Democrats Go Off In An Off Year

And the most definitive report on the 2022 midterms gives us clues about the 2024 electorate. Then Dan talks to Democratic messaging guru Anat Shinkar Osorio about smart economic messaging and how Democrats should be talking about the debt ceiling. And since Elijah Cohn is here with us in studio in Los Angeles, we're going to play a round of take take. Don't tell me. But first to all, the Dan Stans. That's what my housekeeping says. I don't even know what's coming next.

I'm worried to all the Dan Stans. In case you missed the Tuesday pod, we've got a big announcement. Crooked Subscription Community. Friends of the Pod is finally here. You can subscribe at Crooked.com, Slash Friends for subscriber only, bonus content, exclusive access and more. I guess we thought there's some people who just listened to the Thursday pod and not.

Also, what happens when a mysterious?

I was very excited when we first got the pitch for this one. It's a really cool, funny kind of story, that's great, it sounds awesome. All right, let's get to the news.

We are now two weeks away from the date our government thinks we won't have enough money to pay our bills. Which would trigger an economic catastrophe the likes of which we've never seen. Congress could avert this crisis by simply voting to raise the debt ceiling, like they did when Donald Trump was president. But Republicans now refuse to do so unless Joe Biden agrees to gut a bunch of programs people depend on. Staff for. The president and Speaker, McCarthy are now engaged in direct negotiations.

They've kicked everyone else out of the room. And Biden spoke about their progress on Wednesday, right before he left for the G7 in Japan, a trip he'll now be cutting short to reach.

Because you can always take what Kevin McCarthy says as.

Is that Austin Goolsbee? It sounds?

So it was we just heard in that clip. Biden went from saying he won't negotiate over the debt ceiling to cutting his foreign trip short so he can come home and negotiate a budget deal. That would presumably include a debt ceiling increase. What happened is he, you think he's doing the right thing here? Did he have any other options?

I'm not sure he had other options.

They now have a say in it. There are going to be some things we don't want, less betting than we want on some things, some other things we don't like. And there would be that negotiation that has happened in divided governments since the beginning of time, and this is, and the.

There can be no avoiding of default if Kevin McCarthy does not put a bill on the floor. Absent. A couple of things we'll talk about in a second. And so what he's trying to do is help Kevin McCarthy, help himself by pulling this negotiation forward. That was going to happen anyway, cut that deal. And then would allow Kevin McCarthy to go to his people and say, Look at what I got you from the debt ceiling. Which is something he actually would have got them anyway later this fall. And so that is what is happening.

Now the challenge here is what happens if they don't have a deal when we get close to that X date, will Kevin? President Biden said in those remarks before he left for Japan that all the leaders have agreed we won't default. Well, what that means is, if we don't have a deal, are they going to do an extension of the debt ceiling? Even if it's for a short period of time to buy? Time to negotiate, and I think if we do not have a deal quickly, that is. The next move for the White House is to call for a short term extension to give them time to finish the negotiation around the budget.

And if they will do that, then we are right back into where we were before, which is looking over the cliff of default.

That should not be coming out of President Biden's ledger. And how you keep those things separate in this sort of negotiation is very challenging. We should wait to see what comes out of it before we render judgment on it. But that is what makes this hard. That should be just stipulated.

We're just going to tuck that into whatever we agree with. The White House is going to ask for more funding for health care or something else. Republicans are asked for less funding to help feed children or whatever is on brand for them. And then you meet somewhere in the middle. But if the if it counts as will give you non default. If you accept work requirements or something else, that's an unfair and bad negotiation, then the White House is in a very, very difficult position.

But I think President Biden and his team have earned enough trust from us to see what they actually come up with. And then we can judge that because we don't know what's happening in the room. Are there things they're asking for, other things they're getting? Maybe maybe not, but I think we should just see what happens.

I think let's just stipulate. There is no evidence that work requirements help people find work, and they generally make it harder for them to access benefits they need. You're going to hear an interview I did with Anant Shankar-Osorio a little later in this pod, where she explains that. The way we should talk about work requirements is referred to as benefit theft. Because that's really what it is doing.

What I think is happening here, there's a lot of speculation around this, and you keep hearing reporters write. And Republicans say that in 1996, Joe Biden voted for Bill Clinton's relatively atrocious welfare reform bill. And that that somehow predicts how he's feeling about this. I think we should take that off the table. That was nearly 30 years ago. What Joe Biden believed 30 years ago is not what he believes now. This is still the same president who fought very hard for a very expansive program to help the poorest Americans and the American Rescue Plan. Build Back Better.

We would have one of the most historic programs of all time if Joe Manchin had not sunk it. And what it seems that they're doing is Biden is looking for deal space here. I would admit he is a very seasoned congressional negotiator. And I think McCarthy has probably said this is a thing I have to have, and Biden is trying to trade something for that that he wants. What that is, I don't know, and the devil is going to be in the details here about what it is. But if there is anything that sounds like work requirements can be labeled as work requirements. That. Kevin McCarthy can run around with his group of MAGA asshole friends and say, Look at the win we got by hurting poor people. That's going to have a lot of blowback on President Biden from Democrats in Congress, and I think progressives and activists around the country.

So that helps you understand that. McCarthy thinks he's playing a strong political hand, and Biden and the White House are like, Oh, we're not playing a strong political hand. Because when people just hear work requirements, they're like, Yeah, of course, people should work if they're able to work, and they're able to find a job. Instead of just being on government assistance. But the truth is, 93 of Medicaid recipients are already either working, attending school or have a disability. But, you know, Arkansas? In 2018, they didn't care about that, they decided to pass work requirements for Medicaid anyway. 16,000 people who are in poverty lost their health care, and over 90 of those people who lost their health care because of work requirements were working.

And the reason that they lost it is because work requirements are really just additional paperwork requirements. You need more documentation, you need to know how to navigate confusing government websites. And, as I said earlier, we already have work requirements for welfare and food assistance. What Republicans want in this deal? What I've read is they want more paperwork for welfare. And to raise the age you're required to work for food assistance from 50 to 55..

But again, the people who are getting this assistance are either working, working part-time, because that's all they can find. They're between jobs they're caregiving, or they have health issues that prevent them from working the same jobs they did when they were younger. So it's like, the issue here is most of the people that this would hurt are either already working or very much want to work. Right now, there's still like a quarter of all people who are eligible for TANF for welfare, don't have it because it's too complicated to get. And the incentives, since Bill Clinton passed welfare reform for welfare workers, are to get people off the benefits.

And so they make it more confusing, they make the paperwork difficult. There are people who don't have access to the internet, they don't have transportation access, and all these things come into play. So that it makes it harder for someone to get benefits, like for us, you go to the DMV and you spend all day there, waiting in a long line. And then you get to the front. And then you don't have the documentation that you're supposed to.

It's happened to all of us like, you go back home and you can't renew your license that day. But imagine if that happened and when you went back home, you couldn't have food for a month or healthcare. Like these are the problems with work requirements. It's not that Joe Biden and the Democrats are against the concept of working or encouraging work.

It's that, like I probably told you, work requirements are just an excuse for Republicans to push working people into poverty. And if it wasn't an excuse for that, they would get rid of these programs. Because everywhere it's been tried, they haven't worked, they haven't worked. So I just, you know, it's horrible policy, but you can see where Biden's going on. This because there are already work requirements and what they're trying to do is tighten the screws a little more on the requirements and raise the age on food assistance.

So it's relatively small, but it's still stupid policy because what it comes down.

So what's the alternative?

Make it harder for poor people to have food and healthcare, that is the choice. And look, I would say for Republicans, they are in it for the kicks. If there was no deficit, they would follow this anyway. Because for them, kicking poor people off healthcare is just like the friends they made along the way. It's worth it for itself, right?

But in this context, it is because they say they care about the deficit. They need savings to say they reduce the deficit or reduce spending, and they won't do it. The most obvious ways that would ask their wealthy benefactors to pay a little more to pay the money they owe.

The parties are too far apart and there's no deal that Biden will sign off on that. The Democratic Senate will also pass that will appease the Freedom Caucus and others. And so you're in a world where you're going to need maybe 100 Democrats to be for it to get it across the finish line.

That's what happened in almost every fiscal negotiation Obama had as well. The far right didn't want to do it, the progressives in the center-left in the Democratic Party didn't want to do it. And then the people who were more moderate or had safer seats, or others and still hated the deal, voted for it because it was better than default. And that is likely where we're in.

And that is going to be rough political waters for President Biden. Because he's going to be in a situation where he and Obama had this, too. Where he cannot tout the wins he got. Because for every time, he says, it's not that bad, another Republican leaves, and it gets that much harder to pass. And so you just have to, like, eat shit until the U.s full faith and credit is safe, and then try to spin.

And they have two different ideas. The House Democrats are moving a discharge petition that would force a vote on a debt ceiling increase. Though, they'd still need six Republicans to make that happen, because Democrats only have 212 votes in the House. And that discharge petition won't be ready until the middle of June, which seems like it could be past the X date if the X date really is June 1st. As Janet Yellen says, it is so. That's discharge petition. And some Senate Democrats sent Biden a letter yesterday Wednesday urging him to declare the debt ceiling is unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment.

Elizabeth Warren and some others. Angus King, who's not as progressive and independent from Maine? Fiscal Hawk also said he thinks the debt ceiling is unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment. What are your thoughts on either of these plans working? And we've talked about them before, but working at this stage of the process, I think put aside the timing.

That only worked if there wasn't a negotiation between Biden and McCarthy. Because you're not going to find six members who are going to bail in the middle of the negotiation. Maybe it could work if we get to the end. That's what I was thinking. Keep doing it.

Keep talking about it, keep pushing it. It's not going to short circuit this negotiation. this negotiation either can produce a deal to avoid default or it's not. And then we're going to be staring over the cliff, and this is one option on the table, yeah, if we're staring.

If you're not the one who has to make the decision, being a member of Congress, being a newsletter writer, a podcaster, a tweeter, you could say that sounds like he should do it. 14th Amendment. We'll show them if you're the person who took the oath of office, who is responsible for the well-being of the entire country. Not the politics, not the polls, not the 2024 election. But whether millions of Americans are going to lose their jobs and trillions of dollars in wealth is going to be destroyed overnight? Are you really going to take a path where the lawyers basically give you the equivalent of the shrug emoji on whether it's going to work?

Biden is in the choice of either he takes this very risky path that could work but is high risk and may not work if it doesn't work. It would lead to the worst unforced domestic policy error in the history of this country, with massive ramifications that could take a decade or more to unwind. How do you make that decision if you're the one who actually make it?

Put it in a press release, put it in your colleague letter, tweet about it, write about it in your sub stack, talk about it in this podcast. But if you're the person in the room that has to make the decision. And you and I were in meetings where some of those things were talked about a decade ago. It's just as the president who's responsible for the country. That's a very, very, very hard, if not impossible, path to.

Worst case, it goes to the Supreme Court, goes up to the Supreme Court. And the very right wing, most extreme right wing support ever says, No, fuck you Joe Biden, and it's unconstitutional. And then the global economy plunges into crisis. Now the question there is, Do people blame the Supreme Court?

Because the Supreme Court's the one that plunged the economy into crisis, and those are all the headlines. Or do people say that Biden shouldn't have taken it so far? And I don't know the answer to that. But it's still a risk for the.

Yeah, and and even if in the short term, everyone is like, this is Clarence Thomas's fault. And I also fucking hate Mitch McConnell for stealing those seats, and Kevin McCarthy's a doofus. At the end of the day, if all you cared about was the politics by, it still means Biden's gonna run for reelection in a historic recession.

It's not gonna be better by November of 2024 if this happens. And so that, like, that's how it ends, and so it just, it seems very, I mean, it's just. It is easy to play fantasy football when you're not the person who has to make the decision, who has to bear the responsibility for the actual pain that happens if that plan does not work, and so you might end up making having to take concessions. You do not like take a deal, you do not like take on a ton of shit that you do not want or need politically to avoid that fate.

That's sort of why Biden's in.

And so I just wonder, like, which that case had gone through earlier, had been at the court earlier. But there's a lot of questions on, like, who has standing to sue over the debt ceiling? Because ignoring the debt ceiling doesn't actually injure anyone, which is why the debt ceiling is so fucking stupid. But it doesn't. It doesn't hurt anyone if you got rid of the debt ceiling, right? It's just a stupid fucking thing that Congress passed.

So I just I wish that we had had some, like some, you know, legal judgment on this before we hit the X date that would have.

I think there's going to be a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking, a lot of second guessing, hindsight about how we got here. Whenever. Whatever happens, whether we default or a deal, some of it will be completely legitimate, some of it will certainly not be, but we have to. This has to play itself out before we really know whether this was the right approach, the wrong approach. Whatever it is, I just think some of the solutions are not as simple as they.

All right, happier news. There were elections on Tuesday that led to some notable results in Florida, Pennsylvania and Kentucky. In Florida, Democrat Donna Deegan won a huge upset in the Jacksonville mayor's race, beating the DESantis-endorsed Daniel Davis. In a city that's been trending Republican, also the largest city in Florida. Did you know that?

I didn't know that, I thought Miami was a bigger city than Jacksonville, Jacksonville's a pretty.

Cameron tweaked Tiny D during his victory speech. Let's listen, the Trump culture of winning is alive and well in Kentucky.

This is, of course, mocking Ron DeSantis's. We can't have a culture of losing a oblique shot at Trump that he trotted out over the weekend. What on earth was DeSantis thinking? Endorsing someone right before the polls closed? Who went on to lose by 30 points? I don't understand.

But why did he endorse Craft when it made no difference, when voters wouldn't even know about it when they voted? Which is a real statement on how little political influence he has relative to Trump, in his own mind, two reasons one. Kelly and Joe Craft Joe Craft is Kelly's husband are billionaire coal barons.

And Joe Craft is a donor to DESANTIS and likely a donor to a DESANTis Super PAC. When and if he runs, that's reason one. reason two is that Craft's strategist is Jeff Rowe. Who is this Republican wunderkind who helped elect Yunkin? And it was a big coup that the DESantis world got Jeff Rowe to come work for them. And so he clearly used his connections to DESAntis to deliver this endorsement, even at the last minute.

I'm sure he promised Kelly Craft when he took the job that he would eventually get. DESANTiS. DESantis finally gave in at the last minute. He should fire Jeff Rowe for this because it's complete grift where he abused his relationship with DESantis to get this endorsement. And so the whole thing speaks very poorly of the reportedly very soon to launch DESantis presidential campaign. They don't know what they're doing.

They got a bunch of people in it, just trying to use Desantis for influence and money, and.

Something has to change for that to work, and right now it's not working at.

It's your best argument. He is trying to be more likable, though. Here's a clip from him last week.

How about that, laugh, Dan? I mean, what a weirdo, what a weirdo. I mean, taking that likable on the top of his debate.

For those of you who are listening in the audio format.

Yeah, and that's.

No, I knew it was going to happen, and I knew Jacksonville was.

We've seen that come to bear in the New York Mayor's race a couple of years ago, we saw it in how the Chicago mayor's race played out. Even if the Progressive won in the end, and it happened here as well, and this is a big deal. This is the first Black woman mayor in the history of the city of Philadelphia.

We should be celebrating that she is as exciting candidate as.

Parker got the highest share of her vote from people making under $50,000.

So, you know, some people thought that Helen Gimm much would be like Brandon Johnson in Chicago, a progressive who would be a more moderate candidate to win the mayor's race. The difference with Brandon Johnson is Brandon Johnson built a coalition that included college-educated whites, wealthier liberals, but also Black voters. And in Philadelphia, Helen Gimm just had the highly educated wealthier white liberals and didn't combine it with the Black vote. And that's the difference right there.

I mean, there is one other fundamental difference.

In the Chicago race had a one-on-one runoff between Vallis and Johnson, and here this is a multi-candidate race with no runoff. So it put particular value in a consolidation of the Black vote in a city with a large working-class Black population.

You see it here. Ten years ago, we were a presidential election year party, and we now have a larger percentage of our base. That is turning out in non-presidential election years, and it's giving us real strength down ballot in some of these elections, like the Jacksonville mayor's race.

And ultimately, there's a lot of work to do to expand our coalition, to have a true governing coalition geographically across the country. But sustainable, progressive political power is built at the state level. And if you want to do that, you have to turn out in these non-presidential years, and that is happening, and I think it's.

She was able to persuade Republicans to vote for her because she's a more moderate candidate, and the Republican she framed as an extreme right-wing candidate. And so again, we've said it a million times. Like, turnout incredibly important, and also persuasion is incredibly important. And you can't be given up on convincing Republican or lean Republican or independent voters to vote for you, because both things are key to win a race.

Speaking of elections, the most definitive account of what happened in the 2022 midterms is finally out. The data firm Catalyst maintains the longest running voter file outside the two political parties, which makes their insights much more accurate than exit polls. Few of the major findings about 2022 are one. You just mentioned. This. Turnout was higher than any midterm election other than 2018, and Democrats won the majority of heavily contested races.

Two Gen Z and millennial voters combined actually exceeded their 2018 record-breaking turnout by 6, and 65 of them supported Democratic candidates. Three election-denying MAGA candidates did one to four points worse than other Republicans, and four. The 2020 Biden coalition basically stayed the same, with two notable exceptions. Democratic support among white, non-college-educated women rose 4, and turnout among Black voters fell in contested races.

What's your take on the data and did anything else stand out to you?

There's obviously a lot of work to do there. When you know even midterms, as high as the turnout was in this midterm, it's still. There's still a whole ton of people who are going to sign the presidential election who were not in this election. But the strength of the Democratic Coalition stays strong. The second piece that I think is really notable and important is the centrality of continuing to brand correctly the Republicans as extremists, and particularly extremists on issues like abortion.

Because if you can take those gains you have made with white women who didn't go to college with the surge in voter registration among women that they found in this study. After the Roe v. Wade decision. And keep pushing it forward. As around the country, whether it's in Florida or North Carolina or elsewhere, that Republicans are continuing to push incredibly extreme, cruel and dangerous positions on abortion. It creates a. It is a boost to what we are seeing, which is a anti-Maga majority in the in the country, but particularly in the battleground states. That will decide the presidential election and decide to the Senate in 2022. And what is I think most useful about this study is that in the 2022 election? There was almost one-for-one overlap between where the races were for governor and Senate and the ones that will decide the presidency. Oftentimes, they're not, you know, it's about Maine or some or these other states that are not in play in the presidential, but here it is. We're talking about Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, right?

That is the that's it, that's the battleground right there.

That's where we saw the biggest drop-off, though. Notably, it was less of an issue in the two races in Georgia, both the governor's race and the Senate race, and North Carolina, the Senate race. Where we lost. When Black candidates were running at the top of the ticket, we didn't see as much drop-off or in both turnout and support in those races. So that's something for Democrats to certainly think about, and also cannot give up on white, non-college educated voters. They made up a third of the Democrats winning coalition in 2022.

That's more than it was in 2020, when Biden won some voters back white working class voters back from when Hillary ran in 2016.

And we saw in 2020 2022, support for Democrats rose among non-college educated white women. Which, you know, Celinda Lake always tells us, is like a key swing group. And there's plenty of reasons for that. I think abortion is a huge one. I also think sort of like economic reasons as well.

But you know, this idea that we should, that these are all Trump voters and we should give up on them. It's just not. It hasn't borne out in all of the data we've seen in every election since 2016, it just hasn't borne out. So yeah, those are, those were all.

Those were all my takes on this. Do you think that the 2022 results and the data from Catalyst can tell us anything about where the electorate?

I would think of it less as telling us where the electorate is going to be than giving us a list of things we should work on in preparation for 2024. One you mentioned, which was some concerning. Numbers with Black voters in places other than Georgia and North Carolina to the Latino vote stayed basically equivalent to where it was in 2020. But that is still a nine point drop from in support levels for Democrats from where it was in 2016. If we want to have any margin for error and put some other states, like Texas, in play, we have to get start getting that number.

Stopping it from falling is step one, getting it back up to where it was is step two, and so that point to point three is the. We won this election because of large turnout from Gen. Z and millennials, and as you would point out, millennials are not that young anymore. But this is the core of the Democratic Party.

We have to make sure we have that turnout going forward and thinking about how we're communicating with those people. In a media environment where our traditional tools, other than very popular progressive podcasts, do not reach that group, how are we going to navigate that with an 80-year-old president like that? That cannot fall by the wayside. And should be a top of mind. And as we know, it is top of mind of the Biden folks as they're thinking about it. But those would be the top three things on my punch list in thinking about how we replicate the 2022 success in 2024..

Yes, certainly some good news in the data.

It makes us feel good. It never, ever works by that. I mean, they voted to raise the debt ceiling a million times before, and they did it under Trump, and they've done it before. Actually, what we find when we test that is, it backlashes hard again. It's that reminder that we are, or that feeling that we are perennially irresponsible and we just keep putting ourselves into this situation.

On the DO side, which is obviously the more important side, definitely talking about it as default, definitely making clear that there are villains here. So, for example, if MAGA Republicans block our government from paying America's bills, millions of families won't be able to pay ours. So really, putting into stark relief, what is this abstract, seeming thing? Also saying, for example, MAGA Republicans are threatening to default on America, that phrase, default on America, unless they can take away what Americans need. In order to be able to explain what I also call the your money or your life offer quote unquote offer that McCarthy is putting forward.

Is it specific programs? What does your research show?

But, that said, to directly answer your question, the number one rule is we don't need to repeat what they say, right? So McCarthy, for example, introduces the notion of work requirements and how we need to have work requirements. And our instinctive response is to say, these work requirements are terrible, these work requirements are going to harm people, these work requirements. X, y, z.

And there I go, repeating what? Work requirements? Which is something that, broadly speaking, many, many Americans actually favor because they have been taught to worship at the altar of work will set you free. Hmm, where have I seen that phrase before? So instead, we can call them, for example, benefits theft. Basically, McCarthy wants to take away benefits, the care, public education, veterans services that Americans need and that we support. So that he can hand kickbacks, hand dollars to his donors. We always want to get in that piece of what I call ascribing motivation.

So, making it clear the why behind?

In my tweet about this, I can write benefit theft or whatever else, but the press is just going to write work requirements. And that is the primary vehicle for which most voters are still getting. To the extent that they are following this, and polls show they're not following it that closely. That could change as we get closer to default. But if they're getting information about it, it is being framed in ways in which we have no control. Do you have thoughts on how to push that back, or how to navigate the challenges of the media environment we're in?

Yeah, I mean.

So, a couple of points of advice number one. We don't have control over what the opposition says, We don't have control over what the mainstream media says. The only thing we have control over is what we say. And so I would still reinforce and deliberately repeat, because repetition is important.

And so I'm being repetitious in order to repeat that notion that still we have to stick with our thing. And I think that the widespread usage of default and defaulting on America is already a sign that we can push back on. The phrase that is sort of closest to top of mind, which is debt ceiling. And I'm not saying the media has changed, but that is a far more widespread thing. So how do we make the work requirements, for example, default no longer be the default? So the media says to you as a member of Congress, or, you know, as someone who is being quoted, Hey, what do you think about these work requirements?

You know, my advice for what to say back is, I think most of us in America, and certainly my voters and my constituents that I talk to across my district, believe that most of us are just here. Because we want to care for our families and leave things off for generations to come. But today, McCarthy and his MAGA Republicans want to steal benefits from Americans who work day in and day out. Whether that's caring for our kids or whether that's punching in and out at a nine to five. He wants to be able to hand kickbacks to his donors while he screws the rest of us. Basically, just coming back again to why he's doing this, rather than belaboring whether work requirements are good, work requirements are bad, they're obnoxious, they're not obnoxious. Just not taking the bait.

Is there's a you know, everyone wants to get our, you know, you would know, the right phrase? But once we have fallen and Biden has put himself in this position on the idea that we have to deal with deficits over time. It's a question of how, because, I mean, the public does agree with that, even if they and they have more ways. And, you know, they just want to cut foreign aid and waste foreign abuse, and keep everything else. While also expending, you know, spending more money in the military, whatever the public wants. But you get into now, you're in this world of how do you do it right? And our way is includes asking the wealthy and corporations to pay more. They will refuse to do that because they refuse to do that. They have to X, Y and Z, right? Which can be cut. Medicare and Social Security.

You know, as you know, benefit theft is in your phrase or something like that. Like that is sort of the, you know. Once we're in that world, is that the is that the way to do it? About two different approaches.

And regardless of what is actually factually true and the way that we, you know, yell on screen. Because it is true that they're the ones that actually pile onto the deficit with their tax cuts, and there are various kinds of spending. The public perception is what the public perception is, as you have rightly laid out, and No. So when we get into that trap of, you know, we also want to cut the deficit, and these are the ways that we're going to cut the deficit. I just think we're handing them the advantage and where we need to keep the discourse is. And you know, I'm going to bring up a word that you and I are both very, very into, which is freedoms. We need to talk about, how we need to make the freedom case in the economic realm, so this idea, as ever, that we value our freedoms. But a wealthy few have always tried calling the shots, rigging the rules. To avoid paying what they owe, that, by the way, pay what they owe, rather than ask them to contribute their fair share, much stronger language pay what they owe. Rightly implies that they've been skating by and skirting what is due, as opposed to now a new asking them to chip into the pot. So the idea with that, that the wealthy few have always tried calling the shots. And now MAGA. Republicans want to default on America and push us into economic showdown unless we let them take away our health care, our school funding, jobs from families.

That is where we need the argument to be that, basically, this is same as it ever was. Perennially. MAGA Republicans jumping to do the bidding of billionaires and trying to put our families into peril and making the Colby protect our families from the MAGA default.

What is your advice on how we do that without simply being irresponsible? Is there a way that you would recommend to build a coherent narrative about who the Republicans are to fit all of these things into?

The slings and arrows don't land. So what we have to do, and it's tough, is discipline ourselves to actually not talk about every single one of these things as a separate one-off. And can you believe they did this? and can you believe they said that? and can you believe? and can you believe? and can you believe? But rather, as you just articulated, come up with one overarching charge. And the ones that we are seeing still pop because we are hot in the middle of this. Especially in preparation for the slew of Supreme Court badness that is coming our way. We're just in the field, looking, looking, looking at what is this overarching story?

The ones that are popping to the top, unsurprisingly, a continuation of what we saw work in 22. Which is, they want to take away your freedoms from the freedom to love who you love, to read what you want to read. For your kids to learn the truth of our past. Your freedom to decide whether and when to have kids, your freedom to be with your partner, your freedom to parent. How you see fit and raise your kids according to your own values. Which, of course, is a charge that they make against us. So again, that loss aversion, weaving in the economics. They want to take away your freedom to earn a good living, they want to take away your freedom to retire in dignity and so on. So it doesn't just apply on the social side, another way of doing it, another kind of overarching storyline that's really popping is this idea of control. So they want to control us, they want to decide our futures for us, they want to take us backward to a time where they call the shots. And they can hand back whatever they want to their wealthy donors. While telling us who we can be, what we can do, where we can go, and what we can say.

So taking away our freedoms, trying to control us and decide our futures for us. Those are two kind of ways to tell the full story and fit the particular for instances in it. And thank you so much, please tell our.

ANAT Thank you so.

I would encourage you to go join the Discord. I think it's the platonic ideal of social media, especially in Elon's Twitter.

And I'm going to post some clips on social media, so go check those out if you want a taste for what it is and go sign up.

Crooked?

Com slash friends John and Dan, please say crooked.com slash friends.

Com slash friends.

Com slash friends great, let's play the game. Welcome back to take take, don't tell me.

So I'm going to present you all with five news stories. And then you'll have to rank them from best to worst, with the worst take being number one. Okay, here's the catch.

You don't know which takes are coming, so be careful to not fill that number one slot too early. Are you both ready?

I'd wait, I don't know, so yes, I'm ready as I'm going to be. So let's start with a piece from Politico. It's about Vivek Ramaswamy.

Yes, do you know what this one is? you said Politico, and I was triggered, Yes, wow.

So, Vivek Ramaswamy is running for the 2024 Republican nomination for president. If you aren't familiar, his background is that he's rich and he hates wokeness, that's it. This piece is titled.

Nine ways Vivek Ramaswamy can beat Donald Trump, according to Andrew Yang.

Dan This is like a piece called How to Win a Game Seven, according to Doc Rivers. Do you think that was that necessary?

Was it necessary?

I congratulate the Celtics fans for winning yet again. They will always be better than the Sixers. But just say that on Sunday, I watched Game seven and I.

Step on your toes until you rip your toenail off.

So this piece from Andrew Yang is in listicle format. So there are some big picture pieces, pieces of advice, followed by paragraphs. I'd like to, for the quote, just share you a couple of those big picture pieces of advice. Uh, number one, be prepared for the debates.

Number five lean into memes.

I mean, like, you know, you can give Kevin McCarthy like leaks that you feel good about the number one position, but no, the other side can leak. Other things where I mean, you don't want to put it at number one. It sounds like, I think we just got to give ourselves some room.

Do do that, doubt that I never, never. You don't, you don't have to. you don't have to better that way.

Let's go to the Wall Street Journal. Here's a piece I love this genre, titled If Biden bows out, How about Michelle Obama? How about it? Here's a quote.

According to a Zogby Analytics poll released last year, it found that if Mr. Biden were to bow out in 2024, the favorite to replace him is the only Democrat with broad national appeal, Michelle Obama. I should say this piece, I don't remember how you feel about all of these authors, but this piece is by Douglas Schoen and Andrew Stein.

So Hillary Clinton could back around this time in 2011 or so, I think he did a similar. He called for someone else to drop out recently, like this is, this is his thing, he's kind of mailing it in.

It's very possible he's using Chet GPT to do this. So I say, four.

Wheat is only legal because it's cool.

This is one from the Washington Post, the next one. It's a piece titled The Durham report is a damning indictment of the FBI and the media. Now I have an explanation here, but do you, one of you guys want to explain what the Durham report is? It's an go ahead, John.

I was gonna make a duke basketball joke, but it's not even I'm tapped out on basketball content for this pod.

And somehow, Republicans are still holding it up as like proof that Donald Trump was unfairly investigated. It just seems like fucking crazy.

Why did Trump supporters storm the Capitol because they believe Trump's false claims that the election was being stolen, and why did they believe him? If the media lied to them about Trump's collusion with Russia, why should they trust the reports that Trump's election claims were false?

What do you think, Dan? It feels like it's a number three, but I'm worried about what the last, yeah, and if it can be, and if it can beat the Andrew Yang thing.

Is the FBI slash Media's fault? Number four is what about Michelle Obama? Number five is weed is only legal because it's cool. The good thing about number one is that it's unconventional. It's what you make of it because it's not really a take.

It's a tweet from Mike Pence. It's simply a photo of Mike Pence inside a Dunkin Donuts in New Hampshire. It's a very awkward photo. John's holding up his dunkin, so here's a text from the tweet that goes along with the photo.

I heard New Hampshire in America run on at Dunkin Donuts, had to check it out for myself. American flag emoji. The take is the implicit idea that this is what Pence needs to do to contend in 2024 and that this was good by his staff.

Where do you guys want to rank it?

Is this what Mike Pence needs to win?

Wall Street Journal What about Michelle Obama and New York Times? Wheat is only legal because it's cool. How do we feel overall about these rankings?

Everyone have a great weekend and we'll talk to you next week.

Com Slash Friends Pod Save America is a crooked media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our producers are Andy Gardner-Bernstein and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

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