Ronald Brownstein, Susan Del Percio & Danielle Allen

reporting on how we can repair our democracy. But first we have senior editor at The Atlantic, Ron Brownstein. Welcome to Fast Politics. Ron Brownstein, Hey, thanks for having me again. Happy to year. I guess can I still say that? No, you're out of the window. Out of the window, and letter David doesn't live that far from me, so who knows. You might come down and smite me. But I want to ask you. We are in the middle of this insane house. I mean, it does feel like the there

are no adults in the house. Chilp. Yeah. I mean, look, you know, the house is often the expression of the party's I at any given moment, either party. We certainly saw that in the nineties when the ging which generation took control of the House. And now you have a House in which roughly three quarters of the Republicans are from deep Trump country, the districts that Trump won by at least ten points, and then you have, you know, their majority makers which put them over the top, are

the eighteen Republicans from districts that voted for Biden. And the big question all year is going to be whether those more vulnerable swing seat Republicans impose any restraints on the right flank of the caucus or the conference which feels enormously empowered by the outcome of the speaker fight in which, you know, McCarthy kind of, as someone said to me, surrendered his way to the speakership, really drawing almost no lines and just constantly giving more visibility, power,

authority to the most extreme members of his caucus. And the question is when, if at all, do the relatively more you know, I wouldn't even say centrist members, members from more centrist areas draw online Molly. I will say that historically, waiting for this has been you know, waiting for good. Oh. I remember when Republicans were looking at

impeaching Clinton. And there were many people, myself included, who noted that there were at that point House Republicans from districts had voted for Clinton in ninety six, and the thought was, well, at least some of them are going to throw the brakes on this train, and they didn't. So logically you would say these eighteen plus another twenty or so in districts the Trump wont only narrowly would have a different set of incentives. But until proven otherwise,

I'm not sure that's going to be the case. It's interesting because Republicans paid dearly for that impeaching Clinton, yes, and they paid dearly even in this election for the image of extremists. You know, I wrote, I wrote the other look historic, and you and I have talked about this before. Historically, if you have the set of conditions that we had in November twenty two, the out parties

should be looking at substantial games. Uh. You had a president's groper writing was in the load of mid forties, who had seventy of the country say the economy was on the wrong track, and you had the highest inflation in forty years, and yet Republicans enormously underperformed, and the principal reason they underperformed at really all levels was that too many voters who were dissatisfied with the way things are going fought that Republicans are too extreme to entrust

with power. In fact, I had someone run from me from the exit pose the other day to quantify this, as you know, I like to quantify the ephemeral. Something like forty two percent of voters who said the economy was in bad shape said that Republicans were too extreme, and those voters overwhelmingly voted Democratic for the House and

presumably for these other statewide races. And that was the difference between I think a normal mid term that you would expect in these conditions and what you actually got, which was very disappointing for Republicans. And I've put them in this situation where because they have such a narrow majority, the far right part of the conference has all of

this leverage. So that's the paradox right, the the image of extremism limited their gains, and those limited gains are in turn empowering the most extreme forces in the conference to demand more of the same attitudes and policies that hurt them in the first place it seems like Kevin McCarthy is not the man for this job. Well, McCarthy has decided, you know that he's just not going to

fight this that he has got. McCarthy has basically made the calculation which I have seen Republican speakers make before, that in the end, it is the center, or the folks from the centrist districts, who are going to break and who will fall in line because they have theoretically, in a five seat majority, they have as much power as the right. You know, I mean eighteen House Republicans and districts that Biden one, another two dozen or so in district that Trump only narrowly, one that can easily

go the other way in a presidential race. They could have said no to any of this, but he's betting they won't, and that as long as he keeps the right happy, he can keep his job. The voters get another say on that in two years as well. But in terms of the dynamics inside the Cock Conference, that is clearly the calculation that he's making. The center in the end will give in if he tells them I have to do this to satisfy the right, and if I don't you're gonna get someone even further than the

right to speaker like Schooley's. It is an interesting calculus. And I do think that Matt Gates, I mean, he's really elevated Matt Gates. I mean, I think that's proof that what he's doing isn't ear a work gang. Well.

Marjorie Taylor Green as well. I mean, look, Marjorie Taylor Green, You've got to imagine that they're going to be ads in with Republican candidates in suburban districts, morphing into Marjorie Taylor Green and Matt Gates, and you know, in the same way that Republicans have tried to run against and have run against Pelosi or the squad. You know, something

like six It was pretty close. I think was fifty percent of independent voters in elections said Republicans were too extreme, and it was a significantly wider spread for Republicans than it was for Democrats among independent voters. McCarthy is systematically putting the most off, putting potentially members of his caucus in front of TV cameras and and giving them power for the next year. I mean, they are on the Oversight Committee, they are on this special Weaponization of the

Federal Government Committee. They are on the COVID Committee, and so to the extent there are Republicans and they may, in fact, you know, draw some blood from the Biden administration through these various attacks and negotiations, but he has guaranteed that in the process, their most extreme members are going to be front and center, you know, talking about conspiracy theories and all sorts of things that hurt them, you know, in the places why they underperformed, and potentially

it hurt them even more in the context of a presidential year, right, And and I think that's ultimately kind of where we're seeing it go. Um. So, now we have these committee hearings coming up soon, but we also have the debt ceiling, and you've written about the dead ceiling. Talk to me about this. It's like a runaway freight train. Yeah, it's clearly the most important policy debate or confrontation that

we're going to have in in Washington. There's not going to be a lot of substantive I mean, it's hard to imagine this Republican conference in the House getting to agreements with Biden on very much other than the bare minimum of keeping the doors open in the government and keeping the U S from defaulting, potentially throwing catastrophic ripples through the global economy. And you know, what you've got

is a reprise of what happened in T eleven. So you know, when Republicans are in the White House, Republicans in Congress have no real problem raising the debt ceiling. I mean they've they've done it. They did it repeatedly under Trump, they did it under w It wasn't an issue. When Democrats are in the White House and Republicans hold a majority in either or both chambers, they demand spending

cuts to offset the debt ceiling increase. In fact, when John Banner became Speaker in eleven, he offered what was called the Baynor rule, which said for each dollar in more debt authority you get, there should be an offsetting

dollar of spending cuts. Never mind that the debt ceiling is not about future spending, it's about you know, funding things we've already done, right, But that was what Bayner laid out, and in eleven Obama did choose to negotiate with the House Republicans on a deficit reduction deal was known then as the Grand Bargain, and went through months of kind of a multi layer negotiation that began with Joe Biden and Eric Canter, who was then the number

two in the House, holding these meetings about you know, cutting spending in the postal service and you know, auctioning off the airwaves more efficiently and so forth. That ultimately broke down over the Republican refusal to raise taxes, and then Bayner and Obama picked up the baton in late

June July eleven. They had a series of secret meetings that got them close to what was again described as the Grand Bargain, which was basically a ten year plan to raise taxes and reduced spending on Social Security and medicare primarily to you know, lead toward the budget being a balanced over time. And people who lived through that will recall there was as as someone said to me, put it to me last week, there was a lot of that in the air. In eleven, I mean, there

was a Simpson Bowls Bipartisan Commission. He was executive to rector, by the way, as the Deputy chief of Staff, and the White House Bruce read there was a Dominicci rivalent. I mean, they were just like these bipartisan commissions and Obama basically accepted the idea that it would be a

good thing to reach a long term budget deal. And in fact, there were a number It wasn't only Republicans who were pressing him to do that at that point, there were more kind of center right mansion esque Democratic senators who were also pressing him to do that. After two thousand too big initiatives, the stimulus planned on the

Affordable Care Act. So Obama went through these negotiations Biden canner that collapsed, Obama banner that collapsed, and they were forced to scramble in the final weekend before default in these you know, horrific tense meetings inside the White House to cobble together what turned out to still be a significant budget reduction deal in order to get Republicans to

raise the dead ceiling. And Jack lou who was the OMB director then and the Treasury secretary and the second term, said to me, you don't have to here the audio. You can just see the looks on the faces in peach suits his pictures, and you know how much it was. And Obama came out of that where none of the positives that he was seeking a rational long term pathway towards, you know, managing the debt. The deficit came out and you instead had all of this market turbulence that took

the country to the Briton. And he came out of that and he said never again. And the US credit was downgraded. I mean it was traumatic. Oh, the US credit was downgraded. It was a debacle. Republicans did get something they wanted out of that. Ultimately they got some substantial budget cuts and this process known as sequestration, which really dominated the fiscal debates of the next decade with

automatic defense and the message discretionary spending cuts. But Obama came out of that experience in tleven and basically said never again. And in fact, as as several people involved told me, it wasn't even that he came out of that experience and said never again. Even as it was concluding, he had decided never again. And in fact, in his second term, when Republicans came back and said, okay, if you want to raise you have to raise the dead

ceiling again. Now we're demanding more cuts and we're demanding that you would ravel the Affordable Care Act, he refused to negotiate with them over the dead ceiling. And eventually in the fall the spring, and again in the Republicans back down and under Bay they did raise it. And that is the posture that Biden is taking now. It's important that people understand he is not saying he won't negotiate with them about the budget. Obviously has to do

that they control one chamber of Congress. What are he is seeing is we are not going to negotiate with the threat of default, you know, as the gun cocked against our head. We are not negotiate in the context of the dead ceiling. Raising the dead ceiling is non negotiable. We don't want to attach anything to it. Now whether he can hold to that all the way through with Joe Manchon already out there saying, well, we should have another commission like we had back then, you know, to

study deficit reduction. But that is Biden's posture. It is inextricably rooted in his experience next to Obama. By the way, footnote on this, Molly, that's worth noting when the second confrontation came up in about Republicans saying, don't you know, we're not going to raise the dead ceiling unless you give us more cuts and roll back the affordable character.

Harry Reid, you know, the Christ and Peace, who was then the Democratic Majority leader, went to the White House and specifically told Obama to keep Biden away from the negotiations because he thought he would be too willing to cut a deal with Mitch mcconm just just an interesting fact. So, I mean, it kind of shows you how far Biden has come, you know, And even the threshold is not

really true anymore. Like back then, you know, people can forget Obama and the key people around him thought it was both good economics and good politics to reach a long term deficit reduction deal that traded some cuts and to care and Social Security for you know, tax increases. I don't think that's true anymore, either in no in the in the Biden White House, or among Democrats in the Senate that is, in the House that is very

much a minority position today. And and so even the threshold that you know, Obama's threshold was, yeah, a deal would be a good thing, and he didn't see it as disqualifying to tie the negotiations to the debt ceiling. Both both of those propositions I think are no longer

true among Democrats. So how this plays out. I think, you know, Biden is betting that enough Republicans, those Republicans we've talked about before from more competitive districts in the end will break and in some way maybe by signing a discharge position will pass this through the House, and that enough Senate Republicans obviously will do so as well. But there are gonna be a lot of white knuckle

moments between now and then. You know, there's also the question of military spending, right yeah, well, you know, look, I mean that was like when they made this final deal on this horrible final weekend before the country defaulted for the first time. The deal was that it created a so called super committee in the House, which is kind of what uh mansion wants now. I think that if they could reach agreement on a plan, would be

guaranteed a floor vote on the plan. But if they couldn't reach agreement on a plan to cut the deficit by a little over one trillion, the fallback was what was known as sequestration, which were automatic cuts in discretionary domestic and defense spending, and Democrats fought that was their fail safe because Republicans in the end would never allow the defense spending cuts to go into effect, and to some extent they were right because Congress did repeatedly loosen

the belt on the sequestration, and but some of it did go into effect, and Republicans were willing to have those cuts go on to defense. And so like probably now, betting that defense cuts are the circuit breaker they keep Republicans from demanding other cuts is probably a misguided hope for Democrats. Yeah right, definitely, because also Republicans are now they're sort of against this war in Ukraine. There the spending on Ukraine, right, so they could easily want to

cut that. Yeah, right, So you could see Bayner is like Lincoln compared to McCarthy. Bainer kind of accepted that there were responsibilities, you know, I mean, and he writes in his memoir about how much he hated the Second Confrontation that he was just he just thought it was ridiculous and counterproductive, and you know, the crazy Caucus and all of that. He was all in the first time.

You know, he did go to New York and he gave this speech in Maylen where he laid down the bin a rule, a dollar for cuts for dollar of more debt authorization. But yes, I mean Bainer clearly, and

Ryan even to a significant extent. So it as part of his job to resist the demands of the far right in the Republican ranks, and McCarthy clearly views his future, his viability in the job as acceding to as many of those demands as possible while leaning on the moderates now to give in rather than trying to resist what the right wants to do, which was more the posture of Banter and even more the posture of Ryan. So

where do you think this goes? I guess I am in the camp that believes default is so unpredictable and potentially catastrophic that they will find a way to avoid it, and that enough Republicans will sign a discharge petition to pass a debt seiling increase in the House. But I would guess that as part of that, Biden is going to have to accept some kind of Simpson Bowles type thing,

you know, yet another commission to study the deficit. I don't think he will agree to Obama did in, which is a guaranteed, streamlined process for that to be voted on. But I'm not sure I see even how he gets nine votes in the Senate without some sort of fig Leaf study group that's, you know, examining how we deal with this and maybe if I can get enough Republicans to just back down to get a clean debt ceiling increase, but I'm not sure. Ron Brownstein so interesting. I hope

you will come back. Always glad to be here. Thanks so much for having me. Susan del Perco is an NBC political analyst and Republican strategist. Welcome, Too Fast Politics, Susan del Purcio. Great to be with you. I'm so excited to be on your new podcast. Well, we're excited to have you. And as I was, I was writing my Vanity Fair thing today and yesterday, and I was thinking about Trump being back. And it's been uh, you know,

this weekend of Trump pretending to be Jeb. I mean, of course he's not Jeb and he still you know, went into his autopilot autocrat. But there's certainly seems like there's a concerted effort, uh for Trump to try to pretend to be normal. Yeah. And Trump doesn't do normal well, and he doesn't stay very long when he does um. As a matter of fact, he'll get criticized for doing for trying to do normal because he can't do it well and it shows, and he comes off as very

flat and not energetic. And his his weekend appearances were pathetic. Yeah, they because we're simply pathetic. They were just read off some copy and and here's what the worst part is. Actually it was trying to be normal and trying to rehash the past. He wasn't even trying to say like I'm gonna come forward and do this for you. He's like, just stay with me because I'm really upset and I need your support, so please be with me. Like a little blanky. Yes, he said, he's back, and he's ang.

I mean, you have worked with Republican candidates. You were Republican strategists. I mean, I don't know the people in my life who were Republicans. Many of them have changed to independence. Are you an independent? Are you still Republican? No, I'm still a Republican. Although I asked him, I said that question, why every every day? This is the answer. And it's changed over the years. You know, initially like

he's not taking over my party, God damn it. And you know, I was very defiant, and then I was like, well, there's gotta be someone here like to at least bring like sanity to the conversations. But it evolved, i'd say in the last couple of years too. This is a two party country. People may want an independent party and other parties, but that's not how we work. If everybody leaves the Republican Party who's frustrated with it, when it comes back, they're not going to be so welcomed into it.

And you have to be part of bringing it up. So I'm a Republican that hoped to see the party burned to the ground to build it back up, but to show it's almost like, yes, we need Republican voices out there, even if no one's listening right now, because I spend all this time thinking about, like, how can there be a normal Republican party and sort of trying to game it out in my head, and and it seems like, I mean, this is such a great example, right.

I had one to ask David from this question, and he said a party needs to lose three elections in order to sort of rewrite the ship. So I thought two thousand eighteen two that they might, but but someone else told me no, it's three presidential elections that they have to lose. I'm kind of in between those numbers.

By the way, I think it starts in twenty with the beginning of the the end for the Republican Party, and it's not going to come back to mostly be because you not only have to presidential elections there, but the midterms the other congressional election races. Those are where the local people really have a voice and they start pushing out the losers. So you lose in, you lose in, You lose in because it will go through at least and then maybe by like people are like enough and

the state and local organizations start recalibrating. And that's what you know, I guess, coming from you know, building from the down, Yeah, the low the lowliest races of city council all the way up to the presidential level. You know, you get to know how local politics really works and where the shifts start to come in, right, I mean, that's clearly. I think the hope is that there'll be some I know that this rn C meeting last week was a bloodbast It's amazing because I have a friend

who called me in a rage. Oh really, yeah, because they were harassing people. It's so interesting because Trump was you could tell that. Like leading up to it, he was like, I may throw Runna under the bus. I'm not sure yet, Like I could do it because I don't like getting blamed, and maybe I could get her to be blamed for losing, but oh gosh, I don't know. And plus other people like me, so maybe. And then

it was just it was too far. It went too far down the pipe for it too to have a leadership, but to have one third of the voting members say like no, thank you, I would say, is good. But they went for more crazy, which was the problem. Right, And my friend said exactly that we obviously need new blood. But but um, you know this is I mean, my pillow guy is not going to be how it happens. No, no, no, no, no, It'll take rebet because again, those people who vote at

the r n C for chairman come from the state parties. Again, it's gonna take time, but you have to be patient. But you feel a little bit optimistic that there could be a sort of sanity like that Emit Romney could come back, or you know, someone like that. Oh, I think there will sanity will return. But I think we're maybe about halfway through as far as burning to the ground that we need to. We have a long way to go to really found miserb of like And that goes to what you were about to say when I

interrupted you. So I apologize about Kevin McCarthy and this new house that we have. Yeah, so let's talk about that. I mean, they are ready to roll with lots of investigations, I mean already. I mean, I'm sure. So that's CNN polling last week that you know, the American people are

not so interested in Hunter Biden's laptop. No, there's not, and I don't think And here's the key, given the way we operate now as a country versus fort example, even during the Benghazi hearings, you know, almost it's almost

a decade ago, can you believe it? But the difference is that people just don't buy into that kind of stuff now, and they're already so planted into each side that if the Republicans, if that's all they can do is get into the Hunter Biden's laptop and let's say they can put it all online and everyone can see what's on it, and there is bad stuff on it, no one's going to care because you haven't done anything to govern, and they walk into this so poorly, with

such a bad look votes. The calculus that McCarthy has made is that he has to appease the right and the center will go along. Right the far right and the center right will go along. But a lot of these people will in fact lose their seats. I mean they're in very swingy districts. So I mean, do those people eventually go like, funk this it's not for me, excuse my French. Or do you think they just are like, we have to appease the right. Um, it's a great question.

I think. You know, there were eighteen newly elected members of Congress that came from Biden districts, and there's a lot of talk about how many were from New York. I'm willing to bet not including Santas, which is his own problem. Don't put that aside for a moment, But even Santos district, there is at least three or four of those newly elected Republicans that will not win reelection. They just won't. And it's the way it goes. It

happens in New York quite often, by the way. Republicans come in at weird times where the rest of the country does not as great and Republicans do well, and then they get voted out in a presidential because of turnout. And so I do think that you know, I've been yelling for it. They all have the same vote. You know, how many votes a member of Congress has one. It doesn't matter if you're Matt Gates or Mike Lawler or whoever.

You only get one vote. And I've been waiting for these eighteen to kind of form, if you will, like the Democracy Caucus is what I had had in mind, like they would actually do the right thing, because these are sensible people again minus santos Um, but there and there are others who want to do the right thing. Now here's where it gets interesting is that McCarthy is throwing out all these things. He had the anti abortion vote, he's going to do some stupid immigration you know, order vote.

He's going to put all these really hardcore conservative votes out there. The question is how many or for how long will he continue to do that, because that's when they start getting pushed back from the middle because the Republicans that I just talked about, those eighteen plus about at least another twenty are not going to vote to default on our death. They won't do it right. Well, that is the big that is the big, big question. But the thing that I think is interesting, so people

will people always say when when Nancy Pelosi. By the way, I think that McCarthy has been a walking advertisement for Nancy Pelosi, right, Like, this job is a lot harder than it looks. Right. But the question I had was, so here we have this guy who you know. One of the things that Ancy Pelosi was famous for was she never made Democrats vote on things that might hurt them in re election. So, for example, Medicare for all,

she never took Medicare for all. She never let it go to the to the Congress because even though it's a very good idea, she worried it would hurt though was frontliners, the swingy Democrats like that it might hurt them in their re elections. So this is like completely contrary to exactly what McCarthy is doing. Yeah, it's interesting.

Pelosi was such, I mean, a tremendous leader. Not only could she get the votes that were really tough through with her very slim and equal majority to what McCarthy is feeling with now, but she also was able to work with the other side to know where the votes were to let her members off the hook. She was also known for telling her members, if you have to run against me and make me the devil, go right ahead,

right She even like ego get in the way. Where is McCarthy The only thing he has is his ego because that's the only thing that's driving him to do this job. Otherwise, wouldn't you be so embarrassed? I mean, if you're a McCarthy, everything you've had to do for God's freake, But he lives with Frank Lutts. Okay, so I want to get into this for a second. Frank Lutts. I mean, you can say a lot of things about him,

but he's no dummy. I mean, so, I mean there are people advising McCarthy who are explaining to him, Are there or am I just delusional? No? There are people who explain it. But the thing is is that no one knows as best as people in those positions, if you will, that are all based on ego, like McCarthy. Carthy listens, yes, but he still thinks he knows better.

Right right, So you can surround yourself with really smart people and maybe do one or two smart things, but it won't stop you from blowing yourself up if you're convinced this is the only way I can get from here to there. Right, So it's Ego we are in this weird run up. There's one declared Republican candidate right now. His name is Donald Trump. He's very curious, and everyone trying to run against him. I mean, where does that go? I mean, do you think he ends up being the nominee?

I actually don't think he'll appear on a ballot. Interesting. I don't say he's not going to run because he's announced, so that therefore he's running, But I don't think he will be running long enough to have his name on a natural ballot. So I've been let that way for a while. For there's a whole host of reasons. His legal troubles are going to start catching up with him. Poles are starting to move against him. And it's not if he can't be number one. He doesn't want it,

and more importantly, he doesn't want to lose. And that fear of losing is what will probably be the biggest driver again going to Ego, because there's no way he wins. He can't moderate enough not only is it not in his personnel, but literally he can't do it. There's no room for him to change. But the problem is that reality of plotting the field is still there. It is. And yet that's what Donald Trump was betting on. Put my name in early. It'll stop people from running, or

they'll just be speculations. So there really won't be much of a field if for some reason it works that I want to run. But the point was just to shut everyone else out. And here's the thing he's not and he didn't because Ron de Santis has not stopped the whisper campaign, he's amplified it. Nicki Haley probably jumps in now whether what you think of these two individuals, you know, we'll put aside. But the fact is is that they're going to get more attention and they're gonna

be talking about what's happening in the future. And Donald Trump is going to be like, well, there's nothing without me. Okay, well what are you gonna do for me? Donald? It does seem to me like he's just so unable to stay on message that that is going to hurt him. And I also think like the novelty of him is gone absolutely and I actually think one of the reasons why he hasn't done the rallies is because his lawyers are petrified of him just going on. You know, he

doesn't just do a typical speech or rally. He goes on for an hour with all these gripes and who knows what he's going to say when he gets on, you know, in his group. So I think that's one of the reasons. And people are tired of him people, and that's why I think that the problem with like Biden has a problem to people are tired of all of this. They want to put twenty six behind them. They're happy that Biden's there in that he's steadied the ship.

But I think people want to look forward. Yeah, I mean, I think that's right. I continue, though, to wonder if you're I mean, I think there's certainly a hunger for that. But there are a lot of things in this Republican Party, for example, that sort of Trump has I'm trying to pivot to match Slap and Seapack Sea Pack is coming up. Match Lap has these allegations, there's tape. I mean, what are we doing here? I mean, does he just get

to keep Sea pap because nobody cares. You know, what the heck is seapack Anyway, Kelly and Conboy did get one thing right when she went there right after Trump's win. It's Trump pack, it's tea pack. It's not conservative pack. This is nowhere close to what you used to see back in the day years ago when I started in the business, seapack. I mean, I think it wasn't a big fan, but it was like not it was actually conservative values moving forward and I and actually a place

for ideas. Seepack now is just a Trump circus, and it's not surprising that one of its leaders find themselves in trouble. And so what is seapack? I mean seriously, like, I don't even know who cares to go to it anymore. People look like the Marjorie Taylor Greens of the world and Ghostart want to go to like the like. So who's going to see pack? Right, No, I mean it's a it's a very good question. Jesse is texting me. Then Matt Slap actually said they are not conservatives. They

are people who are in love with the founding of America. Okay, all right, I'm certainly not going anymore. I think the hope for a lot of the more sane Republicans left is that there'll be some kind of reckoning, right absolutely, And like I said, it'll take the party to burn down. It just it won't be small little improvements that you're gonna say, oh, we're a little bit better, We're a little bit better. It's going to have to be a complete utter failure at the electoral level, which is probably

going to be. And I would say, with the exception of I think the Senate will flip to Republican just because of the map. I know everyone said, how could the Republicans lose this time? But there were at least a few swing states in play. But there's too many seats in play with too many incumbents. Like if Tester doesn't run, who wins Montana? Like what Democrat wins run? No one, do we think Tester is not running? I

thought Tester was running. He may but like I'm just saying, the point is is that, like there's only a handful in West Virginia. I mean, yeah, he's just gonna say Mansion does he run as a Republican? Completely doable. I don't think Mangin can runs because Jim Justice is thinking about running right, But you know it all happened until it's it's all happening until it's not happening, right exactly. No,

I mean the map is really bad. So you are a New York Republican and so this is really your wheelhouse. Why did Democrats have such a bad showing a New York State? Two reasons. One was the maps that the Democrats proposed were so ridiculous, and that was because of Sean Patrick Maloney, and let's put the blame there. He wanted it to go even further. Jerry nandered. So when the maps went to the courts, of course they got

overturned because they were so bad. The second thing is is turnout in New York State was abysmal by the Democrats. Republicans were jazzed up, which normally doesn't matter, but Democrats did not show up. Everyone made a big deal about Kathy Hope. Oh my god, six points in a ten million dollars given to Lee's Eldon. You know what, Letitia James ran against the repulsion that didn't have bust. She ran against someone who didn't have bus there, and she

won by eight points. Four years ago, she won by twenty seven points nothing changed except for Republican turnout. But more importantly, Democrats didn't show up. They just did. The numbers were not there, and that's what the Democrats have to fear. In states like New York and other places like people are not showing up. Yeah, that's so interesting. Thank you so much. She's in del per c O. I hope you'll come back, of course, absolutely, thank you.

I know you, our dear listeners are very busy and you don't have time to sort through the hundreds of pieces of pundentry each week. This is why every week I put together a newsletter of my five favorite articles on politics. If you enjoy the podcast, you will love having this in your inbox every Friday. So sign up at Fast Politics pod dot com and click the tab to join our mailing list. That's Fast politics pod dot com. Danielle Allen is a contributing columnist at The Washington Post.

Welcome to Fast Politics, Danielle Allen. Thank you, Molly, glad to be here with you. I'm very excited to have you because it's a very interesting project that is something that is greatly needed. So explain to us what you're doing at the Washington Post. The short of it is. I think we all know a lot of us are pretty frustrated, anxious, depressed about the state of our politics. I've been in a state of high alert about our democracy for a decade, going back even longer, for a

lot of reasons things happening to. My family lost a cousin in two thousand nine, which is real life turning point before me. So I've been thinking a lot about why is it that our democracy feels like it's not delivering for us right now? Why does it feel so much understrained, so fragile. And that has led me into a project that I call a project of democracy renovation.

Think of our democracy, our institutions as a house. We all limited together, and you know, we're a heck of a lot bigger, has a family, and more complex than used to be. The systems aren't fit for purpose anymore. The house was never built for everybody. Some people had you know, beautiful rooms with a view. Others were stuck in gloomy basements, and so we've got to address that. And then there are other features of the house that have just been you know, sort of pillars and foundations

knocked out from under us by transformation. For example, the transformation of social media. So I think we have a lot of deferred maintenance basically on our democracy, and so I'm spending my year for the Washington Post trying to lay out things that we can do to renovate our shared house, our democracy, so that it works for us in the twenty one century. So you're a political theorist at Harvard, can you explain to our listeners what that is?

I feel like that's a real basic question. But like my dad, you know, just for whoever doesn't totally now, of course no, I mean, it's not an obvious thing. So I am in a political science to print, and so there are a whole lot of people who study politics, But that doesn't actually mean, you know, studying politics the way you read about it in the newspaper. It's not about tracking the horse race in the election or something

like that. It's more about trying to understand the deeper phenomena that are affecting why our politics operates the way it does. And then, in my case, I'm also a political philosopher. That means I really ask questions not just about how things work and why they work, but also what should we do, how should they work, um, what are the positive visions we should pursue. So political philosophers,

for example, think about theories of justice. There is a fairness, there is a freedom, theories of equality, and we ask a question, Okay, these ideals are worthy, how do we actually make them real in the world. So this feels like an impossible, impossible feat where do you start? Well, you know, first of all, we've got to remember that it's not impossible, and in some sense, you know, our history is a history of people carrying out toocracy renovations.

There was the first really big one, known as the Constitutional Convention. It's fair to say that all those folks who helped design the Constitution were political theorists. For example, they thought about the how and the why and the what. But they also had a goal. You know, they were trying to achieve effective governance. They had a banking crisis, a Congress that couldn't form a quorum, they couldn't deal

with their wartime debt, and so forth. It was really those issues that provoked the Constitutional Convention, and they literally re engineered the systems of their government in order to make sure it worked. Of course, we re engineered again after the Civil War, in the early twentieth century. A lot of re engineering happened then and what was known as that sort of progressive era, where that was when we got direct collection of senators, for example, and not

having them be picked by the state legislatures anymore. It's when women got the right to vote. So we have had big periods of democracy renovation, and I believe we're due for another one. And what would that look like exactly? So there are a lot of pieces and parts of this, and I was fortunate to coachair a commit shim that did work on this. It was sponsored by an organization called the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. This is a super old organization's older than the country. It was

founded by the same people who led the revolution. And what they wanted to do is assemble what they at the time called you, all the members of the learned professions, so doctors and lawyers and ministers and professors and so forth, who were asked to always sort of stand by as a knowledge body that could help the new country figure its way through problems. So we did a lot of work on the strain and our democracy, and we have

a report with about thirty one recommendations. So it's a lot of things, and some of them are federal, some of them are at the state level. If I just started the federal level. For me, one of my favorites of the thirty one recommendations is the idea that it is time to uncap the House of Representatives. Oh. Interesting, the House was supposed to grow, you know, over time, and it hasn't grown for about a century. It seems like something that would be a hard cell to Republicans,

but certainly was the original idea. It was the original idea exactly every ten year census, the House was supposed to grow again. We've actually done a lot of modeling on what it would mean to just play due deferred maintenance and grow it as if if we had stayed growing at the same sort of apportionment rate as had been historically the norm, we would currently be at about

five and eighty five members. We've done a lot of modeling on that it does not actually obviously result in benefit to either party, So there may be a little window of possibility where we could actually get this through. Ooh, that's so interesting, And what states would benefit from this well to some extent, you know, as you might imagine the bigger states with the bigger populations wouldst for California exactly. Yeah. But the other thing it would do is it would

flow through to the electoral college. So the electoral college is was designed to be waited in favor of less populous states, But the numbers in the college electoral college flow directly from the size of the House. So one of the reasons the electoral ledge is so badly out of whack right now is because we haven't grown the house for a century. So that's really interesting. Can you

give me one other really interesting suggestion, you guys said, sure. So, you know, we look at the Supreme Court and it's very clear that the longevity of justices has politicized that body. It means that, you know, the selection of Supreme Court justices is now sort of the number one issue in a presidential election. I think it's really important to de politicize the court, and we think that the most important way of doing that is by achieving term limits for

Supreme Court justices. They don't need to serve for life, they could serve for eighteen years. There's a little bit of debate about whether this could be done merely through the rules of the judiciary. With the sort of transfer of justices to another court in the federal judiciary, they can stay in the system for life, but needn't stand

the Supreme Court for life. Um, that's one possibility. Others think maybe it would require a constitutional amendment, but whatever the case, eighteen years with then you'd have a kind of routine beat of justices rotating on and off. Every president would get basically the same number of justices to a point, and in principle, that would help deep politicize the court. Yeah, do you feel like there's an appetite for this stuff? I mean, I certainly am all in

on it, but I'm just curious since you've been on this. Sure, I mean, there's definitely an appetite in among us, you know, Americans broadly across the country. If I hear your question right, I'm hearing a question about politicians and could we actually gets done? Yes. So I think that's a really important point, and it matters in some sense. There's kind of like an order of operations you have to think about here.

Probably we're not likely to get Congress to do these things right up front, so it's really important to remember that power over how members of Congress get elected lies in the states. So in every state we can do what Alaska just did, for example, change the election method. Nevada just voted as well for an approach with a

nonpartisan primary for ranked choice right believen. More importantly than that is shifting away from a partisan primary to what you might call it a preliminary where you've got all comers and you take the top four or five candidates on and yes, instant runoff in the general election. But it's really that switch away from the party primary structure that is the importance of opening up. It means candidates would have to campaign to the general electorate all the

way through the process. That's what would generate different dynamics in incentives for elected officials. That's really interesting. Do you think that's feasible. I mean, certainly it's it is happening so that and it's Nevada is is a swing state, but Alaska is very brad Yeah. I mean this is a mechanism that is beneficial again in both red and blue context. So when I talk about toxic renovation, I

am not talking about this in a partisan way. I am talking about what I think we need to have institutions that are responsive to the people, that can get us past gridlock to effective steering so that we can solve the urgent problems that we collectively share. Do you want to talk a little bit about your about because sure, I mean I said, I've had a sense of urgency about our democracy for a long time, and that does

really come from basic family experiences. You know. The first part of that is I have come by as sort of commitment to democracy totally honestly, just as a matter of family inheritance. You know, my granddad helped found one of the first end of l A c. P Chapters in northern Florida in the forties, which was just super dangerous for and then on my mom's side, my great grandparents helped fight for women's right to vote in the early twentieth century. So my greatgrandmother was president of the

Legal Women Voters in Michigan in the thirties. So dangerous, yeah, exactly, not not quite the same level, but through amount of insanity for sure, right, yes, for sure. So that kind of commit been to empowerment was just sort of part of the air and water that I breathed growing up. And so democracy didn't really become personal to me until I just watched my own generational cohort come up in the world. And whereas my parents generation everybody came up,

that wasn't true for my generation. For my generation, it was really what I call the great pulling apart. So you know, some of us had amazing opportunities. Here I sit tenure and professor at Harvard. I believe there's no more privileged position in the world from the point of view of freedom and security. But at the same time, I've got dead cousins, and not in a way you can feel good about, so homicide and substance use disorder and things like that. So because it's my book about

one of my cousins, my baby cousin, Michael. Michael was killed in two thousand nine. He was shot and killed. He had spent a long time in prison. He had gone to prison at the age of fifteen on a first arrest in southern California for an attempted carjacking. This was a terrible thing to have done, obviously, but it was also a time when punishment in California was at

its most intense. So Michael got a sentence of twelve years and eight months and serve most of that, so it only had two years out at the point that he was again shot and killed by somebody he had met while he was in prison. So that sort of changed everything for me. Really, all the work I had already been doing on democracy, it came to sort of

pull it to a focus on justice reform. But I quickly came to understand that even where we had bipartisan solutions for problems, it was really hard to get them through because of the dysfunction of our politics. So that's what brought my attention then to our democracy. Um, you know, we need that democracy renovation in order to do some of the really important things we all need to do for our communities. I feel like criminal justice reform is a part of this, It's a part of it, for sure.

And also being able to address the urgent problems in the economy, you know, real sort of stalling out of mobility for a whole lot of people, the fact that so many people can't find a footing in the labor market in the sense of good jobs, jobs that are only sustaining jobs that permit a sort of thriving life. Um, there's work out there, but a lot of it really

alienating or exploitative in various ways. So right now, you know, our society is kind of scaling up and getting ever more complex, and we're not actually dealing with that in ways that give people a foundation for flourishing in their communities. And that's about criminal justice. It's about safety from violence for you know, all people need that safety. I mean that's not just about crimes, but violence generally in our culture. And you know, we just while watched what's happened in Memphis,

you know, this past period of time. So there's a lot that we need to do on our own. Palf Yeah, so important and so interesting. Do you think there's anything sort of solid that the Biden administration can do? Now? A lot of this is on the federal, but do you have any you know, sort of recommendations for them.

You know, this is a slightly different direction, but I think that there are a lot of really important oportunities in the work they've just done passing the Inflation Reduction Act, for instance, So that is going to require an awful lot of proactive coordination across the different levels of our federal system, so federal, state, county, and municipal and I think that is actually a real opportunity to you know,

strengthen and make much healthier. How all those different jurisdictional levels are working together, can we find a kind of harmonizing approach. I talk about aspirational federalism a lot. I think the Biden administration actually has a real opportunity to show us, you know, a really different way that we can go about putting the puzzle pieces together and becoming a country where we can actually get things done with a sense of common purpose. Yeah. No, it definitely seems

like that. You still teach undergrads, right ye undergrads and graduate students yea, the whole gamut. I mean, are you seeing anything that we should know that's hopeful that will make us less depressed? No pressure, Well, I mean let me, I am full, but let me first just at the context a little bit. I mean, you're right, my students right now, there is a lot of fear, a lot of anger, a lot of anxiety. Those are the emotions

that they register. I do little surveys even at the start of class about things, and those are the emotions that came out at the start of this semester for sure. So I can't pretend that there's a kind of you know, joyful wave about to ascend. At the same time, though, I am hopeful, I said, I've been working in this space of democracy renovation for about a decade now, and my total red alert went off in when Congress had

at nine approval rating. So from my point of view, honestly my estimates, we're about halfway through a really bad store. I think we've got another decade to go. It's a

long time, but I actually think we're halfway through. And the reason I think that is because I can see so many people all over the country at the grassroots level working at democracy renovation at every level, city level, you know, where people are working on things like participatory budgeting, or bringing in rank choice voting so that you have more inclusion, or people participating, you know, the effort to really achieve high levels of voter registration and voter participation.

I mean, there is a lot of renovation work going on all over the country, and that wasn't really true a decade ago. So that in itself is enough to tell me we're headed in the right direction. Oh Okay, now we have to end because this was hopeful and that never happens. So we have to end now because we never get a hopeful moment here. I hope you

will come back. Thank you such an important voice. And also you have a really interesting perspective in in this, and I think to get some I feel like we're so in it and we never sort of pull back to have high level thinkers in here to sort of explain the philosophical So this is really helpful, at least to me anyway. Well, I'm glad to hear that. Anything I can do to be helpful, glad to do it. And it's been a pleasure to talk with you. Molly.

Thank you, Molly Jung Fast Jesse Cannon. That carry Lake woman, a woman who clearly has a writer that says she cannot go anywhere without perfect lighting or a filter on her zoom. She's in a little trouble I here. So she wanted to be governor, but instead she's going to be investigated. The request from Arizona Secretary of State comes after Lake posted a tweet on January that made an unfounded claim that there were forty thou ballots that didn't

match voter signatures that the state had on record. Lake posted a graphic that showed sixteen voters studentatures alleging that they didn't match with what Arizona had on file. Look, this is going to keep happening until a stop is put to it, and so it is really important that people who believe in Democrats see stand up for it. There's very few little to look forward to in the future.

But the one thing I look forward to in the future is carry running against Reuben Diego and him having to remind her that she ran even behind blake Masters in some of the districts that she lost. Well, we could, I think we could see a Blake Master's Carrie leg Reuben Diego Kirsten cinema deathmatch. One of those fools is going to step up to the plate. Yeah, and for that, but she is our moment of gray. 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.