The Daily Beast Podcast - Sep. 20 Member Bonus: The Real Reason Trump Won’t Stop Yelling About Mail-In Voting

Episode Date: October 15, 2020

This members-only episode was originally published on September 20, 2020 and moved to this feed for full member access. President Trump will not shut up about voting by mail, repeatedly asserting that the system that has been used in elections prior is “rigged.” Meanwhile, Republicans have tried endlessly to block certain states from making it happen. In this new bonus episode of The New Abnormal, Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) explains the motivations behind the constant anti-mail-in ballot rhetoric and it’s deeper than Trump trying to prevent Americans from voting. “Really, what they want to do is two things: They want to undermine the confidence voters have in the election. And they want to undermine the confidence that people have in the post office,” he tells Rick Wilson and Molly Jong-Fast. Why? Privatization and manipulation, aka “get people to believe that this simply cannot be done” so they give up and continue to yell at each other on Twitter. But there’s something that Americans can do and that’s voting right away. “As soon as you get the damn thing, turn it right around,” says Schatz. There’s also another thing that voters can do, he says, and he failed at it in 2016. It’s taking social risks to stick up for Biden “in ways that are actually going to cause discomfort at the human level between people that care about each other, because the other side did that.” He tells Rick and Molly exactly where he himself went wrong. Plus! Schatz shares why Facebook will almost always take Trump’s side. And the gang trio discuss why Kansas and American “housewives” there are more progressive than we think. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We're happy to have with us, Senator Brian Chats of Hawaii today. And a lot of folks are focused very intently on the presidential race, but many, many folks are also right now giled in like a laser on the fact that the control of the U.S. Senate is going to come down to a very few races this year. And Brian, we're so happy to have you with us. And let's just get to it and start talking about the races you think are the hot plays in the 2020 Senate contests. Well, thanks for having me. And I think you're right. I mean, first of all, we have to imagine a Biden presidency with Mitch McConnell still in charge. and how much that would grind the, even just the standing up of the government to a halt. And then we have to imagine a Trump presidency where we had the Senate. And at least we would be able to check and control him to greater or lesser degree. So the Senate is maybe not as important as the presidency, but it's a very, very close second. Here's my view of the Senate races. My advice for your listeners and for anyone who asks is to spend money and time on,

the non-famous candidates. It is very easy to get sort of caught up in the people who are either very online or very charismatic or running against someone you particularly hate. And, you know, there's nothing wrong with that because we kind of need money and volunteers everywhere. But as I think through the races that we've won and lost over the last several election cycles, it's really got nothing to do with who became a sort of nationwide phenomenon. So we've got to make sure that all of our races are covered. I mean, I think Gary Peters in Michigan is a really good example. Betsy DeVos is all in with her super PAC. The Republicans love their candidate. They're spending a million dollars a week lying about Gary and there's a little bit too much comfort around the idea that Biden's doing reasonably well,

a little too close for comfort, but he's doing reasonably well in Michigan. And therefore, Gary Peters is an incumbent Democratic senator. It should be fine. This thing is too close and they are dedicated to flipping that seat because that makes our math that much more difficult. So Gary Peters is an enormously high priority. I'll also say Doug Jones, not just because this guy is just a beautiful human being, the person who prosecuted the Birmingham bombers, but also he really still can win. What worries me a bit about that race is that people read that morning consult poll, that online poll, which is sort of notoriously wobbly and inaccurate. Was that the only poll out of Alabama? Because There's not a lot of polling, right?

There's not a lot of polling. I don't think it's not accurate to say that Doug Jones is in the lead. It is accurate to say that Doug Jones has a pathway to win this thing. The Trump-Biden margin is probably going to be cut in half from 22. And so Doug Jones has to get some Republican and independent voters, which he's really good at doing. And the way he's mobilized the African-American community throughout Alabama, not just in cities, but in rural communities, gives him a path to. way to victory. And then I just think, follow your muse, but don't just assume that the most

famous candidate is the highest priority. In fact, sometimes those very famous candidates are, I wouldn't say overfunded, but sufficiently funded. So who else would you suggest? I think Barbara Bolier in Kansas is very interesting. Rising the attention spectrum right there. Yeah. So Barbara is a doctor. She is a moderate, a state legislator, state senator who was a Republican and switched parties as a result of Trump's extremism. She was endorsed by the person who preceded Pat Roberts, Rick, what's her name, the Republican female senator in Kansas. Nancy Castlebaum. Yeah, she was just endorsed by, yeah, she was just endorsed by Nancy Castlebaum. And Kansas is getting a little swinging. I mean, it is. I hesitate to talk about this too confidently because I haven't been to all of these places,

but the trade war is really wearing down rural communities generally and farmers in particular. And I think Canzans do not like the conduct of the president. And Barbara Bollier embodies a kind of spirit of being moderate, being thoughtful, being bipartisan, and being practical and pragmatic. She's got a real shot at winning this thing. They just won the governor's race in the last cycle. So Kansas is one of those places where I think it's really hard in your mind's eye if you're an activist to picture that we could win there.

But, you know, that's what we've got to do. I also think Steve Bullock is, believe it or not, I think he's a slag. favorite. And that's not based on polling. That is based on he's a popular incumbent governor who's doing a good job with COVID and has legitimacy as someone who's displayed his independence and who's fought dark money and won, who's fought on behalf of working people and one. And he's just a good guy. It was sort of weird to me that he didn't actually pick up a little more steam as a presidential candidate. I think that was purely, again, you come from Montana, you don't have a lot of online money and he just sort of ran out of gas. But he's super talented.

and I wouldn't say young, but young for politics and just a great human being. So I'm fired up about some of our candidates in races that are not the North Carolina, Maine, Arizona, Colorado. Everybody knows those at the sort of top four targets. And then on the playing defense side, it's Gary Peters, it's Doug Jones, and it's Gina Shaheen. But after that, it gets really kind of pretty interesting. And Rick and I have talked a little bit about this. The theory of the case has to be that we press everywhere our potential advantage because the danger for strategist people and also for activists folks is that we put all of our eggs in the basket of winning these four races and if one of them goes wrong we don't take the Senate. We've got to roll the dice on three or four or five or six

of these other races so we can take the Senate and maybe even then some and we haven't even gotten into Georgia yet. Which is, you know, Georgia is the craziest state in this list in a lot of ways because no one saw any of that coming a year ago that there was even any possibility. Look, and I think you've seen some places like Steve Bullock and like Al Gross, where a good candidate, and I think probably one of the best candidates in the field, and interestingly, I had a Republican consultant say to me the day that he thought Jamie Harrison was one of the best candidates he'd ever seen and has turned the South Carolina race competitive against Lindsey Graham, in part because he's just a damn good candidate. He does the work. I love Jamie Harrison, but can we just roll back for one second? Can you guys,

both talk about Georgia? Because it's a complicated situation what's going on there. There's a runoff, okay? It's a runoff system. So there will be another election right after the election and before the inauguration. So in a lot of ways, what happens in Georgia, I think will come down to what happens at the presidential level. I think this is an observer of Georgia and a guy who's done some Georgia politics. If Joe Biden does not win the presidency, I think there's a chance both those seats get blown out and go Democrat. If he does, I think one of those seats is in play, and one probably isn't. It's Loughler as in play?

Yeah, I think Loughler would be in play. She's not quite solidified, and she's got strangely bad numbers with women. And, you know, I think it's partly because of the whole, like, association of her. Not that strange, Rick. It's funny because Republicans used to look at suburban women as a major strong suit.

And we got out of the field a few weeks ago in Maricopa County, and Republican women hate Martha McSally only by about a three-point difference with Democratic women. just disliked so fundamentally, and it's because of the Trump stuff. Yeah, and some of the coming, you know, Martha is my colleague, but some of the stuff that she's said to people, I just feel like she's, I think just to put a fine point on the Republican view of women in the suburbs, right,

is that as long as you get a person who sort of resembles a sort of 1978 version of a woman in the suburb, then you're going to be successful with women in the suburbs. And I think that's also grading on women in the suburbs who are, by the way, they're multi-ethnic. And even those who are may resemble the sort of old school view of what a woman in the suburb looks like. It's like, don't call me a, what did Trump say? Don't call me a suburban housewife. Suburban housewife. Listen, even if you are a stay-at-home mom, that's just a hell of a way to characterize somebody.

And they're not actually afraid of Cory Booker running HUD. They're afraid of COVID. They're afraid of. of the unrest that Trump is causing. And so the playbook is to make people afraid of Democrats, but the stuff that they're trying to raise as a sort of ugly specter, look, if the Democrats get elected, you might get an affordable housing project a block away.

It's like, well, maybe some of these people don't want an affordable housing project that could block away. And that's not nearly as terrifying as a disease that may kill you. Right, and that is killing their parents and grandparents and so on. Right. So I see Republicans threatening and offering things that would, have to happen on the state level anyway. Like Trump is like, we're going to take this crazy press conference today. None of this stuff is stuff he could even do anyway or that Biden could do.

Yeah. I mean, I've been reading a little bit about this stuff. And I think your observation is exactly right. And it's not going to resonate because even though people may not be all up on their civics, they have an instinct that curriculum, for instance, is not set at the federal level by a president, And a national commission is like not where these stuff gets decided. But I think maybe more to the point. And I don't want to, Rick, you might have a different observation, but I don't want to be too Pollyanna about the possibility that this stuff might work. But it does occur to me that to the extent that they're trying a different thing every day, TikTok, right? I mean, every day where they're throwing a new thing at the wall, even if it works for a couple of days, then they abandon it and then they move on to a new thing. I mean, I can't tell you what the Trump re-election message is at this point, other than. Loud noise. Well, and boat parades. No, but I think that's largely correct, Brian, is that there's an immediate switchover of message every day because Trump himself is the whole campaign.

And so when a bright and shiny object gets in front of him, he chases after it. Whereas, you know, if I were running the Trump campaign and I had a candidate who could be disciplined, those are big ifs, obviously, every day he would be out there saying wear a mask, we're going to get through this. COVID is tough. We're working hard every day. We trust the scientists. they could make him tell that story if he was not insane. But both fortunately and unfortunately, he is insane.

Yeah. And I think that as I look back on the loss in 2016, not to spend too much time on that because it gives me a stomach cake. But one of his advantages in those moments was that Hillary and the Democratic Party and Democratic operatives had built up, you know, data analytics and lots of kind of innovative new structures and overlaying the old structures. You had sort of like the Obama insights and they were real insights, plus the old. school politics of the Clintons and the Ed Rendell's of the world. And what they ended up with was this behemoth that had no flexibility and no intuition and no ability to move through a news cycle with any alacrity. Right. And so if Trump had an instinct and maybe it accidentally worked, the Clinton team would take four or five, six days running a poll, having meetings, you know, conference calls and all the rest of it. And so that flat footedness really kicked us in the

face. This year, they just looked goofy. Right. It is absolutely a provable fact. that the Clinton campaign lacked a certain dexterity and felicity. But this year, the Trump campaign, I mean, they've spent a billion dollars. And so we're in this spot where the things they're trying now are things because they can't go on TV with $100 million in Florida or $30 million in Minnesota. They don't have the resources right now. And so he's going to try a lot of this earned media stuff, a lot of this Facebook-driven stuff. But that inability to stick to a message and stick to a plan has definitely cost them, well, it's cost them a billion dollars. Well, and the grift, right? It's the gold. Yeah, there's always some overhead, you know.

For both of you, how worried do you think Democrats need to be about Facebook? Oh, they need to be so fucking worried. They need to run for the hills every day. And they need to be terrified of Facebook. I agree with that. And I think that Facebook has become a vector for misinformation and toxicity. And even some of my smart friends get weird ideas from Facebook. And so part of the thing that I would recommend to your listeners is in the 2016 16 cycle. Now, I'm in Hawaii at the time and all the rest of it, but I will just tell you, I, different from the Obama campaign, I never really took a social risk on behalf of Hillary Clinton. Like, if I was at a barbecue with buddies and someone said something negative about Hillary, I sort of let it pass. And I feel really deeply guilty about that. But if someone had come after Obama in either of his elections, I was ready to fight about it. And I think that in that 16 cycle, there were lots of people standing up for Trump and criticizing Hillary and lots of people. who were for Hillary, but just didn't do the work of taking social risks within family structures and within social structures and with colleagues and friends. And I just think we've got to be willing to take some of those social risks and stand up for our campaign, our candidate, our principles,

our country in ways that are actually going to cause discomfort at the human level between people that care about each other because the other side did that and will do that. And Facebook is the vector for all kinds of crazy shit to come out. And people who are on Facebook or Instagram or Snap or even TikTok got to push their weight around too because we just didn't have that kind of mojo in 16. And we certainly did with Obama in his two elections. There's a business week article out right now on Zuckerberg and Trump's alliance. No one in D.C. is fooled that Facebook is run by Trump allies at this point and that they're

going to do everything they can to help him. And I'll break a little news on this broadcast. We learned a few weeks ago that the head of the head of the president of the president of Facebook in D.C. had ordered his people to assemble dossiers on the Lincoln Project, senior leadership. Oh, wow. So these people are playing to help Trump. They're all in for Donald Trump. There's a 1,000% chance that if there's a question of something being blocked or banned or censored on Facebook, it's going to go in Trump's direction. And we've reached the point where we recognize that Facebook is a disinformation channel, a propaganda channel. And Mark Zuckerberg has realized

that his only survival pathway right now is with Trump. And he will do everything he can to help the guy. That's our view of the matter. I want to linger here because I do, although I like playing amateur pundit and strategists, I want to linger here on what you just said about the head of government relations in Washington for Facebook assembling a dossier on you. I think that's real news. Yep, on the Lincoln Project Senior Leadership. And we've had it from a whistleblower and they're all in on Trump.

That's why they're doing this. I guarantee you he doesn't have dossiers on Jason Miller and Brett's and Bill Steppian and Brad Parskow. Imagine how easy. would be to have a dossier and Jason Miller. I was going to say, isn't that just Google? Right. I mean, I do have a dossier and Jason Miller and believe me, it would make your eyes bleed. I mean, it's worse than what I already know. Yes, vastly. But Brian, to your point, continue, we got sidetracked there. I think Rick is right that we have to view this as sort of behind enemy lines, right? But that doesn't mean that we have to kind of leave the platform. Frankly,

we don't have the market power in terms of our numbers to make a dent in their revenue and certainly not in 45 days. So what we have to do is unfortunately buy ads on the platform and push our weight around. We really have to be there fighting to make sure the nonsense doesn't happen. Now, I personally, both publicly and privately, try to push back on Facebook and their view of themselves as a neutral platform. Because I think, Rick, you've got it mostly right, that they, for reasons related to their, survival. They don't want to get sideways with the Trump people. They don't want to lose the revenue, and they are terrified of an antitrust investigation. And that's where they're at. They should be. But don't you think they know that eventually, I mean, unless Trump is able to install himself like a mini Putin,

which is certainly possible, that eventually power in Washington will change? No, they don't know that because they have outsourced their politics to a bunch of Republican operatives because, and you just, you have to understand the original. dynamic was a bunch Silicon Valley people actually were originally liberal, although kind of a more libertarian version of liberal, but you know, pro-gay, pro-choice, pro-climate action, right? That kind of liberal, maybe not economically liberal. Right. Free market-ish. Leave me alone. And so they found Washington to be sort of beneath them and uninteresting and it was basically leave me alone. And then they realized they had to ramp up a government relations shop and a government relations strategy. Okay. So they do

But in the middle of all of that, they're getting shoved around by United States senators on the Republican side. They're getting accused of bias. And so they overcompensate by hiring a bunch of Republican operatives and staffers. And that's why we landed here. It's that like these personally liberal quote unquote CEOs and C-suite individuals sort of tried to hedge. And they've still basically outsource their political strategy to Republicans and don't know how to recalibrate and are just sort of stumbling through this, but stumbling through this with massive profits. So the board won't shove their weight around either because the numbers still look good. That's it. Really depressing. Man, you guys got me to say more than I intended to say it.

Wait, I want you to talk about Trump's crazy speech that you were talking about before, just at the beginning. Oh, yeah. I mean, it just strikes me that they don't know what to say, that someone got this idea in his head, and that they think that someone's going to go and vote for president or not on the basis of, I guess, the way we're teaching American history or something. And the 1619 project thing is really interesting because you have to now explain what the 1619 project is, right? And then you have to get people angry about it. And then you have to say, I won't do that, right? But that's a lot of my buddy Neil Abercrombie, who was governor and appointed me to the Senate and served in the House forever, said, when you're explaining, you're losing. And that's just a lot of explaining with 45 days left.

try to get people freaked out about critical race theory and the 1619 project when there are just a lot scarier things actually happening to us all. Yeah, I mean, it's a deadly pandemic. We can't leave the house, but people are fighting. But also, yes, I agree. It's totally interesting. Can you talk to us a little bit about the post office? Because that's like my obsession.

Molly's obsessed with the post office. I live a very sexy and exciting life. Well, listen, a couple of things. I mean, let me start with the most important thing, which is that I believe that the mail will be delivered. on time, including election mail. And that part of what was going on with the slowdowns and the way DeJoy was operating was to freak people out to the point where they weren't sure if their vote was going to get counted and to just create enough doubt to, say, decrease turnout by 6% among Democratic likely voters. So I think that was the play. I also think DeJoy and some of these private companies

have been wanting to privatize the post office for a decade, right, or more. And they've actually won an important tactical victory a number of years ago when they decided as a matter of federal law to count all of the pension obligations as cash money due and owing, even though no government agency has to do it that way and no private sector company has to book their pension obligations for decades out as a liability in the current year. And so there's like no way the post office can look like it's not terribly wasteful because you have to pre-fund all of the pensions. Otherwise, it looks like it's running in the red. So that's the context. Really what they want to do is two things. They want to undermine the confidence that voters have in the election, and they want to undermine the confidence that

people have in the post office so the whole enterprise can be privatized. I am still worried, and we are still obviously pushing very hard on both language in the appropriations bill to make sure that the mail is delivered on time and also on the financial side. But whatever happens in the next two weeks in terms of legislation. There's no reason for people to believe that their mail is not going to be delivered on time. But what I would recommend is vote right away. As soon as you get the damn thing, turn it right around, and then you can track your ballot. And then you shouldn't have to worry about it because even if something really goofy happens, you can walk in and say, my ballot's been delayed or lost by the Postal Service. It's sort of like a provisional golf shot, right? In case this one's

out of bounds, this is my shot. And so, but I don't want people to lose confidence in voting by mail, And I think that's really where they want Democrats to land. I think they would love for Democrats to be freaked out and saying, this is a coup. It's not going to work. Democrats aren't fighting hard enough. This can't be done, right? They want to kill fight. I think that is the best, I don't say best because it's evil.

But I think the smartest strategy, if you don't care about the country and all you want to do is win, is to get people to believe that this simply cannot be done and that it is inevitable that this person will seize power. And so we might as well not vote and just yell at each other online about how you're not doing enough. No, you're not doing enough. Your strategy sucks. And so we all got to kind of focus on the task at hand, which is at this point, it's just exclusively vote getting. Let's just get the votes. Get out and hustle every day.

One time a guy said to me, he goes, in a very tight race, very old hand in politics, a very tight race. You said, you need to go out there and engineer the possibilities every day. So people need to get out there and keep that in mind that a lot of the things they're hearing, yes, male maybe they may try to play screw around with it mentally, but the system's going to work. And there's an accountability chain with absentee ballot mail and early voting mail that's in some ways less amenable to shenanigans than the same day voting. So get your ballot, get it early, get on out. How do you work with Rand Paul?

Oh, this question is for me, isn't it? Yeah, it's not for Rick. It's like, Rick, how do you work with Rand Paul? Not anymore is the answer. How do you work with someone whose whole goal is to destroy the government? On narrow issues, we've done some things on the 1033 program, which is the DOD program that transfers excess military equipment to police departments and pellegrants for prisoners. And so narrow criminal justice issues, I can find a way to work together. But I think the short version of how do I work with Rand Paul is through my staff.

Right. On that note, we'll wrap up this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking with smart folks from The Daily Beast and beyond from me, culture, politics, and science, who will help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. We're just getting started and don't want you to miss an episode. If you'd like to follow us on Twitter, I'm Molly Jongfest and he's the Rick Wilson. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you again on the next episode.

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