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Welcome to Party of America, I'm Jon Favreau. I'm John Lovett. I'm Tommy Vietor. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Later on the pod, I catch up with Better O'Rorke, who's organizing a massive phone bank event next week to help turn Texas blue. Before that, the gang's all here to talk about last night's vice presidential debate. Quick note before we start. If you'd like to donate in these last few weeks and want to make sure you get the most bang for your buck, we've got you covered.

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Let's talk about last night. Senator Kamala Harris and Vice President Mike Pence met in Salt Lake City for the first and only vice presidential debate. USA Today's Susan Page moderated the 90 minute event where the two candidates were separated by 12 feet and plexiglass because Pence, who runs the White House covid task force, may have been exposed to an infectious. Donald Trump commonly spent most of the debate holding the president and Pence accountable for their record while making the case for the Biden Harris ticket.

While Pence tried to defend the Trump record, evade questions he didn't like and interrupt Harris like this. Well, let's go.

But, Suzanne, this is Susan. And I want to ask you, Mr. Vice President, I'm speaking. I'm speaking.

So aside from Pence's very annoying interruptions, the debate was the the tame affair everyone asked for after last week's Chicho. Between Trump and Biden, though, I did see a bunch of commentary saying it was too boring and forgettable. What did you guys think it was?

It wasn't the shit show. Is it too boring? What kind of debate are we looking for here?

Love it. I know I look boring, is nice, I don't I'm good for I'm I'm excited about boring. Look, I think Trump shows up and he's blustery and he's interrupting and he's monstrous and he lies. Penns shows up. And his whole ethos, his whole strategy, his whole mode of being as a politician is to lie while pretending Donald Trump doesn't exist, just acting as if everything that's happening and swirling around him is not real. That does make for something.

Boring, but I do think boring is pretty good for for us because they need something to change, they need something to change quickly. And a boring debate between Kamala Harris and Mike Pence in which Kamala Harris delivers some pretty tough blows on the biggest issues facing the country, like covid and the ACA. Then they mix it up and Pence does fine on the economy or what have you. And then the next morning, Trump calls up Bartiromo and calls Kamala Harris a monster is not the shift in the dynamic I think that they need.

You know that that was on the message calendar. Dan, what did you think commo strategy was going into this debate and and how well did she execute?

I think it was a three part strategy. Part one was to continue to eviscerate the Trump pants record on covid, which is obviously the most important issue in this campaign. Step number two was to take any opportunity she could to offer details on the Biden Harris agenda. She was able to do that, I think, particularly well on the Biden economic plan and the climate change plan. And then finally is to remind people as often as possible that as we sit here in the middle of a pandemic, Donald Trump and Mike Pence are in court trying to kick millions of Americans off health care.

And she did that, I think, two or three times the debates. So I think, you know, you have to judge these vice presidential debates differently than a presidential debate, because historically, these vice presidential debates don't move votes. They are about taking advantage of a large audience to provide potentially undecided voters with relevant information. And I think on that measure, Kamala Harris did incredibly well. I think if you were a judge again on who won the debate between the two of them, she also won that debate handily, but she advanced her campaign strategic agenda much further than Mike Pence did the Trump agenda.

Tommy, how do you think that she handled all of Pence's interruptions as well as she could?

I mean, I'm going to Susan Page you, John, for a minute and just not answer a single thing you asked by by just pointing out the fact I'm really mad that the debate even happened.

It's very frustrating that Mike Pence was on a stage with her and not quarantining with his breathless, frail, ailing boss. You know, like they put everyone at risk a week ago.

And now we're supposed to pretend that a piece of Plexiglas like solves the problem. I'm also frustrated that the debate commission still has not solved the problem of the interruptions. They've also created a structure that made these things pretty useless. I mean, Susan Page did better than Chris Wallace, but she apparently wasn't allowed to ask follow up questions. So there was no one helping her when Pence was was trying to interrupt her. And there was no substance to the question.

The point of the debate isn't civility. It's to get information that actually matters. And I don't know that they did this.

I mean, I think, you know, I think all the polling we've seen so far today, it shows that people liked both Kamala Harris on style and on substance. So that to me suggests she handled Pence's interruptions pretty well. But overall, I mean, I think the takeaway was a lot of conversation about the coronavirus, which wasn't necessarily good for the the Trump side of the ledger.

Can I just say, I do think that there was a difference between what happened with interruptions in the first debate and this debate. It is true that Pence spoke over Kamala Harris, he interrupted, he spoke too long, I will say, if a third of your points are being made while the moderator is saying, Mr. Vice President. Mr. Pence. Thank you, Mr. Pence. It becomes about the interruption. And I think they're really what I really appreciated about how Kamala Harris handled those moments is I don't think it ever really prevented her from delivering the message she wanted to deliver.

And she made moments out of needing to finish what she was saying and delivering some pretty good hits, even as he was sort of kind of interrupting her, interrupting Susan Page or what have you.

I think she handled the interruptions masterfully. I think she was forceful but polite. I think that as a black woman, she knew this and her team knew this going in. She faces like all kinds of double standards. And you have to walk a tightrope like we know this because we know how Hillary had to deal with us in debates.

We've all worked with Barack Obama, a black man who, you know, sometimes concerned that he couldn't appear too angry because of the various stereotypes that he has to face out there.

So she knew all this, walking into that room, walking into the debate.

And I thought the way she handled it by being very forceful, but also polite was perfect. And then when I still saw some fuckin undecided assholes, white guys and Frank Luntz focus group, saying that she was too harsh or whatever, it really just bummed me out.

Not that I was surprised that there's sexism and racism and double standards out there, but just because I watched it without trying to look at Twitter or any and just see how she did.

And I was like, I, I couldn't I don't think she could have handled it better, like with him interrupting all the time and in her not being allowed to finish.

I mean, it's very clear she has a lifetime of experience of being interrupted by dumb white guys and she knows exactly how to handle it, i.e. it's not just these undecided voters in that focus group you mentioned to basically, as someone said on Twitter, I remember who that basically was like their comments was a lesson from a gender studies class in college, just how on the nose it was for misogynistic tropes. But I mean, the right wing leaned into this on Twitter.

You had Megyn Kelly saying, take it like a woman, don't make a face, which is quite a thing to say from someone who works at Fox News. You had a whole bunch of, you know, Harlan Hill saying horribly offensive things about comments like they absolutely cannot help themselves when confronted with a impressive showing by a woman and particularly a black woman, it was just like you would think they would be enough sense to just like take their foot off the gas, but they cannot help themselves and push the envelope.

And I haven't looked at what the horrible content is right wing content trending on Facebook is. But I have a pretty safe guess it's going to be all about this.

Yeah. Although the one hopeful thing is, of course, there's a huge gender gap in the CNN poll about how she did. And we'll talk about the CNN poll later. But still, even with the gender gap. Forty eight percent of men thought she won versus 46 percent who thought she lost. So it was at least good to see that. But, you know, the right wing assholes were out in force.

How'd you guys think that Susan Page did as a moderator?

We had some disagreement in our panel over this love. It's a big Susan Page fan.

Look what I said at the end of day. Not so much. Look, Dan and I really you know, we didn't mix it up in a group thread I found.

Look, we just watched the worst debate in presidential history. We have kind of raving, steroid addled misinformation, conspiracy theories, spreading monster in the White House. And the final question, being from a teen about civility and actually allowing Mike Pence a place to talk about how important it is that we get over our differences is like a pretty extraordinary abdication, I think, of responsibility.

I don't think you need to I don't understand why it would be her job to ignore reality. Right. There is a reality. Donald Trump is the you know, is a study that found he's not he's the leading source of misinformation. Unkovic is the leading divider in our country. So that was a bit frustrating. That said, I found her questions on covid. I found some of the questions directed at Pence to be pretty direct and not kind of not willing to kind of give Trump or Pence the benefit of the doubt.

So, you know, I come away with a nuanced view like I've done Susan Page for a very long time.

I think she is she's a wonderful person and she's a phenomenal reporter. And she knows a lot about politics. And I agree with it that her questions were really the problem isn't really with Susan Page is with the conception of a debate moderator is put forward by this absurd, ridiculous, completely pointless debate commission. The idea that a moderator should not see it as their role to ask follow up questions or to fact check obvious lies from candidates is absurd. There's no point in putting journalists there to just sort of shepherd them around and ask questions if you're not going to hold their feet to the fire.

And this is the problem. You have a debate commission that is run by and like 80 something year old Republican gaming lobbyists. Is we live in this world where fact checking is seen as partisan because Democrats use facts and Republicans lie, and it's true.

Yeah, I mean, you can't like they. The Republicans have been against debate moderators fact checking since Candy Crowley called Mitt Romney out for a while on stage in the 2012 debate about Benghazi. And so now it is seen as unfair. So Chris Wallace, a person whose brain has been somewhat pickled through Fox News racist agitprop, but is a tough interviewer, in fact, check the living hell out of Trump in that interview. Felt like it was not his job to fact check.

Right. So what is the point of having these people there? And so I agree, like, I completely agree with all of it, that that last question was absurd. I thought the questions. There's nothing that should have prevented Susan Page from saying you didn't answer my question, like when they answered a completely opposite topic. She does. Well, as you can be expected, given the constraints that we've decided to put on debate moderators to make it easier for Mike Pence and Donald Trump to lie to the American people.

Like she also said that her plan was to ask candidates some tough questions and some easy questions.

Why plan to ask them easy questions?

Like, if I wanted a substance list conversation where no one is challenged, I'd watch another episode of Emily in Paris, which is what I did after the debate was over. So like, come on, keep plugging.

That show was talking about tonight in Paris for three days now. I getting a Netflix check because we're doing a lot of work here. It's in different. Let us know if you hate it. I think there's something going on. Don't tell me what I like.

I'm going I'm going to the next clip. Enough. I'm going to ask another question. All right.

Let's break down a few of the notable moments. First question was about covid, which Comilla called the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country, and pointed out several times in the debate that the White House is actively trying to dismantle the Affordable Care Act in the middle of a pandemic. Mike Pence, meanwhile, offered thoughts and prayers for those affected by coronavirus equated criticizing the president with denigrating the sacrifices the American people have made and even accused Joe Biden and Harris of plagiarizing the White House's response plan.

Let's take a listen.

Well, the American people have witnessed what is the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country.

And here are the facts. Two hundred and ten thousand dead people in our country in just the last several months. Over seven million people who have contracted this disease, one in five businesses closed. We're looking at front line workers who have been treated like sacrificial workers. The reality is when you look at the Biden plan, it reads an awful lot like what President Trump and I and our task force have been doing every step of the way. And quite frankly, when I look at their plan that talks about advancing testing, creating new PPE, developing a vaccine, it looks a little bit like plagiarism, which is something Joe Biden knows a little bit about.

And I think the American people know that this is a president who has put America first in the American people, I believe, with my heart, can be proud of the sacrifices they have made. It saved countless American lives.

Tommy Lahm, plagiarism joke aside, that anyone under 50 years old probably doesn't understand. What did you think of Mike Pence?

Basically, his response on covid is, oh, they just want to do the same thing. We are as his like as he is, his red eyes are bulging out of his face. I don't know what was wrong with this fucking idea that the the plagiarism joke probably killed with the fifty swing voters who have read what it takes. Speaking of killing swing voters, like what you plagiarism. Well, I'm sorry.

Are they are they are they infecting Gold Star families? That's your current plan, Mike Pence. I just I realize that Pence has no case to make here. There's no spinning two hundred thousand people that it is so remarkable to me that they're go to talking point is that they instituted a travel ban to China back in February. And since then they have fucked up every single thing since. And somehow that sort of absolves them from this. I just, like Pence, had no case.

And it wasn't just that he got drilled in this opening segment. He kept pivoting back to a conversation about the coronavirus and like putting himself on ground. That I think is probably the worst polling issue they could be talking about. So I didn't think he got out of that in any way, shape or form. And I think, you know, Kamala Harris, like, pretty thoroughly drilled him on their record here. Well, and I thought she did something interesting, which is she didn't spend a lot of time on Trump's diagnosis, his behavior, the Rose Garden thing, she brought it up at one point, but she really went to the larger record on the pandemic and then she hit them on health care.

Here's a clip of her talking about pre-existing conditions.

On the one hand, you have Joe Biden, who was responsible with President Barack Obama for the Affordable Care Act, which brought health care to over 20 million Americans and protected people with pre-existing conditions. And what it also did is it saved those families who otherwise were going bankrupt because of hospital bills they could not afford. On the other hand, you have Donald Trump, who's in court right now, trying to get rid of you, trying to get rid of the Affordable Care Act, which means that you will lose protections if you have pre-existing conditions.

And I just this is very important, Susan. Yes. And it's about we need to we need to get vice president, just like he interrupted me. And I'd like to just finish, please.

If you have a preexisting condition, heart disease, diabetes, breast cancer, they're coming for you. If you love someone who has a pre-existing condition, thank you, thank you, Sam, and for you, if you are under the age of twenty six on your parents coverage, they're coming for you.

Dan, I thought it was a great answer. And I also can't believe that we've now had two debates and at least Pentz has not prepped an answer on ACA and pre-existing conditions like they just can. They just not defend this?

There's no answer. They have no plan. Like their plan is to take away the Affordable Care Act and fuck over millions of people. That has been their plan from the very beginning. And it is truly I mean, it's both an example of how intellectually bankrupt they're in cruel their approaches. But also, once again, that's a pivot back, the moderator. But Pence said they have a plan, which would have been a phenomenal time for Susan Page to say, tell us your plan.

And he didn't do that because he can't. And they like all this is he's sort of rerunning the 2018 Republican congressional playbook, which is just claim without evidence or regard for the truth that you protect people with pre-existing conditions. But Josh Holloway did. To get re-elected, to get elected. That's what a whole bunch of Republicans tried is what Trump is trying. And would you and that could possibly work for some candidates running in red states. But when you are someone who has zero credibility with the vast majority of voters like Trump and Pence do, then it gets very, very, very challenging.

And that's why it's so important that Kamala Harris brought it up repeatedly.

They are relying on the fact that their position is so heinous it doesn't seem plausible. They are relying on the fact that they can say we will protect pre-existing conditions when their actual position is we would like to eliminate the ACA without a replacement and cause untold havoc in people's lives. It's a matter of choice as well. Right? That's why Pence has to dodge the question on choice, because their position is the same position he's had since he was the governor of Indiana, which is they would like to criminalize abortion.

But of course, that position is so heinous that they are relying on the fact that if they applied the truth on it, not enough people will actually understand or truly countenance just how terrible the outcome of their actual policy preferences would be.

So the issue of racial justice was also raised last night when the candidates were asked whether they felt that justice had been served.

In the case of Brianna Taylor, Mike Pence pivoted to a law and order argument denied the reality of systemic racism in the United States and began the following exchange with Kamala Harris. Here's a clip.

And I must tell you this. This. This presumption that you hear consistently from Joe Biden and Kamala Harris that that America is systemically racist and that is Joe Biden said that he believes that law enforcement has an implicit bias against minorities.

Is is a great insult, and the reality of this is that we are talking about an election in 27 days where last week the president of the United States took a debate stage in front of 70 million Americans and refused to condemn white supremacists.

Not true and not true. It wasn't like he didn't have a chance. He didn't do it, and then he doubled down. Thank you, Susan, I appreciate that very much. You know, I think this is one of the things that makes people dislike the media so much in this country. Susan. That you selectively edit, just like Senator Harris did. Comments that President Trump and I and others on our side of the aisle make, Tommy, is is Donald Trump's problem that he's selectively edited too often that that's the problem.

A community theater Reagan impersonator Mike Pence thinks they selectively edited a live debate that we all watched last week. Mike Pence seemed offended on behalf of systemic racism and I guess also like data.

I mean, like like we've we've had this conversation since June. There's been so much polling on on how people feel about racial justice, about policing. We all know that public opinion is on the side of the Biden Harris position on this. I think that's the third issue. Area 4th issue area we've talked about so far on the show, where all available evidence suggests that Mike Pence and Trump are taking the wrong side of an issue when it comes to trying to actually attract voters.

Yeah, this one didn't go all that well for Mike, I thought. Well, you could also tell he he so clumsily pivoted to what he was obviously going to pivot to as soon as humanly possible, which there's a discussion about Brianna Taylor's case and he immediately goes to rioting and looting and and the poor police and stuff like that because he thinks that's the only strong territory.

So I actually think that Camilla did really, really well. Zooming back to talk about Trump, the guy who's running for president, being a racist on stage at the debate.

I mean, look, the the bottom line is like there were several high profile cases of black Americans being murdered by police this summer. And Mike Pence could not find it within himself to have empathy for those individuals who were killed. He had to go to violence. He had to try to make it some sort of blue lives matter wedge issue and that he's not good at this. It came through, it seems cynical to me. He's a dimwit and really is, Dan, you and I both were this way like he was known for being dumb.

Yeah, I thought the whole thing was a good example of, like, how Trump ism doesn't necessarily work without Trump because like Mike Pence, he doesn't get to do his own sort of Republican spiel. He has to be constantly defending Donald Trump and saying things like Donald Trump would say. But even his whole schtick about the media's Susan, this is why people don't like the media, like it just doesn't it doesn't come off well for Mike Pence. I mean, doesn't come off well from Donald Trump either.

But at least with Trump, it's like part of his act. Mike Pence just looks like a fuck. And he's a bad Reagan impersonator, if you like.

Throughout the debate, you felt the kind of scale of of coronavirus of protests against police brutality and systemic racism, economic dislocation, like the scale of the problems, like the actual crises that were in made lines about plagiarism lines, about riots. And then Tifa, like these little tiny hits, they just don't work. We're not we're just not at that level. Things are too bad. The crises are too deep. There's too much chaos in the White House for these little kind of pathetic childish hits and media hits and all the rest to land like we're not in that we're not in that headspace as a country.

We are in an emergency. And this shit just doesn't work.

Just doesn't work. Yeah. So what if pences strategic objectives clearly was to paint the Biden Harris ticket as extreme leftists? One of the tactics during the debate was clearly going to be, you know, Kamala Harris has a more progressive record than Joe Biden wanted to like find the differences in their record, exploit them. You know, the Trump people have been trying to paint them as all secret, left us this entire campaign. Here are a few examples of how that went when Pence tried it.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris want to raise taxes. They want to bury our economy under a two trillion dollar green new deal, which you were one of the original co-sponsors of in the United States Senate. They want to abolish fossil fuels and ban fracking, which would cost hundreds of thousands of American jobs all across the heartland.

Joe Biden will not raise taxes on anyone who makes less than four hundred thousand dollars a year. He has been very clear about that. Joe Biden will not end fracking. He has been very clear about that.

Joe Biden. Is the one who during the the Great Recession was responsible. For the Recovery Act that brought America back and now the Trump administration wants to take credit. When they ran when they rode the coattails of Joe Biden's success for the economy that they had at the beginning of their term. Of course, now the economy is a complete disaster.

So, Dan, how do you think that Comilla handled both the tax hit and the and the Green New Deal hit?

Very well, I thought. I mean, it's sort of this absurd, not particularly well thought out tactic in these vice presidential debates to say, well, yeah, sure, the guy at the top of the ticket doesn't believe this, but you believe it. Therefore, what right does it make a lot of sense? And it it's just and I think a lot of the entire approach, I think, should equal McLinden Kirkeby as director, said this in the group thread last night as he was trying to get to the minimum word count on his college essay, because he was just saying, just trying to like he was trying to achieve anything, just trying to say words to get to the end of the time.

And I think having her say on camera that Joe Biden is not going to raise taxes on anyone who makes less than forty thousand dollars is very, very powerful. And it's sort of shows how one dimensional the Trump strategy is as they lead with that. Like you knew that was going to come when you said it. That is the fact that Trump cuts taxes for the rich and Joe Biden raises taxes on the rich is a point in Joe Biden's favor with the overall majority of voters, including a majority of Trump voters.

And so opening the door to that is particularly stupid. Let me it's not stupid for Pence to try to say as many times as possible that Joe Biden is going to ban fracking in Pennsylvania like they they've done that in advertising. They've done that in mail out there. But it once again gave her the opportunity to say he's not and to talk about what their plan was and to talk about some of the details of the Biden Harris climate plan, which I think is to their benefit to have that conversation.

I do sort of wonder there was a there was a tax exchange where she said, you know, he's not going to raise taxes on anyone making under four hundred thousand dollars a year, then said, oh, if you repeal the Trump tax cuts, obviously that's going to raise some taxes on middle class people because some of the even though most of the Trump tax cuts were just for the rich and for corporations, there are some that were on more middle class.

And she just didn't answer that question. I'm sort of I'm sort of wondering like what Biden will do in the next debate if asked, that obviously Trump's not going to nail him down because Trump doesn't have the the the mental wherewithal or the capacity or the lung capacity.

But I could I could imagine a moderator trying to nail him down on that.

I also just like we also have kind of like covid goggles on, like. Yeah. Like that was like a real exchange. It's actually a winning issue for Democrats. It's not as clean as they failed on the greatest crisis in 100 years. And the only thing that matters. So, yeah, there was a back and forth. It wasn't a totally clean hit. That's OK. Like a whole debate in which the most important two issues, the Affordable Care Act and covid, she managed to land just absolutely withering hits.

And Pence had nothing to say, I think matters more than the fact that there was a bit of a kind of like spongy tax exchange, by the way, that came after a great hit on Trump paying seven hundred fifty dollars in taxes and owing 400 million dollars to God knows who. That was really good.

There was also a Supreme Court question where he kept trying to pin her down on will you pack the court? Are you expanding the court? She also just did not take the bait on that one. To me, that's another one that will surely come up if there is another debate. Trump thinks, you know, they all think this is a winning issue because the pundits all think that, you know, this is a winning issue, too, for them, because Biden and Harris haven't said whether they will expand the Supreme Court or not or whether they're even considering it.

Do you think they can continue to just not answer that question or is there a better answer?

I mean, look, my personal take is like I don't I don't need to hear Joe Biden say he will pack the court and expand it before the election. I'm OK with them skirting it. I'm not sure it's the best answer. Where we've landed, it seems a little rough, a little tumultuous. Like there's a way you could just throw it to Congress and say, actually, that's up that's up to the Senate. That's up to the House to vote on whether or not they would do that.

That wouldn't be up to the executive. It seems like that would be an easy way out of it. I'm kind of skeptical that people really care. I think these guys live in McGartland where people automatically know what the Green New Deal is and automatically think it's bad. I'm not sure that's the case. You know, like that tax, it was the only area where I thought maybe they made up some ground. I wish Biden and Harris had a little bit better a court packing answer, but, yeah, I don't know.

I like do I think people came away from that debate last night thinking I might not support Biden in Harris because they might pack the courts? No, nobody would be.

My guess.

I would try and answer like Mitch McConnell in twenty sixteen single handedly change the size of the court when he stole that seat, the Gorsuch seat.

And since then, he has completely packed the court, Supreme Court Circuit Courts, federal courts with the most extreme right wing judges. And now he's trying to do it again before an election while people are already voting. People don't want this justice to be seated before an election and he's going to do it anyway where we're fighting as hard as we can to stop him from packing the court right now. And we're going to try to stop him from doing that first and then we'll see what happens afterwards.

But I'm going to focus on the fight in front of us first.

Yeah, Michael, just say something like that. We'll just hand him a balloon and say, inflate this before I answer the rest of your questions. See if you can play this.

Look, I feel like there's two options, right?

There's like kind of John, I saw you talking about this on Twitter. Like, you can basically just say, like, I hope it doesn't come to it, but if they push us sick, fuck, yeah, we'll do it. Right. But there's also a kind of version of like a forlorn like I really hope it doesn't come to that. Like, I just hope, you know, I think I hope we fight this nomination. I think we can defeat this nomination.

I hope they don't pack the court. And and other than that, I'm not going to engage in hypotheticals. I'm trying to get this fight done. And hopefully we can stop Amy CONI Barrett and it will never come to that. Schumer gave them the answer.

Schumer when said, I'm not taking anything off the table. And everyone is like, oh, my God, Schumer left it on the table and then that's it. Then no one said anything to him again. He's fine. Chuck Schumer went on his merry way.

He just went on to show and asked him our short shoot more vampyre fundraising videos for YouTube. Dan, what do you think? I know you've you've read a lot. You're a big fan of court expansion.

We don't call it hacking guys rebalancing, perhaps caught rebalancing.

What do you think I am for a little sprucing up? We're sprucing up the courts.

Yeah, of course. Redecorating. I think this will look better with two additional chairs on either end. That's what I think it's feng shui workout, feng shui. I think that answer, John, that you gave is right.

There's no they need a better answer to it. I do think one thing that was very powerful to Kamala Harris, which is an absolutely stunning fact that we should get more attention, is that Donald Trump hasn't appointed a black person to the court. Yeah, that's a failure. That is. I learn that I learned something from the debate that is absolutely my by we should say that more often, I think there is the Chuck Schumer answer is the right answer.

And there is. And I think the forlorn tone is the right way to do it.

There is one audience in addition to prominent court backers like ourselves to hear that. And it is John Roberts.

And who is going to have to make a whole bunch of decisions in the coming months with a completely rigged court, and he is someone who has shown in the past to have some very real concerns about his legacy as it relates to the to the fate of the court and the idea that decisions that he makes that are very clearly putting his thumb on the electoral scale could lead to a changing of the court matters. And I think that I believe that that is part of what Schumer is doing by saying that is sending a message.

You know, taking it off the table gives Roberts free will to do something not just on ACA and roll, but also on in a nightmare scenario in a Bush v. Gore two. And the idea that that is going to have some consequences in the back of his head. I think it's important.

That's smart. I think there's one other piece of this, too, which is the lack of an answer has led, I think, to a lot of Republicans who are trying to kind of make intellectually dishonest arguments in favor of doing the confirmation is it doesn't matter what we do, they're going to pack the court. And I think the reality, of course, is Joe Biden is incredibly reluctant to do something like this. He is an institutionalist to the court.

And so making it clear that, like despite I think what a lot of left wing activist and progressive activists would want, which is to pack the court no matter what, for Joe Biden to say, not explicitly, but basically say I hope it doesn't come to that. I don't want to do that. But if they push us, we may have no choice. I think kind of kind of speaks to both sides.

Renovate the court after not hearing a lot about foreign policy in the first debate, Susan Page did ask a few questions about this. Kamala Harris talked about rebuilding alliances while Mike Pence talked about crushing ISIS attacks. Biden for opposing the decision to take out Qassem Soleimani. Harris responded by pointing out all the ways Donald Trump has disrespected those who serve in the military. Here's a clip.

But you mentioned Soleimani. Let's let's start there. So after the strike on Sulimani, there was a counter strike on our troops in Iraq. And. They suffered serious brain injuries and do you know what, Donald Trump dismissed them as headaches, and this is about a pattern of Donald Trump's where he has referred to our men who are serving in our military as suckers and losers.

The American people deserve to know. Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian general, was responsible for the death of hundreds of American service members. When the opportunity came, we saw him headed to Baghdad to kill more Americans. President Trump didn't hesitate and cost him. Sulaimani is gone, but you deserve to know the Joe Biden. And Kamala Harris actually criticized the decision to take out some Qassem Soleimani. It's really inexplicable. But with regard to Joe Biden, it's it's explainable because history records that Joe Biden actually opposed the raid against Osama bin Laden.

Tell me what you think about that exchange. I mean, I don't think anyone really understood what they were talking about.

I mean, just for for our listeners, right? I mean, they assassinated Cosmo Imadi in January. The Iranians responded with this massive missile strike. They tried to play it down like nothing happened, as Kamala Harris mentioned, like, I think one hundred service members had traumatic brain injuries, which was a big deal. The reason they said they had to assassinate a senior military leader in Iran was because they were providing material support to all these Shiite militia groups in Iraq that were attacking U.S. service members in the region that would they call it that.

They call that deterrence. But just like last week, we learned that that deterrence is going so poorly that the United States might have to fully withdraw U.S. embassy personnel from our embassy in Baghdad, which is an embassy the size of Vatican City that cost a billion dollars to build, which is one of the most heavily fortified embassies on the planet. Right. So the policy they're describing in terms of killing Soleimani has completely failed. But then Pence goes on to totally debase himself by raising his two children and their military service as a shield to defend Donald Trump, who he knows damn well, said troops who died are suckers and losers.

We know that because General Kelly has refused to deny the reports that originally in the Atlantic. So what this showed me was like, again, Mike Pence is willing to say and do anything even cheap in the service of his own family members in service of Donald Trump.

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Let's talk about the postdebate reaction. Instant polling by CNN showed Kamala Harris is the decisive winner. Fifty nine thirty eight percent. Harris also saw her favorability ratings rise from 56 percent before the debate to 63 percent after, while Pence's favorability numbers with the poll didn't budge, an inch remaining at forty one. Percent and Ipsos poll with five thirty eight found pretty much the same thing, the majority of voters thought that Kamala Harris did better than the majority of voters liked her policies better than pences.

And she saw her favorability rise to plus 10 in that poll. And Mike Pence's remained at negative 14, didn't move at all.

So, you know what, if anything, did each campaign achieve here? And how much will this debate matter at all? Dan?

I think there was an opportunity to deliver message to what I assume was tens of millions of people watching this debate, some of whom are undecided about whether they're going to vote and undecided about who they're going to vote for. The polling shows, common sense shows that Kamala Harris in a much better job of that opportunity than Pence did.

But the vice president is not a huge event on the path to Election Day. But it is. But it is a moment that matters. And when you are winning, as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are, every time one of these moments passes and you are still winning, that is good. And so they should feel very good about where they are today. Love it. Yeah, I agree with that, I also one thing we didn't talk about is just that Kohlhaas just oh, we didn't talk about the fly.

We all did. Yeah. We also forgot to talk about the fly. Well, you know, I think a few people on Twitter have mentioned it. I think she also took a chance to kind of tell her bio, do her bio.

And I think that there was value to that because, you know, like Susan Page asked the question at the end that referenced it, neither one really answered it. But it is present that both that Joe Biden is older and there is a, you know, a question as to whether he would run for re-election and the fact that she would just took an opportunity to run through her qualifications, talk about her past, I think has value. And, you know, all in all, what what did Mike Pence do to convince millions upon millions of Americans that the Trump administration has failed abysmally on the biggest challenges facing the country?

I don't think anything I don't think there is anything he could say. Their positions are indefensible and he didn't succeed.

Tommy, will anyone be talking about this this time tomorrow? No, this time today.

I'm shocked. We're talking about it right now. Yeah, I am, too. Right. Because because because Donald Trump decided to unburden himself to Maria Bartiromo for like thirty five forty five minutes this morning and said a bunch of batched stuff.

And so we're talking about that and said what was interesting to me, it was in a debate that was pretty combative. And often when you're sort of like engaged in political combat, people don't like either side. Right. Kamala Harris still managed to improve her favorability ratings in that CNN poll. It went from 56 percent to 63 percent. And I do think that was directly attributed to the way she handled herself. I also agree. Love it. I thought that that question early on when she decided just not even come close to answering whatever the question was and just tell a story about herself and her parents.

And her upbringing was like a very savvy moment to just tell the story and sort of leaven what had been kind of a tough back and forth with just some sort of hopeful, optimistic two minutes like Hannah. Hannah couldn't watch the debate. And then when that happened, she came and sat down next to me for a minute and a half until she left again when Penn started talking.

So the winner tonight was civility, guys.

I mean, I can't emphasize enough how difficult it is to debate when you're up there. Like I saw a lot of people on Twitter, to the extent that Tumblr has got criticism, some people are like, oh, she missed an opportunity to hit him here or she could have hit him here. You know, like the sheer number of things that you have to keep in your mind when you're sitting on that debate stage for 90 minutes. First of all, imagine the anxiety you're in front of, like tens of millions of Americans.

She's had a bigger audience that she's ever had in her life. Right. Same with Mike Pence and with anyone who does one of these presidential debates.

And and then you have prepped all this time. So you have lines that you have to deliver. You have moments that you're trying to hit. And then whatever your plan is, it's constantly getting interrupted by whatever the moderator wants to do and whatever Mike Pence wants to do.

So the fact that you have all those things going on and she still was able to check off everything on her list, right.

Like talked about her bio, talked about Biden's economic plan. Did the health care hit did the covid hit like she got so much done during that debate while being interrupted?

I thought it was a really, really impressive performance.

It's probably one of the most impressive debate performances we've seen in a very long time. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's easy to get lost in frustration with the moderators in the presence of Plexiglas and all of that. But she is a phenomenally talented communicator and she delivers in big moments. She talks like a human, which is something we talk about all the time. She doesn't use political jargon. She looks directly into the camera and she has, as you said, a punch list of things she wants to accomplish with the audience that she has.

And she went through, I imagine, pretty close to that entire list. And that is something that should be incredibly important. And this is like this is one of those moments where she has everything to lose. Biden is winning. The press is just chomping at the bit for something it could possibly do for a change in narrative. And she is a black woman on national television dealing with a press corps and set of pundits who still abide by a lot of the racist and misogynistic terms.

You saw it in the coverage of her in the primary debates. You saw the coverage of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in their previous debates. And to do that on with that much pressure on with the highest stakes, the most one election in history is incredibly impressive and it shouldn't get lost because of why.

Later on, Mike Pence, his head, as Tom you mentioned, you know, thanks to Donald Trump, the debate is already out of the news cycle. Patient Zero did a phone interview with Magga pundit Maria Bartiromo, where he twice called Kamala Harris a monster, attacked his attorney general and FBI director for not yet indicting Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton and blamed Goldstar military families who've lost loved ones for giving him covid-19. Trump also announced he will not be participating in the next presidential debate because the Commission on Presidential Debates has chosen a virtual format in order to protect people from a potentially infectious Donald Trump.

So Biden campaign released a statement saying they were prepared to accept the virtual format. But now that Trump has pulled out, Biden will find a way to take questions from voters on October 15th and has asked the commission to move the Biden Trump town hall debate to October 22nd, which is the date of the third and final debate. Then the Trump campaign came back and said, OK, we'll do that. But we still want the third debate now on October twenty ninth, which is a few days before the election, and the Biden campaign said, fuck off, do the virtual debate if you want.

What do you guys think of this move? What do you think of Trump's meltdown this morning? Love it.

What do I think of it? Looks like he's spinning out. He obviously is refusing to say yes to the virtual debate because it highlights the fact that he is sick and contagious because of his recklessness and incompetence in controlling a pandemic not just nationally, but in his own home. So obviously, a virtual debate would be an advertisement for his failures. That's not the commission. So the mute button got that? Well, that's right. Yeah. The mute button is deadly to him.

He can't be muted. So it's embarrassing to admit reality. I mean, you know, that's not the commission's fault. That's not Joe Biden's fault. So I think all in all, I think he's seeing the polls. He is seeing reviews of Mike Pence favorably compared to his own performance. He is seeing the fact that his tax returns are being exposed in legal proceedings in New York and he is lashing out unhelpfully. Tommy, I I feel like the Biden campaign is on pretty firm ground here saying that, like, look, they came up with a virtual debate.

You said, no, we're not going to do with your fucking October. Twenty nine, three days before the election, final debate.

Do the debate that the commission asked, he has covid and then and he probably had it at the last debate and they lied about it like the Biden Biden people should never walk in the room with him again. He is an unhinged, unhealthy old man who should go get bed rest or do whatever he needs to do to get healthy.

And like just like I think the Biden campaign is doing exactly what they should do. Just to just step back for one second about how ridiculous the Trump campaign strategy is. He spent like thirty minutes. Forty five minutes on the phone with Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business. How many people watch that show? Two hundred thousand three hundred. I think that was how you spent your time today. He also attacked Mike Pompeo for not releasing Hillary Clinton's emails. He said Don Jr.

, his son, couldn't win in New York City.

It was just like your classic Donald Trump ranting, raving nonsense. He sounds to me like a man who knows he's going to lose and he doesn't know how to fix it and he's just going to bitch and moan until the votes are cast.

Dan, isn't it in his interest to do two more debates, to accept two more debates like he's behind right now?

Wouldn't you try if he wasn't an incoherent, raving lunatic? Right. I mean, that's the problem. Like, when is the best thing for Trump to do to have any chance to win this election would be to stop talking. Yeah. Yeah, right. Like, every like his presence on that stage was a disaster for him the last time. His presence on the stage next time will also probably be a disaster for him. And even if he were to be able to do an OK job and then have Biden make some sort of mistake, which I can't really fathom what that would be, that would overcome the fact that Donald Trump gave himself covid after failing to respond to repeated mechanical.

Two hundred ten thousand Americans throws himself your back. Dan, you can't just say I can't fathom what it is and then just leave it there. You got to throw some salt behind. You got to do so.

We're to going to have to edit that out for Kermesse sacrificed for karma. Now, let's say let's say he did make a mistake, a mistake like Donald Trump would just call Fox and Friends the next morning and draw attention back to himself again. And so, like, just when you read the summary of what Donald Trump said on Maria Bartiromo this morning, which I did not like, waking up to that in midstream was really jarring this morning. I loved seeing the tweets about it.

I dove in, but you read but you read that list of things that it reminds me of, something many, many, many years ago.

Ron Klain, who's one of Biden's top advisors, and I were advising a candidate at the same time and the candidate something absolutely insane. And I called Ron to tell him what it was. And Ron said to me, Dan, that is an a plus answer to a political science question of how do you lose an election? And so, like, that's what that was.

And it's just it's truly mind boggling that he would do those things. And it actually says a lot about our totally fucked up the American political system is that this race is still not over yet, despite Donald Trump doing those things on a regular basis.

Well, I was thinking about that, too. I think there's so much noise, like there are so many crazy Trump statements. He's putting out these fucking videos from the White House just before we started recording. He's he's he did he did a direct address to seniors where he called them vulnerable and then promised them everywhere, like, you get a Regeneron, you get a Regeneron, you get a real he's promising you promising treatments to everyone he like in that paragraph.

I just I just read, like, blaming the Gold Star families for giving him covid, even though he met with them the day after the Rose Garden ceremony. So it's very likely that he infected Gold Star families with covid-19 in the same breath as he's calling on on his attorney general to fucking indict Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, which is like something that because he's done it so many times now, we just we're like, oh, yeah, there you go again.

Calling for the imprisonment of all his political opponents. Crazy Trump.

Well, it's look, I. I think the serious part about all of this is, is this person has always been unfit, he's always been monstrous. It's just sort of fully revealed now. There's nothing else left. There's just failure and that kind of purest and worst form of Trump. And and it ultimately is a reminder that this election isn't really about him like he is who he is. He is monstrous. He can't shift. He has no strategy.

He can't fix it. The only question is, is the brokenness in our system is the propaganda all around him is the rot that allows him to be taken seriously and treated as though there's an actual political debate in our country. Is all of that enough to overcome like democracy and the basic virtues of politics in which we claim to have a debate about our differences that we adjudicate in front of the American people, like are those forces of kind of brokenness and institutional decline able to overcome the good work and the democracy that everybody is fighting for?

And I hope the answer is yes, but I don't think anyone should pretend it's a sure thing I take away from this morning's like anything can happen. He could still win. We all need to just do the work. But like the first debate, the VP debate, this call this morning, it just reminds you how much they have lost the thread. Like in twenty sixteen, he had a message. It was like, I'm not a Washington insider.

Crooked Hillary's emails are bad. He used to hit her on trade all the time. Now they're just flailing and like Mike Pence is flailing along with him.

That closing bit he did about the Russia probe and the, you know, spied on my campaign like that nonsense is for an audience of one that is designed to make Donald Trump happy. It is not designed to win a campaign. So they are just like they're not doing anything to help themselves win. Meanwhile, they're pulling down ad buys in like every state that matters, like, look, I'm not trying to be cocky or I'm not predicting shit, but like they're not setting themselves up for success.

No, there's no message. You're totally right. They're flailing. Obviously, we all look for things to be anxious about all the time because of 2016 and because of who we are, like, you know, it is it's October 8th. There are well, they'll be three weeks left next Tuesday. So a little more than three weeks left. That is a lot of time left on the clock for Donald Trump. Maybe he can come up with some closing message.

Maybe he can be a little more coherent. Maybe he's trying to make seniors two hundred dollar drug cards or at least say he's going to be paid for by them, paid for by taxpayers.

So he's going to try to like every trick in the book, every abuse of power he can think of. He's going to try it out the next three weeks.

And I do think, you know, I think to myself, like last Monday was the tax story, the tax story, before the debate, before the covid diagnosis that all happened in the last week, in the last three weeks has been the Atlantic story, the Woodward story, the taxes, two debates and Trump getting covid three weeks, not to mention a Supreme Court seat opening.

Yes. Yes. And the Supreme Court again. Yeah, well, that's the other thing. Like, you know, they're going to Democrats are going do whatever they can to stop Amy Barrett from being nominated. But again, like we've said before, Mitch McConnell has the votes. He changes the rules. He can do whatever he want as the guy that runs the Senate. So we should we should fight like hell, but we should not kid ourselves that it's very possible that could seat her and then that's another win for Trump or whatever.

So stay vigilant. And these last three weeks. But like you said, Tommy, there is there is no closing message or argument like there was in twenty sixteen. Did you see that Mitch McConnell today said he hasn't been to the White House? Yes, yes, yes. A shot at Trump. You said he hasn't been there because they don't do social distancing like I want. That's basically what he said.

He knows he's the last line of defense for minority role and he cannot put himself at risk here. He's basically the designated survivor so he can go nowhere near Trump.

But also today, we learned that Mark Meadows in May hosted a 70 person wedding for his daughter where no one, no masks, no one socially distanced. And they did this in Atlanta. So, you know, rules for the not for me. It's just plutocracy assholes.

I mean, it's a shock that didn't happen in the Rose Garden. There's another story, another scandal.

It's just there's too many. All right. When we come back, I will talk to Better Oruc.

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I'm now joined by former Texas Congressman and the founder of Powered by People Better O'Rourke. Welcome back to Positive America Better.

John, it's so good to see you. I wish this were in person, but it's still good to see you across the screen. It's good to see you, too.

First question saw some pretty wild polls in your state this morning. Is this the year where we're turning Texas blue? Is it going to happen? It is.

So it's been forty four years. Last time it happened was in nineteen seventy six, almost half a century since a Democrat won the Electoral College votes in Texas. But the poll I saw this morning, probably same one you're referring to Biden forty eight, Trump forty eight. And it doesn't mean that Biden's going to do it. It just means that it is fully possible and within our power to make it so. And so there are, as you know, so many amazing state House candidates in Texas, congressional candidates in Texas, a revived Texas Democratic Party.

So many people doing what they can to make the most of this opportunity. And I really think that we have no better shot of ending this on election night, given the fact Pennsylvania will take maybe days or weeks to count their ballots. Then for Texas, 38 Electoral College votes tonight on November 3rd to come in for the Democrat for the first time in a half century. And mathematically and then maybe more importantly psychologically, it becomes impossible for Trump to move forward.

And we turn the page on that and start something new and ambitious and perhaps the. Progressive administration in the history of this country, so a lot, I believe, is riding on Texas.

So I want to talk all about the state legislative races. But just before we get there, from a statewide perspective, your race against Cruz, you got to. Forty eight percent. Like, how does a Democrat in Texas get that extra two percent if you had to do it over all over again, if you were running statewide again, where would you look for those votes?

A couple of things, one, since I ran anywhere from eight to nine hundred thousand Texans have become registered to vote, so there's almost an entirely new electorate in the state. It tends to be young, it tends to be incredibly diverse and tends to be concentrated in north Texas, around the DFW Metroplex and southeast Texas around Houston. So connect with those young voters and those new Texans who moved here from other states and those new registrants, you know, I don't know, go into two hundred and fifty four counties and making sure no one was written off.

No one was taken for granted. We ran that pretty hard. And not only did we have the best turnout in midterms since nineteen seventy in the state of Texas, not only did I win more votes than any Democrat had ever won, you had half a million people. Five hundred thousand vote for Greg Abbott for governor, voted for me for US Senate, which has something to do with the campaign we ran. May have a lot to do with Ted Cruz and just how vile a human being he is.

And I think that we're actually working with a similar dynamic here. Unfortunately, more than sixteen thousand of my fellow Texans have lost their lives. Most of them did not need to do that. We represent four percent of the world's population as a country.

We're a fifth of the world's deaths. This is one hundred percent attributable to Donald Trump. Those have enabled him like John Cornyn and those who are following in his footsteps, like our governor, Greg Abbott. And that is not lost on the voters of this state. They are connecting the dots. And so I think that poll that shows what is possible if we all are doing our part, connecting with those voters, if Joe Biden follows up on this really impressive investment, he's made six million bucks, which is probably six million more than any Democratic nominee for president has spent in Texas, at least on the air in in decades.

We could really come through for the country. So I think building upon the great work that everyone did in twenty eighteen, the great contrast we have with Trump and the Republican Party and then making sure that people know what the consequence of another four years of Trump is and then what's possible with the four years of a Biden Harris. Can you talk about why you started powered by people and what kind of work you've been doing since last fall?

I think the most exciting level of government, especially in Texas right now, is the state legislature. This is where the rubber meets the road when you're talking about access to health care were the least insured state in the country. Number one provider of mental health care is the county jail system. Largest inpatient mental health care facility is the Harris County Jail. We elected not to expand Medicaid when the federal government was going to pay a hundred cents on the dollar in order to do that.

And therefore, many Texans are far sicker than they otherwise would be, are dying and they don't have to. That state legislature and Democratic control could expand Medicaid and therefore the ability to see a doctor and save somebody's life. We are on the front lines of climate change. Your energy rich Texas, that could be the leader in renewable energy and that would be a decision for the state legislature.

We are at the frontlines of gun violence, El Paso, Midland, Odessa, Sutherland Springs, Santa Fe High School. So many mass shootings have taken place here in Texas. We expanded the ability to carry guns on campuses and in churches and in businesses in the wake of those shootings, having guns since candidates who can appeal to gun owners and non gun owners alike, that becomes possible with the Democratic majority. And in this and you all have been so focused on this and we are grateful.

Greg Abbott last week closing down all of the absentee ballot drop off locations in the two hundred fifty four Texas counties, save for the one at central headquarters in each county. That compounded by the most rigorous voter I.D. laws. Seven hundred and fifty polling place closures, most of them located in black and Latino neighborhoods over the last eight years. The racial gerrymander that is Texas and those are the words of a federal judge, not mine. You get a Democratic majority with a seat at the table in twenty, twenty one when we redistrict the state and draw in three new congressional districts thanks to our population growth and you get a democracy that begins to work again, not one that is drawn black Texans, Mexican-American Texans out solely based on the color of their skin or their country of national origin, but one that reveals its true genius through its diversity.

We have been held back for so long, not a red state, not a Republican state, not a blue state, just a non-voting state up to this point. And in winning, the state legislature changes all that. And one other thing, I think there is my theory of the case, to use a phrase I often associate with you, is that instead of top down coattails, a big spend from the top of the ticket, lots of organizing statewide and the votes trickle down, we're going to have all these great state House candidates who, by the way, most of them are women, women of color and many black women among them.

They are enlarging the electorate, registering new voters. They're exciting. These new voters. They're bringing people in who otherwise would not vote. And those voters and votes will travel up ballot to the congressional races, to the US Senate race for MJ Hagar could be John Cornyn. And I think they, more than any other factor or force will help Joe Biden win this state. So powered by people is really just a bunch of US volunteers, more than six thousand of us making phone calls and postcards, texting Prie covid.

We were knocking on doors to reach the voters in these competitive state House districts that can decide the outcomes of these elections. And it is it is pretty thrilling. It reminds me a lot of the twenty eighteen campaign, just very grassroots folks taking the matter into their own hands, calling complete strangers and bringing them in and hopefully producing the largest turnout we've seen in a presidential election cycle ever.

And how are voters responding to this, because traditionally, at least for the last decade, last several years, it's been really hard to get people to focus on sort of down ballot races, local races, like how much sort of education do you have to do when you're talking to voters about like this is a state legislative race that's really important that you should focus on?

Yeah, so I'm on all these phone banks that we do. And I got to tell you, and you know this from from doing this kind of work, it's not necessarily fun and it's certainly not easy. You might be getting a lot of hangers. Yeah. Yeah. You might be getting somebody in the middle of dinner. You may just have somebody who doesn't want to talk about this with a complete stranger on the phone.

But when I get the right person at the right number and they take the time to talk with me, the most gratifying response I get is I didn't know that Alisa Simmons was running for State House here. And I know about Akela Baozi or Kiki Williams. She she is running just outside of Fort Hood in a community that hasn't been represented by a Democrat and I don't know how long. Twenty four year Army veteran running this tenacious campaign. And when I connect with voters in her district, they are thrilled that she's running.

They didn't know a Democrat was running. They didn't know that they had a twenty four year Army veteran to choose. And and that's when I know that these calls make a difference, that you might otherwise have had somebody in a state that just ended straight ticket voting for this cycle. You might have people who vote for the presidential race, maybe the US Senate and then go home. They're now going to stay on that ballot six pages later and vote for that state rep candidate.

So I know that this this works. I know it is tough, but if this stuff were easy, we'd be a blue state already. And it's going to take this kind of work to bring it home. And just from a from a numbers perspective, how close are you guys to flipping the legislature? How many seats? How close is it?

Yeah, so we are thanks to the great work everyone did in twenty eighteen where we picked up 12 state House seats. We are only nine down. And the great thing is in nine of those districts we want to win. I actually won more votes than did Ted Cruz. So in that case, in that year in twenty eighteen folks just didn't complete the job go down the ballot. So we know we can turn out Democratic voters in sufficient numbers to win these races.

So we've got to win those. We've got to hold the ones that we picked up in twenty eighteen. But what's so exciting is that we are contesting everywhere and I just think it's beautiful. There's a guy, Jason Rogers, running a Democrat running in East Texas in a seat that hasn't seen a Democrat run in like 20 or 30 years. He is an Army veteran. He's a retired public school teacher and he's currently a diesel mechanic. And he's talking to the people in his district in in a way that they can understand the kind of transcends party or ideology or your pre held conceptions about what a Democrat is or is not.

And I don't know if Jason Rogers is going to win. I think he's got a shot.

But what he is going to do is he's going to bring in more voters and an otherwise turnout because there hasn't been a contest there in decades and those voters are going to go right up the ballot to Joe Biden. So it's pretty cool to see what's happening across the board across the state.

In Texas right now, you guys are hosting a million voter phone bank on Monday, October 12th. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Yeah, this is going to be really fun. And it's, I think, the biggest voter phone bank we've seen in Texas, certainly that I've been a part of. We're going to try to call a million voters that we have already identified because powered by people, the Texas Democratic Party, the candidates themselves have made tens of millions of voter contact attempts. We've identified our voters. Now we've got to turn them out. So on Monday, the 12th of October, which is the eve of early voting, which starts the next day, on Tuesday, we're going to try to call a million known Democratic voters and get them to make a commitment to vote on the first day of early voting, thereby avoiding any long lines on November 3rd, making sure that they get their votes.

And we're going to be joined by Oprah Winfrey, Willie Nelson, Bernie Sanders, Stacey Abrams, Julian Castro, Andrew Yang and a bunch of other amazing people on a crew and a crew.

So I'm so proud to be a part of this and and so grateful that these folks who have such a large following and are so concerned about the state of our democracy and the need to vote, are willing to lend their names and their time to this as well. So the million voter phone bank on on Monday, the 12th of October. So you guys have had a number of obstacles to overcome, you've talked about some of them, pandemic's made it harder, harder to organize and register voters.

You mentioned like every other day I see a story in the news about some other Republican voter suppression tactic in Texas. How are you dealing with all this shit, both from a tactical perspective and also from a psychological perspective, for voters to feel like, oh, everything's stacked up against us?

What can I do? Yeah, great question. I mean, you've got to go in eyes wide open. You have to acknowledge that voter suppression is alive and well in Texas, that you know what you're walking into. I mentioned the polling place closures in the voter ID laws. You can use your license to carry a firearm in Texas to prove who you are at your precinct. You can't use your student I.D. as an example, in this latest move by Greg Abbott to close down the absentee ballot collection sites is just more of it.

But but if we leave it there, then all we've done is kind of depress people and inadvertently and unwittingly help those Republicans suppress the vote. So let's talk about this in Harris County, which is home to Houston, Texas, which has more people in it than the state of Colorado or the state of Nevada has two thousand square miles musclemen, cos they've got twenty four hour voting. They have voter super centers where you can keep safe distance and very convenient and can accommodate a lot of people.

They have drive through voting so you don't have to leave your car. And Chris Hollonds, who is the county clerk there, has implemented a a ballot tracker for those who who want to entrust their absentee ballot to the US mail. So they'll track that and confirm when they have received it. So many of these counties, most of them led by Democrats, are making it incredibly easy for people to vote nonetheless. And that's how we're going to overcome this desperate attempt to suppress or intimidate voters.

We're not going to allow them to do that. And so I think we have to keep continuing to share that message about how easy so many in so many counties have made it to vote. And then we've got to also beyond voting, beyond expressing our outrage about voter suppression on on Twitter, we've got to do some of the hard work, the grind of a voter phone bank. I mean, this stuff is not fun and and it's not easy, but it's necessary.

And it's the only way, certainly in the midst of Cauvin, the only sure way we have a connecting with those whose votes will decide the outcome of these elections. And so we certainly encourage anyone who's interested. You can be a Texan. You can be outside of the state of Texas to join us on a Monday, the 12th on the million voter phone make and reach those Texans who folks will not only decide whether we have a Democratic majority in the state House, we'll not only decide the most competitive congressional landscape in Texas in my lifetime, but will also potentially decide whether this election is over on the night of November 3rd and whether Joe Biden becomes the first Democrat to win Texas in in forty four years.

That's how important these phone calls are.

So when you're on these phone calls, when you're talking to voters and you're talking to people who are either undecided between candidates or uncertain about whether they'll vote at all, what have you found to be the most persuasive arguments?

You know what this is this is one of the toughest conversations I have because it's hard for me given everything I know and have witnessed and participated in, to believe that anybody could be undecided at this point.

But, you know, they're out there. They're out there. And I had an experience with a voter. Congresswoman Veronica Escobar organized a series of phone banks that were calling voters along the US Mexico border. So communities that are ninety ninety five percent, Mexican-American voters who may prefer to speak in English, they prefer to speak in Spanish.

And I caught one guy who was at work. He was at a convenience store. And in Texas, the minimum wage is seven dollars and twenty five cents an hour. So this may be his second or third job. And he said, I'm undecided. I don't have time for this shit. I've got to get back to work. I've got a lot going on in my life right now. And that that helped me understand how some don't have the luxury to get as engaged as I've been able to get engaged in in the news politics, in democracy.

And then I have to also acknowledge that as a Mexican-American man, I mean, his vote has been actively suppressed for a very long time. And in some ways, we've got to work to help him overcome that. So that outreach and he mentioned to me, you're the first call I've ever had from a candidate or a campaign or anything political. So I will at least think about it. That was important. And then part of why I think it's so critical that Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and their surrogates campaign in Texas is that I am hearing from a lot of Mexican-American voters, a lot of black voters in Texas who aren't sure that they're going to vote.

And some say, you know, I feel like I'm supposed to vote for the Democrat because I'm black and that's what's expected of me. But, you know, if someone doesn't come and ask for my vote, then I'm not so sure that I will. And as as great a job as the Texas Democratic Party and our candidates and volunteers are doing nothing will be Joe Biden, the man who will be in the position of public trust that will determine the future and fate of this country.

Nothing will be him coming to Texas and making that case here. So we are so grateful for everything that he is doing so far, this investment that they're making, the fact that Doug Moss was just in the Rio Grande Valley, which is not an easy place to get to, but it is so critically important that we show up in places like McCallan or Harlingen. But to have more of that is just going to improve our chances of winning. We we these voters know what they can vote against.

These voters desperately want something and someone to vote for.

Yeah, that's that's been my experience talking to these same voters. So I follow you on Twitter.

I notice you've been laser focused on organizing in Texas. You haven't commented a ton about Trump in the race, which kudos to you. That's a lot more productive what you're doing.

But what is your I've been curious, like what's your reaction been to the last several weeks of this race from the debate to the covid diagnosis to the insanity that we're dealing with right now?

Yeah, I was I don't know, another word to put on it that the night of in the morning after that debate, I was just depressed and not depressed about our chances, just depressed that this is what the country has come to and that something like that could even take place. And it is a very defeating feeling. I mean, it's hard to to motivate yourself to get out there and move and do something. And I almost thought maybe that's the mad genius of Donald Trump, that it is just such a blizzard of bizarre behavior, just such an awful train wreck that it depresses us from from moving and getting past it or getting through it or getting over it or getting beyond it.

And it really wasn't until we we had a phone bank that night. And I always kind of have to kind of gear up for those phone banks because, you know, not only am I calling strangers, but sometimes as better work, you know, people want to give you a piece of their mind. And I'm going to receive that for two and a half hours. But but I finish that phone bank and man, I felt so much better.

Do you feel a sense of urgency and purpose? And you're not a witness. You're not a bystander. This isn't happening to you. You're going to happen to it. You're you're going to change the dynamic.

And look, you're one person maybe over the course, that phone bank you've made one hundred and fifteen one hundred and twenty phone calls. But in the aggregate, when you're joined by four or five hundred six hundred other people doing it at the same time. And then Kate on our team gives us the rundown of here's how many calls we made. Here's how many voters we talked to. Here's how many commitments we got for Biden or for the Democratic state House candidate.

Man, that feels so good. And I got to remind myself of that whenever I get down. Or distressed or on the on the verge of despair, go out, do some work, and if you can, can find a safe way to knock on doors. I know the the Biden campaign is going to start doing that. Or if you can join one of these phone banks or if you can talk to someone in your life and gain a commitment from them to make a plan to vote as soon as early voting starts in their state, then by all means, do it.

It's the only way, John, I know how to respond to that because it is just too bizarre. The roid rage of of the president the these last couple of days, the walking away from literally hundreds of millions of Americans who who need help getting through the deadliest pandemic of the last one hundred and two years, the millions of Texans who lost their job. Twice as many Texans filed for unemployment in the first two months of this pandemic as did in all of twenty nineteen.

And then they are struggling and suffering the Rio Grande Valley. So many people have died so quickly of covid that they are stacking the dead bodies in refrigerated FEMA trailers because there is no more room in the morgues and the funeral homes. Donald Trump walked away from each and every single one of them. Everyone who needs our government to come through for us at this moment, and I can't control that. And I don't know the effective response in real time except to make sure he is not our president.

On the twenty first of January, twenty twenty one, I said the same exact thing the day after the debate to our staff. Is that like his bet is that you will be so disgusted with politics that you will just tune out and stay home.

And we have to remember that we have the power to change that, that we have agency in the outcome of this race, that we don't have to let him have the last word by making us so disgusted about politics that we stay home because we have the power to change it by going to vote and volunteering and making those phone calls.

On that note, if people want to help, if people want to be part of the million voter phone bank on Monday, October 12th, they want to help power by people. What should they do? Where should they go?

So the website is powered by people, dawg. It's spelled a little funny. It's powered and then X people powered, X people dog. You go there, you can sign up for any number of shifts on the million voter phone bank. You can sign up for the shift with Willie Nelson, with Oprah Winfrey, with Andrew Yang, with Julian Castro, with Stacey Abrams, with Bernie Sanders. All of these great people who understand how important Texas is for the future of our country.

You can get on the phones with them. So it's powered by people, Doug, and we would love to have you making phone calls with us on Monday. Outstanding.

Better work. Thank you so much for coming back to PSA and thanks for all the wonderful work you're doing. And good luck out there. Thank you, man. Thanks for having me on and thank you for what you all are doing.

Thanks to Barrow for joining and after listening to him talk about how important it is to flip the Texas state legislature, we're making a big addition to fuck Jerry. We're going to add Texas, as Ben mentioned, to flip the Texas House. Democrats need to just flip nine Republican seats and not lose any Democrats. And they can do it entirely with districts that battle one in twenty eighteen. So to support the most flippable Texas House seats, we're working with Future Now Fund to ensure that your contributions are spent in a way that can support as many candidates as possible.

And so you go to vote, save America, dotcom slash, fuck Jerry and and donate today with taxes.

Also, if you haven't made your fly joke by now on Twitter or social media, it's it's like 12 hours too late. Just don't do it. That's just a, you know, a PSA for everybody out there.

What about the title? Do we want to fly a title for those guys? Find out. Let's find out what we decide by everyone.

By. God Save America is a crooked media production, the executive producer is Michael Martinez, our associate 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 Quinn Lewis, Brian Semmel, Caroline Reston and Elisa Gutierrez for production support into our digital team, Elijah Konar Melkonian, Elfriede and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos every week.