The Young Turks - Part 8 TYT Live: Election Day 2020

Episode Date: November 4, 2020

Election Day Part 8: Cenk Uygur, Ryan Grim, Ana Kasparian, and Julie Oliver TYT is Progressive Headquarters on Election Day. We’ll be tracking the presidential race between Donald Trump and Joe Biden and key progressive races around the country featuring a rotating panel of guests. Stay tuned for exit polls, state returns, down-ballot races, and more! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to the Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. All right, back on a Young Turks, Jane Hugar, Anna Kasparian, and Ryan Grim with you guys. Ryan, of course, the Washington Bureau Chief of the Intercept and also a TYT contributor. And we've got a great guest coming up for you as well, who's in the middle of a race right now. But before we go to where, I've got to give you guys some really important calls, just because we share every call with you guys and then more important Ohio numbers. Donald Trump has won Louisiana.

Donald Trump has won North Dakota. Joe Biden has won New Mexico. Joe Biden has won New York. None of these are surprising. None of these are swing states. But I remember a day when New Mexico used to be a swing state. It is no longer a swing state and gets called immediately for the Democrats. Donald Trump wins South Dakota, he wins Wyoming, and he wins Nebraska.

Again, none of that is surprising, but he has not necessarily won the second district of Nebraska. That's for later in the night, that's where Kara Eastman is, and she'll be joining us later as well. Classy, Ben Sassy is won re-election in Nebraska. Of course, he is not classy, nor is his last name pronounced Sassy. Nor is he sassy. Right. It's Ben Sass, the Republican Senator from Nebraska woning re-election. Mike Rounds, Senator from South Dakota, a Republican is one re-election.

Governor Doug Bergam, another Republican in North Dakota, wins re-election. And Cynthia Loomis wins the Senate seat in Wyoming for the Republicans. Now, importantly, Ohio is now down to, I got to do this math quick in my head. 7.3% lead for Biden, but with 54% percent. reporting. As David Danes said before we left, it is not going to be an early night. So Canadian in Sweden, I hate to disappoint you because you wrote in, okay, I need Jack to call this so I can go to bed. That's not how it works. And I wish I could. If we'd won Florida, I would have called it for you, but that's not what happened. If we'd won North Carolina,

I would have come close to calling it, but right now, that's not what it looks like it's happening. Now I'm going to give you a depressing analysis from Nate Silver, and then we'll move on to our guest. Do you have to? I do. It's my job. We got to be honest with you guys. So, and I give it to you because I think he's right. So he had Trump a 10% chance of winning this election going in. But he had Biden with us, I believe, a 67% chance of winning Florida. Now that he has not, he has tripled Trump's chance of winning the election overall. And it's now around 30 to 35% chance. Now that's dangerous. Because last time in 2016, we started the night at 35%. And we all told you here at the Young Turks,

35% is a real number, that could happen. 10% is not a real number. It normally can't happen. Obviously, you know that I'm, you know, not being exact. It happens 10% of the time. We all know that, right? But it's very unlikely. But now if it's moved to 30 to 35, and I'm not sure I disagree with that, especially with North Carolina coming in as it has, that's starting to be a real number.

So don't brace for impact, but you do have to buckle up. Okay, now let's go to our guest. Joining us now is Julie Oliver. is running in Texas and not only as a Democrat, but as a progressive, and a very strong progressive. Julie, how's the election going for you tonight? Oh my gosh, y'all, I'm so nervous. Like, I keep feeling my pulse.

I'm like, I'm so nervous, but I'm excited. I'm genuinely excited for my state, but very nervous, y'all. I'm just being honest. Yeah, of course, of course. We're incredibly nervous and we're not in an election. You are. So do you had, did you guys game plan at all? I don't know if you had time or if there's enough numbers in your particular district to game plan this, Julie. But at what point

you would start to get hopeful or, well, let's put it this way. What are good signs you look for in an election night like this? And what are bad signs? Well, okay, so here's what's so funny. The Texas Secretary of State's website is down. So we don't even know what counties are reporting. I don't know. It's hard to make an analysis. You're seeing kind of raw numbers come in. But without knowing which county they come from,

it's hard for us to make some sort of determination. It's like, wait, do we have more pickup or do we have less pickup? So right now, it's anybody's guess at this point. And we have been trying to refresh the Secretary of State's website over and over again. But right now it's just down. So I have no idea where the votes are coming from. I do think Travis County reported because that's a big, a big batch of numbers got dumped. It put us in the lead. So that had to be Travis County. But beyond that, I don't know if our next biggest county, Johnson County has reported for Hayes County. Bell County is a big one for us.

And I just don't know. So I wish I had a better analysis for you. Yeah, Julie, you're doing a good job of not getting excited even though you have a slight lead. because you're right. I mean, there's a triple whammy here in your race. There's the fact that you don't know where the votes are coming from, and that makes it very hard to determine whether a lead is real or not real. You don't know if they're coming in for mail-in or in-person voting. That makes it doubly hard to know. And now the website's down, so it's near impossible to know. So first, now that the voting is over, you know, the Republicans have this theory that if Democrats, especially progressives win, they go like

a, they have a Scooby-Doo moment. They go, booh, and they actually ripped the mask off, and underneath the mask, you're a Maoist Obama, which of course makes no sense in either direction. But can you reassure the good voters of your district, including Republicans, that no matter who they are that you'll actually fight for higher wages and better health care? Absolutely, I can reassure them. In fact, today we were still texting people to get out the vote. And I texted people that I had a couple that responded to me saying, oh, I'm a Republican.

I was like, well, that's okay. I still want your vote. And I still, I was like, and now you actually have my phone number. So I hope you'll, you'll call me if you ever have any questions. I could conceivably be your Congresswoman. And they wrote back really positive things. And so that is my, that is a way I look at this. It's, you know, for whomever is looking to have representation, whether they're

Democrat, a Republican, a non-voter, you know, I'm here for them. I really am. That's way I've run this campaign and that's, I don't anticipate that changing once elected. If you win, what would be your top priority? Health care, obviously, you know, getting to the other side of this pandemic. We need to tackle it with the urgency, but it requires healthcare is why I started running in the first place. And it clearly has not gotten any less important. The pandemic has really reflected that the need for universal healthcare in our country.

And I think we can do that with Medicare for all. I think we have actually a real opportunity to do that with Medicare for all. And Julie, what's your sense of the difference between the last election and this election, if there is a a difference? So the last election, you know, I will say I didn't feel like I had finished. Like I remember thinking I need three more months to campaign. This cycle, I feel like we've done everything we could possibly do in a pandemic. I mean, we connected with hundreds of thousands of voters.

We did it through phone banking. We did it through text messaging. In fact, in the last two weeks, we dropped 100,000 pieces of literature at people's doors. We call it to contact list lip drop. So I really believe that we did everything that we could possibly do. You know, we're still a very gerrymandered district. That did not change. It's still, you know, I call it the halapeno heart of Texas.

It looks like a halpena was smashed on Texas and with pixelated edges. So I think that's the difference. That's the difference I felt this morning. It's the difference I feel this evening. We've done absolutely everything we could in 2020 to flip this district. Julie, I have a question about, you know, strategy assuming that you win because Texas's governor, Greg Abbott, along with the lieutenant governor, they've both been incredibly irresponsible during the pandemic. I really appreciate the message that you have

about health care. I totally agree with you. But assuming you win, how do you see yourself, you know, basically pressuring not just the Republican Party, but also the Democratic Party that has pretty much rejected any real solutions to health care, especially Medicare for all? Well, I think that again, this is a real opportunity to explain the benefits of Medicare for all and to kind of pull off the mask that Greg Abbott and even before him, his predecessor, Rick Perry, had when it came to even just the Affordable Care Act. I know how to explain that to Republicans in a way that makes their eyes kind of

pop and say, wait a second, I had no idea that's how we financed health care in Texas. And yeah, we have an exorbitant property tax because we're paying for uninsured care in our emergency rooms. We've given $100 billion of our income tax dollars to other states. And if we are lucky enough to have insurance tied to employment that could go away in the blink of an eye, you know, for let's say a pandemic that comes that neither a governor nor president do anything about. And in fact, if we want to start, you know, going through the myths of Medicare for all,

that's one of my favorite things to do. I love playing Mythbusters on Medicare for all. But I think that's one of the things that I have a knack for is explaining how the dollars and cents work to Republicans and say, hey, yeah, if you're really the party of fiscal responsibility, this is the plan that is fiscally responsible. And it just so happens you save lives and improve outcomes as well. What was the reaction of your constituents when you would campaign? on Medicare for all.

Well, when I explain to people what that looks like and how we're doing it in Texas, most people have this incredible aha moment. In fact, my last voter I talked to tonight, I kid you not, my very last voter I talked to tonight before he went in and cast his ballot, he had the same quote on earth do you do that? How do you get Medicare for all? How do you have universal health care? How are you going to pay for it? And when you start from that premise, and I will say in this case, either his, his girlfriend,

his partner, his wife, I'm not sure what their relationship was. She actually was a nurse at a hospital, and I said, well, you can probably vouch for this. You know that folks who don't have insurance in Texas end up in our ERs. And she's sitting there shaking her head. And I said, when they go to the emergency room, it's the most expensive level of care. And whether that's for something as simple as an ear infection or something like cardiovascular disease, it's incredibly expensive to get that care in an emergency room when it could have been taken care of by a doctor, just in an outpatient setting. And it's like he had his aha moment.

He's like, all right, I'm voting for you. So that's what that's the frame through which I can explain it. That's what I hope I can bring to Congress and have conversations with folks across the aisle about. All right, last question for you, Julie. If you win and the Democrats control all three branches of government, which in the beginning of the night seemed very likely, at this point seems still barely likely. likely. And the Speaker of the House says, no, Julie, I'm, I appreciate that you ran for Medicare for all, but we're not going to have a vote on Medicare for all. What would be your reaction? I think we have to, we have to form that coalition that really pushes back against it.

Now look, it's going to be really hard for me. If there's, if there's something that is better than what we have right now, and it actually comes to the floor for a vote, I'm going to be honest with you all, it would be really hard for me to vote against that because of how desperate people are right now, truly. And I can't vote to keep status quo. So I'm just being really honest with you. But the reality is I think there are strength in numbers. I'm encouraged by the number of progressive who have been elected to Congress, just even in the cycle, just through the primaries. And, you know, using that voice, using that power in the numbers, I'm hoping we can push back against that narrative and say, no, we deserve at least a vote on this.

We deserve a vote. Make people vote on this. And I really think that we can rally people. Again, I know there's special interest money behind us. I'm not being Pollyanna about this on any level. I get that there's big money that wants status quo. But we need to shine a light that that is what is impairing our ability to pass universal health care in America. It is big money behind that. 100%. All right, you can see why we really like Julie Oliver, a strong progressive running in a purple district in Texas, but no holds barred. So I'm hoping at the end of the night that I say that Julie Oliver has won the jalapeno in Texas. All right, thank you for joining

us, Julie. All right, we only have a minute here, but Ohio is reporting 58% and the lead is down a four for Biden. And as I look at the map here, there's a lot of conclusions that could be drawn. Trump has a big lead with 36% reporting in Georgia. New York Times says he has an 81% chance of winning that. In North Carolina, Biden still holding it onto a two-point lead with 78% reporting. But New York Times says that Trump still has an 88% chance of winning that. So now it looks like we're going to really have to win the Midwest. So Ryan, before we go to the break, I really wanted to get your initial perspective on how it's going so far. I mean, the massive swing in the suburbs toward Democrats that we saw in 2018 is continuing through to 2020.

And so if Biden can hold steady with the numbers that Hillary Clinton got, with black and let's, voters, then then he should be in a good place to win. It doesn't appear that he's holding steady there, however, and that is something that Democrats are, you know, need to need to think about what, you know, why, why is it that, you know, as as they're as as they are picking up votes in the suburbs, they're losing working class votes elsewhere. And are there enough kind of college educated people in this country to, to organize your, your coalition around them without driving away too much of the of the working class vote

that that puts you under under 50 percent. So I think it's it I think it's going to be extremely close and you're seeing these these huge margins in in the suburbs that could that could you know that could counterbalance the losses. You know the exit polls were that the media was shopping around off the record looked very good for for Biden essentially confirming the you know, it's essentially confirming the, the polling averages that we saw in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. And so those are, you know, two separate data points. You're seeing the suburban numbers come in. They're huge. So like you said, it does, you know, they are going to need big, big chunks of the Midwest and Arizona if they can hold on to that. And, you know, if they can do that, Biden then squeaks through. But even if even if he does, they have to, you know, they have to.

to take care of their coalition and think about why it is that this, this president that they consider irredeemably racist did better among people of color than he did in 2016. Yeah, look, it might be, I'll put it, communists in Kanye, right? So scare Latinos with talk of communists, bring in all these nonsense, incredibly wealthy rappers like Kanye West, 50 Cent, kind of ice cube and this last guy, a little pump and dump or whatever his name is, and just peel away a couple percentage points. You don't, people like, that's why I was still. I don't know, I don't know. I don't think, I don't think Kanye had anything to do that. I think you're right that in Miami, Miami is unique. And you can, you can,

you can do your national analysis and just kind of carve, carve Miami out of it. I don't, I don't think it was Kanye. I think it, you know, this is a, this is a longer. term problem that Democrats are dealing with that involves kind of the breakup of black churches as an organizing center for black communities and also the breakup of black communities themselves to gentrification to mass to mass incarceration and so you in the past you know you organizers were able to you know you use those tight community bonds through the church and elsewhere and drive and drive this democratic vote to the polls the black community is most community is much more disaggregated today than it was before. So you have to now appeal to

people much more, much more aggressively than Democrats did before. Where they were taking the black vote for granted before, that's not going to work in incoming elections. Yeah, but I just I know we got to take the break, but I got to say two quick things. Look, at first I don't want people to say what I'm saying. It's not kind, Kanye, I mean a symbolic, right? And- Right, your point though, if it's just at the margins and if it's only one or two percent, percent than maybe is that what you kind of meant yeah and and what I'm referring to there more than any one individual is and I wonder if people start to talk about this but Trump did a pretty good job of appealing to the

macho side of all of our cultures and so did he peel away enough male voters and Latinos and African Americans to make a difference and part of the reason I brought up Kanye was symbolic part of the the reason is because I'm frustrated that that phenomenon overall was dismissed as no, it's not going to have an effect when I could see in the polling that it was having an effect. And so I, you know, despite all of this worry from the Democrats, oh my God, what if it's 2016, what if it's 2016, they didn't actually worry about the things they should have worried about in at least in those communities.

But if they really do pick up the suburban vote, then their calculation was correct. But we got to take the break. We're going to come back with the same team here. But I want to talk about if a landslide in either direction is off the table now, if we've got another really close election. And I can summarize it this way, first of all, no matter what else happens in Arizona, North Carolina, everywhere else, Biden has to hold on to either Ohio or Pennsylvania. And now it's not a guarantee that he's going to. So that's where we are.

We might be at the Nader here. And I think if the polling is anywhere near right, that'll be correct. And we'll go up from here. But right now with just a four point lead in Ohio, it's gotten interesting. So stay right here. If you can, hit the join button below on YouTube to become a member, because you guys power us. You allow us to do this coverage.

And if you're watching anywhere else, t.com slash join. We'll be right back. All right. I'm back at AI Turks, Jank, Anna, and Ryan Grimm with you guys. This is an insane election. It's so hard to make heads or tails of what's happening here because New York Times is saying that Joe Biden is almost definitely going to lose North Carolina. And Fox News is saying that Joe Biden is almost certainly going to win.

North Carolina. What in the world? Okay, so let me give me an update on Ohio. Now we're down to a 2.7 lead for Joe Biden with 60% reporting. And this is another thing that's very frustrating and I'm sure that it's a random and but it's frustrating nonetheless. On the New York Times website and obviously we're looking at all these websites, all the way through to Fox News, right?

But on the New York Times website, they only have the states where Trump is likely to win as a percentage. They don't have any of the states that Biden might win as a percentage. So just coincidence, I guess, but it's very, very frustrating. So, yeah, Anna, go ahead. So for Ohio, apparently what they're waiting on is, you know, the votes from cities. So that could be a good sign for Biden, you know, because the giant lead he had over Trump has closed to only 3% with 60% reporting. But if you look at, you know, the areas that have already reported the votes, it's mostly

like, you know, small town, suburbs, things like that. So depending on how cities vote, which you would assume would go to Biden, it looks like Biden is likely to win Ohio. North Carolina's crazy. You're right, Jank. So with North Carolina, the New York Times is reporting that Trump has a 92% chance of winning. But currently with 80% reporting, Biden has a 1.8% lead. It gets crazier.

Fox News has a Biden with an 89% chance of winning North Carolina. What? Yeah. And so, and furthermore, Fox News says the Democrats will not only hold a house, but they are projecting that the Democrats will expand the majority. As you are seeing Trump seemingly winning in places that we're supposed to be close like Florida and Georgia and maybe North Carolina, at the same time, it looks like the Democrats are going to pick up seats in the House.

That's why I mentioned before we went to break that we might be at the Nader here, and we might be at a point where we're about to pick up and see some of the results of the polling that we all suspected. But hadn't happened yet, as George W. Bush used to say back in the day. I'm going to break down some of the electoral college numbers in a second here for you guys too. First, let me just update you right now as things stand, no swing state has been called with the exception of some news organizations calling Florida for Trump, but others not. And right now, the electoral college vote without Florida is 122 to 92 for Biden. But none of that is unexpected.

So the swing states are everything. So Ryan, what do you make of this what appears to be a wild night? It's all a function of the early voting. And not just the fact that of early voting, but the fact that there is a partisan disparate. in early voting, but that we don't know precisely what that disparity is. And you add on top of that, that the way that operatives and analysts have long tried to figure out how the early vote is going is to look at the ballots turned in by Republicans, independents, and Democrats. But this is as much a persuasion election as it is a turnout

one, which means that Biden is doing actually fairly well with a significant number of Republicans who live registered Republicans who live in suburbs. And so if those people turn in ballots early for Biden, they look like their Republican votes. And so both Fox and the New York Times and everybody munking through all these numbers is, you know, normally as votes continue to come in, you know that they're going to match, you know, roughly similar to how they voted before. Okay, you know, the Chicago suburbs voted this way before. This is how they're going to vote this time. But and so we'll look at this precinct and we'll be able to tell. But you're not getting all of the voters at the same time. If you only are getting the early votes, you might be getting

these heavily Democratic votes. Then, and that might mean that the election day votes are heavily Republican, but you don't necessarily know that. And so everybody is just kind of guessing at what the portions are of Democrats who participated disproportionately in early voting compared to Republicans. And then they're doing the math and going from there to come up with these projections. But if those guesses are off by just a handful of percent, that's the whole ball game. So either Fox calling it 90 percent for Biden or New York Times calling it North Carolina 90 percent for Trump are that that's wishful thinking that they could have that level of certainty until we really know a little bit more about who actually voted early

and who voted on election day and who and we don't and a lot of these machines don't don't exactly know are these early absentee ballots are they mail ballots that that are being put out and you know it's not like these election boards are are giving people the most amount of transparency these are these are rickety operations that are that are run on a shoe string and are just doing everything they can to kind of get results out out the door. Yeah, and here's what I know with, in this topsy-turvy world, with Fox News saying 90% Biden and New York Times saying 90% Trump for North Carolina, I'm positive, it's not 90% in either direction. Whatever the real percent of the chance of winning is, it ain't one of those. It's 100% in one direction or another.

I just don't know which one. Exactly, which means you're not 90% sure. That's insane to say that you're 90% sure. in either direction. The Ohio lead is down to two points, 62% reporting in Ohio. At the same time, a lot of reporters are bullish about Ohio because of what we've been talking about all night, the suburbs, the suburbs, and it looks like the cities have not necessarily come in. Speaking of cities not coming in, in Wisconsin, Milwaukee and Green Bay apparently are going to take a long time counting the mail-in ballots. So we might not know what happens with those

cities until later in the night or maybe even tomorrow. So buckle up for Wisconsin. But here, let me lay out a scenario where at the end of the day, it's still landslide-ish for Biden. If Fox News is right, New York Times is wrong about North Carolina and Biden wins North Carolina. If everyone is generally right about Ohio and Biden wins Ohio, that means he's almost certainly going to win Pennsylvania.

And he still has a chance at winning Arizona, because we don't know anything about Arizona yet. Well, then we're back to a landslide. We just switched Ohio and Florida, not as big a landslide as it could have been. But, Ryan, you in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Arizona, North Carolina, that's you're up to 335, 350 in that ballpark. What do you think of that? Would that be considered a landslide? Yeah, I think it would, particularly because The media, you know, for all the, for all the, for all the focus that the media had on the, on Ohio diners and the white working class, the media's cultural milieu is, is suburban voters.

Like that's, that's, that's who that's who the media is. And, you know, and they have often been nervous about, you know, looking around at their surroundings and drawing national conclusions based on that as the, as they should be. That's a terrible way to do journalism. But if their priors are actually confirmed by a massive sweep of the suburbs in a nation where the suburbs are only growing and the rural areas are only shrinking, then I do think that it would probably be talked about as a landslide, though that's, you know, obviously that's premature. At this point, it's not even obvious that he'll win. Yeah, no, of course. I'm just saying what's left on the table. But yeah, I think you're right. Yeah, as possibilities. So I have an important call to make, and as part of why you watch Young Turs on election night,

Jamal Bowman has won. Jamal Bowman will be going to Congress, and he is now officially the ninth Justice Democrat in Congress. Later tonight, Cory Bush is expected to be the 10th, and we're crossing our fingers that Cara Eastman could be the 11th, and there are a couple of others left on the board as well. so we still have a fantastic finish left on the board as a possibility. We also have a super tight election as a possibility too. When we come back, Jamal Bowman joins us. So stay right here. Back on the Young Turks, Janky, Granite and Gasparian and Ryan Grim with you guys.

A couple of quick updates for you that are important. The lead in Ohio is down a 0.3% for Biden, was 64% percent. reporting. And we've got two important calls here. Colorado has been called for Biden. Now that's a swingier state. It's not at this point it's swung so much that it's not much of a swing state anymore. But the speed at which it was called is reassuring. So that's good. That goes in the in his camp. Of course, District of Columbia also called for Biden. But now an an actual one that was in doubt for some time, not in doubt anymore, John Hickenlooper is going to the Senate. Corey Gardner, incumbent Republican senator, has lost in Colorado. So the Democrats

pick up a seat in the Senate. That is very important and relevant. All right. Now, joining us on our election coverage, Jamal Bowman, the winner in New York. Justice Democrat, go to Congress. How you doing, Jamal? I'm well, I'm well, how you all doing? Thanks for having me. Of course, so Jamal, I want to start with this. I remember you telling a story about how police had wrongly arrested you one time. And there not being enough seats in the cell and you having to sit on the floor there and how frustrating that was. That was in relationship to the stories that were coming out about stop and frisk, but your real lived experience of what you went through.

If somebody had come to you as you were sitting on the floor of that jail cell, unjustly, and told you, hey, don't worry about it, Jamal, one day you're going to be a United States Congressman. What would you have thought? Hell yes, it's probably what I wouldn't thought. I was a pretty, I was a pretty self-assured dude in my young 20s. probably too self-assured, which is, you know, why I would get myself into trouble always open in my big mouth. But, but to your point, you know, that experience was incredibly dehumanizing. And the more experiences I would have like that, and there were far too many, the less I would believe in, in what was possible for my own life in terms of, you know,

at that time I was a teacher. So I wasn't thinking about running for Congress. I was just trying to be a good teacher and you know, maybe one day be a school counselor and then who knows, right? But the more you you are terrorized by law enforcement and by the state who's supposed to protect you, the less you feel you have a sense of the less self-worth you have, the less self-esteem you have, and the less you feel like you're able to accomplish anything. But, you know, my mama, you know, she instilled self-love in me pretty young, man. So that kind of never went away, you know, thank God. Yeah, no, no, you've got to be an incredibly strong spirit to do the things that you've done.

You go through all that experience and you still decide, hey, you know what? I think I'm the right guy to open up a school. I think I'm the right guy to run for Congress. And it turns out you were right on both counts. So, but let's talk policy. for a second, Chabon. So, you know, you lived the need for criminal justice reform. So, and I know right now the Biden camp has some decent proposals. But, but do you want to push further? How much further do you want to push? And then I don't know if you thought through the

strategy of how to push if leadership says, no, now's not the right time. Well, yes, I want to push further. A couple of things we need to do at a federal level. We need to legalize marijuana at a federal level and release everyone who's in prison due to marijuana convictions and expunge their records and reinvest in the communities in which they come from. So that's number one. Number two, we need to end life sentences.

We need to end the death penalty, we need to end solitary confinement. And we need to create a pathway for those who are formerly incarcerated directly toward housing, a job, and immediately re-enfranchised them in addition to getting rid of all these for-profit, stupid fines that they pay upon release from prison. So those are a few things we have to do, in addition to ending qualified immunity, ending the transfer of weapons from the federal government to local government. government's ending no knock warrants, and the list goes on and on and on. So so much work to do there, we must reallocate resources toward true public safety, like

food security and housing security and jobs. When the hood needed jobs, they gave us police, and that's the problem. And we have to reverse the impact of all of that. So that's part of the work I want to do in Congress. And you know, as the pandemic basically forces people out of their own homes because they've lost their jobs and they've been left behind without another round of stimulus, I mean, we just desperately need fighters in Congress who will demand more. I mean, the CARES Act was one thing, you know, the more robust unemployment benefits were great, but obviously those benefits have

expired. And now you see Americans getting evicted from their homes right now. I mean, it's, it's, Absolutely disgusting. Have you thought about how you plan on working with members of Congress to, you know, a strategy essentially to ensure that there will be another round of stimulus for average Americans as opposed to massive corporate bailouts? Well, I think it's a huge win for us to pick up at least one Senate seat thus far. If we can pick up three more, that would be huge. And obviously, it's easier if Trump wins, excuse me, if Trump loses the White House. But for me, it's about, you know, not just organizing my peers inside of Congress. It's about applying pressure from the outside.

And it's about using the power of my voice in the bully pulpit to bring attention to the stories I'm hearing here on the ground in my district and the stories that are taking place across the country. I mean, I haven't even been sworn in yet. And I'm already working with tenants here pushing back against management companies and landlords who are trying to intimidate them and force them out of their homes. So New York does a lot of good work around rent stabilization and making sure people have legal representation in court. Some of those rent stabilization laws need to be brought to a federal level. But to your point, first and foremost, let's strengthen the Heroes Act.

Let's pass it in the Senate. And let's get the resources to the people who need it most. I mean, here in Yonkers, for example, our unemployment rate is triple what it was a year ago at this point because of the pandemic. So so much work to be done and people have so many needs. And tonight is hopefully step one towards meeting those needs. Let me stick with the first policy we're talking about, criminal justice reform. Because as you read that list, to Progressive's years, it sounded fantastic. And we would love to get every single thing that you mentioned on that list.

And there will be ranges of what the establishment wing of the Democratic Party is willing to accept. By the end of Obama's term, they were still not willing to accept legalizing marijuana, which it just, it blows my mind every time when I think about it. I assume if there's any hesitation around that, that their good trouble would ensue immediately. Is that a fair assumption? That's a fair assumption, yes. I'm just waiting for this night to be over, the AP to call our race so that we can get to work immediately. That's the bottom line. And again, this is not about me.

This is about common sense. This is about what the majority of American people want. And this is about us establishing ourselves as a moral and humanitarian leader, both domestically and around the world. And enough is enough with the nonsense that's been taking place over the last 50 years. You know, we incarcerate more people per capita than anywhere in the world. Inconceration is torture. I don't care how you draw it up. And we incarcerate race and poverty.

You know, and that's just that's just oppressive and it's a new form of slavery and it's unacceptable, right? So the work begins tomorrow. We're not even waiting until we get to Congress because the people here need relief and support and the people throughout the country need the same thing. So, you know, I'm looking forward to working with my colleagues and I hope that they are more responsive to the American people. But if they're not, then we have to do what we have to do. Yeah, and when you get to qualified immunity and in solitary confinement, that's where you're going to get a lot more pushback. And that's where we need even more good trouble. But one step at a time, as you rightly say. I'm curious.

But it's crazy. I just want to say like, you know, we need more empathy in Congress, right? I'm going to need for my colleagues to put themselves in the shoes of Jacob Blake's. Make believe Jacob Blake is their son, you know, make believe George Floyd is their child. Make believe Brianna Taylor is their niece. Like we got to understand that this is hitting home for so many and poor communities and communities of color. And people in Congress are so far removed from that, right? So it's about having conversations from the perspective of or with the sense of empathy and compassion and really personalizing it for people.

because how can you support solitary confinement? It's torture, period. And no one in Congress will want their child or their grandchild or their niece or nephew to be placing behind bars under any circumstances, let alone solitary confinement. Yeah, well, that's the kind of strength that progressives love to hear. Let's keep it real. Ryan, I want to give you an opportunity to jump in here. And then I have a kind of a mechanics question that I've always been curious about that I want to ask you, Jamal.

But Ryan, go ahead. Jamal and I were actually rolling around his district this morning and this afternoon. And one thing you saw or didn't see were in most places were voters, which speaks to the effect of early voting. People have really adopted this as a practice. And I don't think there's going to be any going back. And I think it's a better system overall. The idea that if it, if it rained on a particular Tuesday, once every four years, that you'd have a different public policy direction for a country is absurd.

And it does away with these October surprises that people come to regret considering surprises later, like say the James Comey letter just a couple days before the election. So we now, as Jamal called it today, we have an election season where the last day of voting ends on election day. The next step is for election officials to figure out how to start pre-canvassing those votes, how to start, you know, once that you can start counting them when they come in. You just set up a process for that so that when the polls close, you can announce what those results are. And then you can put all of your resources into counting because, you know, the reason that we're all up in the air right now, we might be looking at a landslide election for Biden. We might be looking at a win for Trump. And we just don't know because they don't know, they don't know how to kind of count this new system that we have.

Yeah. So, Jamal, is it just to follow up on that real quick, New York does not have the best system of voting when it comes to opening it up. for more people to get involved, especially in the primaries. You're going at the federal level, but is there any influence you could do to get New York to be more open in their voting, especially in the Democratic primaries? Yes, there's a ton of influence. One of the things that I've been telling the elected officials and the organizers that I've been meeting with since we won the primary is we have to do a lot more collaborating with each other, cooperating with each other and working together to get things done for our districts.

What I'm learning is, you know, many work in isolation, and they're more concerned about their sort of day-to-day jobs, and they're not working and leveraging resources of each of their offices to get things done for the district. So absolutely it's something that, you know, I can lend my voice to, I can advocate for, and it's something that that needs to happen. To Ryan's point, today we couldn't find voters because early voting works so well. I mean, if we went to five places, there was one long line in one area, in one place. And the other spots there were just trickle in, trickle in voters. But what happened during the early voting season, where the lines were astronomical, they were ridiculous.

We had people, I waited three hours and 45 minutes to vote the first day of early voting. So we need more sites, we need more machines, we need more poll workers, and we need a better system to count votes as they come in so that election night, on election night, we could be done with it. Yeah, a hurricane just hit Nicaragua. There but for the grace of God go, us, we could have hit Florida and Texas. And then we'd be having a completely different conversation about this election. Jamal, I've always been curious. You defeated Elliot Engel in the primary, and he was a very powerful Democrat. And obviously, it was a bit contentious as any race would be. Do you have you guys already talked about a transition of constituent services and those type of things? Yes. I have an amazing chief of staff. Her name is Sarah Idrisu.

She's been on board now for about a month. But she's so brilliant and relentless. It's like she's been working with us for a year. So she's been in touch with Congressman Ingalls, of staff in his office so that the transfer of any cases that they've been working on takes place and it's as smooth and as just a transition as possible. Because whatever he was working on, we want to pick up and continue to do that work. And we want to also figure out how to continue to leverage resources in the way that he did for this district in particular areas. So those conversations are happening, yes, and so far they're very cordial. All right, that's fantastic. And by the way, as we were speaking, your fellow just Democrat, Ilhan Omar, has won, and that just got announced.

So an even larger caucus for the just Democrats in the next term. Jamal Bowman. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to like her, Rashida, Alex, and Niana, like kicking ass tonight. Like, I want them to crush their opponents tonight because, you know, know, there's been some money put behind their challengers, and I want like people to see that you wasted your money. You cannot mess around with these badass women who are changing the world. So I can't wait to see those results. And it looks like AOC's opponent will be, is that about 24% right now? So that's ass kicking that you ask for, duly delivered. Asking,

he shall receive. All right, Jamal Bowman, going to kick some ass in Congress. Thank you for joining us. We appreciate it. Of course, y'all, peace and love. See you soon. Yep, absolutely. All right, so that was a great interview and a great moment

and a moment that I would have dreamed about happening when this cycle began. I'll give you one more piece of good news from New York. Richie Torres, another progressive, has won, and his election is been called the 15th district in New York. But now before we take the break, I got to give you some bad news. The New York Times is called Lindsay Graham's election. Lindsay Graham has won and defeated Jamie Harrison. We will talk about that. We will talk about the state of the Biden Trump election. How close is it when we return? Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work. Listen to ad-free.

members only bonus content and more by subscribing to apple podcasts at apple dot co slash t yt i'm your host jank huger and i'll see you soon