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Hi, I'm Ali John Fast and welcome to the Daily Beast, the new abnormal. I'm Al Fwing Pandit and an editor at large at the Daily Beast. We're here to have fun, sharp conversations with some of the smartest people in media, politics and science that help make what's happening in the country and the world clearer. Our world has been turned up to down on the new abnormal.
We'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and figure out how to get ourselves out of it. And I'm producer Jesse Kennan. I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. Molly and I are all for the holiday, but we wanted to keep your podcast fed since that's what this weekend is all about.
We have two rising stars of the Democratic Party on to talk to us about a host of issues. Michael Tubbs is the former mayor of Stockton, California, and author of The Deeper the Roots and memoir of Hope and Home. He's going to talk to us about the politics of today, but first we're going to speak to Josh Shapiro, who's presently the Attorney General of Pennsylvania, but in 2022 will be the Democratic nominee for Governor of the State. Welcome to the new abnormal Josh Shapiro.
Great to be with you. Thanks, Molly. So I actually been wanting to get you on here since we knew you were going to run before you announced. I love it.
Yeah, it's really good. The reason, I mean, there are a number of reasons why the governor of Pennsylvania, you know, that governorship is important, but now with the Republican assault on democracy, it seems even more important that Democrats win this seat. Yeah, without question, I mean, democracy is on the ballot right now here in Pennsylvania and indeed across the country. And that is something that is motivating me.
It's motivating the people that I see when I'm traveling across the Commonwealth. And I think it'll be a central conversation in this campaign. Yeah, you really were in the thick of it in a way, because you have been a G for the state. I mean, you've seen these sort of firsthand, what has happened with Republicans, is it as bad as it looks on TV?
I mean, let's just walk through what happened here in Pennsylvania. So I serve as Attorney General of the Commonwealth. And in the early days of 2020, when the former president began talking about how vote by mail was not okay, and that the Democrats were going to try and steal the election, right? All of his greatest hits.
I immediately put together a team in my office made up of lawyers from both our criminal division and our civil division. And we basically had three focuses that we were trying to deal with. First, how do we ensure that every legal eligible voter has access to the polls? That was our goal leading up to Election Day.
Second, how could we have a safe, free and fair and smooth election day? And then third, how could we deal with the inevitable legal challenges that would come after the election trying to deny people's votes from being counted? I predicted that would happen. Unfortunately, I was right.
We faced 19 lawsuits before a single vote was cast in Pennsylvania. We want every single one of them. We had a free and fair safe and secure election on Election Day. And then we faced over 20 more lawsuits to try and make it harder for people's votes to be counted.
And we want every single one of those. But understand, Molly, they didn't stop there. And that's why our democracy is still a central issue here in Pennsylvania and across the country. They continued with the big lie.
And you can draw straight line between the litigation, the lies and the violent insurrection on January the 6th. And then they took the fight to the States. We saw that in Georgia and Texas, for example, where they passed new laws, making it harder for people to vote, particularly people of color and disabled Americans. They tried to do that here in Pennsylvania.
But for the veto pan of our Democratic governor, it would be law here as well. And then they didn't stop there. Then they went forward with these sham audits. You saw it happened in Arizona.
It's happening in Pennsylvania now. I'm in litigation right now to stop them from being able to get the private personal information of 9 million Pennsylvania voters. And so now we will see an extension of those attacks on our democracy in next year's elections and certainly here in Pennsylvania. If we lose the veto pan of our governor, they will pass the same kind of laws they've already passed in Texas and in Georgia.
And so that is why I'm being very clear that I stand on the side of democracy. I stand on the side of inclusion. I stand on the side of voter participation. My opponents all want to restrict that.
All want to make it harder for people to get access to the ballot box. And here's the last thing I'll say, Molly, sorry to go on and on. But the reason why this is so important is not just about these sort of broad concepts of democracy. But when you want to go deal with the big issues we are facing today, whether it's workforce issues, education issues, public health issues, if certain people are excluded from that conversation, are denied the right to vote, are denied access to the ballot box and thus not part of the conversation about the solutions, then we're not going to have fair and just outcomes when it comes to those big public policy challenges that we're facing here in Pennsylvania today.
And so it is critically important, not just for the sake of our democracy, but for the sake of all of these issues that we care so deeply about of making sure that everybody's included in the process. Yeah, no, clearly, and it seems like you were on the front lines. Did you get threats? Oh, of course, I mean, lots of threats.
But this is my job is to stand up and fight for the good people of Pennsylvania. And thankfully, we have a great group of folks here who deal with that stuff. But the rhetoric has gotten white, hot people who are supposed leaders in our country and former leaders in our country are allowing their words to be used to foment hate and violence in our communities. That's absolutely unacceptable.
Leaders need to speak and act with moral clarity. I try and do that here in Pennsylvania. I wish others did as well. Did you ever think like it's just not worth it?
No, I'm staying in this fight. I've always gotten off the sidelines, got in the game and tried to make things right. If I walk away at this time, if I give in to those people on the other side who would seek to undermine your way to vote, make it harder for women to make decisions over their own bodies, make it harder for young people of color to have an opportunity for success in this Commonwealth, make it harder for us to deal with these systemic inequities that exist in our Commonwealth, then who's going to fight those fights? So I'm staying in this game.
I'm not going to be deterred. I am unafraid of what they're putting forward. I'm going to continue to take this big fight directly to them and stand up for the good people of Pennsylvania. There's a lot of media narrative about and also historical precedent for Democrats getting shellacked in the 2020 midterm.
That's Obama's word not mine. What do you think Democrats can do? And also listeners of this podcast to prevent that from happening. I can't speak to Democrats in Washington, DC or anywhere else.
I can only speak to here in Pennsylvania. And I've got a record of winning in tough elections in 2016 when Secretary Clinton lost here in Pennsylvania. I won in 2020. I ran ahead of Joe Biden and set a record for the most votes ever in the history of Pennsylvania for any office at any time.
And that's largely because we show up in every community. We talk about issues that matter most of the people of Pennsylvania trying to stay away from the kind of, you know, national rhetoric that I think is frankly not all that helpful to our democracy and to our politics today and just focus on how we're going to make the lives of everyday Pennsylvanians better. That's the work I've done in the past. And that's what I'll do in this campaign.
And we feel really strong and optimistic. I want to go back to that. I'm curious about that. And I think about that a lot.
Are you talking about sort of the Republican culture war stuff that you don't want to get involved in? Because I see that as a real kind of bait situation to distract Democrats from the legislation they're passing. But I'm curious to know what you think. Look, I'm running my campaign.
I'm a Pennsylvania Democrat. And I focus on the issues that matter most to Pennsylvania. So I try not to subscribe to, you know, someone else and someone else's labels or were their orthodoxy over a particular issue or matter. I really just try and focus on meeting people where they are in their communities, listening to them.
That's something that oftentimes is lost in our politics. And then talking about concrete solutions, they're going to make their lives better. That's what I pay attention to. And that's what I think most people here in Pennsylvania pay attention to.
They're not kind of paying attention to the the national rhetoric as much in my estimation. You have places in Pennsylvania that are really truly like red, like West Virginia. How do you go to places like I understand how you go to you know how you go to Philly. But like, talk to me about how you go to those places and appeal to those people because that's something Democrats really struggle with.
Well, first and foremost, I show up. I mean, I'm not trying to sound silly, but like, you got to show up. And I've done that throughout my career. And the results speak for themselves in 2016 and 2020.
I ran ahead of every other Democrat in those kinds of counties that you're talking about. Let me tell you a story about a man that I visited with in Bradford County, Pennsylvania. It's up kind of in the Northern tier, more like Northeastern Pennsylvania on the border with New York State, a very, very conservative area. I brought a lawsuit against a natural gas company that was drilling on the lands of individuals who lived in those neighborhoods.
And the natural gas company refused to pay the landowners what they were owed in natural gas royalty pants. And I sued the company and I went to Bradford County several times, but it was one incident to brief the neighbors on this status of our lawsuit. And after my town hall meeting was over, one of the guys kind of motioned, he kind of pointed at me with his finger and called me over to him. And he was wearing one of those red, you know, whatever you call him, the MAGA hats and he had a t-shirt on that expressed his support for the former president.
And he said, you know, Mr. Terry General, I don't agree with you on a bunch of the policy positions you have, but you're the only guy who's up here fighting for us. And I appreciate that. And I'm for you.
And Molly, I have to tell you, I mean, that that meant the world to me. And I think it really speaks to how Pennsylvanians think about their elected leaders. They just want to know your fighting for them. And look, for some, a party label is important.
And that's all they're going to ever see. But for a lot of others, I think they're willing to look past that and evaluate the person and try and get a sense of what have they done to make my life better. And in this case, I worked my tail off to make the lives of the good people of Bradford County better, even though historically they're not ones that tended to vote in big numbers for Democrats. I mean, how do you deal with, like, for example, misinformation, like, you know, the pockets of Florida voters got stuff that wasn't true.
I mean, how do you deal with that kind of like, you know, some of these people, the only news they'll ever have is Facebook? Yeah, I mean, I can't speak to Florida, but here in Pennsylvania, we respond to it. And we make sure that the truth is shared, that I aggressively put forth my message, put forth the facts, make sure people are seeing a counter to the misinformation, disinformation that is being shared on Facebook and parlor and some of these other sites. So we're very, very aggressive about trying to respond and get the truth out.
Do you think that Democrats should legislate more on that? Look, I mean, I'm in the midst of several investigations into some of these social media companies. So I think I want to be a little bit careful about what I say in terms of what law enforcement can do. But certainly, Congress needs to act and these social media companies need to be reigned in.
And that's not, I'm not expressing that because I want these social media companies to be pursuing a particular political viewpoint. I want them to be even on that and fair. But I want to make sure that they are not making a buck off of promoting misinformation, which is what Facebook and others have done. I think that is really reckless and dangerous in our democracy.
Are you worried about the fundamentals of like having free and fair elections for this 2022 election? Look, I'm working to make sure again that we have a free and fair safe and secure election. Like we did last time in Pennsylvania, understand Molly that there was all kinds of rhetoric about voter fraud. I think at the end of the day, we had it was either three or four cases of voter fraud.
And in every case, it was an individual trying to cast an answer vote for the former president, hardly the kind of widespread voter fraud that's been alleged. And so we will continue to make sure, by the way, I prosecuted voter fraud as the attorney general. I take that very, very seriously. We didn't have that kind of widespread voter fraud in 2020.
And I'm going to make sure we don't have it going forward in any election. We didn't have it in 2021, where we just had a number of races as well. And there were no allegations of it, which I think kind of speaks volumes about the hypocrisy and the emptiness of the commentary coming from the other side. So we will do everything in our power to continue to make sure that we have free and fair safe and secure elections here in Pennsylvania.
I literally am scared that democracy may not hold. We have a Republican party that is basically consolidating power and trying to figure out a way. I mean, they're encouraging the craziest people they can to run for state office in order to be able to overturn elections. I mean, does that keep you up at night?
Of course, I'm running for office, in part, because I want to make sure we are defending our democracy. And then we are giving everyone an opportunity to be heard in our system and participate in our system. But certainly, I'm concerned about it. Look, here in Pennsylvania, I think there's 13, 15 candidates running for governor on the Republican side.
I'm the only one running as a Democrat. All of my opponents are beholden to the big lie. They all express it. And indeed, polling shows that the leading candidate on the other side, like leading by a lot, participated in the violent insurrection on January the 6th and speaks openly about it.
That is not the kind of leadership we can afford to have here in Pennsylvania. Not only will he undermine democracy, but he'll sign the Texas abortion ban into law, something I will veto. He'll make it harder for kids to get a quality education. He'll make it harder for people to participate in our economy.
He'll make it harder for us to get past COVID and deal with the public health issues. This is someone who is very dangerous, but it's also someone who's the leading candidate in the Republican side. And so I'm motivated not just to beat him, but to make sure that we can protect our democracy here in the Commonwealth going forward. Oh, I'm so stressed.
I'm somehow more stressed out. Anyway, thank you so much for joining us. This was great. Great to be with you, Molly.
Thank you. Thank you. Hey, folks, if you haven't heard every single week, we do a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the daily Beast membership program. Sometimes we interview senators like Cory Booker or the folks who explain what's happening behind the scenes in media, like Jim Acosta or Soladad O'Brien.
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That's newabnormal.thelabys.com Michael Tubbs is the former mayor of Stockton, California, and author of The Deeper the Roots, a memoir of Hope and Home. Welcome back to the new Abnormal, Michael Tubbs. Thank you so much for having me again. Anytime.
So talk to us about the book. Yeah, the book, The Deeper the Roots, a memoir of Hope and Home is really a love letter to my city Stockton, a love letter to my mom, my aunt and grandmother who all paid pivotal roles in raising me and also a love letter to the future about sort of the hard work we have to do to create the society and the communities we all deserve to live in. So it talks about being the first black mayor, being the youngest. It talks about like growing up.
And in a community like Stockton growing up in poverty growing up with incarcerated father. It's also commentary on policies and how they impact on people's lived experiences. So let's talk about that for a second because do you think Democrats are doing a good enough job at messaging these policies? I think we can always do better.
I think the Democrats in and of themselves can't be the only messengers. We also need sort of mainstream media to at least tell people what's going on. Are these tell people what's being done? Can I at least report what's actually happening?
Will you expand on that for us for a minute? I mean, I think we saw it this week where Vice President Harris had an amazing trip to France. Rep. You know, I say well on a global stage and seen in the rental story about gossip and whispers about some of Joe Biden's staff may not like her.
It's like, and that becomes what people are talking about and like what does Vice President do? Well, she was just in France. She was just ensuring that we had a great relationship with some of our allies. And I think we see that time and time again, even though reporting this year, you have the genuine you reporting is as if the Democrats and Republicans are like, like our equal parties.
Like the Republican party is a far right authoritarian party of sedition. Like it's a party where folks went and tried to overthrow the election and killed a vice president of their own party. And I think the way the media reports confuses people. Well, I mean, nothing's being done in Congress.
Well, why is nothing being done? We have obstructionists in the Republican. So long answer to say, I think Democrats, we do have to bear a double messaging and illustrating to people sort of what why does it matter when Democrats govern the Howard and the lives better and different. It would be great for him in doing that.
Because we have to continue with the right wing ecosystem with this information with the terrible algorithms to face, but to kind of get to get people's attention. It's either said and done, but something we have to do in the mainstream media has to do their part and just like report what's actually happening. Right. As we are recording this in massive infrastructure bill is being signed.
Don't you think that there really is a sense in which like that was Democrats false. We're talking about the top line number and not being able to sort of sum up, you know, if it had been Trump, he would have been like in the truck, like honking the horn be like, I'm going to give you all bridges and fast trains. I think what we should have did, we should have mailed a hard hat, it's not too late. Mel a hard hat to every American family or to all the families they're just doing, it's the moustache too.
And so this is our infrastructure plan. We're so proud to be American. Create like some game where you could go in and build like a bridge in your city. Like this is how much money your city gets here.
Right. Like I think we do know that's a fair point. We have to do a better job of illustrating the people, me craving how we do it. But let me also say it's hard to do that in govern.
It's hard to do that and get the votes and to write the politics. Like something you're just tired. Like, look, we're gonna build these bridges, but we know in 21st century America, 2021, it's not enough to be effective. It's not enough just to govern.
You have to explain, explain, explain, explain, explain and create symbols and emotions around what you're doing. And that's something we have to do a better job as a party for sure. You lost your mayoral ship because of disinformation. What do you think we should be doing as Democrats to combat this misinformation?
I remember sort of that attitude to be when they go low, we go high. Right. Well, I realize now that a whole bunch of our people are going our low to that we have low information, they're getting their information at the lowest common denominator. So we have to go low to lift them up.
But we need to explain things. Yeah, I went to really engage. I think my flaw was that for three years, I did not respond to disinformation because it was so stupid and so ridiculous. I thought I was beneath the title of the mayor to respond to like some Facebook blog.
Right. Right. But that's just not the terrain we're in and we have to really engage in conversations with people. That's what the public party does.
That's what Donald Trump did. He was talking to people every day through Facebook. He was talking to people every day on YouTube. He was talking to people every single day on Twitter.
And we have to do it while we're working on some guidelines and some laws to counter the corrosive impacts of the algorithm. While the algorithm exists as it is, we have to engage in a way where we're actually talking to people. Like silence is consent. Like just doing good is not enough.
We have to tell a story and that story has to be rooted in emotions because that's what the Republican party does. They don't make ideological arguments to their base. These are not ideological arguments they're making. There's no real ideology.
The only ideology is white supremacy. But what they do is appeal to emotions. They appear to fear. They appear to anger.
And then they elevate people. And Democrats, we appeal to ideas, which is right? We have to connect ideas to emotions. Like we're in the party of hope.
That's like everything we do very hopeful. If we're going to be the party of righteous anger, let's make sure that's the emotion where we're getting our base to fill. Because right now we're talking about infrastructure and that's the point of emotion. We have to connect the infrastructure to like a nostalgia.
Right. But I also think like there needs to be accountability for January 6th until you know people understand that one party is really just trying to end democracy. I mean that seems like a pretty important point. A hugely important point.
I'm glad to see Bannon was arrested. I was going to be arrested. I don't think the public realizes that January 6th was something very unique to American history. And I think every single day, like on Veterans Day, we should have said how dare any Republican post anything about Veterans Day when they disrespected the flag and ramshacked the Capitol for the first time since 1812.
That's the big message. Yeah. Because we see that since January 6th Republicans have really done a very good job of messaging that it was a terrible, that Trump was this was stolen. Of course it wasn't stolen.
But you know, if there's no narrative out there, the one narrative that is takes hold. And that's what I learned from being mayor of Stockton. It has to be out there in a way that people on the ground who aren't connected can articulate or most of your point they'll go to what they can explain based off what they read on Facebook or on next door. Is there a way for Democrats to really get in Facebook and sort of correct the record?
Yeah. I mean it's gonna cost money. But it's like literally doing advertising and ads and ads and targeting and talking to people and language to understand about what happened. People should be so up in arms about January 6th.
They've been told about it for so long and so often. But we haven't done that. It's like we we spend more time talking about the fake antifa protesters during some of the summer Black Lives Matter protests than we have about the actual far right terrorist who ramsacked the Capitol and tried to kill the vice president, which is crazy. Killed officers.
No, I know. We have two major trials. How do you feel watching these and what is your take on this? Yeah, I kind of in a watch because it gets me upset.
When we see people disengage from the system, when we see people be nihilistic, when you see people that having despair, well, that's why this young man, whether he loves cops or not, is not the issue. This young man killed protesters exercising their first amendment rights and their rights as American citizens. And we're debating whether he should be held accountable. We drop the charge.
We drop the charge. That's most likely easy to prove legally. That's not just this, particularly when we know if it had been somebody else. Particularly, we know protesters have been in jail for less, right?
A reminder of the work we have to do. But also, I think it also goes back to sort of how part of the work has to be changing the narrative. So that the people who are murdered by Kyle Ritzenhouse are deemed just as valuable and just as worthy and just as American as Kyle is by everyone, right? Like, then we will see justice and that's just the work we have to all engage in together.
It's so depressing. I'm more depressed than I was before. Michael, so your book, you mentioned the title, you talk about hope. Why don't we turn this conversation actually to something a little bit nice?
It's Molly's already so depressed. Tell us about what hope has been in your life and how it relates to the book. Yeah, I think sort of my life story in general is a cause for hope. It's by the first one to talk about structural problems and institutional barriers and racism and white supremacy.
But despite all that, 31 years old, I've been a mayor, I've been a council member, I've been a White House intern, I worked at Google, I went to Stanford. Like, that's a cause for despite having the mom who had me at 16 and the father was incarcerated. That is a reason for hope. It's not a reason to think all problems go away.
It's not a reason to say, well, if I could do it, everyone could do it. But it is a reason that, okay, there's hope. There's still something in the system that is working. And then for me, it's my kids.
I have two kids. I have a two year old and a nine week old and they are just so happy. Our oblivious to the craziness of the world that they didn't actually be brought into are happy and joyful and learning every day and growing every day. And that gives me hope because there's a future, right?
It's not over. This is not how it ends. We have another generation that's coming along. So I guess me a lot of hope.
And then also, I think some of the things I did in Stockton, or we did in Stockton, excuse me, from reducing homicides to doing the first basic income program led by a city in this country to scholarships for all the kids. So that gives me hope too, because despite how difficult it was, it was possible to make change. It was possible to make things better. So that gives me a lot of hope as well.
Minimum basic income has really taken off. And we talked about the last time you were on. Do you see a future where that happens? It's funny, because even from the last time we talked, we even closer.
Like, in the last time we talked, I was like, we're really far, we were doing really great. So I think the child tax credit is a huge first step when you're talking about the guarantee income for families with children, which isn't everybody, but it's a whole lot more people than it was before. So I think when it's not to be permanent, that's a building block to build upon. So that's sort of my goal.
That's some of the work I'll be engaged in. It's for you to make guarantee income move from pilots to policy, because we have 24 pilots under marriage for guaranteed income. And it's great. We love that work.
We love the data we're getting. We love the narratives we're telling. But we're closer today than we were at any time in the past 50 years. I'm really excited about that.
And that's also a reason for hope. Like, in 2017, that's going to be a basic income is before Andrew Yang even announces running for president. Everyone's obviously like, who's this 27 year old kid? He's crazy.
Like, what? Basic income. What? And five years later, at least families with kids are getting checks and people are still getting their stimulus checks.
It's a huge, hugely forward. Yeah. Oh, fantastic. Thank you so much, Michael Tubbs.
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