Today, Explained - Democrats, where you at?

Episode Date: February 5, 2025

NBC News reporter Sahil Kapur and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) try to explain if the Democrats are, like, dead. This episode was produced by Amanda Lewellyn, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Patrick Boyd and Andrea Kristinsdottir, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast Support Today, Explained by becoming a Vox Member today: http://www.vox.com/members Democratic lawmakers protest against Elon Musk outside Treasury Department. Photo by Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg via Getty Images. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Republicans have been saying lots of things. Just yesterday, their leader said he wants to own Gaza? The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it too. We'll own it. On Monday, the Secretary of State said an entire federal agency was insubordinate. USAID in particular, they refuse to tell us anything. We won't tell you what the money's going to, where the money's for, who has it. Over the weekend, Vice President Elon Musk,

the richest man on earth, tweeted about the same agency that, you know, gives money to the poorest people on earth. We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the woodchipper. Could gone to some great parties. Did that instead. But what have the Democrats been saying? People are aroused. I haven't seen people so aroused

in a very, very long time. Huh. That's a weird way to put it, Senator. We're going to ask what exactly is the Democrats' strategy to push back on Republicans on Today Explained. Support for this podcast comes

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Just go to indeed.com slash vox ca right now and support the show. And if you're interested in getting your job done, you can get your job done right now at indeed.com slash vox ca. Sean Ramos, for a halftime Host at Today Explained, Sahil Kapoor, Senior National Politics Reporter at NBC News. Sahil's been following Democrats as they try to figure out how to respond to Republicans having all the power and doing all the things. I think it's absolutely fair to call it a work in progress. Akeem Jeffries, the minority leader, got into a room with a bunch of Democrats and said he warned them this administration is going to

flood the zone and that Democrats cannot afford to chase every single outrage or that nothing was going to sink in for voters. That's according to a source in the room I spoke to. This is the classic Steve Bannon strategy of flood the zone. Every day we hit them with three things. They'll bite on one and we'll get all of our stuff done.

Just doing a ton of stuff, making a bunch of proclamations and overwhelming the system and the opposition. That's exactly right. And the message from Hakeem Jeffries was that if Democrats chase every little thing, respond to every little outrage, say one thing today and another thing tomorrow, and then change their message the next week, then nothing was going to stick.

So his plea to Democrats was simply focus on the kitchen table issues that people are worried about, and that arguably swung the last election for Trump. And Trump is giving them a lot to work with. The tariffs they're gonna argue are gonna increase costs if he actually goes through with them. Trump has been back and forth already on tariffs. Remember Donald Trump got hired saying he was going to lower grocery prices? Right.

Two weeks in, he's doing something that's going to do the absolute opposite. Mass deportation, they're going to try to connect that to the price of food going up, disruptions to supply chains, make it less about the migrants this time, more about the economic harm that it's doing. If we deport a large percentage of our farm workforce, farm labor is going to be scarce. Isn't that inevitably going to push up food prices? And then by the same token, Senator Adam Schiff, who I believe will be our next guest, I spoke

to him recently, and he said, you know, there are certain things that Democrats just need to let go this time around, such as Trump renaming the Gulf of Mexico. There are others who believe his chatter about Greenland are just are just taunts that he's not actually going to do anything, that they're not taking the bait on that one. And it's really interesting for Schiff to say this because he was in many ways the face of the first resistance. You know, he was a top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee. He was on the airwaves. He was on TV all the time talking about, you know, what he knew regarding Trump and the connections to Russia.

This time he wants it all to be about economics. Hmm. It's interesting this kitchen table issues strategy, while I guess it makes some sense because surely they lost because of some kitchen table issues, it also feels like that is the strategy that Kamala Harris was taking in her campaign. For all these positive steps, the cost of living in America is still just too high. You know it and I know it. Is there some sense that it didn't work for her, but they can make it work for them? I think this is precisely the argument

of some in the progressive movement who don't like this idea, who believe that this is effectively Democrats letting Trump off the hook for some issues, social issues, cultural issues, whatever you want to call them, that they do believe Democrats need to make a stand on, including protecting migrants,

including protecting the transgender community. So there are a few different ways to look at it. Yes, they will argue that Kamala Harris tried moving to the Center on Immigration. While we understand that many people are desperate to migrate to the United States, our system must be orderly and secure. And she lost. They will say she tried making it all about pocketbook issues and costs and, you know, saying, I'm going to go after the price gougers.

Illegal price gouging. Corporate landlords that unfairly raise rents on working families. And she lost. But the flip side is she had the shortest campaign in presidential campaign history. She had three months to make all of this work. And by then the damage was done, that she was in such a deep hole that President Biden left her for various reasons, that three months was simply not

enough time to recover. And you can see from the data, from the polls, that she made up a lot of ground on where President Biden was. And so the argument here among the Democratic leaders is that she was only able to run it close by focusing on those issues. The alternate strategy here, as you alluded to, is speaking out on immigration, taking stands on trans rights, opposing Trump's nominees, opposing the Lake and Riley Act. I guess it's too late for that one. Opposing basically everything this president wants to do.

I believe Senator Chris Murphy wants to take this approach this week. He's talking about a constitutional crisis. I worry that the American public is not going to rise up against this seizure of power if they see Democrats collaborating with Republicans on the floor of the Senate on a regular basis to pass legislation or support nominees. Are you seeing more Democrats pressing for that approach or pushing against it? Well Senator Chris Murphy is arguing that if Democrats appear afraid to cry wolf, then

people are going to think that, meh, things aren't so bad, that the new Trump administration is basically okay and that there are only a few select things to worry about, whereas yes, you're right, he argues this is a five alarm fire, that it's a constitutional crisis and Democrats have to act like it. Now, I will say that Dial has moved a little bit

in Chris Murphy's direction in recent days, in part because of the actions that the president has taken that have sparked so much outrage among his critics and a lot of bafflement even among his supporters, you know, unilaterally freezing federal aid, talking, you know, with Elon Musk saying that he and Donald Trump are going to shut down USAID unilaterally, which is something you need Congress to do. You can't legally do that. A president cannot legally do that on his own.

A whole bunch of actions that he has taken have sparked Democrats into outrage, into fury, into a little bit like the first resistance, it seems at times. We will see you in the courts, in Congress, in the streets. Elon Musk is a Nazi nut-ball baby. But again, the argument that they're making is along the lines of he has no plan for the middle class, so he's doing this. He has no plans to improve the lives of people

who are hurt by inflation and voted for him. There is still more of a focus this time around, even in the Chris Murphy theory of the case. They're shuttering agencies and sending employees home in order to create the illusion that they're saving money in order to do what? Pass a giant tax cut for billionaires and corporations. Right? It's mostly an opposition strategy right now because Democrats don't control anything. They don't control the House. They don't control the Senate. They don't control the White House. The Supreme Court is very conservative, too.

So what they have is an opposition, an opposition message. And does that mean that that message is sort of geared towards. The midterm elections, because it's not like they're gonna do any agenda setting until they win something back. It is geared to the midterm elections. That's the immediate focus, but it's also geared to winning back that Obama coalition that they lost major pieces of in the 2024 election.

they lost major pieces of in the 2024 election. I think this is why the Democrats are so stunned by this electoral defeat. It hasn't been like recent ones in the fact that they lost the popular vote for the first time since 2004. Even in 2016, when Trump won, there was still this so called coalition of the ascendant, you know, they still did very well among that Obama coalition, which had been growing in number. This time, they lost an enormous amount of ground among Latino

voters, they lost non white working class voters by huge numbers. The democrats believe that the core of their brand, at least since FDR, has been using the power of government to help the working class and the middle class. And they believe they've lost that because their brand has been defined by all these other things that might appeal to certain parts of the country, that might appeal to the coast, that would appeal to progressives, that would appeal to many young voters who want to reckon with things that they believe the country hasn't in a long time. All of that stuff is not what swing voters in the working class and the middle class think about.

They worry about paying their bills and the Dems want to be the party that is defined by, we're going to help you do that. Sahil Kapoor, NBCNews.com. Today Explained comes from Shopify. Business owners have a lot of spinning plates to balance. Frankly, it's kind of amazing that anyone is crazy enough to take on the challenge of starting a company if you think about it. You've got to create a great product manager team, reach customers and so much more. It's a lot. Luckily, there are platforms out there designed to take some

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It's a cute thing we do. Would you mind just saying your name and how you want us to identify you on the show? Uh, Adam Schiff and Adam is just fine. Great. I can't call you Adam. I'm sorry, but my mom would get mad. Senator Adam Schiff.

Congratulations on becoming a Senator under the first Trump administration. When you were still in the house of representatives, you were seen as one of the faces of the democratic resistance. You were the lead prosecutor in Donald Trump's first impeachment. You and he traded insults a bunch of times. You campaigned on being one of his toughest critics. What is your plan to oppose his agenda this time around? My plan is to pick my fights,

to sign on the things that he's doing that are really destructive, that are harmful to the state and to the country, not chase every crazy squirrel that comes running out of Trump land, to look for areas where we might actually be able to work on things together, like bringing down the cost of living. Now a lot of the things he's doing are going to have exactly the opposite effect, the tariffs, the mass deportations, all those things are going to drive up costs. But I'm not going to stop looking for things that I can work together on with the administration.

I don't think we have four years to wait until this is over to get anything done. But judging from the first two weeks of this administration, every violation of law and constitution, every corrupt act he's going to expect and should expect, I'm going to vigorously go after him and push back. I think that's what my constituents are expecting of me. It seems like there's some tension right now in the Democratic Party around the strategy that you're promoting here right now.

I've seen reporting that some of our Democratic governors like Pritzker in Illinois would like to see sort of a across the board total opposition to the entire Trump agenda instead of the more bespoke approach perhaps that you're advocating. What do you think of that tension or the other approach? Well, I think in order for us to be effective, we're going to have to be united in the fights that we pick. So you can't have some members of the party say, I'm just going to oppose everything and others have a different strategy. I don't think that's effective.

So we have to find the common ground to unite in opposition. And to give you an illustration, I think when we all came together to fight this freeze on federal funding, it was very effective. We took to the floor, we held the floor, we organized our constituents back home, we highlighted cases of real harm that this freeze would do. And I think our unity helped with the clarity of message that we needed helped beat that back at least for a time. That's the kind of thing I think we need to do. If some folks, for example, are opposing all nominations and others opposing only some nominations,

it's less clear where we unite on, for example, this guy, Russell Vogt, and make the case, this obscure head of OMB or desired head of the Office of Management and Budget, and we let the country know why this person is so dangerous, this architect of Project 2025, then the message breaks through. So I think our strength is our unity. Uh, we will find greater and greater unity, uh, as we go from, you know, week two to week three and even more unity in week four, as we arrive at the most effective strategy. I want to ask you more about messaging because I spent some time in anticipation of this conversation with you, scrolling through the Democrats'

account on Twitter. And it's a lot of Trump is bad. Trump is bad. Trump is bad for democracy. Trump is bad for these other reasons. And it feels like the same message. I saw one tweet that said, I think from January 27th, Donald Trump is putting together an administration that's focused on Wall Street, not Main Street, and I had to check my calendar to make sure I wasn't

back in 2016. Is the messaging just sort of stuck and can you guys unstick it? Well at one level the messaging is affected because he's very unpopular, but that's not enough. We're not very popular either. Right, there was a there was a poll that said you guys had what like? 57% of the country didn't didn't approve of the job you guys were doing which is like the lowest since 2008 I think yes now typically when you lose an election You're not going to be very popular and when the Republicans lost the last election they were deeply unpopular But part of it is that we need to make sure that we're communicating with equal vigor

our positive message about the economy. The fact that what we are focused on like a laser is making sure that if you're working hard you can earn a good living in America. And I do think there's going to be a sharp contrast that is going to be even more apparent to people as we get into the tax debate about who's fighting for whom. And that reference you made about who's fighting for the billionaires and who's fighting for working families, that's going to become crystal clear as we get into the fight over this big Trump tax giveaway to corporations and wealthy people. And of course, by making Elon Musk their

And of course, by making Elon Musk their most visible, I don't know how to describe him, alter ego president, they're helping us make the case. He is the symbol of the oligarchy and he is sort of ransacking, vandalizing these agencies, enriching himself. There's all this corrupt self-dealing going on in the administration, the president and his meme coin.

The swamp is just overflowing. So the case is going to be quite easy to make, but even as we make that case, we have to be articulate in our own bold economic vision for the future, which needs to be simple and powerful. And we need to have the same brand and message discipline that we see from the other side. I think there's a sense out there that the Democrats keep getting caught flat footed, like when Roe V. Wade was overturned and it felt like the president

didn't really have a plan in place, even though, you know, Supreme Court cases, they take a while to process. They're kind of predictable in a way. Or you know, let's just say by running Joe Biden for re-election in the first place, that obviously seemed like a mistake eventually. And then right now, Elon Musk trying to reshape our civil service, it feels like we could have predicted some of this, though I do see Democrats out there outside USAID making a stink about it.

Do you think there's more the party could be doing to feel like a couple steps ahead of what's coming instead of a couple steps behind. Absolutely. And I think the illustration you give about Roe v. Wade is a really important one, because I think a big piece of what we need to do is take the long view, the way Republicans have. They worked on overturning Roe v. Wade for decades and they succeeded and and part of I think the reason we were caught flat-footed is We were in some disbelief On the one hand we knew this is what their goal was and they were trying to do it on the other hand It was like could they really do that? Could the Supreme Court really? Overturn these decades of law would they really go so far and even while we knew the answer was yes

We still had a hard time believing they would actually do it and they did. But here's the thing, we're going to need to reform that Supreme Court. In order to reform it, we're going to have to impose a code of ethics on the court. We're going to have to impose term limits on the court. We're going to ultimately have to change the size of the court. We're going to need to start socializing these ideas now because they're going to take time. And people might say, okay, term limits on the court, which I think frankly is one of

the most important reforms. Is that really possible? Is that really doable? And the answer is yes, it is. And the public would be hugely supportive of that. I don't think you can find probably many people out there who think it's a good idea that you'd be given that kind of power for life without any check on it. And we can impose term limits and do so in a constitutional way as long as we provide

that after you serve, let's say, 18 years on the court. You're not removed completely from the court. You're just reassigned back to the court of appeals or to the district court. You remain a judge for life, but you don't have, you don't have a lifetime guarantee of being on a particular court. That is constitutional. That would eliminate the kind of institution destroying gamesmanship we saw when Merrick Garland could even get a hearing.

And over time it would once again restore that court's balance and credibility, which has been so badly shaken, eroded, and destroyed. But we're going to need to socialize those ideas. We're going to need to make that case. We're going to have to be ready to make it for as long as it takes. We need to learn from what the Republicans did in tearing that institution down if we're going to be able to rebuild it.

Before we go, Senator, I want to ask you about pardons. You spent a lot of time trying to prosecute the January 6th insurrectionists with some success. President Trump walked into office and let them all off the hook. Abuse of power, et cetera. But on his way out of office, President Biden pardoned his siblings and their spouses. Not a great look, he also pardoned you. What did you do?

I did my job, which I'm proud of as a January 6th committee member. Look, what Biden did was a mistake. I urged him not to do it. I think in particular, the pardons of the family members set a precedent that will haunt us because what it means is Trump's kids are all going to get a pardon now. So going into this administration, the Don Juniors and the Erics and all the rest of that group that are already looking for every way to enrich themselves now know they can cross any line they want because dad's gonna give

them a pardon on the way out the door. That's a terrible message to be sending a family that has, you know, ethical problems galore. So terrible precedent. I also thought the pardons of the January 6th committee, even though I was one of them are a mistake. I don't want to see administrations on the way out the door pardoning party members and political allies, et cetera. That's another precedent we don't want, but all of that, all of that is child's play compared to what Donald Trump has done.

And let's just look at the big picture here. Donald Trump comes into office, he pardons 1550 people, including people who violently attacked police in the service of an even bigger political crime of trying to overturn the election. He sends a message, if you use violence in my favor to perpetuate my power, I have your back. Then he goes beyond that to fire the prosecutors, the top prosecutors and the top FBI agents, who worked on properly investigating and prosecuting these criminals. So he punishes law enforcement for doing their jobs and he rewards criminals

for beating police and trying to stop the transfer of power. It is breathtaking and they're not done. They now want to purge countless people from the FBI. Uh, they want you to inform on your neighbor. They want to know anyone who ever worked in these cases. Uh, it is just dangerous and disgraceful and, and, uh, an attack on the rule of law and the justice system. So, yeah, I disagree with Joe Biden. It's not in the rule of law and the justice system. So yeah, I disagree with Joe Biden.

It's not in the same league. And I think we really have to be aware of the magnitude of the harm that Trump is doing right now to our whole justice system. Senators, Adam Schiff, you can call him Adam. Senator Adam Schiff, you can call him Adam. Amanda produced our show, Amina edited, Laura checked the facts, Patrick and Andy mixed it. It's today. Thank you.