Fighting For Voting Rights with Eric Holder

my best friends are. Some of my best friends are dot dot dot and this show we wrestle with the challenges and the absurdities of a deeply divided and unequal country. A man and ain't that the truth? Our democracy is on life support. And we're gonna talk to the nation's leading democracy trauma surgeon, Eric Holder, the former US Attorney General, is with us to help us make sense of how deep this problem is and what to do about it.

We're going to talk to him about his life leading up to his career in the Obama administration and everything he's done since YEP, and all of the work that he's done after leaving office to strengthen our democracy. A lot of that work has paid off in the mid term election, so we're going to learn a lot more about it. Yeah, he has been protecting voting rights, he's been fighting for fair elections, he has been working to uphold our democracy. I am really looking forward to this conversation.

Let's do it. So first, what should we call you? Should we call you an attorney general holder? Can we call you Eric? What do you prefer? Eric is fine? I mean I've been called a lot worse than next, trust me. Yeah, all right, we absolutely love that. I've actually heard another nickname of yours. So I don't I don't know if you remember, but we were in a meeting trying to figure out how to sort of prepare

for the twenty sixteen election. And it was one of these closed door meetings where none of us are supposed to talk about what happened in the meeting, but there was you know, Harry Bellafonte was there, and Reverend Barber joined in remotely, and there are a whole bunch of other folks in the room, and at some point someone in the room was talking about the Democratic get out the vote machine and really kind of frustrated by how it just shows up, you know, for midterms, it shows

up for the presidential race. But everyone packs up there consulting briefcases and moves on. And the question was directed to you and said, hey, you know you're like the highest ranking official in this room from the past administration. You know, you're somebody who can help us understand why the Democratic Party won't change. And you said, hey, man,

I'm just little Ricky from one hundred forty fifth Street. Okay, you and your great memory Khalil, Yes, that would be like little older from one hundred first Street, two places, you know. Yeah, so I and I love the moment when when mister Bellafonte, mister b leaned over who was sitting next to Year, and he said, well you were the man, as if to remind you that you did actually have some power in that moment. You weren't just little Ricky, so we won't call you a little Rickie.

But Eric works. Yeah, little Ricky grew up to be Eric Holder, and uh, little Rickie that you know, that's fine, Ricky Holder, that that's that's cool. But Eric will worked just fine. Okay, all right, And we actually had a question out of that, who was little Ricky? Meaning like we want to know who you were as a kid growing up in Queens. Well, I tell you it was interesting. I was a kid who just grew up in what

was an immigrant neighborhood. Although the immigrants at that point were folks who had moved up from the south to the north. It was an all black neighborhood. It's actually a neighborhood that was in transition. When I was extremely young, Italian folks were moving out, Black Americans were moving in. East Elmhurst in Queens is one of the most stable neighborhoods in the city. I once read that if you look at all the zip codes, we're one, one, three,

six nine. It's the place we have the least amount of movement. And it was also a neighborhood that was peopled with, you know, really with celebrities. It was a

real hotbed of black achievement. But it was interesting also because up until fourth grade I was at PS one twenty seven, all black school, and then as part of some I guess was called IGC program Intellectually Gifted Children, they me to PS one forty eight and that was a predominantly Jewish school and so I had little Ricky Holder, my feet in two worlds, was predominantly Jewish in a

world that was predominantly African American. But I think it was in some ways something that prepared me for the duality that I was going to have to face as an adult. Wow. So, so what you're saying is your coming of age was like being encapsulated in our podcast a black guy and a Jewish guy trying to make

sense of race in America. That's amazing. That's amazing. If you guys have any problems interacting with one another, I can be the interpreter here to explain what's happening from the Jewish perspective as well as from the African American. This might be a long interview, we might be on all day. Well, I wanted to follow up on all that greatest hits of black excellence. I mean, so just take us back just a little bit to your own consciousness being immersed in that neighborhood at the time. Well,

you know, it's interesting, Khalil. I mean I saw a full range of accomplished, you know, striving black men, and that went from everybody from mister Gachet, who was my little league coach and who was a custodian for a building in Manhattan. Also, doctor Scott two blocks over was a radiologist, so there was mister Archer down the block

was a lawyer. I mean, you were all packed together, and I saw the full panoply of um, you know, Black men and to a lesser extent, African American women, because a lot of them were, you know, working in the home, but a full range of black I guess involvement activity. And the thing was, no matter what your station, for lack of a better term, was everybody had pride in themselves. Everybody thought that they were working to make

it better for the next generation. We were cognizant of the fact that, you know, Louis Armstrong was around the block, that Malcolm X was around the block, that Willie Mays was you know, pretty close by. But it wasn't as if we were a start ruck. They were just part of the neighborhood. I mean, one interesting story, I'm at a candy store run by a Jewish guy twenty third Avenue in ninety seven sight guy named Mo and I'm getting through candy whatever. My brother comes flying in and says, Cactus.

Clayton is in front of Malcolm X's house. Now this is after the first Listen fight and before he formally becomes Muhammad Ali. All right, So I'm like, yeah, right, and he said, no, it's true, it's true. So I walked down there. Everybody is running. I walked down and then in fact he's out there in front of Malcolm X's house and he's signing autographs. And I skinny little, you know, I guess maybe twelve year old holder and

always kind of a bit of a smart ass. I said to him if people might not remember in the way in before the Liston fight, his blood pressure was really high. People said he was scared, and so I said, hey, were you scared? Before the fight? And this is he the largest human being I've ever seen. So he's like sixteen sixty three. I'm like five something or of it. And he balls up his fist and very slowly extends it and puts it in my face and says, what

do you think? Oh wow? I said, no, you know, And he signed the autograph for me on a I had a bag and I pulled a piece of the bag and he signed cash his clay on the bag. Kept it forever, and my mother, in one of her periodic cleanings throughout my autograph book. So I think Pill has his, but I don't have mine. You don't need an autograph, you have this on the podcast. That's that's forever.

Here we go, we go. So so Eric, one more follow up about this, which is so much of your work is about civil rights and so how does all of this growing up and growing up in the nineteen sixties lead you to civil rights work. Well, you know, it's interesting because I always saw possibilities, you know, um growing up in East Elmhurst again, that range of people doing a variety of things, all with a great deal of pride. But also I'm growing up in the sixties

where African countries are gaining their independence. My folks is from Barbados. Caribbean countries were gaining their independence, and the civil rights movement is in, you know, in full bloom. And so as a Northerner, I'm watching to see what's

going on in Birmingham. My future sister in law is integrating the University of Alabama with the George Wallace standing the schoolhouse door, and so all of this stuff is brewing in me, and this notion of black pride, black accomplishment the notion of independence, the notion of throwing off that which was old and creating something new. All that is in me and has stayed with me, you know ever since. You know, they say, as you get older,

you're supposed to get I guess more conservative. I'm seventy one now, and I suspect I'm more progressive, liberal, radical now than I was when I was, you know, fifteen. Oh, you're on the right show. So you have a new book out called Our Unfinished March, and we've read your book, and one of the things that you tell in this book is how, in the midst of the Civil rights movement, at its height, you are watching John Lewis cross the

Edmund Pettis Bridge in nineteen sixty five. Tell us about that moment and why it became sort of a turning point in your own life story. You know, I don't see it live because I'm watching from the black and white TV in the basement in Queens, but I see the newsreels of your like fourteen at this point, Yeah, I'm fourteen. Can I see the newsreels of him crossing the Edmund Pettis Bridge the March four you know, from Selma to Montgomery for voting rights. People tend to forget

that it was from voting rights. And then to see these Alabama state troopers attack these people, and to see this guy who left an impression to me from the nineteen sixty three March on Washington. I remember thinking he was kind of young, you know. You know, I don't remember you remember the speech as much as I remember. He just seemed seemed young. Of all the speakers who are remember watching again on television, And to see him getting beaten, that for me was kind of like, wait

a minute, What's what's going on here? These guys are marching for a right that I know we have up here in the North. And to see these folks marching to do that which we do as a matter of routine and then getting beaten for it. That made me understand in a way that perhaps I had not before, that there was a dual existence for African Americans in the United States. But the John Lewis thing, for some reason,

really melded in my mind. Welded into my mind the notion that there was a battle to be had, there was a fight to be won, and specifically over voting rights. Like where you conscious that that was where the fight was being had. Yeah. Yeah, you know, it's something that I knew at the time, you know, I mean, you know, sixty four you have Cheney, Schwarner and Goodman dying, and I knew, for whatever reason that they were down there to register people to vote. John Lewis is marching to

get people to vote. And so voting is something that really gets seared into my consciousness and has always has really kind of been a focal point of my professional life. And you go into the law with that in mind, that that's how you want to use to use the law for these fights. So no, I gotta tell the truth here. I mean, I tried to craft a Black studies you know major that did not exist at Columbia.

So I took all the courses I could and came up with this thing and said that looks like American history. So you're an American history major. And I get out and I'm thinking, all right, now what do I do? And people say, well, you could teach, And I was thinking, boy, I don't want to foist myself on the you know, this next generation of Americans that would be irresponsible. Let's not do that. And somebody said well, you know, if you go to law school, you can do a lot

with a legal degree. So I thought of law schools kind of the haven for the undecided. And so I go to law school and something clicked first year criminal law at a professor named Telford Taylor, who had been a Nuremberg prosecutor, and something about him and about the way he taught the course and the way he talked about the law made me and maybe decide that I wanted to be a lawyer and to use the law and my skill as a lawyer to kind of help

advance the cause. Kind of a diffuse notion of advancing the cause. I mean, as a freshman at Columbia, we took over the Naval ROTC office and converted it into what is still there, the Malcolm X Lounge, a place where black students could gather. And so I was a bit of an activist, and I thought that I could use my legal skills in some kind of undefined way

to further the cause. So Eric, you go on to become the first black US attorney for the District of Columbia and then go on to be the nation's first black Attorney General under President Obama and We'll talk more about that legacy after the break, But there was a moment when your career was going to be the basis for a TV show. One of our actual best friends is Sasha Penn, the screenwriter whom you were working with on a TV show based on your career and life.

What is a TV show about the first black attorney general? What is it about? Well, you know, it's interesting. I mean, Sasha is an unbelievably talented writer, and it was a

great show. It was going to be called Main Justice, and it was about this first African American ag attorney general, and we were going to explore, you know, what it meant to be that person and you know, trying to be black and to be a person consistent with all that helped define you well at the same time being the chief law enforcement officer of the country and to try to understand that they were political pressures that you had to, you know, make some difficult choices in a

lot of ways, just kind of you know, based on what my experience was as the first black um AG. It went to pilot, scored pretty well, and for whatever reason, CBS decided not to put it on there. So I've got this like CD or DVD of this break, so it ought to be on TV. Will we will get HBO or something like that. But um, they couldn't. They couldn't handle the truth. They weren't ready for the handle

were ready for you. Well, we are going to take a break now and when we come back, we are going to talk to you about what you've been up to since you've left that incredible office as the first black Attorney General for the United States. Well, Eric has been great, really hearing the trajectory going from Elmhurst Queen's and having a neighbor as Malcolm X and being inspired by so many people of the civil rights generation, and

now you yourself are making history. You have been working against the tide of history in this moment to deal with this issue of voter suppression. And you've been working with this organization, the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. So tell

us what you've been working on, tell us how this works. Yeah, the NDRC, the National Democrat Redistricting Committee, the NDRC was formed up in January of twenty seventeen, and what we wanted to do was to try to come up with a way in which the redistricting process, which happens every ten years after the census when we draw the lines and that decides, you know, what the districts is going to look like at the state legislature, in state legislatures

as well as in you know, the United States House of Representatives. To do that in a fair way, Republicans had really jerrymandered. In twenty eleven, a study at Princeton University said it was the worst jerrymandering of the past fifty years. And we said, you know, if we just make this fair, Progressives Democrats will be just fine as long as it is fair. This is kind of simple, Eric,

but could you just define what jerrymandering is. Yeah, Jerrymandering is the drawing of district lines in such a way that you guarantee, almost guarantee that the party that draws the lines that their candidate will win. And so you end up with people who are in these elected positions who don't year a general election because they know they're going to win, that the only thing they worry about is getting primaried. You know, there's a whole range of things.

And now we have seen as a result of the Dobb's decision, we've seen these gerrymandered state legislatures use the power that they have to put in place these anti choice laws that are inconsistent with the desires of the people in the states where these things are being passed. But they can pass these bills even though again every state that stunn a poll, every state has said we

don't want roversus way to overturn. Now, the margins are different in New York they than say in Texas, but they can put in place these anti choice laws, these draconian anti choice laws, and not fear any electoral consequence because they're in these gerrymandered state legislatures. And so that's what we were We've been fighting, in addition to fighting

voter suppression and the attacks on our electoral infrastructure. While your Attorney General Shelby County, Alabama has this lawsuit to weaken the nineteen sixty five Voting Rights out and it goes to the Supreme Court and the decision that actually does weaken the act. Is this where your inspiration to do this kind of where comes from? Where you're already

thinking about working on voting rights. No, it's interesting. I knew that working to protect voting rights was going to be within the range of those things that I was really going to have to focus on is ag and

that was fine. But after the Shelby County decision in twenty thirteen, it becomes critically clear that I'm going to have to use the power what remains of the power that the Justice Department has to try to get at what the States almost immediately did after the Shelby County case, which is one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in history.

It's a five four decision where Chief Justice Roberts says, America has changed, and as a result of that, you know, we don't need to have in the full force that we now have, the Voting Rights Act of nineteen sixty five, which is the pearl of the jewel, the crown jewel of the civil rights movement. Almost immediately States put in place these unnecessary photo ID laws. Seventeen hundred polling places have been closed around the country since Shelby County decision.

Unnecessary voter purges have occurred, all of which would have been stopped before the Shelby County case by the Justice Department in those covered jurisdictions. Because the Justice Department had the ability to look at any change in an electoral

system and say you can't do that. But after Shelby County Justice Department did not did not have that power, and so it became clear twenty thirteen on the voting rights had to be a primary focus of my time at the department, and I you know it is again. So after I leave the department, or what I said in my closing speech was I'm leaving the department, but

I'll never leave the work. And what I meant by that is I'm never going to leave the work to protect our democracy generally and to protect the right to vote more specifically. Yeah, now it's just us here. I mean, it's just Derek, Ben and Khalil You. What you really want to say is that they mess with the wrong brother from Queens. Since your name is on that's the Freme Court decision Shelby versus Holding. You said, Okay, I'll be back, but I won't be back here as ag.

I'm going to be back here with a cape and an ass underneath my sweater, and I'm ready to bring the fight to the people. You can't mess with Sunny Holder's boy. Try me. So we just had a midterm I mean, Ben and I are still learning from exit poll research and results in the newspapers what happened and why one outcome went one way and another. Obviously, the degree to which the Democrats retain control of the Senate but lost the House is as a sort of mixed outcome.

But I'm really curious, as a native New Yorker, to what degree do you see that in New York and in the nation, your own work over these past several years having led to a good outcome, Is it a mixed outcome for you? How do you weigh the results of the twenty twenty two midterm elections? Yeah, you know, I think in a lot of ways a twenty twenty two midterm or midterms are validation of the work that

we did. We have seen, you know, the flip of state legislative chambers in Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania, you know, trifecta control for Democrats for the first time in forty years in Michigan, much more fair voting in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina. So lots of lots of pluses. So I'd say overall it was a good night. There was a good mid term that, as I said, validated a lot of the work that we did New York, there is

an interesting case. You know, Initially a lot of people said, well, you know, it's because of the redistricting that was done inappropriately overreached by New York Democrats. And then you know, the court drew the lines in such a way that were unfair at least as we looked at kind of the data here. The places where Democrats lost in New York were pro Biden districts by a variety I think

two percent to five percent. And so something else was going on there as to why, you know, Democrats loss, I think the crime you know, measures or the crime arguments republican, the rhetoric, the fair langering. Yet yeah, really kind of resonated for whatever reason in New York in a way that did not resonate in similar kinds of suburban districts in other states. And so I think more study, I think it's going to have to be is going to have to be done. But it wasn't the redistricting.

I think that cost Democrats critically, you know, four or five seats in New York. It was something else, Eric as you're saying, it was a good night that the election day, the election was a good night. You're wearing two hats. I sort of hear you say, like one as a Democratic stalwart, and you're saying like how Democrats did, but you're also talking about was it fair? And we're the problems with the vote, and those seem those could

be aligned, but they don't necessarily have to be. You know, it's interesting, Ben that you say that, because I actually think that I'm not. I'm wearing one hat because the reality is, although yeah, I'm a Democrat and proud of that, one party has made the determination in our system, and let's just be fair, let's you know, be accurate about this. One party stands for democratic small d democratic principles, you know,

pro democracy. Another party, because of the demographic changes that it faces, the ideological ideological shifts that I think the nation is undergoing, they've made peace with the notion that they can be, in terms of popular support, a minority party that has majority power. And so they do a whole range of things racial and partists in jerrymandering, making it more difficult for people to vote, suppressing the vote. And so when I say we had a good night,

what I meant by that? And it made me make this clear to everybody. I meant that democracy had a good night. Now that also meant that Democrats had a good night, because Republicans are too much of the Republican Party has kind of turned its back on that, which when we are saying we are exceptional, the thing that makes us exceptional is the fact that we let the

people decide. We've been an imperfect nation. You know, we're better than we were fifty years ago and better than fifty years before, but we're still not at a place where we need to be. But I'm really worried about

where the Republican Party is headed. Yeah. Well, this is one of the things that I think is really interesting about this moment, because you have given speeches about and you've written in your book about the history that helps inform how we Americans ought to think about democracy as sacrosanct,

as non negotiable. And yet I think it's fair eric to say that America didn't actually deliver democracy to all of its people until nineteen sixty five, in which case we're talking about more than or just shy of essentially two hundred years of a country who so called liberal

democracy was not for everyone. And I'm wondering how do you navigate the sort of tide of history and the need to actually make these changes In a sense, wouldn't we have to become a different nation legislatively and by structure, by political structure, by the very reforms you proposed would actually change the bones of this country in order to maintain the post nineteen sixty five multiracial democracy. You know,

the demographic changes are baked into this nation. We're going to be a we say, twenty fifty, we will have more people of color than than white folks in this nation. Now that's been moved up to twenty forty three. The last I look might even be earlier than that now. And so those demographic changes can be a source of great strength for this nation or they can be unbelievably divisive.

And you know, Donald Trump has tried to use those demographic changes to instill fear and to gain political control. And so we've got to look at the structure of our nation. And yeah, it was groundbreaking and wonderful two hundred and fifty years or so ago, but it was flawed. And the first group of people who fought for the right to vote were white men and the Jacksonian era, Yeah,

who did their own property. While the founders are in the process of putting this thing called America together, they consider a couple they consider one thing. On somebody said, well, what we should let all white men vote? Well, not only with property. And when somebody one of the founders says, wait a minute, if you give white men without property the right to vote, they don't have the intellectual capacity.

They'll be able to be bought off. And interestingly says, if you give them the right to vote, other groups we're going to ask for the right to vote, including up hold on to it now women And sure enough, as that founding father predicted, other groups over time have sought that that right to vote. But we need to make structural changes. I mean, yeah, it was great two hundred and fifty years or so ago. You know, the Senate two senators for every state, part of the you know,

the great Compromise. So Wyoming's got to with less people than why Hington DC a sticking point for me, and California with over thirty million people, you know, has to We've allowed the filibuster to render the Senate to be a place that just doesn't function well. Supreme Court life tenures sounded great when people lived, you know, much shorter lives, and people left the court in the early parts of our country when they died. Now people do these strategic retirements,

and this is Democrats as well as Republicans. You know, they leave when they decide that they're going to have a president who will appoint somebody like them. And we put people on the court when they're like in the late forties, early fifties and with the hope that they'll serve forty fifty years. That's too much time for somebody to have that much power. Yeah, you're proposing now that

it'd be eighteen year terms. And I've read this and heard it amongst some of my colleagues who are law professors, that eighteen year term limited. I think actually the former Justice Brier has recently come out also in favor of term limited Supreme Court appointments. You know, that's one of the rare places. The Chief Justice Roberts and I agree

he says term limits of fifteen years. I say eighteen because I also think that a president should appoint a Supreme Court justice in his or her first year as well as her third year of an administration. So a president would be guaranteed to Supreme Court appointments every term, and if you have them at eighteen years, over time, that will expand the court in the short term, but over time the court will come back to nine members.

And just to close the loop on this point, I think, I mean this tension between fairness and what's in the interests of the Democratic Party, which is often the main talking point of the Fox News and conservative ecosystem. I mean, all these reforms are really just to put more Democrats in power. Fundamentally turns on a rejection of the notion, as was true in the Founding Generation, that people who are taxed and who have obligations to the state should

also have the right to vote. Period hard stop, end of story, and we'll let the electoral outcomes of their patient let the chips fall where they may. So it's not fundamentally fair that Puerto Rico has essentially been treated as a stepchild in our democratic system of government, and

more certainly true for the residents of Washington, DC. I mean that's your point, yeah, and clear you make a really good point there, because I think the reality is that it's a telling thing about where the conservative movement is right now, where the Republican Party is right now that when you stand for things that looked at I think objectively, are just all about fairness, injecting fairness into the system, they deem that partisan. Right. Well, you know,

people ought to have the right to vote. We should have more polling places. We should reduce the number the amount of time it takes for a person to vote. We should make it easy for people to vote by letting people vote by mail, you have early voting hours and people that's you know, you're favoring Democrats. No, I'm favoring the American people. Now it may mean that more I don't know, Democrats will maybe Democrats when maybe Demo perhaps to lose. I don't really care as long as

the system is fair. We are here with the amazing Eric Holder, Sonny's kid, and we will be back after a short break to talk about a more perfect future. So one of the things I'm struck by, Eric, is that there's this chicken and egg problem, meaning that in order to get to these reforms like automatic voter registration, like reforming the use of the filibuster by getting rid of it, by dealing with Supreme Court term limits, all of these are in the end legislative reforms, you'll have

to get voters to support passing this legislation. And as a Ben and I being gen xers, you know, we are keenly aware that for our generation that's been written out of the history books at having accomplished nothing like the first generation of FoST civil writers, right like your generation, Eric. You know, you guys took the reins of power. You were the first to show up in all parts of American society, and then your kids us ultimately just set

on our hands and enjoyed the fruits of all that labor. Now, of course with this podcast, we are trying to make up for lost time. But that's totally unfair, I mean, because the reality is that your generation has accomplished a great deal, you know, thank you, No, I mean that's really true. And in the notion that somehow or other, you know, boomers did all these wonderful things and then nothing has happened. I mean, you know that which the generation before me put in place or started, and that

we've tried to keep going. Your generation has done its part to do, you know, as we did, and you'll want get nearly the credit that you deserve, you know, you guys are still young and malleable, and we need to bring you over to the democracy side. You know, I love it, I love it. I'm ready. I signed

me up. But on this point, so we are talking about a generational divide, and it's not it's not not an issue, right because, as you well know, in John Lewis's day, when he decided to leave Troy, Alabama, to leave his parents who were farmers, to make his way to Fisk University and sit at the foot of Jim Lawson and learn about the nonviolent movement he broke from his parents. They did not send him out there to

make sacrifice to change the world. And it seems to me, just from my perspective, that we are still living with generational tensions between young black activists who are engaging in racial justice movements right now on the ground. Some of them are teenagers, some of them are like Latasha Brown, who is organizing in Alabama and really nationally for black

voters matter. How do you make sense of today's generational divide between a baby boom generation that's still active, still doing things, and even how we sort of hold up people like John Lewis as an avatar for change when there are people today doing this work. This generational tension, it certainly exists and we can but we can make more of it than it actually is. I mean, I look at these young people today and they remind me

of me. I'm the guy you know, at that age who was taken over the Naval ROTC office to come up with a black lounge. You know, attention is good because young people are the ones least beat down by the experiences that you acquire over time, and it's almost inevitable, you know, as you age, they are the most optimistic. They are the ones who are physically, you know, most capable. And so the question is how do you harness that

energy with the knowledge that that older folks have. You know, Richard probably to always say, you don't see many old fools. You know, when you get to be old, you've been able to navigate, at least at a minimum, you know, keep yourself alive. And so getting that that experiential base along with that youthful fervor, that is the way in which you know the movement at the end of the

day will be most successful. Now it means that people have to again keep their eyes on the price and we can argue about tactics, and you have to compromise around tactics, which you never compromise about what our ultimate goals are. I want to stay on this a minute longer, because this is fascinating. You talked about being entering your seventies and feeling as progressive as you were, or more

so than even when you were at fifteen. Certainly a problem for the Democratic Party is what we're describing here, that the leadership is older and more centrist, and the younger people are much further to the left on actual policy, on the prize, not just on tactics, but like what we're supposed to achieve. And so I don't think we can just sort of say like we're all. You know, this is a good tension, because it's also the riffs that, you know, we might have strategies to win elections, but

we're not even sure what exactly we stand for. It's a tension that on one hand leads some young voters to not vote because they feel like they're not being captured in the party itself in responding to their political vision of the future. And also those young people have been scapegoaded by Republicans and the right, as terrorists who want to change America, who who literally are the thing that Republican voters have to do everything in their power

to keep from voting, otherwise they would change America. And then Democrats runaway. Centrist Democrats run away from them, from the youth, from those those charges. Yeah, you know, it's interesting because I mean, I think if you look at Democrats written large, and say, are you concerned about things that animate and move? I think young people, you know, are you concerned about climate? They'd all say yes. Are you concerned about a woman's right? Two? They all say yes,

criminal justice reform, yeah, you know, protecting the right to vote? Yeah, So everybody's I think, in the same place when it comes to those things that are that matter. The question that I think that separates the generations is, so what is it that we do to get to the place where we are dealing effectively with climate? And so, you know, you have something the New Green Deal, which has been totally misconstrued as a molocialist package to destroy America. Right.

I mean, people, you know, Fox talks about the New Green Deal. They don't have any idea what the New Green Deal is about other than it's just a good talking point to scare people, you know, and unfortunately, too many Democrats you know, get scared, you know, by these attacks from the right. The reality is is that I think the movement and the party are most successful when you stand up for what it is you truly believe when you know it's like, don't cut corners, don't try

to be Republican light conservative light. That doesn't work, you know. Um, we are most successful when we stand up and say, look, you know, yeah, I'm for climate change and call it a new Green Deal in the same way that you know, I'm proud to be a member of the party that started you know, social Security, you know, the New Deal, and Medicare and Medicaid and the Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty five, you know, and the the Affordable Care Act.

That's who we are as progressives and as Democrats and to really, you know, interact with the people of this country and counter a narrative, I mean, don't be you know, look, we got to be as tough as they are, as creative as they are. I mean, hell, it's smarter than they are. There's no question about that. They have mastered the art of the big lie, and so we have got to be effective in pushing back against it. And that means that, you know, some older Democrats, I don't know,

centrist democrats have got to ask themselves. You know, you claim to be a Democrat, you know understand what that means in a historical context, and how do you apply the historical context to the present day issues that we've confront Yeah, So, in keeping with the theme a more perfect future, I'm also struck by this tension in your own journey as a public figure about balancing hope and honesty.

I mean, in part that's what we've been talking about here, and the sort of narrative strategies of the Democratic Party have probably leaned a lot more on unity and hope and a little bit less on the honesty of what our policies need to be and what it needs to be to run on your values in a way that you don't run away from them. And something in your book really jumped off the page at me in twenty thirteen, on that anniversary of the Selma March, and you describe

being there and giving a speech in Selma. You say that just as you were about to close the speech that you decided to end on a hopeful note when you knew there would be irreparable harm done by the

Supreme Court. And as someone who I've admired in your role for your use of your platform, I mean you've opened essentially your term as Attorney General giving an internal speech to the DLJ where you in the end describe the nation as a nation of cowards for being unwilling to confront a racial past and to deal with those

legacy effects today. In closing, just help us think about how you balance this tension between the hopeful, aspirational rhetoric of what the past teaches us and what we're capable overcoming and the honesty that is required that typically our young people are a little bit more on the honesty side of the equation than the hopeful side. Yeah, you know, it's interesting because I think what you're tapping into there is like, what's leadership about? How do you share honesty

which can be daunting and can be action defeating. How do you combine that with inspiring people to be engaged even when the odds seem, you know, set against you. You know, in twenty thirteen, Yeah, I understand what's going to happen and what states are going to do with this new freedom that the Supreme Court has inappropriately given

to them. But I want people to leave that church with the sense that whatever it is that we're going to have to confront, history tells us in this space that every generation of Americans has met challenges to democracy and that this generation can't be the first that does not. You know, whether it is threats from outside the country, you know, Nazis, or threats from within you know, white supremacists, and you know other structural inequalities that are baked into

the system. You know, we have every generation has expanded the franchise try to protect our democracy, and that this generation can't be the one. This can't be the time where we are not successful in that defense of an expansion of democracy. So it's it's it's me. It's melding that honesty with that notion of hope. Eric. So, I mean since that moment in twenty thirteen, have you changed?

I mean you're talking about different kinds of leadership, and here you've written this book and the work you're doing, you're much more direct and addressing the hired truths the problems. Is this a time for a different kind of leadership for for calling out the problems and focusing on them

using the khalil you know equation in there. I think it's a time to dial up to a greater degree of honesty component because I think people need to understand what's at stake, you know, And I don't mean to scare people, but I mean the reality is that, you know, you look at what happened in Europe in the twentieth century. You know, fascism rose not because fascism was strong, but

because the defense of democracy was weak. And it doesn't mean we'll have a dictator here in the United States, but you could render meaningless our elections every two years, every four years, every six years, unless we are willing to stand up for our democracy. You know. Again, we had a pretty good night a couple of two days ago. All the election deniers who ran for Secretary of State, a position that people never focused on before, all of

them were defeated. It's important a blatt of election deniers were defeated at a whole range of levels, but some did win at the local level, and so we got to be concerned about that. And what it is that they would do with that power is shown by what they tried to do in January the sixth. That wasn't you know, we talked about insurrection and people, I'm short

an insurrection. That was a cool attempt. That was an attempt to capitate our democracy, to stop the peaceful transfer of powers, drop peaceful, to just stop the transfer of power. You know. That was an attempt to somehow stop the American people from having their voices heard and deciding who the next president of the United States was going to be.

I mean, they were all about doing things that we see happen or have seen happen, you know, in other countries, and because it happened in other countries, it can happen here. That's right. Democracy is a fragile thing and if we don't fight for it, we can lose it. Yeah. Yeah, Well, I'm going to end this conversation with your own words, which I think are a taste of that honesty. And for those who haven't had a chance to read the book, you can pick it up and read it yourself. You

say we are in the middle of a crisis. You say, now, anyone who tells you progress is inevitable is mistaken. Demography is not destiny. Moral arcs don't been with certainty. History is not a Marvel movie. The good guys lose as often as they win, and so we have to fight for the things that matter. Thank you so much, Eric Holder, little Ricky son of Sunny Holder, not to be confused with Sunny Listen are We are really grateful that you took some time to join us on some of my

best friends are all right. Thanks for having me, Ben, thanks for having me clear it has been it's been a lot of fun. Yeah, thank you so much, Eric Man. What a great conversation. I mean, his love of his background, his family, the journey he's been on is really strong voice and honesty. It just was impressive. But there's one thing that he made reference to about that TV show that none of us have seen and may never see, about the political pressures of being the first black attorney general.

And I was really curious. I didn't I didn't get a chance to ask it during the interview, but I was really curious about what exactly he was talking about. Okay, so this is the show that he made with our friend Sasha Penn that that they made a pilot but it didn't go to series. That's what you're talking about, Yeah, yeah, and I kind of asked you maybe you could talk to Sasha and find out I talked to Sasha about it. You know, this is you talked to it. Okay, this

is CBS. You know the murder she wrote stations, so they didn't they couldn't they couldn't pick it up. Yeah. So the political pressures about being the first black attorney general. So the show was like working with these ideas that you know, he had the staff that had been there through multiple administrations, and when they weren't supporting him this, you know, this black ag has to worry like are they not supporting me because they disagree with my policies

or because I'm black? You mean, like that the same kind of stuff I have to deal with when my students give me bad, bad marks. I'm like, is it no joking? Yeah, no, it goes deeper. There isn't a Barack Obama character, meaning the president at that time is a white man who appointed him to the job because they needed ratings. Has too much Blackfoot television. You can have either a black president or a black tangent, or

you can't have both. Maybe not because I didn't get picked up the series, but when he's like investigating some mouthfeasance, possibly by the president. Again, there's a sort of racial tension, but I think where race maybe comes up the most is that they are all these threats on his life. And when Sasha was researching the show, he said that he talked to the person and assigned to protect Erk Colder and he was like, yeah, man, they came all the time. You know, he had not seen this man,

oh damn. Yeah. Wow. Hence, political pressure is like to just to like shut up and dribble for the attorney general. But you know, maybe maybe most importantly so that show didn't get picked up. But you know, when Sasha is writing the show for us, you know about some of my best friends, are we're gonna get picked up the series all got it? Got it? Yes? Yeah, because nobody is trying to kill us. Well, you know the first thing is I think it won't be on CBS. It's

gonna be on cable. That's gonna be the thing that gets us going. You mean, like the tub channel, No, maybe cook us up? Maybe stars all right, all right, all right, man, well listen, I love that Sasha got to be part of this episode, and of course I love you man. I love you Too. Some of My Best Friends Are is a production of Pushkin Industries. The show is written and hosted by me Khalil Dubron Muhammad and my best friend Ben Austin. It's produced by John

Asante and Lucy Sullivan. Our editor is Jasmine Morris, our engineer is Amanda k Juan, and our executive producer is Mia LaBelle. At Pushkin thanks to Leta Mullad, Julia Barton, Heather Faine, Carly Nigliori, John Schnars, Gretta Cone, and Jacob Weisberg. Our theme song, Little Lily, is by fellow chicagoan the Brilliant Avery R. Young, from his album Tubman. You definitely want to check out his music at his website Avery R.

Young dot com. You can find Pushkin on all social platforms at pushkin pods and you can sign up for our newsletter at pushkin dot fm. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And if you like our show, please give us a five star rating and a review and listen. Even if you don't like it, give it a five star rating and a review and please tell all of your best friends about it. Thank you. That's gonna be

like the hardest thing that you all do. How do you keep Khalil quiet for fifteen seconds? He wasn't really quiet there. You could hear you with moving around. I mean, like, like, Khalil, don't say anything for fifteen seconds. That's clothed. Damn near impossible, right,