Fast Politics with Molly Jong-FastTalking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall skewers the right-wing influence outfit Tenet Media after it was indicted by the DOJ. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, rebuts J.D. Vance’s attacks on her character. Run For Something’s Amanda Litman details the down-ballot races to focus on to ensure Dems win in November.
Hi, I'm Mollie John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds. And Donald Trump has lost four billion dollars in quote unquote wealth from Trump's media and technology groups stock Crash. Oh well, we have such a great show for you today. Randy Weingarden, president of the American Federation of Teachers, robutts Jadie Vance's attacks on her character and her lack of biological children. Run for Something, as Amanda Littman tells us about the down ballot races to focus on to ensure DEM's win in November. But first we have talking points memos. Josh Marshall, Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Josh Marshall, thanks for having me again.
So I think of you as like the voice of Saturday. Okay, and sorry, I apologize. And so you have written for such a long time and covered views craziest election cycles? Is this one the craziest?
I think so crazy? Is highly subjective and I had to kind of go back through the elections that I've sort of followed in some sort of adult professional sense, and yeah, I think it has to be. And there are just certain like objective ways. I mean, you've never had a candidate drop out in the middle of the race. People talk about the LBJ thing, but the system was different then. He was really dropping out before the primary race really started. It's different.
You haven't having a candidate running to stay out of jail.
I mean, those are the relatively normal things. I mean, I was gonna I was going to say that, I can't think of the last time you've had a you know, a serious assassination attempt during a campaign, let alone at all. So there's just all of these things that are just I would say almost any of those things are kind of so off the charts they would make it the sort of the craziest. So I don't think there's any question, I mean, sort of any any campaign with Trump in it has to be in the sort of the first t right, So yeah, I don't think there's much question. This is off the charts craziness.
Yeah, the craziness of it keeps getting badded down by the conventional framing. I think something that really bores our listeners is media criticism. But it does seem to me that people are anxious to cover Trump as crazy as he is because they're worried it'll make them look partisan, right.
I mean, I think there's two things going on. One is that it's hard to know how to deal with Trump because if you just deal with him in a common sense sort of like you're coming to after being knocked out and you want to sound sane, you're gonna sound kind of partisan. And that's difficult for a journalists for all the reasons. We know about our friend Aaron Rupar has this thing. I think he calls it, saye washing, you know Trump's comments, And part of that is that you have a certain toolkit when you're a campaign journalist, and beyond the wanting to sound partisan, things like you've got a toolkit and you know, you've got a Phillips head screwdriver and a flathead screwdriver and those kind of kind of weird multi prong ones they sell nowadays, and you've got a tool for each one of those. But if something is just like a kind of a piece of protoplasm, what do you do with it?
Right?
You don't have any tool for it. And so there's another thing, which is an effort to like you need to get it down to something that can be handled with the journalism tool set. If someone is saying something about like batteries and shark or you know, kind of like putting new boards against the wall and executing them. You know, it's just you're kind of like, Okay, he said something pretty anti abortion, because what else are you going to say? Right, You're you're kind of you've got to break it down into one of those, like I said, sort of the things you can handle with the tool set. And so there's that too.
One of the things that Mary Garland has been busy this week and he's found, you know, a bunch of pro Trump influencers, Tim Poole, Dave Rubin, really the dumbest of the dumb and maybe you know, and by the way, Ben Shapiro's defense of them was like, how can you be mean to them for not knowing that they were just being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for making one dumb video a week. But this is one of those things where it's like there's been a lot of normalization about the Russia collusion stuff, and you know, the right is pretty much just four hundred k per month. Jesse's it's quite a lot really per month.
Yeah, well, apparently you know, I was in a meeting earlier today with some of my colleagues and I guess it was like a hundred K show for weekly shows. So yeah, they're like Seinfeld, Yeah exactly. This isn't just like kind of like, wow, you were making some good money. This is like totally totally that's like in the ballpark of like what the sort of the prestige national TV anchors get.
Yeah, And I mean if it were me, I would be like, why does this weird company I've never heard of want to pay me one hundred thousand dollars in interview? And but not these people, as Ben Shapiro has said, they just were tricked and it's very unfair and they're the real victims.
Well, it's sort of like, you know, the cookie jar snuck up on my hand and like grabbed onto my hand. On a more sort of substance level. I was again talking to my colleagues who are very good at this, and from reading through the indictments, you know, the influencers, the whatever you want to call them, have all been out there saying, well, the Justice Department made clear we are the victims. And actually what it says is that some of them were victims, right, and some of them were not. And so everybody's trying to kind of get into that victim bucket. And you know is I've I've run a digital journalism company for almost twenty five years, and you've got to be pretty dumb to be that outwitted by like, you know, the Russians, Like the Russians tricked me into being paid by Russia. Like okay, and as you say, those are just absurd sums. I was stunned this morning when I was talking to my colleagues about this, that I didn't realize that it was at that scale. As you say, that's like for a TV episode per episode.
Most people in our business do not make four hundred k per year, let alone per.
Month, certainly not from podcasting alone. Podcasting is often a lost leader for other you know, kind of you've got a mix of stuff, Nick Koutremont, It's absurd, it's absurd, it's absurd amounts of money.
So elon Mosk who sits on a pile of government contracts, who is about to rescue to astronauts that Boeing left in space basically right, that guy has engaged with all of these pundits a lot.
Yeah, it gets back to that thing you mentioned about how we kind of treat this as a given now. You know, we have a thing about like when do the primary start? When of the first debates? You say, well, when is the first Russian information operation happen in the cycle? I tweeted about this a couple of days ago. It's remarkable how we all treat this as a given.
Right.
The Republicans may like, oh, Russia. If they know what's happening, they may say I think if you got them to talk honestly, they would say, okay, look, yeah, that's happening, but it's a bunch of fake news nonsense. It's not really affecting anything, and who knows the impact. But we just treat it as a given that. Of course they're on Trump's side, and that's how it works.
Right, And it is kind of incredible that you have people like Elon who has this security clearance and you know, is very involved with national security in all different ways, which all right, but it's very ideologically right wing and has already endorsed Donald Trump. And then you have sort of these other billionaires who really want a tax cut. You know, some of them say it's about anti Semitism. But I think that's bullshit. I don't think the guy who has dinner with Nick Flantaz really gives a shit about anti semitism.
You think not, I think not. Yeah. The Times actually had a great feature maybe a year ago, and one of the things I was shocked to learn from them is that Elon Musk's company controls and owns about half the working satellites around the globe. That's stunning, not half of the US, half of all of them. And even normally we frown on like defense contractors being really kind of tight with Russia, but there are even other things that maybe shouldn't be such a big deal, but are. You can't have those clearances and stuff and be like, I don't know, snorting ketamine with like the Girl of the week and stuff. You can't do that, all the drug use and stuff for normal people. You're out when that happens. Yeah, that's just and maybe that shouldn't be the case, but it is the case.
No, And in fact, I know people, not a lot, but some people work in New Mexico in the labs, and you know, if you get a DUI, you lose your clearance. If you get a DUI, you lose your security cleaner. So here's a guy. None of us have seen him snort katamine, but it was alleged in the Wall Street Journal, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, and you know, I mean they did alleg it, so you would think that would be enough.
He's very open and bragging about his drug use, and I think more than just poddle of that's obviously his kind of his brand. But even those things, I don't know if they've loosened that a bit since since marijuana not. Yeah, I don't think they do either. It's still there's this thing, you know Biden did with the relisting. But the point is that he on a million different fronts, he is, you know, totally off the rails in terms of what you are allowed to do if you are a government contractor in the national security space. And I think part of it is they don't know how to deal with him.
But it's the same as Trump, right, I mean, Trump has You'll remember that Trump gets away with stuff that nobody else gets away with.
Of course, well that's you know, kind of birds of a feather, you know, when when you're a billy, you know they let you do it right, right, And I think we've learned this. And even that's the funny thing with Trump, even when you say you're a billionaire, they let you do it most of the time.
Right.
It's a branding thing more than a net worth thing.
Yeah, or anything. As we go into the season, we're in this sixty days run to the selection, where is traditional punditry failing? For example, everyone in the world is saying that this debate really matters, that this debate is it now? Last week I was told that the interview really mattered. I mean, do you think that that is right? And also are you seeing this kind of like Solizit style punditry other places? And what are you watching for?
Punditry has always been pretty bad. If anything, I would say it's somewhat better now than it was maybe twenty years ago, because twenty years ago you had the people on the panel shows and everybody else just yelling at their TV, right, especially before the Internet. Now, obviously there is endless crap on the internet in all the ways we know, but it is I think somewhat better. I don't know, you have a lot of people who just repeat the same things they've heard and basically are kind of taking and repackaging things they hear from the opposition party and having that be the sort of the conventional wisdom. I mean, the thing about the interview and stuff. This is something that we've actually talked about inside our organization kind of because we have seen not like we sit around doing media criticism, but it becomes a practical issue for us because you need to have everybody on the team looking at the actual campaign as opposed to the other punditry, right, because you get pulled along with it. And I do think there's some ways that something has shifted, maybe even in this election cycle, where it is just more superficial than it was in the past, notwithstanding what I said a moment ago. And one of the things I have come up with is that, you know, journalism is like any other profession. You're kind of acculturated in your first years in the line of work, and then you kind of carry that with you largely through your career. And a couple things have happened in the last twenty five years. One is that if you are kind of early mid career journalists, now your kind of a culturation period is like the early Politico era when that was the dominant thing, and I think that makes a difference now.
Tiger beat on the Potoma.
Yeah, and it was more It was actually more like that than it is now. Politico is in a lot of ways better than it was then, but that was the hot new thing.
And the magazine is very very good. There's a lot of good stuff there.
Yeah, there are lots of really talented people and a lot of good stuff produced by Political I mean there's a lot of fluff too, but that was in the very early hardcore winning the morning kind of you know thing. And so in some ways the ballast of a news or organization is the editors and more senior reporters who have that kind of longer experience can kind of keep things on the rails. And I think that the people now in those positions are people who, again that was their formative experience. So that's one thing. Another thing is is that we have been in a long term era of buyouts, right, so a lot of more senior people are no longer at these organizations, and so you have a situation where I'm fifty five, where at a lot of these organizations there aren't a lot of people older than I am. One other thing I think that plays in there is that because you no longer have many people employed by the big regional papers or the DC bureaus of the big regional papers, you don't have that kind of training space. And what that means is you have a lot of people at the big national publications, the Times, the Post, whatever, who have gone right to the big leagues without that kind of training. All those things come together and they play into what you're seeing, which is a very thin kind of political commentary, which is complicated by the fact that you have a politics that is, you know, hard to get your head around. It is.
It just is, Yeah, I mean it's super interesting and that's right. And also those mid level papers don't even really exist anymore, right, you know, the stop between like hyper local, which also doesn't exist anymore.
Yeah, No, it's it's absolutely true. I mean, you know, most of them exist notionally, and in many cases there's still people doing real journalism and good journalism there, but they're so much smaller. When I was thinking about this a little while ago, it occurred to me elite media is much more elite than it used to be. And what I mean by that is, if you were at the New York Times, a Washington Post, you know, maybe thirty years ago you would look at someone at the Plane Dealer or the Boston Globe or Mimmy Harold and you say, I'm a little higher on the totem P, you know, than they are. But now it's just you guys. Those places employ huge numbers of journalists and as you say, the other the other places don't really employ very many journalists anymore. So all of those things are different in ways that shows up on the page as it were.
Yeah, it's so interesting and so important. Thank you, Josh Marshall.
Well, thank you for having me.
We have even more tour dates for you. Did you know the Lincoln projects Rick Wills that have fast politics BLEI jug Faster are heading out on tour to bring you a night of laughs for our dark political landscape. Join us on August twenty sixth at San Francisco at the Swedish American Hall, or in la on August twenty seventh at the Region Theater. Then we're headed to the Midwest. We'll be at the Vivarium in Milwaukee on the twenty first of September and on the twenty second, we'll be in Chicago at City Winery. Then we're going to hit the East coast. On September thirtieth, we'll be in Boston at Arts at the Armory. On the first of October, we'll be in Affiliates City Winery, and then DC on the second at the Miracle Theater. And today we just announced that we'll be in New York on the fourteenth of October at City Winery. If you need to laugh as we get through this selection and hopefully never hear from a guy who lives in a golf club again, we got you covered. Join us in our surprise guests to help you laugh instead of cry your way through the selection season and give you the inside analysis of what's really going on right now. Buy your tickets now by heading to Politics as Unusual dot bio. That's Politics as Unusual dot bio.
Randy Winegarden is the president of the American Federation of Teachers. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Randy Winegarden.
I am always so joyful and honored to be with you, Bally so thankful.
Well, I'm always delighted to have you. It's funny because it's like I'm one of those people that those people hate too, So whenever I see them going after you, I'm like, I both relate and also am like, you got to be doing something right. So first we're going to talk about Rupert Murdoch's New York Post. I want to just say before we talk about this, that we live in a city or I live in New York. You live, Ink Jesse lives in New York. We live in a city where there is the only really successful local paper is owned by Rupert Murdoch.
Yeah, exactly right.
So tell us about your experience with him.
And what's said about that is that New York City used to be a place where a lot of newspapers were out there, and we should really at another time talk about the importance of local journalism. But the reason that the Post is so successful in the New York Post is because of his sports pages. That's why people actually buy the Post. And frankly, it's more successful because the New York Times has actually walked away from doing any coverage of local news. So it's not successful because of Rupert's headlines. But what he does is he uses it to actually, just like Musk is now doing, to actually try to instead of engaging with people who have a different perspective just to try to bully them and silence them into submission. But I mean, I'm used to him for I don't know, the last twenty years, thirty years, bullying teachers, and I'm used to them ying. But this time they went too far.
Tell us what they did.
We're going to sue them for defamation if they don't retract what they did. That's the bottom line. But what they did was these six hostages that were murdered by Hamas. There's a lot of us who know and are very involved with obviously what's going on in Israel and Gaza and who have been fighting for the release of these hostages, and these young people were murdered by Hamas this weekend. And so what happened was I, like so many others who have been involved in tried to get to a peace agreement, trying to get to a ceasefire, trying to end the war, trying to get humanitarian aid for gosins, trying to bring the hostages home. You know, I said how heartbroken I was in a tweet that Hamas murdered these hostages, and then said, but you know, anger also must be placed at Nettunahu's footsteps for not conservating a peace deal and a hostage release.
Right which he has had months and months and months and months and months to work on.
Yes, and the Israeli public is on the streets for the last five days. There's like two hundred and three hundred thousand people who have been on the streets of Tel Aviv and a Jerusalem, And I thaught it's the equivalent of a fifteen million people in America were on the streets. That's what the equivalent is given who's on the streets, basically saying the whole thing, and the military oparatus said the whole thing. They said that all of a sudden, there's this new demand by Neptunahu, and once he made that new demand and refused to consummate a deal, this happened to the to the hostages. Now Hamas is an evil terrorist orioization, but this is what happened. But instead of actually saying and putting pleasure, I'm both the loss Aaron Etchinau who to get to a deal, what the New York Post decided to do is to say that I was insane and I was appeasing Tomas. Now not only was that defamatory, but what was the intent? The intent is the same intent as jd Vance's intent when he bullies people. It's the same intent as Trump's intent. When they bully people. They're trying to separate out people. They're trying to create fear, they're trying to create incitement. So I just said this was too much, and yesterday I sent them a letter, or my lawyer sent them a letter saying, apologize and retract, or we're going to sue you for recklessness and defamation.
I think it's important to just add here, like we've seen this playbook again and again. Right we've seen people in the right wing media like Grouper Moroc, like the New York posts, like Fox News. This hasn't happened as much, but you know, you would see during the days, these salad days of when Fox was getting five six seven million people a night, which it's not getting anymore, you could get targeted by them, and you would see your inbox would fill up with You're a whore, you're a slide, you're a you know, just the worst most misogynistic kind of over sexualized attacks. Because Tucker Carlson had had called you out or whatever. So you know, the goal is to quiet the public discourse.
Right, that's part of the reason. Why would Pompeo, a secretary of former Secretary State, someone who is the head of the CIA, why would he added nowhere say I was the most dangerous person in the world. Why would band say, well, whatever she does, she's childless, and you know, it just disgusts me or it makes me feel weird or something like that. All of this is intended when it comes to education. It's intended to try to signal to parents, oh, you should fear those teachers or those people who represent teachers. It's intended to disconnect the teacher parent relationship, and in the bigger discourse, it's intended to do exactly what you said to silence someone who they actually want to say, no, mister Musk, you're wrong, No, mister Murdoch, you're wrong, And instead of engaging, they just smear and bully and do it in a way that you just then get death threats and do it in a way that is very much misogynistic issues.
Yeah, so let's talk about the childless cat lady insult. That was. You know, the idea was that you could not be a good educator if you didn't have biological children and you are a stepmother, ergo, you are lesser in some way than someone who has had their own children. I have had many, many children, two of whom almost killed me with a very dicey delivery. And the idea is preposterous. But I also feel like it has roots in both misogyny and in some ways in a kind of anti LGBTQ. So talk to me about that.
So initially, I think when Vance said it, you know, you had Van, and you had Hot and you had youngkin. They were all trying for the anti lgbt wrote. They were looking to see which ways they could try to polarize and divide, and you saw that in terms of the book bands, and you saw that in terms of what they were saying, and they did it very much about educators and using terms like groomers and pedophiles and things like that, and really re upping what we had seen in the nineteen fifties to try to create this division between people who are LGBTQ and people who are not. They hadn't even started their transphobic media. And yet so I say it this way, Molly, because there is an intentionality behind everything that they do. And so when he said it initially, you know, he just was really gross about it because he said, oh, you know, if you listen to the tone, and he does it in front of what he thinks as a conservative Christian audience, and he says, you know, how can anybody teach who's childless? The tone is really really negative. What's been interesting to me is that he reupted it when he's running for vice president at the beginning of a new school year, and how the reaction now has been completely different, because the reaction now is it gets this.
Man out of his mind because like, think about in the Catholic Church, how many nuns. The nuns are the backbone of the parochial Catholic school system.
And last I heard, I thought they were all childless. So and then you have all these new teachers who kind of want to you know, they want to have children. But you know, you try to recruit all sorts of new teachers right at college.
They don't want it because it's too expensive, they can't afford it.
We got to deal with childcare, We got to deal with all of that. But it's like, if you look at any schools. Every single student has had someone who's a teacher.
Who knows they have kids. I mean, it's like it's so people kept saying, Okay, this is really crazy. So what I said was I don't really care what he says about me. And you know, I corrected the record because I do have amazing grandchildren and amazing children. You know, I am a mother by marriage, and great and amazing nieces and nephews and great nieces and efforts. But it's besides the point. The point is it's the beginning of the damn school year. You want parents and teachers to connect. You want them to connect to ensure that our kids have a great school year.
So the home deafness of him, you know, re upping or redoubling the attack, just showed how disconnected he is from what regular parents and regular teachers and people across America are doing right this month, last month, and deaths about So that's how disconnected they are that they don't even think politically, Oh, we're trying to get parents to vote for us, let's do it by fear instead of actually rooting for their kid's success.
But it's also like part of the larger issue, and I think I'm particularly cognizant of this because Jesse and I did this big project twenty twenty five YouTube series.
Which was great, Oh thank you, Just some props to the two of you. I think your series was one of the first ways that became accessible to people to say, oh, this is really bad, So props to you.
Yeah, oh well, thank you. But such a fundamental part of it is their war on the Department of Education. And right again, because you have public schools in the Red States get less money because you know, the state taxes are lower, so they need more federal money to even it out. And even still it doesn't necessarily work like that, and it tends to be that the states with the lower property taxes have less money for education. So you really do see this like larger war on public schools. And also the underlying thing here is a push towards you know, homeschooling and religious schooling.
Yeah, I would say it's three things. It's a push towards the fragmentation of society, the Balkanization of society because if you think about the public school as a public square, like think about everywhere in America, not just in New York City, but everywhere in America. What other institution, what other entity, what other organization is everywhere in America where people gather it's the public school. It's now kind of become public square. So if you basically say, oh no, no, no, no, that shouldn't be, we're gonna undermine it. We're going to create distrust about it. We're going to defund it. What other public square do you have? What other place do you have that everybody convenes together, particularly particularly in rural areas. Think about Friday night lights, particularly in rural areas. So Number one is there. They are going against not just diversity, but democracy, the pluralism that undergirds America. They're trying to tear at it. And the second thing they're trying to do is they're trying to tear at the funding. And they do that with bouchers and charters and saying to people, you have better options, and then the money gets taken out. And then they did the same thing in terms of saying and Project twenty twenty five and by the way, we're not going to fund all these things like Headstart and Title IE and IDA, which is for kids with disabilities or kids who need extra funding. But the third thing they do is they actually have a war against knowledge. If you think about all of this stuff, this is basically, let's get rid of the ladder of opportunity for poor and middle class kids. Because if you look at and Steve Rattner did this on Morning Joe this.
Week, Yeah, he's really good. I'm kind of obsessed with Steve Rattner.
Gone, yeah, me too, I'm obsessed with his charts. His charts were Oh my god. The red states get more federal money for education than the Blue states. But this is my last point.
They are fearful of our kids, and particularly their kids, having real knowledge and being critical thinkers, and being able to understand context and having friends who.
Are diverse friends of theirs. There is such a fear. Not regular parent. I'm talking about the people who wrote Project twenty twenty five. I'm talking about the billionaire crowd who is trying to push this like the devices and the assets. They are really afraid of children having real knowledge and having the relational skills and the critical thinking and skills to be able to navigate the world. In fact less fact, the states that have been so aggressive about universal vouchers, many of them are the same states who have actually relaxed child labor laws at the same time.
Right, there are states where you can't get an abortion, but you can have a young child working in a factory and you know, and you can't get that kid a free breakfast. But you know, the idea here of pro life is pretty wild. I'm curious, now we're in this sort of home stretchy selection, what do you think of what sort of role teachers play. Tim Walls is a great example. He's a teacher, Gwen is a teacher. And I think the way he got into politics is really interesting too. You know, he was in the Guard, very upset about the Iraq War, decides to run for office in a very red district, has his students like canvassing for him. Talk to me about like the teacher to politician pipeline and how in some ways people are just sort of discovering that teachers make good politicians.
You know, it reminded me, and I've never told this story publicly, but it reminded me of when the students canvassing for him that when I was in high school, you know, there were budget cuts.
I grew up outside of New York City, and my beloved teacher was our head of stage crew, but he was also a shop teacher and a driver's head teacher, and there were many of us who can this the public during that period of time. To try to save his job and try to save several other people's jobs, we went out, we can this, We did other things because we didn't want our beloved teachers to be laid on. And when I saw them talk about how the student sudents were canvassing for me, I just remembered mister Munson and how what the effect of mister Munson at on my life and on the dozens of us that were out there canvassing for him and or to try to save his job. And that's the effect that, in some ways teachers have on us as we're growing up. The sense that Tim Walls was both the coach of the football team as well as the coach of the Gay Straight Alliance, The sense that teachers become our sounding boards. They create a safe and welcoming environment so that kids can be who they are and so that kids can thrive. There's no linear direct relationship between you know, page and thriving. We all go through lots of different bumps in the road. And so teachers like when and like Tim and you know, and high school, not just high school teachers, teachers throughout there's a sense of how you help not only mold minds, but how you nurture kids. And I love when he says, you know, if I could do the lunch room, then I can deal with the Senate. And he's absolutely right, because think about it, how to manage I mean, in a lunch room, by the way, claireboardon high school, you're managing one hundred and fifty to two hundred kids. At the same time, in a classroom you're managing fifteen to thirty kids. So the fact that he wears his being a teacher so proudly, what it's done throughout the country is it's two things. It has. I've seen teachers just sit up stronger and higher and more solemnly and say, you know, I'm proud to be a teacher. And what I'm also saying is that this parent teacher connection, which is absolutely critical with the team that has to be there for kids, it's getting closer again because it says this is valuable and valiant work. And that's what both Tim and Gwen bring to this ticket that that kind of or the caring professions, the ways in which we nurture children, that's on the ticket that sends a message to Americans that nurturing the next generation, looking at the future is really important to this.
Ticket, so important, and thank you so much. I hope you'll come back soon.
Thank you, marth.
Are you concerned about Project twenty twenty five and how awful Trump's second term could be? Well so are we, which is why we teamed up with iHeart to make a limited series with the experts on what a disaster Project twenty twenty five would be for America's future. Right now, we have just released the final episode of this five episode series. They're all available by looking up Molly John Fast Project twenty twenty five on YouTube, and if you are more of a podcast person and not say a YouTuber, you can hit play and put your phone in the lock screen and it will play back just like the podcast. All five episodes are online now.
We need to educate.
Americans on what Trump's second term would or could do to this country, so please watch it and spread the word. Amanda Littman is the co founder of Run for Something. Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Amanda Lipman always happy to chat. Molly.
I would love you to just talk us through this last bunch of primaries. I would love you to just give a two second because a lot of people know who you are and love you. Some people don't. Just two second state of what your organization does and then tell us how you guys did in that last batch of primaries or in the whole primary season.
Run for Something recruits and supports young, diverse leaders running.
For local office.
We work exclusively with millennials and gen zs running for things like state house, state senate, city council, school board, library board, and that kind of stuff. And it's worth naming. There actually are a few more primaries this week. People keep forgetting this, but we've got Rhode Island, Delaware and actually run for something because a few special elections and new I'm sure coming up on the tenth. So along with being debate day, it is as every Tuesday is election day, which is really exciting.
Wait are those primaries or are they special elections?
They are primaries. We've got primary folks, in particular the Rhode Island State Legislature, and then Delaware has primaries. That's how we're going to get our first trans member of Congress or likely transmember of Congress and run for Something Alongsiah McBride.
Oh wow, Yeah, tell us how the primaries have gone. And also I'm hoping you could talk to us about the school board.
Yes, so our primary season has been incredible. You know, Run for Something does endorsements both before and after primaries this year at any given point, so it's hard to say exactly what our win number has been over the course of the year, but we still have more than four hundred candidates who are going to be on the ballot this fall out of more than five hundred we've been working with over the course of the cycle, which is so exciting. We've also already had about six percent of our folks just be done. Like a thirty two people are elected. They have won their election. There you take office. I'm particularly pumped about some of the primaries we had in Florida earlier this summer.
Yeah, will you talk to us about that, because Florida had a lot of Ron Desanta's school board candidates.
Right, that's exactly.
Right, and I think it was a big moment to really hammer home one They're not going anywhere, but two. They're not winning anywhere either. So Run for Something had eleven school board candidates on the ballot in Florida. Ron de Santas some Moms for Liberty had about twenty three. Seven of our eleven either outright one or moving on to the general election, because in Florida, if you don't get fifty percent in these nonpartisan primaries, you move on to the general and then it's a runoff. Ron de Santas, I believe only six of them won outright and maybe a couple more six five or six more are moving onto the runoff for the general election. That is not great. That is barely a fifty percent win rate. That's like the equivalent of flip and a coin a bunch of times. And Run for Something in particular, had some of these candidates meet Moms for liber folks really meaningfully, especially down in Sarasota where we had Liz Barker take on and beat a Moms for Liberty candidate in a place that they've been calling the Home for the mag American Dream terrifying name, and it's really indicative of the fact that when voters are given a choice, which they're not always I think this is something we've talked about over the years that you and I've been doing these conversations. We don't always fight for these offices because it's not where the Democratic Party has historically invested a ton of ton kind of resources. But when we do, you know, as Kamala says, when we fight, we win, and when we run for office in these places.
We can win.
We're seeing that in Florida and we're going to see it elsewhere across the country.
Yeah, I want you to talk about So it seems to me, and again this is you are way more read in on these local school board races, especially in Florida. Let me rephrase this. You know what you're talking about and I don't in this topic. But it seems to me from what I understand that the candidates don't the Moms for Liberty candidates, the Disantis candidates, these school board candidates don't do well in h normal districts. They only really do well in like bright Red Maga districts.
And even in those, they're not as universally loved as you might expect. I mean, Sarasota, for example, is a pretty Republican area. Yeah, but they weren't able to win you know, Republican candidates in in Indian River County and Florida, Republicans have a two to one advantage, but the two school board candidates that were backed by disandas and Moms Liberty fell pretty far short.
They only won maybe I think a ten percent of the county's precincts.
Last I recall, these are not what Republican voters generally want. They want sane functioning school boards and governments. You know, the Moms for Liberty extremists who are talking about you know, teachers performing gender transitsert schools and banning books like that is such a waste of time and I think something that they're Run for Something. Candidates and other incredible organizations on the ground have been pushing We're not asking for extreme things. We're asking for sanity. We're asking to make boring again, and that the candidates who can really connect on that are able to win.
I mean, does Run for Something have candidates in some of these very red districts.
We absolutely do.
You know, we are going to have candidates in November on this ballet, and I think forty eight different states, basically everywhere that there is a state or local election we're only missing a couple That includes in deep red areas in Mississippi, in Nebraska, in rural Georgia, in Utah, in Idaho, in Oklahoma, as well as of course dozens and dozens of folks running in the core battleground states who will hopefully gin up turnout for the top of the ticket. You know, our candidates in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, North Carolina, and Georgia, as well as, of course are some of our candidates in Nebraska who can help make sure that we win thattical electoral College vote.
There.
All of them are.
Going to spur turnout for the top of the ticket in a way that I think is completely meaningful, especially knowing that the Commonlay campaign you had to get a little bit of a late start with some of this volunteer enthusiasm, whereas our folks have been knocking doors in some cases for over a year.
Yeah, talk to me about this idea. I truly believe you're the first person to have talked about this, but maybe not that running people at the bottom of the ballot help the top of the ticket.
Reverse courte tales is definitely an older idea than us but we were the first one say thing, to really popularize it in the last couple of years, and especially to implement it as a strategy. At least the first one's on the left, and I think that's worth naming because the right has one hundred percent been using reverse codetails. So reverse coat tales is the idea that when you can test local elections and when you have candidates on the ballot who are knocking doors talking to voters about the issues they care about in a hyper local way, it can increase turnout for the top of the ticket anywhere from point four to two point three percent, especially compared to a district where the Republican candidate ran unopposed. That margin of victory can make up the difference in a state like Georgia, in Wisconsin, in Nevada, all over the country. This can really be the difference maker because we know, even with all this enthusiasm, it is going to be, unfortunately and infuriatingly, a very close election. So these local candidates who've been knocking doors talking to voters, they're the ones who are going to make sure that we're not leaving any door unknocked, that we are leaving every voter and giving every voter an invitation to show up this fall.
So talk to me about candidates that people don't know about that we should know about.
Oh I could do this for hours. I'm excited about folks like Christina Hines, who is running from a Come County prosecutor in Michigan. She's a community advocate, a lawyer, a parent who's running against a Republican incumbent who is aggressively anti abortion and also has a long history of ethics allegations against him, sexual harassment, and sold allegations against him. And she been knocking doors and talking to voters in a really powerful way. I'm really excited about Alie Phillips down in Tennessee, who's running for state House, really making the case that her personal experience needing to leave the state to get the abortion care she needed is what helped her decide to run to take office. I'm excited about Anna Thomas down in Pennsylvanians running in a very competitive state house race. She has been an incredible candidate, knocking doors and making her way through this cycle in a way that will really, I think, move the needle for the top of the ticket there. I had my doubt Florida who's running for Allison. She used to be at an escort for people seeking abortion care and a great race there and was ready to be an advocate for victims of sexual assault in the state legislative chamber if she gets to.
Can you tell us about some of your success stories and sort of how their candidacy has made a difference. Just explain to us a little bit about like one or two people like that.
Yeah, So one of my favorite examples here in twenty twenty three. Most recently we worked where we recruited again named Justin Douglas to run for Dolphin County Commission. Justin was a former pastor.
Where's Dolphin.
It's like Harrisburg, It's around Harrisbony And he was running in part because when we were reaching out to find people to run for this position, which does things like oversee election administration, you know, control the county.
Jail system, he was like pretty wary at first. He wasn't sure he was the right person. But as we kept talking to him, we really encouraged him. No, you like deeply care about the members of her community. He was actually fired for being pastor of his church because he was too welcoming to LGBTQ congregants. Gives you a sense to the kind of person he is. He ran this incredible campaign. He was outspent I think close to ten to one. He knocked thousands and thousands of doors. He really hammered home both the issues around democracy which the County Commission had done. He had really dragged their feet on things like ballat drop boxes. At some point, some of them were accused of like harvesting things.
You know.
It was one of those types of counties, and in particular in the county jail system, a number of inmates had died under the care of the jail system imparted you to neglect. So justin on this really strong campaign whose outspend ten to one and knocked tens of thousands of doors, and on election night he ended up winning, but I think the final margin was maybe about one hundred and fifty votes. His victory flipped control of the County Commission for the first time in over one hundred years. And one of the first things he did when he took office was one begin to hold people accountable for what was going on in the jail system, but two expanded the number of dropboxes available for people to drop off their ballots, and expanded the number of languages that ballots were available in. And when I think about what the importance of a state like Pennsylvania will be for Kamala, this here having Justin and Democrats in control of a county commission that is willing to make it more available for people to cast their ballots. You know, if maybe a couple hundred or a thousand people vote in Dauphin County who weren't able to vote before, maybe didn't have as much accessibility to the polls before, that could be the margin of victory We're going to win in Pennsylvania this year is because people like Justin Douglas won last year.
So important and interesting, I mean, and I think that really is the sense where if you elect someone that there really are huge consequences to these little races, right.
That's the whole idea that you know, the way to win the big elections is to win the small ones over and over and over again. You know, I'm thinking as well about the white folks who've worked with in Arizona. You know, Gabriela Cassares Kelly, who's the Pima county recorder. We helped her elect her in twenty eighteen, she became one of the first Indigenous women elected county wide in the state. She's an incredible election administrator and one of the things that she fought for over the last couple of years and when she was re elected in twenty twenty two, has continued to do is make it easier for people living on the reservations to cast their bats. Before they had to go two or three hours drive away to vote early. She changed that and that again could be the margin of victory both for Cola but also for people like Reuben Diego running statewide.
Right. And also you'll remember that like in twenty twenty, Native people were really you know, they got Democrats over the finish line in a bunch of states.
Absolutely right. And I think she in particular really embodies the thing that we have kept talking about over the years, which is that her lived experience as a woman who grew up on the reservation as an Indigenous person, you know, it shapes the way that she governs and shapes the way that she leads. I means she's fighting for a community maybe hasn't had a voice for them in power it is so meaningful, and she's like, she's just an incredible leader.
I love her.
I think she's really fun. She's these cool stickers where she's like riding on a scooter. Anyway, she's great, and I think it's doing an incredible job to expand access to the polls.
As we talk about this, one of the candidates, you know, we have the first Native woman governor if Tim Walls gets elected.
That's right.
Peggy Flanagan out in Minnesota, I think really embodies what we've been talking about, you know, generally, which is that you build the bench both because it matters today, because great leaders need to take office in these local positions. Peggy Flannagan got her starter on the Minneapolis school board, which she was maybe twenty four to twenty five years old fifteen twenty years ago, and now she could be the next governor of Minnesota, the first Indigenous woman governor. You build a bench for moments like this where they can really rise and be transformative leaders.
We're seeing with Tim Walls that teachers make really good candidates. We have these very hot school board races. You know, education has become a central conservative fight. You know, this is sort of their Passion Project right now. Are you seeing a lot of teachers in the mix here and also are you still recruiting candidates and talk to us about that.
Yeah, so rounder something has worked on this year with a couple dozen teachers. We've always work with teachers. There are some of our favorite candidates. I'm really excited about Max Tuckman down in Miami Dade, who's running for a school board there. I'm really excited about No One Knowstrom, who's a Spanish language teacher in Tennessee who's running for a state house. I'm really pumped about Camilla Bywaters, who's running against a mom's for a liberty candidate for school board in Nevada. I think it's Clark County. She's amazing. Selina LaRue Hatch, she's a member of the Nevada State Legislature. We've been working with for a while and we're working with her in her re election. She's one of the top targets for the Republican governor to kick out of office. She's an former educator herself. I think former teachers, especially in these positions that directly oversee elections or that oversee the education system, like Kristen Christensen in Nebraska running for state Board of Education. They are most connected to the community. They know the parents, they know the kids, they know their neighbors, they know the problems, and they also know the solutions and they've lived the impact of government. And you see that now with Governor Tim Walls on the national state. Now they are able to communicate. If you've ever had to manage a classroom of thirty screaming eight year olds or eighteen year olds, you know how to deal with a rally or a political opponent or a crazy Trump Republican like, there's basically the same maturity level. So I think that it gives us a sense of the kind of quality of Canada. And we are absolutely still recruiting folks to run for office. And Ally, I'm really glad you asked this because people, I think, and then especially on the Democrats, get a little excited amp pumped for election day and then forget that there's work that happens after. Like the file of lens for some of these races for twenty twenty five are going to come as soon as December and January, so we're already talking to candidates we're going to be running next year for school boards down in Texas and municipal elections in Wisconsin and elsewhere. And is the thing that I really hope, especially the Democratic funding universe, doesn't forget and get complacent, because the only reason that we are in this moment now is because we kept our foot on the gas for the last eight years. We cannot let it up now.
I was hoping you could talk to me because you have been in this race. How Harris has changed the calculus of the race.
If she has, oh, I absolutely she has. I think she has given people a sense of energy and excitement and a vision for what the future can be. We often say, you can totally run a campaign on fear. It's absolutely doable, and I think that's what we sort of had to do under a Biden at the top of the ticket. You had to make it about against Trump. But a campaign on hope, a campaign on excitement, a campaign that is built on what a better future could be.
Now.
Hope is a non renewable resource. We can sustain itself. It can keep going and going and going. You joy can keeping fueled for a much longer period of time than anger can. And I think the thing that we have seen nationally. It's also the thing that our local candidates are experiencing. They're knocking doors and talking to voters who pay Maybe weren't that excited to go vote this fall, but we're gonna do it anyway for the school board race because they knew that was important, and now they're really excited to vote this fall and also really eager to vote the full ballot. That is a really big change and makes those conversations in that canvassing experience much more joyful.
Yeah, I mean, I think that's right and it's super important. Thank you so much for joining us always.
You know, one of my favorite things about going on your show is every time I do, we hear from so many folks who say, I never thought about running for office before, but kel yes, yes, or i'd never wear to run for something, and I want to give you some money. So we're for folks who are able to go to run for something that net and ship in, sign up to run, volunteer, find a candidate. It all helps and it's never been more important. So thanks to you, and thanks to your entire community.
Thank you.
Well.
I definitely think it's one of those places where a little money could make a big difference, and you know, these downballot races are so important and you're just so right and I really appreciate you, so thank you.
Thanks Smiley.
No More went on Jesse Cannon.
By Jack So Trump spoke to the Economic Club of New York and they asked them policy questions.
How do you think it went?
So, I think it's really an important moment here is you really do see why asking specific policy questions is so important and also why following up if a candidate doesn't answer them is even more important. So Donald Trump, and again like the fact that we are so late into this election cycle and that Trump has no policy positions is not abundantly clear to everyone in the world. Is a shanda, as my people say. So they asked Donald Trump how he was going to make childcare more affordable, and he said a word salad, which involved Marco Rubio, Avanka and not much else. So it just is kind of amazing. And there were other things, you know, he said about the economy, why don't we have a wealth fund? Other countries have wealth funds, We have nothing, right, We're going to have a sovereign wealth fund. We're going to put tremendous amounts of money in it. I mean, you know, a lot of this stuff shows that he doesn't really understand how the economy works. And this is the guy that a lot of rich people want back in office because he'll give them tax cuts, and he can't understand how any of this works. And he was president already for four years and he still doesn't understand it. So that is our moment of Fuckeray. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.
