? And then you have the media just really sort of loved, they loved the fact that she was a woman. And in some instances, they really wanted to be able to write the story that Mondale had picked a woman and she didn't get across the fucking finish line. And so they blew up this interaction into just something seismic when Barbara Bush,

who is campaigning for her husband, was out and someone asked her a question off the record about Geraldine Ferraro. And she said that she rhymes with rich. And so everyone extrapolates that that means bitch. Barbara later says that it meant witch because it was right before Halloween. Either way, the media blows this up. Barbara Bush says to her husband that she thinks she sunk the campaign. She can't believe she did this. She's so sorry. So the first thing she does also without missing a beat is call Ferraro to apologize. And Ferraro kind of as a testament to her political grit was like, girl, we're good. You know, she's like, Barbara, you know, don't even worry about it.

It wasn't even that bad. Like, we're good. And so and Barbara Bush in retelling the story just says like, she was so gracious. Like I couldn't believe it. I was so upset. And this was her response to me. And then of course the media frothing at the mouth stalks Jerry Ferraro down like prey. And it's like, is it true?

Is it true? She apologized to you. She's like, yeah, Barbara Bush is a great lady. And so in so many ways, like the sort of narrative, this catfight that the media was dying for, she just wouldn't give it to them. And she was like, no, she's Barbara Bush is a great lady. So moving on. And you could you could even see when you watch the coverage that reporters were like disappointed. They were like, no, tell us she's a bitch, too. But but she would do no such thing because she truly just understood it was, you know, par for the course.

Yeah. I mean, there are so many dynamics that we've seen play themselves out in politics in the years since in the press coverage, right? One is trying to pit two women against each other, right? Whether that is Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama, whether it is Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren or whatever it is, like that is always a frequent dynamic. Another part of the campaign that was, there was this intense press coverage on the finances of Jody Ferraro's husband, John Saccaro, that dominated the coverage for a month. And the thing that people can understand was they filed their taxes separately because she had a separate career from his business. And that was treated as essentially a crime that she was trying to hide things. That was treated as essentially a crime that she was trying to hide things.

You know, so like you can like you really got to see for the first time how things would play themselves out for a year. And, you know, the dynamic also played itself out in the debate between Farrow and Vice President George W. Bush, which was much more historic than I think one would think, because, you know, now it is tradition for the vice presidential candidates to debate each other. But this was actually the Farrow-Bush debate was actually only the second vice presidential nominee debate in history. Bush had not debated Mondale when Mondale was Carter's vice president in the 80 election. And it was a very historic moment.

And it was – a lot of people had questioned Ferraro's foreign policy and national security experience. And during that debate, Bush took the opportunity to try to call her knowledge into question. Here's one of the most memorable exchanges. Let me help you with the difference, Ms. Ferraro, between Iran and the embassy in Lebanon. Iran, we were heads and our allies were with us, the British, the French and the Italians. Congresswoman Farrar. Let me just say, first of all, that I almost resent Vice President Bush, your patronizing attitude that you have to teach me about foreign policy. What was your reaction to that, Alyssa? I think it could be summed up by the quote of the editor of Ms. Magazine back after the debate, which was, you can't make a man look that bad and live. I loved it. I thought it was so good. I can't even

like take credit for it, but she was so funny. But no, I mean, both of them went into that debate with sort of impossible expectations, right? Like George Bush couldn't be patronizing, which, you know, I'm sure was hard, turned out to be a little hard. She had to, you know, she talks about how going into the debate, she both had to think about toning herself down with her, like, she talked about how she communicated through her sense of humor, her queen's sense of humor. And she knew that she couldn't do that on stage because she didn't want to be seen as aggressive. At the same time, she was worried about how short she was compared to him. She was only five foot four. And so, I mean, it's just an

incredible thing to think about all the things going on inside your head that aren't directly related to substance of what you're going to have to say. But an interesting thing for people who watch debates like we do is that it was the first time in the 1984 vice presidential debate, they built a very invisible ramp for her so that people wouldn't actually see how short she was. And then they built a platform within the podium so that they would look closer in height, which is something that is still done to this day. Obviously, the choice was historic, right? The election result was not good, by any chance of imagination. But I don't think anyone blames Ferraro for that loss. I mean, like Mondale was going to lose that election, whether he picked Geraldine Ferraro, Ted Kennedy,

the high school age Barack Obama, whatever he was going to look like. That was just the fact of the matter. But one thing that I think is notable is it appears to have left a bad taste in the mouth of the overwhelmingly male decision makers in American politics because it was 24 years later before a woman was on the ticket again. Why do you think that is? Well, you know, I think that when we look back in time, what so many people just remember is that they lost, right? They lost. He picked a woman and they lost, even though he was probably always going to lose. And I actually give her mad credit for even taking the job and giving up her congressional seat because it was such a stretch, you know, that they would win. I think that if you are a man who's running for president, you see sort of the challenges that a woman faced that others, you know, it was Geraldine Ferraro by, you know, being a woman and a Roman Catholic, her feet were held to the fire

time after time over her stance on abortion. It was the first time in picking a woman that a spouse's finances and a spouse's profile were brought into question and vetted at the level that they were. And so I think that, you know, you take a big risk. It's big risk, big reward, right? And I think a lot of people who ran for president after that didn't see the upside. Let's transition to Sarah Palin, that, you know, obviously the second woman in history to be a vice presidential selection. That obviously was a campaign we worked on. She was John McCain's running mate against Barack Obama in 2008. Do you remember when you first heard that Palin was going to be

the nominee? Let's be honest, Fyfe. This is not even for me to discuss because the thing that made our campaign so wonderful is that like we very much had our very discrete roles and responsibilities. And I remember like rolling out Joe Biden. I'm like, good to go. And they announced Sarah Palin. I will say that my immediate reaction was like, who's this? And her first like day of press was great. You know, I mean, she's like charismatic. She's got like, you know, she's like a governor who's also breastfeeding. I mean, she kind of was like, checked every single box. So a little context of how John McCain made his decision.

So in 2008, the Democratic Convention went first. And the Republican Convention was scheduled to begin the Monday after the Democratic convention. And so McCain did something that was actually quite clever for a very poorly run campaign, which was in the middle of our convention, he announced he would be making his vice presidential selection on the Friday after our convention ended. So Obama gave his nomination speech on Thursday night, and then McCain was going to announce Friday morning, which was very smart because it was an attempt to step on our momentum. And McCain had a short list of candidates that included Joe Lieberman, Tom Ridge, who was a former Pennsylvania governor and George W. Bush's Secretary of Homeland Security, very popular governor in Pennsylvania when he was in office. Tim Pawlenty, who was the governor of Minnesota at the time, and a couple of others.

And Palin was on the list, but really no one, there was never any speculation that she would get picked. And most of the speculation was around Pawlenty, Lieberman, and Ridge. And most of the speculation was around Palenti, Lieberman, and Ridge. And, you know, as the communications director on that campaign, I, you know, was oversaw, in a way, some of the efforts that we were putting together to prepare for and respond to whoever the choice was. And we actually had, you know, opposition research and plans for, you know, and we had decided in advance on messaging of what we would say for any of those people I just mentioned. We had no plan for Palin.

I was sitting in my hotel room in Denver, packing my bag, getting ready to go to the airport to return to the headquarters. And I got an email from some reporter who had heard this was the announcement to be. It immediately circulated around a bunch of people in the campaign leadership who focused on communications. And we all thought it had to be bad reporting. We almost laughed at it. And then it was confirmed on, I think, on the morning shows that morning. I was a little tired. I'd stayed out perhaps a little bit later than I should have celebrating Barack Obama accepting the nomination. And so the campaign immediately got on the phone and we quickly hammered out a response we had no plan for this like i honestly knew nothing about her other than she was the governor

of alaska nothing else and so we quickly hammered out a statement that criticized mccain for choosing and i'm quoting her original statement here the former mayor of a town with 9,000 with zero foreign public experience, a heartbeat away from the presidency. We put that together. We put it out under the name of a spokesperson. That spokesperson was fortunately not me, although it obviously could have been. And we hit send. And so the first mistake we made was this was a decision made by a group of people who was probably overwhelmingly male. And we did not in any way factor in the historical significance of this selection for not just people who would support John McCain, but for women across the country. And the second mistake we made was we forgot to talk to Barack Obama before we hit send.

Zoink, Scoop. Yeah, that never goes well. And so Barack Obama and Joe Biden were sitting next to each other on the plane, on the tarmac in Denver, getting ready to take off to begin the post-convention barnstorming tour or whatever it was going to be. I'm sure it was going to be a bus or a train or a boat or something. And David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs and a few others, I think, walked up to Obama and Biden to talk to them in the cabin about the choice, and they showed him the statement. And Barack Obama was not pleased because he immediately got what we did not get. And on the spot, he dictated a new statement that went out under both his and Joe Biden's

name. Joe Biden, new to the ticket, also not pleased with this failure to adhere to the chain of commands. And they put out a new statement. I'm pretty sure that is the only statement in the history of either Obama campaign that went out under both Obama and Biden's name. And that statement was much more welcoming of Sarah Palin to the race. That's some history as to how surprising it was.

I think it's also interesting that in the history of the advancement of women in politics, right? Ferrara was obviously a huge part of that. Hillary Clinton's run in 2008 is a part of that. But Sarah Palin is sort of left out of that conversation, right? She's not part of sort of the feminist history, which I think is in some part how she would want it based on her response to her candidacy. But why do you think that is? And do you think that she faced some of the same obstacles that Ferraro faced? Sarah Palin, she's a complicated bear. Sarah Palin. She's a complicated bear. Look, Sarah Palin was the conductor of her own demise in so many ways. When you look at the difference between Ferraro and Palin, one of the things that's so different, I think, is that back in 1984, the women around Ferraro, the women around Mondale, and Ferraro herself knew this was a big deal.

And I think that there's always some level of hubris involved in someone deciding that they will accept, you know, the invitation to be on the ticket. Sarah Palin, her level of hubris was on a whole other level. And, you know, whereas Ferraro and the people in the Mondale campaign and feminists didn't want it to be a symbolic pick. They wanted someone serious. They wanted someone who could compete like head to head with, you know, any man. That was the criteria for that selection. I think it was known at the time. It was clear at the time and it's known now. The Palin pick was meant to shock and awe, right? Like the intention of picking Sarah Palin was not to forward the cause of women. It was not, you know,

the people who sat around on McCain's campaign weren't like, we are fucking feminists and we are just going to do this. There was the thing, the reason I think it's so different is because the intention was so different. And the fact that the people on the McCain campaign who didn't understand, yeah, it was going to get fucking great ratings and they were going to get a lot of press, blah, blah, blah, but that they didn't understand what an important move this was for women and to have taken it more seriously and to have vetted her, like the things that were Palin's undoing were not hard to find, you know?

Like she didn't understand foreign policy. She had limited experience. Like her vetting, as we talked about last week, that's just, it's not, if you care about setting someone up for success, which anyone who's picking someone who's never been represented really at this level of politics before should have, they didn't do. And so, you know, a lot of times people will say, you know, did Sarah Palin set back women? It's like, no, Sarah Palin set back some white men's judgments. Like, that's what she set back. Sarah Palin set back some white men's judgments. Like that's what she set back.

But you know, there was an interesting thing in some of the people at the Palin rally. I don't know if you will ever remember the guy, Larry Hawkins. I remembered him. And so I tried to search and remember exactly what he said. But Larry Hawkins was at, he was interviewed at one of her first rallies.

And he said, they bear us children. They risk their lives to give us birth. So maybe it's time we let a woman lead us. Now, I know that sounds crazy that I think that that's a positive thing. But someone who was not like a progressive, you know, feminist male, like the fact that she opened his eyes up in that way. Now, I don't know if they were still open after she spent $150,000 on clothing and attacked staff, but like, and like failed miserably in most televised interviews that she did because

she was fundamentally unprepared to be vice president. But I do think that to a certain extent, you know, yeah, I guess women can flame out as well as men. Well, you know, I think, you know, in going back and looking at all of this stuff in preparation for this podcast, it is, I think, a really complex situation to judge that candidacy appropriately. Because I think it is deeply unfair to Geraldine Ferraro to compare the two of them. Correct. They have almost nothing in common other than being women who were selected as vice president. And it is also very clear that Mondale's campaign, although it was in a very similar political position as McCain's when they made the choice, but Mondale's campaign, although it was in a very similar political position as McCain's

when they made the choice, but Mondale's campaign took it very seriously and there were women at the table when the decision was made. And so they made that decision knowing that this was a very important moment that if handled incorrectly would have pretty serious consequences for the advance of feminism in American life. So I think that is true. But it is also true that the reception from the press, the political world, and the populace of those two campaigns are quite similar, actually. And it is, of course, hard to separate how unseriously Sarah Palin took her role from how seriously it should be considered in history. You briefly mentioned wardrobe. It was a huge scandal during the campaign that Sarah Palin

had reportedly asked the McCain campaign to buy her new clothes and that they had spent a lot of money on those clothes. Now, certainly that was a moment in which we, on the Obama campaign, took political advantage of, right? Oh, yes. But that is just never a story that would ever be written about a man. It doesn't matter, right? So that's one. And then the other one is, obviously, she did not take government seriously, politics seriously, did not take preparing for the presidency seriously. She sort of laughed at it.

But then a few years later, Donald Trump comes down the escalator, acts the exact same way. In fact, much less experienced than Sarah Palin and was treated at least – did not face the same level of attacks from some people that Palin did. Not that people took Donald Trump seriously on his face. He's a ridiculous human being and was often treated with the appropriate amount of ridiculousness and derision. But I think when you look at the coverage of Palin and her mistakes and the coverage of Trump and his mistakes, you can see both a conscious and unconscious bias in how we talk about politics. And I think there's other parallel with Ferraro, which is Sarah Palin, like Ferraro, also had a big political impact, at least in the short term. Like, the race got close pretty quickly. We were winning by a lot. And the selection of Palin

energized the McCain campaign and narrowed the polls. There were some moments of panic among the Democratic establishment, if not the Obama campaign, about the choice of four-hour and the internal discussions within the McCain campaign about Palin, there is a similar born of desperation element to it, right? So this is from the book Game Change when McCain made the decision. McCain was leaning towards Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, who would have been clearly a safe pick. Governor of the battleground state of Minnesota. It's one that McCain very incorrectly thought he'd be able to put into play because Bush had done very well in it in 2004. But this is what Ms. Schmidt told McCain. Here's my view of the politics of it.

In any normal year, Tim Pawlenty is a great pick, a no-brainer. But this isn't a normal year. We need to have a transformative, electrifying moment in the campaign. That's almost word for word what some of the Mondale advisors were talking about when they were choosing between Ferraro and some of the men on the list. And it had the impact. It just didn't stick. But the problems with the choice itself and then the role of the choice are tied to this conversation we had around vetting last week, which is that they didn't put any real

thought into it. Like this was the full extent of the conversation, right? The Ferraro selection was part of a much longer, more serious process that Mondale had engaged in, had met with all of the people many times. I think McCain and Palin met once. Yeah, I think once. And then made this, you know, made a decision based on that. And that's never a way to make a decision whether you're, you know, buying a mattress or picking a vice president. What, you know, pushing this forward to 2020, do you see any specific lessons for the Biden campaign from these two historical examples? I think that, you know, the most important thing is making sure like there is nothing more important than the vetting and rollout of whoever this person is. see the difference, even with someone like Ferraro, who was so thoroughly vetted and had been in public life. It is a feeding frenzy because look, all of the candidates, Trump has been president for like

four fucking years at this point. Biden's been in public life for 40 years. The running mate, Pence has been vice president. Whoever this person is, is going to be the most exciting thing to talk about and report on. And so setting whoever the VP select is up for success is like critical and anything less than the most thorough process is like malpractice in my opinion. Yeah, I think that's right. we've seen this happen twice now. We've seen that regardless of what progress has been made since Geraldine Farrow was elected in 1984, that a woman vice president is going to get more scrutiny, face higher hurdles and greater expectations than any man who would be picked. Right. greater expectations than any man who would be picked. Right. And we know that because we just went through a 2020 primary where we saw Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, and

others held to much higher standards than the men who ran. Higher standards of electability, higher standards of, quote unquote, toughness, higher standards of policy knowledge, all of the above. Joe Biden has a list, we believe, of 10 to 11 people. Every one of them is smarter, more qualified, more responsible, more dynamic than Mike Pence. To all of them. Who is basically homophobic tub of paste, right? He's the most boring human being possible. But Mike Pence is held to no standards, right? Right. Yeah, when he was picked, there were some stories about when he thought that one of the

greatest threats to American civilization was the Disney movie, Mulan. Obviously, there was controversy around some of his previous positions and the fact that he was just an absolutely miserable governor and seen by many as one of the dumbest people to serve in the United States House of Representatives. But he fit the mold of what people have historically expected from a vice president, right? A white man governor. You mean that he had good posture and he was white? Do you think he has good posture? Yeah, he's like got to pull up his butt. He's like very shoulders back straight ahead.

He has good posture. I'll give him that. Okay. All right. Great hair. I'll say he's got excellent. He's got politician hair. He's not a silver fox, but he's silver.

It's a very strong part, I would say. That's what I would say. But like they're going to be held to a tremendous standard, and they're going to have to face the same challenges on the debate stage with Mike Pence that Geraldine Ferraro faced with George H.W. Bush, and to a very different extent, Sarah Palin faced with Joe Biden. And when we come back, Alyssa is going to talk to writer Rebecca Traister. I'm now joined by New York Magazine and The Cut's Rebecca Traister. Rebecca is also the New York Times bestselling author of Good and Mad and All the Single Ladies. I've read both. So should you. Tracer, welcome to That's the Ticket. Hi, I'm very happy to be here. Thank you. Here we are talking about how you go about picking a vice president and all the things that you really never learn about on TV or Twitter if you're even half paying attention.

So let's just let's just say front, before we talk about the VP, let's talk about Joe Biden for a bit. I love talking about Joe Biden. You know what? I know that about you. And I feel like we're going to have a very robust conversation. During the primary, you were not supportive of Joe Biden. No.

You were not alone. Let's stipulate for the purposes of this conversation that we all acknowledge this election is an existential threat to our global well-being. However, that doesn't mean that our candidates don't have to do the work. What are some of the biggest issues you think he has to overcome in winning over voters who were supporting more progressive candidates, let's say? Well, I think he has his work cut out for him. So I think that Biden is actually, if he becomes the president, well, and even beforehand, as he runs his campaign, I mean, he's in this such a weird position because so much of this is being driven right now by fury, dismay, fear about the incumbent. And so there's this weird way where, to my eye, he hasn't even been that active. And it's going to be different from anything we've experienced in our lifetimes.

It's going to be different from anything we've experienced in our lifetimes. Through this summer, it's all felt slightly stalled in part because, well, on the one hand, people are paying attention to the government ineptitude and mishandling, not just coming from the White House, but on state levels and in both parties. When it comes to dealing with a pandemic and the failure of the government to economically support its country and its people in a way that they can remain healthy and safe and economically stable. And that is a failure just across the board. And he's going to need to address that. You also have the protests that have erupted and so powerfully persist through this summer. One of the things that Joe Biden has straight in front of him that to my my mind, is slightly different from what we've seen before coming from left agitation and left wing pressures, is that the revelation he's facing is that this whole system needs to be uprooted.

So it's not a matter of can he check a box on criminal justice reform or health care reform? What is happening that I think is very good for the country, but is gonna be a real test and challenge for this candidate and potentially this president and administration is that the education and revelation that we're in the midst of, which long overdue, is that this is an entire intertwined system

so that you cannot just do, oh, I'm gonna fix this thing about healthcare and then satisfy progressives there. What we're getting far closer to than I remember in my past is a view of all of this is intertwined so that you can't do criminal justice reform without doing education reform, without doing housing policy reform, without doing immigration reform. getting a view of the deeply broken system. And so the project that is ahead of this candidate, which is very ironic because this candidate represents so much of the past of the Democratic Party that helped to calcify and uphold this system, right, is that the desire coming from progressive critics, agitators, protesters, and progressive politicians who are in office in his house, right, who are in the House of Representatives, a couple of who are in office in his house right who are in the house of representatives a couple of whom are in the senate right is that we need to dig up the

bones of the whole thing and that is a big fucking project that is a big project um do you think so let's go back in time a little bit to march jo Joe Biden's on the debate stage. He declares that he is going to pick a woman to be his running mate. How, how'd that hit you? apart, really. I didn't love it. I didn't love it insofar as, I mean, I want to separate a couple issues. I care very much about representation in politics. And that is not to say that I think getting closer to equal representation fixes our politics. So there are a lot of distinct issues here, right? We have a broken system that is built around capitalist white patriarchy, right? Which means that, you know, capitalism, money is in charge, men have been in charge, and white people have been in charge, right? And not just in charge as far as individuals, the system's been built around all these things, right? And so that's created all kinds of

intertwining inequality. It is also true that the individuals who run these systems, and for now we're talking about government and electoral politics, also have not been representative of the people that they govern, police, tax, all of that. I care about representation. It matters. It really matters that there's never ever been a woman who has been our president or a vice president, that there's only ever been one woman who has ever been a major party nominee for the presidency. And that was four years ago. It went great. And it matters. And so Joe Biden is signaling like the most rudimentary acknowledgement of the fact that that matters.

It would have been nice if he had just saved it and named that that matters. It would have been nice if he had just saved it and named a specific woman. It would have been great. That's how I felt. I like the commitment. I agree. Look, depending on which woman he picks, I'll be very, very pleased. Do you think that this helps Biden draw a starker contrast between his candidacy and Trump's presidency? And what do you think Mike Pence is going to do on stage at the VP debate? He's going to bring his wife up so he's not alone with her. I mean, if you need the female vice president to be your contrast to tell you that Donald Trump is like abysmally hateful, punitive and abusive and disrespectful toward women, then there are problems that are larger

than any vice presidential pick are going to solve. So sure. Yeah, it'll make that contrast clear. I mean, I think one of the things about the Trump administration, I'm always hesitant to, you know, Trump is like extraordinarily and exceptionally awful. And I don't want to deny that. But I am always wary of the way that we focus on Trump as like some singular problem when, in fact, he's he's just helped to make visible what has been true in his party for a really long time. And one of the interesting things that he has helped to highlight is the Republican Party has been terrible for women and to women for decades, you know, and forever in some ways. But past administrations have worked a lot harder to do kind of window dressing. George Bush actually promoted a lot of women within his administration.

You know, there's been more of that, you know, John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate. You know, there's been more sense of like, we're the party of women, pretend stuff. And Donald Trump just does away with that, right? He doesn't even bother with that. And in fact, I think he views it as a sign of weakness. And so his power photos are all those photos of like 20 white men sitting around a table. Like people are like, ooh, look, he got caught out.

And he's like, no, that's the message he's trying to send. Like he is very big on sending an anti-woman public message with pride and authority. But like, again, that's already established. It's not going to be like, I can't imagine somebody seeing Joe Biden and his female running mate and being like, wow, it really strikes me that Donald Trump doesn't respect women. But if Joe Biden and his running mate, to be named later, get elected, like, it will be the first time in America's history that a woman has been elected vice president. And like, he may pick a woman that I would rather not see as vice president. But two things can be true at one time. And one of those things that will be true is America will have done something that it has

never done before, if it happens, right? And that that is meaningful, even if it's not meaningful in a way that satisfies me. It actually does matter that we have never seen a woman in federal executive office before. This matters because it is reflected in our policy, how we police and tax women's bodies, how, you know, it's obviously not a lack of representation that doesn't find its reflection and echo in the way our systems are built and our laws are made. And so electing a woman isn't instantly going to, or perhaps ever going to change those laws and policies. But the fact that, you know, we can conceive of changing the representation is like, it's not meaningless. It is, in fact, to some degree, very meaningful. And let me add, I think it is possible to likely as some of the women that

he's considering are black women, Kamala Harris, Stacey Abrams, you know, we have never even nominated a black woman to be vice president. We have never in this country elected a black woman to be governor of a state. I mean, probably Georgians has a very specific bias in how they cover women. Ferraro, Palin, Clinton. And you have written extensively about this. I think it's important for people who are listening to be reminded of things to look out for, because I think in so much of what you wrote after 2016, people didn't realize what was happening at the time. But then when they read examples of how Secretary Clinton was unfairly treated, they were like, oh, fuck, I didn't even realize that at the time. So can you give some of your grossest examples of things people should be looking out for? Well, it was funny because I covered the Clinton campaign in

2008 in the primary campaign against Barack Obama. And it's so funny. People always say to me, God, you must be so pessimistic having covered women and issues of gender and race and class and bias in these presidential elections. It must be so depressing to just do it over and over again. And that is true. It's true. But there are also ways in which it can make you sort of optimistic because I've actually seen an arc of progress. So in 08, when Hillary Clinton was actually, now she certainly is not the first woman to run for president and not even the first woman, Shirley Chisholm in 72 made one of the first viable runs, although it was really more symbolic. And then you had Carol Mosley Brown, Pat Schroeder

make runs later, Elizabeth Dole sort of attempt, but they didn't get very far. Clinton's run in 2008 was the closest that any woman had ever come to getting a major party nomination. And it was an incredibly drawn out, long primary battle against Barack Obama. And the media did not know what to do with her. And the examples then, which I was the first race that I really covered, were just so disgusting and egregious that if somebody like heard them now and didn't know about them, then you're like, really that happened? I mean, one of her opponents, John Edwards, made fun of her jacket in a debate, like when asked to say something positive and negative about her on in a debate

in a presidential debate. John Edwards said, I really admire some of the things your husband did, but I don't know about that jacket. Okay, she was the only woman standing on a stage and she was like in a pink jacket or something. He's like, I'm not sure about that jacket. So Penn Jillette about that Penn Jillette said that Obama had done well in February because it was Black History Month and that Clinton was doing great in March because it was White Bitch Month. There was the Nutcracker. You had people, oh, an NPR, somebody on NPR, a producer, compared her to Glenn Close in the final scene of Fatal Attraction where she comes up from the bathtub and then has to get shot and like the blood smears again anyway um and then there were just this whole

raft of like in some cases Fox News commentators who you'd think like there was all this you know life's a bitch don't vote for her all that kind of bumper sticker stuff that came out of Fox News but then from like pundits on you know Morning Joe and stuff there's a lot of like she sounds just like your ex-wife standing outside of probate court. Like Chris Matthews said that, remember, she's only a candidate. She's only a senator because her husband messed around. I mean, it was out of control. Like nobody had the basic vocabulary of sexism. People made fun of the pantsuits. It was like kindergarten sexism. And then by 2016, people had gotten smarter, marginally smarter. And so there was less of that, like, I think she's a bitch who's gonna

castrate men. Although there was there wasn't that sign that said the agenda of manicide. It was like, yeah, church or something. One of my favorites. But there is by far that wasn't coming from like an MSNBC pundit. He didn't say there was going to be a agenda of manicide, which was like a stark improvement over 2008. In 2016, it was very different. And it was much tougher in some ways to point it out, because especially I think as the party was growing more progressive, and you had Bernie Sanders staging a really exciting run from the left. And so a lot of the criticism of Clinton was coming, like there was a, there's a real reckoning with a sort of center left governing ideas that Clinton was representative of. The thing that was harder then was to pick out what was gendered and what

was not gendered, right? Because there was a lot of valid stuff there. But the intensity was so much, the hatred of her was so much, the vilification of her was so much. I mean, one of the things you could really pick out in 2016 was the dishonesty thing. Like of all the things you could sort of accuse Hillary Clinton of being that were negative, you could say all kinds of critical things about her that by many measures would be perfectly valid. But honestly, like Hillary Clinton is one of the most like known figures in American politics. Hillary Clinton for a politician was extremely forthcoming, was sort of of all the criticisms you could make of her dishonesty didn't actually rank. And yet it stuck to her. And that Salamisha Tillett said there was something like biblical,

something like Eve betrayer. There was something incomprehensible about her. She wasn't human. I had people telling me throughout 2016, like liberals and people on the left, like, I don't know, she just doesn't seem like a human being to me. And it was like, right, because most of us actually don't run for president. Most of us aren't like she's not that those people aren't necessarily comprehensible to us. But like for her, it was like that made people angry. And one of the weird things about Joe

Biden's victory in 2020 is that that's been kind of interesting and depressing. It's sort of made clear the intensity of your hatred feels like it's tied up in her gender. Like you could never have that battle because it would make somebody incredibly angry. No, it's not. It's because she is a neoliberal warmonger. And you're like, okay, I see why you're arguing. But I think that like the fact that you wake up thinking about how much you hate her might have a different dimension to it. So watching Joe Biden, there's not the same intensity. And he has, if anything, a far more center right record than Hillary Clinton. Like she her campaign in 2016 was actually moving in like her political trajectory was moving to the left in a way that was exciting for me at the time

as somebody who had been a critic of her in the past and thought that she was actually opening up to way more progressive ideas in 2016 than she had in 2008. And certainly as a senator, Biden, for his candidacy hasn't up, up until very recently, hasn't really signaled any moves to the left, hasn't really signaled big concessions to progressivism. His record is far more entrenched in a sort of neoliberal, actually in the Bill Clinton administration, to which Hillary always got attached. But in the administration, there was at least one version of that story in which she was an arguer from the progressive side in the Clinton administration. But Biden was very entrenched in that administration. He wrote the crime bill. You know, he's on the wrong side of bankruptcy stuff. And yet there's not that same kind of I wake up in the morning and think about how much I hate Joe Biden. piece for The Atlantic about that phenomenon on the right, which is that Trump's having a hard time running against Biden because you can't bring the race and gender stuff that, you know,

Republicans were able to bring against Clinton and Obama in previous cycles. Last question for you. You have written already about how we've seen Democratic women forced to respond to Tara Reade's sexual assault allegations against Biden. Their responses got outsized coverage. How is this a trap for whomever his running mate is? And is there any way they can avoid it, provide satisfactory answers, or is she doomed to be asked about it again and again and again? Well, I mean, I think that there's no question that one of the reasons that Joe Biden has promised to pick a woman TM is that he has

sustained a lot of criticism over the years, well in advance of the assault allegations brought by Tara Reid. He has been criticized for decades for things having to do both with his behavior and his policymaking. And so, you know, he has evolved, as they say, on abortion, but he had a bad history around abortion policy of supporting Hyde eagerly, even when it had no exceptions, of being personally anti-abortion and taking bad votes on it up until very recently. He's better on it now, and that's good. And I appreciate it and respect it.

He's better on it now and that's good and I appreciate it and respect it. His mismanagement of the Anita Hill hearings in 1991 was probably an event that helped to form me and millions of other women politically. and permitted Republicans to go after Hill in ways that were just disgusting. And then for years, he claimed that he apologized to her, but he never did, which is something she said. He has been on the wrong side of all kinds of financial bad policy that disproportionately affects women. Go back and look at his arguments with Elizabeth Warren over the bankruptcy bill in 2002. And then, of course, there's the before you get to Tara Reade's assault allegation, which I think there's been considerable doubt at this point cast on that. But that's a very tough question. But what you do have is multiple women and lots of video of Joe Biden sort of making inappropriate remarks and touching. And that happened, by the way, I was during the primary campaign after he had been

criticized for this for having touched and kissed women in ways that made them feel uncomfortable, sometimes fellow politicians, young women who he met at public events, he didn't react by saying, gosh, these are bad habits. And I am I'm learning from what you're telling me about how my own personal communicative habits have made you uncomfortable. He turned it into a joke and said, Oh, I know I'm not allowed to touch you. You know, he didn't treat it with a lot of seriousness. You know, he continued to make sort of paternalistic, patriarchal comments to young women. I mean, he there's this the one instance, you know, where he told the brothers of young girl, like your job is to keep the boys away.

It's just this stuff. So he has a long history of sustaining feminist criticism. And there's no question that one of the reasons that he will pick a woman is as a defense against some of that kind of stuff. It's a strategic move. And it's probably not dumb. And what that means for that woman, whoever she may be, is that she will be asked just like defend a guy who sustained really valid feminist criticism over the years. And that's

part of her job. And is there a way for her to win at that? You know, I mean, this is politics. So it's we're in the real world. We're not in an ideal world. I think that there are certain running mates he could pick who would respond to some of that stuff by saying, you know, I shared dismay back then, but he's really learned since now. There's by now, you know, there are people who might say, you know, I can't answer for him. And then there are other people who will do a more traditional route, which is the Joe Biden I know is a wonderful man who respects women. And, you know, like that's that's your canned answer. And that's their job to some extent.

And what upsets me is that the prospect that those women in the process of defending him, which will be their job, would I prefer them to give the more honest answers and say, yes, I remember watching those hearings and being horrified that, you know, probably she wouldn't say horrified, but being feeling dismay and shock that Anina Hill sustained that treatment and wasn't better defended by not only Joe Biden, but many of the other Democrats on the Senate Judiciary panel. And so I share your concern, but I know that Joe Biden has thought and learned a lot about this since and understands the mistakes he made. I'd love to see that version of it. But I also hate that if we don't see that version, if what we get is the more traditional from perhaps like that same imaginary wonderful person I'm drawing in my brain, who just says like, look, my job here is to say the Joe Biden I know is wonderful and respects women and like doesn't do the deeper dive, more nuanced answer that then what's going to happen is that that person, regardless of what her actual career has been like, what her politics or positions are, is going to be like, oh, she's just caping for Biden. She's

just, you know, and it's somehow going to be her fault. And that's the thing that I'm really bracing for, because I feel it myself. I feel it in myself. I have felt myself being really disappointed with some of the women who've been asked about Joe Biden right now, women who I admire and women who I respect and whose careers I expect to be following for decades to come. And I myself have felt this like, oh, why are you doing this? And I really check myself and I'm like, why am I evaluating this person based on her reaction to him? One of the things that if you have been paying attention to women in presidential politics over the past few cycles, one of the things you'll note is that

women, the way they react to men, whether they judge them or forgive them or how they respond to them or how they talk to them, winds up being the most salient thing about them. And we can look to specific examples. Look at Kamala Harris. What's the moment that everybody remembers from her presidential run? It was when she criticized Biden. And you either remember it in a way where you were like, yes, Kamala, or you were like, how could she say that about Joe Biden, whose son helped her, you know, like whatever defense mechanism you have. Look at Kirsten Gillibrand, whose entire career, which is a fascinating political career, having moved from like a center member of the House to a very progressive politician who's done work on sexual harassment and assault in the military and college campuses, entirely evaluated based on the decisions she made around Al Franken. Look at Elizabeth Warren and how she got turned into a snake meme because of something that got leaked about a story she told about something Bernie Sanders said about her. That was like the most explosive thing about

Elizabeth Warren's candidacy. It's all this way in which we still evaluate women based on how they are interacting with or defending or attacking powerful men who are still the centers of our concern. And so that's the thing I'm trying to guard against. I am more interested in how, in these women's careers and ideas, independent of their relationship with whichever powerful man they happen to be cast either in alliance or opposition to. Tracer, thank you for coming on That's the Ticket. Thank you so much for having me. Alyssa, any final thoughts on this topic?

Women are awesome. That's my final thought. I agree, Alyssa. Thank you. Thanks, everyone. Next week, we'll be back with the final episode. We will talk about how campaigns make the decision, how they announce the decision, and what impact the recent reckoning over institutional racism in this country will have on Joe Biden's process and his decision.

Thanks everyone so much and talk to you next week. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our assistant 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, Caroline Reston, and Elisa Gutierrez for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn,

Narmel Cohnian, Yale Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos every week.