The presenting sponsor of Positive America, ZIP recruiter covid-19 has presented many challenges for candidates on the campaign trail, so they've been forced to find creative ways to reach their audience, for instance, like accusing Joe Scarborough of murder.

That is a that's one way to give way. One way to get rich.

Get to your audience audience. We got a Montana candidate who's running for statewide office who started an online story.

Time for children to give their parents a break.

Nice.

A Michigan congressional candidate launched a program to help deliver free groceries to western Michigan. What kind of idea? People in these roles have to find their own relevant resources to connect with voters.

But what about the rest of us? If you're a job seeker who needs to connect with a great company that's hiring or a company that needs to connect with the right people.

There's only one resource you need and that is, of course, zip recruiter if you're looking for a job.

Zip recruiters app will send you up to date job openings so you can be one of the first to apply. And if you're actively hiring, ZIP recruiter will invite candidates to apply to your most urgent roles, making it faster and easier to reach the people you need.

Zip recruiter is working with all of us to help us keep moving forward. So let's work together. Visit zip recruiter dotcom slash work together.

Welcome to Positive America, I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer on today's pot. I talked to one of the Obama campaign's most legendary organizers, Paul Toos, about the 2020 election and how you can make a difference. Dan, you should see Paul's beard. He looks like Santa Claus.

It is outrageous.

Is that before this, that pandemic related or is he he didn't happen to happen to have that beard and a pandemic happened to happen, you know, with Tu's.

It could be either. You don't know before that. We'll talk about how the president marked one hundred thousand American deaths from coronavirus with a deranged Twitter meltdown and Joe Biden's first public appearance and interview outside of his home since the pandemic began. But first, be sure to check out parts of the world this week. Tommy and Ben explain how China is trying to crush dissent in Hong Kong and how the Trump administration is increasing the risk of nuclear war by walking away from decades old bipartisan arms control agreements.

Also, check out Dan's latest good and bad 20 20 ads video, this time with special guest David Plouffe. This is exciting.

Yeah, it was great. As usual, Plouffe, a super smart. We broke down a ad from the Biden Super PAC, an ad from the Trump campaign and the much requested Lincoln Project ad Morning in America. All right.

So everyone go check that out on YouTube. Dotcom slash crooked media. Finally, if you haven't adopted a swing state, what are you waiting for? Dan, would you like to make a pitch for your adopted state of North Carolina since Lovett and Tommy and I all did ours on Tuesdays pod and you've had some complaints about that, that North Carolina was not giving a fair hearing on that part?

Look, my complaints about this date back before that podcast, you may remember, wow, you had a little podcast called The Wilderness.

I did. Which was very focused on Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan. You even went to Florida, if I recall correctly. Yet you ignored did. I only had money for four focus groups.

Yeah. And you and I and with and you made choices. And those choices included ignoring the state of North Carolina.

Not only if I adopt in North Carolina, it is a Phifer family project because in 2008, how he Phifer was an organizer in North Carolina when Barack Obama won the state and turned it blue for the first time in a very long time.

Here is why I think people should make North Carolina look, adopt any state we want. We will we will take whatever states get us to 270. But here is why North Carolina is important. It's a three four state. It is a it is a state where you can defeat Donald Trump, elect Cal Cunningham and rip the gavel from Mitch McConnell's ghoulish claws and flip the state legislature towards the Democrats.

Reason number two, the Google North Carolina Republicans. Hmm. They make the folks in Wisconsin look like the Lincoln Project. They are on the forefront of rigging democracy and stealing elections. And these people should be nowhere near power.

And so we have to do that.

And this is a state that I think maybe most importantly, above all other reasons, except the one that I used to work there, is that this is a state that is entirely about mobilization. There are more than enough unregistered Democratic voters in North Carolina to win the election. So if there are sufficient volunteers, sufficient activism, we can win the state.

That is the the path Obama used in 2008. We can win it again. And so join North Carolina. You have me, you have Alija, you have Shanika, you have Yale. We have a core group of the best content creators and staff at cricket. And it's going to be an uphill climb. We don't get enough attention to a lot of focus on Florida and everyone loves Wisconsin. And Arizona was hipster like four months ago, but now it's super mainstream.

And so if you want to be on the leading edge of the new emerging Democratic majority, this country going to be on the team, North Carolina.

Look, I think you made a lot of compelling arguments there, but none more so than join Team North Carolina because of the content creation.

You know what? We we live in a meme in video world and when and and have you see have you seen the videos that shows. Yeah.

If you're on Twitter, you'll he's really been spending most of his workday making defeating Donald Trump.

Are you going to dock his pay? But also, look, if you want to flip the state that once made Joe Arpaio sheriff, you know, come join Team Arizona. That's my pitch.

I look, I'm not against winning Arizona. I'm not against North Carolina. But I would like people on my team. And in fact, you know, many men, let's just say many people are saying that many volunteers have signed up for Team Arizona anyway.

Have the Arizona Democratic establishment rushed to team? Look, Kyrsten Sinema, Mark Kelly, if you're out there, I'm pretty sure. See, on Twitter, I'm trying to get you guys to tweet about this. I haven't heard anything yet, so that's OK. That's OK. This is a grassroots.

It's a marathon, not a grassroots movement. All right. Anyway, go to vote. Save America, dot com, slash, adopt, pick a state and we will send you specific calls to action that you can do right from your couch between now and November. It is super important. This is what you can do to help win this election. All right.

Let's get to the news.

As of Wednesday, just over three months into this pandemic, more than 100000 Americans have died from covid-19 easily one of the worst tragedies our country has ever endured. We have already lost more people to covid than we did in Vietnam. The Persian Gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan combined is stunning.

Many media outlets and elected officials from both parties marked the grim milestone in some way yesterday. On Wednesday, here's a video clip from former Vice President Joe Biden.

There are moments in our history so grim, so heartrending, that there forever fixed in each of our hearts. Shared grief. Today is one of those moments one hundred thousand lives have now been lost, this virus. All of you who are hurting so badly. I'm so sorry for your loss. This nation grieves with you, take some solace from the fact. We all agree with you, so we don't have a Trump clip because he didn't say a word on Wednesday about the fact that one hundred thousand Americans have died.

Instead, he played golf over the weekend, falsely accused Joe Scarborough of murder, falsely accused Barack Obama of spying on him, falsely accused Democrats of trying to steal the election, falsely claim that vote by mail is fraudulent, falsely accused Twitter of interfering in the election because they fact checked his claim about vote by mail retweeted some truly vile insults about Nancy Pelosi. Stacey Abrams and Hillary Clinton celebrated the news that the Atlantic is laying off 20 percent of its staff and that the Dow hit twenty five thousand.

And this morning, on Thursday, he shared a tweet or a Republican county commissioner in New Mexico said, quote, The only good Democrat is a dead Democrat.

So, Dan, do you think that the president has struck the right tone for the moment?

I know, I know people were laughing, Owen.

Yeah, I mean, I would say this to you right now, John, the optics are not the optics are not good.

Like you read that completely insane list of things in your choices are laughing and crying.

And it is just stunning. And it's there are two things that are stunning at the same time. And I think they are the scale of the the challenges are such that they're hard to actually grapple with in a real way, which is one, you went through the numbers that a hundred thousand Americans have died in a few months. And that the exact same time that that national tragedy and a preventable national tragedy happened, the person who is our president is someone who not for one second.

His seemed to think about the scale of that tragedy has tried to heal the nation has wrestled with the idea that some of the decisions he made or did not make contributed to that. He has only sought to elude blame for the problem that he allowed to happen.

And for everything else we talk about in this election and health care and taxes and civil rights and all the other important issues on the ballot, but ultimately comes down to is.

Presidents are the head of state of this country, and we are going to face tragedies again, and we should just be very, very clear that it is highly likely, based on the history of pandemics like this and the pace at which vaccines are usually developed, that the person who was sworn in in January of twenty twenty one will be present at a time. Which coronavirus still exists? You can either have someone who had a message like the one Joe Biden had, who clearly in a heart wrenching and raw way, was dealing with what is actually happening in this country.

And you have someone who is opposed to trying to solve the problem is simply trying to distract people from the problem.

Yeah, I mean, I found Biden's video moving and powerful, not just because of the particular words of Biden himself, but I I guess I hadn't realized how much, just as an American, I wanted a leader to talk to us during a difficult time. And in the past, every time the country's been through a tragedy, whether you agreed with the president in power or not, whether you're from the same party or not, you could want that person out of office immediately.

But at the very least, the president would step up and speak to the nation and comfort the nation and offer some solace and remind us that we are one country and that we have more in common than than that which divides us. And it was, you know, the first thing to be really sad about is obviously 100000 Americans dying.

And sort of a second order thing is just the fact that we've lost this sort of sense of national leadership that sort of brings us together as a country during these really difficult times. And, you know, it makes you pretty enraged that we have a president like this.

Why do you think he seems even more unhinged than usual or I guess I should say. Do you think he seems even more unhinged than usual?

I mean, even some of his right wing media pals at The Washington Examiner, The Wall Street Journal editorial board, criticized the Scarborough thing, the idea that in the midst of all this, he's been on this like multi day rampage, spreading some deranged conspiracy theory about a cable news host that just has no basis in reality whatsoever.

And he just won't give it up like what is going on with him.

I think just to be so people have the information they need. We should explain why the Scarbro conspiracy theory is false and what the facts are, which is that when Joe Scarborough was serving in Congress many years ago, he had a twenty eight year old intern who died in the office from a head injury. The medical examiner determined that the woman passed out and hit her head due to an undiagnosed heart condition. The law enforcement accepted that explanation, the families have an explanation and we've moved on, this has been a conspiracy theory that has been swirling in the nether regions of the Internet for a long time.

And Donald Trump, because he saw it in his political interest or to deal with the grievance of being criticized for his performance as president, decided to use the presidential bully pulpit to communicate this to millions of people without any regard for the family of the woman who passed away.

I just I mean, I'm glad, I'm glad thank you for providing all the facts about that so people know, but it's just like, again, it is, you know, from the day that Donald Trump started running for president until maybe the outbreak of the pandemic, we talk about these little these tangents, these crazy conspiracy theories of Trump's. You know, every time we have a podcast now is we're sitting here looking at the fact that a hundred thousand Americans have died in the last three months.

It just seems even more bizarre and deranged that he continues to talk about this shit while the nation is going through one of its worst crises in history. I do understand from the Trump campaign's just from a pure political perspective, they have decided we want to pretend the pandemic doesn't exist anymore. We don't want to talk about it because it's not helping Donald Trump, because people think that he fucked it up. We want to focus on reopening and the economy and Trump's going to be the leader of the recovery, blah, blah.

But they can't even they can't even focus on that message because every day he just goes off on 10 other tangents on Twitter. Like, I just, you know, like I just recited. And I'm just I guess he's just incapable of a message is he's just extra angry, like, I don't understand it.

Yeah, look, I think the behavior is the same, but the backdrop has changed, right? Right. This has to like him in any way, this crisis has literally not changed him a bit. If we were to go back and read the outlines of America for the last three and a half years, a large number of them begin with. Some period of Trump insanity on Twitter, right, a rainy weekend where you guys had to go through all the tweets that he sent when he wasn't golfing his like, you know, on a Monday pod, him going crazy.

And I was talking about, like, this happens all the time, but it feels different when you have 40 million Americans losing their job. One hundred thousand Americans dead than in normal times.

Yeah, even still.

Even having said that, I still think as a nation and a political culture and a media culture, we are still way too OK with this, like trying to describe how we go about life in America with a president like this who is completely deranged, deeply dangerous, without a doubt, one of the worst people in America. He is a just a horrible individual, cares about nothing other himself. And we you know, I try to do the best way I can describe it is that we are uncomfortably numb.

Like we all know this is bad.

We know, you know, put aside the base. The majority of the country and people support Trump are uncomfortable with his behavior.

But this the short term danger of him being president, the long term consequences of the fact that someone like Trump could become president are like too much for us to wrestle with. So even in a pandemic, you know, this is treated as a news story, but not sort of the cataclysmic event that it would move people's opinions about.

Who our president is and what he's. I mean, you know, when I woke up and saw him share the tweet about that asshole in New Mexico who said the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat who you know, and it's of course, this is all classic Trump. And the guy was like, oh, I didn't mean that, literally. And then he goes on to say, oh, but I would give Gretchen Whitmer and and Ralph Northam a choice, either hanging or firing squad, you know, so whatever.

But like I saw that I'm like, oh, this will be the thing that, like, people will be talking about this. This is going to dominate Twitter. And I'm like scrolling. I'm reading other news stories and, you know, people are mentioning it here and there, but it's not a big deal.

And I'm thinking like, you know, we've we went through the tragedy in El Paso right before the midterms in twenty eighteen, sort of, you know, we saw pipe bombs sent to Democratic leaders. Violence that was inspired by the perpetrators of violence, said they were inspired by some of the things that Trump said.

And like we made a bigger deal of it then and now it's happening again. And we're just like, well, we just got to move on to the next thing.

Also, you know, he's signing an executive order to because he's mad about Twitter and he's going to try to, like, go after social media companies now.

So we have to talk about that, too. I mean, I guess the question is like how what is the most effective message to voters about this kind of behavior?

Because there's people like us, a lot of people listening who pay attention to this and get exercised about this every single day. And there's a lot of Americans, most Americans who are going about their lives, trying to make sure they're healthy and don't get covid trying to make sure that they keep their job or get another job if they've lost theirs, trying to put food on the table. Like, how do we talk about this to people who are going to vote in November?

We have to make Trump's actions be about Trump. We have to explain that, that it is a message of Trump first America last, that at a time in which Americans are dying, people are losing their job. He's not focused on preventing the spread of the pandemic or fixing the economy. He is focused entirely on rewarding himself, getting reelected and punishing his enemies. That his is always Trump for us, always America last, which has two benefits.

One, it helps create motivation for the behaviors that he's demonstrating because simply etiquette violations or not being a normal president are saying untoward things is not in and of itself a powerful reelection message.

What you have to do is you have to demonstrate how it affects people's lives. And we could be doing all these other things, except we have a president who wakes up every day thinking about himself and thinking about the country.

If he suddenly becomes a little more disciplined or at least if his campaign becomes disciplined in the messages that they're putting out there through advertising, do you think it's possible that they can achieve their strategic goal of changing the narrative from the pandemic to sort of this economic recovery? You know, there was a story in Politico about how some Democrats are worried about, you know, if we do have this v shaped recovery because we have massive job losses in the spring, massive contraction of the economy.

But then as the economy reopens, you know, maybe we bounce back. And so you have GDP numbers and jobs numbers that seem like they are like the biggest job growth that we've seen, the biggest GDP growth that we've seen, even if it doesn't bring us back anywhere close to where we were when the pandemic hit. But just the numbers themselves and Trump's touting of those numbers would somehow boost his reelection chances.

Like what did you think of that story? And also, do you think that Trump is going to be able to sort of change the narrative and change the focus people's focus over the next four or five months?

I mean, as we know, things get flushed down the memory hole very quickly. Now, this is a much, much bigger deal than anything that we've ever put to that test before. This is not a brief government shutdown. This is not even impeachment. It is a national crisis, unlike anything we've seen in a century.

And so but, you know, if we are in a situation where you have a resurgence of the virus in the fall economy, get shut down again, that all that obviously is going to dictate the terms of this. What I think I read that story and I went into it thinking I should panic, but I adhere to our adage of worrying and not panicking. And so a couple things about it. One, we know from having worked in the White House for President Obama in 2009 and 2010, where we had some months with large job increases because of the Recovery Act.

And it also happened to fall the time in which the Congress was hiring census workers, which is a temporary inflation of the jobs numbers. And those numbers did not change people's impressions of the economy at all because they're looking at it from their personal perspective. Right. Despite what you know, either the stock market or some jobs numbers says you're living the reality of it and the fear and anxiety you have for your family and your job certainly outweighs some headline you may or may not see in in certainly in this media virus.

Be harder to see that now.

My caveat to that and the reason why I do worry is we know, as we talked about last week, that the only thing that is propping Trump up is his economic approval rating, that voters give him credit on the economy, that we do not believe he deserves in any way, shape or form, because I do not think much should go on Mount Rushmore for not fucking up Barack Obama's economy until he did fuck it up, but.

I think the way to like, we can't we don't know what's going to happen in the fall, we don't know what the number is going to look like. But the way to limit whatever gains you can have is to define right now what economic recovery means to Trump, like who he's trying to help. Right. That he is celebrating as his idiot son, Eric Trump did yesterday on the day one of those people died, celebrated the Dow Jones get to twenty five thousand.

Right. Right. So that this is about him helping big business corporations, the wealthy and not average everyday people. And so if you can define who Trump is fighting for and who Biden is fighting for, then you will fare better in an environment where Trump has some headlines or information that he can weaponize to make a case that he is sort of leading some sort of comeback, even if we know that's bullshit.

Yeah, I think the central question of the election has to be what kind of recovery do you want? You want a recovery that benefits Trump and his friends and Mitch McConnell and his friends, or do you want a recovery that benefits you not only financially, but also keeps you healthy, keeps you healthy, safe, and with a job that pays the bills? And that's and that's what that's the case that Biden and the Democrats have to make.

This episode of Positive America is brought to you by Four Stigmatic, a wellness company that mixes shrooms and adaptive genes with coffee, Cachao latte and plant based protein powder.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

Mushroom coffee is more than just coffee, everyone. It contains lion's mane. You, of course, know what lines mean is it's your brain.

I'm sorry, this is not hallucinogenic. This is not a description of an acid trip. No, this is real.

Lion's Mane is your brain's best friend, Tommy. It supports focused productivity and creativity during a busy day. Here's a fun fact. Here's a fun fact. Did you know that lion's mane mushrooms have long been used by the Buddhist monks to help with focus during meditation? Oh, I didn't know there were.

I'm learning. I didn't hear the name of a monk now. That's helpful.

Plus, it includes Chagga, the king of mushrooms. What this ad copy is designed to test us.

And I think I feel good. Yeah, it's good.

It's the deal. I mean, you might be happy. You might have some questions. We got answers. The compounds and antioxidant properties in Qargha play a big role in supporting our immune system and maintaining its functions. You know, you can start your day with the king of mushrooms because with everything you have going on, there's no time for a time out. It's your daily bodyguard to keep you.

Well, now you take a sip of it, you take a sip of it and you say you say, long live the king. That's a little thing you say to yourself. Here's a question that's about how far down the copy. But, you know, I would think it's probably top of mind for most people who are listening to this. Does this coffee tastes like mushrooms? No, that was my question. It doesn't. That was literally my question.

It does not. I remember like before before Stigmatic Zevin and sponsor Sarah Sarah, which I think was the first one to test it out. And she loved it. She was like, guys, there's this great mushroom coffee I'm calling a mushroom coffee. But it doesn't taste like mushrooms. No, it's just delicious.

Personally, mushroom coffee is way easier on my gut. We all know about gut health here at pods in America. Well, no, although here's the crazy thing, Ronon. I was making myself a mushroom coffee. Ronan was supposed to have a real coffee cups, got confused. He drinks my mushroom coffee. Next thing I know, he's up on the roof cleaning out the gutters.

Well, you know, the other good thing about it, unlike regular coffee, it doesn't leave you with that awful jittery feeling or crash, which you hate.

Now, now, he worked up there all day, but he wasn't jittery, all for stigmatic products or vegan and gluten free. Every single batch is tested in a third party lab for heavy metals allergens, bad bacteria, yeasts, molds, mycotoxins and pesticides to ensure their purity and safety. Well, thank you. I didn't even realize that list was something to be concerned about.

So, you know, you're getting the highest quality shrooms possible is a sentence.

I just said, best of all, for Stigmatic stands behind their products unconditionally with 100 percent money back guarantee. This is the guarantee.

Guys love every sip or get your money back. Why wouldn't you try that?

I feel like you can workshop every sip, you know, love every sip. All your money won't slip.

Like, I don't know, like we've got to get a rhyming version of that. Can you work on that? Well let's. Yeah, let's workshop that.

Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think we should get a workshop going. It'll be a lot of fungus.

Good, good, good, good. We'll get on a Schrum call.

We've worked on an exclusive offer with four stigmatic on their best selling lines. Made coffee. This is just for pods. Save America listeners receive up to 40 percent off plus free shipping on the line's main coffee bundle.

To claim this deal, you must go to four stigmatic dotcom slash crooked.

Don't shoot talki this deal. All right, don't talk. You talk your way out of it. It's a good deal.

This offer is only for PC listeners and is not available on their regular website. Go to f o u r.

S i gmat. I see dotcom aggregate and get yourself some delicious lensman coffee. That's for stigmatic dotcom slash. Crooked full discount will be applied at checkout.

All right, let's talk about what Trump's opponent has been up to. Joe Biden made his first public appearance in two months when he visited a veterans park in Delaware for Memorial Day. Biden, his wife, Jill, and his staff all wore masks to the wreath laying ceremony. The former vice president, whose late son Beau served in the military, told reporters, quote, Never forget the sacrifices that these men and women made never, ever forget. Later that day, Trump retweeted Fox pundit Brit Hume, mocking Biden for wearing a mask and then said to a reporter, quote, He was standing outside with his wife, perfect conditions, perfect weather.

And so I thought it was very unusual that he had one on. He also showed her tweet this morning that said the image of Biden in a mass, quote, endorses a culture of silence, slavery and social death.

The fuck Biden, in his first in-person interview since the pandemic began, told CNN's Dana Bash that Trump is in, quote, absolute fool and that his opposition to masks is macho stuff that's costing people's lives. All right. Before we get to the mosque issue.

What did you think of Biden's decision to leave his home and do a memorial event? Should he do more things like this?

I mean, it was it was great to see him out there. I think it got a tremendous amount of attention. It seems like the fact that he had been in his House opposition narrative around him being in his house and that he went out and did it and wore a mask. Right. All of that created serious conversation. I think this is where the campaign is headed, which is to try to find things to do that are consistent with the guidelines in Delaware where Biden lives and the safety of not just the candidate, but the Secret Service, the staff and everyone who has to travel with a presidential nominee.

And I you know, I think we will you know, I don't know of a specific plan, but I think we will begin to see some more things like that. But it's going to be limited given the constraints in which he's under. But it obviously will ramp up over time.

Yeah, I mean, look, and in Delaware, they're starting to relax some of the social distancing regulations that they've put in place, some of the restrictions and so has every state at this point. Now, I think all 50 states have some tentative plans for reopening in Delaware. Governor Carney announced on Tuesday that outdoor gatherings of up to two hundred and fifty people are allowed with precautions, face covering, social distancing, et cetera.

So I do think it's important that, you know, and I'm sure the Biden team is working on this, but like to figure out, you know, public events that are not in his house, that are creative in the sense that they show Biden out on the campaign trail, but also make sure to protect him and the people around him, like you said.

All right. Let's talk about the masks.

So the latest navigator tracking poll shows that nearly 75 percent of Americans are in favor of wearing masks, including more than half of Republicans. Two thirds of Americans disapprove of Trump's refusal to wear a mask. And the vast majority of people in both parties want their elected officials to wear masks inside.

So. Why is Trump trying so hard to make this some kind of polarized culture war? Is there a strategy here? Is he just being an asshole?

Like, what do you think? Hmm? Well, I think probably both. So I think on the asshole front, I think he he just has this natural instinct for trying to find wedge issues like he knows he does better in a period of time of division, like he succeeds through polarization. And so he's trying to create this wedge between people who don't want the virus and scientists and local officials and his voters. It's not really clear.

Now, I'm not a political expert on any level, but I'm pretty sure that on a 75, 18 percent issue, you do not want to choose the 18 percent side. But that's where he is. I think to the extent that there's a strategy and I think I always think Trump's decisions are more instinctual than election, I think it's probably patently obvious thing to say and instinctual, maybe giving him too much credit.

But is like if you are trying to pretend like the virus either never happened or is not here. Right. Is that we like if you believe you need to return to normal to be able to get the economy going and return to your really comfortable forty four percent average approval rating, then having people wear masks is a constant reminder of your potentially your failure to prevent the virus from spreading as it did.

And so, like, I think that's why he naturally does not want people to be wearing masks around him, because it reminds perhaps himself of his failure, but also reminds the public of his failure.

I thought I was looking for some Trump ally official to actually give an explanation of why he keeps shitting on mask wearing and why this has become a fucking thing on Fox News and all the rest of the wackos on the right, Eric Bech, who is the co-chairman of one of Trump's super PACs, said this to The Washington Post, quote, There is this capitulation that Biden seems to have.

Believe the science, don't question anything and don't show any leadership, whereas Trump understands that we should question science and should question data.

I mean, that's it. That's is Biden. We are criticizing Biden because he believes in science and Trump knows what real leadership is not believing in science.

Do you think Trump and Eric Beach, whoever he may be, questions gravity, a real leader says to themselves, is the world really round? Yes.

Great for a great president, Kyrie Irving up here.

So, I mean, on a sort of the broader culture war, a sense which the culture thing, by the way, gets me annoyed because the way the media portrays it is that everyone is automatically polarized. Everyone is already divided by a culture where everything is left, right, red, blue, blah, blah, blah.

They love this, but we're not divided over mask's. Republican voters are the only ones divided over whether to wear masks. Democrats are fully supportive. Independents are fully supportive. Half the Republican Party is fully supportive. You know, the very, very conservative governor of North Dakota made like an emotional plea for people to wear masks.

Mike DeWine, governor of Ohio, has been making a plea like the Republican officials out there.

The only people that are divided about this right now are the Republican Party, though, of course, Donald Trump will try to make this an issue where, you know, your allegiance to the Republican Party is dependent on whether you approve or disapprove of masks. But that's the whole point. He tries to polarize these things. We are not naturally divided as a country. We are not naturally polarized as a country. We are polarized because we have a president that tries to polarize us every single day.

And there's another party that is not trying to do that, that is actively trying to make sure that we all do something that would protect us. And there are Republican officials who are trying to do that as well. So that's the polarization thing.

But, you know, actually, is that a piece the other day where they said that this is part of a larger strategy? Trump is out and about masks be damned. Watch for plenty more mask. Free outings from Trump hyping the reopening of the economy and avoiding discussions of social distancing and death counts. And watch for a visual contrast between the two party conventions in August. Two sources close to the president say they hope to have a boisterous live crowd.

They want to have more people there physically than at the Democratic convention. So you can see what Trump wants to set up for the fall, right? He is the guy who is championing the opening of the economy. He's going to go and have his rallies with his big crowds. He's strong and tough and he doesn't worry about any virus. And he wants people to just live their lives and be normal and stuff like that. And there's weak, cowardly Joe Biden and the Democrats.

Hiding indoors, doing their virtual events, not doing reality, they want you to stay home, they don't want you to live their lives, that seems to be what the contrast he wants to set up for the fall. What do you think about that? What can it be effective?

I mean, can we just stipulate that even if you looked at this, as Trump does to his pure self-interest, which we presume is centered around getting re-elected, there is no disputing this. The more people wear masks, the less spread of the viruses, the less spread of the virus there is, the more economic activity, the more economic activity, the faster the economy grows and the more jobs are created, the more economic growth and jobs, the better chance Trump has of being reelected.

Yet he has decided to say, nope, because I think either I look funny in a mask or I'm going to be some sort of culture warrior, even though that's a complete mis use of the term culture war media. Great job that he's going to make it more likely that we have a resurgence in the fall, which makes it more likely that he will be defeated.

The strategy could have used a little bit of scrutiny from either the Trump campaign or the reporters writing about it, because it makes almost no sense.

But to the extent that, like buried in the absurdity that the Trump campaign has put forward is the idea that they are trying to say Biden is old and frail and not up to the job like that. Like that is a huge part of the messaging from Trump, his Twitter account, Fox News, which is his Twitter account on TV.

And the one way to do that is a contrast of images of Trump in factories or in front of crowds and Biden. In a mask in his basement or whatever else, like I don't think the Binyomin is going to allow that to be the exact contrast, but they're trying to show that Trump is up to the task and that even if you have questions about Trump, Biden is definitely not up to the task of getting the country out of this mess. And they're trying to, which is not a bad political strategy.

I think it's a tough task is to flip the crisis on its head and turn it into an asset for Trump as opposed to a weakness.

Yeah, and all I would say is, you know, Republicans want the frame to be, you know, Trump wants everything open, Democrats want everything closed, and then they want to force Democrats to either say, yes, things should be closed because we want to keep people safe or no, we're opening some stuff. But we want to you know, they want they want the frame to be open, closed.

And I think Democrats need to pull it out of that frame and say that Trump wants to do nothing about the crisis except things that help his re-election. That's the only he has no plan. He has no plan for jobs. He has no plan to stop the spread of the virus. He has no plan to put you back to work. He has no plan to help you in any way. He has one plan and that plan is to get re-elected.

Democrats want to keep you safe, keep you healthy, put you back to work, make sure you can pay your bills. We want to do something about this crisis that is both a health crisis and an economic crisis. He doesn't want to do anything and he has proved that he hasn't done anything yet, which is why we're still in the mess that we're in.

So I just think it's like it's we can't let it be a frame of there open. We're closed. Which, as you saw from the lazy reporting on this, the media is very you know, they're willing to, like, buy into that frame that it's red blue America culture war masks, no mask. You can see how the media is going to eat this up. And I think we're going to have to work harder to sort of pull it out of that frame.

I agree with everything you said except for one addendum, which I think we should give Trump two plants, get re-elected, help his wealthy friends and corporations. Because I think Pollit, I think the public assumes with some reason that every politician wants to get reelected. So that's not necessarily a deficit. But if you can point out the plutocratic economic part of this, I think that also will help. That's right. That's right. But but the point of that is that requires Democrats to also have a plan, the specific plan for.

Yes.

Which I have no doubt that the Biden campaign is working on somewhere. But it can't plan, always beats no plan. Right. And currently we're in a no plan versus no plan world. And so we need a plan.

Yeah.

And when we say plan, you know, we don't mean you're like 20 page policy prescription that's on your website somewhere, like a plan that every voter or at least every organizer can recite to every voter easily.

So the Trump campaign is also attacking Biden for comments he made at the end of an interview on The Breakfast Club last Friday with Charlamagne the God. He said, quote, If you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't black.

Biden later apologized in a call with black business leaders and told them that he shouldn't have been so, quote, Cavalier, saying, quote, I know that the comments have come off like I was taking the African-American vote for granted, but nothing could be further from the truth. I've never, ever done that and I've earned it every time I've run.

Of course, Trump campaign is already running digital ads and selling you ain't black T-shirts. Very subtle, as usual. Then what was your reaction to Biden's comments?

You know, as someone who has staffed many, many interviews for political candidates and presidents, I don't think I've ever seen someone make a mistake so close to the finish line because I.

I will go up and I heard about it on Twitter and I watched the 18 minute interview. And I'm like, wait, where is this? Where is this? And then they're leaving there. And in the interview, it's I don't see it. Did someone make a mistake? And I was like, oh, there it is. There it is at the very end.

Yes, it was after he said by he made the mistake and it was very clearly a mistake. It was the obviously the wrong thing to say.

I did think as the day went on that you can understand the media ecosystem incentives that cause some politicians to never apologize, mostly Republican. Now I want a politician, a president, a presidential candidate who is willing to admit they were wrong and to apologize when they cause offense. So I think it's the right thing to do. But I'm sitting there, this happens. Or, you know, the Trump campaign puts out the T-shirts. Everyone is reacting to it.

There's a Twitter swirl.

You know, the world kind of moves on a little bit, at least in terms of the online conversation about it. And then I'm holding my phone in my hand and I get nine news alerts. That's like Biden apologized. Biden apologized, Biden apologized, Biden apologies. And and so you see that somehow we live in a world where Biden gets a hundred times more coverage than Trump for saying the wrong thing and apologizing than Trump does for saying the wrong thing and never apologizing.

And like Biden was right to apologize, it is the morally right thing to do, obviously, in the medium to long term, the politically right thing to do, but like it is not treated the same way or fairly. And there's a real asymmetry in how these things are covered.

Yeah, I mean, it's back to the conversation. We've had a million times about like 2016 and how there haven't been many lessons learned from 2016 at all. And I think it is a we we can yell about it and yell about media coverage, but it's going to be a dynamic that we all have to deal with between now and November, that any time Biden makes a mistake, it will be on somewhat of an equal plain as Trump mistakes that are a thousand times worse.

But, you know, this goes to why Trump thinks he can benefit politically from this.

Like, I think the Trump people know that he's one of the most racist people to ever hold office. I mean, he's he says racist things 10 times a day, and yet they think this will benefit them politically. Why? What's their strategy here? You know, there is a whole bunch of stories that like behind the curtain stories about the Trump campaign effort to court African-American voters, and they're very in depth.

And I think, in fairness to the reporters, pretty skeptical of both the efficacy and sincerity of these efforts.

But they're putting real resources behind this, like they have a show on the Trump app that is called Black Voices with Katrina Pierson and others. They have you know, there's a lot of merge. There's you know, they're putting up signs and storefronts in African-American communities. And so they're putting resources behind it. I think the question is, I think this is true for the vast majority of Republican Party efforts to court black voters. Is are they trying to get.

More African-Americans to vote for them, or are they trying to convince white moderates who were uncomfortable with Trump's racism that he's not as racist as they might think? The question isn't the strategy, it's what the target audience is. And and so I think that is, you know, how to analyze this necessarily.

I also think they don't necessarily think they can get a lot of black voters to cast their ballots for Trump, but they do think that they can get some small percentage of black voters, particularly young black voters who do not have a long time attachment to the Democratic Party, as older black voters do, to stay home. Right. Which is what they tried to do in 2016 with some success. And if you look at the places where we need to win in Michigan, around Detroit and in Pennsylvania, around Philadelphia and, you know, a little less so in Wisconsin, I think.

But there are places where they think if they can shave the margin just a little bit, that can make the difference.

And I you know, my issue with Biden's comments, which he was, you know, I'm glad he he apologized for is I think for a lot of at least this is what the data shows.

I think for a lot of older black voters, they probably care less about that. They do have a long time attachment to the Democratic Party and they understand that, you know, of course, we're not going to vote for Trump and they have an affection for Joe Biden. But I think there's a lot of young people of color, and this is true of young people in general who don't really have an attachment to either party.

And the reason they don't have they they could have very liberal progressive values. But the reason that they don't have an attachment to either party is they don't see that anyone has done anything for them to make their life better over the last several years. And they're worried about their job prospects. They're worried about police brutality and police violence, which we're going to talk about in a second.

They're now worried about how they've been disproportionately impacted by this virus. And again, they look around and they see no one seems to care. And all these politicians say the same thing around the election time. And, yes, Trump's racist and I get that. But where are the Democrats? Where is Joe Biden and what have they done? And so when you hear Joe Biden say, you know, you ain't black, they think, well, you know what?

And this is what Charlamagne said to him. Charlemagne's like, this isn't about Trump. So I don't like Trump. I'm wondering, as president, what are you going to do for my community? How many times have politicians shown up in black communities to ask for votes? And then after the election, nothing happens. And we can say that Democrats have been fighting really hard to improve life in black communities and that the reason that it doesn't happen is because Republicans have obstructed us in Congress and they've stopped us at every turn and all that kind of stuff.

And it's all true. But again, when all you see is a bunch of politicians talking and then you don't see improvement come to your community over time, you're going to have less of an attachment to that party. And to me, that is. And it goes way beyond what Biden said and apologized.

That's that's fine. But I think a big challenge in this election. I mean, you know, black turnout went down between Obama and Hillary, and that's somewhat understandable as the first black president and then already in polls, you know, Joe Biden is not receiving the same share of the black vote in polls that Hillary Clinton did, and particularly that's that's concentrated in young voters.

And we've talked about this before in the in the universe, up for grabs voters. They are disproportionately young and disproportionately people of color right now.

And, you know, I think the question is, aside from this gaffe, aside from what the Trump campaign is doing, what would Biden not taking black voters for granted actually look like?

I mean, I think based on a lot of the people who have been hired by the campaign and a lot of things, you know, is that this is something I have no reason to believe that they have any plans to take African-American voters for granted, despite what Joe Biden said, that from the campaign's perspective, it is about organizing in the community with local people now.

Right. It is about outreach now. It's not waiting till the like the complaint you always hear is that Democratic Party politicians come in, you know, a month before the election and focus on geo TV.

It is about doing real organizing right now. That is begins with conversations about what needs to be done in the community. And I think that that that has to be done. Now, that is much more challenging in a pandemic context, where you can't go door to door, you can't go to community meetings, it's much harder, but it has to be done. And I think you're exactly right that the Trump campaign's goal is not to get more black voters.

It's to make sure that Joe Biden gets fewer black voters. And it's not about the not about the margin. It's about the aggregate number of total voters.

And that and if I was in the Trump campaign, if you look at, you know, you always want to find sort of the inefficiency in the system you can exploit. Right. And so if you know that you only have to move a group of voters to points. To change change the outcome, that is a very efficient way to spend money, and so that is why that is why they are focused on because if you just you change that number by two or three points in Wisconsin or Michigan or Pennsylvania or North North Carolina, for example, you're going to win as opposed to losing.

And, you know, we have to be very wary of that. And we can, you know, not just Joe Biden, but the entire party can take nothing for granted. And we have to be and it is not enough to just yell that Donald Trump is racist. We've actually seen research that shows that that is the one of the least persuasive arguments with African-American voters who we need to get bring back into it.

In fact, it's more persuasive to white liberals than most African-American voters because they understand that this part of our next because they understand that racism is structural and is much bigger than just Donald Trump's tweets.

Well, and on that note, the other important thing to note here is we're having this conversation. You know, there have been a series of very horrific instances of racist violence and discrimination over the last several weeks.

We're now in the third day of protests in Minneapolis over the murder of George Floyd, a black man who died after he was pinned down and suffocated by police while he begged for his life. I would highly recommend listening to Akela Hughes talk about this on Wednesday's episode of What a Day. It's very powerful. The officers have been fired, but not charged with anything yet. On Tuesday, Biden called for a civil rights investigation into the killing, which he said was, quote, part of an ingrained, systemic cycle of injustice that still exists where black lives are under threat every single day.

Later, Trump tweeted out a call for an expedited investigation, but didn't mention systemic racism. To me, the way Biden handles this is far more important than how he deals with his Breakfast Club comments. What do you think? I think that's right.

I think this is a. Very important conversation to have, and it's a very different one than we normally have, and I think it has to be one that's very honest, which is most of the time in the context of Pottsy American. We talk about these things. We talk about them in terms of how winning the election will change things.

Right. Where, you know, you're concerned about whether the ACA is around or whether more Americans should get access to health care or whether we're going to stop destroying the planet, try something different. And electing Joe Biden and Democrats to the Senate Democrats, the House up and down the ballot. All of that is a solution to those problems.

We should, like no one should be naive, no white liberal should suggest that somehow winning this election is going to fundamentally change the dynamics that are at play here right between the races. And we saw in Central Park the obviously the police violence that has plagued our communities for a very long time. There were only paying more attention to now because of smartphone videos are showing it.

It's not going to change that. Will Joe Biden do a much better job of trying to address both the root causes and some of the behaviors that lead to this? One hundred percent, even the steps, you know, the steps we're taking the Obama administration around police violence against minority citizens were, you know, I have no doubt not enough in later than they should have been.

But even those steps were undone by Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump in the first few days. And Joe Biden would, you know, put those in and go beyond. And I think he has to have a very specific plan for and I know he's talked about a bunch of this stuff during the primary and we'll talk about it again now. But this is you know, this is this is the country in the world in which we live in. And I think it's really important for folks like us to listen to Akela, to read some of the things that Britney and a lot of other people have said about this and try to understand the right way for white liberals to respond to this that fully understands the the fear and.

Despair in grief that comes from this from the African-American community, and I think a lot that really needs to be thought about is the sharing of these videos that Akela talked about that you would never share in any other context. And we don't think about that enough because I think people share them and they think, you know, despite maybe some subconscious sense of showing the world that they are OK, it's that we want the world to know this happens. But as Akela points out, just so passionately and powerfully in her remarks, that's not what's changing things.

Right. And you have to think about who is here in the other end. It's impossible to put ourselves in those shoes.

But I think about the comments from Christian Cooper in New York Times where he you know, he is the person who was in Central Park as a birdwatcher and got in this altercation with a woman about her dog being off the leash.

And he talked about how he his passion, his bird watching, and that he has to think every day that he has chosen a hobby that has him crawling through the bushes with a metal object in his hands, and that if he comes out from behind the bush in the wrong way at the wrong time, his life is at risk. And that is something that is much bigger than this election or anything else. And it is like the root it is.

And it goes beyond any of these videos. It is the fundamental reality that a huge portion of Americans are living in and addressing that is bigger than tweets. It's bigger than everything else we're talking about here.

Well, I mean, back to our earlier conversation about, you know, sort of. A needing a president who can help the country grieve during a time like this, right there is Biden, of course, needs plans for this and he'll have plans and I don't doubt that he will. And he'll say the right things and he'll and he'll have the right kind of plans to address this, hopefully. But more important than that, maybe even more important than that, is speaking about it in an honest way and showing that he gets it, that he gets at the core what this is really about, that he you know, that I mean, we are now seeing protests in Minneapolis over the last couple of days.

There are protests here in L.A. about this. This could continue.

And as the country is sort of going through this turmoil, and especially as the black community is sort of demanding rightfully, that people understand what they have been going through and fearing for so long in this country. We need to have a president. We need to have leaders who show that they understand that and that they can help heal the country and help find justice. And that is not like I said, that is more than just plans.

That is constantly talking about this, making this part of your message, making this part of the everyday discussions you have, not siphoning it off so that you're only talking about it when something pops up in the news, but that you're talking about it through this whole campaign. And, you know, like it's just getting the message out there. It's like what we've been talking about with everything else. And so I do think that's that's something that the Biden campaign needs to be focused on.

One last question on this. Do you think any of this will impact Biden's VP selection? Should it?

I don't know, obviously none of us know, and it's the always important stipulation in discussion about rumors reporting around VPs is in almost every in every case, the people who talk don't know and people who know don't talk. So right now, you've see you here reporting about Biden. Biden's down to these two people are the first ever favorite. No one no one actually knows. And I actually, frankly, think Joe Biden does not know right now is short list is because he said last night at a fundraiser he won't make a decision on August one.

Right. And so if you just based on schedule, it's unlikely that the vetting and other processes and certainly the interviews have happened yet. I don't know whether this will have an impact on it.

You know, polling, to the extent we've seen it shows that it's not really clear. You know, some polling suggests that some people may add more to the ticket. There's a story out today that some polling that Stan Greenberg, a Democratic pollster, did, says Elizabeth Warren would be the best option. I've seen polling that says it doesn't make a huge difference.

I think the the question will be behind all of this.

You know, the specifics of these individual things is like, what is the impact of a. Sort of a larger meta conversation in our politics about Joe Biden specifically not picking a woman of color. Yeah, right where you have very clearly qualified people in those positions to do it right like you is not an abstract question.

It is someone like Kamala Harris or Stacey Abrams who are on the quote unquote rumored short list. Right. So you're picking someone other than them. What even if right now polling shows that people don't have strong feelings one way or the other or ambivalent or it all comes out on the wash in terms of who people pick, what is the impact of that meta conversation?

And one that will certainly be weaponized by the Trump campaign. Right. And other disinformation outlets to try to deal with the problem that, as you point out, that Joe Biden has is doing less well as of right now than previous Democratic nominees have done.

And, you know, it is complicated. You know, you mentioned the the Politico story about Stan Greenberg polling, which pointed to Warren as the best option. Morning consult did a poll this week that found Warren would have the biggest net positive impact on Biden's candidacy among all voters, but particularly among black voters and young voters, more so than Kamala Harris or Stacey Abrams, though it's fairly close with black voters. And also we have to recognize that Elizabeth Warren's name ID, name ID is greater than Kamala Harris or Stacey Abrams, especially Stacey Abrams.

But so, you know, first you have to understand, like, we don't know for sure that picking a woman of color in this scenario when you have Elizabeth Warren would attract more voters of color to the ticket.

We just don't know that as we're sitting here today, just being pundits, I will say, of all of the potential picks. You know, Politico has a story this week quoting black activists who don't want to see Amy Klobuchar as the pick. And The Washington Post, Jonathan Capehart points to a 20 19 headline from their paper that read, As a prosecutor in heavily white Minnesota, Amy Klobuchar declined to go after police involved in fatal encounters with black men.

I do think with this happening in Minneapolis right now, the fact that Amy Klobuchar was the Hennepin County attorney for a long time, that is obviously going to raise some questions about her as a potential pick for or could raise a lot of questions for her as a potential pick among a lot of voters of color.

So I think it's unclear the effect it has on Warren versus Harris versus Abram's, but I do wonder if it does have some effect on Amy Klobuchar. I mean, I just this is my guess, but it's an educated guess, just based on having known and worked with Joe Biden for a long time is his first and foremost test is going to be are they ready? Which I think everyone who is on the short list passes that test easily. Right.

That they could step, because just even if you didn't have a presidential nominee who was nearing 80 in a time of pandemic, you need to have someone who can step into the role. And I think the second one, which close relatives, who is the best governing partner. Right. And that is going to take precedence over the politics of it with him for just he's been vice president. He knows how important it is to have someone you can work with.

You know, the relationship with Barack Obama was so critical to him and his experience there and the contribution they were able to make to the country. And he's been around long enough to see how that works when they get along, when they don't get along right. But this is an election. It is the most important election in history. The politics will matter some. I think it will be secondary. But these are going to be close calls where people are going to look at all of these things and there will be no obvious choice.

And you're going to have to make a gut because it's a dynamic. It's not a thing you can know in advance. Polling is not going to tell you who the right political choices it'll be, how that choice is received. It'll be how that person performs on the campaign trail and how that person performs at the conventions and at the debate with Mike Pence. Yeah, presumably Mike Pence is allowed to attend. All I can do is guide you.

Just ask John McCain. All right.

When we come back, we'll have my conversation with Paul Tu's from Organizing Together 20 20.

But America's brought to you by simply safe, what's the number one sign of a bad home security system, a home security system that's so complicated you never use it?

I was going to say this is broken glass and a stranger in your house. That's the number one side. No one told me. That's probably the bigger sign.

Yeah. My old way of doing it is I would take a vase from the hallway, break it into pieces, put it in front of the door so I could hear somebody coming micromachines.

But here's the thing that that that complicated security system that you can't use, that's exactly the type that simply safe has spent a decade fighting against.

They believe that there's one other way I did it, I, I put a bucket, a glue above the doorframe and then a bunch of feathers in front of a fan. Where did you put the micromachines? The micromachines you put at the bottom of the stairs right before you right before you get them with the paint cans.

Simply safe believes that simple is safer, you get it, and it's exactly why super safe is the home security system for right now and feeling safe at home has never been more important. Simply safe was designed to be easy to use while protecting your whole home 24/7.

Order online with the click of a button, open the box, placed the sensors, plug it in. Suddenly your home is protected around the clock. No technician or salesperson has to come and disrupt your house.

You don't need to pay any outrageous monthly fees or sign a two year contract.

Love it. Why don't you tell us about how you did it?

I said I might simply say it's very simple, hence the name and I just hence the name. You take it out of the box, you set it up. The base station sets up really easily. I also added a camera and I thought I was going to be annoying. It took two seconds. You plug it into the wall and then like, all of a sudden it just very you do it with the app in your phone. I'm also getting to simply say doorbell.

I'm like, I'm in on the simply say if it really works, it's very simple. I like I now I'm just a user. I don't know if I would have found simply safe without these ads, but now that I have, I'm glad I did, you know.

Well, you convinced me modern.

Lets me simply say it was named best overall home security system of twenty twenty by US News and World Report. And there are twenty four seven professional monitoring and emergency dispatch starts at fifty cents a day.

Had to simply save dotcom sized crooked and get a free HD camera just for our listeners that simply saved dotcom crooked.

And just make sure you tell them that a positive America sent you.

I am joined today by the man who ran Iowa for the Obama campaign in 2008 and is now the head of organizing together.

Twenty twenty the legendary Paul TEUs. Welcome to the pod. Well, I'm very excited to be with you. I think I did this once before with you guys back when Tommy was doing an Iowa series. And it seems about every four years I'm popular for about two weeks when people start talking about Iowa. So it's good to be not just talking about Iowa. That's why we thought we'd bring you back. We don't want to pigeonhole you like that. Thank you.

Thank you so much. I do appreciate that.

So I want to dig into organizing. But first, I want to get your perspective on the overall state of the race. Where do you think things stand right now? What are Biden's biggest challenges and what are Trump's biggest challenges? Thirty thousand foot view here.

Thirty thousand foot. Well, listen, I'm optimistic and I think about our chances. I do think people should be optimistic. You know, I think this is this is going to be an election that's obviously a referendum on Trump. And I think, you know, from all the polling you see on just in conversations, you know, people aren't satisfied. They're not happy. They're, you know, they're. They want to make a different choice. So I feel optimistic, I do think, you know, it's just incumbent upon an apropos to this conversation that people do their part.

This isn't you know, I think a lot of people sit around, say, hey, let's wait for this Biden campaign to get on. Let's get moving. Biden is actually probably further ahead than where Obama was in 08. We didn't start really getting going until July, August in the general. So I you know, I think he's further ahead there, you know, but I think it's it's incumbent upon all of us and what we can do to affect this election.

You know, that's really what organizing is about. That's where people come in on a day to day basis, talking to their neighbors, talking to their friends, not being afraid to have that conversation and not being afraid to have an opinion. And so, you know, I feel I actually do feel optimistic about our chances, not only with Biden, but for Democrats as a whole. And it's just a function of working hard and working from the heart and getting out there and communicating with people and listening to people.

Well, let's talk about that.

You know, a lot of our listeners are all signed up, ready to organize. But I think there are some other people. It's great. But I think there's some other people out there who are thinking, all right, I'll vote. But, you know, Biden won the primary with the smallest field organization of anyone in the race. So maybe it doesn't make that much of a difference. What do you say to that? Why is Field why is organizing so important?

Well, I think you can ask Al Gore when he lost by, what, three hundred twenty votes? You can ask. You know, Hillary Clinton when she lost and I think was collective. Eighty thousand votes in three states. You know, every vote matters. It really does. And, you know, organizing is important because I still believe and I think most people should believe this, that politics is still about people. You know, it's it's it's still about human interaction.

It's still about how we treat how we treat one another.

And I think if you care about your community, if you care about your country, anyone can be involved in politics and everyone should be involved. No matter what your opinions are, this country needs that. Your community needs that. And that should be your motivation. I think most Americans do care about what's going on in their communities, what's going on in their neighborhoods, what's going on in their country, and being involved in political campaigns and volunteering. And, you know, it's a good feeling.

I just have so many great memories of every campaign office I've ever walked in and you see know volunteers coming in and out. And they feel good. They feel good about their role. They feel good about the effort they're making on behalf of the things they care about. And I think that's just healthy for democracy, healthy for us as a country when individual citizens just feel great about their role. And again, every vote matters and every vote matters.

And one volunteer, our here are to volunteer hours. There can be the difference and oftentimes it has been the difference. So for the sake of your heart, go out and get involved. And for the sake of your country and for the sake of talking to voters, get involved. I mean, you know, that certainly was the case in 2008, we always tell the story, but, you know, you were running Iowa, I was in Chicago, and there were times in the summer of 2007, in the fall of 2007, where the national media narrative was, Obama is behind, Hillary is going to win.

Obama has no chance. And we were all pretty down in the Chicago headquarters. And then, yeah, come tough to you step into that. It was tough right now.

And you step into that Des Moines office or one of the offices or one of the field offices and all the all the different counties in Iowa.

And you'd feel this energy and enthusiasm that was just electric.

And it made you feel better about the race, because I think when you're on the ground talking to people doing that work, it's such a different experience than sitting at a desk, reading tweets, reading the news, looking at the polls, all that bullshit.

It really is. It sort of it does something to you.

Yeah, no, I listen. And that's the thing, you know, I think. You know, I think especially even this is now 12 years later, you know, when I mean, boy, you see a new poll every five minutes, it seems, you know, that the people can affect change right in front of them, that obviously there's a bigger picture. But, you know, I think most people want to know that what they're doing is making a difference.

And that's very local. All politics are local. And your ability to affect change happens neighbor by neighbor, friend by friend, community by community. And I think that's the attitude people have to have in order to in order, one, to satisfy their own hearts and why they're doing this and to to effect change, you know, worry about and think about and focus on the things that are right and wrong.

Let's talk about organizing together 20, 20 you guys together before the primary was over to make sure that whoever won the nomination would have an organizing staff ready to hit the ground running. How is this informed by 2016?

Yeah, so it was created by organizing 20, 20 was really created by, you know, a few national unions and SEIU and asked me and they went through the Strategic Victory Fund. You know, it was it was kind of this idea that the number one challenge of organizing is time. It always is.

You know, it's it's decided, you know, I think back to 08 where Obama got good and nobody really talks about this is, you know, we had to run a campaign and 50 states before the general election, we had time to train volunteers, work with volunteers, get people energized, get people organized. So it's a function of time. So, you know, our whole mission here was we wanted to get organized early.

No one in these states get organizers trained up, get volunteer, give volunteers a home, give them something to do. And then third is to kind of create a little unity out there. I think we have organizers from 13 different presidential campaigns. You know, as they came off of their own campaigns, we hired them up and put them to work to develop some continuity. So, listen, it's it's an idea borne out by these unions that, you know, organizing better than anybody.

We we just got to get ready and get going and the general election will happen. Biden's in a good place. They're not they're probably ahead of the curve. They're not behind. And we just want people to be ready and give them something to do. So that's what we're doing.

So you've always been someone who loves to send organizers out to knock on doors, to make phone calls. You believe in the team spirit of organizing, doing it side by side with other people. How are you thinking about ways to capture that spirit if we have to do much of this campaign from home because of the pandemic?

Well, yeah, I listen, I still think it's community. It's still campaigns or community. You just have to be a little more creative with things like Zoom and and virtual offices and, you know, and getting people together as best they can in this situation. You know, I think some of the the you know, it's interesting, when I first started in politics, you know, boy, that was a long time ago, John.

You know, five years ago, three years ago now is you know, back then, you know, the phone call with the phone was your weapon. You know, we would set up phone banks and that was your way to communicate with voters. So in a way, while technology has advanced so much, I still think there's a lot of ways to talk to voters, whether it be through a phone call, whether it be through text message, text messaging.

A lot of people communicate through Facebook and and where we're create content and they go out and put their own personal touch on it. And, you know, so I volunteer. There's still a lot of things you can do to affect change. And so we've built out tools and platforms around all those things. But it's still about community and it's still about getting involved. And along the way, you made a few people and you enjoy your time. It's it's an invigorating experience, as you know, as you can attest to.

I sure can. You know, we hear from a lot of people we're doing this adopt a state program, people are adopting one of the six battleground states. And, you know, a lot of people say they're concerned about volunteering outside of their communities and maybe being perceived as an outsider. How do people avoid that if you're sort of calling into or reaching into another state?

I think a couple of things. I'd say one is always be respectful. You know, always be respectful to the voter you're talking to even, and respect starts with listening, you know, just listen to people. I think we need more of that in our politics, not less. And I think people across the country, they have different stories to tell, you know, but there's a theme that runs through it. They care about a lot of the same things, family and and their community and jobs and, you know, their own security.

But, you know, so start with start with the proposition of respect. Listen, and don't be afraid to tell your own story. Don't read from talking points. Tell your own story. Why do you care? Where are you taking time to do this? And if you say it in a respectful way, I think people listen. I do. And that's important. So every voice matters. This is a country we're not a collection of 50 states and thousands of communities.

You know, we're one country. And so I think people should feel empowered to know whether you're from California or New York or Vermont or Wyoming to make a difference and they can't.

So one of Biden's biggest challenges is getting young people out to vote, especially young people of color. The pandemic makes this even harder. You know, some college kids may not even be on campus this fall. How can we organize in a way that gets young people excited to actively participate in this election and not be bystanders?

Listen, it starts with young people talking to young people. I think that you're sending me maybe you could do it, sending me in to talk to young people, boy.

But you know that I'm on the edge of. Yeah, right. I think it is like I think it's the idea that, you know, this next generation and the leaders in there and people that want to be leaders and that need to take it upon themselves to realize what's at stake in this election, to get their fellow citizens, you know, younger citizens engaged and active. You know, and I think also there's onus on Biden to to speak to those issues, and I'm sure he will.

So I think it starts with those two propositions. I think it's it's got to be young people talking to young people about what's at stake. And then Biden at some point, and I know he's already done this, know, really speaking to what they care about because that'll get them.

Yeah. Last question for you that I've been asking people. What's keeping you up at night about this election? And you can't say everything.

I think participation is going to be the biggest thing. You know, and I think I'd organize into a 20, 20, what we're trying to do now is across these states, fortunately in our states, they're. There all have pretty good vote by mail rules, but is giving letting people know early what their options are and voting guiding them through the process? You know, folks like you and me and probably most of your listeners think about politics and campaigns 365 days a year normal.

The normal American does. We're not normally normal Americans. They may think about it three days before the election and maybe it's too late. So I think these phone calls and this volunteering that you're doing is is important to educate people about their options and keep it in the front of their mind about, you know, what are my voting options. So that that is what keeps me up at night is that will our traditional folks show up? Will there be confusion in the process?

And are we ready to handle the confusion?

Paltos organizing together 20 20. Really looking forward to working with you guys on this interactive and I give a shout out. You sure can. And you got to put this on the air. So Ashley Williams is our training director. She's a great training director. She's going to be guiding everybody through this. She's a big fan of your guys, listens all the time. So Ashley Williams will be handling all the training and she's probably one of the best in the country.

So people can feel good that when they get trained through us, that they're going to be in good hands.

Another reason to sign up, Ashley Williams will be leading the training. She's one of the best in the business.

You heard it here first TEUs. Good talking to you, man. Take care. Thanks, John.

Stay out of the boys. Thanks to Paul TOS for joining us today and everyone have a great weekend, we'll talk to you next week by everyone. Parts of America is a product of cricket media, the executive producer is Michael Martinez, our assistant producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Soglin is our sound engineer, thanks to Tanya Nominator, K.D. Lang, Roman Papadimitriou, Caroline Reston and Elisa Gutierrez for production support into our digital team, Alija Konar Melkonian, Elfriede and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos every week.