Fixing The Filibuster To Save Democracy

This podcast is part of the Democracy Group.

Welcome to another episode of the podcast, Another Way, produced by Equal Citizens. This is Adam Iken, the Executive Director of Equal Citizens. As I'm sure you've noticed by now, we're bypassing our schedule of posting new podcast episodes only on Thursdays. Frankly, there's just so much going on and we have so much content for you that we're going to upload that content to the podcast feed as soon as we finish producing it. I will still be continuing my short miniseries on the Fight for the for the People act, but will intersperse that other content between the episodes of the miniseries and today I'm going to bring you some of that other content and I think you'll really enjoy it. On August 5, Lawrence Lessig moderated a discussion between two experts on the filibuster and the for the People Act. Cliff Albright, the co founder of Black Voters Matter, and Ellie Zupnick, spokesperson for Fix Our Senate. Jana Morgan, the director of the Declaration for American Democracy Coalition, made a special guest appearance as well. This event, entitled Fixing the Filibuster to Save Democracy, gave an in depth look at the stakes of the filibuster fight, the benefits of the for the People act, and what to expect in the coming weeks. I'm rebroadcasting the audio of this discussion in full. For those of you who didn't attend, I think you'll learn a lot. And for those of you who actually were at the event, feel free to listen again because I'm sure that you'll find even more to take away from it on a second listen. And for both sets of audiences, please consider sharing this audio with anyone who you think might find it compelling. I'll also include a link to the video recording of the webinar in the show notes with that, Enjoy the audio from Fixing the Filibuster to Save Democracy.

Welcome everybody. I'm Larry Lustig and I'm grateful you're tuning into this conversation sponsored by Equal Citizens and so many other organizations, including Black Voters Matter, Fix Our Senate, the the Worker's Circle, Democracy Matters, American Democracy Open Democracy Saves Small Planet Institute, Women's March End Citizens United, Represent Us and someone's been in this fight for a long time. Common Cause. This fight is incredibly important, but the conversation we're going to have right now will be focused on what has to happen to make this successful. And it's a fight not just in our democracy generally, this fight about the filibuster, but especially a fight about its role in this most important package of democratic reform that our Congress has considered since the Voting Rights act of 1965. That reform is the for the People act, aka HR1, aka Senate1, and that reform, or some version of that reform, I think is likely to have enough votes to pass in the United States Senate, if not this week, then next week. But of course, we live in a strange sort of democracy, one where having enough votes to pass in Congress with the President willing to sign your bill does not necessarily mean your bill will be passed, because standing in the way of this law being passed is a democratically strange institution, the filibuster within a democratically strange institution, the United States Senate. And the reality is that if the rules of the filibuster are not changed, then this bill and so much else will not pass the United States Congress. Now, there's all sorts of excitement in Washington right now that Joe Biden is going to pass a infrastructure bill with bipartisan support, and I'm happy about that as well. But we should not forget that because of the filibuster, that infrastructure spending bill will have no infrastructure spending to address climate change. And celebrations notwithstanding, we should recognize that because of the filibuster, there's a whole gaggle of legislation that America wants to pass that is not going to pass. We're not going to pass climate change legislation in this Congress so long as there is this filibuster. We're not going to change the minimum wage, we're not going to have health care reform, we're not going to address student debt, and we're not going to address voting rights reform, the kind in HR1 or any other kind at all. Now, it's that last fact that explains the obviousness of one of our two guests in this conversation, Cliff Albright. Because though many will try to suggest that the filibuster is part of our tradition or that the filibuster is not racist, the truth is that the modern filibuster is not part of our tradition. But if it is, we should remember one thing about that tradition, that in the time between Reconstruction 1877 and the passage of the Voting Rights act of 1965, the only bills that the filibuster has actually stopped, not slowed, but actually stopped, were civil rights bills, anti lynching legislation. Most frequently, of course, it almost stopped the Voting Rights act of 1965. But for the extraordinary effort of an extraordinary president to get beyond the filibuster in the Senate, Lyndon Johnson. So that's why this conversation must put race Right at the center. Cliff Albright is a co founder of Black Voters matter. He's a 2020 Soros Equality Fellow. Black Voters Matter Fund builds community and organizational capacity related to black voters voting power. They received national attention in 2017 when they astonished the world by helping to mobilize so many voters, so many black voters during the United States Senate race between Doug Jones and Roy Moore, electing a Democrat in that overwhelmingly Republican state. Since then, he and the BVM team have traveled throughout 13 primarily southern states in the, quote, blackest bus in America, end quote, energizing voters and exposing voter suppression. And he serves as an instructor of African American studies at several universities. Joining Cliff is Elie Zupnick. He is the spokesman for Fix Our Senate, which is a coalition of organizations fighting to eliminate or reform the filibuster. Ellie came to Fix our Senate following 10 years as a staffer in the United States Senate Senate, including six years as communications director for Senator Patty Murray from Democrat from Washington. In addition to his work in the Senate, Ellie has extensive political campaign experience. He took his time from the Senate to work in a number of senatorial campaigns, including Chris Murphy's successful 2012 bid in Connecticut. Okay, but before we get to the conversation about the filibuster with Ellie and Cliff, we've asked Jana Morgan, who is the director of the Declaration for American Democracy, insiders call it dfad, to give us an update on the status of the for The People Act, HR1. DFAD is a coalition of more than 230 groups from labor, racial justice, faith, women's rights, environmental good government, and many other important organizations on a mission to take back our democracy and give power to the people. The first step, I hope, will be passing this critical legislation. She has previously served as Director of Advocacy and campaigns at the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable, and before that, she was director of publish what you pay in the United States. What you pay United States. Okay, so we're going to shift now to Jana. Jana, are you here? Yes.

Hello. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for inviting me to be a part of this wonderful event. For that great introduction. I want to thank everyone for joining us tonight to learn more about how we can bust the filibuster, and also to learn more about the for the people act, which is groundbreaking legislation that would get big money out of poverty politics, that would stop partisan gerrymandering, restore government ethics, and of course, protect the freedom to vote. And I want to do a special thank you to all of the activists who are out There who have been fighting for the passage of the for the People act for the past few years and especially so intensely over the past few months, we are making incredible progress. And the reason this is so important is that America is at a crossroads moment right now. After attempts to undermine the legitimacy of the 2020 elections, the January 6th attack on our nation and the anti voter laws being passed around the country, our democracy is in a real moment of crisis. And years in the future, the eyes of history are going to look back at us in this moment. And I hope those eyes will be smiling because we did everything we could to protect the freedom to vote and to build a democracy that actually works for the people in this country. And we can do that by passing the for the People Act. So the for the People act passed the House of Representatives in March, had a hearing in the Senate, and it went up for a vote earlier this summer in the Senate. But Republicans in the Senate used the filibuster to block the bill from even having a debate. Imagine a bill that has the support of 8 out of 10Americans, including majorities amongst Democrats, Republicans and Independents and and yet Senate Republicans block even having a discussion about this bill. So we need the Senate to take up this bill again and to not let anything including the Jim Crow filibuster stand in its way. And we are right now in the middle of an incredible week of advocacy to make that happen. So we at the Declaration for American Democracy and our over 230 members just hosted the Recess Can Wait, Our Democracy Can't Week of Action. Working with partners like the center for American Progress, Black Voters Matter, and Citizens United, Public Citizen, Common Cause and many more. We brought 100 state legislators from 30 states across the country to Washington, D.C. to join the 50 state legislators from Texas who are on the front lines of defending the right to vote, who are already here. And on Tuesday, we rallied on Capitol Hill with compelling speakers like Senators Klobuchar Warnock, Merkley Booker and many other members of Congress, as well as legislators from states like Arizona, Florida, Texas, Georgia, West Virginia and more to tell the Senate that recess can wait, our democracy can't. And you can go to our recesscanwait.org website to see the live stream from that incredible event. And then just yesterday, DFAD partnered with Black Voters Matter, the Transformative Justice Coalition and a number of other partners to host the President Biden Pick a Side March. And we went from the African American History Museum to the White House to tell President Biden that he needs to do more to protect the sacred right to vote and ensure passage of the for the People Act. We've also hosted an incredible call in day which you can find out more about on our website. You can also write an lte. There's a number of different ways that you can be a part of this recess can wait effort. And again, feel free to go to recesscanwait.org to learn more. And let me tell you, our advocacy has been working. We just heard reports today that the Senate leadership is considering a vote next week again on the for the People Act. But in order for us to be successful, we need to overcome the filibuster. And we are calling on Leader Schumer and the rest of the Senate to not go on recession until the for the People act is the law of the land. So this has been such an inspiration, such an incredible week with all of these legislators who are putting their lives on hold to come to Washington, D.C. and advocate to protect the freedom to vote for all of us all across America and also to get big money out of politics, to stop partisan gerrymandering and to restore government ethics. And so if you want to be a part of that, please go to recesscanwait.org and learn more. You can also go and you can see the rally footage. You can see some of the footage from the march that we did yesterday and all the virtual programming that we have still planned for tomorrow because this week isn't over. And so you're probably asking yourself, what's next? What else can I do? What's in person on August 10th? Next week, Tuesday, we are doing mobilizations in cities across the country and we encourage you to attend one of these events or if there isn't one, feel free to organize one in your own city. And our activists have great toolkits. They'll be able to walk you through exactly how to host an event, provide you with all the information and tools you need to have a successful mobilization. So if you're interested in that Again, go to recesscanwait.org or you can learn more at our main website, declarationforamerican democracy.org to see how you can engage in our activation happening on August 10th or or how you can engage in any of our other actions that we'll be having in the coming weeks. Visiting your representative, writing a letter to the editor, making a call to your senator. All of that is a part of the effort and the work that we need from people across the country to ensure we get the for the People act across the finish line. So Happy to turn it back over to you, Lawrence, and thanks so much for having me.

Thank you, Jenna. Now, Cliff and Ellie, if you could jump to the screen. Great. So great to have you guys and really eager for this conversation. Ellie, I want to start with you, who 10 years ago spent time in the Senate. But I want you to give us a sense of where this institution, the filibuster, comes from. Is this something that that was with us at the founding. Is this something that was the same in 1880 as it is today? Or is this some innovation by the dark lord of Washington to destroy the capacity for democracy?

That's a great question. Thank you for having me here. Thank you, Equal Citizen. Thank you, Cliff. Thank you, Janet, for that great update. This has been, I think this is gonna be an exciting conversation and it comes at a key moment when we are truly at the cusp, I think very close, closer than ever to really making the kind of change that the Senate needs to get things done. But you asked the great question. The reality is, of course not the filibuster is not a part of the Senate. It was never intended to be a part of the Senate. In fact, when the framers of the Constitution created the Senate, they intentionally wanted to stay away from super majority requirements. They saw in the Articles of Confederation that super majorities led to gridlock, led to dysfunction, led to what one of the framers called a pertinacious minority blocking any kind of progress. I believe that was Madison, but I'm sure you can correct me if I'm wrong. And they intentionally wanted to move away from that for a long time. For the first couple of decades of the Senate, a simple majority like the House could allow things to pass. It wasn't until 1805 it was actually Aaron Burr in a mistake, as the story goes, he, he wanted to clean up the Senate rules. He eliminated what was called the previous question motion, where a member of the Senate can call for a final vote and unwittingly created no mechanism to end debate as long as members were still on the floor and wanted to continue the debate. That wasn't something that was used for many, many decades. It wasn't until pre Civil War when Southern Democrats realized that this was a tool that they can use to block civil rights, to block the north from lynching, anti lynching legislation, from voting rights protections. If that point wasn't quite voting rights in the south, but they realized that this was the tool they could use, they used it after the Civil War, through the Jim Crow era, President Obama called this a Jim Crow relic for very good reason. Over 200 anti lynching laws were blocked and it was never intended to be this way. I think the you mentioned Larry, at the top, at the beginning it was only civil rights and voting rights that was being blocked by the filibuster. Most legislation if it had a majority it would pass. There's a famous story about Lyndon Johnson that after the I believe it was the 66 election, one of his top eight said to him I think we have 55 votes for Medicare so we're going to pass the Senate. There was never any, there was never any assumption that you needed 60 votes. That is a recent thing. So you mentioned at the end the certain dark lord. This really changed recently. 2009 when I got to the Senate was a big moment of change when Leader McConnell realized that the filibuster was a tool he can use to make President Obama and the party in power. The Democrats look bad that the voters voted Democrats in to run government to deliver an agenda. And President and Leader McConnell realized that he had the ability to from the minority to stop that without anyone noticing. And he was right. He blocked a big part of President Obama's agenda. They had 60 votes for a little while, then they lost 60 votes. And Democrats paid a price. They lost the House in 2010 because voters were frustrated. They lost the Senate in 2014. And since that time it has been a weapon of pure partisan obstruction. It has stopped bipartisanship, it has created gridlocket dysfunction. It, it has created a de facto super majority requirement where an already undemocratic biased Senate that wildly overrepresents rural conservative white states already is now even further rigged to the point where 40 senators, 41 senators representing sometimes as little as 23% of the country can block the will of the overwhelming majority. We see that on background checks that 90% support got filibustered. We see that in voting rights that was 80 plus percent support. It happened over and over. In fact, one last point and then I'll stop here because I'm sure Cliff has a lot to say about this too is we, when we talk about the anti lynching legislation, sometimes people think that this was a reflection of popular will. That people at the time were, of course they were. But when Gallup started doing their polling, I believe it was in 1917 or so, they saw that anti lynching legislation had majority support, including in the South. But the filibuster was still able to stop it from becoming law. And that has continued throughout the decades. It has been turbocharged by Leader McConnell, Senator McConnell for the past 12 years. And it's got to go. It just does not make sense in today's Senate.

So it's a really important point to emphasize that I teach constitutional law. The reality of constitutional law is that the actual written Constitution means very little. It's the norms around the Constitution. And the reason why this filibuster, not a great idea ever, but hasn't really mattered that much until 2009, is that the norms of the Senate was you didn't invoke it except on the most important issues for you. Now, it turned out the Democratic Party's most important issue was flagging civil rights in the south, which is why they invoked it when they did. But you didn't invoke it on every bit of legislation, but now we do. And so the question isn't what the historical filibuster was or whether the historical filibuster makes sense, the traditional filibuster. It's really, what does this modern filibuster, which gets invoked for every single important issue, say about our democracy now? You know, Cliff, you've been literally on the front line. You've been out there rallying people to this fight. I just wonder when you have to get beyond the obvious point that we need voter rights legislation. You've got to explain this kind of puzzling point, what people say when they hear and understand that this weird rule of the Senate might make it so that the majority of Congress can't give what the majority of America wants them to give.

Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Larry. Thanks, Lawrence, for having me. Yeah. People don't get it, you know, because when we were out there in the midst of December and early January, you know, trying to mobilize voters, black voters in particular in Georgia, and saying that, you know, if we win these two seats, then we'll have a majority in the Senate. You know, the pitch line to folks wasn't, oh, but, you know, but we might actually need 60 votes to get stuff done. That's not what we told folks. Right. We told them if we get a majority, including the tiebreaker, that we'd be able to move and get action on the issues that we were passionate about, issues like voting rights issues like police violence, issues like how we deal with COVID and stimulus and health care and all of those issues. And so nowhere is anybody expecting or understanding why we have to get 60 votes. And the fact of the matter is, we shouldn't have to. Right? We have power, folks. And Democrats in the Senate, in the House, and in The White House. President Biden has power that we literally risked our lives to give to him. And it's a hard sell to explain to people this filibuster thing and how we really need 60 votes to get anything done. And it's an even harder thing to explain why. Why we have a president who said on the night that he accepted his victory, said, black voters have always had my back and I always have yours. And we have to explain why in this moment, when we need him to have our backs as well as the rest of the country's back, the entire democracy's back, but in particular the black voters that are being targeted by this voter suppression in places like Georgia and Florida and in Texas and other states. Why is it that he seems more concerned with preserving the filibuster than he is with preserving our voting rights? That's a hard thing to explain to folks. But when we explain to folks what we need to do, the actions we need to take in order to push this president, in order to push the Senate to take action, people get that. They don't want to have to be in that position. But people are passionate and they've been responding. And that's why you've seen the kind of actions that Jana was just, just talking about taking place all across the country, really. And this week, especially in D.C. and not just this week, over the past three, four weeks, I mean, we've had a member of the Congressional Black Caucus get arrested in each, literally each of the past four weeks. And so you're seeing actions across the country. You're seeing actions in D.C. you're seeing actions at the Senate offices building. And next week, we're going to see increasing actions, even at the Capitol itself.

Yeah, I mean, I want to emphasize one point and ask you a follow up from what you've just said, so I'm going to share my screen for a second. Ellie made this point, but I want to emphasize it because I want to get you to see visually exactly how extraordinary this is. And what we're describing here is actually not something Joe Biden ever had to live with. So if it takes 41 votes to block legislation in the Senate, that means if you put together 21 states, you have the power to block anything in the Senate. Now, here are the states, the smallest states, where Trump won at least 10 points by at least 10 points, Sami won by more than 30 points, but at least 10 points. So these 21 states represent the most extreme far right of America. Now, they deserve power just like anybody else does. But the reality is that this filibuster means that. That 21 states representing 21% of the population has the power to say hell no to anything the United States Senate or the United States Congress wants to do. Now, it's one thing to imagine this system where that happens once every blue moon. And it's one thing to imagine the system where the minority necessary to block is like, close to a majority. But the idea that it's one fifth of the fricking nation that gets to say nothing. You can't do anything unless we agree on it means we're not a majority democracy. We're a minority democracy. Minoritarian. We're Iraq or Syria more clearly than we are. But the framers of our Constitution. Ellie was exactly right. They rejected super majoritarianism. That was in the Articles of Confederation. They said we're going to be a majoritarian institution. Now that, I mean, even I'm getting angry and I'm a boring law professor about this. Right. So, Cliff, when you're out there and you're explaining this 60 and you're saying Joe Biden needs to step up, are you feeling people beginning to feel anger for this president that we all love to love so much? Because God knows he is the perfect antidote to the last president. But are you feeling anger growing about exactly what's not happening because of leadership here?

Yeah, I mean, it's growing every day. You know, it's literally growing every day. And that's not to say that there aren't some things that he's done that people like. Right. You know, people, people like the stimulus checks. Right. The child tax credit. So there are things that people have seen that they like. But at the same time, again, you. You can't explain to folks why he won't be just as passionate about voting rights as he is about infrastructure. Right. People just aren't connecting with that. So, yes, people are getting upset increasingly every day. And then when you see things like just last week or the week before, when you see somebody who literally stormed the Capitol, broke into the Capitol, injured police officers, and get sentenced to eight months. But then you look at what's going on in some of these states, that taking Texas, for example, the case of Crystal Mason. Crystal Mason, who had been released from prison, was not told that she didn't. No longer had. She was on supervised probation and that she did not have her voting rights back, cast a provisional ballot which was not counted, which was not counted, and for that faced criminal charges in five years, a sentence of five years for casting A vote that was not counted when she was not informed that she should have been by the state of what exactly her voting rights or lack of voting rights was. And so when people are seeing that, we see the hypocrisy, we see the impact that voter suppression is having on our community. And as I always say, voter suppression is a violent crime because the impacts of the policies that come about because of voter suppression, the impact of the policies that come about because you've got essentially a minority rule so situation, those policies have violent impacts in our lives. And so, yes, people are getting increasingly frustrated and not understanding why President Biden is not doing more on this issue of voting rights, why he's not doing more to speak out more forcefully against the filibuster. People were very upset about his response. Even just the other night a couple of weeks ago at his town hall where he was asked, you could see the frustration from. From Don Lemon, who, as a journalist, you could see the frustration if you could see that in him when he asked the question about why, why keep the filibuster. You can only imagine what people in our communities are feeling when we're seeing what's going on on a daily basis. And again, that's why people are going, to the extent that we've been going, having regular actions, having national days of actions, people submitting themselves, literally the other day, Monday, hundreds of people getting arrested fighting for this issue. It's going to increase until we get these. Until we get these voting rights. And as Jana said earlier, recess has got to wait until we get the voting rights passed, and we need the president to join us in pushing. You brought up Lyndon Johnson just a minute ago, and I've been saying this over and over again. We need President Biden to have a Lyndon B. Johnson moment. Yes, we know that Lyndon B. Johnson had to be pushed into taking action on voting rights. We know that he told Dr. King in the movement, now's not the time. The country's not ready for it. But at the end of the day, he had his moment where he twisted some arms, when he got in some people's faces, where he cut some deals and he got it done. We need President Biden to lean in the same way Lyndon Johnson would lean in, literally right in front of your face and tell you what you're gonna vote for. We need President Biden to have the same kind of a moment and to lean into voting rights, to match his actions with his words and his passionate speech a couple of weeks ago where he said that this is the greatest threat since the Civil War. You can't tell us that in one sentence and then in the next sentence say, but I wanna keep the filibuster. Those two things cannot go together.

Yeah. And for what? I mean, it feels like there's this nostalgia for a time when, like, white guys in the Senate could, like, get along, even though they had different parties next to their names. And that, you know, they're so proud of the fact that we're going to get bipartisan infrastructure bill passed, which, you know, I'm happy with that too. But the idea that that's the most important issue here seems kind of crazy talk. I mean, what's the most important issue here is having a democracy that can elect a majority and make it possible for them to do something. And we don't have that right now. Now, Ellie, what's interesting about your group is that you've pulled together, you know, a bunch of people who typically aren't out on the front lines arguing about what should happen to our democracy. I mean, you've got a lot of people like you who have experience inside the Senate and they have a real sense and a love for the Senate like Joe Biden has, but a real sense of why this institution has now corrupted the function of the Senate and made it so. Fixing the Senate in the way that your group would push it as a fundamental, maybe first step. I wonder when you began to organize these people, what the conversation was like. How did you convince them to come out of the woodwork to say, okay, I've been a staffer, I've been a supporter of the institution, but now we've got to save the institution if we're going to save this democracy.

Yeah, that's a great question. I think that that is one of the reasons I feel so optimistic is because there truly are more and more people who respect the Senate, who think, who worked for the Senate, who understand that there are deep problems in the Senate, but know that we're not getting a constitutional amendment to get rid of it anytime soon. They want the Senate to work, and it was a process. So there are people who came before me. There are people who spent many, many years working on this. Senator Merkley is someone who has been a leader on this. He has been 10 years in the Senate every day writing memos, telling people, telling his colleagues. This just doesn't make sense. Spreading these ideas more and more people outside, people like Cliff and others who have engaged with people in the conversation about this. And we are now at the point when it doesn't take much persuasion to many people who care about the Senate. People who worked in the Senate can look at what is going on now and they can see that is nothing like the filibuster of their day. We just had a letter that was signed by 31 former Chiefs of staff, led by a former chief of staff to Senator Johnson of South Dakota, Senator Kennedy from Massachusetts. And they made that point that they were in the Senate, they saw how the Senate worked. The filibuster is nothing like the way it is now. So that is a big shift from where things were. And one thing that makes me so confident that we're gonna succeed is that we now have a coalition of people who, like me and many, many others who think that the filibuster was always a bad idea, who think that the filibuster just doesn' sense in today's Senate, we should get rid of it, even if it wasn't being abused. But then we now are joined by many, many people, moderates people, establishments, people who really like institutionalists, people who care deeply about the Senate, who can say, I support the filibuster. I have supported the filibuster. I think in the past it worked. But it's being abused. It is clearly now not working the way it was intended to work. And that is something that you're even hearing that from Senator Manchin when he says things like the filibuster used to be more painful. And maybe we should go back to that. You hear that from President Biden who said, maybe we should go back to a talking filibuster, who said that if Republicans are obstreperous, he would consider doing something like that. So that is something that is very encouraging to me, that that's the message that we've been delivering. So we worked with our coalition over the past year. We've had hundreds of conversations with groups from gun safety groups to climate groups, immigration groups, civil rights, voting rights across the spectrum, people who care about issues, whose members care about issues. And we help them connect the dots between the issues they care about and the Senate filibuster. That is a brick wall standing in the way. And this is something Cliff mentioned that I think is so smart. And again, why I'm so confident that we're going to win right now, maybe however long it takes, we will win eventually, is that members cannot go home after they were elected by voters and say, I wish I could have done it, but it's this filibuster. We needed 60 votes. There has been a level of education that has gone on at the grassroots level, at the grass tops level, and everywhere in between, where now that's not going to be an acceptable excuse. Members will go home, senators will go home and they will say, I just couldn't pass this gun safety bill had 90% support among the public, but it got filibustered. And their voters are going to say to them, why didn't you change the filibuster? It just takes 50 votes. The filibuster wasn't intended to be used this way. That's why we worked so hard to educate people. I know that's why Cliff and so many others did the same. And I think that's going to make a real difference right now.

So let's focus a little bit on what the change could look like and then we're going to start taking questions from the audience. So if you have a question just in the Q and A box, you can put it and I'll put it and be fed up to me here. But so Ellie, obviously there's a possibility to go back to Madison's rules and eliminate all of the anything like a filibuster. But short of that, what are the most plausible changes that could get us a Senate that would be even a little bit more responsive?

Sure. Well, I'll start by saying that I think the best thing that the Senate Democrats could do right now is eliminate the filibuster. That is the cleanest, best option that would move the Senate in the right direction. And then if there are further updates that are needed, needed, they can do that. It will not take away deliberation. It would not take away compromise. In fact, I think it would. It would actually generate more bipartisanship and more compromise. If the Republicans knew the minority knew that bills could move whether they were with them or without or not, they couldn't simply obstruct. They have stronger incentive to come to the table. That being said, I think it's pretty clear based on Center Manchin, Center Sinema, that at least in the short term, we're much more likely to get reform than elimination. So when I think about reforms, the prism through which I view them is will they ultimately allow bills to pass with a simple majority? Maybe it takes some time. Maybe there's some deliberation, maybe there's some openness for the minority to have amendments or to have additional procedural tools. But at the end of the day, can a bill with majority support pass the Senate? If yes, it's a good reform, it's at least worth considering it moves us in the right direction. If no, it very well could be just another tool that Senator McConnell can use to, to create more delay and more gridlock so quickly. The two reforms that are most discussed right now are a talking filibuster, a return to what most people think of as the filibuster, where members have to go actually hold the floor, make their case. They can't just email a filibuster in like they do now, where a member can literally send an email to their leadership, say, I refuse to give consent. I intend to filibuster. And that creates a 60 vote threshold. It ends that. It forces the minority to hold the floor. Now, a strong version, one that actually Senator Manchin mentioned, one that you've talked about, Larry, and others, is putting the onus on the minority to produce 41 to hold the floor instead of putting the onus on the majority to produce 60. If you do that, if you force them to, any member could come to the floor and say, I want to end debate. And the minority has to produce 41 votes at 3am on a Saturday, on a Sunday afternoon. There is a limit to how much time the minority will be able to keep 41 members in D.C. to keep that filibuster going. So that I think would be a step in the right direction, but the devil's in the details. And then the second thing I'll mention quickly is something that the former Senator Doug Jones mentioned, who Stacey Abrams has mentioned, Senator Representative Clyburn and many others, which is a democracy carve out. Some people have called it a John Lewis carve out where the idea that was mentioned before that voting rights is so critical, it is so core to our democracy. You do not have a democracy if people are excluded from the franchise. People are not allowed to participate. This should not be something that can be held up by a minority. That if there are already exemptions in the filibuster for reconciliation, where you could pass a budget with a simple majority, you could put a Supreme Court justice on the bench for a lifetime with a simple majority. You could pass trade deals. There are many exceptions to the filibuster. This should be another one. So this argument goes that voting rights should be something that can pass with a simple majority. I of course, think that would also be a step in the right direction.

Yeah, I'll put one more on the table. And then I have a question for Cliff. My colleague Matt Stevenson and his co authors have proposed the idea of changing the filibuster to have a majority of the Majority rule, meaning you need a majority vote. And that majority has got to represent more people than the other side, so that you need more votes and more people. And if more votes and more people are on your side, then you get to bring a vote to cloture. It's really important to recognize the difference between needing 60 votes to proceed versus 41 to stop. Because the most outrageous thing about what happened with the for the People act, you have a bunch of people defending the filibuster by saying what this does is it protects the right of deliberation. Okay, fine. When they tried to deliberate on the for the People act, the first thing they had to do was to get 60 votes. They didn't get 60 votes. So there was no debate, no deliberation. It is, as somebody has said, a complete fraud, this idea of this filibuster serving the role of deliberation or protecting minority rights or anything else like that. Okay, so, but Cliff, I have two parts to this question. One is how. So the general thrust is, this is the question coming from the questions in the Q and A, how do we get there? And that's really two things. One is how do we get Biden, sorry, President Biden, the Joe we love to love there, so that he thinks, I've got to be Lyndon Johnson and do this. But more precisely, how do we get Senators Sinemai and Manchin, who seem to be the critical blocks here, to see why they need to do something here? What are the practical political realities that will make those two things happen?

Yeah, I think there's a couple of ways to go about it. Right. But first, let me just say, just counter on the irony of what you were just talking about here. We have a Senate that prides itself on being called the world's most deliberative body, and yet they've got a procedure in place that literally, literally keeps them from being able to deliberate. Right. Those two things can't go together. But I think that there's a couple of ways that we can get Manchin Cinema and President Biden. It's going to take a lot of action. It's going to take a lot of pressure. We know that. It's going to take phone calls and text messages, and folks have been doing an incredible job of doing that literally for weeks and months now. But it's going to have to take more than that. It's going to have to take people in the streets. It's going to have to take some of the same things that unfortunately took in 1965 by that I don't mean hopefully hundreds of people getting beat up on a bridge in Selma. But it's going to take direct confrontation, direct action, some people getting arrested in order to dramatize the issues that we're talking about and to make it be clear. So it's going to take all of that, and we're committed to doing that. A lot of our partners have been committed to doing that. Shout out. I want to recognize Melanie Campbell and Black Women's Roundtable, which did one of the early actions that got a congressperson arrested. But in addition to that, I think it's going to take this combination of all of that, but also this pressure even on those people that are our friends. In other words, it's not enough just for us on the outside to be pressuring the mansions and the cinemas or as I call them, Manchinima. It's going to take some of the senators putting more pressure. Yes, we know that there are 49 co sponsors of the for the People Act. Great. They all support it, but we need them to put pressure on their colleagues in order to get them to delay the recess in order to get them to agree to end or modify the filibuster. It's not enough that you support the for the People Act. You've got to support using whatever power you have, whatever leverage you have with your colleagues in order to get it done. Part of that might include that, you know, we're at a point now where, you know, Joe Manchin isn't the only person that can play this game of being the biggest, you know, the most important kid in the class. Right. Somebody else in the Senate eventually might get around to saying, look, if we're not going to get voting rights, then we're also not going to get infrastructure. You know, we've been saying recess can wait. We might be at a point now where we need a senator to say infrastructure can wait, or it may not even necessarily need to be a Senate. Maybe it's some, some House members or, or, or a coalition of, of, of a caucus within the House that might say, well, whatever y' all pass in the Senate, when it comes back to the House, it's not going anywhere until we get voting rights. So there's a few different strategies that we can use. And as in anything else, it's this combination of an inside game and outside game where we need the activism going on outside, we need the pressure points going on inside, and we need some people can do both of those. Cori Bush just showed us that being a legislator doesn't mean that you're no longer an activist. Right. And so we need some senators who are willing to be activists. We need some senators that will be willing to sit with us. There were some people sitting on the steps of the Senate last night trying to pick up where Cori Bush left off to deliver the message that recess can wait until voting rights are dealt with. We need a senator to do the same thing that Cory Congresswoman Bush and her staff did, paving the way and creating the space for activists to be able to do that. So we need an inside game and an outside game, but we also need that nexus of folks who are on the inside building to be activists if we really want to live up to the. The legacy of a John Lewis who at one point even did a sit in on the floor of the House. Right. We need that spirit in this Congress in order to get the voting rights. We can't do it all from the outside. We're gonna do everything we can. Right? But we need folks who are on the inside. We need centers, and we need this president to fully lean in to this struggle. You can't save the soul of the nation if you're unclear about just how cancerous that soul has become and if you're unclear or in denial about from whence that cancer came. We need Joe Biden to ask himself to look in the mirror and ask some very hard questions to get rid of the nostalgia and come to terms with the true nature of the Senate that he currently has on his hand. He's got over 40 years of Senate experience. You can't tell me that he doesn't know how to whip one vote. Because if that's the case, then those decades of Senate experience aren't doing us a heck of a lot of good on this foundational issue. So that's the combination of strategies that I think it's going to take.

Ellie, from the perspective you had inside the Senate, would you add anything to that or does Cliff have a fair characterization of exactly what we need now?

I think Cliff is exactly right. I think what we are seeing right now from President Biden and the White House on infrastructure shows that they can make a difference, that they can actually influence the Senate. I mean, it was very strange hearing their messaging a few weeks ago after his speech, or around his speech, around that town hall that Cliff mentioned where they were. They. He laid out in almost apocalyptic terms the grave threat to our democracy, but then didn't follow it up with any actual plan. In fact, almost seemed to accept defeat, accept that these Voter suppression laws were going to be implemented. That calling on communities who had already done so much to just simply out organize and run uphill again and again. And then to hear the White House tell reporters and say publicly that this is a Senate issue, it's going to be decided by the Senate. Only to see President Biden one week later go to the Senate Democratic Caucus lunch and make the case for infrastructure. His press secretary read out to the press that he spent the weekend making phone calls whipping on the infrastructure bill. The idea, if anyone asked five years ago in a 50, 50 Senate with conservative Democrats, if Democrats will be able to get big bills like the American rescue plan, like this reconciliation bill that's going to come down the pike, they would have said, no, that's tough. But the reason it's getting done is because President Biden said, this is what I care about. This is my priority. He is staking his presidency on it. He is twisting those arms and he is making it happen. He could absolutely do that. On voting rights, we are so close. We have 50 Democrats on board with strong voting rights legislation. We have members saying that the filibuster cannot stand in the way. We have Leader Schumer saying failure is not an option and everything is on the table. I am convinced as someone who worked in the Senate and just sees this now every day, if President Biden made this a priority, if he listened to the voices who are his allies, people like Representative Clyburn and many others telling him that this is the right thing to do. This is a president who we know feels the weight of history. He brought historians into the White House to talk to him about what great presidents did. That's what a great president does. I mean, Cliff mentioned LBJ again. LBJ was counseled by his advisors after Kennedy was killed. Do not you had to give a State of the Union address or a joint address to Congress. Days later, his aides told him, Robert Caro recounted this. Do not talk about civil rights. If you talk about civil rights, the rest of your agenda will go down the drain because Southern Democrats will not let anything move. And he said, what the hell is the presidency for if not for that? This is what power is for. He went. He gave that speech staring at his former mentor, his former Senator Russell, a racist who is his former mentor and the leader of the southern bloc. And he said, we are going to get this civil rights bill done. And he did. And he got the rest of his agenda done. That is what a true leader does. And that's also, again, I go Keep going back to confidence. I think President Biden's going to get there. I think he is hearing from these, from these leaders who are telling him who there was such a, such a backlash to the speech he gave in the town hall. I am confident that he's going to get there in no small part due to the work of Cliff and so many other people on the ground making their voices heard and the inside game that's pushing from the leaders that we have inside the Senate.

Guys. Astonishing. Richard Russell, who's still has a name on a Senate office building, was the fundamental force stopping progress until his mentee stood up to him. That's exactly right. I want to focus a little bit about money here or how money in American politics affects this. One of the most striking reports I read was of a telephone call or a conference call with the no Labels group and Joe Manchin who has some honorary role in the no Labels group. And they were talking about the need to avoid filibuster reform. And the reason it was so important to them was it quite clear from that call it would remove the power of big money in Congress if there were filibuster reform. And one of the leaders of the pac, not a congressperson, but one of the represent, one of the people who organized the PAC, described the dynamic of the pac, no Labels inside of Congress. And they describe how members of Congress, especially in the House, spend such an extraordinary amount of time raising money and they can come in and lay $50,000 on the table. He said, not quite clear how they do that, but lay $50,000 on the table. And if they do that, then they know they have that representative because that representative is so grateful that they don't have to spend two days raising that 50,000 or however long it takes to raise that $50,000. So here was big money because no Labels just gathers together the biggest money there is, ostensibly putting themselves forward as this great reform organization, but pitching the idea that we should not reform this deeply anti democratic feature of our government because it would reduce the impact of money in politics. Now of course, HR1 would do that as well by passing the small dollar public funding. What I think is one of the most critical things in that bill after the voting rights provisions and gerrymandering after that. But it's quite amazing that you have people openly willing to acknowledge that the status quo gives them the rich, the, the easiest ability to block. Now, have you seen things like this, Cliff, in your conversations about this on the Hill?

Yeah, I'm glad you raised that because A lot of people don't know that the for the People act deals with more than just the voter access, the ballot access, days of voting and all of that. They don't know about the yellow pieces. Maybe they know about the gerrymandering piece and the redistricting piece. But the part that you just mentioned, you know, the part about money and politics and campaign finance reform is a critically important aspect of the for the People Act. And one of the things that, you know, we try to talk about with voters, community members as well as with elected officials is, you know, just the importance of keeping that in. And as you got all these negotiations going on, did that not get, you know, kicked off to the side? It's important to note that the U.S. chamber of Commerce is against the for the People act. Right. Many of the companies, we did a whole. And when I say we, you know, black voters matter, a lot of our partners, and I got to mention my dear friend, Sister Latasha Brown, co founder, we did a whole campaign in the state of Georgia raising this issue of corporate accountability, right? Of looking at what their role is, because there are corporations that have been funding the very people that are pushing the voter suppression at the state level. And so we are definitely concerned about the ability to have campaign finance reform to hold those who are trying to use their money as influence in the political process. That's a critical piece of the Ford of People act that we don't want to see get chopped up in the negotiation process.

Ali, I want to give you a chance to explain one of the big justifications that's offered here for the filibuster. This comes from a question. Do you agree with the statement from this question or quote, the 60 vote requirement is meant to protect the minority from majority tyranny. It was intended to force compromise and coalition building. Is that your understanding of what the modern filibuster is?

Absolutely not. It's the exact opposite. It has become a tool that the minority uses to block the majority. That's it. It has become a tool of obstruction. And I think it's important to understand, too. And this gets to what you mentioned about no labels. And actually, I appreciate that that came out. And people get to see what they don't get to normally see. How these big donors, these big bundlers talk to centers behind closed doors, because it really is, it offers a real window into how some, how power works. They know that the filibuster allows them not just to have 41 members to stop legislation instead of 51 members, because, yes, that's important. They need 41 members. We saw that with gun safety, where background checks. The NRA was not able to get 50 members or 51. The bill got 54 votes, but they were able to get 41 members and they were able to stop that bill. But they are able to member one member. They dropped that 50,000 to maybe and that member is able to hold everything up. And maybe the bill never even sees the light of day because it would be so torturous and so long. And time on the Senate calendar is such a valuable commodity. The best example of this is WAXMAN Markey in 2009, 2010, when that passed the House, it never even came up for a vote in the Senate. Now, maybe it would get 50 votes. I think it would have it certainly wasn't going to get 60 votes, but it never even came up for a debate because big oil and their lobbies, lobbyists, they knew they would have at least one member and many more willing to stand up and block that and extend the process and make it so hard for Leader Reid and Democrats that it wasn't even worth it because it wasn't going to pass. It wasn't going to get 60. There are so many examples like that over and over that we see that just the insidious, pernicious impact of the filibuster on the Senate. And you see that again and again. So it is not the case that the filibuster promotes bipartisanship. It is not the case that it protects the minority. There are many ways that the minority has a voice. We have so many veto points in our government that the minority has many opportunities to get a voice. There's an amendment process, there's a committee process, there's actual deliberation and debate. That doesn't mean that at the end of the day, after all of that deliberation, after all of that debate, that a bill should not be able to come up for an up or down vote, especially when people are demanding it, people are expecting it. People put down, in this case, people put Democrats in power to deliver results. And they didn't say if McConnell lets you, if the minority lets you, they actually want results, they want things done. And like I said before, they are not going to accept the excuse that we couldn't do it because of the filibuster.

So, Cliff, can I add on to that? Larry, just quickly, you know, because there's, it's one of the ironic things is, you know, even as Senator Manchin and others talk about what you just raised you know, oh, protecting the rights of minorities and the legislature and all of that. If you look at these bills at the state level, what's happening is exactly the opposite of what Senator Manchin and others say they want to see happen. These bills are being rammed through these state legislatures. In Georgia, they took a two page bill, turned it into a 98 page bill, and then literally introduced it one day. And by lunch of the next day, the following day, it was passed by both houses and signed by Governor Kemp beneath the picture of a slave plantation, if you recall. But it was passed by both houses and signed by Governor Kemp in less than 24 hours. Same thing in Texas. Same thing happening in Florida. It's happened in Florida. And so you can't simultaneously say that you're worshiping the filibuster because you want to preserve the rights of minority parties in the Senate while you are literally sitting by and fiddling as these state legislatures are just ramming all kinds of Jim Crow voter suppression through the state legislatures.

Yeah, I mean, this big call for bipartisanship stops when you get to the state legislatures because there's no bipartisan support in the state legislatures for these voting suppression bills.

It's funny, I have never heard a single supporter of the filibuster advocate that the filibuster be implemented in states. They ignore that. No state has the filibuster. West Virginia, where Senator Manchin was governor, doesn't have the filibuster. I've never heard him or anyone else say, let's institute a filibuster in the states because they know it doesn't truly make sense.

Okay, so Cliff, help us understand another. Here's another question that comes up. Little puzzle, see if you can unpack it. President Biden at the CNN forum we talked about said there's no reason to protect it. Speaking of the filibuster, other than you're going to throw the entire Congress into chaos and nothing will get done, nothing at all will get done. And there's lots of stake. The most important one is the right to vote. That's the single most important one. Okay, so the question is, what the hell does that mean? How do you throw Congress into chaos? By having a majority system in a majoritarian institution. Like what is the chaos that he's talking about?

Right. The only chaos that I can imagine is the chaos that we might actually get. Get an agenda that's actually moved that again, the majority of the country supports. We talk about bipartisanship. You got to think about how you're measuring Bipartisanship, you pointed out earlier, Larry, or maybe it was Ellie. 80% of the country supports the Florida People act, including close to a majority of Republicans. Even in Joe Manchin's own state, a majority supports the for the People Act. Gun control, common sense, gun control, background checks, vast 90 something percent supports these things. And so if you're defining bipartisanship just on people in the country, voters in the country, community members, then these things are wildly popular. But if you're defining bipartisanship by looking at the very group of people who literally tried to overturn the election, if you're defining bipartisanship by a group of people who you could not get a single vote on the Republican side to investigate what happened on January 6th, if that's your benchmark for how you're going to define bipartisanship, then you have failed epically before you've even started to fight. And so that's what we're going up against. And we just got to continue to point that out.

Okay, so we're going to go a couple minutes over because there's so many great questions. Here's another one. I think this is a really fair way of putting it. The question says, I'm all for putting pressure on President Biden. We are, too. But don't we have to recognize that the more relevant the word villain is used in this question? But okay, our villains are Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema and of course, the GOP pseudo moderates who will march in step with the odious Mitch McConnell. What can be done about Manchin and cinema? LBJ had not only strong Democratic majorities, but also the cooperation of the minority leader, the Republican, Everett Dirksen, who gave a truly great speech to support the Voting Rights act on why the filibuster had to be broken. To support the Filibuster Act. To support the Voting Rights Act. But what can be done about the two senators we know are most likely to block this? Let me start with Ellie and then Cliff, why don't you say something about that?

Sure. First of all, this questioner has a way with words, so I can appreciate that it's a good question. I think that there's a few things. First of all, it's important to note that we know Senator Manchin is actually on board with reform. That conversation that you mentioned, with no labels, that was leaked. He didn't intend to come out. He explicitly says he is open to reform. I would also say Senator Sinema wrote an op ed saying she would never eliminate the filibuster. She has defended the filibuster. She has never said she would not change a single thing about the filibuster. So first of all. So I think we have a path. I think we have a path where Senator Manchin, Senator Sinema can stay true to their principles. They can say they protected the filibuster, they strengthened the filibuster, they made the Senate work better, they promoted bipartisan with some common sense reforms. And I think that's attainable. I also think that President Biden can make a difference and we're seeing that. I think that we are close enough where if he weighs in, if he makes it clear that this is his priority, this is about our democracy. He is staking his presidency, his reputation, his political capital on this. He can move two members. Presidents have done far more in far more difficult circumstances. Right now we have a caucus that general. There's a consensus view that voting rights is important. They have 50 Democrats who are ready to be on board this bill. I think we're inches from the finish line and President Biden's the only one, I think, who could push us over and he can.

Cliff?

Yeah, I agree completely. I mean, I think, you know, first of all, you know, even at that historical example where people say, oh well, LBJ had, you know, he had a Democratic majority, you know, people forget a Democrat in New York and a Democrat in Chicago at that time was not the same. Same as a Democrat from Mississippi or from Alabama. Right. Just having a Democratic majority didn't mean that he had all the votes that he needed. He had to work to make that happen. Same thing that President Biden has to do right now. But the other piece is this. The question assumes that there's no pressure being put on Manchin and cinema. Right. We saw just last week again, dozens of people getting arrested in Arizona because of a in action that was taking place there. We did a whole freedom ride that went to 10 states in nine days, one of which was West Virginia where we stopped and did a whole rally which was largely targeted at Joe Manchu, including lifting up the voices of again, those folks in West Virginia who support the for the People Act. There was a lot. There was a poll done the other day that shows that Chris Kirsten Sinema is losing support, that her favorability is down because of summer position. So there's been pressure put on both of them, but we got to walk and chew gum at the same time. We got to put pressure on them and be willing to put pressure on President Biden. A lot of times when People ask that question, and I don't want to assume anything for this particular person, but a lot of time when people ask that question, they're not really saying, why don't you also put pressure on Manchin and Sinema? What they're really saying is, why don't we leave President Biden alone? And we can't do that. Right. We have got to unfortunately include him in this discussion. He's got a role that he can play. He's got tools at his disposal that he can use on mansion and cinema. And it's not just fair game. It would be neglect if negligence if we did not also include President Biden in his discussion, asking him to lean in to all of these issues, the filibuster, delaying recess and so on and so forth. He's got to play a role in this process the same way that he's playing a role in the infrastructure battle.

Right.

If he can do it on that, then he needs to at least do as much on an issue that he said his words was the biggest threat since the Civil War. I don't think that's a lot to ask.

One of my favorite Obama speeches was when he was a kid candidate in April 2008 and he was speaking to the AFL CIO in Philadelphia and he said, if we don't take up the fight, he meant by that, the fight to change Washington. Real change. I know this now by heart. Real change. Change that will make a lasting difference in the lives of ordinary Americans will keep getting blocked by the defenders of the status quo. When Obama made that speech, we didn't yet have super PACs. When Obama made that speech, we did not have a party that was the leadership of which is openly advocating to pass bills to suppress the votes of their Democratic opponents. We didn't have a party that was openly advocating bills that allow state legislatures to reject the votes of their people in a presidential election. We didn't have the supercharged gerrymandering technologies of Big data, which in 2010, Dave Daly showed us in 2010 were so instrumental in radically changing, producing inequality in the United States Senate. And we didn't have a Supreme Court that basically was willing to wash their hands of any obligation to take up the fight to make sure that we have a democracy that represents people equally. We are so much worse off from the standpoint of democracy than we were when Obama called on us to take up that fight. And what's so hopeful is that right now, HR1, if we can get it through the Senate in its current form or at least close to the current form, would address the vote suppression problem, would address the gerrymandering problem, would address the money in politics problem, would do as much as we can do about Citizens United. It would be a final chance for us to take up the fight and do something about it. And this is our only chance to get it done. So the work that you two are doing, I think, and the groups that you represent, the people that you have pulled together, is so extraordinarily important. And I'm grateful to the work that you're doing. We've got a lot of people still in the room, and we got a lot of people watching by simultaneous broadcast here. And this will be alive for a long time. Give us your one minute or two minutes, final pitch about what they should be doing right now so that we take up this fight and finally deliver on what Barack Obama told us 12 years ago we had to do. Let me start with Ellie and then, Cliff, you have a last word.

Great. I think this is a key moment. The clock is ticking. Time is running out. We know that in the next couple of weeks, states are going to start drawing their maps. They're going to start gerrymandering, they're going to start voter suppression laws are going to be on. It won't be able to unwind them. As we get close to the election, people need to make their voices heard. This is the moment. There's no more time to waste. Make sure legislators will go on recess if they don't get it done before recess. See them at events, call their office, show up at their doors, tell them this is important to you. Tell them that the filibuster cannot be an excuse to stand in the way. Say it's the Jim Crow filibuster. Let them know you know the history of the filibuster. People can make a difference. I know someone who worked in the Senate. Any staffer knows that people actually, the centers, actually listen to their constituents, especially back home at their events, back home in their districts. It matters. People have an opportunity now to say, we have a choice. The filibuster or our democracy. Where do you stand? What are you going to do about it? And I think that can make a real difference.

Excellent, Cliff.

Yeah. I'm going to give two answers to that. One is the practical and one is the imaginative. Right. On the practical side, everything that Ellie just said.

Right.

It's, It's. It's getting connected to an organization. It doesn't have to be black voters matter.

Right.

It doesn't have to be in Citizens United. You know, it doesn't have to be dfab, but get connected to some organization that is working on this issue. They've all got toolkits and phone numbers that you can call and text messages that you can send and actions that you can take. DFAD's got a whole national day of action coming up on August 10th. And so get connected to our organization. There are lots of concrete actions that you can take in person and virtually. But the other way to answer that is this. And my sister, Comrade Latasha, always talks about, we've got to have a radical reimagining of this democracy. Right? And I'll take it even further. We've got to have a radical reimagining of what's possible, of what our own power is to make change, to make change in our lives, to make change in governance, to make change in the way that we conceive of what elected officials look like. We've got to have a re. Imagining. We've got to. I always say that we are in the business of taking the impossible and making it possible. That's what we do on a daily basis. That's what we do in history. And be clear, we are making history with the decisions that we make every day. We have the power to make the change, to be the change that we want to see, but we've got to believe that that's possible. And a lot of times, that's where we fall short, because we have been trained for so long to believe that we don't have that power, that somebody else has that power, that they've been given that responsibility. We have the power to get this done. And I believe that that's what we're going to get done. I'm saying it even further. I believe we're going to get it done before the end of August.

Yeah, I agree with you on that. We did a poll a long time ago where we found 91% of Americans, I mean, sorry, 96% of Americans thought it important to end the influence of money in politics. 91% didn't think it was possible. That's the politics of resignation. What that tells us is the most important thing to do is to convince people something can be done. We have never been this close. We have never been this close to reform as fundamental. And so if we can just convince. I think it's really one, but maybe it's two. If we can convince two people, we can radically change the character of what the Future, the next 10 years of America will look like. So I so honor you both for the work that you and your groups have done. Thank you. Thank you for joining taking up this fight. You can go to equalcitizens us itmustgo and we've got tools there where you can reach out and join organizations and and reach out to representatives and to senators to get them to do the right thing. I'm grateful to both for participating, grateful to Jana for helping us get this going and to my team especially Adam Eichen who has done an extraordinary job to pull it together and we have two interns who have been working tirelessly on this. McNoor has been doing this forever and Kevin Rissmiller has been fighting this fight as long as he's been with us. We're grateful for the support. Please share this as broadly as you can when you are finished and we put it posted up so that we can get as many people to watch and to get engaged as we can. Thank you so much for joining us and to the fight tonight.

Sam.