Paul Begala on the Politics of Democracy Reform [08-22-19]

This is Larry Lessig and this is the third season of the podcast Another Way. The subtitle for this season POTUS 1. And our effort to frame a commitment to fundamental reform among these presidential candidates, to get them to articulate and to accept it. So today I'm incredibly happy to speak with an old friend, Paul Begala, who, when I was just starting out, was a kind of hero of mine and who I got to know just about 20 years ago. Begala has been at the core of Democratic politics now for more than 30 years. Close to Clinton, Bill Clinton, Obama, Clinton, Hillary Clinton. He has been listening and understanding what works in Democratic politics for all of at least the life of mine in politics. I have no idea whether he's close to anyone in this cycle, though he will tell you he's not. And I believe him when he says it. I affirmatively don't care who he might be close to because we're not going to talk about presidential politics here. We're going to talk about the politics of reform. And you know why you're here? Because you believe, as I do, that we get nothing in this government until we fix our government. It's like a family sitting in a car arguing about whether they're going to go to the beach or to the mountains for the weekend when the car has four flat tires and someone has stolen the battery. The obvious fact is that we have to fix the car if we're going to go anywhere. And so the obvious objective of this podcast and the work of so many other groups around the nation is to drive this issue into the center of the debate. So it's not just that reform is important, it's that reform is essential. But given that, what's so surprising to me, and this is the topic of our conversation, is how invisible it is in the debate. Not just the debates where not a single question has been asked about reform, but also in the debate that. That the candidates themselves push. Our objective has been endlessly to get these reluctant politicians to talk about how we could make their world work. And that's the objective of this episode, the politics of Reform Politics. That's the topic. Stay tuned for the episode. These podcasts are produced by Equal Citizens US. You can find us on the web at EqualCitizens US and find the podcast at EqualCitizens US. Anotherway. There's a place there to share the podcast and to give us feedback and your ideas. Please do both and please share this broadly. You can also help by making sure that your favorite candidate has a staff efficient enough to actually schedule a time that we can speak to them about these issues. We've reached out to every candidate, absolutely every one of them has said they want to participate. Some have done so insanely, quickly and effectively and enthusiastically, like Andrew Yang, who agreed to do a town hall. Still one of my favorite events, where he talked about his hundred dollar Democracy dollars, and he said that he was going to make fixing our government the first thing that he pushed for. Kirsten Gillibrand did an amazing podcast with us committing to a $600 democracy dollar package, and she has also done a town hall with our team in New Hampshire. Beto o' Rourke has done a podcast. Amy Klobuchar has agreed to do a town hall, which I had to cancel because of with my dad's health. Senator Bennett, whose book I'm in the Middle of, It's a fantastic book, has offered, but we've not yet scheduled it. But there are plenty whose staff has not yet found the time, as they so euphemistically put it. So if your candidate is not yet on our list, please feel free to pester them. Senator Warren, Senator Sanders, Senator Booker, Senator Harris, Mr. Vice President, Mr. Mayor. Let them know you'd like to know what they would say about reform in the podcast, whose core message is devoted to this question of reform. Welcome, Paul Begalla. As you know, this is a podcast about reforming our government and the role the presidential campaigns might play in that. But I wanted to have you on because I think that you've had such an extraordinary experience that you can help us define the art of the possible, even if I think many of us think we have a sense of what's necessary. But before we get to that, I want to make sure people understand exactly the place that you have in this conversation. I've known you for about 20 years, but we're contemporary. You're a little older than I am. I guess you're still older than I am, but you've had an extraordinary range of experience. You and James Carville were the key strategists in the election that brought us Bill Clinton. I guess you'd worked for Harris Wofford before that.

I did.

And then you obviously had an incredibly important role in that administration. And then afterwards in the media, which with MSNBC Equal Time, and then Crossfire. And you've been doing work with candidates ever since. But the thing that's important from my perspective is you are so close to the ground in understanding how people hear what politicians say. And so you've been central to understanding what politicians can say about a wide range of issues and the issues that we've been talking about in the course of this podcast with both candidates and academics and activists is exactly how we get reform in. You started in politics, really, when there was probably more possible from government. And I'm sure you have the sense that we're in a place where less is possible because of the way government has evolved. And so let me just start by asking you, do you believe, like many of us do, that we've got to find a way to bring reform to our government? And if you don't tell me why.

Oh, I think first, thank you for having me. It's very kind of you. And I do know you, but also admire your work professionally. Like you a lot personally. But so thank you. I think it's essential. I think it's absolutely essential. I think what you and others in the reform movement have been doing is critically important. I look back, I worked for many candidates who were always on the, I think, progressive side of things, always Democrats. I also spent some time, I don't do this any longer, but spent some time raising money and helping run a super PAC where we raise vast amounts of reported but unlimited money. I've seen it from sort of all sides. And believe me, we need the reforms that you and others talked about, Citizens United or the legislation that the Democrats passed through the House and that Senator Udall has introduced in the Senate to sort of jump right into the practical matter. I think what I and others in the system, I'm no longer in the system. I'm a commentator. But I think one of the mistakes I've made, and I think one that current candidates are making is they're not doing a good enough job about making the issues they care about relevant to the people they're talking to, explaining to folks. Everybody understands why healthcare is relevant to them because everybody gets sick and everybody needs a doctor and everybody has to pay bills. You don't have to explain to people why health care is relevant. You do have to take that extra step with reform and explain to them the reason we're the only major country in the world doesn't have a sensible system of covering everyone is not because we're crueler than our neighbors in Canada or Mexico or Britain or anywhere. It's because our system is, is so corrupt. The reason that we're the only major country that's now doing little or nothing, one of the only major countries to pull out of Paris climate accord. It's not because Americans want their cities to Flood and their farmers to lose their land. It's because of reform. In other words, we don't, the politicians don't do a good enough job. And people who are now my successors and interest as the advisors to these politicians, they're not doing a good enough job of explaining to people why it matters in their lives. And it's probably my central critique about our politics today. And I'm part of this problem. I go on TV every night and my hair's on fire about our president. I just can't stand him. Just be honest. I can't stand it. The problem with that is I have to keep remembering not only to talk about his character flaws, which are manifest, but why this matters in your life to voters who you know he's not going to grab them by the privates. And I think that I have to do a better job explaining things to folks in terms of how it affects their lives. And the number one issue on that is reform. And I didn't see in any of the debates we've had so far, people really put that front and center in a way that I wish they would because I do think it's the NAEP ultra. If we don't do that, we don't have any of it.

I mean, you're absolutely right about it not being central, but I'm trying to understand more of the reasons because, you know, some of these people, like, you know, you know all of these people, but some of these people I know, and if I were to sit down and talk to them, they would shake their head and say, absolutely, you're right, it's gotta be reform if anything is else going to happen? And some of them, you know, at least seven of them have said they're going to make reform the first thing they do if in fact they're elected president. Of course there's an argument about what's in that package, but at least it's the right way to frame it. But the problem is it seems like there's a group of advisors or wisdom that says this is not what's going to bring people in, even if you explained it. And I wonder whether that resonates. Is that what you would have said if you were standing next to one of these candidates in a debate, or do you think that's just no longer true, that we should be able to recruit people to this?

We should be able to. First off, you gotta be who you are. And the people who advised Al Gore did a terrible job of telling him don't really run on climate Change Al, because it doesn't really poll. Well, I learned this earlier in my career, 1991, I'm working for now departed Harris Hoffer, who I just loved. And there's a recession on. And in Pennsylvania, the number one issue was jobs and the number two issue was the economy. And the number three issue was jobs. I mean, it's the only thing people wanted to hear about. So by conventional analysis, Wofford should have run as the jobs guy. And in fact, his immediate job at the time when he was appointed to the Senate was Secretary of labor and Industry. Well, he looked at that poll with me and his other advisors and he said, the reason why we're losing jobs in Pennsylvania is because of health care. The biggest cause of strikes in Pennsylvania is health care. The biggest cause of bankruptcies in Pennsylvania is health care. He saw that, so he said, if you really want to talk about jobs, you got to talk about health care. And health care in the open ended polling was a 3% issue in that poll. 3. And over 50 wanted to hear about the economy. Well, Wofford understood that he could make it an economic issue, and so he did. And you know, he won great upset and a landslide at that. That's what these politicians need to do, and frankly, it's what their consultants need to do. You do a poll now, everybody says, oh, I want to be for health care for everybody. Okay, fine. And they all had, I think, quite good plans. Varying gradations of, I think, appeal to me. But nobody is looking at it the way Wofford did or frankly the way Clinton did. You know, Bill Clinton, we did our first poll and we were behind Bush on credibility on crime and law enforcement by like 40 points. And he said, we got to start talking about our vision for criminal justice. And he did. And I think that's what's lacking right now is people, frankly, consultants, pollsters, politicians, looking beyond just the ranking of issues and saying to people, if you really care about climate, you have to reform our government. If you really care about health care, you have to reform our government. If you really want to improve education, you have to reform our politics. And my hope was that Steve Bullock would do that. He seemed to be. And I know all these candidates, and they're really good people. Governor Bullock of Montana seemed to be the most passionate about reform because he's litigated, as you know, he has been in the trenches and his state has one of the most interesting and important histories on political reform. But he's 1%. So I'm really looking to the leading candidates to do this, and so far, not very successful. I will say this. Nancy Pelosi did make it her first priority, and she did pass it through the House. It's a terrific bill.

It is the most important reform bill passed by the House since the Voting Rights act of 1965. And it's not just that she passed it, it's that she called it HR1, which signaled that this is what has to happen before anything else would happen. And indeed, we've named this season of the podcast POTUS 1, because what we're trying to do is get the Nancy Pelosi idea in the context of this presidential campaign. But it is striking that the leading candidates, you know, I mean, I know Elizabeth Warren, she's a colleague of mine. I know she has the right. You know, she has exactly the right views about this, you know, but she and Bernie Sanders both, I think, have hesitated to making the essential elements right out front and center. And I just wonder when, you know, I know she would believe this, would she say, let's make it front and center. And her polar. His pollsters would say, look, if you do that, you're gonna be hit with welfare for government, for politicians, or you're gonna be hit with a distraction that makes it not valuable or worth it to you to do that.

I don't think that's a big risk in the Democratic primary. It might be in the general election, but you can. That's a fight you want, particularly if you're Elizabeth or Bernie. I mean, these are people who are absolutely fearless about taking on corporate interests. I do hope they'll do that. I can't say enough about how important it is that Pelosi made this party. Let me take it back in time. Campaign reform, political reform was one of the issues Bill Clinton ran on in 1992, and he won. And I had worked on the Hill. I'd worked for the majority leader in the House. So he sent me up to the Hill in the transition, and I met with all the House Democrats, and I went through his reform agenda. Right, his whole agenda, though. We want to do health care, we want to do welfare reform, we want to do campaign reform, and two, three others. His economic plan was the most important. And one of these Democrats stood up and lectured me like you wouldn't talk to a dog. He said, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. This is cheap demagoguery that you and Clinton ran on all around this country. He said, my colleagues are more honest and ethical today than any Congress in history. My God, Daniel Webster was taking cash from the railroad companies and Lyndon Johnson was taking cash from the oil companies. And you stand here today and your candidate, President Elect, runs around the country. It was. And they cheered. They all cheered.

Wow.

And I was lucky to get out of there alive. And you know what? They killed our reform bill early, and we let them because we wanted to pass our economic plan. We wanted to pass a lot of other reforms. I really regret that. You know, Michael Waldman, who's now at the Brennan center, has written, talked about this, and he was one of our leading champions on reform. I really regret that. I have to tell you that. And God rest his soul, that that was the Democrats under Tom Foley in the House. The Democrats under Nancy Pelosi are completely different kind, and she understands that you can't get anything else important done until you first clean up the corruption in Washington and in our campaigns. And that's what I would say. I mean, I tried to talk to almost all these candidates. That's what I would say. And I don't have a favorite. I honestly don't, Larry, but that's what I would say to them. Don't make the mistake that I made 25 years ago in letting them steamroll

a reform agenda that's so important. And this whole, whole question about whether to call the system corrupt is to call the politicians corrupt, I think, is extremely important. There's an incredible debate with John McCain and the Dark Lord Mitch McConnell, when they were considering the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, McCain, Feingold law. And McCain, of course, was famous at that time for talking about the corruption in Washington and the corruption in Congress. And McConnell said, I want you to name the corrupt members. And McCain said, I'm not saying there are individuals who are corrupt. I'm saying the system is corrupt. And McCain said, There's no way to have a corrupt system unless you got corrupt individuals. So who are the corrupt individuals? And Harris Wofford stood up on the floor and he said, no, you're missing the point. It is not that individuals are taking bribes. It's that they're looking in the wrong way. And they're looking in the wrong way because they're spending their time raising money rather than thinking about what's in the interest of the nation. And that seems to me so central that you, you don't have to say members of Congress are evil, corrupt people in order to say the institution has been led down a path where no longer can it do its work. And it's obvious it can't do its work.

That's exactly right. And Harris saw it, and I was his campaign manager. The opportunity cost of having to raise all that money is enormously high. And the agenda that is imposed upon you by proximity. Okay, I've raised hundreds of millions, actually, hundreds of millions. I don't think I have had a major donor. And I mean seven figure. I said, people, give me eight figures. I don't think I've ever had one say to me, I want a tax breaker. I want a special access to the Japanese for my trade deal, or what. Never did. I never did. I have someone with any sort of whiff of what, you know, the Mr. Smith goes to Washington form of corruption, but I don't think I ever had one say we got to raise the minimum wage either. Yeah, they're not bad people, but they have a different agenda. And in my party, it's an agenda I agree with. In the main, they care desperately about gay rights and women's rights and climate change. But the kind of economic justice arguments, the criminal justice reform arguments, many of the issues that younger people and people of color are pressing onto the party are just not the issues that the major donors live. They're not bad people, but they are in their own bubbles. So Harris was exactly right. And then that's in the most benign way that it distorts. It also distorts in that, look, many of these votes would probably turn out exactly the same. You know, I think there are good people in both parties trapped in a bad system. And so if you really, earnestly, honestly believe that life begins at conception, it doesn't matter how much money people give you, you're going to vote a certain way on the Height Amendment. But there's a lot of other stuff, as you know, Larry, that, like, I don't have a position. I have no idea whether T Mobile should be allowed to merge with Sprint. I don't know, and I don't care. It's above my pay grade, and I just don't know. Well, what if the lobbyist for one of those companies had, you know, given my pack $100,000. Now, I've never lobbied, and I wouldn't. But you see, that's how it distorts, is there's a whole lot of these fights that are not terribly ideological. They're just vested interests slugging it out. And they ought to have to slug it out only on the merits.

Yeah. Leslie Byrne, when she went to Congress, was told by a colleague, quote, always lean to the green. And then to clarify, she had to say, you know, he was not an environmentalist. And, and the point she's making is exactly this. Like if you're in a context where you haven't made something an issue, it's not the center of your identity or the center of your campaign. But there's one way you can lean and another way you can lean. The simple measure is lean in the direction that leads money into your campaign. And that's certainly an incredibly important part of what makes it so Washington can't work because it's so trivially easy in our separated of power, separated powers, checks and debts, imbalances, form of government to block anything. And for those of us in a party which wants to reform and make the world a better place, the idea that we have a government that can stop, that can be stopped so easily has got to mean that we can't get what we want done.

That's right. And I just, I think making it about people's lives, it's hard to do. But these are talented politicians. Look at the deal and I would have cut this deal, Larry, but look at the deal that President Obama cut to get Obama. He let pharmaceutical companies exclude themselves from market competition. That is to say the VA can negotiate for lower drug prices but Medicare cannot. And he accepted that deal. And look, the system is corrupt and that's an example of corruption in the system. He I think felt like, and I probably would have advised him to, had to take that deal in order to get a really important, important bill through the corrupt system. But now 10 years later we're still overpaying and you hear these horror stories of parents with children who need insulin, seeing the price go through the roof. And this is the real world. The majority of the new House Democrats, probably the biggest issue they ran on was this question of prescription drug prices and they would be lower but for the power of the pharmaceutical lobbyists. That's all it is. It's big pharma and the money that they bring to bear. Very few people sit around and say, well yes, Medicare should not have the same rights as Sam's Club or Costco to negotiate lower prices on volume. It's against any conservative's idea, I think of market pressures and it's against any progressives idea of access to life saving medication.

Yeah, but they could demand that because they could credibly threaten to channel ungodly amounts of money into just 10 seats and guarantee the Democrats would lose control of the House. But of course they lost control anyway. But that wasn't because of that deal. Well then, so, but then the question is like, is there a way that this issue can be seen to be a unifying issue? I mean, I, we had an interview with, I don't know if you know this guy, Billy Sutton from South Dakota. So Billy, Billy Sutton ran for governor in South Dakota as a Democrat. So South Dakota is a state that in 2016, went for Trump by 30 points. Billy Sutton came within three and a half points of beating the Republican. And his campaign was solely focused on integrity and trust in government because of course, South Dakota is a one party state and they've evolved into a very corrupt one party state. But he was able to bring an extraordinary number of Republicans along with him because he stood for something that in principle, everybody should agree with, like who could really be for this corrupt system? And I just wonder whether, you know, it seems so obvious to me that if we had a way of freedom framing the fight that made it so, you could say to Republicans, look, we know we're going to disagree about 100 really important issues, but let's at least get to a place where we could have a government that could listen to all of us as opposed to the funders of campaigns or the lobbyists on the Hill, that there should be a way for them to come along and this should be a way to actually break this type of division. So why isn't it more obvious and played more consistently in these campaigns?

I think we're so very tribal, Larry, in a way that we never have been in my life. So much more so. So that, like I noticed when Elizabeth Warren came out for reforming the Electoral College, which I've long supported Republican opposition to, it went through the roof. Yeah, just, I don't know that there are any unifying issues anymore. Dear God, when people are murdered because of their ethnicity, we can't even get our president to seem like he cares. So I despair about that, I have to say, but in my party, it should be a unifying argument. You know, this is maddening, insane debate in the Democratic Party. Should we focus on the base or should we reach out to those suburban college educated women who gave us the House majority? To me, it's a really stupid argument. You should advance issues that you unite those two. Bill Clinton always used to say they have wedge issues because they're about splitting up our coalition. But we have to have web issues that stitch people back together. And the truth is the issues that you're championing are those you can go to any college educated woman in the suburb who is running away from Trump. She's been A lifelong Republican, she's running away from Trump because she thinks he's a racist and misogynist. You can say this, make your case to her about reform, and you can go to the most progressive activist and they're both going to agree with you that that's the kind of issues I want Democrats to run on so it can unify the Democrats. I just despair. I hate to say it, but I despair of my friends on the other side who've just become so very tribal. I mean, the percentage of Republicans who believe in climate change is dropping. There's no new science, by the way. The percentage of Republicans who believe in evolution is dropping. It's really disheartening. Wait till they hear about gravity and photosynthesis. It's just going to be awesome.

But then, you know, is this itself a product of. I mean, there's so many things, obviously, that have driven to the polarization in political culture, including just the way the media has evolved so that the business model of hate is incredibly profitable. And that's the game that gets political played. But I wonder whether the primary system itself doesn't in some sense fuel this. I mean, when this began, this cycle began, it was clear the strategy that people like Warren were going to have to play in order to grab a base and make it strong enough to prevail. And that sounded, it seemed like the experts thought that the way to do that was to play to what seems to be an extreme relative to a whole bunch of other people. Is that a mistake or is that the right way to play a strategy to win in a primary?

I think it could win her and others. I don't mean to single out Warren, who I have great admiration for, it could win the Democrat the nomination and lose the election. I actually think money plays a role in this in a counterintuitive way, Larry, that I did not see coming. A lot of it's media. I'm part of it. A whole lot of it is social media. There's great research on this about how Twitter in my party is far more white and far more leftist than the grassroots of the Democratic Party. The heart of the Democratic Party is not on Twitter. But let's zero in on the money. I never saw this coming. The low donor emphasis that the Democrats put on, I thought was terrific. It's had an unintended consequence. Low donors tend to be more ideological. They have there. I talked about how big donors have their bubbles and their agendas. Well, so do the low donors. So when 20 people are chasing the same pool of very, very progressive small dollar donors. It pulls them to the left. And that is actually something even HR1 I think would do with its. I think it's a great idea. But this wonderful six to one match. I like your idea better, which is Ro Khanna's bill to actually empower people, everybody. Most people still don't even have 50 bucks to give to a politician that's so important. So this, the unintended consequence of emphasis on small donors has been to pull the Democrats to the left. I'm actually working on an op ed piece on this. My solution is not to abandon that because I do want to build small donors, I want to empower them, but to have another metric that could also qualify you for the debate, and that is how many voters you've registered.

Wow, that's a great point.

That also should be at the heart of the Democratic Party.

And you change the business model of fundraising because candidates focus on like, how do I bring a wide range of contributors in knowing that everybody's empowered to contribute? I mean, it's been an amazing year for vouchers because, you know, when I wrote my book in 2011 that, you know, argued for a $50 voucher, I thought I was being pretty radical. This year you've got, you know, you've got Andrew Yang who's argued for $100 vouchers, and now you have Gillibrand who said there should be 200 for every federal election. So in some years you could have $600 in vouchers, which is exciting because I think you begin to shift the field and draw people's attention to the real potential. And, you know, cities like Seattle, which have begun to make it real, I think give people an imagination of how much more powerful this could be.

I think it's such a great idea because it doesn't. One of the legitimate criticisms that my friends on the right, George Will, has made this criticism is that people like me who want to limit donations are imposing a false scarcity. But there's plenty of money in politics. There's plenty of money for politics, but you're imposing a scarcity on it, and that distorts. I'm okay with that. I think the good outweighs the bad on that. But that's a legitimate comment. Your system doesn't do that. It doesn't impose a false scarcity. In fact, it brings more democracy. You know, it's, it's, it's. I just think that's a really. The voucher idea is a terrific one.

So what else should Be at the center of reform.

I think, well, I love this bill, but at the heart of it, well, not the heart of it, but the heart for me is more disclosure, not only of donors and all the dark money. They should disclose all of that. Again, when I was with the super pac, we disclosed it all, but it was colossal amounts. But the disclosure of Facebook ads. Amy Klobuchar has written a bill understood is incorporated into it. Pelosi's HR1, Mark Warren Warner of Virginia has been a champion of this disclose online advertising and the source the way that you have to on television. California has the most robust disclosure that I've seen on television. We also have to list major donors for your ads. People have a right to know if they see an ad that claims it's from something called the Cincinnati Christian News. Right there. It's. There's no such thing. It's not based in Cincinnati. It's not Christian, and it's not news. It's St. Petersburg Russian trolls trying to lie to my sweet mother. I think that that piece of this is going to be. Have to be critically, critically important so that people know. You know, I just. There are some who want to crack down and censor, and I'm never going to be for that. But more information, more disclosure has got to be helpful.

What about gerrymandering?

Huge issue. It's. And the court I talked to, I won't say who. I talked to an attorney who litigates at the Supreme Court for a living. He could not believe that. And I asked him if it was about the discretionary docket. They just don't want to take every state and every county's gerrymandering case. And this sounds cynical. We said no, they just, they want to, you know, it's a majority conservative court, and they think that when you're losing in democracy, you rig the game. I just can't. I can't believe that I live in a country where the court is not going to review whether districts are constitutionally drawn. So we have to reform it at the state level. Eric Holder has been a terrific leader in this. It's absolutely essential. I live in Virginia, where they've had to redo the districts in my commonwealth, and it has made for much more free, fair and robust districts. You know, the Democrats are the minority in both the state Senate and the General assembly despite winning the majority of votes for both the state Senate and the assembly in the last two elections. Now they have fair districts imposed by the court. And I think if they do their job and, you know, if they're good candidates with good ideas, they should have districts that reflect what voters want.

But Congress could do it for congressional districts itself. It doesn't have to wait for the states. Right. So shouldn't congressional mandated, nonpartisan districting be part of what a reform package is?

Anything that reforms those. Yes, is a short answer, but I like the idea of independent commissions. Different states do different things. Iowa has. Go look at the map. Anybody listening to this podcast, look at my beloved Texas, where I grew up, where every district looks, you know, like a rattlesnake has been run over by an 18 wheeler. And then look at Iowa. It was like corn farmers here, hog farmers there, college town here, Des Moines in the middle. It's sensible. And there are communities of interest gathered together and they're represented. That's the goal in the model. And we've always had gerrymanning. I know the whole story of Elbridge theory and all that, but computer technology, My delegate in my neighborhood, the woman I go to church with, she's now no longer in office, but she came up to me. She's very, very, very conservative Republican. I'm a progressive Democrat. She came up to me in the church parking lot. She said, you'll be happy to know I cut your house out of my district. And literally, Larry, I can show you the map. If I walk 20 paces down the road, I'm in the other district. And I said, I'm not happy. I liked voting against you. She said, well, now you're in a lefty district. That's only because of computers. So we've always had these impulses, and I understand them, but computers allow these candidates and these politicians to be so precise that it becomes a joke. On top of that, we're increasingly in an era of identity politics. And so Republicans particularly look for communities of color and then segregate them. That's bad for everybody.

Yeah. And of course, the Supreme Court helped us dodge, actually dodged a bullet on this, when I think most people didn't quite realize that the reason the whole census question was there, the question about whether you're a citizen on the census, was that the Republicans wanted a sense of simple way to begin to require districts be drawn by citizenship as opposed to by population. And the reason for that is that the RNC number crunchers had figured out that if they did that, they could much more effectively embed minority rule than they could even using the incredible computers that gave us gerrymandering. So it was completely accidental that that was discovered. And my friend Dave Daley did an extraordinary job in surfacing this and getting it into the news. And I think the supreme, even the Supreme Court just thought this just went too far. And so at least gave us a pause so that in this cycle they won't be able to play that game. But he set it up. But the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Roberts set it up. So next time around that could certainly be the way they want to draw districts. And it would have an enormous effect embedding minority rule.

That's a great point, Larry. And I believe you would know. I do believe. Who is it that said the Supreme Court reads the election results? Well, the Supreme Court watches, sadly, FOX News, but they also watch, they read the New York Times. You know, Justice Scalia used to talk about the greenhouse effect when Linda Greenhouse would cover something and he said it with contempt. But I think that's an example. By the way, the late Justice Scalia, God rest his soul, was barking at the, at the Burwell case, the Affordable Care act case, about the so called cornhusker kickback, which was not in the bill. It was not in the law.

No, but it was on Fox News. Yeah, it was on Fox News.

On Fox News.

Yeah. Yeah.

So. And Fox did not file an amicus brief. It was just the carnival barkers on Fox scripting a. One of the most brilliant members of the Supreme Court. And that was sad.

Yeah, it was. I clerked for justice to Scalia, but in the old days when he was really struggling to figure out what was right. Well, okay, so. But your life now is at the center of the press. So here's the other part of the mystery of this story. Why doesn't the press care about this issue? I mean, we've had not a single question in the debates about this issue. Now people will say, well, that's true about 100 issues. But if you look at it the way you've described it, and I've written about it such that this issue has to be solved if anything else is going to be solved. You would think that at least a single question would have been asked about changing the system. So why isn't it? What is it that makes them blind to that?

I think I have not. My guess is that absent a story, a narrative, you know, the Keating Five, a million Years ago, Senator McCain and some others got caught up. That was a classic example of actually good people coming. Those stories become important. So if someone is in the news, you know, in the middle of a campaign scandal, they're likely to raise it. But the more systemic Stuff is harder to get to as a general matter, almost impossible to get to when every morning the president rolls out of bed and tweets something, you know, racist. And so there is a responsibility. I do wish they. But I have to say they also haven't. One of my heroes and a guy I know a bit is actually Willie Nelson who's emailing me saying, why aren't they asking about farm issues? Farmers are dying out here. They need to ask about ag issues. And he was right. So you're right. There's so many that they can't get to. But I put it on the politicians. I do think if you have the talent these people have, they can elide the question. So they ask him a question about prescription drug price and you say, I want to do something about it. But here's the best way to get to it is to reform our political system. They could do this. And I think they have to have deeper insight into these issues rather than simply don't allow your poll to be a pinball machine. Just you're going to hit each pillar that scores the most points and that's what you're going to talk about. Because people are more complex than that and they're deeper than that. And again, back to my friend and hero and mentor, Harris Wofford, when he talked about healthcare as the driver of the recession in Pennsylvania. People got it. And I think people are smart and if you describe it that way, they will get it.

So you are not working with. And you haven't indicated support for any candidate. I don't want to ask you to do that. But I. Of the candidates in the Democratic Party, you know, of course the president wanted to drain the swamp, but we don't believe that that's. But, you know, at least that was a frame that allowed reformers on the right to think they had a reformer in the Democratic Party. Who do you think is closest to being able to talk about it in a convincing way or who's done the most, do you think, to talk about it in a way that.

Well, even though he's at 1%, I like the way Bullock talks about this. I've talked to him about it. I knew Steve Bullock. I knew him when he was attorney General. And as you know, he litigated the Montana case after Citizens United, where Montana had a century old terrific progressive campaign law and the court threw it out after Citizens United. He gets this. And I think because his history and his state is so remarkable, somebody got to make a movie about it. He has done. I Think the best job. But again, when you're a late entrant into the race, which he is, when you're at 1% or less, which he is, that's a lot of freight to be carrying up the Hill. I'd like to see one of the three or four leading candidates do the same thing. I'm sure they all believe it. I'm sure you're right. These are all talented, brilliant people, and I'm sure they all get it. I think maybe this early in the race, they haven't really thought that they might win. In other words. I don't mean to sound mean, but when they fly spec each other's health care plans like they did in this last debate, I was like, borderline contemptuous. I was yelling at the screen, saying it's not going to pass anyway. You know, they're going to take their campaign plan and they're going to hand it over to 535 people, some of whom are saints and some of whom are sinners, and they're going to all chew it up and vomit out something completely different. So why not work on that?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, some of them haven't thought about it enough. Some haven't thought they're going to be in the front. But, you know, I mean, Bernie Sanders in 2016 thought about it, but would never, for example, talk about public funding without talking about it as something, quote, for the long term. So it seems that it's not just negligence, it's intentional, or at least it's strategic. And so maybe somebody like Bullock making it central would force others to make it central. Maybe as Buttigieg starts articulating more what his day one democracy reform package looks like, we get more HR1 like responses from others. But, I mean, I scream at the TV because they just don't talk about it. Right. I mean, it's, it's at least something if you're arguing about fly specs, if you're ignoring the flies, then, then that's much worse. Right?

That's a great point. Where the, yeah, the giant steaming pile of food that's drawing all the flies. But we, we, I, we live in hope, really do. And you can't be a Democrat and grow up in Texas and not be an optimist. So I do hope a lot of this is on us. You know, the fault there, British, lies not in our stars, it lies in ourselves. And if they go around that Iowa State Fair and they hear from the third or fourth or fifth person, you gotta clean up that corruption, dear God, we have coal lobbyists running environmental agencies. Come on, Senator, we gotta do something about this. They'll start to react. And again, getting back to my first point, but the problem is it's a foundational issue. Very few people wake up in the morning and say, gee, I'm getting screwed by a lobbyist. But they are, and they do need leaders to explain that. Nexus. And you've done a terrific job of this, Larry, seriously. And I'm really glad you're doing it.

Well, you know, and at the state level, what's so striking is the. That there's been such extraordinary success. You know, in 2018, the largest number of states passed fundamental reform through referendum process than at any other point in American history, even in the Progressive era. Because these issues bubble up and they grab the imagination of citizens. And I think most importantly, the citizens want to talk about them in nonpartisan ways. So Michigan redistricted, led by the amazing Katie Fahey. I mean, she had a rule. You could not use the word Democrat or Republican in meetings. Like, it just was not allowed because she said, we're doing this to be better citizens, not to be better Democrats or be better Republicans. And that energy is extraordinary at the state level, but we don't really have a mechanism like that at the federal level. So we're kind of left to the devices of these partisan entities that, of course, whenever they speak, the other side has to negate what they've said. And I think that makes this so incredibly hard.

It does. And I'm not sure how to break that, because that comes all together. A lot of it is money, but a lot of it is media. A lot of it is changing tribal attitudes by voters themselves. But also a lot of it is leadership. I really believe this when. Sorry to be, like, too philosophical, but I. I think we all. I certainly do have darkness and prejudice in our soul. And when leaders call on that, it comes out.

Yeah.

And when they call us to higher ground, we. We try to be better. And, you know, we've only got a couple of thousand years of human civilization and about 50,000 years of human existence. And, you know, the early days, it was 50,000 years ago. It's a very good idea to kill someone who showed up at your tribal encampment look different from you, but something happened in between, which is every decent religion, every decent philosophy, that's only a couple of thousand years against tens of thousands of years. And one of the things, we saw this with Miloevic in the former Yugoslavia, when leaders call us to hate each other, it's heartbreaking how receptive we are to that. And what I don't know is will we snap back or will the left, my side, just try to reciprocate? Can you stop the pendulum in the middle?

Yeah.

And that's what I'm looking for. Above all else, I want to replace Trump, but in all ways. I don't want someone just as vulgar and divisive, but who's a progressive.

That's completely right. But when you say you want to be optimistic, are you optimistic that's going to come out?

I don't know yet. I don't. I do worry that they're being pulled too ideological. And even I cringe when everybody now says Trump's a racist. We can't see in his soul. We can certainly say he abets racism and he espouses racist things. It's hard to get away from the conclusion that he is. I don't really believe grudge these candidates for saying it, but that is such a conversation killer when I have family members and friends who voted for Trump, and yet I believe he holds these views. We have to work at trying to find some way to put it all back together. I can't believe he got away with this drain the swamp stuff. It just does show you that cheap sloganeering can still work.

Yeah. And I don't know how long people believed it even during the campaign, but I do think it was a pivotal moment in American politics when in the September debate in 2015, he stood on that stage and he called out every other Republican saying, I own every one of you. And I think, you know, I didn't believe him at the time, and I don't. I think very few who knew him believed him. But I think there are a lot of Republicans who heard that and said, yes, this is the problem, too. And that seems to me the great hope. If we could find somebody from our side who can convince people that they are focused in the same way, then, you know, we could cut 5% away from his side and that could be enough.

I think so. I think it's a great idea.

Okay. Mr. Begala, I am so grateful. I miss seeing you more, but thank you for your leadership and I love watching you try to talk some wisdom into this conversation. I hope you'll talk this wisdom a little bit more.

I will, gladly. And I'm so grateful that you had me on. But also that you're doing the work that you're doing and it is making a difference. You can see it.

I appreciate that. Thank you very much.

All right, my brother.

Many of the ideas discussed in this season of Another Way are also discussed in a new book I'm publishing this fall. The book's title, they don't represent us. You can as in you should pre order this book. You can do so@hc.com representus this is Larry Lessig. Stay tuned. Tuned next week for another episode. Thank you very much.