0:00

Hi, I'm Angie Hicks, co-founder of

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certified pros at angie.com. And

0:36

now from the Institute of Politics

0:38

at the University of Chicago in

0:40

CNN Audio, the Axwiles, with

0:43

your host, David Axelrod. I

0:46

sat down with an old friend

0:48

and colleague this week amid the

0:50

roiling controversy surrounding the status of

0:53

the Biden candidacy. I worked and

0:55

collaborated for years with John Favreau

0:57

when he was the chief speechwriter

0:59

for Senator and then President Barack

1:01

Obama. I've watched and listened as

1:03

John and his Pod Save America

1:05

crew, White House alums all, built

1:08

something smart and entertaining and impactful

1:10

these past eight years. They are

1:12

an admirable, inspiring group of pragmatic

1:14

idealists who see politics as more than

1:16

a game, and their podcasts

1:18

and crooked media site as a

1:20

vehicle to provoke thought and action

1:23

and change. Here's my conversation with

1:25

John Favreau. John

1:30

Favreau, it's good to see you. Thanks

1:33

for having me on again. Welcome to

1:35

the Island of Pricky

1:38

Podcasters. It's

1:41

been quite a time. I

1:48

wanted to talk to you partly for therapeutic

1:50

reasons on this particular...

1:52

This will be a different kind of Axwiles, but

1:55

also because it seems like a really meaningful...

2:00

time in like a

2:02

hinge one of those hinge moments in history what

2:04

happens in the next few weeks

2:06

and obviously what happens in the next few months

2:09

and you've been talking a lot about it

2:11

I've been talking a lot about it but tell

2:13

me where you think we

2:15

are I don't think we're in

2:17

a great place look I'm

2:20

really I have a lot

2:22

of I've had a lot of feelings over these last couple weeks feeling

2:25

pretty angry that we somehow

2:27

ended up here feeling

2:31

pretty pretty worried

2:34

about the election and the future of

2:36

the country and also just

2:38

like bewildered

2:41

at why there hasn't been

2:43

sort of more movement

2:46

from people in the party who like

2:49

we all saw what we saw on

2:51

stage when 50 other million

2:54

50 million other Americans saw it as well and

2:57

then we all saw that George Stephanopoulos interview

2:59

eight million Americans saw that and

3:02

I think we all anyone

3:05

I've talked to people in politics

3:07

people outside of politics are like

3:09

yeah that was that was bad it wasn't

3:11

just one bad interview one bad debate there's like

3:13

it's this is really

3:16

concerning and we're going

3:18

up against Donald Trump and democracy is at

3:20

stake here and yet there

3:22

seems to be a collective action

3:24

problem and a very stubborn

3:27

president and his inner circle

3:29

that refused to budge and

3:32

I don't know it feels it's

3:35

it's it's very frustrating it's very

3:37

frustrating what are you

3:39

hearing you've got quite a listenership

3:41

and readership at that pod

3:43

save America Empire that you've built you

3:45

and the boys yeah what

3:47

what are you hearing from people

3:50

I mean it's interesting because we

3:52

have a you know we have a set

3:55

of subscribers who are great at the Friends of

3:57

the Pod community and we have this discord which

3:59

is like a sort of private Twitter

4:01

that's much nicer. But all of

4:03

our people, all of our listeners. That's a low bar, my friend.

4:05

I know, it is a low bar. All of

4:07

our listeners are like, they see

4:09

what most Americans saw and they're

4:12

all ready to work their asses off

4:14

to get Democrats elected and to beat Donald Trump. But

4:18

they are feeling like a

4:20

little gaslit by the Biden

4:24

White House and the campaign and other senior

4:26

people in the party who are saying like,

4:28

everything's fine and don't worry about it. And

4:32

they want some direction. And

4:36

today someone wondering, well, what

4:39

are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to

4:41

think about the fall? And I told everyone, we've

4:43

obviously been having these conversations hoping

4:46

that the president would sort

4:48

of see the light here and make

4:51

some hard but right decisions.

4:55

But whatever he decides, we're

4:57

still gonna have to work our

4:59

asses off to defeat Donald Trump and elect Democrats

5:01

up and down the ballot and do whatever we

5:04

can to save democracy. And that's a fight that

5:06

doesn't even end in

5:08

November. And that's true no matter

5:10

who wins. And so we

5:12

have to be in this for the long haul. I

5:15

know you guys have done a lot to mobilize

5:17

young voters over the

5:20

course of your existence and

5:22

in a really very focused and successful

5:24

way. I mean, I forget what the

5:26

numbers are, but it's something quite

5:28

impressive. Yeah, we had about 3,400,000

5:31

volunteers in 2020 who

5:34

were doing work to elect Democrats

5:37

from Joe Biden on down. We've

5:40

raised tens of millions of dollars

5:43

since Vote Save America began.

5:45

And we're already putting

5:48

that money to work this time with

5:50

grassroots organizations, local campaigns, state

5:52

campaigns, voter registration drives. So wherever

5:55

we can help and we try

5:57

to tell people that we want to make

5:59

sure that we're doing it. We wanna make sure that your money and

6:01

your time are spent most efficiently. So

6:04

we wanna tell you, you know, where your money

6:06

is gonna have the biggest impact. And

6:09

we work really hard to make sure that people aren't

6:11

just wasting their money on races that don't

6:13

have as, or where people don't have as good

6:15

a chance at winning. And you said you had three or 400,000

6:17

volunteers out there in

6:19

2020. Are

6:22

you getting the same volume

6:24

of volunteers or are you

6:26

getting pushback about whether they

6:28

can motivate themselves but motivate

6:30

voters around the president? You

6:33

know, we, for, if you compare

6:36

this time in the cycle to four years

6:38

ago, we're actually getting more than we were

6:41

at this time last time. But there have been

6:44

concerns from the get-go

6:46

about Joe Biden and

6:49

exciting people to elect Joe Biden.

6:51

And we've felt that on

6:53

our, we've listened to that from our staff here at Crooked

6:55

Media. And I think

6:58

that a lot of people, a lot of volunteers out

7:00

there, you know, they sort of understood

7:02

that this election isn't

7:04

really about rewarding or punishing Joe

7:07

Biden or Donald Trump. It's

7:09

about something bigger than that. It's about

7:11

choosing between two different futures for

7:14

yourself, for your family, for the people

7:16

in your community, for the country. And

7:19

so before the debate, we

7:22

were, you know, a lot of our volunteers and a lot

7:24

of people who listened to the pod, I

7:26

think they really internalized that message that, you

7:28

know, this isn't just about the two people

7:31

duking it out to be president. This is about

7:33

something bigger. This is about who's

7:35

gonna make decisions that affect our lives and the

7:37

life of this country. I'm

7:40

not gonna lie, it's been much tougher

7:44

post-debate because I think

7:46

people are scared and they're confused and

7:49

they don't know what's gonna happen. Yeah. You

7:52

know, we both worked with Joe Biden in

7:55

the White House. I actually really enjoyed

7:57

working with him. I thought he brought

7:59

a good- sort of grounded point of

8:01

view. He brought experience about the Hill.

8:05

Some of the things that he brought have been

8:07

evident in the last four years. I mean, I

8:09

think he's done some miraculous things in the last

8:12

four years. He obviously agrees with that.

8:14

But the thing that

8:18

I keep wrestling with is

8:21

every time he gets asked about why he should be

8:23

elected for the next four years, he talks about the

8:25

last four years, and it's sort of willfully

8:30

bypassing the fundamental question that seems

8:32

to be very much top of

8:35

mind for most voters, which is

8:38

whatever he did in the last four years. And I

8:40

don't think he gets the credit he deserves, and his

8:42

approval rating isn't as high as it should be. History

8:45

will be better to him. That's irrelevant

8:47

to whether they think he can do it for

8:49

the next four years. And it feels like Democrats

8:51

are those who support him, are

8:55

hoping to get him through the next

8:57

four months rather than

8:59

the next four years. What

9:03

has really bothered me

9:06

over the last couple of years is the seeming

9:10

resistance by, sometimes

9:13

the Biden administration does this, sometimes a lot

9:15

of people, a lot of very online, very

9:17

engaged Democrats, not so much activists and organizers,

9:20

but people who sort of follow politics for

9:22

a living. This resistance to

9:26

listening to the concerns

9:28

of voters. And of

9:30

course, that's the right thing to do

9:32

in a democracy, but it's also the

9:35

only smart political thing to do.

9:40

We wrestled with this in the Obama White

9:42

House, right? I don't know how

9:44

many speeches where you and

9:47

I would go back and forth and say, okay, how

9:49

much should we talk about what Barack

9:51

Obama has accomplished and how much should we acknowledge

9:53

that a lot of

9:55

people still don't have jobs and a lot of

9:58

people still are struggling? And yes, we don't get

10:00

to... to toot our own horn as much if

10:02

we do that, but we have to meet people

10:04

where they are first and foremost. And like, I

10:07

don't, there are

10:09

times when Biden has done that, but like

10:11

not enough. And I think since he was

10:13

actually getting closer to doing that at some

10:16

of these events before the debate, I

10:18

think the reaction to the debate has made

10:20

it so much worse, the backward

10:22

looking stuff. And I was just saying this

10:24

on the pod, on Pods of America yesterday,

10:26

like if you read that transcript

10:28

of the Stephanopoulos interview. So forget

10:30

about how he looked, how he sounded. If

10:33

you clean up all the syntax in

10:35

the transcript and you do them all

10:37

these favors, his message is

10:39

still, I did a lot of great stuff.

10:42

Most of it's for, I held NATO together, something

10:45

about the Pacific basin and China and

10:48

AUKUS, like foreign

10:50

policy accomplishments. It's just like, there's no

10:52

message there that resonates

10:55

with what voters continue to say.

10:57

They're looking for, which is, what

11:00

are you gonna do for the next four years? And

11:02

I already know why Trump is bad,

11:05

but what's his plan for the next four

11:07

years? And it's the most basic thing is

11:09

to make an election, a choice,

11:11

especially if you're the incumbent. And

11:13

he just, his campaign knows that

11:15

and they drive the choice in their ads

11:17

and in their communication, but he can't seem

11:20

to drive that choice. And I don't understand

11:22

why. Yeah, he did get

11:24

a little bit more working class rhetoric

11:26

into his appearance on Morning Joe. He

11:28

called in, I suspect he had cards

11:31

in front of him to

11:33

remind him of that. But then when

11:35

he went off a little bit about

11:37

the elites and so on in that

11:39

section, he said, he

11:42

was back to NATO again, which

11:44

is part of the issue. I've

11:47

said from the beginning, Joe Biden strengthened

11:49

the reason he won in 2000, which

11:52

at 2020, which we should

11:54

remind ourselves was really by

11:56

the margin of 45,000 votes in three states.

11:59

It wasn't a- this was no landslide.

12:01

I mean, he won a popular vote

12:03

majority. He wouldn't today, but he did

12:06

then by 7 million votes, but 45,000

12:08

votes in three states.

12:10

But he, remember middle of the summer,

12:13

he started embracing and the convention really

12:15

amplified this, the whole sort of Joe

12:17

from Scranton, Main

12:19

Street versus Wall Street and so on.

12:21

And that was what propelled him, I

12:24

think much more than, you know, there's a

12:26

mythology about the soul of America message. That

12:29

really got jettisoned to a large degree.

12:31

And it was really working class

12:34

issues that drove him. You

12:37

know, he had a week in there where

12:39

he went back to Scranton a few months

12:42

ago. And I thought, well, now we're gonna,

12:44

but they, that was a week. It was

12:46

like, you know, it was like Donald Trump's

12:48

infrastructure week had came and it went. And

12:50

it, look, we, we know that

12:53

that message is a message

12:56

about, you know, helping middle-class

12:58

families, giving people a chance,

13:02

you know, fighting against sort of corporate

13:04

special interests, that that's a resonant message.

13:06

It has been for some time. It's

13:09

also like, it's perfect for Joe Biden because

13:11

it's who he is and what he believes.

13:13

So it's not even like it's a poor

13:16

fit for him, right? Like we've, we've both

13:18

seen him in, in

13:20

public and in private become animated by

13:22

those issues. So this is not something

13:24

that's beyond Joe Biden's capacity

13:26

to do. I think

13:29

that a lot of this foreign, I mean, the foreign

13:31

policy stuff, I have to say it really

13:33

reminded me of, I started off on

13:35

the Kerry campaign and John

13:38

Kerry, and I think, you know, he was

13:40

fantastic secretary of state for,

13:42

for us in

13:44

the Obama administration later, but like he, you know,

13:48

sort of fancied himself a foreign policy expert,

13:50

loved his time on the Senate foreign relations

13:52

committee and would always on his

13:54

own drift back to talking about foreign policy

13:57

issues and talking about them in a way

13:59

that only. someone in

14:01

Washington would really

14:03

understand. And that's, Biden

14:05

reminds me of that a lot when

14:07

he's in these recent interviews. Yeah, I'll

14:09

say two things about that. One is

14:11

that Biden's, his roots and his ethos,

14:15

I think are very, were very much formed in

14:18

his working class upbringing in Claymont

14:21

and in Scranton, but he spent

14:23

50 years in Washington. I mean,

14:25

he's, that's where he's worked. And

14:28

a lot of it in the foreign policy

14:30

and national security realm. And I think that's

14:32

where he's most comfortable. And when he feels

14:34

like he's drifting or when he's looking

14:37

for ballast, his first instinct is to

14:39

reach for the things that

14:41

he feels he knows best. And

14:43

that's all this national security stuff.

14:45

And obviously it's super important. Of

14:47

course. NATO's here this

14:49

week and I think he's done

14:51

an admirable job. But when he

14:54

says, I'm the guy who in the Georgian interview,

14:56

I'm the guy who added

14:58

countries to NATO. And

15:00

I'm like, I'm wondering how

15:03

the guy in Scranton hears that as

15:05

part of his life. You know, it's

15:07

important, it's admirable, it's significant

15:09

for the security of our country and

15:12

the security of the world, but it's

15:14

not a frontline issue for voters, which

15:17

is your point. Yeah, I thought George, by

15:19

the way, I thought it was

15:21

a very good interview. I thought he

15:23

did a very good job. I

15:25

thought he was respectful. He really

15:27

gave the president a chance to confront

15:30

what he needed to confront. He just didn't

15:32

wanna confront it. Multiple

15:35

times, multiple times. And it was

15:37

so frustrating because he

15:39

had a week, right? He has

15:42

this debate performance that his

15:44

own people agree

15:46

was very bad, had

15:49

a week to prepare for this interview. They

15:51

give George 15 minutes. And

15:54

I get that it's tough when all

15:56

of the questions are about your cognitive ability.

16:00

and decline and age, how

16:02

it's tough to like pivot back to a message, but one

16:05

would think, knowing his

16:07

advisors as we do, that

16:09

they would have prepped him for that pivot, to

16:12

pivot back to message, and I'm sure that they did. And

16:16

it's just, it's very worrying that

16:18

he wasn't able to do that. Yeah,

16:21

and I wonder, I mean, I don't

16:24

know what's transpiring between him and the

16:26

people around him, whether they are, whether

16:29

they are just drawn into

16:32

his own emotions,

16:34

he's clearly pissed about

16:38

the way people are reacting. I

16:40

mean, that came through loud and clear

16:42

in that Morning Joe

16:44

interview. And I don't know,

16:46

is anybody telling him, yesterday,

16:49

I'm told he was shopping

16:51

these Bloomberg state polls that

16:53

I think were very

16:56

much inconsistent with a lot of other data

16:58

that I've seen and inconsistent with two sets

17:00

of polls that have come out

17:02

since, but they were a little more rosy. They

17:04

weren't great, by the way. I mean, he was

17:06

still losing the election on that in those polls.

17:08

Five to seven, I think. He was down seven

17:10

in Pennsylvania, and 55% of voters

17:12

on those polls said that he should step aside.

17:14

And those were the polls that they were touting

17:16

as like, oh, the narrative is wrong, and all

17:19

the Twitter pundits are wrong. I get

17:21

it, we've all been on a campaign, like sometimes you

17:23

just gotta work with what you have and spinning stuff,

17:25

but I mean, it does worry

17:27

me because I think that there's

17:29

business like poll denialism and poll

17:32

trutherism that has sort of infected

17:35

some of the party and some of the

17:37

pundits in the party, and now the Biden

17:39

campaign, or at least the outward facing part

17:41

of the Biden campaign and the president himself,

17:43

which is like, polls aren't perfect.

17:45

They are very imperfect tools to measure

17:47

public opinion. You know that. They can

17:50

be wrong. But like, they're

17:52

all we have to measure

17:54

where the public is and to measure where the race

17:56

is, and campaigns spend a lot

17:58

of money using the... for themselves,

18:00

including the Biden campaign. And if we don't- Well,

18:02

that's the thing, you know. If we're gonna dismiss

18:04

all the polls, then all we have is our

18:07

own subjective judgment. And everyone can just be like

18:09

yelling about stuff and having our own judgment. And

18:11

like, that's just no way to make a decision.

18:14

No, sort of the order of the day.

18:16

I mean, we do a lot of that on a lot

18:18

of things, but you know, it seems to me that he

18:21

believes in polling when the polls are favorable

18:23

to him and he thinks polls are inaccurate

18:27

when they're not favorable to him because he says, I

18:29

go out there. He was just on

18:31

the road and he had some rallies. And he said, oh,

18:34

you know, you should have come with me.

18:36

You know, they tell me I've lost black

18:38

support. Well, you know, I

18:40

go out there and I see how

18:43

people are reacting. Those polls don't reflect.

18:45

He's going to rallies for him. It's

18:47

kind of a self-selecting audience, you know.

18:51

So if you don't get a good

18:53

response at a Biden rally, that would

18:55

be really concerning, but it doesn't necessarily

18:57

reflect the whole country. So

18:59

what do you think happens now? You know, we

19:02

had these caucuses today, House

19:04

and Senate, and I got the same read from both

19:06

of them. The leaders did not push

19:08

them one way or another. And

19:13

in both of those, half the

19:15

room or more where he's got

19:17

to go, we can't win with him. The other half was

19:20

supportive of him. And the same was true

19:22

in the House and Senate. And

19:25

so, you know, it seems to me the only

19:27

people, George asked this and Biden said it would

19:29

never happen. The only people who can impact

19:32

on him are the leaders

19:34

of Congress because you know, that's his world.

19:37

Yeah. And if the Senate Majority

19:39

Leader comes to him and says, Joe, we're

19:41

going to lose a lot of seats here

19:43

and we got to really turn this thing

19:45

around and we can't do it with

19:48

this hanging over us, but it doesn't really

19:50

feel like either leader is going

19:52

to do that. I

19:55

don't quite understand why. I have not heard from

19:57

a single person and I'm sure you've talked to

19:59

a lot of people too. I've talked to members

20:01

and I've talked to strategists and I've fielded panicked

20:03

calls from senior members of the

20:06

party. And it

20:08

doesn't seem like anyone thinks that

20:11

he can win right now. And

20:14

so even the people who aren't saying something publicly

20:16

that he should think about stepping aside

20:19

privately think that he can't win

20:21

and are worried. And then the reason that they're

20:23

not speaking publicly is that they are

20:25

afraid of the unknown. And

20:28

whether that unknown is the

20:30

candidacy of Kamala Harris or an

20:32

open convention, they're

20:34

sticking with what they

20:37

know, which

20:39

is Joe Biden and hoping that I

20:41

guess he's got a

20:43

floor, Trump has a low ceiling,

20:46

people will forget about this, he

20:48

won't make any other mistakes, negative

20:51

polarization and a closely divided electorate will

20:53

rule the day like they have for

20:56

the last several elections in the Trump era, we

20:59

get the race within three or four points. And

21:01

then I don't know, a miracle happens,

21:03

I don't know, maybe the polls were a little off.

21:06

I mean, even if you give the Biden campaign the

21:09

benefit of the doubt, their internal polling, they

21:11

said, he was down a little bit

21:13

after the debate, but it's still tied, so it's tied in the

21:15

low 40s. They

21:18

had one chance to have a big audience

21:20

in an election where the biggest challenge was

21:22

getting people's attention in a very fractured media

21:25

environment. So they get 50 million people to

21:27

watch, they've now blown that chance,

21:30

well, the candidate has blown that chance, and

21:32

they might not get another chance like that because I don't

21:34

know why Trump would agree to another debate

21:36

now, to the second debate. Well, he already said

21:39

I wouldn't put Joe through that again. Which

21:41

is the smart thing, I would do that if I was

21:43

him, right? We have two conventions

21:45

coming up, which are mostly watched by

21:47

partisans who have already made up their

21:49

mind. So then the question is, what

21:53

is the plan from the Biden campaign

21:56

and from Joe Biden to

21:58

not just hold on to Democrats? and hold on

22:00

to elected Democrats, which is what they've been doing

22:02

for the last week, but to actually win over

22:05

the 15, 20% of voters who

22:08

keep telling pollsters, including the Biden

22:11

campaign's internal polling, that they're

22:13

not sure whether they're gonna pick between Trump

22:15

or Biden. What's the plan to win over

22:17

those voters after what some of them saw

22:19

or heard about that debate? We're

22:23

gonna take a short break, and we'll be right back

22:25

with more of the Ax Files. Hi,

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24:21

now, back to the show. Well,

24:28

it was interesting to me to listen

24:30

today to the press conference that Pete

24:33

Aguilar had the number three guy in the house.

24:35

I don't know if you heard that, but he

24:37

came out and did the press conference with Ted

24:39

Liu after the conference

24:41

met. The

24:43

leader wasn't there, Hakeem Jeffries wasn't

24:45

there. And he

24:48

gave opening remarks and through the opening

24:50

remarks and almost every answer, he really

24:53

didn't mention the president. It

24:55

was all about Trump and

24:57

extremism and we're not going to let

24:59

that happen. And our goal is

25:01

to stop Donald Trump from becoming president of the

25:04

United from getting in the Oval Office again, and

25:06

to elect Hakeem Jeffries,

25:08

Speaker of the House. And

25:12

I found that really interesting that what

25:15

it suggests to me is this, this is how they're going to run.

25:18

Yeah. I mean, how, how

25:21

does a Democrat at this

25:23

convention, if Joe

25:25

Biden remains the nominee as it seems like

25:27

he's going to be, make an honest

25:30

case, a credible

25:32

case to voters about

25:35

Joe Biden's abilities. You

25:37

can absolutely talk about his incredible

25:40

record of accomplishment. I'm right

25:43

there that he has been

25:45

a great and consequential president for

25:47

sure. You can absolutely talk about

25:49

the threat that Donald Trump poses, which

25:52

I very much believe in and very much afraid

25:54

of. And you could talk about

25:56

all the things that Donald Trump's going to do. But

25:59

like when you get to the part about Biden in

26:01

the next four years. What

26:03

do you say? Yeah, well,

26:06

maybe there'll be a chant of four more months.

26:10

That would differentiate it from, but

26:14

look, you're the most gifted

26:16

speech writer that I know. There are

26:18

other candidates who are all your colleagues

26:20

and partners and proteges. It

26:23

struck me there was a great speech to be written

26:25

if Biden had decided to leave

26:27

the race on July 4th to talk

26:29

about Donald Trump may not understand that

26:33

no one is bigger than this republic

26:35

of ours and this democracy, but I

26:37

do. And I've

26:39

decided that I'm gonna step away.

26:41

But now, if you were writing

26:44

his speech, what would you

26:46

say? I mean, I think what I would say,

26:48

if he really, and of course we

26:50

can't get inside his mind, but if

26:52

he really truly believes that he

26:55

is up for this and he's okay and he

26:57

was just having a bad night and he's just

26:59

a little older and not as precise, I

27:02

would say, look, I know people

27:04

have concerns. I understand if I saw what

27:08

everyone else saw, I'd have concerns too. I

27:11

also know how much I love this country. I

27:13

know how much I believe

27:15

in my ability

27:19

to be part of bringing

27:21

this country forward. I believe that

27:23

Donald Trump is a threat to

27:26

everything we hold dear. And

27:29

I am going to show you every

27:31

single day over these next couple

27:34

months, I'm gonna fight as hard as I know

27:36

how, I'm gonna go out there and I'm gonna

27:38

work even harder than I

27:40

ever thought possible to prove

27:43

to you that I am fighting on behalf of

27:45

you. And that's

27:48

why I'm in this race. I

27:51

don't care about the pundits or anyone,

27:53

he can do that kind of stuff, but he's

27:55

gotta make the turn to people. And

27:57

the reason that I got into this race, I'm

27:59

old. right? And Donald Trump's old. We're

28:01

both old. But I have

28:04

kids and grandkids and I

28:06

love this country and what I'm in

28:09

it for is their future and your

28:11

future. And if Donald Trump gets elected,

28:13

that's going to be a future that

28:15

just in no way reflects the values

28:18

that we love about this country. Yeah, this isn't

28:20

about my future or Donald Trump's. It's about yours

28:22

and your kids and your grandkids. And you know

28:24

what? And I'm not perfect. And I'm maybe not

28:27

a perfect, perfect messenger for this. And I am

28:29

older than I was and I am slower than

28:31

I was. But I will tell you, I mean,

28:33

he did get close in that I

28:36

liked that North Carolina rally when he said I know

28:38

how to do it. It was a little too much.

28:40

I because I think that some of the defensiveness was

28:42

there, but whatever. It's it's something to work with after

28:45

the debate that I think he has to

28:47

acknowledge. And this is something that they've had

28:50

a lot of trouble with. He has to acknowledge

28:52

people's concerns. And because right

28:54

now it doesn't seem like they

28:57

are operating in the same reality that

28:59

most other people are. And

29:01

I think that's the most that's the biggest

29:04

danger is that not only Joe Biden, but

29:06

like other Democratic officials talking

29:08

about Joe Biden sound like they are

29:10

either lying to people or just not

29:13

meeting people where they are right now.

29:15

In addition to just the

29:17

presentational issues that were so shocking in

29:20

that debate, as you pointed out, it

29:22

was a missed opportunity. And I thought

29:24

going into the debate, they

29:26

were set up to do the right thing

29:28

because General Mallie Dylan,

29:31

who we both know and worked with, did

29:33

a great interview in Puck and her messaging

29:35

was really, really good. And it was exactly

29:38

what you're talking about. It was, you know, I'm

29:40

fighting for people. Biden's fighting

29:42

for people every single day. And Donald

29:45

Trump fights for Donald Trump. I

29:47

mean, one of the things that imperils that

29:50

message is right

29:52

now it feels very much like he's fighting for

29:54

him. And I have no doubt that he believes

29:56

that Donald Trump needs

29:58

to be defeated he believes that he's the best

30:01

guy to do it, but

30:03

it has become a lot more about

30:05

him and a lot less about people

30:07

and a lot less about Trump, frankly. Who

30:10

else is gonna hold NATO together? Who else?

30:12

I mean, that's the kind of like acting

30:15

like he's the only person

30:17

who can beat Trump. He's the only person who

30:20

can do all these foreign policy things. It's

30:22

just not, you're right. It is

30:24

antithetical to the message that

30:27

is supposed to be central to the campaign, which

30:29

I do believe is the right message. I mean,

30:31

this is what's so frustrating too, is I think

30:33

his team knows it. The ads are right on.

30:36

The messaging from the team is right on. They

30:39

know what they're doing in terms of figuring

30:41

out what to communicate to the

30:43

American people and what to communicate

30:46

to the undecided voters, but it's

30:48

a candidate issue and I don't know

30:51

how they fix it. And like, you

30:53

know, it sucks being in

30:55

this position because like

30:57

I do love and

30:59

respect Joe Biden and like you, I

31:01

enjoyed working with him and it's not

31:03

personal about Joe Biden. Like if, you

31:06

know, we went through a really bad

31:08

first debate with Barack Obama, but if

31:10

something happened as bad as it did

31:12

with Joe Biden on that debate stage

31:14

with Barack Obama, like we'd be pretty

31:17

upset with him and

31:20

you would be like having some

31:22

pretty serious talks with him and you have, right?

31:25

It's not about Joe Biden. It's just like

31:27

he's the guy who's supposed to be on

31:30

the top of the ticket who's tasked with

31:32

and told us that he could help save

31:34

democracy and beat Trump a second time. Yeah,

31:37

no, he's right about the magnitude of

31:39

the stakes, but

31:41

that should lead him to focus like

31:43

a laser on whether, what

31:46

gives us the best chance to turn

31:48

back the threat. Yeah, you mentioned that debate

31:51

and that came up a lot after the

31:53

debate because that was part of the sort

31:55

of instant spin. Well, Obama had a bad

31:58

first debate too and honestly, it was, Obviously

32:00

most first presidents do, but that

32:03

was an order of magnitude different

32:06

than what we saw. But

32:08

the bigger thing was, whatever doubts there

32:10

were about Barack Obama, they weren't about

32:12

his mental acuity, they weren't about his

32:14

stamina, they weren't about any of those

32:16

things. I mean,

32:18

there were concerns about that, and

32:20

this was his oral exam in

32:22

front of 50 million people, and

32:25

it went badly. And that's why

32:27

this was such a big deal.

32:29

Ronald Reagan had a bad first

32:31

debate in 1984, but he also

32:33

was like ahead by double digits

32:35

when that happened. The

32:37

country was in a very positive mood

32:39

about things, and there was a lot

32:42

of room for him to recover. This

32:45

was not the case here. Let me ask

32:47

you something. One of the reasons that I

32:49

so loved working with you, and

32:52

all of the speechwriters, was

32:55

it was a room full

32:57

of pragmatic, yes, but idealistic

32:59

young people, very

33:01

creative obviously, but

33:04

who all believed that politics was

33:06

more than just a

33:09

sport, but it was a vehicle to achieve

33:12

things that will change people's lives

33:14

for the better, that will make

33:17

the country more just, that will

33:19

make the world more peaceful. That

33:22

was what jazzed people up was to

33:24

feel like, hey, we're about something big

33:26

here. We can do things that could

33:28

really help. Are

33:31

you worried about cynicism

33:34

just dousing that sense of

33:37

possibility? Very much so. I

33:40

mean, I've been worried about it long

33:42

before the debate. I've been worried about it for a couple of years

33:44

now, and part of it is I think the way we

33:49

consume information, the way younger people consume

33:51

information, the incentives on

33:53

all of these social media platforms

33:56

are to enrage us

33:58

and make us more successful.

34:00

afraid and show

34:02

us everything that's wrong with the world and

34:05

not a lot of what's right. And

34:07

so I do worry about all that. When

34:12

people ask me about it, I mean, one

34:14

of the reasons I've been trying to say that

34:16

this election is not just about Joe

34:19

Biden and Donald Trump is because I think that politics

34:21

and the way politics is covered, and this has

34:23

been true for a long time, focuses

34:26

so much on personalities

34:30

in politics and not enough

34:32

on sort of policies

34:35

and vision and like what we can

34:37

do together. And

34:39

we dealt with this to some

34:41

extent after Obama won, which was,

34:43

a lot of people got excited about Barack

34:46

Obama, but they thought, okay, I did my

34:48

job. They saw politics

34:50

as transaction. I gave him my vote and now

34:52

I can go back and chill out and

34:54

do something else for four years and Barack Obama is going to

34:56

go into Washington. He's going to fix everything. And

34:59

I don't care how young you are, how

35:01

talented you are, how good of a communicator

35:03

you are. That's not the

35:05

way this democracy was ever supposed to work.

35:09

And now that we are facing

35:12

a threat from rising authoritarianism

35:14

here and all over the

35:16

world, I think it is a good

35:18

moment to not just go

35:21

around saying we need to save democracy

35:23

and defend democracy, but we need to

35:25

sell democracy to people as the

35:28

best way of organizing ourselves. And

35:30

that might feel like, why do we

35:32

have to do that? That's kind of basic, isn't it? Well, you

35:34

know what? It's been a

35:37

long time since World War II and

35:39

we were out there defending democracy around

35:41

the world and a new generation hasn't

35:43

necessarily felt the benefits of living

35:46

in a democracy that hasn't necessarily

35:48

delivered for them, whether it's financial

35:51

security, personal freedom, safety, whatever

35:53

it may be. And

35:56

there's been this debate within the party

35:58

about doing it. do we

36:01

make it about democracy because Donald

36:04

Trump's an existential threat to democracy? And you know what?

36:06

If you had someone and they were about to go

36:08

into the voting booth and they were undecided and you

36:10

had 30 seconds, you would probably talk about the

36:12

threat that Donald Trump posed to democracy. Like if

36:15

you, that's what you'd probably say. At the same

36:17

time, you talk to voters and

36:19

people who, you know,

36:21

aren't highly educated, don't have a lot

36:24

of money, don't have time to read

36:26

another Atlantic piece about the future of

36:28

democracy. And they, their concerns

36:30

are much closer to home and their

36:32

concerns are- Absolutely. Catch your table. And

36:35

I think it's, I think the only way to square this

36:37

circle is for someone and for

36:39

hopefully for a lot of Democrats to

36:41

make an argument about why democracy

36:43

matters to you, about why this

36:46

system is the best way to

36:48

give you a better

36:50

life, to help you be financially

36:52

secure. And like, I

36:54

just, I don't think you can separate those two things forever

36:56

or just pick one or the other. I think you have

36:58

to figure out a way to tell

37:00

the whole story. Yeah, you know, I think

37:03

I agree with everything you said. One of the

37:05

things that's concerned me about all of the rhetoric

37:08

around this is yes, yes,

37:10

democracy is under threat. But

37:13

A, we don't really

37:15

think about enough about why.

37:18

We don't think enough about why and

37:21

whether or not democracy has delivered

37:23

in a way that it should.

37:25

And I wonder whether or not we

37:27

should be talking not just about saving

37:30

democracy, but strengthening it. Fixing

37:32

it. And making it work and

37:34

making it more accountable to people.

37:36

And, you know,

37:38

the younger folks, think

37:40

about the last couple of decades in the United States.

37:42

I mean, when I met you, it was in 2004,

37:46

you were 22 years old. I

37:48

wanna ask you about that in a second, about life

37:50

as a 42 year old. But you

37:53

were 22 years old and

37:56

we had just gone through 9-11. We

37:58

had a financial collapse. four years later,

38:01

that took years to recover

38:03

from. And then we

38:06

had the turmoil of the Trump years

38:09

and we had a pandemic.

38:12

And a lot of these things

38:15

had, it had very different impacts

38:17

on different people. We, you

38:20

and I, and a lot of people like us, the

38:22

president would call us elites.

38:24

He was one of them too. We

38:26

were able to endure that pandemic just

38:28

fine. We could stay at home

38:30

and work on our computers and go out

38:33

for walks. And there are a

38:35

whole bunch of people who didn't have that luxury.

38:37

And they happen to be the people who keep

38:39

the country moving and

38:41

working. In so many ways

38:43

we live in, it's a

38:45

cliche, you know, that it's been a

38:48

cliche in politics, but there really

38:50

are two Americas. And democracy can't

38:52

function well if half the country

38:54

feels like the system is rigged

38:56

against them. And then you have

38:58

on top of that social media amplifying

39:01

everybody's resentment and outrage.

39:03

So the project is bigger

39:05

than just saving democracy because you

39:07

can maybe save it. Labor Party

39:09

just won a big victory in

39:12

Britain, but they have to look over their

39:15

shoulder because the right did pretty well in

39:18

that election. And this was

39:20

a reaction to the failure of

39:22

the conservatives. It wasn't necessarily an

39:24

affirmation of labor. You see, you

39:26

know, what's going on in France,

39:29

they dodged a bullet, but not

39:31

necessarily for long. This project of

39:33

democracy needs refreshing. The

39:36

lure of authoritarianism,

39:39

the promise of the demagogue is

39:42

fairly simple and easy to

39:44

understand. It is, there's

39:46

all these problems. I

39:49

am going to tell you they are caused by other

39:51

people who don't look like you, who don't come from

39:53

where you come from. And all you have to do

39:55

is put me in power and

39:58

I alone can fix it. I'm

40:00

gonna do it all. And that

40:02

is a story as old as time. And

40:04

what happens is every time one of those

40:07

demagogues, authoritarians get into power, then

40:09

when you give someone absolute power,

40:11

it corrupts them absolutely. And

40:13

they end up looking out for themselves and

40:16

they're loyalists and they don't care about anyone

40:18

else and it is a false promise. But

40:21

it is constantly attractive

40:23

to people who feel

40:26

like things are out

40:28

of control, that they can't get ahead, that there's

40:30

chaos in the world, that the world's changing too

40:32

fast around them. And the

40:35

other way to organize ourselves is say, okay,

40:37

instead of giving all this power to one

40:39

person who might turn out to just look

40:42

out for themselves, let's all

40:44

have a voice and let's all

40:46

have a say and let's give each other a

40:48

chance and let's be inclusive of everyone, no matter

40:50

what you look like or where you come from.

40:53

And that sounds nice. It's also really

40:55

tough to do because that's a lot

40:57

of opinions and that's a lot of

40:59

people and that's a lot of different

41:01

backgrounds and religious beliefs. And the only

41:04

way that's gonna work is

41:06

if we actually practice the values of

41:08

democracy, which I don't think we talk about

41:10

enough. And those values are like, we

41:12

have to be empathetic to each

41:14

other. And that empathy is

41:16

not just people from a different class or

41:19

from a different place, but people from different

41:21

political beliefs as well. And that's

41:23

not us being like soft, mushy,

41:25

moderate, centrist or everyone now,

41:29

it's like, oh, Michelle Obama, when she said they

41:31

go low, we go high, that was a huge

41:33

mistake. It's not about just like being nice. It's

41:35

like, we are not going to survive

41:38

in a country with more than 300 million

41:40

people who are incredibly different

41:42

in a, we're not gonna live peacefully

41:45

and coexist peacefully with one another unless

41:47

we can step into one another's shoes

41:50

and talk to each other and figure out

41:52

how to disagree with each other. Sometimes vehemently

41:56

while still not devolving into.

42:00

political violence or, you know,

42:03

what we have seen, you know, or lawlessness,

42:05

right? Like that is the project and it's

42:07

a much harder project than what the demagogue

42:09

offers. But like, we've got to

42:12

sell that project if we want people to

42:14

participate. We're

42:16

going to take a short break and we'll be right back

42:18

with more of the Ax Files. And

42:29

now back to the show. The

42:36

demagogue, I mean, obviously

42:38

Trump fits that category that

42:41

you're describing. And there

42:43

is this sense that

42:46

has helped propel him through all

42:48

of his indictments and convictions and

42:50

all of the baggage he's carrying,

42:53

that somehow he is strong and

42:56

he can make this work and

42:58

that Biden is weak

43:00

and he's not in control.

43:02

And that is the siren

43:05

song of Trump right now

43:07

that Democrats have to find

43:09

a way to contest because

43:12

there is a sense that things are

43:14

out of control. And you listen to

43:16

the Republican message, it's about the border,

43:18

it's about urban crime, it's about inflation,

43:21

it's the scent. And that's their

43:23

fundamental message, things are out of

43:25

control. But in terms

43:27

of our democracy itself, one

43:30

of the things that we're

43:32

fighting, social media

43:34

is the absolute

43:36

antithesis of what you're describing.

43:40

The whole profit incentive for social

43:42

media is to divide us, to

43:45

make us feel aggrieved and

43:47

to feel like everyone outside

43:50

our silo is menacing and

43:53

you live much more in this world than I do.

43:55

How do we defeat that? because

44:00

I don't think, I

44:03

don't, you know, I host this

44:05

podcast offline and I have

44:07

come to think that we can't really regulate ourselves

44:10

out of this, even if we did have a

44:12

functional government that could pass social media regulations, right?

44:14

Like, because, you know, people have focused on privacy

44:16

concerns and you can, you know, take care of

44:19

that. And you can sort of, even

44:21

these social media companies, you tweak an algorithm

44:23

one way and then a whole nother set

44:26

of problems happens, right? You have to create

44:28

another algorithm to police the first

44:30

algorithm. Right, and I do- And it's crazy. It's

44:32

crazy and I think the only- And nobody quite

44:34

even understands how they all work. No one understands

44:36

how they all work. And it also, I think

44:39

the other thing it does, it doesn't just enrage

44:41

us, it isolates us and

44:43

it gives us the illusion of connection,

44:46

but it's not real connection. Because

44:48

real connection is face-to-face

44:50

interaction with other human

44:53

beings. And when

44:55

you can't see someone's face,

44:57

their expressions, when you can't have

44:59

a complex, nuanced argument with that

45:02

person, it's just not gonna work.

45:04

And, you know, we were, when

45:06

we interviewed Obama at

45:09

the 15th anniversary

45:11

in Chicago in November, you

45:13

know, I remember Tommy asked him a question about

45:15

Gaza and Obama started the

45:17

answer talking about, you know, everyone

45:19

talked about technology, sort

45:22

of the Obama campaign pioneering the use

45:24

of technology. And he's like, but we

45:26

organize people online to meet up offline.

45:29

Right. So we use it as a tool

45:31

to get people together in real life. If

45:33

you're just gonna organize people online, it's

45:35

just that's never gonna work with

45:38

this kind of social media environment. And I

45:40

do think it's gonna take people like

45:42

voluntarily sort of walking away from this and

45:45

unplugging it. I think it has to start

45:47

with kids. I think it has to start

45:49

with the younger generation. Like I now, you

45:52

know, I have a four year old and

45:54

a six month old and I,

45:57

you know, I worry about when When

46:00

they get their phones, how much time they're going to

46:02

be on their screens. A lot

46:04

of schools are starting to ban phones in the

46:06

classroom now. I think that's a really good idea.

46:08

I can't imagine why kids

46:10

need to have their cell phones. They're

46:13

in class the whole day. I think

46:15

they should be not just learning, but

46:17

interacting with their friends in person. Because

46:20

we just can't have younger

46:22

generations of kids growing up where they're

46:24

only by themselves with the screen scrolling

46:27

through all the horrors of the world. That

46:31

is antithetical to the Democratic Project.

46:33

Yeah, it is. And

46:35

there are all kinds of other attendant problems, as

46:38

we've seen with the elevated suicide

46:41

rate, particularly my adolescent girls. I've

46:43

got a nine-year-old granddaughter who, much

46:46

to my chagrin, just got a cell phone.

46:49

I worry about her. She's

46:52

entering that very vulnerable age.

46:54

But back to the Democratic Project. The other

46:56

thing that I've said here before, I

46:58

think, I probably said everything here before,

47:00

because this is my almost 600th podcast.

47:04

Wow. Yeah. But in terms of

47:06

the Democratic Party's role, I still

47:09

think the Democratic Party is the

47:11

party that has empathy and solidarity

47:14

with working people and vulnerable people

47:16

and so on. But

47:19

it's also become a

47:21

cosmopolitan, college-educated party. Democrats

47:27

tend to approach these communities,

47:29

rural communities, small towns, working

47:32

class people sort of as Margaret Mead

47:34

would approach the natives. It's like, I'm

47:37

here. We're here to help. We're

47:41

here to help you become more like us. And

47:43

it carries with it this sort of unspoken

47:47

disdain. Like, you're a little bit less than

47:49

we are, but you could be like us.

47:51

And the people we're talking to are people

47:54

who work their asses off doing things that

47:56

we need, that the world needs done. There's

47:58

dignity in what they do. do. And

48:01

actually the guy who I

48:03

think feels that is Joe Biden, he

48:06

just hasn't been able to express it

48:08

very much lately. But I

48:11

think one of the reasons he won

48:13

is because there was enough of that

48:15

that he made people feel comfortable that,

48:17

yeah, maybe he gets what's going on

48:19

in my life. But this is

48:21

a project for the Democratic Party. So this

48:23

is what I wanted to ask you about

48:25

now that you're, I don't know,

48:27

should we say middle age? I guess these

48:30

days, 40 is the new 20, I

48:32

guess these days. I feel great. I just

48:34

turned 43. I don't love that number, but

48:36

yeah, I'm feeling okay. But

48:39

you started off, as I said, you were

48:41

22, you were 26 when you became the

48:43

head speech writer for the President of the

48:45

United States. Pod Save America, how long has

48:48

that been around now? Eight years. So you

48:51

were kind of young when all these projects

48:53

happened. Do you find it harder

48:56

to relate to your younger

48:59

audience? I don't even know what the demo of your audience

49:01

is, but I'm assuming it's young. It

49:04

is, but it's funny, our audience is similar.

49:07

I would say late 20s through early 40s or late 30s. So

49:09

we're still like, we're millennials, even

49:16

though we're sort of elder millennials, but we still have our,

49:18

but there's a lot of younger

49:21

folks too, when we have a lot of younger staff and

49:24

they let us know when we seem too old

49:26

or we don't get it. It's a

49:30

constant process of learning

49:32

and trying to

49:35

understand change

49:37

that's happening in younger generations without being like

49:39

the old man on the lawn yelling at

49:41

kids kind of thing. I'm always sort of

49:44

wary of that. I'm sure our

49:46

staff is probably like, yeah, well, you're

49:49

not that aware, but it's

49:51

tricky. But I think again, this is back

49:53

to what we were talking about. You have

49:56

to be open to... hearing

50:00

from younger people, listening

50:03

to them. Like, and,

50:05

you know, I was just doing, I did an episode

50:07

of the wilderness, which is a

50:09

podcast where we look at focus groups and we just did,

50:13

are an episode on young voters. And

50:16

I talked to John De La Volpe, who, you

50:19

know. Harvard pollster, polls young people

50:21

from the Institute of Politics there.

50:24

He sent me like a dozen focus groups and town

50:26

halls that he did in swing states with young voters.

50:28

And it was

50:30

tough listening because these

50:32

kids are, they're really worried

50:35

about the future and the financial

50:37

insecurity just came through

50:39

as the number one issue.

50:41

Absolutely. And particularly around housing,

50:44

whether it's, you know, worrying that you're never gonna be

50:46

able to own a home, whether it's worrying that your

50:48

rent is too high. And for a

50:50

lot of these kids, they're saying, you know, I did what I

50:52

was supposed to do. I went to college,

50:55

I took out all this debt. I got a

50:57

job after college. And

50:59

the job is still not allowing me to live

51:02

comfortably or in some cases live

51:04

anywhere at all. And some of these groups, there

51:06

were kids who have college, well,

51:09

some kids had college degrees and were

51:11

working and said that they experienced homelessness.

51:13

They had experienced homelessness, you know. And

51:15

then when you ask them like, well, then, what

51:17

do you think about politics? They're like, well,

51:19

politics doesn't seem like it matters to me,

51:22

right? Because who's good, there's all this yelling

51:24

about this and that, but like, who's actually

51:26

gonna be out there fighting for what

51:28

I need? This is so worrisome to

51:30

me. This is so, you know, I work

51:32

with young people at the Institute of

51:34

Politics at Arizona State to some degree, you

51:36

know, University of Chicago, Arizona State. And

51:39

I think the most critical thing that

51:41

we can do is keep these young

51:43

people in the game. Keep them,

51:46

you know, because they, the

51:48

thing about democracy, they have to

51:50

believe that they can change things,

51:53

that they actually can change things. And

51:55

you look at communities across the country

51:57

and there's change all the time. And

52:00

there's been some significant change in

52:02

Washington as well, but the fundamental pervasive

52:05

feeling is that this is politics is

52:07

all—and I think you wrote some lines

52:09

like this for Obama's announcement speech

52:11

in 2007—that politics is an inside game

52:16

for the benefit of those who play

52:18

it and not a vehicle for change.

52:21

And that, to me, if there's more

52:23

than anything else, we talk about what

52:26

Trump might do to democracy. The promotion

52:28

of that kind of cynicism is

52:30

the most insidious thing you can do to democracy.

52:34

And young people, if there's not a

52:37

renewal of faith in that,

52:39

then we have real problems. I had

52:41

such a great conversation with someone I know you like

52:44

or love as much as I do, Doris Kearns

52:47

Goodwin last week. I don't know if

52:49

you've read her new book. I haven't.

52:51

I've been meaning to. I love it because, you

52:54

know, her husband, Dick Goodwin, was a speechwriter and

52:56

worked on some of the great speeches in the

52:58

1960s. But the thing

53:00

about Doris, who's in her 80s herself

53:02

now, is she still retains,

53:06

through her work about

53:08

the ages, this sense

53:10

of enthusiasm, inspiration

53:12

about what democracy can

53:15

do. And

53:17

in the course of getting ready for

53:19

that podcast, I went back and reread

53:21

Bobby Kennedy's Ripples of Hope speech in

53:25

South Africa in 1966. And

53:30

that speech in which he talked about

53:32

the actions of individuals of daring and

53:34

courage, creating ripples and that

53:36

a million ripples come together

53:38

in a way that can knock

53:41

down the walls of oppression and

53:43

so on. And it

53:45

still gives me chills to read

53:47

that, you know? And

53:50

look, the challenge today is

53:52

it's difficult to... There's

53:56

so much cynicism. There's so much more cynicism

53:58

now. Some of it warranted. especially

54:01

from younger generations who just haven't, like

54:04

we said, felt the benefits of living

54:06

in this democracy, benefits of living in

54:08

this country, that it's

54:10

harder to have that message land

54:13

without it feeling either

54:16

cheesy or false. And

54:18

part of this is, like I think that

54:20

we have to be careful about sort of

54:23

over promising and also, like you gotta tell

54:25

people, you gotta level with people, right? Like

54:27

the thing that I think Obama did well,

54:29

and we always tried with

54:31

him was to like balance out

54:34

idealism and inspiration with just honesty and not

54:36

telling people what they wanna hear, but telling

54:38

them like what they need to hear and

54:41

just leveling with people about how long

54:44

and difficult the challenge may be. But

54:46

then to say, yes, it's gonna be hard. Yes,

54:48

it's gonna be difficult. Yes, it's gonna take a

54:50

long time. But if you keep at it, like

54:53

even with the setbacks, even with the disappointments,

54:55

we're gonna make progress. Things are gonna get

54:58

better. And you know what, the choices between

55:00

giving up in which we know

55:03

if we go in that direction, we're not gonna make

55:05

any progress at all. And then a

55:07

whole bunch of other people, strangers that we don't

55:09

know, we're gonna make huge decisions that affect our

55:11

lives and we're not gonna be part of those

55:13

decisions. Or, you know, we can,

55:15

as Obama said, we can grab an oar,

55:17

right? And we can get involved. And

55:20

that's not always gonna be satisfying and the work's

55:22

gonna be difficult and we're not always gonna win,

55:24

but it's gonna give us the chance to make

55:26

progress. And if you look at the long arc

55:28

of history, it's the only thing that has ever

55:30

made progress. It's the only way we've ever done

55:32

it. So I'm gonna stop right there

55:35

because I can't think of

55:37

a better way to end

55:39

this conversation. And it's a

55:41

message that I think we have to continue to repeat

55:43

and carry and make

55:45

real for people here. It's

55:48

easy to get swept up in the

55:51

dispiriting situation that we

55:53

find ourselves in. But this

55:55

project of democracy requires that we

55:57

stay in the game. And

56:01

I applaud you and the

56:03

other guys for being true to it

56:05

and calling people to that mission and

56:08

lifting up people who are doing

56:10

it well. It's really, really

56:12

important. So, you know, maybe you'll age out

56:14

of it someday. I hope not soon. Well,

56:17

you haven't and we learned it and

56:19

we're inspired by that mission because

56:21

of you to a large extent. So I

56:24

always appreciate that. Well, as you know, I'm proud

56:26

of you guys every day. So let us proceed

56:28

and we'll see what happens. I'll see you down

56:31

the line, my friend. All right, Axe,

56:33

take care. Thank you. Thank

56:37

you for listening to the Axe Files,

56:40

brought to you by the Institute of

56:42

Politics at the University of Chicago and

56:44

CNN Audio. The executive producer of

56:46

the show is Miriam Fender

56:48

Annenberg. The show is

56:50

also produced by Sarah Leena Berry, Jeff

56:52

Fox and Hannah Grace McDonald. And

56:55

special thanks to our partners at CNN, including

56:58

Steve Lichtai and Haley Thomas. For

57:00

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57:03

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