The Pundits vs. The For The People Act

This podcast is part of the Democracy Group.

Welcome to another episode of Another Way, the podcast produced by Equal Citizens. This is Adam Iken, the Executive Director of Equal Citizen Citizens. As you know, the fight continues to pass the for the People act in Congress. Soon we expect that the Senate will release a revised version of the bill to secure the support of Senator Joe Manchin, the lone Democrat who opposes the for the People act as written as we wait for the Senate to reach a deal over a modified framework, I wanted to talk to you about something that has really, really been bugging me, and for that matter, a lot of the folks fighting to save our democracy. That something is the role of the media in covering the for the People Act. More concretely, though, just how badly the pundits in D.C. have missed the mark when writing about the bill and the advocates who are fighting for it. Over and over and over again, the pundits have proclaimed the for the People act dead. They've said advocates are wasting their time, that we should lower our expectations and fight for crumbs instead. And yet, despite the chattering class's proclamations, the fight continues, and we're closer than ever to winning expansive, historic federal legislation to save our democracy. There's a lot more to say on this topic, but I don't want to get too far ahead of myself because today I have a great episode for you. I spoke to two experts in the field, Adam Bozie and Michael Zosin, who have been deeply involved not only in the negotiations over the for the People act, but also in helping to shape the media coverage of the fight. They have a lot to say about just how badly the Washington punditry has missed the mark. A little bit about my guests Adam is the Vice President for Communications at End Citizens United. Before coming to ECU, Adam served as Senator Michael Bennett's communications director, and he brings with him more than 15 years of campaign and government communications experience at both the federal and state level. He's also worked on Capitol Hill in Senator Jack Reed's press shop, and he ran communications for Congressman Harry Mitchell, Democrat from Arizona. Michael, on the other hand, is a senior Fellow at American Progress, where he focuses on democracy and government reform. From 2015 to 2017, he was American Progress's senior vice president for Government affairs, managing the institution's interactions with federal, state, and local policymakers. Mike joined American progress in 2015 after two decades of work in federal government and the private sector. Among some of Mike's other prominent ROLES

before joining CAP were chief of staff

to former U.S. senator Mark Udall, legislative director for former Senator Jim Webb and counsel to Senator Bill Nelson. With that, let's turn to the interview. I hope you enjoy.

Adam, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks for having me, Adam, of course.

And Mike, welcome to you as well.

Thank you. Happy to be here.

I'm really excited about this conversation. I think that this is something that the three of us have been talking about for a while, just how badly the media has distorted the coverage of the for the People Act. So you both are my go to folks for kvetching about the media, but also thinking more critically about, about just why they're getting it wrong. So I think this is going to be a really good interview for, for our listeners. So let's, let's kind of start off really generally, you know, what do you guys think has been the, the overall media narrative around the for the People act, you know, both in the past and currently? And do you think it's been fair in terms of how they've covered this fight to fix democracy? So, so Adam, I want to throw it to you first. Give me, give me your general thoughts about kind of how you think that the coverage has been of this fight.

I think a lot of it's been ill informed. I think there are certainly good reporters who know a lot about the bill and what's happening and are doing their best to cover it. But I also think there's a lot of coverage that has missed the point entirely. There's a lot of misunderstanding about what the bill does, what the bills do. We should talk about the John Lewis bill as well and what the bills do and why they're different and how they're different. And fundamentally, strategically, how you would get a bill like this passed in the environment that you're in right now. And I think that's where there's a big breakdown.

Yeah. Mike, what do you think about that?

I agree. I think that overall the coverage has been pretty lacking. There are some good reporters who I think along the way have a bit more sophistication about how the inner sausage making process works for getting legislation across the finish line, especially major transformative legislation, which is never easy and which always has a ton of twists and turns. So, you know, I think Greg Sargent, for example, the Washington Post is really good. He's an example of somebody who really gets it. But far too often, as my comrade in arms Adam says, it's been really poor coverage. And I think part of it is that the press corps inside the Beltway suffers from herd mentality. And this happens across Almost every issue area, there's a narrative that forms at the beginning somehow, and then everyone just follows that same narrative, that same shiny object. And it's true that sometimes enterprising reporters will want to break out of that and find some sort of scoop, but generally, that narrative just continues. And so that's been frustrating with the for the People Act. I mean, along the way, there are some reporters who've talked about the momentum that it's gained. Like, for example, when it passed the House, there was some good coverage, but by and large, yeah, I just think that the reporting has not been accurate, has been way too pessimistic about the for the People Act. As somebody who works on this issue day in and day out, I still remain optimistic about passage of this voting rights legislation.

Yeah. And we'll talk about kind of why there's ample reason to be optimistic. And like the specifics, I want to get into the kind of specific claims that are made about the bill. Mike, I do want to ask you, though, you worked actually as a staffer on the Hill for a while. Is this something that you've experienced before that on these kind of big omnibus bills, that there's kind of a narrative that starts and then it's extremely hard to break it? In other words, kind of the moment that the press started being extremely pessimistic about the for the People act, the idea that, like, oh, well, this is a waste of time. The Democrats will never actually pass this once they get into that herd mentality. In your experience, is this kind of what happens with the Washington press corps, for sure.

I mean, I can think of two examples from my time on the Hill, and both of these were just big, transformative pieces of legislation. I mean, one of them was the Affordable Care act, otherwise known as Obamacare, which was left for dead and called dead so many times that, you know, you can't even catalog it.

Right.

And so. But, you know, the stakeholders in that, the key senators, the president, they just kept plugging away at it until it got over the finish line. Another issue that I was really involved with as a staffer was the repeal of Don't Ask, don't Tell. So, you know, which had prevented people who are openly LGBT from focusing, from. Sorry, from serving in the military. And that was a long saga as well, with people saying, hey, you know, then President George W. Bush was gonna. Was gonna veto it. It would never pass anyway. John McCain, who was the kingmaker in the Senate, was against, wasn't. And instead it did, and it actually passed with, I think around 65 votes when it finally did pass. So it totally disproved the narrative that had been going on for months. So, yeah, I've seen this before and it remains incredibly frustrating to see it. But that's why it's all the more important that those of us who know that this is something that happens fairly frequently with big lifts, with important legislation that we don't give up and we keep on, keep on keeping on anyway.

Yeah. And the real narrative from this conversation that I want listeners to take away is that, like, just because a Washington member of the Washington press corps says something, it's usually an interpretation of events, not necessarily reality, because the Washington press corps, again, as we're going to talk about, isn't in the room. They're not in the room when these conversations are being had, especially with the for the People Act. And they seem to be missing very concrete developments again and again and again, which, you know, for those of us on the inside are keeping us, you know, if not optimistic, certainly with still a sense that this bill can pass. And the Washington press corps really seems to be missing these, these very clear markers, which, again, I want, I want to dig into. But, Adam, I want to kind of, you know, throw it to you for a second. And this is from my vantage point, there have been three broad narratives that have emerged around the for the People act over the past couple months and to this day, number one, the bill can't pass. It's long been dead, it's not going to pass, et cetera, et cetera. Two, it was never designed to pass. It was, you know, the press has called it a quote, unquote, messaging bill. This idea that the Democrats just created this bill because it looks good on paper, they can campaign on it, but it was never really serious. And then the third and final thing is that the bill doesn't actually address the crisis of democracy, that it's a poorly written bill. Is that a fair summary as far as you're concerned, of kind of the broad strokes? I know that's a lot there, Adam,

but I think it's a fair summary of an unfair summary. Right.

Right.

I think the second one, the second piece of that may be the most infuriating about the motivations of the people who are working surpasses billboards on and off the Hill. But I think all three of those points are, have been baked into coverage from the beginning.

Right.

So. So, Adam, let's, let's actually take that a step further, and I kind of want to hear your response here. Let's start with number two, because I know that's the one that infuriates you the most, Right. This idea that, like, this bill is a messaging bill and not a quote, unquote, like, real bill. And to be clear to our listeners, this is not something that, like, I saw a Twitter account with, you know, 16 numbers at the end saying, like, the calling it a messaging bill is something that political playbook, which is like the kind of the insider's guide to politics called it, Right. They said that this was a messaging bill. This is not a serious bill under consideration. So, Adam, what's your response there? That the intentions of this bill are not genuine?

Right. Well, first of all, the first problem is that there is no definition of a messaging bill. And Mike and I both been on the Hill, and Mike, I don't know if you work for a member who was like, let's write a bill that we don't want to pass. Which is. It is probably done in some cases, but for the most part, staff and members are working on bills that they want to pass. Right. Aside from that point, it's just really unfair to a group of staffers who came together because there was a decision by the Supreme Court on Citizens United, decision on Shelby that were devastating to our democracy. And they're looking at, how do we, you know, how do we fix it? Right. And it was, I think, a painstaking process over a number of years to put together a bill that was maximum strength, that could pass something that they thought could build a coalition in Congress to pass and become law. That is, that was the absolute goal of this, was to create a bill that could have a coalition that would pass. And so to say it's a messaging bill, to say it was not designed to pass, just undermines a lot of hard work from a lot of good and earnest people working to protect the voice and vote of every American. And so I think that's why I take umbrage, I think, to that the most.

Yeah.

And, Adam, I want to quickly kind of. And I want to actually throw it

to both of you.

But, Adam, I'll throw it to you first. I mean, you know, we know a lot of the folks in that room who are actually drafting this. I just had on the, on the podcast, Elizabeth Hira of the Brennan center, who was a staffer in the room writing this bill. And, you know, there's kind of this. And again, you know, this theme is going to come up number of times in our conversation, but, you know, it's kind of disorienting Right. To like, know the folks on the inside. Right. To like, know the blood, sweat and tears that were put into crafting this amazing bill. And then watching the pundit class kind of just throw dirt on it in like a really arrogant way. Right. Like knowing nothing about kind of what, you know, went on on the inside. And so I'm just curious, I mean, like, I know that you're angry about this, but, like, can you tell me a little bit more about like, just how disorienting it is to kind of again, like, know the facts about how this bill was created and then kind of see the late. I mean, really sloppiness.

It's unserious coverage, I think, from people who consider themselves serious reporters or serious analysts. And I think that's problematic because it affects everything else. It affects the readers who are trying to get information about this. It also affects people on the Hill who are negotiating and trying to work this on this bill. And they're seeing the coverage. It really does affect those negotiations. It affects other reporters. And it gets to what Mike talked about at the beginning, which is this echo chamber. Right. I think he talked about as a narrative. Like one reporter writes something and it just becomes a narrative. They're hearing each other and it's like confirmation bias. And I think that's one of the big problems.

Yeah. Mike, what do you think about this idea of the press calling it a messaging bill? What kind of makes you most angry about that? Or what would be your response about why?

That's just B.S.

it's just, again, non serious coverage. That just doesn't help the process of passing the bill for everyone who's working on it, as Adam says, the members and staffers and all the stakeholders and frankly the millions of people nationwide who want this bill to be passed because they know that democracy has to be saved. It's just frustrating for everybody. And you know, one anecdote that is another proof point about why this is was never just merely a messaging bill goes back to what Adam said. There were a few things that, as an advocate, some policies that I was hoping and that I was advocating for to get into the bill as it was being fashioned at the beginning where it was first filed, and there was pushback from some of the members of Congress on it who would say things like that policy does make some good sense, we get it, but we do not have the votes for that even within the Democratic caucus. It just would be too heavy of a lift. And we want this bill to pass. So sorry, we cannot put that agenda, that policy in it, you know, that right there, again, goes to prove the point that they were serious about it. And so, yeah, it just goes back to the fact that it's, you know, it's lazy reporting built on some narratives that got set at the beginning. That.

That is an excellent point. There are a lot of very good policies that people like Mike and others fought for. And, and one of the criticisms of this messaging bill, calling it a messaging bill, is that it's a wish list of advocates.

Exactly.

And there's a lot of good policy in this bill, of important policy in this bill that are on a lot of wish list for all of advocates. But there's a lot of things that are not in this bill as well. And, you know, for the reason that I might just laid out, that this is what they believe, that a coalition, even if they were wrong about whether or not this is what we need in the bill to get a coalition to pass, it certainly was. Their intention was to put this together. And it looks like they were right. They passed it in the House, and we're very close to passing it in the Senate.

Yeah. And that leads into the second thing I want to talk about of the criticism that this bill is dead and could never pass. But I will just say that one thing that Elizabeth Hira, we talked, you know, she and I spoke about on the podcast. Right. Is this idea that, like, the bill is super long and contains 800 pages of policy because our democracy hasn't had an upgrade in decades.

Right.

We haven't had a serious, you know, software update to our democratic infrastructure since essentially the 1965, you know, voting rights act and, you know, the campaign finance reforms of the 70s. Right. There hasn't been this federal overhaul. And so it's not just a random wish list, a grab bag of, like, what capital D Democrats want. It's what's necessary to bring our democracy into the 21st century. And so this idea that it's a messaging bill is not only offensive, at least to me, to the people who put, again, blood, sweat and tears into designing it, but it's also just intellectually unserious about kind of not recognizing the stakes of what's actually needed to push our democracy forward and to prevent kind of, and again, going to talk about this, the kind of the assaults on democracy that we see across the states. So that's certainly my response as well. But let's get into this kind of point. Another point that the pundit class is saying is that the bill's dead. The Bill, in fact, never had a shot of passing. What's the response there, Michael, I'll throw that to you. You very much are kind of very tuned in to the negotiations happening and kind of, you know, your ear to the ground inside the Capitol. Is this bill dead?

The good news and something that all your listeners should know is that the bill is very much alive. It is on a path that is going to continue to be winding up to the summit, but it's going to get to the summit alive and thriving. Might be a little beat up along the way, but it's going to be thriving up at the summit. And so people should just, you know, my request to anybody who's listening is to just to continue to be very engaged in this, make your voices heard, because that's what's helping to drive this up the summit, despite the terrible news coverage or despite some recalcitrant members, et cetera, et cetera. So that's a long winded way of saying the bill is very much alive and it has been unfortunate to see it declared dead or on life support so many times. One thing I'll say, there's a number of amusing anecdotes. I'll share one with you. There's a certain reporter for a major broadcast outlet who continues to come to. He reports on this issue and he continues to come to the rallies that many of us help to set up in favor of passage. And when he sees me there, he's like a little bit, you know, he's trying to poke me a little bit, but he says, you know, why another ral like this bill is dead. And I try to explain to him why the bill is very much alive. And he's like, no, I mean, look no further than Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema saying they're not gonna break the filibuster. There's no path forward on this. Why do you guys continue to have these rallies? We know. What are you trying to prove? And I continue to try to explain a little bit to him. He'll listen for around 30 seconds, and then he kind of just waves me off, thinking that I'm quite naive on this. So he's gonna be one of the people that I most relish being able to contact him upon passage and upon helping to save democracy and voting rights and say, hey, see, this is what many of us were trying to tell you along the way. And God, I just hope that the reporter will learn from it as he goes forward, doesn't fall back into this echo chamber again.

Yeah, Adam, what do you think, in your view, is the bill dead? And also, I want to push you a bit in terms of. Is it just that, you know, reporters can't. Is it that reporters can't, you know, like, have any sort of. Of kind of like, awareness about kind of the grassroots movement pushing kind of the ball forward? Is it that. Is that these pundits are just, like, so cynical that, like, if there's a single roadblock, they just throw up their hands and say, well, clearly nothing's going to change. I mean, is that kind of. I don't want to, like, armchair analyze them, but. So what's your take here? Why such pessimistic takes from the journalists? And I should say it's like very definitive takes, right? It's not like the bill is likely dead, right? Like, you look at these headlines and it's the for the People act is dead, right? Politico, when they were reporting in the same thing, they called it a messenger bill, said that, like when the filibuster happened in June, right. When the Republicans filibustered the bill, they said that finally, the bill is dead, right? The bill will be dead. There was no ambiguity in the coverage. It was definitive. So, like, what, what, what is going on here?

A couple of points. First, the most important point of this whole conversation, I think Mike just brought up, is that it's, it's important that people continue to make phone calls and be active, call their senator, whether their senators in a blue state or red state supports or doesn't support it. That is how we're going to get this passed. And so that is probably the most important point of the day. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And second, the bill is alive and going to pass. And just to give everybody, like, some insight, this is the path that we expected it to be on. We expected to pass the House. It was going to be work because it worked. We got it passed to get through committee in the Senate. We got through committee in the Senate. We need to get all 50 Democrats on the bill in the Senate, and then we need some kind of change to the procedure to get around the filibuster because we know we're not going to have Republicans. Now right now, Senator Manchin and a bunch of other senators are finalizing negotiation on a bill that is going to have a stronger version of this bill that is going to have the entire Democratic caucus on it, all 50 senators. And that is a process that's taken a little longer than some people would have liked, but that is the Process in the Senate, Mike talked about the ACA that took a year to pass and it was longer than people wanted to take. The infrastructure bill that they just passed took longer than people expected. Senator Schumer wanted to have it on the floor the first week of July. It was August before capacity was in it, and it's still not done. There's still a process. So this is just the process that it takes. And again, we're going to have, I think, very soon this compromise version of the for the people bill that we have all 50 senators on. And then it's going to be a vote to make every senator decide what is more important, the protecting the freedom to vote and protecting our democracy or protecting the filibuster, which is an arcane rule and a conversation for another day. But that is the answer. And we're on the bill. The third part on how this happened, how the, how the media coverage went this way, I just think there's a kind of a focus on the now. And it just, you know, whatever the state of play is right now is a state of play forever. And that.

Right.

Yeah. That's in sports broadcasting coverage, too, right. I mean, you, you know, the team that's in first place on the first week of the baseball season, they're going to win the World Series, Right. It's just, it's just the way it works. And I think that's part of the problem. Senator Manchin said he wasn't going to vote for the COVID relief bill, and he did. He said he wasn't going to support today or this week that he was going to support this budget reconciliation bill. Now, I think everybody expects him to come to the table and get this done, but we're going to go through this process again with them. That's the same process we're going through right now with him here. And it's just because that's the process in the Senate and that's the negotiation takes. And so, I mean, with just a little bit of foresight and thought and looking at the field, the coverage would be different.

Yeah. And I really want to emphasize this, right. Like the, you know, when Joe Manchin back, I guess it was in May, all time has collapsed at this point. So I've lost complete track of time. But whenever it was that Manchin announced in that op ed in the West Virginia paper that he was going to oppose the for the People act, right. All of the Beltway coverage was, well, that's it. Game over. This bill's dead. Right. And then what happened was this real groundswell of activism, activism that the Beltway press has just completely ignored. You know, the activism proliferated across the country, but especially in West Virginia. And then what happened happened, right? Two weeks later, Manchin announces that he's going to come back to the table, he's going to negotiate, and then he votes on the motion to proceed to debate. Right? And then that upends the media coverage that, well, Manchin's no longer interested in this, therefore it's dead.

Right.

It took kind of part inside baseball, part activism and part news coverage. And lo and behold, what was forecasted to be conclusive all of a sudden became, well, a faulty prediction. And I think that's the kind of, one of the most frustrating parts of this kind of this broader narrative that the for the People act is dead. Is that like it constantly, the pundits constantly keep moving the goalposts of kind of like, oh, it's dead, okay, well, now it's really dead, okay, now it's really, really dead, right? Because at every step of the process, it seems like we're proving them wrong. But instead of altering their coverage and saying, well, maybe it's not actually dead, or maybe there's something going on here under the hood of these activists pushing the wall forward, they're not doing that. They're not actually being really reflective of their own coverage. They're just kind of, they've created a narrative and they're sticking with it and they can't conceptualize anything beyond that. And so I think that everything that we've covered is a really good point here.

There's another bookend which is not only have they failed to really capture up front how Manchin could evolve on the for the People act, it's the same failure right now with his evolution on maybe a carve out or some sort of reform to the filibuster. I mean, you know, yes, he said up front he didn't want to reform the filibuster at all. And he said so publicly and he said it in an op ed. But behind the scenes he has been telling people differently. And that's been published. There was an Intercept article based on a recording of a conversation that he's never disputed where he specifically told supporters in a private meeting different ways that he's absolutely open to reforming the filibuster. And this is based on a public account that hasn't been disputed. And so he, I predict, will continue to evolve on this. He's got his own pathway, as does Senior Senator Sinema. All senators have their own kind of path from getting to A to Z. And again, it's lazy reporting that just has them back on A and never gets them to Z until suddenly, oh, look, they are on Z. What happened to the reporting that we failed to cover on the way there? So I predict that people will be pleasantly surprised with where the Democratic caucus comes out on some sort of filibuster reform. I hope I'm not going to eat my words, but, you know, I just remain optimistic on this. We just have to let it play out a little bit more, but not passively play out again. We have to actively push it to play out in this way, and I think we will be able to do that.

To Mike's point, it's also been undercover that Joe Manchin actually has supported reforms of the filibuster in the past. And he's.

Yeah, he's co sponsored.

You're right, exactly. So the idea that like, you know, he can't, you know, figure out a pathway forward or, you know, evolve a little bit is ridiculous, I think, Adam,

that's a good point because imagine, imagine how many of these articles would have been reframed if the reporters merely would include it would have included a paragraph reminding their readers that despite what Manchin is saying, he has actually co sponsored filibuster asked and he recently said on a recording that he was going to do so Imagine if that just if they did their homework and that made its way into every article, we'd probably be in a little bit of a different place.

Yeah. And I think that's kind of one of the things that, like, you know, the three of us talk about. Right. Is that like, you know, this isn't just kind of like a media criticism episode of this podcast. Right. Like the failures of the media here are really dire.

Right.

They're not, they're not killing the momentum, but they're affecting the momentum.

Right.

Like this bad coverage does make our job harder to get this bill across the finish line. I completely agree. If all of these stories about the bill being dead or Manchin in no way, shape or form ever going to be convinced to reform. The filibuster included caveats that, well, the bill failed or got blocked by the filibuster, but Senator Schumer has said he's not giving up and that there will be another vote and this fight isn't over or yes, Senator Manchin has said that he's not going to budge on the filibuster, but he has also said that he supports filibuster reform and has in the past supported filibuster reform for certain parts of Senate procedure. It wouldn't lead to such nihilism, because my big fear is always with this bad coverage, it convinces people to give up. And we know that what we need now more than ever is people power, because that's the only thing that's going to get us across the finish line is thousands of upon thousands of people fighting for this bill. And so, you know, kind of there's a risk at which these kind of these bad predictions by pundits, these really negative predictions by pundits end up becoming, you know, a prophecy, right? They become kind of. They create the narrative that they're already trying to put forward because their negativity about the possibility of reform is leading people to tune out, which then makes it harder to pass reform, which then proves their breakthrough conviction. Correct that, in other words. I think one of my most frustrating, you know, one of my biggest frustrations is that, you know, the pundits love to pretend they're above the fray, but they don't understand that they're actually, they're players here, that they're players in the political fight. But the. The Beltway class never, never really likes to admit that. I don't know if it's cognitive dissonance. I don't know if they all want to be kind of like Woodward and Bernstein. They all want to be kind of like, you know, people on the outside exposing power, but, like, it's very clear that, like, they are part of the game and the narratives they create aren't unbiased and oftentimes extremely sloppy. And that actually alters the political terrain upon which we're fighting. And so I think that's one of the really. That's one of the reasons that I really wanted to focus on this episode about the media coverage, because it really is just. It's so frustrating for those of us on the inside. I mean, I don't know about you guys, but it really feels sometimes like we're in one of those, like, you know, we're a. At carnival and we're in a funhouse mirror. Because what we know to be true is just we look outside, we look at kind of what's being reflected back at us, and it's distorted. It's not. It's not the reality that we see like, that we experience like we know what we know, right? But when we were looking into the glass, we're seeing something that looks nothing like what we thought we knew, right? And I think that's kind of the best way that I can summarize what it's been like to be operating in this fight and then reading the coverage of the fight. I don't know if you guys have had similar kind of, like, moments of dissonance there when reading the coverage.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Almost on a daily basis. I just think if the reporter only knew what was truly going on behind the scenes and did a little bit more digging this article, this framing would be very different.

Yeah, Adam, I want to throw it to you, though, because I do want to make this kind of positive in some respects. And Citizens United has spent a lot of money to try and actually get a good narrative out there.

Right.

Like, you guys have been running ads in places like West Virginia, in Arizona, in other swing states in the key states to try and actually get the message out about what this bill would do and to try and pressure the Senate to pass this bill. So I'm curious, in terms of kind of your. Your background, kind of like, in crafting those ads, but also kind of, again, from like, a strategic point of view, you know, what efforts have there been to push back on this, these kind of really poor, sloppy narratives that we just talked about?

Yeah, I mean, a couple of things. I mean, I think in terms of the ads in the states and the activities on the ground and the crossroads, it's all. It's all going really well. I mean, the bill has support. It has support from, you know, large cross sections of, you know, people from both parties, and there's a lot of phone calls and letters and emails going into the Senate offices. And so that. That's. That's helpful, and that's really good. And that's going on. I think, you know, we just continue to do that, and we continue to push back. And, you know, we're trying to make the case to reporters and show them the momentum that we have. And, you know, again, we're, you know, particularly in Washington, Europe, against this echo chamber. And, you know, we're doing everything we can do to counter that. And it might just be that, like Mike said, when Senator Manchin came back to the table, it was like kind of a snap narrative change, at least a partial snap narrative change, but it happened. And then, you know, when we get back on the floor and get into the actual debate on changing the filibuster procedure, that's where you hope to see that narrative again. Until then, it's just kind of fighting the battle and making the case for the urgency for the bill. What the bill will do, how it will help people on both sides of the aisle protect their voice, protect their vote. And that has all gone well. And again, that's why all these senators are engaged in this process. I think they understand the gravity of the situation. They understand what needs to get done. Joe Manchin has said inaction is not an option on this issue. Senator Schumer said failure is not an option. So you're right, Adam, that the narrative and the coverage hinders the ability to get this done. But we're still moving forward on it, and we still are on the path to getting done.

Yeah. And, Adam, and I want to throw it to Mike right after this, but I do want to give you just a moment, if you will, to talk about the ad that you recently released, trying to get, you know, to get President Biden's ear a bit, to join the fight a little bit, and specifically around the filibuster. Because I think that one of the interesting things here is that, you know, when it comes to actually the coverage of, like, you know, getting people to understand this bill, most people don't really know kind of what the filibuster is or really care. And so you guys at ECU released a really great ad trying to get Biden to take more of a role in reforming the filibuster, but also like, to try and get the public more energized. So we'll link to it in the show notes. But I was. I was hoping that. But if you could just kind of, in terms of, like, getting our message out there, if you could just kind of give, like, a little bit of, like, context to this ad that you released, because it's really sensational.

Sure, sure. And the good news is, I mean, President Biden supports this bill, has been good on these issues for his career. And what we need from him is to show the same kind of leadership to get this bill passed as he did on the infrastructure bill. We know he's with us on the issue, and we need him to get this done, and that's the only way we're going to get it done, is if we can. If we can have his leadership on this issue. We released an ad, as you mentioned, that invokes Martin Luther King and an interview that he gave 60 years ago discussing the filibuster and how it was a tool in the Senate that stopped people from voting and his words in that interview. Then you can apply them to today to the exact same situation.

Yeah, it's almost eerie, Adam. I mean, it really is like Martin Luther King is speaking directly to the senators who are refusing to reform the. The filibuster to pass, the for the People act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. I mean, I think that's why the ad. Right. It's a full clip. It's like the full 10 seconds of Martin Luther King speaking about the filibuster. And I think that there's just like this very, very eerie kind of moment when you're watching it for the first time about like, oh, my God, like this. Like this is kind of like the next one of the next battles in kind of like still protecting that right to vote, which. Which was never finished in the 1960s.

Yep. And it's a powerful ad. You said you linked to it. And at the end, we appealed to President Biden to urge the Senate to reform the filibuster to pass these bills. And I think the good news is it sounds like the President is getting ready to engage in a way he has not engaged yet. And, you know, we need to keep up the pressure on everyone on the Senate, on the White House to act, and we need to keep that pressure up until it's done. But we. We. We hope that, you know, that. That we're getting to this point where we're gonna have.

Yeah, Mike, So. So what. What has Cap been doing and you and like, maybe some others that you know of like to, again, to push back on this narrative. Like, how. How. How have you been conceptualizing kind of pushing back on this idea, like this nihilistic take on the for the People Act?

Well, we just try to be as engaged as we can be across different sorts of media platforms, but also really raising up different audiences. So, I mean, we've talked several times on this podcast about the importance of your listeners about the grassroots, about real Americans who are real voices stepping up to fight foreign demand democracy reform. One of the cohorts that we've been working really closely with are state legislators. For example, the heroic state legislators from Texas who left Texas for many, many weeks and came to Washington, D.C. in order to deny quorum in Texas. So they, at least they delayed for many months the passage of the terrible voter suppression bill that finally did pass a few days ago. And they've been a really important voice Both here in D.C. in terms of meeting with senators and pushing, meeting with the administration. But also it's incredibly important, the work that they're doing back in their states, both in the Texas legislators. But we, you know, we're working with legislators across a number of key states, whether it's Arizona or Georgia or others. And that's another place that, where you can make a difference in shaping the narrative. Because again, we've talked about kind of the echo chamber of the inside the Beltway press. Well, luckily there's the whole other segment of the press that is the in state or in city press, the local press. And they're luckily, they do their jobs differently, oftentimes better, sometimes not. But it's just a different, it's a different milieu. So we're really trying to make sure that there's a lot of attention rooted there in the states to show the momentum and to show the demand for this legislation so that it just doesn't slip off the radar. Another danger we have coming up is there's so much competing for Senate floor time and for just everyone's attention in this country right now, whether it's Afghanistan or the big budget reconciliation bill or the funding bill that has to be passed to keep the government open by September 30th or the hurricane in Afghanistan. There's so much. Right. And we're all so busy in our lives. So it's always a matter of keeping this incredibly imperative legislation, the democracy legislation, at the forefront. Because honestly, if we don't pass this legislation, then, you know, a bunch of bad things are going to continue to flow from our corrupted democracy.

Yeah.

And that's also why it was so important that, you know, at the end of August, right, there was the 50,000 person rally in D.C. and then also, you know, sister rallies across the country for the, for the People act and the Voting Rights Advancement Act. Right. Like, that's why activism is so important. Like, Mike, you hit the nail on the head, right? That is why we rally. Like, that is why we don't take our foot off the gas. Because like, that's how you keep, like that's how you force the folks, like in the Beltway, even if they think that bill is dead, like by rallying and like, you know, engaging in like very intense activism. Right. Like that's how you force the coverage, right. Like from a media perspective. Like, I mean, Adam, I don't, I don't know if you agree, agree with me here, but like, that's how we keep the issue alive in, in the minds of the press. Right? By, you know, they, they, they just, just can't ignore 50,000 people in D.C. rallying for saving democracy. They can try. Maybe they think it's a waste of time, but that's just not the way the press works. If there's 50,000 people for something, they're going to cover it. Is that fair to say? Adam?

Yeah, I think it's that and the rallies and sister rallies and marches across the country and all of the things in the state and in Washington over and over and over happening that keeps that Germany going and makes it hard to ignore.

Yeah, I mean, I think that one thing I want to say just before we conclude is it's so funny to me, back in 2016, I kind of cut my teeth and it feels like a million years ago at this point, but it was with the Democracy Spring and Democracy awakening protests in 2016. Right. And we got, I think, 30 seconds of cable news coverage back then. I think the Intercept reported that at the time. Right. And.

And to see how far we've come

where, you know, again, as we're critiquing the media, but it's still very hard to turn on MSNBC or CNN and not see at least one segment about voting rights and about democracy. So as, as, as much as I want to do media criticism, we have succeeded in getting this issue of our broken democracy to the top of the agenda, and nothing can take that away from us at this point. So, in other words, as angry as I am about the kind of, the really bad and lazy and sloppy coverage of kind of like the possibilities of passage, the fact that it's on the Washington agenda is no small feat. Right. You guys know this better than I do. Getting something onto the agenda of the Washington press corps is hard. And so the fact that we're consistently at the top, maybe not the top right in this moment, because, again, as we were talking about, there's a lot of competing coverage. The fact that we still remain there is really impressive and shows not just about just how serious the crisis is, but also just how powerful the movement is to get this thing done. So I, I want to throw it to both of you just as kind of like, final words here. I didn't get a chance to kind of talk with you guys about the third media narrative about this bill doesn't address the democracy crisis. But for listeners who are interested in that, it's just an absurd claim. I highly recommend checking out my interview with Elizabeth Hira, who again helped write the bill. We spend about an hour and a half going through the structure of the bill and why it's so important. So there's certainly enough to chew on in that episode. But, Mike, I'll throw it to you. Any final words here? And can you leave us on an optimistic Note that despite the bad coverage you are in this and why you're feeling good here.

Yeah, absolutely. I feel, again, pretty optimistic about where we're going. I think the next many weeks, September, are going to be a really critical time period, as Leader Schumer said before the Senate went on recess. He said that the for the People act is going to be the pending piece of legislative business when the Senate comes back from recess on September 13th. So, you know, that's less than two weeks from now. We don't know exactly which day Senator Schumer might bring another procedural vote to try to try to begin debate on this legislation. It might not be the 13th or 14th, it might be the week of the 20th. Who knows? Again, there's a lot of competing stuff going on of competing legislation that has to be passed. But he made the commitment that this was gonna be a top priority. I have no doubt he will stick to that commitment. And what I would predict is there will be a couple more of these votes. And again, another important point, Schumer said that the next time he brings it up for a procedural vote, it will mean the Mansion compromise. They've been working on it for a couple months now. Some stuff has been, I think, added into what Manchin had proposed. So I call it the Manchin Plus Compromise. That's what Schumer's gonna try to move to. My guess is, as always, McConnell and the Republicans will obstruct it using the filibuster, and then it will be a matter of how many more of those votes do we need to prove to all the stakeholders that we're never gonna get 10 Republicans and that we have to move forward with some sort of filibuster reform? Maybe the Senate will be able to get to that big pressure point sometime in September, I would predict. And my crystal ball has been very faulty for several years, especially since Donald Trump entered the picture five years ago, take it with a grain of salt. But if I had to predict, I'd say October, hopefully early October, could be a real flashpoint for when this is going to come to a head around filibuster reform and hopefully passage of the legislation. So that's kind of my timeline ahead, as I would predict. And again, I think that the Democratic look, the Democratic caucus is united. All 50 of them support voting rights legislation. All of them do. And the House already passed it and President Biden is fighting for it. So this is already historic. And we just have to get that over that last hurdle. And so I just encourage everyone to just do what you've been doing. I know it's tiring. I know at times it feels like it's a bit pointless, but it's the opposite. Your voices are gonna be incredibly important in September, and you're gonna help get us to victory. And, Adam, thank you for having me on.

Of course. I couldn't agree more. Adam, I'll throw it to you.

Yep. I'd echo everything Mike said. You know, I'd also. On your third point, the bill absolutely addresses the problems that we need to fix with democracy and also has gone through a process. And as new issues have come up and new attacks on voting and our democracy have come up, the bill has been updated. And so that is part of this process to this mentioned compromise plus process. That's what we're going through. So for those criticisms that include this or include that, that's, again, that lack of foresight about, well, what should the process be here again, what Mike said. Everybody needs to keep the pressure on, keep making these phone calls. I. I agree. His timeline sounds. I don't. I don't even have a crystal ball, but that timeline seems right to me. And then there's the last point I'd say is that Speaker Pelosi is someone who is a strong driver of this. This fight. She's a strong believer in this bill, and to bet against this bill is to bet against that Speaker Pelosi, and I would not do that.

Yeah, that's. Yeah, no, that's a really good point. I think that we just got to keep pushing this forward. And I think one of the things that I was considering doing on this episode was having kind of the equivalent of a mean tweet section where we read the worst takes about the for the People act and then talk about why it's ridiculous. But I think the better option would be that when this bill passes, we'll do another episode. I'm going to compile all of the worst takes, and we will do a kind of a part two of this episode and gloat, because we will be gloating when we could prove the pundits wrong. And I can't wait to celebrate that moment with you guys. And I'm really, really honored to be in this fight with you guys. Both of you have really been so inspirational to me and the Equal Citizens Team and as. And it's really just been a pleasure to have you on this episode, but also just again to be in this fight with you both. So thanks, Mike. Thanks, Adam, for joining me today. Really appreciate it.

Thanks and thanks for everything you continue to do, Adam.

Of course, you guys deserve some credit. And you're into equal citizens. And thanks for everything that you guys are doing this way.

Well, this has been another episode of another way. We'll see you next time. Time.