>> good evening. welcome to the midtown scholar bookstore. it is an honor to welcome you to this evening's author program. before we begin, i have a few housekeeping notes as always. one, while our speakers will keep their masks off, we ask you to keep your masks on. two, this event is being recorded by c-span, so a couple notes. we please ask you turn off your cell phone ringers, refrain from using profanity, and don't walk in front of the stage at any point. exits are to the left and right. three, most importantly, if you have not yet purchased the book, we encourage you to purchase the book through the midtown scholar bookstore. we have copies available at the cafe county if you're interested in getting your book signed at the end of the evening. at this time, i am happy to introduce our authors. our interviewer is a civil rights activist focused on issues of innovation, equity and justice. born and raised in baltimore, he holds honorary doctorates from the new school and the maryland institute college of art. as a leading voice in the black lives matter movement and a cofounder of campaign zero, he has worked to connect individuals with knowledge and tools and provide citizens and policymakers with commonsense policies that ensure equity. he has been praised by president obama for his work as a community organizer and has advised officials at all levels of government and continues to provide capacity to activists, organizers, and influencers to make an impact. our featured author is dan pfeiffer. a cohost of pod save america, one of barack obama's longest-serving advisors. he was director of communications from 2009 to 2013. he lives in the bay area of california. dan's new book that we are here for this evening is titled, battling the big lie, how thoughts, facebook, and the maga media are destroying america. this blurb, it's an enlightening, at times enraging, and always entertaining guide to the recent history of our politics and media, drawing on dan pfeiffer's unparalleled experience. read this book if you want to understand what is happening in american politics, why it is happening, and what you can do about it. we're honored to welcome you back to harrisburg. without further ado, please join me and giving them a warm harrisburg welcome. [applause] >> it is good to be back. i know dan well, but we have not talked about the book because i have been waiting to talk about it in front of you all. let's start with the easiest question. why this book, why now? >> some of you may know, we were here together, sitting in these exact chairs in mid february 2020. and we are back. did anything happen? after that last book, i decided that would probably my last book. i was very proud of it, ready to do some other things. then after the election happened, i was really wrestling with the question of how it was that in an election that was close but not much closer than trump's victory in 2016, and certainly less close than george w. bush's election, that we could live in a world where 70% of republicans could believe, against all evidence, that the election was stolen. some of them could believe it so fervently that they would storm the capitol with weapons to try to stop the certification of the election. so i thought we were at this tipping point of the power of disinformation and right wing media and wanted to better understand it myself and explain it to democrats, because i think this is the driving force of american politics right now. >> i have a lot of questions. we will start at the beginning. this is a push. you say in the beginning, they have fallen for the big lie, they all believe without a doubt the election was stolen. i question the language of fallen for the big lie. some people chose it, that they willingly chose this line, they did it for reasons of why to premises and accused of other things. but they were not duped, but they chose it. what would you say to that? >> within any group, there are people who use motivated reasoning to believe what makes sense to them, to fit events into their worldview. in their world, donald trump could not possibly lose. but it is much bigger than those people. 70% of republicans believe that the election was illegitimate in some way, shape, or form. some people are choosing to believe it and some people are falling for it, and some people are throwing up their arms because they see so much noise that they don't know what to believe. that is probably the most alarming part of that last group. >> there was a lot that surprised me, and one of them is use a large portions of the country good -- never heard any negative information about trump. is that true? >> if you live within the right wing ecosystem -- >> i feel like we hear about him all the time. [laughter] >> you hear it, it is done in the perspective of, like, the deep state, the fake new york times lying about him. what the right does is create a dramatically sealed information bubble for a large swath of their electorate. where the information they get is filtered to them in a way that is a entirely positive to trump. or if there is a larger conversation about that stuff about trump, it is explaining why that is. >> there is a whole section where you talk about the importance of the blog and the o ld style of media. do you still think blogs matter in the same way? >> no, certainly not. i tell a story in the book about in 2004 i was working for senator tom daschle in south dakota. this was a big deal senate race, because tom daschle was running for reelection. he was bush's enemy number one, his opponent was recruited by karl rove. no senate leader had lost in 50 years. in that election, a group of, out of nowhere, a group of conservative political blogs, immaculately named to cover the race, they came up and hammered daschle nonstop. they transitioned eventually into pushing conspiracy theories. we published this lock muster scoop, like, siren emojis, it was on the drudge report, that tom daschle had a secret deal with the native american population that if the native american population delivered enough votes, daschle would return the black hills to them. which is something that should happen. it is their land that was stolen. but far beyond the power of one senator to do, so it is clearly not true. at first i dismissed it, like, who is reading these idiotic blogs? no one who matters. but all of a sudden he's undecided voters are reading back to me what they are hearing in here. and what we learned leader on was that our opponent, the republican candidate, was paying these blogs to publish disinformation about daschle. and then it dawned on me, that was the first time i confronted disinformation as an explicit political strategy of the republicans and i filed it away is something i thought we would see many times later. maybe not to the extent we see it now, but the canary in the coal mine. >> in that vein, you make a big deal of highlighting this inference between misinformation and disinformation. what is that? >> these are the two terms that get interchanged all-time. misinformation is inaccurate information. it can be accidental, inadvertent. all of us on social media periodically become inadvertent transmitters of misinformation because we read a false story, or someone has taken an out of context comment or something that we tweeted out like, this is terrible, and we spread it, only to find later on that is not what really happened. disinformation is a specific strategy to spread false information to deceive people. and so those differences are important. disinformation is a specific byproduct -- it's a political strategy that we have to pay a lot of attention to and respond to. >> i obvious he paid attention, i knew russia influence the election. i didn't know it was called the internet research agency. but they were dealing in disinformation, not misinformation. >> correct. in 2016, we have all talked about the russian hacking. the one thing the russians did was they hacked into the dmc and clinton campaign emails and then released those emails to cause as much chaos as possible. >> that was confirmed it was the russians? >> yes. >> i was a victim of like, was it the russians? but i believe you. [laughter] >> it was the consensus of the intelligence community, both under obama and trump. although you could not really say that out loud in the trump years. and so, the other thing they did is they created -- they had a strategy to flood social media with false accounts to push disinformation. one of the ways they would do that is they would create false accounts pretending to be black activists who would then post things about why they were not supporting hillary clinton, or pushing people not to vote. and then these entities funded by the russians would run facebook ads promoting that content targeting black audiences. target people by interests, so people who would express interest in civil rights or martin luther king, or similar topics, push that to them. there was a very specific strategy to try to create division and reduce hillary clinton's support and turnout in the black community. >> one of the things he wrote was this idea that trump could not win if more black people voted. >> that is true. in 2016 that was absolutely true. if you had black turnout at the levels at which barack obama had it, the math would be such that hillary clinton would have won wisconsin, for s --pennsylvania and michigan. >> you wrote about the moment where trump was like, sunlight is going to enter your body and if it does, covid is going to disappear. he also said to drink bleach. you talked about the bleach moment is something we all laughed at, but you highlight that as a positive moment for trump. why? >> trump telling people to inject bleach, or get sunlight inside of their body, and we didn't ask any questions about what his plans were as to how you do that -- it was part of a larger strategy to convince people that the pandemic was not as scary as it was. was to get people to return to normal faster. he believed, with very good reason, that his reelection chances were dependent upon the economy bouncing back. it's a ridiculous, absurd thing to say, but people listened. dangerously so. people drank disinfectant. people tried to injest disinfectant. and we have to -- when we look at trump's pent-up response -- pandemic response, it's abhorr ent on every level and seems ridiculous. but he did very effectively and very dangerously to a large swath of the country spread a lot of distrust in what scientists were saying for a political purpose. i use the inject bleach one because a lot of times liberals laugh but republicans listen, and we have to understand why that is if we are going to be able to compete in an information environment where people can listen to something that ridiculous. >> to think of any politicians on the left who would get that message right? one of the things you talk about is we have to -- it cannot always be gloom and doom. you don't write about this in the book, but are there people you think you are getting that right on the left? >> in terms of a message that brings people in? yeah, i think aoc, certainly beer -- certainly bernie sanders in both of his campaigns. i talk in the book about,m like, we look at a trump rally, it is not a place i want to go, it does not seem fun to me. they don't seem to make a lot of sense. but obviously the people there are having a blast. and it is not just the people in the crowd that we see. obviously there are pretty alarming things they are chanting. then you see the footage when the reporters are doing their live shots before the event and it is a festival. it is like renaissance fair, there are people just up as things, they are selling all this swag and people dress up like donald trump. that is not my thing, but i think we need to think about politics as a way that is exciting. that was the core of obama, was people wanted to be there. so i think bernie sanders, aoc, i think stacey abrams in a different way brings people in in a very exciting way. i have not seen this firsthand but i have heard this from a lot of people on the east coast, john fetterman, people are pretty jazzed to be around john fetterman. [applause] >> love that. another thing you said i had not thought about in this way, you push back on republicans wanting smaller government. you talk about injecting antigovernment rhetoric in a strategy, but it is not about shrinking the government. what do you mean by that? >> republicans don't want -- it is not about the size of the government, it is about who the government is protecting. yeah, they want to shrink the epa, osha, all of that, but they want to grow ika, belieff, and it's their view that the government is a bulwark against an america that is changing graphically and culturally in a way that threatens the people who have held political power in this country since the beginning, like christians, primarily meant. so -- men. so this -- that's an important thing democrats have to understand. none of this is on the level. this is not a paul krugman argument about how you build a good economy. it is about political power, and who has it and who they are trying to stop from getting it. it is why the radicalization from the right has happened so aggressively since barack obama won the white house, because that is the embodiment of something they had feared for a very long time. it happened before they were ready for it. >> this book came out before the january 6 hearings and all that. you write at one point, the message is -- do you think the january 6 hearings happening now will stick in a way democrats can use, or do you think we botched the messaging? >> i don't think we have botched the messaging. i think democrats have done a great job. and it is not just a democrat, because it's a bipartisan hearing. but the first thing you have to do is get people to hear you. so the fact that the january 6 hearing got 20 million people to watch the first one, that is unbelievable. that is 6 million more people watching a congressional hearing than game six of the nba finals. that is wild and impressive. this is not in the book but i discovered this fact when doing research on the book, 20 million people is a lot, but it is 80 million fewer people than watch the oj car chase live in 1994. so it got people's attention. social engagement about january 6 has been off the roof for democrat, which is very impressive. also i think they have done something very smart and powerful. they have simplified the story. every hearing tells one aspect of the story. it is not overly complicated. the second piece is the voices they are showing people are not democrat members of congress. we recognize that adam schiff is not going to persuade a lot of people in the middle of the country. so it is liz cheney. the fact that liz cheney, dick cheney's daughter, basically she is darth vader's daughter and she is leading this, and that is amazing. she is a card-carrying member of the republican establishment. it is all the footage of these trump aids, bill barr, jason miller, he ivanka trump, card-carrying members of maga nation, basically saying trump knew the election was not stolen. so it's one of the most important aspects of modern communication strategy where you have a population who are skeptical of politicians generally. it is to use people from your in-group to tell you a message you do not want to hear is very impressive. so whether it is going to stick is up to awesome, what happens going forward -- is up to us, what happens going forward. but thus far, it has been an credible success. >> you sprinkle in some criticism of the new york times. what would you say about the times's lack of holding the administration accountable during those years? or people criticize the reporters who knew things and waited until their books came out. how do you think about the times 's role? >> the new york times does credible journalism. they do really -- does incredible journalism. huge stories they broke. they do great stuff. i picked the times and facebook because they are by far the most influential parts of their respective elements. facebook is by far the most important social media company, the new york times is by far the most influential traditional media organization in the country. and they are way more influential than they have probably ever been because there is so much less competition now. and i think the criticism of the new york times and every answer to the larger traditional media is really that this is not a both sides issue. democracy is at stake here. we cannot have a political conversation where we treat them across trying to run on kitchen table issues the same as republicans trying to steal elections. press is not an unbiased entity. they have biases, they have things they advocate for. we know the press cares passionately about how many questions joe biden answers every week. like, that seems trite and annoying compared to a lot of things, but they should advocate for as much access as possible. that is a good thing to do, and they will use their power to push for more. which is why you read articles about how few interviews joe biden does. the readers don't want to read that. they write it to put pressure on the white house. i think the press can and should be more aggressive advocates for democracy. and if that benefits my crass right now, so be it -- benefits democrats right now, so be it. the first people authoritarians take out when they take over, the press. so i want them to be more aggressive advocates for democracy because i do not think this is a partisan issue. >> the other thing i learned in reading was you talk about the sec's decision to end the fair use doctrine, and the rise of right-wing radio. do you think there's a way to put that back in the bottle? can we undo that? if trump wins, it would be like trying to unring a bill. do you think we can unring the bell or not? >> i thought a lot about how the right, for decades, has run this campaign against -- to try to disqualify the press. that campaign culminates with reagan's election, and reagan using the fcc to repeal the doctrine, which demanded equal time in media. once that happened, right wing radio basically grew exponentially because now there was no need for there to be someone opposite rush limbaugh, you could just have rush limbaugh. and i have wanted to find a way that you could put the fairness doctrine back in to fix these problems and every single person i talk to about this says the bell cannot be un-wrong. the media has been changed so much that a lot of what we deal with now -- like fox probably exists because and in the fair use doctrine shows the marketplace for right-wing media. cable news was not covered by the fairness doctrine. you can't unring the bell is the unfortunate part, so we have to figure out how to live in this environment. >> i didn't know that tucker carlsen started the "daily caller" until i read the book. > i think it was scarborough and tucker colson, back to back. the number one media. >> you don't really give up on facebook, though. you say the left needs to push out messages on facebook. but when you look at the top posts on facebook, they are overwhelmingly ben shapiro republican. you clearly think that is the algorithm, but do you think the left can counter that? you highlight the outrage and anger we can use. do you think that our base will share the messages or do you think the algorithm of facebook is so screwed that we have to fix it first? >> algorithms respond to the input. right now the amount of right wing information pumped into the algorithm is exponentially greater. there's more right wing engages, pushing out more content. we are not necessarily going to very quickly close that gap, but there is room. we have to find ways to have messages that are consistent with our political narrative that also go viral on facebook. that's very hard because the number one political posts on facebook this week, for the week ending today, was by barack obama. but you know what it was? his father's day message. which is charming and important, but i don't think it is moving the political debate in any way. we have gotten a little better at harnessing energy. this is one of the very rare weeks where progressive posts outperform conservative posts, all about abortion. in the wake of the supreme court case, people took to facebook and shared content and responded to content and lifted the content above. this can't happen once every nine months. it has to happen on a regular basis. one of the lessons for us, and after many years of basically never posting on facebook and only looking at pictures of my friends' kids, got back on, started a public page, started to work with a collective of progressives to get more people to post more content. it's like a drop in the bucket at this point but we need more people. seven in 10 american adults are on facebook. half of those people go to the site multiple times a day. 40% of them see it as a major source of news. the scale between only one quarter of americans claim to be on twitter and i think it is smaller than that. on twitter, 90% of the tweets are from 10% of the people. we spent all the time on twitter and think about it and worry about it. it is an important platform for a specific conversation among active people, but facebook is by far the most important. >> you talk about the decision not to fact-check politicians as a watershed moment. do you think they will fact-check politicians? >> put it in perspective. when mark zuckerberg went to give his big speech about how facebook was going to stand for free speech and the first amendment and they would not fact-check politicians. i hate to say this but first amendment and facebook have nothing to do with each other. it is not about your right to be on a specific social media platform. even then, do you really want a big tech company to be the one to decide what is true and what isn't? especially from politicians? the answer to that is maybe not. on the things they say, like donald trump will post something and should it come down, should it not if it violates terms of service? that is fair. what is different is what he's really talking about is fact checking ads. facebook ads are some of the most -- it's not like we lost 30 seconds on the eagles game and hope people watch it. it is that you are able to precisely, able to upload to facebook the file, you can match people, and specifically target people based on their interests. you can push information and use facebook's massive data and ai powered algorithm to decide the people most likely to believe that information. that is a very big deal. is that why donald trump almost won the election? no. but it's throwing your arms up and allowing the weaponization of disinformation. i think that's a bad thing. >> one thing that was interesting is the republican strategy, your argument is if we talk about the facts, they will lose. they have to distract us because when they talk about the fact, they will lose. the second is they have to stoke, you don't call it white supremacy i think, but bigotry. do you see a good counter to those things? we saw the latest rally, like thank you for protecting white life. >> and she won her primary last night. >> did she win? yikes. i thought it must be edited. but she really said that. do you see an effective counter to that? do we need to organize better? what do you do when it is no longer innuendo. >> i think a big part of this is trying to solve the megaphone problem for democrats. what is happening is the right has built this massive apparatus that is dominating the political conversation. it is pushing information out there to decide what we talk about. one thing we can do, it is the hard work, build up a progressive megaphone to get the message out so we are not getting drowned out. >> is msnbc not a megaphone? >> it is not a megaphone. it has great programming on it, but it is not an adjunct of the democratic party, nor should it be. but fox is an adjunct of the republican party. their interest is electing road republican politicians. it is still an organization that uses itself as a journalistic organization and we are just operating at such a smaller scale. tucker carlsen is getting two to three times the viewers of the largest nbc show and six times the largest cnn show. it is a massive rating advantage. and there viewers are more engaged and much more dominant online. the fox facebook presence and online presence is huge. they have an entire streaming platform. there's fox news station. people who pay to get additional tucker carlsen. no one is monitoring. but there is crazy stuff. there is very little of that on the left. we can't count on msnbc to do as much. there's good stuff there but it is not the same. >> start thinking about your questions because we will go to q and a soon. what does the megaphone look like? do we need to round up influencers or make our own tv station? obviously we have the crooked network. the. podcast. >> i think it's all the above. i don't think anyone is investing money in a linear cable network anytime soon. it is more content creators like the organization more perfect union, started by bernie sanders. . campaign managers. a lot of youtube videos, a lot of reporting that they have been aggressively pushing back. a lot of stuff in spanish language. some of my friends acquired stations in florida. it is all of the above. we just need more people saying more things to more people. there's no hierarchy, no one exact person. it will not be like a roger ailes of the left doing it. it's a huge investment in progressive media. it's not just subscribing to progressive publications. it is also just calling them on facebook, subscribe to the youtube channel. when you do that, the algorithms will show that to more people. our party leaders have to do a better job of this. donald trump did many things that were not very smart, but she was brilliant about nurturing a right-wing media ecosystem. if there was an article he thought was good for him in a right-wing conversation, he published it. i'm sorry, he tweeted it. he tweeted, they get traffic. they get more ad dollars. they can do more journalism. if he was promoting fox, doing interviews with right-wing media , when books were written he thought were favorable, he tweeted about those to drive them all on the new york times bestseller list. that means those books would get better placement and the authors would get more media bookings, the publishers would think there's a market for more pro-trump books. democratic politicians, with a handful of exceptions, do not do that. they continue to exist in a world where they will do the bulk of their media through traditional media. they should do all of the above, but it is in every democrats interest to nurture the progressive media ecosystem into using its allies. obama did some of this in the early days. bernie sanders was a master of this in the 2016 campaign. stacey abrams does this. obviously aoc is a media person herself. for the most part, there is still a reticence to embrace progressive media. if the leadership does not, we cannot get the public to do it either. >> what about abortion messaging? a lot of people i'm around think the party is not bold enough, laying low when we should be fighting back. this is the time to not dillydally. and there are other people who say, we can only do so much, aoc obviously believes otherwise, but what do you think? >> i always have sympathy for people who work in the white house and have limited tools to serve -- to do what people care about. there's nothing he can do with his pen that will undo what was done or protect millions of people who just lost rights. but i do think, and i thought aoc's twitter thread on this, really resonated with a lot of people in my life who are interested in politics but don't work in it. what she did was say to recognize the urgency of the situation and say we need a plan. even if they plan over the short, medium, and long-term, we need a plan. this has been a challenge off and on for the last two years, probably the trump years but particularly the last couple years. i think the urgency a lot of democratic voters feel about where the country is going, the dangers of the supreme court, this radical and extreme faction , and the language and tone of our leaders who even if they do believe it, i think many of them do and their actions suggest they do, but if someone in the house did about voting rights, i think we need to do a better job of speaking to that. even if you can't fix the problem, right now you have to speak to the way people feel and make them get it and offer them a long-term. i think people will, in the absence of a short-term problem, a plan to solve the problem. i thought aoc had good ideas on this. sometimes people want to feel your anger. i hope we hear more of that. >> actually when she was like, if you have a better plan, put out, but you can't not say anything. what do you want to ask -- process? >> if i'm ever running for office, it will be the school board and that will be the cap of it. [laughter] >> let's go to questions. >> this is -- let's give it up for dan. [laughter] raise your hand and we will pass around the mic. we will start in this general area and go that way. >> i want to say thank you for your talk, but i have a little issue with how you kind of accused president biden for not doing anything, because he really can't. this is the same man who said vladimir putin should step down. and so to me, as a woman, it is a copout. i would like your feelings on that. >> i don't disagree with what you said. the point i was trying to make is that there are limited tools. i do agree we need more people, the president included, to speak more powerfully, more often and more loudly about this. i was mainly referring to the options he had to actually do something. i 100% agree that we have a party from the president, congressional leaders, candidates, who do not aggressively talk about what has happened here, the fact that a supreme court that was put in place, five justices were appointed by president who got fewer votes, and was confirmed by a republican that represents a minority of americans, just took a constitutional right away from millions, and we don't talk about in the most aggressive terms possible, the voters will not come with us. i'm not going to tell anyone who thought that they were wrong. we have to have a specific point. you give us these votes, we will do x, over the course of time, we will reform, much like aoc said. >> so for those of us who have loved ones who are in that dangerous third category you mentioned at the beginning who go, this is too much and they throw their hands up, how do we get them to understand these alternative information ecosphere's are not equal, one is based in truth and reality and one is a profitable manufactured machine? how do you get them to vote accordingly especially if they say this is too much, i will just vote with the r? how do you bring them to your side? >> in the book, i write about a study that was done in 2019 where they show people news stories with one group. they had another group where they show news stories that were shared by someone they knew. what they came to find out was that people paid way more attention to stories that were shared by people they trusted than the news organization. whether it was the new york times or cnn or fox news, the fact that it was a person they thought shared their values or experiences in some way seemed to have agreed with the point or promote the point that they would believe it. so i think how we do it, each person you deal with will be different. trying to find sources they agree with or they trust to tell them to push back on things. one experiment i saw one political group do was very effective with republican leading voters who disapproved of trauma but still planned to vote for him anyway, was articles from the wall street journal, which because of rupert murdoch, were treated very differently in this group. in fact, for a lot of people in the new york times, it was proof the opposite was true when it came to trump. with the new york times says about donald trump, then it can't be true. so listening to them trying to figure out what sources they trust, conservative voices can be very powerful in influencing people lean conservative but may be skeptical about this version of the republican party or president trump. >> in that vein, you write about the fact checkers. fact checking does not have the power it used to have. do you think that will remain? for a lot of people, something that is obviously not true, like go fact-check it. but your argument is the fact checkers do not have as much sway. >> exactly, it's the opposite in a lot of ways. particularly cnn and the new york times, they are the most targeted news organizations by trump and the most distrust on the right, but the fact that they say it's not true is proof that it is true. so fact checking cannot be the way we win the war on truth and we need other ways to do it. it can be voices and experts to do it. >> you mentioned school boards. and local elections. your book talked about largely the larger scale elections statewide. one of the things that brings something painful to my soul is seeing people maga campaigning for school boards and winning. can you speak to that or what role -- how important do you think these local elections will become in terms of the overall strategy? there are people who are plain idiots who have no awareness of what the real issues are, and are campaigning on things that aren't really even issues, but it is the right buzzwords. i think it is very frightening for our society last night. >> absolutely. political power is built from the ground up here the process by which the republicans were able to rig the supreme court, made a decision to have large swaths of the entry day one, that abortion being banned is a long-term product starting in school boards. democrats have traditionally done a poor job of investing that at the party leadership level and donors and volunteers. we like to elect president, we think the white house is cool, we watch the west wing, and too often we do not invest in the hard work of building political power. i think that has changed a lot since trump won and there are well-funded groups run by the best operatives in the party. this is an example of how serious this is. we talk a lot about the insurrection and what republicans want to do in 2024. in many states like arizona, votes are counted at the county level. county out or -- county auditor is critical. one of the auditors in arizona refused to certify the election. steve bannon on his podcast every week is recruiting people. one group i recommend is run for something. it recruits and trains candidates. this is where the impact of everything we are dealing with will happen in that down ballot. >> one of the things i think that republicans are very good at, we have a governors race coming up, with someone in the past said that he was elected to ban abortions. but now that roe v. wade has been overturned, he is sidestepping that and is concentrating on the economy and gas prices and inflation. that is what the republicans are going to do to take over the house and possibly the senate in the fall. i have friends that are really intelligent, biden, the gas prices, is gas nationalized? does he have the authority to change? who are you going to blame? bp. mobile exxon. the gas companies. they are the ones that are fleecing you. so people believe on a very visceral level that the economy is all on biden. how can we change this? >> to piggyback on that, i had to go to the mall today and might luber driver said, biden is giving away money to ukraine and he needs to do something about gas prices. what do you do with that? we were just talking and she really thought biden is giving away money to ukraine and not helping us with gas. >> so it is always one of the great frustrations of anyone who works in the white house that the public thinks you have way more power than you actually have. gas prices, inflation is a worldwide phenomenon, all of the above. it is hard to explain away peoples economic pain and anger. i think there are two elements of this. one is we can accept the premise of the problem that gas prices are too high and try to reframe the argument about who will do a better job of solving it. is it going to be the party that is funded by oil companies? the party who insists on giving those exact same oil companies tax breaks? the same people who were opposing a windfall profits tax supported by democrats? it is a tough political environment, but you always want the argument of who is going to fight for you. in a tough economy, that can work for democrats. as much as republicans try to rebrand themselves as populists, there's still a lot of skepticism as people who will fight for middle-class working people and corporations. the other thing is i think there's a mentality among some democrats in terms of politics that we have to change. doug messed rihanna wants to talk about gas prices because that is better for him. but that does not mean we have to as well. republicans tend to decide polling, decide what issues voters should talk about on election day, and talk about it. no one thought immigration would be the number one issue in 2016. donald trump made it the number one issue. democrats look at polls and say what are people thinking about now, and then we just talk about that, whether it is good or bad for us. in this case, there's a whole lot with january 6, there is abortion, a right wing war on freedom in this country where they want to ban contraception, they want to decide who you love, what looks you can read. i imagine an argument would be very powerful. just because he wants to talk about it doesn't mean we have to fall for that. >> i want to know your thoughts on reconciling campaign rhetoric and campaign promises with managing expectations. in your campaign, you hear a lot of candidates talking about issues and saying what democratic voters want to hear, but i feel like younger voters are sort of becoming disillusioned by that. just wanted your thoughts on that. >> that is the old, famous line from governor mario cuomo that you campaign on poetry but govern in prose. this is something we wrestled with in obama's reelection campaign. we are trying to run on what we say with what we are going to do , but knowing we will almost certainly returned to the white house with republican house and senate. i think there are two elements of this letter very important. one is we have to treat voters as if they are smart and they understand it. talk to them like adults. we cannot make promises we can deliver on but that we will fight like hell for the biggest mistake emma cuts, and i include myself -- democrats, and i include myself on this, is that we manage expectations terribly. the senate kept saying failure is not an option on voting rights. we have no plan to cross the manchin chasm, but we have to be honest with people. we were so bad at managing expectations around build back better, that it washed away incredibly important compliments. we are focused on what did not get done as opposed to what got done. i'm sympathetic with people frustrated that we have not done a bunch of things but we have to be more honest with voters. >> there's a lot of unhappiness and social media that pushes the obama team that would say you all did not codify roe v. wade when you had the votes and the power. what would you say to that? people who are on our side are saying that. >> so there was a two-year period from 2009 two 2011 where democrats had unified control of the house and senate. obama had pledged that if he was elected, he would try to codify roe. he said at a conference in the campaign. here's the problem and why it did not happen. this is not to say president obama and those who worked for him could not have done more to forestall where we are as americans. what i am saying is what naral said in 2010, that there is not a pro-choice majority in the house and senate. there were not enough votes. we had expanded the pro-choice democrats, but in two thousand 9, 1 third of house democrats defined themselves as anti-choice. a large number of democratic senators were either explicitly anti-choice or pretty ambivalent about their position. we had enough democrats but not pro-choice democrats. that's ultimately what the best message in the short term is, give me 52 pro-choice democrats, and we can deliver the codification of roe. are you justifying or excusing -- i'm trying to explain what the reality is. people would be shocked at where joe manchin would be on this spectrum of democratic senators circa 2010. it would not be on the far right, it was closer to the middle because we had a pretty conservative party back >> i have been reading -- what do you think of the thought, i think you have seen it, that too many of our organizers have not come from too small of a section of the country. they come from colleges, that kind of argument, so they don't have the life experience and can't connect with people further down the chain. also they don't talk like real people? >> i think most people in politics don't talk like real people. that is the first people of advice my cohost gives everyone. you have to talk like a human. and a human doesn't need small words, it means you have to have relatable emotions and stories. but it is -- i think we need more diversity at every level of the party. diversity in every element of life. race, gender, where you are from, where you work. and a lot of the thing -- the pandemic really affected how the 2020 campaign was -- in powerful ways. more people on the ground working. a lot of organizers, they will parachute into states, that is what they do for a living. but they were constantly recruiting people from those states to work for them. college kids, adults who wanted to get involved in politics. so we need a lot more of that. we are always trying to find the narrowest possible problem that explains everything. i think diversity in every element, in every way you define that word is a problem in all parts of american life. but it is not the only reason, struggling with working class, a trend that has been going on for well over two decades. >> up here in the -- >> i just wanted to ask, one of the things that perplexes me is how it always feels democrats are not organized and not thinking about the long game. for a long time, we have said roe v. wade was a target. we knew that is where things were headed. yet i feel like to hear someone say now we need to have a strategy now, it is like where have you been? i think about when w was president, republicans made it clear they were going to start recruiting among latino communities in the south for the republican party so in the long term, knowing there would be eventually a much larger latino voting population, they would have that majority. we are starting to see the results of that. it was an intentional strategy they created. why can't democrats get organized like that? what is going on? >> politics is funny in the way perception changed quickly. if this had been a meeting of republicans in 2012, 2013, all the way up until the moment donald trump one, republicans would say how is it we keep getting our clock cleaned, democrats are organizing, fundraising us, data technology, all of that. it has obviously changed. there are things that are fair and true of your critique. republicans have had a donor base, primarily the coat others for many years, who invested in political infrastructure. the most boring things possible, but off year elections, candidates training recruitment, there have been similar efforts among democrats. there has been a group of people since -- 2012, democrats organizing impacts as a group. the fact they have come this far is a product of a decade of organizing from democrats. that is the reason why beddoe almost -- beto almost won. georgia, stacey abrams, black lives matter's, what they had done is a product of a decade of organizing in that state. so there are elements of it. it is fair to say that -- and it is a very important critique, on the issue of abortion, and a lot of people after the opinion league. republicans had a better plan to overturn roe v. wade than democrats. the supreme court being the way it is, you have limited control of where you get justices. that is why we are in this situation. we need to have more -- and hopefully people learn a lesson from this, that we need long-term, well-funded strategic solutions. go through elections you win, and elections you lose. you are making progress towards an end goal. a lot has changed in the party, some is very good. but clearly not enough is done. we may have lost the saddle before we even started because they have been working on it so long. >> similar -- diversity and activating knowing the plan. in pennsylvania, are elections of the governor and senate race are important. but there is a lot of anger. in the democratic party, what is going on right now. how do we unite the diverse party, specifically in pennsylvania? because it is such a critical election to unite people and activate them in the next 5, 6 months, in terms of november coming up. >> i would say, we organize around the country, justice and policing, and what i have seen to be most effective going into this question, organizers were always trying to convince aunts and uncles, whoever does that will always win. what trump did well, he had never talked -- i don't know what he said privately, i can imagine it is ridiculous publicly, but he would always talk to aunts and uncles. my aunt always understood what he said, it was just crazy to her. my aunts listens to biden and says i don't know what he's saying. when we organize on issues, we are always testing it. not that my aunt is not smart, she is in business with three kids, she is not watching tv all day to see seven people tell the story, which is what cable news is. she is going to get one shot at it, and you have to deliver. the second thing is reminding people of what we do believe in and not what we don't believe in. some people love the police, some people don't. do i want people to be safe? do you want the person with a gun to get the cat out of a tree, to tell you you don't have your taillight? i'm trying to take the craziness out of the issue and make it seem really simple. i have learned that on the far left, and ideologically i consider myself on the far left, the message has to be the middle sometimes. we have to take the message out of it -- in the book, it is like how they were able to convince people everyone is a socialist in florida. it is not socialist to say everyone should have breakfast, lunch, and enter. we should talk about it as a basic thing. a basic thing to say you should not die where you go to school. we have to take the street credit, i really care about the people, out of it, and talk about it as simply as possible. she is like you should not die in schools, should not die in prison. like yes. i have learned sometimes we overdo it. and my aunt doesn't want to be yelled at, she wants to be convinced. >> that is exactly right. there is an element of finding common cause with people. it is not simplifying as -- what do we care about, what do we agree on? even our democratic family. if it is something as simple as in pennsylvania, we think let the people choose who they vote for in the election should be who is elected. it should be people should not be prosecuted. we believe politicians should not decide what books we read or what teachers teach, across the board. raising the stakes in a unified way. >> and organizing, we always try and figure out the question to rephrase things. think about the place where you feel the most safe. a place where you feel safe. are the police there? no. what does it look like without the police? you already know. when everyone was in their room where you want to feel safe, we scale it up. people you love, food, we are trying to take the bite out of it and make it something you already understand. >> thank you for your service. i'm almost 80. i remember very well many presidents love the statements and enrage -- equal engagement. especially today's republican party. my husband and i are republicans, the democrats are the crazies down south and hang with the mafia. this changed. our parents, republicans excite people. they wind them up, fear and anger are the most primitive, most reactive emotions. to keep people scared is to keep them engaged. afraid of immigrants, afraid of socialists, afraid of democrats, they had us afraid of dr. seuss and pepe lepeu. very capable woman, but not an exciting speaker, hillary clinton. president biden, extremely capable. not an exciting speaker. we need another obama with some good support. my question is what do you think of the national popular vote contact? >> i'm a big believer in the fact that the electoral college is a terrible, anti-democratic relic, a terrible thing to get rid of. the vote is a project getting states to have walls that say they will give their electors whoever wins the popular vote. pennsylvania would do it. but they are big in recruiting states for i think decades. but you need to get to all of them for it to actually go into place. everyone around the constitution. it is going to be very hard, republicans know the only way -- they have lost the election, so they probably won't have a lot of states to agree the popular vote. senate questions from the balcony, this is the sort of work you do so you're prepared for a moment when you possibly can strike. i think it is very good stuff. >> this will be our final question. >> thank you for the excellent talk. there is a lot of problems, as you described, situations feel very bleak. at the same time, many dark faces of american history and global history. i'm wondering to what extent you think the moment is singular. is it really unprecedented on a totally different level? how do you think about that? >> it depends on who you ask. this could be a passing moment, it could be the last rose of an extremist, right-wing, authoritarian movement, or the beginning of something very good for us. that is up to all of us and what we do to stop it. we have the power to stop it. there is a growing progressive pro-democracy, pro-truth, anti-maga majority in the country, we just have to show up to vote in the right places at the right time. i think the danger of this moment for democracy -- i don't want to say it is unique, but it is not by definition something that will go away. only if you make it go away. >> let's give it up for david. 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the activist tarana burke describes her as a truth teller and builder of movements. we have seen that with her work with a nonprofit she founded to close the gender gap in technology. her commitment to technology helped her launch a national movement to center her commitment to economic recovery and her policy that supports moms. gender equality is at the heart of this. the pandemic made it clear to her and millions of women that workplaces were never built for working mothers to have a fair chance and that is why we saw historic number of women leave their jobs in 2021, highlighting that it is the system that needs to be fixed. they offer a plan to educate corporate leaders, advocate for policy reform and reimagine our workplaces. she will be having this conversation with the executive editor of the washington post, the first woman to lead the 140 four-year-old news organization. previously, she was the executive editor and senior vp of the associated press. later we will take some of your questions and you can submit those using the q and a button at the bottom of your window. we are including a link to purchase copies of the book with autographs in the checkbox. thanks for joining us. please give a warm welcome to both of them into your homes. >> hi! hi everyone, it is great to be with all of you and thank you for joining us today. it is so nice to see you again even if it is virtually like this and talk to you about all of these important issues you are raising in this new book. >> thank you, sally. i know a lot is happening in life and the world so for you to take the time to be here to talk about women and working women means a lot for everything will person who is participating. >> thank you, that is very kind. there is no more important issue in our world. the title of the book is "pay up: the future of women and work and how it is different than you think." how is it different? >> workplaces never made from women. -- millions of women have left the workforce. the largest exodus of women leaving the workforce. many women say they are anxious and depressed. the groups that are the most at risk are 18 to 24-year-olds and moms. so we have this opportunity to finally make workplaces work for us. because they never have. >> you right in the book that there is anything -- there is a feeling we are colluding with our own erasure. we are squeezed or do we squeeze ourselves into a guilt cone, with the contradictory demands of child-rearing and professional ambition. because wasn't having it all what we asked for? i'm curious what you think this all came to a head during the pandemic. was it always happening? why did it come to the head and the pandemic? >> i think it was always happening. i did my book party with hillary clinton and she was talking about this. ever since she entered the workforce, she said don't have pictures of your kids, don't talk about your motherhood. so the only way we could show up at work was hiding half of ourselves. the problem is that corporate feminism bought into this. i bought into this. i spent the past decade telling girls to lean in, grow boss her way to the top. and covid, i found myself with two little kids running an organization and it broke me. and i have resources. so we learned that having it all is really a euphemism for doing it all. it was something about covid, whether being at home for our kids, zoom schooling, knowing we would be the beneficiaries of that work. and no one cared. so the way we have been doing it, telling women to get a sponsor, colorcode their calendar, that was not getting us to equality. we were fighting the wrong fight. the fight we should have been fighting is how do we get to equality at home? how do we create structures so we can stop trying to fix the woman and fix the system? >> yes, that idea of fixing the woman versus the system is very much at the heart of this. many of us are asked how do you do what you do is if we are somehow superhero people who if they could figure out what we do to work, many of us would get asked that question and was that a good bit of advice? so talk to me a little bit about that, do people approach you with that? i need to change to make this work? is that something you hear? >> all the time. i -- why women show up, i spend my life tried to get more girls in technology and the amount of women at m.i.t., phd, the last question they will ask is i feel a guy don't belong here. why my exhausted? and it's when they are doing two thirds of the caregiving work. i think we thought that was the way. i have spent almost a decade trying to have a baby. when i finally did, i was on two planes into two trains every week trying to build the movement. i do not see him take his first steps, i do not seem crawl, i do not hear him say his first words. and i would look at myself in the mirror and say that is the price you have to pay for changing the world. and that should not be a price we have to pay. if we want to work or make a difference. so what we have been doing has come at a huge cost. i think where it is showing up right now is not even just for labor market and the numbers of women in the workforce. it is the mental health peace that should terrify all of us. >> are there any companies who are doing it right? is there anything you see on a private level, that is helpful or hopeful for the future? >> i think there are companies who have done a little better in the pandemic. i worry we're going backwards, though. once we get everybody returned to the office. but yeah, companies like disney and patagonia have on-site daycare to help with childcare issues. there are more companies that are offering paid leave and benefits and six-day benefits. there are some companies that have pushed back against flexibility and remote working and say we are going to make it possible for people to work wherever it works for them. so i think there is a trend. what i worry about is there are also trends that go back to the old normal. from our president, joe biden to my mayor eric adams to say get out of your pajamas and go to work. we are still not talking about the fact that the latest jobs numbers, 27 times more men enter the job market and we are still missing millions of women. and black women have the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years. it is all about -- a lot about the cost of childcare. >> what would a new definition of working motherhood look like for different groups? obviously there are privileged white women, women of color. how would you think through or think about what this means for different groups and women with different life experiences at this moment in time? >> three out of 10 american families are missing a mom. when i think about -- when i built it, i went to refugee camps. i which of the poorest communities and i said i can teach her, i can teach anybody. when we get to workplaces, we designed them for white men who had a partner staying at home doing the domestic work. we did not design them for a single mom, isn't a woman of color that is an hourly wage worker. and we need to. we have an opportunity to do that right now. i think companies should be providing the same paid leave benefits across the board. if you have women in factories and the front office, they should get the same benefits. it should not matter the color of your skin or how much money you make, an indicator of how you get to spend time with your kids and raise your kids. that is fundamentally broken in our country. it should not be about privilege. that is dictating your ability to have a job or be a mother. >> but the u.s. has long been an outlier on health care in general. the system you described happens in some countries, maybe not perfectly but it happens. do you have a plan for moms? what would be a realistic step forward? in the united states? what are the elements of what that needs to be? >> six month ago i would've said past build back better. past paid leave, extend the child tax credit. those things were providing relief for working families when we have them. and it still shocks me that we are bailing out airlines but not moms. all of the evidence and data and all of the pain that politicians of one party are already facing at the ballot box, but they still can't grow a part. that tells me there is something fundamentally that we need to shift in our culture. i was talking to -- doing a panel with some senior executives in canada and some senior executives in canada and france. what maybe almost crying is in canada, post-pandemic it is -- we have more women. and that is because you have health care. you have paid leave. when you start encouraging families to share in the domestic labor and provide support to single parents, and is actually good for the economy, our health and our children. the fact that we as a country, but likes to say we are about family values, can't get there -- it is not surprising. i think part of the problem, it goes back to the history. women were only allowed to work in the workforce because of world war ii. the men were going to war and they needed workers so they said all right, come in. they even provided paid leave and childcare at some moments. then when the men came back we were pushed out again. so we have always been doing this dance of please let me work , and we have been doing it at the expense again of our families and our own mental health. i think we just need to call it right now for what it is, and also resist this push against the old world. because the opportunity is the great resignation. 11 million open jobs. you can see these ceo's faces and they are likely is, anybody, please come to work. it is a sellers market. we have an opportunity, all of us, not just women. parents, non-binary, all of us have the ability to dictate what we want workplaces to look like. >> how can women use that leverage? often when women are under stress, they are looking for a job quickly, they are making a transition of your life, they don't always have the time to thoughtfully think through. or sometimes they don't have the resources to think through maybe there's a better job, maybe i have leverage. and none of us are taught. are we doing a good enough job of teaching the next generation of women how to do those things, and what -- if you are offering specific, concrete advice to someone in the labor market right now, looking for a job, what am i asking for? what am i pushing for? >> it depends on your age and everything but let's talk about -- >> let's talk about specifics. >> yeah, and this is how i outlined my book, we know what the problem is, how do we fix it? i think there are two issues. typically where we have not been any job market where there are so many open jobs in employees have leverage. that's not going to last forever but it will last for a while. and most of the workplace organizing has often happened in labor unions. so there is not an organization that calls you up and says here's your shots. maybe you can get them to pay for your childcare. here's what you need to ask for. we also do need to start teaching, and working women in particular. i think millennials are getting this right. they're going in, asking for seven figures, pay for my therapy. they know their worth. it is not a women's issue. it is a working mother's problem. we have been so traumatized by our experience as mothers in the workplace. the motherhood penalty. in the workforce, you get paid 40% on average less than when you exited. so we are saying please let us back in, and we are breast-feeding in closets, putting networking lunches on our calendars rather than taking our kids to the doctors appointment. we are doing zumba, praying our kids aren't on screen. that is what we have been too, for 100 years, but is what our grandmothers did, our mothers did and what we are doing. how do you un-teach that? so much of the movement has a there. you are the leverage. what is one thing you want to change? what is one thing? maybe you want to work from home or work remotely at the end of the school day two days a week. maybe you want to fight for that flexibility and your employer is pushing. maybe you want to ask about what your childcare benefits are. part of it is figuring out, what do i need? and then saying -- and some people i know would rather quit than ask for what they need. the great resignation is being led by women. we are quitting. but then we are going to our next and quitting again because we did it -- did not solve it. i don't want to put it all on us because there's another piece. the things that we want, men want that, too. the amount of men i know that want to take their kids to school in the morning, they are in the job market instead of asking. it shows culturally there is a problem. we are afraid of retribution for trying to advocate for ourselves as parents. >> what role do you think -- are basically saying this is the way the united states and its culture has been all along. but what cause is that? rugged individualism, or women were not in the workforce or striving for perfection, that feminism in america was striving for perfection? what do you think culturally? or is it literally just the government, we don't want to use the government for our benefit unless we need to? what do you think it is? >> she sent an interesting thing last night. we were close to getting childcare during nixon. but then the bill failed. and when we asked nixon about that, we heard i think the place for women is at home with the children. when you listen to joe manchin, met romney, you kind of hear the same thing. i think culturally there is not the will to fix workplaces for us by men in leadership. it is the same i would argue with ceo's. i'm shocked because they know what is happening, they know why they are leaving. they have surveys. they are -- there still is resistance. it makes me think they don't actually want to make workplaces work for us because maybe they don't want us there. that is maybe at the extreme. and a little of why i came to this topic is because if you are going to be building a movement, you should know the movement that helps organize women, when i wrote my first op-ed, i read the comment section. and i never be the comments. what was fascinating was people on the left were like, what about the dads? and people on the right were like motherhood is a choice. people on the left still insist on wanting to talk about this issue. i think it is a mistake. i think it is not appealing to the people who are -- two thirds of caregivers are women. if you don't have focus, you can't move the needle. i believe that. i get called -- if i had called girls who code kids who code, i would not have attracted thousands of girls. why are we pushing women out? why does the pandemic push women out? why was the caregiving put on women? and on the right it is about this idea that motherhood is a choice and you don't get anything from your government come your partner, your employer. it is this sense of you are in it yourself. it is your personal issue and you have to fix it. the fascinating example of this to me is school closures. i hope somebody writes about this. when that decision was made from a policy perspective, to basically -- because other countries, the u.k., they do not shut the schools down. they kept them open for the reason we are about to talk about. we decided to close them and we decided to design something called zoom schooling where you needed a parent and your child at these hour increments. while, again, 80 plus percent of parents work. so most women are in the workforce. we knew in march, april, may and sure we had data, that women were the ones doing the homeschooling. so when they decided to do this cross-country release of policy and terms of how we were going to teach millions of kids, we knew who was going to be affected by it. but we did not care. and we did not even design it in a way that would relieve the pressure that was going to be put on women to choose between unpaid labor and pay labor. and i wonder, i don't know, because i'm not an investigative journalist, is that product? do they talk about that? were reconsidered? because we have always been the default, because if men were doing the homeschooling, no way. they would have kept the schools open. >> it is a fascinating question. my children are above school age at this point, but so many people at my workplace at that point were literally just going, it all went to adjust your personal resources. there was nothing available. if you were a -- if your husband or partner or anyone was helping you with schooling, that was great. if not, he went to the grandparents. all of these things. you talk in this book about your own experiences. there is literally a moment where you are describing falling apart and being in fetal position on the floor. was that difficult for you to do? there is almost a trauma around those first couple of months and we did our best but my god. there are these secret conversations women have about, did your children learn anything or do they just run wild? there's almost a guilt around the pandemic, did we do a good job or did it fail? i don't know that i have ever heard men having those conversations. but i have heard a lot of women. >> they learned how to play the guitar. most of them were like that's amazing, i got to thinking rest. i started the pandemic with a girls who code super bowl ad, i had newborn babies, and all this anxiety about not spending time so i was looking forward to my leave. and connecticut got about three weeks after my child was born. i had to go back with a newborn, homeschooled and basically save girls who code from being shut down. when pandemics hit the first resource to go our women and girls. so many women's organizations shut down during the pandemic. most of my leadership team or working moms. -- were working moms. we were trying to save our babies, literally, our children. i got covid-19 early, my liver failed, i was a mess from the health perspective. and the trauma that that decision was made without my input. it scared the hell out of me. because so many of us have sacrificed so much to get to that point we were at. to have it taken from you and not acknowledged, two years later it has not been acknowledged. what happened to moms. it is funny. i was writing about this. everyone this week is like oh my god, you must be so excited, your book, and i was like no, i'm reliving my trauma. it's about how hard it was. and i had resources. i had childcare. i can work from home. my husband works from home. when it was safe, i dropped my baby off at my parents and they could watch them for a couple of minutes while i worked. single moms, she had to quit her job, go to another job that she could work at home so she could come so -- could home school, moved in with her mother, that is typical. my story is not typical. i had it easy compared to my sisters who were drowning and are still drowning. >>'s let's work through this and talk about smaller companies, an interesting thing. i think one of the issues in the united states is that a lot of women work for corporations. but a lot of women also because they might come in and out of the workforce tend to work for smaller companies or nonprofits or whatever it is. but that is not necessarily go with just one company for one time. there are smaller organizations. smaller organizations have more difficulty doing the kinds of things you are talking about in your book. what would you -- what do you think are practical ways to also get smaller, not just big operations, but smaller companies active on this issue? >> i was/am now a ceo of a smaller company. very early on, we offered to pay for this. i thought if i could pay for people they will stay with me and i was -- it was true. people leave companies fast. >> i just lost -- i'm having trouble hearing her but maybe i did something on my end. i think people cannot hear. >> i think i fixed it. >> hooray. >> he turned on his airpods. >> super resilient. we are super proud of you. thank you all for your patience. we will start again very soon. you ok? take your time, get settled. are you ok? >> i'm used to this. it's like a day in the life. >> ok. let's briefly pit -- pivot to the topic of men. what is the role of men in this, whether we're talking about the people who should have some of the burden, the people who if the burden fell on women in the first months of the pandemic, and is still falling on women at this time, what should men do to make this situation better? >> our goal would be to solve for the gender inequality happening at all. all studies show that women are doing two and a half jobs. two thirds of the caregiving work is done by women. so how do we change that? for me, i always say i married one of the good ones. when we had sean, i took leave and he did not. that is how you set the tone. for a lot of us, we have been taught that -- i can't tell you how many people in this conversation willie he's got to find a new husband. you're clearly not teaching him well. when you feel like your partner is not doing what they're supposed to do, you feel like it is your shame. you messed up. we have to take a step back and see it is not my job to fix him. we all have to fix the structure. and we think about one of the things that are exacerbating that? this is why our believe in mandating paid leave. it's not enough for these companies to tout that they offer 28 weeks of paid leave. i want to know, who is taking it? are the men taking it? because what we hear from studies is that 70% of american fathers take less than 10 days off. >> even if they have it available. >> even if they have it available. so we are not fixing the gender issue of domestic labor happening at home. i think corporations have to start auditing their policies, what could i be doing that could shift that ratio? that is mandating paid leave, asking on monday morning, -- it is promoting flexibility and remote working. so you do get men being at home to do the laundry between zoom sessions. we have to call that a goal. it's funny, and it is partly cultural, the philippines had an ad campaign. can you imagine the next super bowl had snoop dogg and lebron james doing an ad campaign about doing laundry? that's kind of what we need to do. it was good that the ceo of twitter announced that he was taking -- i would like him to take it more, but that is a step in the right direction. >> do you think, this is one of those blame game questions, this is why the conversations are among women happen. are we -- two women stayed what they need at their demands clearly enough? or do we just take it? it is obviously a no-win situation during the pandemic. you're not going to not feed your child or not care for your child when there is a global emergency going on. but there are moments where women have leverage. as you are saying right now. but are reorganized, are we brave enough, is there enough structure amongst us that that would be supported and whose response ability is that? is that my responsibility? if those are the questions, are women brave enough, are women doing enough at this moment in time, or is that what you are trying to do to make that call? >> i think when it comes to ourselves, how do we -- we talk about how do we empower yourself. and i get sleep more, meditate into yoga. it's about creating tangible boundaries. in our house, i do the mornings, and he does the nights. if i'm sitting around watching netflix at 6:00, he will be like hey, could you warm up the bottle or change a diaper? so i just leave at 6:00. i go have dinner for myself, i create boundaries. i don't -- we are here, we left the guys with the kids and i need a list of went to feed them, i lay the pajamas out. i'm like why did you do that? you just created all of this work. that is cognitively burned. but his mental brains these than his work. -- mental brain space that is work. you have to let that go. i don't think it is so much about them negotiation. this was feeling about covid in terms of our partners. they saw us doing it. maybe they just don't know. they know. >> [laughter] it was right in front of them. >> it's time for us to take our own situation in our own hands. your second point about how do you get some of these policies implemented, this is really what i do think is missing from the ecosystem in the women's space. when i was trying to get more women to go into technology, girls who code can work with women, come into the offices and say this what we need to do. that's how we got done. there is no similar organization. that is set up in the same way to put that type of pressure. there isn't government. in the workplace, and that is what marshall did for moms, taking the lead on that and started to take the lead on it. there is an advocacy toolkit. i would fire everybody up, help get it done. my goal is the first step is about subsidizing childcare. we are building a national business coalition. to be able to -- everyone is asking for it. not just mothers, good parents. a lot of this was a young women because during the pandemic, they looked at -- no thank you. you choose if you don't want to have kids, but we have the preserve choice. >> this issue, is it really that we are talking about working mothers? because obviously women have more responsibilities. parents, but tend to -- there is this issue of sometimes people in workplaces, if we are trying to make accommodations or help people who have children, people who don't have children can be asked to work. there can be things like that in workplaces. we have all come across this. that would get us back to the question, and this is where countries are different, everyone has a stake in child rearing. whether you personally have children or not. but we are very far culturally in the united states from that kind of idea. i am curious, is that something you believe in, that regardless of where you are in my journey i should care about the rearing of children and the ability of that to be done well in the world without impacting some people? >> i do believe that. i believe when we let the child tax credit expire we put 41 million kids in poverty and that should devastate all of us. countries are valued in the way that they treat women and children. i also believe as an activist, you always support the most honorable. right now the most honorable in our country are mothers. y'all have to do our part. i think we have seen other communities, whether it is black lives matter, race, whether it is the lgbtq. you had communities come together and say we are being treated unfairly. and we all, as a community, need to rally around that to root out racism. to root out discrimination based on sexual orientation. we have never seen discrimination against mothers as a thing. we've never recognized, which is accepted, but fed is real. it is interesting with equal pay day, we had the women's soccer team there, but the pay gap, it is not between childless women and childless men. there are no pay gaps. the largest pay gap is between childless women and mothers. even for how long we have been trying to solve the pay gap, we had it in the clear -- we haven't been clear about what the pay gap is. it is a mother penalty, period. so we have got to recognize that working mothers are discriminated against in the workforce as a class. and yes, if you have resources, it is a little better. but we have to start by figuring out how do you root out the discrimination against women of color that are underserved? that is where it begins. when we start to see what has happened to them, the choices they have to make. i think about my own mom. my parents came in here as refugees. i was a latchkey kid from when i was seven years old because they could not afford $50 a week for child care. i grew up as a brown family in a white working-class neighborhood. my parents were bullied. their house was spray-painted in tipi. but because we cannot afford childcare, my sister and i would walk 10 blocks home and i would say run the 10 blocks home and lock ourselves in our house and hide. we were afraid. think about how my mother felt. i 3:41 every day, when she had to let her babies walk home. the unconscionable choices that mothers have to make every single day, because we do not provide them support. we make it harder for them. so yeah, take the revolution includes all of us. all of us. sometimes we have incidents that happen in our life, in our history that show that we need to do something. and covid was one of those. it was that for working mothers. >> do you think that story has been told? obviously there has been coverage and things written, but this is not exactly one of the central narratives of the pandemic. that has been one of the narratives, but certainly not like the biggest story around the pandemic in any, shape or form. >> god bless every single female journalist. i find it fascinating that women would rather call the washington post or the new york times and scream then called her legislator. i think women have put so much -- and this story has been kept alive by female journalists. but is it the front page? is it the thing that as a country are united on? with the women's jobs are? >> yeah. there are excellent questions coming in from the people are listening to us so i want some of those. i think there is a right to ask about things like that but these are questions that go to some of the real bone of what we are talking about. the first is a practical question. it is also the kind of think that is front and center. what is your advice for a woman interviewing for a new job who wants to learn about the company's parental leave policy but does not want the company to be scared off from hiring her? [laughter] >> we've got to get over that. because our fear in many ways has gotten us there and for all of the men and women who don't have children, you have to ask. an example of this is the amount -- and millennials come up with mental health is a huge issue, i had so many young people come say to me, are you going to pay for my therapy? they were fearless because they knew there was an epidemic and they knew even if they were not experiencing it in solidarity with others they needed to normalize it. and we need to normalize motherhood. and not feel like upon asking about it it means of not going to be a good employer, going to be distracted or nonproductive. we need to normalize looking at workplaces that care about families. >> and part of this is for others who have partners, what advice would you give to single others trying to navigate these structures? >> we need to build everything from sickle model and we for them. -- we need to fight for them. women who don't have partners and children need to fight for civil bombs. even if you don't think you need flexibility, we need to ask on behalf of them. so many more families today are being run by single mothers, sickle parents. and we are still operating from a two parent perspective. the pandemic is a great example. think about the single mothers who had to navigate the zoo and their work. i was telling you today -- a woman was telling me today our son was making a smoothie in the middle of her call as a pharmaceutical salesperson. we know when that happens, you are looking at me thinking i don't have it together and i'm not committed. i know that there is a penalty. that is the other thing. i think the mothers noted -- motherhood penalty peace, we have to demand that every ceo hire for coders, get an algorithm. they can do that overnight. when we start removing it, some of the sickle moms are not getting paid equitably. not only are they having to do it themselves, they don't have the resources they deserve to do it. >> all right. this is a good follow-up. kimberly asked what are the two or three things you would suggest that investors ask companies to do to support women. and also what should consumers do to help -- hold companies accountable. if i care about this issue and i have leverage as a consumer or investor, what are the practical and most impactful things? >> i love that. i think investors should ask, i want to see your posts quds -- policies on maternity leave. what are you thinking that in terms of childcare? we're always talking about attrition. it is the biggest thing people are worried about because it is expensive. pushing and saying do you think you can reduce your attrition by providing some subsidizing of childcare and acknowledging that is an economic issue. what are you doing to support his mental health? -- support working women's mental health? a lot of companies are seeing women leaving at a greater rate than men. it is not just the great resignation. there's something different happening with women. the other thing is many employers don't track with eckert tabor with a caretaker. they don't keep track of who is taking care of the elderly, who is apparent. so recognizing at the same way that we recognize race and gender, because we have goals around that. we should have goals around keeping and retaining working mothers. we know that they are the ones that leave at the highest rate. so what are we doing to fix that. >> that's interesting. so not just looking race of women in the company, but specifically working mothers, having a career advancement in the company. that is interesting. is there anybody who does that? >> i don't know. there should be. we have found that technology companies, 50% of women leave by the time they're 35, normally about the time they are having kids. the narrative used to be they are leaving as they want to spend time with their kids. that is not what is happening. they are leaving because they can't have kids and work here. and again, i think companies have a hard time taking ownership that they may to bidding or their culture might be attribute into some of this. and this is one of our policy focuses, to start looking at attrition and pay equity at the motherhood bias and penalty and start pushing companies to start plugging data on this and offering solutions. we are starting with childcare because i feel like that is not crazy. i feel it is more likely that we are going to get 50, 60, 70% of companies subsidizing childcare, definitely before they pass the bill formerly known as build back better. >> [laughter] [applause] do you think universal family leave will ever be passed? >> it has to be. so many organizations, the philanthropic resources, dollars that are going into making sure that those organizations -- thank god for linda gaetz. -- linda gates. she makes sure ththere's a lot d stops. we should have a fully funded $100 million sponsored by whomever paid leave campaign because if we don't we are never going to get it. we did the bipartisan poll on this. republicans and democrats want this. there is the will for this. part of what i have found as we started looking into this more deeply is it was i think many of the business coalitions that helped to kill it. there is an narrative on the hill that it's too expensive, the government doesn't have to do it because companies aren't providing it anyway. if you look at most of the data out there whether it's a survey done by consulting companies they will say do you offer paid leave or not? the checkbox is a yes or no. the narrative is that everyone is getting paid leave and that's not true. the other narrative is essentially that if i worked at google and we will is essentially offering paid leave, that they are not fighting against the build back better bill to offer it for everybody else. you have to hold all of those companies accountable. the chamber. everybody who is a member of the chamber accountable for making paid leave not happen for those millions of women who don't have it. the vast majority don't. >> that's an interesting thing to look at. not just our own policies but what they are lobbying for. >> how do we do it for all of us? it can't just be for you. the system doesn't change if it's just for you. >> one of the audience questions -- really talking about white this isn't a priority and says only way we make more progress is if we elect more women to positions of power to elevate and legislate these policies at the state and federal levels. how can we change it? >> it's true, the women that were there fighting were all the women. there just wasn't enough of them. i think that's right, we have to have more women serving. i also think we have to create a movement of mothers, this is what we're trying to do, we have to create a coalition of mothers who are fighting for issues that affect mothers. there are great organizations of mothers fighting for their kids. mothers for climate change, mothers against drunk driving. we don't fight for ourselves. that same energy from all of those mothers across the country that we're trying to take books out of schools was put into paid leave and affordable childcare, we would have those things. they want those things. we have to figure out from an activist perspective how to fix that. we didn't have a million mothers marching on washington because we are so tired. >> what would you do with the kids if you went to the march? >> right. you have to zoom school. >> do you think that is always going to be an issue? >> it's not. because it's like i see a gap and i think others see a gap now. the issue on the left is to really start getting people to start organizing embracing mothers as -- and it doesn't leave anybody out. i think that is challenging. there are mothers fighting for other issues. dedicated to the things that every single day benefit us. we are so used to being martyrs. so many forgot what it was like. it's why we still fight for choice. i want to protect my right to choose. i want to protect this institution of motherhood because i really believe that in many ways, that is the conflict. this past women's history month, there were probably hundreds of millions of sessions about how to get a mentor. really it should've been how to get the men in the office to do more laundry. [laughter] let's audit our corporate policies and figure out which ones help exacerbate the gender inequality in my home. how do we have a 50-50 goal at goldman sachs that every single family that's a part of goldman sachs that gets to that ratio? can you imagine? we are being instructed again. we are being distracted to telling people to tell us to fix ourselves. we are not the problem. >> you are essentially saying it needs to be an organizing effort and it needs to be not like again we are going back to fix the woman or fix the workplace. the question is am i doing something wrong that means that i can't bounce the responsibilities that i have or is there something systemic? >> there is something systemic that doesn't mean you can't fight for the system to change. it's not about you. the system has to change and that's something that we see as a bigger landscape. this is hard. there's an entire industrial complex on corporate feminism. i have a hundred t-shirts in my closet about how to be a girl boss. you're asking people who for the past 30 or 40 years have been telling all of us to work harder. and we will get there. can you imagine if all of these women in business organizations all of these started saying like me, we were wrong. we've been focused on the wrong thing, we have to shift our focus and focus on equalizing unpaid labor. imagine that being possible. i am going to own that as the ceo of girls who code that i need to tell my students and people who look up to make something very different. the second piece is the only way the structure is not going to change is if we fight for. to make sure our allies and partners that we fight for. nobody's going to give it to us. it's not in their interest. you see that by two years of the pandemic productivity the stock market is through the roof. systematically nothing has changed in terms of the cost of childcare or daycare centers being shut down. yet still, there is a push to return to the old normal because they are thinking about us. they are thinking about them. >> there was one question i'm going to ask came from the audience which was referring to the title of your book, what are the ways that people in the workplace can push for salary transparency? which many people feel is a critical issue. >> it's huge. in new york state, you have to start putting your salary demand on job descriptions. -- your salary bans on job disruption. there's a statewide push to have that. if you are c level or a manager and have a say we think about how we are recruiting people, people are going to start asking for. pretty soon you can't put a post on twitter without putting the salary range. they want this this is the way we are moving. i do think that will help with when you first get into a job. but the question is, the inequality it still grows over time and the promotion. how do you get transparency on that? >> good question. there's a lot of audience response from things like saying how wonderful it was that you exhibited or illustrated the issues that women faced. there's a lot of things like support that you handled it with such grace and empathy that we all have these things. that's it i'm going to go kill my husband. [laughter] >> was a lot of praise for you on how you handle that. someone said thank you for addressing the major issues. that's laundry. it speaks to each of us. when the husband or partner deliberately does laundry poorly so it becomes an issue where you're like i'm just want to take it on. just a lot of support for everything you're doing. going to ask one final question which is -- then we will wrap it up because this is been such an amazing conversation. i only regret is we should have had these conversations in the middle of the pandemic because it could have been so fascinating. i am thrilled that you have written this book and it's federalist, but think about if we could've harnessed this as it was going on. don't think we have the time or energy to do it, but it could have been such an exciting to think about. my question for you is not just you as a person although i'm super interested in that, but you as a person who believes in this cause where you go from there? you've laid out a manifesto. you're going to talk to companies to get them to make commitments. how would you build that? how would you build on it to make the most progress or how are you intending to build on it to make the most progress? >> i am igniting a writ -- a revolution. when there's a problem i want to solve, i don't stop until i do it. that's exactly what i did for girls who code. someone said oh that's cute you are teaching girls to code. this is a moment of once-in-a-lifetime moment and i think for someone who has been fighting for women and girls since i was 13, i don't want to die fighting for the wrong thing. this is the problem we have to solve and i do believe in my heart and again at think canada and norway are great examples that if we can fix this, we can get to equality. all the little girls can dream of being president or a ceo. they can dream of being a mother and taking care of your kid then going back to the workforce and being able to go back to the workforce. it's preserving the ability to move in and out it so critical. we have to ignite this fire. i think we can. i'm not asking you to march. i'm not asking you to call your congressman. but i am asking to advocate for one thing for yourself. get our toolkit. sign up to be an advocate. women need to feel that we are back in control of our lives. in the profile in the washington post in the magazine what i said, there's 40 million of us that have gone through some version of a collective experience. that's a lot of millions. >> that's amazing. i think we are all in huge admiration of your energy and intensity and commitment to this. it has been a huge pleasure thank you so much. this has been really inspiring. thank you so much. >> i echo that gratitude. special thanks to you to be with us tonight in the midst of overseeing coverage of the war in ukraine. we are grateful for your time. thank you to everyone in the audience for joining us. if you would still like to purchase an autographed book, but that in the chat box. we hope you can james o'keefe and your new book american muckraker you write that there's an indecently close personal and professional relationship between reporters and the people they are supposed to cover. is that a bad thing? parts yes. there has been tension between access and autonomy. some people need to get close to their sources. some need to adversary late investigate their sources. these days in journalism, -- they have delivered on a platter what the sources in the government what the government wants them to see. they're acting as delivery people for the sources rather than being adversarial or skeptical. you don't want to be too adversarial because that can engender biases of their own but you have to strike the balance. there's no more balanced. the national security force in the new york times act as servicemen for the people they administration. >> i want to ask about the subtitle of your book rethinking journalism for the 21st century. how does that fit with being a muckraker? >> the early in the mid 20th century, investigative reporting was you had the chicago sun-times doing these investigations where they are posing as bartenders. you had most famously upton sinclair wrote the jungle. he had an ideology. he was a valid socialist. there was a willingness to go there and speak aggressively toward the powers that be. you don't really see that anymore. people just sort of sit up there and opine and talk about what they think. none of these journalists on cable right big aggressive stories. most of the stories are broken into people like me. washington for example the washington post wrote a pulitzer -- won a pulitzer prize for investigating me not corruption in the government. you need to have the spirit of investigative reporting and citizens need to do it. have a renaissance to go back to what was done decades ago. now it doesn't happen anymore. it goes back to what i talk about in the book which is economics. the commercial imperative which a lot of news organizations have slashed their budgets. abc news recently slashed their investigative bureau. it has become a commercial enterprise not a journalism one. that's why we are philanthropic nonprofit organization. nobody tells us what to do. >> what is the goal with project veritas? how do you pick your subjects? >> they find us. in the same way that any journalism -- journalists find their sources. in the same way of james snowden. that contractor found him. much is the case of project veritas. this year and fbi agent found me after the fbi raided my home. that agent came to us with internal restricted documents from within the fbi computer systems where they were calling us news media which is very big deal because the case hinges on whether we are news media. they tend to find journalists they can trust. these days, most people don't trust media. we don't pick our subjects, our subject find us. >> how many times have you been sued? or jailed or indicted? >> we're sitting here in an exhibit hall and my attorneys are five steps away from a laughing. a couple dozen pieces of litigation over the last 10 years. we've never lost a case. we don't lose because we are in the right and we don't give up. if you are in the right and you don't ever settle, you eventually win in a court of law. in some cases, we have to appeal. we end up going on offense. in the beginning of my career, people would sue me and there was the opportunity to settle cases and i said i'm not settling any of these cases. we found out in that discovery process of a lawsuit, i've been sued for all sorts of things, the people who sued me never wanted to be deposed themselves. they never wanted discovery into their own operations. we are fairly ethical at veritas. we don't break laws or do anything improper. the people over there are is ethical. they say if i sue james o'keefe i will have to be deposed and they don't want that so they stopped suing us and now we sue them. >> there's a chapter in the book called deception. your question is interesting because it's a question of relative deception. either you deceive your subject that you're investigating to tell the truth or you don't deceive your subject and you tell untruths to your audience. you take your subject at face value you will be disseminating millions of people. there's an ethicist who argues in a thesis paper you have a moral imperative to deceive your subject if your mission is to tell the truth your audience. this is also written about called the journalist and the murderer that was written in the 90's. a legendary journalist wrote that a journalist always deceives their subject. it's a confidence game you must play if your intention is to do investigative reporting. if your intention is to read off teleprompters and to tell the public what the two star general once you to know, i would argue that's a worse deception. you must choose between these two types of political deception. it is paramount that you tell the truth to your audience. >> how do you get started in this business? ask lucky charms. i went to rutgers university. there was a lot of censorship on campus. being an irish american, to prove a point i said lucky charms was racist against my irish heritage. thought it would be laughed at that one of the deans took me seriously and had a meeting and informed me they would ban lucky charms because it was racist against me and that was the beginning of this undercover investigative work which showed these people for who they were. sort of an artistic mission or than a political one. >> whenever in the mainstream media you read about project veritas, there is usually the line in selected edited video project veritas . >> that's a hyperbole. all journalism is edited. rightfully so. words are arranged into sentences. it's an absurd insinuation because they can never name the edit. it's just that it is edited. then when i release the full route 8, they say we don't know that you turn the device off and on. they're engaged in conspiracy theories and an court woman litigate this stuff, it all falls apart. i've had multiple federal judges say that nothing was edited out of context. might wonder why that isn't covered more. our attorneys attempted to go to wikipedia to get that put on there, with the pds said something to the effect of legal documents are not legal sources. we say these things that they can edit and paste but they never name the edit. the only case where they can name a point is in 2009 when i went into these acorn offices wearing a pimp coat. i didn't wear that into all the offices that i presented myself as a pimp. i said i wanted to create these brothels when i was undercover. i said on my website pimp protocol doesn't require wearing a costume. if that's all they have on me is that i didn't wear the pimp costume 12 your seo, all journalists make mistakes. our track record is unbelievable compared to the track record of the mistakes made and admitted by the likes of the washington post cnn and the new york times. >> james o'keefe, has there ever been a moment in your career where you said i just can't do this again? this is really hard this is really uncomfortable. >> first chapter if you don't mind holding it up, first chapter of american muckraker which is a journalism textbook, it's about suffering. you might say how would you write a chapter in a journalism book about a theme like that? i think there's a lot of trauma that has occurred in my life and the lives of the people that work for me. whether you are being a whistleblower and violating your nondisclosure agreement, fired from your job. i was arrested in 2010 by the fbi. eventually exonerated from what they were accusing me of. these are federal agents taking journalists work products rifling through anonymous sources in order to find out if you have committed crimes. it could be a traumatizing thing that shakes the foundation of what it means to be an american and you live through that. you're falsely accused, your suit, you have the most powerful people in the world pharmaceutical companies federal governments the president the attorney general coming after you. there are moments where he said i don't know if i can do that anymore. i talk about that in the book. it's a very personal story. then you begin to realize there's a lot of people out there who believe in you. all they have is you. then you begin to realize there's more of us than there are of them. then you have these whistleblowers that come to you and i say in the book the hunter becomes the hunted. they are more afraid of us than we are of them. people like the whistleblower, all these people most recently were interviewing an individual in the government talking about child trafficking trying to corroborate that. the passion that you have forgetting the story exceeds whatever pain that is inflicted upon you. >> it's because of some of the topics that you are addressing that you are ignored or edited ridiculed the mainstream media. >> it's not so much politics as power. as noam chomsky wrote about, he wrote a book called manufacturing consent 1987. there is a symbiotic relationship between the people and the media it a reciprocity of interest. for example, cnn one of their main advertisers is pfizer pharmaceutical. it's a cliche brought to you by pfizer. they take that for granted in the commercials but if you are literally paid by a billion-dollar corporation, can you investigate that corporation? of course not. we take this for granted growing up in america. these are not right arguments. noam chomsky is not a right-winger. these are just honest things about the state of our media. in the 1970's and 80's, journalist newsman were willing to sacrifice profits on their balance sheet and have a loss leader on their balance sheet to do that investigative reporting. no more. now it's all about the money and preserving the relationship you have with the powers that be. that's not journalism under any accepted understanding of what journalism is. >> in your book, use bend a bit of time talking about -- and -- >> i think he has smart things to say. from chicago, he wrote a book called rules for radicals. he talks about make them live up to their own principles. he said that's the most important thing to do is to use their own rules and make them up to them. another way of saying that is exposing hypocrisy. he also talks about the idea of picking a subject and focusing on as opposed to lofty broad narratives. this can be applied to what i do. focusing anecdotally on voter fraud it's a hot button issue in the united states. some people say there is no voter fraud and others believe the whole election was stolen. there are instances of fraud for example in minnesota and texas, someone was arrested by the attorney general after we caught her on tape bragging about the crime she was committing. there's a methodology which is to focus on the actual facts not on these broad narratives which is what most people in media do. >> in the book, you use a technique of referring to yourself as the muckraker in the third person. why? parts i wanted this book to be -- this is my life's work. took me five years to write. it has 800 footnotes. it reads like a thesis paper. i want it to outlast me. i wanted to be about principles. my first book rate through was about basically my 20's. i am 38 years old. my incarceration, going to court, it was a perverse -- first person narrative. this one is a boy scout manual for people who want to follow in our footsteps. of all the people to follow in our footsteps, it is the whistleblower. there is a chapter in the book called whistleblowing. it's like you're being on the margins of society. you're a spacewalking astronaut whose umbilical cord has been cut from the mothership. i want people to understand what it's like and i think the most important chapter in the book is the first chapter. the psychological effects are unbelievable. the number one question i get asked is are you worried? are you afraid? i say no. i try not to worry about the things i can't control. fear is the thing that holds most people back in this country. the fbi raids remarkably it has helped project veritas because sources now trust us. they say you must be for real. i wasn't sure, but you must be for real because the feds are raiding you. we have had sources come to us as a result of what the feds did. >> where we raised? >> i am from bergen county, new jersey. my mother is from rochester, new york. dad is from buffalo, new york. they moved to new jersey the time i was born. project veritas is located in westchester county, new york 45 minutes north of new york city. we have a few dozen journalists roaming the country undercover. >> was your life like zero to 18? >> are right about that in my first book. my father and grandfather were in construction and property maintenance and i help them up until my teenage years. i write about some of that story and the story of resilience in my life. i didn't ever think i was going to be a journalist, but i watched local news in new york fox five nbc four abc seven. i read the new york times every day. i read newspapers every day for a year or two. i found mike wallace once said this. he said it best. things were not as they seemed and rarely as they should be. i didn't know what to do with that sentiment. i didn't know what that meant to meet. was i going to be an actor? work in finance? work with my dad? i wanted to do something about that. things were not portrayed accurately. as a student at rutgers, i became a columnist for the paper . it was the daily newspaper at rutgers university. i was let go from that job. i wrote a column about how much money professors give to each political party. the ratio of democrats to republicans was 104-1. i said why don't i create my own newspaper so i did that. i didn't know what i was doing. most of the work was layout design. i had to learn how to layout newspaper magazine. i did that and i had a staff. it was called the centurion and the rest is history. >> in a few remaining minutes, i want to ask you about two people you brought up here in my notes i have listed a lot of them muckrakers that you talk about. you brought up daniel ellsberg and mike wallace. are they heroes do you? are they effective people in their field? >> some of the things they have done or heroic. mike wallace was an unbelievable questioner. he made people feel comfortable in his interviews and i respect that. not just a protected class for priesthood, people want journalism to be an identity like a cartel. i admire virtues from each of these different people. it might lead her audience -- why is o'keefe appreciating? because there are virtues in all of these people. one almost went to jail and they went to the supreme court the washington post and new york times litigated to the supreme court. whistleblowing can be heroic. it can also be illegal. ed snowden can be breaking the law but there is a place in the world for people like that. without people like that, investigative journalists can't do their jobs. it's the bread and butter of what it means to be an american. that right to report what someone tells you is being fundamentally it's in jeopardy right now. in our case with the fbi. they are trying to take that right away from us. right now. i had the aclu lawyers in my office last month telling me and by the way, they are defending us. the aclu is writing to the judge trying to unseal the warrants that are against me. they said this is never happened in american history. what's happening to you has never happened before to any journalist. now they're starting point guns at us. and take our notebooks. i admire people like edward snowden, julian assange, mike wallace. i don't know what is happened. i don't know why the billion-dollar corporations are doing the job. his left scrappy broke entrepreneurial enterprising people but so be it. >> james o'keefe project veritas and of the author of this book american muckraker rethinking journalism for the 21st cen >> good evening. welcome to the midtown scholar bookstore. it is an honor to welcome you to this evening's author program. before we begin, i have a few housekeeping notes as always. one, while our speakers will keep their masks off, we ask you to keep your masks on. two, this event is being recorded by c-span, so a couple notes. we please ask you turn off your cell phone ringers, refrain from using profanity, and don't walk in front of the stage at any point. exits are to the left and right. three, most importantly, if you have not yet purchased the book, we encourage you to purchase the book through the midtown scholar bookstore. we have copies available at the cafe county if you're interested in getting your book signed at the end of the evening. at this time, i am happy to introduce our authors. our interviewer is a civil rights activist focused on issues of innovation, equity and justice. born and raised in baltimore, he holds honorary doctorates from the new school and the maryland institute college of art. as a leading voice in the black lives matter movement and a cofounder of campaign zero, he has worked to connect individuals with knowledge and tools and provide citizens and policymakers with commonsense policies that ensure equity. he has been praised by president obama for his work as a community organizer and has advised officials at all levels of government and continues to provide capacity to activists, organizers, and influencers to make an impact. our featured author is dan pfeiffer. a cohost of pod save america, one of barack obama's longest-serving advisors. he was director of communications from 2009 to 2013. he lives in the bay area of california. dan's new book that we are here for this evening is titled, battling the big lie, how thoughts, facebook, and the maga media are destroying america. this blurb, it's an enlightening, at times enraging, and always entertaining guide to the recent history of our politics and media, drawing on dan pfeiffer's unparalleled experience. read this book if you want to understand what is happening in american politics, why it is happening, and what you can do about it. we're honored to welcome you back to harrisburg. without further ado, please join me and giving them a warm harrisburg welcome. [applause] >> it is good to be back. i know dan well, but we have not talked about the book because i have been waiting to talk about it in front of you all. let's start with the easiest question. why this book, why now? >> some of you may know, we were here together, sitting in these exact chairs in mid february 2020. and we are back. did anything happen? after that last book, i decided that would probably my last book. i was very proud of it, ready to do some other things. then after the election happened, i was really wrestling with the question of how it was that in an election that was close but not much closer than trump's victory in 2016, and certainly less close than george w. bush's election, that we could live in a world where 70% of republicans could believe, against all evidence, that the election was stolen. some of them could believe it so fervently that they would storm the capitol with weapons to try to stop the certification of the election. so i thought we were at this tipping point of the power of disinformation and right wing media and wanted to better understand it myself and explain it to democrats, because i think this is the driving force of american politics right now. >> i have a lot of questions. we will start at the beginning. this is a push. you say in the beginning, they have fallen for the big lie, they all believe without a doubt the election was stolen. i question the language of fallen for the big lie. some people chose it, that they willingly chose this line, they did it for reasons of why to premises and accused of other things. but they were not duped, but they chose it. what would you say to that? >> within any group, there are people who use motivated reasoning to believe what makes sense to them, to fit events into their worldview. in their world, donald trump could not possibly lose. but it is much bigger than those people. 70% of republicans believe that the election was illegitimate in some way, shape, or form. some people are choosing to believe it and some people are falling for it, and some people are throwing up their arms because they see so much noise that they don't know what to believe. that is probably the most alarming part of that last group. >> there was a lot that surprised me, and one of them is use a large portions of the country good -- never heard any negative information about trump. is that true? >> if you live within the right wing ecosystem -- >> i feel like we hear about him all the time. [laughter] >> you hear it, it is done in the perspective of, like, the deep state, the fake new york times lying about him. what the right does is create a dramatically sealed information bubble for a large swath of their electorate. where the information they get is filtered to them in a way that is a entirely positive to trump. or if there is a larger conversation about that stuff about trump, it is explaining why that is. >> there is a whole section where you talk about the importance of the blog and the o ld style of media. do you still think blogs matter in the same way? >> no, certainly not. i tell a story in the book about in 2004 i was working for senator tom daschle in south dakota. this was a big deal senate race, because tom daschle was running for reelection. he was bush's enemy number one, his opponent was recruited by karl rove. no senate leader had lost in 50 years. in that election, a group of, out of nowhere, a group of conservative political blogs, immaculately named to cover the race, they came up and hammered daschle nonstop. they transitioned eventually into pushing conspiracy theories. we published this lock muster scoop, like, siren emojis, it was on the drudge report, that tom daschle had a secret deal with the native american population that if the native american population delivered enough votes, daschle would return the black hills to them. which is something that should happen. it is their land that was stolen. but far beyond the power of one senator to do, so it is clearly not true. at first i dismissed it, like, who is reading these idiotic blogs? no one who matters. but all of a sudden he's undecided voters are reading back to me what they are hearing in here. and what we learned leader on was that our opponent, the republican candidate, was paying these blogs to publish disinformation about daschle. and then it dawned on me, that was the first time i confronted disinformation as an explicit political strategy of the republicans and i filed it away is something i thought we would see many times later. maybe not to the extent we see it now, but the canary in the coal mine. >> in that vein, you make a big deal of highlighting this inference between misinformation and disinformation. what is that? >> these are the two terms that get interchanged all-time. misinformation is inaccurate information. it can be accidental, inadvertent. all of us on social media periodically become inadvertent transmitters of misinformation because we read a false story, or someone has taken an out of context comment or something that we tweeted out like, this is terrible, and we spread it, only to find later on that is not what really happened. disinformation is a specific strategy to spread false information to deceive people. and so those differences are important. disinformation is a specific byproduct -- it's a political strategy that we have to pay a lot of attention to and respond to. >> i obvious he paid attention, i knew russia influence the election. i didn't know it was called the internet research agency. but they were dealing in disinformation, not misinformation. >> correct. in 2016, we have all talked about the russian hacking. the one thing the russians did was they hacked into the dmc and clinton campaign emails and then released those emails to cause as much chaos as possible. >> that was confirmed it was the russians? >> yes. >> i was a victim of like, was it the russians? but i believe you. [laughter] >> it was the consensus of the intelligence community, both under obama and trump. although you could not really say that out loud in the trump years. and so, the other thing they did is they created -- they had a strategy to flood social media with false accounts to push disinformation. one of the ways they would do that is they would create false accounts pretending to be black activists who would then post things about why they were not supporting hillary clinton, or pushing people not to vote. and then these entities funded by the russians would run facebook ads promoting that content targeting black audiences. target people by interests, so people who would express interest in civil rights or martin luther king, or similar topics, push that to them. there was a very specific strategy to try to create division and reduce hillary clinton's support and turnout in the black community. >> one of the things he wrote was this idea that trump could not win if more black people voted. >> that is true. in 2016 that was absolutely true. if you had black turnout at the levels at which barack obama had it, the math would be such that hillary clinton would have won wisconsin, for s --pennsylvania and michigan. >> you wrote about the moment where trump was like, sunlight is going to enter your body and if it does, covid is going to disappear. he also said to drink bleach. you talked about the bleach moment is something we all laughed at, but you highlight that as a positive moment for trump. why? >> trump telling people to inject bleach, or get sunlight inside of their body, and we didn't ask any questions about what his plans were as to how you do that -- it was part of a larger strategy to convince people that the pandemic was not as scary as it was. was to get people to return to normal faster. he believed, with very good reason, that his reelection chances were dependent upon the economy bouncing back. it's a ridiculous, absurd thing to say, but people listened. dangerously so. people drank disinfectant. people tried to injest disinfectant. and we have to -- when we look at trump's pent-up response -- pandemic response, it's abhorr ent on every level and seems ridiculous. but he did very effectively and very dangerously to a large swath of the country spread a lot of distrust in what scientists were saying for a political purpose. i use the inject bleach one because a lot of times liberals laugh but republicans listen, and we have to understand why that is if we are going to be able to compete in an information environment where people can listen to something that ridiculous. >> to think of any politicians on the left who would get that message right? one of the things you talk about is we have to -- it cannot always be gloom and doom. you don't write about this in the book, but are there people you think you are getting that right on the left? >> in terms of a message that brings people in? yeah, i think aoc, certainly beer -- certainly bernie sanders in both of his campaigns. i talk in the book about,m like, we look at a trump rally, it is not a place i want to go, it does not seem fun to me. they don't seem to make a lot of sense. but obviously the people there are having a blast. and it is not just the people in the crowd that we see. obviously there are pretty alarming things they are chanting. then you see the footage when the reporters are doing their live shots before the event and it is a festival. it is like renaissance fair, there are people just up as things, they are selling all this swag and people dress up like donald trump. that is not my thing, but i think we need to think about politics as a way that is exciting. that was the core of obama, was people wanted to be there. so i think bernie sanders, aoc, i think stacey abrams in a different way brings people in in a very exciting way. i have not seen this firsthand but i have heard this from a lot of people on the east coast, john fetterman, people are pretty jazzed to be around john fetterman. [applause] >> love that. another thing you said i had not thought about in this way, you push back on republicans wanting smaller government. you talk about injecting antigovernment rhetoric in a strategy, but it is not about shrinking the government. what do you mean by that? >> republicans don't want -- it is not about the size of the government, it is about who the government is protecting. yeah, they want to shrink the epa, osha, all of that, but they want to grow ika, belieff, and it's their view that the government is a bulwark against an america that is changing graphically and culturally in a way that threatens the people who have held political power in this country since the beginning, like christians, primarily meant. so -- men. so this -- that's an important thing democrats have to understand. none of this is on the level. this is not a paul krugman argument about how you build a good economy. it is about political power, and who has it and who they are trying to stop from getting it. it is why the radicalization from the right has happened so aggressively since barack obama won the white house, because that is the embodiment of something they had feared for a very long time. it happened before they were ready for it. >> this book came out before the january 6 hearings and all that. you write at one point, the message is -- do you think the january 6 hearings happening now will stick in a way democrats can use, or do you think we botched the messaging? >> i don't think we have botched the messaging. i think democrats have done a great job. and it is not just a democrat, because it's a bipartisan hearing. but the first thing you have to do is get people to hear you. so the fact that the january 6 hearing got 20 million people to watch the first one, that is unbelievable. that is 6 million more people watching a congressional hearing than game six of the nba finals. that is wild and impressive. this is not in the book but i discovered this fact when doing research on the book, 20 million people is a lot, but it is 80 million fewer people than watch the oj car chase live in 1994. so it got people's attention. social engagement about january 6 has been off the roof for democrat, which is very impressive. also i think they have done something very smart and powerful. they have simplified the story. every hearing tells one aspect of the story. it is not overly complicated. the second piece is the voices they are showing people are not democrat members of congress. we recognize that adam schiff is not going to persuade a lot of people in the middle of the country. so it is liz cheney. the fact that liz cheney, dick cheney's daughter, basically she is darth vader's daughter and she is leading this, and that is amazing. she is a card-carrying member of the republican establishment. it is all the footage of these trump aids, bill barr, jason miller, he ivanka trump, card-carrying members of maga nation, basically saying trump knew the election was not stolen. so it's one of the most important aspects of modern communication strategy where you have a population who are skeptical of politicians generally. it is to use people from your in-group to tell you a message you do not want to hear is very impressive. so whether it is going to stick is up to awesome, what happens going forward -- is up to us, what happens going forward. but thus far, it has been an credible success. >> you sprinkle in some criticism of the new york times. what would you say about the times's lack of holding the administration accountable during those years? or people criticize the reporters who knew things and waited until their books came out. how do you think about the times 's role? >> the new york times does credible journalism. they do really -- does incredible journalism. huge stories they broke. they do great stuff. i picked the times and facebook because they are by far the most influential parts of their respective elements. facebook is by far the most important social media company, the new york times is by far the most influential traditional media organization in the country. and they are way more influential than they have probably ever been because there is so much less competition now. and i think the criticism of the new york times and every answer to the larger traditional media is really that this is not a both sides issue. democracy is at stake here. we cannot have a political conversation where we treat them across trying to run on kitchen table issues the same as republicans trying to steal elections. press is not an unbiased entity. they have biases, they have things they advocate for. we know the press cares passionately about how many questions joe biden answers every week. like, that seems trite and annoying compared to a lot of things, but they should advocate for as much access as possible. that is a good thing to do, and they will use their power to push for more. which is why you read articles about how few interviews joe biden does. the readers don't want to read that. they write it to put pressure on the white house. i think the press can and should be more aggressive advocates for democracy. and if that benefits my crass right now, so be it -- benefits democrats right now, so be it. the first people authoritarians take out when they take over, the press. so i want them to be more aggressive advocates for democracy because i do not think this is a partisan issue. >> the other thing i learned in reading was you talk about the sec's decision to end the fair use doctrine, and the rise of right-wing radio. do you think there's a way to put that back in the bottle? can we undo that? if trump wins, it would be like trying to unring a bill. do you think we can unring the bell or not? >> i thought a lot about how the right, for decades, has run this campaign against -- to try to disqualify the press. that campaign culminates with reagan's election, and reagan using the fcc to repeal the doctrine, which demanded equal time in media. once that happened, right wing radio basically grew exponentially because now there was no need for there to be someone opposite rush limbaugh, you could just have rush limbaugh. and i have wanted to find a way that you could put the fairness doctrine back in to fix these problems and every single person i talk to about this says the bell cannot be un-wrong. the media has been changed so much that a lot of what we deal with now -- like fox probably exists because and in the fair use doctrine shows the marketplace for right-wing media. cable news was not covered by the fairness doctrine. you can't unring the bell is the unfortunate part, so we have to figure out how to live in this environment. >> i didn't know that tucker carlsen started the "daily caller" until i read the book. > i think it was scarborough and tucker colson, back to back. the number one media. >> you don't really give up on facebook, though. you say the left needs to push out messages on facebook. but when you look at the top posts on facebook, they are overwhelmingly ben shapiro republican. you clearly think that is the algorithm, but do you think the left can counter that? you highlight the outrage and anger we can use. do you think that our base will share the messages or do you think the algorithm of facebook is so screwed that we have to fix it first? >> algorithms respond to the input. right now the amount of right wing information pumped into the algorithm is exponentially greater. there's more right wing engages, pushing out more content. we are not necessarily going to very quickly close that gap, but there is room. we have to find ways to have messages that are consistent with our political narrative that also go viral on facebook. that's very hard because the number one political posts on facebook this week, for the week ending today, was by barack obama. but you know what it was? his father's day message. which is charming and important, but i don't think it is moving the political debate in any way. we have gotten a little better at harnessing energy. this is one of the very rare weeks where progressive posts outperform conservative posts, all about abortion. in the wake of the supreme court case, people took to facebook and shared content and responded to content and lifted the content above. this can't happen once every nine months. it has to happen on a regular basis. one of the lessons for us, and after many years of basically never posting on facebook and only looking at pictures of my friends' kids, got back on, started a public page, started to work with a collective of progressives to get more people to post more content. it's like a drop in the bucket at this point but we need more people. seven in 10 american adults are on facebook. half of those people go to the site multiple times a day. 40% of them see it as a major source of news. the scale between only one quarter of americans claim to be on twitter and i think it is smaller than that. on twitter, 90% of the tweets are from 10% of the people. we spent all the time on twitter and think about it and worry about it. it is an important platform for a specific conversation among active people, but facebook is by far the most important. >> you talk about the decision not to fact-check politicians as a watershed moment. do you think they will fact-check politicians? >> put it in perspective. when mark zuckerberg went to give his big speech about how facebook was going to stand for free speech and the first amendment and they would not fact-check politicians. i hate to say this but first amendment and facebook have nothing to do with each other. it is not about your right to be on a specific social media platform. even then, do you really want a big tech company to be the one to decide what is true and what isn't? especially from politicians? the answer to that is maybe not. on the things they say, like donald trump will post something and should it come down, should it not if it violates terms of service? that is fair. what is different is what he's really talking about is fact checking ads. facebook ads are some of the most -- it's not like we lost 30 seconds on the eagles game and hope people watch it. it is that you are able to precisely, able to upload to facebook the file, you can match people, and specifically target people based on their interests. you can push information and use facebook's massive data and ai powered algorithm to decide the people most likely to believe that information. that is a very big deal. is that why donald trump almost won the election? no. but it's throwing your arms up and allowing the weaponization of disinformation. i think that's a bad thing. >> one thing that was interesting is the republican strategy, your argument is if we talk about the facts, they will lose. they have to distract us because when they talk about the fact, they will lose. the second is they have to stoke, you don't call it white supremacy i think, but bigotry. do you see a good counter to those things? we saw the latest rally, like thank you for protecting white life. >> and she won her primary last night. >> did she win? yikes. i thought it must be edited. but she really said that. do you see an effective counter to that? do we need to organize better? what do you do when it is no longer innuendo. >> i think a big part of this is trying to solve the megaphone problem for democrats. what is happening is the right has built this massive apparatus that is dominating the political conversation. it is pushing information out there to decide what we talk about. one thing we can do, it is the hard work, build up a progressive megaphone to get the message out so we are not getting drowned out. >> is msnbc not a megaphone? >> it is not a megaphone. it has great programming on it, but it is not an adjunct of the democratic party, nor should it be. but fox is an adjunct of the republican party. their interest is electing road republican politicians. it is still an organization that uses itself as a journalistic organization and we are just operating at such a smaller scale. tucker carlsen is getting two to three times the viewers of the largest nbc show and six times the largest cnn show. it is a massive rating advantage. and there viewers are more engaged and much more dominant online. the fox facebook presence and online presence is huge. they have an entire streaming platform. there's fox news station. people who pay to get additional tucker carlsen. no one is monitoring. but there is crazy stuff. there is very little of that on the left. we can't count on msnbc to do as much. there's good stuff there but it is not the same. >> start thinking about your questions because we will go to q and a soon. what does the megaphone look like? do we need to round up influencers or make our own tv station? obviously we have the crooked network. the. podcast. >> i think it's all the above. i don't think anyone is investing money in a linear cable network anytime soon. it is more content creators like the organization more perfect union, started by bernie sanders. . campaign managers. a lot of youtube videos, a lot of reporting that they have been aggressively pushing back. a lot of stuff in spanish language. some of my friends acquired stations in florida. it is all of the above. we just need more people saying more things to more people. there's no hierarchy, no one exact person. it will not be like a roger ailes of the left doing it. it's a huge investment in progressive media. it's not just subscribing to progressive publications. it is also just calling them on facebook, subscribe to the youtube channel. when you do that, the algorithms will show that to more people. our party leaders have to do a better job of this. donald trump did many things that were not very smart, but she was brilliant about nurturing a right-wing media ecosystem. if there was an article he thought was good for him in a right-wing conversation, he published it. i'm sorry, he tweeted it. he tweeted, they get traffic. they get more ad dollars. they can do more journalism. if he was promoting fox, doing interviews with right-wing media , when books were written he thought were favorable, he tweeted about those to drive them all on the new york times bestseller list. that means those books would get better placement and the authors would get more media bookings, the publishers would think there's a market for more pro-trump books. democratic politicians, with a handful of exceptions, do not do that. they continue to exist in a world where they will do the bulk of their media through traditional media. they should do all of the above, but it is in every democrats interest to nurture the progressive media ecosystem into using its allies. obama did some of this in the early days. bernie sanders was a master of this in the 2016 campaign. stacey abrams does this. obviously aoc is a media person herself. for the most part, there is still a reticence to embrace progressive media. if the leadership does not, we cannot get the public to do it either. >> what about abortion messaging? a lot of people i'm around think the party is not bold enough, laying low when we should be fighting back. this is the time to not dillydally. and there are other people who say, we can only do so much, aoc obviously believes otherwise, but what do you think? >> i always have sympathy for people who work in the white house and have limited tools to serve -- to do what people care about. there's nothing he can do with his pen that will undo what was done or protect millions of people who just lost rights. but i do think, and i thought aoc's twitter thread on this, really resonated with a lot of people in my life who are interested in politics but don't work in it. what she did was say to recognize the urgency of the situation and say we need a plan. even if they plan over the short, medium, and long-term, we need a plan. this has been a challenge off and on for the last two years, probably the trump years but particularly the last couple years. i think the urgency a lot of democratic voters feel about where the country is going, the dangers of the supreme court, this radical and extreme faction , and the language and tone of our leaders who even if they do believe it, i think many of them do and their actions suggest they do, but if someone in the house did about voting rights, i think we need to do a better job of speaking to that. even if you can't fix the problem, right now you have to speak to the way people feel and make them get it and offer them a long-term. i think people will, in the absence of a short-term problem, a plan to solve the problem. i thought aoc had good ideas on this. sometimes people want to feel your anger. i hope we hear more of that. >> actually when she was like, if you have a better plan, put out, but you can't not say anything. what do you want to ask -- process? >> if i'm ever running for office, it will be the school board and that will be the cap of it. [laughter] >> let's go to questions. >> this is -- let's give it up for dan. [laughter] raise your hand and we will pass around the mic. we will start in this general area and go that way. >> i want to say thank you for your talk, but i have a little issue with how you kind of accused president biden for not doing anything, because he really can't. this is the same man who said vladimir putin should step down. and so to me, as a woman, it is a copout. i would like your feelings on that. >> i don't disagree with what you said. the point i was trying to make is that there are limited tools. i do agree we need more people, the president included, to speak more powerfully, more often and more loudly about this. i was mainly referring to the options he had to actually do something. i 100% agree that we have a party from the president, congressional leaders, candidates, who do not aggressively talk about what has happened here, the fact that a supreme court that was put in place, five justices were appointed by president who got fewer votes, and was confirmed by a republican that represents a minority of americans, just took a constitutional right away from millions, and we don't talk about in the most aggressive terms possible, the voters will not come with us. i'm not going to tell anyone who thought that they were wrong. we have to have a specific point. you give us these votes, we will do x, over the course of time, we will reform, much like aoc said. >> so for those of us who have loved ones who are in that dangerous third category you mentioned at the beginning who go, this is too much and they throw their hands up, how do we get them to understand these alternative information ecosphere's are not equal, one is based in truth and reality and one is a profitable manufactured machine? how do you get them to vote accordingly especially if they say this is too much, i will just vote with the r? how do you bring them to your side? >> in the book, i write about a study that was done in 2019 where they show people news stories with one group. they had another group where they show news stories that were shared by someone they knew. what they came to find out was that people paid way more attention to stories that were shared by people they trusted than the news organization. whether it was the new york times or cnn or fox news, the fact that it was a person they thought shared their values or experiences in some way seemed to have agreed with the point or promote the point that they would believe it. so i think how we do it, each person you deal with will be different. trying to find sources they agree with or they trust to tell them to push back on things. one experiment i saw one political group do was very effective with republican leading voters who disapproved of trauma but still planned to vote for him anyway, was articles from the wall street journal, which because of rupert murdoch, were treated very differently in this group. in fact, for a lot of people in the new york times, it was proof the opposite was true when it came to trump. with the new york times says about donald trump, then it can't be true. so listening to them trying to figure out what sources they trust, conservative voices can be very powerful in influencing people lean conservative but may be skeptical about this version of the republican party or president trump. >> in that vein, you write about the fact checkers. fact checking does not have the power it used to have. do you think that will remain? for a lot of people, something that is obviously not true, like go fact-check it. but your argument is the fact checkers do not have as much sway. >> exactly, it's the opposite in a lot of ways. particularly cnn and the new york times, they are the most targeted news organizations by trump and the most distrust on the right, but the fact that they say it's not true is proof that it is true. so fact checking cannot be the way we win the war on truth and we need other ways to do it. it can be voices and experts to do it. >> you mentioned school boards. and local elections. your book talked about largely the larger scale elections statewide. one of the things that brings something painful to my soul is seeing people maga campaigning for school boards and winning. can you speak to that or what role -- how important do you think these local elections will become in terms of the overall strategy? there are people who are plain idiots who have no awareness of what the real issues are, and are campaigning on things that aren't really even issues, but it is the right buzzwords. i think it is very frightening for our society last night. >> absolutely. political power is built from the ground up here the process by which the republicans were able to rig the supreme court, made a decision to have large swaths of the entry day one, that abortion being banned is a long-term product starting in school boards. democrats have traditionally done a poor job of investing that at the party leadership level and donors and volunteers. we like to elect president, we think the white house is cool, we watch the west wing, and too often we do not invest in the hard work of building political power. i think that has changed a lot since trump won and there are well-funded groups run by the best operatives in the party. this is an example of how serious this is. we talk a lot about the insurrection and what republicans want to do in 2024. in many states like arizona, votes are counted at the county level. county out or -- county auditor is critical. one of the auditors in arizona refused to certify the election. steve bannon on his podcast every week is recruiting people. one group i recommend is run for something. it recruits and trains candidates. this is where the impact of everything we are dealing with will happen in that down ballot. >> one of the things i think that republicans are very good at, we have a governors race coming up, with someone in the past said that he was elected to ban abortions. but now that roe v. wade has been overturned, he is sidestepping that and is concentrating on the economy and gas prices and inflation. that is what the republicans are going to do to take over the house and possibly the senate in the fall. i have friends that are really intelligent, biden, the gas prices, is gas nationalized? does he have the authority to change? who are you going to blame? bp. mobile exxon. the gas companies. they are the ones that are fleecing you. so people believe on a very visceral level that the economy is all on biden. how can we change this? >> to piggyback on that, i had to go to the mall today and might luber driver said, biden is giving away money to ukraine and he needs to do something about gas prices. what do you do with that? we were just talking and she really thought biden is giving away money to ukraine and not helping us with gas. >> so it is always one of the great frustrations of anyone who works in the white house that the public thinks you have way more power than you actually have. gas prices, inflation is a worldwide phenomenon, all of the above. it is hard to explain away peoples economic pain and anger. i think there are two elements of this. one is we can accept the premise of the problem that gas prices are too high and try to reframe the argument about who will do a better job of solving it. is it going to be the party that is funded by oil companies? the party who insists on giving those exact same oil companies tax breaks? the same people who were opposing a windfall profits tax supported by democrats? it is a tough political environment, but you always want the argument of who is going to fight for you. in a tough economy, that can work for democrats. as much as republicans try to rebrand themselves as populists, there's still a lot of skepticism as people who will fight for middle-class working people and corporations. the other thing is i think there's a mentality among some democrats in terms of politics that we have to change. doug messed rihanna wants to talk about gas prices because that is better for him. but that does not mean we have to as well. republicans tend to decide polling, decide what issues voters should talk about on election day, and talk about it. no one thought immigration would be the number one issue in 2016. donald trump made it the number one issue. democrats look at polls and say what are people thinking about now, and then we just talk about that, whether it is good or bad for us. in this case, there's a whole lot with january 6, there is abortion, a right wing war on freedom in this country where they want to ban contraception, they want to decide who you love, what looks you can read. i imagine an argument would be very powerful. just because he wants to talk about it doesn't mean we have to fall for that. >> i want to know your thoughts on reconciling campaign rhetoric and campaign promises with managing expectations. in your campaign, you hear a lot of candidates talking about issues and saying what democratic voters want to hear, but i feel like younger voters are sort of becoming disillusioned by that. just wanted your thoughts on that. >> that is the old, famous line from governor mario cuomo that you campaign on poetry but govern in prose. this is something we wrestled with in obama's reelection campaign. we are trying to run on what we say with what we are going to do , but knowing we will almost certainly returned to the white house with republican house and senate. i think there are two elements of this letter very important. one is we have to treat voters as if they are smart and they understand it. talk to them like adults. we cannot make promises we can deliver on but that we will fight like hell for the biggest mistake emma cuts, and i include myself -- democrats, and i include myself on this, is that we manage expectations terribly. the senate kept saying failure is not an option on voting rights. we have no plan to cross the manchin chasm, but we have to be honest with people. we were so bad at managing expectations around build back better, that it washed away incredibly important compliments. we are focused on what did not get done as opposed to what got done. i'm sympathetic with people frustrated that we have not done a bunch of things but we have to be more honest with voters. >> there's a lot of unhappiness and social media that pushes the obama team that would say you all did not codify roe v. wade when you had the votes and the power. what would you say to that? people who are on our side are saying that. >> so there was a two-year period from 2009 two 2011 where democrats had unified control of the house and senate. obama had pledged that if he was elected, he would try to codify roe. he said at a conference in the campaign. here's the problem and why it did not happen. this is not to say president obama and those who worked for him could not have done more to forestall where we are as americans. what i am saying is what naral said in 2010, that there is not a pro-choice majority in the house and senate. there were not enough votes. we had expanded the pro-choice democrats, but in two thousand 9, 1 third of house democrats defined themselves as anti-choice. a large number of democratic senators were either explicitly anti-choice or pretty ambivalent about their position. we had enough democrats but not pro-choice democrats. that's ultimately what the best message in the short term is, give me 52 pro-choice democrats, and we can deliver the codification of roe. are you justifying or excusing -- i'm trying to explain what the reality is. people would be shocked at where joe manchin would be on this spectrum of democratic senators circa 2010. it would not be on the far right, it was closer to the middle because we had a pretty conservative party back >> i have been reading -- what do you think of the thought, i think you have seen it, that too many of our organizers have not come from too small of a section of the country. they come from colleges, that kind of argument, so they don't have the life experience and can't connect with people further down the chain. also they don't talk like real people? >> i think most people in politics don't talk like real people. that is the first people of advice my cohost gives everyone. you have to talk like a human. and a human doesn't need small words, it means you have to have relatable emotions and stories. but it is -- i think we need more diversity at every level of the party. diversity in every element of life. race, gender, where you are from, where you work. and a lot of the thing -- the pandemic really affected how the 2020 campaign was -- in powerful ways. more people on the ground working. a lot of organizers, they will parachute into states, that is what they do for a living. but they were constantly recruiting people from those states to work for them. college kids, adults who wanted to get involved in politics. so we need a lot more of that. we are always trying to find the narrowest possible problem that explains everything. i think diversity in every element, in every way you define that word is a problem in all parts of american life. but it is not the only reason, struggling with working class, a trend that has been going on for well over two decades. >> up here in the -- >> i just wanted to ask, one of the things that perplexes me is how it always feels democrats are not organized and not thinking about the long game. for a long time, we have said roe v. wade was a target. we knew that is where things were headed. yet i feel like to hear someone say now we need to have a strategy now, it is like where have you been? i think about when w was president, republicans made it clear they were going to start recruiting among latino communities in the south for the republican party so in the long term, knowing there would be eventually a much larger latino voting population, they would have that majority. we are starting to see the results of that. it was an intentional strategy they created. why can't democrats get organized like that? what is going on? >> politics is funny in the way perception changed quickly. if this had been a meeting of republicans in 2012, 2013, all the way up until the moment donald trump one, republicans would say how is it we keep getting our clock cleaned, democrats are organizing, fundraising us, data technology, all of that. it has obviously changed. there are things that are fair and true of your critique. republicans have had a donor base, primarily the coat others for many years, who invested in political infrastructure. the most boring things possible, but off year elections, candidates training recruitment, there have been similar efforts among democrats. there has been a group of people since -- 2012, democrats organizing impacts as a group. the fact they have come this far is a product of a decade of organizing from democrats. that is the reason why beddoe almost -- beto almost won. georgia, stacey abrams, black lives matter's, what they had done is a product of a decade of organizing in that state. so there are elements of it. it is fair to say that -- and it is a very important critique, on the issue of abortion, and a lot of people after the opinion league. republicans had a better plan to overturn roe v. wade than democrats. the supreme court being the way it is, you have limited control of where you get justices. that is why we are in this situation. we need to have more -- and hopefully people learn a lesson from this, that we need long-term, well-funded strategic solutions. go through elections you win, and elections you lose. you are making progress towards an end goal. a lot has changed in the party, some is very good. but clearly not enough is done. we may have lost the saddle before we even started because they have been working on it so long. >> similar -- diversity and activating knowing the plan. in pennsylvania, are elections of the governor and senate race are important. but there is a lot of anger. in the democratic party, what is going on right now. how do we unite the diverse party, specifically in pennsylvania? because it is such a critical election to unite people and activate them in the next 5, 6 months, in terms of november coming up. >> i would say, we organize around the country, justice and policing, and what i have seen to be most effective going into this question, organizers were always trying to convince aunts and uncles, whoever does that will always win. what trump did well, he had never talked -- i don't know what he said privately, i can imagine it is ridiculous publicly, but he would always talk to aunts and uncles. my aunt always understood what he said, it was just crazy to her. my aunts listens to biden and says i don't know what he's saying. when we organize on issues, we are always testing it. not that my aunt is not smart, she is in business with three kids, she is not watching tv all day to see seven people tell the story, which is what cable news is. she is going to get one shot at it, and you have to deliver. the second thing is reminding people of what we do believe in and not what we don't believe in. some people love the police, some people don't. do i want people to be safe? do you want the person with a gun to get the cat out of a tree, to tell you you don't have your taillight? i'm trying to take the craziness out of the issue and make it seem really simple. i have learned that on the far left, and ideologically i consider myself on the far left, the message has to be the middle sometimes. we have to take the message out of it -- in the book, it is like how they were able to convince people everyone is a socialist in florida. it is not socialist to say everyone should have breakfast, lunch, and enter. we should talk about it as a basic thing. a basic thing to say you should not die where you go to school. we have to take the street credit, i really care about the people, out of it, and talk about it as simply as possible. she is like you should not die in schools, should not die in prison. like yes. i have learned sometimes we overdo it. and my aunt doesn't want to be yelled at, she wants to be convinced. >> that is exactly right. there is an element of finding common cause with people. it is not simplifying as -- what do we care about, what do we agree on? even our democratic family. if it is something as simple as in pennsylvania, we think let the people choose who they vote for in the election should be who is elected. it should be people should not be prosecuted. we believe politicians should not decide what books we read or what teachers teach, across the board. raising the stakes in a unified way. >> and organizing, we always try and figure out the question to rephrase things. think about the place where you feel the most safe. a place where you feel safe. are the police there? no. what does it look like without the police? you already know. when everyone was in their room where you want to feel safe, we scale it up. people you love, food, we are trying to take the bite out of it and make it something you already understand. >> thank you for your service. i'm almost 80. i remember very well many presidents love the statements and enrage -- equal engagement. especially today's republican party. my husband and i are republicans, the democrats are the crazies down south and hang with the mafia. this changed. our parents, republicans excite people. they wind them up, fear and anger are the most primitive, most reactive emotions. to keep people scared is to keep them engaged. afraid of immigrants, afraid of socialists, afraid of democrats, they had us afraid of dr. seuss and pepe lepeu. very capable woman, but not an exciting speaker, hillary clinton. president biden, extremely capable. not an exciting speaker. we need another obama with some good support. my question is what do you think of the national popular vote contact? >> i'm a big believer in the fact that the electoral college is a terrible, anti-democratic relic, a terrible thing to get rid of. the vote is a project getting states to have walls that say they will give their electors whoever wins the popular vote. pennsylvania would do it. but they are big in recruiting states for i think decades. but you need to get to all of them for it to actually go into place. everyone around the constitution. it is going to be very hard, republicans know the only way -- they have lost the election, so they probably won't have a lot of states to agree the popular vote. senate questions from the balcony, this is the sort of work you do so you're prepared for a moment when you possibly can strike. i think it is very good stuff. >> this will be our final question. >> thank you for the excellent talk. there is a lot of problems, as you described, situations feel very bleak. at the same time, many dark faces of american history and global history. i'm wondering to what extent you think the moment is singular. is it really unprecedented on a totally different level? how do you think about that? >> it depends on who you ask. this could be a passing moment, it could be the last rose of an extremist, right-wing, authoritarian movement, or the beginning of something very good for us. that is up to all of us and what we do to stop it. we have the power to stop it. there is a growing progressive pro-democracy, pro-truth, anti-maga majority in the country, we just have to show up to vote in the right places at the right time. i think the danger of this moment for democracy -- i don't want to say it is unique, but it is not by definition something that will go away. only if you make it go away. >> let's give it up for david. [applause] >> now on book tv we are joined by the co-author of this book called "superabundance: the story of population growth, innovation, and human flourishing on an infinitely bountiful planet." professor fully, what do you mean when you talk about superabundance? >> thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about what we discovered in our research. the idea of superabundance occurred to us when we were looking at this original bed between julian simon and paul ehrlich in the 1980's. paul ehrlich had written this book that painted this dystopian future that things were going to crash and england would not exist and we were going to starve. and economists picked up the book and read it. they said initially, this looks like it makes sense. but maybe i should look at what the data says about resources. how abundant the resources are. as economists, we look at the price of resources. you know, if something is money now it should be getting more expensive. what julian simon found is that the price of these things was not going up. they were going down. so how can you have something becoming more scarce that was becoming cheaper? so, he begins to research other things. he starts looking at nonrenewable metals like copper. then he extended it to these other resources. what he observed is this population increase. these prices, these resources they went down. he published his findings. this created this huge contention between the two. science magazine published his article. so, they had this disagreement. finally julian says, why don't we just bet? paul, you pick five medals, however many you want and i will bet that they will be cheaper in the future. so paul ehrlich and two of his friends took the five metals, chromium, copper, tin, and tungsten. they said, let's bet 10 years and see what happens. 10 years later the bed comes through. the inflation adjusted prices of these five metals have fallen by 36%. that was during the same decade we had the highest growth of population on the planet. the population is doing this. prices are doing that. he writes this check to julian. julian says, well, would you like to bed again? -- to bet again? so as economists we have always been interested in that bet. we felt like this was one of the most important checks ever written in economics. >> so in simple form, how is it that population growth equals more abundance? >> well, it's kind of counterintuitive. you think, well, if we have supply, this pizza, and i keep inviting friends over and the slices get smaller with every round of pizza. that thinking, the idea of living in a world where we have limited resources, that is the fundamental flaw. because, we recognize we do live in a world with a finite number of atoms. but economics is not about atoms. economics is about knowledge and the creation of value. when we add knowledge to atoms. that is really where it comes down to this core issue. human beings are the source of knowledge. as they come and bring knowledge and discover and trace knowledge, this makes these things much more abundant and much less expensive. that is the basic idea that we explore in the book. >> oil is a product you talk about all the time. we thought we would run out of oil, that we had peaked on oil. >> if you go back and look at the history of oil when we first found it it was bubbling on the ground. we were like, that stuff is a liability. but thinking, what can this be used for? we discovered, if you heat up the oil and steam it when it condenses it turns into other substances like kerosene. kerosene then became this valuable asset that replaced whale oil because the price of whale oil was doing this. people wanted to bite whale oil. so we are out hunting whales because we wanted to get there oil to operate these plants. kerosene comes along. it is a substitute and it is much, much deeper to do that. suddenly the liability becomes an asset. because it was always there. what was not always there was the knowledge of how to make this stuff valuable. george gilmer, my friend he makes this really great observation. he says, the difference between our age and the stone age is entirely due to the growth of knowledge. we are not getting more atoms. we are getting more knowledge. knowledge is really the product of free human beings that are able to explore and innovate. that is what allows us to escape poverty. growth in knowledge. if you really want to have more stuff, you have to be in favor of more human beings. >> so you teach economic at baylor. >> byu. >> byu in hawaii. >> yes. brigham young. your co-author is to? >> marion tupy a senior fellow at the cato institute. >> what is an example you use through the book? >> remember, we buy things with money. we really pay for them with time. if you buy something you're like, i will go earn the money and then by this thing. we said, we buy things with money and we pay for them with time. we measure things in dollars and a sense. we can also measure things in hours and minutes. a pizza, for example, costs $20. i am earning 40 -- $40 per hour. the pizza costs 30 minutes. that is the time price. everything gets converted from money to time. that has four benefits. time has four benefits over money. the first benefit is you don't have to worry about making adjustments for nominal dollars in real dollars. it avoids the whole inflation issue. all of the cpi, all of these adjustments that we try to make as economists, to adjust that to some real number. you can avoid all that confusion. go straight to the time price. the second advantage is once you have developed the time price you can look at the time price of anything through history. what was the time price for a loaf of bread in paris in the 1850's? what was the time price for a loaf of bread in new york today? you cannot measure the change in the time price. so, convert money prices to time prices and look at the change in the time price over time. that is really what we see yields the true insight about resource abundance. if the time price is going down, that means that resource has got to become more and more abundant. the reason that the time price is going down, two things. when we have innovation, we will see both the lower prices and higher incomes. when you have a new innovation in business, you are able to pay employees more money. so income action increases. so time price more fully captures innovation than just the money price. we like time price. the other reasons. i have four here. the last reason is that we related back to this fundamental measure of time. of the seven measurements we use in science, six relate to time. so we can take economics and related back to time. then, we have this universal constant that is recognized for everybody. we all get 24 hours a day. everybody on the planet has this sense of what time is. time prices are really true prices versus nominal and real. these time prices together capture wrote -- what it really costs you to buy something. >> in the example you weave in throughout the book is a farmer in india. >> that's a good one. that goes back to 1960. your guy in india, how much time you spend to earn or buy rice for the day. back then based on the price of rice and hourly income it would take about seven to eight hours. that's a guy working all day to earn money to buy my rice. since 1960, the price of rice as fallen. incomes have increased in india. now, it takes less than an hour. that's like an 80% to 90% drop in the time price. so, india now has six or seven more hours a day they can devote to someone -- somewhere else. compare that to somebody in indiana. in 1960 it took them one hour to earn the money to buy their bushel of wheat. today it takes less than six minutes. so, their time price has fallen by the same amount. but it was actually better off, the guy in india that has six hours, or, the guy in indiana that has 50 minutes? time prices are allowing this quality of life. now people have more and more time to devote to other activities. >> talk about the issue of innovation. his innovation incremental? or are their surprises? >> yes, we divide it. there is this idea of continuous innovation. i will grow at 3%, 5% per year. then you also have these equilibrium times. the pony express for time -- for example is going along and suddenly you have the telegram. that's a big gain in one day. the next day, it's like, wow. so, you have these punctuated equilibrium's and also this continuous innovation that occurs. both of those are happening around us. in punctuated equilibrium's we get surprise abundance once every 20 years. we have this continuous innovation happening. we see that this occurs at a rate of around 3% to 4% a year. if you grow at 3.5% a year you a double your abundance every 20 years. the question would be, would you want to go -- grow 3.5% a year and a double in 20 years or wait 20 years and get a doubling in one day? if you waited 20 years and went into the store and everything was 50% off one day you would be like, this is fantastic. but we are experiencing it a little every day so we don't notice it until we step back and say, what really happened in 1980? how much was i earning in 1980. what were the price of things in 1980? it took me two hours to buy a pizza in 1980. today it takes me 20 minutes. that is what time prices allow you to do. to measure things in time. you look at the change in time over time. that really reveals a whole new world, we think, about what is really really happening with resources. we look at the basic commodities. we started with 50 basic commodities. oil, energy, food. materials. minerals. edibles. then we expanded it. we pulled out a sears catalog in 1980 and looked through all the prices of things. then we went to walmart.com today and look at the same prices of the same things. a bicycle, a blender, a microwave, atv. it was a -- astonishing how expensive things used to be, you know, when you look at what we have to spend today versus what you had to spend even in 1980 42 years ago. for us it's like, i remember 40 years ago. but we are sitting here in las vegas. lake mead levels are dropping. we are talking about drought here. population growth leads to more water uses. population growth leads to more co2 emissions. true or not true? what well, -- >> well, population growth leads to more water. if the price of something goes up, four things happen. first, people use less of it. gas, for example. i will not be using as much gas so people use less of it. on the supply side people start looking for substitutes. half of these guys here today are talking about energy, trying to invest in energy. they are looking to increase the supply. they are also looking for substitutes. can we find things that are substitutes for this thing. now, there is not a good substitute for water. but there is lots of water on the planet. the issue will be can you figure out how to innovate desalination ? can you lower the cost of desales nation -- desalination? we see that all over the planet where's -- with places like israel that have figured out how to desalinate water at less than five cents per gallon like 50% of once and for gallon. it is so inexpensive today. so, if we can trust human innovation to show up when prices go up, we can expect these resources to not become more scarce. to become in fact, more abundant. because, you are taking and applying knowledge. we say, you are intelligent rising atoms. you are adding intelligence to atoms in the way you have organized those atoms. for example, spencer hill dongle this great economist at m.i.t. has this analysis. you go by a $2 million sports car. it is a beautiful car. in your excitement you drive it off the lot and all of a sudden you crash it. boom. what has happened to the value of the car? well, it might disappear. but all of the atoms are still there. it was the organization of the atoms that made it valuable. not the atoms. you know, this guy here. you have like six ounces of basically sand, silicone, and aluminum. but what makes it valuable is the way we have been able to organize these things. the knowledge we are adding to this material. that is what economics really is looking at. you know, when you walk into the store to buy a loaf of bread, how many times you count the loaves on the shelf? do you ever? what is more important the number of loaves on the show for the price? the price, right? that is economic thinking. what is the price? the information contained in the price tells you what you should do. if you think i get economists instead of -- you know, we make fun of accountants. accountants like to count everything. how much oil do we have? how much are we using? oh, we will run out in five years. no. the price will signal to all the people in the market about changing their behavior that will ultimately create abundance. because, the focus will be on let's go out and to discover and create new knowledge that will convert this scarcity into abundance. go back to the issue of oil. yes, we are experiencing this oil thing right now. but is it due to this fundamental? are we running out of oil or is something else affecting the price with a temporary nature? if you look at the price of oil, how much time it takes to earn the money to buy a gallon of gas, it has been going like this. we have these periods of up. the underlying trend is that the time price is continuing to get lower and lower and lower. really, we can say it's becoming more abundant. a car today gets twice in the mileage of a car in 1980. suddenly, this is the price of gas fallen by 50%. because we don't buy the gas. but the gas we buy is for what it provides to us. if you can't find oil, what can you do? you can find more efficient ways to use oil. that is where knowledge and innovation shows up in the efficiency we see with car modification, for example. >> so when it comes to superabundance, how did governments or government entities promote door -- promote the process? >> there are two issues. the first is, we have to overcome the ideology that we live in a world of scarcity. this ideology that we will run out of stuff. we will not run out of stuff. the second issue is, the challenges. we are destroying the environment, right? we are having this effect on the environment. with knowledge and innovation, this will actually lead us out of environmental challenges. we see human beings ability to adapt and accommodate to changing conditions. i live in hawaii. it is a chain of semi-dormant volcanoes. i wake up and i have a costco. i have air conditioning. this is astonishing that i can live there. because, human beings are supremely adaptable to conditions. conditions change. but we seem to be able to adapt and innovate and take a liability and convert it into a really valuable asset. >> there is a line in her book i want to quote to you that has struck me. "liberal societies appear to be less -- growing less tolerant of eccentricity." >> that is my co-authors line. >> what did he mean by it? >> i think that what people say is as we become more and more prosperous, what do we worry about? we tend to start worrying about more smaller and smaller things. more prosperity means there are fewer things that are big we really have to worry about. that intolerance of people wanting to try to innovate new things, take more risks. you lose that edge when you are full and in air conditioning. it is like, ok, what we will -- what will we do next? there is this idea here at that as a culture we need to be more open to experimenting, allowing people to extreme it with new ways of doing things. more tolerant, if you will. let people have a go at it. see what they can come up with. let people have freedom. that is how we characterize china. china until the 1980's was flat. suddenly, they take off like that. why is that? you give people a small measure of freedom and suddenly they have new innovation and new ability to create value. there is this fundamental argument we make. superabundance is the idea that your resources are growing at a faster rate than the population. the more people you bring not only bring their pizza, they bring pizza to share with everybody else. for every 1% increase in population, that corresponds to a 3% or 4% increase in personal resource abundance. so these people show up on the planet. suddenly, i am 3%, 4% richer. that has been what we have seen over the last 200 years. this book, the introduction was written by george gilder. you have support from jason furman of the obama administration, jordan peterson, steven pinker. you did something right to get that diverse group of people to agree on your book, correct? >> that was marian. marian knows all those guys. i think what they were able to see is look, you have this framework. looking at things with time prices instead of money prices reveals a completely different picture of what is happening. so we have this framework. then we go out and apply it to actual data and see a different world. it is like a telescope almost. it is like once you have this instrument, this way of looking at things, you see a completely different world. the world we see when we look at time prices says we are experiencing superabundance where we do not see that population will increase and make us run out of resources. we will become more abundant. you don't see an increase in population that will cause these other kinds of -- i mean, recently we have heard about elon musk versus the new mall susie ends. -- new malthusians. thomas mall this wrote this --malthus wrote this book that said if you're population does this the economy will crash. we think it has been a virus that has infected our culture, that we will run out of stuff. bill marr talks about, we have too many people. aoc says it's not ok to have children. there has never been a time in the history of humanity where we have been able to have abundance to have more children. that's really true. >> paul ehrlich of population bomb never publicly apologized for getting it wrong or did he cut the check? >> he cut the check. i saw an interview with him the other day. he said, i was not extreme enough. i am still right. it's like, paul, there is still time to recant, i guess. >> you were born in 1955. i was born in 1960. how has our economic world changed? in our lifetime? >> we have data back to 1960 that we can analyze. i am 60 years old. every 20 years my life as doubled. my standard of living has doubled every 20 years. i went from one to two to four days. i am really -- i went from one to two 24 to eight. i am eight times better than i was in 1955. what did you have in 1960? you have at least four times that today, you really do. i show my students this and they said, what do you pay for that? i said, $600. what would i have to pay you to never use this again? this is really how much you value it. i can't find a student that will do it for less than $5 million. you have a $5 million in your you can walk around with. how rich are you? how abundant is your life? >> "superabundance: the story of population growth and human flourishing on an infinite>> we. this is the institute on religion and democracy as well as providence, a journal of christianity and american foreign policy with the delight of posting the unveiling of a new book. it is very connected to our major themes of christian realism. it is called "power politics and moral order: 30 generations of christian realism, a reader." it was put together by two friends of our organization. eric patterson, who was on our ird board of directors and bob who has come all the way from toronto to be here with us this evening for this special book unveiling. bob is associate professor of politics and international studies and founding director of the center for christian scholarship at redeemer university in toronto. eric patterson is the current vice president of the religious freedom institute here in washington and scott are at large at rutledge university in virginia beach. it should be pointed out that our providence executive editor mark contributed a chapter to this book. i am mark tooley, president of the ird and editor at providence. special welcome to all of you here physically this evening in downtown washington, d.c., to all of our viewers on facebook and put her at -- twitter, and our future viewers on c-span book tv. where this video will be airing, no doubt, many times in the near future. eric where this video will be airing no doubt many times in the near future. eric patterson will speak first and there will be plenty of time for questions later. i am sure you will be experiencing intellectual overload. that should be time for all of you. eric: my name is eric patterson, executive vice president of the religious freedom institute in washington dc on scholar at large up regent university in virginia beach. thanks to the institute for religion and democracy and providence, its journal. several essays in "power politics and moral order" were given to us gratis to print in this book. i would like to thank the two universities, redeemer and regent. both provided a natural resources for copyrights for chapters in the book, they provided research assistance. we could not have done it without them. let me take you to the summer of 1940. london and other british cities are being bombed. it is the battle of britain. world wars -- world war ii officially started a year before as heckler invaded poland. -- hitler invaded poland. why is it than with bombs falling on london and other cities that cs lewis had go to oxford university and give a famous speech. this beach was, "why i am not a pacifist." how is it, seven years after hitler's takes over germany -- hitler's takes over germany -- hitler takes over germany, that lewis has to defend self-defense against the nazis. part of that lies in what was called the twenty-year crisis, from the end of world war i to the beginning of world war ii, in which the western world bide to look the other way and not a problem of hitler and the nazis or japanese imperialism. they didn't because of pragmatic pacifism. by that, i mean world war i was so destructive, we will do anything to avoid being responsible for our neighbors and standing up to hitler. there was also a utopian idealism that maybe we could legislate war away. the kellogg-briand pact of 1935, the league of nations, these things were designed to outlaw war. and if it was outlaw, who then would break the rules and cause a war? hitler just needed a little bit of elbow room, right? that is the context of the growth of what we call christian realism, associated with the united states and united kingdom. it is a reaction to the utopian, idealistic, irresponsible pacifism and the like. this book goes beyond reinhold neighbor, the famous christian realist. what we do is, we document a history of 90 years of christian realism. one of the contributions of this book is laying the tradition out in three generations. the first generation being the fight against fascism and early communism, 1932-1965. the second era is from the vietnam war in the late decolonization period to the end of the cold war, 1990. the last generation with names you would know is the disorder of the 1990's and the era of terrorism since 2001. the names are people like george weigle, james turner johnson, mark love vicki, daniel strand, myself, rob jost struck -- rob jostra and many others. you will find the writings in this book. let's step back. i assume that by identifying a counter pacifism and idealism, let me mention a couple of tenants that make up christian realism. for those who study political science or international relations, you know there are all sorts of realisms out there. it means a realistic, non-utopian foreign policy analysis. we distinguish pragmatic forms of realism like mikey valley -- machiavelli, thomas hobbes, from moral forms of realism, christian realism. christian realists to look at policy analysis, security, power politics. but they don't only look at it through the lens of government versus government and the security dilemma. instead, we recognize this is an augustinian tradition rooted in early christian sources, most likely in the way augustine things about anthropology and politics. christian realists are united in recognizing human beings are sinful. much of what motivates us is self-interested. but that is not all there is to the story. christian realists also tend to be helpful, so individuals have worth, but also responsibility to act in political life. that is the difference between that and irresponsible forms of that is someone else's problem or i can't dirty my hands by trying to save and protect. christian realism in a sense is a species of this augustine tradition. another part of this is a focus on ways that not just individuals, but that groups have their own, natural forms of limitation and sin it seems humans in groups are more chauvinistic -- fascism, communism, f no nationalism, we are more chauvinistic in a group that we are as individuals. christian realists i like the way, whether it is ethnic basis, racial basis, some other form of prejudice based on ideology, that all of those are idolatrous. they put the group and some sort of populist leader in an idolatrous position instead of the god of the bible. you will also find that christian realists are very concerned about unintended consequences. so, they will often debate limits and restraints when thinking about foreign-policy action. there is a lot more about that in the book you can read for yourself. but the second part of this, this idea of generations of christian realism, we found christian realists typically answered the same sorts of questions decade after decade. in that first generation in the 1940's and 50's, they thought about how we have a liberal world order that dresses the piece responsibility and doesn't fail like the league of nations? how do we think about atomic weapons? etc. the same types of questions are asked today. you will find that there is a commonality of the questions and approaches to how they are answered. in conclusion for my portion, rob and i are both going to point out a couple of readings that are our favorites from the book. a runner up is that, in the last section, we have contrasting chapters where we slightly disagree on the importance of potency of international institutions and multilateralism. that reflects my american bias and his canadian highest -- canadian bias. another great chapter is by george weigle, well known in town, an essay he wrote in the book with james turner johnson defining peace and tucked to think about peace when confronting saddam hussein and the disintegration of the cold piece of the cold war. i would like to read a couple of excerpts from 1948 by martin white, in an essay called "the church, russia and the west," and martin white is the father of modern international relations theory, what we call the english school, and primarily, we teach this in british universities. it is very influential. his two text books published after his death are still best sellers today in international relations theory. he is writing in 1948 about the jumble of international relations after 1945. the soviet union doesn't leave iran. soviet union leaves troops in eastern europe. there is communist infiltration all around the world. atomic weapons. china seems to be teetering. he lays this all out in the first pages and then steps back and says, how should we as christians think about this? what categories should we use? let me read what he says about history. "the distinction between secular and sacred history is the stuff of our argument, between history as process only and history as purpose. if we use one metaphor, we can say that secular and sacred history enter penetrate. if we use another metaphor, and perhaps a truer one, we will see secular history as just the surface of the time process, dead and glassy. but we see sacred history is that same time process, but transparent indivisible against the light of attorney. -- paternity. the sum of all the depths of destiny. this is the same distinction is augustine's two cities, the earthly city in the heavenly city, built by the love of god to the contempt of self. he goes on to say, "two beliefs have hitherto underlain the ordinary non-christian attitude toward the present crisis, the attitude of the ordinary secular liberal in our post-christian world. one of these is the belief that we are on the whole, well-meaning people doing our best and will somehow model through. the other secular approach is an optimistic belief that, because we are well-meaning at doing our best, things will tend to come out right, that what happens will be for the best anyway. hence, perhaps the way it has been used in modern times is just to see public affairs as a suggestion -- as a succession of questions or problems to be solved in time. we are not all meaning people doing our best. we are miserable sinners living under judgment with a heritage of sin to expiate. we will not somehow model room. -- model through -- muddle through. the promise of being safe carries no assurance of muddling through the world. nor do we find in the bible anything resembling secular progress. we find redemption through suffering. " -- we find redemption through suffering." he goes on to talk about dealing with the soviet union. i will leave that to you. thank you. [applause] mark: thank you, eric. thank you for hosting the launch for the institute. we are grateful for inviting a canadian to talk about politics and power. i trust by the time i finished talking, you will shoo me out of town for all my middle power institutionalism and lifting americans have to do. my heart was warmed as eric was reading the passage. my calvinist part was warmed as i heard you're reading about the depredations of sin. i came to the tradition of christian realism. i did not initially study politics in college. i studied history and calvinism. when i first encountered herbert butterfield, i encountered him as a historian, not as a political scientist. one contribution, one journey i went on was coming from the other side of the ocean, over, back to, which is for a lot of people who think about christian realism, they think about the american experience, they think about reinhold niebuhr. i think about paul ramsey. when the contributions we are able to make in this reader was that yes, and amen to the great fast of american christian realists. but also, a transatlantic perspective as well. people like white, that we just heard from. people like herbert butterfield. ennis bertinelli -- and extraordinary insensitive scholar and had views on nuclear weapons that might be closer to my canadian sensitivities. i will let you give me a hard time about that later. i was deeply entrenched in english school. and as others have argued, this tradition that has residents, also perhaps something they called the amsterdam school. people like abraham kuyper and hermann bob beck and others known as pastors and theologians but also were politically active, active in politics and policy. kuyper served as prime minister of the nuns and made foreign policy i would be remiss -- foreign policy. i would be remiss if i didn't mention i published a book with another joster, and there is a wonderful book for you to go and sink your attention in. this to me adds essential flavor to the tradition of christian realism. i don't want to step away from the american school, i don't want to step away from niebuhr, certainly not paul ramsey. but the witnesses, those in the late imperial context of the u.k., at least the way we in canada measure it, we talk about the decline of the british empire happening around 19 if when conveniently the minister of external affairs first on the scenes and introduced the united nations emergency force we have come to call peacekeepers. they say this is the moment in which the united kingdom was coming to terms with it postwar decline. there was a question, what does christian realism look like there? not at the height of super -- at the height of superpower promise or the school asking questions that to a canadian like myself, would ask, there are really powerful countries right next-door and sometimes they are friendly and sometimes they are not and how do we make foreign policy where we do not dominate the agenda, set the terms, so we cannot by virtue of coercive force imagine solving this resolution. it is why when given the choice about teaching american or canadian foreign policy, i would rather teach canadian foreign policy. the joke i hear is, but what do you do after the first two weeks? there is a full course of content. students who enter into american foreign policy, and often with the premise of imagining the problems in the world are there is to solve. how can we solve this? we have the power to affect this change. you almost have to spend a whole semester debunking that impulse and helping them understand the limitations, the hubris of power, the irony of american history. in canadian foreign policy, we start there. we don't have to do a lot of heavy lifting to convince you that this major quandary is going to be solved by canada. maybe in partnership, may be collaboration, but that is a more humble and productive and collaborative and yes multilateral place to start. that is one of the reasons the transatlantic perspective in addition to the generational perspective in this volume is so helpful. we will hear from the american school, but also the english school and also the after dam school. that will help us think about late imperial power, middle power, lesser powers but still powers, still countries that have responsibilities, ethics, obligations, and what does justice mean for them? justice is not simply the purview of the great superpowers, it is the purview of anyone with political power. and that is the way augustine would put it to us. i think this is really helpful. i love the introduction of this transatlantic dialogue on christian realism. i wish there was more work excavating the english school and making it contemporary. at also building up the amsterdam school and help us your voices from other parts of tradition around the globe. this is one of the exciting pieces of contribution, but i want to focus on two pieces. one is english school and one is an empty dam school -- what is it amsterdam school. they both nine on aspects of american christian realism. certainly realism in the case of butterfield. i had a friend of mine convince me to listen to audio books, and now i am in it to win it. i have been listening to general mcmasters' "dereliction of duty," he reads it himself, and his impressions of president johnson are not to be missed. in his reading it out loud, he is critical of the quonset, the whiz kids, as they begin to set the terms for power politics, for communication. this is one of the things butterfield gets to the heart of, human nature and the dominion of fear. he says we think about fear is this feature of the international system, it is there, whether we talk about whether it is natural, but he says it is not always something we can quantify easily. there is an emotional element to it. it is such a risk -- rich aspect of the english school. he says fear is a thing that is extraordinarily vivid while we are in its grip, but once it is over, it leaves little trace of itself in our consciousness and is one of the experiences we can never properly remember, one also which, since we may be ashamed of it, we have no reason for wishing to remember. we are in the position of those unsympathetic parents who, though they can recall concrete things that happened in their lives, have forgotten what it really felt like to be in love. it is curious that the moods and sensations which have mastered us in the past, and which all -- which almost may consume a man, are significant to recover or reimagine afterwards. because it is so hard for us to recapture the feeling in our imagination, what can be nonparticipating when there is a question of fear that is not our own. if another person is the victim of it, we may fail, or it may never occur to us to apprehend the thing itself or the range of its possible consequences. it would seem we are not always easily convinced of the existence of fear in other people, especially political rivals are potential enemies. historians are not easily convinced when they deal at a later time with former enemies of their country. above all, if the thing which the other party dreaded is the danger that never materialized, it becomes easy to be skeptical about the genuineness of the fear itself. when the historian cannot escape recording the terror napoleon inspired of the german threat of russia or the apprehension of a people in the face of imminent attack, he may produce a factual statement that gives little impression of the four -- the force and effect of the emotion experienced. he finds himself confronted by an event and sees that the rest of his picture provides an inadequate context for it. terms out -- it turns out there was some terrible factor in the story which he had him perfectly apprehended or merely failed to keep in mind." "we do not always realize and sometimes do not like to recognize how often a mistaken policy, a braggart manner or even an act of cruelty may be traceable to fear. this is a way of talking about in the es, it does not rule out rational discussions, but it imagine human beings in an augustinian way, emotional, desiring creatures and that affects our politics and policies and priorities, not as pure, rational, material calcululists. the american tradition of realism is less good on that end butterfield puts his finger on this. the last segment from nicholas, glad you let me include this. this is from his book, "until justice and peace, brace" and he is writing about liberation theology. when someone says liberation theology, you have to hear behind it the controversy, like critical race theory, so final the emotion of that debate and the ideas that you hear into liberation theology. there are a couple of key points where it is going to nudge american realism. "liberation theology and neo-calvinism, the amsterdam school, have similarities that extend beyond the fact they are both contemporary versions of world formative christianity. both express a significant concern for the victims of modern society, though it is true they differ in their definitions of which groups constitute the victims of a given society. in addition, both express concerns for the victims in essentially the same manner, not by applying bandages, but by searching out what inflicted the wounds, seeking to effect change in that quarter. both find the culprit in the structure of modern society and the dynamic underlying that structure rather than an active individual waywardness. both offer architectonic analyses of the ills of modern society and in the political sphere insofar as it supports the economic." he says come of this doesn't mean we need to hose down liberation gal ig with baptismal water and say that we got it all right. there are important disagreements. but he does say here is something you need perhaps learn , that systems and institutions are structured and they are fragile -- they are prejudiced, they not human behavior and they need the full attention of christians. they are not simply neutral. we know all this with technology. we learned this 10, 15 years ago, does google make us stupid? i don't know about instagram. and we say human beings have human agencies, none of this robs human beings of agency. it says the systems and institutions we construct must be subject to our question analysis because they make for, nudge for better justice, better mercy. this is what bob hoffer said. -- baumhoffer said. desmond to put it better. he said it is not enough to pull bodies out of the river, we must go upstream and ask why so many people are falling in. this is real amsterdam school stuff, and architectonic critique, not just to burn them down, but for reformation, for justice. this also makes them fit in an augustinian way so nicely into this transatlantic dialogue on christian realism. i could read from it all night, but he will leave it there. [applause] >> we have plenty of time for questions and comments. please come forward and speak into this microphone and identify yourself. who goes first? >> thank you both for speaking. on this issue of christian realism, when you look at current and past precedent on international institutions where you see an organization like nato, policies pointing out other countries may not be holding up their end of a bargain, how does christian realism approach a situation like that where these other countries may not be doing their part in these international institutions, yet the answer may not to be withdraw completely from those? >> i am going to introduce the question and rob is going to answer the question. >> i feel like he is coming after the canadians. >> he mentioned nato and people not pulling their weight in institutions. andrew davenport, outstanding graduate of regent, a co-author with me on a forthcoming essay this summer and now working for the family research council he washington as a summer intern. over to you. >> let me answer in theory and let me answer and practice. in theory, why engage multilaterally at all? one key foundational argument we advance in the book is that one of the fundamental, really the cornerstone of realist theory is that it is fundamentally flawed. it is that the fulcrum, the moment that gives a reality to all the logic of international relations is fear. everybody is afraid of each other. we have a fear dilemma. everybody learns this, anarchy, etc., and we actually say the argument we make, it is a very augustinian argument, that is a fundamental departure point. the organizing principle of politics is not fear, it is love . this is a very augustinian answer. we are bonded together out of common love, out of common objects of our desire. and unless this sounds to moshe, we often write these -- sounds too mushy, we often write these things down and we call them constitutions, charters. these are things we love. on what basis? if that is the basis, this is an augustinian idea, commonwealths of love, so if that is the basis, on what level should we participate with other communities in the international system? we should seek to work alongside those who share those desires, those loves. not perfectly. there is always going to be then diagrams of overlap, but there is things that are going to be close. -- venn diagrams of overlap, but there is things that are going to be close, that advance our values and so forth. why would a superpower collaborate with other, middle power institutions? because it is not ultimately just about that state, it is the things that state stands for, that state loves. it is not just only about the united states of america, it is about what united states of america stands for, and believes. and then you participate on that basis. but what happens when you end up with a power imbalance that creates a free rider dilemma? you won't see me quoting president trump to often, but on this, he was correct. i am saying this as a canadian. countries like canada, not only canada, have been subject or too long to free riding. and this is not me criticizing the canadian armed services who have continued to make more bricks with less straw year on year. they have not resourced -- have not been resourced to the level they are supposed to become at the 2% gdp. friends need to have hard words with each other and i think it is right when you say, are we in this object, are we working together or aren't we? i know there is a limit to what middle powers and lesser powers can contribute, but it is a question of whether we are enjoined in this or not. if you pushed them out, it would be a sad injustice. because many of these middle powers and lower powers have contributed enormously to the tradition of multilateralism and global order. it being june sixth, i am aware of juno beach, which i have visited. i am the son of immigrants from the netherlands. my dad had his first taste of chocolate from a canadian soldier, that is how my parents ended up in canada. i am profoundly aware of what the country has and can contribute. but this is where i say, as friends, as americans, i don't think you should let us get away with it. i don't think it is just. there is a contribution that is necessary and fundamental. that is my practical answer to the question. it is right that the u.s. pushes on its allies and partners and i think there has also been movement in that direction, so i don't want to be critical here. that was a long answer. eric, do you want to correct me? [laughter] >> i was hearing "stars & stripes forever" playing as you said that. we will give them the opportunity for another question. >> thanks, congratulations on the book. you circled around a couple of times about a word that has been said a lot -- interests. what role does interests play in christian realism? very often, interests is the i -word, it is wrong. what role does interests play in christian realism. i am mark live becky from realism magazine. >> let's start with the bible. there is a verse in philippians and that verse says, look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. ended goes into how christ sacrificed himself for us. -- and it goes into how christ sacrificed himself for us. there isn't a verse that says, look only to your own interests. that is why when you are on an airplane in those things drop when you lose cabin pressure, they say put on your mask first and take care of the person next to you, at the principal is that we have a certain responsibility for ourselves first and foremost. that doesn't mean to the exclusion of others. a complementary principle is that we have expanding circles of what our interests entail, and this is tied to the catholic concept of subsidiary and the notion of sphere sovereignty. mark, you as a husband and dad have an interest. interests are actually responsibilities. we often talk about the may craven way, self-interested selfishness. certainly that is possible, but part of what you are interested in, what you are responsible for come is your wife and your two children. and there is another expensive circle, the person who lives next to you, the person in your community, your parents, the people he and your church or in other organizations that are part of your civic and associational life. so when we think about interests, we need to think about what or who am i responsible for? and christian realists like niebuhr and others talk a lot about this, perhaps best encapsulated in the just war principle of legitimate political authority. it is not about authority's warmaking, it is saying political authorities have a big duty, big obligation, they are responsible for the lives, livelihoods and way of life of the people who are entrusted to their care. that is how we ought to be thinking about the national interests. >> i agree. interest gets a bad rap. we cover this almost every freshman seminar on political economy, isn't it a terrible thing these capitalism people pursue their own self interests? and i say, who else do you want to define your interests? you are going to define them or someone else is. we almost edged into sphere sovereignty language there, but i will restrain myself from that impulse big but there is a sense in which interest is natural. and there is a way in which it is tied to the moral communities in wage we are in. there is a way in which there are natural laws, norms that are intrinsic to those, and that is right and good. this is another place where i feel like there is more clarity in this conversation when we move it out of a super our context to a middle power context because we begin at a point of limitation. i find that very clarifying, to begin at a point of limitation. limitation is not a result of a fall. human beings are limited because we are human beings. that is baked in. god made us limited and said that is good. you are not me, you are humans. so, those limitations make us part of communities. most communities have their own agendas have their own agendas, intuitions and moral goals. we serve those said that makes serving those interests one of the good. i hear this argument but i say you just can't trust theologians where they say you have to have a more cosmopolitan ethic, and i say we intrinsically know this isn't this case. her parents' road has a pothole in it. it is in michigan. i have no obligation to fix that. i am not a taxpayer of the state of michigan, i am not a member about county -- member of that county. if there is a pothole and my neighbor's street, i almost have a communal power to fix that. that is part of a moral obligation of living in that community. so, there are boundaries and spheres in which those interests take place and they are exercised. and there are limits. and that is normal and human. we sometimes imagine limitless ness is what we are intended for , but theologically, i don't see that. we don't become -- there are questions we may simply never know the answer to because we are human beings. there is nothing wrong with that. and there are also things we may never be able to accomplish, but we have to say we are responsible -- responsible in the communities where we are, how they have been designed for norms, and what it means to do justice in those. and in that context, interest is not a dirty word, interest is actually a good word. i think we should rescue it from how it has been taken in vain. [laughter] >> thank you for being here to speak with us. i am a student at patrick in the -- patrick henry college. you mentioned psychological drives of love and fear but i was wondering how christian realism thanks about honor that seems to be a primary motivation in human nature. china, it has been given a bad rap, but i think honor is a very important force in human relations. and you mentioned how britain had to come to terms in the postwar period that they were a nation in decline. i think that some of that mood still dominates today and i was wondering, how does christian realism think through that? >> this is why i think transatlantic and perhaps global christian the illogical -- grow lowball -- global christian theology is important in this. what does it mean to think among the ruins, as augustine wrote? as he is writing, he is deeply aware of the fact that rome is falling, it is falling apart. the great empire. the great center of civilization. those of us who are orthodox will remind you it protested -- it persisted until 1853 -- but one of the ways this is accessed and recognized is that human beings are not simply utility and material maximizers. it is not, butterfield is drawing our attention to fear, but underlying his love. how does that attach to honor? it attaches to cultures all over the world, not just shame on our cultures and so on, but it attaches to ways of understanding loyalty, what is right, what is wrong, what is ethical, and that attaches to our deepest desires, who we are. that is a hard thing to get at. how does keller what it? -- how does keller put it? the only thing you need is nothing, but nobody has that. we have to be toward the good and honor as a reflection of what goods that we hold our, hold -- hold are, and our sense of lineage, our sense of the past. and some cultures are different. charles taylor talks about the north atlantic is having a pitiless attitude over the past, almost to betray our parents, which is ironically honoring our parents in a perverse way. we never escape our parents. this is how mcintyre puts it. we are on a stage not of our own making. we are born into it. i think that is part of what, even when we are trying to escape it in the north atlantic world, we are still embedded in those networks of desire. that is part of the reflection about cultures like shame and honor, we ignore that if it is simply a material or utilitarian process. we were the history of the opium wars, but i have friends teaching and english schools in china and the opium wars are taught as wars of humiliation and degradation that was done to them. and in the last one, also a little bit of the united states, but primarily great. that memory lives. christian realism actually pushes i -- pushes us into acknowledgment that those things are real. they are not just permit the edible -- they are not just peripheral, they move foreign policy. like butterfield said, they move human communities. even if we wouldn't behave similarly. it pushes us toward that kind of acknowledgment. kuyper and butterfield agree that good history, good foreign policy, get us deeply into political theology very quickly, deeply into how do we love, who do we owe, where do we come from? those of the questions a good foreign policy analyst needs to be asking, what do we love and what are we here for? >> i will make three quick teaching points. the first is that, if we do good foreign policy, and this is a contribution christian realism -- contribution of christian realism, good foreign policy can only be quantitative, secular and materialistic. that is not good foreign policy because it does not explain pas htuns in afghanistan. we could go culture by culture. it does not take into account what is important to the other side. i need to understand what matters to them, even if i don't with it. but if you just start with statistics and metrics, you never get there. second is a criticism you will find throughout this book of one form of honor, honor as egoism. if what we mean by honor is actually hubris, expansive pride, niebuhr and others are against it over and over and it is an achilles' heel that haunts countries and empires and political leaders over and over. however, if what we are talking about with honor becomes what we love and we think about it in the active tense, how do we show honor? that is an important question all of its own. markley vicky has written about this, i have written about this looking at the vietnam war did the vietnam war is a good case of this because -- vietnam war. the vietnam war is a good case of this because four presidents in a row set part of the fight in vietnam had to do with honor. lbj and nixon in particular, and jfk all said, we have already invested here. if we pull out, that is not peace with honor. if you pull that logic apart, it that says, whether this is the right place to be come of the right expenditure to have come of the way we honor those who already died is by killing more people, or allowing more of our people to die. that is nothing best form of honor. and i am a supporter, i think the u.s. was in the right prosecuting the vietnam war. but if the only argument you're making is that we are rude to fight or prolong the war because we are dishonoring the war debt, that is not a great argument documents have to be made on the of the parties involved and what is best for world politics. there are other ways to honor the wounded and dead, such as taking care of their widows, building monuments, taking care of the orphans, the wounded. we did not do that well as a society in 1971, 19 need to come in 1973. so there is a dishonor that happened -- 1972, 1973. so there is a dishonor that happened. when we are talking about hubris, that is different definition that is a problem for christian realists. and the third is dicing when a politician or christian realist says we are going to honor something, what are we honoring it are we doing it in a way that comes back to fundamental loves? thanks. >> anymore questions -- any more questions, comments? >> any final comments from either or both of you? >> niebuhr used to say that these were perennial issues, and the hubris of any generation is to say, what we are going through right now [indiscernible] history is doomed to repeat itself. it only repeats itself. christian realists would disagree in part with both of those. what they would say is that the conditions of individual sin, the hidden sin in power politics of a society that prides itself on all its good and hides all its weaknesses, that all these problems are part of the human condition. so they are natural, they recur, but that does not mean we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over. there is hope. there is hope for progress at times. there is hope for change. there is hope for making a difference in the lives of some people. think about the high points in history, george washington, abraham lincoln, our own tradition in the united dates. -- united states. in a sense, they are this view of balancing the people we live within the -- live with in the world to not only ameliorate the effects of people, but to build its best. >> a word of thanks to "providence" magazine. i know the evening was entitled in defense of christian realism. i've every rarely need to defend christian realism to my students. they come as blank slates on this question. [laughter] in many cases, they come baked in with a kind of easy instrumental is him -- instrumentalism. so, if force has to be used, that is a bad thing, but you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette. sometimes, you have to do bad to get good. that tends to be the easy come instrumental logic that dominates coming in. i think providence magazine and i hope this reader, and christian realism as a tradition more generally, is essential in this moment. because it gives an opportunity for students who are coming in to learn about the ethical complexity of their own tradition, that they haven't been catechized into, educated into and it is very rich. and it is very available. and i am very grateful. my journey went from amsterdam to england back to more famous sources in the united states, for which i am grateful. but i am grateful those sources were there to be read, to be wrestled with, because of people like eric and magazines like "providence," so thank you that work. my students benefited from it as well, even in canada, perhaps even more where we badly need it there. i am very grateful to the magazine and institute for your work. thank you. [applause] [captions copyright national this is the fourth day of an amazing display of. writers and thought leaders and today will be no different. i'm so grateful to be here. this panel is i've been waiting for this. you know, i have these conversations, the radio, and i've spoken with a couple of these folk, the radio. but to be in community with our people, to talk about it and everyone has accolades that we would be here all i was like, okay, speed it up, speed it up. don't need to hear all of that because we got to get, to the business of talking about us and what it means to be and what it means to be here. and then what can we do. all right. so let's welcome our panelists. i don't see them. so let's let's bring them in. let's bring them in. let's bring them in first. first ladies first. always first. welcome, lady hubbard. lady she is, of course mo talked about literary geniuses. well, we have one here, author of last suspicious hold out the rib king and our novel, the talented. and she's won a lot of awards as. well, thank you for joining us. also here is ebrahim kendi. we got a lot to talk about. patel from the beginning how to be an anti-racist. anti-racist baby's making all of the news. he's here all the awards, bestsellers, blah, blah. yes, maurice, carlos ruffin of the ones who don't say they love you, and his debut novel, the caste, we cast a shadow of definitely have a rousing conversation. him and my birthday twin. why i left him last. mr. literally we are twins birthday. twins kevin powell, author of many, many books, including the education of kevin powell and his latest when we free the world. is that our responsibility? well, we're going to talk about that. let me welcome the panelists. thank you. thank you all for being here today. thank you. thank you thank i'm going to kick off with little baldwin because i think it's important to do that from nobody knows name he writes it is complex feat to be an american america's history her aspirations her peculiar triumphs her even more peculiar defeats and her position in the world yesterday and today are all so profoundly and stubbornly unique that the very word remains a new almost undefined and extremely controversial so proper. now, no one in the world seems to exactly what it describes and not even we motley millions who call ourselves americans what. does it mean to be an american? let's start and i'm going to start with kevin powell. does god lack. i'm gonna give that to you. hi i was telling dr. green, can i go last? i literally just moved from hotel room to hotel room, but i'll go first of. good, everyone. good morning. good morning. good morning. please repeat the question. karen, great to see you as always. good. see, you must be on the left coast because it is one something. here we are. i'm in this literally switch hotel rooms in 20 minutes. yeah, i just asked. i asked a simple question. i think everyone's going to be able to not answer it. what what does it mean to be black in american? well, i'm an african person. i'm a black person. and i didn't know that the first 18 years of my life and this is one reason why the work of this hybrid and brother kennedy and brother maurice are so important. i didn't even know that writers existed until i got to you know, i went to integrated schools in new jersey, shout out to our home state of new. my family's from south carolina generation northerners. certainly i knew i was black. my mother, you know, single black mother, single mothers raised me culturally, you know, but and she sent me to to get an education. she didn't know that going to those schools was actually brainwash she mean to hate myself, to hate my skin, my my lips, everything and literally in 13 years of education as part of being a a student k through 12, all learned was that black folks were slaves, that was a paragraph or two, and that dr. king had a dream and rosa parks didn't give up her seat. and so i think when we talk racism or the great term that that was made popular and necessarily popular anti-racism for me, the first thing about being black is actually knowing that you are black and knowing your history being rooted it and understanding that you can't separate that the contributions of african people to this place called america. i'm not comfortable just saying american i say african-american because i still feel it. so we actually respect people like justice, a.g. brown, jackson until we actually stop meaning people to death, shooting them in their beds. george floyd and breonna taylor. until we stop educating generations of people about who they are, we stop fighting a holistic history of of all contribution. this country. it's a fraught term to say america, you know what i mean? to just say america. no, obviously, when i travel overseas, i feel my americanness because is where i'm from in many different ways. but, you know, for me, i'm i'm with i'm with baldwin with w.e.b. dubois. this is a double conscious that we're talking about. and i think when you look at the work of our our esteemed panelists, this is what they're talking about as well. you know, how do we navigate this thing called america, how do you figure it out? and so, you know, i just i'm i'm i mean, rooted in my africanness, in my south carolina and is rooted in my brooklyn jersey ness. that's what it means where my people are from, where i'm based out of. and once i became conscious, as we used, say, back in the day, woke in these times, you know, and then a commitment as a writer and activist throughout my 14 books, throughout my activism, whether it be a katrina relief, whether it be voting rights work over 30 plus years, you know, fighting for the for the empowerment and freedom black people is really simple to me and making sure as many of us as possible know who we are and that we actually move the kind of self-hatred that i experienced in my lifetime because of white supremacy, because of racism, you know, toward love, toward love for ourselves, which is what baldwin was talking about, which is fannie lou hamer and ella baker and dr. king and malcolm were talking about. that's what it is for me. and then the bigger piece for america, also understanding at a certain point that americans know who they are. you know, i'm sure, the other panels will talk about it. and so what is whiteness what does that mean? you know, why are you fighting resisting conversations about anti-racism? what is that about? you know, what have you internalized around the system of white supremacy, around racism over this 400 years that you actually even want to have a conversation where you regard someone who may be different than you because of skin color, gender or gender identity or class background as your equal. so that's what it means to me. are we going to get to this anti-racist? dr. kendi so can you just just be patient? lady hubbard you write they the land. they built the plants, asians, they fill the americas up with slaves. sugar kept the workers distracted them from grief. and for 100 years later, you have your military invasions in mcdonald's. happy your whole hos and preemptive strikes your oreos and reaganomics your captain crunch and kool-aid. you weave all of the things that kevin said through your novel says oh well was a lot. he said a lot. yes, he did a lot. that was great. yeah. and i you know, i agree. i have similar and similar thoughts. i don't i mean, i agree with he just said it was also my and i went to like supposedly very fine schools and i never read black poet until i went to college also and it's related i think it's something i think about a lot and when you first asked that question thought about it was was recognizing how much of american culture is black was created by black people and acknowledging and that's that's a part of it and i think it's like a huge problem for for white people also like to admit how much of their identity you talking about white identity also to admit how much of identity is actually shaped by that. so yeah that that part of the book is in the story he's reading a book called how europe underdeveloped africa by walter rodney. it's like a specific reference and. i was trying to it was sort of in head and i was trying to sort show how it altered his perceptions of what was actually going on around him by what he was reading at that at that moment. so and that's from the last suspicious hold out. everyone to get that book, please. let's do that. i thank you for your response. we well, at least most of us watched couple of weeks ago the hearings. the the confirmation hearing for judge clayton brown jackson. and in that hearing, the senator from the great state of texas held up a bunch of books, as in dimock of the problems that face and confront our our children in schools critical race theory. and he rattled off a bunch of books among them how to be an anti and he had the audacity unmitigated gall to put posters big giant posters of anti-racist baby as a problem because. we are infecting the minds of young children and babies to think of themselves as racist. dr. kendi ibram candie, those are your books. those are your books. you went to twitter after that and you said, let. you said he tried and failed to distort, disparage and weaponize hashtag anti-racist baby and that poor what the people what you saw through the nonsense and now these two books are again new york times bestsellers that was a moment that you didn't ask for, but we were here for it. but before you get to that, what does it mean to you to be american black? well, first, i just want to to to thank dr. greene, of course, for her leadership. and i just wanted to thank each of you for just incredible work to be able to to work in this incredible of black writers is what sort of feeds me each day. and, you know, to this question, karen, the i think this is a question that i think black america fans, you know, in particular have always struggled with because you really asking a question about and and black americans in particular have never truly felt home, you know, in the united states. you know, even when we go back to, let's say in west africa, we may not even necessarily we feel completely home and so in many ways, black americans don't even feel like they have nation. but then other scholars, you know, starting with people like dubois, have argued, we do have a nation. black america is our nation, right? we have a nation within nation. and, you know, it sort of reminds of even langston hughes when he wrote, of course, in his poem, too, am an american. but then 40 years later, malcolm x said in a famous speech that i'm i'm not a republican. i'm not a democrat. i'm not even american and got sense enough to know it. you know, one of the 22 million black victims of the democrats of the republic kids, you know, of the americans. and so in many ways, i think there isn't necessarily a right answer this question. and black writers have been arguing it. you know, really from the beginning of our sort prose. for me, i that we should also be considering who controls america because in many ways who controls america is going to determine what an american. and certainly folk have been fighting for our freedom so we can control ourselves and our story, you know, from the beginning that we can then determine, you know, what is an american, hmm. now, ted cruz held up your your your book and did all of those things in trying to i guess have a gotcha moment with judge brown jackson i know it helped your book sales. what did it say about this country when? a person like anthony brown jackson could be taken through the paces that she taken through when just when thurgood marshall was going for confirmation. it wasn't that hard. and you think about that was during a period of time in this country where it should have been harder for a black person go through and pass muster, but yet was taken through. and at the crux of this is this battle around race and racism and what is racism and nancy racism. and how did you feel about that? i mean, know, karen, i think i initially first felt horrible about joe jackson. i mean, i you know, for her to have to for her for me to see after fact, i was like in something, right? it was sort of happening for her to have to deal with my book or the book of another sort of writer being destroyed and and weaponized and then for her having to sort of gather and who knows what ran through her mind, you know, when when she was you know, just i think, i felt bad for her. and i just want sort of emphasize that because, you know, there's been a lot of around it. but that was a very difficult moment her that senator cruz created. but i think to think that we have senators who think the existential threat is anti-racism as opposed to racism you know is all i need to know about what those senators think, what they believe what they champion, what they defend. and it's certainly not those us who are struggling to dismantle this structure. and just for those in the back and the cheap seats who came in with nefarious, you know, just to here to troll define that to find what is anti-racism what is it what is it so that we can sit with the rest have it out there anti-racism you know particularly when we think it from a structural standpoint it's about creating a set of policies and practice that can create equity and justice. all people on the basis that, that, that the racial groups are equal. okay, we got that. now it should be settled. thank you so much, dr.. for your work as well as everyone in this room kevin powell you a little bit less let's get to the hard questions that was easy one you know as i was listening to dr. kendi in lady hubbard even it up to the point that there really is no american culture without black people so when when that can talk about the power structure i, i think black folks are at the of the power structure of like there's no america without black people. so aren't we empowered now and if we knew that, you know, we move differently? well, first of all, i want to apologize. i didn't. dr. greene, brenda greene and april silver and all the folks who put this together in the beginning. so i just want to say thank all to the folks who are behind the scenes who, make this happen. and i'm honored again to be here. the first time i came to this is in 1991. so it's really incredible to see continually going on the racism to me is race plus power equals racism and any in the context of any society, in the context of american societies who has power who does you know it's not an either or it's both you can't talk about american history. you can't talk about you can't talk about scientific progress. you can't talk about the arts. you can't talk about the construction of all those institutions in dc, including the capital that was stormed on january 6th, you know, the so-called without talking about black people that you can't talk about literature that talked about bloody we can't talk about so many tough things talking about the country's pieces people you can't talk about the journey of america period. without black people you can't. it's just impossible to do so. but have black people ever had power in this country? the way i define the ability to determine our lives, we're talking about the termination. if can go to school. i was thinking about the more early about he lived in a black community was insulated so they didn't deal with white actually we do because even if you are only around black people if you're still talking about someone has good hair and has bad hair, someone whose lighter complexion is more attracted to someone who has darker complexion. if one body type is superior to another body type, you're still dealing with the effects of racism. racism is race plus power, which means i'm dictating how you see yourself and what you can cannot do in any given society any time, if which i'm out, can walk up my door, whether it's in california where i'm at now or new york, where i live and have to think about getting killed simply because a black person that's called racism, black people in this society in america, other places where we're the numerical minority are not minorities, we are not minorities. we are numerical minorities in places like england, you know, like canada, like united states. can we actually control every aspect of our lives. and if the answer is no, you know that we are dependent on something else over or we're fearful that something may happen to us simply because of who we as black people, as african people, we don't have power. we're actually disempowered power. and what we've been fighting for since the beginning is to be in power, which is why when you think about everything you know from folks after reconstruction, you know, the building of schools, the building of the call for land, you know, when you think about what the civil rights war was about or the garvey movement even before that in twenties, these are different movies. what is black matter? you know, we want to be you know what i mean? and so that doesn't mean that i don't think that we are a powerful people. i know we're a powerful people. that's what that goes to on question. look, the body of work that abraham and lady and morris and you, karen, represent look at the body of work at this conflict. you can see power, the genius, the excellence of black people every single day. but what i'm talking about when i think power is how do we get to that? what emerges saying this is a system race ism is race plus power equals racism. and when i can get to a place where we don't have someone attacking people's work and ignorant white supremacist politician attacking his work and attacking a black judge. i said justice earlier. i was trying to foreshadow she's going to get in, but a.g. brown jackson, who we know was more qualified than amy coney barrett and brett kavanaugh because they are mediocre white people, they're mediocre white people. but what the system of racism allows is white people to actually the scholarship of dr. kennedy or a the genius a judge, kentucky, brown, jackson because they are threatened that this system of racism is somehow going to fall apart just by letting in a few people of color that's the insanity of racism that's the insanity of racism and so what we're fighting for and this is this for anyone who's listening, who doesn't understand, show me a time in history america where black people have wanted do to white people who are white supremacy and what they've done to us.
in front of the stage at any point. exits are to the left and right. three, most importantly, if you have not yet purchased the book, we encourage you to purchase the book through the midtown scholar bookstore. we have copies available at the cafe county if you're interested in getting your book signed at the end of the evening. at this time, i am happy to introduce our authors. our interviewer is a civil rights activist focused on issues of innovation, equity and justice. born and raised in baltimore, he holds honorary doctorates from the new school and the maryland institute college of art. as a leading voice in the black lives matter movement and a cofounder of campaign zero, he has worked to connect individuals with knowledge and tools and provide citizens and policymakers with commonsense policies that ensure equity. he has been praised by president obama for his work as a community organizer and has advised officials at all levels of government and continues to provide capacity to activists, organizers, and influencers to make an impact. our featured author is dan pfeiffer. a cohost of pod save america, one of barack obama's longest-serving advisors. he was director of communications from 2009 to 2013. he lives in the bay area of california. dan's new book that we are here for this evening is titled, battling the big lie, how thoughts, facebook, and the maga media are destroying america. this blurb, it's an enlightening, at times enraging, and always entertaining guide to the recent history of our politics and media, drawing on dan pfeiffer's unparalleled experience. read this book if you want to understand what is happening in american politics, why it is happening, and what you can do about it. we're honored to welcome you back to harrisburg. without further ado, please join me and giving them a warm harrisburg welcome. [applause] >> it is good to be back. i know dan well, but we have not talked about the book because i have been waiting to talk about it in front of you all. let's start with the easiest question. why this book, why now? >> some of you may know, we were here together, sitting in these exact chairs in mid february 2020. and we are back. did anything happen? after that last book, i decided that would probably my last book. i was very proud of it, ready to do some other things. then after the election happened, i was really wrestling with the question of how it was that in an election that was close but not much closer than trump's victory in 2016, and certainly less close than george w. bush's election, that we could live in a world where 70% of republicans could believe, against all evidence, that the election was stolen. some of them could believe it so fervently that they would storm the capitol with weapons to try to stop the certification of the election. so i thought we were at this tipping point of the power of disinformation and right wing media and wanted to better understand it myself and explain it to democrats, because i think this is the driving force of american politics right now. >> i have a lot of questions. we will start at the beginning. this is a push. you say in the beginning, they have fallen for the big lie, they all believe without a doubt the election was stolen. i question the language of fallen for the big lie. some people chose it, that they willingly chose this line, they did it for reasons of why to premises and accused of other things. but they were not duped, but they chose it. what would you say to that? >> within any group, there are people who use motivated reasoning to believe what makes sense to them, to fit events into their worldview. in their world, donald trump could not possibly lose. but it is much bigger than those people. 70% of republicans believe that the election was illegitimate in some way, shape, or form. some people are choosing to believe it and some people are falling for it, and some people are throwing up their arms because they see so much noise that they don't know what to believe. that is probably the most alarming part of that last group. >> there was a lot that surprised me, and one of them is use a large portions of the country good -- never heard any negative information about trump. is that true? >> if you live within the right wing ecosystem -- >> i feel like we hear about him all the time. [laughter] >> you hear it, it is done in the perspective of, like, the deep state, the fake new york times lying about him. what the right does is create a dramatically sealed information bubble for a large swath of their electorate. where the information they get is filtered to them in a way that is a entirely positive to trump. or if there is a larger conversation about that stuff about trump, it is explaining why that is. >> there is a whole section where you talk about the importance of the blog and the o ld style of media. do you still think blogs matter in the same way? >> no, certainly not. i tell a story in the book about in 2004 i was working for senator tom daschle in south dakota. this was a big deal senate race, because tom daschle was running for reelection. he was bush's enemy number one, his opponent was recruited by karl rove. no senate leader had lost in 50 years. in that election, a group of, out of nowhere, a group of conservative political blogs, immaculately named to cover the race, they came up and hammered daschle nonstop. they transitioned eventually into pushing conspiracy theories. we published this lock muster scoop, like, siren emojis, it was on the drudge report, that tom daschle had a secret deal with the native american population that if the native american population delivered enough votes, daschle would return the black hills to them. which is something that should happen. it is their land that was stolen. but far beyond the power of one senator to do, so it is clearly not true. at first i dismissed it, like, who is reading these idiotic blogs? no one who matters. but all of a sudden he's undecided voters are reading back to me what they are hearing in here. and what we learned leader on was that our opponent, the republican candidate, was paying these blogs to publish disinformation about daschle. and then it dawned on me, that was the first time i confronted disinformation as an explicit political strategy of the republicans and i filed it away is something i thought we would see many times later. maybe not to the extent we see it now, but the canary in the coal mine. >> in that vein, you make a big deal of highlighting this inference between misinformation and disinformation. what is that? >> these are the two terms that get interchanged all-time. misinformation is inaccurate information. it can be accidental, inadvertent. all of us on social media periodically become inadvertent transmitters of misinformation because we read a false story, or someone has taken an out of context comment or something that we tweeted out like, this is terrible, and we spread it, only to find later on that is not what really happened. disinformation is a specific strategy to spread false information to deceive people. and so those differences are important. disinformation is a specific byproduct -- it's a political strategy that we have to pay a lot of attention to and respond to. >> i obvious he paid attention, i knew russia influence the election. i didn't know it was called the internet research agency. but they were dealing in disinformation, not misinformation. >> correct. in 2016, we have all talked about the russian hacking. the one thing the russians did was they hacked into the dmc and clinton campaign emails and then released those emails to cause as much chaos as possible. >> that was confirmed it was the russians? >> yes. >> i was a victim of like, was it the russians? but i believe you. [laughter] >> it was the consensus of the intelligence community, both under obama and trump. although you could not really say that out loud in the trump years. and so, the other thing they did is they created -- they had a strategy to flood social media with false accounts to push disinformation. one of the ways they would do that is they would create false accounts pretending to be black activists who would then post things about why they were not supporting hillary clinton, or pushing people not to vote. and then these entities funded by the russians would run facebook ads promoting that content targeting black audiences. target people by interests, so people who would express interest in civil rights or martin luther king, or similar topics, push that to them. there was a very specific strategy to try to create division and reduce hillary clinton's support and turnout in the black community. >> one of the things he wrote was this idea that trump could not win if more black people voted. >> that is true. in 2016 that was absolutely true. if you had black turnout at the levels at which barack obama had it, the math would be such that hillary clinton would have won wisconsin, for s --pennsylvania and michigan. >> you wrote about the moment where trump was like, sunlight is going to enter your body and if it does, covid is going to disappear. he also said to drink bleach. you talked about the bleach moment is something we all laughed at, but you highlight that as a positive moment for trump. why? >> trump telling people to inject bleach, or get sunlight inside of their body, and we didn't ask any questions about what his plans were as to how you do that -- it was part of a larger strategy to convince people that the pandemic was not as scary as it was. was to get people to return to normal faster. he believed, with very good reason, that his reelection chances were dependent upon the economy bouncing back. it's a ridiculous, absurd thing to say, but people listened. dangerously so. people drank disinfectant. people tried to injest disinfectant. and we have to -- when we look at trump's pent-up response -- pandemic response, it's abhorr ent on every level and seems ridiculous. but he did very effectively and very dangerously to a large swath of the country spread a lot of distrust in what scientists were saying for a political purpose. i use the inject bleach one because a lot of times liberals laugh but republicans listen, and we have to understand why that is if we are going to be able to compete in an information environment where people can listen to something that ridiculous. >> to think of any politicians on the left who would get that message right? one of the things you talk about is we have to -- it cannot always be gloom and doom. you don't write about this in the book, but are there people you think you are getting that right on the left? >> in terms of a message that brings people in? yeah, i think aoc, certainly beer -- certainly bernie sanders in both of his campaigns. i talk in the book about,m like, we look at a trump rally, it is not a place i want to go, it does not seem fun to me. they don't seem to make a lot of sense. but obviously the people there are having a blast. and it is not just the people in the crowd that we see. obviously there are pretty alarming things they are chanting. then you see the footage when the reporters are doing their live shots before the event and it is a festival. it is like renaissance fair, there are people just up as things, they are selling all this swag and people dress up like donald trump. that is not my thing, but i think we need to think about politics as a way that is exciting. that was the core of obama, was people wanted to be there. so i think bernie sanders, aoc, i think stacey abrams in a different way brings people in in a very exciting way. i have not seen this firsthand but i have heard this from a lot of people on the east coast, john fetterman, people are pretty jazzed to be around john fetterman. [applause] >> love that. another thing you said i had not thought about in this way, you push back on republicans wanting smaller government. you talk about injecting antigovernment rhetoric in a strategy, but it is not about shrinking the government. what do you mean by that? >> republicans don't want -- it is not about the size of the government, it is about who the government is protecting. yeah, they want to shrink the epa, osha, all of that, but they want to grow ika, belieff, and it's their view that the government is a bulwark against an america that is changing graphically and culturally in a way that threatens the people who have held political power in this country since the beginning, like christians, primarily meant. so -- men. so this -- that's an important thing democrats have to understand. none of this is on the level. this is not a paul krugman argument about how you build a good economy. it is about political power, and who has it and who they are trying to stop from getting it. it is why the radicalization from the right has happened so aggressively since barack obama won the white house, because that is the embodiment of something they had feared for a very long time. it happened before they were ready for it. >> this book came out before the january 6 hearings and all that. you write at one point, the message is -- do you think the january 6 hearings happening now will stick in a way democrats can use, or do you think we botched the messaging? >> i don't think we have botched the messaging. i think democrats have done a great job. and it is not just a democrat, because it's a bipartisan hearing. but the first thing you have to do is get people to hear you. so the fact that the january 6 hearing got 20 million people to watch the first one, that is unbelievable. that is 6 million more people watching a congressional hearing than game six of the nba finals. that is wild and impressive. this is not in the book but i discovered this fact when doing research on the book, 20 million people is a lot, but it is 80 million fewer people than watch the oj car chase live in 1994. so it got people's attention. social engagement about january 6 has been off the roof for democrat, which is very impressive. also i think they have done something very smart and powerful. they have simplified the story. every hearing tells one aspect of the story. it is not overly complicated. the second piece is the voices they are showing people are not democrat members of congress. we recognize that adam schiff is not going to persuade a lot of people in the middle of the country. so it is liz cheney. the fact that liz cheney, dick cheney's daughter, basically she is darth vader's daughter and she is leading this, and that is amazing. she is a card-carrying member of the republican establishment. it is all the footage of these trump aids, bill barr, jason miller, he ivanka trump, card-carrying members of maga nation, basically saying trump knew the election was not stolen. so it's one of the most important aspects of modern communication strategy where you have a population who are skeptical of politicians generally. it is to use people from your in-group to tell you a message you do not want to hear is very impressive. so whether it is going to stick is up to awesome, what happens going forward -- is up to us, what happens going forward. but thus far, it has been an credible success. >> you sprinkle in some criticism of the new york times. what would you say about the times's lack of holding the administration accountable during those years? or people criticize the reporters who knew things and waited until their books came out. how do you think about the times 's role? >> the new york times does credible journalism. they do really -- does incredible journalism. huge stories they broke. they do great stuff. i picked the times and facebook because they are by far the most influential parts of their respective elements. facebook is by far the most important social media company, the new york times is by far the most influential traditional media organization in the country. and they are way more influential than they have probably ever been because there is so much less competition now. and i think the criticism of the new york times and every answer to the larger traditional media is really that this is not a both sides issue. democracy is at stake here. we cannot have a political conversation where we treat them across trying to run on kitchen table issues the same as republicans trying to steal elections. press is not an unbiased entity. they have biases, they have things they advocate for. we know the press cares passionately about how many questions joe biden answers every week. like, that seems trite and annoying compared to a lot of things, but they should advocate for as much access as possible. that is a good thing to do, and they will use their power to push for more. which is why you read articles about how few interviews joe biden does. the readers don't want to read that. they write it to put pressure on the white house. i think the press can and should be more aggressive advocates for democracy. and if that benefits my crass right now, so be it -- benefits democrats right now, so be it. the first people authoritarians take out when they take over, the press. so i want them to be more aggressive advocates for democracy because i do not think this is a partisan issue. >> the other thing i learned in reading was you talk about the sec's decision to end the fair use doctrine, and the rise of right-wing radio. do you think there's a way to put that back in the bottle? can we undo that? if trump wins, it would be like trying to unring a bill. do you think we can unring the bell or not? >> i thought a lot about how the right, for decades, has run this campaign against -- to try to disqualify the press. that campaign culminates with reagan's election, and reagan using the fcc to repeal the doctrine, which demanded equal time in media. once that happened, right wing radio basically grew exponentially because now there was no need for there to be someone opposite rush limbaugh, you could just have rush limbaugh. and i have wanted to find a way that you could put the fairness doctrine back in to fix these problems and every single person i talk to about this says the bell cannot be un-wrong. the media has been changed so much that a lot of what we deal with now -- like fox probably exists because and in the fair use doctrine shows the marketplace for right-wing media. cable news was not covered by the fairness doctrine. you can't unring the bell is the unfortunate part, so we have to figure out how to live in this environment. >> i didn't know that tucker carlsen started the "daily caller" until i read the book. > i think it was scarborough and tucker colson, back to back. the number one media. >> you don't really give up on facebook, though. you say the left needs to push out messages on facebook. but when you look at the top posts on facebook, they are overwhelmingly ben shapiro republican. you clearly think that is the algorithm, but do you think the left can counter that? you highlight the outrage and anger we can use. do you think that our base will share the messages or do you think the algorithm of facebook is so screwed that we have to fix it first? >> algorithms respond to the input. right now the amount of right wing information pumped into the algorithm is exponentially greater. there's more right wing engages, pushing out more content. we are not necessarily going to very quickly close that gap, but there is room. we have to find ways to have messages that are consistent with our political narrative that also go viral on facebook. that's very hard because the number one political posts on facebook this week, for the week ending today, was by barack obama. but you know what it was? his father's day message. which is charming and important, but i don't think it is moving the political debate in any way. we have gotten a little better at harnessing energy. this is one of the very rare weeks where progressive posts outperform conservative posts, all about abortion. in the wake of the supreme court case, people took to facebook and shared content and responded to content and lifted the content above. this can't happen once every nine months. it has to happen on a regular basis. one of the lessons for us, and after many years of basically never posting on facebook and only looking at pictures of my friends' kids, got back on, started a public page, started to work with a collective of progressives to get more people to post more content. it's like a drop in the bucket at this point but we need more people. seven in 10 american adults are on facebook. half of those people go to the site multiple times a day. 40% of them see it as a major source of news. the scale between only one quarter of americans claim to be on twitter and i think it is smaller than that. on twitter, 90% of the tweets are from 10% of the people. we spent all the time on twitter and think about it and worry about it. it is an important platform for a specific conversation among active people, but facebook is by far the most important. >> you talk about the decision not to fact-check politicians as a watershed moment. do you think they will fact-check politicians? >> put it in perspective. when mark zuckerberg went to give his big speech about how facebook was going to stand for free speech and the first amendment and they would not fact-check politicians. i hate to say this but first amendment and facebook have nothing to do with each other. it is not about your right to be on a specific social media platform. even then, do you really want a big tech company to be the one to decide what is true and what isn't? especially from politicians? the answer to that is maybe not. on the things they say, like donald trump will post something and should it come down, should it not if it violates terms of service? that is fair. what is different is what he's really talking about is fact checking ads. facebook ads are some of the most -- it's not like we lost 30 seconds on the eagles game and hope people watch it. it is that you are able to precisely, able to upload to facebook the file, you can match people, and specifically target people based on their interests. you can push information and use facebook's massive data and ai powered algorithm to decide the people most likely to believe that information. that is a very big deal. is that why donald trump almost won the election? no. but it's throwing your arms up and allowing the weaponization of disinformation. i think that's a bad thing. >> one thing that was interesting is the republican strategy, your argument is if we talk about the facts, they will lose. they have to distract us because when they talk about the fact, they will lose. the second is they have to stoke, you don't call it white supremacy i think, but bigotry. do you see a good counter to those things? we saw the latest rally, like thank you for protecting white life. >> and she won her primary last night. >> did she win? yikes. i thought it must be edited. but she really said that. do you see an effective counter to that? do we need to organize better? what do you do when it is no longer innuendo. >> i think a big part of this is trying to solve the megaphone problem for democrats. what is happening is the right has built this massive apparatus that is dominating the political conversation. it is pushing information out there to decide what we talk about. one thing we can do, it is the hard work, build up a progressive megaphone to get the message out so we are not getting drowned out. >> is msnbc not a megaphone? >> it is not a megaphone. it has great programming on it, but it is not an adjunct of the democratic party, nor should it be. but fox is an adjunct of the republican party. their interest is electing road republican politicians. it is still an organization that uses itself as a journalistic organization and we are just operating at such a smaller scale. tucker carlsen is getting two to three times the viewers of the largest nbc show and six times the largest cnn show. it is a massive rating advantage. and there viewers are more engaged and much more dominant online. the fox facebook presence and online presence is huge. they have an entire streaming platform. there's fox news station. people who pay to get additional tucker carlsen. no one is monitoring. but there is crazy stuff. there is very little of that on the left. we can't count on msnbc to do as much. there's good stuff there but it is not the same. >> start thinking about your questions because we will go to q and a soon. what does the megaphone look like? do we need to round up influencers or make our own tv station? obviously we have the crooked network. the. podcast. >> i think it's all the above. i don't think anyone is investing money in a linear cable network anytime soon. it is more content creators like the organization more perfect union, started by bernie sanders. . campaign managers. a lot of youtube videos, a lot of reporting that they have been aggressively pushing back. a lot of stuff in spanish language. some of my friends acquired stations in florida. it is all of the above. we just need more people saying more things to more people. there's no hierarchy, no one exact person. it will not be like a roger ailes of the left doing it. it's a huge investment in progressive media. it's not just subscribing to progressive publications. it is also just calling them on facebook, subscribe to the youtube channel. when you do that, the algorithms will show that to more people. our party leaders have to do a better job of this. donald trump did many things that were not very smart, but she was brilliant about nurturing a right-wing media ecosystem. if there was an article he thought was good for him in a right-wing conversation, he published it. i'm sorry, he tweeted it. he tweeted, they get traffic. they get more ad dollars. they can do more journalism. if he was promoting fox, doing interviews with right-wing media , when books were written he thought were favorable, he tweeted about those to drive them all on the new york times bestseller list. that means those books would get better placement and the authors would get more media bookings, the publishers would think there's a market for more pro-trump books. democratic politicians, with a handful of exceptions, do not do that. they continue to exist in a world where they will do the bulk of their media through traditional media. they should do all of the above, but it is in every democrats interest to nurture the progressive media ecosystem into using its allies. obama did some of this in the early days. bernie sanders was a master of this in the 2016 campaign. stacey abrams does this. obviously aoc is a media person herself. for the most part, there is still a reticence to embrace progressive media. if the leadership does not, we cannot get the public to do it either. >> what about abortion messaging? a lot of people i'm around think the party is not bold enough, laying low when we should be fighting back. this is the time to not dillydally. and there are other people who say, we can only do so much, aoc obviously believes otherwise, but what do you think? >> i always have sympathy for people who work in the white house and have limited tools to serve -- to do what people care about. there's nothing he can do with his pen that will undo what was done or protect millions of people who just lost rights. but i do think, and i thought aoc's twitter thread on this, really resonated with a lot of people in my life who are interested in politics but don't work in it. what she did was say to recognize the urgency of the situation and say we need a plan. even if they plan over the short, medium, and long-term, we need a plan. this has been a challenge off and on for the last two years, probably the trump years but particularly the last couple years. i think the urgency a lot of democratic voters feel about where the country is going, the dangers of the supreme court, this radical and extreme faction , and the language and tone of our leaders who even if they do believe it, i think many of them do and their actions suggest they do, but if someone in the house did about voting rights, i think we need to do a better job of speaking to that. even if you can't fix the problem, right now you have to speak to the way people feel and make them get it and offer them a long-term. i think people will, in the absence of a short-term problem, a plan to solve the problem. i thought aoc had good ideas on this. sometimes people want to feel your anger. i hope we hear more of that. >> actually when she was like, if you have a better plan, put out, but you can't not say anything. what do you want to ask -- process? >> if i'm ever running for office, it will be the school board and that will be the cap of it. [laughter] >> let's go to questions. >> this is -- let's give it up for dan. [laughter] raise your hand and we will pass around the mic. we will start in this general area and go that way. >> i want to say thank you for your talk, but i have a little issue with how you kind of accused president biden for not doing anything, because he really can't. this is the same man who said vladimir putin should step down. and so to me, as a woman, it is a copout. i would like your feelings on that. >> i don't disagree with what you said. the point i was trying to make is that there are limited tools. i do agree we need more people, the president included, to speak more powerfully, more often and more loudly about this. i was mainly referring to the options he had to actually do something. i 100% agree that we have a party from the president, congressional leaders, candidates, who do not aggressively talk about what has happened here, the fact that a supreme court that was put in place, five justices were appointed by president who got fewer votes, and was confirmed by a republican that represents a minority of americans, just took a constitutional right away from millions, and we don't talk about in the most aggressive terms possible, the voters will not come with us. i'm not going to tell anyone who thought that they were wrong. we have to have a specific point. you give us these votes, we will do x, over the course of time, we will reform, much like aoc said. >> so for those of us who have loved ones who are in that dangerous third category you mentioned at the beginning who go, this is too much and they throw their hands up, how do we get them to understand these alternative information ecosphere's are not equal, one is based in truth and reality and one is a profitable manufactured machine? how do you get them to vote accordingly especially if they say this is too much, i will just vote with the r? how do you bring them to your side? >> in the book, i write about a study that was done in 2019 where they show people news stories with one group. they had another group where they show news stories that were shared by someone they knew. what they came to find out was that people paid way more attention to stories that were shared by people they trusted than the news organization. whether it was the new york times or cnn or fox news, the fact that it was a person they thought shared their values or experiences in some way seemed to have agreed with the point or promote the point that they would believe it. so i think how we do it, each person you deal with will be different. trying to find sources they agree with or they trust to tell them to push back on things. one experiment i saw one political group do was very effective with republican leading voters who disapproved of trauma but still planned to vote for him anyway, was articles from the wall street journal, which because of rupert murdoch, were treated very differently in this group. in fact, for a lot of people in the new york times, it was proof the opposite was true when it came to trump. with the new york times says about donald trump, then it can't be true. so listening to them trying to figure out what sources they trust, conservative voices can be very powerful in influencing people lean conservative but may be skeptical about this version of the republican party or president trump. >> in that vein, you write about the fact checkers. fact checking does not have the power it used to have. do you think that will remain? for a lot of people, something that is obviously not true, like go fact-check it. but your argument is the fact checkers do not have as much sway. >> exactly, it's the opposite in a lot of ways. particularly cnn and the new york times, they are the most targeted news organizations by trump and the most distrust on the right, but the fact that they say it's not true is proof that it is true. so fact checking cannot be the way we win the war on truth and we need other ways to do it. it can be voices and experts to do it. >> you mentioned school boards. and local elections. your book talked about largely the larger scale elections statewide. one of the things that brings something painful to my soul is seeing people maga campaigning for school boards and winning. can you speak to that or what role -- how important do you think these local elections will become in terms of the overall strategy? there are people who are plain idiots who have no awareness of what the real issues are, and are campaigning on things that aren't really even issues, but it is the right buzzwords. i think it is very frightening for our society last night. >> absolutely. political power is built from the ground up here the process by which the republicans were able to rig the supreme court, made a decision to have large swaths of the entry day one, that abortion being banned is a long-term product starting in school boards. democrats have traditionally done a poor job of investing that at the party leadership level and donors and volunteers. we like to elect president, we think the white house is cool, we watch the west wing, and too often we do not invest in the hard work of building political power. i think that has changed a lot since trump won and there are well-funded groups run by the best operatives in the party. this is an example of how serious this is. we talk a lot about the insurrection and what republicans want to do in 2024. in many states like arizona, votes are counted at the county level. county out or -- county auditor is critical. one of the auditors in arizona refused to certify the election. steve bannon on his podcast every week is recruiting people. one group i recommend is run for something. it recruits and trains candidates. this is where the impact of everything we are dealing with will happen in that down ballot. >> one of the things i think that republicans are very good at, we have a governors race coming up, with someone in the past said that he was elected to ban abortions. but now that roe v. wade has been overturned, he is sidestepping that and is concentrating on the economy and gas prices and inflation. that is what the republicans are going to do to take over the house and possibly the senate in the fall. i have friends that are really intelligent, biden, the gas prices, is gas nationalized? does he have the authority to change? who are you going to blame? bp. mobile exxon. the gas companies. they are the ones that are fleecing you. so people believe on a very visceral level that the economy is all on biden. how can we change this? >> to piggyback on that, i had to go to the mall today and might luber driver said, biden is giving away money to ukraine and he needs to do something about gas prices. what do you do with that? we were just talking and she really thought biden is giving away money to ukraine and not helping us with gas. >> so it is always one of the great frustrations of anyone who works in the white house that the public thinks you have way more power than you actually have. gas prices, inflation is a worldwide phenomenon, all of the above. it is hard to explain away peoples economic pain and anger. i think there are two elements of this. one is we can accept the premise of the problem that gas prices are too high and try to reframe the argument about who will do a better job of solving it. is it going to be the party that is funded by oil companies? the party who insists on giving those exact same oil companies tax breaks? the same people who were opposing a windfall profits tax supported by democrats? it is a tough political environment, but you always want the argument of who is going to fight for you. in a tough economy, that can work for democrats. as much as republicans try to rebrand themselves as populists, there's still a lot of skepticism as people who will fight for middle-class working people and corporations. the other thing is i think there's a mentality among some democrats in terms of politics that we have to change. doug messed rihanna wants to talk about gas prices because that is better for him. but that does not mean we have to as well. republicans tend to decide polling, decide what issues voters should talk about on election day, and talk about it. no one thought immigration would be the number one issue in 2016. donald trump made it the number one issue. democrats look at polls and say what are people thinking about now, and then we just talk about that, whether it is good or bad for us. in this case, there's a whole lot with january 6, there is abortion, a right wing war on freedom in this country where they want to ban contraception, they want to decide who you love, what looks you can read. i imagine an argument would be very powerful. just because he wants to talk about it doesn't mean we have to fall for that. >> i want to know your thoughts on reconciling campaign rhetoric and campaign promises with managing expectations. in your campaign, you hear a lot of candidates talking about issues and saying what democratic voters want to hear, but i feel like younger voters are sort of becoming disillusioned by that. just wanted your thoughts on that. >> that is the old, famous line from governor mario cuomo that you campaign on poetry but govern in prose. this is something we wrestled with in obama's reelection campaign. we are trying to run on what we say with what we are going to do , but knowing we will almost certainly returned to the white house with republican house and senate. i think there are two elements of this letter very important. one is we have to treat voters as if they are smart and they understand it. talk to them like adults. we cannot make promises we can deliver on but that we will fight like hell for the biggest mistake emma cuts, and i include myself -- democrats, and i include myself on this, is that we manage expectations terribly. the senate kept saying failure is not an option on voting rights. we have no plan to cross the manchin chasm, but we have to be honest with people. we were so bad at managing expectations around build back better, that it washed away incredibly important compliments. we are focused on what did not get done as opposed to what got done. i'm sympathetic with people frustrated that we have not done a bunch of things but we have to be more honest with voters. >> there's a lot of unhappiness and social media that pushes the obama team that would say you all did not codify roe v. wade when you had the votes and the power. what would you say to that? people who are on our side are saying that. >> so there was a two-year period from 2009 two 2011 where democrats had unified control of the house and senate. obama had pledged that if he was elected, he would try to codify roe. he said at a conference in the campaign. here's the problem and why it did not happen. this is not to say president obama and those who worked for him could not have done more to forestall where we are as americans. what i am saying is what naral said in 2010, that there is not a pro-choice majority in the house and senate. there were not enough votes. we had expanded the pro-choice democrats, but in two thousand 9, 1 third of house democrats defined themselves as anti-choice. a large number of democratic senators were either explicitly anti-choice or pretty ambivalent about their position. we had enough democrats but not pro-choice democrats. that's ultimately what the best message in the short term is, give me 52 pro-choice democrats, and we can deliver the codification of roe. are you justifying or excusing -- i'm trying to explain what the reality is. people would be shocked at where joe manchin would be on this spectrum of democratic senators circa 2010. it would not be on the far right, it was closer to the middle because we had a pretty conservative party back >> i have been reading -- what do you think of the thought, i think you have seen it, that too many of our organizers have not come from too small of a section of the country. they come from colleges, that kind of argument, so they don't have the life experience and can't connect with people further down the chain. also they don't talk like real people? >> i think most people in politics don't talk like real people. that is the first people of advice my cohost gives everyone. you have to talk like a human. and a human doesn't need small words, it means you have to have relatable emotions and stories. but it is -- i think we need more diversity at every level of the party. diversity in every element of life. race, gender, where you are from, where you work. and a lot of the thing -- the pandemic really affected how the 2020 campaign was -- in powerful ways. more people on the ground working. a lot of organizers, they will parachute into states, that is what they do for a living. but they were constantly recruiting people from those states to work for them. college kids, adults who wanted to get involved in politics. so we need a lot more of that. we are always trying to find the narrowest possible problem that explains everything. i think diversity in every element, in every way you define that word is a problem in all parts of american life. but it is not the only reason, struggling with working class, a trend that has been going on for well over two decades. >> up here in the -- >> i just wanted to ask, one of the things that perplexes me is how it always feels democrats are not organized and not thinking about the long game. for a long time, we have said roe v. wade was a target. we knew that is where things were headed. yet i feel like to hear someone say now we need to have a strategy now, it is like where have you been? i think about when w was president, republicans made it clear they were going to start recruiting among latino communities in the south for the republican party so in the long term, knowing there would be eventually a much larger latino voting population, they would have that majority. we are starting to see the results of that. it was an intentional strategy they created. why can't democrats get organized like that? what is going on? >> politics is funny in the way perception changed quickly. if this had been a meeting of republicans in 2012, 2013, all the way up until the moment donald trump one, republicans would say how is it we keep getting our clock cleaned, democrats are organizing, fundraising us, data technology, all of that. it has obviously changed. there are things that are fair and true of your critique. republicans have had a donor base, primarily the coat others for many years, who invested in political infrastructure. the most boring things possible, but off year elections, candidates training recruitment, there have been similar efforts among democrats. there has been a group of people since -- 2012, democrats organizing impacts as a group. the fact they have come this far is a product of a decade of organizing from democrats. that is the reason why beddoe almost -- beto almost won. georgia, stacey abrams, black lives matter's, what they had done is a product of a decade of organizing in that state. so there are elements of it. it is fair to say that -- and it is a very important critique, on the issue of abortion, and a lot of people after the opinion league. republicans had a better plan to overturn roe v. wade than democrats. the supreme court being the way it is, you have limited control of where you get justices. that is why we are in this situation. we need to have more -- and hopefully people learn a lesson from this, that we need long-term, well-funded strategic solutions. go through elections you win, and elections you lose. you are making progress towards an end goal. a lot has changed in the party, some is very good. but clearly not enough is done. we may have lost the saddle before we even started because they have been working on it so long. >> similar -- diversity and activating knowing the plan. in pennsylvania, are elections of the governor and senate race are important. but there is a lot of anger. in the democratic party, what is going on right now. how do we unite the diverse party, specifically in pennsylvania? because it is such a critical election to unite people and activate them in the next 5, 6 months, in terms of november coming up. >> i would say, we organize around the country, justice and policing, and what i have seen to be most effective going into this question, organizers were always trying to convince aunts and uncles, whoever does that will always win. what trump did well, he had never talked -- i don't know what he said privately, i can imagine it is ridiculous publicly, but he would always talk to aunts and uncles. my aunt always understood what he said, it was just crazy to her. my aunts listens to biden and says i don't know what he's saying. when we organize on issues, we are always testing it. not that my aunt is not smart, she is in business with three kids, she is not watching tv all day to see seven people tell the story, which is what cable news is. she is going to get one shot at it, and you have to deliver. the second thing is reminding people of what we do believe in and not what we don't believe in. some people love the police, some people don't. do i want people to be safe? do you want the person with a gun to get the cat out of a tree, to tell you you don't have your taillight? i'm trying to take the craziness out of the issue and make it seem really simple. i have learned that on the far left, and ideologically i consider myself on the far left, the message has to be the middle sometimes. we have to take the message out of it -- in the book, it is like how they were able to convince people everyone is a socialist in florida. it is not socialist to say everyone should have breakfast, lunch, and enter. we should talk about it as a basic thing. a basic thing to say you should not die where you go to school. we have to take the street credit, i really care about the people, out of it, and talk about it as simply as possible. she is like you should not die in schools, should not die in prison. like yes. i have learned sometimes we overdo it. and my aunt doesn't want to be yelled at, she wants to be convinced. >> that is exactly right. there is an element of finding common cause with people. it is not simplifying as -- what do we care about, what do we agree on? even our democratic family. if it is something as simple as in pennsylvania, we think let the people choose who they vote for in the election should be who is elected. it should be people should not be prosecuted. we believe politicians should not decide what books we read or what teachers teach, across the board. raising the stakes in a unified way. >> and organizing, we always try and figure out the question to rephrase things. think about the place where you feel the most safe. a place where you feel safe. are the police there? no. what does it look like without the police? you already know. when everyone was in their room where you want to feel safe, we scale it up. people you love, food, we are trying to take the bite out of it and make it something you already understand. >> thank you for your service. i'm almost 80. i remember very well many presidents love the statements and enrage -- equal engagement. especially today's republican party. my husband and i are republicans, the democrats are the crazies down south and hang with the mafia. this changed. our parents, republicans excite people. they wind them up, fear and anger are the most primitive, most reactive emotions. to keep people scared is to keep them engaged. afraid of immigrants, afraid of socialists, afraid of democrats, they had us afraid of dr. seuss and pepe lepeu. very capable woman, but not an exciting speaker, hillary clinton. president biden, extremely capable. not an exciting speaker. we need another obama with some good support. my question is what do you think of the national popular vote contact? >> i'm a big believer in the fact that the electoral college is a terrible, anti-democratic relic, a terrible thing to get rid of. the vote is a project getting states to have walls that say they will give their electors whoever wins the popular vote. pennsylvania would do it. but they are big in recruiting states for i think decades. but you need to get to all of them for it to actually go into place. everyone around the constitution. it is going to be very hard, republicans know the only way -- they have lost the election, so they probably won't have a lot of states to agree the popular vote. senate questions from the balcony, this is the sort of work you do so you're prepared for a moment when you possibly can strike. i think it is very good stuff. >> this will be our final question. >> thank you for the excellent talk. there is a lot of problems, as you described, situations feel very bleak. at the same time, many dark faces of american history and global history. i'm wondering to what extent you think the moment is singular. is it really unprecedented on a totally different level? how do you think about that? >> it depends on who you ask. this could be a passing moment, it could be the last rose of an extremist, right-wing, authoritarian movement, or the beginning of something very good for us. that is up to all of us and what we do to stop it. we have the power to stop it. there is a growing progressive pro-democracy, pro-truth, anti-maga majority in the country, we just have to show up to vote in the right places at the right time. i think the danger of this moment for democracy -- i don't want to say it is unique, but it is not by definition something that will go away. only if you make it go away. >> let's give it up for david. [applause] >> now on book tv we are joined by the co-author of this book called "superabundance: the story of population growth, innovation, and human flourishing on an infinitely bountiful planet." professor fully, what do you mean when you talk about superabundance?
exits are to the left and right. three, most importantly, if you have not yet purchased the book, we encourage you to purchase the book through the midtown scholar bookstore. we have copies available at the cafe county if you're interested in getting your book signed at the end of the evening. at this time, i am happy to introduce our authors. our interviewer is a civil rights activist focused on issues of innovation, equity and justice. born and raised in baltimore, he holds honorary doctorates from the new school and the maryland institute college of art. as a leading voice in the black lives matter movement and a cofounder of campaign zero, he has worked to connect individuals with knowledge and tools and provide citizens and policymakers with commonsense policies that ensure equity. he has been praised by president obama for his work as a community organizer and has advised officials at all levels of government and continues to provide capacity to activists, organizers, and influencers to make an impact. our featured author is dan pfeiffer. a cohost of pod save america, one of barack obama's longest-serving advisors. he was director of communications from 2009 to 2013. he lives in the bay area of california. dan's new book that we are here for this evening is titled, battling the big lie, how thoughts, facebook, and the maga media are destroying america. this blurb, it's an enlightening, at times enraging, and always entertaining guide to the recent history of our politics and media, drawing on dan pfeiffer's unparalleled experience. read this book if you want to understand what is happening in american politics, why it is happening, and what you can do about it. we're honored to welcome you back to harrisburg. without further ado, please join me and giving them a warm harrisburg welcome. [applause] >> it is good to be back. i know dan well, but we have not talked about the book because i have been waiting to talk about it in front of you all. let's start with the easiest question. why this book, why now? >> some of you may know, we were here together, sitting in these exact chairs in mid february 2020. and we are back. did anything happen? after that last book, i decided that would probably my last book. i was very proud of it, ready to do some other things. then after the election happened, i was really wrestling with the question of how it was that in an election that was close but not much closer than trump's victory in 2016, and certainly less close than george w. bush's election, that we could live in a world where 70% of republicans could believe, against all evidence, that the election was stolen. some of them could believe it so fervently that they would storm the capitol with weapons to try to stop the certification of the election. so i thought we were at this tipping point of the power of disinformation and right wing media and wanted to better understand it myself and explain it to democrats, because i think this is the driving force of american politics right now. >> i have a lot of questions. we will start at the beginning. this is a push. you say in the beginning, they have fallen for the big lie, they all believe without a doubt the election was stolen. i question the language of fallen for the big lie. some people chose it, that they willingly chose this line, they did it for reasons of why to premises and accused of other things. but they were not duped, but they chose it. what would you say to that? >> within any group, there are people who use motivated reasoning to believe what makes sense to them, to fit events into their worldview. in their world, donald trump could not possibly lose. but it is much bigger than those people. 70% of republicans believe that the election was illegitimate in some way, shape, or form. some people are choosing to believe it and some people are falling for it, and some people are throwing up their arms because they see so much noise that they don't know what to believe. that is probably the most alarming part of that last group. >> there was a lot that surprised me, and one of them is use a large portions of the country good -- never heard any negative information about trump. is that true? >> if you live within the right wing ecosystem -- >> i feel like we hear about him all the time. [laughter] >> you hear it, it is done in the perspective of, like, the deep state, the fake new york times lying about him. what the right does is create a dramatically sealed information bubble for a large swath of their electorate. where the information they get is filtered to them in a way that is a entirely positive to trump. or if there is a larger conversation about that stuff about trump, it is explaining why that is. >> there is a whole section where you talk about the importance of the blog and the o ld style of media. do you still think blogs matter in the same way? >> no, certainly not. i tell a story in the book about in 2004 i was working for senator tom daschle in south dakota. this was a big deal senate race, because tom daschle was running for reelection. he was bush's enemy number one, his opponent was recruited by karl rove. no senate leader had lost in 50 years. in that election, a group of, out of nowhere, a group of conservative political blogs, immaculately named to cover the race, they came up and hammered daschle nonstop. they transitioned eventually into pushing conspiracy theories. we published this lock muster scoop, like, siren emojis, it was on the drudge report, that tom daschle had a secret deal with the native american population that if the native american population delivered enough votes, daschle would return the black hills to them. which is something that should happen. it is their land that was stolen. but far beyond the power of one senator to do, so it is clearly not true. at first i dismissed it, like, who is reading these idiotic blogs? no one who matters. but all of a sudden he's undecided voters are reading back to me what they are hearing in here. and what we learned leader on was that our opponent, the republican candidate, was paying these blogs to publish disinformation about daschle. and then it dawned on me, that was the first time i confronted disinformation as an explicit political strategy of the republicans and i filed it away is something i thought we would see many times later. maybe not to the extent we see it now, but the canary in the coal mine. >> in that vein, you make a big deal of highlighting this inference between misinformation and disinformation. what is that? >> these are the two terms that get interchanged all-time. misinformation is inaccurate information. it can be accidental, inadvertent. all of us on social media periodically become inadvertent transmitters of misinformation because we read a false story, or someone has taken an out of context comment or something that we tweeted out like, this is terrible, and we spread it, only to find later on that is not what really happened. disinformation is a specific strategy to spread false information to deceive people. and so those differences are important. disinformation is a specific byproduct -- it's a political strategy that we have to pay a lot of attention to and respond to. >> i obvious he paid attention, i knew russia influence the election. i didn't know it was called the internet research agency. but they were dealing in disinformation, not misinformation. >> correct. in 2016, we have all talked about the russian hacking. the one thing the russians did was they hacked into the dmc and clinton campaign emails and then released those emails to cause as much chaos as possible. >> that was confirmed it was the russians? >> yes. >> i was a victim of like, was it the russians? but i believe you. [laughter] >> it was the consensus of the intelligence community, both under obama and trump. although you could not really say that out loud in the trump years. and so, the other thing they did is they created -- they had a strategy to flood social media with false accounts to push disinformation. one of the ways they would do that is they would create false accounts pretending to be black activists who would then post things about why they were not supporting hillary clinton, or pushing people not to vote. and then these entities funded by the russians would run facebook ads promoting that content targeting black audiences. target people by interests, so people who would express interest in civil rights or martin luther king, or similar topics, push that to them. there was a very specific strategy to try to create division and reduce hillary clinton's support and turnout in the black community. >> one of the things he wrote was this idea that trump could not win if more black people voted. >> that is true. in 2016 that was absolutely true. if you had black turnout at the levels at which barack obama had it, the math would be such that hillary clinton would have won wisconsin, for s --pennsylvania and michigan. >> you wrote about the moment where trump was like, sunlight is going to enter your body and if it does, covid is going to disappear. he also said to drink bleach. you talked about the bleach moment is something we all laughed at, but you highlight that as a positive moment for trump. why? >> trump telling people to inject bleach, or get sunlight inside of their body, and we didn't ask any questions about what his plans were as to how you do that -- it was part of a larger strategy to convince people that the pandemic was not as scary as it was. was to get people to return to normal faster. he believed, with very good reason, that his reelection chances were dependent upon the economy bouncing back. it's a ridiculous, absurd thing to say, but people listened. dangerously so. people drank disinfectant. people tried to injest disinfectant. and we have to -- when we look at trump's pent-up response -- pandemic response, it's abhorr ent on every level and seems ridiculous. but he did very effectively and very dangerously to a large swath of the country spread a lot of distrust in what scientists were saying for a political purpose. i use the inject bleach one because a lot of times liberals laugh but republicans listen, and we have to understand why that is if we are going to be able to compete in an information environment where people can listen to something that ridiculous. >> to think of any politicians on the left who would get that message right? one of the things you talk about is we have to -- it cannot always be gloom and doom. you don't write about this in the book, but are there people you think you are getting that right on the left? >> in terms of a message that brings people in? yeah, i think aoc, certainly beer -- certainly bernie sanders in both of his campaigns. i talk in the book about,m like, we look at a trump rally, it is not a place i want to go, it does not seem fun to me. they don't seem to make a lot of sense. but obviously the people there are having a blast. and it is not just the people in the crowd that we see. obviously there are pretty alarming things they are chanting. then you see the footage when the reporters are doing their live shots before the event and it is a festival. it is like renaissance fair, there are people just up as things, they are selling all this swag and people dress up like donald trump. that is not my thing, but i think we need to think about politics as a way that is exciting. that was the core of obama, was people wanted to be there. so i think bernie sanders, aoc, i think stacey abrams in a different way brings people in in a very exciting way. i have not seen this firsthand but i have heard this from a lot of people on the east coast, john fetterman, people are pretty jazzed to be around john fetterman. [applause] >> love that. another thing you said i had not thought about in this way, you push back on republicans wanting smaller government. you talk about injecting antigovernment rhetoric in a strategy, but it is not about shrinking the government. what do you mean by that? >> republicans don't want -- it is not about the size of the government, it is about who the government is protecting. yeah, they want to shrink the epa, osha, all of that, but they want to grow ika, belieff, and it's their view that the government is a bulwark against an america that is changing graphically and culturally in a way that threatens the people who have held political power in this country since the beginning, like christians, primarily meant. so -- men. so this -- that's an important thing democrats have to understand. none of this is on the level. this is not a paul krugman argument about how you build a good economy. it is about political power, and who has it and who they are trying to stop from getting it. it is why the radicalization from the right has happened so aggressively since barack obama won the white house, because that is the embodiment of something they had feared for a very long time. it happened before they were ready for it. >> this book came out before the january 6 hearings and all that. you write at one point, the message is -- do you think the january 6 hearings happening now will stick in a way democrats can use, or do you think we botched the messaging? >> i don't think we have botched the messaging. i think democrats have done a great job. and it is not just a democrat, because it's a bipartisan hearing. but the first thing you have to do is get people to hear you. so the fact that the january 6 hearing got 20 million people to watch the first one, that is unbelievable. that is 6 million more people watching a congressional hearing than game six of the nba finals. that is wild and impressive. this is not in the book but i discovered this fact when doing research on the book, 20 million people is a lot, but it is 80 million fewer people than watch the oj car chase live in 1994. so it got people's attention. social engagement about january 6 has been off the roof for democrat, which is very impressive. also i think they have done something very smart and powerful. they have simplified the story. every hearing tells one aspect of the story. it is not overly complicated. the second piece is the voices they are showing people are not democrat members of congress. we recognize that adam schiff is not going to persuade a lot of people in the middle of the country. so it is liz cheney. the fact that liz cheney, dick cheney's daughter, basically she is darth vader's daughter and she is leading this, and that is amazing. she is a card-carrying member of the republican establishment. it is all the footage of these trump aids, bill barr, jason miller, he ivanka trump, card-carrying members of maga nation, basically saying trump knew the election was not stolen. so it's one of the most important aspects of modern communication strategy where you have a population who are skeptical of politicians generally. it is to use people from your in-group to tell you a message you do not want to hear is very impressive. so whether it is going to stick is up to awesome, what happens going forward -- is up to us, what happens going forward. but thus far, it has been an credible success. >> you sprinkle in some criticism of the new york times. what would you say about the times's lack of holding the administration accountable during those years? or people criticize the reporters who knew things and waited until their books came out. how do you think about the times 's role? >> the new york times does credible journalism. they do really -- does incredible journalism. huge stories they broke. they do great stuff. i picked the times and facebook because they are by far the most influential parts of their respective elements. facebook is by far the most important social media company, the new york times is by far the most influential traditional media organization in the country. and they are way more influential than they have probably ever been because there is so much less competition now. and i think the criticism of the new york times and every answer to the larger traditional media is really that this is not a both sides issue. democracy is at stake here. we cannot have a political conversation where we treat them across trying to run on kitchen table issues the same as republicans trying to steal elections. press is not an unbiased entity. they have biases, they have things they advocate for. we know the press cares passionately about how many questions joe biden answers every week. like, that seems trite and annoying compared to a lot of things, but they should advocate for as much access as possible. that is a good thing to do, and they will use their power to push for more. which is why you read articles about how few interviews joe biden does. the readers don't want to read that. they write it to put pressure on the white house. i think the press can and should be more aggressive advocates for democracy. and if that benefits my crass right now, so be it -- benefits democrats right now, so be it. the first people authoritarians take out when they take over, the press. so i want them to be more aggressive advocates for democracy because i do not think this is a partisan issue. >> the other thing i learned in reading was you talk about the sec's decision to end the fair use doctrine, and the rise of right-wing radio. do you think there's a way to put that back in the bottle? can we undo that? if trump wins, it would be like trying to unring a bill. do you think we can unring the bell or not? >> i thought a lot about how the right, for decades, has run this campaign against -- to try to disqualify the press. that campaign culminates with reagan's election, and reagan using the fcc to repeal the doctrine, which demanded equal time in media. once that happened, right wing radio basically grew exponentially because now there was no need for there to be someone opposite rush limbaugh, you could just have rush limbaugh. and i have wanted to find a way that you could put the fairness doctrine back in to fix these problems and every single person i talk to about this says the bell cannot be un-wrong. the media has been changed so much that a lot of what we deal with now -- like fox probably exists because and in the fair use doctrine shows the marketplace for right-wing media. cable news was not covered by the fairness doctrine. you can't unring the bell is the unfortunate part, so we have to figure out how to live in this environment. >> i didn't know that tucker carlsen started the "daily caller" until i read the book. > i think it was scarborough and tucker colson, back to back. the number one media. >> you don't really give up on facebook, though. you say the left needs to push out messages on facebook. but when you look at the top posts on facebook, they are overwhelmingly ben shapiro republican. you clearly think that is the algorithm, but do you think the left can counter that? you highlight the outrage and anger we can use. do you think that our base will share the messages or do you think the algorithm of facebook is so screwed that we have to fix it first? >> algorithms respond to the input. right now the amount of right wing information pumped into the algorithm is exponentially greater. there's more right wing engages, pushing out more content. we are not necessarily going to very quickly close that gap, but there is room. we have to find ways to have messages that are consistent with our political narrative that also go viral on facebook. that's very hard because the number one political posts on facebook this week, for the week ending today, was by barack obama. but you know what it was? his father's day message. which is charming and important, but i don't think it is moving the political debate in any way. we have gotten a little better at harnessing energy. this is one of the very rare weeks where progressive posts outperform conservative posts, all about abortion. in the wake of the supreme court case, people took to facebook and shared content and responded to content and lifted the content above. this can't happen once every nine months. it has to happen on a regular basis. one of the lessons for us, and after many years of basically never posting on facebook and only looking at pictures of my friends' kids, got back on, started a public page, started to work with a collective of progressives to get more people to post more content. it's like a drop in the bucket at this point but we need more people. seven in 10 american adults are on facebook. half of those people go to the site multiple times a day. 40% of them see it as a major source of news. the scale between only one quarter of americans claim to be on twitter and i think it is smaller than that. on twitter, 90% of the tweets are from 10% of the people. we spent all the time on twitter and think about it and worry about it. it is an important platform for a specific conversation among active people, but facebook is by far the most important. >> you talk about the decision not to fact-check politicians as a watershed moment. do you think they will fact-check politicians? >> put it in perspective. when mark zuckerberg went to give his big speech about how facebook was going to stand for free speech and the first amendment and they would not fact-check politicians. i hate to say this but first amendment and facebook have nothing to do with each other. it is not about your right to be on a specific social media platform. even then, do you really want a big tech company to be the one to decide what is true and what isn't? especially from politicians? the answer to that is maybe not. on the things they say, like donald trump will post something and should it come down, should it not if it violates terms of service? that is fair. what is different is what he's really talking about is fact checking ads. facebook ads are some of the most -- it's not like we lost 30 seconds on the eagles game and hope people watch it. it is that you are able to precisely, able to upload to facebook the file, you can match people, and specifically target people based on their interests. you can push information and use facebook's massive data and ai powered algorithm to decide the people most likely to believe that information. that is a very big deal. is that why donald trump almost won the election? no. but it's throwing your arms up and allowing the weaponization of disinformation. i think that's a bad thing. >> one thing that was interesting is the republican strategy, your argument is if we talk about the facts, they will lose. they have to distract us because when they talk about the fact, they will lose. the second is they have to stoke, you don't call it white supremacy i think, but bigotry. do you see a good counter to those things? we saw the latest rally, like thank you for protecting white life. >> and she won her primary last night. >> did she win? yikes. i thought it must be edited. but she really said that. do you see an effective counter to that? do we need to organize better? what do you do when it is no longer innuendo. >> i think a big part of this is trying to solve the megaphone problem for democrats. what is happening is the right has built this massive apparatus that is dominating the political conversation. it is pushing information out there to decide what we talk about. one thing we can do, it is the hard work, build up a progressive megaphone to get the message out so we are not getting drowned out. >> is msnbc not a megaphone? >> it is not a megaphone. it has great programming on it, but it is not an adjunct of the democratic party, nor should it be. but fox is an adjunct of the republican party. their interest is electing road republican politicians. it is still an organization that uses itself as a journalistic organization and we are just operating at such a smaller scale. tucker carlsen is getting two to three times the viewers of the largest nbc show and six times the largest cnn show. it is a massive rating advantage. and there viewers are more engaged and much more dominant online. the fox facebook presence and online presence is huge. they have an entire streaming platform. there's fox news station. people who pay to get additional tucker carlsen. no one is monitoring. but there is crazy stuff. there is very little of that on the left. we can't count on msnbc to do as much. there's good stuff there but it is not the same. >> start thinking about your questions because we will go to q and a soon. what does the megaphone look like? do we need to round up influencers or make our own tv station? obviously we have the crooked network. the. podcast. >> i think it's all the above. i don't think anyone is investing money in a linear cable network anytime soon. it is more content creators like the organization more perfect union, started by bernie sanders. . campaign managers. a lot of youtube videos, a lot of reporting that they have been aggressively pushing back. a lot of stuff in spanish language. some of my friends acquired stations in florida. it is all of the above. we just need more people saying more things to more people. there's no hierarchy, no one exact person. it will not be like a roger ailes of the left doing it. it's a huge investment in progressive media. it's not just subscribing to progressive publications. it is also just calling them on facebook, subscribe to the youtube channel. when you do that, the algorithms will show that to more people. our party leaders have to do a better job of this. donald trump did many things that were not very smart, but she was brilliant about nurturing a right-wing media ecosystem. if there was an article he thought was good for him in a right-wing conversation, he published it. i'm sorry, he tweeted it. he tweeted, they get traffic. they get more ad dollars. they can do more journalism. if he was promoting fox, doing interviews with right-wing media , when books were written he thought were favorable, he tweeted about those to drive them all on the new york times bestseller list. that means those books would get better placement and the authors would get more media bookings, the publishers would think there's a market for more pro-trump books. democratic politicians, with a handful of exceptions, do not do that. they continue to exist in a world where they will do the bulk of their media through traditional media. they should do all of the above, but it is in every democrats interest to nurture the progressive media ecosystem into using its allies. obama did some of this in the early days. bernie sanders was a master of this in the 2016 campaign. stacey abrams does this. obviously aoc is a media person herself. for the most part, there is still a reticence to embrace progressive media. if the leadership does not, we cannot get the public to do it either. >> what about abortion messaging? a lot of people i'm around think the party is not bold enough, laying low when we should be fighting back. this is the time to not dillydally. and there are other people who say, we can only do so much, aoc obviously believes otherwise, but what do you think? >> i always have sympathy for people who work in the white house and have limited tools to serve -- to do what people care about. there's nothing he can do with his pen that will undo what was done or protect millions of people who just lost rights. but i do think, and i thought aoc's twitter thread on this, really resonated with a lot of people in my life who are interested in politics but don't work in it. what she did was say to recognize the urgency of the situation and say we need a plan. even if they plan over the short, medium, and long-term, we need a plan. this has been a challenge off and on for the last two years, probably the trump years but particularly the last couple years. i think the urgency a lot of democratic voters feel about where the country is going, the dangers of the supreme court, this radical and extreme faction , and the language and tone of our leaders who even if they do believe it, i think many of them do and their actions suggest they do, but if someone in the house did about voting rights, i think we need to do a better job of speaking to that. even if you can't fix the problem, right now you have to speak to the way people feel and make them get it and offer them a long-term. i think people will, in the absence of a short-term problem, a plan to solve the problem. i thought aoc had good ideas on this. sometimes people want to feel your anger. i hope we hear more of that. >> actually when she was like, if you have a better plan, put out, but you can't not say anything. what do you want to ask -- process? >> if i'm ever running for office, it will be the school board and that will be the cap of it. [laughter] >> let's go to questions. >> this is -- let's give it up for dan. [laughter] raise your hand and we will pass around the mic. we will start in this general area and go that way. >> i want to say thank you for your talk, but i have a little issue with how you kind of accused president biden for not doing anything, because he really can't. this is the same man who said vladimir putin should step down. and so to me, as a woman, it is a copout. i would like your feelings on that. >> i don't disagree with what you said. the point i was trying to make is that there are limited tools. i do agree we need more people, the president included, to speak more powerfully, more often and more loudly about this. i was mainly referring to the options he had to actually do something. i 100% agree that we have a party from the president, congressional leaders, candidates, who do not aggressively talk about what has happened here, the fact that a supreme court that was put in place, five justices were appointed by president who got fewer votes, and was confirmed by a republican that represents a minority of americans, just took a constitutional right away from millions, and we don't talk about in the most aggressive terms possible, the voters will not come with us. i'm not going to tell anyone who thought that they were wrong. we have to have a specific point. you give us these votes, we will do x, over the course of time, we will reform, much like aoc said. >> so for those of us who have loved ones who are in that dangerous third category you mentioned at the beginning who go, this is too much and they throw their hands up, how do we get them to understand these alternative information ecosphere's are not equal, one is based in truth and reality and one is a profitable manufactured machine? how do you get them to vote accordingly especially if they say this is too much, i will just vote with the r? how do you bring them to your side? >> in the book, i write about a study that was done in 2019 where they show people news stories with one group. they had another group where they show news stories that were shared by someone they knew. what they came to find out was that people paid way more attention to stories that were shared by people they trusted than the news organization. whether it was the new york times or cnn or fox news, the fact that it was a person they thought shared their values or experiences in some way seemed to have agreed with the point or promote the point that they would believe it. so i think how we do it, each person you deal with will be different. trying to find sources they agree with or they trust to tell them to push back on things. one experiment i saw one political group do was very effective with republican leading voters who disapproved of trauma but still planned to vote for him anyway, was articles from the wall street journal, which because of rupert murdoch, were treated very differently in this group. in fact, for a lot of people in the new york times, it was proof the opposite was true when it came to trump. with the new york times says about donald trump, then it can't be true. so listening to them trying to figure out what sources they trust, conservative voices can be very powerful in influencing people lean conservative but may be skeptical about this version of the republican party or president trump. >> in that vein, you write about the fact checkers. fact checking does not have the power it used to have. do you think that will remain? for a lot of people, something that is obviously not true, like go fact-check it. but your argument is the fact checkers do not have as much sway. >> exactly, it's the opposite in a lot of ways. particularly cnn and the new york times, they are the most targeted news organizations by trump and the most distrust on the right, but the fact that they say it's not true is proof that it is true. so fact checking cannot be the way we win the war on truth and we need other ways to do it. it can be voices and experts to do it. >> you mentioned school boards. and local elections. your book talked about largely the larger scale elections statewide. one of the things that brings something painful to my soul is seeing people maga campaigning for school boards and winning. can you speak to that or what role -- how important do you think these local elections will become in terms of the overall strategy? there are people who are plain idiots who have no awareness of what the real issues are, and are campaigning on things that aren't really even issues, but it is the right buzzwords. i think it is very frightening for our society last night. >> absolutely. political power is built from the ground up here the process by which the republicans were able to rig the supreme court, made a decision to have large swaths of the entry day one, that abortion being banned is a long-term product starting in school boards. democrats have traditionally done a poor job of investing that at the party leadership level and donors and volunteers. we like to elect president, we think the white house is cool, we watch the west wing, and too often we do not invest in the hard work of building political power. i think that has changed a lot since trump won and there are well-funded groups run by the best operatives in the party. this is an example of how serious this is. we talk a lot about the insurrection and what republicans want to do in 2024. in many states like arizona, votes are counted at the county level. county out or -- county auditor is critical. one of the auditors in arizona refused to certify the election. steve bannon on his podcast every week is recruiting people. one group i recommend is run for something. it recruits and trains candidates. this is where the impact of everything we are dealing with will happen in that down ballot. >> one of the things i think that republicans are very good at, we have a governors race coming up, with someone in the past said that he was elected to ban abortions. but now that roe v. wade has been overturned, he is sidestepping that and is concentrating on the economy and gas prices and inflation. that is what the republicans are going to do to take over the house and possibly the senate in the fall. i have friends that are really intelligent, biden, the gas prices, is gas nationalized? does he have the authority to change? who are you going to blame? bp. mobile exxon. the gas companies. they are the ones that are fleecing you. so people believe on a very visceral level that the economy is all on biden. how can we change this? >> to piggyback on that, i had to go to the mall today and might luber driver said, biden is giving away money to ukraine and he needs to do something about gas prices. what do you do with that? we were just talking and she really thought biden is giving away money to ukraine and not helping us with gas. >> so it is always one of the great frustrations of anyone who works in the white house that the public thinks you have way more power than you actually have. gas prices, inflation is a worldwide phenomenon, all of the above. it is hard to explain away peoples economic pain and anger. i think there are two elements of this. one is we can accept the premise of the problem that gas prices are too high and try to reframe the argument about who will do a better job of solving it. is it going to be the party that is funded by oil companies? the party who insists on giving those exact same oil companies tax breaks? the same people who were opposing a windfall profits tax supported by democrats? it is a tough political environment, but you always want the argument of who is going to fight for you. in a tough economy, that can work for democrats. as much as republicans try to rebrand themselves as populists, there's still a lot of skepticism as people who will fight for middle-class working people and corporations. the other thing is i think there's a mentality among some democrats in terms of politics that we have to change. doug messed rihanna wants to talk about gas prices because that is better for him. but that does not mean we have to as well. republicans tend to decide polling, decide what issues voters should talk about on election day, and talk about it. no one thought immigration would be the number one issue in 2016. donald trump made it the number one issue. democrats look at polls and say what are people thinking about now, and then we just talk about that, whether it is good or bad for us. in this case, there's a whole lot with january 6, there is abortion, a right wing war on freedom in this country where they want to ban contraception, they want to decide who you love, what looks you can read. i imagine an argument would be very powerful. just because he wants to talk about it doesn't mean we have to fall for that. >> i want to know your thoughts on reconciling campaign rhetoric and campaign promises with managing expectations. in your campaign, you hear a lot of candidates talking about issues and saying what democratic voters want to hear, but i feel like younger voters are sort of becoming disillusioned by that. just wanted your thoughts on that. >> that is the old, famous line from governor mario cuomo that you campaign on poetry but govern in prose. this is something we wrestled with in obama's reelection campaign. we are trying to run on what we say with what we are going to do , but knowing we will almost certainly returned to the white house with republican house and senate. i think there are two elements of this letter very important. one is we have to treat voters as if they are smart and they understand it. talk to them like adults. we cannot make promises we can deliver on but that we will fight like hell for the biggest mistake emma cuts, and i include myself -- democrats, and i include myself on this, is that we manage expectations terribly. the senate kept saying failure is not an option on voting rights. we have no plan to cross the manchin chasm, but we have to be honest with people. we were so bad at managing expectations around build back better, that it washed away incredibly important compliments. we are focused on what did not get done as opposed to what got done. i'm sympathetic with people frustrated that we have not done a bunch of things but we have to be more honest with voters. >> there's a lot of unhappiness and social media that pushes the obama team that would say you all did not codify roe v. wade when you had the votes and the power. what would you say to that? people who are on our side are saying that. >> so there was a two-year period from 2009 two 2011 where democrats had unified control of the house and senate. obama had pledged that if he was elected, he would try to codify roe. he said at a conference in the campaign. here's the problem and why it did not happen. this is not to say president obama and those who worked for him could not have done more to forestall where we are as americans. what i am saying is what naral said in 2010, that there is not a pro-choice majority in the house and senate. there were not enough votes. we had expanded the pro-choice democrats, but in two thousand 9, 1 third of house democrats defined themselves as anti-choice. a large number of democratic senators were either explicitly anti-choice or pretty ambivalent about their position. we had enough democrats but not pro-choice democrats. that's ultimately what the best message in the short term is, give me 52 pro-choice democrats, and we can deliver the codification of roe. are you justifying or excusing -- i'm trying to explain what the reality is. people would be shocked at where joe manchin would be on this spectrum of democratic senators circa 2010. it would not be on the far right, it was closer to the middle because we had a pretty conservative party back >> i have been reading -- what do you think of the thought, i think you have seen it, that too many of our organizers have not come from too small of a section of the country. they come from colleges, that kind of argument, so they don't have the life experience and can't connect with people further down the chain. also they don't talk like real people? >> i think most people in politics don't talk like real people. that is the first people of advice my cohost gives everyone. you have to talk like a human. and a human doesn't need small words, it means you have to have relatable emotions and stories. but it is -- i think we need more diversity at every level of the party. diversity in every element of life. race, gender, where you are from, where you work. and a lot of the thing -- the pandemic really affected how the 2020 campaign was -- in powerful ways. more people on the ground working. a lot of organizers, they will parachute into states, that is what they do for a living. but they were constantly recruiting people from those states to work for them. college kids, adults who wanted to get involved in politics. so we need a lot more of that. we are always trying to find the narrowest possible problem that explains everything. i think diversity in every element, in every way you define that word is a problem in all parts of american life. but it is not the only reason, struggling with working class, a trend that has been going on for well over two decades. >> up here in the -- >> i just wanted to ask, one of the things that perplexes me is how it always feels democrats are not organized and not thinking about the long game. for a long time, we have said roe v. wade was a target. we knew that is where things were headed. yet i feel like to hear someone say now we need to have a strategy now, it is like where have you been? i think about when w was president, republicans made it clear they were going to start recruiting among latino communities in the south for the republican party so in the long term, knowing there would be eventually a much larger latino voting population, they would have that majority. we are starting to see the results of that. it was an intentional strategy they created. why can't democrats get organized like that? what is going on? >> politics is funny in the way perception changed quickly. if this had been a meeting of republicans in 2012, 2013, all the way up until the moment donald trump one, republicans would say how is it we keep getting our clock cleaned, democrats are organizing, fundraising us, data technology, all of that. it has obviously changed. there are things that are fair and true of your critique. republicans have had a donor base, primarily the coat others for many years, who invested in political infrastructure. the most boring things possible, but off year elections, candidates training recruitment, there have been similar efforts among democrats. there has been a group of people since -- 2012, democrats organizing impacts as a group. the fact they have come this far is a product of a decade of organizing from democrats. that is the reason why beddoe almost -- beto almost won. georgia, stacey abrams, black lives matter's, what they had done is a product of a decade of organizing in that state. so there are elements of it. it is fair to say that -- and it is a very important critique, on the issue of abortion, and a lot of people after the opinion league. republicans had a better plan to overturn roe v. wade than democrats. the supreme court being the way it is, you have limited control of where you get justices. that is why we are in this situation. we need to have more -- and hopefully people learn a lesson from this, that we need long-term, well-funded strategic solutions. go through elections you win, and elections you lose. you are making progress towards an end goal. a lot has changed in the party, some is very good. but clearly not enough is done. we may have lost the saddle before we even started because they have been working on it so long. >> similar -- diversity and activating knowing the plan. in pennsylvania, are elections of the governor and senate race are important. but there is a lot of anger. in the democratic party, what is going on right now. how do we unite the diverse party, specifically in pennsylvania? because it is such a critical election to unite people and activate them in the next 5, 6 months, in terms of november coming up. >> i would say, we organize around the country, justice and policing, and what i have seen to be most effective going into this question, organizers were always trying to convince aunts and uncles, whoever does that will always win. what trump did well, he had never talked -- i don't know what he said privately, i can imagine it is ridiculous publicly, but he would always talk to aunts and uncles. my aunt always understood what he said, it was just crazy to her. my aunts listens to biden and says i don't know what he's saying. when we organize on issues, we are always testing it. not that my aunt is not smart, she is in business with three kids, she is not watching tv all day to see seven people tell the story, which is what cable news is. she is going to get one shot at it, and you have to deliver. the second thing is reminding people of what we do believe in and not what we don't believe in. some people love the police, some people don't. do i want people to be safe? do you want the person with a gun to get the cat out of a tree, to tell you you don't have your taillight? i'm trying to take the craziness out of the issue and make it seem really simple. i have learned that on the far left, and ideologically i consider myself on the far left, the message has to be the middle sometimes. we have to take the message out of it -- in the book, it is like how they were able to convince people everyone is a socialist in florida. it is not socialist to say everyone should have breakfast, lunch, and enter. we should talk about it as a basic thing. a basic thing to say you should not die where you go to school. we have to take the street credit, i really care about the people, out of it, and talk about it as simply as possible. she is like you should not die in schools, should not die in prison. like yes. i have learned sometimes we overdo it. and my aunt doesn't want to be yelled at, she wants to be convinced. >> that is exactly right. there is an element of finding common cause with people. it is not simplifying as -- what do we care about, what do we agree on? even our democratic family. if it is something as simple as in pennsylvania, we think let the people choose who they vote for in the election should be who is elected. it should be people should not be prosecuted. we believe politicians should not decide what books we read or what teachers teach, across the board. raising the stakes in a unified way. >> and organizing, we always try and figure out the question to rephrase things. think about the place where you feel the most safe. a place where you feel safe. are the police there? no. what does it look like without the police? you already know. when everyone was in their room where you want to feel safe, we scale it up. people you love, food, we are trying to take the bite out of it and make it something you already understand. >> thank you for your service. i'm almost 80. i remember very well many presidents love the statements and enrage -- equal engagement. especially today's republican party. my husband and i are republicans, the democrats are the crazies down south and hang with the mafia. this changed. our parents, republicans excite people. they wind them up, fear and anger are the most primitive, most reactive emotions. to keep people scared is to keep them engaged. afraid of immigrants, afraid of socialists, afraid of democrats, they had us afraid of dr. seuss and pepe lepeu. very capable woman, but not an exciting speaker, hillary clinton. president biden, extremely capable. not an exciting speaker. we need another obama with some good support. my question is what do you think of the national popular vote contact? >> i'm a big believer in the fact that the electoral college is a terrible, anti-democratic relic, a terrible thing to get rid of. the vote is a project getting states to have walls that say they will give their electors whoever wins the popular vote. pennsylvania would do it. but they are big in recruiting states for i think decades. but you need to get to all of them for it to actually go into place. everyone around the constitution. it is going to be very hard, republicans know the only way -- they have lost the election, so they probably won't have a lot of states to agree the popular vote. senate questions from the balcony, this is the sort of work you do so you're prepared for a moment when you possibly can strike. i think it is very good stuff. >> this will be our final question. >> thank you for the excellent talk. there is a lot of problems, as you described, situations feel very bleak. at the same time, many dark faces of american history and global history. i'm wondering to what extent you think the moment is singular. is it really unprecedented on a totally different level? how do you think about that? >> it depends on who you ask. this could be a passing moment, it could be the last rose of an extremist, right-wing, authoritarian movement, or the beginning of something very good for us. that is up to all of us and what we do to stop it. we have the power to stop it. there is a growing progressive pro-democracy, pro-truth, anti-maga majority in the country, we just have to show up to vote in the right places at the right time. i think the danger of this moment for democracy -- i don't want to say it is unique, but it is not by definition something that will go away. only if you make it go away. >> let's give it up for david. [applause] >> now on book tv we are joined by the co-author of this book called "superabundance: the story of population growth, innovation, and human flourishing on an infinitely bountiful planet." professor fully, what do you mean when you talk about superabundance? >> thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about what we dve
point. exits are to the left and right. three, most importantly, if you have not yet purchased the book, we encourage you to purchase the book through the midtown scholar bookstore. we have copies available at the cafe county if you're interested in getting your book signed at the end of the evening. at this time, i am happy to introduce our authors. our interviewer is a civil rights activist focused on issues of innovation, equity and justice. born and raised in baltimore, he holds honorary doctorates from the new school and the maryland institute college of art. as a leading voice in the black lives matter movement and a cofounder of campaign zero, he has worked to connect individuals with knowledge and tools and provide citizens and policymakers with commonsense policies that ensure equity. he has been praised by president obama for his work as a community organizer and has advised officials at all levels of government and continues to provide capacity to activists, organizers, and influencers to make an impact. our featured author is dan pfeiffer. a cohost of pod save america, one of barack obama's longest-serving advisors. he was director of communications from 2009 to 2013. he lives in the bay area of california. dan's new book that we are here for this evening is titled, battling the big lie, how thoughts, facebook, and the maga media are destroying america. this blurb, it's an enlightening, at times enraging, and always entertaining guide to the recent history of our politics and media, drawing on dan pfeiffer's unparalleled experience. read this book if you want to understand what is happening in american politics, why it is happening, and what you can do about it. we're honored to welcome you back to harrisburg. without further ado, please join me and giving them a warm harrisburg welcome. [applause] >> it is good to be back. i know dan well, but we have not talked about the book because i have been waiting to talk about it in front of you all. let's start with the easiest question. why this book, why now? >> some of you may know, we were here together, sitting in these exact chairs in mid february 2020. and we are back. did anything happen? after that last book, i decided that would probably my last book. i was very proud of it, ready to do some other things. then after the election happened, i was really wrestling with the question of how it was that in an election that was close but not much closer than trump's victory in 2016, and certainly less close than george w. bush's election, that we could live in a world where 70% of republicans could believe, against all evidence, that the election was stolen. some of them could believe it so fervently that they would storm the capitol with weapons to try to stop the certification of the election. so i thought we were at this tipping point of the power of disinformation and right wing media and wanted to better understand it myself and explain it to democrats, because i think this is the driving force of american politics right now. >> i have a lot of questions. we will start at the beginning. this is a push. you say in the beginning, they have fallen for the big lie, they all believe without a doubt the election was stolen. i question the language of fallen for the big lie. some people chose it, that they willingly chose this line, they did it for reasons of why to premises and accused of other things. but they were not duped, but they chose it. what would you say to that? >> within any group, there are people who use motivated reasoning to believe what makes sense to them, to fit events into their worldview. in their world, donald trump could not possibly lose. but it is much bigger than those people. 70% of republicans believe that the election was illegitimate in some way, shape, or form. some people are choosing to believe it and some people are falling for it, and some people are throwing up their arms because they see so much noise that they don't know what to believe. that is probably the most alarming part of that last group. >> there was a lot that surprised me, and one of them is use a large portions of the country good -- never heard any negative information about trump. is that true? >> if you live within the right wing ecosystem -- >> i feel like we hear about him all the time. [laughter] >> you hear it, it is done in the perspective of, like, the deep state, the fake new york times lying about him. what the right does is create a dramatically sealed information bubble for a large swath of their electorate. where the information they get is filtered to them in a way that is a entirely positive to trump. or if there is a larger conversation about that stuff about trump, it is explaining why that is. >> there is a whole section where you talk about the importance of the blog and the o ld style of media. do you still think blogs matter in the same way? >> no, certainly not. i tell a story in the book about in 2004 i was working for senator tom daschle in south dakota. this was a big deal senate race, because tom daschle was running for reelection. he was bush's enemy number one, his opponent was recruited by karl rove. no senate leader had lost in 50 years. in that election, a group of, out of nowhere, a group of conservative political blogs, immaculately named to cover the race, they came up and hammered daschle nonstop. they transitioned eventually into pushing conspiracy theories. we published this lock muster scoop, like, siren emojis, it was on the drudge report, that tom daschle had a secret deal with the native american population that if the native american population delivered enough votes, daschle would return the black hills to them. which is something that should happen. it is their land that was stolen. but far beyond the power of one senator to do, so it is clearly not true. at first i dismissed it, like, who is reading these idiotic blogs? no one who matters. but all of a sudden he's undecided voters are reading back to me what they are hearing in here. and what we learned leader on was that our opponent, the republican candidate, was paying these blogs to publish disinformation about daschle. and then it dawned on me, that was the first time i confronted disinformation as an explicit political strategy of the republicans and i filed it away is something i thought we would see many times later. maybe not to the extent we see it now, but the canary in the coal mine. >> in that vein, you make a big deal of highlighting this inference between misinformation and disinformation. what is that? >> these are the two terms that get interchanged all-time. misinformation is inaccurate information. it can be accidental, inadvertent. all of us on social media periodically become inadvertent transmitters of misinformation because we read a false story, or someone has taken an out of context comment or something that we tweeted out like, this is terrible, and we spread it, only to find later on that is not what really happened. disinformation is a specific strategy to spread false information to deceive people. and so those differences are important. disinformation is a specific byproduct -- it's a political strategy that we have to pay a lot of attention to and respond to. >> i obvious he paid attention, i knew russia influence the election. i didn't know it was called the internet research agency. but they were dealing in disinformation, not misinformation. >> correct. in 2016, we have all talked about the russian hacking. the one thing the russians did was they hacked into the dmc and clinton campaign emails and then released those emails to cause as much chaos as possible. >> that was confirmed it was the russians? >> yes. >> i was a victim of like, was it the russians? but i believe you. [laughter] >> it was the consensus of the intelligence community, both under obama and trump. although you could not really say that out loud in the trump years. and so, the other thing they did is they created -- they had a strategy to flood social media with false accounts to push disinformation. one of the ways they would do that is they would create false accounts pretending to be black activists who would then post things about why they were not supporting hillary clinton, or pushing people not to vote. and then these entities funded by the russians would run facebook ads promoting that content targeting black audiences. target people by interests, so people who would express interest in civil rights or martin luther king, or similar topics, push that to them. there was a very specific strategy to try to create division and reduce hillary clinton's support and turnout in the black community. >> one of the things he wrote was this idea that trump could not win if more black people voted. >> that is true. in 2016 that was absolutely true. if you had black turnout at the levels at which barack obama had it, the math would be such that hillary clinton would have won wisconsin, for s --pennsylvania and michigan. >> you wrote about the moment where trump was like, sunlight is going to enter your body and if it does, covid is going to disappear. he also said to drink bleach. you talked about the bleach moment is something we all laughed at, but you highlight that as a positive moment for trump. why? >> trump telling people to inject bleach, or get sunlight inside of their body, and we didn't ask any questions about what his plans were as to how you do that -- it was part of a larger strategy to convince people that the pandemic was not as scary as it was. was to get people to return to normal faster. he believed, with very good reason, that his reelection chances were dependent upon the economy bouncing back. it's a ridiculous, absurd thing to say, but people listened. dangerously so. people drank disinfectant. people tried to injest disinfectant. and we have to -- when we look at trump's pent-up response -- pandemic response, it's abhorr ent on every level and seems ridiculous. but he did very effectively and very dangerously to a large swath of the country spread a lot of distrust in what scientists were saying for a political purpose. i use the inject bleach one because a lot of times liberals laugh but republicans listen, and we have to understand why that is if we are going to be able to compete in an information environment where people can listen to something that ridiculous. >> to think of any politicians on the left who would get that message right? one of the things you talk about is we have to -- it cannot always be gloom and doom. you don't write about this in the book, but are there people you think you are getting that right on the left? >> in terms of a message that brings people in? yeah, i think aoc, certainly beer -- certainly bernie sanders in both of his campaigns. i talk in the book about,m like, we look at a trump rally, it is not a place i want to go, it does not seem fun to me. they don't seem to make a lot of sense. but obviously the people there are having a blast. and it is not just the people in the crowd that we see. obviously there are pretty alarming things they are chanting. then you see the footage when the reporters are doing their live shots before the event and it is a festival. it is like renaissance fair, there are people just up as things, they are selling all this swag and people dress up like donald trump. that is not my thing, but i think we need to think about politics as a way that is exciting. that was the core of obama, was people wanted to be there. so i think bernie sanders, aoc, i think stacey abrams in a different way brings people in in a very exciting way. i have not seen this firsthand but i have heard this from a lot of people on the east coast, john fetterman, people are pretty jazzed to be around john fetterman. [applause] >> love that. another thing you said i had not thought about in this way, you push back on republicans wanting smaller government. you talk about injecting antigovernment rhetoric in a strategy, but it is not about shrinking the government. what do you mean by that? >> republicans don't want -- it is not about the size of the government, it is about who the government is protecting. yeah, they want to shrink the epa, osha, all of that, but they want to grow ika, belieff, and it's their view that the government is a bulwark against an america that is changing graphically and culturally in a way that threatens the people who have held political power in this country since the beginning, like christians, primarily meant. so -- men. so this -- that's an important thing democrats have to understand. none of this is on the level. this is not a paul krugman argument about how you build a good economy. it is about political power, and who has it and who they are trying to stop from getting it. it is why the radicalization from the right has happened so aggressively since barack obama won the white house, because that is the embodiment of something they had feared for a very long time. it happened before they were ready for it. >> this book came out before the january 6 hearings and all that. you write at one point, the message is -- do you think the january 6 hearings happening now will stick in a way democrats can use, or do you think we botched the messaging? >> i don't think we have botched the messaging. i think democrats have done a great job. and it is not just a democrat, because it's a bipartisan hearing. but the first thing you have to do is get people to hear you. so the fact that the january 6 hearing got 20 million people to watch the first one, that is unbelievable. that is 6 million more people watching a congressional hearing than game six of the nba finals. that is wild and impressive. this is not in the book but i discovered this fact when doing research on the book, 20 million people is a lot, but it is 80 million fewer people than watch the oj car chase live in 1994. so it got people's attention. social engagement about january 6 has been off the roof for democrat, which is very impressive. also i think they have done something very smart and powerful. they have simplified the story. every hearing tells one aspect of the story. it is not overly complicated. the second piece is the voices they are showing people are not democrat members of congress. we recognize that adam schiff is not going to persuade a lot of people in the middle of the country. so it is liz cheney. the fact that liz cheney, dick cheney's daughter, basically she is darth vader's daughter and she is leading this, and that is amazing. she is a card-carrying member of the republican establishment. it is all the footage of these trump aids, bill barr, jason miller, he ivanka trump, card-carrying members of maga nation, basically saying trump knew the election was not stolen. so it's one of the most important aspects of modern communication strategy where you have a population who are skeptical of politicians generally. it is to use people from your in-group to tell you a message you do not want to hear is very impressive. so whether it is going to stick is up to awesome, what happens going forward -- is up to us, what happens going forward. but thus far, it has been an credible success. >> you sprinkle in some criticism of the new york times. what would you say about the times's lack of holding the administration accountable during those years? or people criticize the reporters who knew things and waited until their books came out. how do you think about the times 's role? >> the new york times does credible journalism. they do really -- does incredible journalism. huge stories they broke. they do great stuff. i picked the times and facebook because they are by far the most influential parts of their respective elements. facebook is by far the most important social media company, the new york times is by far the most influential traditional media organization in the country. and they are way more influential than they have probably ever been because there is so much less competition now. and i think the criticism of the new york times and every answer to the larger traditional media is really that this is not a both sides issue. democracy is at stake here. we cannot have a political conversation where we treat them across trying to run on kitchen table issues the same as republicans trying to steal elections. press is not an unbiased entity. they have biases, they have things they advocate for. we know the press cares passionately about how many questions joe biden answers every week. like, that seems trite and annoying compared to a lot of things, but they should advocate for as much access as possible. that is a good thing to do, and they will use their power to push for more. which is why you read articles about how few interviews joe biden does. the readers don't want to read that. they write it to put pressure on the white house. i think the press can and should be more aggressive advocates for democracy. and if that benefits my crass right now, so be it -- benefits democrats right now, so be it. the first people authoritarians take out when they take over, the press. so i want them to be more aggressive advocates for democracy because i do not think this is a partisan issue. >> the other thing i learned in reading was you talk about the sec's decision to end the fair use doctrine, and the rise of right-wing radio. do you think there's a way to put that back in the bottle? can we undo that? if trump wins, it would be like trying to unring a bill. do you think we can unring the bell or not? >> i thought a lot about how the right, for decades, has run this campaign against -- to try to disqualify the press. that campaign culminates with reagan's election, and reagan using the fcc to repeal the doctrine, which demanded equal time in media. once that happened, right wing radio basically grew exponentially because now there was no need for there to be someone opposite rush limbaugh, you could just have rush limbaugh. and i have wanted to find a way that you could put the fairness doctrine back in to fix these problems and every single person i talk to about this says the bell cannot be un-wrong. the media has been changed so much that a lot of what we deal with now -- like fox probably exists because and in the fair use doctrine shows the marketplace for right-wing media. cable news was not covered by the fairness doctrine. you can't unring the bell is the unfortunate part, so we have to figure out how to live in this environment. >> i didn't know that tucker carlsen started the "daily caller" until i read the book. > i think it was scarborough and tucker colson, back to back. the number one media. >> you don't really give up on facebook, though. you say the left needs to push out messages on facebook. but when you look at the top posts on facebook, they are overwhelmingly ben shapiro republican. you clearly think that is the algorithm, but do you think the left can counter that? you highlight the outrage and anger we can use. do you think that our base will share the messages or do you think the algorithm of facebook is so screwed that we have to fix it first? >> algorithms respond to the input. right now the amount of right wing information pumped into the algorithm is exponentially greater. there's more right wing engages, pushing out more content. we are not necessarily going to very quickly close that gap, but there is room. we have to find ways to have messages that are consistent with our political narrative that also go viral on facebook. that's very hard because the number one political posts on facebook this week, for the week ending today, was by barack obama. but you know what it was? his father's day message. which is charming and important, but i don't think it is moving the political debate in any way. we have gotten a little better at harnessing energy. this is one of the very rare weeks where progressive posts outperform conservative posts, all about abortion. in the wake of the supreme court case, people took to facebook and shared content and responded to content and lifted the content above. this can't happen once every nine months. it has to happen on a regular basis. one of the lessons for us, and after many years of basically never posting on facebook and only looking at pictures of my friends' kids, got back on, started a public page, started to work with a collective of progressives to get more people to post more content. it's like a drop in the bucket at this point but we need more people. seven in 10 american adults are on facebook. half of those people go to the site multiple times a day. 40% of them see it as a major source of news. the scale between only one quarter of americans claim to be on twitter and i think it is smaller than that. on twitter, 90% of the tweets are from 10% of the people. we spent all the time on twitter and think about it and worry about it. it is an important platform for a specific conversation among active people, but facebook is by far the most important. >> you talk about the decision not to fact-check politicians as a watershed moment. do you think they will fact-check politicians? >> put it in perspective. when mark zuckerberg went to give his big speech about how facebook was going to stand for free speech and the first amendment and they would not fact-check politicians. i hate to say this but first amendment and facebook have nothing to do with each other. it is not about your right to be on a specific social media platform. even then, do you really want a big tech company to be the one to decide what is true and what isn't? especially from politicians? the answer to that is maybe not. on the things they say, like donald trump will post something and should it come down, should it not if it violates terms of service? that is fair. what is different is what he's really talking about is fact checking ads. facebook ads are some of the most -- it's not like we lost 30 seconds on the eagles game and hope people watch it. it is that you are able to precisely, able to upload to facebook the file, you can match people, and specifically target people based on their interests. you can push information and use facebook's massive data and ai powered algorithm to decide the people most likely to believe that information. that is a very big deal. is that why donald trump almost won the election? no. but it's throwing your arms up and allowing the weaponization of disinformation. i think that's a bad thing. >> one thing that was interesting is the republican strategy, your argument is if we talk about the facts, they will lose. they have to distract us because when they talk about the fact, they will lose. the second is they have to stoke, you don't call it white supremacy i think, but bigotry. do you see a good counter to those things? we saw the latest rally, like thank you for protecting white life. >> and she won her primary last night. >> did she win? yikes. i thought it must be edited. but she really said that. do you see an effective counter to that? do we need to organize better? what do you do when it is no longer innuendo. >> i think a big part of this is trying to solve the megaphone problem for democrats. what is happening is the right has built this massive apparatus that is dominating the political conversation. it is pushing information out there to decide what we talk about. one thing we can do, it is the hard work, build up a progressive megaphone to get the message out so we are not getting drowned out. >> is msnbc not a megaphone? >> it is not a megaphone. it has great programming on it, but it is not an adjunct of the democratic party, nor should it be. but fox is an adjunct of the republican party. their interest is electing road republican politicians. it is still an organization that uses itself as a journalistic organization and we are just operating at such a smaller scale. tucker carlsen is getting two to three times the viewers of the largest nbc show and six times the largest cnn show. it is a massive rating advantage. and there viewers are more engaged and much more dominant online. the fox facebook presence and online presence is huge. they have an entire streaming platform. there's fox news station. people who pay to get additional tucker carlsen. no one is monitoring. but there is crazy stuff. there is very little of that on the left. we can't count on msnbc to do as much. there's good stuff there but it is not the same. >> start thinking about your questions because we will go to q and a soon. what does the megaphone look like? do we need to round up influencers or make our own tv station? obviously we have the crooked network. the. podcast. >> i think it's all the above. i don't think anyone is investing money in a linear cable network anytime soon. it is more content creators like the organization more perfect union, started by bernie sanders. . campaign managers. a lot of youtube videos, a lot of reporting that they have been aggressively pushing back. a lot of stuff in spanish language. some of my friends acquired stations in florida. it is all of the above. we just need more people saying more things to more people. there's no hierarchy, no one exact person. it will not be like a roger ailes of the left doing it. it's a huge investment in progressive media. it's not just subscribing to progressive publications. it is also just calling them on facebook, subscribe to the youtube channel. when you do that, the algorithms will show that to more people. our party leaders have to do a better job of this. donald trump did many things that were not very smart, but she was brilliant about nurturing a right-wing media ecosystem. if there was an article he thought was good for him in a right-wing conversation, he published it. i'm sorry, he tweeted it. he tweeted, they get traffic. they get more ad dollars. they can do more journalism. if he was promoting fox, doing interviews with right-wing media , when books were written he thought were favorable, he tweeted about those to drive them all on the new york times bestseller list. that means those books would get better placement and the authors would get more media bookings, the publishers would think there's a market for more pro-trump books. democratic politicians, with a handful of exceptions, do not do that. they continue to exist in a world where they will do the bulk of their media through traditional media. they should do all of the above, but it is in every democrats interest to nurture the progressive media ecosystem into using its allies. obama did some of this in the early days. bernie sanders was a master of this in the 2016 campaign. stacey abrams does this. obviously aoc is a media person herself. for the most part, there is still a reticence to embrace progressive media. if the leadership does not, we cannot get the public to do it either. >> what about abortion messaging? a lot of people i'm around think the party is not bold enough, laying low when we should be fighting back. this is the time to not dillydally. and there are other people who say, we can only do so much, aoc obviously believes otherwise, but what do you think? >> i always have sympathy for people who work in the white house and have limited tools to serve -- to do what people care about. there's nothing he can do with his pen that will undo what was done or protect millions of people who just lost rights. but i do think, and i thought aoc's twitter thread on this, really resonated with a lot of people in my life who are interested in politics but don't work in it. what she did was say to recognize the urgency of the situation and say we need a plan. even if they plan over the short, medium, and long-term, we need a plan. this has been a challenge off and on for the last two years, probably the trump years but particularly the last couple years. i think the urgency a lot of democratic voters feel about where the country is going, the dangers of the supreme court, this radical and extreme faction , and the language and tone of our leaders who even if they do believe it, i think many of them do and their actions suggest they do, but if someone in the house did about voting rights, i think we need to do a better job of speaking to that. even if you can't fix the problem, right now you have to speak to the way people feel and make them get it and offer them a long-term. i think people will, in the absence of a short-term problem, a plan to solve the problem. i thought aoc had good ideas on this. sometimes people want to feel your anger. i hope we hear more of that. >> actually when she was like, if you have a better plan, put out, but you can't not say anything. what do you want to ask -- process? >> if i'm ever running for office, it will be the school board and that will be the cap of it. [laughter] >> let's go to questions. >> this is -- let's give it up for dan. [laughter] raise your hand and we will pass around the mic. we will start in this general area and go that way. >> i want to say thank you for your talk, but i have a little issue with how you kind of accused president biden for not doing anything, because he really can't. this is the same man who said vladimir putin should step down. and so to me, as a woman, it is a copout. i would like your feelings on that. >> i don't disagree with what you said. the point i was trying to make is that there are limited tools. i do agree we need more people, the president included, to speak more powerfully, more often and more loudly about this. i was mainly referring to the options he had to actually do something. i 100% agree that we have a party from the president, congressional leaders, candidates, who do not aggressively talk about what has happened here, the fact that a supreme court that was put in place, five justices were appointed by president who got fewer votes, and was confirmed by a republican that represents a minority of americans, just took a constitutional right away from millions, and we don't talk about in the most aggressive terms possible, the voters will not come with us. i'm not going to tell anyone who thought that they were wrong. we have to have a specific point. you give us these votes, we will do x, over the course of time, we will reform, much like aoc said. >> so for those of us who have loved ones who are in that dangerous third category you mentioned at the beginning who go, this is too much and they throw their hands up, how do we get them to understand these alternative information ecosphere's are not equal, one is based in truth and reality and one is a profitable manufactured machine? how do you get them to vote accordingly especially if they say this is too much, i will just vote with the r? how do you bring them to your side? >> in the book, i write about a study that was done in 2019 where they show people news stories with one group. they had another group where they show news stories that were shared by someone they knew. what they came to find out was that people paid way more attention to stories that were shared by people they trusted than the news organization. whether it was the new york times or cnn or fox news, the fact that it was a person they thought shared their values or experiences in some way seemed to have agreed with the point or promote the point that they would believe it. so i think how we do it, each person you deal with will be different. trying to find sources they agree with or they trust to tell them to push back on things. one experiment i saw one political group do was very effective with republican leading voters who disapproved of trauma but still planned to vote for him anyway, was articles from the wall street journal, which because of rupert murdoch, were treated very differently in this group. in fact, for a lot of people in the new york times, it was proof the opposite was true when it came to trump. with the new york times says about donald trump, then it can't be true. so listening to them trying to figure out what sources they trust, conservative voices can be very powerful in influencing people lean conservative but may be skeptical about this version of the republican party or president trump. >> in that vein, you write about the fact checkers. fact checking does not have the power it used to have. do you think that will remain? for a lot of people, something that is obviously not true, like go fact-check it. but your argument is the fact checkers do not have as much sway. >> exactly, it's the opposite in a lot of ways. particularly cnn and the new york times, they are the most targeted news organizations by trump and the most distrust on the right, but the fact that they say it's not true is proof that it is true. so fact checking cannot be the way we win the war on truth and we need other ways to do it. it can be voices and experts to do it. >> you mentioned school boards. and local elections. your book talked about largely the larger scale elections statewide. one of the things that brings something painful to my soul is seeing people maga campaigning for school boards and winning. can you speak to that or what role -- how important do you think these local elections will become in terms of the overall strategy? there are people who are plain idiots who have no awareness of what the real issues are, and are campaigning on things that aren't really even issues, but it is the right buzzwords. i think it is very frightening for our society last night. >> absolutely. political power is built from the ground up here the process by which the republicans were able to rig the supreme court, made a decision to have large swaths of the entry day one, that abortion being banned is a long-term product starting in school boards. democrats have traditionally done a poor job of investing that at the party leadership level and donors and volunteers. we like to elect president, we think the white house is cool, we watch the west wing, and too often we do not invest in the hard work of building political power. i think that has changed a lot since trump won and there are well-funded groups run by the best operatives in the party. this is an example of how serious this is. we talk a lot about the insurrection and what republicans want to do in 2024. in many states like arizona, votes are counted at the county level. county out or -- county auditor is critical. one of the auditors in arizona refused to certify the election. steve bannon on his podcast every week is recruiting people. one group i recommend is run for something. it recruits and trains candidates. this is where the impact of everything we are dealing with will happen in that down ballot. >> one of the things i think that republicans are very good at, we have a governors race coming up, with someone in the past said that he was elected to ban abortions. but now that roe v. wade has been overturned, he is sidestepping that and is concentrating on the economy and gas prices and inflation. that is what the republicans are going to do to take over the house and possibly the senate in the fall. i have friends that are really intelligent, biden, the gas prices, is gas nationalized? does he have the authority to change? who are you going to blame? bp. mobile exxon. the gas companies. they are the ones that are fleecing you. so people believe on a very visceral level that the economy is all on biden. how can we change this? >> to piggyback on that, i had to go to the mall today and might luber driver said, biden is giving away money to ukraine and he needs to do something about gas prices. what do you do with that? we were just talking and she really thought biden is giving away money to ukraine and not helping us with gas. >> so it is always one of the great frustrations of anyone who works in the white house that the public thinks you have way more power than you actually have. gas prices, inflation is a worldwide phenomenon, all of the above. it is hard to explain away peoples economic pain and anger. i think there are two elements of this. one is we can accept the premise of the problem that gas prices are too high and try to reframe the argument about who will do a better job of solving it. is it going to be the party that is funded by oil companies? the party who insists on giving those exact same oil companies tax breaks? the same people who were opposing a windfall profits tax supported by democrats? it is a tough political environment, but you always want the argument of who is going to fight for you. in a tough economy, that can work for democrats. as much as republicans try to rebrand themselves as populists, there's still a lot of skepticism as people who will fight for middle-class working people and corporations. the other thing is i think there's a mentality among some democrats in terms of politics that we have to change. doug messed rihanna wants to talk about gas prices because that is better for him. but that does not mean we have to as well. republicans tend to decide polling, decide what issues voters should talk about on election day, and talk about it. no one thought immigration would be the number one issue in 2016. donald trump made it the number one issue. democrats look at polls and say what are people thinking about now, and then we just talk about that, whether it is good or bad for us. in this case, there's a whole lot with january 6, there is abortion, a right wing war on freedom in this country where they want to ban contraception, they want to decide who you love, what looks you can read. i imagine an argument would be very powerful. just because he wants to talk about it doesn't mean we have to fall for that. >> i want to know your thoughts on reconciling campaign rhetoric and campaign promises with managing expectations. in your campaign, you hear a lot of candidates talking about issues and saying what democratic voters want to hear, but i feel like younger voters are sort of becoming disillusioned by that. just wanted your thoughts on that. >> that is the old, famous line from governor mario cuomo that you campaign on poetry but govern in prose. this is something we wrestled with in obama's reelection campaign. we are trying to run on what we say with what we are going to do , but knowing we will almost certainly returned to the white house with republican house and senate. i think there are two elements of this letter very important. one is we have to treat voters as if they are smart and they understand it. talk to them like adults. we cannot make promises we can deliver on but that we will fight like hell for the biggest mistake emma cuts, and i include myself -- democrats, and i include myself on this, is that we manage expectations terribly. the senate kept saying failure is not an option on voting rights. we have no plan to cross the manchin chasm, but we have to be honest with people. we were so bad at managing expectations around build back better, that it washed away incredibly important compliments. we are focused on what did not get done as opposed to what got done. i'm sympathetic with people frustrated that we have not done a bunch of things but we have to be more honest with voters. >> there's a lot of unhappiness and social media that pushes the obama team that would say you all did not codify roe v. wade when you had the votes and the power. what would you say to that? people who are on our side are saying that. >> so there was a two-year period from 2009 two 2011 where democrats had unified control of the house and senate. obama had pledged that if he was elected, he would try to codify roe. he said at a conference in the campaign. here's the problem and why it did not happen. this is not to say president obama and those who worked for him could not have done more to forestall where we are as americans. what i am saying is what naral said in 2010, that there is not a pro-choice majority in the house and senate. there were not enough votes. we had expanded the pro-choice democrats, but in two thousand 9, 1 third of house democrats defined themselves as anti-choice. a large number of democratic senators were either explicitly anti-choice or pretty ambivalent about their position. we had enough democrats but not pro-choice democrats. that's ultimately what the best message in the short term is, give me 52 pro-choice democrats, and we can deliver the codification of roe. are you justifying or excusing -- i'm trying to explain what the reality is. people would be shocked at where joe manchin would be on this spectrum of democratic senators circa 2010. it would not be on the far right, it was closer to the middle because we had a pretty conservative party back >> i have been reading -- what do you think of the thought, i think you have seen it, that too many of our organizers have not come from too small of a section of the country. they come from colleges, that kind of argument, so they don't have the life experience and can't connect with people further down the chain. also they don't talk like real people? >> i think most people in politics don't talk like real people. that is the first people of advice my cohost gives everyone. you have to talk like a human. and a human doesn't need small words, it means you have to have relatable emotions and stories. but it is -- i think we need more diversity at every level of the party. diversity in every element of life. race, gender, where you are from, where you work. and a lot of the thing -- the pandemic really affected how the 2020 campaign was -- in powerful ways. more people on the ground working. a lot of organizers, they will parachute into states, that is what they do for a living. but they were constantly recruiting people from those states to work for them. college kids, adults who wanted to get involved in politics. so we need a lot more of that. we are always trying to find the narrowest possible problem that explains everything. i think diversity in every element, in every way you define that word is a problem in all parts of american life. but it is not the only reason, struggling with working class, a trend that has been going on for well over two decades. >> up here in the -- >> i just wanted to ask, one of the things that perplexes me is how it always feels democrats are not organized and not thinking about the long game. for a long time, we have said roe v. wade was a target. we knew that is where things were headed. yet i feel like to hear someone say now we need to have a strategy now, it is like where have you been? i think about when w was president, republicans made it clear they were going to start recruiting among latino communities in the south for the republican party so in the long term, knowing there would be eventually a much larger latino voting population, they would have that majority. we are starting to see the results of that. it was an intentional strategy they created. why can't democrats get organized like that? what is going on? >> politics is funny in the way perception changed quickly. if this had been a meeting of republicans in 2012, 2013, all the way up until the moment donald trump one, republicans would say how is it we keep getting our clock cleaned, democrats are organizing, fundraising us, data technology, all of that. it has obviously changed. there are things that are fair and true of your critique. republicans have had a donor base, primarily the coat others for many years, who invested in political infrastructure. the most boring things possible, but off year elections, candidates training recruitment, there have been similar efforts among democrats. there has been a group of people since -- 2012, democrats organizing impacts as a group. the fact they have come this far is a product of a decade of organizing from democrats. that is the reason why beddoe almost -- beto almost won. georgia, stacey abrams, black lives matter's, what they had done is a product of a decade of organizing in that state. so there are elements of it. it is fair to say that -- and it is a very important critique, on the issue of abortion, and a lot of people after the opinion league. republicans had a better plan to overturn roe v. wade than democrats. the supreme court being the way it is, you have limited control of where you get justices. that is why we are in this situation. we need to have more -- and hopefully people learn a lesson from this, that we need long-term, well-funded strategic solutions. go through elections you win, and elections you lose. you are making progress towards an end goal. a lot has changed in the party, some is very good. but clearly not enough is done. we may have lost the saddle before we even started because they have been working on it so long. >> similar -- diversity and activating knowing the plan. in pennsylvania, are elections of the governor and senate race are important. but there is a lot of anger. in the democratic party, what is going on right now. how do we unite the diverse party, specifically in pennsylvania? because it is such a critical election to unite people and activate them in the next 5, 6 months, in terms of november coming up. >> i would say, we organize around the country, justice and policing, and what i have seen to be most effective going into this question, organizers were always trying to convince aunts and uncles, whoever does that will always win. what trump did well, he had never talked -- i don't know what he said privately, i can imagine it is ridiculous publicly, but he would always talk to aunts and uncles. my aunt always understood what he said, it was just crazy to her. my aunts listens to biden and says i don't know what he's saying. when we organize on issues, we are always testing it. not that my aunt is not smart, she is in business with three kids, she is not watching tv all day to see seven people tell the story, which is what cable news is. she is going to get one shot at it, and you have to deliver. the second thing is reminding people of what we do believe in and not what we don't believe in. some people love the police, some people don't. do i want people to be safe? do you want the person with a gun to get the cat out of a tree, to tell you you don't have your taillight? i'm trying to take the craziness out of the issue and make it seem really simple. i have learned that on the far left, and ideologically i consider myself on the far left, the message has to be the middle sometimes. we have to take the message out of it -- in the book, it is like how they were able to convince people everyone is a socialist in florida. it is not socialist to say everyone should have breakfast, lunch, and enter. we should talk about it as a basic thing. a basic thing to say you should not die where you go to school. we have to take the street credit, i really care about the people, out of it, and talk about it as simply as possible. she is like you should not die in schools, should not die in prison. like yes. i have learned sometimes we overdo it. and my aunt doesn't want to be yelled at, she wants to be convinced. >> that is exactly right. there is an element of finding common cause with people. it is not simplifying as -- what do we care about, what do we agree on? even our democratic family. if it is something as simple as in pennsylvania, we think let the people choose who they vote for in the election should be who is elected. it should be people should not be prosecuted. we believe politicians should not decide what books we read or what teachers teach, across the board. raising the stakes in a unified way. >> and organizing, we always try and figure out the question to rephrase things. think about the place where you feel the most safe. a place where you feel safe. are the police there? no. what does it look like without the police? you already know. when everyone was in their room where you want to feel safe, we scale it up. people you love, food, we are trying to take the bite out of it and make it something you already understand. >> thank you for your service. i'm almost 80. i remember very well many presidents love the statements and enrage -- equal engagement. especially today's republican party. my husband and i are republicans, the democrats are the crazies down south and hang with the mafia. this changed. our parents, republicans excite people. they wind them up, fear and anger are the most primitive, most reactive emotions. to keep people scared is to keep them engaged. afraid of immigrants, afraid of socialists, afraid of democrats, they had us afraid of dr. seuss and pepe lepeu. very capable woman, but not an exciting speaker, hillary clinton. president biden, extremely capable. not an exciting speaker. we need another obama with some good support. my question is what do you think of the national popular vote contact? >> i'm a big believer in the fact that the electoral college is a terrible, anti-democratic relic, a terrible thing to get rid of. the vote is a project getting states to have walls that say they will give their electors whoever wins the popular vote. pennsylvania would do it. but they are big in recruiting states for i think decades. but you need to get to all of them for it to actually go into place. everyone around the constitution. it is going to be very hard, republicans know the only way -- they have lost the election, so they probably won't have a lot of states to agree the popular vote. senate questions from the balcony, this is the sort of work you do so you're prepared for a moment when you possibly can strike. i think it is very good stuff. >> this will be our final question. >> thank you for the excellent talk. there is a lot of problems, as you described, situations feel very bleak. at the same time, many dark faces of american history and global history. i'm wondering to what extent you think the moment is singular. is it really unprecedented on a totally different level? how do you think about that? >> it depends on who you ask. this could be a passing moment, it could be the last rose of an extremist, right-wing, authoritarian movement, or the beginning of something very good for us. that is up to all of us and what we do to stop it. we have the power to stop it. there is a growing progressive pro-democracy, pro-truth, anti-maga majority in the country, we just have to show up to vote in the right places at the right time. i think the danger of this moment for democracy -- i don't want to say it is unique, but it is not by definition something that will go away. only if you make it go away. >> let's give it up for david. [applause] >> now on book tv we are joined by the co-author of this book called "superabundance: the story of population growth, innovation, and human flourishing on an infinitely bountiful planet." professor fully, what do you mean when you talk about superabundance? >> thank you for giving me the opportunity
>> good evening. welcome to the midtown scholar bookstore. it is an honor to welcome you to this evening's author program. before we begin, i have a few housekeeping notes as always. one, while our speakers will keep their masks off, we ask you to keep your masks on. two, this event is being recorded by c-span, so a couple notes. we please ask you turn off your cell phone ringers, refrain from using profanity, and don't walk in front of the stage at any point. exits are to the left and right. three, most importantly, if you have not yet purchased the book, we encourage you to purchase the book through the midtown scholar bookstore. we have copies available at the cafe county if you're interested in getting your book signed at the end of the evening. at this time, i am happy to introduce our authors. our interviewer is a civil rights activist focused on issues of innovation, equity and justice. born and raised in baltimore, he holds honorary doctorates from the new school and the maryland institute college of art. as a leading voice in the black lives matter movement and a cofounder of campaign zero, he has worked to connect individuals with knowledge and tools and provide citizens and policymakers with commonsense policies that ensure equity. he has been praised by president obama for his work as a community organizer and has advised officials at all levels of government and continues to provide capacity to activists, organizers, and influencers to make an impact. our featured author is dan pfeiffer. a cohost of pod save america, one of barack obama's longest-serving advisors. he was director of communications from 2009 to 2013. he lives in the bay area of california. dan's new book that we are here for this evening is titled, battling the big lie, how thoughts, facebook, and the maga media are destroying america. this blurb, it's an enlightening, at times enraging, and always entertaining guide to the recent history of our politics and media, drawing on dan pfeiffer's unparalleled experience. read this book if you want to understand what is happening in american politics, why it is happening, and what you can do about it. we're honored to welcome you back to harrisburg. without further ado, please join me and giving them a warm harrisburg welcome. [applause] >> it is good to be back. i know dan well, but we have not talked about the book because i have been waiting to talk about it in front of you all. let's start with the easiest question. why this book, why now? >> some of you may know, we were here together, sitting in these exact chairs in mid february 2020. and we are back. did anything happen? after that last book, i decided that would probably my last book. i was very proud of it, ready to do some other things. then after the election happened, i was really wrestling with the question of how it was that in an election that was close but not much closer than trump's victory in 2016, and certainly less close than george w. bush's election, that we could live in a world where 70% of republicans could believe, against all evidence, that the election was stolen. some of them could believe it so fervently that they would storm the capitol with weapons to try to stop the certification of the election. so i thought we were at this tipping point of the power of disinformation and right wing media and wanted to better understand it myself and explain it to democrats, because i think this is the driving force of american politics right now. >> i have a lot of questions. we will start at the beginning. this is a push. you say in the beginning, they have fallen for the big lie, they all believe without a doubt the election was stolen. i question the language of fallen for the big lie. some people chose it, that they willingly chose this line, they did it for reasons of why to premises and accused of other things. but they were not duped, but they chose it. what would you say to that? >> within any group, there are people who use motivated reasoning to believe what makes sense to them, to fit events into their worldview. in their world, donald trump could not possibly lose. but it is much bigger than those people. 70% of republicans believe that the election was illegitimate in some way, shape, or form. some people are choosing to believe it and some people are falling for it, and some people are throwing up their arms because they see so much noise that they don't know what to believe. that is probably the most alarming part of that last group. >> there was a lot that surprised me, and one of them is use a large portions of the country good -- never heard any negative information about trump. is that true? >> if you live within the right wing ecosystem -- >> i feel like we hear about him all the time. [laughter] >> you hear it, it is done in the perspective of, like, the deep state, the fake new york times lying about him. what the right does is create a dramatically sealed information bubble for a large swath of their electorate. where the information they get is filtered to them in a way that is a entirely positive to trump. or if there is a larger conversation about that stuff about trump, it is explaining why that is. >> there is a whole section where you talk about the importance of the blog and the o ld style of media. do you still think blogs matter in the same way? >> no, certainly not. i tell a story in the book about in 2004 i was working for senator tom daschle in south dakota. this was a big deal senate race, because tom daschle was running for reelection. he was bush's enemy number one, his opponent was recruited by karl rove. no senate leader had lost in 50 years. in that election, a group of, out of nowhere, a group of conservative political blogs, immaculately named to cover the race, they came up and hammered daschle nonstop. they transitioned eventually into pushing conspiracy theories. we published this lock muster scoop, like, siren emojis, it was on the drudge report, that tom daschle had a secret deal with the native american population that if the native american population delivered enough votes, daschle would return the black hills to them. which is something that should happen. it is their land that was stolen. but far beyond the power of one senator to do, so it is clearly not true. at first i dismissed it, like, who is reading these idiotic blogs? no one who matters. but all of a sudden he's undecided voters are reading back to me what they are hearing in here. and what we learned leader on was that our opponent, the republican candidate, was paying these blogs to publish disinformation about daschle. and then it dawned on me, that was the first time i confronted disinformation as an explicit political strategy of the republicans and i filed it away is something i thought we would see many times later. maybe not to the extent we see it now, but the canary in the coal mine. >> in that vein, you make a big deal of highlighting this inference between misinformation and disinformation. what is that? >> these are the two terms that get interchanged all-time. misinformation is inaccurate information. it can be accidental, inadvertent. all of us on social media periodically become inadvertent transmitters of misinformation because we read a false story, or someone has taken an out of context comment or something that we tweeted out like, this is terrible, and we spread it, only to find later on that is not what really happened. disinformation is a specific strategy to spread false information to deceive people. and so those differences are important. disinformation is a specific byproduct -- it's a political strategy that we have to pay a lot of attention to and respond to. >> i obvious he paid attention, i knew russia influence the election. i didn't know it was called the internet research agency. but they were dealing in disinformation, not misinformation. >> correct. in 2016, we have all talked about the russian hacking. the one thing the russians did was they hacked into the dmc and clinton campaign emails and then released those emails to cause as much chaos as possible. >> that was confirmed it was the russians? >> yes. >> i was a victim of like, was it the russians? but i believe you. [laughter] >> it was the consensus of the intelligence community, both under obama and trump. although you could not really say that out loud in the trump years. and so, the other thing they did is they created -- they had a strategy to flood social media with false accounts to push disinformation. one of the ways they would do that is they would create false accounts pretending to be black activists who would then post things about why they were not supporting hillary clinton, or pushing people not to vote. and then these entities funded by the russians would run facebook ads promoting that content targeting black audiences. target people by interests, so people who would express interest in civil rights or martin luther king, or similar topics, push that to them. there was a very specific strategy to try to create division and reduce hillary clinton's support and turnout in the black community. >> one of the things he wrote was this idea that trump could not win if more black people voted. >> that is true. in 2016 that was absolutely true. if you had black turnout at the levels at which barack obama had it, the math would be such that hillary clinton would have won wisconsin, for s --pennsylvania and michigan. >> you wrote about the moment where trump was like, sunlight is going to enter your body and if it does, covid is going to disappear. he also said to drink bleach. you talked about the bleach moment is something we all laughed at, but you highlight that as a positive moment for trump. why? >> trump telling people to inject bleach, or get sunlight inside of their body, and we didn't ask any questions about what his plans were as to how you do that -- it was part of a larger strategy to convince people that the pandemic was not as scary as it was. was to get people to return to normal faster. he believed, with very good reason, that his reelection chances were dependent upon the economy bouncing back. it's a ridiculous, absurd thing to say, but people listened. dangerously so. people drank disinfectant. people tried to injest disinfectant. and we have to -- when we look at trump's pent-up response -- pandemic response, it's abhorr ent on every level and seems ridiculous. but he did very effectively and very dangerously to a large swath of the country spread a lot of distrust in what scientists were saying for a political purpose. i use the inject bleach one because a lot of times liberals laugh but republicans listen, and we have to understand why that is if we are going to be able to compete in an information environment where people can listen to something that ridiculous. >> to think of any politicians on the left who would get that message right? one of the things you talk about is we have to -- it cannot always be gloom and doom. you don't write about this in the book, but are there people you think you are getting that right on the left? >> in terms of a message that brings people in? yeah, i think aoc, certainly beer -- certainly bernie sanders in both of his campaigns. i talk in the book about,m like, we look at a trump rally, it is not a place i want to go, it does not seem fun to me. they don't seem to make a lot of sense. but obviously the people there are having a blast. and it is not just the people in the crowd that we see. obviously there are pretty alarming things they are chanting. then you see the footage when the reporters are doing their live shots before the event and it is a festival. it is like renaissance fair, there are people just up as things, they are selling all this swag and people dress up like donald trump. that is not my thing, but i think we need to think about politics as a way that is exciting. that was the core of obama, was people wanted to be there. so i think bernie sanders, aoc, i think stacey abrams in a different way brings people in in a very exciting way. i have not seen this firsthand but i have heard this from a lot of people on the east coast, john fetterman, people are pretty jazzed to be around john fetterman. [applause] >> love that. another thing you said i had not thought about in this way, you push back on republicans wanting smaller government. you talk about injecting antigovernment rhetoric in a strategy, but it is not about shrinking the government. what do you mean by that? >> republicans don't want -- it is not about the size of the government, it is about who the government is protecting. yeah, they want to shrink the epa, osha, all of that, but they want to grow ika, belieff, and it's their view that the government is a bulwark against an america that is changing graphically and culturally in a way that threatens the people who have held political power in this country since the beginning, like christians, primarily meant. so -- men. so this -- that's an important thing democrats have to understand. none of this is on the level. this is not a paul krugman argument about how you build a good economy. it is about political power, and who has it and who they are trying to stop from getting it. it is why the radicalization from the right has happened so aggressively since barack obama won the white house, because that is the embodiment of something they had feared for a very long time. it happened before they were ready for it. >> this book came out before the january 6 hearings and all that. you write at one point, the message is -- do you think the january 6 hearings happening now will stick in a way democrats can use, or do you think we botched the messaging? >> i don't think we have botched the messaging. i think democrats have done a great job. and it is not just a democrat, because it's a bipartisan hearing. but the first thing you have to do is get people to hear you. so the fact that the january 6 hearing got 20 million people to watch the first one, that is unbelievable. that is 6 million more people watching a congressional hearing than game six of the nba finals. that is wild and impressive. this is not in the book but i discovered this fact when doing research on the book, 20 million people is a lot, but it is 80 million fewer people than watch the oj car chase live in 1994. so it got people's attention. social engagement about january 6 has been off the roof for democrat, which is very impressive. also i think they have done something very smart and powerful. they have simplified the story. every hearing tells one aspect of the story. it is not overly complicated. the second piece is the voices they are showing people are not democrat members of congress. we recognize that adam schiff is not going to persuade a lot of people in the middle of the country. so it is liz cheney. the fact that liz cheney, dick cheney's daughter, basically she is darth vader's daughter and she is leading this, and that is amazing. she is a card-carrying member of the republican establishment. it is all the footage of these trump aids, bill barr, jason miller, he ivanka trump, card-carrying members of maga nation, basically saying trump knew the election was not stolen. so it's one of the most important aspects of modern communication strategy where you have a population who are skeptical of politicians generally. it is to use people from your in-group to tell you a message you do not want to hear is very impressive. so whether it is going to stick is up to awesome, what happens going forward -- is up to us, what happens going forward. but thus far, it has been an credible success. >> you sprinkle in some criticism of the new york times. what would you say about the times's lack of holding the administration accountable during those years? or people criticize the reporters who knew things and waited until their books came out. how do you think about the times 's role? >> the new york times does credible journalism. they do really -- does incredible journalism. huge stories they broke. they do great stuff. i picked the times and facebook because they are by far the most influential parts of their respective elements. facebook is by far the most important social media company, the new york times is by far the most influential traditional media organization in the country. and they are way more influential than they have probably ever been because there is so much less competition now. and i think the criticism of the new york times and every answer to the larger traditional media is really that this is not a both sides issue. democracy is at stake here. we cannot have a political conversation where we treat them across trying to run on kitchen table issues the same as republicans trying to steal elections. press is not an unbiased entity. they have biases, they have things they advocate for. we know the press cares passionately about how many questions joe biden answers every week. like, that seems trite and annoying compared to a lot of things, but they should advocate for as much access as possible. that is a good thing to do, and they will use their power to push for more. which is why you read articles about how few interviews joe biden does. the readers don't want to read that. they write it to put pressure on the white house. i think the press can and should be more aggressive advocates for democracy. and if that benefits my crass right now, so be it -- benefits democrats right now, so be it. the first people authoritarians take out when they take over, the press. so i want them to be more aggressive advocates for democracy because i do not think this is a partisan issue. >> the other thing i learned in reading was you talk about the sec's decision to end the fair use doctrine, and the rise of right-wing radio. do you think there's a way to put that back in the bottle? can we undo that? if trump wins, it would be like trying to unring a bill. do you think we can unring the bell or not? >> i thought a lot about how the right, for decades, has run this campaign against -- to try to disqualify the press. that campaign culminates with reagan's election, and reagan using the fcc to repeal the doctrine, which demanded equal time in media. once that happened, right wing radio basically grew exponentially because now there was no need for there to be someone opposite rush limbaugh, you could just have rush limbaugh. and i have wanted to find a way that you could put the fairness doctrine back in to fix these problems and every single person i talk to about this says the bell cannot be un-wrong. the media has been changed so much that a lot of what we deal with now -- like fox probably exists because and in the fair use doctrine shows the marketplace for right-wing media. cable news was not covered by the fairness doctrine. you can't unring the bell is the unfortunate part, so we have to figure out how to live in this environment. >> i didn't know that tucker carlsen started the "daily caller" until i read the book. > i think it was scarborough and tucker colson, back to back. the number one media. >> you don't really give up on facebook, though. you say the left needs to push out messages on facebook. but when you look at the top posts on facebook, they are overwhelmingly ben shapiro republican. you clearly think that is the algorithm, but do you think the left can counter that? you highlight the outrage and anger we can use. do you think that our base will share the messages or do you think the algorithm of facebook is so screwed that we have to fix it first? >> algorithms respond to the input. right now the amount of right wing information pumped into the algorithm is exponentially greater. there's more right wing engages, pushing out more content. we are not necessarily going to very quickly close that gap, but there is room. we have to find ways to have messages that are consistent with our political narrative that also go viral on facebook. that's very hard because the number one political posts on facebook this week, for the week ending today, was by barack obama. but you know what it was? his father's day message. which is charming and important, but i don't think it is moving the political debate in any way. we have gotten a little better at harnessing energy. this is one of the very rare weeks where progressive posts outperform conservative posts, all about abortion. in the wake of the supreme court case, people took to facebook and shared content and responded to content and lifted the content above. this can't happen once every nine months. it has to happen on a regular basis. one of the lessons for us, and after many years of basically never posting on facebook and only looking at pictures of my friends' kids, got back on, started a public page, started to work with a collective of progressives to get more people to post more content. it's like a drop in the bucket at this point but we need more people. seven in 10 american adults are on facebook. half of those people go to the site multiple times a day. 40% of them see it as a major source of news. the scale between only one quarter of americans claim to be on twitter and i think it is smaller than that. on twitter, 90% of the tweets are from 10% of the people. we spent all the time on twitter and think about it and worry about it. it is an important platform for a specific conversation among active people, but facebook is by far the most important. >> you talk about the decision not to fact-check politicians as a watershed moment. do you think they will fact-check politicians? >> put it in perspective. when mark zuckerberg went to give his big speech about how facebook was going to stand for free speech and the first amendment and they would not fact-check politicians. i hate to say this but first amendment and facebook have nothing to do with each other. it is not about your right to be on a specific social media platform. even then, do you really want a big tech company to be the one to decide what is true and what isn't? especially from politicians? the answer to that is maybe not. on the things they say, like donald trump will post something and should it come down, should it not if it violates terms of service? that is fair. what is different is what he's really talking about is fact checking ads. facebook ads are some of the most -- it's not like we lost 30 seconds on the eagles game and hope people watch it. it is that you are able to precisely, able to upload to facebook the file, you can match people, and specifically target people based on their interests. you can push information and use facebook's massive data and ai powered algorithm to decide the people most likely to believe that information. that is a very big deal. is that why donald trump almost won the election? no. but it's throwing your arms up and allowing the weaponization of disinformation. i think that's a bad thing. >> one thing that was interesting is the republican strategy, your argument is if we talk about the facts, they will lose. they have to distract us because when they talk about the fact, they will lose. the second is they have to stoke, you don't call it white supremacy i think, but bigotry. do you see a good counter to those things? we saw the latest rally, like thank you for protecting white life. >> and she won her primary last night. >> did she win? yikes. i thought it must be edited. but she really said that. do you see an effective counter to that? do we need to organize better? what do you do when it is no longer innuendo. >> i think a big part of this is trying to solve the megaphone problem for democrats. what is happening is the right has built this massive apparatus that is dominating the political conversation. it is pushing information out there to decide what we talk about. one thing we can do, it is the hard work, build up a progressive megaphone to get the message out so we are not getting drowned out. >> is msnbc not a megaphone? >> it is not a megaphone. it has great programming on it, but it is not an adjunct of the democratic party, nor should it be. but fox is an adjunct of the republican party. their interest is electing road republican politicians. it is still an organization that uses itself as a journalistic organization and we are just operating at such a smaller scale. tucker carlsen is getting two to three times the viewers of the largest nbc show and six times the largest cnn show. it is a massive rating advantage. and there viewers are more engaged and much more dominant online. the fox facebook presence and online presence is huge. they have an entire streaming platform. there's fox news station. people who pay to get additional tucker carlsen. no one is monitoring. but there is crazy stuff. there is very little of that on the left. we can't count on msnbc to do as much. there's good stuff there but it is not the same. >> start thinking about your questions because we will go to q and a soon. what does the megaphone look like? do we need to round up influencers or make our own tv station? obviously we have the crooked network. the. podcast. >> i think it's all the above. i don't think anyone is investing money in a linear cable network anytime soon. it is more content creators like the organization more perfect union, started by bernie sanders. . campaign managers. a lot of youtube videos, a lot of reporting that they have been aggressively pushing back. a lot of stuff in spanish language. some of my friends acquired stations in florida. it is all of the above. we just need more people saying more things to more people. there's no hierarchy, no one exact person. it will not be like a roger ailes of the left doing it. it's a huge investment in progressive media. it's not just subscribing to progressive publications. it is also just calling them on facebook, subscribe to the youtube channel. when you do that, the algorithms will show that to more people. our party leaders have to do a better job of this. donald trump did many things that were not very smart, but she was brilliant about nurturing a right-wing media ecosystem. if there was an article he thought was good for him in a right-wing conversation, he published it. i'm sorry, he tweeted it. he tweeted, they get traffic. they get more ad dollars. they can do more journalism. if he was promoting fox, doing interviews with right-wing media , when books were written he thought were favorable, he tweeted about those to drive them all on the new york times bestseller list. that means those books would get better placement and the authors would get more media bookings, the publishers would think there's a market for more pro-trump books. democratic politicians, with a handful of exceptions, do not do that. they continue to exist in a world where they will do the bulk of their media through traditional media. they should do all of the above, but it is in every democrats interest to nurture the progressive media ecosystem into using its allies. obama did some of this in the early days. bernie sanders was a master of this in the 2016 campaign. stacey abrams does this. obviously aoc is a media person herself. for the most part, there is still a reticence to embrace progressive media. if the leadership does not, we cannot get the public to do it either. >> what about abortion messaging? a lot of people i'm around think the party is not bold enough, laying low when we should be fighting back. this is the time to not dillydally. and there are other people who say, we can only do so much, aoc obviously believes otherwise, but what do you think? >> i always have sympathy for people who work in the white house and have limited tools to serve -- to do what people care about. there's nothing he can do with his pen that will undo what was done or protect millions of people who just lost rights. but i do think, and i thought aoc's twitter thread on this, really resonated with a lot of people in my life who are interested in politics but don't work in it. what she did was say to recognize the urgency of the situation and say we need a plan. even if they plan over the short, medium, and long-term, we need a plan. this has been a challenge off and on for the last two years, probably the trump years but particularly the last couple years. i think the urgency a lot of democratic voters feel about where the country is going, the dangers of the supreme court, this radical and extreme faction , and the language and tone of our leaders who even if they do believe it, i think many of them do and their actions suggest they do, but if someone in the house did about voting rights, i think we need to do a better job of speaking to that. even if you can't fix the problem, right now you have to speak to the way people feel and make them get it and offer them a long-term. i think people will, in the absence of a short-term problem, a plan to solve the problem. i thought aoc had good ideas on this. sometimes people want to feel your anger. i hope we hear more of that. >> actually when she was like, if you have a better plan, put out, but you can't not say anything. what do you want to ask -- process? >> if i'm ever running for office, it will be the school board and that will be the cap of it. [laughter] >> let's go to questions. >> this is -- let's give it up for dan. [laughter] raise your hand and we will pass around the mic. we will start in this general area and go that way. >> i want to say thank you for your talk, but i have a little issue with how you kind of accused president biden for not doing anything, because he really can't. this is the same man who said vladimir putin should step down. and so to me, as a woman, it is a copout. i would like your feelings on that. >> i don't disagree with what you said. the point i was trying to make is that there are limited tools. i do agree we need more people, the president included, to speak more powerfully, more often and more loudly about this. i was mainly referring to the options he had to actually do something. i 100% agree that we have a party from the president, congressional leaders, candidates, who do not aggressively talk about what has happened here, the fact that a supreme court that was put in place, five justices were appointed by president who got fewer votes, and was confirmed by a republican that represents a minority of americans, just took a constitutional right away from millions, and we don't talk about in the most aggressive terms possible, the voters will not come with us. i'm not going to tell anyone who thought that they were wrong. we have to have a specific point. you give us these votes, we will do x, over the course of time, we will reform, much like aoc said. >> so for those of us who have loved ones who are in that dangerous third category you mentioned at the beginning who go, this is too much and they throw their hands up, how do we get them to understand these alternative information ecosphere's are not equal, one is based in truth and reality and one is a profitable manufactured machine? how do you get them to vote accordingly especially if they say this is too much, i will just vote with the r? how do you bring them to your side? >> in the book, i write about a study that was done in 2019 where they show people news stories with one group. they had another group where they show news stories that were shared by someone they knew. what they came to find out was that people paid way more attention to stories that were shared by people they trusted than the news organization. whether it was the new york times or cnn or fox news, the fact that it was a person they thought shared their values or experiences in some way seemed to have agreed with the point or promote the point that they would believe it. so i think how we do it, each person you deal with will be different. trying to find sources they agree with or they trust to tell them to push back on things. one experiment i saw one political group do was very effective with republican leading voters who disapproved of trauma but still planned to vote for him anyway, was articles from the wall street journal, which because of rupert murdoch, were treated very differently in this group. in fact, for a lot of people in the new york times, it was proof the opposite was true when it came to trump. with the new york times says about donald trump, then it can't be true. so listening to them trying to figure out what sources they trust, conservative voices can be very powerful in influencing people lean conservative but may be skeptical about this version of the republican party or president trump. >> in that vein, you write about the fact checkers. fact checking does not have the power it used to have. do you think that will remain? for a lot of people, something that is obviously not true, like go fact-check it. but your argument is the fact checkers do not have as much sway. >> exactly, it's the opposite in a lot of ways. particularly cnn and the new york times, they are the most targeted news organizations by trump and the most distrust on the right, but the fact that they say it's not true is proof that it is true. so fact checking cannot be the way we win the war on truth and we need other ways to do it. it can be voices and experts to do it. >> you mentioned school boards. and local elections. your book talked about largely the larger scale elections statewide. one of the things that brings something painful to my soul is seeing people maga campaigning for school boards and winning. can you speak to that or what role -- how important do you think these local elections will become in terms of the overall strategy? there are people who are plain idiots who have no awareness of what the real issues are, and are campaigning on things that aren't really even issues, but it is the right buzzwords. i think it is very frightening for our society last night. >> absolutely. political power is built from the ground up here the process by which the republicans were able to rig the supreme court, made a decision to have large swaths of the entry day one, that abortion being banned is a long-term product starting in school boards. democrats have traditionally done a poor job of investing that at the party leadership level and donors and volunteers. we like to elect president, we think the white house is cool, we watch the west wing, and too often we do not invest in the hard work of building political power. i think that has changed a lot since trump won and there are well-funded groups run by the best operatives in the party. this is an example of how serious this is. we talk a lot about the insurrection and what republicans want to do in 2024. in many states like arizona, votes are counted at the county level. county out or -- county auditor is critical. one of the auditors in arizona refused to certify the election. steve bannon on his podcast every week is recruiting people. one group i recommend is run for something. it recruits and trains candidates. this is where the impact of everything we are dealing with will happen in that down ballot. >> one of the things i think that republicans are very good at, we have a governors race coming up, with someone in the past said that he was elected to ban abortions. but now that roe v. wade has been overturned, he is sidestepping that and is concentrating on the economy and gas prices and inflation. that is what the republicans are going to do to take over the house and possibly the senate in the fall. i have friends that are really intelligent, biden, the gas prices, is gas nationalized? does he have the authority to change? who are you going to blame? bp. mobile exxon. the gas companies. they are the ones that are fleecing you. so people believe on a very visceral level that the economy is all on biden. how can we change this? >> to piggyback on that, i had to go to the mall today and might luber driver said, biden is giving away money to ukraine and he needs to do something about gas prices. what do you do with that? we were just talking and she really thought biden is giving away money to ukraine and not helping us with gas. >> so it is always one of the great frustrations of anyone who works in the white house that the public thinks you have way more power than you actually have. gas prices, inflation is a worldwide phenomenon, all of the above. it is hard to explain away peoples economic pain and anger. i think there are two elements of this. one is we can accept the premise of the problem that gas prices are too high and try to reframe the argument about who will do a better job of solving it. is it going to be the party that is funded by oil companies? the party who insists on giving those exact same oil companies tax breaks? the same people who were opposing a windfall profits tax supported by democrats? it is a tough political environment, but you always want the argument of who is going to fight for you. in a tough economy, that can work for democrats. as much as republicans try to rebrand themselves as populists, there's still a lot of skepticism as people who will fight for middle-class working people and corporations. the other thing is i think there's a mentality among some democrats in terms of politics that we have to change. doug messed rihanna wants to talk about gas prices because that is better for him. but that does not mean we have to as well. republicans tend to decide polling, decide what issues voters should talk about on election day, and talk about it. no one thought immigration would be the number one issue in 2016. donald trump made it the number one issue. democrats look at polls and say what are people thinking about now, and then we just talk about that, whether it is good or bad for us. in this case, there's a whole lot with january 6, there is abortion, a right wing war on freedom in this country where they want to ban contraception, they want to decide who you love, what looks you can read. i imagine an argument would be very powerful. just because he wants to talk about it doesn't mean we have to fall for that. >> i want to know your thoughts on reconciling campaign rhetoric and campaign promises with managing expectations. in your campaign, you hear a lot of candidates talking about issues and saying what democratic voters want to hear, but i feel like younger voters are sort of becoming disillusioned by that. just wanted your thoughts on that. >> that is the old, famous line from governor mario cuomo that you campaign on poetry but govern in prose. this is something we wrestled with in obama's reelection campaign. we are trying to run on what we say with what we are going to do , but knowing we will almost certainly returned to the white house with republican house and senate. i think there are two elements of this letter very important. one is we have to treat voters as if they are smart and they understand it. talk to them like adults. we cannot make promises we can deliver on but that we will fight like hell for the biggest mistake emma cuts, and i include myself -- democrats, and i include myself on this, is that we manage expectations terribly. the senate kept saying failure is not an option on voting rights. we have no plan to cross the manchin chasm, but we have to be honest with people. we were so bad at managing expectations around build back better, that it washed away incredibly important compliments. we are focused on what did not get done as opposed to what got done. i'm sympathetic with people frustrated that we have not done a bunch of things but we have to be more honest with voters. >> there's a lot of unhappiness and social media that pushes the obama team that would say you all did not codify roe v. wade when you had the votes and the power. what would you say to that? people who are on our side are saying that. >> so there was a two-year period from 2009 two 2011 where democrats had unified control of the house and senate. obama had pledged that if he was elected, he would try to codify roe. he said at a conference in the campaign. here's the problem and why it did not happen. this is not to say president obama and those who worked for him could not have done more to forestall where we are as americans. what i am saying is what naral said in 2010, that there is not a pro-choice majority in the house and senate. there were not enough votes. we had expanded the pro-choice democrats, but in two thousand 9, 1 third of house democrats defined themselves as anti-choice. a large number of democratic senators were either explicitly anti-choice or pretty ambivalent about their position. we had enough democrats but not pro-choice democrats. that's ultimately what the best message in the short term is, give me 52 pro-choice democrats, and we can deliver the codification of roe. are you justifying or excusing -- i'm trying to explain what the reality is. people would be shocked at where joe manchin would be on this spectrum of democratic senators circa 2010. it would not be on the far right, it was closer to the middle because we had a pretty conservative party back >> i have been reading -- what do you think of the thought, i think you have seen it, that too many of our organizers have not come from too small of a section of the country. they come from colleges, that kind of argument, so they don't have the life experience and can't connect with people further down the chain. also they don't talk like real people? >> i think most people in politics don't talk like real people. that is the first people of advice my cohost gives everyone. you have to talk like a human. and a human doesn't need small words, it means you have to have relatable emotions and stories. but it is -- i think we need more diversity at every level of the party. diversity in every element of life. race, gender, where you are from, where you work. and a lot of the thing -- the pandemic really affected how the 2020 campaign was -- in powerful ways. more people on the ground working. a lot of organizers, they will parachute into states, that is what they do for a living. but they were constantly recruiting people from those states to work for them. college kids, adults who wanted to get involved in politics. so we need a lot more of that. we are always trying to find the narrowest possible problem that explains everything. i think diversity in every element, in every way you define that word is a problem in all parts of american life. but it is not the only reason, struggling with working class, a trend that has been going on for well over two decades. >> up here in the -- >> i just wanted to ask, one of the things that perplexes me is how it always feels democrats are not organized and not thinking about the long game. for a long time, we have said roe v. wade was a target. we knew that is where things were headed. yet i feel like to hear someone say now we need to have a strategy now, it is like where have you been? i think about when w was president, republicans made it clear they were going to start recruiting among latino communities in the south for the republican party so in the long term, knowing there would be eventually a much larger latino voting population, they would have that majority. we are starting to see the results of that. it was an intentional strategy they created. why can't democrats get organized like that? what is going on? >> politics is funny in the way perception changed quickly. if this had been a meeting of republicans in 2012, 2013, all the way up until the moment donald trump one, republicans would say how is it we keep getting our clock cleaned, democrats are organizing, fundraising us, data technology, all of that. it has obviously changed. there are things that are fair and true of your critique. republicans have had a donor base, primarily the coat others for many years, who invested in political infrastructure. the most boring things possible, but off year elections, candidates training recruitment, there have been similar efforts among democrats. there has been a group of people since -- 2012, democrats organizing impacts as a group. the fact they have come this far is a product of a decade of organizing from democrats. that is the reason why beddoe almost -- beto almost won. georgia, stacey abrams, black lives matter's, what they had done is a product of a decade of organizing in that state. so there are elements of it. it is fair to say that -- and it is a very important critique, on the issue of abortion, and a lot of people after the opinion league. republicans had a better plan to overturn roe v. wade than democrats. the supreme court being the way it is, you have limited control of where you get justices. that is why we are in this situation. we need to have more -- and hopefully people learn a lesson from this, that we need long-term, well-funded strategic solutions. go through elections you win, and elections you lose. you are making progress towards an end goal. a lot has changed in the party, some is very good. but clearly not enough is done. we may have lost the saddle before we even started because they have been working on it so long. >> similar -- diversity and activating knowing the plan. in pennsylvania, are elections of the governor and senate race are important. but there is a lot of anger. in the democratic party, what is going on right now. how do we unite the diverse party, specifically in pennsylvania? because it is such a critical election to unite people and activate them in the next 5, 6 months, in terms of november coming up. >> i would say, we organize around the country, justice and policing, and what i have seen to be most effective going into this question, organizers were always trying to convince aunts and uncles, whoever does that will always win. what trump did well, he had never talked -- i don't know what he said privately, i can imagine it is ridiculous publicly, but he would always talk to aunts and uncles. my aunt always understood what he said, it was just crazy to her. my aunts listens to biden and says i don't know what he's saying. when we organize on issues, we are always testing it. not that my aunt is not smart, she is in business with three kids, she is not watching tv all day to see seven people tell the story, which is what cable news is. she is going to get one shot at it, and you have to deliver. the second thing is reminding people of what we do believe in and not what we don't believe in. some people love the police, some people don't. do i want people to be safe? do you want the person with a gun to get the cat out of a tree, to tell you you don't have your taillight? i'm trying to take the craziness out of the issue and make it seem really simple. i have learned that on the far left, and ideologically i consider myself on the far left, the message has to be the middle sometimes. we have to take the message out of it -- in the book, it is like how they were able to convince people everyone is a socialist in florida. it is not socialist to say everyone should have breakfast, lunch, and enter. we should talk about it as a basic thing. a basic thing to say you should not die where you go to school. we have to take the street credit, i really care about the people, out of it, and talk about it as simply as possible. she is like you should not die in schools, should not die in prison. like yes. i have learned sometimes we overdo it. and my aunt doesn't want to be yelled at, she wants to be convinced. >> that is exactly right. there is an element of finding common cause with people. it is not simplifying as -- what do we care about, what do we agree on? even our democratic family. if it is something as simple as in pennsylvania, we think let the people choose who they vote for in the election should be who is elected. it should be people should not be prosecuted. we believe politicians should not decide what books we read or what teachers teach, across the board. raising the stakes in a unified way. >> and organizing, we always try and figure out the question to rephrase things. think about the place where you feel the most safe. a place where you feel safe. are the police there? no. what does it look like without the police? you already know. when everyone was in their room where you want to feel safe, we scale it up. people you love, food, we are trying to take the bite out of it and make it something you already understand. >> thank you for your service. i'm almost 80. i remember very well many presidents love the statements and enrage -- equal engagement. especially today's republican party. my husband and i are republicans, the democrats are the crazies down south and hang with the mafia. this changed. our parents, republicans excite people. they wind them up, fear and anger are the most primitive, most reactive emotions. to keep people scared is to keep them engaged. afraid of immigrants, afraid of socialists, afraid of democrats, they had us afraid of dr. seuss and pepe lepeu. very capable woman, but not an exciting speaker, hillary clinton. president biden, extremely capable. not an exciting speaker. we need another obama with some good support. my question is what do you think of the national popular vote contact? >> i'm a big believer in the fact that the electoral college is a terrible, anti-democratic relic, a terrible thing to get rid of. the vote is a project getting states to have walls that say they will give their electors whoever wins the popular vote. pennsylvania would do it. but they are big in recruiting states for i think decades. but you need to get to all of them for it to actually go into place. everyone around the constitution. it is going to be very hard, republicans know the only way -- they have lost the election, so they probably won't have a lot of states to agree the popular vote. senate questions from the balcony, this is the sort of work you do so you're prepared for a moment when you possibly can strike. i think it is very good stuff. >> this will be our final question. >> thank you for the excellent talk. there is a lot of problems, as youes, siations feel very bleak. at the same time, many dark faces of american history and global history. i'm wondering to what extent you think the moment is singular. is it really unprecedented on a totally different level? how do you think about that? >> it depends on who you ask. this could be a passing moment, it could be the last rose of an extremist, right-wing, authoritarian movement, or the beginning of something very good for us. that is up to all of us and what we do to stop it. we have the power to stop it. there is a growing progressive pro-democracy, pro-truth, anti-maga majority in the country, we just have to show up to vote in the right places at the right time. i think the danger of this moment for democracy -- i don't want to say it is unique, but it is not by definition something that will go away. only if you make it go away. >> let's give it up for david. [applause] >> now on book
>> good evening. welcome to the midtown scholar bookstore. it is an honor to welcome you to this evening's author program. before we begin, i have a few housekeeping notes as always. one, while our speakers will keep their masks off, we ask you to keep your masks on. two, this event is being recorded by c-span, so a couple notes. we please ask you turn off your cell phone ringers, refrain from using profanity, and don't walk in front of the stage at any point. exits are to the left and right. three, most importantly, if you have not yet purchased the book, we encourage you to purchase the book through the midtown scholar bookstore. we have copies available at the cafe county if you're interested in getting your book signed at the end of the evening. at this time, i am happy to introduce our authors. our interviewer is a civil rights activist focused on issues of innovation, equity and justice. born and raised in baltimore, he holds honorary doctorates from the new school and the maryland institute college of art. as a leading voice in the black lives matter movement and a cofounder of campaign zero, he has worked to connect individuals with knowledge and tools and provide citizens and policymakers with commonsense policies that ensure equity. he has been praised by president obama for his work as a community organizer and has advised officials at all levels of government and continues to provide capacity to activists, organizers, and influencers to make an impact. our featured author is dan pfeiffer. a cohost of pod save america, one of barack obama's longest-serving advisors. he was director of communications from 2009 to 2013. he lives in the bay area of california. dan's new book that we are here for this evening is titled, battling the big lie, how thoughts, facebook, and the maga media are destroying america. this blurb, it's an enlightening, at times enraging, and always entertaining guide to the recent history of our politics and media, drawing on dan pfeiffer's unparalleled experience. read this book if you want to understand what is happening in american politics, why it is happening, and what you can do about it. we're honored to welcome you back to harrisburg. without further ado, please join me and giving them a warm harrisburg welcome. [applause] >> it is good to be back. i know dan well, but we have not talked about the book because i have been waiting to talk about it in front of you all. let's start with the easiest question. why this book, why now? >> some of you may know, we were here together, sitting in these exact chairs in mid february 2020. and we are back. did anything happen? after that last book, i decided that would probably my last book. i was very proud of it, ready to do some other things. then after the election happened, i was really wrestling with the question of how it was that in an election that was close but not much closer than trump's victory in 2016, and certainly less close than george w. bush's election, that we could live in a world where 70% of republicans could believe, against all evidence, that the election was stolen. some of them could believe it so fervently that they would storm the capitol with weapons to try to stop the certification of the election. so i thought we were at this tipping point of the power of disinformation and right wing media and wanted to better understand it myself and explain it to democrats, because i think this is the driving force of american politics right now. >> i have a lot of questions. we will start at the beginning. this is a push. you say in the beginning, they have fallen for the big lie, they all believe without a doubt the election was stolen. i question the language of fallen for the big lie. some people chose it, that they willingly chose this line, they did it for reasons of why to premises and accused of other things. but they were not duped, but they chose it. what would you say to that? >> within any group, there are people who use motivated reasoning to believe what makes sense to them, to fit events into their worldview. in their world, donald trump could not possibly lose. but it is much bigger than those people. 70% of republicans believe that the election was illegitimate in some way, shape, or form. some people are choosing to believe it and some people are falling for it, and some people are throwing up their arms because they see so much noise that they don't know what to believe. that is probably the most alarming part of that last group. >> there was a lot that surprised me, and one of them is use a large portions of the country good -- never heard any negative information about trump. is that true? >> if you live within the right wing ecosystem -- >> i feel like we hear about him all the time. [laughter] >> you hear it, it is done in the perspective of, like, the deep state, the fake new york times lying about him. what the right does is create a dramatically sealed information bubble for a large swath of their electorate. where the information they get is filtered to them in a way that is a entirely positive to trump. or if there is a larger conversation about that stuff about trump, it is explaining why that is. >> there is a whole section where you talk about the importance of the blog and the o ld style of media. do you still think blogs matter in the same way? >> no, certainly not. i tell a story in the book about in 2004 i was working for senator tom daschle in south dakota. this was a big deal senate race, because tom daschle was running for reelection. he was bush's enemy number one, his opponent was recruited by karl rove. no senate leader had lost in 50 years. in that election, a group of, out of nowhere, a group of conservative political blogs, immaculately named to cover the race, they came up and hammered daschle nonstop. they transitioned eventually into pushing conspiracy theories. we published this lock muster scoop, like, siren emojis, it was on the drudge report, that tom daschle had a secret deal with the native american population that if the native american population delivered enough votes, daschle would return the black hills to them. which is something that should happen. it is their land that was stolen. but far beyond the power of one senator to do, so it is clearly not true. at first i dismissed it, like, who is reading these idiotic blogs? no one who matters. but all of a sudden he's undecided voters are reading back to me what they are hearing in here. and what we learned leader on was that our opponent, the republican candidate, was paying these blogs to publish disinformation about daschle. and then it dawned on me, that was the first time i confronted disinformation as an explicit political strategy of the republicans and i filed it away is something i thought we would see many times later. maybe not to the extent we see it now, but the canary in the coal mine. >> in that vein, you make a big deal of highlighting this inference between misinformation and disinformation. what is that? >> these are the two terms that get interchanged all-time. misinformation is inaccurate information. it can be accidental, inadvertent. all of us on social media periodically become inadvertent transmitters of misinformation because we read a false story, or someone has taken an out of context comment or something that we tweeted out like, this is terrible, and we spread it, only to find later on that is not what really happened. disinformation is a specific strategy to spread false information to deceive people. and so those differences are important. disinformation is a specific byproduct -- it's a political strategy that we have to pay a lot of attention to and respond to. >> i obvious he paid attention, i knew russia influence the election. i didn't know it was called the internet research agency. but they were dealing in disinformation, not misinformation. >> correct. in 2016, we have all talked about the russian hacking. the one thing the russians did was they hacked into the dmc and clinton campaign emails and then released those emails to cause as much chaos as possible. >> that was confirmed it was the russians? >> yes. >> i was a victim of like, was it the russians? but i believe you. [laughter] >> it was the consensus of the intelligence community, both under obama and trump. although you could not really say that out loud in the trump years. and so, the other thing they did is they created -- they had a strategy to flood social media with false accounts to push disinformation. one of the ways they would do that is they would create false accounts pretending to be black activists who would then post things about why they were not supporting hillary clinton, or pushing people not to vote. and then these entities funded by the russians would run facebook ads promoting that content targeting black audiences. target people by interests, so people who would express interest in civil rights or martin luther king, or similar topics, push that to them. there was a very specific strategy to try to create division and reduce hillary clinton's support and turnout in the black community. >> one of the things he wrote was this idea that trump could not win if more black people voted. >> that is true. in 2016 that was absolutely true. if you had black turnout at the levels at which barack obama had it, the math would be such that hillary clinton would have won wisconsin, for s --pennsylvania and michigan. >> you wrote about the moment where trump was like, sunlight is going to enter your body and if it does, covid is going to disappear. he also said to drink bleach. you talked about the bleach moment is something we all laughed at, but you highlight that as a positive moment for trump. why? >> trump telling people to inject bleach, or get sunlight inside of their body, and we didn't ask any questions about what his plans were as to how you do that -- it was part of a larger strategy to convince people that the pandemic was not as scary as it was. was to get people to return to normal faster. he believed, with very good reason, that his reelection chances were dependent upon the economy bouncing back. it's a ridiculous, absurd thing to say, but people listened. dangerously so. people drank disinfectant. people tried to injest disinfectant. and we have to -- when we look at trump's pent-up response -- pandemic response, it's abhorr ent on every level and seems ridiculous. but he did very effectively and very dangerously to a large swath of the country spread a lot of distrust in what scientists were saying for a political purpose. i use the inject bleach one because a lot of times liberals laugh but republicans listen, and we have to understand why that is if we are going to be able to compete in an information environment where people can listen to something that ridiculous. >> to think of any politicians on the left who would get that message right? one of the things you talk about is we have to -- it cannot always be gloom and doom. you don't write about this in the book, but are there people you think you are getting that right on the left? >> in terms of a message that brings people in? yeah, i think aoc, certainly beer -- certainly bernie sanders in both of his campaigns. i talk in the book about,m like, we look at a trump rally, it is not a place i want to go, it does not seem fun to me. they don't seem to make a lot of sense. but obviously the people there are having a blast. and it is not just the people in the crowd that we see. obviously there are pretty alarming things they are chanting. then you see the footage when the reporters are doing their live shots before the event and it is a festival. it is like renaissance fair, there are people just up as things, they are selling all this swag and people dress up like donald trump. that is not my thing, but i think we need to think about politics as a way that is exciting. that was the core of obama, was people wanted to be there. so i think bernie sanders, aoc, i think stacey abrams in a different way brings people in in a very exciting way. i have not seen this firsthand but i have heard this from a lot of people on the east coast, john fetterman, people are pretty jazzed to be around john fetterman. [applause] >> love that. another thing you said i had not thought about in this way, you push back on republicans wanting smaller government. you talk about injecting antigovernment rhetoric in a strategy, but it is not about shrinking the government. what do you mean by that? >> republicans don't want -- it is not about the size of the government, it is about who the government is protecting. yeah, they want to shrink the epa, osha, all of that, but they want to grow ika, belieff, and it's their view that the government is a bulwark against an america that is changing graphically and culturally in a way that threatens the people who have held political power in this country since the beginning, like christians, primarily meant. so -- men. so this -- that's an important thing democrats have to understand. none of this is on the level. this is not a paul krugman argument about how you build a good economy. it is about political power, and who has it and who they are trying to stop from getting it. it is why the radicalization from the right has happened so aggressively since barack obama won the white house, because that is the embodiment of something they had feared for a very long time. it happened before they were ready for it. >> this book came out before the january 6 hearings and all that. you write at one point, the message is -- do you think the january 6 hearings happening now will stick in a way democrats can use, or do you think we botched the messaging? >> i don't think we have botched the messaging. i think democrats have done a great job. and it is not just a democrat, because it's a bipartisan hearing. but the first thing you have to do is get people to hear you. so the fact that the january 6 hearing got 20 million people to watch the first one, that is unbelievable. that is 6 million more people watching a congressional hearing than game six of the nba finals. that is wild and impressive. this is not in the book but i discovered this fact when doing research on the book, 20 million people is a lot, but it is 80 million fewer people than watch the oj car chase live in 1994. so it got people's attention. social engagement about january 6 has been off the roof for democrat, which is very impressive. also i think they have done something very smart and powerful. they have simplified the story. every hearing tells one aspect of the story. it is not overly complicated. the second piece is the voices they are showing people are not democrat members of congress. we recognize that adam schiff is not going to persuade a lot of people in the middle of the country. so it is liz cheney. the fact that liz cheney, dick cheney's daughter, basically she is darth vader's daughter and she is leading this, and that is amazing. she is a card-carrying member of the republican establishment. it is all the footage of these trump aids, bill barr, jason miller, he ivanka trump, card-carrying members of maga nation, basically saying trump knew the election was not stolen. so it's one of the most important aspects of modern communication strategy where you have a population who are skeptical of politicians generally. it is to use people from your in-group to tell you a message you do not want to hear is very impressive. so whether it is going to stick is up to awesome, what happens going forward -- is up to us, what happens going forward. but thus far, it has been an credible success. >> you sprinkle in some criticism of the new york times. what would you say about the times's lack of holding the administration accountable during those years? or people criticize the reporters who knew things and waited until their books came out. how do you think about the times 's role? >> the new york times does credible journalism. they do really -- does incredible journalism. huge stories they broke. they do great stuff. i picked the times and facebook because they are by far the most influential parts of their respective elements. facebook is by far the most important social media company, the new york times is by far the most influential traditional media organization in the country. and they are way more influential than they have probably ever been because there is so much less competition now. and i think the criticism of the new york times and every answer to the larger traditional media is really that this is not a both sides issue. democracy is at stake here. we cannot have a political conversation where we treat them across trying to run on kitchen table issues the same as republicans trying to steal elections. press is not an unbiased entity. they have biases, they have things they advocate for. we know the press cares passionately about how many questions joe biden answers every week. like, that seems trite and annoying compared to a lot of things, but they should advocate for as much access as possible. that is a good thing to do, and they will use their power to push for more. which is why you read articles about how few interviews joe biden does. the readers don't want to read that. they write it to put pressure on the white house. i think the press can and should be more aggressive advocates for democracy. and if that benefits my crass right now, so be it -- benefits democrats right now, so be it. the first people authoritarians take out when they take over, the press. so i want them to be more aggressive advocates for democracy because i do not think this is a partisan issue. >> the other thing i learned in reading was you talk about the sec's decision to end the fair use doctrine, and the rise of right-wing radio. do you think there's a way to put that back in the bottle? can we undo that? if trump wins, it would be like trying to unring a bill. do you think we can unring the bell or not? >> i thought a lot about how the right, for decades, has run this campaign against -- to try to disqualify the press. that campaign culminates with reagan's election, and reagan using the fcc to repeal the doctrine, which demanded equal time in media. once that happened, right wing radio basically grew exponentially because now there was no need for there to be someone opposite rush limbaugh, you could just have rush limbaugh. and i have wanted to find a way that you could put the fairness doctrine back in to fix these problems and every single person i talk to about this says the bell cannot be un-wrong. the media has been changed so much that a lot of what we deal with now -- like fox probably exists because and in the fair use doctrine shows the marketplace for right-wing media. cable news was not covered by the fairness doctrine. you can't unring the bell is the unfortunate part, so we have to figure out how to live in this environment. >> i didn't know that tucker carlsen started the "daily caller" until i read the book. > i think it was scarborough and tucker colson, back to back. the number one media. >> you don't really give up on facebook, though. you say the left needs to push out messages on facebook. but when you look at the top posts on facebook, they are overwhelmingly ben shapiro republican. you clearly think that is the algorithm, but do you think the left can counter that? you highlight the outrage and anger we can use. do you think that our base will share the messages or do you think the algorithm of facebook is so screwed that we have to fix it first? >> algorithms respond to the input. right now the amount of right wing information pumped into the algorithm is exponentially greater. there's more right wing engages, pushing out more content. we are not necessarily going to very quickly close that gap, but there is room. we have to find ways to have messages that are consistent with our political narrative that also go viral on facebook. that's very hard because the number one political posts on facebook this week, for the week ending today, was by barack obama. but you know what it was? his father's day message. which is charming and important, but i don't think it is moving the political debate in any way. we have gotten a little better at harnessing energy. this is one of the very rare weeks where progressive posts outperform conservative posts, all about abortion. in the wake of the supreme court case, people took to facebook and shared content and responded to content and lifted the content above. this can't happen once every nine months. it has to happen on a regular basis. one of the lessons for us, and after many years of basically never posting on facebook and only looking at pictures of my friends' kids, got back on, started a public page, started to work with a collective of progressives to get more people to post more content. it's like a drop in the bucket at this point but we need more people. seven in 10 american adults are on facebook. half of those people go to the site multiple times a day. 40% of them see it as a major source of news. the scale between only one quarter of americans claim to be on twitter and i think it is smaller than that. on twitter, 90% of the tweets are from 10% of the people. we spent all the time on twitter and think about it and worry about it. it is an important platform for a specific conversation among active people, but facebook is by far the most important. >> you talk about the decision not to fact-check politicians as a watershed moment. do you think they will fact-check politicians? >> put it in perspective. when mark zuckerberg went to give his big speech about how facebook was going to stand for free speech and the first amendment and they would not fact-check politicians. i hate to say this but first amendment and facebook have nothing to do with each other. it is not about your right to be on a specific social media platform. even then, do you really want a big tech company to be the one to decide what is true and what isn't? especially from politicians? the answer to that is maybe not. on the things they say, like donald trump will post something and should it come down, should it not if it violates terms of service? that is fair. what is different is what he's really talking about is fact checking ads. facebook ads are some of the most -- it's not like we lost 30 seconds on the eagles game and hope people watch it. it is that you are able to precisely, able to upload to facebook the file, you can match people, and specifically target people based on their interests. you can push information and use facebook's massive data and ai powered algorithm to decide the people most likely to believe that information. that is a very big deal. is that why donald trump almost won the election? no. but it's throwing your arms up and allowing the weaponization of disinformation. i think that's a bad thing. >> one thing that was interesting is the republican strategy, your argument is if we talk about the facts, they will lose. they have to distract us because when they talk about the fact, they will lose. the second is they have to stoke, you don't call it white supremacy i think, but bigotry. do you see a good counter to those things? we saw the latest rally, like thank you for protecting white life. >> and she won her primary last night. >> did she win? yikes. i thought it must be edited. but she really said that. do you see an effective counter to that? do we need to organize better? what do you do when it is no longer innuendo. >> i think a big part of this is trying to solve the megaphone problem for democrats. what is happening is the right has built this massive apparatus that is dominating the political conversation. it is pushing information out there to decide what we talk about. one thing we can do, it is the hard work, build up a progressive megaphone to get the message out so we are not getting drowned out. >> is msnbc not a megaphone? >> it is not a megaphone. it has great programming on it, but it is not an adjunct of the democratic party, nor should it be. but fox is an adjunct of the republican party. their interest is electing road republican politicians. it is still an organization that uses itself as a journalistic organization and we are just operating at such a smaller scale. tucker carlsen is getting two to three times the viewers of the largest nbc show and six times the largest cnn show. it is a massive rating advantage. and there viewers are more engaged and much more dominant online. the fox facebook presence and online presence is huge. they have an entire streaming platform. there's fox news station. people who pay to get additional tucker carlsen. no one is monitoring. but there is crazy stuff. there is very little of that on the left. we can't count on msnbc to do as much. there's good stuff there but it is not the same. >> start thinking about your questions because we will go to q and a soon. what does the megaphone look like? do we need to round up influencers or make our own tv station? obviously we have the crooked network. the. podcast. >> i think it's all the above. i don't think anyone is investing money in a linear cable network anytime soon. it is more content creators like the organization more perfect union, started by bernie sanders. . campaign managers. a lot of youtube videos, a lot of reporting that they have been aggressively pushing back. a lot of stuff in spanish language. some of my friends acquired stations in florida. it is all of the above. we just need more people saying more things to more people. there's no hierarchy, no one exact person. it will not be like a roger ailes of the left doing it. it's a huge investment in progressive media. it's not just subscribing to progressive publications. it is also just calling them on facebook, subscribe to the youtube channel. when you do that, the algorithms will show that to more people. our party leaders have to do a better job of this. donald trump did many things that were not very smart, but she was brilliant about nurturing a right-wing media ecosystem. if there was an article he thought was good for him in a right-wing conversation, he published it. i'm sorry, he tweeted it. he tweeted, they get traffic. they get more ad dollars. they can do more journalism. if he was promoting fox, doing interviews with right-wing media , when books were written he thought were favorable, he tweeted about those to drive them all on the new york times bestseller list. that means those books would get better placement and the authors would get more media bookings, the publishers would think there's a market for more pro-trump books. democratic politicians, with a handful of exceptions, do not do that. they continue to exist in a world where they will do the bulk of their media through traditional media. they should do all of the above, but it is in every democrats interest to nurture the progressive media ecosystem into using its allies. obama did some of this in the early days. bernie sanders was a master of this in the 2016 campaign. stacey abrams does this. obviously aoc is a media person herself. for the most part, there is still a reticence to embrace progressive media. if the leadership does not, we cannot get the public to do it either. >> what about abortion messaging? a lot of people i'm around think the party is not bold enough, laying low when we should be fighting back. this is the time to not dillydally. and there are other people who say, we can only do so much, aoc obviously believes otherwise, but what do you think? >> i always have sympathy for people who work in the white house and have limited tools to serve -- to do what people care about. there's nothing he can do with his pen that will undo what was done or protect millions of people who just lost rights. but i do think, and i thought aoc's twitter thread on this, really resonated with a lot of people in my life who are interested in politics but don't work in it. what she did was say to recognize the urgency of the situation and say we need a plan. even if they plan over the short, medium, and long-term, we need a plan. this has been a challenge off and on for the last two years, probably the trump years but particularly the last couple years. i think the urgency a lot of democratic voters feel about where the country is going, the dangers of the supreme court, this radical and extreme faction , and the language and tone of our leaders who even if they do believe it, i think many of them do and their actions suggest they do, but if someone in the house did about voting rights, i think we need to do a better job of speaking to that. even if you can't fix the problem, right now you have to speak to the way people feel and make them get it and offer them a long-term. i think people will, in the absence of a short-term problem, a plan to solve the problem. i thought aoc had good ideas on this. sometimes people want to feel your anger. i hope we hear more of that. >> actually when she was like, if you have a better plan, put out, but you can't not say anything. what do you want to ask -- process? >> if i'm ever running for office, it will be the school board and that will be the cap of it. [laughter] >> let's go to questions. >> this is -- let's give it up for dan. [laughter] raise your hand and we will pass around the mic. we will start in this general area and go that way. >> i want to say thank you for your talk, but i have a little issue with how you kind of accused president biden for not doing anything, because he really can't. this is the same man who said vladimir putin should step down. and so to me, as a woman, it is a copout. i would like your feelings on that. >> i don't disagree with what you said. the point i was trying to make is that there are limited tools. i do agree we need more people, the president included, to speak more powerfully, more often and more loudly about this. i was mainly referring to the options he had to actually do something. i 100% agree that we have a party from the president, congressional leaders, candidates, who do not aggressively talk about what has happened here, the fact that a supreme court that was put in place, five justices were appointed by president who got fewer votes, and was confirmed by a republican that represents a minority of americans, just took a constitutional right away from millions, and we don't talk about in the most aggressive terms possible, the voters will not come with us. i'm not going to tell anyone who thought that they were wrong. we have to have a specific point. you give us these votes, we will do x, over the course of time, we will reform, much like aoc said. >> so for those of us who have loved ones who are in that dangerous third category you mentioned at the beginning who go, this is too much and they throw their hands up, how do we get them to understand these alternative information ecosphere's are not equal, one is based in truth and reality and one is a profitable manufactured machine? how do you get them to vote accordingly especially if they say this is too much, i will just vote with the r? how do you bring them to your side? >> in the book, i write about a study that was done in 2019 where they show people news stories with one group. they had another group where they show news stories that were shared by someone they knew. what they came to find out was that people paid way more attention to stories that were shared by people they trusted than the news organization. whether it was the new york times or cnn or fox news, the fact that it was a person they thought shared their values or experiences in some way seemed to have agreed with the point or promote the point that they would believe it. so i think how we do it, each person you deal with will be different. trying to find sources they agree with or they trust to tell them to push back on things. one experiment i saw one political group do was very effective with republican leading voters who disapproved of trauma but still planned to vote for him anyway, was articles from the wall street journal, which because of rupert murdoch, were treated very differently in this group. in fact, for a lot of people in the new york times, it was proof the opposite was true when it came to trump. with the new york times says about donald trump, then it can't be true. so listening to them trying to figure out what sources they trust, conservative voices can be very powerful in influencing people lean conservative but may be skeptical about this version of the republican party or president trump. >> in that vein, you write about the fact checkers. fact checking does not have the power it used to have. do you think that will remain? for a lot of people, something that is obviously not true, like go fact-check it. but your argument is the fact checkers do not have as much sway. >> exactly, it's the opposite in a lot of ways. particularly cnn and the new york times, they are the most targeted news organizations by trump and the most distrust on the right, but the fact that they say it's not true is proof that it is true. so fact checking cannot be the way we win the war on truth and we need other ways to do it. it can be voices and experts to do it. >> you mentioned school boards. and local elections. your book talked about largely the larger scale elections statewide. one of the things that brings something painful to my soul is seeing people maga campaigning for school boards and winning. can you speak to that or what role -- how important do you think these local elections will become in terms of the overall strategy? there are people who are plain idiots who have no awareness of what the real issues are, and are campaigning on things that aren't really even issues, but it is the right buzzwords. i think it is very frightening for our society last night. >> absolutely. political power is built from the ground up here the process by which the republicans were able to rig the supreme court, made a decision to have large swaths of the entry day one, that abortion being banned is a long-term product starting in school boards. democrats have traditionally done a poor job of investing that at the party leadership level and donors and volunteers. we like to elect president, we think the white house is cool, we watch the west wing, and too often we do not invest in the hard work of building political power. i think that has changed a lot since trump won and there are well-funded groups run by the best operatives in the party. this is an example of how serious this is. we talk a lot about the insurrection and what republicans want to do in 2024. in many states like arizona, votes are counted at the county level. county out or -- county auditor is critical. one of the auditors in arizona refused to certify the election. steve bannon on his podcast every week is recruiting people. one group i recommend is run for something. it recruits and trains candidates. this is where the impact of everything we are dealing with will happen in that down ballot. >> one of the things i think that republicans are very good at, we have a governors race coming up, with someone in the past said that he was elected to ban abortions. but now that roe v. wade has been overturned, he is sidestepping that and is concentrating on the economy and gas prices and inflation. that is what the republicans are going to do to take over the house and possibly the senate in the fall. i have friends that are really intelligent, biden, the gas prices, is gas nationalized? does he have the authority to change? who are you going to blame? bp. mobile exxon. the gas companies. they are the ones that are fleecing you. so people believe on a very visceral level that the economy is all on biden. how can we change this? >> to piggyback on that, i had to go to the mall today and might luber driver said, biden is giving away money to ukraine and he needs to do something about gas prices. what do you do with that? we were just talking and she really thought biden is giving away money to ukraine and not helping us with gas. >> so it is always one of the great frustrations of anyone who works in the white house that the public thinks you have way more power than you actually have. gas prices, inflation is a worldwide phenomenon, all of the above. it is hard to explain away peoples economic pain and anger. i think there are two elements of this. one is we can accept the premise of the problem that gas prices are too high and try to reframe the argument about who will do a better job of solving it. is it going to be the party that is funded by oil companies? the party who insists on giving those exact same oil companies tax breaks? the same people who were opposing a windfall profits tax supported by democrats? it is a tough political environment, but you always want the argument of who is going to fight for you. in a tough economy, that can work for democrats. as much as republicans try to rebrand themselves as populists, there's still a lot of skepticism as people who will fight for middle-class working people and corporations. the other thing is i think there's a mentality among some democrats in terms of politics that we have to change. doug messed rihanna wants to talk about gas prices because that is better for him. but that does not mean we have to as well. republicans tend to decide polling, decide what issues voters should talk about on election day, and talk about it. no one thought immigration would be the number one issue in 2016. donald trump made it the number one issue. democrats look at polls and say what are people thinking about now, and then we just talk about that, whether it is good or bad for us. in this case, there's a whole lot with january 6, there is abortion, a right wing war on freedom in this country where they want to ban contraception, they want to decide who you love, what looks you can read. i imagine an argument would be very powerful. just because he wants to talk about it doesn't mean we have to fall for that. >> i want to know your thoughts on reconciling campaign rhetoric and campaign promises with managing expectations. in your campaign, you hear a lot of candidates talking about issues and saying what democratic voters want to hear, but i feel like younger voters are sort of becoming disillusioned by that. just wanted your thoughts on that. >> that is the old, famous line from governor mario cuomo that you campaign on poetry but govern in prose. this is something we wrestled with in obama's reelection campaign. we are trying to run on what we say with what we are going to do , but knowing we will almost certainly returned to the white house with republican house and senate. i think there are two elements of this letter very important. one is we have to treat voters as if they are smart and they understand it. talk to them like adults. we cannot make promises we can deliver on but that we will fight like hell for the biggest mistake emma cuts, and i include myself -- democrats, and i include myself on this, is that we manage expectations terribly. the senate kept saying failure is not an option on voting rights. we have no plan to cross the manchin chasm, but we have to be honest with people. we were so bad at managing expectations around build back better, that it washed away incredibly important compliments. we are focused on what did not get done as opposed to what got done. i'm sympathetic with people frustrated that we have not done a bunch of things but we have to be more honest with voters. >> there's a lot of unhappiness and social media that pushes the obama team that would say you all did not codify roe v. wade when you had the votes and the power. what would you say to that? people who are on our side are saying that. >> so there was a two-year period from 2009 two 2011 where democrats had unified control of the house and senate. obama had pledged that if he was elected, he would try to codify roe. he said at a conference in the campaign. here's the problem and why it did not happen. this is not to say president obama and those who worked for him could not have done more to forestall where we are as americans. what i am saying is what naral said in 2010, that there is not a pro-choice majority in the house and senate. there were not enough votes. we had expanded the pro-choice democrats, but in two thousand 9, 1 third of house democrats defined themselves as anti-choice. a large number of democratic senators were either explicitly anti-choice or pretty ambivalent about their position. we had enough democrats but not pro-choice democrats. that's ultimately what the best message in the short term is, give me 52 pro-choice democrats, and we can deliver the codification of roe. are you justifying or excusing -- i'm trying to explain what the reality is. people would be shocked at where joe manchin would be on this spectrum of democratic senators circa 2010. it would not be on the far right, it was closer to the middle because we had a pretty conservative party back >> i have been reading -- what do you think of the thought, i think you have seen it, that too many of our organizers have not come from too small of a section of the country. they come from colleges, that kind of argument, so they don't have the life experience and can't connect with people further down the chain. also they don't talk like real people? >> i think most people in politics don't talk like real people. that is the first people of advice my cohost gives everyone. you have to talk like a human. and a human doesn't need small words, it means you have to have relatable emotions and stories. but it is -- i think we need more diversity at every level of the party. diversity in every element of life. race, gender, where you are from, where you work. and a lot of the thing -- the pandemic really affected how the 2020 campaign was -- in powerful ways. more people on the ground working. a lot of organizers, they will parachute into states, that is what they do for a living. but they were constantly recruiting people from those states to work for them. college kids, adults who wanted to get involved in politics. so we need a lot more of that. we are always trying to find the narrowest possible problem that explains everything. i think diversity in every element, in every way you define that word is a problem in all parts of american life. but it is not the only reason, struggling with working class, a trend that has been going on for well over two decades. >> up here in the -- >> i just wanted to ask, one of the things that perplexes me is how it always feels democrats are not organized and not thinking about the long game. for a long time, we have said roe v. wade was a target. we knew that is where things were headed. yet i feel like to hear someone say now we need to have a strategy now, it is like where have you been? i think about when w was president, republicans made it clear they were going to start recruiting among latino communities in the south for the republican party so in the long term, knowing there would be eventually a much larger latino voting population, they would have that majority. we are starting to see the results of that. it was an intentional strategy they created. why can't democrats get organized like that? what is going on? >> politics is funny in the way perception changed quickly. if this had been a meeting of republicans in 2012, 2013, all the way up until the moment donald trump one, republicans would say how is it we keep getting our clock cleaned, democrats are organizing, fundraising us, data technology, all of that. it has obviously changed. there are things that are fair and true of your critique. republicans have had a donor base, primarily the coat others for many years, who invested in political infrastructure. the most boring things possible, but off year elections, candidates training recruitment, there have been similar efforts among democrats. there has been a group of people since -- 2012, democrats organizing impacts as a group. the fact they have come this far is a product of a decade of organizing from democrats. that is the reason why beddoe almost -- beto almost won. georgia, stacey abrams, black lives matter's, what they had done is a product of a decade of organizing in that state. so there are elements of it. it is fair to say that -- and it is a very important critique, on the issue of abortion, and a lot of people after the opinion league. republicans had a better plan to overturn roe v. wade than democrats. the supreme court being the way it is, you have limited control of where you get justices. that is why we are in this situation. we need to have more -- and hopefully people learn a lesson from this, that we need long-term, well-funded strategic solutions. go through elections you win, and elections you lose. you are making progress towards an end goal. a lot has changed in the party, some is very good. but clearly not enough is done. we may have lost the saddle before we even started because they have been working on it so long. >> similar -- diversity and activating knowing the plan. in pennsylvania, are elections of the governor and senate race are important. but there is a lot of anger. in the democratic party, what is going on right now. how do we unite the diverse party, specifically in pennsylvania? because it is such a critical election to unite people and activate them in the next 5, 6 months, in terms of november coming up. >> i would say, we organize around the country, justice and policing, and what i have seen to be most effective going into this question, organizers were always trying to convince aunts and uncles, whoever does that will always win. what trump did well, he had never talked -- i don't know what he said privately, i can imagine it is ridiculous publicly, but he would always talk to aunts and uncles. my aunt always understood what he said, it was just crazy to her. my aunts listens to biden and says i don't know what he's saying. when we organize on issues, we are always testing it. not that my aunt is not smart, she is in business with three kids, she is not watching tv all day to see seven people tell the story, which is what cable news is. she is going to get one shot at it, and you have to deliver. the second thing is reminding people of what we do believe in and not what we don't believe in. some people love the police, some people don't. do i want people to be safe? do you want the person with a gun to get the cat out of a tree, to tell you you don't have your taillight? i'm trying to take the craziness out of the issue and make it seem really simple. i have learned that on the far left, and ideologically i consider myself on the far left, the message has to be the middle sometimes. we have to take the message out of it -- in the book, it is like how they were able to convince people everyone is a socialist in florida. it is not socialist to say everyone should have breakfast, lunch, and enter. we should talk about it as a basic thing. a basic thing to say you should not die where you go to school. we have to take the street credit, i really care about the people, out of it, and talk about it as simply as possible. she is like you should not die in schools, should not die in prison. like yes. i have learned sometimes we overdo it. and my aunt doesn't want to be yelled at, she wants to be convinced. >> that is exactly right. there is an element of finding common cause with people. it is not simplifying as -- what do we care about, what do we agree on? even our democratic family. if it is something as simple as in pennsylvania, we think let the people choose who they vote for in the election should be who is elected. it should be people should not be prosecuted. we believe politicians should not decide what books we read or what teachers teach, across the board. raising the stakes in a unified way. >> and organizing, we always try and figure out the question to rephrase things. think about the place where you feel the most safe. a place where you feel safe. are the police there? no. what does it look like without the police? you already know. when everyone was in their room where you want to feel safe, we scale it up. people you love, food, we are trying to take the bite out of it and make it something you already understand. >> thank you for your service. i'm almost 80. i remember very well many presidents love the statements and enrage -- equal engagement. especially today's republican party. my husband and i are republicans, the democrats are the crazies down south and hang with the mafia. this changed. our parents, republicans excite people. they wind them up, fear and anger are the most primitive, most reactive emotions. to keep people scared is to keep them engaged. afraid of immigrants, afraid of socialists, afraid of democrats, they had us afraid of dr. seuss and pepe lepeu. very capable woman, but not an exciting speaker, hillary clinton. president biden, extremely capable. not an exciting speaker. we need another obama with some good support. my question is what do you think of the national popular vote contact? >> i'm a big believer in the fact that the electoral college is a terrible, anti-democratic relic, a terrible thing to get rid of. the vote is a project getting states to have walls that say they will give their electors whoever wins the popular vote. pennsylvania would do it. but they are big in recruiting states for i think decades. but you need to get to all of them for it to actually go into place. everyone around the constitution. it is going to be very hard, republicans know the only way -- they have lost the election, so they probably won't have a lot of states to agree the popular vote. senate questions from the balcony, this is the sort of work you do so you're prepared for a moment when you possibly can strike. i think it is very good stuff. >> this will be our final question. >> thank you for the excellent talk. there is a lot of problems, as you described, situations feel very bleak. at the same time, many dark faces of american history and global history. i'm wondering to what extent you think the moment is singular. is it really unprecedented on a totally different level? how do you think about that? >> it depends on who you ask. this could be a passing moment, it could be the last rose of an extremist, right-wing, authoritarian movement, or the beginning of something very good for us. that is up to all of us and what we do to stop it. we have the power to stop it. there is a growing progressive pro-democracy, pro-truth, anti-maga majority in the country, we just have to show up to vote in the right places at the right time. i think the danger of this moment for democracy -- i don't want to say it is unique, but it is not by definition something that will go away. only if you make it go away. >> let's give it up for david. [applause]
>> good evening. welcome to the midtown scholar bookstore. it is an honor to welcome you to this evening's author program. before we begin, i have a few housekeeping notes as always. one, while our speakers will keep their masks off, we ask you to keep your masks on. two, this event is being recorded by c-span, so a couple notes. we please ask you turn off your cell phone ringers, refrain from using profanity, and don't walk in front of the stage at any point. exits are to the left and right. three, most importantly, if you have not yet purchased the book, we encourage you to purchase the book through the midtown scholar bookstore. we have copies available at the cafe county if you're interested in getting your book signed at the end of the evening. at this time, i am happy to introduce our authors. our interviewer is a civil rights activist focused on issues of innovation, equity and justice. born and raised in baltimore, he holds honorary doctorates from the new school and the maryland institute college of art. as a leading voice in the black lives matter movement and a cofounder of campaign zero, he has worked to connect individuals with knowledge and tools and provide citizens and policymakers with commonsense policies that ensure equity. he has been praised by president obama for his work as a community organizer and has advised officials at all levels of government and continues to provide capacity to activists, organizers, and influencers to make an impact. our featured author is dan pfeiffer. a cohost of pod save america, one of barack obama's longest-serving advisors. he was director of communications from 2009 to 2013. he lives in the bay area of california. dan's new book that we are here for this evening is titled, battling the big lie, how thoughts, facebook, and the maga media are destroying america. this blurb, it's an enlightening, at times enraging, and always entertaining guide to the recent history of our politics and media, drawing on dan pfeiffer's unparalleled experience. read this book if you want to understand what is happening in american politics, why it is happening, and what you can do about it. we're honored to welcome you back to harrisburg. without further ado, please join me and giving them a warm harrisburg welcome. [applause] >> it is good to be back. i know dan well, but we have not talked about the book because i have been waiting to talk about it in front of you all. let's start with the easiest question. why this book, why now? >> some of you may know, we were here together, sitting in these exact chairs in mid february 2020. and we are back. did anything happen? after that last book, i decided that would probably my last book. i was very proud of it, ready to do some other things. then after the election happened, i was really wrestling with the question of how it was that in an election that was close but not much closer than trump's victory in 2016, and certainly less close than george w. bush's election, that we could live in a world where 70% of republicans could believe, against all evidence, that the election was stolen. some of them could believe it so fervently that they would storm the capitol with weapons to try to stop the certification of the election. so i thought we were at this tipping point of the power of disinformation and right wing media and wanted to better understand it myself and explain it to democrats, because i think this is the driving force of american politics right now. >> i have a lot of questions. we will start at the beginning. this is a push. you say in the beginning, they have fallen for the big lie, they all believe without a doubt the election was stolen. i question the language of fallen for the big lie. some people chose it, that they willingly chose this line, they did it for reasons of why to premises and accused of other things. but they were not duped, but they chose it. what would you say to that? >> within any group, there are people who use motivated reasoning to believe what makes sense to them, to fit events into their worldview. in their world, donald trump could not possibly lose. but it is much bigger than those people. 70% of republicans believe that the election was illegitimate in some way, shape, or form. some people are choosing to believe it and some people are falling for it, and some people are throwing up their arms because they see so much noise that they don't know what to believe. that is probably the most alarming part of that last group. >> there was a lot that surprised me, and one of them is use a large portions of the country good -- never heard any negative information about trump. is that true? >> if you live within the right wing ecosystem -- >> i feel like we hear about him all the time. [laughter] >> you hear it, it is done in the perspective of, like, the deep state, the fake new york times lying about him. what the right does is create a dramatically sealed information bubble for a large swath of their electorate. where the information they get is filtered to them in a way that is a entirely positive to trump. or if there is a larger conversation about that stuff about trump, it is explaining why that is. >> there is a whole section where you talk about the importance of the blog and the o ld style of media. do you still think blogs matter in the same way? >> no, certainly not. i tell a story in the book about in 2004 i was working for senator tom daschle in south dakota. this was a big deal senate race, because tom daschle was running for reelection. he was bush's enemy number one, his opponent was recruited by karl rove. no senate leader had lost in 50 years. in that election, a group of, out of nowhere, a group of conservative political blogs, immaculately named to cover the race, they came up and hammered daschle nonstop. they transitioned eventually into pushing conspiracy theories. we published this lock muster scoop, like, siren emojis, it was on the drudge report, that tom daschle had a secret deal with the native american population that if the native american population delivered enough votes, daschle would return the black hills to them. which is something that should happen. it is their land that was stolen. but far beyond the power of one senator to do, so it is clearly not true. at first i dismissed it, like, who is reading these idiotic blogs? no one who matters. but all of a sudden he's undecided voters are reading back to me what they are hearing in here. and what we learned leader on was that our opponent, the republican candidate, was paying these blogs to publish disinformation about daschle. and then it dawned on me, that was the first time i confronted disinformation as an explicit political strategy of the republicans and i filed it away is something i thought we would see many times later. maybe not to the extent we see it now, but the canary in the coal mine. >> in that vein, you make a big deal of highlighting this inference between misinformation and disinformation. what is that? >> these are the two terms that get interchanged all-time. misinformation is inaccurate information. it can be accidental, inadvertent. all of us on social media periodically become inadvertent transmitters of misinformation because we read a false story, or someone has taken an out of context comment or something that we tweeted out like, this is terrible, and we spread it, only to find later on that is not what really happened. disinformation is a specific strategy to spread false information to deceive people. and so those differences are important. disinformation is a specific byproduct -- it's a political strategy that we have to pay a lot of attention to and respond to. >> i obvious he paid attention, i knew russia influence the election. i didn't know it was called the internet research agency. but they were dealing in disinformation, not misinformation. >> correct. in 2016, we have all talked about the russian hacking. the one thing the russians did was they hacked into the dmc and clinton campaign emails and then released those emails to cause as much chaos as possible. >> that was confirmed it was the russians? >> yes. >> i was a victim of like, was it the russians? but i believe you. [laughter] >> it was the consensus of the intelligence community, both under obama and trump. although you could not really say that out loud in the trump years. and so, the other thing they did is they created -- they had a strategy to flood social media with false accounts to push disinformation. one of the ways they would do that is they would create false accounts pretending to be black activists who would then post things about why they were not supporting hillary clinton, or pushing people not to vote. and then these entities funded by the russians would run facebook ads promoting that content targeting black audiences. target people by interests, so people who would express interest in civil rights or martin luther king, or similar topics, push that to them. there was a very specific strategy to try to create division and reduce hillary clinton's support and turnout in the black community. >> one of the things he wrote was this idea that trump could not win if more black people voted. >> that is true. in 2016 that was absolutely true. if you had black turnout at the levels at which barack obama had it, the math would be such that hillary clinton would have won wisconsin, for s --pennsylvania and michigan. >> you wrote about the moment where trump was like, sunlight is going to enter your body and if it does, covid is going to disappear. he also said to drink bleach. you talked about the bleach moment is something we all laughed at, but you highlight that as a positive moment for trump. why? >> trump telling people to inject bleach, or get sunlight inside of their body, and we didn't ask any questions about what his plans were as to how you do that -- it was part of a larger strategy to convince people that the pandemic was not as scary as it was. was to get people to return to normal faster. he believed, with very good reason, that his reelection chances were dependent upon the economy bouncing back. it's a ridiculous, absurd thing to say, but people listened. dangerously so. people drank disinfectant. people tried to injest disinfectant. and we have to -- when we look at trump's pent-up response -- pandemic response, it's abhorr ent on every level and seems ridiculous. but he did very effectively and very dangerously to a large swath of the country spread a lot of distrust in what scientists were saying for a political purpose. i use the inject bleach one because a lot of times liberals laugh but republicans listen, and we have to understand why that is if we are going to be able to compete in an information environment where people can listen to something that ridiculous. >> to think of any politicians on the left who would get that message right? one of the things you talk about is we have to -- it cannot always be gloom and doom. you don't write about this in the book, but are there people you think you are getting that right on the left? >> in terms of a message that brings people in? yeah, i think aoc, certainly beer -- certainly bernie sanders in both of his campaigns. i talk in the book about,m like, we look at a trump rally, it is not a place i want to go, it does not seem fun to me. they don't seem to make a lot of sense. but obviously the people there are having a blast. and it is not just the people in the crowd that we see. obviously there are pretty alarming things they are chanting. then you see the footage when the reporters are doing their live shots before the event and it is a festival. it is like renaissance fair, there are people just up as things, they are selling all this swag and people dress up like donald trump. that is not my thing, but i think we need to think about politics as a way that is exciting. that was the core of obama, was people wanted to be there. so i think bernie sanders, aoc, i think stacey abrams in a different way brings people in in a very exciting way. i have not seen this firsthand but i have heard this from a lot of people on the east coast, john fetterman, people are pretty jazzed to be around john fetterman. [applause] >> love that. another thing you said i had not thought about in this way, you push back on republicans wanting smaller government. you talk about injecting antigovernment rhetoric in a strategy, but it is not about shrinking the government. what do you mean by that? >> republicans don't want -- it is not about the size of the government, it is about who the government is protecting. yeah, they want to shrink the epa, osha, all of that, but they want to grow ika, belieff, and it's their view that the government is a bulwark against an america that is changing graphically and culturally in a way that threatens the people who have held political power in this country since the beginning, like christians, primarily meant. so -- men. so this -- that's an important thing democrats have to understand. none of this is on the level. this is not a paul krugman argument about how you build a good economy. it is about political power, and who has it and who they are trying to stop from getting it. it is why the radicalization from the right has happened so aggressively since barack obama won the white house, because that is the embodiment of something they had feared for a very long time. it happened before they were ready for it. >> this book came out before the january 6 hearings and all that. you write at one point, the message is -- do you think the january 6 hearings happening now will stick in a way democrats can use, or do you think we botched the messaging? >> i don't think we have botched the messaging. i think democrats have done a great job. and it is not just a democrat, because it's a bipartisan hearing. but the first thing you have to do is get people to hear you. so the fact that the january 6 hearing got 20 million people to watch the first one, that is unbelievable. that is 6 million more people watching a congressional hearing than game six of the nba finals. that is wild and impressive. this is not in the book but i discovered this fact when doing research on the book, 20 million people is a lot, but it is 80 million fewer people than watch the oj car chase live in 1994. so it got people's attention. social engagement about january 6 has been off the roof for democrat, which is very impressive. also i think they have done something very smart and powerful. they have simplified the story. every hearing tells one aspect of the story. it is not overly complicated. the second piece is the voices they are showing people are not democrat members of congress. we recognize that adam schiff is not going to persuade a lot of people in the middle of the country. so it is liz cheney. the fact that liz cheney, dick cheney's daughter, basically she is darth vader's daughter and she is leading this, and that is amazing. she is a card-carrying member of the republican establishment. it is all the footage of these trump aids, bill barr, jason miller, he ivanka trump, card-carrying members of maga nation, basically saying trump knew the election was not stolen. so it's one of the most important aspects of modern communication strategy where you have a population who are skeptical of politicians generally. it is to use people from your in-group to tell you a message you do not want to hear is very impressive. so whether it is going to stick is up to awesome, what happens going forward -- is up to us, what happens going forward. but thus far, it has been an credible success. >> you sprinkle in some criticism of the new york times. what would you say about the times's lack of holding the administration accountable during those years? or people criticize the reporters who knew things and waited until their books came out. how do you think about the times 's role? >> the new york times does credible journalism. they do really -- does incredible journalism. huge stories they broke. they do great stuff. i picked the times and facebook because they are by far the most influential parts of their respective elements. facebook is by far the most important social media company, the new york times is by far the most influential traditional media organization in the country. and they are way more influential than they have probably ever been because there is so much less competition now. and i think the criticism of the new york times and every answer to the larger traditional media is really that this is not a both sides issue. democracy is at stake here. we cannot have a political conversation where we treat them across trying to run on kitchen table issues the same as republicans trying to steal elections. press is not an unbiased entity. they have biases, they have things they advocate for. we know the press cares passionately about how many questions joe biden answers every week. like, that seems trite and annoying compared to a lot of things, but they should advocate for as much access as possible. that is a good thing to do, and they will use their power to push for more. which is why you read articles about how few interviews joe biden does. the readers don't want to read that. they write it to put pressure on the white house. i think the press can and should be more aggressive advocates for democracy. and if that benefits my crass right now, so be it -- benefits democrats right now, so be it. the first people authoritarians take out when they take over, the press. so i want them to be more aggressive advocates for democracy because i do not think this is a partisan issue. >> the other thing i learned in reading was you talk about the sec's decision to end the fair use doctrine, and the rise of right-wing radio. do you think there's a way to put that back in the bottle? can we undo that? if trump wins, it would be like trying to unring a bill. do you think we can unring the bell or not? >> i thought a lot about how the right, for decades, has run this campaign against -- to try to disqualify the press. that campaign culminates with reagan's election, and reagan using the fcc to repeal the doctrine, which demanded equal time in media. once that happened, right wing radio basically grew exponentially because now there was no need for there to be someone opposite rush limbaugh, you could just have rush limbaugh. and i have wanted to find a way that you could put the fairness doctrine back in to fix these problems and every single person i talk to about this says the bell cannot be un-wrong. the media has been changed so much that a lot of what we deal with now -- like fox probably exists because and in the fair use doctrine shows the marketplace for right-wing media. cable news was not covered by the fairness doctrine. you can't unring the bell is the unfortunate part, so we have to figure out how to live in this environment. >> i didn't know that tucker carlsen started the "daily caller" until i read the book. > i think it was scarborough and tucker colson, back to back. the number one media. >> you don't really give up on facebook, though. you say the left needs to push out messages on facebook. but when you look at the top posts on facebook, they are overwhelmingly ben shapiro republican. you clearly think that is the algorithm, but do you think the left can counter that? you highlight the outrage and anger we can use. do you think that our base will share the messages or do you think the algorithm of facebook is so screwed that we have to fix it first? >> algorithms respond to the input. right now the amount of right wing information pumped into the algorithm is exponentially greater. there's more right wing engages, pushing out more content. we are not necessarily going to very quickly close that gap, but there is room. we have to find ways to have messages that are consistent with our political narrative that also go viral on facebook. that's very hard because the number one political posts on facebook this week, for the week ending today, was by barack obama. but you know what it was? his father's day message. which is charming and important, but i don't think it is moving the political debate in any way. we have gotten a little better at harnessing energy. this is one of the very rare weeks where progressive posts outperform conservative posts, all about abortion. in the wake of the supreme court case, people took to facebook and shared content and responded to content and lifted the content above. this can't happen once every nine months. it has to happen on a regular basis. one of the lessons for us, and after many years of basically never posting on facebook and only looking at pictures of my friends' kids, got back on, started a public page, started to work with a collective of progressives to get more people to post more content. it's like a drop in the bucket at this point but we need more people. seven in 10 american adults are on facebook. half of those people go to the site multiple times a day. 40% of them see it as a major source of news. the scale between only one quarter of americans claim to be on twitter and i think it is smaller than that. on twitter, 90% of the tweets are from 10% of the people. we spent all the time on twitter and think about it and worry about it. it is an important platform for a specific conversation among active people, but facebook is by far the most important. >> you talk about the decision not to fact-check politicians as a watershed moment. do you think they will fact-check politicians? >> put it in perspective. when mark zuckerberg went to give his big speech about how facebook was going to stand for free speech and the first amendment and they would not fact-check politicians. i hate to say this but first amendment and facebook have nothing to do with each other. it is not about your right to be on a specific social media platform. even then, do you really want a big tech company to be the one to decide what is true and what isn't? especially from politicians? the answer to that is maybe not. on the things they say, like donald trump will post something and should it come down, should it not if it violates terms of service? that is fair. what is different is what he's really talking about is fact checking ads. facebook ads are some of the most -- it's not like we lost 30 seconds on the eagles game and hope people watch it. it is that you are able to precisely, able to upload to facebook the file, you can match people, and specifically target people based on their interests. you can push information and use facebook's massive data and ai powered algorithm to decide the people most likely to believe that information. that is a very big deal. is that why donald trump almost won the election? no. but it's throwing your arms up and allowing the weaponization of disinformation. i think that's a bad thing. >> one thing that was interesting is the republican strategy, your argument is if we talk about the facts, they will lose. they have to distract us because when they talk about the fact, they will lose. the second is they have to stoke, you don't call it white supremacy i think, but bigotry. do you see a good counter to those things? we saw the latest rally, like thank you for protecting white life. >> and she won her primary last night. >> did she win? yikes. i thought it must be edited. but she really said that. do you see an effective counter to that? do we need to organize better? what do you do when it is no longer innuendo. >> i think a big part of this is trying to solve the megaphone problem for democrats. what is happening is the right has built this massive apparatus that is dominating the political conversation. it is pushing information out there to decide what we talk about. one thing we can do, it is the hard work, build up a progressive megaphone to get the message out so we are not getting drowned out. >> is msnbc not a megaphone? >> it is not a megaphone. it has great programming on it, but it is not an adjunct of the democratic party, nor should it be. but fox is an adjunct of the republican party. their interest is electing road republican politicians. it is still an organization that uses itself as a journalistic organization and we are just operating at such a smaller scale. tucker carlsen is getting two to three times the viewers of the largest nbc show and six times the largest cnn show. it is a massive rating advantage. and there viewers are more engaged and much more dominant online. the fox facebook presence and online presence is huge. they have an entire streaming platform. there's fox news station. people who pay to get additional tucker carlsen. no one is monitoring. but there is crazy stuff. there is very little of that on the left. we can't count on msnbc to do as much. there's good stuff there but it is not the same. >> start thinking about your questions because we will go to q and a soon. what does the megaphone look like? do we need to round up influencers or make our own tv station? obviously we have the crooked network. the. podcast. >> i think it's all the above. i don't think anyone is investing money in a linear cable network anytime soon. it is more content creators like the organization more perfect union, started by bernie sanders. . campaign managers. a lot of youtube videos, a lot of reporting that they have been aggressively pushing back. a lot of stuff in spanish language. some of my friends acquired stations in florida. it is all of the above. we just need more people saying more things to more people. there's no hierarchy, no one exact person. it will not be like a roger ailes of the left doing it. it's a huge investment in progressive media. it's not just subscribing to progressive publications. it is also just calling them on facebook, subscribe to the youtube channel. when you do that, the algorithms will show that to more people. our party leaders have to do a better job of this. donald trump did many things that were not very smart, but she was brilliant about nurturing a right-wing media ecosystem. if there was an article he thought was good for him in a right-wing conversation, he published it. i'm sorry, he tweeted it. he tweeted, they get traffic. they get more ad dollars. they can do more journalism. if he was promoting fox, doing interviews with right-wing media , when books were written he thought were favorable, he tweeted about those to drive them all on the new york times bestseller list. that means those books would get better placement and the authors would get more media bookings, the publishers would think there's a market for more pro-trump books. democratic politicians, with a handful of exceptions, do not do that. they continue to exist in a world where they will do the bulk of their media through traditional media. they should do all of the above, but it is in every democrats interest to nurture the progressive media ecosystem into using its allies. obama did some of this in the early days. bernie sanders was a master of this in the 2016 campaign. stacey abrams does this. obviously aoc is a media person herself. for the most part, there is still a reticence to embrace progressive media. if the leadership does not, we cannot get the public to do it either. >> what about abortion messaging? a lot of people i'm around think the party is not bold enough, laying low when we should be fighting back. this is the time to not dillydally. and there are other people who say, we can only do so much, aoc obviously believes otherwise, but what do you think? >> i always have sympathy for people who work in the white house and have limited tools to serve -- to do what people care about. there's nothing he can do with his pen that will undo what was done or protect millions of people who just lost rights. but i do think, and i thought aoc's twitter thread on this, really resonated with a lot of people in my life who are interested in politics but don't work in it. what she did was say to recognize the urgency of the situation and say we need a plan. even if they plan over the short, medium, and long-term, we need a plan. this has been a challenge off and on for the last two years, probably the trump years but particularly the last couple years. i think the urgency a lot of democratic voters feel about where the country is going, the dangers of the supreme court, this radical and extreme faction , and the language and tone of our leaders who even if they do believe it, i think many of them do and their actions suggest they do, but if someone in the house did about voting rights, i think we need to do a better job of speaking to that. even if you can't fix the problem, right now you have to speak to the way people feel and make them get it and offer them a long-term. i think people will, in the absence of a short-term problem, a plan to solve the problem. i thought aoc had good ideas on this. sometimes people want to feel your anger. i hope we hear more of that. >> actually when she was like, if you have a better plan, put out, but you can't not say anything. what do you want to ask -- process? >> if i'm ever running for office, it will be the school board and that will be the cap of it. [laughter] >> let's go to questions. >> this is -- let's give it up for dan. [laughter] raise your hand and we will pass around the mic. we will start in this general area and go that way. >> i want to say thank you for your talk, but i have a little issue with how you kind of accused president biden for not doing anything, because he really can't. this is the same man who said vladimir putin should step down. and so to me, as a woman, it is a copout. i would like your feelings on that. >> i don't disagree with what you said. the point i was trying to make is that there are limited tools. i do agree we need more people, the president included, to speak more powerfully, more often and more loudly about this. i was mainly referring to the options he had to actually do something. i 100% agree that we have a party from the president, congressional leaders, candidates, who do not aggressively talk about what has happened here, the fact that a supreme court that was put in place, five justices were appointed by president who got fewer votes, and was confirmed by a republican that represents a minority of americans, just took a constitutional right away from millions, and we don't talk about in the most aggressive terms possible, the voters will not come with us. i'm not going to tell anyone who thought that they were wrong. we have to have a specific point. you give us these votes, we will do x, over the course of time, we will reform, much like aoc said. >> so for those of us who have loved ones who are in that dangerous third category you mentioned at the beginning who go, this is too much and they throw their hands up, how do we get them to understand these alternative information ecosphere's are not equal, one is based in truth and reality and one is a profitable manufactured machine? how do you get them to vote accordingly especially if they say this is too much, i will just vote with the r? how do you bring them to your side? >> in the book, i write about a study that was done in 2019 where they show people news stories with one group. they had another group where they show news stories that were shared by someone they knew. what they came to find out was that people paid way more attention to stories that were shared by people they trusted than the news organization. whether it was the new york times or cnn or fox news, the fact that it was a person they thought shared their values or experiences in some way seemed to have agreed with the point or promote the point that they would believe it. so i think how we do it, each person you deal with will be different. trying to find sources they agree with or they trust to tell them to push back on things. one experiment i saw one political group do was very effective with republican leading voters who disapproved of trauma but still planned to vote for him anyway, was articles from the wall street journal, which because of rupert murdoch, were treated very differently in this group. in fact, for a lot of people in the new york times, it was proof the opposite was true when it came to trump. with the new york times says about donald trump, then it can't be true. so listening to them trying to figure out what sources they trust, conservative voices can be very powerful in influencing people lean conservative but may be skeptical about this version of the republican party or president trump. >> in that vein, you write about the fact checkers. fact checking does not have the power it used to have. do you think that will remain? for a lot of people, something that is obviously not true, like go fact-check it. but your argument is the fact checkers do not have as much sway. >> exactly, it's the opposite in a lot of ways. particularly cnn and the new york times, they are the most targeted news organizations by trump and the most distrust on the right, but the fact that they say it's not true is proof that it is true. so fact checking cannot be the way we win the war on truth and we need other ways to do it. it can be voices and experts to do it. >> you mentioned school boards. and local elections. your book talked about largely the larger scale elections statewide. one of the things that brings something painful to my soul is seeing people maga campaigning for school boards and winning. can you speak to that or what role -- how important do you think these local elections will become in terms of the overall strategy? there are people who are plain idiots who have no awareness of what the real issues are, and are campaigning on things that aren't really even issues, but it is the right buzzwords. i think it is very frightening for our society last night. >> absolutely. political power is built from the ground up here the process by which the republicans were able to rig the supreme court, made a decision to have large swaths of the entry day one, that abortion being banned is a long-term product starting in school boards. democrats have traditionally done a poor job of investing that at the party leadership level and donors and volunteers. we like to elect president, we think the white house is cool, we watch the west wing, and too often we do not invest in the hard work of building political power. i think that has changed a lot since trump won and there are well-funded groups run by the best operatives in the party. this is an example of how serious this is. we talk a lot about the insurrection and what republicans want to do in 2024. in many states like arizona, votes are counted at the county level. county out or -- county auditor is critical. one of the auditors in arizona refused to certify the election. steve bannon on his podcast every week is recruiting people. one group i recommend is run for something. it recruits and trains candidates. this is where the impact of everything we are dealing with will happen in that down ballot. >> one of the things i think that republicans are very good at, we have a governors race coming up, with someone in the past said that he was elected to ban abortions. but now that roe v. wade has been overturned, he is sidestepping that and is concentrating on the economy and gas prices and inflation. that is what the republicans are going to do to take over the house and possibly the senate in the fall. i have friends that are really intelligent, biden, the gas prices, is gas nationalized? does he have the authority to change? who are you going to blame? bp. mobile exxon. the gas companies. they are the ones that are fleecing you. so people believe on a very visceral level that the economy is all on biden. how can we change this? >> to piggyback on that, i had to go to the mall today and might luber driver said, biden is giving away money to ukraine and he needs to do something about gas prices. what do you do with that? we were just talking and she really thought biden is giving away money to ukraine and not helping us with gas. >> so it is always one of the great frustrations of anyone who works in the white house that the public thinks you have way more power than you actually have. gas prices, inflation is a worldwide phenomenon, all of the above. it is hard to explain away peoples economic pain and anger. i think there are two elements of this. one is we can accept the premise of the problem that gas prices are too high and try to reframe the argument about who will do a better job of solving it. is it going to be the party that is funded by oil companies? the party who insists on giving those exact same oil companies tax breaks? the same people who were opposing a windfall profits tax supported by democrats? it is a tough political environment, but you always want the argument of who is going to fight for you. in a tough economy, that can work for democrats. as much as republicans try to rebrand themselves as populists, there's still a lot of skepticism as people who will fight for middle-class working people and corporations. the other thing is i think there's a mentality among some democrats in terms of politics that we have to change. doug messed rihanna wants to talk about gas prices because that is better for him. but that does not mean we have to as well. republicans tend to decide polling, decide what issues voters should talk about on election day, and talk about it. no one thought immigration would be the number one issue in 2016. donald trump made it the number one issue. democrats look at polls and say what are people thinking about now, and then we just talk about that, whether it is good or bad for us. in this case, there's a whole lot with january 6, there is abortion, a right wing war on freedom in this country where they want to ban contraception, they want to decide who you love, what looks you can read. i imagine an argument would be very powerful. just because he wants to talk about it doesn't mean we have to fall for that. >> i want to know your thoughts on reconciling campaign rhetoric and campaign promises with managing expectations. in your campaign, you hear a lot of candidates talking about issues and saying what democratic voters want to hear, but i feel like younger voters are sort of becoming disillusioned by that. just wanted your thoughts on that. >> that is the old, famous line from governor mario cuomo that you campaign on poetry but govern in prose. this is something we wrestled with in obama's reelection campaign. we are trying to run on what we say with what we are going to do , but knowing we will almost certainly returned to the white house with republican house and senate. i think there are two elements of this letter very important. one is we have to treat voters as if they are smart and they understand it. talk to them like adults. we cannot make promises we can deliver on but that we will fight like hell for the biggest mistake emma cuts, and i include myself -- democrats, and i include myself on this, is that we manage expectations terribly. the senate kept saying failure is not an option on voting rights. we have no plan to cross the manchin chasm, but we have to be honest with people. we were so bad at managing expectations around build back better, that it washed away incredibly important compliments. we are focused on what did not get done as opposed to what got done. i'm sympathetic with people frustrated that we have not done a bunch of things but we have to be more honest with voters. >> there's a lot of unhappiness and social media that pushes the obama team that would say you all did not codify roe v. wade when you had the votes and the power. what would you say to that? people who are on our side are saying that. >> so there was a two-year period from 2009 two 2011 where democrats had unified control of the house and senate. obama had pledged that if he was elected, he would try to codify roe. he said at a conference in the campaign. here's the problem and why it did not happen. this is not to say president obama and those who worked for him could not have done more to forestall where we are as americans. what i am saying is what naral said in 2010, that there is not a pro-choice majority in the house and senate. there were not enough votes. we had expanded the pro-choice democrats, but in two thousand 9, 1 third of house democrats defined themselves as anti-choice. a large number of democratic senators were either explicitly anti-choice or pretty ambivalent about their position. we had enough democrats but not pro-choice democrats. that's ultimately what the best message in the short term is, give me 52 pro-choice democrats, and we can deliver the codification of roe. are you justifying or excusing -- i'm trying to explain what the reality is. people would be shocked at where joe manchin would be on this spectrum of democratic senators circa 2010. it would not be on the far right, it was closer to the middle because we had a pretty conservative party back >> i have been reading -- what do you think of the thought, i think you have seen it, that too many of our organizers have not come from too small of a section of the country. they come from colleges, that kind of argument, so they don't have the life experience and can't connect with people further down the chain. also they don't talk like real people? >> i think most people in politics don't talk like real people. that is the first people of advice my cohost gives everyone. you have to talk like a human. and a human doesn't need small words, it means you have to have relatable emotions and stories. but it is -- i think we need more diversity at every level of the party. diversity in every element of life. race, gender, where you are from, where you work. and a lot of the thing -- the pandemic really affected how the 2020 campaign was -- in powerful ways. more people on the ground working. a lot of organizers, they will parachute into states, that is what they do for a living. but they were constantly recruiting people from those states to work for them. college kids, adults who wanted to get involved in politics. so we need a lot more of that. we are always trying to find the narrowest possible problem that explains everything. i think diversity in every element, in every way you define that word is a problem in all parts of american life. but it is not the only reason, struggling with working class, a trend that has been going on for well over two decades. >> up here in the -- >> i just wanted to ask, one of the things that perplexes me is how it always feels democrats are not organized and not thinking about the long game. for a long time, we have said roe v. wade was a target. we knew that is where things were headed. yet i feel like to hear someone say now we need to have a strategy now, it is like where have you been? i think about when w was president, republicans made it clear they were going to start recruiting among latino communities in the south for the republican party so in the long term, knowing there would be eventually a much larger latino voting population, they would have that majority. we are starting to see the results of that. it was an intentional strategy they created. why can't democrats get organized like that? what is going on? >> politics is funny in the way perception changed quickly. if this had been a meeting of republicans in 2012, 2013, all the way up until the moment donald trump one, republicans would say how is it we keep getting our clock cleaned, democrats are organizing, fundraising us, data technology, all of that. it has obviously changed. there are things that are fair and true of your critique. republicans have had a donor base, primarily the coat others for many years, who invested in political infrastructure. the most boring things possible, but off year elections, candidates training recruitment, there have been similar efforts among democrats. there has been a group of people since -- 2012, democrats organizing impacts as a group. the fact they have come this far is a product of a decade of organizing from democrats. that is the reason why beddoe almost -- beto almost won. georgia, stacey abrams, black lives matter's, what they had done is a product of a decade of organizing in that state. so there are elements of it. it is fair to say that -- and it is a very important critique, on the issue of abortion, and a lot of people after the opinion league. republicans had a better plan to overturn roe v. wade than democrats. the supreme court being the way it is, you have limited control of where you get justices. that is why we are in this situation. we need to have more -- and hopefully people learn a lesson from this, that we need long-term, well-funded strategic solutions. go through elections you win, and elections you lose. you are making progress towards an end goal. a lot has changed in the party, some is very good. but clearly not enough is done. we may have lost the saddle before we even started because they have been working on it so long. >> similar -- diversity and activating knowing the plan. in pennsylvania, are elections of the governor and senate race are important. but there is a lot of anger. in the democratic party, what is going on right now. how do we unite the diverse party, specifically in pennsylvania? because it is such a critical election to unite people and activate them in the next 5, 6 months, in terms of november coming up. >> i would say, we organize around the country, justice and policing, and what i have seen to be most effective going into this question, organizers were always trying to convince aunts and uncles, whoever does that will always win. what trump did well, he had never talked -- i don't know what he said privately, i can imagine it is ridiculous publicly, but he would always talk to aunts and uncles. my aunt always understood what he said, it was just crazy to her. my aunts listens to biden and says i don't know what he's saying. when we organize on issues, we are always testing it. not that my aunt is not smart, she is in business with three kids, she is not watching tv all day to see seven people tell the story, which is what cable news is. she is going to get one shot at it, and you have to deliver. the second thing is reminding people of what we do believe in and not what we don't believe in. some people love the police, some people don't. do i want people to be safe? do you want the person with a gun to get the cat out of a tree, to tell you you don't have your taillight? i'm trying to take the craziness out of the issue and make it seem really simple. i have learned that on the far left, and ideologically i consider myself on the far left, the message has to be the middle sometimes. we have to take the message out of it -- in the book, it is like how they were able to convince people everyone is a socialist in florida. it is not socialist to say everyone should have breakfast, lunch, and enter. we should talk about it as a basic thing. a basic thing to say you should not die where you go to school. we have to take the street credit, i really care about the people, out of it, and talk about it as simply as possible. she is like you should not die in schools, should not die in prison. like yes. i have learned sometimes we overdo it. and my aunt doesn't want to be yelled at, she wants to be convinced. >> that is exactly right. there is an element of finding common cause with people. it is not simplifying as -- what do we care about, what do we agree on? even our democratic family. if it is something as simple as in pennsylvania, we think let the people choose who they vote for in the election should be who is elected. it should be people should not be prosecuted. we believe politicians should not decide what books we read or what teachers teach, across the board. raising the stakes in a unified way. >> and organizing, we always try and figure out the question to rephrase things. think about the place where you feel the most safe. a place where you feel safe. are the police there? no. what does it look like without the police? you already know. when everyone was in their room where you want to feel safe, we scale it up. people you love, food, we are trying to take the bite out of it and make it something you already understand. >> thank you for your service. i'm almost 80. i remember very well many presidents love the statements and enrage -- equal engagement. especially today's republican party. my husband and i are republicans, the democrats are the crazies down south and hang with the mafia. this changed. our parents, republicans excite people. they wind them up, fear and anger are the most primitive, most reactive emotions. to keep people scared is to keep them engaged. afraid of immigrants, afraid of socialists, afraid of democrats, they had us afraid of dr. seuss and pepe lepeu. very capable woman, but not an exciting speaker, hillary clinton. president biden, extremely capable. not an exciting speaker. we need another obama with some good support. my question is what do you think of the national popular vote contact? >> i'm a big believer in the fact that the electoral college is a terrible, anti-democratic relic, a terrible thing to get rid of. the vote is a project getting states to have walls that say they will give their electors whoever wins the popular vote. pennsylvania would do it. but they are big in recruiting states for i think decades. but you need to get to all of them for it to actually go into place. everyone around the constitution. it is going to be very hard, republicans know the only way -- they have lost the election, so they probably won't have a lot of states to agree the popular vote. senate questions from the balcony, this is the sort of work you do so you're prepared for a moment when you possibly can strike. i think it is very good stuff. >> this will be our final question. >> thank you for the excellent talk. there is a lot of problems, as you described, situations feel very bleak. at the same time, many dark faces of american history and global history. i'm wondering to what extent you think the moment is singular. is it really unprecedented on a totally different level? how do you think about that? >> it depends on who you ask. this could be a passing moment, it could be the last rose of an extremist, right-wing, authoritarian movement, or the beginning of something very good for us. that is up to all of us and what we do to stop it. we have the power to stop it. there is a growing progressive pro-democracy, pro-truth, anti-maga majority in the country, we just have to show up to vote in the right places at the right time. i think the danger of this moment for democracy -- i don't want to say it is unique, but it is not by definition something that will go away. only if you make it go away. >> let's give it up for david. [applause]
recorded by c-span, so a couple notes. we please ask you turn off your cell phone ringers, refrain from using profanity, and don't walk in front of the stage at any point. exits are to the left and right. three, most importantly, if you have not yet purchased the book, we encourage you to purchase the book through the midtown scholar bookstore. we have copies available at the cafe county if you're interested in getting your book signed at the end of the evening. at this time, i am happy to introduce our authors. our interviewer is a civil rights activist focused on issues of innovation, equity and justice. born and raised in baltimore, he holds honorary doctorates from the new school and the maryland institute college of art. as a leading voice in the black lives matter movement and a cofounder of campaign zero, he has worked to connect individuals with knowledge and tools and provide citizens and policymakers with commonsense policies that ensure equity. he has been praised by president obama for his work as a community organizer and has advised officials at all levels of government and continues to provide capacity to activists, organizers, and influencers to make an impact. our featured author is dan pfeiffer. a cohost of pod save america, one of barack obama's longest-serving advisors. he was director of communications from 2009 to 2013. he lives in the bay area of california. dan's new book that we are here for this evening is titled, battling the big lie, how thoughts, facebook, and the maga media are destroying america. this blurb, it's an enlightening, at times enraging, and always entertaining guide to the recent history of our politics and media, drawing on dan pfeiffer's unparalleled experience. read this book if you want to understand what is happening in american politics, why it is happening, and what you can do about it. we're honored to welcome you back to harrisburg. without further ado, please join me and giving them a warm harrisburg welcome. [applause] >> it is good to be back. i know dan well, but we have not talked about the book because i have been waiting to talk about it in front of you all. let's start with the easiest question. why this book, why now? >> some of you may know, we were here together, sitting in these exact chairs in mid february 2020. and we are back. did anything happen? after that last book, i decided that would probably my last book. i was very proud of it, ready to do some other things. then after the election happened, i was really wrestling with the question of how it was that in an election that was close but not much closer than trump's victory in 2016, and certainly less close than george w. bush's election, that we could live in a world where 70% of republicans could believe, against all evidence, that the election was stolen. some of them could believe it so fervently that they would storm the capitol with weapons to try to stop the certification of the election. so i thought we were at this tipping point of the power of disinformation and right wing media and wanted to better understand it myself and explain it to democrats, because i think this is the driving force of american politics right now. >> i have a lot of questions. we will start at the beginning. this is a push. you say in the beginning, they have fallen for the big lie, they all believe without a doubt the election was stolen. i question the language of fallen for the big lie. some people chose it, that they willingly chose this line, they did it for reasons of why to premises and accused of other things. but they were not duped, but they chose it. what would you say to that? >> within any group, there are people who use motivated reasoning to believe what makes sense to them, to fit events into their worldview. in their world, donald trump could not possibly lose. but it is much bigger than those people. 70% of republicans believe that the election was illegitimate in some way, shape, or form. some people are choosing to believe it and some people are falling for it, and some people are throwing up their arms because they see so much noise that they don't know what to believe. that is probably the most alarming part of that last group. >> there was a lot that surprised me, and one of them is use a large portions of the country good -- never heard any negative information about trump. is that true? >> if you live within the right wing ecosystem -- >> i feel like we hear about him all the time. [laughter] >> you hear it, it is done in the perspective of, like, the deep state, the fake new york times lying about him. what the right does is create a dramatically sealed information bubble for a large swath of their electorate. where the information they get is filtered to them in a way that is a entirely positive to trump. or if there is a larger conversation about that stuff about trump, it is explaining why that is. >> there is a whole section where you talk about the importance of the blog and the o ld style of media. do you still think blogs matter in the same way? >> no, certainly not. i tell a story in the book about in 2004 i was working for senator tom daschle in south dakota. this was a big deal senate race, because tom daschle was running for reelection. he was bush's enemy number one, his opponent was recruited by karl rove. no senate leader had lost in 50 years. in that election, a group of, out of nowhere, a group of conservative political blogs, immaculately named to cover the race, they came up and hammered daschle nonstop. they transitioned eventually into pushing conspiracy theories. we published this lock muster scoop, like, siren emojis, it was on the drudge report, that tom daschle had a secret deal with the native american population that if the native american population delivered enough votes, daschle would return the black hills to them. which is something that should happen. it is their land that was stolen. but far beyond the power of one senator to do, so it is clearly not true. at first i dismissed it, like, who is reading these idiotic blogs? no one who matters. but all of a sudden he's undecided voters are reading back to me what they are hearing in here. and what we learned leader on was that our opponent, the republican candidate, was paying these blogs to publish disinformation about daschle. and then it dawned on me, that was the first time i confronted disinformation as an explicit political strategy of the republicans and i filed it away is something i thought we would see many times later. maybe not to the extent we see it now, but the canary in the coal mine. >> in that vein, you make a big deal of highlighting this inference between misinformation and disinformation. what is that? >> these are the two terms that get interchanged all-time. misinformation is inaccurate information. it can be accidental, inadvertent. all of us on social media periodically become inadvertent transmitters of misinformation because we read a false story, or someone has taken an out of context comment or something that we tweeted out like, this is terrible, and we spread it, only to find later on that is not what really happened. disinformation is a specific strategy to spread false information to deceive people. and so those differences are important. disinformation is a specific byproduct -- it's a political strategy that we have to pay a lot of attention to and respond to. >> i obvious he paid attention, i knew russia influence the election. i didn't know it was called the internet research agency. but they were dealing in disinformation, not misinformation. >> correct. in 2016, we have all talked about the russian hacking. the one thing the russians did was they hacked into the dmc and clinton campaign emails and then released those emails to cause as much chaos as possible. >> that was confirmed it was the russians? >> yes. >> i was a victim of like, was it the russians? but i believe you. [laughter] >> it was the consensus of the intelligence community, both under obama and trump. although you could not really say that out loud in the trump years. and so, the other thing they did is they created -- they had a strategy to flood social media with false accounts to push disinformation. one of the ways they would do that is they would create false accounts pretending to be black activists who would then post things about why they were not supporting hillary clinton, or pushing people not to vote. and then these entities funded by the russians would run facebook ads promoting that content targeting black audiences. target people by interests, so people who would express interest in civil rights or martin luther king, or similar topics, push that to them. there was a very specific strategy to try to create division and reduce hillary clinton's support and turnout in the black community. >> one of the things he wrote was this idea that trump could not win if more black people voted. >> that is true. in 2016 that was absolutely true. if you had black turnout at the levels at which barack obama had it, the math would be such that hillary clinton would have won wisconsin, for s --pennsylvania and michigan. >> you wrote about the moment where trump was like, sunlight is going to enter your body and if it does, covid is going to disappear. he also said to drink bleach. you talked about the bleach moment is something we all laughed at, but you highlight that as a positive moment for trump. why? >> trump telling people to inject bleach, or get sunlight inside of their body, and we didn't ask any questions about what his plans were as to how you do that -- it was part of a larger strategy to convince people that the pandemic was not as scary as it was. was to get people to return to normal faster. he believed, with very good reason, that his reelection chances were dependent upon the economy bouncing back. it's a ridiculous, absurd thing to say, but people listened. dangerously so. people drank disinfectant. people tried to injest disinfectant. and we have to -- when we look at trump's pent-up response -- pandemic response, it's abhorr ent on every level and seems ridiculous. but he did very effectively and very dangerously to a large swath of the country spread a lot of distrust in what scientists were saying for a political purpose. i use the inject bleach one because a lot of times liberals laugh but republicans listen, and we have to understand why that is if we are going to be able to compete in an information environment where people can listen to something that ridiculous. >> to think of any politicians on the left who would get that message right? one of the things you talk about is we have to -- it cannot always be gloom and doom. you don't write about this in the book, but are there people you think you are getting that right on the left? >> in terms of a message that brings people in? yeah, i think aoc, certainly beer -- certainly bernie sanders in both of his campaigns. i talk in the book about,m like, we look at a trump rally, it is not a place i want to go, it does not seem fun to me. they don't seem to make a lot of sense. but obviously the people there are having a blast. and it is not just the people in the crowd that we see. obviously there are pretty alarming things they are chanting. then you see the footage when the reporters are doing their live shots before the event and it is a festival. it is like renaissance fair, there are people just up as things, they are selling all this swag and people dress up like donald trump. that is not my thing, but i think we need to think about politics as a way that is exciting. that was the core of obama, was people wanted to be there. so i think bernie sanders, aoc, i think stacey abrams in a different way brings people in in a very exciting way. i have not seen this firsthand but i have heard this from a lot of people on the east coast, john fetterman, people are pretty jazzed to be around john fetterman. [applause] >> love that. another thing you said i had not thought about in this way, you push back on republicans wanting smaller government. you talk about injecting antigovernment rhetoric in a strategy, but it is not about shrinking the government. what do you mean by that? >> republicans don't want -- it is not about the size of the government, it is about who the government is protecting. yeah, they want to shrink the epa, osha, all of that, but they want to grow ika, belieff, and it's their view that the government is a bulwark against an america that is changing graphically and culturally in a way that threatens the people who have held political power in this country since the beginning, like christians, primarily meant. so -- men. so this -- that's an important thing democrats have to understand. none of this is on the level. this is not a paul krugman argument about how you build a good economy. it is about political power, and who has it and who they are trying to stop from getting it. it is why the radicalization from the right has happened so aggressively since barack obama won the white house, because that is the embodiment of something they had feared for a very long time. it happened before they were ready for it. >> this book came out before the january 6 hearings and all that. you write at one point, the message is -- do you think the january 6 hearings happening now will stick in a way democrats can use, or do you think we botched the messaging? >> i don't think we have botched the messaging. i think democrats have done a great job. and it is not just a democrat, because it's a bipartisan hearing. but the first thing you have to do is get people to hear you. so the fact that the january 6 hearing got 20 million people to watch the first one, that is unbelievable. that is 6 million more people watching a congressional hearing than game six of the nba finals. that is wild and impressive. this is not in the book but i discovered this fact when doing research on the book, 20 million people is a lot, but it is 80 million fewer people than watch the oj car chase live in 1994. so it got people's attention. social engagement about january 6 has been off the roof for democrat, which is very impressive. also i think they have done something very smart and powerful. they have simplified the story. every hearing tells one aspect of the story. it is not overly complicated. the second piece is the voices they are showing people are not democrat members of congress. we recognize that adam schiff is not going to persuade a lot of people in the middle of the country. so it is liz cheney. the fact that liz cheney, dick cheney's daughter, basically she is darth vader's daughter and she is leading this, and that is amazing. she is a card-carrying member of the republican establishment. it is all the footage of these trump aids, bill barr, jason miller, he ivanka trump, card-carrying members of maga nation, basically saying trump knew the election was not stolen. so it's one of the most important aspects of modern communication strategy where you have a population who are skeptical of politicians generally. it is to use people from your in-group to tell you a message you do not want to hear is very impressive. so whether it is going to stick is up to awesome, what happens going forward -- is up to us, what happens going forward. but thus far, it has been an credible success. >> you sprinkle in some criticism of the new york times. what would you say about the times's lack of holding the administration accountable during those years? or people criticize the reporters who knew things and waited until their books came out. how do you think about the times 's role? >> the new york times does credible journalism. they do really -- does incredible journalism. huge stories they broke. they do great stuff. i picked the times and facebook because they are by far the most influential parts of their respective elements. facebook is by far the most important social media company, the new york times is by far the most influential traditional media organization in the country. and they are way more influential than they have probably ever been because there is so much less competition now. and i think the criticism of the new york times and every answer to the larger traditional media is really that this is not a both sides issue. democracy is at stake here. we cannot have a political conversation where we treat them across trying to run on kitchen table issues the same as republicans trying to steal elections. press is not an unbiased entity. they have biases, they have things they advocate for. we know the press cares passionately about how many questions joe biden answers every week. like, that seems trite and annoying compared to a lot of things, but they should advocate for as much access as possible. that is a good thing to do, and they will use their power to push for more. which is why you read articles about how few interviews joe biden does. the readers don't want to read that. they write it to put pressure on the white house. i think the press can and should be more aggressive advocates for democracy. and if that benefits my crass right now, so be it -- benefits democrats right now, so be it. the first people authoritarians take out when they take over, the press. so i want them to be more aggressive advocates for democracy because i do not think this is a partisan issue. >> the other thing i learned in reading was you talk about the sec's decision to end the fair use doctrine, and the rise of right-wing radio. do you think there's a way to put that back in the bottle? can we undo that? if trump wins, it would be like trying to unring a bill. do you think we can unring the bell or not? >> i thought a lot about how the right, for decades, has run this campaign against -- to try to disqualify the press. that campaign culminates with reagan's election, and reagan using the fcc to repeal the doctrine, which demanded equal time in media. once that happened, right wing radio basically grew exponentially because now there was no need for there to be someone opposite rush limbaugh, you could just have rush limbaugh. and i have wanted to find a way that you could put the fairness doctrine back in to fix these problems and every single person i talk to about this says the bell cannot be un-wrong. the media has been changed so much that a lot of what we deal with now -- like fox probably exists because and in the fair use doctrine shows the marketplace for right-wing media. cable news was not covered by the fairness doctrine. you can't unring the bell is the unfortunate part, so we have to figure out how to live in this environment. >> i didn't know that tucker carlsen started the "daily caller" until i read the book. > i think it was scarborough and tucker colson, back to back. the number one media. >> you don't really give up on facebook, though. you say the left needs to push out messages on facebook. but when you look at the top posts on facebook, they are overwhelmingly ben shapiro republican. you clearly think that is the algorithm, but do you think the left can counter that? you highlight the outrage and anger we can use. do you think that our base will share the messages or do you think the algorithm of facebook is so screwed that we have to fix it first? >> algorithms respond to the input. right now the amount of right wing information pumped into the algorithm is exponentially greater. there's more right wing engages, pushing out more content. we are not necessarily going to very quickly close that gap, but there is room. we have to find ways to have messages that are consistent with our political narrative that also go viral on facebook. that's very hard because the number one political posts on facebook this week, for the week ending today, was by barack obama. but you know what it was? his father's day message. which is charming and important, but i don't think it is moving the political debate in any way. we have gotten a little better at harnessing energy. this is one of the very rare weeks where progressive posts outperform conservative posts, all about abortion. in the wake of the supreme court case, people took to facebook and shared content and responded to content and lifted the content above. this can't happen once every nine months. it has to happen on a regular basis. one of the lessons for us, and after many years of basically never posting on facebook and only looking at pictures of my friends' kids, got back on, started a public page, started to work with a collective of progressives to get more people to post more content. it's like a drop in the bucket at this point but we need more people. seven in 10 american adults are on facebook. half of those people go to the site multiple times a day. 40% of them see it as a major source of news. the scale between only one quarter of americans claim to be on twitter and i think it is smaller than that. on twitter, 90% of the tweets are from 10% of the people. we spent all the time on twitter and think about it and worry about it. it is an important platform for a specific conversation among active people, but facebook is by far the most important. >> you talk about the decision not to fact-check politicians as a watershed moment. do you think they will fact-check politicians? >> put it in perspective. when mark zuckerberg went to give his big speech about how facebook was going to stand for free speech and the first amendment and they would not fact-check politicians. i hate to say this but first amendment and facebook have nothing to do with each other. it is not about your right to be on a specific social media platform. even then, do you really want a big tech company to be the one to decide what is true and what isn't? especially from politicians? the answer to that is maybe not. on the things they say, like donald trump will post something and should it come down, should it not if it violates terms of service? that is fair. what is different is what he's really talking about is fact checking ads. facebook ads are some of the most -- it's not like we lost 30 seconds on the eagles game and hope people watch it. it is that you are able to precisely, able to upload to facebook the file, you can match people, and specifically target people based on their interests. you can push information and use facebook's massive data and ai powered algorithm to decide the people most likely to believe that information. that is a very big deal. is that why donald trump almost won the election? no. but it's throwing your arms up and allowing the weaponization of disinformation. i think that's a bad thing. >> one thing that was interesting is the republican strategy, your argument is if we talk about the facts, they will lose. they have to distract us because when they talk about the fact, they will lose. the second is they have to stoke, you don't call it white supremacy i think, but bigotry. do you see a good counter to those things? we saw the latest rally, like thank you for protecting white life. >> and she won her primary last night. >> did she win? yikes. i thought it must be edited. but she really said that. do you see an effective counter to that? do we need to organize better? what do you do when it is no longer innuendo. >> i think a big part of this is trying to solve the megaphone problem for democrats. what is happening is the right has built this massive apparatus that is dominating the political conversation. it is pushing information out there to decide what we talk about. one thing we can do, it is the hard work, build up a progressive megaphone to get the message out so we are not getting drowned out. >> is msnbc not a megaphone? >> it is not a megaphone. it has great programming on it, but it is not an adjunct of the democratic party, nor should it be. but fox is an adjunct of the republican party. their interest is electing road republican politicians. it is still an organization that uses itself as a journalistic organization and we are just operating at such a smaller scale. tucker carlsen is getting two to three times the viewers of the largest nbc show and six times the largest cnn show. it is a massive rating advantage. and there viewers are more engaged and much more dominant online. the fox facebook presence and online presence is huge. they have an entire streaming platform. there's fox news station. people who pay to get additional tucker carlsen. no one is monitoring. but there is crazy stuff. there is very little of that on the left. we can't count on msnbc to do as much. there's good stuff there but it is not the same. >> start thinking about your questions because we will go to q and a soon. what does the megaphone look like? do we need to round up influencers or make our own tv station? obviously we have the crooked network. the. podcast. >> i think it's all the above. i don't think anyone is investing money in a linear cable network anytime soon. it is more content creators like the organization more perfect union, started by bernie sanders. . campaign managers. a lot of youtube videos, a lot of reporting that they have been aggressively pushing back. a lot of stuff in spanish language. some of my friends acquired stations in florida. it is all of the above. we just need more people saying more things to more people. there's no hierarchy, no one exact person. it will not be like a roger ailes of the left doing it. it's a huge investment in progressive media. it's not just subscribing to progressive publications. it is also just calling them on facebook, subscribe to the youtube channel. when you do that, the algorithms will show that to more people. our party leaders have to do a better job of this. donald trump did many things that were not very smart, but she was brilliant about nurturing a right-wing media ecosystem. if there was an article he thought was good for him in a right-wing conversation, he published it. i'm sorry, he tweeted it. he tweeted, they get traffic. they get more ad dollars. they can do more journalism. if he was promoting fox, doing interviews with right-wing media , when books were written he thought were favorable, he tweeted about those to drive them all on the new york times bestseller list. that means those books would get better placement and the authors would get more media bookings, the publishers would think there's a market for more pro-trump books. democratic politicians, with a handful of exceptions, do not do that. they continue to exist in a world where they will do the bulk of their media through traditional media. they should do all of the above, but it is in every democrats interest to nurture the progressive media ecosystem into using its allies. obama did some of this in the early days. bernie sanders was a master of this in the 2016 campaign. stacey abrams does this. obviously aoc is a media person herself. for the most part, there is still a reticence to embrace progressive media. if the leadership does not, we cannot get the public to do it either. >> what about abortion messaging? a lot of people i'm around think the party is not bold enough, laying low when we should be fighting back. this is the time to not dillydally. and there are other people who say, we can only do so much, aoc obviously believes otherwise, but what do you think? >> i always have sympathy for people who work in the white house and have limited tools to serve -- to do what people care about. there's nothing he can do with his pen that will undo what was done or protect millions of people who just lost rights. but i do think, and i thought aoc's twitter thread on this, really resonated with a lot of people in my life who are interested in politics but don't work in it. what she did was say to recognize the urgency of the situation and say we need a plan. even if they plan over the short, medium, and long-term, we need a plan. this has been a challenge off and on for the last two years, probably the trump years but particularly the last couple years. i think the urgency a lot of democratic voters feel about where the country is going, the dangers of the supreme court, this radical and extreme faction , and the language and tone of our leaders who even if they do believe it, i think many of them do and their actions suggest they do, but if someone in the house did about voting rights, i think we need to do a better job of speaking to that. even if you can't fix the problem, right now you have to speak to the way people feel and make them get it and offer them a long-term. i think people will, in the absence of a short-term problem, a plan to solve the problem. i thought aoc had good ideas on this. sometimes people want to feel your anger. i hope we hear more of that. >> actually when she was like, if you have a better plan, put out, but you can't not say anything. what do you want to ask -- process? >> if i'm ever running for office, it will be the school board and that will be the cap of it. [laughter] >> let's go to questions. >> this is -- let's give it up for dan. [laughter] raise your hand and we will pass around the mic. we will start in this general area and go that way. >> i want to say thank you for your talk, but i have a little issue with how you kind of accused president biden for not doing anything, because he really can't. this is the same man who said vladimir putin should step down. and so to me, as a woman, it is a copout. i would like your feelings on that. >> i don't disagree with what you said. the point i was trying to make is that there are limited tools. i do agree we need more people, the president included, to speak more powerfully, more often and more loudly about this. i was mainly referring to the options he had to actually do something. i 100% agree that we have a party from the president, congressional leaders, candidates, who do not aggressively talk about what has happened here, the fact that a supreme court that was put in place, five justices were appointed by president who got fewer votes, and was confirmed by a republican that represents a minority of americans, just took a constitutional right away from millions, and we don't talk about in the most aggressive terms possible, the voters will not come with us. i'm not going to tell anyone who thought that they were wrong. we have to have a specific point. you give us these votes, we will do x, over the course of time, we will reform, much like aoc said. >> so for those of us who have loved ones who are in that dangerous third category you mentioned at the beginning who go, this is too much and they throw their hands up, how do we get them to understand these alternative information ecosphere's are not equal, one is based in truth and reality and one is a profitable manufactured machine? how do you get them to vote accordingly especially if they say this is too much, i will just vote with the r? how do you bring them to your side? >> in the book, i write about a study that was done in 2019 where they show people news stories with one group. they had another group where they show news stories that were shared by someone they knew. what they came to find out was that people paid way more attention to stories that were shared by people they trusted than the news organization. whether it was the new york times or cnn or fox news, the fact that it was a person they thought shared their values or experiences in some way seemed to have agreed with the point or promote the point that they would believe it. so i think how we do it, each person you deal with will be different. trying to find sources they agree with or they trust to tell them to push back on things. one experiment i saw one political group do was very effective with republican leading voters who disapproved of trauma but still planned to vote for him anyway, was articles from the wall street journal, which because of rupert murdoch, were treated very differently in this group. in fact, for a lot of people in the new york times, it was proof the opposite was true when it came to trump. with the new york times says about donald trump, then it can't be true. so listening to them trying to figure out what sources they trust, conservative voices can be very powerful in influencing people lean conservative but may be skeptical about this version of the republican party or president trump. >> in that vein, you write about the fact checkers. fact checking does not have the power it used to have. do you think that will remain? for a lot of people, something that is obviously not true, like go fact-check it. but your argument is the fact checkers do not have as much sway. >> exactly, it's the opposite in a lot of ways. particularly cnn and the new york times, they are the most targeted news organizations by trump and the most distrust on the right, but the fact that they say it's not true is proof that it is true. so fact checking cannot be the way we win the war on truth and we need other ways to do it. it can be voices and experts to do it. >> you mentioned school boards. and local elections. your book talked about largely the larger scale elections statewide. one of the things that brings something painful to my soul is seeing people maga campaigning for school boards and winning. can you speak to that or what role -- how important do you think these local elections will become in terms of the overall strategy? there are people who are plain idiots who have no awareness of what the real issues are, and are campaigning on things that aren't really even issues, but it is the right buzzwords. i think it is very frightening for our society last night. >> absolutely. political power is built from the ground up here the process by which the republicans were able to rig the supreme court, made a decision to have large swaths of the entry day one, that abortion being banned is a long-term product starting in school boards. democrats have traditionally done a poor job of investing that at the party leadership level and donors and volunteers. we like to elect president, we think the white house is cool, we watch the west wing, and too often we do not invest in the hard work of building political power. i think that has changed a lot since trump won and there are well-funded groups run by the best operatives in the party. this is an example of how serious this is. we talk a lot about the insurrection and what republicans want to do in 2024. in many states like arizona, votes are counted at the county level. county out or -- county auditor is critical. one of the auditors in arizona refused to certify the election. steve bannon on his podcast every week is recruiting people. one group i recommend is run for something. it recruits and trains candidates. this is where the impact of everything we are dealing with will happen in that down ballot. >> one of the things i think that republicans are very good at, we have a governors race coming up, with someone in the past said that he was elected to ban abortions. but now that roe v. wade has been overturned, he is sidestepping that and is concentrating on the economy and gas prices and inflation. that is what the republicans are going to do to take over the house and possibly the senate in the fall. i have friends that are really intelligent, biden, the gas prices, is gas nationalized? does he have the authority to change? who are you going to blame? bp. mobile exxon. the gas companies. they are the ones that are fleecing you. so people believe on a very visceral level that the economy is all on biden. how can we change this? >> to piggyback on that, i had to go to the mall today and might luber driver said, biden is giving away money to ukraine and he needs to do something about gas prices. what do you do with that? we were just talking and she really thought biden is giving away money to ukraine and not helping us with gas. >> so it is always one of the great frustrations of anyone who works in the white house that the public thinks you have way more power than you actually have. gas prices, inflation is a worldwide phenomenon, all of the above. it is hard to explain away peoples economic pain and anger. i think there are two elements of this. one is we can accept the premise of the problem that gas prices are too high and try to reframe the argument about who will do a better job of solving it. is it going to be the party that is funded by oil companies? the party who insists on giving those exact same oil companies tax breaks? the same people who were opposing a windfall profits tax supported by democrats? it is a tough political environment, but you always want the argument of who is going to fight for you. in a tough economy, that can work for democrats. as much as republicans try to rebrand themselves as populists, there's still a lot of skepticism as people who will fight for middle-class working people and corporations. the other thing is i think there's a mentality among some democrats in terms of politics that we have to change. doug messed rihanna wants to talk about gas prices because that is better for him. but that does not mean we have to as well. republicans tend to decide polling, decide what issues voters should talk about on election day, and talk about it. no one thought immigration would be the number one issue in 2016. donald trump made it the number one issue. democrats look at polls and say what are people thinking about now, and then we just talk about that, whether it is good or bad for us. in this case, there's a whole lot with january 6, there is abortion, a right wing war on freedom in this country where they want to ban contraception, they want to decide who you love, what looks you can read. i imagine an argument would be very powerful. just because he wants to talk about it doesn't mean we have to fall for that. >> i want to know your thoughts on reconciling campaign rhetoric and campaign promises with managing expectations. in your campaign, you hear a lot of candidates talking about issues and saying what democratic voters want to hear, but i feel like younger voters are sort of becoming disillusioned by that. just wanted your thoughts on that. >> that is the old, famous line from governor mario cuomo that you campaign on poetry but govern in prose. this is something we wrestled with in obama's reelection campaign. we are trying to run on what we say with what we are going to do , but knowing we will almost certainly returned to the white house with republican house and senate. i think there are two elements of this letter very important. one is we have to treat voters as if they are smart and they understand it. talk to them like adults. we cannot make promises we can deliver on but that we will fight like hell for the biggest mistake emma cuts, and i include myself -- democrats, and i include myself on this, is that we manage expectations terribly. the senate kept saying failure is not an option on voting rights. we have no plan to cross the manchin chasm, but we have to be honest with people. we were so bad at managing expectations around build back better, that it washed away incredibly important compliments. we are focused on what did not get done as opposed to what got done. i'm sympathetic with people frustrated that we have not done a bunch of things but we have to be more honest with voters. >> there's a lot of unhappiness and social media that pushes the obama team that would say you all did not codify roe v. wade when you had the votes and the power. what would you say to that? people who are on our side are saying that. >> so there was a two-year period from 2009 two 2011 where democrats had unified control of the house and senate. obama had pledged that if he was elected, he would try to codify roe. he said at a conference in the campaign. here's the problem and why it did not happen. this is not to say president obama and those who worked for him could not have done more to forestall where we are as americans. what i am saying is what naral said in 2010, that there is not a pro-choice majority in the house and senate. there were not enough votes. we had expanded the pro-choice democrats, but in two thousand 9, 1 third of house democrats defined themselves as anti-choice. a large number of democratic senators were either explicitly anti-choice or pretty ambivalent about their position. we had enough democrats but not pro-choice democrats. that's ultimately what the best message in the short term is, give me 52 pro-choice democrats, and we can deliver the codification of roe. are you justifying or excusing -- i'm trying to explain what the reality is. people would be shocked at where joe manchin would be on this spectrum of democratic senators circa 2010. it would not be on the far right, it was closer to the middle because we had a pretty conservative party back >> i have been reading -- what do you think of the thought, i think you have seen it, that too many of our organizers have not come from too small of a section of the country. they come from colleges, that kind of argument, so they don't have the life experience and can't connect with people further down the chain. also they don't talk like real people? >> i think most people in politics don't talk like real people. that is the first people of advice my cohost gives everyone. you have to talk like a human. and a human doesn't need small words, it means you have to have relatable emotions and stories. but it is -- i think we need more diversity at every level of the party. diversity in every element of life. race, gender, where you are from, where you work. and a lot of the thing -- the pandemic really affected how the 2020 campaign was -- in powerful ways. more people on the ground working. a lot of organizers, they will parachute into states, that is what they do for a living. but they were constantly recruiting people from those states to work for them. college kids, adults who wanted to get involved in politics. so we need a lot more of that. we are always trying to find the narrowest possible problem that explains everything. i think diversity in every element, in every way you define that word is a problem in all parts of american life. but it is not the only reason, struggling with working class, a trend that has been going on for well over two decades. >> up here in the -- >> i just wanted to ask, one of the things that perplexes me is how it always feels democrats are not organized and not thinking about the long game. for a long time, we have said roe v. wade was a target. we knew that is where things were headed. yet i feel like to hear someone say now we need to have a strategy now, it is like where have you been? i think about when w was president, republicans made it clear they were going to start recruiting among latino communities in the south for the republican party so in the long term, knowing there would be eventually a much larger latino voting population, they would have that majority. we are starting to see the results of that. it was an intentional strategy they created. why can't democrats get organized like that? what is going on? >> politics is funny in the way perception changed quickly. if this had been a meeting of republicans in 2012, 2013, all the way up until the moment donald trump one, republicans would say how is it we keep getting our clock cleaned, democrats are organizing, fundraising us, data technology, all of that. it has obviously changed. there are things that are fair and true of your critique. republicans have had a donor base, primarily the coat others for many years, who invested in political infrastructure. the most boring things possible, but off year elections, candidates training recruitment, there have been similar efforts among democrats. there has been a group of people since -- 2012, democrats organizing impacts as a group. the fact they have come this far is a product of a decade of organizing from democrats. that is the reason why beddoe almost -- beto almost won. georgia, stacey abrams, black lives matter's, what they had done is a product of a decade of organizing in that state. so there are elements of it. it is fair to say that -- and it is a very important critique, on the issue of abortion, and a lot of people after the opinion league. republicans had a better plan to overturn roe v. wade than democrats. the supreme court being the way it is, you have limited control of where you get justices. that is why we are in this situation. we need to have more -- and hopefully people learn a lesson from this, that we need long-term, well-funded strategic solutions. go through elections you win, and elections you lose. you are making progress towards an end goal. a lot has changed in the party, some is very good. but clearly not enough is done. we may have lost the saddle before we even started because they have been working on it so long. >> similar -- diversity and activating knowing the plan. in pennsylvania, are elections of the governor and senate race are important. but there is a lot of anger. in the democratic party, what is going on right now. how do we unite the diverse party, specifically in pennsylvania? because it is such a critical election to unite people and activate them in the next 5, 6 months, in terms of november coming up. >> i would say, we organize around the country, justice and policing, and what i have seen to be most effective going into this question, organizers were always trying to convince aunts and uncles, whoever does that will always win. what trump did well, he had never talked -- i don't know what he said privately, i can imagine it is ridiculous publicly, but he would always talk to aunts and uncles. my aunt always understood what he said, it was just crazy to her. my aunts listens to biden and says i don't know what he's saying. when we organize on issues, we are always testing it. not that my aunt is not smart, she is in business with three kids, she is not watching tv all day to see seven people tell the story, which is what cable news is. she is going to get one shot at it, and you have to deliver. the second thing is reminding people of what we do believe in and not what we don't believe in. some people love the police, some people don't. do i want people to be safe? do you want the person with a gun to get the cat out of a tree, to tell you you don't have your taillight? i'm trying to take the craziness out of the issue and make it seem really simple. i have learned that on the far left, and ideologically i consider myself on the far left, the message has to be the middle sometimes. we have to take the message out of it -- in the book, it is like how they were able to convince people everyone is a socialist in florida. it is not socialist to say everyone should have breakfast, lunch, and enter. we should talk about it as a basic thing. a basic thing to say you should not die where you go to school. we have to take the street credit, i really care about the people, out of it, and talk about it as simply as possible. she is like you should not die in schools, should not die in prison. like yes. i have learned sometimes we overdo it. and my aunt doesn't want to be yelled at, she wants to be convinced. >> that is exactly right. there is an element of finding common cause with people. it is not simplifying as -- what do we care about, what do we agree on? even our democratic family. if it is something as simple as in pennsylvania, we think let the people choose who they vote for in the election should be who is elected. it should be people should not be prosecuted. we believe politicians should not decide what books we read or what teachers teach, across the board. raising the stakes in a unified way. >> and organizing, we always try and figure out the question to rephrase things. think about the place where you feel the most safe. a place where you feel safe. are the police there? no. what does it look like without the police? you already know. when everyone was in their room where you want to feel safe, we scale it up. people you love, food, we are trying to take the bite out of it and make it something you already understand. >> thank you for your service. i'm almost 80. i remember very well many presidents love the statements and enrage -- equal engagement. especially today's republican party. my husband and i are republicans, the democrats are the crazies down south and hang with the mafia. this changed. our parents, republicans excite people. they wind them up, fear and anger are the most primitive, most reactive emotions. to keep people scared is to keep them engaged. afraid of immigrants, afraid of socialists, afraid of democrats, they had us afraid of dr. seuss and pepe lepeu. very capable woman, but not an exciting speaker, hillary clinton. president biden, extremely capable. not an exciting speaker. we need another obama with some good support. my question is what do you think of the national popular vote contact? >> i'm a big believer in the fact that the electoral college is a terrible, anti-democratic relic, a terrible thing to get rid of. the vote is a project getting states to have walls that say they will give their electors whoever wins the popular vote. pennsylvania would do it. but they are big in recruiting states for i think decades. but you need to get to all of them for it to actually go into place. everyone around the constitution. it is going to be very hard, republicans know the only way -- they have lost the election, so they probably won't have a lot of states to agree the popular vote. senate questions from the balcony, this is the sort of work you do so you're prepared for a moment when you possibly can strike. i think it is very good stuff. >> this will be our final question. >> thank you for the excellent talk. there is a lot of problems, as you described, situations feel very bleak. at the same time, many dark faces of american history and global history. i'm wondering to what extent you think the moment is singular. is it really unprecedented on a totally different level? how do you think about that? >> it depends on who you ask. this could be a passing moment, it could be the last rose of an extremist, right-wing, authoritarian movement, or the beginning of something very good for us. that is up to all of us and what we do to stop it. we have the power to stop it. there is a growing progressive pro-democracy, pro-truth, anti-maga majority in the country, we just have to show up to vote in the right places at the right time. i think the danger of this moment for democracy -- i don't want to say it is unique, but it is not by definition something that will go away. only if you make it go away. >> let's give it up for david. [applause] all right flasher. thanks for joining us today. thank you, juan. let me begin by giving you the opportunity to tell people about the book the thesis. well my thesis is that the mainstream media is one o
three, most importantly, if you have not yet purchased the book, we encourage you to purchase the book through the midtown scholar bookstore. we have copies available at the cafe county if you're interested in getting your book signed at the end of the evening. at this time, i am happy to introduce our authors. our interviewer is a civil rights activist focused on issues of innovation, equity and justice. born and raised in baltimore, he holds honorary doctorates from the new school and the maryland institute college of art. as a leading voice in the black lives matter movement and a cofounder of campaign zero, he has worked to connect individuals with knowledge and tools and provide citizens and policymakers with commonsense policies that ensure equity. he has been praised by president obama for his work as a community organizer and has advised officials at all levels of government and continues to provide capacity to activists, organizers, and influencers to make an impact. our featured author is dan pfeiffer. a cohost of pod save america, one of barack obama's longest-serving advisors. he was director of communications from 2009 to 2013. he lives in the bay area of california. dan's new book that we are here for this evening is titled, battling the big lie, how thoughts, facebook, and the maga media are destroying america. this blurb, it's an enlightening, at times enraging, and always entertaining guide to the recent history of our politics and media, drawing on dan pfeiffer's unparalleled experience. read this book if you want to understand what is happening in american politics, why it is happening, and what you can do about it. we're honored to welcome you back to harrisburg. without further ado, please join me and giving them a warm harrisburg welcome. [applause] >> it is good to be back. i know dan well, but we have not talked about the book because i have been waiting to talk about it in front of you all. let's start with the easiest question. why this book, why now? >> some of you may know, we were here together, sitting in these exact chairs in mid february 2020. and we are back. did anything happen? after that last book, i decided that would probably my last book. i was very proud of it, ready to do some other things. then after the election happened, i was really wrestling with the question of how it was that in an election that was close but not much closer than trump's victory in 2016, and certainly less close than george w. bush's election, that we could live in a world where 70% of republicans could believe, against all evidence, that the election was stolen. some of them could believe it so fervently that they would storm the capitol with weapons to try to stop the certification of the election. so i thought we were at this tipping point of the power of disinformation and right wing media and wanted to better understand it myself and explain it to democrats, because i think this is the driving force of american politics right now. >> i have a lot of questions. we will start at the beginning. this is a push. you say in the beginning, they have fallen for the big lie, they all believe without a doubt the election was stolen. i question the language of fallen for the big lie. some people chose it, that they willingly chose this line, they did it for reasons of why to premises and accused of other things. but they were not duped, but they chose it. what would you say to that? >> within any group, there are people who use motivated reasoning to believe what makes sense to them, to fit events into their worldview. in their world, donald trump could not possibly lose. but it is much bigger than those people. 70% of republicans believe that the election was illegitimate in some way, shape, or form. some people are choosing to believe it and some people are falling for it, and some people are throwing up their arms because they see so much noise that they don't know what to believe. that is probably the most alarming part of that last group. >> there was a lot that surprised me, and one of them is use a large portions of the country good -- never heard any negative information about trump. is that true? >> if you live within the right wing ecosystem -- >> i feel like we hear about him all the time. [laughter] >> you hear it, it is done in the perspective of, like, the deep state, the fake new york times lying about him. what the right does is create a dramatically sealed information bubble for a large swath of their electorate. where the information they get is filtered to them in a way that is a entirely positive to trump. or if there is a larger conversation about that stuff about trump, it is explaining why that is. >> there is a whole section where you talk about the importance of the blog and the o ld style of media. do you still think blogs matter in the same way? >> no, certainly not. i tell a story in the book about in 2004 i was working for senator tom daschle in south dakota. this was a big deal senate race, because tom daschle was running for reelection. he was bush's enemy number one, his opponent was recruited by karl rove. no senate leader had lost in 50 years. in that election, a group of, out of nowhere, a group of conservative political blogs, immaculately named to cover the race, they came up and hammered daschle nonstop. they transitioned eventually into pushing conspiracy theories. we published this lock muster scoop, like, siren emojis, it was on the drudge report, that tom daschle had a secret deal with the native american population that if the native american population delivered enough votes, daschle would return the black hills to them. which is something that should happen. it is their land that was stolen. but far beyond the power of one senator to do, so it is clearly not true. at first i dismissed it, like, who is reading these idiotic blogs? no one who matters. but all of a sudden he's undecided voters are reading back to me what they are hearing in here. and what we learned leader on was that our opponent, the republican candidate, was paying these blogs to publish disinformation about daschle. and then it dawned on me, that was the first time i confronted disinformation as an explicit political strategy of the republicans and i filed it away is something i thought we would see many times later. maybe not to the extent we see it now, but the canary in the coal mine. >> in that vein, you make a big deal of highlighting this inference between misinformation and disinformation. what is that? >> these are the two terms that get interchanged all-time. misinformation is inaccurate information. it can be accidental, inadvertent. all of us on social media periodically become inadvertent transmitters of misinformation because we read a false story, or someone has taken an out of context comment or something that we tweeted out like, this is terrible, and we spread it, only to find later on that is not what really happened. disinformation is a specific strategy to spread false information to deceive people. and so those differences are important. disinformation is a specific byproduct -- it's a political strategy that we have to pay a lot of attention to and respond to. >> i obvious he paid attention, i knew russia influence the election. i didn't know it was called the internet research agency. but they were dealing in disinformation, not misinformation. >> correct. in 2016, we have all talked about the russian hacking. the one thing the russians did was they hacked into the dmc and clinton campaign emails and then released those emails to cause as much chaos as possible. >> that was confirmed it was the russians? >> yes. >> i was a victim of like, was it the russians? but i believe you. [laughter] >> it was the consensus of the intelligence community, both under obama and trump. although you could not really say that out loud in the trump years. and so, the other thing they did is they created -- they had a strategy to flood social media with false accounts to push disinformation. one of the ways they would do that is they would create false accounts pretending to be black activists who would then post things about why they were not supporting hillary clinton, or pushing people not to vote. and then these entities funded by the russians would run facebook ads promoting that content targeting black audiences. target people by interests, so people who would express interest in civil rights or martin luther king, or similar topics, push that to them. there was a very specific strategy to try to create division and reduce hillary clinton's support and turnout in the black community. >> one of the things he wrote was this idea that trump could not win if more black people voted. >> that is true. in 2016 that was absolutely true. if you had black turnout at the levels at which barack obama had it, the math would be such that hillary clinton would have won wisconsin, for s --pennsylvania and michigan. >> you wrote about the moment where trump was like, sunlight is going to enter your body and if it does, covid is going to disappear. he also said to drink bleach. you talked about the bleach moment is something we all laughed at, but you highlight that as a positive moment for trump. why? >> trump telling people to inject bleach, or get sunlight inside of their body, and we didn't ask any questions about what his plans were as to how you do that -- it was part of a larger strategy to convince people that the pandemic was not as scary as it was. was to get people to return to normal faster. he believed, with very good reason, that his reelection chances were dependent upon the economy bouncing back. it's a ridiculous, absurd thing to say, but people listened. dangerously so. people drank disinfectant. people tried to injest disinfectant. and we have to -- when we look at trump's pent-up response -- pandemic response, it's abhorr ent on every level and seems ridiculous. but he did very effectively and very dangerously to a large swath of the country spread a lot of distrust in what scientists were saying for a political purpose. i use the inject bleach one because a lot of times liberals laugh but republicans listen, and we have to understand why that is if we are going to be able to compete in an information environment where people can listen to something that ridiculous. >> to think of any politicians on the left who would get that message right? one of the things you talk about is we have to -- it cannot always be gloom and doom. you don't write about this in the book, but are there people you think you are getting that right on the left? >> in terms of a message that brings people in? yeah, i think aoc, certainly beer -- certainly bernie sanders in both of his campaigns. i talk in the book about,m like, we look at a trump rally, it is not a place i want to go, it does not seem fun to me. they don't seem to make a lot of sense. but obviously the people there are having a blast. and it is not just the people in the crowd that we see. obviously there are pretty alarming things they are chanting. then you see the footage when the reporters are doing their live shots before the event and it is a festival. it is like renaissance fair, there are people just up as things, they are selling all this swag and people dress up like donald trump. that is not my thing, but i think we need to think about politics as a way that is exciting. that was the core of obama, was people wanted to be there. so i think bernie sanders, aoc, i think stacey abrams in a different way brings people in in a very exciting way. i have not seen this firsthand but i have heard this from a lot of people on the east coast, john fetterman, people are pretty jazzed to be around john fetterman. [applause] >> love that. another thing you said i had not thought about in this way, you push back on republicans wanting smaller government. you talk about injecting antigovernment rhetoric in a strategy, but it is not about shrinking the government. what do you mean by that? >> republicans don't want -- it is not about the size of the government, it is about who the government is protecting. yeah, they want to shrink the epa, osha, all of that, but they want to grow ika, belieff, and it's their view that the government is a bulwark against an america that is changing graphically and culturally in a way that threatens the people who have held political power in this country since the beginning, like christians, primarily meant. so -- men. so this -- that's an important thing democrats have to understand. none of this is on the level. this is not a paul krugman argument about how you build a good economy. it is about political power, and who has it and who they are trying to stop from getting it. it is why the radicalization from the right has happened so aggressively since barack obama won the white house, because that is the embodiment of something they had feared for a very long time. it happened before they were ready for it. >> this book came out before the january 6 hearings and all that. you write at one point, the message is -- do you think the january 6 hearings happening now will stick in a way democrats can use, or do you think we botched the messaging? >> i don't think we have botched the messaging. i think democrats have done a great job. and it is not just a democrat, because it's a bipartisan hearing. but the first thing you have to do is get people to hear you. so the fact that the january 6 hearing got 20 million people to watch the first one, that is unbelievable. that is 6 million more people watching a congressional hearing than game six of the nba finals. that is wild and impressive. this is not in the book but i discovered this fact when doing research on the book, 20 million people is a lot, but it is 80 million fewer people than watch the oj car chase live in 1994. so it got people's attention. social engagement about january 6 has been off the roof for democrat, which is very impressive. also i think they have done something very smart and powerful. they have simplified the story. every hearing tells one aspect of the story. it is not overly complicated. the second piece is the voices they are showing people are not democrat members of congress. we recognize that adam schiff is not going to persuade a lot of people in the middle of the country. so it is liz cheney. the fact that liz cheney, dick cheney's daughter, basically she is darth vader's daughter and she is leading this, and that is amazing. she is a card-carrying member of the republican establishment. it is all the footage of these trump aids, bill barr, jason miller, he ivanka trump, card-carrying members of maga nation, basically saying trump knew the election was not stolen. so it's one of the most important aspects of modern communication strategy where you have a population who are skeptical of politicians generally. it is to use people from your in-group to tell you a message you do not want to hear is very impressive. so whether it is going to stick is up to awesome, what happens going forward -- is up to us, what happens going forward. but thus far, it has been an credible success. >> you sprinkle in some criticism of the new york times. what would you say about the times's lack of holding the administration accountable during those years? or people criticize the reporters who knew things and waited until their books came out. how do you think about the times 's role? >> the new york times does credible journalism. they do really -- does incredible journalism. huge stories they broke. they do great stuff. i picked the times and facebook because they are by far the most influential parts of their respective elements. facebook is by far the most important social media company, the new york times is by far the most influential traditional media organization in the country. and they are way more influential than they have probably ever been because there is so much less competition now. and i think the criticism of the new york times and every answer to the larger traditional media is really that this is not a both sides issue. democracy is at stake here. we cannot have a political conversation where we treat them across trying to run on kitchen table issues the same as republicans trying to steal elections. press is not an unbiased entity. they have biases, they have things they advocate for. we know the press cares passionately about how many questions joe biden answers every week. like, that seems trite and annoying compared to a lot of things, but they should advocate for as much access as possible. that is a good thing to do, and they will use their power to push for more. which is why you read articles about how few interviews joe biden does. the readers don't want to read that. they write it to put pressure on the white house. i think the press can and should be more aggressive advocates for democracy. and if that benefits my crass right now, so be it -- benefits democrats right now, so be it. the first people authoritarians take out when they take over, the press. so i want them to be more aggressive advocates for democracy because i do not think this is a partisan issue. >> the other thing i learned in reading was you talk about the sec's decision to end the fair use doctrine, and the rise of right-wing radio. do you think there's a way to put that back in the bottle? can we undo that? if trump wins, it would be like trying to unring a bill. do you think we can unring the bell or not? >> i thought a lot about how the right, for decades, has run this campaign against -- to try to disqualify the press. that campaign culminates with reagan's election, and reagan using the fcc to repeal the doctrine, which demanded equal time in media. once that happened, right wing radio basically grew exponentially because now there was no need for there to be someone opposite rush limbaugh, you could just have rush limbaugh. and i have wanted to find a way that you could put the fairness doctrine back in to fix these problems and every single person i talk to about this says the bell cannot be un-wrong. the media has been changed so much that a lot of what we deal with now -- like fox probably exists because and in the fair use doctrine shows the marketplace for right-wing media. cable news was not covered by the fairness doctrine. you can't unring the bell is the unfortunate part, so we have to figure out how to live in this environment. >> i didn't know that tucker carlsen started the "daily caller" until i read the book. > i think it was scarborough and tucker colson, back to back. the number one media. >> you don't really give up on facebook, though. you say the left needs to push out messages on facebook. but when you look at the top posts on facebook, they are overwhelmingly ben shapiro republican. you clearly think that is the algorithm, but do you think the left can counter that? you highlight the outrage and anger we can use. do you think that our base will share the messages or do you think the algorithm of facebook is so screwed that we have to fix it first? >> algorithms respond to the input. right now the amount of right wing information pumped into the algorithm is exponentially greater. there's more right wing engages, pushing out more content. we are not necessarily going to very quickly close that gap, but there is room. we have to find ways to have messages that are consistent with our political narrative that also go viral on facebook. that's very hard because the number one political posts on facebook this week, for the week ending today, was by barack obama. but you know what it was? his father's day message. which is charming and important, but i don't think it is moving the political debate in any way. we have gotten a little better at harnessing energy. this is one of the very rare weeks where progressive posts outperform conservative posts, all about abortion. in the wake of the supreme court case, people took to facebook and shared content and responded to content and lifted the content above. this can't happen once every nine months. it has to happen on a regular basis. one of the lessons for us, and after many years of basically never posting on facebook and only looking at pictures of my friends' kids, got back on, started a public page, started to work with a collective of progressives to get more people to post more content. it's like a drop in the bucket at this point but we need more people. seven in 10 american adults are on facebook. half of those people go to the site multiple times a day. 40% of them see it as a major source of news. the scale between only one quarter of americans claim to be on twitter and i think it is smaller than that. on twitter, 90% of the tweets are from 10% of the people. we spent all the time on twitter and think about it and worry about it. it is an important platform for a specific conversation among active people, but facebook is by far the most important. >> you talk about the decision not to fact-check politicians as a watershed moment. do you think they will fact-check politicians? >> put it in perspective. when mark zuckerberg went to give his big speech about how facebook was going to stand for free speech and the first amendment and they would not fact-check politicians. i hate to say this but first amendment and facebook have nothing to do with each other. it is not about your right to be on a specific social media platform. even then, do you really want a big tech company to be the one to decide what is true and what isn't? especially from politicians? the answer to that is maybe not. on the things they say, like donald trump will post something and should it come down, should it not if it violates terms of service? that is fair. what is different is what he's really talking about is fact checking ads. facebook ads are some of the most -- it's not like we lost 30 seconds on the eagles game and hope people watch it. it is that you are able to precisely, able to upload to facebook the file, you can match people, and specifically target people based on their interests. you can push information and use facebook's massive data and ai powered algorithm to decide the people most likely to believe that information. that is a very big deal. is that why donald trump almost won the election? no. but it's throwing your arms up and allowing the weaponization of disinformation. i think that's a bad thing. >> one thing that was interesting is the republican strategy, your argument is if we talk about the facts, they will lose. they have to distract us because when they talk about the fact, they will lose. the second is they have to stoke, you don't call it white supremacy i think, but bigotry. do you see a good counter to those things? we saw the latest rally, like thank you for protecting white life. >> and she won her primary last night. >> did she win? yikes. i thought it must be edited. but she really said that. do you see an effective counter to that? do we need to organize better? what do you do when it is no longer innuendo. >> i think a big part of this is trying to solve the megaphone problem for democrats. what is happening is the right has built this massive apparatus that is dominating the political conversation. it is pushing information out there to decide what we talk about. one thing we can do, it is the hard work, build up a progressive megaphone to get the message out so we are not getting drowned out. >> is msnbc not a megaphone? >> it is not a megaphone. it has great programming on it, but it is not an adjunct of the democratic party, nor should it be. but fox is an adjunct of the republican party. their interest is electing road republican politicians. it is still an organization that uses itself as a journalistic organization and we are just operating at such a smaller scale. tucker carlsen is getting two to three times the viewers of the largest nbc show and six times the largest cnn show. it is a massive rating advantage. and there viewers are more engaged and much more dominant online. the fox facebook presence and online presence is huge. they have an entire streaming platform. there's fox news station. people who pay to get additional tucker carlsen. no one is monitoring. but there is crazy stuff. there is very little of that on the left. we can't count on msnbc to do as much. there's good stuff there but it is not the same. >> start thinking about your questions because we will go to q and a soon. what does the megaphone look like? do we need to round up influencers or make our own tv station? obviously we have the crooked network. the. podcast. >> i think it's all the above. i don't think anyone is investing money in a linear cable network anytime soon. it is more content creators like the organization more perfect union, started by bernie sanders. . campaign managers. a lot of youtube videos, a lot of reporting that they have been aggressively pushing back. a lot of stuff in spanish language. some of my friends acquired stations in florida. it is all of the above. we just need more people saying more things to more people. there's no hierarchy, no one exact person. it will not be like a roger ailes of the left doing it. it's a huge investment in progressive media. it's not just subscribing to progressive publications. it is also just calling them on facebook, subscribe to the youtube channel. when you do that, the algorithms will show that to more people. our party leaders have to do a better job of this. donald trump did many things that were not very smart, but she was brilliant about nurturing a right-wing media ecosystem. if there was an article he thought was good for him in a right-wing conversation, he published it. i'm sorry, he tweeted it. he tweeted, they get traffic. they get more ad dollars. they can do more journalism. if he was promoting fox, doing interviews with right-wing media , when books were written he thought were favorable, he tweeted about those to drive them all on the new york times bestseller list. that means those books would get better placement and the authors would get more media bookings, the publishers would think there's a market for more pro-trump books. democratic politicians, with a handful of exceptions, do not do that. they continue to exist in a world where they will do the bulk of their media through traditional media. they should do all of the above, but it is in every democrats interest to nurture the progressive media ecosystem into using its allies. obama did some of this in the early days. bernie sanders was a master of this in the 2016 campaign. stacey abrams does this. obviously aoc is a media person herself. for the most part, there is still a reticence to embrace progressive media. if the leadership does not, we cannot get the public to do it either. >> what about abortion messaging? a lot of people i'm around think the party is not bold enough, laying low when we should be fighting back. this is the time to not dillydally. and there are other people who say, we can only do so much, aoc obviously believes otherwise, but what do you think? >> i always have sympathy for people who work in the white house and have limited tools to serve -- to do what people care about. there's nothing he can do with his pen that will undo what was done or protect millions of people who just lost rights. but i do think, and i thought aoc's twitter thread on this, really resonated with a lot of people in my life who are interested in politics but don't work in it. what she did was say to recognize the urgency of the situation and say we need a plan. even if they plan over the short, medium, and long-term, we need a plan. this has been a challenge off and on for the last two years, probably the trump years but particularly the last couple years. i think the urgency a lot of democratic voters feel about where the country is going, the dangers of the supreme court, this radical and extreme faction , and the language and tone of our leaders who even if they do believe it, i think many of them do and their actions suggest they do, but if someone in the house did about voting rights, i think we need to do a better job of speaking to that. even if you can't fix the problem, right now you have to speak to the way people feel and make them get it and offer them a long-term. i think people will, in the absence of a short-term problem, a plan to solve the problem. i thought aoc had good ideas on this. sometimes people want to feel your anger. i hope we hear more of that. >> actually when she was like, if you have a better plan, put out, but you can't not say anything. what do you want to ask -- process? >> if i'm ever running for office, it will be the school board and that will be the cap of it. [laughter] >> let's go to questions. >> this is -- let's give it up for dan. [laughter] raise your hand and we will pass around the mic. we will start in this general area and go that way. >> i want to say thank you for your talk, but i have a little issue with how you kind of accused president biden for not doing anything, because he really can't. this is the same man who said vladimir putin should step down. and so to me, as a woman, it is a copout. i would like your feelings on that. >> i don't disagree with what you said. the point i was trying to make is that there are limited tools. i do agree we need more people, the president included, to speak more powerfully, more often and more loudly about this. i was mainly referring to the options he had to actually do something. i 100% agree that we have a party from the president, congressional leaders, candidates, who do not aggressively talk about what has happened here, the fact that a supreme court that was put in place, five justices were appointed by president who got fewer votes, and was confirmed by a republican that represents a minority of americans, just took a constitutional right away from millions, and we don't talk about in the most aggressive terms possible, the voters will not come with us. i'm not going to tell anyone who thought that they were wrong. we have to have a specific point. you give us these votes, we will do x, over the course of time, we will reform, much like aoc said. >> so for those of us who have loved ones who are in that dangerous third category you mentioned at the beginning who go, this is too much and they throw their hands up, how do we get them to understand these alternative information ecosphere's are not equal, one is based in truth and reality and one is a profitable manufactured machine? how do you get them to vote accordingly especially if they say this is too much, i will just vote with the r? how do you bring them to your side? >> in the book, i write about a study that was done in 2019 where they show people news stories with one group. they had another group where they show news stories that were shared by someone they knew. what they came to find out was that people paid way more attention to stories that were shared by people they trusted than the news organization. whether it was the new york times or cnn or fox news, the fact that it was a person they thought shared their values or experiences in some way seemed to have agreed with the point or promote the point that they would believe it. so i think how we do it, each person you deal with will be different. trying to find sources they agree with or they trust to tell them to push back on things. one experiment i saw one political group do was very effective with republican leading voters who disapproved of trauma but still planned to vote for him anyway, was articles from the wall street journal, which because of rupert murdoch, were treated very differently in this group. in fact, for a lot of people in the new york times, it was proof the opposite was true when it came to trump. with the new york times says about donald trump, then it can't be true. so listening to them trying to figure out what sources they trust, conservative voices can be very powerful in influencing people lean conservative but may be skeptical about this version of the republican party or president trump. >> in that vein, you write about the fact checkers. fact checking does not have the power it used to have. do you think that will remain? for a lot of people, something that is obviously not true, like go fact-check it. but your argument is the fact checkers do not have as much sway. >> exactly, it's the opposite in a lot of ways. particularly cnn and the new york times, they are the most targeted news organizations by trump and the most distrust on the right, but the fact that they say it's not true is proof that it is true. so fact checking cannot be the way we win the war on truth and we need other ways to do it. it can be voices and experts to do it. >> you mentioned school boards. and local elections. your book talked about largely the larger scale elections statewide. one of the things that brings something painful to my soul is seeing people maga campaigning for school boards and winning. can you speak to that or what role -- how important do you think these local elections will become in terms of the overall strategy? there are people who are plain idiots who have no awareness of what the real issues are, and are campaigning on things that aren't really even issues, but it is the right buzzwords. i think it is very frightening for our society last night. >> absolutely. political power is built from the ground up here the process by which the republicans were able to rig the supreme court, made a decision to have large swaths of the entry day one, that abortion being banned is a long-term product starting in school boards. democrats have traditionally done a poor job of investing that at the party leadership level and donors and volunteers. we like to elect president, we think the white house is cool, we watch the west wing, and too often we do not invest in the hard work of building political power. i think that has changed a lot since trump won and there are well-funded groups run by the best operatives in the party. this is an example of how serious this is. we talk a lot about the insurrection and what republicans want to do in 2024. in many states like arizona, votes are counted at the county level. county out or -- county auditor is critical. one of the auditors in arizona refused to certify the election. steve bannon on his podcast every week is recruiting people. one group i recommend is run for something. it recruits and trains candidates. this is where the impact of everything we are dealing with will happen in that down ballot. >> one of the things i think that republicans are very good at, we have a governors race coming up, with someone in the past said that he was elected to ban abortions. but now that roe v. wade has been overturned, he is sidestepping that and is concentrating on the economy and gas prices and inflation. that is what the republicans are going to do to take over the house and possibly the senate in the fall. i have friends that are really intelligent, biden, the gas prices, is gas nationalized? does he have the authority to change? who are you going to blame? bp. mobile exxon. the gas companies. they are the ones that are fleecing you. so people believe on a very visceral level that the economy is all on biden. how can we change this? >> to piggyback on that, i had to go to the mall today and might luber driver said, biden is giving away money to ukraine and he needs to do something about gas prices. what do you do with that? we were just talking and she really thought biden is giving away money to ukraine and not helping us with gas. >> so it is always one of the great frustrations of anyone who works in the white house that the public thinks you have way more power than you actually have. gas prices, inflation is a worldwide phenomenon, all of the above. it is hard to explain away peoples economic pain and anger. i think there are two elements of this. one is we can accept the premise of the problem that gas prices are too high and try to reframe the argument about who will do a better job of solving it. is it going to be the party that is funded by oil companies? the party who insists on giving those exact same oil companies tax breaks? the same people who were opposing a windfall profits tax supported by democrats? it is a tough political environment, but you always want the argument of who is going to fight for you. in a tough economy, that can work for democrats. as much as republicans try to rebrand themselves as populists, there's still a lot of skepticism as people who will fight for middle-class working people and corporations. the other thing is i think there's a mentality among some democrats in terms of politics that we have to change. doug messed rihanna wants to talk about gas prices because that is better for him. but that does not mean we have to as well. republicans tend to decide polling, decide what issues voters should talk about on election day, and talk about it. no one thought immigration would be the number one issue in 2016. donald trump made it the number one issue. democrats look at polls and say what are people thinking about now, and then we just talk about that, whether it is good or bad for us. in this case, there's a whole lot with january 6, there is abortion, a right wing war on freedom in this country where they want to ban contraception, they want to decide who you love, what looks you can read. i imagine an argument would be very powerful. just because he wants to talk about it doesn't mean we have to fall for that. >> i want to know your thoughts on reconciling campaign rhetoric and campaign promises with managing expectations. in your campaign, you hear a lot of candidates talking about issues and saying what democratic voters want to hear, but i feel like younger voters are sort of becoming disillusioned by that. just wanted your thoughts on that. >> that is the old, famous line from governor mario cuomo that you campaign on poetry but govern in prose. this is something we wrestled with in obama's reelection campaign. we are trying to run on what we say with what we are going to do , but knowing we will almost certainly returned to the white house with republican house and senate. i think there are two elements of this letter very important. one is we have to treat voters as if they are smart and they understand it. talk to them like adults. we cannot make promises we can deliver on but that we will fight like hell for the biggest mistake emma cuts, and i include myself -- democrats, and i include myself on this, is that we manage expectations terribly. the senate kept saying failure is not an option on voting rights. we have no plan to cross the manchin chasm, but we have to be honest with people. we were so bad at managing expectations around build back better, that it washed away incredibly important compliments. we are focused on what did not get done as opposed to what got done. i'm sympathetic with people frustrated that we have not done a bunch of things but we have to be more honest with voters. >> there's a lot of unhappiness and social media that pushes the obama team that would say you all did not codify roe v. wade when you had the votes and the power. what would you say to that? people who are on our side are saying that. >> so there was a two-year period from 2009 two 2011 where democrats had unified control of the house and senate. obama had pledged that if he was elected, he would try to codify roe. he said at a conference in the campaign. here's the problem and why it did not happen. this is not to say president obama and those who worked for him could not have done more to forestall where we are as americans. what i am saying is what naral said in 2010, that there is not a pro-choice majority in the house and senate. there were not enough votes. we had expanded the pro-choice democrats, but in two thousand 9, 1 third of house democrats defined themselves as anti-choice. a large number of democratic senators were either explicitly anti-choice or pretty ambivalent about their position. we had enough democrats but not pro-choice democrats. that's ultimately what the best message in the short term is, give me 52 pro-choice democrats, and we can deliver the codification of roe. are you justifying or excusing -- i'm trying to explain what the reality is. people would be shocked at where joe manchin would be on this spectrum of democratic senators circa 2010. it would not be on the far right, it was closer to the middle because we had a pretty conservative party back >> i have been reading -- what do you think of the thought, i think you have seen it, that too many of our organizers have not come from too small of a section of the country. they come from colleges, that kind of argument, so they don't have the life experience and can't connect with people further down the chain. also they don't talk like real people? >> i think most people in politics don't talk like real people. that is the first people of advice my cohost gives everyone. you have to talk like a human. and a human doesn't need small words, it means you have to have relatable emotions and stories. but it is -- i think we need more diversity at every level of the party. diversity in every element of life. race, gender, where you are from, where you work. and a lot of the thing -- the pandemic really affected how the 2020 campaign was -- in powerful ways. more people on the ground working. a lot of organizers, they will parachute into states, that is what they do for a living. but they were constantly recruiting people from those states to work for them. college kids, adults who wanted to get involved in politics. so we need a lot more of that. we are always trying to find the narrowest possible problem that explains everything. i think diversity in every element, in every way you define that word is a problem in all parts of american life. but it is not the only reason, struggling with working class, a trend that has been going on for well over two decades. >> up here in the -- >> i just wanted to ask, one of the things that perplexes me is how it always feels democrats are not organized and not thinking about the long game. for a long time, we have said roe v. wade was a target. we knew that is where things were headed. yet i feel like to hear someone say now we need to have a strategy now, it is like where have you been? i think about when w was president, republicans made it clear they were going to start recruiting among latino communities in the south for the republican party so in the long term, knowing there would be eventually a much larger latino voting population, they would have that majority. we are starting to see the results of that. it was an intentional strategy they created. why can't democrats get organized like that? what is going on? >> politics is funny in the way perception changed quickly. if this had been a meeting of republicans in 2012, 2013, all the way up until the moment donald trump one, republicans would say how is it we keep getting our clock cleaned, democrats are organizing, fundraising us, data technology, all of that. it has obviously changed. there are things that are fair and true of your critique. republicans have had a donor base, primarily the coat others for many years, who invested in political infrastructure. the most boring things possible, but off year elections, candidates training recruitment, there have been similar efforts among democrats. there has been a group of people since -- 2012, democrats organizing impacts as a group. the fact they have come this far is a product of a decade of organizing from democrats. that is the reason why beddoe almost -- beto almost won. georgia, stacey abrams, black lives matter's, what they had done is a product of a decade of organizing in that state. so there are elements of it. it is fair to say that -- and it is a very important critique, on the issue of abortion, and a lot of people after the opinion league. republicans had a better plan to overturn roe v. wade than democrats. the supreme court being the way it is, you have limited control of where you get justices. that is why we are in this situation. we need to have more -- and hopefully people learn a lesson from this, that we need long-term, well-funded strategic solutions. go through elections you win, and elections you lose. you are making progress towards an end goal. a lot has changed in the party, some is very good. but clearly not enough is done. we may have lost the saddle before we even started because they have been working on it so long. >> similar -- diversity and activating knowing the plan. in pennsylvania, are elections of the governor and senate race are important. but there is a lot of anger. in the democratic party, what is going on right now. how do we unite the diverse party, specifically in pennsylvania? because it is such a critical election to unite people and activate them in the next 5, 6 months, in terms of november coming up. >> i would say, we organize around the country, justice and policing, and what i have seen to be most effective going into this question, organizers were always trying to convince aunts and uncles, whoever does that will always win. what trump did well, he had never talked -- i don't know what he said privately, i can imagine it is ridiculous publicly, but he would always talk to aunts and uncles. my aunt always understood what he said, it was just crazy to her. my aunts listens to biden and says i don't know what he's saying. when we organize on issues, we are always testing it. not that my aunt is not smart, she is in business with three kids, she is not watching tv all day to see seven people tell the story, which is what cable news is. she is going to get one shot at it, and you have to deliver. the second thing is reminding people of what we do believe in and not what we don't believe in. some people love the police, some people don't. do i want people to be safe? do you want the person with a gun to get the cat out of a tree, to tell you you don't have your taillight? i'm trying to take the craziness out of the issue and make it seem really simple. i have learned that on the far left, and ideologically i consider myself on the far left, the message has to be the middle sometimes. we have to take the message out of it -- in the book, it is like how they were able to convince people everyone is a socialist in florida. it is not socialist to say everyone should have breakfast, lunch, and enter. we should talk about it as a basic thing. a basic thing to say you should not die where you go to school. we have to take the street credit, i really care about the people, out of it, and talk about it as simply as possible. she is like you should not die in schools, should not die in prison. like yes. i have learned sometimes we overdo it. and my aunt doesn't want to be yelled at, she wants to be convinced. >> that is exactly right. there is an element of finding common cause with people. it is not simplifying as -- what do we care about, what do we agree on? even our democratic family. if it is something as simple as in pennsylvania, we think let the people choose who they vote for in the election should be who is elected. it should be people should not be prosecuted. we believe politicians should not decide what books we read or what teachers teach, across the board. raising the stakes in a unified way. >> and organizing, we always try and figure out the question to rephrase things. think about the place where you feel the most safe. a place where you feel safe. are the police there? no. what does it look like without the police? you already know. when everyone was in their room where you want to feel safe, we scale it up. people you love, food, we are trying to take the bite out of it and make it something you already understand. >> thank you for your service. i'm almost 80. i remember very well many presidents love the statements and enrage -- equal engagement. especially today's republican party. my husband and i are republicans, the democrats are the crazies down south and hang with the mafia. this changed. our parents, republicans excite people. they wind them up, fear and anger are the most primitive, most reactive emotions. to keep people scared is to keep them engaged. afraid of immigrants, afraid of socialists, afraid of democrats, they had us afraid of dr. seuss and pepe lepeu. very capable woman, but not an exciting speaker, hillary clinton. president biden, extremely capable. not an exciting speaker. we need another obama with some good support. my question is what do you think of the national popular vote contact? >> i'm a big believer in the fact that the electoral college is a terrible, anti-democratic relic, a terrible thing to get rid of. the vote is a project getting states to have walls that say they will give their electors whoever wins the popular vote. pennsylvania would do it. but they are big in recruiting states for i think decades. but you need to get to all of them for it to actually go into place. everyone around the constitution. it is going to be very hard, republicans know the only way -- they have lost the election, so they probably won't have a lot of states to agree the popular vote. senate questions from the balcony, this is the sort of work you do so you're prepared for a moment when you possibly can strike. i think it is very good stuff. >> this will be our final question. >> thank you for the excellent talk. there is a lot of problems, as you described, situations feel very bleak. at the same time, many dark faces of american history and global history. i'm wondering to what extent you think the moment is singular. is it really unprecedented on a totally different level? how do you think about that? >> it depends on who you ask. this could be a passing moment, it could be the last rose of an extremist, right-wing, authoritarian movement, or the beginning of something very good for us. that is up to all of us and what we do to stop it. we have the power to stop it. there is a growing progressive pro-democracy, pro-truth, anti-maga majority in the country, we just have to show up to vote in the right places at the right time. i think the danger of this moment for democracy -- i don't want to say it is unique, but it is not by definition something that will go away. only if you make it go away. >> let's give it up for david. [applause] >> welcome to book bar. we are doing our second event of the day. we have lisa forbes here. if you are here for the event, please come over and join us. we have some come the couches here in the lounge. if you're not here for the event, no problem. please be mindful of the people who are here for the event. if you want to have conversation, we have other tables in the back. the patio seating.