Lawrence O'Donnell, Margaret Sullivan & Edward Isaac Dovere

ballot initiatives. It's an old GOP playbook. But first we have the host of the Laurence O'Donnell Show, MSNBC's Laurence O'Donnell. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Ban favorite, Laurence O'Donnell. Great to be here, delighted to have you. I wanted to talk to you first about what is going on in Tennessee. I feel like that is something right out of the West Wing. It really is. It's also something out of

the nineteen sixties. And the reason Martin Luther King's life ended in Tennessee is that he was there to participate in a worker's strike. The sanitation workers all went out on strike one day when two of them were killed in what we now call an industrial accident on the job. They were killed by the truck that they were working on. And the conditions were so unsafe and the pay was so low, and they were not unionized that they all went out on strike and just to form a union.

And the slogan that they had at the time for their protest march, which they were doing at gunpoint, by the way, was I am a man. And if you wanted to reduce what happened in the Tennessee legislature on Thursday when they were expelling these two men, you could reduce their statements to I am a man or I am a person, and I need to be recognized as a person with the right to speak in this body, which they were denied, which is the kind of the missing part of the coverage, in a way, is what

led up to it. You're not allowed to speak in that crazy legislature. And so they were standing in a very long tradition and dark and horrible tradition in Tennessee, which at its worst moments has turned into progress. And so we'll see less than a week after being expelled, they will both be back at their desks in that Legislative Chamber, and so what do we do? Do we thank I really have been thinking about do we thank the Republican Speaker of the House for doing this? Because

I didn't know Justin Pearson existed. I didn't know Justin Jones existed. Justin Pearson is his speeches and debate he was in debate on the House floor reached a level that I've never seen before. You know, no one has outdone Martin Luther King in public speaking in the history of the United States of America, but no one has ever outdone Justin Pearson in debate in the United States

of America. What he was doing was a combination of public speaking and debate because he was taking all this input from these Republicans making statements at him and pointing fingers at him, you know, trying to expel him, and he was responding to them in the moment, with no teleprompter, no script, no night to think it over. You know, what am I going to say if he says this?

It was just the one most remarkable thing. You know, as I was watching it, you know, we originally scheduled one segment on it for the show, and I was as I was watching you know, Representative Pearson. I just kept saying, oh, no, we gotta get rid of we gotta get rid of the Trump segment, that we can do that tomorrow. And then I was like, now you gotta get rid of this other thing. And it ended up being the whole show and we could barely do it justice in the whole show. Yeah, it's so interesting

because it is the two of them. Justin Pearson and Justin Jones were both kicked out, but these six year old white woman was not. I just didn't believe they could be that stupid. But man, I am so embarrassed at having underestimated stupid in America since the rise of Donald Trump, because I really thought I had my finger

on the pulse of stupid in America. We've talked about this before, Yeah, I mean I grew up with a lot of it, you know, and so like it was, it was all around me, and I just I don't know. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, America. I overestimated how smart you were.

I thought you were thirty percent stupid. So when I saw them not expel the Representative Johnson, a white woman, I thought, Okay, they realize what Justin Jones said in his final words, which is the whole world is watching and they realize this looks bad and we're going to stop this. And the only logic I could see unfolding, the only story logic in front of me, was Okay, they're pulling back from this crazy idea. They're not going

to expel her. They're obviously then not going to expel the next guy, you know, Representative Pearson, and then they will probably go back and revote on the other guy or something to try to fix it. And it's like no, no, no, no no no no, no, no, no no. Guess how stupid they are. They're going to keep the white person and then expel the next black person. Unbelievable. And I think that you know, there's a GOP donor retreat in Nashville,

Tennessee this weekend. Yeah. And of course, you know, there used to be a notion in politics that you know, well, you know, the big bunny people, they all kind of gravitate toward the same place, a very similar place in politics.

So if you were to go back, say to the early nineteen nineties, say to the Clinton era of running for president, and you were to say, what is the policy difference between big dollar donors to president, the first president Bush running for reelection and Bill Clinton running against him for president, and you would say, you could put all those big dollar donors, the corporate the corporate big dollar donors, not the Hollywood big dollar donors, because they've

always been liberal and they're they're different, you know. But you could put the corporate big dollar donors in a room together, and you wouldn't if you just were overhearing them talk. It would take you quite a while to figure out which one is with Bush, you know. And and surely all of them would be saying how much they don't like taxes, right, but some of them would be contributing to the Democrat. But there was a very significant overlap in the way they thought. And now there's none.

There is no overlap between the thinking of the big money corporate people contributing to Republicans and the big money

corporate people contributing to Democrats. There's no overlap at all, which is extremely dangerous because it means that the insular and very stupid thinking of rich Republican corporatists will only get stupider because they will only be you know, talking to themselves and interacting with themselves and developing a set of you know, political contribution incentives that get stupider and stupider, and so they will find themselves contributing to the party

that is nationally threatening to destroy their businesses and their accumulated wealth in one fell swoop with the debt ceiling that no one's ever threatened them at that level before. And because they too are stupid, they continue to be handcuffed to the stupid party. And so the you know, the Republican donors no longer are the force that we could rely on to avoid collisions on things like the debt ceiling. And I still hear it, you know, I

still hear oya. You know, the money men are telling McCarthy he has to fix the debt ceiling and he can't fool around, right, There's no evidence to support that. If you said that about Gingrich in the nineteen nineties, I'd go, yeah, okay, good, that'll take care of it. Not Now, this dovetails to the next question. I wanted to ask you, which is the most recent reporting from that left wing rag Pro Publica about one Clarence Thomas.

We have publicly revealed the most corrupt Supreme Court in history. And the good news about that is that in the entire history of the Supreme Court, there has been next to not a whiff of scandal at the Supreme Court. So and I guarantee you that you know, in eighteen seventy that did not mean that the wives of Supreme Court justices were highly politically active people secretly who were trying to harm the country. They were profoundly inactive people

at the time. And so the nature of the scandal that we have now, which is very much a spousal scandal, it's very much a Jinny Thomas scandal because this Nazi memorabilia collecting billionaire, the first thing he does is hey personally pay Clarence Thomas's wife out of his pocket. He funds an organization with all the money it needs to then pay a salary to Clarence Thomas's wife. And by the way, it's a salary that instantaneously doubles the income

of a Supreme Court justice's home. And one of the challenges in the modern real estate market of the Washington, DC area is how do you live on a Supreme Court justice's salary in a way that you would expect a Supreme Court justice to live. And one of the answers to that in the Thomas family is well, number one, don't worry about the Supreme Court justice's salary. And so you know, the level of corruption there is colossal and

unaddressable by the current system. Yeah. I mean, if you're John Roberts, you just have a wife who is a legal Oh but I mean he one of the reasons why he can't go near this is his wife lives an equally corrupt life. Okay, his wife lives an equally equally corrupt life. I shouldn't be laughing, but it's just grim in the legal community. Now, let's take a look at the vice president's husband. Okay, because we're not saying

you can't have a job. We are saying the founders lived in a world in which no wife would ever have a job, so they never had this kind of thing never crossed their minds. Okay, but now we live in the twenty first century, so sure your spouse can have a job. What did the vice president's husband do? High powered lawyer, very high income lawyer in a big worldwide law firm. He quit his law firm. He represents entertainment clients. He didn't represent any clients with any issues

before the government in any way. But he thought, I can't be a associated with a law firm whose London office might someday be involved in a case that somehow reflects on some aspect of American governing. And so the Vice President's husband quits the high Pang law firm and he becomes a law professor at a local law school in Washington, DC. And that is the model. There is utterly nothing slightly corrupting about that model, and it is

entirely honorable. And he will get no credit for that by anyone out there in the news media who looks at these issues. While the news media will just be looking at the Jenny Thomas and the Chief Justice Robert's spousal situations and say, well, you can't say that they can't have a job. You know, they'll take the stupidest possible angle on it. And the answer is, yeah, sure, you can have a job. Tell me what the job is.

And I've seen senators go from being United States senators to being lobbyists, and I consider that a dishonorable transition. I have also seen senators go from being United States senators to being presidents of universities, and I think, yes, that's what you should do. Do something like that, that is not using the actual day to day currency of what you did in government to add to the personal

currency of your bank account, right exactly. So one of the things that was super interesting about this pro Publica's story was not so much because we had all sort of thought after that two thousand and four front page story in the La Times where I talked about how Thomas had gotten gifts, and then he slowly stopped declaring gifts. Okay,

that we're not so shocked by that. But one of the things I was really struck by was all of the conservative writers on Twitter who had gotten money from Harlan Crowe by the way, that name is like right out of Central Casting, who then were staunchly defending him and saying things like, well he has communist art or he has and you really did see how much of conservative media is a donor based I would say, Harland Crowe is a smart corruptor, right, He's a corruptor of

the reviewers of his work, you know, in that sense, you know, by pumping the money in there. Let me tell you a story about the way this is supposed to work okay. Senator Moynihan representing New York had a very strong association with Puerto Rico, which does not get a United States Senator, and so Puerto Rico, when it's lucky, has certain United States Senators at certain times in history that kind of adopt it, and they tend to be

New York Senators. And in the geopolitical dynamics of the region, Ambassador Moynihan at the United Nations was very much concerned every day when he was hearing from other countries about how Puerto Rico is just a colony, and he would be insisting, no, it's not. It's a commonwealth that can vote its own status anytime it wants to and all that you know. And Cuba was doing an awful lot of disinformation about Puerto Rico at the time, and anyway,

he took a strong interest in it. And so when I was working for him in the Senate, he had to go down to Puerto Rico to meet with the Governor of Puerto Rico about a very important tax provision in the US tax code that helps support the Puerto Rican economy. And it was very hard to hold onto because people looked at it as a corporate loophole, which in a way it was, but it was a very strong supporter of an economy that was by far the poorest economy that is part of the United States of America.

So he wanted to go down there, and a friend of his said, you can use my plane to go down there. And I and all my time working for Senator moynihan, never knew him to fly on anyone's private plane. And this was a friend of his he'd had since he was a Harvard professor. And so the Senate rule was, you are allowed to take that gift from someone who you can document was your friend before you became a senator.

Which is very important about this definition of friend. Okay, because everybody who comes at you after you're a senator police don't ever use the word friend. Don't use the word friend. You've got to have a separate word for them. So I knew how long he'd known the guy. I knew the whole thing, and I said to him, well, yeah, but you know, I just don't want to be trying to explain this to the Buffalo News when they run the story about the senator takes a private jet to

the Caribbean, you know, for a vacation. I don't want to have to explain. No, it was to meet with the governor. And yes, it included a weekend, so I guess you could call the weekend vacation. You know, I don't want to explain this whole thing, and I don't want to explain or fifty year relationship with this guy.

And he said, well, you know, my knee and my hip, and you know, he's seventy something at the time, and this is a tough one, right, and his wife is going to go with him and she's not feeling great and this would be so much better. And so I have about two weeks to change his mind on this,

because I'm not going to give up. Because yes, it fits within the Senate Ethics rules to do this, but you will have to put it on a disclosure form, and you will have to explain it all on a disclosure form, and the Buffalo News and the New York Post are going to see that disclosure form, and then I am going to have to explain it, and I'm not gonna do that. And in fact, the unspoken subtext of where I am going with this with the Senator

was if you do this, I will quit. And the reason I will quit is I don't want to have to explain it. And by the way, the problem with most politicians is that they don't have anyone around them ever who would quit over something like that or anything else.

So I work on him, and I work on him, and I have the schedule of FI the Delta flights connecting through Atlanta, you know, from Washington, just terrible, right, and it's awful, And I keep working it and he keeps saying no, no, no, and he's getting like huffy and angry about it. And then literally the day before, like literally the day before, he finally says, uh, yeah, Shiloh will will do Delta through a laptop. And you

know what he knew. He knew. I never said to him, you know, if you do this private plane, then I'm going to leave. I never said that, but I think he could feel the force of how seriously I felt this, And ultimately what I did get through to him was there's nothing we will be able to defensively say to the people of Buffalo, who might when this story breaks, be buried under two feet of snow. There is nothing that I will be able to say to them, right, that will make them say, oh, I'm glad he took

the private yet. I'm glad he took his friend's private yet. And we were a mile away from the ethics line on this Okay, it wasn't even close to the ethics line. It was a mile away, and I wouldn't let it happen. And that's the way it should be. The ethics line is here, you don't put your toe on it. You know, you get as far away from it as you can. You get to the point where you say, I will never ever be in a public discussion about an ethics

choice I make in this arena. And Clarence Thomas says, you know what, I don't want to know where the line is. I just want to ride in a private plane in the yachts. Don't tell me about lines. Laurence O'Donnell, thank you so much for coming. I hope you'll come back. Margaret's Ellivan is a columnist at The Guardian US on media and culture. She's also the author of Newsroom Confidential, Welcome Too Fast, Politics, Welcome Back, My Friend and Yours.

Margaret Sullivan, Thank you, Molly, it's nice to be back with you. I am just delighted to have you on full disclosure. We are friends, and I have to really handle you to get you on the podcast, so I really appreciate it when you agree. You're very welcome, and it is true that we are friends. We're pretty good buddies. Actually, we survived COVID together by walking in the park and have consulted on many things. That's right. I first want to talk to you about Evan. Tell us a little

bit about Evan. Yes, so we're talking about Evan Gershkovic, who very unfortunately and very unfairly has been detained in Russia on espionage charges. He is a reporter for the Wall Street Journal. He's thirty one years old. I know Evan pretty well because so I was the public editor at the New York Times for about four years until twenty sixteen. And that job is very strange. It doesn't consist anymore. But it was the job of sort of reader representative, ambud's woman in my case, and kind of

an internal media critic. And it's an isolating job that you know you are crazy to take, but I did, and I always had one assistant, and I kind of rotated through a few different young wonderful, brilliant young people, all of whom have gone on to do incredible things. But Evan was the last one of them. And that was so it was in twenty sixteen, and he was

twenty three or twenty four years old. He was one year out of Bowden College and fresh faced, very handsome, very good natured, smart, driven young man, and he helped me with this difficult job. He kind of did the triage of the complaints coming in from readers, and so they complaints a week about The New York Times, and

so we would get the first products. A horrible job, it is, and then he would say to me, you know, my assistants would say to me, well, we're hearing a lot about this, and maybe you want to take this up in a blog post or at a column. So, you know, we got to know each other really well because we were in such a very tight, little two

member department. And I also was very fond of Evan because you know, for many reasons, but one was that he was a little younger than my son Alex and a little older than my daughter Grace, and so you know, we had that kind of thing going on as well. A week or two ago I'm in Washington, DC, and I'm in a hotel room by myself, and it's the morning, and I start seeing these headlines about a Wall Street journal reporter detained on espionage charges in Russia. And my

initial reaction was, oh, my gosh, that's so awful. And I start thinking about what a difficult time this is for journalists and how you know, we're in kind of a new Cold War and Putin's been cracking down on journalists. And then I took another look at the headshot the photograph, and I realized it was Evan, And I mean, I felt like the color of the world just changed. You know, it was a devastating moment, which hasn't actually improved since then.

It's true, I don't want to laugh. It's just so depressing. Well, he's you know, he's in prison. Can you explain a little bit about exactly what the story is he was arrested. Yeah, so he you know, I mean, I don't really know exactly what the reason was. He was arrested on espionage charges, but that are clearly bullshit. Yeah, I mean, the thought was that he was gathering information about the Russian military, which is very possibly true because reporters do gather information,

to gather information together documents. In fact, that is the definition of journalism and reporting. And it's not a crime. It's not a crime here, and it shouldn't be a crime anywhere, because this is how we get informed. And you know, as you know, Molly, a lot of journalists left Moscow and left Russia altogether because it's become so dangerous for journalists, and a lot of Russian journalists are in prison or have been detained, I believe very unfairly.

But this is the first time that a foreign correspondent has been arrested and detained in the modern era. So is a very unusual, very alarming, and very appalling kind of thing to have happened. So one of the things that I've read about the editor of the Wall Street Journal, the new editor of the Wall Street Journal, said that one of the most important things that when you have a journalist like that who gets detained, is to keep

him in the news. That's right, Emma Tucker, who is the real as you say, the relatively new top editor of the Wall Street Journal, who seems to be doing a great job with this situation, has said very clearly that you know, people and should keep him top of mind. I mean, the worst thing is for somebody like Evan to be forgotten and languishing in prison in Russia, and you know who knows what happens to him. So the journal, the Wall Street Journal has been doing a wonderful job

I think of writing stories about this. They did a great profile of Evan. They have a hashtag I Stand with Evan, And the thought is that you know, whether you're a journalist or a non journalist, regular person, you can at least, you know, keep him in the conversation. And I think that's really important. So I want to ask you what we're on this topic of authoritarian government's not liking media coverage. Elon Mosk yesterday just sort of

had this. He decided that he was going to make a false equivalency between media outlets like the British Broadcasting Company, which are media out let's say, get some money from the British people, versus Russia today, which is an arm of the state. You know, he's going to keep the algorithms so that all of these actors good and bad get the same kind of boost from the algorithm. Can you talk about where you think that goes and what

you think about that. Yeah, the first piece of that I heard about was when NPR was branded on Twitter as state affiliated media. Right. NPR gets a very tiny percentage of its revenue from the government. I mean, it's like one something like that. Most of its funding comes from listeners like you and me as they like to. And similarly, the BBC does get some government funding, but they are not state affiliated in the sense that they're an arm of the government or that elected officials or

bureaucrats tell them what to do. I mean, there's a very very they're regular independent media. Right. It's certainly misleading at the very least, and probably worse than misleading. I actually harmful for Twitter for Moss to be branding those news organizations that way. It makes people think that there's something that they're not, and it's really not right. It is interesting, though, I mean, here is someone who has

many many business dealings. He has factors in China, he has a product he needs to sell around the world. I mean Twitter is a technology company, but ultimately I mean he wants to make it a media company. Well, I mean I've always felt that the big platforms, and I would include Twitter and Facebook and others are in fact media companies because they are a source of they're a source of I mean, they don't produce news, but they are an incredible source of distributing the news, and

so there's incredible power there. And pretty much everything that's happened to Twitter since Musk bought it has been damaging to the way we use it and the way that it's and I think to certainly too its revenue and it's financial future, but also to the usefulness of it. I mean, it always had some problems, as we know, and could even be described, you know, at times as

sort of assesspool. But in general, you know, I think it was a place where you could get good information and you could distribute your work, and you could promote other people's work and now and sort of choose how you wanted information to come to you. And a lot of that has gotten very messed up. And you know, one symbol of that is the verified check mark, which you know, for a long time was a way that you could say, as a user, you could say, oh, is this a fake New York Times or is that

actually the New York Times. And so now, as Musk says, he wants people to basically buy that check mark or buy that verification, so now it's pointless. In fact, if it comes off the real ones and is only available to those who buy it, it will be actively misleading. So that's a bad move. Yeah. It's super interesting though, right, because we have come to the moment where technology and media they've gone from using our content for free to build their platforms to wanting to charge us to use

our content, right exactly. And it's very frustrating and at the same time, so for my friends who don't use Twitter, they'll say it's dumb, why don't you just come off it? But for journalists it is a really important and valuable tool. There's nothing so far that has replaced it as sort of a gathering place and a place to develop sources in a place to quickly find information and follow breaking news and all that stuff, or meet new friends. Right, Molly,

that's how we met pretty much. Well that's not actually how we met, but close enough. Yeah, no, it's not, but what we had established that we kind of liked each other on Twitter, that I met you in person, it was like meeting an old friend even though we didn't know each other. Oh yeah, I think it's a good point though, that we find ourselves in a real place of dependent Well we'll see. I mean some people have left, but they also seemed to kind of come

trickling back as well. So I mean, I think that I've sort of changed my use of Twitter a little bit by being more careful and less you know, just

sort of being a little bit more passive. I'm more likely to sort of lurk and read things rather than necessarily post a lot of original stuff myself, although I always post, you know, I write a column for The Guardian and I do post that all the time, and it's helpful, you know, it helps get the word out that hey, here's this thing, you might want to read it. So I'm curious what you think about the sort of Trump news cycle that we'd just come in and out

of very quickly. Well, I mean it's been fascinating. As you know, we can never as a society seemed to tear our eyes from Donald Trump, no matter what, and so in that sense, it's just been another chapter of the insanity. But I do think that his base will never desert him. Trump has said a lot of false things, but I actually think one of the truer things he said early on was that he could probably shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and his base would not desert him.

That seems to be sort of true, and that, you know, being indicted, being arraigned, being charged with all these felonies has only helped him fundraise and made his base of followers feel more closely tied to him. But I do think that a lot of people who are not the closest,

the most maga hat wearing people have gotten dissolution. And while I believe that journalists should not make predictions because we're very, very very bad at it, I will nevertheless say that I think that he could be and likely will be the Republican nominee for president. But I think that his ability to actually get elected in a general election has been somewhat damaged. Yeah, I mean, it does

seem like that, and he did lose last time. So if he runs against Biden, which again is looking more likely since Biden has now told l Roker of all people, run No, not that he's planning to run, but that he's planning to have more Easter egg roles at the White House, so that you know, I mean, who among us? Yeah, So I'm curious, you know here you are. You've been the public editor of The Times, you have written a media column from the Washington Post, and now you're reading

a writing a media column for The Guardian. I was curious to know you have been really in the forefront of covering the media. Have we gotten batter well in some ways? I mean, I think that we've learned some things. And it was a steep learning curve with Trump because there was this tendency to cover Trump the way other elected officials or would be elected officials had been covered, you know, kind of give them the benefit of the doubt when they said something newsworthy, put it in the headline,

all of that kind of thing. But I think we have learned some lessons about not constantly magnifying false information, so that is good. But there is still a tendency to focus too much on things that are outrageous, to go with the sensational rather than the substantial, and to some extent, we're all obsessed with what could be called engagement if you want to be polite about it, or could clicks if you don't want to be so polite about it. And we as media people in general, work

for corporations, not everybody. So there's a profit motive that's running a lot of the decision making and that is hard to get away from. Yeah, it is such an interesting and strange time in American life because we're seeing this, how can media survive in a world where you know, some tech owners really hate the media? Yeah, well, I mean that has been what we've seen play out with Musk. But then there's also you know, the whole Fox News drama, right, Oh, yeah,

will you talk about that a little bit? Well, I mean, you know, basically, we're coming up on the trial in Delaware this month of Dominion voting Systems suing Fox for billions of dollars for harming their reputation about whether they rigged the election, which was something that was promi gated after the twenty twenty election on Fox News, at least by their opinion hosts and and so on. So dominion did not like that, and now we're seeing it play out.

And what's happened in the pre trial filings is that all of this stuff has come out about you know, the text messages and the emails that have come out about how vehemently Fox did not want to say some of the true things, like the election was legit and because their audience, their vast audience didn't want to hear it and was decamping to more, you know, even more right wing places like Newsmax in one America. So it's going to be really interesting to see how it plays out.

I mean it so far we're not talking about a settlement. We're talking about an actual trial, and I think it's going to be riveting. Yeah, I mean, it seems like Delaware is the hot it's right now now, just kidding, but I mean it does seem like Dominion wants to see hosts on the stand. They want to see Rupert Murdoch on the stand. Yeah. Yeah, And so Rupert's free now, he's not engaged anymore, so I hope that he's going to be available. And you never know, you know, you

can meet people in court, so why not. I mean, I'm making a place to meet wife number whatever. He's on five, I think, I guess, or have there been five? I can't keep it straight. That was like a what two week engagement didn't really it didn't really pan out, really pan out, But you know, I mean, there's life is really long, I guess, so you never know. Yeah, very interesting stuff, Margaret Sullivan. I hope I can convince you to come back at some point. Always fun to

talk Edward. Isaac Dovert is a senior reporter at CNN. Welcome, Too Fast Politics, Isaac. Thanks, it's great to be here. So I wanted to have you on because I wanted to talk to you about abortion rights, but I want to talk to you about some other stuff too, So get ready. Okay, So this article you wrote really struck me because it's like something we talked about a lot

on this podcast. Democrats pushed abortion rights to the ballot in twenty thirty four, using an old Goop playbook, explain, well, what we've seen over the last year since the Dobs decision leaked and then when it finally came out a couple of weeks after that, is that this issue is incredibly politically potent and in ways that I don't think anybody had really anticipated. And you saw that prove out

in some of the ballot meaisters. Remember when Kansas, which was not a state that anybody expected would be an abortion rights state, had that ballot measure that protected abortion rights in the end, and by a significant margin, given that it was Kansas, but then going into the midterms in November, abortion rights were really resonating with a lot of people, and in Michigan there was a balot measure

there that also ended up protecting abortion rights. It passed with the support for that, but importantly for Democrats who were linking things, it was part of powering a lot of turnout for Democrats that gave them a very good year there. All the statewide races went for Democrats, such of house races that were seen as on the bubble

could go either way, ended up going for Democrats. And the lesson that Democrats started to take from that was, Okay, well, we should really be talking more about this, apparently, and continuing to press it because it is a live, live issue. That is all the mindset that they were in going into the Wisconsin State Supreme Court race last week, which again was supposed to be this very competitive race, very

narrowly divided state. Wisconsin, the very narrowly divided state obviously very close in twenty sixteen and in twenty twenty and the presidential elections there. The Senate race in Wisconsin last year was a very narrowly divided race between the incombent Senator Ron Johnson, who was reelected in Mandela Barnes, So it went for the Republicans then, But then the governor of the state was reelected Tony Evers, and the attorney general, Democrat,

was reelected. So that division is there. But this race for a state Supreme Court, which is you know, usually state Supreme court races and years past, we're not a big deal. But this between a huge deal, in large part because the way the other judges on the Supreme Court.

And this is also it's weird to some people that there are even elections for a state Supreme Court, but they are a Wisconsin but the judges are evenly divided in most people's assessment over how they will vote on upholding a law that goes back to eighteen forty nine that banned abortion in Wisconsin, which would be on the books after the Dova's decision. And so this judge, whoever was elected, was going to probably be the tie breaking vote.

And sure enough, one of the main issues in the fact, when you look at all the advertising spending that was part of this race, it was the top issue was abortion rights. And that race, which was not a close race at all, In the end, it was an eleven point win for the Democratic backhandate the one who will vote to preserve abortion rights in Wisconsin. That means two Democrats. Again, it's another proofpoint this is an issue that is really

politically potent. They say that Republicans have overreached, that they are continuing to not recognize how people are reacting to this, and for them that means talk about abortion rights going into next year to all the elections, but also really forced the issue by trying to find other states that they can put ballot measures on the ballot in places

that they want to juice turnout. And that goes back to something that that's the Republican playbook from two thousand and four when Karl Rove did this to help George W. Bush when reelection. He oversaw the strategy to put ballot measures in a lot of swing states about banning gay marriage. So that was banning gay marriage in two thousand and

four helped Bush. Then in twenty twenty four, it looks like it will be protecting abortion rights that Democrats are pushing in a hope of helping looks like Joe Biden if he indeed runs for reelection seems like he will, and a lot of other candidates for the House and Senate and governor. I want to get back to this idea of balant initiatives helping top of the ticket candidates, because that's sort of interesting, isn't it. It's a little

bit counterintuitive. Well, like it gives people another reason to turn out and vote and makes them connect with an issue. You have a presidential candidate or even a governor senator candidate, and you may think, Okay, well, why do I care about that person, or what is it that's really grabbing me about that person? But a ballot measure can be a reason to go and vote, and it's you see

that about a lot of things. I remember to go back to Michigan actually in twenty eighteen when there was also a good year for Democrats then, and one of the reasons that was cited to me for why they had such a good year in Michigan that year by the chair of the Michigan Democratic Party on election night. He said to me, the big part of it was

that there was a measure to legalize marijuana. Right that drew a lot of people out, people who might not have voted otherwise, including so I mean the younger voters, but not just younger voters. That that cuts across a lot of groups. That gave people a reason turn out

to vote, and when they're there. Very rarely do people go in to vote and vote on just one thing and turn around and so looking for these issues that can connect with voters who are likely to be with you on other things and then making them get to the polls. That's that's what this is about. And it's pretty smart because if you think about it, you know, one of the things that Biden has been struggling with recently is getting excitement among young voters. Yeah, and that's

a perennial thing. Look, I remember in twenty twelve writing an article about whether Obama would be able to connect with young voters again like he did in two thousand eight. That's a crazy thing to think about. Well, but in the end, the youth turnout was there for Obama in twelve, the youth turnout was there for Biden in twenty despite

the bat is obviously not a young man himself. But what I the conversations that I've had with elected officials, younger elect officials, people like Maxwell Frost that twenty five year old congressman. Yeah, who was just on this podcast on Monday. Well, there you go. It's all connected. Molly Frost said to me right after he was elected, when he was in Washington, he said, look, I think that young people are going to turn out for Biden because of his focus on things that Frost fields are very

important to his generation. A lot of the climate change measure is a big part of that was obviously a big part of what was in the Inflation Reduction Act last year. But these sorts of issues that can connect

with younger voters and are a part of it. But it's when you talk to the people who have been involved with making these very successful ballot measures elsewhere around the country last year, what they say is that this is it doesn't work as well to say vote for Democrats there for abortion rights, or if you want abortion rights,

Democrats are your people. What they say is that what works is to talk about it in terms of rights and in terms of Republicans stripping away freedoms and the government getting involved, not even Republicans so much, but getting involved, and that if you do that, that connects to a broader feeling that is there for a whole range of voters that they feel like the government is not paying attention to them and is not looking out for them, and is following their own agendas and all those sorts

of it's more of a swingy message. Yeah, and look, when you get that, you get people who are really connected with this issue already on top of it. That ends up being a lot of voters. When you have states that are being decided by small margins in the presidential election or in lower level races, whether it's senator down to House, a couple thousand votes means a lot. If in twenty twenty, Donald Trump had won I think it's forty four thousand votes between four different states, he

would have been reelected president. He would not have won the popular vote, right, Biden still had many million vote lead, but the electoral College would have gone to Trump again. So you think about that forty four thousand votes between

four states, it's not a lot. And states where some of the action is being talked about for these ballot measures next year include Nevada, Arizona, right, some of those closely divided states, but they all so include Montana, where there is a Senate race John Tester running for reelection and seen as probably going to be again as it has been the every time he's run a very very competitive race. Also in New York. New York already has a ballot measure that is set for the twenty twenty

four ballot. The legislature approved it a couple of weeks ago. New York is not going to be a competitive state in the president wow, except that there are all these House seats right that Democrats fucked up. Excuse my French, but I can curse because we're not on cable news. You know, there's the George Santos seat, etc. There are six seats that are represented by Republicans now in districts

that Biden carried in twenty twenty. If that isn't a case that Jay Jacobs should resign, I don't know what it is. Well, I'll leave that for you. And that's six seats just in New York. And you know how many seats it would take for the Democrats to be in the majority of the House. Five Yeah, house race they're never decided by that many votes in close districts. So with that ballot measure in New York, that in itself could be the thing that changes the dynamics of

next year's elections. I'm going to ask you about a tweet. It's very annoying to be asked about a tweet, but it's not one of your tweets. So there's something if it's about one of my tweets, and it's of course

not annoying. Month So, on April seventh, after this yet another Texas abortion ruling, Dan Diamond, who writes for the Washing Post Very Smart, noted that there were twenty six Senate Democrats who waited in on this ruling and only one Republican who waited in on it, and it was Senator Cindy Hyde Smith, who is from a very red state and also not a genius from Mississippi, which is

where the Dobb's decision originated. That comes from Mississippi. She's also most famous for having dressed up as a Confederate soldier. I mean, I'm just saying I don't think of her as like having her finger on the pulse or she does for Mississippi. Yeah, and that's her job, is to represent Mississippi. I'll tell you this. I went down to the Supreme Court on the day the Dobb's decision was argued, not when it was decided, and there was, as often as the case for big events like that, there were

a lot of protesters on both sides of it. I looked around. I could not find any elected officials there at all, except for Roger Wicker, who's the other senator from Mississippi. It's not that far from the Capitol to the Supreme Court, say maybe a three minute walk, I should say. I couldn't find any Republican elected official either than Wicker. There were some Democratic officials who'd been part of protests and speaking, and I walked up to Senator Wicker and I said to him, why do you think

you're the only Republican here? And he said, well, you know, people are busy their committee hearing, isn't it And I said, the Senator, it's pretty close, and it seems like an important case. Don't you think the people would want to be part And he said, well, you know, there are a lot of things, and he kind of dismissed it and then said he had to get back to his

office himself. What we see from then, from when the Dobbs decision leaked, from when the decision officially came out and ongoing is Republicans who very much would rather not talk about this. The people who are most engaged with trying to win elections see this as a mostly losing issue for them with swing voters, and that they feel just as the Democrats field, it's proved out in their favor.

The Republicans see the same numbers and see the same results, and that's why they want to try to avoid it. But that is not an option that a lot of the people who are leaders in the Republican Party seem to want to give them. Lindsay Graham last year introduced a fifteen week ban on abortion that would be at the federal level. Ronda Santis looks like he is on the cusp of signing what would be a six week ban after six weeks out of which is essentially a

ban in Florida. Right. Mike Pence has been a very adamant and clear that he thinks that there should be a national abortion ban. Obviously, he's very committed to the cause, whatever the constituency for that is. He's the former vice president. He looks like he's probably going to be running for president. He is going to keep talking about this himself, right, And the only Republican presidential candidate, and that I saw,

and maybe I'm wrong. Who reacted to the Texas Judge's ruling was Pence, who said, this is a great thing. It corrects a wrong of this pill being available for

the last twenty years. So when that is going on, and then you see things like the Susan B. Anthony List, which is one of the leading groups committed to pro life cause, saying there's a call that the president of that group did earlier this year with reporters, and she said that she doesn't think it's an acceptable option for Republicans to either a well, i'll put this in the

affirmative case. She thinks that it's important that Republicans are very committed to a full approach of backing more restrictions and more laws that would make abortions illegal and the

procedures and everybody involved with them not happen. And she also said she said that Republicans shouldn't adopt the which she said the Ostrich strategy of trying to talk about this, She and others are going to say, this is an issue we want to hear from our candidates about, and that's candidates from president on down and they want them to be very clearly on one side of this. She's going to drive Republicans into a ditch, which I think is great, but I'm just saying it does seem an

important data point. Yeah, you also see Donald Trump, who has a complicated history of where he stands on this issue, and best complicated and worst perhaps you know. Right in twenty sixteen when he was running, there was a moment where Chris Matthews asked him about whether he thought there should be a punishment for women who get abortions, and he said there has to be some punishment. Then they walked it back like an hour later and said that's

not really what he meant. There was this weird moment in an interview that Trump did with Maureen Daub where he was not clear on whether he had ever been involved with a woman who had gotten an abortion. But then, of course he appointed three of the judges to the

report who were part of the dab's decision. And yet after the mid terms, which did not go well for Republicans, or at least as well as they wanted to and where the historical trends would have put them, Trump started complaining publicly through his truth social posts that too many Republicans had been for too many restrictions and that's not what people wanted. And that turned off a bunch of his evangelical supporters who were like, wait a second, I

thought you were with us. You're the first and only president who showed up at the March for Life in Washington appointed these justices. Now you're turning on us. So it's not like Trump is going anywhere in the Republican primary,

and so all of these things are there. But what it does seem to mean is that the Republicans themselves are going to keep talking about this issue, while at the same time, in a bunch of state legislatures, you have a lot of bills moving that would be more abortion restrictions, a couple that would classify abortion as a homicide or put a penalty like murder, one that would have the death penalty for abortions, and you have one

of those has been introduced in South Carolina. Tim Scott, who is very consistent a pro life senator thinking about running for president himself. He was asked about that a couple of weeks ago on Fox News, and I think that's a terrible idea, right, And that's the pincer that they,

the Republicans, seem to be caught in. And as this is all happening in a democratic political operatives, could not be happier to watch them not know where to go, because that's all just the opportunity for them to make an issue of this. Yeah, thank you so much. I hope you'll come back. I hope you'll invite me back. Molly John Fast Jesse Cannon. That Diane Finestein, she's a little old at eighty nine. Diane Feinstein. Look, she has served her constituents in a great way. She has been

a statesman and a leader. She is now because she's sick with shingles, which is terrible. She is in the hospital and unable to vote on the judicial nominees. So Democrats don't have the numbers to confirm judges on the judic Cherry Committee, and so they are out of luck. While Diane Finstein recuperates, it could be very easy for her to take this moment to retire and let Democrats continue putting judges on the bench. And as much as we respect and appreciate her hard service, it probably is

time for her to retire. And that is why this entire situation is our moment of fuckeray. 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.