Pod Save America - “They’re coming for your health care.”

Episode Date: October 17, 2018

Trump goes on a media tour to rev up the base, Republicans admit that they’re coming after health care and retirement programs if they win, and Democrats look to flip a slew of key governorships. Then Democratic congressional candidate Lucy McBath talks about the gun violence that took her son’s life, and her campaign to win the Georgia 6th.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Later in the pod, you'll hear from Lucy McBath, a Democratic congressional candidate in Georgia who got into politics after losing her son to gun violence. We're also launching something very cool today. A few months ago, Crooked Media's editor-in-chief, Brian Boitler, went to San Quentin State Prison to talk to prisoners about voting and felon disenfranchisement. And many of the prisoners wrote personal essays

about what it means to participate in an election. You can now read those essays on votesaveamerica.com slash restore the vote. And you can listen to Brian's conversations with these prisoners on this week's Crooked Conversation. Here's a quick trailer. Check it out. We're nearing midterm elections at breakneck speed now, and a lot of people still have not registered, and many others just won't turn out to vote. But millions of our

fellow citizens don't even have the choice to begin with. Currently, six million Americans who have been convicted of felonies are prohibited from voting by their state governments. For that reason, earlier this year, I visited San Quentin State Prison in Northern California. I didn't realize how, what a voice was. I think I kind of took on the stereotype of my vote didn't matter. Before I commit my crime, I have the right to vote. I didn't value it. I didn't take it seriously until I lost it. Then I realized how important it is.

I look at voting as rehabilitation, as part of getting acclimated back into society. Voting feels like you're being responsible. Listen to more on Crooked Conversations. This episode is called Restore the Right. And check out votesaveamerica.com slash restorethevote to read personal essays about voting

written by prisoners at San Quentin. Also check out Vote Save America, which now has a very cool, very useful voter guide that will help you understand everything on your ballot. You can even fill out a copy of your ballot and save it so you can have the ballot with you when you go to the polls and fill out your real ballot, fill out your mail-in ballot, whatever it is. and fill out your real ballot, fill out your mail-in ballot, whatever it is. Just so you know, what we have on the website is a copy of the ballot that you can use to help yourself figure out what's on it. It is not your real ballot. Some people ask that.

Is that really a problem? A couple people thought that maybe it was the real ballot that you could download from our website, which, that would be something. Just printing real ballots here at Cricket Media. That's going to end up on Fox. Okay, finally, we will be in Austin on Friday for our second HBO special, and we'll be joined by our good friends Brittany Packnett and Beto O'Rourke.

You will not want to miss that one it is friday night 11 p.m eastern on hbo uh and then it'll be on hbo go and hbo now so check it out second show austin okay dan let's talk about the news huh a lot of news sure why not it's been a while since we talked about the news let's do it um With 20 days left until the 2018 midterm elections, Donald Trump has decided to finally come out of his shell and say what's on his mind. He kicked off Tuesday morning by calling Stormy Daniels horseface on Twitter. He mocked Senator Elizabeth Warren, continuing to call her Pocahontas. He criticized the global condemnation of Saudi Arabia for what appears to be the brutal murder of a journalist who is an American resident, comparing the allegations that the Saudis are guilty to the allegations of sexual assault against Brett Kavanaugh.

In interviews on Tuesday, Trump again questioned whether Russia meddled in the 2016 election. When asked about his personal lawyer implicating Trump as an unindicted co-conspirator in multiple felonies, the president accused Michael Cohen of lying. When asked whether he believed in climate change, the president said there are scientists on both sides, that California has wildfires because the state does a horrible job of maintaining their forests, that he hasn't visited troops in a combat zone yet because he doesn't think it's overly necessary, that he's done an incredible job with the children he's separated from their parents at the border, and that if Republicans lose the House in November, it won't be his fault.

Dan, where do you want to start? I mean, I don't know. First, I'd like to just say the amount of introspection and self-reflection in that interview where you look at what you've done, what you've done well, and you think about how you can be a better president is astounding. I mean, it's just, it's really... He's really grown. He's really grown in the job. He is.

What a man who walked into the Oval Office right off the set of The Celebrity Apprentice, who, when he felt the burden of being President of the United States, leader of the free world, a role model to children, just took that in and thought about how can I fit the burdens of this office? No, nothing has changed. He has grown not one iota after two years of making life and death decisions.

Nothing. Nothing. It's amazing. It's amazing. I guess, like, how does the media even begin to cover all of this? And, like, how do people process it? I mean, in that quick list of things that I just read through, any one of those comments from Donald Trump would be, like, a multi-day, possibly multi-week story for any other president, most other politicians, in any other we just like what are we supposed to think about this i realize we say this all the time but it is 20 days until an election and the president has decided to go um on a media tour where he is

just saying all kinds of just dishonest gross grossly inappropriate, offensive shit, which is the norm with him. We have been known to be media critics on this podcast. Yeah. But I really don't know how the media can cover this. Oh, I don't either. That was my genuine question. I don't understand. I mean, as preparing for this podcast, I didn't know how we'd cover it all.

Yeah. I was watching this sort of happen in real time when Zeke Miller, who's a White House reporter for the AP, was just tweeting out the leads of the stories that they were writing off of this. And it's like, Trump says he takes no, if the Republicans lose the House, it will not be his fault. Trump says, blaming the Saudis for the Khashoggi killing is – they should be innocent until proven guilty. Trump says – defends calling stormy annual enforcement. It's just all the things. Any one of those would be a five-day story in a different media environment. And so the only way I think we can interpret it is to take a step back and look at the full array of everything he said

and as a indictment of the kind of president he is we've been talking a long time about how an important argument for democrats in this election is about being a check against the chaos and corruption of trump and here you have just to use a term of art a fuck ton of chaos and some potential corruption oh yeah always i mean oh like just that that is a given there is there is more corruption before breakfast in this administration than in any presidency since watergate i mean you know the stormy daniels news reminded us of course that the president's own lawyer has implicated him in multiple campaign finance crimes. Nothing has been done about that so far.

This Saudi news reminds us that the president and his hotels and his private companies have financially benefited from the Saudis, who it now seems he is helping cover up the murder of a journalist who is an American resident. Seems fairly astounding and it's just sort of just sort of on the back burner just uh it's it's unbelievable it's unbelievable i mean we are 24 hours after let's just start with the stormy daniels news we're 24 hours after the president united states called a woman a horse face. Is any Republican candidate in any close race going to condemn that? Anything going to happen about that with that? No. I mean, maybe somewhere down the line, Jeff Flake will condemn this in a sad tweet.

And then if there were some bill to make a horse face monument, Jeff Flake would vote for that. Like that's exactly how this would happen. Look, I think we have to understand that this Trump's being – I don't know the right way to say this. But Trump being so horrible is a classic feature not bug argument for the Republicans. For a portion of his base, this is why they like him. This willingness to say things that others won't say. And the problem is, I don't think most Republican elected officials believe that the president of the United States should be calling anyone a horse face. But they have come to believe, and this is the long-term danger of Trumpism becoming conservatism in America, is they have come to believe that even if it is morally wrong, it's good politics. And therefore, they can't say anything or shouldn't say anything,

because that will upset the Trump base, and therefore, they will't say anything or shouldn't say anything because that will upset the Trump base and therefore they will lose elections. So we have silence on things that you – I just – I think many of these Republicans are bad in a lot of ways. But I do think that – I do believe that they probably – even Paul Ryan thinks it is wrong that Trump says this. But they feel like they can't say it because they believe it's – they believe what Trump does is now good politics. And so he's buying their silence in exchange for what they believe to be votes from his base. believe that this is morally wrong, but that doesn't matter. They think it's politically smart and they think that it will rev up their base and they think that their base is all they need to win a lot of these elections. And we can get into why that may or may not be true. But if Republicans do well in the midterms, Trump will say all of this stuff and worse and do worse over the next two years because their strategy will have been validated, right um he will charge on if you let the last two years

were bad you ain't seen nothing yet for the next two years if republicans do well and this strategy of trump saying whatever the fuck he wants and riling up the base and doing whatever he wants to rile up the base if that is validated on election day um all bets are off for the next two years the trump is going to be Trump. Like if they lost 200 seats, Trump would find a way to believe that this was voter fraud, the Chinese interfering in elections, Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell being terrible

and not supportive. He would find a way to justify it because he is chemically incapable of accepting responsibility for anything. But what could change is Republicans feeling a need to provide, to say something, to be a check of some kind. And on the matters of policy and oversight and corruption, if we take the House, I don't really give a shit what Paul Ryan or Ben Sasse say, because Democrats will be able to

actually stop the Trump agenda. They'll be able to hold oversight hearings, subpoena witnesses, and that's what will really matter. But we can't judge success and failure of what happens by what comes out of Trump's mouth because that is unchangeable. What is the strategy behind making this the Trump show for the last few weeks? Is it even a strategy? I realize we use the term loosely when talking about Trump and the White House, but it does. I guess we know at least from the Daily Beast had a story about

this yesterday or a couple of days ago that Trump told his the White House staff in the mid in mid September. I'm not getting my message out in enough places. I need to do more interviews. Getting my message out in enough places. I need to do more interviews. I want to do even more non-Fox, non-right-wing interviews because, you know, I'm the good messenger. And if I just get my message out, we'll win the election. What do you think the strategy is there? Do you think there's something more to it?

Yeah, I think, I mean, as you point out, I'm always hesitant to use the word strategy to describe Trump because he doesn't have strategic thinking. But there is something underlying this. It is – I mean it's – I always describe Trump as more instinctual than intellectual. And I think this is – he has an instinct that the more he talks, the better off Republicans will be and the better off he will be and that he has very little faith in anyone else speaking for him, whether it's Republican congressional candidates, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Mitch McConnell, anyone else. The person who should be speaking is Trump. He also enjoys attention and this is attention. He would just melt into the ground if the rule was that he had to stop talking for Republicans to do well. He would never believe polling or anything else that would say, the less Trump, the better. And they have a theory of trying to get Republican enthusiasm up. And the belief is that the more Trump, the more Republican enthusiasm. I don't know whether that's going to work or not. There's some evidence it works in some places and not others. But I think that is what is happening here. That's what I was going to say. I mean,

when you look back at, you know, polling and special election results since Trump has become president, you know, we've said this before. It does seem like when we are debating large scale economic policy, health care, tax cuts, stuff like that. Polls have that's when the Democrats have been at their best. I think another time that Democrats have done better is when Trump is out there all the time saying truly crazy shit. But again, that could be in some places and not others. others. And then it seems as though when the polls have been tightest was during the Kavanaugh hearings and partly during during that time for most of it until the end, Trump sort of receded into the background and it was sort of a traditional Republican versus Democrat culture war. So, you know, I don't know. I don't know if they'd be better off with Trump out there saying all this kind of crazy shit more or not.

I guess like – talk more about when you said that it might help in some places and not others. Sure. I think this is an important point that most political analysis, unless it's done by people who really dig into data and understand the voter makeup in various districts and states, most political analysis is one-dimensional. And it's based in this old idea that the Democratic base is going to do what it's going to do. The Republican base is going to do what it's going to do. They are equivalently the same size. And the elections are decided by 20% of people in the middle. And whether a strategy worked or didn't work, whether a statement was effective or not effective, it was based on its impact on that 20% of swing voters. Did it move 12% one way? Did it move 12% the other way? And that, I don't know the politics

was ever that simple, but it was much closer to that 15 to 20 years ago. And now politics is much more three and four dimensional in the sense that you have states are very different, districts are very different. The bases aren't the same size. The Democratic base is larger than the Republican base. The Republican base is more reliable voters in midterms and presidentials, frankly. And the number of voters in the middle are smaller. And so things can – like Trump doing something can be effective in a red state where the Trump base, which largely means not necessarily Republicans but non-college-educated Trump base is a smaller percentage of the electorate will have the opposite effect. So Trump can be simultaneously helping Democrats win in the Crooked Seven and helping Republicans win some of these Senate races, whether it's like North Dakota or Montana or something else. or Montana or something else. And you have to really understand and get pretty deep in the data to see what is the voter makeup that can get either a Democrat or Republican to their win number. And so in this case, it could be, yes, it's working. And yes, it's killing Republicans

at the same time, just in different places. Yeah, I think the geographic point is important here. And Nate Cohn, who does polling and analyzes data for The New York Times, wrote about this this week. I want to quote from the story since it was fairly disturbing, but Nate's very smart. He wrote that polarization from stories like the fight over Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation seems to be helping Republican candidates in the final weeks of the election. He said that trend might fade, but if it holds, it will be an abrupt change from earlier polls and last year's special election results, which indicated the Democrats were highly competitive in red areas. Instead, the district and state polling raises the possibility of an election more like last year's Virginia elections or the 2010 midterm elections. So that doesn't sound very great. Now, you just heard me talk about Virginia, and you might thinking, well, what do you mean? Like Ralph Northam won Virginia by nine points. The polls said he was a close race. sorts of turnout models in the blue parts of Virginia that Clinton had won in 2016. In the red parts of Virginia that Trump had won, Gillespie did almost as well as Trump did. In some cases, as well as Trump did. So the concern is for this election that in the blue areas of the country, you know, Democrats have incredibly high turnout and a ton of votes. And, you know, like you said, all those suburban districts in California could be, you know,

flippable. But in these red areas, and unfortunately, the Senate map is incredibly red, probably the toughest map we've ever faced, probably the toughest map either party has ever faced. Whereas we might have been competitive earlier this year, now we might not be. I don't know. What do you think about all this? Look, I think it is a very important point to understand what's happening, is that the blue wave, if it opens, knock on wood, fingers crossed, everything, is not going to hit everywhere the same way because there's just less blue in less places. Now, there are some complicating factors to that analysis. Let me say one more thing. It's very important to understand, we did very, very well in Virginia. The Trump base is,

Virginia has one of the smallest per capita amount of the Trump base of any of the swing states. It's one of the reasons why it's one of the few states that moved, that Hillary Clinton did better in than Barack Obama. And Colorado's another state. And so in that sense, Virginia is not a... Virginia can tell you a lot about the districts that Hillary Clinton won in 2016 that currently have Republican members. California, Pennsylvania, all across the country and places like that. So that is very true. Now, the thing that I would say, we are no longer into don't wet the bed, wet the bed. So that is very true. Now, the thing that I would say, we are no longer into don't wet the bed, wet the bed. That's not a thing we do anymore for people who were fans of a different podcast we once had in a much different political time. There are some

signs that in the Midwest in particular, states that Trump won in 2016, that exact formula, it's a more complicated picture than that. Just we're going to do well in blue, they're going to do well in red, that in purple areas, purple states, states that Obama won by a little bit, Trump won by a decent amount. Democrats are doing quite well. Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin are three that are interesting. Michigan is another one. Trump's numbers in Iowa suggest some opportunities for Democrats there. And so just the regions of the country are very different. Deep, deep red seems like it is getting potentially more deep red, which is problematic for Democrats in the Senate. Blue is getting bluer, which is good for Democrats in the House. And purple may be getting bluer,

which is good for Democrats in the House, holding on to some Senate seats we're defending and picking up governorship, which we'll talk about a little bit later in this podcast. Yeah, I mean, it is, I think, in all political analysis, because this aspect of it is somewhat boring and a little more static, people always underestimate geography in all of this, you know? And so you can see a scenario where if the Democrats win the House and if the Republicans win the Senate, the meta analysis is, oh, we are a divided country as divided as ever and blah, blah, blah. And the truth is, look at the fundamentals of the election. We've known from the beginning that in the Senate, Democrats are defending many seats in deep red states.

And like you said, the Midwestern states that aren't deep red, but just states that Trump won in 2016, but Democrats had won before that, were actually defending those seats quite well, at least as for right now. But in some of these real red states like North Dakota, Heidi Heitkamp, Joe Donnelly in Indiana, Claire McCaskill in Missouri, and even a purple state like Nevada, Jackie Rosen's having a really tight race there too. These are harder places for Democrats to really have this sort of blowout turnout. At least they have been in the past. Again, we don't know what might happen. Nevada is a really interesting one because we think of it as this blue state because Democrats have won it in the last several presidential elections. Obama won it by a lot in 08 and 12. Senator Harry Reid defended

his Senate seat in 2010. But it is a very interesting state where it has a very large percentage of Trump base, much more than most blue states. But it has this huge Hispanic population as well. And the way in which we have been able to overcome the high turnout levels of the quote-unquote Trump base is very high levels of Hispanic turnout, because to swamp that, it is an open question as to whether that is going to happen this time in the midterm, both because we've seen polling that suggests perhaps lower turnout or lower enthusiasm among particularly younger Hispanics. And Senator Harry Reid's political machine is not the same as it was because Senator Harry Reid has been retired for a couple of years now. Right. Yeah, no, that's a worry. And the Latino turnout issue, as we've talked about before,

that's going to be critical in not just Nevada, but in Arizona, in Texas, and in Florida, a lot of these Sunbelt states. And so, you know, we have to keep an eye on that. Anyway, this is all to say, the Senate is a very steep climb and has been a steep climb from the beginning. And if you are looking to do some extra work, extra volunteering, extra door knocking, extra phone banking in these last couple weeks, as you should be giving some more money. If you have friends in those states, look at all of the states the Democrats are defending, plus Arizona, Nevada, Texas, and Tennessee, where we have a chance to flip, and do a lot of work in those states. Reach out to people that you know in those states. Ask if they're registered to vote.

It's going to be really tough to take the Senate back, but anything can happen in a couple of weeks. Can I say one more thing about this, which is that you said the verdict may be Democrats take the House, Republicans keep the Senate, that it'll be a quote unquote split decision, the country's divided. Yeah. I would note, and you would remember this as someone who was working in the White House on the day after the midterm election in 2010, where Republicans took the House and Democrats kept the

Senate. No one judged it as a split decision. It was seen as a, quote, shellacking for Obama, that we got crushed, we had to change everything, people needed to get fired, everything was a mistake. And if the decision is 1 well you know tie game uh rubber match in 2020 the sound you hear on the first podcast we do after the election will be me spontaneously combusting in fury i mean you know what's funny until you said that i forgot you would forget from the analysis of uh the 2010 elections that we kept the Senate. I forgot about that. You wouldn't know that because it was so bad for us in the House.

That's very interesting. Another question about something we can do right now. Another question about something we can do right now. How do Democrats get back on message? Or at least how do we respond to this Trump circus, Trump flooding the zone in these last couple weeks and saying a whole bunch of crazy shit? You know, obviously, we don't want to respond to everything he says. We don't necessarily want to be responding to him and playing on his turf in general. But we also don't have a single party leader that can dominate the airwaves like Trump can. How do Democrats sort of get back on message here? I think we

should not worry so much about how the party writ large gets back on message because you're right, we don't have any single voice. There is no person within the party who could go out and dominate the airwaves and sort of send a signal to everyone about this is what we say. The advantage we have here is that at this point, in every single competitive race, Democrats are advertising either digital or on TV or radio, and they're on the stump every day. So you actually can control, both through paid and earned, what your voters hear. And so the key is to stay focused on the issues that matter, which is health care, taxes, the economy, and the general, all under the framework of we need a check on the chaos and corruption of Trump.

And we talked about this a little bit during the HBO show when we were bemoaning the civility debate. And I said then, and I think this similar pivot works for everything Trump says, whether it's the horseface comments or something else, is to say, do you know what's uncivil? Taking healthcare away from people with pre-existing conditions and using it to pay for a tax cut for billionaires. like that is the way you got to get right back to the thing that matters because that's what Trump wants. He wants a civility debate. He wants us to debate the appropriateness of using the term horse face. He wants us to get wrapped around an axle about Elizabeth Warren and her DNA test and everything else. When we know what works with voters, we have the capacity to communicate it because Democrats have done such a great job raising money. So we just have to do that. We have to stick to our knitting to use an old person phrase.

Wow, very well. Really reaching those youth voters. There was a good tweet from champion Senate tweeter Brian Schatz yesterday about this. He said, they say Stormy Daniels, you say Medicaid and Medicare. They say MS-13, you say economic fairness. They say mob, you say that the corruption has to stop. They say 2020. You say 2018.

Sums it up pretty well. Sums it up pretty well. Brian Schatz, great messenger. Great messenger. Okay, let's talk about one way the Democrats can get back on message. In an interview with Bloomberg News this week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that entitlement programs are to blame for the rising deficits, not the Republican tax cuts, and that changes to programs like Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security would be required to reduce the deficit. Though he also said there's, quote, little chance of a major deficit reduction deal while Republicans control Congress and the White House. He said it would probably need to be bipartisan.

McConnell's comments follow the Treasury Department announcement that the budget deficit increased by 17 percent in 2018, driven in large part by a sharp decline in corporate tax revenues after the Trump tax cuts took effect. The one point nine trillion dollar tax cut that wasn't paid for. Dan, weren't we told by your good friend and mentor, Paul Ryan, that these tax cuts would pay for themselves, that the deficit would actually shrink? Wasn't that the sales pitch during the tax cut debate? Look, noted policy wonk, budget expert, guy who just got deep in the Excel spreadsheets, Paul Ryan looked at this and said, yes, this will be fine. He was wrong, like he always is. I mean, are they lying?

Are they not super bright when it comes to economics? Is it both? For many people, I mean, it depends. Paul Ryan, I don't think, I think the wonk level, sort of the wonk title has been greatly overstated with him because the press are suckers. But he's not an idiot, right? And so he is lying. Mitch McConnell is most certainly not an idiot. That's one of our problems. He is most certainly lying. And we have to understand that this whole thing was the plan all along. This is what the Republicans do, which is they don't care about deficits. too much government spending, too much government helping people, too many kids getting healthcare, too much money spent cleaning rivers, too many veterans getting help. That's what they made.

And so they had this plan. This is the exact same plan they did when George W. Bush took office, which is if the deficit is coming down, you provide a massive tax cut to people who don't need it and many of whom don't even want it, which then jacks the deficit up, which then you turn around and say, we have to solve this deficit crisis by cutting spending, in particular, Medicare and Social Security, which they hate. Well, and why don't they just say at the outset they would like to cut Medicare and Social Security and Medicaid? Why do they have to go through this whole rigmarole of pretending that they care about deficits? I think you know the answer

to that rhetorical question, John. Because they know it is very politically unpopular and has maybe become more so over time. It is also funny that all of this concern about deficits and federal spending, you know, it just sort of melts away when it is when Republicans are in power. There's a great part of the of a New York Times piece on this this week that said the Tea Party wave of 2010 was animated by federal spending. But that has definitely subsided, said Tim Chapman, executive director of Heritage Action for America. But that has definitely subsided, said Tim Chapman, executive director of Heritage Action for America. Even groups like Tea Party Express have moved on and messaged. Incumbents who made the deficit a central issue of their first campaigns in 2010 now focus on the strength of the stock market. That's what the Tea Party movement has become?

Cheering on the stock market? Those tea partiers who were just working class Americans who were hoping to stop the deficit, that out of control federal spending and high taxes for themselves. Now they're just cheering the stock market. Interesting. Really interesting. Just average everyday populist Americans swimming in cash from plutocrats like the Koch brothers. from plutocrats like the Koch brothers. I mean, so it's interesting that it does seem like it was a bit of a gaffe for McConnell to talk about this yesterday, though, I mean, Republicans have been hinting now for the

last couple of months that they were coming out, that they plan to come after entitlement programs. I don't even like calling them entitled programs, health care programs, retirement programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. At his debate with Beto O'Rourke last night, Ted Cruz said he would cut spending on, quote, socialized medicine, meaning Medicare, to address the deficit. The chairman of the House Republican Campaign Committee, Trump's top economic adviser, Larry Kududlow have all said in recent months that after this election in 2019 they would like to go after medicare spending medicaid spending and social security um first of all do you think there's any constituency for entitlement cuts

outside of uh you know paul ryan and his merry band of wonks. I mean, there are a lot of Koch brothers funded think tanks, which is all of the Republican think tanks that want this. This is what the Wall Street Journal editorial page wants. Like the last remaining shreds of, quote unquote, conservative electoralism. And I use the quotes for all of the obvious reasons. Care about this. And I do like Republicans are basically in the Trump reasons, care about this. And I do, like, Republicans are basically, in the Trump era, ideological nihilists.

They don't care about anything other than the accumulation and maintenance of power. Except they do care about cutting taxes for the rich and cutting Medicare and Social Security. That is something that they sincerely care about. Now, the former- There's one wing of the party. The traditional, this is like the Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell wing of the party.

Elected Republican officials, not Republican voters who by and large, and it is worth noting that Donald Trump ran saying he would not cut Medicaid, Social Security, or Medicare. He's already attempted to cut Medicaid significantly, and he seems very open to Medicare and Social Security, suggesting that maybe he's completely full of shit. The tax cuts are both an ideological belief that they have and a way to maintain power because it is a way to take cash, give it back to their donors like the Koch brothers,

Sheldon Adelson, et cetera, and then have those donors then spend a portion of their tax cut to keep Republicans in power, which is, and this is disturbing to say, but a completely legal money laundering scheme because of Citizens United. But Medicare and Social Security, they are telling us what their intentions are, And we would be foolish not to make sure that every voter knows that that's exactly what they are going to do. Yeah. Well, I was going to say, how should Democrats talk about this and message this? You know, the good news was yesterday when McConnell said this on Bloomberg, he said this on Tuesday, there were press releases that went out in like, you know, every competitive district and every state in the country from Democratic campaigns just blasting McConnell over this. So I do think that even though the news on Tuesday was a complete mess full of crazy Trump shit, in the states on the ground, Democrats drove this Republicans are coming after Medicare, Medicaid and Social

Security message pretty hard. In this week's episode of Dan Pfeiffer's imaginary but incredibly well-funded super PAC, what I would be doing if I had billions of dollars at my disposal would be targeting Trump voters, core Trump voters, with Facebook ads saying congressional Republicans want to cut Medicare. Because what you really like, they do not agree with that. They are skeptical of people like Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan. And if you want, they need to know this. And that may, some of those voters are available to Democrats if they were Obama Trump voters, Some of those voters are available to Democrats if they were Obama-Trump voters, if they were sort of reluctant Trump voters like that. There's this delta between Trump's win number in 2016 and his current approval rating. So depending on polls, there's 4% to 6% to 8% of voters who voted for Trump but currently do not approve of him.

So those voters are theoretically people who Democrats could win over or could stay home. And so there's a certain group of people we need to know this. And this is a shot to the main engine of Trump's base. And we can't get it. It will not be covered on Fox. It will not be on Breitbart. It will not actually probably be on most newscasts. I don't know what percentage of Trump voters listen to our podcast, so they might not get it from us. Maybe not. So you're going to have to show them, you're going to have to give them the information where they get their news, which is unfortunately for democracy, Facebook. Hey, liberal billionaires, listen up. Fund these Facebook ads. No, I mean, here's the thing on this. I can already hear some people, the Nothing Matters crowd say, oh, Trump voters don't care.

You know, they're just going to vote for Trump anyway. We're not talking about, like you said, this is not the MAGA base. These aren't the people that show up at the rallies. Like we're fully aware that this is not going to change their mind. But like you said, it's the Obama Trump voters. It's also, by the way, the the non voters, the people who don't a lot, and might be looking around at all this and think, I don't know if I'm even going to vote if there's enough at stake in this election. And if Republicans win both houses of Congress, the Affordable Care Act is gone, right? Let's

just put that, I mean, that's, we don't even have to guess about that like we do about Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid. Well, of course, the Affordable Care Act includes Medicaid, but the Affordable Care Act is gone if Republicans take the House, keep the House, and keep the Senate. We don't have John McCain's vote anymore. We don't have anything else. It's over. That's 20 million people without health insurance. That's no protections for pre-existing conditions. Everyone needs to know that. And now, if they are emboldened by winning both houses, it is very likely because they keep telling us they want to do it, that they will try their hardest to cut Medicare, to cut Medicaid, and to cut Social Security. So that's a message for Obama-Trump voters, for people who voted for Obama in 2012 and then didn't vote in 2016, for people who just haven't voted in a long time. Your

healthcare is on the line. It's why the number one issue the Democrats are talking about is healthcare. It's why, when you look at polls, the number one issue that people say they're concerned about is healthcare. It is a very big issue. And Democratic candidates are doing everything they can to drive it home in these last couple weeks. And everyone else connected to the party should be doing the same. There's one other group of voters that I think I would be targeting with my imaginary ads, which are there are voters who did not vote in 2012 who voted for Trump in 2016. And those are voters who are most likely – every voter is different – but most likely skeptical of the Republican Party but very pro-Trump. Any drop-off in that number is what hurts Republicans. And so for Democrats, we had this huge election in 2008.

Democrats, we had this huge election in 2008. And we had two problems in 2010, which caused Republicans to have this split decision, if you will, of taking the House and not taking the Senate, where both independents who supported Obama voted for Republicans in Congress, and you see evidence of that is happening in at least a lot of states and districts for Democrats. Then you also had people who came out for Obama who had not traditionally come out for Democrats and felt more affinity to Obama than to the party did not turn out in 2010. And so there's a group of people like that on the Republican side who are also – will help decide this election and should be open to having concerns raised about Republicans cutting Medicare. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. Let's talk about a set of campaigns that haven't gotten quite enough attention, and that's the governor's races. Democrats have a number of opportunities to flip seats currently held by Republican governors. We could flip governorships in

the following states. This is more than until I started doing research for this segment. I didn't even know we had this many opportunities. Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Maine, Florida, New Mexico, Georgia, maybe even Kansas or Oklahoma or even South Dakota. Dan, why do you think Democrats don't pay enough attention to these races, including us? Yeah, yeah i mean i feel when we talked about this segment the other day i just i felt terribly guilty because like oftentimes when we're out talking to people we yell about governor's races and it's like we should focus on governor's races redistricting all of that and then we sit down to do the podcast and we focus on

the house and the senate and that yeah that is a dereliction of duty on our part, because we're supposed to be quasi-smarter than that. But it's two things, I think. One, just... And I say this as someone who has actually worked for the Democratic Governance Association 100 years ago. No one cares. There is victory of, do you have 218 members of the House? Do you have 51 senators? Crossing some threshold is a gigantic transformational difference in how power is allocated in Washington and having, you know, 26 governors or 18 governors or 35 governors has no global effect. It has a huge effect on people in that state, but it's sort of like, if you are in California and you were not someone who was focused on redistricting, like why should you care about who the governor of Ohio is?

We're going to tell you the answer to that question. But just generally it's not intuitively obvious to people for the same reason that if you are in California, you care passionately whether Heidi Heitkamp wins her race or Beto O'Rourke wins that race. Because you have a stake in the Democrats taking the Senate or the Democrats taking the House. You don't really have any – you don't feel like you have an intuitive stake in whether Democrats have more governorships or not. Right. But you do. You have a huge stake, people. So why would winning these races be so important?

What do Democrats get out of winning a bunch of governors' races? I think you can divide it along three lines. Line one is redistricting. These are the governorships that will be in place that will draw the lines in the House races after the 2020 census. Losing all the governorships in 2010 has crushed us for a decade. And so it's incredibly important that we have Democratic governors who will ensure that there is not ridiculous partisan meddling in the elections. So that's one. Two is, it is incredibly important to have governorships when it comes to the presidential election. Now, you and I know this from being on the 2008-2012 campaign. In 2008, we had a pretty decent number of Democratic governors, and we had significant early voting in Ohio, Iowa, states like that. By 2012, Republicans had taken those seats and dramatically cut back on access to the polls for all voters,

but with a particular target against Democratic voters, voters of color. And so if we were able to get the Ohio governorship, the Wisconsin governorship, the Iowa governorship, Florida, all of them, that will have a dramatic difference of you will at least be able to level the playing fields and fight back against Republican voter suppression efforts. You think about the difference between 2008 and 2016 in Wisconsin, a state that Obama won by double digits and then Hillary Clinton lost. A huge factor in that, among many other factors, is the tremendous level of voter suppression, including a very onerous voter ID law that Scott Walker put in place. And so a Democratic governor would have the potential to undo that before the 2020 election. before the 2020 election.

Yeah, imagine not having to worry about these purges and this voting suppression that we're hearing about in all these states that have a huge effect. And just a Democratic governor has the power to, and a Democratic Secretary of State, by the way, which is why Secretary of State races statewide are important, even though people don't talk about that a lot, are incredibly important because they then have the power to make sure that doesn't happen. And I think, look, I think the third big reason why Democrats winning governorships is so

important is because, and this is the reason that's probably most real to ordinary people, is the chance for Democrats to pass progressive policy in states with a Democratic governor and a Democratic legislature. And in some cases, a Democratic governor and a Republican legislature that they can work with. But usually it's unified government. And I mean, when we have been talking about the 2018 election and we talk about Congress, we are even in the best case scenario when if Democrats win the House and Democrats won the Senate, we are even in the best case scenario when if Democrats win the House and Democrats won the Senate, we still wouldn't be able to pass anything. We would just be able to stop all of Trump's bad shit, which is huge, by the way, stopping the Trump agenda.

But it's not going to be very satisfying to a lot of people who say, OK, well, what are Democrats actually going to pass that's going to change my life? Well, we're not going to be able to do that until 2020. But we win governorships and, and Democrats take control of certain state governments. You're going to actually see real progressive policy coming out of it. We have a couple of examples in New Jersey where Phil Murphy, Democrat Phil Murphy, won the governorship there. In Washington state, we have unified government. Some of the policies that have come out of these states in the last couple of years, $15 minimum wage, automatic voter registration, Medicaid expansion, gun control laws like banning bump stocks and background checks, equal pay laws as an equal pay law in New Jersey, millionaire tax hikes to fund education and health care programs. policies that are going to affect the lives of millions and millions of people if democratic governors and democratic legislatures can pass them in these states and we saw this in virginia

too uh and you know the house of delegates was decided by literally picking a vote out of a hat and because there were so many democrats in the legislature and because ralph northam won he was able to force the republicans in legislature to accept a medicaid expansion and that meant hundreds of thousands of people in virginia have insurance for the first time. So this shit really matters. Imagine that winning an election and then being able to help people. To do something, right? To not just block bad shit. I'd also like to thank you for finishing my list of three, which I stopped at two, which is something that has happened to me as I'm getting older, because it's always my habit, because we work for Barack Obama, who was a very linear sort of three things about this.

Let me make two points about this. So I would always be like, Mr. President, three things. And then oftentimes I would only have two things and I have to spend midway through the second thing trying to come up with the third thing. This time, I knew my three things, but I just... I just decided to... Well, I always get most excited about the last one, too, just because I think a lot of voters who don't pay super close attention to politics in this country, what they see in politics is Trump acting like an asshole, but also a lot of yelling and screaming in Washington and not a lot getting done. in Washington and not a lot getting done. And I think as progressives, as the party that believes that government has a role to play in making a difference in people's lives, we have to eventually pass policy that makes a difference in people's lives and let them know and connect the dots for people and say, the reason you have health care, the reason there's a higher minimum wage right now, the reason you're automatically registered to vote is because you elected Democrats and they made that happen. And it's going to be very hard to do that in

Congress between now and 2020. But it's not going to be hard in the states if we flip these governorships. So it could end up, I think, being the most hopeful story if we work really hard. It could end up being the most hopeful story of Election Day, just how many governorships we win. And look, they're not all easy easy all the ones i listed are certainly uh... not cakewalks but you know illinois seems like uh... it's it's a good bet in you know democrats are doing well in michigan gretchen whitmer

is doing great there uh... andrew gillum in florida stacy abrams in georgia were hoping for tony everson was constant richard cordray in ohio there are are really strong candidates in a lot of these races. And again, as you're thinking about what to do in these last couple of weeks, think about giving time and money to some of these governor's races. Can I throw one more plug in just as we're thinking about the idea of elections giving

people healthcare is that our friends at the Fairness Project have worked with people on the ground in states and have been able to put on the ballot in Nebraska, Utah, Idaho, and Montana for deeply red states, an initiative to expand Medicaid. So if those are to pass, then tens of thousands of people in each state will have access to health care. And so we do sometimes forget when we sort of think about elections as moving pieces around a chessboard. Will Nancy Pelosi have the gavel? Will so-and-so be the chair of X committee? But elections are ultimately about putting in place policies that help people, and both in these governance races and then in ballot initiatives all across the country, which you can read about on votesaveamerica.com. But four that are very interesting to me are

these four initiatives in four states to expand Medicaid, where it's just so simple. It is like one of the best investments in time and money you'll make, which is you can make a contribution, I can make phone calls, I can knock doors, and my neighbors who don't have health care will get it. It's that simple. That simple. All right. When we come back, we'll have our interview with Georgia congressional candidate Lucy McBath. Okay, so as part of our attempt to talk to midterm candidates in unexpected places who've got unique stories, we're talking to a mother who decided to run for office for the first time in her late 50s.

More than 600 black women are running for federal, state, and local seats. 37 of them in Georgia alone. I'm your neighbor here in Georgia's 6th congressional district. But Democrat Lucy McBath brings a personal story unlike any other. And I just decided that no one was going to tell my story and I wasn't going to be silent. Lucy McBath is the Democratic congressional nominee

for Georgia's 6th district. She's running against Republican incumbent Karen Handel. As a kid, Lucy's parents had been involved in social justice movements. I watched my father give speeches all over Illinois. You know, we were in the marches and the rallies. Her dad was the Illinois branch president of the NAACP. I remember when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.

I remember the National Guardsmen that were called to stand and protect our home because, you know, of course we didn't know what other civil rights leaders were going to be targeted. Lucy studied political science in college and after a few jobs became a flight attendant for Delta and moved to Marietta, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. I say that my neighborhood is one of those old-fashioned neighborhoods where, you know, all the people that I live among, we know their names. We know the names of their children. They all have dogs. And when it snows outside in the winter and everything shuts down, we all come out and we bring our hot chocolate and, you know, pull the children around in the wagons.

So that's the old-fashioned neighborhood. That's what I live in. Jordan really liked living in Marietta. Jordan's the name of Lucy's son. Jordan was very easy to raise. He was a very happy child. He really was a leader among his friends. He had a lot of friends that were even older than him,

and Jordan was always telling everybody what to do. But he was a natural-born leader. Just a great sense of humor. His idea was that he wanted the other children in the neighborhood to have the same kinds of experiences that he had. So he encouraged me, Mom, you've got to buy this SUV because we've got to be able to take the boys along with us. We go roller skating, we go swimming, we go to the beach.

We do all the kinds of things that some of the kids that I live among, you know, their parents aren't taking them and letting them be involved in those experiences. So Jordan had very much that kind of heart that was compassionate. Lucy saw a lot of her own dad in Jordan. We would have discussions about who he was going to be, and I'd always say, Jordan, I see you as an activist. I see you as somebody in the community. I see you as someone standing up for a cause. Six years ago, Lucy was out of town,

spending the holidays with family in Chicago, when she got a call from Jordan's dad. He told me that Jordan had been shot, that Jordan was at Shands Hospital, and I needed to get on the plane, the first plane, and come down there, but he says he told me that Jordan was murdered at that moment. The 17-year-old was shot to death as he was sitting in an SUV with friends last Friday night. Police say Michael Dunn told the teens to turn down the music and that there was an argument. Police say Michael Dunn told the teens to turn down the music and that there was an argument. Police say Dunn fired into that SUV, killing Jordan.

I don't remember. I just remember screaming, crumbling on the floor. Everything went black, and I just started screaming. I remember hearing this wail come out of me, something so ugly that I didn't really think it was coming from me. But the fact that everything I tried to protect Jordan from, every fear that I had, you know, that one day he would, you know, be hit by a car or be in an accident or get in a fight or all those things. Everything came down on me at that one very moment. You know, sometimes, sometimes even to this day, I still keep thinking, how did I get here?

I still keep thinking, how did I get here? And sometimes I keep saying, this isn't really real. That's every parent's worst nightmare. Jordan was shot and killed at a gas station by a man, a 45-year-old software developer, who thought Jordan was playing his music too loud. And this tragedy, the loss of her son, lit a fire in Lucy. So it just began to dawn on me that everything that my father and my mother worked for, all those experiences had probably, without my knowing, prepared me for what I believe God was calling me to do now and that's

the reason why I started speaking out about the gun culture talking very candidly you know about why these tragedies were happening so I stand before you today why were our legislators not talking about these tragedies why were they not working to protect the people that put them in office? Why was the clergy silent? Why were civic leaders silent? We are not going away. Since Jordan's death, Lucy has become an outspoken advocate for gun control legislation.

In order to change the culture, people need to hear me. Because I'm not a number, I'm not a statistic, but I'm a real human being that can tell you earnestly and honestly what this devastating culture looks and feels like. Lucy became such a big part of the gun violence prevention effort that President Obama actually invited her back to D.C. in 2016 when he signed a series of executive actions aimed to reduce gun violence. This for me was one of those culminating days when I recognized everything my mother and my father had worked for was coming to fruition with the first black or first minority president of the United States. And that the work that I was doing, I remember just standing on the stage just saying, Oh, my gosh, I can't believe I'm here. But you know, this is this is me carrying on the mantle of my father and my mother,

all the work they did in the civil rights movement to make sure that people had equality and access to everything that you know, democracy is supposed to afford us in this nation, that I now get to carry on their mantle. And I kept thinking how proud they would be of me, how proud Jordan would be of me standing there in support of President Obama as he rolled out his executive orders. And that I just felt very blessed. But it just really fueled in me that I had a lot of work to do. There was a lot more work to do.

And now she's doing that work. And a big reason Lucy's appealing to voters is her personal connection to these issues. Well, the issues that define my race most definitely gun violence prevention, making sure that no one has to be in fear of being gunned down in their own communities. Health care, I'm a two-time breast cancer survivor, so I'm very concerned about the nature of health care for the people that I live among, most specifically women, because I know that my incumbent has tried to defund Planned Parenthood when she worked for the Susan G. Komen Foundation. So that's extremely, I just really have a bone to pick with that because what I say

is that she has such wonderful benefits herself. Why would she not want the people that she has such wonderful benefits herself. Why would she not want the people that she is to represent to be healthy and whole and have good quality health care and options? A lot of the first-time candidates we've talked to are really making it easy for voters to connect to them. I think that sometimes people have felt like they didn't have a voice or people have felt disengaged for whatever their reasons. They believe that maybe the politics didn't speak to them. But there again, as I said, I believe the candidates now that are running, we're telling our stories. We've been engaged in our communities.

telling our stories. We've been engaged in our communities. We've been, you know, local civic leaders or business owners or people that have been actively engaged in our communities such that we can really speak to the needs of the people that we live among every single day. People are anxious. They're afraid. They're concerned about their futures. I think that the people that are standing up now are willing to fight on behalf of their communities. We're not career politicians. Most of us haven't been trying to figure out for all of our lives how to be in, you know, in office. But we've decided to stand up and to fight for our communities. That was Lucy McBath, the Democratic nominee for Georgia's 6th Congressional District. There are a lot of candidates out there with inspiring stories running this cycle.

We're going to do our best to keep sharing them between now and Election Day. And a lot of these candidates have already shared videos with us that you can check out at votesaveamerica.com. All right. Thanks to Lucy McBath for chatting with us. And thank you all. And we'll see you on Friday in Austin. Talk to everyone next week. Bye. Bye.

Bye. Thank you.