Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds, and Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace says, we cannot be assholes to women.
All right, Well, that's something.
We have such a great show for you today, the Atlantics, Franklin Fower talks about his new book, The Last Politician, Inside Joe Biden's White House and the struggle for America's future.
Then we'll talk to Hanafried.
Executive director of All Voting as Local, about how we keep our elections fair. But first we have MSNBC Daily Editor James Downey.
Welcome back to Fast Politics. Jim Downey, thank you for having me back. We're delighted.
So let's talk about this last slow week of summer. This comes out on Monday, so we're kind of catching up to the kind of it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was vacmenttum it was discuss vic everywhere.
Yeah. I tend to subscribe to the theory that a large part of this is that the GOP race is so boring. You've got the santisis top strategists saying we need fifty million dollars.
I feel like the top line is they back down.
Like somehow he needs It's almost like he's facing a hur or he's dealing with the fall from a hurricane, and he needs more help with the collapse of his political campaign. Like that's how bad this is. So I think it's you all, yeah, you see this a lot of times. My personal comparison with Vivic is Herman Kane in a lot of right, where it's the guy who comes in with all of these slogans that don't pass the left test, spell test, that whatever test you want
to run on them. But you get to September October and all of the regular stories have been written by the political press, and they're like, well, who else is here?
Oh?
This guy nine guys, yeah, yeah, have a nine nine nine fag He's just it's remarkable where somebody decided to take everything that's much of the worst of Donald Trump and all of the worst of Ted Cruz and this sockety that that was a winning strategy for politics.
All of the worst of Ted Cruz, and also Jeff row who worked on Ted Cruz too.
Yes, that's right, yes, and in ours, yeah it.
Is now making money on yet another uncharismatic candidate. So I want to talk to you about this idea of boringness, right, and the political mainstream media, which is us, right, that's us. I mean I hate it when people are like criticizing the mainstream media and I'm like, that's you, bitch. I'm sorry, Like, well, like this is us. But there is some pressure to write things that people want to read.
Yeah, I think it can be difficult sometimes. As I said, I hit September October, and I think in this situation in particular, where we all know where this Republican race is going, absence some remarkable event, we know who's going to be the nominee, it's one of the least suspenseful, so to speak, primaries in decades, maybe.
Maybe in maybe in even more.
Yeah, I'm trying to think back to I mean when George W. Bush won the two thousand race, I mean that was people McCain for a little bit there Al wore on the other side, but he was an incumbent vice president.
I mean that was pretty boring.
That was pretty boring.
Yeah, that was.
The birth of the Naomi Wolf being brought in to tell him to wear more feminine suits discourse, which was in fact one of the dumber moments.
Yeah, and it's only looked dumber in hindsight as she's done made.
Her her career is an anti vaccer.
Yes, yes, Well, when you've completely embarrassed yourself on the BBC, your book has been pulp literally pulp taken out a circulation because an error you made. What's left but to become a.
Grifter, right exactly.
But yeah, I think it's tough. I have a lot of some of you. I think when you work at a place like I mean, I'm an MSNBC and we have a lot our colleagues and NBC News, we have people who are on the road every day with these candidates or will be on the road every day with this candidates soon, and you've got to say new stuff. I think that that's something that can be very And yes, people will say you need to be substantive, and you should,
you should cover the substantive stuff. But also, first of all, if you're covering a parent like Vivic, how much substantive stuff is? I mean you can be like, what was it? We need a physical fitness test for colleges, right, I mean, like at a certain point, you know, I mean, how many times can you write that story? Again? If he comes out with a new substance of new policy, you write that story and you write reactions to it, and
hopefully you write about how dumb that is. But sometimes that may get you one to two stories, but it may not. It's not going to be it's not going to do a whole month of reporting for you.
So right, exactly.
I mean, the pressure to file copy is real, right, and the pressure to make these stories interesting. The American public israel And I again, I don't like where we are in American democracy, and I don't think anyone does. But we have the kind of civic engagement that we haven't had in a long time, right like these I mean I remember news cycles filled with like why don't people vote?
How do we get people to vote?
Right?
People?
We have these turnouts that are like knocking the doors off. I mean, think about that Ohio. We had a special election in Ohio and August that was set up in the hopes of not getting a lot of people there, and the numbers were insane.
Yeah, And I think that's a great example of much as we've bemow the many faults of sort of the age of the Internet and the age of and the difficulties with disinformation and privacy issues and so forth. I think about how much more difficult it would have been to get out the word about those sorts of things,
particularly maybe not so much inside the state. And in terms of it might have been a little bit easier and the turnout wouldn't have been a huge drop off, but in terms of the funding and in terms of the national attention, you look at from Ohio with the abortion referenda to all of the anti trans efforts in various states across the country, and you think about how quickly this news moves and how quickly people are able
to be aware of it. We're undeniably in that situation, in a better situation under in the Internet era than we were twenty or fifty years ago. I mean, you go back and look at when you had just three major broadcast networks in your local newspaper, and obviously the death of local news is a huge problem, but.
The gatekeeping was insane.
I mean, I come from nineties world because I published my first book when I was twenty ish and so, which was of course in twenty twenty one no the in nineteen ninety whatever, and so the gatekeeping like if you didn't get a review somewhere, you were fucked. Like there was no If Ana let you write for Vogue, great, but if not, there were like three choices and it wasn't.
So I do feel like what's been incredible about this Internet world, and I've been a huge beneficiary of it myself, is that you can really if people think you're funny, they'll sort of and there's a much different kind of people. Can I mean again, like I feel like this is a conversation like everything bad for you is actually good for you. But I want to like sort of just talk about kind of what is coming up this week
because the House is coming back. They have the GOP House, which has barely five seats and has all of these very vulnerable House Republicans is planning on doing a lot of crazy shit.
Can you talk to us about that?
Absolutely? Well, it starts with the fact that Kevin McCarthy is still very bad at his job. That's much of voice is happy in the House.
We will talk. That's because he's very stupid.
At the very least, he's very good at fundraising and he's very bad at keeping his mouth shut, because they're moving forward. It looks like he's moving forward with this impeachment effort, even though GOP congressman aids they'll admit off the record, I mean, in every other story on this movement to impeach him has a quote from an aid or a congressman off the record, of course, because God forbid, they put their names behind it, but saying that, like,
we just don't have the evidence to do this. We
don't have the evidence to this. And actually the fact that they have him move forward with this impeachment investigation is in and of itself a sign that they don't have the evidence, because the fact that they didn't move forward with it in April, say, because there's such pressure from the right right, as you mentioned, they have such a narrow majority, and they have enough moderate quote unquote moderate let's say, representing Biden's endangered congressmen and women who
look at this, look at what the so called evidence, and say, this isn't there and it's only going to hurt me. This is not going to help me, because we mean, you look at the Democrats. The Democrats did not suffer at the ballot box for pursuing impeachment. I think that's pretty indisputable, right whereas here Republicans themselves, there's enough of them who look at this and say this
is a bad idea. And McCarthy's doing this in part not just because he's trying to protect himself just overall this sess am now a majority, but also because he made that error where he didn't immediately when he was asked. I believe on CNBC that whether Trump was the strongest candidate, he didn't say yes right away. He didn't doff his cap and scrape and bow, and this is his way
of covering for it. And now we're just going to be headed back towards an impeachment inquiry is going to be a wasteerer when it's time, and a shut down, that possible shutdown, which is again going to be a wastewaary West Simon will and if it goes through, will hurt the economy and it's ridiculous.
And I want to talk about shut down for a minute.
So basically Republicans are mad that they're debt ceiling, so they had caused a debt ceiling fracas. The dead ceiling is not Republicans if a Republican president off in office, Republicans agree to lift the debt ceiling. If a Democratic president's office, Republicans agree to not lift the debt ceiling because they hate Democrats, or because they want to be obstreppers, or because they think they can get something from it.
Republicans did not get anything from it. The MAGA Caucus, which includes Marjorie Tayler Green and Matt Gates and that crew furious. So now they want to do a government shutdown to stick it to the Libs.
Yeah, And the pathetic part of this is that there was an argument to be made, and there was some polling to suggest that a debt default could hurt both parties, that that was a materially different situation, could crush the economy. Yeah, that could have been such a shock that both sides would have been blamed. Whereas the shutdown. We've been through
several of these in the last decade. We know how this ends, we know and McCarthy knows how this sends, right, And you had you have Marjorie Taller Green, who it's worth noting Marjorie Taylor Green, and I believe gets as well. But certainly Green has she underperformed a lot of similar Republicans in nearby districts or or similar kinds of districts. She is not good at politics. It's kind of funny to me that the people talk about her as a
potential VP. And I mean, who knows what Jeff does god to do, but she even among a roster of very bad choices, she would be particularly awful.
I would like to add in to take this moment to talk for a minute about Jadie Vance, who has also drunk the Maga kool aid. Though obviously he's a little smarter than Marjorie Tayler Green and has this very fancy pedigree. But he is another one who well underperformed right Like had he been running in Pennsylvania, he would have lost, but because he was running in such a deeply read state, he was able to win. But he's still underperformed, like by a larger margin than most Republicans
in Ohio. And I think it is worth realizing that these Maga celebrities is and Ted Cruz is another one who is up for re election now again Texas seems like a hard nut to crack, but these Maga celebrities, they really only serve a very small part of this very kind of galvanized dug in base.
Absolutely, and I've thrown Lauren Bobert there as well, of course. I mean we remember that there was suspense for she couldn't claim victory in her race until a couple days after the midterms. Last year, her race came right down to the warne at the election was so close that it triggered her recount.
She only won by five hundred votes.
Yeah, I think Cruise is sort of the er example, the original example of this. I mean, obviously Democrats would love to flip texts, and as you said, it's a tough nut to crack, but a lot of the most sort of promising signs have been less about Texas changing and more about Ted Cruz being a uniquely bad, terrible candle.
I mean, it is also worth talking about the gubernatorial races of twenty twenty three, of which there are a few that are like Andy Burscher in Kentucky. I think he's term limited, but there's another Democrat running for that seat. And then Mississippi has a Democrat running for Elvis Presley's cousin, right, who was the highest elected Democrat in the state. And then there are like a sort of spate of these red states with blue governors or where a blue governor has a real shot.
Yeah, and obviously that's going to say that people are going to be watching really closely, because you recall that in twenty twenty one with Glenn Youngkin in Virginia and the Republican near Flip Jersey as well, which actually, compared to the fundamentals, was in some ways more of a Republican of a performance than in Virginia that basically determined the narrative for the whole year running up, and that that was the reason why people thought there was going
to be a red wave and also materialize. Yeah, well right, yes, and I think here this is gonna be sathing that people are gonna be watching very closely and as much as anything, even though because I believe it's in Louisiana,
Mississippi and Kentucky. Yes, even obviously not exactly. Basher has done a tremendous job in Kentucky in terms of electoral track record, and John Bell Edwards and then John Bell Edwards and Louisiana exactly so, but these are usually difficult states for Democrats to succeed in state well stay wide or district lost both paying in the district. I think Edwards and Basher would sort issue. I think it's Cameron who is right.
Cameron is running Yeah.
Yeah, the ag But no, they would tell you, of course that they are always looking uphill on it.
But the thinking there is that these Democrats are the bulwark against crazy Republican state legislatures.
Yeah, and I think in terms of the national the narrative, no one's the people who want to say, oh, this is if Edward's and or Cameron Lewis it's I think you're going to see people who have been waiting since last fall to argue against anything Biden does and points at any electional proof. They're going to try and use this as evidence if things do go badly.
So, will you talk for two seconds about this prescription drug pricing negotiation. It's the slowest week of the year. This is a very big fucking deal. Can you talk about it and explain why it's so important?
Well, prescription me lowering position drug prices is one of those issues that let's start with the politics. Lower prescription drug prices is one of those issues that pulls well across the board. It's something that even Donald Trump was talking about doing, but until he met with pharmaceutical obvious and then all of a sudden he just forgot about it. But also it's something that has made through Congress at
different points. It's gotten fairly close and then sort of mysteriously died as it gets closer to being turned into law. And so this announcement earlier this week from President Biden, which they announced the first ten drugs that Medicare will be able to negotiate.
Prike will like request blood dinners, Ye, cancer drugs.
Yeah, cancer drugs, And they went basically as I understand it, by usage. These are all widely used, These are all going to save people a lot of money, and so more important in a lot of ways than the politics is the policy. This is going to save people tons of money. As Ernie Sanders and others are fond of saying, America pays higher prices for worse healthcare outcomes, and prescription
drugs are a big part of that. And I mean, this is going to be something I think you're going to hear this again and again and again and again between now and next fall well and really through the rest of the rest of Biden's Simon office, because this is something that Biden can point to and say, I'm lowering prescription drugs for you. And obviously these first ten drugs are only the start. There will be more each
year added to the list. And even though the lowering of prices they only snap into place a couple of years from now, that doesn't mean that it won't affect the drug price market before that. And so this is going to make a big difference in people's lives, and I think also is going to be a big winner at the polls.
One last question, the Biden underperformed with older voters.
Could this help him?
I mean, undoubtedly. I don't see how it can hurt him. Something that anybody who has an older relative, whether they hear it from the relative or they just are taking care of it relative, you get sticker shock at the prices for some of these strokes, and just putting more money in people's pockets can only help. Thank you so much, Jim, Thank you for having me.
Franklin Foer is a writer at the Atlantic an author of the Last Politician, Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future.
Welcome to Fast Politics.
Franklin Foer. He do a great introduction. So it's called The Last Politician, and it's a book.
Give us the elevator, pitch go.
Joe Biden is somebody who people think of as being as boring as cardboard, and for some strange reason, I think of failing in our media culture, perhaps a failing in Joe Biden's administration's part. His accomplishments and the man himself have not been marketed to the country as the important, consequential,
engaging residency that they have been. And this presidency has arguably got more accomplishments on its side of the Ledger than Eddie and recent memory, everything from the vaccine rollout, which everybody seems to forget, to saving the economy from the brink of collapse, to all the pieces of transformational legislation that will cut carbon emissions, that will for American manufacturing, et cetera, et cetera. And some of this has been
done without any drama. Like all these events that are usually catacuismic, like a banking crisis or a dead sealing negotiation, he's managed to dispose of without them getting to the break. And so he's actually a totally fascinating. Guy Fox is like created this persona this corpse who is stalking I'm going to get.
To the corpse because I want to talk about that right wing depiction of him, because it's super fascinating. But I want to stop first and roll back and talk about the accomplishments piece because that is such a really good point. And I have a lot of people in my life who say things like, Okay, hot take, Joe
Biden is the most transformative president of our lifetime. And I was listening this morning to one of my political podcasts and they were talking about the prescription drug pricing situation, which has never happened under any president, and they've been trying to do it since even before Reagan.
Just continue down that road.
So you take two big buckets of policy. With economic policy, for a couple generations, we've been stuck in a paradigm that Democrats Republicans alike that was kind of skeptical of unions, inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to markets, that was pro globalization. And he's gone this other way where he's given the state this new and totally different and ultimately progressive way of managing the economy, so that the state begins to make these consequential investments in industries
that we have deemed to be of national important. So we need semiconductors because they go into everything, and because there's this possibility that China might someday invade Taiwan a realistic possibility, or all the green energy investments because the market is moving in this direction to invest in solar, to invest in when, to invest in electric vehicles, but we're never going to get there in time to satisfy our emissions goals, and so it just needed the government
to come in and give the market this huge shove. And the shove has turned out to be so much bigger than anybody expected because when they negotiated the bill with Joe Manchin, they didn't cap the tax credits and subsidies. Mansion was a little bit caught off by this fact
and now hates it. But the result is is that when Congress initially said there would be three hundred and seventy billion dollars investment in clean energy, it's going to end up being something closer to one zero point one trillion dollars of investment in clean energy, and it's going to really make the transition happen so much quicker than anybody had anticipated. Or you take foreign policy, and he
actually has a grand strategy. You look at something like the Asia Pacific and I know this is like kind of maybe two in the weeds, but when you listen to him describe what he wants to do, it's like, Okay, I'm going to broker a relationship between Korea and South Korea and Japan that they've been fighting for all these decades because we need them.
To get along.
We're going to create a new military alliance with the Australians in the British. We're going to take Modi, who maybe an odious character, and we're going to woo him so that he flips out of China's camp and he's more neutral and more favorably inclined to us. And he's got a vision for competing with the Belton Road initiative. And when you listen to him talk about this, it's at a level of sophistication that the country doesn't see. It's not something that he really can talk eloquently about,
but his path breaking. He's transforming not just American strategy and priorities, but he's actually remaking the geostrategic map.
So really interesting.
I was thinking about that that meeting and Camp David that Biden recently had with Japan and Korea, which was the first time anyone's been in Camp David, or at least anyone who's not like one of the Trump kids that where they've had foreign leaders there since twenty fifteen.
Right.
One of the interesting things about Joe Biden as a politician is that he's got a sense of stagecraft, which unfortunately doesn't translate always to his public messaging, but he understands the ways when he's dealing with the congressional leader or foreign leader, how if he conducts the meeting in the rate setting, he can use the majesty of the presidency to become this home court advantage. So Camp David's
a good example of that. Another example of that is he took Joe Manchin once to his house in Delaware, which he never does. He never takes, but he's a super proud guy about his real estate. It's like there's a lot of status anxiety and interesting psychological dynamics at work there.
But he cares a lot about his house in Delaware.
And so when you give somebody the tour of your private abode and you haven't done that for anybody else.
It's a meaningful thing. Or you take the Oval Office itself, which with the help of the historian John Meachum, he decorated it so that there are all these set pieces in the Oval Office from American history that have been designed to tell specific stories, Like there's a picture of Hamilton next to Jefferson, which he can point to and say, you know, we've had all these disagreements in our past
and we've been able to get by them. You know, he's got FDR sitting there across the desk from him, and that's there for very specific, maybe obvious, but a narrative purpose that he calls on repeatedly. That goes to the title of the book, The Last Politician, that all these things that we kind of think of is like maybe cheesy or antiquated that he engages in and that he deploys as tactics are actually at the core of his persona and kind of a lost to American art
and we've lost faith in it as a people. And his thesis is that he can prove that politics is still an effective way of get people who disagree with one another vociferously to coexist in this nation.
Right, I mean, and if he can't, we're all completely fucked. But I do think that's a really good point. I mean, you hear that from the Biden administration all the time, like Trump got so much credit and hopefully doesn't again, got so much credit for things like declaring it Infrastructure Week, but then not ever passing any infrastructure, whereas Biden has gone.
I mean, I feel like Chips is an amazing piece of legislation, and then the prescription drugs which is part of this larger climate package, And then can we talk about the trains? Is that okay? Is that too weird?
We can talk about trains.
Joe Biden would probably tune into this podcast as a train fanatic himself if we talk about trains. But one thing that's super interesting to me about the way that they think about the legislative accomplishments that they don't talk about is that the Chips Bill, the infrastructure Bill, the Clean Energy Bill all interact because they've made them interact.
So you have people in the White House who are in charge of implementation and coordinating the spending of all of these trillions of dollars, and the idea is you can take a place and you can transform it, whether it is someplace in upstate New York that's struggling that you can suddenly get broadband piped into in subsidized ways via the Infrastructure Bill, that suddenly will have a solar factory in there, and then other spending on other parts of the supply chain for that that are embedded in
other pieces of legislation, and it has the possibility of actually transforming the political geography of this country in a totally interesting sort of way. Because you build a plant in Georgia, which they've built a lot of, like in fact, they've built one of a solar plant is getting built in Marjorie Tailer Greens District, or you build one in Phoenix.
You don't just have have manufacturing jobs coming into those places, but you also have a lot of engineers and managers and kind of white collar workers who were college educated white collar workers who were migrating to those places in order to take those specialized jobs. And it's going to have a political effect where maybe to some extent, workers kind of appreciate the role that the Biden administration played
in the creation of these centers. But you also, just as like a matter of math, you have people who tend to be Democratic voters having to move to work in these jobs, and in a tightly divided electorate, if you have five ten thousand workers moved to Phoenix or to the excerbs of Atlanta, that could make a difference in a tight election.
Speaking of that, one of the situations here with the prescription drug So this prescription drug negotiation, which I think is actually quite quite a big deal, right. I mean it's funny because I actually was listening to NPR podcast and they were talking about like how no president has done it, it's so amazing. And then they were like, but could this fail? If this fails, could that be
bad for Joe Biden? And I was like, Jesus Christ, you guys, but I want to ask you a we are a country where we are just at the mercy of prescription drug pricing. I mean, a great example is Joe Manchin's daughter who was involved in this EpiPen. I mean, I have a kid who has anaphylactic food allergies. Yeah, and so like I remember, we went from like these EpiPens are twenty bucks to these EpiPens are one hundred
and thirty dollars and you know they expire. They're not forever, you know, they're for three years or something or maybe less of my existence. Yeah, I could probably do a fact check on that, and you cannot. You know, if you have a kid with anaphylactic food allergies and I've given an EpiPen a bunch of times, like they can't go out of the house without it, they can die. And so I mean, we really are at the mercy of our drug companies for pricing, and that I think
is a really good example. But with this negotiation, it might actually have Biden do better with older voters if they if somehow Trump can't claim credit for it.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And just to step back, I mean, I think you were talking about the administration the NPR podcast, where the administration's accomplishment was maybe being compouter. There was
this skepticism in it. And I think that there's a really interesting dynamic at play with the press as it relates to Biden, which is press went so all in on opposing Trump, yet we're kind of still stuck within the structures of objectivity, and so I think there's almost this subconscious desire to treat Biden with like some of the same sorts of skepticism or the same kind of even at the Ledger, in some sort of way to preserve authority and credibility. And it's a conscients solving thing.
But sometimes I think that the press maybe has gone overboard and self correct there, and that there's this kind of tendency to downplay or deny accomplishments that I think comes out of something that has nothing to do with Biden, but that has everything to do with the psychodrama of the last decade.
Right, No, for sure, And I think it really is these institutions like the press and the federal government. I'm thinking about, you know that Heritage News story about how Heritage has a plan for if they can get Trump reelected, which would involve basically just completely dismantling the federal government as.
We know it.
And there is a feeling that these institutions have been through so much that they are forever changed.
Right exactly.
And so what's so interesting about this is Biden is kind of an institutionalist to his core. I mean, he was this guy who served in the Senate forever and ever. He's got faith in institutions that comes from another generation. And you know, on the one hand, it's hard not to see the shortcomings in that analysis when you have
the heritage. Fedition is Trump bes kind of bent on just shredding these institutions and politicizing them, and so the natural response is to say, well, the only way to fight fires with fire and to politicize the institutions for ourselves.
I think in Biden's view, protecting and preserving institutions means that you're protecting and preserving this buffer the next time the authoritarian comes to power, and so you have to steward them as well as you can to the next time, so that the Justice Department, civil service feels like they can resist some of the worst orders that will come their way. There is probably some naivete to that worldview.
I've thought about this as long in our and I can't really come up with a much better alternative to that other than the one, which is to just kind of throw up your arms and say, like, it's all politics. Our institutions shouldn't be neutral, they should just be ours of the state. But I think that that's a far more dangerous set of circumstances.
Yeah, you have this problem of Democrats coming back into power after an authoritarian and trying to get us back to normal. I think that's been a real problem. And I think one of the things that I've been really interested in is we've seen the right wing media and so they message about Biden the same way the mainstream
media messaged about Trump. Right So they say Biden is an authoritarian, Biden is a dictator, Biden is just throwing norms, which is not true on the face of it, but I think it has been very powerful for in this right wing media eco chamber.
Oh my god, I've just been dealing with this. So when we're talking today, my book has yet to come out. It was embargo until next Tuesday, and some guy at The Guardian managed to get a hold of a copy of my book game store.
I know that guy.
Okay, Martin Martin, I'm not speaking ill. Martin Martin is a very industrious reporter. Martin found one line in the end of my book where I'm talking about Joe Biden's age, and I mentioned that Joe Biden on occasion would say that he felt tired, like as I'm sure you do about five times a day, as we all do like, if that's the worst man about Joe Biden's age, then like,
you know, God bless. But then the next thing, you know, it's like, you know, five shows on Fox take this little chard of truth and then inflated into this absurd story that they twist into the demagogically to serve their narrative purposes. This guy, Jess Waters, did something hilarious yesterday. Kind of scary, but it's like it's hilarious. He took
my excerpt about Afghanistan and I had an anecdote. Well, he starts ranting about how I had reported that Joe Biden wanted to build parking lots and cobble in the middle of the withdrawal crisis, and he starts laughing about it and how absurd this idea is and how all of Biden's age were mocking him for his declining mental acuity, when in fact, what I wrote was Biden, who threw himself into the details of the Afghan crisis, was studying maps of Kabble and he pointed out a parking lot
where he said it might be a convenient place for refugees to gather so that they could be militarily escortated to the airport, and Waters is like going on and on about this terrible misreading of my piece. That's like probably a willful misreading or he just doesn't actually care.
In Jesse waters defense, it is possible that he can't read.
Yes, yes, well, which is the perfect reason to give him a prime time show.
Right, well, it is the perfect reason to give him a prime time show on Fox.
Yes, yes, Franklin, I hope you will come back.
It would be my immense pleasure.
Thank you.
Hanna Fried is a quote rights attorney and executive director of All Voting is Local.
Welcome to Fast Politics.
Hannah, thank you. Fun to be here.
Well, it hasn't happened yet. Let's see.
It's a bud life.
That's right.
First, let's start with what your organization is and what it does.
Sure All the Any Local is a non partisan, multi state voting rights organization, and the work that we do Probalyground and eight States focuses on the power that state and particularly local election officials have over the right and ability of people to register to guest a ballot and
to cast a ballot that's going to get counted. And we work especially in communities of color communities that have been long disenfranchised, and we advocate, We say, you have to run your elections in a way that makes it easier for people to vote. Have processed these rules systems and are more fair. And that's the work that we do. We've been doing it for about five years and it is a really it is an exciting and interesting time to be doing this work.
Give us an example of a community where you have helped voters get enfranchised and how you've done it.
Yeah, I can give some examples from this past month. We have long advocated in Florida, in Duval County, which is the county in the north part of the state, for voters to have more access to in person early voting. Early voting has been really popular in Florida for a long long time, particularly popular among black voters. And we want to make sure that when election officials are selecting their early voting locations that they're putting them in places
that people can actually get to. Can people get there easily on foot? Can they get there easily through public transportation? Are these locations near to where people work or go to school? And one great piece of news from just the last couple of weeks has been that the Supervisor of Elections, the top elections of the Shore Douvall County, has just announced that they're going to open five more early voting sites, including one on the campus of Edward
Waters University, which is a historically black college. They're in Duval County, and this matters because we know when people can get easily to their polling place, they are more likely to build. And so we are delighted, particularly for the black community in Duval County, particularly for the students at and Waters, to have once again access to voting in a way that makes sense for them.
Yeah, that sounds great.
And again we've seen a lot of times Republicans have been really against college kids voting. I can't imagine why.
But that said, you know, I take the point of your question about you know, there is certainly a lot of energy of say in the states where we work, there's energy on the part of students, but there's also energy on the fire folks who want to pass laws and make it harder for people to vote. I mean, state legislators have passed or tried to pass record numbers
of anti voter laws across the country. Last count I saw was north of three hundred laws that have been introduced, right, that make it harder for people to register, that make it harder for groups that do vote registration drives. That's actually along on the topic of Florida top of minds that they faced a hurricane just recently. Right, state legislature just passed a law earlier this year that would have issued multiple fifty thousand dollars fines to voter registration organizations.
I mean, that is devastating to an organization that's trying to register voters in communities of color, particularly which is where a lot of voter registration drives are doing their work to try and make up for historical gaps in registration among black voters Latino voters. And you know that's just registration, right. I mean, there have been efforts in Georgia to get rid of every single ballot dropbox. Why would you do that, right, Voters showed up in twenty twenty.
They love to have options for voting.
Right.
That was true in the pandemic. But it's not just about that. So without question, there is a ton of momentum right now on the part of folks who want to stop voters from voting and stop their votes from county.
Yeah, it is such an incredible bumber.
It is the goal here is to get people to vote.
So let's talk about this fake electors scheme implicating a sitting state senator. Yeah, I would love you to, like just give us the TLDR on this, even though I know it some of our listeners might not.
And then what you're doing there.
In Georgia, in Michigan and a bunch of other plaphans, they know that there were activities around the twenty twenty election, and there are now charges being brown a couple of these states against people who allegedly served as fake electors. These are people who were put forward as a false flight of electors to elect somebody who had not actually been elected by the people of fair state. And there are charges being brought against them in Michigan and in Georgia,
including a sitting state senator. And there are sitting officials in Michigan also mayor member of a city council. I believe we're not fans of that. If I've heard people say, you know, if you're going to be a firefighter, you should not be trying to set things on fire. And I think same can be said here about public officials. Election officials certainly should not be people who've also served
as fake electors. Public officials, whether it's the mayor, a member of a city council, a sitting state senator, these are people who have demonstrated that they do not believe in the fair systems of elections that we have in this country. These democratic values, and I use that with a very small d these are the systems that we have in place. These are how people get elected in
this country. And I think at a bare minimum, we should all be able to have faith in our public officials that they are going to uphold the norms and democratic values of this country and the laws of this country, right. I mean, the allegations here are that these folks have actually broken the law.
I think so much about how during that twenty twenty election there was so much pressure on secretaries of state from MAGA world to do the wrong thing.
And I really did think.
If Carrie Lake were elected governor of Arizona or some of these swing state governors were put in there, that we really could see refusals to certify.
We have seen refusals to certify. I mean in twenty twenty two, there was a county in Pennsylvania, Luzern County that did not certify. In Arizona, Coachees County officials tried to delay certification through a last minute change to process of hand counting every single ballot. And you know, look, I mean don't want to terrify anyone, but it doesn't
take a lot gum up the works on this front. Right, Like, you can have a county, couple of county officials who can cause a lot of trouble by refusing to follow the law and follow their obligations to the voters that they're supposed to serve. So that threat is real.
So let's talk about these anti voter tactics and how we certainly seen a number of times people on the right wing media spreading conspiracies about votes coming from Hong Kong and Ruby freedmen having a hard drive which turned out to be a ginger mint, and this sort of want for a handcount of ballots and dealing certification.
Let's talk about that.
Yeah, let's where even to a start. So I think, well, perhaps the place to start is the sort of underlying theme that connects all this stuff which is taking power from the people, taking power from voters. That is the sort of unifying thread among all these efforts is that some people want to grab power and they will do
it at any cost. And you know, whether it is the intimidation and threats made against election workers that you just referenced, right, whether it is you know, storming the capital on January sixth, right, it all comes down to the very same thing, which is that the people get to vote and they get to decide they're elected officials and not the other way around. And there are some people who just cannot abide that, they will not accept
that that is the way this country works. And I'll say two, Look, I mean we started all voting as local five years ago, where what we still this organization to do was to fight against voter suppression. And people ask me a lot. You know, you've been doing this work for a long time, off and on for about fifteen years. House things in the wall, and they have, without question, right, the threats that we're talking about right now,
refusal the sort of by election results. You and I would not have been having this conversation you years ago, well a few years ago actually now, but five years ago, no, right, not you know, just no voter suppression comes from the same place. It's the same impulse. Right, It's all about taking power from the people. It's just dressed up differently. Right. You've goss the strict photo ID law, you cut early voting, right, you put polling locations away from public transit.
Right.
Why are you doing those things? Right? Why are you passing those laws? Why are you making those policies? It is because people want to use the systems we have to their own advantage, to the advantage of you know, the political party or the candidate that they want to win. They want power for themselves, and they will use what
they can to get it done. And just so happens that right now, we're in a moment where one of the tools some folks are using to achieve that end is questioning our election results, lying about our election results, and building as we're learning, whole conspiracies around that.
Very idea. So interesting.
I'm a listener here, I'm listening to you. I want to help people to vote. I want how can people support you guys?
Oh?
Really a lovely question. And I although I feel I haven't been going pretty dark, there actually is a lot to be done right.
Well, that's why I wanted to pull back and talk about that.
Yes.
Yeah, so one thing that people can do if they really want to help voters is become a poll worker. I really mean that, that is a real that question. We know that there are shortages of the people who make our polling places run. Right. A poll worker is the person who you know all of us have probably at one time or another voted in person.
Right.
That's the person who greets you, the person who gives you your ballot. Right. If the person who helps you if you have a question, you didn't bring the idea you needed, They're going to help you figure out what your options are. They are the essential backbone of our democracy. And that is not lip service. If we do not have pull workers, our democracy doesn't function. And this was a cour a huge concern in twenty twenty because of
the pandemic. But pollworker shortages have always impacted particular communities that generally deal with underresourcing around elections. And so if as a you know, on election day, I'm usually pretty goodgee because I do mooting rights work. If that's a big day for our you know the work of organizations like mine. But if I were not doing that, I
would become a pullworker. That is number one. I think the second thing is that I mean, you know, probably your listeners are hearing or aware of really entrenched problems of disinformation that we have in this moment. And again not a new problem, but at scale, right, I mean, social media has made it so much easier. Right, And then we you know't whatever we are, I think, all well, pretty well burst in kind of what's going on the front idioms. It is really a problem of scale right now.
And so I think, you know, one thing that we know is that people trust their friends and their family for advice, and so I think one thing I would offer to a listener is shake it back. Right. There's a lot us bloating around out there, whether it's about the hours of voting or about the systems we used to count ballots, about who is influencing our elections, right, it is worth spending a little time before you repost reshare is this good information?
Right?
Don't spread misinformation that seems like a really good.
You are a trusted messenger to somebody in your life. You should take that responsibility seriously.
I think that's really important.
But also that you shouldn't you know, you should make sure that the information you're getting to vote is credible.
Yeah, that's true.
So interesting. What states are you particularly worried about. We've had James Carvell on this podcast a lot. James Carpal is a creature of the South, and he is very bullish on Mississippi maybe electing a Democratic governor for the first time. Mississippi is a state where if there wasn't such criminal disenfranchisemant it would probably be a blue state. But these voters are really targeted and kept from voting. Could you talk a little bit about how you fix a state like Mississippi.
One of the things I'll say, you know, when we started thinking about where did we want to do this work, which states we want to work in, and I'll say, you know, Mississippi isn't one of them.
Because it's just too hard.
We had to make some decisions, but one way or another. But I will say about Mississippi and some of the other states in the Deep South, that part of what has made these states. And we work in Florida and Georgia, we work in other places that had some federal protections previously. What's made these states tough is that they don't have the full protections of the voting right seck that they once did. I don't want to act too Rosie. Things
were tough even when we had those protections. But until the Supreme Court not evenven about a decade ago now gutted the core protection of Section five O Vuilting Rights Act. There were special protections for these states had deep, deep, deep histories of disenfranchisement. And it became a free for all after that, and so then there was no bottom right, It just you It was like a free fall. And we've seen that in some of our states that used
to have these protections. And so I think that, you know, our theory of change is so premised on the power of local election officials and the power that communities have to make change. I mean, I use this example of this county in Florida, Duval County. That is because communities there are coming together and demanding change. And sometimes you have a legislature or a governor who isn't going to step up and actually helpfulders, and sometimes they very intentionally
are not helping burners. But communities can actually overcome and push and demand and I think that is what we have seen when when things seem hopeless. That is the thing that we have found is what moves the needle Coaches County Arizona. When these election officials are saying, hey, we're not going to count these you know, we're gon we're going to handcout all these balls. Were even sure the elections can be trusted, people showed up at public
meetings there and said you have to count these roots. Right. This has been a largely dark conversation with most of my conversations about this topic are But in these states, what we see is these communities turn out and they just say enough is enough. Voter said it in Ohio in August about Issue one. You know about this legislature basically trying to end democracy as we know it in the state of Ohio. Letters just said we've had enough,
and they set it through their advocacy. They said it by signing up as poll workers, as I mentioned, and they send it in their vote.
Thank you so much.
I hope you'll come back. And also everyone needs to sign up to be a poll worker.
That's the message.
Thank you.
All moments Jesse Cannon, Molly Jung Fast that Ron de Santis I think he has nightmares every night of that Chris Christy embrace of Obama and now he is really doing some dumb, dumb stuff.
This weekend was they pos hurricane recovery in Florida. It was a very bad hurricane, but not with a ton I mean, some damage, but not as much damage as
they were worried about. Joe Biden flew down to Florida to meet with local Floridians to talk about the situation, and believe it or not, the governor of Florida, the man who has basically treated his governorship as an audition to primary Donald Trump, refused to meet with Joe Biden, thus looking small and petty, and instead Joe Biden met with the man who was trying to get Mitch McConnell's job,
the one the only Mars attack, Senator Rick Scott. I don't think anyone is surprised that Ron DeSantis is politicizing this and refusing to meet with Biden. That said, one of the times when Biden came down to meet with DeSantis, there were lots of pictures where DeSantis looked like he wasn't relating to other humans, and Biden did so. I could see where the campaign might have a little anxiety about this. Either way, I think it makes DeSantis look terrible like he did in those boots exactly.
And for that, those boots were made for doing your goddamn job. And that is our moment of fuckery.
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.