Jane Fonda, Adam Jentelson & Sam Wang

But first we have the author of kill Switch, Adam Gentlesen. Welcome to Fast Politics. Adam Gentlesen. Hi, guys, Hi Molly. I don't want to talk about Nevada first, because you worked for Harry Reid and this must just be making you nuts. But let's just talk about Nevada first. Let's do it's happening in Nevada. First thing I'll do is correct your your pronunciation Nevada. I'm sorry, what is happening Nevada. I'll be obnoxious about it. He had Cortez master on

and she was like Nevada. When I worked for him, I had to be a stickler about it. So I don't work for him. Anymore, so I don't really care. But yes, what's happening to Vada is that there's a lot of folks will say, you know, it's always important to caveat looking at the early vote, and I think that's true for a lot of states. I think in most states the early vote doesn't tell you a lot because you never know how people's voting patterns change, and you know, the way people vote in a lot of

different states change cycle to cycle. Novada is a little bit different because early voting has long been established there as his male and voting, and people are used to using it, and most of the state votes early in most election cycles, and so people have gotten very, very good at reading what the early vote means and and

deciphering the tea leaves. Uh. And you've got great reporters out there like John Ralston who have sort of, you know, made a profession out of parsing these these tea leaves and drawing conclusions. And so all that is to say, it is probably one of the few states where I would I would say it is is actually worth looking at the early vote because you really can draw some firm conclusions, and the conclusions we can draw this time

are sharky emoji. We don't know. Look, I I will say it's not as good for Democrats as it has been in the past. You know what they have in nevative We have this thing called the Clark Firewall. So Clark County is the is the most populous county. It's the county that include Las Vegas and suburbs. Typically, what happens during early vote is Democrats like to build up a substantial lead. Democrats are tend to be better at Republicans at banking early votes. Democrats generally tend to early

vote more than Republicans. And so you know the sort of quote unquote read machine as it's known. Um. A big part of what it does is it banks a ton of early votes and tries to build a substantial lead so that on election Day, even if there's high Republican turnout, they've got a big lead to go on. Now, so that's that's what we know, is the and we call the Clark Firewall because most of that lead comes from Clark County. This year, it does not look like

there's a very big fire all. Now, I will covey that by saying it changes literally hour to hour because these votes arrive in batches, and even someone who follows as closely as a guy like John Ralston will you know, put up a post in the middle in the afternoon, and then a few hours later another batch of votes will appear and have to update the post and say, oops, actually it turns out that it's better for Democrats than we thought. And so what's been happening over the last

couple of weeks. It's not been looking great. And then new batches of votes have been appearing. And I don't want to imply anything nefarious. This is just how they're delivered by the postal service, and it shifts the analysis. Where things stand right now is that Democrats have a um, a bit of a lead. Is not as big as it has been in the past. Um, it might be enough for them to survive, but but we don't know, right But who knows? UM? So let's talk about what

I actually wanted to have you here on. And Jesse just texted me about this because he is Actually my brain was what Democrats can do in the lame duck. Well, they can do anything they want, really, and they should they should sometimes in lame should they do in the lame duck more important life. Sometimes you get this sort of um, we don't give a funk anymore attitude in

a lame duck, especially if you have lost in the election. Uh, if you've lost your majority, because you know, a lot of this sort of cautiousness that you had earlier in the year was because you were afraid to do things because you thought they might hurt you in the election. Well, now the election is over. If you've lost the majority, you know, this is your last gas in power, so you should do as much as you can. So what I think they should do is eliminate the debt ceiling.

I think that the biggest thing they could do is to take that crisis off the table, because if they don't, what's going to happen is early next year. We don't know exactly when there will be a debt limit crisis, especially if Republicans take back at least the House. This, of course, is the you know, I'm sure your viewers are from your listeners are familiar with it. We have not had one of these debt limit crises where you've had a divided government since two thousand eleven, and it

is an extremely dangerou this situation. I was there in even the last time we had one that really went down to the wire. This was when it really shook the markets. America's credit was downgraded as a result, even though we didn't quite breach it, we came right up to the edge. And there were a fair number of Republican members of Congress back in two thousand eleven who were perfectly willing to breach the limit and push the country into default. And their numbers have only grown and

their power has only grown since then. And I am very much convinced that Republicans will be willing to push America into default once we reach that crisis. Even if Kevin McCarthy doesn't want to, he won't have the power to stop them. And so I think the most important thing that Democrats can do in the Lame Duck is to just take that off the table, whether it's by raising it a bunch um to push the crisis out several years, whether it's you know, minting the platinum coin

that people talk about using the fourteenth Membment. I don't really care how they do it. I'm not a stickler on that thing, but I think they should do it somehow. Otherwise, were in a whole heap of trouble early next year. Also, now let's talk about there's more than that if Republicans take the House. I think it's important that we just say if they're going to do a lot of crazy ship. One of the other questions I had was can they do something to protect democracy? Can they do something to

protect voting? Can you can they do something to protect the way votes are counted? I mean they can do anything they want. I mean they can pass HR one, you know, the bill that that failed in January UM and I think they should, but they'd have to get rid of the filibuster. For that, they would have to get rid of the filibuster, which I'm not sure you want to do right before you hand it over to

someone else. We are now speaking theoretically here. Yeah, that's true, and I think there'll be a lot of hesitation to do that. You could also do pair down versions of those that you might be able to get fifty votes for within the caucus, or you know, they're they're voting

rights can't be done through reconciliation. So if you're gonna do voting rights, you have to do it with either getting rid of the filibuster, or through a narrow exception, although I think exceptions are sort of um a fig leaf, and and Republicans won't consider it narrow they take over.

I mean, look, I've always said that the worst case scenario when it comes to the filibuster will be for Democrats to not do a bunch of things that they could have done when they were in power, because they left the filibuster in place, thinking that when they are in the minority they'll be able to use the filibuster to block Republicans from doing bad things. But then Republicans just get rid of the filibuster anyway or ignore it. Very likely scenario exactly. I think, unfortunately, we might be

headed for that scenario. The one thing I would say about if you did get rid of the filibuster in the lame dock and you passed everything you know before you run out before the clock runs out on January three, and you lose the majority, if in fact they lose the majority, um, the one thing I'd say is you always have President Biden for the next two years to to veto. I mean, the Republicans could pass whatever they want, but as long as there's a Democrat in the White House,

that's your backstop. I think the idea that the filibuster will provide a backstop is is not going to play out. I think Republicans won't let it block anything that they truly, deeply, really want to do. UM. So it's really about keeping at least one House of Congress and or the White House, and that's your backstop. What else can happen in the Lame Duck that like you think should happen besides the

dead's heiling. What's gonna happen is that the Defense Bill is going to be the main vehicle and everything is going to ride on that. But you can stick whatever you want into the bill. There's they traditionally are what you know, what we call Christmas trees, even even when it's out of season, so you can put what everyone on it. One thing I think they're likely to do is bring back up this permitting reform bill UM that failed, which I think people have pretty strong views on both sides.

I tend to fall on the side of of doing it UM. There are very reliable studies that show that most of the climate related gains in terms of you know, fighting climate change that that are to be realized from the pieces of legislation that we've passed in the last two years. Most of the need this permitting reform built to pass in order for those gains to be fully realized. Some environmentalists don't love it because it would involve some you know, fossil fuel production. Um. But I think on

balance it is very Uh. It is a net positive when it comes to finding climate change, and a very big net positive. So that's one thing I think we'll see, um them do. Look you've got they could codify ROW again. That's a filibuster issue. They could pass some of the pieces that fell out of build back better, like the childcare tax credit. That can be done through reconciliation. You don't need to to reform the filibuster to do that.

That's another big one. You know, when that was in place, it slash child poverty by around a third, and then it expired, um, and you know, child poverty is spiked. So I think they should pass it so that we can go back to reducing child poverty instead of increasing it. Um. You know, Joe Manchin was the one who killed that one, and I think there's probably a compromise that can be reached with him that would be a really great thing to do before the end of the year, especially in

the holiday season, and you don't have to do that one. Yeah, let's let's children here, not a bad thing to do during the holidays. So I'm not sure there's any Republican appetite for that, because why would there by? Yeah, but that one you can do with just Democratic votes, and you can do it with a reconciliation vehicle that will still be available until the end of the year. I want to ask you about sort of where we are right now and what you think Democrats should be doing it,

and more importantly, how they should be messaging. I think that one of the things that Democrats should take away from this election is that we really do need a consistent, strong, and compelling economic message, and it has to be one that captures a lot of the anger that people feel

right now, which is very valid. I think Democrats found themselves in the last year or so often in the in the you know, politically not advisable position of sort of telling voters that they should be less angry than they were, that they weren't appreciating all the great things we had passed. And I've been on the other side

of that. I appreciate how frustrating it it is to pass a lot of you know, truly incredible legislation and not have voters know that you passed it um or you know, appreciate the benefits and but you know what,

that's life and that's politics. We do tend to get caught up, as Democrats in this sort of laundry list style messaging where we list all the things we did, rather than speaking to people on an emotional gut level about how they view the world and how they see the economy as you know, an emotional issue and and that emotion that a lot of people feels anger and our our message too often comes across as telling people they shouldn't be angry, they shouldn't be upset, they shouldn't

feel like, you know, their life is more disappointing than they wanted it to be, and they're looking for a you know, an explanation for that. We need to get better at explaining people why that is. Um. I think a lot of that has to test to run through,

you know, a sort of populous message. That isn't that isn't you know, xenophobic, that isn't about excluding other people, but It is about talking of people who feel very angry right now about an economy where inequality is extraordinarily devastating fact of life for millions of people, where you know, corporations really have shifted from a model of you know, giving back to their community and having a bigger picture of prosperity in mind to just exclusively, you know, doing

the bidding of their shareholders and maximizing profits for their shareholders. You know, these are true facts, and they have real impacts on people's lives, and we need to be more aggressive about articulating this to people because that does do something to capture this anger. If if we're out there, you know, talking to an angry population telling them not to be angry and that they should rather just appreciate all the great things we've done for them, that's just

not going to be a winning message. This sounds to me like a sort of failure of Democrats to be able to bridge the gap between working people and unions.

This is a question as much as anything. Yeah, I think I think that's right, and you know, look, I also think sort of in the way this plays out in inter party conversations that it's it is often we have to stop fighting the primary as a party, you know, because a lot of what I when I say this to people, they're like, oh, you're a Bernie Sanders guy. And I'm like, I'm not a Bernie Sanders guy. I am a Democratic Party guy. I like everybody. I like

Bernie Sanders. I also like Hillary Clinton, you know, I like Elizabeth Warren. I also like Joe Biden. Bernie Sanders has a very strong economic message and if you can sort of you know, listen to the words and model the words, and you know, some people are turned off by the baggage that he has. You know, I think we should nevertheless really think about why his message was so powerful to so many people, including people who were sort of non traditional voters outside the Democratic Party, that

we need to do better with No I agree. And I just want to say one other thing, which is I do feel like when we have this one party just not give a fuck about working people, right, they don't give a fuck. Like there's a reason that all these billionaires give millions and millions of dollars Republican Party, and its beak be cause of a state tax. I mean,

even you know it's a state tax. It's taxation. And in fact, you're even seeing this more and more with Ted Cruz, you know Ted Cruse, my my man Ted Cruz, who always says the quiet part laud is like abolish the I R s right, abolished the this is what

they know what that's what their donors want. So like the fact that Democrats can't explain that, like this is the party that wants to give rich people a break and Democrats that's the party that wants to help you working people, is like such a profound failure on the part of all of us, right right, And I think a lot of people right now are a little frustrated that, you know, voters aren't don't seem to be caring about the failure of our democracy per se, but you know,

and that they're that voters prize the economy over this sort of more abstract thing of the failure of our democracy. But that's an opportunity for us. We shouldn't be frustrated

about that. We should seize the opportunity to drive home are very strong economic message that also happens to be the truth, and rather than sort of be frustrated about it, we should say this is our economic message is so much more powerful than Republicans because we are actually the party of working people and they are actually the party of plutocrats and the very wealthy, and everything they do is done in order to give more benefits and shovel

more money towards the people who are already wealthy. So rather than be frustrated by this, we should embrace it and just drive a mack truck through that opening, and you know, seize it as an opportunity and just really get get together and stop being divided in this sort of Bernie versus Hillary, you know, redux that we just get caught up in and and because I think at the end of the day, we all believe the same things,

and we really do believe this message. And sometimes you hear Joe Biden deliver it and it's it doesn't quite feel like he's his heart is really in it, but he is so good when he does it. And so that's where we need to just sort of go forward as a as a party and just fully embrace that and drive it forward. Obama has been doing it in his appearances lately for candidates and doing it very effectively, and I think that's something we can model. Who do you see if stars of this psite goal coming out.

Anybody who wins, let's talk look environment, you know, but look Warnock, I think is is a massive star. I think if he wins, we should we should really be thinking about him for for bigger roles, for for national roles. Um. I think if John Federman pulls it off of Pennsylvania, you know, we should be thinking about what it is about him that allowed him to endure over a hundred

million dollars worth of attack ads. I mean, people say, you know, Josh Sapiro will probably win by more, but Joshapiro had the only opponent in a statewide race who didn't spend basically any money against him. So, you know, Federman weather to a a hundred million dollars in attacks, and

that's that's something. There's something there if if if he pulls it off folks like that, if if they win in a in a difficult national environment, having weathered you know so much incoming and Republican attacks, we should really ask them how they did it and and use them as models moving forward. Thank you so much, Adam, Absolutely great, great to start to you. Jane Fonda is an actress known for countless roles. And an act of and the

founder of the Jane Fonda Climate Pack. Welcome to Fast Politics, Jane Fonda, thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm so excited to have you. I have been wanting to have you for such a long time, since you started doing the fire drought protests. Can you talk to us a little bit about how you decided to do these fire droll protests or It was Labor Day of twenty nineteen, and I was very depressed because I knew I wasn't doing enough given that I have a big platform.

And I decided that I wanted to go to Washington and camp out in front of the White House and protest for a year. And I called Annie Leonard, who is the executive director of Greenpeace USA, and I told her I wanted to do that, but I was concerned. I've done a lot of camping in the wilderness, but I was concerned about pooping in the city. How do you She said, don't to worry, because camping is now illegal. You can't do that, but there may be some other ideas.

And the next day she arranged a conference call with herself, the author and activist Naomi Klein, and Bill mckibbon, founder of Three fifty Work, and we decided as a group to sort of copy what was done in the eighties as a protest against apartheid. There was actually that one was a daily civil disobedience in front of the South African Embassy. We decided to have it near the capitol and do it every Friday the way the students did. As long as the students approved that, I could also

do something on Friday. And that's what we decided to do. And it became fired Drill Fridays, based on Greta Tunberg saying our houses on fire and this is not a drill, this is an emergency. And we decided to use civil disobedience because historically that's what's changed history, whether it was Gandhi and India, Martin Luther King and young activists in the South sitting in the lunch counters, the tea party in Boston, the beginning of our founding as a country,

and so forth. And it worked. The first Friday, I think there were fourteen people arrested. In the last Friday, over nine hundred people were arrested. And the goal of fired Rille Fridays was to reach the seventy percent of Americans or who are concerned about climate but hadn't taken any action, and it worked. People began coming from all over the country to engage in civil disobedience with me. They've never done it before, and we when COVID hit, we took it online and a few weeks ago we

had our eleven million viewer across all platforms. So it continues to be a successful program that is now part of Greenpeace, and we've trained people to how to call their elected officials, how to lobby, how to visit their elected officials in their home offices, writing letters, joining various

campaigns to get out the vote. It's been good. But then we saw bill after bill, both both federally with the Build Back Better Bill, which was the bill that we needed to confront the climate crisis, and statewide here in California. There were so many climate bills that were so good that were killed by people in the legislature or Congress and the Senate who were taking money from

the fossil fuel industry. I mean, the most egregious example is Joe Mansion, but there are many of others, and a lot of them are moderate Democrats, and so we decided that what we had to do was to elect climate champions signed the No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge and try to get them elected to office and get the people who were obstructionists who were pro fossil fuels out, because somebody that's gonna take money from the fossil fuel industry right now, given what we know, is somebody who's

probably also anti raised the mirimum wage and anti Joyce, etcetera. People who are standing up for the climate tend to be people who vote for a woman's right to choose whether or not to get pregnant a woman's They tend to be humanitarian generally across the board. Yeah, I think that's right. I went to one of the climate change events. Yeah,

it was amazing and very moving. Those are in d C. In d C. When you were doing it in d C, which one it was, I can't remember who it was, who you had with you, but it was really interesting and moving and you got arrested five times, right, Yeah, And I couldn't keep getting arrested because after a certain number of times then you get put in jail for many months. I got a contract to continue making Grace

and Frankie, so I couldn't do that four months. Yeah, you've been this activist consistently throughout your life and your career. Doesn't it give you a certain like good feeling that you have been on the forefront of this for such a long time, or does it just frustrate you? Oh? I don't get frustrated. Really, I get I get angry, but I try to play the long game. I think what we're up against is a mindset that has developed over millennia and this is not going to be changed quickly.

People often ask me, because I've been involved as an activist for a long time, well, is it any easier now that we have social media? And yes, it's easier to call a demonstration because you can reach so many people easily, But no, when it comes to building a movement, you can't build a movement with Twitter and Instagram. You you have to be on the ground year after year after year. And it takes a movement to change anything important.

Things don't change quickly, and I just think young people tend to be more impatient to think it's going to happen faster, and those of us who have seen for decades things happen and then they move back, and then they move forward, and then what you think can never happen has in fact been growing under the radar and then suddenly sprouts and appears above the surface and seemed to be sudden, but it was really moving in that direction for a long time. So I try to understand,

this is not even a marathon, it's a relay. I'll be gone soon and I'll pass the torch to younger people, that kind of thing. So one of the things that you're doing is you're starting this pack. Will you explain to us what it is and what it does. Well, let's call the Jane Fonda Climate Pack, and what it does specifically. And in this it's very unusual. We're trying to break the stranglehold of the fossil fuel industry has

on our government, federal, state, and local governments. And we try to do that by electing climate champions to replace pro fossil fuel Republicans and Democrats, because moderate Democrats take money from fossil fuels just as much or more than Republicans do. I mean, Senator Joe mentioned has become a multi millionaire are off of coal, and that's why he fights so hard to maintain it and please the fossil

fuel industry. A lot of very important green groups can't do this because they work with lobbyists, and they work with moderate Democrats, and and so they don't want to alienate anybody. Or maybe they have investors on their board who invest in fossil fuels, etcetera. But we're not part of a bigger organization. We have this sole focus. And because we're a new pack, we don't have a whole

lot of money. We don't have enough money to make a difference in senate races, for example, or gubernatorial races necessarily much less presidential. But it's really great that we've been forced to support down ballot candidates, because what I'm discovering is that down ballot offices have tremendous power when it comes to the climate. I'll give you an example.

In Texas, there's the Railroad Commission. It was originally created to regulate the railroad, but when tech, when Texas' main industry became oil and gas, the Railroad Commission got shifted to be overseeing and regulating the fossil fuel industry. But they didn't change the name, I think deliberately so that people wouldn't pay a lot of attention because historically the three commissioners on the Railroad Commission have worked for the

fossil fuel industry. It's like the fox guarding the chicken coop, and consequently nothing much gets done. The anti flaring legislation passed by a Republican legislature in Texas is not enforced because of who is sitting on the Railroad Commission. They didn't weatherize the grill even after two years ago over seven people froze to death. But a young progressive Democrat is running to be a railroad commissioner. It can make all the difference in the world. That's just one example.

The Public Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard in Mexico. She's signed a contract to bring the largest wind farm in the Western Hemisphere to New Mexico. And she's stay ending up to the fossil fuel industry and getting them to cap their orphan wells which can become very toxic, or pay and she's brought hundreds of millions of dollars into New Mexico that she's put into poor school districts and

health clinics and things like that. So it's been a joy for me to travel to these states and work with these mostly very young and mostly women and very often Latina women who are the first the first woman, the first Latina to be this in this office or that office, or Dana Nesso first Attorney general, and who's a woman in Michigan. I mean, it's very exciting and

it's filled me with hope. Yeah, I'll say I think that setting up a pack is a way that liberals can sort of fight Republicans on their turf, right, Yeah, but it's important to know that we're we're we're trying to replace some of the Democrats who have prevented good legislation from passing. Yeah, exactly, not Republicans. You have actually a really good blog on your site which I was reading about, and you talk about going to Texas and have they really not fixed the grid in Texas at all?

And this is the second time that the grid has collapsed because of extreme weather, and they didn't repair it the first time and they haven't done it this last time. And I met with a whole bunch a couple of dozen people in public housing who dot who have relatives who died, and whose apartments ceilings caved in, walls caved in when pipes burst and ice began to form in living rooms, and even still today these apartments, when you're poor and a person of color, they don't get help.

The apartments still haven't been repaired, whereas on the other side of the tracks and the rich white community, they got their power back within hours, if not days. This is called environmental racism. And you write about that. So wow, and in such an interesting way. What are you looking at now? So you're looking at the grid in Texas and this railroad commission. You're talking two people in New Mexico. I mean New Mexico seems to me like to be

a pretty promising state for democrats. I hope, So, I hope we can what we have. Yeah, yeah, And I'm just curious where else are you seeing like this sort of climate activism? Younger candidates that you're interested in involved with. Well, Michigan, the Attorney general there has a lot of power and has really been brave in terms of confronting the Mbridge oil pipeline that they want to put embed and rock at the bottom of the straits of Mackinac or Florida

or Pennsylvania. I mean, there's a lot of places we're endorsing many, many scores of candidates all across the country who have signed the no Fossil Fuel Money Pledge and have taken a public, very courageous public stand. And when you're an elected official in an oil or gas producing state, it takes a lot of guts and it takes a lot of strategy to walk that fine line to keep getting elected, but also to keep standing up to the oil coume pannies. And that's what we have to what

we have to support. We have little over seven years to cut our fossil fuel emissions in half, and we're moving in the wrong direction. And this country, the world can't become about how to be resilient in the face of climate catastrophe. I mean, we do have to do that, but it can't just be about resilience. It has to about being Hey, guys, let's if we're bailing out a sinking boat. We have to plug the hole. We can't just keep trying to bail out the water but not

plug the hole. And that means no new fossil fuel infrastructure and phasing out gradually until mid century of the use of fossil fuels altogether. When when the green sustainable economy becomes at scale, then we can totally get off fossil fuel. That can't happen right away, but all of it has to be done what's called a just transition. We have to be sure that the fossil fuel workers it's not their fault that we're facing a climate crisis.

They have to be ensured that they can transition from jobs in the fossil fuel industry to other jobs that they're training and paid equitably. The fossil fuel industry pays union wages for the most part, and the alternatives the green energy sector doesn't, and we have to change that. Yeah,

that's a really important point. And I think that your focus on equity is really It's so interesting to me because like when Russia invaded Ukraine, my first thought was like, okay, now we really have to focus on renewables, and this sort of media narrative was we gotta get more nuclear and I was like, and it is infuriating because it is small portable nuclear reactors are not as good as

solution as a renewable and it's just crazy to me. Yeah, well, I'm certainly not somebody that's going to tout the value

of any kind of nuclear energy. I'm being you remember the China syndrome that that said nuclear plants that already exist and that are shown to be safe should be allowed to continue because as they do, create a clean bridge clean if you don't think about the nuclear waste, which we is a problem, especially when the sea levels are rising and we have hurricanes and these nuclear plants that are close to the shore are in danger. But building new nuclear plants, no, I'm sorry. First of all,

they take too long. We don't have time wait, but they always there's cost over runs and time over runs. They take years, and also they use so much water at a time when water is gold. We're running out of water. So let's not be profligate with our turn to nuclear energy. Let's just keep the ones online that are safe and already exists, but not spend a lot of money building new ones because they won't matter, they won't happen in time, and we need the water. So

what are you doing next? Acting wise, I haven't a fuzzy rats ass, have no idea. I have no idea when I have three movies coming out. Last year I made three movies, so I kind of want to spend the next year or so with the climate activism. Then we're going back to d C live and in person on December two. Fantastic. Maybe I'll come down. Yeah, it's

gonna be great. It's gonna be okay, what did the election mean for the climate and what does climate activism look like in the next two years between between November and when we're going to elect the president and so it's going to be an important one. We're not going to engage in civil disobedience just because of the times when the concern and the January six stuff and the Capitol police and everything. But it's going to be a lot of fun. We're going to have a New Orleans

marching band performing and it'll be good. Fantastic. Jane, thank you so much for joining us. I'm so thrilled. We rarely have celebrities because this is a politics podcast, but you are, like just have been such an important activist and it is so it's just fantastic to have you and it's really an honor. So thank you, Thank you for existing. Sam Wang is a scientist at the Princeton Election Consortium. Welcome to Fast Politics, Sam Wang. Hey, they're fast.

This is your first Fast Politics yes, I'm following you around first to your different platform. I joined Mastered on yesterday, so I'm following you all over the place. I'm like a deadhead. Tell us, just for those of us who are not as well versed, what you do. You're a scientist or Princeton and you run this thing called the Princeton Election Projects explained for us. Yeah, so over at election dot Princeton dot E d U. I'm a pole aggregator. You know, everybody does it now, I'm one of the

ones who is not named Nate who does it. So there's Nate Silver, Nate Cone shawan trendy, there's all kinds of It's a whole industry now. But I've been doing it since I don't know, two thousand four. It's taking the polls, aggregating them, understanding the structure of modern politics,

and taking a guess of where we are now. My flavor of it is I what I really like to do is translate that into understanding where voters are most powerful personally, like where on a per vote basis, where the most influential voters And you know, where would you want to drive people to the polls or where would you like to give money and so for me, it's this whole industry, but my version of it. Over at the Princeton Election Consortium is trying to find places where

people can be powerful. You can actually tell our listeners what they should be doing right now. By the our listeners are Democrats. In case you're wondering who would like democracy to continue, which is most Democrats. I think those are not exactly the same people. There are people who are not Democrats who also like democracy. So like Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzigger, right, you can name them on one hand. Yeah, but they're important. They're they're Americans and they like democracy. Listen,

I love them. I wish there were more of them. People should find someplace near them where there's a competitive race and help get people out to vote. Here in New Jersey, there is a competitive district north of me. It's the seventh District where Tom Alonowski is trying to hang onto a seat. I'm not too far from Pennsylvania, so over the river there's a Senate seat in case you haven't noticed that where Oprah has now laid down

her marker. Right, So Oprah has abandoned her favorite doctor moment Oz and she's now endorsed John Fetterman, and that Senate race is going to be down to the wire and it could be the one that determines who controls the Senate. So people should be going out there and looking for places to make a difference. Last night I was thinking about Oprah, like lying in bed in our mansion in Montecito, going like, oh shit, I have to

endorse Fetterman, right like you. I mean that must have been like I cannot have a doctor oz on my conscience. You know, he was so fun at the beginning, right, he was like this incredible heart surgeon who had like who let racky healers into the operating room. But he also developed the left of ventricular assist device that sounded pretty good. And then you know, and then he turned into a supplement seller and so just he's really he's

he's changed a lot. Yeah. I mean, he operated my father in law, as I always listeners in this podcast will know, and was a mention until he wasn't talk to me about why all these polls are wrong all the time. They can't help it. So these posters are trying to do their best, and you've got nonpartisan polsters, you've got partisan posters. That's like trafalgar. Are the partisan posters? Right, Yeah, that's right trafalgar. But even the partisan posters are actually

attempting to make a measurement. They're trying to do something. On average, they do better as a group than they do individually, but as a group they can still be off. And so the best we can say right now is it's possible to identify, um about seven races that are going to be within five points either way in the Senate, and so we know where they are. And those seven

races are close to tide. Some of them aren't going to be that close to tide by the time the votes are counted, but we don't know which ones, and so the posters are doing their best. And uh, and if you think about how much power of voter has those seven states are where if you care about the Senate and you care about say judges, or you care about I don't know, government shutdowns or impeachment, these seven states are going to be important. New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia,

North Carolina, Wisconsin. And that hasn't changed all season, even though the polls drift around a little bit it's still those half dozen states. So what are you seeing. The remarkable thing right now is that, right now, as of the moment that we're recording this, there are four races where the median margin between the two candidates is less than one point, which means that you know, it's not going to be within a point probably, But New Hampshire

looks like a tie right now. Battle looks like a tie. Yeah, New Hampshire looks like a tie, which is not Sorry, I know you're not used to this, but yeah, here here here at Princeton, we we drow f bombs occasionally, but that was a good one. But yeah. So the thing is like Maggie Hassan and Dan Boldock are currently about tied, and so that's the race. It could go either way. And what this means is Democrats could end up with I would say, as few as forty six

seats in the Senate. They could end up with as many as fifty four seats in the Senate. I think that any outcome in that range is possible at this moment. Wow, that is unbelievable. Arizona is close, and New Hampshire is close. Nevada is close. Um, but you know, on the other side of the point. Ohio and Pennsylvania are also close, and I think that people are watching this closely. We're

not necessarily expecting Ohio to be that close. Yeah, no, I mean it does seem to me like Tim Ryan has run the kind of like perfect campaign that we dream of Democrats running in red states, like a campaign about kitchen table issues, a campaign that's not about the national Party like that, that kind of thing. Yeah. Well, and also just he speaks to people. He is a strong candidate. One thing about the Republican side is that

they've run some kind of problematic candidates this year. Yeah, as Mitch mcconny al says, candidate quality, Yes, and if one conscious of the numbers, they appear to be running a few points behind where a generic Republican would be running. And so people like Jade Vance, Herschel Walker, Blake Masters, Mementos, Yeah they're yeah, Blake Masters, they're running a few points behind where a generic Republican could run, and so that's

to their disadvantage. But then it you know, it looks like it's going to it should be a good Republican year. And so those are the two major forces, right, I mean, that. I think it's an important thing to go back to, which we're not talking about really enough when we talk about these mid terms, is like, ultimately this should be a Republican blowout. Democrats control the Senate, the House, the President,

say the Biden's approval rating is low. Inflation is really I mean, it's a global problem, but it's certainly a problem here. Gas rights are high. Like the weather should be very bad for Democrats. So the fact that it's not, you know, if it if on Tuesday night, and we don't know right because of the polling, but if Tuesday night is not a total blood bath, we will have bucked a trend. That is true. That is true, I guess.

So if you look at the political science models, political scientists are saying that it would be about par for Democrats to lose about I think forty seats in the House and to lose multiple seats in the Senate. And that could still happen. But if it doesn't happen, then that would be bucking a trend. Yeah. So, I mean, and I've seen I've seen thirty seats, I've seen twenty seats. I mean, I've seen endless machinations about what it's going to be. But let's just I want to like talk

about this a little more. If we can't get polls to tell us what's going to happen, then why do we do them. Sorry to ask a really obnoxious question to you, but it is a good question. I think we expect a lot of clarity and precision out of polls. And because polling margins are in you know, integers, it's like one point two point three points margin between the candidates,

we want that to be a clear answer. But the truth is, unless something gets out into the five point range, it's gonna be a number that we can't really be

sure about. And so when I look at polls, what I what I do is I look at and I say, okay, I look at the polling average, like I'll go over to five thirty eight, or I'll go over to my own site election dot Prince dot eu, and I'll say, if a race is within about three points or so in the in the aggregate, I say, well, that's a close race, and I don't know which way that one's going to go. So I think that people better get their fannies over there and work on that particular race.

And so My feeling is that polls are good for helping us figure out where to put our efforts. Um and you know, if you look and furthermore, if you look per vote, I mean, gosh, there's all this stuff happening down ticket, same story. We can figure out where the where the dangerous spots are going to be and maybe not just the Senate next year, but democracy two years from now. I mean, that's that's what it seems

like to me. So you would say, you you look at the polls for what's closed, and then you get going on that. Yeah, I mean right now, I gotta say, voters are have a lot of power right now in New Hampshire, Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin and some other states. It's just and there is a lot happening at the Senate and the House at the state level. I'm certain that

you know a lot about that. You know, election deniers right like all these elections, like people like Mark Fincham and Jim Marshawn, Right, Mark Fincham is in Arizona, Jim Marshawn is right, mars Shahnson Nevada. That's right, so Nevada as they say no, they don't say Nevada. We say Nevada, they say Nevada. It's like Colorado. Yeah, I can't. It's like nuclear nuclear anyway. Um, but yes, so, yeah, these small races could really be where democracy lives and dies

in twenty four. Oh yeah. The thing is all this stuff about election clear quitting their jobs are being hounded out in Nevada, like something like two thirds of the county clerks quit. There's all kinds of ideas that are percolating locally, like people saying, well, we should count all the ballots by hand, which is going to take forever. Stuff like that. It's under the radar, right because we're watching the national news and you know, maybe we care

about Catherine Cortes Masto or or what have you. But meanwhile, these secretary of state races are going to determine who is in charge of counting votes and reporting results two years from now. That's the next Iceberg. We're all watching this iceberg, but behind it, there's another iceberg. Yeah no, no, I mean, I also think this is a controversial opinion here, but I think I'm right, which is he has got to do that, which is that I think that Democrats losing the House is not as big a deal as

Democrats losing some of these governorships. Yes, losing the House can be fixed in two years, and the pendulum is likely to swing back two years from now, although we don't know, but right losing governor ships is serious, like losing Wisconsin governorship for Democrats would um the Republican Canada. There is now promising that Republicans will never lose another election to Wisconsin if he gets elected. Wow, dude, how do you promise that? And so and so that's a

pretty inflammatory promise. So governorships, secretaries of state, all that downticket stuff that people forget about is super important. And you know, these these House seats. I mean, I'll say, my slightly contrarian thing, which is jerrymandering in some ways got worked out in some ways favorably at the national level. So that so that's a relatively level playing field in Congress. We're going to have to disagree there, but yes, we

have disagreed on this before. I mean, there's there's a lot of local stuff, like Ohio is a problem, Wisconsin is a problem, but when you added up nationally is a problem. Sure, But when you added up nationally, it becomes less of a problem than it was ten years ago. The point being there is a possibility of either party controlling Congress two years from now, but whoever gets elected governor this time around is going to be in charge of state government two years from now at the time

in the next presidential election. Right, we already know that Trump is waiting in the wings. Yes, he seems likely to run again, doesn't he know. Yeah, I mean it seems like the interesting tension, in my mind is that there's a fairly large section of Republicans who want him to wait as long as possible to announce, which is why the r n C has this deal where they're paying some of his legal bills, and when he announces,

they're going to stop paying them. Oh yes, I think what in their minds they thought was a brilliant move. But I do think eventually he's just gonna stop paying that. In surveys of Republican voters, he's only pulling out about or so among Republicans for the nomination, which seems like it's not very good for somebody who is supposed to be so dominant in the party. Yeah, I mean, it does seem like there's a there's a window here for

another candidate. But these are probab Blkans. They're so profoundly scared of Trump that we have to see what happens. It's not just him, though, there's this reactor fuel among Republican voters of anger, of paranoia about election results, of willingness to consider the other side to be not legitimate,

and that engine is there with or without Trump. Yes, and I think Marjorie Taylor Green is a good sign that Trump is um actually does scale, I do think, and you see this because she does really well with small dollar donations, so that is where the Republican Party is. But I think it's quite an interesting and I think it'll be interesting to see what happened that. You know, you're seeing Republicans freak out because there, I think, or

at least the base, it feels left behind, right. They feel like they didn't get the good stuff that the rest of us got and that this window is closing for them. But during this Biden administration, there's actually been a really big manufacturing boom in the United States, which I wonder if we see some movement with that, how long will it take for a regular person to see the benefits of that I don't know. I mean, like if I if I live in some industrial town, and

how soon will I start seeing jobs? Yeah, I don't know. I mean I think that's going to be the question. I mean, we had mayor Pete on here yesterday and he was talking about or whenever, whatever day is anything, because I don't even know what day is. This like run up to the mid term has been like it's just such a like it's just like a misery of tunnel vision. Um. But I do think like there was a massive infrastructure bill that just got pasted, and so

there is money flowing into these municipalities. I mean, the United States is finally investing in industrial policy on a smaller scale than China, but they but the United States is starting to invest in industrial policy and h and that is a move that could lead to more manufacturing in the United States. I think China is also trying to do that. It appears that these major powers are trying to move towards more self sufficiency, becoming less linked

through trade. That might lead to more on showing right, I'll be really curious to see how it all plays out. Sam Waying, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you Molly. Great to not see you, but great to be with you, great to almost see you, almost close close, Jesse Cannon, Molly, John Fast, Why do you seem so dan?

Me and all the bag of idiots are gonna be able to call you a blue check anymore if you don't buy Elon Musk's blue check After the election when he puts them for sales, Elon Musk had to put off the Twitter checks. So there are verified people on Twitter and they are unverified people on Twitter, and Elon Musk had this brilliant plan to charge people eight dollars to become a verified person on Twitter. Unfortunately for Elon Musk, he laid off all the people he needed to do that.

So now he has decided to put it off, and he also is going to unlay off some of those people to get them back so that they can give everyone blue checks, so that everyone can impersonate each other. That's why we call him a genius. What a man. That's right, That's how it is. Man. In other news, you know, we all say the one thing that's good about Trump is sometimes he comes with a good nickname. But he kind of had a miss this weekend again.

I don't know that he had a miss I mean, it was just like a lot more intelligent than his usual nickname, and so it confused all of us. Usually you'll remember low energy Jeb, little Marco. He doesn't you know, he hits a nickname, but it tends not to be so intellectual. This time he gave Ron to say autists, who really is his only rival for the primary? The nickname Ron dis sanctimonious doesn't have a ring to it. I don't know Ron, I didn't know he knew a

word that big. I saw people suggesting calling him Ron the Fascist. I think that would make the audience like him more. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to her 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.