What A Day - If U Seek Amy Coney Barrett

Episode Date: October 13, 2020

Senate hearings began yesterday to consider Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court. Democrats tried to keep the focus on the Affordable Care Act, while Republicans treated the day like they were writing a profile of Barrett for a conservative version of Marie Claire. With three weeks left until November 3rd, we look at recent polling, what it says about swing voters, and the state of early voting across the country.And in headlines: the California GOP installs illegal ballot-drop boxes, Facebook announces it will ban Holocaust denial, and the epic battle between Microsoft and Trickbot.Show Links:https://caearlyvoting.sos.ca.gov/

It's Tuesday, October 13th. I'm Gideon Resnick. And I'm Erin Ryan, filling in for Akilah Hughes. And this is What A Day, where we are video conferencing into today's Amy Coney Barrett hearing just to yell at everyone. You know what, though? I think there's a couple senators on the judiciary that I would like to get yelled at by. Sounds like a personal issue. No, Kamala Harris. I would love for Kamala Harris to yell at me.

I think it would be great. Kamala Harris, I want her to yell at me. On today's show, what polls and early voting are telling us about the election with three weeks left, then some headlines. But first, the latest. This is probably not about persuading each other unless something really dramatic happens. All Republicans will vote yes and all Democrats will vote no. That was Senator Lindsey Graham yesterday saying what we were all thinking and kicking off the Senate hearings to consider Judge Amy Coney Barrett's nomination to the Supreme Court. Pretty much a foregone conclusion, according to him. That is right. So day one featured opening statements from the members of the Judiciary

Committee and from Barrett. The actual questioning will take place later today and tomorrow. That's when we might hear more substantial testimony about Barrett's record and her judicial philosophy. Yesterday was more of an orientation, if you will. So let's talk about what went down. Just a reminder that polling shows that the American people would overwhelmingly prefer the Senate focus on passing a COVID-19 relief package instead of filling the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg Supreme Court seat before the election. But that's not convincing Graham and his colleagues, who were very defensive throughout the hearing, that this shouldn't be going forward. Despite the election, despite the pandemic, despite what they said four years ago with respect to Merrick Garland.

And basically nothing that happens over the next few days is going to change any of their minds. And that way, Lindsey Graham was correct. First and only time I will say that in my life. Amy Coney Barrett could answer every question the committee asks her by armpit farting into the microphone. And her nomination would still move forward. That I would absolutely tune in for. But I guess if I had to pick, I prefer cynical Lindsey Graham over tantrum Lindsey Graham from the Kavanaugh hearings. I am personally team nobody.

I dislike both Lindsey Grahams equally. They both suck. But back to yesterday's hearing. Republicans treated the day like they were writing a profile of Amy Coney Barrett for right-wing Mary Claire. Here's Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn. But Judge, there's a question that comes up in my discussions with my constituents that's really more basic and more personal. They want to know how you do it. How do you and your husband manage two full-time professional careers and at the same time take care of your large family?

Great question. My guess, nannies. Nannies. The answer is nannies. It's almost always nannies. Cornyn thinks he's being pro-woman here, but that question is both condescending and tiresome. I bet John Cornyn refers to fathers watching their own children as babysitting. But soft sexism aside, clearly Republicans don't care about the integrity of the process or a nonpartisan judiciary. All they care about is the power grab. Because why? Because fuck you. That's why.

That is the motto. So Republicans tried to spend their time portraying Barrett as this very esteemed judge and themselves as esteemed legislators who are just carrying out their solemn duty. What did the Democrats have to say, though? Well, to the great disappointment of Republicans, Democrats did not attack Amy Coney Barrett's Catholicism. That would have been a bad call considering the fact that their presidential nominee is also Catholic. Anyway, instead, they tried to remind the American people that Amy Coney Barrett will help the Supreme Court do massively unpopular things, like invalidate the Affordable Care Act, overturn Roe v. Wade, and threaten same-sex marriage.

Connecticut's Richard Blumenthal said he wanted Coney Barrett to commit to recusing herself from election-related cases if she's confirmed. So we could expect questions on that today and tomorrow. Yeah, seems only fair. And what else did we learn? Democrats want to keep the focus on health care. They displayed posters featuring photos of people who will be impacted by the ACA being thrown out and told their personal stories about what's at stake. And then, of course, there was the COVID of it all. There always is. COVID was the most important invisible guest at the hearing, just as it was the guest that partied the hardest, by far,

at Amy Coney Barrett's nomination celebration in the Rose Garden just a few weeks back. Yeah, COVID went ham at Amy Coney Barrett's nomination. A few members of the committee chose to participate remotely, including Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris, Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy, COVID positive North Carolina Republican Tom Tillis and Ted Cruz, who is isolating himself after coming in contact with COVID riddled Utah Senator Mike Lee, who bizarrely attended the confirmation hearing in person and took his mask off when he was questioning Coney Barrett. It's like they want people to get sick. Because why? Because again, fuck you. That's why is their philosophy. And on that note, let's talk about the election. Excellent segue. All right. Well, there are three weeks left until November 3rd. And last night, President Trump went back on the campaign trail with a rally in Florida after being hospitalized for COVID-19. At one point, he talked about kissing people in the crowd. That is a real thing. And Joe Biden

held campaign events in Ohio. I don't think I caught him talking about kissing anyone. The debate that was scheduled for this week was mercifully scrapped after Trump refused to do it virtually so as not to turn a town hall with voters into a potential super spreader event. And now there might be two separate events on Thursday night with the candidates instead. You know, I prayed for the debate to be canceled, but God being the jerk that he is in 2020 gave me the possibility of two events instead. So rude. God. We know right now that polling tells us Trump is well behind Biden nationally and in key swing states. But we're also getting a more granular look at which voters are supporting which candidate. So let's talk

about that. Yeah, so this is the key thing that the campaigns are likely digging into right now. One of the most important places to look is the Midwest, where we don't need to remind folks Trump, of course, narrowly won in 2016, which gave him the presidency. And to simplify things here, outside of base voters that are firmly in the camp of either candidate, you could break up the rest of the voters in those states into three buckets. People who previously voted for Democrats but voted for Trump last time, people who voted third party, and people who just didn't vote last time. Yesterday, there were new New York Times Siena polls of likely voters in Michigan and Wisconsin that had Biden leading by 8 and 10 points respectively against Trump, which is a little bit higher than recent polling averages. So the latest poll, combined with other

recent polls they had from Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa, and Minnesota, found a couple of interesting things I want to highlight here. There are only about 4% of registered voters since the last election who switched sides, so a very small group. But according to their data, a large percentage of that group are going in the Biden direction, which the pollsters say would be enough for him to win. Additionally, across those states, they found that among people who voted third party last time, Biden is now leading Trump by 34 points. And then there is the important group of people who didn't turn out last time. So, Gideon, what's the story there?

Right. So according to The Times, non-voters in 2016, including those who were too young, are selecting Biden by a margin of 14 points across these states. If you put all these factors together, The Times polling team estimates that Biden is up across these states by around six points, whereas Clinton lost by about three in 2016. But caveat, these are polls and not votes. When it comes to the actual votes, we are looking at the possibility of record turnout, according to experts that are tracking this. The U.S. Elections Project estimates that nearly 10 million people have voted by mail or early across the country already. And according to Michael McDonald, the University of Florida professor who runs that project, at around this point last cycle, only 1.4 million people had voted. He also said that there are five states that have already

reached at least 20% of their total vote in the last election. And is there anything we can take away from the early votes that have come in? That's the question right now. Yeah. At the moment, a lot of experts are saying that these early votes are trending in the Democratic direction, which is a likely byproduct of a lot of things. COVID concerns, worries about getting ballots in early and the president's consistent lying about vote by mail actually impacting the way that Republicans vote. As we watch this in the next few weeks, we're going to have to see if Republicans in fact close those margins up with big election Day turnout, how all this litigation over ballots in various states turn out and where the early vote numbers ultimately go. One thing, though, from a strategic standpoint is that early

vote numbers can help the parties down the road closer to Election Day have a more sophisticated understanding of the remainder of voters they actually need to reach. Okay, so I'm interested in that egghead thing too, like understanding polling, whatever. But how funny would it be if Trump's like caterwauling about mail-in voting and all of his fuckery with the Postal Service ended up Streisand affecting him into losing historically?

It would be hilarious. It would be very funny and there's a chance it happens. I mean, life isn't narratively satisfying, but this would be narratively satisfying. It would make sense in the story of this awful year. Okay, so yesterday we also saw the beginning of early voting in Georgia, a state with a number of close races and a state with a history of problems in voter suppression.

There were images of massive lines of voters. I heard five hours in some places. That doesn't seem great. Yeah. I mean, every time we see that, you know, some of the responses are there's so much enthusiasm. The other responses are this should not be happening in any functioning democracy. And even before the day began, a federal judge ruled that the state

should continue using voting machines versus hand-marked paper ballots, even while acknowledging that the machines have flaws. And so some of the long waits were attributed to those machines having to be rebooted, according to local reports. The machines, for the record here, capture preferences on a touchscreen, and then the results are printed and scanned. Broadly as well, there were projections of more people participating on the first day of in-person early voting than any first day in the state's history. So that is good, but again, long lines are not. We'll be following all this as it develops, but that Squad, and for today's temp check,

we are talking about an extremely 2020 memory. Back in February, grocery stores started selling out as people stockpiled for the pandemic. We thought it was going to be two weeks. We are all fools. Well, it's happening again, but this time because of the pandemic. We thought it was going to be two weeks. We're all fools. Well, it's happening again, but this time because of the election. Concerns about unrest after November 3rd are leading some people to buy non-perishable foods and supplies. Personally, I'm still good with a large collection of bean cans I racked up last time. So Erin, my question, in your last

round of prepping, what was the thing you got that you had absolutely no need for? You know, Gideon, I've thought about this question a lot, because I mostly spend my life feeling bad about myself. The aforementioned beans, I think that when it comes to beans, you have to pick a lane. I went hog wild on all varieties of beans. Pinto,

cannellini, giant white beans, black beans, all the beans. I got too many of all of them. So I really went over the top with that. I also think that simmering sauces, like you go to Trader

Joe's is kind of a grocery store for people who don't know how to cook but want to feel like they're cooking. And they sell a lot of things that you're supposed to simmer other things in so i bought a lot of like pre-made sauces that i'm like how do i how do i use this i would just i would just rather cook i have spices i have spices and canned tomatoes and stuff like what am i what am i buying this pre-made stuff? Okay, same question for you, Gideon. My answer to this is nothing because I don't prepare adequately for any challenges that come in life,

any surprises. I wait and hope for the best. It has been working thus far. At some point, it will not work. But at least I can say I didn't do the thing where I inevitably deprived some family in need of toilet paper because I bought 500 of them myself. So in that respect, it paid off. I feel like if you ever run for political office as like a disruptor, you should have your slogan be at some point it will not work. Right.

Right. I think it's good. Also like, sorry to interrupt. I, but having known you, we met like when we were working together, literally four years ago,

I started at our last job at the, we worked like desks apart and, uh, knowing you having known you for four years, all of this tracks. That you would be totally unprepared for a disaster, but confident in that, totally tracks for me, Gideon. I take it as a compliment and as just another personality feature or flaw.

Again, we will find out one day if it comes back to kill me. I'm sure it will. But just like that, we have checked our temps. Stay safe. Prepare as much as you feel comfortable preparing, and we'll be back with some headlines. Headlines. WGOP installed unofficial ballot drop boxes in recent weeks, which is something that they acknowledged yesterday. Election officials got reports over the weekend of metal boxes popping up at gas stations, churches and gun shops.

My three favorite places to hang out, honestly, with signs that read official ballot drop off box. State officials said installing those boxes was actually a felony. But state Republicans argued that they were just using a 2016 law passed by Democrats that allows a third party to collect and deliver ballots. That's a practice Republicans like to call ballot harvesting. And coincidentally, they hate it. They even sued California's governor over ballot harvesting this year. Now Republicans are trying to justify their illegal actions with a law they don't like to prove that the law is bad. My tiny liberal brain can barely comprehend. The party has been issued cease and desist letters by the state in order to take the boxes down.

We'll include a link in our show notes to help California voters find a ballot dropbox near them that isn't just a big pipe flowing into the ocean. That is where I put mine, and that is where I'm going to have to retrieve it. Facebook announced yesterday that it will finally ban posts that deny or minimize the Holocaust, following a pressure campaign by Holocaust survivors around the world. That campaign also coincided with an advertising boycott over the summer by companies pushing Facebook to have a stronger stance on hate speech. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote that he struggled with the tension between standing for free speech and allowing Holocaust denial on his site. But he says his thinking changed after he saw data showing a rise in anti-Semitic violence. I know of a different piece of data that supports removing Holocaust denial, and it's actually known as the Holocaust. The company said it will immediately begin removing content, but it would take some time to train its systems to recognize and block Holocaust denying posts.

I love the idea of a bunch of Holocaust survivors who are all like north of 80 years old getting online and fucking shit up. Like, I love that. Keep it up, guys. Okay. The Chinese city of Qingdao is requiring all 9.5 million of its residents to get COVID tests after a dozen people tested positive.

The country's pandemic status is a little different than ours with these cases constituting China's first locally transmitted cases in nearly two months. I am jealous of that. That's partly due to aggressive contact tracing measures like these ones. Compare this to the super spreader event at the White House Rose Garden,

which led to at least 35 infections, including the president, and was followed by a contact tracing equivalent of spraying Febreze on a pile of old garbage with a dead body in the middle. Authorities in Qingdao intend to test the nearly 10 million residents within five days. A speed which suggests they figured out how to test for COVID just by staring at someone's picture and focusing really hard. Funnily enough, that's the exact same method the White House thought was the way to test for COVID. He's going to tweet through it. Tweet through the whole thing.

Post through it, my friends. That's all I can advise. The mild-mannered computer company Microsoft is done getting pushed around. They've launched an all-out assault on hackers, and their latest move was to dismantle a botnet that could have disrupted the election. That botnet is called TrickBot, but don't let the cool name fool you. It has infected more than one million computing devices since 2016. TrickBot was recently used to shut down Universal Health Services,

a healthcare provider that operates 250 hospitals nationwide. But that was before Microsoft rolled up its sleeves, broke a bottle over its own head, and went, as we say, micro-hard on the botnet. To disable TrickBot, Microsoft got a federal court order to disable IP addresses associated with its services, then worked with telecom providers worldwide to ground their network. The timing was deliberate, leaving bad actors without enough time to rebuild TrickBot before the election.

Gideon, I have a little bit of a quibble with this last story. Quibble, of course, is short for quick bitching. TrickBot is not a cool name. And the Russians are terrible at naming hacking groups like Fancy Bear. Come on. I'm cutting off your mic. And those are the headlines. That is all for today.

If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, don't throw your ballots into the ocean, and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading and not just the young adult sci-fi thriller I'm writing about a character called Trickbot, like me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Erin Ryan. I'm Gideon Resnick.

And please protect us, Microsoft. Go micro hard on all of my enemies, including anyone who ever deigned to give me a wedgie. What a day is a production of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis. Sonia Tan is our assistant producer. Our head writer is John Milstein and our executive producers are Katie Long, Akilah Hughes and me. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kshaka.