The New Yorker Radio Hour - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Elizabeth Warren on the State of Our Democracy

Episode Date: October 16, 2020

At the 2020 New Yorker Festival, earlier this month, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Elizabeth Warren joined Andrew Marantz to talk about the Presidential race, and how Joe Biden should lead if he wins the election. Plus, Dexter Filkins on the fierce electoral battle taking place in Florida, the largest of the swing states. With a large elderly-voter population and many distinct Latino communities, the state is demographically unique. Filkins spoke with the former sSenator Bill Nelson and others, including The New Yorker’s Stephania Taladrid, who has been reporting on the Latino vote in different states.  New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Earlier this month, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Elizabeth Warren joined us for the annual New Yorker Festival.

It was for reasons you know only too well, a virtual festival. And with the 2020 election just weeks away, the state of American democracy was and is on every single. everybody's mind. Here's Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaking with Andrew Morrance of the New Yorker. I'm just going to get right to it. This isn't, you know, a time for small talk. This is a pretty perilous moment in our history. So I think we should just start, start right with it.

We obviously have a health crisis and economic crisis as a result of that, a reckoning over racial justice in this country. And on top of all that, we have a democratic legitimacy crisis. When we've come this far in terms of breaking of norms and seeing all these abnormal signs that our democracy is in peril and that this administration seems to have authoritarian impulses, what are you looking for as more red flags as we move toward this election? What are you looking for in the coming weeks that will tell you that we have really crossed an irreversible line? And what can you both do as members of Congress to try to safeguard what we have left of our democracy? I guess, Senator, we can start with you on this. Well, I don't think it's about the red lines in the next 24 days. How long have we got now?

We know that Donald Trump's going to do every single thing possible to steal this election, to hang on to power, to deny its legitimacy. There's not any surprise coming in that sense. There may be particular details, but come on. We know this man by now. He has told us who he is. So for me, it's about what are we doing about it and doing about it now? And that is we've got to get people out to vote.

Our big chance here is November 3rd. We can't afford to beat Donald Trump. by a little bit, we got to beat Donald Trump by a huge amount. And that's how we reassert the strength of democracy. Alex, what do you think? Yeah, I completely agree. I'm not looking for any red flags because he's already thrown out plenty. One of the most extremely troubling things that the president has done recently is really signaling that he will not clearly commit to a peaceful transition of power. And so the thing that we have to do, our first line of defense, is absolutely to overwhelm at the polls and to overwhelm at the polls in every way possible, to overwhelm in early voting, early in-person

voting, mail-in voting, and overwhelming on day of election results. Right. And so is there like a break glass in case of emergency plan? If you start to see a state of emergency being called in a swing state and people getting shut out from polling places or some massive irregularity, what are you going to do? Do you go to the well of the Senate and have a sit-in? Like, what is your plan? And also, what is our plan as citizens? Do we show up somewhere in March? Do we start stockpiling food? Like, what do we start doing? Well, I think one of the things that's extremely important is that we have to remember that in our democracy, and yes, I'm going to use the word democracy, contrary to Senator Mike Lee, we, the people have power. We always have power. And I think it's extremely important that people be ready for mass civil demonstration, non- violent, of course, but we have to make sure that we have the demonstration on the scale of the Women's March in 2017, even larger than that, or on the scale of everything that we saw this year. There need to be immediate, political, popular, and social consequences for leadership that refuses to adhere to the rule of law. And we've seen this administration scale back on very disturbing developments due to public backlash and due to popular support or lack of or lack

thereof. And so I do think it's still important for people to understand that if Donald Trump refuses to acknowledge the results of this election, that we exercise our First Amendment rights. And then for us as elected leaders, as elected officials, depending on those developments, there are provisions in the Constitution and making sure that whether we address this in the House or that we also turn out for critical House seats so that we win over state delegations, that we make sure that we have all the pieces in play for every eventuality. Let's say Joe Biden gets in cleanly, peacefully. Let's say Democrats take the House, Biden administration, Democratic House, and a Democratic Senate.

right so that's that's the hypothetical in that world you now hear people talking in this especially this post rbg moment you you hear people talking about a whole wish list of stuff you hear people saying expanding the courts term limits for justices getting rid of the filibuster national popular vote reinstating the voting rights act uh statehood for dc puerto rico maybe even guam is anything on this list something that you're not down with? Are you okay with all those things? And what do you prioritize and how do you get there under a Biden administration and a Democratic Congress? Well, first, right off the boat, I will say that I am not supportive of blanket statehood for Puerto Rico. I've actually introduced a bill with media Velasquez for a self-determination process.

and one that is binding, just, and not influenced by outside interests, the issue of D.C. statehood and Puerto Rico statehood are two very, very different issues. Puerto Rico was a colony and is a colony, and it's a spoil of war. And the United States has been imperial force in that colonial dynamic. And so the way we approach colonized entities is a process of self-determination and decolonization. D.C. statehood is an issue of just criminal disenfranchisement. And so that's one distinction that I would put in there. Joe Biden is a fan of Puerto Rico statehood. That's one small difference. Well, it's a big difference to Puerto Ricans, but it is a difference that we have. But the rest of the agenda, I'm game for us to talk about. In terms of priorities, I think we need to

I think it's important for us to really examine the structural power. And one, I mean, I'm not in this body. So maybe I'm speaking out of turn. This is more Elizabeth's turf. But she has led on discussions of the filibuster. And I think we really need to be examining these tools that allow structural imbalances of power that fuel minority rule to be really, really examined and see if they're actually what is best for our country on a structural democratic integrity level.

I ran for president on changing the filibuster. I think that's an important part of what we have to do. But think about it this way. When we're talking about the list, I don't want to dismiss the importance of we're going to take over, I hope. And this COVID crisis, at least on the current trajectory, is still going to be a serious problem. It is powerfully important that we get the COVID crisis under control

and be able to reopen the economy. It is also important that we not walk past the importance of racial justice and addressing this issue. And every chance I get, I want to be sure that we elevate this and we make sure it stays a continuing part of our conversation. Yeah. on this issue of bipartisanship, I think people are very confused in this moment because on the one hand, it seems clearer and clearer that there isn't always a good faith negotiating partner on the other side of the aisle when it comes to so many of these issues. There aren't two sides to them, and yet they are presented as if they have two sides. Does this mean that there is no such thing as bipartisanship? You still hear people talking, the fever will break. One day, our friends on the other side of the aisle will return to us. They'll have an epiphany. You often hear the Democratic nominee talking in these ways, and it sounds to some people just so outmoded.

I mean, does that strike you as hollow, or what can we do with bipartisanship as a concept? Look, my view on this right now is we need to hold people accountable. And the Republican senators, I'll speak to the side of the House that I'm on, the Republican senators have enabled Donald Trump. when Donald Trump says he just may not follow the results of the election unless he gets elected, where have they been? When Donald Trump plays footsie with Russia, where have they been? When Donald Trump says he is going to try to overturn the affordable care act, but he has this secret magic health plan that no one knows what it is.

Where have they been? When Donald Trump calls people in Richmond who are white supremacists, fine people, and when he refuses at the first presidential debate to denounce white supremacy, where have they been? We don't start this by saying, oh, it's all about bipartisan and you get to do half of what you want and we get to do half of what we want. No, this is about responsibility. You want to be a United States senator.

You have to be willing to speak up and stand up for the Constitution of the United States for our democracy and for the health and safety, not just of a handful of people, but the health and safety of all Americans. That's where we start. And this election, November 3rd, is going to be about exactly that. voters need to hold their senators accountable for what they've done. Yeah, I think this is an area where just there's also just a huge generational shift in our politics. Bipartisanship to young people seems like this kind of vintage fantasy.

Like it seems like people are yearning for this time that I've never lived through. But for young people, bipartisanship got us the Iraq war. By partisanship got us endless war. Bypartisanship got us bank bailouts. And we very rarely see the results of bipartisanship yielding in racial justice, yielding in economic justice for working families, yielding in improvements to health care. And in fact, the things that have yielded those things have been done. Democratic majorities. I hope one day we can get to a point where our democracy is much more but what we are seeing right now is that when the Republican Party is given the keys to any governing body, it will yield an abuse of power, fealty to Trump or any other authoritarian that would try to assume the highest office of the land. And, you know, I think that what we really need to examine perhaps is common ground on an issue-to-issue basis. This is not to say that I've never worked with a Republican in my life. There are some areas where we've been able to reach out with

more libertarian elements of the Republican Party. There are some areas, but I don't necessarily think bipartisanship for bipartisanship's sake is a virtue. But just because some things bipartisan doesn't mean that it's good or that it's good for you. Thank you both so much. This is great. Thank you. That's Congresswoman Alexandria Acacio-Cortez and Senator Elizabeth Warren, speaking at the New Yorker Festival this month with staff writer Andrew Morantz. Dexter Filkins joins us in a moment. You're listening to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick and this is the New Yorker Radio Hour. We're going to take a look now at the essential battleground state of Florida. With 29 electoral votes, it's the largest of the swing states and by some analyses, Florida is the key to the whole presidential race.

Florida is like America. It's big, diverse, and idiosyncratic. It's also voted with the winner of every presidential election, except for two since 1936. Staff writer Dexter Filkins is a Florida native and he's been reporting on the electoral battle that's taking place there. In 2016, Donald Trump won the state by just over 100,000 votes. The elections in Florida are almost always won by a narrow margin. and the state has a long history of voting problems and voter suppression. This year in Florida, there have been a number of major shifts in the electorate which could shape the outcome.

Demographic changes, a big increase in mail-in voting, and a fight over the voting rights of felons. Dexter has talked with a lot of people about what those changes mean and how they may determine the winner of the state's electoral vote. First up here is the longtime U.S. Senator Bill Nelson, a Democrat, who lost his bid for re-election in two. 2018. Okay. Senator Nelson, we've seen over the years that the margins in statewide races in Florida, including often the races for the presidency, are often so narrow. What makes Florida so complicated to win? Well, Florida is like the country because the country has moved to Florida. You think about it. South Florida is particularly in Miami-Dade County Hispanic. Move on up into Palm Beach County, and you've got the northeast has moved there.

Go over to the southwest coast, Sarasota on down to Naples. You've got the Midwest of the U.S. has moved there. Go up to North Florida, and they talk with a very flat. accent as the old South. And by the way, I found that as an elected official over 40-plus years, that my accent could actually change which part of Florida I was in. In terms of demographics, the demographics of Florida, who's Biden strong with? And where is Trump strong? And if you look the two candidates, who are they failing to capture in Florida? Well, there are two significant changes that have occurred, which is those 65 age and older. And this is a demographic that has

traditionally been going to Republicans. But that demographic has changed for Joe. And I believe that it probably is because of the underscoring of the coronavirus, the serious nature of how this has been botched by the current administration. And so that's one component of the elector. The other one that's changing is that we don't know yet, but it appears that younger people are going to vote in much larger percentages. And if that's the case, that's a vote that should go to Joe instead of to the incumbent president. If you were running Joe Biden's campaign right now, what would you be doing? What would you be focused on in Florida?

Well, the coalition that will elect Joe this year in Florida will be strong out of the urban counties. and of course because Joe Biden is a political moderate, he will have a lot better chance at swing counties across the middle section, drive out a big vote in South Florida, in the three big counties there, and then make in roads into North Florida with the African-American community, and neutralize the huge Republican vote that will surround in the more rural counties surrounding Jacksonville. When you look ahead to Election Day, we're in the middle of a pandemic.

What's it going to look like? For the first time ever by Election Day, at least half of the electorate will already have voted, voted by mail or early vote. what's going to happen uniquely in Florida because 22 days out from the election, the mail-in ballots are being processed to double-check the names, the signatures, against the signature on file, so that presumably all of those mail-in ballots are ready

to go ahead and put in the machine at 7 p.m. on election night. And so you will not only get the processing of the day of the election ballots, but the ballots that have been already cast previously. And it could be that you have the early results tilting to Biden, and then it's starting to narrow as the evening goes into the next day. But there's a lot that can go wrong on election day in Florida. Ion Sancho is a retired election supervisor from Leon County, which includes Florida's capital, Tallahassee.

He's been very active in trying to maintain the integrity of the electoral process. Ion, it seems that the driving, I mean, it's the kind of the driving premise of the Republican playbook is lower turnout. Like lower turnout elects Republicans, higher turnouts, elect Democrats. Can you talk about that a little bit? Unlike the Republican legislatures across the board who are not approving vote-by-mail drop boxes, the Florida legislature, they were planning on utilizing vote-by-mail as the primary method to harvest Republican votes. So they went ahead and passed a law saying that every early voting site in the state had to have a vote-by-mail drop box. That was before President Trump changed the playbook on them.

and decided to attack vote by mail, really threatening a number of elected officials' campaigns who were Republican here in the state. And they squawked about it mightily and got Trump to sort of give Florida a pass. One of the things that people have talked about is with this kind of deluge of mail-in ballots that we're going to have, is that you're going to have lots of signatures

that will be challenged will come under challenge. Are you worried that that process could get out of control? Yes, I am. Yes, I am, because as I witnessed personally in the 2000 election, when we were doing the canvassing of the signatures of the voters, party representatives would be in the canvassing room, and depending upon the political affiliation of the voter, would lodge a challenge.

which would immediately slow the process down. That's the worrisome point. I'm hoping that we can have a number of representatives of the media at the various canvassing boards, which often does not occur. And Florida has an open counting process. As soon as the polls close or the last voter has voted, the citizens are allowed to be in that polling precinct,

and actually watch what the staff is doing in terms of closing it down, printing out the final results. All those eyes on the process will help the process be better. Basically, from my point of view, secrecy only helps two categories of individuals, those who are corrupt and those who are inept. One issue which came up repeatedly in my reporting on Florida is Amendment 4, which was intended to be the largest enfranchisement of voters since 1971. Amendment 4 was approved by Florida's voters in 2018 and said that all but the most violent felons, once they had served their sentences, had the right to vote. That could have meant nearly 800,000 new voters in Florida this November. But then the Republican-controlled legislature stepped in and passed a law dictating that ex-felons could vote only if they first paid all the fines, restitution, and fees imposed at their sentencing.

Victor, hey! Betty, Hey, how you doing? Good. It's great to see you kind of in person. Yeah, kind of. Betty Riddle is one of those former felons. She grew up in a segregated neighborhood in Sarasota, Florida. At a young age, she became addicted to crack cocaine and was convicted of five felonies.

But then she turned her life around. And today she works for the Sarasota County Public Defender's Office. You were able to vote because of the passage of Amendment 4 to the Florida Constitution, which was approved by, I think, 60% of Florida's voters. What was your reaction when that passed? How did you feel? When I first heard it, I was like the first one in my office to walk down to register

to vote. So it was amazing. Me and my family celebrated, you know. It was a victory. I mean, I'm just curious, but did you feel like having been to prison that it was over? I was free. I was free from the change. I had no change because you don't know when you become a convicted felon being released from prison, you finish one sentence and start another one.

So, you know, that becomes a real lifestyle. You never think about voting because you know you're not entitled until that day came. You cast your first ballot. The Florida legislature voted to require that all convicted felons, even after they've served their sentences, have to pay all their fines, restitution, and fees that were imposed at the time in their sentencing. And that, as you know, that's effectively taken, you know, several hundred thousand potential voters are not going to be able to vote now.

what do you make about law? First of all, I was really upset because at the beginning, I knew it was a poll tactic. I already knew it wasn't about court costs or fines because when they did impose that on us, they knew that it would affect all the low-income people, and they knew that we couldn't afford to pay that before this election. They knew that. They didn't want to say it, but that's pretty much what it is. We're paying to vote. No one else is paying court costs and fines to vote.

But we as felonies, we have to pay to vote. That's what we're doing. I never thought it was about the money. I always believed in my heart that it was about stopping us from voting. Always. Why don't they want you to vote? Okay. I think they passed a law to keep us from voting Democrat.

Have you been in touch with other people who were in prison or convicted of felonies who are also? planning to vote or having problems or like what what's what are people saying yes like every Saturday I join a couple of of organizations that I go up from 12 to 4 and I go do to do service asking people have their registered to vote due to their old court costs and fines and a lot of them gave up after that that bill passed last year a lot of them gave up because they didn't want to challenge politics they just say we're not they're going to win and you know I lost a lot of friends and people just returning from prison. I lost a lot of them after that because I had them when we first, it first passed. So you know, lately I've been crying out to the young,

young generations to stand in our behalf of the ones that really can't afford to vote and stand for us and vote. I've been reaching out to a lot of young kids through my grandkids. And I think that I think that we have a job. chance of reaching more people between now and a day to vote. I really do. And that's what I'm going to do. Latino voters are going to be 17% of the electorate in Florida on November 3rd and therefore a potentially decisive group in determining the outcome. I called my colleague Stefania Taled who has been looking at the complexities of Latino politics in Florida. And Steph, I know we can't talk about

the Latino vote in Florida as anything remotely monolithic. But how decisive is it? The way you win Florida is by winning the Latino vote. And I know the media pays no service to this just because we, we ourselves call it the Latino vote. But what does that mean? And in Florida, I think there's been a lot of focus on Cuban Americans because, you know, they have a great deal of political power in the state. But there's a huge diaspora of Puerto Ricans and even Ecuadorians, Nicaraguans, Mexicans, Peruvians. And so actually, that's something that can benefit Biden because I think it's fair to say that the Cuban-American vote is largely lost to Trump at this point. But that's not the case among Puerto Ricans and some of the other diaspora, as that I mentioned. That's really, you know, Biden, Biden has an opportunity among those communities.

communities to really improve his standing among Latinos here. So, so Steph, what's, what's Biden doing to, to kind of get the support of the Latin community and whether that's Cuban or Puerto Rican or Brazilian or, or Argentine or Ecuador?

And what, what's, what's he doing? So, yeah, I mean, a lot of it is TV and radio, too.

I mean, you turn on the radio here, at least in Miami, and, and chances are you will come across a Biden. an ad. Most of them are in Spanish, of course. But it's not just about the ads. They have a pretty robust campaign apparatus here, and they're holding events pretty much, you know, every day, just for the vice presidential debate. They had a drive-in watch party. They're also holding

caravans. They call them caravans with Biden. And so, again, going back to this idea of how important their diasporas are, you have Cubanos con Biden holding the caravanas. You have Puerto Ricans, Borikas combined in holding the caravanas. And these are just long, long caravans of anywhere between hundreds to a thousand cars driving around the city, just showing their support for the candidate. You mentioned the Biden ads. And I'm just wondering, are they good? Yeah. I mean, the ads are really, really good.

And as you know, the Republican Party has really focused on the Red Scare, right? on really portraying Biden as this puppet of the far left who will usher communism into the country and bring in very radical policies, right? And the Biden campaign has actually responded to those kinds of negative ads with their own. And there's one in particular in which they compare Trump to a Caldillo like figure, you know, a Latin American strong man like Chavez, like Castro. it's actually a notion that's resonating with a lot of people because in conversations with Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, and even some Cubans, they tell me, you know, when I see Trump,

I see a Daniel Ortega type of figure. You know, when I hear him criminalizing protesters, when I hear him criminalizing the press, I recognize those profoundly authoritarian instinct. And Steph, you know, every four years we hear about the sleeping giant that the Latino vote is in the United States and it hasn't always materialized and I just wonder, is this the year when it's full effect will finally come into view?

I don't have an answer for that yet, but, you know, this year for the first time in this country's history, Latinos are the largest minority voting group, right? So there's tremendous, tremendous, tremendous, power behind their votes and I surely hope that they'll exercise it.

Dexter Phil Lekins is a staff writer, and he spoke with Stefania Teladreid, also of The New Yorker, and we heard from former Senator Bill Nelson, Ian Sancho, and Betty Riddle. You can find Dexter's reporting on Florida and a great deal more at New Yorker.com. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. Thanks so much for joining us today. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Arts. with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Ave Cario, Riannon Corby, Calalea, David Krasnow, Caroline Lester, Gauphin and Putubuele, Louis Mitchell, Michelle Moses, and Stephen Valentino, with help from Alison McAdam, Danny Bonner, Mung Faye Chen, and Emily Mann. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.