This American Life - 836: The Big Rethink

Episode Date: July 21, 2024

People rethinking some of the most important relationships in their lives — with their sister, their political party, and the nominee for president. Prologue: Ira observes that we are in a moment of national reconsideration. (2 minutes)Act One: Zoe Chace reports on a surprising guest at the Republican National Convention: Teamsters president Sean O’Brien. (18 minutes)Act Two: Ira talks to Representative Seth Moulton about what it was like to be among the first members of Congress to call for President Joe Biden to step aside. (18 minutes)Act Three: Two adult sisters revisit old rivalries when they compete for a world record in typing with their pinkies. (16 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.

A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbeaped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org. For three weeks, Joe Biden said as forcefully as a human being possibly could say that he would not step down. And for three weeks, it was this agonizing drip, drip, drip of people trying to get him to reconsider. And of voters around the country wondering if he was going to reconsider. Fed by a steady stream of daily news stories that read tea leaves and applied electron microscopes to the tiniest scraps of evidence. Looking for any minuscule signs indicating that maybe it could happen. Maybe Biden would rethink things.

Democrats wondering what it might take to change Biden's mind. Meanwhile, over in the other half of the country, in red state America, at the Republican National Convention, people who had changed their minds and reconsidered firmly held convictions were a big part of the festivities. Donald Trump picked his vice president, a man who once said about him,

my God, what an idiot, J.D. Vance. Nikki Haley, who at once called Trump unhinged, and other former Trump rivals, people who once seemed like they hated Trump, had spoken out against him, took the stage to show how they'd reconsidered. And even Trump himself, the centerpiece of the whole thing, seemed to be presenting himself as a changed man, somebody who had reconsidered who he wants to be in the wake of his near assassination. He presented a notably gentler, uniter-not-divider side of himself.

All this reconsideration, of course, was in the service of getting the swing voters of the swing states to do some reconsideration of their own about who they might be picking for president this fall. I sometimes feel like the rarest thing in the world is to witness somebody actually changing their mind. You know what I mean? Changing their mind about something big, some fundamental belief. I mean, I know it happens, right? Most of us know people who are never going to have kids, who decide they're going to

go for it, or we know Democrats who became Republicans, we know pro-lifers who switched to pro-choicers. When it happens, it's a seismic thing. And that point of transition, when you're flipping from one way of seeing things to the new way, that is a weird, awkward thing to live through. And so today on our show, in this moment when Joe Biden seems to have reconsidered some of his most deeply held ideas about himself and his chances in this election. We have stories of people rethinking some big, basic beliefs that they've taken for granted,

trying to learn a new attitude toward the world. And we watch how that goes for them. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us. It's American Life, Act One, Fate of the Union. Of all the people who'd rethought their feelings about Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this week, there was one guest for whom the rethink has been especially dramatic. And that's Sean O'Brien,

a lifelong Democrat from Massachusetts. Sean O'Brien is the head of the Teamsters Union. 1.3 million truck drivers, rail, air, all transportation, delivery workers, lots of jobs. They endorsed Biden in 2020. And Sean O'Brien was at the RNC to give a speech, big speech actually. The keynote speech on the first night of the convention. And I should say, the Teamsters Union president hasn't spoken at the RNC ever before in the entire history of the union. Because, maybe this is obvious, Republicans have been the party of big business and generally pretty opposed to organized labor. Zoe Chase tells how this played out.

Here's how weird it is that this guy Sean O'Brien is at the RNC in the first place. President Biden, a Democrat, calls himself the most pro-union president in history. There's reasons. He bailed out union pensions. The Teamsters were pushing for that. All his major infrastructure bills have included money and benefits specifically for unions. He walked a picket line with the United Auto Workers. He gave his first 2020 campaign speech from a Teamsters Hall.

Donald Trump has a record, too, as a Republican president of rolling back regulations that protected unions, appointing Supreme Court justices who ruled against unions, and of course, hiring non-union workers when he was a real estate developer, notoriously stiffing his workers out of overtime. Both of them talk about loving American workers, obviously, that's politics, but their policies are very different. So when Teamsters President Sean O'Brien showed up at the Republican convention this week, he felt like an outsider right away. Or maybe he wanted to make the point that he was an outsider right away. So I'm backstage, and the rehearsal the night before, we came in, and they just wanted to show us the setup of the stage. And they just wanted to show us the setup of the stage.

They're telling Sean how to walk across the stage to the podium. He's going to be the keynote speaker on night one. And so they said, now you've got to do a dogleg right when you come out of the stage and come down. But the gentleman said, you know golf. You know how you do a dogleg right? I said, look, in my business, if you're a good golfer you're a bad representative I don't golf so he says just make like a little arc he's a bad example okay here I am hopefully delivering you know the most powerful speech for American workers and I'm debating what a dog leg is with the person so what actually it was typical

to my nature I get distracted and start talking to him about how union officials shouldn't golf because they should be all working. Sean O'Brien seems to be here to walk a fine line, basically, with Republicans. He's like, look, this is a major primetime slot where you don't expect to hear from us, where we get to talk to people who aren't usually listening. He describes his mission as enlightening the Republican National Convention on how important workers and unions are to this country, and maybe make some new political allies. He's been on this charm offensive with Republicans for months. He went to Mar-a-Lago, he met with Trump, took a thumbs-up

picture with him. He's been meeting with Republican senators, including hardline conservative Josh Hawley, who ended up walking union picket lines. O'Brien told me, we have a really diverse union in all the ways, including politically. A big chunk of his membership supports Trump. And he's here partly for them. But some of organized labor is not happy with him at all. It's hard to overstate. Appalled, enraged, apoplectic, horrified. A vice president of the Teamsters union publicly called it unconscionable. So, you know, as I think of O'Brien going to the RNC and doing his song and dance,

you know, I got to go, what's the message? What's he going to say? This is Rick Smith's radio show. He's a 35- year teamster, a truck driver. He thinks O'Brien's just going to be part of the Trump campaign's long running political theater of being a party for blue collar workers without making any actual policy that helps those workers. To him, it's like, what's O'Brien going to get for this? You know, the reality is Sean O'Brien is going to be their whipping boy. They are going to use him and my Teamsters union as their hood ornament as they drive their anti-union policy truck right over the top of working people. And the reality is Sean O'Brien is going to be their dancing show pony, whether he wants to be or not. And they're going to ride him until the election day, because what they understand, what Trump

understands, what the RNC gets by giving him this, this platform is a lot of his members vote for Republicans. This is making it okay. This is going, yeah, don't worry about your job. Don't worry about any of that stuff. It's okay. It's fine. So to see how the song and dance goes over,

I pick my spot way up high in the stands and sit with some delegates. I find Todd Gilman, this delegate from Michigan I know, and make him watch Sean O'Brien's speech with me. Todd's retired, a Navy vet. He was in a union decades ago. He got involved with the Republican Party just a few years ago. And he's organizing a county commissioner race now. We're chatting. How's that going, those races or those campaigns? I think they're going good. Yeah.

Todd has never heard of Sean O'Brien and does not care about him, it seems. All he knows about Teamsters is, where did the mafia bury Jimmy Hoffa's body? We're waiting for O'Brien's spot in the lineup when suddenly an unannounced guest appears. Oh, Trump's here. He's in the building. Trump himself, not scheduled to speak, shows up on screen with a dramatically bandaged ear. It's the first night of the convention, our first time seeing him, and his first time in public since the assassination attempt. The crowd is losing it. The camera's following him down the

hall toward the convention room like he's a fighter headed into the ring. Oh, look at his ear. like he's a fighter headed into the ring. Oh, look at his ear. He might be coming out. Your, uh, your Teamster guy might not be talking. The crowd is jonesing for Trump, but Trump does not take the stage. He sits in the audience, and instead, the guy who appears on stage is... Sweet Greenwood. ...country singer.

He's going to to be an American. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Proud to be an American is Trump's theme song this campaign. It's generally a signal he's about to take the stage. Only this time, the singer himself is here, live, giving a sort of impromptu prayer benediction as images of Trump waving and grimacing appear on screen, turning the white swaddled ear from side to side.

As Donald Trump turned his head just slightly, that the bullet missed him just enough to save his life, to be the next president of the United States. The crowd sings, proud to be an American, with enthusiasm, then chants for Trump. We want Trump! We want Trump! But Trump still does not take the stage. Instead, this random guy limps out and stands there,

one of the many regular Americans on the program who feel hurt by Biden's policies. He's dubbed on screen as a grandfather. You've got to feel for him. The crowd is chanting, we want Trump right into his face. And another rando with the same story of not being able to afford stuff. Then Amber Rose. How to describe model and influencer. Talks about seeing the light and voting Republican. Oh, she does have a forehead tattoo.

Overall, the vibes are way off. Trump's still in the room. People are clamoring for him to speak. And then finally, the last speaker of the night, instead of Trump, it's the president of the Teamsters Union, the outsider guy, the person who doesn't necessarily belong here. Is this the mob boss? There he is.

This is the mob boss? All right, now you pay attention. Tell me what you think. He's probably a mob boss if he's a Teamsters president. Clearly, O'Brien has some assumptions about union bosses to overcome with this crowd. Greetings, delegates and guests. I'm Sean O'Brien, general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Okay, big applause. It just gets bigger.

And I think we all can agree whether people like him or they don't like him. In light of what happened to him on Saturday, he has proven to be one tough S.O.B. Biggest applause line of the night by far. Like, the catharsis of waiting for Trump is satisfied by this. A line that Sean will tell me he came up with right then. Wasn't on the teleprompter. He was just feeling it. My Michigan delegate Todd is cheering, along with his military buddy Bob from Wisconsin. Bob leans over.

This is huge. I mean, you've got all these different people that voted for Joe Biden and their families did coming out here and speaking. This could turn out to be a total butt-kicking in November. Now, the Teamsters are not endorsing Trump tonight. Sean O'Brien has been quite clear about that. But Bob from Wisconsin is just hearing the Teamsters throw their weight behind Trump. He's not paying close attention to the specifics of what Sean is saying, really. And as it goes on, the speech does get much more specific and much less Republican convention sounding, basically.

He throws longstanding Republican allies, mainstays of the party, under the bus. But for a century, major employers have waged a war against labor by forming corporate unions of their own. We need to call the Chamber of Commerce and the business roundtables what they are. They are unions for big business. And here's another fact.

You think that's right? No, he's right. He talks about major American companies, not as great examples of entrepreneurship like at a typical Republican convention, but as great examples of corporate greed. Companies like Amazon are bigger than most national economies. Amazon is valued over $2 trillion. What is sickening is that Amazon has abandoned any national allegiance. Amazon's sole focus is on lining its own pockets. People are like, am I with this?

Companies are bad? It's a little awkward. But then O'Brien pulls out a magic word that sells in this room. Remember, elites have no party. Elites have no nation. Their loyalty is to the balance sheet and the stock price at the expense of the American worker. I love this guy. I can't stand Amazon. worker. I love this guy. I can't stand Amazon. Yeah, I love this guy. At some point, the crowd seems to hear themselves cheering wildly for organized labor and against

corporatists. And it does get a little more strained feeling in the room. There are no consequences for the company, only the worker. Rate to work. Rate to work. Someone is heckling the Teamster president, kind of wonkily, by screaming out the name of a policy that Teamsters hate. Rate to work is a shot directly into the heart of unions' ability to organize. It's at the very center of Republican labor policy.

Rate to work allows workers to work in a union shop without having to pay union dues. Advocates of the policy say workers should get to choose what they want. Unions hate it because they say workers then get the benefits of the contract without paying for it. It undercuts their power. There's over 150 Republicans co-sponsoring right-to-work bills in Congress right now. Trump has said he supports right-to-work. Sean O'Brien continues to slam big business, and I'm almost expecting him to talk about Bernie's millionaires and billionaires.

The applause in the room is getting weaker. These companies offer no real health insurance, no retirement benefits, no pay leave, relying on underfunded public assistance. And who foots the bill? The individual taxpayer. The biggest recipients of welfare in this country are corporations, and this is real corruption.

We must put workers first. By the end of the speech, Todd's feeling about this guy he'd never heard of before. He's knocking it out of the park. I'm glad I stuck around and listened to him. Thanks. When I talked to O'Brien after the speech, in the lobby of the Grand Pfister Hotel, I wanted to know if he felt what I was feeling. About the awkwardness in the room, the uncertain silence, when he started wailing on the Chamber of Commerce, big American companies.

Did you feel a feeling in the room like this is going over weird? Not at all. Not at all. I mean, I felt real comfortable. I knew that, you know, it's like anything else. If you're in a crowd and someone's talking about a situation and, you know, you may think you're the subject of it or you may think that pertains to you, it may be a little bit more uncomfortable for them than it was for me. Overall, he feels pretty great about the speech. He got his message out. He thinks that now he'll get calls from Republican legislators who weren't meeting with him before.

Like, there's this one Senate bill right now that the big unions are really fighting for. It's called the PRO Act, Protecting the Right to Organize Act. It's all Democrats. There's not a single Republican signer onto that bill. Not yet. Not yet, but we're working on it.

Do you think you've got some people... Well, the bill that's currently there, right? So if you know you're not going to get support, it's not going to pass, wouldn't it make sense to figure out what could pass bipartisan? Do you think you've got people in that room to reconsider? I know that for a fact. Because I've had the conversations. Can you give me an example? I cannot, for a fact. Because I've had the conversations. Can you give me an example?

I cannot, but stay tuned. Now, the very next day, the Teamsters announced there was a new co-sponsor of the House version of the bill, a third Republican House member from Oregon. Because of the speech? We don't know. Rick Smith, the 35-year Teamster with the radio show, watched the convention, watched the speech from his union president, and I called him afterwards. I fear he did everything that I thought he was going to do. Because look, I don't think anybody remembers what he says tomorrow.

Other than, Trump's a tough SOB. There may be a quote, but what they're going to remember is he was there for Donald Trump. Rick saw Sean's speech as just another piece of the political theater playing out at the RNC. More working man cosplay. Like Trump's selection of J.D. Vance as vice president, in his opinion. Sean O'Brien praised Vance in his speech. Vance's brand is kind of made-in-America economic populism. He famously walked a UAW picket line in a speech. Vance's brand is kind of made in America, economic populism. He famously walked a UAW picket line in Toledo. I go back to this idea that there are Republicans

that support labor. J.D. Vance walked a picket line. Yeah, OK, he walked a picket line, but he doesn't support workers' right to organize. And I know he'll give on something here or there, but ultimately this is a guy who's not a friend of labor. And it seems simple to me. These are the people who are going to put the final nail in the coffin of the labor movement. And I think he gave them the kind of fodder that they can use. It's like handing an ax murderer an ax and then being surprised.

Or what does Trump always say? You know, about a snake biting you because a snake is a snake, right? Yeah, it's the snake's nature. Right. And this is, that's these people's nature. O'Brien's response is, maybe the snake is changing.

We can make them change. Parties change. Can't get things done if that's your uncompromising approach. I mean, look, you look at the Democratic Party 20 years ago, as compared to now, I think we can all agree there's been significant change. Conversely, you look at the Republican Party 20 years ago and look at it today. I mean, there's been significant change.

You don't have to go back 20 years in this case with this election. You can look at the Biden administration and the Trump administration, and one is more pro-labor than the other. I have no doubt about that. And I can speak to that all day long. I mean, President Biden fixed pensions, brought a lot of work, passed the CHIPS Act, infrastructure bill, all that stuff, there's no doubt. But that doesn't mean that we can't work with anybody else that doesn't have the same labor record. And maybe they can, you know, obviously, if they have the opportunity, they can do good things for working people as well. This sounds either wickedly pragmatic or hopelessly naive. But however much the Democrats and Joe Biden have done for organized labor. The Democrats could definitely lose in November.

And Trump, who was sitting right across the hall from O'Brien up on stage performing, watching him closely with that martyred ear, he might be the guy I'll have to negotiate with. Zoe Chase is the producer on our show. Act Two, Adam Lim. You know who July hasn't been so great for? The Democratic politicians who were out front before anybody, publicly calling for President Biden to drop out of the election. Out of 260 Democrats who sit in the House and Senate, only 21 step forward,

20 from the House of Representatives, and one senator for the first three weeks after the presidential debate. No Democratic governors, no former presidents, but this small group called for Biden to drop out, hoping an army was going to form behind them. Then a week passed, then another week, and the battalions did not show up. They hung out there by themselves. Finally, at the end of this week,

we heard about big names in the party, Pelosi, Schumer, Jeffries, behind the scenes, urging the president to step aside. With that cover going into the weekend, the number of elected lawmakers started edging up very slowly. And finally, of course, Joe Biden bowed out of the race. But it took over three weeks for things to get to this point. So what was that like for the people who stuck their necks out and waited? Well, Congressman Seth Moulton agreed to talk to me about all that.

He's a Democrat from Massachusetts, a rising star in the party, had a brief presidential run himself in 2020, a former Marine who served four tours in Iraq. In fact, he led a platoon in the first company to enter Baghdad. Years ago, he did a memorable interview on our program about this interpreter who he worked with and got close to in Iraq. He ended up coming to the States and living in Moulton's childhood home with his parents. Basically became part of their family while waiting to get asylum

because of all the death threats against him for collaborating with Americans. Joe Biden took an interest in Seth Moulton back when Moulton first ran for Congress in 2014. Biden was vice president. Biden went to Massachusetts to do a rally endorsing him. And they rode in a car together where Moulton says the vice president offered him half of his peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And he was not sure if you're supposed to say no to that offer from the vice president. So he said yes. Moulton's age and his military experience.

Moulton says Biden's told him a few times. He reminds him of his son, Beau. Walton and I spoke this past Monday, July 15th. He told me that the story of turning his back on Joe Biden starts, of course, on debate night. Well, I think, like most Americans, I felt the debate was an unmitigated disaster for President Biden.

I mean, we all remember the times he couldn't keep his train of thought. He lost his place. He seemed incoherent. I thought one of the most remarkable moments was when he literally took our best issue, abortion, and pivoted immediately to our worst issue, immigration. I mean, you almost couldn't make it up. I want to ask you a question that I worry might be a little awkward for you to answer, and I hope you can answer it honestly. The side of President Biden that we all saw on television that night during the debate, you're in DC, you hear a lot of things, I'm sure. Had you seen that side of him before that night? Had you heard about that side of him before that night? Is that something people talk about? Yes. Yes, it is. I've seen the president fairly regularly as a member of Congress, although it does feel like his staff is hiding him far more than they used to.

But I've seen a dramatic change in particular over the last several months. I saw him at the White House Christmas ball and he looked older and frailer but he was excited to see me you know quickly recounted things we've done together or whatnot. Then I saw him most recently, just a few weeks ago in Normandy for the 80th anniversary of D-Day. He was speaking with a small group of us, and the change was pretty dramatic. How so? Well, it was more like the things that we saw in the debate. Not that bad, but more in that direction. Like him having a hard time summoning the words for things.

Yeah, more like that. Yes. But as someone who's been a very long time Joe Biden fan, as someone who's admired him, as someone who's been a mentee of his. It was hard to see, and it was concerning, to the point where, although I don't think there's a single American who expected what we saw the night of that debate, I wasn't entirely surprised. I wasn't entirely surprised. So when we came back to the House floor the next day, everyone was sharing the same view. I didn't speak to anyone who thought it was okay, other than Speaker Pelosi, who just said, well, I don't know that we can judge a campaign by one debate. But

I really felt she had to say that. Party leaders are in a little bit different position. But all of us in the rank and file thought it was a total disaster. And I think most of us were clear that the only way forward for Democrats to have a chance in this election is to get a new nominee at the top of the ticket. Within the next few days, Moten says, he tried to call everybody he knew in the White House, anybody close to the inner circle, to express his concerns about the president's performance and the path ahead. I made a lot of phone calls, and I got nothing in response. Now, I'm not offended by that. I don't want to come across as thinking that the White House should return my phone calls. But given the circumstances, you'd expect some low-level aide to just give me a call and say, we've heard

your concerns. Here's what we're doing about them. But it was just a wall of silence. What did that say to you? It said to me that they're not taking this seriously. We needed to hear a new plan. And first, you just simply need to hear that they're being honest about the situation at hand. But I wasn't hearing any of that. When I came home to Massachusetts, I held a Zoom meeting with a lot of local Democratic officials. And these are people who tend to be very establishment players. They want to stick with the status quo by and large. So I expected the majority of them to be in favor of Biden remaining on the ticket.

I'd say it was about 80% in favor of his stepping aside. That was powerful as well. It's five days after the debate before the first Democratic lawmaker calls for Biden to step down. debate before the first Democratic lawmaker calls for Biden to step down. Day later, a second one does. That same night, Moten releases a very polite, pretty hedgy statement saying, I have grave concerns about President Biden's ability to defeat Donald Trump. And then going on to say, if the president can't demonstrate that he can do a better job prosecuting the case against Trump, quote, we should have all viable options on the table. So that goes out. But then later that night, I showed my statement to a friend who was visiting a Marine. And this great friend of mine, who I trust for advice,

he read it and he said, what are you trying to say? I said, well, I'm basically saying that he should step aside. And he said, well, then why don't you just say it, Seth? And I gave him this long explanation for why being polite was the appropriate thing to do here and actually more likely to result in mission accomplishment. You know, let's be respectful of the president and push him gently in the right position, not be so explicit. But I thought about it a lot that night. And I woke up thinking about it the next morning. And I decided, if I honestly think he should step aside, then you know what?

I should just say it. And so the next morning on the one interview I did at a local NPR station. WBUR. When we were talking about the statement, I just simply added those few words. He should step aside. And with that, Seth Walton became the third Democrat to demand the president step down. He told me he didn't expect tons of his colleagues to join him and follow suit, even though so many of them agreed that Biden should step aside.

That's just how Congress works, he says. He's in other situations where his colleagues agree on important stuff, behind the scenes, but don't take a public stand. I didn't frankly expect a lot of people to jump right in with me. But, I mean, I'm sorry to admit that. And so what happened? Watching the news, I really wondered if for somebody like you, if after making a statement like that, you're walking through the halls of Congress, you're going down to the floor, are you like a pariah? Are people not meeting your eye?

What's it like? Well, it was interesting. I was very curious what would happen the first time I came back to Washington and walked out onto the House floor for votes that evening. And it did seem like people were just avoiding me. Like they didn't want to be caught in a conversation. But it was totally different as soon as I walked into the cloakroom. In other words,

away from the reporters and the TV cameras. And people had a lot of nice things to say. He says he did try to lobby some of these colleagues, told them they should come forward publicly also. And a few did. Generally, most did not. And why not? Fear, but generally most did not. And why not? Fear, best as you can tell.

They were scared of ticking off the president and his team, of going against the Democratic establishment, of sticking their necks out. That fear was not entirely unreasonable. Michigan Congresswoman Hillary Skulden was kicked out of a Democratic Party planning meeting to coordinate get-out-the-vote efforts because, Politico reported, the Michigan State Democratic Party

didn't like the fact that she called on President Biden to step down. Moulton told me the main time he heard anybody make any kind of principled argument against speaking out was at a meeting of the Democratic caucus. This is Democratic members of the House. They met 12 days after the debate to discuss Biden. These Democratic members of the House, they met 12 days after the debate to discuss Biden. People who were concerned about the chaos or supposed chaos of what might come next. People who were unsure whether this should go directly to Vice President Harris or should be some sort of an open mini primary, as James Carville and Jim Clyburn have suggested.

Malden spoke at that meeting. And afterwards, he says, colleagues who were not sticking their necks out publicly continued to tell him that they liked what he was saying and doing in public. Do you feel impatient or frustrated with them? Yes. Yes, I mean, I'll be honest.

Look, I know people have very different political backgrounds and constituencies to represent. I know some people are hearing more folks back home who just want Biden to stay in the race. At least I'm guessing that they do. you're in a safe Democratic district, a pretty safe Democratic district. Is this good for you politically? Like calls and emails and texts and stuff to your office, are they mostly people supporting you coming out and saying this about the president? Interestingly, the calls and messages we've received from people in the district are very supportive. It's just, thank you for saying what we all saw. But there seems to be some kind of organized campaign nationally to attack me because a lot of the messages on social media, on Twitter, and to our office that come from outside the district have been highly critical. Wait, wait, do you think it's possible that your own party or your own president is organizing people to yell at you online? I mean, that's pretty standard practice, I think.

I don't know if that's exactly what's happening right now or it's just, you know, self-organizing groups or even Twitter bots. I mean, I don't really know. We haven't spent a lot of time digging into it. For a lot of us reading news reports during the three weeks before President Biden dropped out, as the days rolled on and President Biden kept insisting that he didn't think he lost any ground in the race, and he wasn't going to listen to anybody but himself on this, chances of him actually leaving the race seemed to get more and more remote. But this past Monday, Congressman Moulton told me that from where he sat, the whole thing was still very much an open question,

even after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump. That photo with his fist in the air. I mean, look, from my narrow perspective and the phone calls I've received, it's intensified calls for President Biden to step aside. It's going to be even harder for Democrats to win after that attempt at assassination. And so how do we increase pressure on the White House? I understand that you were on a phone call that President Biden was on this weekend. What can you say about that? It was a Zoom meeting, and he was speaking with the New Democratic Coalition.

And, well, there are a few dozen of us on with him. And I'm not going to share details of a confidential meeting, but I'll just say that it was discouraging. It left me feeling affirmed of my position and felt like things are bad and getting worse. I mean, this was not a high stakes debate. This was just a low stakes conversation with a bunch of fellow Democrats, but it didn't go terribly well for the president. How so? with a bunch of fellow Democrats, but it didn't go terribly well for the president. How so? It just seemed like he's not taking our concerns seriously,

making a lot of excuses. On the one hand, citing polls that say he's doing better while dismissing all the bad polls by saying polls don't matter. And just continuing to refuse to answer this question about how are you going to turn things around, sir? So as we record this, it's Monday, July 15th, 19 members of Congress and one senator are with you basically in total in total, calling for President Biden to step down, and then the rest of the Democratic Party elected officials are on the other side.

How is that feeling? Well, first of all, that's just not an accurate characterization. 19 plus one are public. The majority are with me. And so therefore, how does it feel? it feels frustrating can I ask you are you in a sort of perverse situation

where when you watch the president now on TV you're sort of hoping for him to slip up like if he slips up more it'll speed him on the path towards having to step down it's an interesting question Like if he slips up more, it'll speed him on the path towards having to step down? It's an interesting question. No, I'm not hoping the president will slip up.

But I am hoping that something happens to push him over the edge, to just to make him realize, to face reality here. I think it's important to say, Ira, that I genuinely love Joe Biden. He's been a great mentor to me. He's consistently given me great advice. I have nothing but good things to say about Joe Biden. Is there some moment between you that especially stands out or you think captures what it was like in the past between you and him? President Biden used to have me over for breakfast when he was vice president. And we'd sit at his residence. And of course, breakfast was always scheduled for about an hour, and it would go for close to three.

And he would regale me with stories from his time in the Senate and the lessons that he's learned about politics over the years. I'd ask very serious questions, pose situations where I needed advice. And he genuinely took me under his wing. It felt like he was invested in me personally. Now, there are hundreds of people in politics who know Joe Biden better than I. I'm still relatively new to this whole thing. But I like him a lot. I could tell that he cared. Knowing him to the degree that you do, are you surprised that he won't give up? He's incredibly tenacious. But I also know he's dedicated to our country. And there's a well-worn phrase in the Marines that they try to drill into you day after day in training, which is, it's not about you. And that's my fundamental message to President Biden today is,

to President Biden today is, sir, this is not about you. You're an amazing president. You've been an incredible senator. You've done so much for the United States of America. And now the best thing you can do is to step aside and give us just a little bit better chance at defeating Donald Trump and winning this election. Congressman Seth Moulton from Massachusetts. Again, we spoke on Monday,

well before the president decided to step down. Coming up, typing with your pinkies, how it has the power to make you rethink everything about your own sister. We have a true life example. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. This is American Life, Myra Glass. Today's program, The Big Rethink, stories of people reconsidering something fundamental about themselves and the way they see themselves.

And what happens next. We've arrived at Act 3 of our show, Act 3. Anything you can do, I can do backwards. Okay, so in this time of country-defining decisions, we close our show out today with yet another story of critical import about two sisters and their pinkies. A story Elna Baker stumbled on. I was chatting with a friend of a friend, Zoe Kuchlewski, at a bar when she casually mentioned she was about to attempt to break the world record for speed typing the alphabet using only her pinkies. It took me a minute to process. There's a world record for typing with your pinkies? How do you even know that's a thing?

Where does that idea even come from? And that's when Zoe said, My sister. I stole it. Sisters. So twisted, right? My sister has something, and I want to take it from her. Here's how it all started. One day, Zoe's sister Eliza texted her this.

LOL, I don't know if you heard, but I broke a world record tonight. Fastest time typing the alphabet backwards with my pinky fingers. LOL, I did it in 6.31 seconds, and the record is 9.65. My next texts were, LOL, what? That's so bizarre and cool that I can do it in 630. I'm going to ruin your night. Wow. So it was sort of instantaneous, your desire to take this record from her. Yeah, I guess so. And I was joking, but it was coming from a true place of like, I really do bet I could do it.

Should I? No, I shouldn't. Unless. So Zoe opens her laptop and gives it a try. Starts typing the alphabet backwards with her pinkies. She's not great, but she's improving rapidly, and live texting Eliza as she gets better. And she said, if you keep practicing, I bet you can get it. And I said, I think I could too, but I would feel like an asshole, lol.

She said, they have the same one for alphabet forwards, the record is 5.7 seconds. And I said, with pinkies, that would be kind of sick if I got forwards and you got backwards. LOL. Gotta throw the LOL in there to soften it, as always. Zoe, right then and there, decided that she would go for trying to beat the record for typing the alphabet with your pinkies forward. Like she's not dethroning her sister and taking her record. Because to me, that was like a way to just ever so slightly sidestep the idea of coming for her gig. And did you think, like, did you think that was going to work?

Did you think that was believable? Um, no. There's a specific kind of mind game endemic to sisterhood, and I want to use this stupid pinky thing to examine that. How something so small can blow up because of deep stuff from the past. Like in Zoe's case. From her perspective, Eliza's always been upstaging her. They're both just a few years out of college,

but Eliza's already a software engineer with a high-paying job. Zoe's a nanny. Eliza travels the world. Zoe binge-watches Vanderpump Rules. And Eliza's always racking up some new achievement. Like, she only came up with the idea to break the world record because she needed something to do after running her first half marathon. Whereas Zoe feels left behind in life.

She moved to L.A. to become a TV writer, but hasn't had the confidence to try yet. And this leads me to the second thing you need to know. The day Zoe got the text from Eliza, it was a big day for Zoe. Just that afternoon, she had finished four months of treatment in a super intense eating disorder program. Like, I'm talking eating all my meals in the company of like a therapist, basically, or a nutritionist. And now I was like, okay, like, now it's time to work myself back into the real world. Does it feel like she's like rubbing her life like like in your face? I for yes.

I mean, for a few good minutes, I was like I was just kind of like this. This was my like I felt really proud of myself for getting through treatment. I felt like I had just kind of had my own accomplishment. And that's when, record scratch, she got the text from Eliza and photos. Eliza was surrounded by friends, everyone's raising their pinkies and celebrating. And I'm sitting alone on my couch. No one is around me. I'm just like sitting, kind of stewing in my own

emotions. So I was a little bit, yeah, I was a little bitter. I was like, doesn't she know it's my last day of treatment? Like, doesn't she know how horrible the timing of this is? I just was bitter. I was just like, congratulate me. This isn't like, this is my moment. This was supposed to be my thing. So Zoe finds a typing speed website that can time her and starts rage typing with her pinkies. To give you an idea of how absurd this looks,

hold up your pinkies like Dr. Evil and try to type anything. Now try to do it faster, now faster, now repeat that for months. Insane, right? But Zoe became completely fixated on winning. Zoe and Eliza are stepsisters. When Zoe was eight, her dad met Eliza's mom, and within a couple years, he lived with Eliza's mom and Eliza. Zoe would visit every other weekend.

Zoe was already self-conscious about her weight. Her dad was always on her about it. And right away, she started comparing her body to Eliza's. Eliza always just seemed to come naturally to. She was always athletic. She, like, ran track. I felt like Eliza was the daughter that my dad dreamed of. For dessert, he might serve Zoe fruit while Eliza got pie.

There'd be little critical comments. Zoe's dad had been fat, lost weight his senior year of high school, and felt like it made life so much easier. He thought he was helping Zoe, but now sees how wrongheaded all that was. But as a teenager, Zoe decided that since Eliza was thin and got good grades and everything seemed easy for her, that Eliza was the favorite and she was more of a burden. All these past wounds ready to rip open with one ill-timed text. All this from a pinky world record. It is all connected, but it is pretty wild that all this stuff is coming up. stuff is coming up. Six months go by and Zoe's getting faster by the millisecond. Early on, she double checks with Eliza. Are you sure you're okay with this? And Eliza's like, yeah, sure.

So Zoe trains on. Finally, she's ready to go for it. To officially break the record, Zoe has to video her attempt to break the record and send it into Guinness. And so on the day of her first attempt, she invited friends over. I wore like sweatbands around my head and my wrists because it was like my athletic Olympian event. Like your Rocky moment. Yeah, it. Like your Rocky moment.

Yeah, it was fully my Rocky moment. And I should have gotten like tiny little sweatbands for my pinkies. That was a missed opportunity. I did my little slate where I say, my name is Zoe Kuchlewski. Hi, my name is Zoe Kuchlewski. I'm here in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles, California. I am attempting to break the record for the fastest time to type the alphabet with the little fingers. Oh, and I'm here with my witnesses, Rebecca Cochin and Ben Liguori. Yay! Zoe goes up to her computer, holds her hands in the air, cracks her knuckles, and wiggles her fingers, warms up her pinkies. Okay, I'm in her pinkies. Okay. I'm in position. Great.

Okay. Are we ready? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay. Three, two, one, go. Done. You got it?

I got it. Yay! 4.6 seconds. The record to beat was 5.12. After a few months, Guinness writes her back. She was now the Guinness World Records time holder. Zoe calls up Eliza to tell her the good news. She let me sit in and record.

So yeah, as you know, I got the record. How do you feel about that? I'm excited for you. Thank you. Yeah. Eliza congratulates her, but also says. For me, I'm really over the whole record thing, to be honest. For me, it was like it's almost been like nine months now since I did it.

So I'm very over it. I'm just excited for you I don't really care anymore from my perspective I did what I said to do so for me it was just yeah something fun to do and so it doesn't really matter to me anymore all the like specifics I don't know it just depends like what it meant to you I think it could have been it was different for for you. But for me, I mean, it wore off a while ago. So it happened pretty quickly for me. But for you, it might be different. True, true. I felt like I could hear Zoe deflating on the call. She went from cheering and laughing to being ashamed for even caring.

This was such a sister counterattack. She seemed so harsh. But when I sat down with Eliza to talk about it, she was warm, self-deprecating. I come in like frazzled, my hands have a little ketchup on them. So I played the call for her and just asked her, what was up with that? How do you think you sound in this? Not great. I mean, I think I sound offensive and upset. Defensive? I think so. I'm like, I don't even really care.

But for you, it's different. Oh, this matters to you, but it doesn't matter to me. For you, it's good. Here's the thing. Eliza knew Zoe was recording her and in good sister fashion she'd said she was okay with it but she wasn't really so she was flustered and uncomfortable and she had other feelings too this itch zoe has to take her down eliza's noticed and it doesn't feel great if you look at the story from her perspective,

Eliza breaks a world record. And when she first texts her sister, hey, I did this cool thing. Zoe's response is, fuck your thing. And like, I guess I was just like, why is her first response like to compete with me and one up me? And I was just like like instead of being happy for me like she saw it as this competition and her first response was like I can do it better this is this cool thing that I tried to achieve and now you're trying to beat it yeah why are you coming after me yeah and I think it's the fact that her first text after was like I bet I can do it faster.

Right. She didn't even say congratulations. Yeah. So then it's like, if that's where this is coming from, like, that feels hurtful. The entire way it was phrased was just doing it better than me. Eliza didn't say any of this to Zoe, though. She felt like it was a dumb thing to get her feelings heard over. So instead, she texted Zoe, I dare you. Eliza says, Zoe always trying to one-up her this way.

Eliza doesn't get it. You personally have never felt like you've been competing with Zoe. Not competing. To me, it's not even comparable. I've always admired the fact that she's out in LA living her dreams, and it's just that she is in a very different career path. But I always think, like, everything she's doing there is amazing. And she's married, and she has a house. Yes, Zoe is married. She lives in a nice house. She and her wife have a great relationship. Eliza hasn't yet checked off those big life boxes. She's also, Eliza told me, the

performer of the family, the one who upstages her. Plus, Zoe's the oldest. She's actually the big sister. Eliza's like, you win. I felt like she like set the tone, like she was player one on the Wii. Like she had to go to the bathroom first when we got home from the car ride. not in any resentful way just in like a that was the pecking order you're the oldest sibling like that felt right so and I think she even said to me too I think she said she felt like there's a point where it flipped and like to her I felt more like the older sister but that never happened for me I've always seen her as the oldest sister. I still look up to her a lot. I think I still really like to get her approval. I don't know if she said, but actually someone made a comment about that recently in our family that I like to get her approval. So to me, I've always looked up to her and admired her and I still do. She told me she had no idea that the day she texted Zoe about her world record was the day Zoe ended treatment. And Zoe never said anything.

And she also had no idea that from the time they were kids, Zoe felt inferior to her. Yeah, that's shocking to me. Shocking. Yeah, I mean, like, I just don't see myself in that role. Like, wow, like, she's doing so much better. I didn't realize she felt like that. Eliza says that growing up, she had no idea Zoe thought Eliza was the favorite,

the daughter their dad really wanted. She never noticed that she got dessert and Zoe got fruit. I mean, it makes me sad to think that. Some of that I think, especially now that we're older, I'm very aware of. But I definitely, again, wasn't as a child. And it makes me sad to think of like Zoe going through all that and feeling very alone and me having no idea. Like that is so isolating. But then I also see it from your perspective because it's sort of like has nothing to do with you. But it like I don't see it from my perspective. It does have to do with me. I mean, even if it doesn't directly like I wish I could have been there for her.

And like, yeah, I don't know why I wasn't. Oh, like, I don't know, just like being younger and just not seeing these things. And maybe it's not something that I was primed to think about. So I wasn't, like, even noticing. Since this whole pinky record thing, for the first time, Zoe and Eliza have started talking about all this. Directly. They called each other, compared notes.

Zoe was like, oops, I didn't say congratulations after you got your record, did I? And Eliza was like, I had no idea you thought my job was cool. And Zoe, who in one sentence will say she admires Eliza, and in the next say she's jealous, has realized that they're two sides of the same coin. And how she feels about Eliza in any given of the same coin, and how she feels about Eliza in any given moment has everything to do with how she feels about herself. And she's being more generous with her. It all looks different now, to both of them. Eleanor Baker, she's the co-host of the podcast Pretty Sure I Can Fly with Johnny Knoxville. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Her story was produced by Lily Sullivan and edited by Nadia Rieman. Are you sure you've had enough of me? Just think about what you left behind Reconsider Just before you turn your back on me And I'll go right out of my mind Our program is produced today by Susan Burton and Dana Chivas and edited by Garth Stracheski. People who put our show together today include Chris Bender of Jindari Bonds, Sean Cole, Michael Kamate of Eva de Kornfeld, Emmanuel Jochi, Hanny Hawasli, Henry Larson, Tobin Lowell, Catherine Maimondo, Ryan Rumery, Elise Spiegel, Ike Sreeskandarajah, Francis Swanson, Christopher Sotala, Matt Tierney, Julie Whitaker, and Diane Wu.

Our managing editor is Sara Abdurrahman. Our senior editor is David Kestenbaum. Our executive editor is Emmanuel Berry. Special thanks today to everybody at WUWM, especially David Lee and Ellie Ellis. Also thanks to Ben Terrace, Mike Elk with Payday Report, Mike Peska, Sarah McCammon, Don Gagne, Jonathan Weissman, and Paola Moda.

Our website, thisamericanlife.org. If you're looking for something to listen to during a long drive during this holiday summer or while you're waiting for planes to fly, you can stream from our archive of over 800 episodes for absolutely free. Free, did you hear me? Thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks as always to our program's co-founder, Ms. Tori Malatia. You know, when he's in Washington, D.C., he actually goes

to the same yoga class that Joe Biden does. But the teacher is so overbearing. Tori keeps having to tell her, let's be respectful of the president and push him gently in the right position. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life. I'll see you next time.