Separate the Show from the Substance. Lanhee Chen Talks to A&G

we enjoy Lan hea Chen so much. Lan He's David and Diane Stephy, fellow in American Public Policy Studies at the Uber Institution and the director of Domestic Policy Studies at the university. Neither of one of us could hope to get into Stanford University, lan He, how are you, sir? I'm doing well. Happy Friday. Maybe some sort of sympathy admission, you know, listen, he's not very bright, but he tries hard.

Something like that. At the end of this at the end of this conversation, Joe said, over his dead body. But at the end of this conversation, I'm just gonna ask for your quick take. Since Caitlyn Jenders announced she's running for governor of California. But at the end of the conversation we'll get to that. Hey, Lonnie, did you happen to see the opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal today by Kimberly Straussel about um voter turnout and all that. I haven't seen it yet. No, I barely

got through my coffee, you guys. So the Secretary of State in New Hampshire, Gardner, who maybe you know, or you don't if you're super into politics. He's a highly respected Democrat. He's the longest serving secretary of state in the entire country. And he testified in front of Congress yesterday as they were having a big talk about voting regulations.

You know, we all know, right, the whole Georgia thing, and Georgia changed some of those and people went crazy and boycott and moving Major League Baseball and then the voter suppression, voter suppression and whatnot. And this highly respected, longtime Democrat was there testifying on the Republicans invited him to say, these these everything's bad records. From what you're saying, there's very little voter suppression going on. What the hell

are you talking about? And New Hampshire has some of the most restrictive voting regulations in the state, partially because it's in their state constitution. You have to show up that day, one of the reasons you have they don't have early voting. One other reasons is because their constitution

mandates that they release the results that night. You have to show an I D though, because they want to be very sure that and they regularly have among the highest turnout, if not the highest turnout in the entire country and the state of California, and that's one of

the reasons I bring it up. Nancy Pelosi was blasting New Hampshire and other states who require I D s and that sort of thing, and want to and and and and are pushing for HR one, the federal government takeover of federal elections, and she wants to impose the California model. And he pointed out Mr Gardner from New Hampshire that California, in terms of turnout in the last

four presidential elections, ranked forty nine. So a lot of the we're gonna make it easier to vote um rules that are put out there, you get lower vertic voter turnout in some of the more restrictive states have higher I just thought that was fascinating. What are your thoughts and all of that, and what do you what do you think the sweet spot would be? What should we do? Yeah?

I mean this is a really tricky set of issues because on the one hand, you know, I think there are certain common sense things about voting that you could get a majority, a strong majority of Democrats and Republicans and independence to nod their heads and say yeah, we

should do that. For example, you know, the idea of saying, look, we want to have an election process that people feel secure, right, they feel like if they vote, that vote is actually the person who cast it as the person who claimed to have cast it, that that vote was securely handled and counted in the right way and accounted for in the right way. You know, I think most people would say, yeah, okay,

that makes a lot of sense. And then you say, look, can we create a mechanism where, in the context of it being a secure vote people have an opportunity to vote in different kinds of ways. Some people want to vote by mail, absolutely they should. Some people want to vote in person early yes, And if you want to vote on election day, yes, you know, so this idea that somehow we have to go and polarize this one way or the other, you know, as Nanci Pelosi said, no, look,

we gotta have one way. We do it across the country, regardless of the fact that, you know, there's reasons why

different states have different election laws and rules. A state that's predominantly rural, for example, has to have a different set of rules potentially in a different set of requirements then a state that's more urban, right, and so there are reasons why, in their infinite wisdom, the founders said, look, fundamentally, when you look at something like an election, we want that election to be primarily driven by the conditions of

what's happening locally in states, in localities, etcetera. So this doesn't have to be a polarized issue. Unfortunately, it's become a really polarized issue, and I think that's frustrating to those of us who look at this and say, can we have a little common sense here? You know, for example, I'll just give one more example and I'll shut up. In the Georgia law, there was a lot of um

noise made by particularly I mean, Biden amplified this. Unfortunately, he said, oh, if you're waiting in line, you can't get water. They want people to to to go without water, waiting in line to vote when it's ninety degrees. Well, first of all, how often is it ninety degrees in November? But putting that aside for a moment, Georgia law actually put putting aside from what the Georgia law actually said is if you are not a poll worker, you cannot

give people who are waiting in line water. And that's a very reasonable thing if you think about it. Why do we why do we prohibit electioneering? Right? Why do we prohibit people from going up while you're waiting in line, harassing you about voting for one person or another. Those kinds of laws prohibiting electioneering are very common. We have them in California, they have them in New York. What the Georgia law actually said is if you are not a poll worker, you cannot set up a water stand.

But in fact, if you are a poll worker, you can put out a water dispenser and people can get water on their own. So how did that become? You know, all of a sudden, we're going to dehydrate people while they're voting. And that's Just an example of how polarized we've become is we can't even have a reasonable dialogue with the law actually says, I know that's what he kept me from voting many times. As as a fad

to get too thirsty. It happens bones. It's like when you climb mount has a reverst and the bones of the dead climbers and it I like that at the polls. So a lot of this is being driven on both sides by I think an unproven theory. Uh, Democrats want higher turnout, Republicans would would like to have a lower turnout, with the belief that the higher to turn out, the more Democrats vote that that is there any fact behind that? No, I mean, look, I think we have seen high turnout

elections that have benefited Republicans. We've seen high turnout elect since that have benefited Democrats and vice versa. So I don't think it's correct to say that high turnout always hurts Republicans. Uh, that's not borne out empirically. Uh. If you've got a good, strong Republican candidate that's able to speak not just to Republican voters, but to voters across the the ideological spectrum, you will see high turnout supporting

Republican candidate. So I don't think it's the king. Well, then this is a heck of a topic that's so benefic So, so the the theory driving the whole thing that higher turnout leads to more Democrats not true. The fact that you'll get better turn out by loosening up the the the ways to vote is not true according to all Gardners stats yesterday. So the whole thing is

a stupid conversation. It would see, right, Lana he Chant is with the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Lane, is there any chance that the district of Columbia will become a state? To why or why not? Um? The only way it becomes a state is if Democrats decide in the Senate they're going to get rid of the filibuster and and and they're going to completely change the way that essentially the Senate operates, and and they're gonna jam it through

on a party line vote. Now, even then the question is, could a would a moderate like Senator Joe Mansion of West Virginia, would he go for something like that? Would he be supportive of something like that? Or does this end up becoming some part of package package. You know, some have suggested, for example, well, yeah, d C would become a state, but at the same time, you've got some Republicans that want Puerto Rico to become a state, so you figure out a way to package DC statehood

with Puerto Rico statehood. I don't know how this is all going to turn out, but in terms of it just being a straight up DC statehood bill passing the Senate, I still think it's less likely than more likely. Again, unless the Democrats really want to burn you burn it all down and say we're gonna get rid of the

filibuster entirely. George Will thinks that the twenty three Amendments UH forbids it, and that there's no chance they're going to overturn the twenty three Amendment or repeal it, and so they're trying to pass and as he describes it, almost inscrutable process to legislatively transferred to the new state the electoral votes constitutionally given to the district, etcetera, etcetera.

It's not even doable constitutionally. Yeah, I mean, and I think certainly you would see the legislation um litigated on on those grounds, you would see people saying, look, essentially, this is not a uh, this is not a constitutional thing. To do it again it it sort of goes against what the intent of of that part of the Constitution was.

And you know, the politics are very fraught, right, I mean, obviously we all know the district of Columbia is extremely tilted politically, and that automatically brings it from the vein of a conversation about what is best for you know, the United States into what is best for my party or for the other party, and that, unfortunately, if never a fun conversation. Can the Biden White House continue to claim that we've got a real problem with racist white

cops shooting people of color despite the facts. Can they continue to do that and win politically or is it going to hurt them? Well? Look, I mean I think there's a few things here. First of all, the that what the Biden team wanted to do essentially was to take this entire situation and and and in some ways employ it to talk about the need for certain kinds

of police reforms. By the way, there's actually a bipartisan consensus if you look last summer, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina actually put forward legislation that would have helped to reform some of these police practices, would have studied and tried to figure out what are best practices, what are things that we can distribute as information, not as requirements, but as guidance, so that police departments around the country could do a better job essentially of enforcing the laws

and making sure that they were doing it in a way that was fair to everybody. So there's actually a bipartisan consensus around the need to do some of these reforms. The problem, again, guys, just like we talked about with the previous subject, is when you try to employ it for political gain. That's when it runs into problems. That's when the two sides can't get together. If we would only get together and say, okay, what does the Tim Scott Bill say as a starting point, what do the

Democrats want? Can we get together and find common ground and agree that there are certain things that you know, certain practices, certain things that are happening we don't want to be happening, but there are other things that are strictly for political show. Can we separate the political show from the actual substance. If we could manage to do that, we could actually come up with legislation in some of

these areas. So that's the frustrating part about this is that it's not like like Republicans are saying no, no no, no, no, no, no, no reform at all in this space, and Democrats are arguing no, no no, no, we're the only ones. I've got the answer to this. In fact, if you look at it, there are actually some ways we can get together. They can be some common ground. And that's where I wish we would start instead of trying to use this to to one's own political advantage, boring who's the good guy,

who's the bad guy? See the world if Tim, if Tim Scott runs for president and maybe against Kamala Harris, who's the one who stopped him from being able to get this going? That that topic could be huge. She wouldn't even meet speaking of people running for office. And if this is if this is a non starter, I mean, if there's no chance, then we don't need to discuss it for more than you here we are, right, Caitlyn Jenner officially announcing today she's running for governor of California.

If you think she's got no shot and is not a player, then we won't discuss it. What are your thoughts. Look, I don't think that it's a non starter completely. And here's why. We all know how difficult it is to break through in California. It is, it is a big state, It has a lot of you know, massively expensive media markets. People are either tension is divided. And if we think back to the last week call, the only person who could have broken through was the one who ended up

running and winning, and that was Arnold Schwarzenegger. And not to put Caitlyn Jenner Arnold Schwarzenegger in the same category. I mean, obviously there there there are differences in their candidacy, but the only there are a number of differences between Arnold Schwartzenegger and Caitlyn Jenner. True, it is very hard to break through. And if your theory of the cases you need something completely you know different, and some would

argue outrageous, then that's what Caitlyn Jenner represents. So I know enough to know that you never say never in politics, and so look, I think I think this will this will make the recall much more interesting even than it would have been before. Let's put it that way. We're

not friends anymore because you had Jack on now. David Stephy fellow, an American public policy Studies at the Hoover Institution, Director of Domestic Policy Studies at Stanford University lan he thanks a million for lending us a bit of your time. Always appreciated. Have a great weekend. Thank you. I actually don't think if I had to bet money, I don't think Gavin Usan is going to get recalled. So it's

not gonna make any difference. No, there is no level of incompetence high enough to get a Democrat recalled in California anymore. The state is beyond saving. It is beyond hope. Abandoned ship, abandoned hope. All ye who enter here, art strong and Jetty