Ari Berman — Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People- with Eric Holder

hello and welcome to politics and Pros bookstore my name is Claire Maguire and I'm a supported Events book seller here we host in-person events along with partnered and supported events trips and classes we've recently relocated both of our branch locations at Union Market and the warf and now host events in both of those locations for a full list of confirmed events please go to our website politics-related please silence your cell phones so as not to disrupt the event when we get to the time for opening the floor to your questions we've placed a standing microphone at the end of the aisle to your right please line up at the mic so that everyone can hear your question as we want that question to be heard in our recording of the event we are live streaming today's program and you or anyone you know can also soon find it at the politics and Pros YouTube channel following the Q&A we'll have a signing up here at this table so if you've not already purchased the book we have many copies behind our registers at the front of the store we will ask you to line up starting here at the pillar right there we will also come by the line to ask your name for personalizations so please have your books ready for us once the event is complete we ask that you fold up your chairs lean them against the walls to help us out a bit so now without further ado the mob that stormed the capital on January 6 2021 represented an extreme form of the central danger facing American democracy today a blatant disregard for the will of the majority but this crisis didn't begin or end with Donald Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election through voter suppression election subversion Jerry mandering dark money the Takeover of the courts and the whitewashing of History reactionary white conservatives have strategically entrenched power in the face of a massive demographic and political shift Ari Burman charts these efforts with sweeping historical research and incisive on the ground reporting chronicling how a wide range of anti-democratic tactics interact with profound structural inequalities in institutions like the Electoral College the Senate and the Supreme Court to threaten the survival of representative government in America chilling and revelatory minority rule exposes is the long history of the conflict between watt Supremacy and multi-racial democracy that has reached a fever pitch today while also telling the inspiring story of resistance to these regressive efforts Ari Burman is the National Voting Rights correspondent for Mother Jones and a reporting fellow at type Media Center he's the author of give us the ballot the modern struggle for voting rights in America and hurting donkeys the fight to rebuild the Democratic party and reshape American politics his writing has also appeared in the New York Times The Washington Post and rolling stone and he's a frequent commentator on MSNBC and NPR he's won the Sydney Hillman Foundation prize for magazine Journal journalism and an izy award for outstanding achievement in Independent Media he lives in New PTZ New York Burman will be in conversation with Eric Holder holder is a civil rights leader who is Chairman of the national Democratic redistricting committee he served as the 8 2nd Attorney General of the United States under President Barack Obama the first African-American to hold that office now a senior council at Covington and Burling he lives in Washington DC with his wife Dr Sharon Malone and their three children he is the author of our unfinished March the violent past and imperal future of the Voda history a crisis a plan Burman and Holder will be in conversation with marann STI mazac the editorial operations director of the DC Bureau of Mother Jones her journalism career has included covering the collapse of Communism 9/11 neuroscience and social policy for such Publications as the New York Times magazine The Washington Post Esquire Harper's Bazaar the Los Angeles Times the new Republic Newsweek the bulletin of atomic scientist Psychology today and news day among others she is the author of The critically acclaimed Memoir I kiss your hand many times which was published by Random House in the United States and was bestseller in Hungary so without further Ado let me introduce our [Applause] author good afternoon and welcome to this potentially very depressing conversation but I have asked both Ari and Eric not to leave us feeling bad so they will have to tell us at the end a bit just a fragment of some good news but to start Let's uh begin with maybe some not so great news and that is what has happened over the last week at the Supreme Court it's been a busy week Ari and I wonder if you could sort of talk a little bit about what the immunity argument tells us about the composition of the court and how it reflects the thesis of your book well thanks so much first off to politics and Pros for having us this is the first event that I'm doing for the book so it's really exciting to be here I can't think of a better place to do it than politics and pros and really excited to my colleague Maryanne uh for leading the conversation and to the attorney general for uh being here we've been having a running conversation about this issue for about nine years and uh I I I remember it being nine years because the first time that well we almost talked was when my first daughter was one day old and I got a a text from your press secretary saying uh the Attorney General wants to talk to you about the Texas voter ID law are are you free and I said well like not to be rude but uh I'm in the hospital and my daughter's day old so uh could we put a pit in it but ever since then you know now she's nine and uh and she says I only write boring books but hopefully you guys think otherwise uh but uh I'm really excited to do this so okay back to the Supreme Court and just to say Maran it's going to be like a roller coaster we're going to bring everyone down and in the end we're going to bring them back up to feel uh empowered and excited about um so it really I think the the not just the argument in the immunity case but the Supreme Court majority writ large illustrates the thesis of my book which is that there is a real threat and in many ways we already have minority rule in the us because we have a supreme court in which five of six conservative justices were appointed by Republican presidents who initially lost the popular vote and were confirmed by Senators elected by a minority of Americans that's never happened in American history so we've already reached an undemocratic Milestone with the Supreme Court then you add on top of that that the Supreme Court has done all these undemocratic things to make the country less Democratic so things like gutting the Voting Rights Act making it so you can't review partisan gerrymandering citizens united all of these things and they've issued all of these decisions that go at odds with the majority of Americans such as Ro overturning roie Wade overturning gun control etc etc etc so a product of minority rule has deepened minority Rule and I think the big thing with Trump is Trump can't do this alone he needs enablers he needs enablers to enable his authoritarianism and everyone thinks that because he failed in 2020 it won't succeed in 2024 but what we're seeing right now is he has more and more enablers in the Republican party and he has it looks like the most important enablers in the country which is the six member of super majority on the Supreme Court you know Eric you are obviously no stranger to the Supreme Court in fact the decision gutting the Voting Rights Act happens to have your name on it do you think scotus is the product all of my friends know that when we refer to that case we simply call it and as you did in the book The Shelby County case you know because it's like Shelby County versus holder is the equivalent of like you know like like Dread Scott versus holder you know I don't want my name associated in any way with that uh with that case so it's the Shelby County case sorry about reminding ing you of this painful fact but do but do you think that scotus is the product of a rigged political system oh obviously I mean for all the reasons that uh that Ari just did but I mean just look at the way in which the last couple of justices were selected Merrick Garland can't get a hearing because it's in the last year of Barack Obama's presidency and Amy Coney Barrett gets you know confirmed while people were in the process of voting so I mean you know there's total hypocrisy there there are the structural things that you know that that Ari talks about in terms of who the presidents who appointed these folks who did not win the majority of the popular vote I mean this is a country where you know if you run for class president you know and you get the most votes well you're the class president um if you want to be on your condo board or something like that and you get the most votes well you're on the condo board well if you run for president of the United States and you get the most votes you don't necessarily win you got to have as we all know you got to win the electoral college which emphasizes um it's it's a counter majoritarian thing uh it's something that you know the founding fathers put in place because they didn't has already talked about didn't trust you know regular people folks like us certainly not folks like me um you know to actually get out there and do something um in an intelligent um thinking thinking way yeah and that that just to just to follow up on that point that's why I it I traced the book and the crisis of American democracy all the way back to the founding because you have to understand that the undemocratic institutions that we have are still with us today and in many ways have actually become more undemocratic so things like a president winning the popular vote but losing the Electoral College that's happened more recently in the last 16 years than it had happened for hundreds of years before that things like Senators representing a majority of senators representing a minority of Americans that has gotten dramatically worse you look at over the last 20 years for example Senate Republicans have held the senate about half of that time they've only represented a majority of Americans once so basically minority rule is a feature and these institutions were set up in a way to prevent popular participation and in many ways they've gotten worse but they're working as they were originally intended so Ari why don't you back up just a little bit because we have been talking a lot about minority rule but how about defining it for us well the the way I Define it is basically a minority of Americans controlling a majority of power but I don't talk about minority rule in terms of how you normally would think of minorities right I'm basically talking about an elite conservative white majority that is hellbent on disenfranchising actual majorities and what I Define as a new American majority which is young voters voters of color more moderate Progressive whites and is the future of the country and basically what I argue is that we're at this historical Tipping Point because in 2045 we're going to be a majority minority country in which white people are no longer the minority the majority in the country and of course social norms change but the idea is that we are becoming a much more diverse country and that has led to a lot of panic within the conservative movement and has led them to not just take advantage of the anti-democratic structures of American politics but to double down on all these new anti-democratic tactics that you're very familiar with voter suppression gerrymandering election subversion the rewriting of History all in an attempt to try to set up a fortress to stop what they view as the coming Siege so Eric how how do we protect um how do we promote majority rule in a way that protects minority rights how does that work yeah I mean I think that we've always got to be mindful of the fact that that is a feature of the American system that is is a good thing that we do protect um minority rights but we never have what we have perverted is we go from protecting minority rights to embracing minority rule yes um we've we have a in essence almost like a political apartheid system where um the minority has the ability to dictate to the majority and elements of the Republican Party have become very comfortable with that in fact are actually afraid that they don't have the ability to win majorities in elections and I actually think that they underestimate their capacity to win um majorities in you know State races although if we if we again we were talk as I talking about before if we were talking about just no no Electoral College this election would be a lock I mean this election would be a lot Joe Biden won U Hillary beat Trump by almost three million votes Biden beat him by like almost 7 million votes or so I mean I guarantee that Joe Biden is going to win the popular vote I mean I guarantee that oh no the popular vote I guarantee that I let's let we'll you sign books and I'll take bets you know here along here um and I'll make more money on my bets to but so that's but that's that doesn't mean he's going to be doesn't mean he's going to be be president and this um this this facility know this ease with which the um Republicans have embraced minority rule is something that I think is extremely disturbing it is incredibly disturbing but as Ari points out in his book the seeds were sown a long long time ago so Ari tell us how the Constitution was conceived and how it actually promoted minority rule some of the also the anti-democratic features that remain today that was one of the most interesting parts of my argument uh and my research because my last book give us the ballot started at 1965 with a passage of the Voting Rights Act this book starts at 1787 with the Constitutional Convention so I had to go back much further and try to answer this question which was how did our institutions become the way they are today which you realize is that as remarkable as the Constitution is it is in many ways a contradiction that our most important Democratic document was actually intended to make the country less Democratic and in many ways the Constitution represents a counterrevolution against the state constitutions that were written after the Declaration of Independence basically the founding fathers were very concerned with there being too much democracy after 1776 and they wanted some way to restrain popular participation to protect a privileged white minority which was themselves white male Property Owners that's what they chiefly wanted to do in drafting the Constitution so they didn't allow the direct election of the president they created this very complicated system of called The Electoral College they made it so that each state got the same number of Senators which dramatically boosted conserv ative white rural States even back then and has metastasized in an incredible way now they made it so that in Most states only white male property owners could vote so that disenfranchised most not just most white people but obviously women African-Americans Native Americans weren't been considered citizens of the United States and what you had is if you look at how the Senate was created how the Electoral College was created how the 35ths Clause was created basically two extremely privileged minority groups which were smaller States and slave states got a disproportionate amount of power and the majority of Americans were written out of that document and the interesting thing to me is that even as the country has democratized a lot so senators are no longer directly elected by state legislators right the people elect the people elect Senators uh the Electoral College people vote for the popular vote winner of their state and the electorates follow that those kind of things have democratized but the undemocratic features have gotten worse and that these built-in biases towards more conservative States wider States smaller States those have gotten more dramatic in terms of the Constitution and we still have not really democratized the in these institutions nearly as much as we think we have I mean just to give you just a quick statistic I mean it's estimated that George Washington's first election only 6% of the people who we would say would be eligible to vote only 6% of the people actually were eligible to cast a vote for um for president again if unless you were a property white male uh you didn't have the right to vote in fact the first group of people to fight for the right to vote were white men who didn't own property so they're the first group and uh you look at some of the Founding Fathers as they're talking about all this stuff and they're saying well you know should we give white men who don't have property the right to vote and John Adam says well you know if you do that other groups are going to GNA seek the right to vote and he says women children I mean can you imagine that you know oh my God women you know well Eric you are talking a little bit about your book here and so as long as we are talking books you traced how that all unfolded over the years and how each particular group ended up fighting for this how would you um that that came out in 19 in 2022 what has anything changed since then and are there parts of the Constitution that if you could do it you would reform like yesterday it's like give me 24 hours of power okay just 20 just 24 hours you know she just be a dictator for one day I just wanted absolute power not a dictator same thing um you know I I think the Electoral College I think would probably be where I I'd start you know um that is it's so counterintuitive that uh it has such negative impacts at the at the highest office in the land so I think that's probably where you know where where I would go but I think I'd also put something in there that I think you know the C post Civil War Amendments have been looked at examined by um the post Civil War Supreme Court in too narrow a way and I would make clear that the right to vote is of constitutional Dem mention you know that I think is something that you can read U from the 15th Amendment but has not never actually been uh it's never been viewed that way no because we don't have a fundamental guarantee of voting rights spelled out in the Constitution that was one thing they actually debated was what what should there be a fundamental guarantee of voting rights and they didn't want it because they didn't want everybody to vote and one of the interesting things that I did when I went back and looked at the book is I you know I actually for the first time read all the debates over the Constitution and the interesting thing is there was a lot of debate about this there were people like James Wilson who was a a close friend of George Washington who argued that that the President should be directly elected and there was a robust debate about it he lost that debate but it was debated same thing with the US Senate the fascinating thing is that James Madison who is more than anyone the architect of the Constitution he hated the idea that each state would get the same number of Senators he wanted the Senate to be an elite body sort of more like the British House of Lords but he wanted the Senate to operate in a majority rule basis and he worried that if each state got the same number of Senators it would allow what he called the most trifling minority ever to control the body well back in 1790 the country's largest state which was Virginia had 12 times as many people as the country's smallest state Delaware today the country's largest state California has 68 times the population of the country's smallest state Wyoming so the fears of James Madison have gotten dramatically worse in terms of what the Senate has become and I I think it it just goes to show you the Perils of talking about quote unquote originalism which is analyzing the Constitution as it was supposedly intended because if you're going to analyze the Constitution as it was intended you also have to acknowledge that the framers of the Constitutions themselves were very ambivalent and some of them quite unhappy with the institutions they were creating but they had to do it because it was either the small states or the slave states or these other factions that basically said if you don't sign off on our demands we're going to leave the union and so that's why I think we have to look at the constitution in a in a in a more nuanced kind of way and say yes it's a it's a remarkable document of our time but it's also a product of factionalism and all these other things and and realize that like we could probably do better if we revised this thing and made it also easier to revise but you know one thing I think is interesting is that although there might they argued about you know who should be the pool that in is involved in making these determinations there was a a consensus among the founding fathers that majority rule the majority should rule they were concerned about what happened in the Articles of Confederation and they didn't want to have minorities dictating um and coming up with a dysfunction that um you know minority rule could potentially um or minority Min minority control could potentially impose on the new government that was being formed so again you see lots of things in the in the founding um in interactions and conversations about do we don't want to have you know Empower minorities but the pool of people from which we will say we will draw these majorities um was was quite restricted well then let's fast forward to right after the Civil War during Reconstruction Ari and how did that lead to a backlash really in multi-racial democracy and are there any lessons we can learn from that time during this Grim period funnily enough I just published a piece in the Washington post about this today so it's a good good time to go to go read it and I mean I I I think you would agree with me I think Reconstruction is one of the most fascinating parts of American History because it's this incredibly brief incredibly radical experiment with multi-racial democracy the America becomes a multi-racial democracy for the first time where formerly enslaved people join the government uh and they join with more moderate whites to to rule the Southern States and it's it's incredible that the US just democratizes so dramatically in such a short period of time now obviously a lot of people are excluded from that women are excluded for example but still the idea that it basically goes from being a white government to a multi-racial government uh essentially right after the Civil War I mean in some cases overnight um is really kind of amazing but the backlash to it is so instructive because uh basically we have majority rule for the first time in places like Mississippi uh where they have black majorities about that Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi's suddenly starts electing black Senators black Governors the my Washington Post piece is about a man named John Roy Lynch who was a formerly enslaved person from Louisiana who at 22 joined the Louisiana legislature in 1870 and at 24 became the first black Speaker of the House of any state just an in remarkable life story but what happens is there's this vicious backlash there's violence to to basically keep African-Americans from the polls there's fraud to nullify their votes that's the part of the story we know there's also another component which is after reconstruction ends white historians rewrite the period to justify the establishment of Jim Crow in the piece and in the book I call this gerrymandering of history and I basically say that the efforts to ban books to censor black history to say that slavery wasn't even a cause of the Civil War to rewrite the history of January 6th everything we're seeing today has its roots in the racist backlash to construction and the idea that multi-racial government is somehow and multiracial democracy is fundamentally illegitimate and that's why I think Reconstruction is such an important period to study yeah I think that's exactly right I mean you know the fear of this multi-racial democracy was so great um that it had to be squashed as soon as it was possible and then descriptions of it or historical accounts of it had to be done in such a way that you made people think that reconstruction was a failure I remember you know growing up in New York City going to Public Schools great schools and I remember leaving you know high school and thinking well reconstruction was kind of a failure I get to Columbia College Columbia um and find that in fact Eric foner is one of my professors and he's one of the first people who says you know what reconstruction actually was a success and would have been a success but for the fact that it was curtailed that people were were supporters of reconstruction um where you know violence was used was used against them um and you look at as in the article that you talked about today I think it's really interesting to see that it was a Columbia Professor among others a guy named Dunning yeah who actually was one of the first one of the first people to start to describe um reconstruction in that negative way which held sway in this country for an extended number of years uh you know woodro Wilson you know having Birth of a Nation um you know first shown at at the White House there were a whole variety of things this notion of the lost cause all these things about uh about reconstruction um and that multi-racial democracy is something that scared those folks who were in Authority very similar to what I think we saw in reaction to the election of the first black president I think that's what we're seeing as well now could you describe a little bit right now what the struggle for voting rights looks like like on the ground because I know you work on that every day yeah I think it's uh it's an ongoing battle you know um this fight for democracy this fight for the right to vote is something that has been with us almost since we have were a nation and and continues now and it es and flows um you know the arc has generally been you know pretty good with some some deviations from that Arc of progress and I think that we're in one of those deviation um periods now Supreme Court has ruled as as Ari was saying and as he mentions in the book you know against the notion of um being able to bring partisan gerrymandering cases in federal courts uh the demolition of a really critical part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 um has made it more difficult to be successful in trying to keep that Arc going in the right way but we've also had substantial numbers of successes um bringing cases in state courts um using um ballot initiatives in in certain places where you can do that um and when you let the people when you let the people decide a whole variety of things they do a lot better than their elected um Representatives frequently do uh and so we at the ndrc we have again we tried to support candidates who will stand for fairness and for the expansion of the right to vote um brought lawsuits where that was the case and then also tried to raise people's Consciousness about um this notion of how important our democracy is and how we should not take it for granted you know we got to learn from history um you know in Europe in the 20th century you see fascism communism rise not because they're strong but because the defense of democracy is weak and that's a lesson that I think we should um we should never never ever forget yeah we can would there be a round of applause for that one so so Ari the epigraph of your on your book is by Bob lafalot who is the great Progressive in Wisconsin and then of course we've also seen Wisconsin as the home for some pretty bad things and I would like you to talk a little bit about how Wisconsin became the gop's laboratory really for oligarchy yeah so one of the things I I try to do in the book is basically say that there's this push and pull over democracy and Democratic rights from the beginning and it's it's a push and pull because as you were saying Eric at times uh the forces of democracy are winning and at times the forces of democracy are losing but it's a theme that runs throughout America history that the the US is both a laboratory for democracy and it's also a laboratory for oligarchy and we are both of those things we are not one of those things we are both of those things and that dualism defines us and Wisconsin is a very good example of that Wisconsin for many years was a progressive laboratory it was a state that gave rise to Social Security to unemployment benefits to collective bargaining rights for unions but Republicans have since 2011 waged a counterrevolution against democracy there and ba the story I try to tell in the book is that the 2010 election was a Tipping Point and it was a Tipping Point in reaction to another Tipping Point which is the 2008 election and the election of the first black president which of course you know very well and basically what Republicans saw was they saw the demographics of the country changing and when Obama got power they said what can we do to counteract this and so the the first way they tried to counteract it was by taking power at the state level after the 2010 election when a lot of Democrats kind of took their eye off the ball of State racis and so Republicans get control of all of these key swing States like Wisconsin North Carolina Pennsylvania Ohio Michigan etc etc and they do all of these undemocratic things but Wisconsin is kind of the epicenter of this because Wisconsin is the progressive laboratory so if you can take away collective bargaining rights there if you can take away voting rights there if you can gerrymander there they felt like that would be their model they would export all across the country and so I think it's pivotal in understanding that first off the Republican Party radicalized against democ before Donald Trump Scott Walker did all of these things in Wisconsin before Donald Trump and it was the fact that the Republican Party decided to become an anti-democracy pro- authoritarian party before Donald Trump that allowed Donald Trump to become so popular within the Republican party because if the Republican Party hadn't radicalized against democracy already there wouldn't have been an appetite for someone like Trump and it also was critically important because it also made Democrats and progressives realize we can't just fight these battles at the national level I'm really setting you up for this point uh but we have to fight them at the state level as well because States can be Laboratories for democracy but they also can be Laboratories of autocracy and I think a lot of the struggle over the last 15 years has been how do we democratize the states if the Federal Constitution is difficult to change which it is then where do we fight back and you realize that in the states it's actually quite easier to fight back and so the push and pull for democracy that I describ in the book is very much happening on the ground now in places like Wisconsin and Michigan so as Ari says but at the state level I mean and that's one of the things that I think progressives Democrats I think you said it quite well took our Eye Off the Ball I mean in 20 you know 2010 you remember that was the election that Barack said the President Obama said was you know the uh the shacking the shacking the Republicans Ed that power that they got in 2010 in the 2011 redistricting cycle to put in place the gerrymanders that you know the likes of which we' not seen you know before Princeton University did a study and said it was the most it was the worst gerrymandering of the past half century um but it also means that we can go state by state it it takes time um and you know progressives Democrats you know we tend to get all excited every four years you know who's running for president and the reality is we got to play the long game and that elections matter Whenever there is an election and winning at the state level at the local level at the county level this matters I mean on a day-to-day basis people's lives are more impacted by who serves in state legislatures than who serves in the United States House of Representatives or who serves in in the Senate and we see that now with regard to all these these you this OD anti-choice laws that are being passed by these um these state legislators even though they're not supported by the people in those States but in Jerry mandri States you can do things that are inconsistent with the desires of the uh of the majority yeah but Eric could you really describe so what are you I mean not you you but your organization doing in a place like Wisconsin what is the granular picture of how to turn things around well I mean we look at every state and come up with a plan for that state and for us looking at Wisconsin our determination was the Jerry Mander is so effective here we're not going to be able to elect people to the state legislature and reverse what the Republicans have done that's the beauty of a geremander it you know if you do it well and believe me they know how to do it well um you can't do anything with it at the ballot so we said all right we've got to elect who can we you know who can have an impact Statewide well the governor can he has the ability to veto the maps that come out and also State Supreme Courts they elect the Supreme Court justices in Wisconsin all right well if we have a Progressive Majority there then perhaps we have a shot at saying that the things that the Republicans have done are inconsistent with the Wisconsin state constitution and so just a very tangible thing we supported like anything um Janet pritz who is the newest Justice to the uh Wisconsin Supreme Court tips the court now to a 4-3 um Progressive Majority and as a result we've already seen positive things coming from that Supreme Court saying that with regard to the state legisl state legislature that those gerrymanders are inconsistent with the Constitution and Wisconsin voters for the first time in a decade will be voting on Fair Maps um you know this year when it comes to the legis State Legislature there's a another suit that I suspect will be filed I just suspect um with regard to the Congressional Delegation U you know as well so AR you are a reporter and you could talk a little bit about your perspective about how Progressive forces are organizing in States like like Wisconsin but also Michigan and I imagine there may be some others too yeah and and like Eric said I think this is a really key strategy for uh protecting democracy and something that's really worked in recent years because a decade ago places like Michigan and Wisconsin seemed hopelessly rigged I mean the idea that you could unrig the system seemed impossible um but it's managed to be unrigged in Wisconsin there's going to be fair elections there for the first time in 2024 at the state level in a decade and a half Michigan's a fascinating Place Michigan was maybe the most rigged government of any state in the country home to the Flint Water Crisis really kind of like a a case study in the effects of minority rule not just on politics but on people's lives in general and people organizers activists took power into their own hands they realized that they could amend the state constitution in Michigan with a simple majority vote something that wasn't allowed in the US Constitution and so in 2018 they passed ballot initiatives ending partisan gerrymandering and putting in place policies like automatic and election day registration a few years later they passed policies that combed election subversion allowed for dropboxes in 2022 they enshrined abortion rights as a fundamental right in the State Constitution and in 2022 for the first time uh the state legislature flipped uh for the first time in the 40 years they had a situation where finally the results follow the popular vote in that state Michigan had the highest turnout in 2022 in State history they had the highest turnout of young voters in the country so it's it's just a remarkable blueprint of how a state can shift from U minority rule to majority Rule and it shows that there is a Playbook here that at the time that people feel hopeless over the federal government that there are different ways to change state governments and basically you know what what I'm advocating for people is obviously you know the most important thing we have we can do right now is protect the rights and freedoms we have uh but also look for other models that are working and I think at the state level there's a lot of interesting models that are working while there still needs to be a longer term movement for structural change at the federal level because I I think basically we can't just accept the fact that we elect Democrats in such an unem elect presidents in such an undemocratic way four years ago or just accept that we're going to have a fundamentally illegitimate Supreme Court with no consequences that's going to take away all of our rights if people don't do something about these longer term structural issues then the Democracy as we know it is going to start slipping away and I would argue we're already on that path absent the structural change that we need so Eric is it possible to sort of expand those changes in the state level to a national level yeah I think it's possible um you know we had Democratic control of the house the Senate and the presidency and a a bill was before got passed ncy Peli got it passed in the house um got filibustered you know in the Senate that would have done a lot of stuff would have outlawed um partisan Jerry mandering with regard to the election of uh you know of congressmen and a whole range of other things that wouldn't would have done done a really great job but we didn't use the power that we had or we were not allowed to use the power that we had we had a couple of um uh Democratic senators who um would not go for a carveout um of the filibuster uh for looking at democracy measures however it might be phrased um Senators mansion and and Cinema um if we maintain control of the presidency win back the house um and even just have a 5050 Senate you can change the filibuster Rule and you know carve out something for democracy provisions and have what was called the John Lewis Voting Rights Act um pass and that would have a fundamental change at the federal level coupled with the changes that have that are occurring uh and I think will continue to occur at the state level and put this nation in a fundamentally um different place but it means that structural changes have to be um have to be brought about and the cheap one there is doing something about the uh the filibuster so R you said this was going to be a little bit of a roller Co poster and now we're going to go on the way down here what what do you think feeling so good on the way up right but what do you think have we got the good news yeah okay sorry we'll get there but what do you think um some of the scary things are in store what um what are your major concerns about the anti-democratic forces in the 2024 election so we we only have five minutes this is a trigger warning uh so I mean my my biggest fear is that we have this antd Democratic political system and that we have a deeply undemocratic movement within the Republican party on top of it and I think that's very volatile that we basically have a political system that is already rigged and then a movement that is determined to rig it even further and my biggest concern is that Minority rule becomes impossible or very difficult to reverse and that we have an authoritarian takeover of the federal government and I think a lot of people are downplaying the risk of this and again they're thinking that because this failed in 2020 it won't succeed in 2024 but I will argue that things like the election denier movement are much better organized much better funded than they were the entire conservative movement is bought into this we have project 2025 all of the biggest parts of the conservative movement Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society the Heritage Foundation all of these groups have a blueprint for authoritarianism whereas they didn't have that in the same way uh in 2016 Trump has basically taken over the Republican party in Congress and purged everyone who's a Critic of him the justices on the Supreme Court are not going to save us I want everyone to realize that so concretely and I think Democrats have made an absolute mistake in not prioritizing reform of the Supreme Court for two reasons number one the Supreme Court super majority is fundamentally illegitimate in terms of how it was constructed number two from a pure policy level these justices don't feel like there's any accountability for their action so back in the 1930s when the Supreme Court Justices Were Striking down all of FDR's New Deal he threatened to change the court he wasn't successful but the court started moderating and I think that if somehow the court felt like there would be some consequences to its actions I think we would have seen a changing Behavior so I'm basically worried that we're on the verge potentially in 2024 of an authoritarian takeover of all three branches of government and I think that's what's so important about this election look past the candidates this is not Biden versus Trump this is is do we have a government that represents multi-racial democracy or do we have an authoritarian government that represents white supremacy that is the choice facing the nation and it should be much deeper than who the candidates for president are Eric I'm goingon to ask you another question but first um it's time for general questions and if people could line up behind that microphone right there and while you do I will have another question for one of our esteemed guest for our other esteemed guests so given that Jeremiah from Ari how do we frame the stakes so that they resonate so that people can understand the urgency well you know it's interesting I think that people do understand and that's actually one of the reasons I brought my phone up here because I know I wasn't going to be able to remember these statistics um a recent poll said all right that protecting democracy protecting democracy is a a big issue for the voters right so it's interesting they ask voters to identify what's the most important issue facing facing the country right now and on that they said inflation cost of living registered at 23% followed by immigration and then at the border 22% so that that's the numbers with regard to what's the most important issues facing the nation then you ask people what's going to actually motivate you to help make you make decide how you're going to vote um what will help you determine your own vote and what they came up with what finished number one protecting democracy or constitutional rights was on top at 28% followed by immigration at the border 20% and abortion at 19% so I think that we underestimate what the American people see and how they React to what it is that they are seeing this stuff is not just Washington Elites who are seeing the perversion of our system I think the American people are understanding what's going on and you know God bless them the Republicans are are helping in that regard the things that they do I mean you think about this now and what is it 1846 um abortion law in Arizona now and you know that looks like they'll probably overturn it or modify it in some ways but at least initially Republicans there were trying to come up with ways in which they could keep an 1846 law with regard to abortion in place and so they are giving tangible examples of what it is they will do with the retention of power the counter majoritarian things that they will do um and so that I think makes it easier for us to make the case raise people's Consciousness I mean when I started off in 2017 with the ndrc and started talking about Jerry mandering you could see people's eyes glaze over and they start looking at their watches and thinking how long is this meeting going to go on and now people tend to get it people tend to understand that Jerry mandering has a negative impact on the quality of their lives the ability of the American people to decide the direction of uh of the nation so I think that poll is pretty interesting you know democracy protection is the number one thing that determines how people say they're going to vote in 2024 exactly I think that was really well said and I think it's important that the drive for uh minority rule has also led to a movement to protect M majority rule and that people were saying in 2022 when Joe Biden was giving all these speeches about democracy no one cares right no one cares but then in all of these states when there were races that were decided on these issues the people that were for democracy won the election and and to me we have to think of these issues as connected so it's not abortion and democracy abortion rights is a democracy issue it's because our democracy got so rigged and our institutions got so rigged that our fundamental rights were taken away and that's why I want people to understand that if you understand that democracy is the key to having the rights and freom that we all want then democracy starts to resonate so take it from an abstract issue to a concrete issue and I think that's that's what makes it motivating to people yeah to make give it just make it really tangible I mean again you heard me mention her name before Janet pritz who ran for Wisconsin Supreme Court Wisconsin's a 50-50 State and elections are decided there by two 3,000 votes almost all the time um she won her Race by 11 points she campaigned on two things basically democracy and abortion those are that and if she's was Supreme Court Justice said you know I'm not going to decide can't tell you how I'm going to decide a particular case but I can say I think these maps are not good ones and that the right to choose is something that is worthy of protection uh and without crossing any lines um she won and by 11 11 points and that's almost unheard of so as I said abortion and protection of democracy thank you so now let's turn it to you could um yes speak into the microphone please and thank you um uh my name is Caroline Poppin and my uh qualification is that I am very very old and I remember when things were different I was born in the 1940s um when both sides with the Republicans and the Democrats I from Massachusetts we had both um and compromise was expected um and we just saw we now have a congress where a a republican who even considers compromise with Democrats is about to lose his his uh speakership um but my question is young people you haven't mentioned them that was an important part of Barack Obama's um Coalition and I read that we are losing them um and they don't they don't remember anything um and of course the history is all being changed so what are you doing to explain to them or reach out to them what is their problem why they don't they see what the because they're the ones who are going to determine this election thank you that's a great question well again go I keep going back to prot to saywitz um that again that that focus on democracy and the freedom to choose resonated with young people and she got a huge turnout of young people in Wisconsin right and I think we need to go to school on that race uh and talk about the issues that you know I was talking about democracy um the right to choose um you know there's young people need to understand they're the now the largest voting B in this country correct and yet they have less power than the Baby Boomers do because we vote in a greater in a greater proportion um than they do and so you've identified you know a problem that gives me um great concern I think the formula is there we saw it in that Wisconsin state supreme court race and others um but I'm worried about for a variety of reasons where young people are right now my hope is that you know this is April and there'll be in a different place when we start voting in late October you know early November um but that's something that we have to we have to focus on yeah I mean I'm not that young anymore I'm 41 so I think I I'm I'm old to a lot of the people on college campuses but but I I will say my first election my first election was 2000 and I I am having deja vu in terms of bush V Gore uh and I'm hearing a lot of things now that I heard back then that there's no differences between the parties and that they're fundamentally the same and that voting doesn't matter but the same people that are saying that are very angry that the Supreme Court took away the right to abortion well how did that happen because people didn't vote in 2000 or voted third party and we got Samuel Le and John Roberts on the Supreme Court so people have to understand there's sometimes if it's a lesser of two evils one party is a lot more evil than the other and sometimes it's not about the candidates it's about the movements and the people they represent and we're not going to relitigate the 2000 election but I guarantee you Al Gore would not have appointed John Roberts and Samuel Leo to the Supreme Court and Hillary Clinton would not have put Neil Gorsuch Amy Cony Barrett and Brett Kavanagh on the Supreme Court okay so those were two elections in which people argued there was no differences between the parties and that led to the current Supreme Court that we have today so I am trying to give people a little bit of a history lesson here I don't have to go all the way back to 1787 I just have to go back to 2000 and remind them of the stakes here but I think the other thing and just briefly is that Democrats have got to be proud of the fact that we're Democrats you know and not halfstep it now I I don't need to triangulate or anything like that here's the deal I'm a Democrat I stand for these things I got a proud tradition as a Democrat and the Democratic policies the Democratic candidates are going to be better for you average voter and then make the case that way don't be afraid to you know stand by the things that define us and to push those things um out there and I I think too often we we we look at polls and try to figure out what's the you know what's the place where we'll forget that stuff what is it you believe in push that and Trust the American people to do the uh the appropriate thing keeping with the theme of getting older um my question has to do with that um leadership vacuum on both sides um you got two old dudes yeah in all respect at least on one side but um in every conversation I have about politics with this recent race what comes up last is why can't we find somebody other than those two and if those two weren't selected who would be represented and then if you're too far right the public always reelect to go back to to the left and vice versa have we lost that because I grew up with Reagan and tip O'Neal and you appreciated how they toggled back and forth and they didn't viscer one another and so now we're coming up in an age where television is a 24hour cycle and you're watching Trump on trial and there is no value it seems okay so um I hear everything AR is saying following uh Eric for years um but the Next Generation that's going to replace the current um is it going to be far right all all the time or far left all the time and there's not going to be any moderates left at all so you see I would reject the notion that the Democratic party is farle you know I I think that the Democratic party is uh maybe Center left but I think well within the mainstream now there are extremes when both in both parties I would say that the Republican party is is in a fundamentally different place they're not center right now I mean you know some of the I mean this is the party that had to struggle to give um arms to Ukraine I me you think about that this the Republican party you know Ronald Reagan he's rolling he's spinning in his grave um you know as a result of that and what was said before about you know that notion of cooperation means on the Republican side that that means you potentially lose your speakership as a function of Jerry mandering I mean Jerry mandering again you're in a safe seat you're not worried about a general election you're worried about a primary Challenge and so what you do in the Republican party is you go further and further to the right to try to ensure that you don't get get challenged from the right and that means if you are Coop seen as cooperating that's a sign of weakness and not Purity and that invites a primary Challenger which means that no cooperation no progress government doesn't work people get cynical because government doesn't work and it has a really negative impact on the system uh as a whole but I I really fundamentally reject the notion that the Democratic party is far left yeah I think it's it's definitely true that the the Republic I mean it's empirically true the Republican party is more far right than the Democratic party is far left and you know as a member of the media one of my frustrations with the media is the media is kind of playing the false equivalency game once again and they're making it seem like the parties are the same the like I said earlier the Republican party is on a path to authoritarianism they are becoming a fundamentally authoritarian party you have one party that is committed to democratic Norms however flaw it might be that party is committing to democratic norms and another party is not and I think that that should be the story of you election not Biden vers Trump not Democrats vers Republicans we have one party that's committed to democracy and one party that is not okay thank you for uh for everything you've said I think you can tell from the Applause you've received in the room that uh at least the vast majority of people in the room agree that they're very concerned with the Democracy of our country and the fact that um the uh far right of the Republican party has been much more successful as you said in the last 15 years at taking control of state legislatures and changing the voting rights of the people within those States my question therefore is about asking you to actually get concrete about telling us what we can do most of us here live in DC or Maryland state DC doesn't count perhaps in that way but as we attempt to impact state legislatures in those states that may determine the next election whether there is fairness or hope for us could you give us Insight in some of the groups other than the dlcc that has not done a good job in state legislatures could you give us your thoughts on groups like States project or protect democracy groups that have presented either Progressive or Centrist candidates successfully in the last two elections to defeat um anti-democracy right-wing candidates in purple districts in those purple key8 states that might determine could you tell us your recommendations for what we can do unless we're going to drive to Pennsylvania perhaps the closest or drive to Georgia that's a great question so and we're gonna you guys have to keep it short because we have a couple of more this will be quick um this is a commercial um for the ndrc we have a a component one of our components is called all on the line all onthel line.org if you go there that's a place where we tell you how you can have an impact on the races in Michigan Ohio um without having to drive um you know we've got virtual stuff that we can do there's a whole range of things you can make calls there's a whole range of things that you can do from the DMV that has an impact in other parts of the country so check out all onthel line.org thank you it's a great yes yeah um you know I'm very concerned know with this election with u you know we're doing policy uh debates between the two sides and this is a very important issue but it's clear that there's a you know it's not just a normal you know if the Republican gets in there they're going to cut taxes Etc you know they're creating a very authoritarian mindset the Supreme Court's decisions recently and my concern is there isn't enough to me um the people who are sort of Independents or moderates people they need to understand how dangerous minority role is for them I think there's part of it where they think it's a good thing because it's more technocrats or maybe more know the more responsible Wall Street people will be in charge but that's not the case they're empowering very I'm not sure if you saw it today there was some article I'm so sorry to interrupt you we are so short of time could you just give us the question so we can get a couple more people here right the basic question is um how do you get that message out that it's not just the minorities who suffer you're going to suffer well that's why I think we have to emphasize the cost of authoritarianism and that authoritarianism leads to the takeaway of all the rights that people actually do care about hi uh I'm a political uh science graduate student who studies right-wing movements um and a lot of what you talk about is institutional capture at various levels um if that's the case and I believe it's a great threat are there methods outside of working with and within the captured institutions for pushing back on this institutional capture because it feels like it's just feeding in on itself here well I think that's why popular movements have been so successful because when it feels like those movements have been captured things like the Civil Rights Movement have been able to Rally public support to unri the rigged institution so I mean I think that's why there always has to be an inside outside strategy because if the institutions themselves are captured you need some way to create a popular movement to change those institutions and we've seen that we saw that with reconstruction we saw that with the Civil Rights Movement we saw that with the women rights movement and at times when it seems like change is impossible we've had popular movements to emerge that have changed the consciousness of the country and demanded more radical systemic change I mean we underestimate our power the power that we have citizens the power that we have I mean what Ari just said is really important to remember you know getting women the right to vote that wasn't easy and that was you know counter institutional things going on at the time ripping down a system of American apar tiddes with the civil rights movement that wasn't easy I'm sure there were moments you know nights Dr King John Lewis thought can we really pull this off and yet it happened because people were galvanized focused committed prepared to sacrifice in order to make those things occur and we can do it again we can do it again yeah I mean our hero I think both of our hero is John Lewis and when when he crossed the Edmond Pettis bridge on March 7th 1965 and stared at thousands of Alabama state troopers who were about to beat him to to death change seemed probably more impossible at that time than ever before in American history and eight days later because of what he did Lynden Johnson introduced the Voting Rights Act so we have to feel like we're not powerless that we can do something about these things that seem seemingly insurmountable and we're not asking you to go get your head beaten by Alabama state troopers we can go a lot less than that and still have an impact so we have I'm so sorry we have one more time for one more question and up many of us in this room including I think you Eric um have very limited voting rights uh for legislatively anyhow do you either of you see any possible path in the not too distant future for getting more voting rights for the District of Columbia I I think that's a critically important issue because listen changing the structure of the US Senate in particular is going to be very very hard but one thing that could at least soften the edges of it would be DC and Puerto Rico if it wanted to becoming new States I mean that would at least change the way the Senate operates right now dramatically and it's also just crazy that the C nation's capital has so many people disenfranchised and you can't look at the racial dimensions and realize that that's not part of it too yeah more people here than in Wyoming uh you know and so they got two senators and a and a congressman um and you know we have nothing and it doesn't require a change in the Constitution this just requires a vote by by by Congress and so this is something that I think those of us who live in the need to be fighting for again and again seems hard how's this going to possibly happen it doesn't happen unless we fight for it and commit ourselves um to it there is so much more to talk about and I just want to thank all of you so very very much for being here with us today and thank you Eric and Ari Ari will be signing books yes make sure

Channel: Politics and Prose

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Keywords: books, book, politics and prose, bookstore, author, author talk, author video, book talk, new books, book store, indie bookstore, independent bookstore, book tube, booktube, journalism, journalist, Washington DC, DC, bookworms, bookworm, book worm, book worms, book chat, @politicsprose, book discussion, author discussion, book video, book event, author event, book tour

Id: jGb9k4_uYhM

Length: 62min 22sec (3742 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 28 2024