Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. We're all doing different elections. Yeah, interesting. On today's show, President Biden reboots his midterm agenda and message in order to fend off a red wave in November. Communism? Let's be careful. We talk about red waves. Okay, okay. Democratic strategist Adisu Domisi joins to talk about a DNC proposal to potentially dethrone Iowa and change the presidential nominating process. And we try to break up some of the tough news with a few fun mailbag questions about Pete Davidson, Elon Musk, and Tom Brady. In that order. How about that? How about that for a lineup? But first, we are very excited to announce Stuck with Damon Young, a Spotify original podcast from Gimlet and Crooked Media.
This is a show where award-winning author Damon Young explores the uncomfortable, hideous, and hilarious absurdity of being black in America. He's joined by some of the brightest minds and bold voices of the black community, including Nicole Hannah-Jones, Sam Irby, Jason Reynolds, and more. The trailer is live right now, and the first episode drops on March 22nd. Listen to Stuck with Damon Young for free, only on Spotify. So exciting. It's been in the works for so long. Damon is so smart and so funny. I read his book several years ago. It's brutally honest and hilarious and great, and the show is going to be incredible. So excited for the show.
Great show. Great, great show. Also, check out the latest episode of America Dissected. This week, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed talks to Dr. Adil Rishi, lead author of a position paper from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, get ready, love it, about daylight savings time. Yeah, yeah. As well as the long-term health consequences that can come with it. Listen, all right, I'll just say this. I interviewed this doctor about this very topic. And while it is true that he came on love to leave it after what I believe was like a 20-hour shift in the hospital, I still gave it to him pretty hard. And honestly, I don't know. I don't know. I think he's right. What are you, fucking Joe Rogan? Yeah, I am. I am. I am. I'm sorry. I'm Joe Rogan who took keeps.
You gave it to him pretty hard. It was an interview about sleeping. Yeah, it was. And he was exhausted. And an hour on your clock, you know? Yeah, here's the thing. Here's the thing. I'll tell you. Here's the thing. There is a very good argument against the time switch. His case for why it should be standard time versus daylight saving time is spurious at best because it depends on what state you're in. All I'm saying is it's more nuanced than Big Pharma would have you believe. He gives it to his guests hard and gives it to us straight, huh? Look, I love it. Dear diary.
Oh, by the way, I hate the show. I'm just going to turn it off. We're not at Pete Davidson yet. We have a whole show to get to. Tom Brady. Wait, no, I'm playing a new game. It's called Fuck Kill Kill.
Should we get to the news? What do you guys think? Let's get to the news. President Biden, you know, he's in the White House. We have a tone shift here. President Biden's biggest challenge right now is dealing with Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, but he's also trying to fend off a bunch of wannabe autocrats here at home. He just spoke about the war and the midterms of the House Democratic retreat in Philadelphia, which led to a pair of big picture stories in the Washington Post and the New York Times about a new message and a new confidence among Democrats. How about that, guys? The Post story says, quote,
Biden's record on Ukraine has offered what Democrats hope is a chance to resurrect the pitch he made to voters as a candidate, that he represents an antidote to the chaos of the Trump administration and is capable of restoring the United States leadership on the world stage. And The Times says, quote, Biden's advisors acknowledge that the crisis in Ukraine presents a chance for a reset, perhaps the president's best opportunity to restore his standing before November. On the other hand, the economic fallout from sanctions against Russia and now lockdowns in China because of Omicron finally hitting that country could lead to supply chain issues and double digit inflation that last at least through the rest of the year. Here's Joe Biden laying out the stakes in his speech to Democrats last week. This off-year election, in my view, may be the most important off-year election in modern history. Because we know what happens. We know the fundamental change that shifts if we lose the House and Senate. The only thing I'll have then is a veto pen. What do you guys think? Is Biden's handling of Ukraine a chance for a midterm reset? Or will this crisis just make everything more difficult? Love it? I don't know what a midterm reset is. It's something the Democrats spin reporters on just to say, things are better now. Well, you know, it's interesting. It's like, look, now that there are tanks rolling through Eastern Europe, it really makes a case for the Biden leader. Like, I actually think what I think is true is...
So Biden's handling of the crisis in Ukraine, the rallying of allies, the leadership and the gravitas, the sense that he and his team have his arms around this highlights what I think has been a little bit lost in the last year or so, which is this is a president that came to office in a period of incredible crisis and peril, years of chaos and incompetence under Trump, a pandemic, a country that was reeling. And I think it puts him back in that place as a person who was chosen because he understood how to lead in a moment of peril. Yeah, I do go to bed every night thinking. Thank God Joe Biden is president right now and not Donald Trump as we're dealing with a madman with nuclear weapons. We have one over there. We don't need one here as well. Tommy, what do you think? I think you both are painting an accurate picture and one that is sort of understood by an informed voter. I do think that when you're trying to sell maybe a less engaged, less informed voter on there being less chaos in the world as they're watching a massive war in Europe spiral out of control, that's going to be a tough sell. I felt like we dealt with a little bit of this when we were at the White House, whether it was during the Arab Spring or the Fukushima nuclear meltdown or the BP oil crisis.
You can have a process in place and be doing the right things and the outcome can still be god awful. And that's kind of what people are going to see on the nightly news. And really the chaos piece of the Trump era was the tweets and just being a shithead all the time publicly. And he's kind of disappeared off the world stage. And so that element is gone now. And so, you know, I think the challenge for Biden is going to be maybe this will be the reset they need. Who knows? Maybe now he's a wartime president. But I think.
The truth about being president is your power is far more limited than people think. And they just want you to fix everything, even if it's not within your power to fix. And I'm worried that really what people are going to see at the end of the day is high gas prices and inflation and scary stuff in the world. And I'm not sure that that cuts to the benefit of the incumbent most times. Oh, I agree. Yeah. I mean, my comment was, I really do thank God every night I go to bed that he's president. That's my personal. I want to be wrong. But no, I think I think, first of all, it's a very small approval bump right now. I don't know if you could call it that. It's if you look at the 538, it's going up a little bit, but I think it might be due to two things. One, a sort of a rally around the flag effect.
that happens at the beginning of a conflict like this. We have no idea where this conflict is going to go, so let's not even try to predict it. And also improving pandemic conditions right now, case levels, hospitalizations, ICU especially, are like as low as they were even before Delta in that wonderful spring of 2021. But ultimately, double-digit inflation, global instability, and the trend of a president's party losing seats in a midterm election anyway is an incredibly challenging mix, incredibly challenging. And I think the big question is, to your point, Tommy, if you're the Democratic Party and you're dealt this hand, and you're Joe Biden and you're dealt this hand, your job is to make the election a choice and not a referendum.
Yeah. That's all you can do. That's that's what. Yeah, that's that's we should get to it. But that's what I sort of when there's Nancy Pelosi's big pitch is Democrats deliver. I know I want to get to that. You're already at it. Well, it's like that. I can't think of a worse pitch, to be honest. You want to make a referendum about whether or not Democrats deliver like the Democratic message.
Whatever the Democratic message may be, whatever the phrase you want to use to describe what you're doing, the second half of your sentence should be something along the lines of, Rick Scott said he wants to raise taxes on the American people by a trillion dollars for basically everyone under $100,000. And then this other fucking goofball, Ron Johnson, wants to take away your health care, wants to repeal Obamacare. We got one of them saying they want to raise your taxes, and the other one saying they want to take away your health care. It's not like we're making it up. The head of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, one of the most important leaders in the Republican Party, put out his plan for the Republicans, and it is sunsetting Medicare, it is sunsetting Social Security, it is raising taxes by $1 trillion. That, to me, is the Democratic message. That's it. I mean, I do think we should...
unpack for our listeners about why Democrats deliver is not really gonna work. Because look, I think there is, we've been there in the White House as well. There's this feeling in the White House. There's this feeling among Democrats in Congress. And there's this feeling among, I think, Democratic partisans who pay a lot of attention to political news that Joe Biden has done all these wonderful things. There's the American Rescue Plan. There's, you know, and we've done all these things and he's not getting credit for any of it. And, you know, there's the reporters are picking out the highest gas station prices, you know, problem. And if the mainstream media is helping the Republicans with message because all they do is say that things are bad and blah, blah, blah. And things are actually much better than they are. And there's this tremendous frustration that Joe Biden is not getting more credit.
For the fact that the economy overall, aside from inflation, is doing pretty well. What do we think about that? I think there is not to be snarky. I think that there is a way to kind of put those things together, which is sort of what I was getting at the beginning. And like if what's happening in Ukraine offers any kind of like narrative change, it kind of puts Biden back at the beginning of the administration kind of taking.
Being a leader at a moment of crisis, like there's a president that came into office while the country was in crisis, both at home and around the world. They took these incredibly important steps to pass a rescue plan, to pass an infrastructure plan. They did it in the face of Republican deception and intransigence and wacko extremism. And they got those things done. We are not out of the woods. Things are still difficult. Things are still hard. What are your choices? Do you want to go with the people that want to go back to how Trump governed? Do you want to go back to the kind of craziness and the corporate welfare and all that? Or do you want to keep making progress through this difficult time? Something like that. Doesn't that remind you of our 2010 message? I don't think I remember back that far anymore. The Democrats deliver is so funny. It's like.
We have such a tarnished brand and we're like, let's make it 50% of the slogan. Democrats deliver high gas prices. And Ron delivers. Just so you know, we're not like freelancing here and being snarky about it. The Times pointed out that Pelosi and the House Democrats go to President Biden and are like, oh, we really want Democrats to be the message. And unbeknownst to them, Biden and his advisors or his advisors had tested the message as one of many messages that they tested. And Democrats deliver was literally at the bottom of the list. It was the least popular message that they tested. Tell a story about what you've done, but also what you want to do and who is standing in the way. But I don't think a lot of voters can be like, look, yeah, this war is scary. Inflation is terrible. But I got that.
stimmy two years ago, so I'm feeling good about these guys. Like, what have you done for me lately? It's a very Janet Jackson electorate here. I mean, the other thing that Democrats can control aside from their message, hopefully, is the policies they enact. The Times reports that Democrats, quote, are considering a handful of executive orders that would please their base on matters including the cancellation of some student loan debt and are determined to enact legislation lowering the cost of prescription drugs. What do you guys think? Is that enough? What else should Democrats be doing or at least pushing for? So did you know that this show also goes out on Thursdays?
And there's this guy, Dan, who's really smart. He interviewed this person, Elizabeth Warren, this genius senator from Massachusetts. And she made a case for student loan debt that I thought was so compelling that 40% of people who were paying off student loans didn't actually get a college degree. So they're paying off their college debt with a high school level salary, which is clearly unfair. Also, that it would do more to close the racial wealth gap than almost any other policy before. So I think it's a no brainer, especially I've always assumed that Biden was waiting on student debt relief to get Build Back Better done because he figured Joe Manchin would freak out about the cost of it. And now, you know.
That's not an issue. It seems like from what Ron Klain said to us on that Thursday pod that you mentioned, that Thursday Pod Save America. That got mentioned this morning on NPR. Did it really? And I think some people on Twitter were confused about this too, just from Ron's answer to this. The extension of the pause on student loan debt repayment goes until May. I think then...
when it's done, when this pause is done, that's when it seems like they will make a decision on executive action debt relief. Like no one's paying right now anyway. Right. And it sounded like from Ron's tone that either they're leaning towards doing it or that Ron wants them to do it. I couldn't quite tell, but from the tone, I got that. That's what they're, that's what they're going to. Yeah. I mean, it's like, they're a little bit at this point now, kind of standing over the country with a wax candle, kind of like going to drop a little wax on the, this is more of a love to leave it joke. Is it, is this, are we, it's like season one, episode one of billions? Yeah. It's a little bit like, you know what I mean? A little bit like, it's a little S&M vibe now. You know what I mean?
Are you going to cancel the debt or not? Sometimes I think Democrats have a policy discussion over here. I'm just going to keep going. They have a policy discussion over here and then they have like a where's our slogan, our bumper sticker over here. And I actually think when you think when they come up with the policy that they're pushing forward, they should think about it in terms of a message, right, as well as in terms of the policy they pursue. So you lower the cost. It's all about costs, right? Biden did this in the state of the United thing quite well. It's all about lowering costs for people. It's lowering the cost of health care, both prescription drugs and health care premiums, which they would do with some of the health care subsidies that were in the bill, which shall not be named.
It's called the Democrats' liver bill. Yeah, it's called the Democrats' liver bill. Education, student debt, and then energy, both gas rebates, which some Democrats have been talking about, and long-term clean energy transition. I think Biden, the State of the Union, said that his clean energy investments would reduce the average family energy bill by $500, right? And then you say, the real popular part, and we're paying for it all by getting rid of huge tax cuts for the 1%, big corporations, and oil companies. Yeah. And you say that over and over. Healthcare, education, energy, taxing the rich, oil companies. You just do it over and over and over again. And then you actually push for it, and some stuff you can do executive action, some stuff it seems like Joe Manchin is amenable to. I know. I know this was controversial at the time, but I wonder if you could get a $12...
federal minimum wage floor from this Congress. Didn't they all just feel like 15 was too high when we made a run at it then? I wonder if you could lower that down and still say, okay, we delivered on 12. Well, you have to get 10 Republicans on that. I thought we could do with reconciliation. I think you need the Republicans. I think you're right that that is a very important message in terms of your proactive agenda. The other agenda, the counterpoint is the extremity of the Republican Party. And luckily, they're helping us out there. A lot of these candidates that are emerging are just...
insane people. The person running for Senate in Arizona stormed off the set of 60 Minutes Australia a couple of days ago, which begs the question, why are you doing 60 Minutes in Australia? Nar. So we can get into some of their positions. Biden, I think, very credibly argued that Roe versus Wade is on the way to being overturned. Idaho today passed a Texas-style bill that would outlaw abortion after six weeks.
for all practical reasons, makes it impossible to get access to abortion care in many states. And I think, you know, he can argue that keeping the Senate is the only way to balance out the courts in the long term. So there's an extremity of the Republican Party piece of this that could be compelling, too. You know, the Ketanji Brown-Jackson nomination is, in some polls, it looks like has excited voters of color, made them more likely to turn out, made young people more likely to turn out. So there's some enthusiasm there, too. Yeah, I was actually pleasantly surprised that, according to Morning Consult, the latest shows that, like, Democrats are slightly more enthused about voting in the midterm than Republicans. I'm skeptical of that, to be honest, but it's there.
Here's a real gem from the Washington Post about what happened at last week's Democratic House retreat in Philadelphia in terms of message. Now we're into the message conversation. Quote, a sitcom showrunner and a bestselling fiction writer encouraged them to tell stories rather than give voters the usual laundry list of reasons Democrats should remain in the majority. Three marketing executives. Shame it was Louis C.K. and J.K. Rowling.
Three marketing executives, including one from Pepsi, Pepsi, urged them to craft their messages like sharp advertisements and leaders echoed a new slogan unveiled by the national party. They can deliver. What sitcom? I don't know. It's just, I mean, now that advice, should you tell stories instead of a laundry list? Yeah, of course. Did they need a sitcom showrunner and a bestselling fiction writer? It depends on the sitcom. Friends? Yeah. If you know who, if you know who, get me the information. If you're hearing this and you're in Los Angeles and you know what showrunner went to the retreat, tell me. Everybody loves Raymond's.
Again, I do think the most telling story is important. I think you laid out one story that works. I also just think it's a constantly a choice. Like they want to raise your taxes to take away your health care. And we are fighting to do all these things. Some of them will be able to do before the midterm. Some of them give us a bigger majority and we'll do them. It'd be funny if it was like the new message is like Democrats deliver and we're going to fuck up those assholes at Coke. What did that get in there? What the hell? When I was working on the Edwards campaign, like there was.
This was 2004, before all the really bad stuff happened. And someone forced us to bring in some, like, Madison Avenue, like, ad campaign, like, types. And it was the guys who did the Absolute Vodka campaign, which just led to endless jokes about, like, Absolute Edwards. It was just, you know, it's all the same advice. It's all the same, like, silly. Who's the guy who did the Don't Think Like an Elephant? George Lakoff. George Lakoff.
Remember when Barack Obama told me to take that meeting? I think Obama met with him too. He kept referring to it as a mem. Remember the meme? The Senate office did it. That's when he was all the rage. Then it became like, don't refer to your opponent by name. Don't ever use their attack in your sentence. It's a completely incomprehensible rhetoric. It's absolutely incomprehensible. I think the important takeaway here from whatever this was, which was great, is that the message does have to flow from the policy. You can't just slogan your way out of your identity, your values, the story you tell, the policies you're pursuing, the fights that you're going to take on, and what your opponents stand for. All of that comes together for a message. It's not like, again, we said this on Thursday, it's not like there's some secret bumper sticker out there.
magic the right combination of words that's going to unlock the majority for us and and also like whatever the slope yes i think that's right i remember like in 2006 remember there was this moment it was america can do better together we can do better remember all those slogans we can do better yeah and like maybe those were in america maybe those were value maybe not but like hbo show incredible uh win the future that was one that we had some bad ones but i do think that like i think sometimes you can get wrapped around the axle and like what i i do think that like People do respect the fact that this country has been through a really hard time. I think starting from that is like a really like start with those emotions. I always think so like Democrats deliver is so anodyne. It starts. It starts from such a kind of what? Yeah, like this is basically like we're pissed. We've been working hard and we've done a good job. Why won't you believe us? That's what that message is. Start from where people are. Like the country has been through a trauma. We talk about all the time, but like it's easy to lose that. It may not always appear in the polls. It may be hard to suss out, but like don't lose. Like don't lose the forest for the trees. Like this is a country that has been through a very, very hard time and is shaken and a little bit confused and anxious and angry. And like you have to meet people there. And a lot of people.
feel forgotten and not seen by their government. They do. And it's not that they don't, you know, it's not that they buy all the bullshit that the Republicans are selling, but they feel like, you know, I want to see more progress. And I at least want to know if I can't see progress, that the people that I elected are fighting like hell to make that progress. And they're fighting for me. And they're not fighting for the assholes who are running oil companies and super rich and all that. That's what they're looking for. And that's hard when you're controlling all branches of government and you can't get everything done, right? And you end up just land here in Sinema, Joe Manchin, for two years like we've been doing. Question, I think this happened when I was out for a while.
Remember when Frank Luntz wanted a media company to send him to Ukraine to do focus groups? There was. I did see that. He tweeted that. He's like, send me. I'll do a focus group. How do you feel about Vladimir Putin invading your country? What do you think you're going to get out of that focus group? How did Crooked Whiff on that one? Next season in the wilderness.
Oh, man. Yeah. I will say that one... I didn't know about that. Yeah, it was a tweet. It was an interesting tweet. One good piece of news here is, and Sean Patrick Mooney, the chair of the DCCC, was saying this in some of the pieces about the retreat, that we've gotten good news on the maps, on redistricting. And that now there's not... After all the worries we had about gerrymandering, and obviously gerrymandering, still bad, but basically Democrats decided... Not what we do it, though. If you're going to do it, we're going to do it in the states that we control. And Republicans also decided to protect more of their incumbents than to draw the maps in a way that could win in the short term. Something I've said for a long time, because if you gerrymandered too hard...
You got to kind of make some thin Republican districts. You can lose some of those incumbents. So the path is that the gerrymandering has not given Republicans the advantage we thought they would get in the House. And in the Senate, there are still a bunch of Senate primaries where the potential Republican nominee is very far to the right and extreme more so than usual. And so you might have some extremist Republican Senate candidates that aren't their strongest. You have a House map that's more fair than we thought it would be. So, you know, the playing field could be a little more even. But again, double digit inflation. And yeah, the good and bad news is.
If we lose, it'll be fair and square. But it does argue for just remembering that one other piece of what our message can be about the Republicans is, don't forget, a lot of these wackos think the vaccine was a conspiracy to have Bill Gates chip you like a dog. You know, like that's sort of just getting that in there a little bit, too. Yeah, that's out there, that take from them. Anyway, is that Mehmet Oz? I saw a video of him, I think, drunk at a high school wrestling tournament. I don't know, his campaign's a journey. His campaign is a journey. That primary's wild, the Ohio primary. I mean, again, we all dislike J.D. Vance. You don't have to convince me, but losing to Josh Mandel.
It's tough. Judge Mandel's a tough nominee. One of the worst human beings. Yeah, maybe it'll be neither of them. That's what the poll's looking like. Okay, when we come back, Tommy and I will talk with former Cory Booker campaign manager Adisu DeMissi about the potential change to the Democratic nomination calendar.
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Last week, there was a heated discussion during the Democratic National Committee's winter meeting about a leaked proposal to change the presidential nomination process by potentially adding a fifth state to the early nominating window, favoring primaries over caucuses and requiring states to reapply for their early state status, which could end up removing Iowa and or New Hampshire from the top spots. Joining us to talk about this is the former campaign manager for Cory Booker's presidential campaign, the current executive director of More Than a Vote, and someone who got his start in politics as an Iowa field organizer for John Kerry's 2004 campaign, our pal Adesu Dimeshi. What's up, man? Very nice introduction. I'm good. How are you guys doing? You know, good. I'm a four time Iowa caucus veteran, actually. Wow. Tommy beat. I thought Tommy was the Iowa guy here. Mine's all branding. This is perfect, Adisi, because both of us, I think, are coming to this conversation with a fondness for some of our experiences in Iowa, right? We've seen how the caucuses can be good. We can see how the process can be bad. Some of this conversation we're having about like a bunch of DNC members in a smoke filled room making decisions about a fifth state versus four. It could probably sound a little esoteric for people like, how does this matter? You ran.
Cory Booker's 2020 presidential campaign, you've run a whole bunch of campaigns, but that was your recent presidential experience. How did the schedule of how the primary and caucus process was structured impact the way you planned and executed that race? I mean, really, it's everything. It's the rules. You know, it's like a basketball court is so many feet wide, a football field is 100 yards long. Like this is the rules of the game. It dictates the every decision you make. And so, you know, for us and I think for most candidates who aren't universally known.
The early states are where the playing field potentially, at least in theory, gets leveled a little bit, right? It's your chance to compete on a relatively equal footing with candidates that may have more money or may have more name recognition or whatever it may be. So for us in 2019 to 2020, we invested, I would say. 80% of our time in the four early states. You know, the other 20% was split basically between Super Tuesday states and fundraising, maybe 75, 25, something along those lines. But we thought our path to victory, honestly, was very similar to what Barack Obama did in 2008, 2007, 2008, which was use the early states as a springboard to get better known, to raise money and ultimately make it Super Tuesday when we knew that was going to be the deciding date for a plurality delegate. So it was everything. It is what dictated our entire strategy from day one. Yeah. And what do you think is the drawback to having
this particular schedule of states, these early states, particularly Iowa and New Hampshire going first? Look, I hesitate because like Tommy said, I have love for the early states in general. I think what Iowa caucus goers, New Hampshire primary voters have going for them is that they're professional voters, like in a way that is, they respect the process. And I'm not suggesting that the other 48 states don't, but from years, decades of experience, like they take the responsibility very seriously. And so, but I think what they aren't is diverse and certainly racially diverse. And also in many ways, not representative of the Democratic Party and where it is and where it's going. And so.
That said, I'm sure we're gonna get into this. Like they have things going for them. The biggest is that they are small. And I do think that really matters a lot in this process. Having small states, at least part of the early mix and all four of our early states are relatively small. South Carolina is the biggest and it's not huge. It allows you to not just level the playing field, but actually do a little bit of retail politics in a way that wouldn't exist if my home state of California or Illinois, which is actually the most sort of representative and diverse state in the union. If one of those went first, it would be an air war. You know, the campaign would ultimately end up being about raising money and spending it on TV, mail, digital, what have you. And so.
There's positives and negatives. And anybody who says this is an easy decision, like I respect the folks who are ultimately in the DNC have to make it. It's not easy. It's not slam dunk. What states go first, whether Iowa and New Hampshire are part of that or not. I mean, there's the problem that both Iowa and New Hampshire aren't as diverse as other states. Iowa has the additional challenge of being a caucus over a primary. Can you sort of talk about the challenges of a caucus versus a primary? Yeah, caucus organizing, like I said, I've done it four times.
It is much more difficult from an organizing perspective. Ultimately, it helps, you know, in theory, it helps the party of the Democratic Party in that state organize internally for their state looking forward to their races, you know, in the general election. But caucuses are party organizing affairs run by the party. And that requires a lot of resources. A lot of time, as we saw in 2020 and 2016, can go sometimes horribly wrong. And so in 20, you know, in 2017, we did this. I'm sorry. Yeah, 2017, we did this.
coming out of the 2016 caucuses, a lot of states actually switched from caucuses to primaries as part of the last go-round of this process we're about to go through here. And I think most of them liked it because state-run primaries, ultimately run by the government, where more people can participate, are easier on the state parties that otherwise are going to have to kill themselves to pull off a caucus. And ultimately, sometimes it's too much for a state party organization. to pull off. Yeah, I was sort of thinking about sort of good and bad parts about Iowa. I mean, diversity of the state is something you mentioned. That is not fixable, right? Like John said, caucuses, they're at a set time. They take a long time. That can make it difficult, if not impossible, for the elderly, the disabled, working people to attend. I think you can begin to address that challenge by creation of like a virtual caucus or other, you know, means to sort of amend the format, but not totally get away from it. The other problem with Iowa, though, is it's not a competitive state. And so you do all this organizing for a year, and the primary doesn't help you in the general. And, you know, that's something that might shift over time. But to your point of view, like...
This point about them being professional voters and taking the process serious is real. It also incentivizes actual face-to-face conversations, not just with the candidates, but between voters themselves. You have community meetings, literally, where people are arguing and talking in a constructive way. There are also rules at a caucus, at least in Iowa, that incentivize positive campaigning because you don't want to piss off the other guy's supporters because you want to be their second choice. And that forces candidates to do retail politics and take hard questions. So to your point about these are professional voters, you need a small state. Do you think that some of the good parts about these early states are replicable if you just kind of found the right location?
Yeah, I do over time because it's only been 50 years that Iowa, I think it was 1972, that Iowa came into play here and sort of came to prominence in 1976 when it catapulted Carter to the presidency. But that's 50 years of experience, which it's going to take 50 years to replicate, but it doesn't mean that you can't find it somewhere else. But the one thing I feel most strongly about is the small state, big state thing. I think we would do ourselves a huge disservice if we just pick the states that were the most representatively diverse in terms of racial or ethnic or economic or whatever it might be. but ultimately were huge. And I guarantee you if that happened, what would happen is a lot of candidates would end up in California, New York, raising money so they could spend it on television as opposed to in those states campaigning on the ground. It's just the nature of the beast right now. So I do think it's replicable. I think it will not be the same if Iowa and New Hampshire or either one of them does not stay early, meaning it will be, I think it might be qualitatively worse the first time because you've lost that experience just like with anything else. But is that a reason alone to keep it as is? I think the answer to that is probably no. No. I mean, the other thing is like the goal of the primary process here is to nominate the strongest possible.
general election candidate. And I do worry about caucuses in particular. And again, I have very fond memories of the Iowa caucuses because it's how Barack Obama won the presidency. But the more I think back on it, like the people who pretend to participate in caucuses are the most hardcore activists. And in a general election.
you're going to have to face all of the voters. And so in the primary, you hope that the candidate who ultimately becomes the nominee has had to face a lot of different voters and not just the voters who are most committed to politics, who tend to be much more liberal than other voters. And I think we saw that in 2020 when obviously Biden didn't do so well in Iowa, but then did quite well in South Carolina in the primary and a very diverse primary of that. Did you see how he's erasing his 2004 John Kerry experience? I just want to make sure you caught that as well. I remember it well. Yeah, you're a two-time Iowa caucus winner. You should be beating your chest about that. I'm a two-time, yeah, exactly. No, look, I think you're right. I think, though, that the one thing that I think has changed, even since we were there in 2003 now, not even two decades ago, is politics is more nationalized now. And it is, I think in theory you're correct, but in practice,
your Iowa caucus goer or your South Carolina primary voter or your super Tuesday primary voter are probably getting some of their political information from the same sources, which was not true in 2003, right? It's, it's, you know, it's pod save America. No, I'm not trying to get through. It's like, it's Rachel Maddow. It's New York times. Like, you know, obviously that's not true of every, you know, primary voter across the country, what have you, but primaries are, it's something I think I got wrong in 2019 and running Booker's race is that I was running a strategy, I think much more tailored to a 2004, 2008 media environment. But now if you're a caucus goer or.
primary voter or whatever in New Hampshire is ultimately kind of similar in a lot of ways to your primary voter in other places, then. it matters less. The retail matters less and actually the state matters less. And so I'm toying with this. I haven't come to a conclusion about this myself, but it is not the same as it was, certainly not in 1972. And I would say even in 2008 when Barack Obama was president. And that means that we should at least be looking at everything and putting it all on the table as the DNC does every four years. And the reason you're saying that is because of the unfortunate collapse of local media, right? That like people, like someone in Manchester, New Hampshire isn't going to the union leader for their news about what happened in the campaign trail that way. Thank God. Yeah, they're watching Ari Melber or Rachel Maddow. Ari Melber, also a John Kerry field organizer. I know, sat next to me in our field office.
Wow, you got some stories I bet. I remember hearing that from you. I remember hearing that from a bunch of like the field organizers I'd meet and like go to Iowa because I went like five or six times. Do you think that that shift was a Trump thing and like everyone being like an electability, you know, like Nate Silver downloading 538 poll average, you know, like just a little ball of anxiety about losing again? Or is this sort of like a John's media environment thing? I think it's a media thing. I think it is.
again, especially among Democratic primary voters, I think it's Twitter. I think it's Facebook. I think it's, I think it is that the way that we consume information now and political information in particular is we, we, we have self segregated in some ways into bubbles and particularly folks who are primary voters, Republican primary voters are the same, right? If you're, if you're, you know, Steve Bannon's podcast or whatever crazy lunatic shit there, you know, they're listening to this, this week, like is probably where you're trying, you're competing to get on that. If you're in the Republican primary more than you're trying to compete for the union leader. And similarly on the Democratic side, I think we have segregated ourselves into, into, into media bubbles. I think it's bad for politics. I think it's also something that,
You know, if I'm sitting at the DNC, I'm not sure. The question you have to ask is, do I want to play into that or do I want to push against the tide? Are things going to go further down this way or are we actually going to, you know, go, go, the pendulum going to swing back? I don't know the answer to that, but I think it's an important analysis point here, which is that retail politics and the nationalization of is not the same. The nationalization of politics is a real phenomenon that has accelerated in the last decade. So Kevin Sheiky, who ran Mike Bloomberg's campaign, floated an idea that.
the closest state in the last general election becomes the first primary in the next presidential election and then so on. So the first five would be Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina. What do you think about that? I mean, no, I don't think, I mean, I'm like, it's a, it's a, it's a cute idea. It's a cute idea. Um, but no, I don't think, I mean, that's, I think some of that is living in the past, right? Like, yeah. Would you have said that Arizona was going to be the closest, or was Georgia or Michigan actually the closest state when all of a sudden that was the one who brought this up to me and I said Michigan too. And then I went and looked and by the end, even though there was all that Wisconsin ended up being like three points in North Carolina was only, was only a point. Even though there was just Trump thinking he won Michigan. Dude, on November 7th, when they called it, I think I was like drunk for a week.
But I think it's a little bit of living in the past. I mean, look, things change very quickly. This is also a reason I think counterpoint to your Iowa point, Tommy, which is like, Who knows where I was going to be a decade, 12 years from now, right? If someone had said, this is where Arizona is going to be a decade ago, you would have maybe chuckled at them or Georgia was going to be a blue state or Virginia, you know, back before Barack Obama, like things changed pretty quickly. And so I think, I think we have to have diversity of every kind in the early States. I think it needs to be geographic. I think it needs to be racial. I think it needs to be rural urban, which is not a small thing. Democrats are losing in rural areas. And if we force our candidates early to compete for rural votes, I think that'll help them in the general election. Regional, right. Which we do a good job of right now, but.
This is why it's a puzzle that's like not as easy as like just just a formula or just as easy as picking, you know, the states that are most racially or otherwise diverse. Yeah, it's not easy. And look, one of the biggest challenges to previous efforts at reform is political inertia. As you know very well, like you're Cory Booker, you're Barack Obama, you go to Iowa, you try to get the endorsement from the such and such muckety muck. The first thing you're committing to is, you know, keeping Iowa, New Hampshire's primacy in the process, right? You end up feeling like you owe them or at least, you know, candidates or elected officials in these states tell you you owe them.
Do you think that Biden, because he did so poorly in Iowa and New Hampshire, could be uniquely positioned to actually make these changes because he doesn't really own those states? Yes, but I don't think that. I mean, you have ultimately this is a decision that's going to be made by DNC members, 450 people who have who are elected by their states. You know, it's not like Congress they have there. And sure, they'll listen to the president of the United States. But like.
they're going to listen to their home state interests first, right? And, you know, if one of their states has somebody who might run for president in 2028, like that's going to come into play probably more than what, you know, the White House says, et cetera. So the answer to your question is, yeah, but there are so many provincial interests at play, I think, with this, that it's going to be, I mean, this is a DNC decision. And it's important for people to know and to remember out there, this is literally why the DNC exists. Like everybody talks about the big bad DNC and...
controls the message and the policy. No, the DNC exists to create the rules for nominating president and vice president of the United States. Article one, section one of the charter. So this is why people get elected to the DNC is to do this. They're going to take it seriously and take their power seriously, I think, too. To do that and rig the primary. And to turn off two-factor.
I mean, but that, so my last question on this from that is how difficult do you think this will be to get done? Do you think it will get done? Like, I mean, this was a leaked proposal, you know, that Jamie Harrison, the DNC chair during the winter meeting sort of says, okay, I know there's rumors, but it's early stages. Like, do you think this gets done by 2024 or 2028? I mean, if Biden, you know, runs again, then it's not gonna be as big of a deal in 2024, but. I think it will definitely get done. I think it happens, it being, we will revisit the process and create a new primary calendar. It happens every four or eight years. We did it in 2017. We got rid of several caucuses for primaries. I believe it was in 2000.
seven when we added um or before the 2008 primaries when we added uh south carolina um so this is not a new thing like it happens all the time it will get done this summer probably and to your point if and when president biden runs for re-election it will be a moot point probably for 2024 but we'll all be talking about this in 2026 uh and 2027 again but i definitely think it will get done it is again it's why the party exists the the dnc exists and the rbc the whole body is gonna go through their process and figure it out by i would guess by the august meeting all right 14 years i mean Just think for a second. New DNC chair trying to host a thoughtful meeting about this discussion and someone leaks a working draft staff level proposal to the Des Moines Register. That's just the beginning of it. Of all places, yeah. It will be messy, but that's Democratic Party politics and that's okay. It's part of the deal. And at least with us, we keep these messages internal and quiet. That's a good thing. Oh, boy. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Come back again soon. Anytime, man. Good to see y'all.
Hey, everyone. My name is Elijah Cohn, and I've been a producer here at Crooked Media for a decade. I love making our shows with the smart, creative people who work here and hearing from all of you who listen every week. But the thing that I'm proudest of is that video we made of Vivek Ramaswamy grunting while hitting baseballs. No, wait, sorry. The thing I'm proudest of is the work we do through Vote Save America. See, we don't want our shows to only leave you feeling anxious about the state of the world. We want to give you something you can actually do about it. Just this year, our listeners have raised millions of dollars and filled thousands of volunteer shifts to help candidates and causes in the 2026 midterms. And we have no plans to slow down as we head into 2028. As far as I know, there's no other media company that does what Crooked does.
We make entertaining, thoughtful content that brings people into politics, and then we give them a direct way to get involved. And if you believe in that mission, one of the best ways to support us is by becoming a paid subscriber. Your subscription helps us keep making the shows you love and building a media company that doesn't just talk about politics, but helps people change them. And if the mission sounds great, but you feel like you need some sweet subscriber benefits to get you over the finish line, we've got you covered. Subscribers get ad-free shows, plus excellent exclusive podcasts, newsletters, and much, much more. So thank you for listening and supporting what we do. Head to crooked.com slash friends today to learn more and become a subscriber.
All right, before we go, we put a call out on social media for a few fun questions to break up some of the heavier news we've been covering lately. And boy, did you deliver. At Van Weezer just replied with a picture of Pete Davidson and a moon superimposed on the head of what appears to be Ariana Grande's body. Two of many questions that come to mind here. One, what do you guys think of the news that Davidson is among six passengers who will be on the next launch of Jeff Bezos' space travel venture Blue Origin? And two, in case that wasn't enough, what do you think about the alleged leaked text between Davidson and Kanye West in which he tells the rapper to grow the fuck up after Kanye's public feud with him over Kim Kardashian?
Got a lot in there, huh? Have they released a reason why he's a passenger on the Blue Origin? Yeah, I read the stories and I could not detect it. It's just like, I work chasing class. Someone wanted to go to space who's been in the news a lot. It's Pete Davidson's world world living in it. That's, of course, Pete Davidson gets to go to space. Why the fuck not? That Dutch rich kid got to go. He's just as deserving. Remember that Dutch kid? Maybe Danish? Sure. Don't comment me in the comments. I don't know if he's Dutch or Danish, and I'll never know. I think that they're the same.
But, and then he had, and he got to go with this woman, this incredible test pilot who like fought for misogyny and sexism for decades. And he's like, my dad bought me ticket. Terrible accent. I'm in a weird place today and it's fine. I'm the Pete Davidson front. Here's the thing. I saw these leaked texts and all I can think is everyone involved in this is so full of fucking shit. It seems like it was like Pete Davidson's friend that leaked the text. But like, what are we doing here? Don't leak any texts. Oh, that's how Pete did it. I am anti-leakening. But the idea that like, what's so funny about the text is like, Pete Davidson is like, come on, Kanye. I'm just a guy trying to like support my girlfriend and his family. And you're like, it's like.
Pete Davidson, you're on SNL. You seem to have a pretty cool life. There are 3.5 billion women on Earth, and you're like the one I want. puts me in a position of being with a woman who has kids with a famous guy who's in some kind of a mental health episode that requires me reaching out to him to create a detente. Why do you like to be so complicated? Fire beware is what you're saying. That's a lot. Weird, weird, weird situation that I don't fully believe. Have you guys watched the Kanye three-part documentary on Netflix? I'm an hour into the first episode. So it is... I'm very excited to continue. It's very much... No. I've got to finish. I just finished The Tinder Swindler. I'm going to do this one next. Enjoy that. It's very much in that category of documentaries where it's kind of like...
You know, like Michael Jordan is the EP on The Last Dance kind of vibe. It's Kanye's close friend, sort of a collaborator over many years. It's amazing and worth watching because it's like the classic casino arc, right? Starts, challenges first, act two is a blast, and the third episode is so sad and depressing as hell. But it's worth watching just to remember that Kanye actually made some of the most amazing music of that era, was a producer on more tracks than you ever realized, that he actually didn't get the respect he deserved in the hip-hop community as a rapper for a very long time. And then clearly when his mother died, like...
That seems to have been a triggering point for a lot of the really hard times lately. So it's like, you know, look, I don't like him as a person. Those early albums were incredible. A good window into sort of what he's been through. Here's one. Does anyone have any thoughts on Elon Musk's tweet in which he challenged Vladimir Putin to single combat? I mean, hey, nerd. Putin would probably kick his ass. He's like a Taekwondo expert. Man, he wants attention all the time. He loves attention. You know, when Ben Carson ran for president, I thought to myself, I guess being a brain surgeon is easy.
When Elon Musk tweets, it makes me think, oh, inventing and transforming the electric car industry must have been simpler than it seemed from the outside. Because there is no one who seems dumber when compared to the actual output of his companies than Elon Musk. Yeah, you know, Dave Weigel at The Washington Post pointed this out in a tweet. On March 4th, Elon Musk tweeted, hold strong Ukraine with six Ukrainian flags. And then 10 days later, he tweeted like this meme, which says, I support the current thing, which is sort of like the...
sort of angry, incel-faced man with a Ukrainian flag and then kind of like LGBT flag. You know, sort of like the idea being that... Mocking performative support for Ukraine is what he's trying to do. He realized that he was doing something cringey in Normcore because it happens to be correct. And he had to signal to his weird fanboys, like, don't worry, I know that anything normal is bad. But he also was like positioning his satellites over Ukraine to help them get internet access. Which is a good thing. He talked to Zelensky, I believe. He's been engaged in this, but then he also has to mock the people.
Who care? It's very frustrating. He's very online and he likes attention. Yeah, too online. Too online and too much attention. He's a genius at many things. He's just, when you're a genius at some things, it doesn't mean you spout off about everything. Right. But yeah, by all means, engage him in one-on-one combat because Vladimir Putin will certainly fight fair and not slap you in the face with polonium or some other fucking... Now we're getting into what the actual combat would look like. Well, he murders his opponents. I don't think you'd have to worry about polonium in a hand-to-hand fight. Well, you never know. I don't know how he's going to kill the guy. Next question. Putin. Tommy, do you have thoughts on Tom Brady unretiring?
It was so good, it made me want to kiss my son on the mouth. He was retired for less than six weeks. It was February 1st he told us he was retired. Such a drama queen. I'm not performing just for Elijah, who's in town, so I can just get laughs out of Elijah. I don't really have thoughts. I don't know. It's weird. Football is his whole, I mean, it's your whole identity. Well, it's your whole identity if you're like, for many NFL players, I think for Tom Brady especially, like there is, that's it, there is nothing outside of football. Football is, you know, it's like, and he's 44 years old, so you're like, and he's, you know. Listen, I'm 41, and I currently can't go jogging because I have an injured butt muscle.
so that get out of here so that's embarrassing so like there is this annoying like sort of paternalistic sort of sentiment horseplay got out of hand I hate this episode this is annoying let us know if you do too a massive episode you see this annoying paternalistic thing on social media or elsewhere that's like I just want him to resign to be happy make sure you don't get the CTE Tom it's like you don't know why he loves playing you don't know what drives this guy if he got CTE how would anyone even fucking know like I loved Tom Brady was there for me for a decade and a half of my life and gave me a lot of joy so you shut up he should do whatever he wants leave that in but know that I know it's wrong. I just don't care why you retire. Why retire and not retire? Yeah. I think he spent five minutes at his NFT business and realized it was a fucking nightmare. I understand him staying more than I understand him announcing it in the first place. That's what I'd say about that. Love it. Thoughts on Elden Ring. I almost regret this question the second that it came out of my mouth. But go ahead. It's a great game. I think people are going to have a lot of fun playing it. What do you do in it? What do you do? You help me understand gaming. I have a 20 year gap in my gaming experience. Same with me.
Well, here's the thing. So in the PlayStation 2, they added a second set of triggers, and that really alienated a lot of people, and we lost them forever. These controllers today with these kids, there's too many buttons on the controller. Use like all five fingers. Use ten fingers. I'm telling you. How about that for old sounding? I really think when they added those second triggers, it really threw a lot of people off. Yeah. Elden Ring is great. It seems an impossible triumph, an open world Soulsborne game, and I love it. I can't wait to get back into it. I'm doing a strength build, but I saw Jason Concepcion's kind of magic build on the internet, and it made me very excited to do a magic build as well. These are incredibly difficult games. Wait, what are we building?
You build a character, you have a strength build, a dexterity build, which is more of a trick weapon. Can you make the character look like you? You can, although it's a very, very... Even the way in which you have to design a face is extremely complicated. It's hard to understand. This is exhausting. It's harder than Zelda Adventures of Link. Sure, but Breath of the Wild, I do think, is inspiring. Breath of the Wild has been a very influential game. I do think it influenced Zelda in a very good way. Question from Hannah DeGroot. What is your personal favorite miniseries in the scammer genre? Dropout for me. Dropout is great. I'm very excited for Wii Crash, which is coming soon, but right now I am very into the dropout. It's really well done. Liz...
Meriwether is a loveless Meriwether absolutely incredible incredible series and Amanda Seyfried is great like the cast is great everyone's great so you want to talk about inventing I know that I constantly dig my own grave by talking about how I'm watching just super basic lame shit and I you know it is what it is but I've been watching Inventing Anna and I will say it's such a frustrating show because the underlying story is actually pretty interesting but they made it like four episodes too long and I love Anna Klumsky since like way back. My girl. My girl days. But, like, she's so funny in Veep. Like, she's one of the funniest characters in Veep. And they make her character, this journalist, like, so annoying. They dramatize the process of, like, the journalism for this story. And it's not the fucking Pentagon Papers. You're, like, figuring out, like, why this scammer scams people. And it just, it's... We watched an episode. I was just... Emily, I think, kept going. I was not a fan. I couldn't do it. And then I started watching the dropout and I was like, this is what I was looking for. Loving the dropout. Loving the dropout. You mentioned Veep. Because someone asked, like, have we been watching funnier shows? Because obviously these are some dark times. I re-watched... Emily started it from season one. I jumped in at season six. And I re-watched season six and seven of Veep.
I think it's the greatest comedy of all time on television. I really do. You told me that, so I started watching season six, and some of the funniest, hardest jokes ever delivered are from that show. I was in tears laughing at that again. I will always remember, we were on a bus between two cities. I don't remember what the cities were during a tour, but both of you had edibles, and then you were...
laughing through veep like that like i've never like two old men like there was something so old about it like when you see old men really laughing at their programs it was you guys were inconsolable it was unreal you had a great time it was so funny it was so funny it was not before it was at the end it was at the end of the night we were going back to the hotel we weren't you know we weren't like yeah it was it was five o'clock somewhere it was fine so funny what other good scammer shows are there um is that like oh well there's there's a tinder swindler i mean that's not like a i here's the thing here's the thing i get it i'd fall for the tinder swindler i'd be in He had the Rolls Royce. He went on the date. He went on the jet. Next thing you know, his bodyguards getting beat up. Yeah. What do you need? It's unreal. There's a point in the conversation in all these types of narratives, inventing Anna, all of them, where the person says to you, I can't get international transfers to work. My credit card got hacked. Red flag. You loaned me $16,000. At which point you say no. That's right. You have to say no. All right. Well, that's all the time we have for today.
Trenchant political analysis. Trenchant political analysis. That's what you come here for. At least Adisu offered us some insights. Yeah, he was smart. Thank God for that guy. Anyway, we'll talk to you on Thursday. There were good nuggets even in the parts that were just us. The Thursday episode of this show is actually really good. And also, if you add this plus Thursday, real good stuff. Huh? This plus Thursday divided by two? Now that's a podcast. Dan says enough smart stuff for five of us. Yeah. Well, usually I just listen to Dan and then add a couple jokes.
Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Andy Gardner-Bernstein. Our producer is Haley Mews, and Olivia Martinez is our associate producer. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Sedlin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Sominator, Sandy Gerrard, Hallie Kiefer, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, TD Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montu. Our episodes are uploaded as videos at youtube.com.
Hey everyone, my name is Elijah Cohn, and I've been a producer here at Crooked Media for a decade. I love making our shows with the smart, creative people who work here and hearing from all of you who listen every week. But the thing that I'm proudest of is that video we made of Vivek Ramaswamy grunting while hitting baseballs. No wait, sorry. The thing I'm proudest of is the work we do through Vote Save America. See, we don't want our shows to only leave you feeling anxious about the state of the world. We want to give you something you can actually do about it. Just this year, our listeners have raised millions of dollars and filled thousands of volunteer shifts to help candidates and causes in the 2026 midterms, and we have no plans to slow down as we head into 2028. As far as I know, there's no other media company that does what Crooked does.
We make entertaining, thoughtful content that brings people into politics, and then we give them a direct way to get involved. And if you believe in that mission, one of the best ways to support us is by becoming a paid subscriber. Your subscription helps us keep making the shows you love and building a media company that doesn't just talk about politics, but helps people change that. And if the mission sounds great, but you feel like you need some sweet subscriber benefits to get you over the finish line, we've got you covered. Subscribers get ad-free shows, plus excellent exclusive podcasts, newsletters, and much, much more. So thank you for listening and supporting what we do. Head to crooked.com slash friends today to learn more and become a subscriber.