Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds.
And Project twenty twenty five claims to be ending policy work right. We have such a great show for you today. Massachusetts Centator Elizabeth Warren stops by to talk how Dems are defending citizens from predatory practices. Then we'll talk to Princeton historian Julian Zelzer about their new book, Our Nation at Risk Election Integrity as the National Security Issue. But first we have the president of Bright Corners and NBC MSNBC political analyst Cornell Belcher.
Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Cornell, thanks for having me. It's my pleasure.
I'm so happy to have you. I'm such a fan of yours. First of all, this week for Vice President Harris, I think it could not have gone better this launch.
It's weird because I was texting back and forth late last week though weekend with two members women members of Congress, the Democratic Caucus, and they were ecstatic and as well as just in shock that we didn't fuck this up right.
The thing is, as a long time fan of the Vice President, I feel like a lot of times I write pieces about how I think she had this seismic change about two years ago where she became an Obama level orator. We haven't had as Democrats since Obama?
Easy? Easy, Why I'm going to get Trump? Easy?
Sorry? But you know what I mean. She became next level about two years ago, and I've been writing about it, and I feel like everyone has been like, you're just a Partisana da da da, But we really saw that.
Well. I think she has gotten better, right, she met the moment. And look, as you know, being in that spotlight and center, that glaric spotlight at the national level is not easy, right. It's difficult for anyone, but it's particularly difficult for women because, as you know, you know, they are scrutinized in a way not even men do. But it is a glaring, heavy spotlight and they go after everything from her hair to the way to the
way she laughs. Everything. They go after women in ways they don't go after men, and it can break up a lot of people, and not everyone's ready for the moment. I think the contrast between her and Jennie Vance, who clearly is not ready for the weight and the moment of this spotlight by his rollout because there's a rollout full of gas and just weird shit. Yeah, but she
has raised to the moment. But after a couple of years of being in the spotlight and being beat up for Look, you mentioned Barack Obama, like people think of the Obama now or the Obama at the end of the campaign, oie. But he had become that Barack Obama. Tel he got his ass kicked through the primaries to Clinton. Right, hey, you get tested by fire. But look what she has been able to do in a short period of time
is remarkable and is extraordinary. And I will say, you know, as a polster, something has happened that I would not would say it was a probable and that is she has gone from a net negative favorability to a net positive favorability and a matter of a week and a half, which is something that we never see. But it's extraordinary, and it is I think some of it is. You know, I'm instilled this line from Chuck Todd. It is you know, the vice president in many ways is the most famous,
unknown person in the country. And so she has been in the background as a vice president doing the work of the vice president, supportant president. But when she got a chance to shine and people will get to know her more. The more they know her, the more they like her.
Yeah. No, I think that's a really good point. It's really true. But it's also because there was all this pulling about how voters really didn't want this rematch and how they felt both candidates were too old and YadA, YadA, YadA, and part of it, I think was they were kind
of desperate for someone who was authentic. You know, she was a sex crimes prosecutor, attorney's general, district attorney, vice president, and second black female senator ever, right, So I mean she has experience, but she has a certain authenticity which I think that the other two men just didn't have.
I agree with you, but I'll even go further than that. And when you look at who she is and you look at where the country is right now, you know she is what they want and that they want change.
Right. That's a good point too.
She encapsulates change, right. What could be bigger change than voting for a woman president of color? Right, And her background of being at the vanguard of and breaking glass ceilings and pushing the boundaries she speaks to, She speaks to change. I would focused groups all the time, and voters talking about how you know they really again want change because Washington is broken and they keep getting the same old politicians with the same old ideals and finding
the same battles. Right, the cultural wars never seem to end. And there's voters out there when you look at Gen X and millennials and the Gen Z's are coming in into the electorate, right, those old battles don't have any meaning to them, and they they're looking for change, and just the very visual of her is changed. Right. We are looking at the you're looking at millennials and Gen Z. You're looking at what the most diverse generation of Americans
in American history. Right, You're looking at swirl America, and Mollie she is a representation of swirl America. She's walking talking diversity, and in her they see themselves and they see what the future of America is about, and she gives a voice to that. So I think she connects in a unique way that is different from ninety nine percent of our political leaders out there at the national stage. And I know we don't want to do it because
there's always blaspheme. Because I work for Obama but how mark of you that she is as close and as certainly as close an inheritor of the Obama continuum than any other candidate on our national stage.
One of the things that there's anxiety about is that Obama was able to still get those working class white voters. That group is more of a Trump contingent. Now, I wonder if the white college educated voters there's been sort of a switch through, like a switch. I wonder if the switch is enough to propel her, and if so, where does she need to focus. Well, I'm going to challenge this, Okay, good, I mean I want you to challenge me, because you know this is what you know about and what I don't.
So please do this idea that Obama didn't win working class wife, Like, what are we talking about?
Okay good?
Tell me? In twelve Obama got what thirty nine percent of the white vote right in it makes giant strides at en roads with working class white voters. I don't know where that comes from. What Obama was was a candidate who expanded the electorate right, and he brought more people into the process, and he made the electorate look more like the changing face.
Of America, right right, right.
But if you look at white non college voters, Obama wasn't winning white non college voters. There wasn't even close. But what I would argue is that if you look at what's been happening, how we didn't even win white college voters in twenty twelve. If you look at what's been happening over the last couple of election cycles, you've seen and I think this is perhaps the beginning of what could be a semi realignment, at least a crack in the way that we haven't seen since the end
of the sixties. Because you have increasingly white college voters, particularly white college women, breaking hard for Democrats. And in some polling, if you look at where Democrats support is among white college women, they're like almost like a base group. That means they're coming to levels where they're coming to a base room. So the Democrat's ability to run up the score among white college voters on the back of white college educated women means all of a sudden, the
suburb rights the suburbs around Philadelphia are more competitive. The suburbs. It means that suburban ringing around Atlanta. It means Georgia is now a state that could go either way. So I think what you will see is that I think she has the ability to grow the gender gap, particularly among women, specifically probably among college educated women, in a way that you didn't see under Biden and Obama. That
would be my first educated guest. I also think she has the ability to and you saw this in their early polling. Is you know Biden was running behind his twenty twenty performance most among what I would call that Obama continuing coalition, those younger diverse voters. I think she has an ability to pull those voters back and coalesce them around in a way that we haven't seen in the polling data recently. And I think that's her power.
That we've been going in the wrong diression. If you look at the exit polling data and even the Pew or Gallop, the Pew verified data from the last couple of elections, we have not been making any in roads at all among white, non college voters, right, And that's not me making a value.
Judgment, right, No, No, it's true.
Yeah, we've been going in the wrong direction. But yet at the same time, we've been having great deal of success in elections, and we've been having a great deal of success in elections because we're making up for that loss in that place by gains in other places. And I think she has an ability to gain in other places to make up for I think the continued erosion of white non college voters as Trump plays that tribal politics and politics of grievance, which resonates.
Right, it does. It resonates with white voters. You know, I read a ton about authoritarianism, and that is the idea of a multi racial democracy, that which is the goal of all of us, is actually very triggering to a certain group of voters, which is insane.
We are at an important crossroad where you do have in many ways, and I talked about this in two thousand and eight. You have two electorates fighting for the future of America, and one of them is older, less diverse,
and they are and again no value judgment. You know, they are uncomfortable with the changes they see happening in the country, and they're anxious about those changes, in these demographic changes, and you have politicians playing that zero sum tribal racial game with them that makes it seem like they're losing, and so you think they're losing their country, right, And on the other side where you now have the majority because you have that and realizing the Obama coalition
is a group of voters who are for the most diverse in the nation's history, who are comfortable with diverse, and they're not anxious about it, and they will change. These two electorates are fighting for the future of the country. The problem for trump Ism is that that coalition isn't growing. That coalition is growing older, and it's shrinking, and they're.
Not as centralized as they were. I mean, the thing that seems so interesting to me is that between twenty sixteen and twenty twenty four. In twenty sixteen, Fox News was their met Yer, right Fox Everything was on Fox News. You know, if Tucker Carlson talked about you in primetime, your life was a living you know what I mean. Like and all of a sudden, now it's two million, maybe it's three million, but it's not the way it was.
And I think this decentralization actually makes the process of running for office totally different too.
Right, I do. But I also think I don't think it matters as much because they are organized around one central thing, right, and that is this idea that the other half of America that diverse America is the enemy, right, and they're taking the country and it's very powerful. And look, if we want to step back from an even more.
I am anxious because I know that historically what we're looking at is something and you talk about sort of studying authoritarianism, and you know, I look at something historically there is that there's an authoritarian sort of fascist fever that is happening on the right and Mala, we know that fever historically, and the country isn't broken until the patient is damn near killed.
Yeah, I'm very worried about the authoritarian stuff. We've been operating under the principle that Democrats can just keep winning elections, but sooner or later they're going to lose, right, and then the sister can't hold right, and we have one party that no longer believes in American democracy, right, So how does thatur?
But it doesn't. And that's why I think we've got to be thinking beyond this election, and we got to be thinking about more sort of fundamental and transformative changes in our country to preserve our democracy because at some point, right, at some point, every election can't be an emergency because at some point and again you say this and say
this or history. You know, most authoritarians are fascists. Don't come to power on the back of the majority, right, it's not that the support has supported now they come to power on the bats of a well organized, vocal minority of voters. So this could happen. And so what do we do even before that? Look in this talk
is now like does the elections get certified? I think we have to win not only the presidential election, but we got to win the post election because they were absolut be people on the Republican side, the Trump Republican side right now will try to disregard the election results if they don't go away.
And they did that in twenty twenty. And I mean, one of the things that I was heartened by with these Biden Supreme Court reforms is that they ultimately are very pro democracy, right like, each president gets to appoint to Supreme Court justices that justices served for eighteen years. They don't involve luck, they don't involve lifetime appointments. They just involved real nuts and bolts kind of stuff. But the larger problem of these norms partisan Supreme Court a
Republican party that basically says every election was stolen. I don't know how you solve for that.
You've got to hope se on the fever brace, because you actually do. We need help from the Republicans on this right for them, sensible Republicans who are still Republicans, not maga, who believe that we have to in fact sate our democracy because if they keep undermining the rule of law and they keep undermind the legitimacy of our government, at some point again it breaks. So at some point, you know, the Romneys of the world, the Bushes of the world, the Chaineys of the world. We need a
coalition for democracy that's beyond partisanship. And we actually need legislation now move through the Senate that stops people from being able to not certify an election outcome.
Yeah, and I think I don't know where you go from there. It's just a completely unsolvable problem. Thank you so much for joining us. I hope you will come back.
It's always my pleasure. I love being on and I love talking politics with you. You're so smart.
Are you concerned about Project twenty twenty five and how awful Trump's second term could be? Well, so are we, which is why We teamed with iHeart to make a limited series with the experts on what a disaster Project twenty twenty five would be for America's future Right now, the first four episodes, with the final episode coming next week, are available by looking up Molly John Fast Project twenty
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Elizabeth Warren is the senior Senator from Massachusetts.
Welcome to Fast Politics, Senator Elizabeth Warren.
Oh, I'm delighted to be with you.
Well, I'm excited to have you. And also on a day when the Senate may start to pass tech regulation, my heart is going to explode.
I know, I know, I think we're starting in exactly the right place, and that is, if we can't pass regulations designed to protect our children, then we've just given up the whole game to the tech bros. So this has got to stop.
Yep.
It's such an interesting like I want to ask a Democratic senator about this, who's really smart? And he was saying that part of the problem is that there's just so much like really successful tech lobbying that it stands in the way of the ability to create regulation. Do you think that's true.
I not only think it's true. I take the problem, you know me, I think problems are structural often. Yeah, And here's the problem we've got for me. This is like credit card world back in the late nineties and the early two thousands, and that was that credit card
comings Man. They were sending out these credit cards to everybody, including lots of stories about dogs and pats that got them, and they had all of these tricks built into them about things like double cycle billing and just crazy stuff that really did trick people, cheat people, got people deeper and deeper in debt, and they couldn't make it out. So Congress comes along and says, oh, wait, we got
to put a stop to this specific problem. And the industry would go for Circo and they would spend a bazillion dollars and then you know, Congress would kind of come fighting back, and people on the outside, because I was very much on the outside during all this time, just doing research, would push and push and push, and then.
Finally, finally, Molly, we would roll that rock up hill and we would ban one really horrible practice, and guess what, in the meantime, they had figured out fifty four other ones.
And so we're kind of in that early phase now trying to push back against the tech industry. Said well, please, sir, could we at least just have this little slice of regulations to help protect our children. Ultimately, what we've got to do here, Mollie, is we have to have the big bill. And I hope you're sitting down because I'm gonna say something. It's gonna surprise you. I have actually worked on that bill with Lindsey Graham's for the last
two years. We got this thing ready to go, and it's the one that creates in many ways, it's like the Consumer Agency. It says Congress can't fight these things one at a time here, one at a time there. Because we need to do things about Amazon and the self preferencing and the way they're destroying small businesses. We need to do things about how apps get more. We need to do things about the anti trust implications of what these giant platforms are doing, just on and on
and on. We need somebody on the side of the American consumer that can develop the expertise, that has the enforcement tools, and that can just basically keep some rules of the road in place so that the tech industry, just like every other industry in America, is subject to some basic rules. So I'm happy to vote for what we're going to do today, but our ambition has to be bigger than that, and it has to be more structural. We need an agency that continues to stay after these folks.
And by the way, I'll just say about the Consumer Agency, you know, because that's what we ended up building after the two thousand and eight crash. It has now returned more than twenty billion dollars directly to consumers who got cheated. And the industry is doing just fine. They innovate, they create, they come up with new products, they make good money.
But there's no longer this idea that the best way to make profits is to cheat people, because there's a watchdog there to say, uh uh, that's not where you get to go.
It's so interesting to me because what we're seeing in this election, which is ninety nine days away, I.
Think ninety nine days a week.
Outing is that Trump is the wild West, Right, you can pay me for regulation. It's reported that he said to a group of oil executives that if you know, if you raise me money, I will end up supporting
you know, I'll end up ending all your regulation. And tech is an industry that has really not been regulated nop SO that has created enormous opportunities for things like Facebook, and also you know, enormous perils like if you think of the Roe Roehindan, I think I'm mispronouncing it, but you know they've had a lot of perils, and they've also killed the you know, they've killed local news while doing it. Yea, And in California there's some regulation to
protect local news. We'll see if it's to go. But we do see them crushing industry after industry.
Right And you know, you are right to put this in an even larger context. Tech right now is the most extreme example. It is the only industry in America for which if they do a bad thing, they neither can get sued in court, nor do they have a regulator to say you've got to stop doing that. In other words, they get a special zoning vary it swhere. If you're tech, you just don't have to follow a lot of the laws. Right now now there are people
trying to bring that in. I want to give big credit to Lena kan Over at the FTC, to Jonathan Canter at the Department of Justice, and they're trying to use our current anti trust tools and consumer protection tools to try to come in. But we really need to write better regulations. But we're in the middle of an election cycle and Donald Trump is auctioning off America's future. I want to go back to your point about the
oil execs. The way I read it is that he offered them if they would put a billion dollars into his campaign. He named his price. If they would put a billion dollars into his campaign, they could basically put whatever poison they wanted into the air for your children to breathe. They could basically do pretty much whatever they want. They've already said it Project.
Twenty twenty five.
They want to get rid of the Environmental Protection Agency, and they want to permit the oil industry to get you at the gas pump as much as they want, and to let the oil industry not pay its fair share of taxes and to shove those off for families and individuals to pay. So it really is. I mean, there's an active auction going on right now with Donald Trump leading the way.
It's sickening.
Yeah, and it is also it's also like pretty scary. They want to get rid of the Department of Education, which I mean this project twenty probably five stuff like they want to get rid of the Department of Education, which would hurt probably more than anyone Red states because they have lower state taxes, you get. I mean, it's just can you just talk through what that would mean getting rid of the Department of Education, because it's so glaring and enormous.
Well, that's it.
The Department of Education now helps the schools that are struggling the most. That's its number one use of its funds is to try to help struggling schools. I think that's a good thing because I think we ought to invest and our children. The other thing in the Department of Education does is it administers the student Lung program. And if you're rid of the Department of Education, I actually when you read this, you're like, what do you
guys have in mind? Here, does that mean that if you're not born into a family that can afford to write a check for you to get more education after high school? And understand, it's technical college, it's two year college, it's four year college. For some people, it's a graduate school, it's any of those. If your family can't afford to write a check for it, don't go. Just don't have
an ambition for your kids, for yourself. You know, that's kind of the approach the Republicans reflect in this Project twenty twenty five overall? Can I do one more from twenty twenty five? Just knock my thoughts off, because it's like, how you think of this whole thing? So Republicans want to stand out and they say, oh, they're family friendly. Okay, let's talk about that a little bit. But let's talk
about the economics of your family. Okay, if you can afford to write a check, your kid doesn't get to go to college. But let's do a second one. How much you're going to pay every year in taxes? Donald Trump has put together a tax package, and Project twenty twenty five kind of fleshes this on out that if you do the math, it's three and a half million dollars every year for every billionaire in America, they get like just a gift of three and a half million
dollars because it cuts their taxes by that much. So what about the average family of four in America? Straight out of Project twenty twenty five, they say those people will pay twenty six hundred dollars more every year because what they think is fare is that working families, middle class families should pay more so that billionaires can have a tax Does that just not pir socks off?
No?
Because I know these people enough, so I mean yes, as in my personal views, yes, I think it's disgusting. But you know, Republicans have somehow convinced white working class people that tax cuts for billionaires will somehow help them. I mean, trickle down economics is like the great lie of the twentieth century.
Great line, and the Republicans are running that same old play again. And the consequence of this because they want taxt the billionaires and the mega millionaires and the billionaire corporations. Because they don't want to do that, it means we don't have the money to invest in our families, in ourselves. So look at something like childcare. Here we are in America richest nation in the world. Where are we on the proportion of our national income that we spend on childcare? Answer?
Or number thirty five out of the thirty seventh th richest nations. Can we all do a chant. We're number thirty five, right, that's the degree of our investment in our children right now. The Republican view is we shouldn't even be doing that much. In fact, can we just talk JD. Vance for a minute? JT. Vance says that putting money into childcare is class warfare on normal people, normal people because obviously normal people don't use childcare. It's breathtaking.
But at the end of the day, always remember follow the money who profits from that billionaires don't have to pay taxes in order to help support our schools, in order to help support kids who are trying to make it through post high school education, in order to support our babies in early childhood education and childcare. So it
all fits together. It's all of a picture here. That picture is the Republican's biting hard for those at the very top and expecting hard working families just to keep taking it on the chin.
Yeah, I think that's totally right, and also scary. So can you talk to us about algorithmic transparency because this is something I'm obsessed with. We get all of this information on social media, but we don't know quite why we get it or how we get it.
Oh, you hit a nerve on this swinder, right, Yeah, So I want to make you a couple of points here. One of the things that's happening right now is that, as you know, with whether you want to call it AI or just fancy, algorithms suck up information and then there's some evidence that the program then starts to discriminate. That is, higher prices for people of certain race, or higher prices for women then for men, or higher prices depending on where you are in your age group, higher
prices because we think we can squeeze you harder. All of those different pieces and the industries that are doing this, some of these are in the financial industry, some are just generally in tech. They say, oh, the computer did it. We didn't do it, And the answer is no. The law is that you are responsible and you're not allowed to just set up the computer and let it take
advantage of people. But I think one of the parts this is an important part of why Lindsey and I when we put this bill together is to put REGs in place so there is more transparency about the algorithms. And if these algorithms are used to create a news feed for you, to create advertising for you, then you have a right to understand what went into that and why you were picked for it. And I think that's great to say the person who gets targeted on this
has a right to nope. But this is one more reason why I believe you've got to have an agency overall with some expertise that's really willing to dive in on these algorithms and run independent verifications and tests. Otherwise we just are still back to big tech companies say, oh, it's very complicated, just trust us, And I'm sorry, I'm gonna know on that.
The tech regulation stuff is really beguiling and they are going to work hard to prevent it at every point. What can you do to sort of push back on that? There definitely is right now bipartisan support for tech legislation, But sooner or later this will become like oil and gas, right, I mean, they'll get Republicans on board.
I think the best answer here is sunshine, and in this context, what I need is to keep hammering on these issues, keep showing what is broken. That's what stiff the spine of the elected officials who ultimately have to
stand up to these lobbyists. Our threat right now is the lobbyists have simply they outnumber all of us here in Washington who are elected to do the people's business, and they are hammering every day for the things that benefit their industry, their corporate executives, and let American families pay for this. So I think it's the kind of work you do, Molly, that we just got to stay after it and keep talking about where the abuses are.
Show them that we're smart, show them we've got our eyes open, show them that we've got a good vehicle like this agency, the Digital Protection Agency, that we are willing to put some muscle behind fighting back. At the end of the day. In a democracy, I got to believe that when the overwhelming majority of people are with us, we can fight and we can actually win.
Thank you, Senator Elizabeth Warren.
Oh, thank you, it's always so good to talk to you.
Julian Zelizer is a historian a Princeton University and the author of Our Nation at Risk Election integrity as a national security issue.
Welcome Julian to Fast Politics.
Hey, it's great to be with you as always.
You know you're my friend, and also you're very, very smart academic. So talk to us about what this book. What's it called? What is it? What's it about?
Tell us everyth It's called Our Nation at Risk. I co edited it with Karen Greenberg, and it looks at just about every element of national of election security, from voting rights to how the machines work, to foreign interference in elections and tries to give with some of the smartest minds in the country, you know, a better understanding of the short term risks our elections face, some of the long term problems we've had since the country started,
and all of them offered different kinds of reforms moving forward. So we thought the time was right, given how fragile our election system has become.
So I was hoping you could explain a little bit about why we Republicans. I mean, I've been watching the Republican whatever that is convention this week and one of the favorite tropes of their particular peccadillos is that the elections are not secure, and they're not safe and basically that the election was rigged. So can you explain to us what the fuck is happening and if that's true or not?
Well, I mean, it wasn't rigged. The remiss of it being rigged was that there's all this voting fraud, which again has been repudiated many times over. Where they are right is that the election system has become more fragile because of them, right, correct, They have been part of
the process. They've exploited weaknesses in the system. I mean, I think many people in twenty twenty didn't realize all the ways in which what should be a pro forma thing, meaning people vote, the votes are tallied, and ultimately the electoral College decision is ratified. That there's a million kind of veto points or points of subversion that can happen along the way, pressuring state legislatures to essentially overturn what the delegates had done, for example, and I think all
of that was exposed. Republicans have used this as a kind of mantra, as a campaign platform, as really a defining theme, but I think what they have actually done is shown how important it is to try to reform this system because we have perpetual problems and ways in which, you know, bad actors can really take advantage of a system.
So taking advantage of a system looks like Republicans refusing to certify elections. Talk to us. This is something that is on the cover of the New York Times. It's a real thing that we're seeing now, which is these these Republicans have decided, you know, they're putting people in there who refuse to certify elections. And they're doing it because if a state doesn't, if parts of a state don't certify, you can actually sort of put the whole thing off.
Right.
No, it's exactly right. I mean, look, we've had contested elections in the past. One of the famous presidential ones was in eighteen seventy six Rutherford Hayes against Samuel Tilden, and eventually there was a commission to decide how it should be resolved, and the resolution brings an end to reconstruction.
There's many congressional races which have been contested, but right now, essentially they're preparing to contest elections before there's any problem, and they are kind of trying to put people in place within the states who will have the authority to take action there's even plans right now to have lawyers for the GOP monitoring election sites dropboxes, And it's kind of this preemptive move which in itself raises doubts about the election if they want, meaning if Trump ends up losing,
But at the same time, it's setting up for kind of an ugly potential outcome where not only does he lose, but then he fights that loss again. And so it's taking something we've had historically and politicizing and weaponizing that for political advantage.
Can you explain to us a little bit about that election that ends Reconstruction, because I think that's really relevant right now, especially because remember, if you think of this as I've always thought of it, which is Trumpism is the last gas of the far right to prevent us from becoming a true multi racial democracy, which we have never been. It's this sort of extremist response to Obama. I'm wondering if you can speak to this reconstruction election, what the history looks like there.
Well, it's really I mean reconstruction for listeners who don't know as much about it, was this huge post Civil War effort by Republicans, and at this point the Republicans were the Party of Lincoln and of Reconstruction, trying to really offer a bold platform that would empower freed black Americans, create a new federal presence to ensure that rights would be observed and implemented. There were efforts to distribute land to create economic independence. So it was this really bold
move and Southerners are furious with it. And you have this election and the Republican is Rutherford Hayes, and initially, you know, he loses to Samuel Tilden, and the Republicans protested in three states. The results were actually uncertain, and so Congress creates this panel and has members of the House, that has members of the Senate, has some Supreme Court justices, and they end up giving Rutherford Hayes all of the
disputed electoral votes, and that gives him the victory. But in exchange for that, basically the Republicans accept the end of Reconstruction. It was a more gradual process how Reconstruction ended, but it was crucial. And so right away you see how elections and disputing elections was right at the heart of these fights over racial justice in the nineteenth century. And then I'll just add it was the same thing
in the twentieth century. Another example I often talk about are the Jim Crow laws in the Deep South, which were essentially mechanisms to sub or the post reconstruction rights the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment rights of Black Americans, and elections became the focus of what we're threatened, what we're subverted. You know, Black Americans just couldn't even register to vote.
There was violence against anyone who supported them. So there is a long history of the connection between election rights and social justice movements.
Yeah, it feels very dark right now for a lot of us. We're going to veer into my own therapeutic practice here. No, I have a sure I'll see them later. But it feels really dark for a lot of Democrats right now. So I want you to explain to us how our elections can be safe and how you know, again, we don't know what's going to happen in November. Donald Trump is actually wildly unpopular. Most of the country just
wants normal democracy. But explain to us a little bit about what that could look like and sort of the net net there.
Well, you know, the irony of twenty twenty is, even though now we remember it for January sixth and all the turbulence, the election actually worked pretty well.
You know.
We brought in a lot of people to vote. We made voting easier, which historically we've been very resistant to do. We didn't have a national election day, but we really saw states innovating with mail in voting and dropboxes and really taking every effort to make sure that there were no barriers to voting. And so I think there were elements of twenty twenty that really worked incredibly well and
showed our election system can be very robust. There are certain things I think, Look, it's not going to happen between now and November, but the most important issue is restoring the Voting Rights Act of nineteen sixty five, which the Supreme Court undercut with a historic case, and many Red states have been moving, you know, since the mid
to twenty tens to undermined voting rights. And so I think if we're thinking of how do you take a system that can work pretty well, that often works very well, and make it better, I would start with that. And that's one of the arguments we have in our book. A full and robust Voting Rights Act restored strength and so that every American understands not only do they have the right to vote, but the federal government will protect it if anyone threatens it. The second thing, and the
most immediate front, is protecting poll workers. You know, there has been an uptick of threats in the last few years against poll workers.
Right, that's a really important point.
That should be number one.
And look after the attempted assassination, where violence is on everyone's mind. So let's do things to stop the threat of violence. And so you should be able to go vote. Someone should be able to you know, take your information, and they shouldn't be scared about doing that.
Yeah, okay, I mean that is a really important point, and I want to do two seconds on poll workers because you cannot have these elections without these people who are normal people in your community, who do this really out of the goodness of their heart. It's not a high paying job, it's not a glamorous job, and occasionally Rudy Giuliani ruins your life.
I think many pole workers are scared of actual violence, but they're also scared of the Jiuliani's, meaning they're scared. In this day and age, someone will grab their phone and take a quick video of something that looks suspicious but actually is not, and then broadcast it to the world on some social media platform X or other. And we saw in twenty twenty some of those people, as you said, are just they're just doing a good thing. All of a sudden, they are subjecting themselves to real
threats and their families. And I think that's a really dangerous situation. It's become hard for a lot of localities to find enough people at this time, and it's a way through threat to subvert the processes. Again, it's like going back to things we seen in the past where the threat against the electoral system becomes a way to intimidate people either away from voting or in this case, even working the ballot box and making sure people can vote.
Yeah, so let's just talk for a minute about some of these lawyers being there. It feels like intimidation. What the Republicans want to do. I want to talk about something that I noticed. This is like in twenty eighteen, I knew a guy who ran for the House. This is like a personal anecdote Hank for Texas. He ran in twenty twenty. It's the podcast before this. A bunch of times he's some really great running for Texas's first district against Louis Gommert. And one of the things he
told me, and again, this is the first district. It's an R plus twenty ten or something. You know, it's the world's most republican district. It's not obviously the world's most but it's very red. He wasn't going to win, but he told me there was a fair amount. And again this is just his so it's anecdotal, so you know, they're not two sources here. You can't run it in a newspaper. But he told me that he saw a lot of voter intimidation in his district. And you know,
guys on horses, et cetera, et cetera. Now very redistrict, so obviously the stakes are different. But can you talk to us about voter intimidation?
Sure, I mean, look, historically, voter intimidation has been part of our politics. I've been deep into studying the South, the Deep South recently for a book about civil rights, and intimidation was prevalent in that day and age. In the nineteen.
Sixties or nineteen fifties.
For example, if a black Mississippian went to the courthouse to try to register to vote. Intimidation would encounter them at every step of the way, from the police who would stare them down when they walked into the courthouse, to the registrar who would ask him essentially, why are you even here? The threats you would face for just trying to do that, And I think right now, there's all kinds of ways in which this threat is being
wielded in a different context for different purposes. But from having the former president of the United States constantly question the legitimacy of the election, down to having lawyers stand around at a drop box in a state like Florida when you go to vote. Is a way in which certain look in certain middle upper middle class communities, they
won't care. But if you're in a different area where encounters with authorities can be very unpleasant and dangerous, this is going to dissuade some people from dropping their ballot off or from going to elections. That will create inconveniences. We've seen that in the two thousand election in areas in Miami, for example, there were huge lines, and this I think will accelerate those inconveniences in places that don't have enough staff and adequate equipment. So look, you combine
voting rights limitations with intimidating poll workers. It's a way to damp in the vote in ky areas very easily.
Right. So one of the things that I was hoping you could talk a little bit about is smart people compare this time in American life to the nineteen sixties. Are they right? And if so, what period of the nineteen sixties and make it make sense.
Look, I mean, if you're saying the nineteen sixties were incredibly turbulent and also very violent. We had many assassinations.
John F.
Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Moore, good comparison, meaning we are in a moment that is that fractious and violent in some ways. It's also a moment where we were deeply divided in the sixties over many core social issues such as race, as well as foreign policy such as Vietnam. And today you see some of those divisions over issues like Ukraine, the Middle East, and certainly social issues from sexuality even to race relations.
So those comparisons are fair. And look in nineteen sixty eight, not only was the Democratic Convention in Chicago as it will be now, but you had an incumbent then Lyndon Johnson. Today Joe Biden, who was in deep trouble within their own party in sixty eight, Lyndon Johnson decides not to run again, and we'll see, but that is one of the possibilities we are seeing with Joe Biden. So those
are some of the comparisons. Look, two basic difference is one, we're much more polarized today, meaning just on the electoral map, fewer parts of the electorate move around sixty eight, you still had landslide elections and big swings in the electorate. So more changed in sixty eight than it does today. And secondly, the media environment is just much more different,
much less controlled. There's fewer guard rails, fewer filters, and so I think information conspiracy theory, arguments about elections can just flow much more easily and quick than they could in sixty eight.
That's really interesting. You are working on this new book about civil rights in the South and about the killing of three civil rights workers. Talk to me about that story and how it relates to right now.
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting, often and often unsettling to hear all these attacks that take place on teaching about civil rights history and race relations history in a clear
eight way. I'm writing a book about something called Freedom Summer in nineteen sixty four, which was a huge mobilization where local black activist civil rights organizations, then college students from the north all converged on Mississippi in an effort to register voters and challenge the Democratic Party, which at that time was the party of Southern Democrats who were at odds with the civil rights agenda of Northern Democrats.
And it's a dramatic story. It's also gruesome. Involves murder not only of three civil rights workers who kind of make the news, but violence against many others, and it's
a reminder. Basically, I think the story of just how deeply rooted not only racial division is in this country, but racial violence, kind of institutionalized racial inequality has all been part of relatively recent history, and it took movement efforts and real struggle to start to bring down those kinds of systems, and we're not that far away from it in twenty twenty four, and so I think the story is important, and it's also a reminder when we
see voting rights being restricted in Red states today, it's not some just technical issue. It's reversing hard fought struggles from that nineteen sixties period. People literally gave their lives just to be able to go and vote, and so that voting rights principle is really sacred. It's not just a democratic principle, it's one that people gave everything for.
And so when we see the restrictions being put back into place today and you can see some of the absolute fury of kind of older generations who remember what it was like not to have that right, I think the history is an important reminder of why this is so dangerous and how badly we can veer in this country when we're not careful and not watching.
Thank you so much, Julian, really appreciate you.
Thanks for having me great to talk.
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.