The Daily Beast Podcast - Will Biden Ever Get Off His Ass to Save Democracy?

Episode Date: May 30, 2021

It’s “the most serious threat to the core underlying principles of American democracy since at least the Civil War.” And Joe Biden is barely doing a thing to stop it. “We are seeing a threat to the integrity of the 2022 and 2024 elections—and the ability of Americans to cast a vote—that is unfolding across multiple dimensions,” The Atlantic’s Ron Brownstein tells Molly Jong-Fast on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. “Amid all of this, you've heard very, very little from Biden presenting this as a threat to democracy.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to another special bonus edition of the new abnormal. And we thank you so much for being here. Today we have a really, really special guest with Ronald Brownstein. If you don't know him, he's a two-time Pulitzer finalist, a senior editor at the Atlantic, a CNN political analyst and author of The New York Times bestseller, Rock Me on the Water. And today he's going to talk to us about why the Biden administration should be taking the threats to democracy more seriously. Welcome back to the new abnormal, Ron Brownstein. Molly, thank you for having me. Good morning.

fact that you're worried makes me really fucking worried. I'm worried. Why are you worried? I think lots of people are worried. I mean, we read the occasional essay of concern. I went out and talked to really the heads of a lot of the civil rights and voting rights groups that are working on these issues. And they are worried on two fronts.

I mean, they're worried about the magnitude of what's unfolding in the red states. And they are worried about the way that the Biden White House and the Senate Democratic leadership are responding to it. And there is a concern that they, There is a gap that is widening between the magnitude of the threat and the intensity of the response. Can you explain a little bit more specifically what that means? I think there is a widespread sense among people who work in this space, whether it is people who study democracy, whether people who do civil rights, people who have worked on voting rights, people who have worked on political reform. For example, someone like Fred Wertheimer, who is the former head of common cause, has been doing this for 50 years, 50, 50, 5-0 years.

that what we are experiencing since the election is the most serious threat to the core underlying principles of American democracy since at least the civil war, if not ever. You know, that we are seeing a threat to the integrity of the 2022 and 2024 elections and the ability of Americans to cast a vote that is unfolding across multiple dimensions. I mean, the most obvious has been the legislation passed in states like Georgia and Iowa and Florida, and soon coming in Texas, restricting the right to vote in various ways, rolling back access to the ballot. But there are also provisions in many of these laws

that are increasing the authority of statewide officials, Republicans, to override decisions by local officials, primarily Democrats, about access to the ballot or even potentially counting of the ballots. And then at the same time, we have seen moves by kind of Trump supporting in some case conspiracy theorists to run for Secretary of State and assume control over, you know, how the ballots will be counted and how the rules would be run in 2024. There are bills in the

states that would restrict the ability of state courts even to oversee and intervene. And obviously, with the resistance to the January 6th Commission among Republicans in Washington, the refusal of Republicans in the House to sanction Marjorie Taylor Green, there are all sorts of signs that a Republican-controlled House or Senate or both might refuse to certify even obvious Democratic victories in future elections if there's any kind of, you know, a complaint raised on the right. And, you know, amid all of this, you've heard very, very little from Biden presenting this as a threat to democracy. And the prospects for comprehensive reform in the Senate are at the moment stalled because largely of the objections of Senator Joe Manchin, who, A, doesn't want to do the bill

itself that passed the House, and B, continues to say he doesn't want to reform the filibuster in order to make that possible. Not great. Yeah, not great. Look, I get you love the one you're with, and Joe Manchin is the one we're with. I mean, I know Joe Manchin seems not interested in voting rights, but can you explain why? He's in an overwhelmingly white, rural, you know, blue-collar state where he does not see this as an immediate issue, first of all. I mean, there really isn't much minority or youth vote in the state to suppress. Second, people in the groups that I've talked to who have spoken to people in his orbit say he refuses to accept or acknowledge that Republicans are making a systematic effort to put in place the power to undermine the democracy or undermine

the election in 2024. And third, and this may be the most important, you know, he's in a state that probably doesn't want Democrats to be in control of Congress and certainly not liberal Democrats. And he believes that when things are framed in a starkly partisan manner, it is very difficult for him. So, you know, we've got this kabuki dance going on pretty much every subject where the White House and Democrats feel that they have to go through the effort of trying to reach a bipartisan deal with Republicans, at least long, you know, great if they can do it in a way that satisfies what they need, but at the least, they have to do it long enough at Mansion and maybe a few others feel that they can go back to their voters and say, look, we tried. What were we supposed to do? Just let the

issue die. You know, and on infrastructure, there's a fair amount of optimism that if that's the point that is reached at the end, he will be there because pouring concrete is popular in West Virginia. You know, I mean, there's really no, you know, no negative to building bridges and expanding broadband, but no one really knows if he would be there in the end on on voting rights. And And there is not much of a conversation to be had there because it is highly unlikely that there are 10 Senate Republicans for anything meaningful on voting rights. Can you even think of, I can think of three Senate Republicans who will act sanely. I'm not sure what it would be. Here's the issue on voting rights, right?

So, you know, as your listeners and you know, the House has passed a comprehensive sweeping bill called HR1. It would establish a nationwide floor of access to the ballot. It would guarantee a certain amount of days of early voting. It would guarantee everyone in the country access to on-demand absentee voting without cause. It would guarantee automatic voter registration and same-day voter registration and online voter registration. It would also do a lot of other things. It would reform the campaign finance system. It would require more disclosure of dark money.

It would take two different measures to undermine gerrymandering. One, it would require states to establish independent commissions, to redraw its districts. And because that would not go into effect, it's not really possible. stand that up in time for this one. It would also establish a nationwide set of standards for controlling redistricting that would inhibit, and probably not eliminate, but inhibit the ability of Republican control legislatures to gerrymander. Every Senate Democrat has endorsed that bill as well, except for Joe Manchin, right? Even Kristen Sinema, who is reluctant to change the filibuster, is on that bill. You know, I talk to a senior Democrat who is very familiar with thinking in the

White House, and they are very, very pessimistic that there is any pathway to get Manchin to endorse and vote for, much less change the filibuster to push through anything like that. The best that might be achieved, they say, is a resurrection of the Voting Rights Act, which Manchin has endorsed after the Supreme Court in 2013 essentially eviscerated its provisions requiring federal preclearance of voting rules in states with a history of discrimination. Manchin is proposed to restore that and extend it nationwide, which may or may not stand Supreme Court review, but at best, this official said to me, the best that might be hoped is that Manchin would accept a some version of the nationwide voting rights floor in H.R. 1 as part of that. Now, if you did that, would any Senate Republican vote for that?

I'm not sure. And certainly not 10. So either way, he is. eventually going to have to face the choice of whether he and cinema, in this case, are willing to exempt, create what, you know, our friend John Alter calls the democracy exemption from the filibuster for something guaranteeing nationwide voting rights. But really, as I say in my story in the Atlantic this week, no one really knows whether he will get to that point or the best pathway to get him to that point. And there are very different views, I think, between the White House and the groups about what that might be. Yeah, I'm worried. I mean, this sounds very worrying. I think one of the things that Biden world is sort of leaving on the table, and since you have some insight into this,

I'm curious to know what you think. Because they don't leak and because they don't give out information the way Trump world does, aren't you worried that they're sort of not able to control their coverage the same way? I think they have a genuinely different analysis. than most of your listeners or most elected officials or most groups in the Democratic orbit. And it is a nuanced view of what is happening and a different kind of conclusion about how they should respond. And I think I gave the most detail in my story about their thinking about this. And I've actually even gotten a little more detail since the story appeared on Thursday. So let me kind of just break it down.

The White House people and the people familiar with kind of what, you know, their calculations are, look at this in two distinct buckets. Bucket A is how much electoral impact will these voter suppression laws have in 22 and 2024? They view them as offensive, obviously, from a civil rights and equity position. But by and large, they are much more sanguine than most Democrats about their ability to overcome these laws. I mean, you know. Is that right? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, they said, look, the rules changed constantly in 2022. Sorry, in 2020, and we adjusted and we turned out our voters and we got 81 million votes. Now, there are a lot of people who say that they are being overconfident or whistling past the graveyard. The quote that, you know, someone said to me, very senior said to me, you tell us the rules and we'll figure it out.

So from a purely electoral point of view, they do not believe Republicans are gaining as much advantage in terms of winning elections from these laws as many Democrats and allied groups fear. Okay. Do you think that's true? Whether that's right or wrong, look, there is a debate. My view is that we're talking about states in Arizona and Georgia in particular that are right on the bubble. So they may be overestimating the potential magnitude of even small changes in the playing field. Okay. But they do take a distinct view between the electoral impact of these laws and the question of whether

Republicans are positioning themselves to try to subvert an obvious Democratic win. And they do see that as a threat. They see a real threat gathering that Republicans in 2024 certainly, and maybe a has a test run in 2022 in these states will refuse to certify even pretty obvious Democratic victories. Okay. Yeah. Like that's the 911 in my mind. That is a 911.

But their analysis of how to respond to that is, I think, again, very different from what most groups believe. I think there is a strong belief among the civil rights and voting rights group, although not universal, as I'll say, that Biden or at least someone else. with a big platform in the administration. The vice president, the attorney general, needs to be calling out what's happening in the states as a genuine five-alarm threat to democracy, because that's how you create the public pressure to do something to defend the democracy. They don't really see it that way. They argue, and this again is an exact quote from a very senior official, that the best chance

to prevent Republicans from undermining the 2024 election is to hold the House and the Senate. And the best way to hold the House and the Senate is for Biden to deliver what he ran on. And part of what he ran on is lowering the temperature in politics and working with Republicans wherever possible to get his agenda passed. And therefore, it's more important to do that than to call out what's happening in stark terms. Now, I mean, look, I mean, that's their story and they're sticking to it. Doesn't that seem insane to you? It is an enormous bet. People that I talk to give the White House some rope because, Molly, I think there's a universal agreement that no one knows the answer about what would get Mansion and Cinema and a couple others in the place where they are willing

to establish a nationwide standard of voting rights without Republicans voting for it. In other words, breaking the filibuster in some way to do this. No one is confident they know how to do that. And as a result, you know, more than one person said to me, I am willing to cut them some slack about not raising the alarm if they believe that doing this quietly actually gives them a better chance of getting mansion on board. Now, another administration official said to me, after my story came out, that the more we bang the alarm, the less likely it is that we get mansion in the end because of what we talked about before. This becomes a clear blue, red battle line and that makes it harder for him. Now look, that may be just self-justification for what

they want to do anyway. I mean, they are positioning Biden, I think, more broadly as a kind of Eisenhower-esque figure who is somewhat above politics and kind of unifies the nation. I mean, I think that is their broader goal. They want him to be identified. You see this across the board. I mean, he is identified with kitchen table issues. Shots in the arm, checks in the pocket, shovels in the ground. You know, he is not fundamentally out there on the point on not only voting rights, but gun rights and LGBT rights and immigration and abortion. I mean, people are complaining that he's not talking about these severe abortion laws that are going forward in many of the red states. I mean, across the board, they've made a decision, a kind of two-fold decision, that at least in the way he spends

his time in public, it is more non-partisan than partisan, and it is heavily tilted, toward kitchen table economic concerns. And so he may never be the guy who calls out what is happening in the red states. But there are other options, you know. I mean, there is a vice president who is sort of looking for something to do. There is an attorney general who could be a very powerful spokesperson of this. There's even Vinita Gupta, you know, who finally got confirmed as the associate attorney general. And, you know, is really one of the country's leading experts on kind of what's happening in terms of voting rights.

You know, no one's in Texas today from the administration saying that what the Texas legislature is about to unveil in the last, what, you know, 72 hours of their session is a threat to the voting rights of Americans. I mean, they are making a conscious choice to downplay this. And, you know, their argument is that gives them a better chance on the inside game, but they are clearly not conditioning the public or raising enough awareness in the public of how great a threat to democracy is gathering in the view of basically. basically everyone who worked on this stuff. Yeah, that doesn't sound good to me. It feels like we're making all the same mistakes of Obama, right? Like, that there's somehow people are going to do the right thing. Actually, I got very upset yesterday because I was listening to Michael Bennett

say that Republicans needed to find their conscience. Like, what is happening? Like, conscience, has anyone seen the brand? I mean, the brand is not conscience? It's a little worrying. We don't have a language in American politics to describe what is happening to a big piece of the Republican Party. Yes, exactly. In a big portion of both the Republican coalition and the Republican elected officials, you know, what I believe is that fear of demographic eclipse is eroding the commitment to democracy.

I think that is unmistakable. That essentially they are saying that if we have to live in a country in which this diverse, more secular, liberal urban Democratic coalition is winning elections, we would rather change the rules of elections than live in that country. It's nuts. It's unmistakable. I mean, in polling, you know, half of Republicans agree with strongly anti-democratic sentiments. AEI had polling, which is a conservative think tank recently. We saw in the new PRRI polling that a quarter of Republican voters essentially agree with the Q&ON conspiracy theory. And it's hard for these senators

who kind of look across the aisle. And there's Joe, who I've been, you know, who I've been, you know, working with for years. It's hard to see them, you know, is he a threat to democracy or the same thing in the House? But, you know, two-thirds of House Republicans voted to overturn the election. You know, within the White House,

even though they're relatively less concerned about the immediate electoral impact of what's happening, they are genuinely concerned that a Republican House or Senate or both would try to install a Republican slate from a state in 2024 that Biden clearly won by any, you know, kind of rational analysis of the results. And we're used to like, okay, you know, Republicans come in, tax rates go down, regulation go down, Democrats go in, there's, you know, EPA is strengthened and there are higher tax, marginal tax rates on people at the top. We don't really have kind of a

a language or a tradition in this country for the idea that if Republicans win in 2024 or even in 2022, they may change the rules in a way that our democracy will never look the same. Yeah. We have not faced that level of existential threat to the underlying democracy. And there are very few people, you know, as Rashad Robinson of color change said to me, you know, there are very few people in any institution that are really truly grappling with the magnitude of this. I mean, the business community.

I mean, the business community is ambivalent. They like when Republicans are in charge because less taxes, less regulation. Are they willing to really go to the mat to say, we have to defend democracy if it continues to erode? The media isn't doing a great job of explaining what's happening. If you talk to the people who study the way democracies die, you know, they would say the Republican Party is evolving into something like what you see in Hungary or Turkey or Poland, a party that wants to use the tools. of democracy to obtain power, but then change the rules to keep power. And I don't think anyone is fully grappling with that. And Biden and the Biden administration so far has made the decision not really to call it out for what it is, which would probably push the country more to deal with the implications of what's happening. Yeah, I don't understand why that's not happening. It goes back to their fundamental belief, you know, that A, the electoral threat isn't as great

as many say, but be more important that the way to stop Republicans from subverting an election is to hold the House in the Senate, and the way to do that is to deliver on what Biden promised, and however paradoxical it sounds, part of the way to do that is to show he's trying to work with Republicans, even as, you know, a growing share of the party is showing that it's willing to abandon democracy. You know, as I say in my story, there is an understandable fear that he is normalizing Republicans, even as they are radicalized. And, you know, look, can I have one other thing? It is a big question.

There's roughly a quarter of the Republican Party electorate. And probably, if you look at the vote in the House on the January 6th Commission, maybe, you know, a fifth of the Republican elected officials who are deeply uneasy with everything that is happening since January 6th, with this turn toward extremism, the refusal to sanctioned Marjorie Taylor Green, the turn away from democracy. But so far, they've not shown they're willing to do anything about it. I mean, they're willing to give their votes and their support to people who may agree with them on tax rates, but are turning away from small D democracy in a fundamental way. And whether that continues, I think it's just a critical question for the next several years in American politics.

Because if the Republicans who are uneasy with being forced into a coalition with the proud boys in QAnon, basically say, enough, I'm not voting for this anymore until you push out, you know, know, until you expunge this extremist wing, that's a very different structure of American politics. But so far... None of them have done it, right? It's not happening. And we'll see whether it happens in 2022. I don't know if it will. And maybe 2022 isn't the best test because the electorate is smaller. But certainly in 2024, there is a possibility that some share of voters who normally vote Republican will say, this is a party, I cannot turn over the country to a party that won't separate

itself from extremism and that has shown itself willing to undermine democracy, if that's what it takes to maintain power. But they might not. They might just stick with it. And look, this is an ongoing crisis. I mean, the thought that when Trump left, you know, however willingly, that it would recede, you know, was woefully mistaken. I wrote the Friday before the election in the Atlantic that I thought the 2020s could be the most dangerous decade for America since the 1850s. And I feel that much more now than I did then. Yeah. I mean, this seems not great.

It isn't. And there isn't a clear strategy on the part of democracy, small D supporters to deal with this threat, as I said. And that extends way beyond Biden, the White House and Democratic leadership. It should not be the burden of a single party to defend democracy in the U.S. And it probably isn't possible for a single party to defend democracy in the U.S. I mean, there has to be a broader coalition of interests in the U.S. society that are willing to act to defend what should not really require a lot of, you know, a lot of decision making to defend our fundamental democratic principles. And look, as several people

said to me, it's not just what's happening in the state laws or in these secretary of state races. I mean, there's a big obligation for the platforms for Facebook and others to kind of deal with the radicalization that's occurring online that is fueling a lot of this. I mean, this is, there needs to be some kind of, you know, I hate to use the word from the 1930s, but popular front in defense democracy that simply doesn't exist. Now, whether it can exist without Biden really banging the gong and calling on Americans to create it, I don't know. I mean, the White House, I'm sure would argue that if it is identified with him, it's less likely to happen because it would become more partisan. And again, they may be right. They may be just justifying what

they want to do anyway. But I do think it's fair to say that, the obligation can't only fall on him and Chuck Schumer. The democracy itself is facing a kind of threat that is really unique in American history. And there are really no institutions that are fully stepping up in response. I'm so stressed out. You didn't think you were going to be feeling this way after Trump was defeated. But, you know, Trump is, look, Trump, I think from the beginning was as much symptom as cause. I mean, he coalesce things, he sharpened them.

But the fact is that a substantial portion, a minority, but a majority in many states of white America is basically open to the idea that democracy is dispensable, if that's what it takes to preserve power for, you know, essentially a white Christian coalition. And when Trump says, as he did in Georgia after the election, this is our America. and they are trying to take it away from us through stealing. He is pushing at an open door. It's not like he's like the most persuasive law professor ever. He is telling people what they want to believe that their country is being taken away from them. Even with Trump bugling as loud as he did,

the share of the vote cast by whites without a college degree, according to the census, fell below 40% for the first time ever in 2020. The diverse share of the electorate grew. And that is the trajectory that we're on. I mean, non-college whites, Christian whites, evangelical whites, the core of the Trump coalition, they are all inexorably shrinking. But, you know, that might make them even more radicalized and more open to a kind of Trumpian message of kind

of racial nationalism and quasi-authoritarianism. And so it is going to be a very difficult decade for the country. But to get through it, you know, whichever side is running things, we need a broader coalition than just a few Democrats saying, hey, the democracy is at risk and maybe it's something we ought to protect. Yeah, I'm really scared. Ron Brownstein, thank you so much for coming on. You are just a national treasure. I'm so happy that you exist in this world.

Well, thank you. I'm happy to live in this world. We are at a serious moment in the country's history, and people have to see it that way. So thanks for giving me a chance to talk about it. Oh, thank you for coming on. Thank you. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the New Abnormal from The Daily Beast.

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