And david daley, author of why your vote doesnt count and the upcoming book unrigged, how americans battle back of democracy. Im a citizen of cherokee nation, a journalist and host of the podcast this land and im really, really excited to dig into this conversation in the next hour. I think its more important now than ever. I think in this moment of a Global Pandemic we are seeing the systemic failures of our government right now. You know, sort of all of the cracks that were existing are more apparent than ever and i think a lot of us have our eyes on this upcoming election, if that election is going to be a solution or make the problem worse. So, steve, i ill direct the first question to you. A lot of democrats have seen a singular focus on beating donald trump in november. Theres a lot of debate whether or not those efforts should be voted on or should be focused on converting trump voters, working class white voters over to the democratic side or increasing turnout or people of color voting democrat. What is the strategy . All of the empirempirecal da people of color with minority progressive whites. 37 to 40 of white voters. And so, that has been thats a majority of people in the country, its a majority of eligible voters for not only who voted in obamas election, but 2015 what you forget is Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 3 million votes. Thats the winning coalition, all the notion around we have to win back the working class voters. And thats the data and those largely with us, who are the more progressive sector of the population. And then, i think the overarching fact that people dont appreciate that. Democrats have not won the white vote overall since 1964, prior to Lyndon Johnson signing the Voting Rights act. Jimmy carter lost the white vote when he ran. White, southern governor with a drawl, right . So this notion that theres this huge like say win back the working class white voters. They have not been there for 40, 50 years. Exactly. And then you take, add to that the trend from the population, the Fastest Growing population are the people of color, africanamericans latinos, asians and then white. If you look at whats shrinking, the logical thing to double down on and go to those who have historically been receptive to a democratic message. Logical, but and in a column you wrote for the nation about a year ago, which i think in coronavirus years, it feels like a decade ago now. You talked about that, how trump and his reelection bid is actually not the frontrunner statistically because and part of that is because of the shifting demographics. Yes, absolutely and again, thats also that was the foundation of actually why i wrote my book, brown is the new white i felt that people were not grasping the lessons of the Obama Coalition of actually how obama won. People dont realize that obama would have lost to reagan because the country was that much less diverse at the time. So that shows how all that plays itself out. Back to the thing about trump, the presumption is hes been so terrible and so much destruction and so much damage that he must be very popular, he must have a lot of support and he must be very hard to defeat. He has not and has never had majority support. He didnt win the election majority support. He lost by 3 million votes in the popular vote in the three states where he won the election, michigan, wisconsin, pennsylvania, he didnt win a majority in those states. What you had was peopsplinterin and going to other parties. And never been 50 and maybe the height and people would give him around the pandemic, but already have come back down. So he does not and never has majority support. It will feel like anybody that confident and cavalier must have support, he does not. I think its important that progressives carry themselves with a confidence that we in fact represent the majority of the people in the country and he does not. And many people support him, but thats not the majority of the people. Yeah, and i think thats one thing that i think, too a lot about a lot. The conversation how are we going to win over trump voters. If you look at his approval ratings, theyve been low. Theyve moved some, but havent moved that dramatically and i also think to myself a lot, if everything that trump has done has not already converted trump voters, what could democrats possibly do in 2020 that would change peoples minds . Yeah, now on our last in our podcast we had in the beginning of march we had ron brownstein, a columnist for cnn and the atlantic, and he coined one of the best, were engaged in the battle between the coalition, Obama Coalition, multiracial and multicultural and make America Great again crowd and taking it back. I think its very similar extension from the postcivil war period. So there arent many people up for grabs. Youre either in one of these two camps and i think thats what a lot of people dont understand about politics at this moment. Yeah, and we know that the president ial election is just one piece of sort of the big policy shifts that a lot of people are talking about, and another really important part of that piece is congress and they state houses and state united states. And so i want to bring in david daley to talk about this aspect because one important piece of that is not just whos voting and in what numbers, but how those votes are counted and actually equal representation and so you literally wrote the back on gerrymandering. So can you talk to us about how voter turnout is sort of one piece of the pie that we have to be thinking about in terms of winning elections . Rebecca, i signed onto steves analysis and i think he got to exactly right. And run rampant on a formulation of this as well. Coalitions, transformation versus coalition of restoration. And when two groups are relatively equally matched, where the lines are drawn between them in competitive states and who controls the drawing of those lines matters an awful lot, and my first book really tells the story of two elections. Its the story of 2008 in which you get the election of barack obama. You get a democratic super majority in the u. S. Senate and a renewed democratic majority in the house. If you look back at the News Coverage of that night. People at that you can about how the change in demographics of this nation was going to make the Republican Party a Minority Party for a generation to come. It didnt work out that way, did it . And a handful of really sophisticated republican strategists realized was that as important and historic an election as 2008 may have been, 2010 had the potential to be that much more consequential because it was a redistricting year, a census year and every congressional line in the country was going to be redrawn immediately after the 2010 election. And there was the ability to use redistricting as a path back to power if they could flip state legislatures in all of these key states and force democrats out of the room entirely when these new lines were being drawn. So they launched a plan, red redistricting majority. And they targeted inexpensive races in states like pennsylvania, ohio, michigan, North Carolina, wisconsin. States we keep talking about, states that are closely divided swing states, the power to draw the lines is the power to decide winners or losers for a decade to come and thats exactly what happened. By winning 107 key state legislative race ins 2010, republicans were able to control not only drawing almost all able to control not only a huge majority of congressional seats. The republicans were able to draw almost 61 by themselves over democrats in 2011 for congress and they were also able to draw the lines for all of the state legislators and it defined the state of play and it pushed policy further to the right in these states and leads to an attack on an assault on Voting Rights, and what you continue to see ises played out in wisconsin, march and april is a direct result of the state legislative elections in 2010 that republicans focused on and that democrats simply fell asleep on. They had a huge impact so in 2012 we reelect barack obama. Democrats still have the u. S. Senate and they get 1. 4 million more votes for congress for the house and yet, republicans hold onto the house, 234201. Its not even close in all of those states, in pennsylvania, in North Carolina, in wisconsin, in michigan, and ohio. Democrats get more votes for the state house, they get more votes for congress, but what you see are these delegations that are entirely lopsided towards the right. 135 in pennsylvania. 124 in ohio, 103 in North Carolina. Super majorities in state legislators that are won with fewer votes and it has pushed politics to the right and it gave them the ability then to gerrymandering is the first step and what you then see is voter i. D. Laws are purging of voters rolls, our precinct closures, making it more difficult to vote absentee in many of these states. Again and again and again, so, you have these two close sides, these two coalitions in a pitched battle, but one side is making most of the rules about how those elections are being fought and waged and theyre doing so with the support of the courts and theyre doing so in a way that continues to give themselves unfair and antidemocratic and ant antimajortarian advantages again and again and again. Steve, can you speak to that, too, because some of the hope and changing demographics that you talk about that is good news for the Democratic Party, it seems its been met equally with Voter Suppression, especially among communities of color. You know, during the democratic primary, we already saw extremely long lines in communities of color. You know, in milwaukee during a Global Pandemic, a city that normally has 180 polling locations, people were crammed into just five. And so how is Voter Suppression in communities of color going to impact the outcome of the 2020 election . And what can be done about it . Right, you mean like how the Wisconsin Supreme Court by teleconference to go out in public and defy that people should go out and vote in public, that kind of suppression. And may i ask david a question around what he was talking about. And a comment and a question. One thing that people dont understand about 2010 is how much there was a lack of voter turnout on the democratic side, and so theres a misperception what happened and all of these people voted for obama and changed their mind and voted republican because of health care. But thats actually not what the data shows. The democratic vote dropped dramatically. So, you know, its important for people to bear in mind, but i was interested in terms of your research, david. Who was behind and who had both the insight and if you know anything about the funding on the right, to say this is what were going after . Because clearly it was not a priority on the progressive side. How they came to focus on that as the thing to go after. Its a fascinating story and it really starts as simple as a republican strategist chris ja jahncowski, worked at and reads an article in the New York Times one day how the census a coming up and its going to the governors elected in 2010 are going to be in the legislatures. He worked with the attorney general association and it was almost like an eureka moment for him and he takes this back to the rslc, which is led by ed gillespie former chair of the party and they begin making a power point and they begin taking it around the country. They raise 30 million and its from the usual sources on the right, you know, its philip morris, its altria, its the chamber of commerce. Eighths lot of the usual funding sources. And writes an oped in the wall street journal in 2010 that lays the entire plan out. You see it now and you want to indict the entire leadership of Democratic Party for incompetence for not laying it out. Rove lays out the strategy and what the consequences are going to be and the individual states and neighborhoods theyre going to lay in. Were going to take control of state legislators and when the redistricts are redrawn the following year were going to control the process and do this less than 30 million. You cant lose a senate race now for that price. And this is the biggest heist in modern american politics. And youve got all of these different major donors on the progressive side. Yes. Spending far more money in terms of the various allocations that they make, so this is, you know, we create we work with millions on the president ial campaigns. If he had spent that money on Building Infrastructure for state legislature. Once again, were talking 2020, in another state legislature year. If bloomberg and stire if theyd put it down ballot in pennsylvania, in texas, in arizona, in some of these important states where once again, a handful could determine the balance of power for a decade to could many. It would have been so much more valuable than lighting it on fire and and in thinking about what is coming up with redistricting. One thing i wanted to ask you about, david, is about the u. S. Census, because now that were in this moment of coronavirus, we know that the u. S. Census is doing a lot less doortodoor work and i could just speak from for the communities, native americans living on reservations where the most likely, you know, they call us hard to count, but the most likely to not get counted and we also have one of the highest rates of where somebody comes and knocks on your door and talks to you. That has been paused because of Public Safety concerns, but what im hearing from tribal leaders and people advocating on the hill in washington, its panic that the undercount in 2020 is going to be historically high and we already know that communities of color are undercounted and White Communities are overcounted in the census. Can we talk about why the census count is so pontiac for republican representations and with the landscape of coronavirus to make sure that people get counted. The census is a hot mess. I mean, it is crucial. The census is the Building Block of first reapportionment which determines how many members of congress a state gets and once you determine how many members of congress and the beginning of the Electoral College votes your state gets. And then after apportionment is set, the census becomes the Building Block of legislature and seats. So an accurate count is absolutely key for all of those reasons, in addition to the trillions of dollars of funding that the census control. And steve, i want to get back to you, and thinking about Democratic Politics leading up to the 2020 election. You know, during the primary season we see people sort of discussing different votes and different voter profiles, and we see the white vote gets talked about in this way that is endlessly complex. So, there are rural voters, urban voters, suburban voters. White, male men without a college education. White women with a college education, but when voters of color are talked about, its always just one big group, where there is the black vote or the latino vote. I was wondering if you think this lack of nuance or complexity, international conversation, specifically among democrats, this advantag advantages disadvantages voters of color . Yes and no. I was obama got 96 of the black vote ap i always want to say, i really want to know who is the 4 of that whole what is at stake in this country, right. I did a piece for the New York Times called trump trying to make America White again and thats the fundamental dividing line within this country. The very first immigration in this country, 1790 i mmigration naturalization act, that was immigration policy from 1790 until the 1950s. And so, this whole question, are you white or not remains at the core of the american identity, the american politics and so, its so in some sense, and that update is a big part of why 90 of africanamericans vote democrat versus against the republicans. And so, to that extent, i would sometimes joke or sarcastically comment, theres a lot of talk in democrat operative spaces about modeling and you could have the models and targets, and look at what kind of, you know, beer they drink and cars they drive and figure out who is progressive, et cetera. And my joke, which isnt a joke at all. In the modeling, how do you find progressive white people because you will you have have to do is find black people and terms to be more progressive in terms of voting and whatnot. To a certain extent, there is a basis that africanamericans in particular, or people of color in general are treated differently and more negatively by the country as a whole and thats what we have this gargantuan racial wealth gap and different distinctions, who holds power and who doesnt hold power. At that level it is a clearcut thing, but it does not lend itself towards deeper and that also its important, which i think is a very important part for 2020, is because the country is so narrowly divided any kind of small incursions make an impact. One of the things that people dont grasp is that there was a Something Like 6 to 8 plus percent drop in the male in the democratic ticket. Women are there, 93 plus . There were some men went over to trump, and wouldnt argue against that being because he was running against a woman. And peeling off they dont need to win black voters, they need to whittle the margins down a little. So the sophistication on the right is deeper in that regard than it is to the democratic side. I think in terms of actually deeply understanding and authentically connecting to the different communities, that having that level of depth of knowledge and insight and so that to know that the majority of latinos in texas are mexican american, but the majority much latinos in florida are cuban and puerto rican with very different backgrounds, right. So, just your average white consultant isnt necessarily going to have that kind of insight and that does work against the effectiveness of the work that de