The Quest To Understand "The People" with Frank Luntz (Part Two)

This podcast is part of the Democracy Group. This is Larry Lessig. This is the podcast.

Another way.

In this episode, we're going to talk

again to a conservative who's been at the center of controversy because others doubt or have expressed their doubt about his place in the conservative conversation. And they've expressed that doubt, I think primarily because he has tried to change the tone of the conversation in critical issues, especially the pandemic, and also the

issues around the 2020 election, to shift

the conversation from a conversation of condemnation to understanding, to find a way to speak across difference. Now, many will say this is not the right strategy, and many will doubt whether anyone has the right to engage in that strategy when they've played the partisan game for so long.

But as you've heard, when I introduced

Frank Luntz before, I've known Frank now since college, and I've seen him become the person he is today. And I was grateful that he would continue the conversation we had before about what 2020 meant and more importantly, about what common ground we should be able to find on the question of fundamental reform.

I thought when we got to this

part of the conversation, we'd have more disagreement. We have one issue that is outstanding, as you'll hear, and it's an interesting question for how we could make progress resolving this remaining dispute.

Okay, thank you, Frank, for the return. I mean, I don't think I've ever had someone come back to the podcast, and it's really exciting that it would be you. I want to talk about two separate ideas, and the first is the harder, and the second might be the more ultimately important and interesting. So the first and the harder one is, what's truth mean? Now, in. In politics, or at least in the party that you've spent most of your life trying to advise, what do you think is going on? How do you explain it to people like me? I mean, you're right now in London, so there are a lot of foreign people there who would be like, what the hell's going on? What is the answer to that question?

It's one of the reasons why I'm in London. It's one of the reasons why I don't sleep. It's one of the reasons why you can hear it in my voice. I've been, these are not the healthiest times for me. It's a line from the TV show Newsroom. The lead Jeff Daniels character is on a search to civilize. I am on a search for the truth. And I decided this a couple years ago that it would be A very interesting journey that I would seek out people like you who are in search of the truth and have the courage and the conviction to tell it and to see whether I could recognize it and then do the same, whether I could call it out or not. What is the truth? The truth is, unfortunately, in the eyes of the beholder. And so you've got a very different truth if you voted for Donald Trump than if you or anybody else in American society. There are different truths, just as there are alternative facts. Now, I don't necessarily believe that, but I know that that is the perception that people will tell me and assert it with absolute certainty that Donald Trump had the election stolen, that he won in November, and that it was, quote, the big lie, unquote, that the election was taken away from him. That is their truth. It is not the truth. That is not factual. And there are too many people out there who are in positions of power who will not say that, will not affirm that. And actually, Larry, I think it's good that you hear me with this voice asserting this, because this is what I've been through for the last 18 months, two years. I don't know how to explain it better than that. There is a truth. There is an absolute truth, but people don't recognize it. So I guess truth is in the eyes of the beholder.

Well, I mean, of course, we agree on the foundational fact that let's just focus on the big lie and the interpretation that most people give to it, not the former president. And so we both agree that there is no basis to believe that the election was stolen. But there are two very different groups of people we should talk about out there. One group of people are like ordinary Republicans who are, to this day, close to 2/3 still will assert that the election was stolen. Half of them assert that there is strong evidence the election is stolen. I think you look at the people who marched on January 6, who stormed the Capitol, I think were overly critical. Those are people who honestly believed the election was stolen. And what is the appropriate response if you think the election is stolen? But the second group of people are people who, you know and I know know better. I mean, you know, I think Kinzinger says that, you know, maybe there's a couple members of Congress who actually believe the election was stolen, but there are hundreds who voted to stop the counting of the Electoral College.

Larry, hold on. Because that's where we part what that vote was, was simply to say that a couple of states should be verified. And actually, I think that they should have done that because that would have put to rest any shred of evidence that this election in any way was improper, was illegal, and that there are times when you simply have to go beyond to teach your children, to teach your friends, to teach the people in power that this is the truth, that this is what happened. There are times when you have to say to your kid, no, I'm going to show you. I'm going to go beyond. Because I need you to believe me here. I need you to understand here. You can't just assert it and assume that people are going to believe it.

Okay, but this is the Ted Cruz argument.

But I know these people. My argument is I know these people. I don't read about them in the newspaper. I'm not defending them. I've given up on that. And I don't believe that they need defending. I think that their actions speak. Speak volumes. But I am going to explain to you, because I talked to so many of them, that they simply wanted an accounting. That's all they were asking for. Now, Trump completely mishandled it. Look, this whole situation went to hell because. And we could see it. And, Larry, if you could take it and put it into this podcast. I talked on CNBC about exactly what was going to happen. That the Biden vote was going to come in late. The Trump vote was going to come in early because Trump voters were voting on the day Biden people were voting earlier by absentee. They would count that day's vote first. It would look like Donald Trump won a landslide. He would then go out and claim victory. And as the hours rolled on and the days rolled on, the Biden vote would get counted, and then Joe Biden would win. I talked about this. God damn it. I talked about this in advance. You can see it on CNBC the entire way that this unfolded.

And.

And the problem was the media didn't echo it. I did it on several different interviews, but the best example is cnbc. Wrap it into this. Put it into this podcast.

Yeah, I'm happy to do that. But let's separate two things, because you.

All you're trying to do is use me to beat up on these guys.

No, no, no, no, no, no. I want to understand motivations.

I'm explaining it to you. The motivation was accountability. The motivation was. Was to prove it. To prove that it was not, as Donald Trump said, but to give voice to that last challenge, because there had not been given voice to that. Everything had been thrown out by the courts and, by the way, legitimately. So the fact is, that all of Donald Trump's challenges were BS and the court said it. But the only way to say to these voters, look, you're wrong was to have one final accounting of it. That's all that vote was. There was very few people, if any, and I didn't speak to a single person who actually thought that Donald Trump won the election. But they correctly, they correctly identified that there needed to be a challenge to this to prove it.

Okay, but Frank, do you really believe if they had had a week long process, I can't remember exactly what Ted Cruz was calling for, but it was something like that, bracketing the fact that that was against federal law. But put that aside. Do you really believe that if they'd had a week long process to redo what 60 courts had basically done, and at the end of the process they had concluded like those 60 courts and said, nope, this is totally fine. Do you believe at that point Donald Trump would have said, okay, fine, it's totally fine. And when he didn't say that, do you think his people would have said, okay, fine, it's totally fine? I mean, the call for a further process here couldn't have been in good faith. Nobody could have believed it was going to really resolve what was driving this craziness, which was places like Fox News repeating again and again and again and again that it was stolen. Right. That problem was not going to be solved by one more round of review.

No, by that point, by that point, Fox News was not saying that. By that point, a couple people on Fox News were claiming it, but the network overall was not running that narrative. That narrative had changed weeks earlier.

Oan was still a lot of most of those Trump supporters didn't get the memo. 827 times Fox News repeated that story. That claim between the election and January 6th, and that repeating over and over again convinced most Republicans, two thirds of Republicans, that the fact was it was stolen. Now if one more review had happened, you don't really believe people would have backed down and said, oh, okay, fine, it's a legitimate election after what we've seen.

Absolutely not, Larry. Based on what we saw, you're correct. You're 100% correct. I'm not defending it. I want to be.

I don't want you to defend it. Your job is not, you're not their lawyer. Your job is, you understand more than most people because you've lived your life trying to understand people and you know these people. Cuz you've spent your life working with

these people and they cannot be moved. And that is the problem. And Trump speaks to them every day. And he's a poison, and it is toxic. And I agree with all that. And then. But I'll say you right now something that's even more important, which you're not speaking of, because it's not in your wheelhouse. Donald Trump is angry that he's not getting credit for the vaccine at the very moment that he isn't telling people to get the vaccine. And his own newsletter, the Trump. I don't know what it's called. It's one of the top newsletters from the desk.

Yeah.

It claims that 3,000 people have died from the vaccine, that the vaccine isn't safe. It's not Trump's newsletter. It's Trump people's newsletter at the very moment that he's trumpeting that he's responsible for creating it, according to that newsletter, what he created has killed at least 3,000 people. It's insane. Well, our situation right now is absolutely insane. And I don't know how to fix it. I don't know how to change it. I barely know how to report it.

Okay, so when you look at. You must have. You worked with Liz Cheney before.

I've known her for a while because I've known her father for a while,

so she was actually a student of mine. She was in one of my first classes, and she was exactly the same person then as she is right now.

Right now.

But when you see the conflict between Liz Cheney and the Republican caucus, this is a purely calculated conflict. Right. I mean, they're just. The people who voted Liz Cheney out are just responding to the polls which show them that's where the party is, and those.

And those polls are correct. But there has to be a way. So I chose to leave the country for a couple months. I chose to teach at Oxford. I chose to. To disengage myself. She chose to engage. There's a consequence to my decision. There's a consequence to hers. There's a consequence to the questions that you ask. We all have to accept those consequences. If you want to fight the most popular person in the party, of course this is gonna be the outcome. So the question is, is this effective? Is this. The mission is understandable. I get it. And from her perspective, she's doing the right thing. We actually had one exchange about this where she said to me through email that this is a fight for the future of the Republican Party. And for her, it is. So I understand why she did. But she also has to understand why, by her speaking up against the Most popular Republican, why her colleagues might be frustrated with it, why her colleagues might seek to do something with it. Larry, this is so easy for you in the ivory towers of Harvard, and you're so smart about it. You're probably the smartest professor in America. So none of you make sense. None of this makes sense. I should say it doesn't. But I get it from being involved in the process that if you're going to attack the person who is the most popular in your party, your friends and colleagues in that party are going to seek to throw you out. It makes perfect sense.

So he's the most popular person in the party because 2/3 of the public agrees with him. 2/3 of the party, self identified Republicans agree with him about a set of facts that you and I both agree are just completely false. And that's just not the product of a flipped switch. It wasn't like a drug that he gave everybody to lead us to believe that. One way to think about this is what. What has to happen to make it so we don't live in a world where this fantasy can be crafted and then believed so forcefully. I mean, this is your whole life dealing with how people come to believe things and how people are persuaded to believe things differently or feel things differently. I mean, when you look at this problem and you think, if I could do anything about it, what would you do about it? Like, what is the thing to take apart to make it so it doesn't work like this.

It's to prove that it is a lie, not the big lie.

Prove.

How do you prove?

You, you show them with people who they trust why this happened. You show them the truth. You show them that what was said is not actually what happened, that what was claimed is not true. But you do it for them not to beat up on their hero. And that, I realize, was the big mistake of the last four years. I work in the media. I work for a number of news networks, both in front of the camera and behind. And I did several presentations to the press saying you're actually building his credibility. You think you're taking him down by insulting him, by condemning him, but you don't realize that you're actually protecting him by your approach. And I'll give you the best example. Early on, he did a press conference within the first three, four months where he spoke for an hour and a half. And he was the rudest I've ever seen a president in a press conference. And the reporters are rude to him and he just criticized them. They criticized him and in the various networks, the ones that began with Trump's comments without editorializing, that just began with what Trump said were the most critical of him. And those news broadcasts that began with their editorializing that Donald Trump is, and I quote, unhinged or crazy. And it was specifically, there was a CBS segment, and the entire first 90 seconds was, Donald Trump is insane. And then you saw him. That led people to support Trump the most, because the only thing that was disliked more than Donald Trump is the media itself. They made themselves the story by doing the editorializing first. Let Trump speak first. I told them, please let people react to what he says and then editorialize. Don't do it at the beginning, or you lose your objectivity and you lose your influence.

I saw you in an exchange, and I'd like to find this and roll this into this, where you're trying to help people understand how best to persuade

people to take the vaccine.

And it was moving as you unpack the techniques that will backfire from the techniques that might actually work. And part. Part of this is like, you know, you've become kind of the wise old man about how do we bring about understanding and progress on issues that we should agree are fundamental issues, like getting people to be vaccinated. That doesn't rally the base. But is that a picture of what a solution looks like? More people not just listening, but beginning to think through it in exactly the way you're trying to think through it?

Yes, but there's a caveat, Larry. There is a host of a TV show that I'm not going to mention because I want to keep doing it, but I was on with a doctor from Texas, and that doctor was calling Trump voters stupid, just ridiculing them for being unwilling to take the vaccine. And I kept saying, please stop doing this. I know this is how you feel. I know that what you're reporting is in some ways accurate, but you're not helping the situation. You're trying to score political points rather than getting them vaccinated. And this is the problem that we've got people involved in this process right now, that instead of making the truth their highest value, they make political payback, revenge. Scoring political points as a higher priority. They want to own the other side or own the Trump voter rather than convincing people to do the right thing. That's not what I am or who I am. Some of these questions. I get it. I know what you're getting at. And whether or not there was a camera on me or being recorded, I'd give you the Same answers. I am not about trying to prove people wrong. I'm simply about informing them so they think and do the right thing, and I leave them to their judgment. We know the truth. We know that Donald Trump lost. How is the best way to show people that the democratic process actually worked? By reporting that Donald Trump lost. That's what I'm interested in. Not ripping into those who don't share that point of view.

Okay, but then what is it that brings, for example, Fox News to the position where, across the board, you have the most influential people on that network who want to bring about a recognition of what they know is true, too? I mean, you said they've given up the lie rhetoric. That's fine. But does it pay, for example, your friend Tucker Carlson to. To be on television and say, look, we need to come to recognize that, in fact, there is no foundation at all for the belief that this was not a fair election?

I don't know about Tucker. Tucker is Tucker. I know that the news division of Fox is quite different than the opinion division as the same thing with msnbc, and I'm not sure about cnn because it all seems to blur together. I know that the ultimate goal of these TV networks is ratings and advertising dollars, and that they do what they have to do to get those ratings, and they do what they have to do. For example, msnbc, one of those primetime hosts, is actually paid by ratings. Not supposed to acknowledge this, but they have a base pay, and beyond that, every month, the pay is determined by how many people watch. Well, guess what? They figured out that beating the living crap out of Donald Trump and his voters gets ratings for them. So that's exactly what the gentleman does every month, and it's given him a lot more money than he otherwise would have. We know what his motivation is. The tragedy is that people watch for information. They watch because they want to believe. And so his motivation is actually undermining the motivation of those who are viewing. And this is part of why the democratic process is horribly broken and why I truly believe it's under threat right now.

Yeah, I mean, it's not just one actor. Right? It's the business model of cable. It's also the business model of platforms like Facebook. The more they can rile people up, the more they make money. And so when we're fighting the business model of the most powerful network actors that there is out there to preserve democracy, this is a very. It's not a bet I would take, but it's certainly a bet I'm going to fight. But, right. I mean, like, what do you do when they make money from making us crazy, as opposed to other environments where the media doesn't make money by making people crazy, or other times in our history where that wasn't true?

There are people who understand this so well, and you understand it better than I do. Tristan Harris, the ethicist, understands this. So does Doris Kearns Goodwin. What would be the most amazing experience, and I actually wrote down a few names, is to put together the ultimate podcast of people who, through sheer intelligence and experience and wisdom, could actually walk through these various challenges, removing their partisan hats, removing the temptation to make a political point and discuss American society and democracy and free markets and technology in a way that people would understand and in a way that would cause people to take action.

Do you know the Fred Friendly series?

Yes. He's brilliant. And what he used to do with people on that panel, it's what I've always wanted to do. But you know what, Larry? You'd be better at it because you're smart enough to be able to respond to every individual. I'm too. What I would do in a situation like this, and the show that I've always wanted to create, is to have somebody like you moderating a panel of experts, 5, 7, 10 of them from different professions, and then put me in the audience right behind them. Because in the end, if it's just the experts, the average American is not going to listen, because the average American wants to hear their voice, have their questions answered. So it's a combination of the two. It is not just Lawrence Lessig from Harvard and his peers, and it is not just Joey from Piscataway and his peers. It's a combination of the two. If we could do that, we might be able to save this country. If we could do that, we actually might be able to hear things that we disagree with, because there would be a Trump person on that panel, there would be a Biden person, there would be someone who would take each of these points of view and someone smart like you who would challenge them and each other, and someone like me who'd bring in the public voice. That would be my goal. Guess what? That is never going to make it on television. The powers that be don't believe that we would watch something like this. It's a show on in Britain right now. It's called PM qs, Prime Minister Questions. It comes on once a week. It's the most amazing show of accountability and a democratic process, and it is loved in the uk. But that show would Never make it in the US because who we are and how we've developed and it's a tragedy.

Okay, I want to shift. We've had a conversation for many, many

years about political reform in America and

you've become quite an articulate spokesman about the need for reform in various areas. Gerrymandering reform, for example, and the money in politics you've spoken about. But I want to come to ground about where we have agreement, where we might have disagreement, or whether something like HR1, which of course is really right now teed up in the Senate as S1, is something that people could or should be able to get agreement on.

So

where do you think we obviously agree and where do you think we probably or we might disagree?

Well, I'll use the voting because that is the part of it I believe that we need a voter ID system. You have an idea to do everything in life. You can't go into a building unless you show an id. You can't get treated in a hospital, you're not supposed to. You show an ID for everything in your life. Voting is important. Why shouldn't you have an ID for voting? And everything else is just ridiculous. Not being able to give people food in line, not having more polling places, not opening them up more days, although voting used to be a one day affair. I don't have an issue with any of that. Make voting easy and make it accurate is my philosophy. And to me just a voter ID alone is sufficient. Let's open up the process. Let's give people more ways, more days, more places. Let's make it simple for them.

Okay, so we don't have a disagreement about the idea, but I want to understand what motivates it because I mean, is there any evidence voter ID would solve any real problem out there?

There is an issue. They showed it in California where dead people voted, that absentee ballots went out to people. And this was a problem back two years ago when you had the counting of votes that. Yes, that it's hundreds of votes, it's not thousands of votes. It's. It did not turn a presidential election, but it could turn a congressional election. And whether or not it happens everywhere, the fact that it does happen just adds a sense of confidence, which is really what this is about. I want people to believe in the electoral process again. And I'm willing to go above and beyond so that they will believe.

So it might not be that there's factual basis, but there certainly is a perception that's been created maybe by some lies, maybe by some Truths that there's this insecurity in our system. And so a simple cheap way to facilitate ID would solve that problem for you.

The latter half, yes, the former half. We've had trouble in New York elections. I remember it. I remember when I worked in the city election in 1993, there was a bus that went around that tried to get everyone to vote at a certain polling place place. And when the TV camera showed up, everyone got back on the bus and started driving around. I remember that from 1993. It may be an isolated incident, but it happened. These things do happen, and voter ID will prevent that. Aetna will give voters a sense that elections do matter and that this is an elevated issue. If you won't even require an id, that it is more important important to have an ID to enter a building, to get on a plane than it is to cast an all important vote for your leaders. It's simply confirming that this stuff does matter and who you are does matter and your legitimacy does matter.

Okay, but let's say it turns out that it's harder for a certain class of people to get an ID than for others. From your perspective, there'd be no reason why you wouldn't want to supplement and make it cheap and easy for that class of people to get an id. Right. That would qualify in this context. Right.

Anyone can get an id.

Well, not necessarily an ID that will count. I mean, for example, Texas had a rule that allowed gun club membership to be an id. But student record, student ID at a certain university not to be an ID to identify you. So there's some games that are played with the IDs that are motivated, obviously for political reasons. But that doesn't sound like what's motivating the desire that you've identified, which is just a basic trust in the system.

It's a trust and it's a level of accountability that adds a level of confidence. And by the way, and then everything else, I support the democratic efforts and everything else they want to do. I'm just asking for one thing, Larry. Professor. One thing. And this is the problem. And you just. It's fascinating for me because you just triggered it. The very fact that I asked for one accountability measure is too much for some people.

I didn't say it was too much. I didn't say it was too much.

No, but that's, that's what you. But your opposition to it. We don't. We believe that our answers are, are legitimate. We believe that our solutions are acceptable. And if it's not Part of our list. It's therefore. We can therefore reject it. I believe that we take one from your list and one from mine. We take two from your list and one from mine. That's actual unity. That's actual cooperation on infrastructure. I use this only as an example to illustrate the Democrats have a majority. So if they want to spend 1.9 trillion infrastructure, go ahead. But what they should have done is given the Republicans the responsibility for accountability, transparency, and efficiency, which is what the GOP wants. Let the GOP do all the oversight to ensure that the money is spent. Exactly. Since they're so hostile to spending money. And give the Republicans the responsibility for oversight so they can ensure that the money is spent wisely. That's a compromise. If the Democrats have the majority and they want to change health care, great. That's their right in democracy. But give the Republicans lawsuit abuse reform. Give them the ability to change these ridiculous medical malpractice rules that. That have created this incredibly lucrative profession of just going around and suing doctors.

Well, okay, we don't have to agree on the facts behind that, but let's go back to the place where you think there's a disagreement between us about voting. I don't have any objection to having a way to certify the qualification of somebody to vote. The difficulty is how do we implement in a world where states run elections presumptively? And so if we. If we simply say you have a voter ID requirement, and we see that states implement it in a way that's plainly partisan in its intent, that creates its own problem. Right. We don't want a system where you get to set the rules so your party can vote easily and the other side can't. So I'm asking, what would a federal response to this be that you would accept? Like, what is the voting ID system that would be appropriate for you to secure this thing that you've identified?

I mean, my frustration is that Georgia passed its rules and that immediately it became the biggest issue about how racist it was and how political it was. They actually increased weekend voting.

They did good things and they did crazy things.

Okay, but then choose what's good and choose what's. And get rid of what's crazy.

They wouldn't do that. I mean, so why is that an obligation?

That is the goal of all of this. One from you and one from me. Or if you're in the majority, two from you and one from me. But there's always something that protects the minority. Always. It's not 100 to 0 and that is the problem right now.

Absolutely. And one of the. We had a really interesting conversation with Lee Drutman, whose book Breaking the Doom Loop tells the story about how for most of American history, we actually had four parties, not two. Each party was divided between liberal and Democrat, I mean, liberal and conservative. And what that meant is nobody presumed to control Congress. Everybody knew they had to work together, they had to strike deals to get anything done. And that created a healthier environment than the world where there are two parties, where one party presumes to hold the majority and therefore can send the other party to Siberia. So I agree we ought to be talking about what is the structure of compromise. And I like your two. Two. You get two, I get one. But then I'm asking you, what is the one that you would demand about voter id? Because that's just a word. You've gotta talk about the institution that you're demanding here to satisfy what you think of as the problem.

If we can track a FedEx package right down to the street that it's in, then I know that we can solve a way that states can afford to institute some sort of picture id, some sort of official ID to vote.

Okay? So states can do it with a federal standard to make sure it's not discriminatory. All right, so if the states do it and they issue a certain set of IDs, then the federal government can make sure that everybody qualified has access to an id.

Correct.

Okay. But then our only factual disagreement about is whether the practical way in which ID systems are implemented is aiming at this neutral position that you've identified. Because practically, turns out it has a pretty predictable effect.

You can't enter a building without an id.

Yeah. In New York. But, you know, if you're a 97 year old African American woman who never had a. Never had a birth certificate because you didn't give them to African Americans 97 years ago, and you live in, you know, rural part of North Carolina and you want to go vote because, you know, God damn it, 150 years ago, that right was supposedly given, at least to white, to black men in America. The fact that you need an ID to fly in an airplane isn't really relevant to her. Right. So what do you do for her?

You find a way. And this is part of our system. You find a way to make it to go to her. You find a way, because obviously she probably can't use a computer, probably doesn't even own a computer.

Right.

And you find a way to go to her and it's the same way that we do. I used to be paid. My first job ever was to look at the voter rolls and make sure that people still lived at the address that they were reported at. And I had to go door to door and I was actually paid per hour to go door to door to make sure that people who were on the list of people who had voted still lived at those residences. This is back now 45 years ago, because I was 16 or 40 years ago. I was 16 at the time. It would have been very easy for me to have taken a Polaroid camera with me and a portable ID stand system and take a photograph of Agnes and so she has an id, never has to leave her house. I could have easily done that as part of my job that I'm already being paid for, to ensure that people live there. It can be done, Larry, if we want it to be done.

Yeah. To create the incentive for it to be done. But if you want to do it in a way that maximizes your own party's success.

No, that's not my. No. I want to do it for a measure of confidence and accountability.

You do? Yes. I agree. You do, and that's certainly what you're arguing for here. What we're trying to figure out is how to get over the gap between what you want and what practically happens when the motivation of election officials is not as pure as the motivation you've identified here. You don't have a way to get over the gap for me, but I think it's a useful exercise. We're not going to get in HR1, some clear solution to that part of the problem, but it might be useful to begin to articulate a commitment to making that part of the solution. In this same two year period. We guarantee that we'll have some solution for the voter ID part as well. What's really crazy, I don't know if you've been watching this insanity with Joe Manchin, who's obsessed with the idea of having a bipartisan voting rights bill. So he's gotten a couple Republicans to signal he'd support the Voter Rights Restoration Act. So they restore the Voting Rights act, which was struck down in part by Supreme Court in Shelby county. But he would modify it to say that it applies not just to targeted districts, but to every district in the United States. Okay, so if I know anything about constitutional law and this Supreme Court, that law is plainly unconstitutional according to the Supreme Court. Not that I would think it's unconstitutional, but they've said it's unconstitutional. So this is the Greeks at the Trojan Gate, the gates of Troy, and they've rolled up this huge horse and wooden horse. And the question now is, should we open the gates and bring them in? And, and you have all these Democrats saying, yes, bring it in. When it's clear that the motivation here is to pass a Voting Rights act, which you get to say we've got bipartisan Voting Rights act, which the Supreme Court will strike down within two years.

Don't accuse. I know Joe Manchin very well. Don't accuse him of that.

I don't want to accuse him. I want to accuse the people.

You're accusing him of having bad motives and you need to. What you just did, did that. Then you need to rephrase your question.

Great. Because what I meant to accuse bad motives here for are the Republican agreement to join it. Because when people who oppose voting rights like HR1 are willing to adopt this, there's at least some of them, like for example, Mitch McConnell, who are willing to do it because they're confident that I'm right about the constitutionality under the Supreme Court's jurisprudence. So I think Joe Manchin, I've written a bunch of things like defending Joe Manchin in this process because he's been consistent about the need for broad based democracy reform, including when he was governor, he supported public funding of judicial elections because he's so obsessed with this that he calls it dialing for dollars in government. So, I mean, he's been rightly motivated. But I'm saying, why does it turn out that you've got Republicans willing to support this? Well, some of them, because they know this thing dies and if it dies and this is the only voting rights that we get, then the system as it is doesn't get changed. You don't disagree with that?

Again, I'm sure you're right. It's the only way that I can say this. I am sure you're right. And all it does is just prove how effed up we are. But those on the left are just as effed up as those on the right and they play their own political games, their own cynical, partisan ideological games, and the country suffers as a result.

There's been games on the left as well, no doubt. We don't have to argue about how, whether they're equal, but there's certainly been games. But I think the scary thing for me with reform, and this is the last point, you need to rest yourself. But I think the scary thing for me is this democracy has always only ever been precariously Majoritarian. It mostly is a majoritarian democracy, mostly is the case that the side that gets the most votes wins. Obviously, we've seen exceptions with the president. We see exceptions in the Senate. We've sometimes seen exceptions in the House, but pretty much more than 90% of the time it works out. But if the 350some bills that are now being considered in state legislatures to make it harder for Democrats to participate pass and the gerrymandering that is now unleashed because the Supreme Court has said there's no limit to political gerrymandering occurs, will move from a predict precariously majoritarian to a predictably minoritarian country where we can say systematically that the side that has the more votes doesn't win. It's the side that has the fewer votes that wins. And, you know, because you've seen these things around the world, that's not a stable result. We can't live with that for long.

We can't live with this for long. We can't live with our current system for long. We can't live on us demonizing and delegitimizing and dehumanizing each other. I listen to people talk about virtue shaming and virtue sin signaling and white privilege and all these words that have entered our vernacular and all they are used for is weapons to undercut and to destroy and to really hurt people. And I don't see anyone out there who's trying to say, hey, hold on. Let's start with I love you. Let's start with I care about you. I hear you. I see you. I get that now. I never understood that. I would see that written up on boards and protest boards. I understand that. But the people who are writing it actually only see themselves and only see their group, and they don't see others. They're saying it, but they're not appreciating others. And it's so destructive. And this is a really pessimistic way to end this. But I don't think it ends well. Just as this podcast is gonna end on a bad note, I think it's gonna end in America on a bad note. We don't seek a better union. We don't seek a better country. We are not the angels in ourselves. As some ancient theoreticians said, we are not our better angels. We seem to be appealing to the lowest common denominator. And you are so brilliant. You actually have a responsibility not just to win the argument. You have a responsibility to win the country and to win the future. So much of my time is now spent explaining the past and so little time focused on achieving a better future. And I think that is based on someone who is at a different stage now in his life and is now looking back at all that has been created. But you in what you do, it's not about theory, professor, it's about real life. And if you don't at least say to people, I get it, I hear you. I know you're angry. I know your frustrations don't act, I don't appreciate that when you act like a child. But. But okay, we'll work with that. No one is willing to listen anymore. We have the most amazing technology that allows us to be heard, but there's no one listening. We have the most amazing economy that allows people to become literally millionaires from their kitchen table. But we have greater economic anxiety than we've ever had. We have the ability to know what each other is thinking and yet we seem to care less than we ever have. I don't know how we fix it. I know we need to try. I know that you got some of the solutions. But I would say to you the goal is not to win the argument. The goal is to win the country and to win the future.

I am going to disagree with one thing. I've been pessimistic and you're not feeling well. So maybe that's a large part of it. But I actually think we begin to

see a way around the corner here.

I begin to see, I think that people begin to understand where and how we can do politics well, whereby politics well means come to some common understanding. So we're not going to do it on Fox News and msnbc. We're not going to do it on Twitter and Facebook. Those places are unhealthy places to do politics. But you've built, you and our friend Andrew Hsu have built contexts where people with very different views can come to a place, place where they're willing to treat each other like humans. And I think we can build out that process. And we have a process we've just launched for deliberating about the electoral college where we've got basically an hour long deliberation videos that lay out issues. The end of that process, people have very different views turn out to have overwhelming agreement about not necessarily national popular vote, which is a very partisan framing. But over are reforms that would make things much, much better. And you know, my objective is let's have a million person deliberation. Let's just do it over the course of the next four years where a million people have deliberated about this in a context where they've got to be as you want them to be. And I think we can do politics in those places. And if we do, then the ugliness that you are suffering, I think is much less significant. Or at least that's what we've got to try.

Well, my friend, you are much more optimistic than I am. I look at the institutions that are undermining that from technology to the media. But I guess we got to try. So at least I'll stick it out long enough to give it a try. I'll be one of your 1 million.

You need to be healthy. Frank, it's so great to see you. I wish you were not feeling poorly, but come back to America. We need you back here

soon enough.

Okay, thank you.

Thanks.

That's the conversation with Frank.

He survived the night. He was under the weather, as you heard, although he was vaccinated. So I'm confident it wasn't the COVID that was bringing him down. Stay tuned as we continue next with more from Capitol Hill. We're going to speak again to Mondaire Jones, who's going to bring us up to speed on where HR1 stands inside of Congress and more interestingly, what he's learned in his first months as a new congressperson on Capitol Hill. Hondaire has become one of the most vocal supporters of HR1 as the essential reform that's necessary in addition to HR4, the Voting Rights act restoration, no doubt, but this primarily, and our objective will be to understand where the agreement is and what the potential for this critical legislation is. Thanks for listening. These podcasts are produced by equal Citizens. You can find us on the web at EqualCitizens US and this podcast, wherever you find podcasts, you know how this works. But on our website, equalcitizens Us anotherway. Thanks for the comments and the feedback that you give on that website. Please keep it coming and please keep the support coming. We're at a critical stage, a really critical stage, because if we can keep the pressure on and get this bill passed, then we will have accomplished the most important political reform that we've seen in a generation in America. And if we don't, I fear, as I've spoken of many times, I fear we face a future in our democracy which is even more divided than our past. So we have until the end of the summer to get this bill through, and we're going to be doing everything we can and fighting as hard as we can to make that happen.

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