October 24, 2024 • 22 mins
We are living through an extremely fractious political moment. Dr. Jonathan Metzl joins to discuss what's at stake in this election and how voters are responding to this urgency.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:11):
Good morning, Peeves, and welcome to ok F Daily with
me your girl, Danielle Moody recording from the Home Bunker, Folks.
In today's conversation with our dear friend, doctor Jonathan Metzel,
we talk about where we think the energy is right
now with less than two weeks to go until the election,
(00:32):
and Jonathan gives his own anecdotes on his experience thus
far trying to vote in Tennessee, and we talk about
a bit of good news that early voting in battleground states.
Tennessee is not a battleground, but early voting in battleground
states are breaking records, and usually that bodes as a
(00:56):
really good sign for Democrats. After Jonathan and I record,
I went back and was looking at headlines that would
surface later in the day, and it said Republicans are
voting in historic numbers and Republicans are early voting, and
it's you know, breaking records and all of these things.
And so I realize we don't know who to believe
(01:19):
and what to believe anymore. And that's kind of the
point of MAGA and the point of Donald Trump over
the last nine years of terrorism in this country is
that we can no longer rely on polls, we can
no longer rely on the news, we can no longer
rely on institution. We don't know which way is up
(01:42):
and which way is down, and nothing that used to
make sense makes sense anymore. And a part of me
feels like we are living inside of black mirror, living
inside of Orwell's nineteen eighty four, that it's already here,
and I don't know, oh, to be honest, how we
(02:03):
backpedal out of this. Obviously, I think that the election
of Kamala Harris would be a really major step in
the right direction, But I'm on the fence of if
that happens or not. Folks like, no one knows. None
of us know, and we won't know, probably for a
couple of days following the election. And that's what's so disheartening,
(02:25):
I think, is that how could you have all of
this information about Donald Trump and still think to yourself
that he should lead this country is obscene and absurd.
But on the other hand, like I just said, so
many of us, millions of us, feel absolutely disoriented and
detached from what we've known to be normal and true,
(02:49):
and that has been done on purpose, so that you
can believe that a figure like Donald Trump, maybe he
isn't as bad as people think he is. Fucking Ezra
Cline who wrote that bullshit and the New York Times,
And so I understand where people are in this moment,
and all I can encourage you to do is find
(03:10):
whatever grounds you, whether that be you know, meditation, walking
your pet, gardening, you know, doing whatever grounds you and
just allows you to feel and see and taste and
smell like reality. Double down on that, because I feel
(03:32):
that over the next couple of months we are going
to be kind of just embedded deeply inside of this
tornado of misinformation of disinformation, and you're not alone in
your disorientation of where things are. So ground yourself. Really
(03:52):
engage in community, in your own community, and stay sane,
my friends, because we are in this for the long haul.
Coming up next, my conversation with our friend, our in
house doctor, doctor Jonathan Metzel. Folks, you know that whenever
we have the opportunity to speak with our in house doctor,
(04:15):
doctor Jonathan Metzel, we are always always thrilled and grateful. Jonathan,
you are back in Tennessee, and Tennessee, I sent you
a video. I will tell folks that I sent Jonathan
a video because I am vacillating, Jonathan as time gets
closer to the final day to vote, between feeling good
(04:36):
and feeling really anxious, feeling excited and feeling really depressed.
And then I watched this video of this white woman
in Davidson, I think Davidson County in Tennessee, where you are,
and she had just finished early voting. She'd gotten into
her car and she'd burst into tears because in her
(04:57):
twenty years of living in Tennessee and voting, is never
experienced the type of lines and packed parking lot and
she was just beside herself. I wanted to get your
reactions to the video and then your own reactions to
having voted already in Tennessee and just give us like
(05:17):
a bit of the experience that you have.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Well, it's funny, I actually haven't voted yet, because.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Oh you haven't voted yet. Okay.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
I went and the line was like around the block
nine times, So actually had to get back to my
day job. Like that woman in the video. Early voting
is usually like ten minutes, and I got there and
I'm just like, oh my god, So I'm going to
go back again today. So it's interesting, right, we're in
(05:44):
a really we're in such an information vacuum right now,
Like it's so unprecedented. All the modeling we have doesn't
account for anything that's happening now, Like are people being
honest with the polls or are they hiding from the polls?
What will be the effect of Kamala Harris engaging Liz
Cheney And how are people going to respond to that?
(06:05):
Well this push Elon Musk is saying he will reproduce
with your wife if you vote, or something like that,
and so it's just like all these weird things and
all of it is so it's all so unprecedented, and
so I understand that everybody's then focusing on their own
their own world. Right in Tennessee, I've never seen more
(06:26):
people vote than or talk about it or engaged. I've
been having a lot of the candidates come to my
class and they're saying the same thing. So I guess
the question is what I liked about that video? As
the woman said, we've been jerrymandered out of existence. That's
what I feel like. People really felt like their vote
didn't matter, and now people feel like their vote matters,
and so it's kind of like trying to fight back
(06:46):
against jerrymandering.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Well, wait, hold on, because I don't want you. I actually,
I'm actually I'm going to shrink you for a moment
because I actually don't want you to dive into posing
a question. I want to ask you, like, in all seriousness,
how does it feel? How has it felt? And how
have the candidates that have visited your classes and they're
all remarking in the same way that they've never seen
(07:09):
lines in this manner that they've never seen people or
heard people in conversation about voting. How does that actually feel?
Regardless of where we think that these people are voting
or who they're voting for, what does the actual experience
feel like?
Speaker 2 (07:25):
I'd sell you what it has felt like for the
past decade here. Is that member in the cartoons when
somebody would get run over by the steamroller and then
they're just like a flattened pancake on the road. That's
what it's felt like to be a Democrat here for
the past ten years. It's just there's something about germandering,
the kind of gearmandering that we see in Tennessee. It
(07:45):
does two things. First, it makes it you feel like
your vote doesn't matter, because everything is so incredibly predetermined
that you know you're voting out of a civic duty,
but your vote doesn't count in a way. And that's
just not not just for presidential elections, I mean, that's
for everything. But the other thing about jerymandering is that
it pushes the party in power. There's no checks and
(08:07):
balances on the party in power, so it pushes them
into what we see now, which is just pornographically obscene
right wing extremist and this is probably be true whoever
is in power, but it's like when there's no natural competitor,
the rush is to go more extreme. And so in
Tennessee we've had these terrible mess shootings, and then the
(08:29):
party in power lets eighteen year olds walk down main
Street with AR fifteen's without any training or regulation or
anything like that. So I guess in a way, what
we're seeing is this a moment of the natural limits
of germandering, which is that the extreme nature then pushes
back toward the center, which is what's nice about it's
happening here in Tennessee. But I also want to just
(08:51):
be clear, we've had the renaissance of a whole new
kind of political engagement here in Tennessee, which I never
thought i'd see was Covenant Moms after the Covenant School
shooting here, who were Centrists or Republicans who were just
sick of the stance on guns. But that's kind of
broadened out to voting rights. Obviously, abortion is a huge, huge,
(09:14):
huge issue here, and so I'm curious to see. I mean,
you hear me being a little hesitant, and it's just
because I've gotten my hopes up before, but this, somehow,
this feels different. There is something, there's something happening here
that I would pay attention to. Trump's going to win
the presidential race. But everything else is just you know,
(09:36):
we have got Gloria Johnson here, We've got the just Times.
We're doing a huge event here about guns in next week.
There's real activity here that is part about people being
sick of the extreme nature of some of this. Part
of it is that we've had a lot of people
move here from other parts of the country who are
not as extreme. So I would keep your eye on
(09:57):
Tennessee right now.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
I mean, this is one of the reasons why I'm
asking one. I think that your kind of description of
gerrymandering is exactly the point. It is to squeeze out
any hopefulness and any belief that you have any power, right,
And that's like what has happened in Tennessee, what's happened
in Texas is a microcosm of what Republicans want to
do nationally. Your vote doesn't count. You squeeze out the hopefulness,
(10:25):
and then people feel just depressed. The voting becomes depressed,
and they're able to literally get away with murder. And
so I think that what is happening, what we're seeing
in Tennessee, what we saw with the early voting as
the day started in North Carolina, in Georgia last week,
you're seeing these historic numbers that are superseding twenty twenty
(10:49):
by doubling the numbers from twenty twenty. And look, people's
hopes get up and they get down. That's just the
nature of being human. But I think that denying ourselves
in this moment an opportunity to feel hopeful and allow
that hopeful energy to spurn us forward. Like I feel
like that also is really necessary and important, right, Like
(11:12):
I don't want people to be like, well, I've had
my hopes let down before. Yeah, you're human, it's going
to happen. But I think that it's really encouraging to
look at and for you, you know, from your first
hand experience, to be like, yeah, early voting here usually
in and out because nobody's doing it, and now you're
having to go back a second day to vote. I
(11:32):
think that that means something. What do you think I mean, Jonathan,
you mentioned that abortion is very big there, but we
know because of the Covenant shooting and because of what
the legislature did by trying to quiet these mothers, trying
to quiet any type of action, trying to censure and
kick out the two Justins from the state House who
(11:52):
were duly elected and then forced to do a special
election and then censured again. I think that the egregious
action that has been taken against the Tennessee three, and
particularly the two young black men, the Justins, how do
you think that that is playing out in this early
voting that you're seeing, Like, how do you think that
(12:12):
the civic engagement? Do you think it is at all
connected with what folks have experienced by watching what Republicans
have tried to do with this group.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
It's not just the bad treatment they got, it's actually
what they tapped into and mobilized. I mean, there was
a grounds well, there's a strong progressive streak here. There
are many many young people who have felt left out,
and I think what they were tapping into before they
were censured, before all that stuff, was they mobilized in
a way that we thought was not possible. There was
(12:45):
just such a feeling of helplessness here, honestly, that these
shootings were going to keep happening, that this stuff was
going to keep happening, and so they kind of modeled
a kind of fighting back in a way that I
think was very timely and very empowering. And part of
the story with Tennessee in a lot of other places
is there's also a profound old guard. I mean, I
(13:06):
just drove to work here and I just rushed in
to speak for our conversation because I was in traffic
for an hour. But I could have ridden my bike.
It would have taken me twenty minutes. We have a
transit bill on the docket here, but there's tremendous resistance
from kind of people who are like, I don't want
my tax dollars doing that. There are a zillion Trump
signs here and a zillion Harris signs here, and so
(13:29):
it'll be interesting to see how this plays out. But
it does feel like something has been tapped into here
that is hopefully something that's going to spread and go national.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
I mean, I hope that it does as well. And
you know, I get the tempered like emotions that folks
are having right now with two weeks to go, I
know that I am vacillating with a lot of emotion.
Like I said at the top, I think that it's
all like hitting me that like either this is the
beginning of something of a new era of democracy or
(14:02):
it's the end of democracy, like there is no in between.
And I think that the stakes and now that the
time has arrived where people are already voting, that it's
starting to like hit me that in a couple of
weeks this country could be profoundly changed.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
No, And in a way that's why, I mean, we're
all so I've been doing four different stops on my
lecture tour a week in addition to my day job
and working with campaigns and stuff like that, and so
it does feel like these are, on one hand, the
two most important weeks. You know, these are the two
most important weeks. So you can't. You can't let down now,
(14:43):
but it does feel like everything's at stake, and you know,
just watching I'll be in Pennsylvania tomorrow. I'm going tonight
to Pennsylvania, and so I'm really curious to see what
the mood of all of this is. It's just I
don't know. There's again so many variables and if you
could ever design in a system to keep people engaged,
(15:03):
like def gone one, this is kind of where we're at.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Yeah, I think that this is right, and I think
that it's fair to say that these two weeks are
the most important because it is when I mean, I'll
be voting in New York on Friday, when early voting starts.
It will be actually the first time that I'm early voting.
I usually have been very old school about the process
and have stayed, you know, to election day. But I
(15:30):
am not going to be able to do that because
I will be working and I don't want to let me.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Ask you because in a way, what's also interesting about
this election, there is some kind of like it's like
the revenge of the forgotten Gerrymander voter or something like that.
So you do kind of see a flip side in
New York of what's happening in Tennessee. Obviously not exactly,
but in New York, a lot of Republicans felt like
(15:55):
their vote was didn't matter because it was such a
blue state. But it feels like in New York, and
this is a question, they've found their hook, which is
immigration and crime to get people who felt like their
vote didn't matter. We're kind of right wing people from
Staten Island or Long Island or something like that, and
so control of the Congress could go through New York,
(16:18):
and so New York in a way, you're seeing the
almost a mirror image of what's happening here in Tennessee,
but the opposite where people there's an issue that has
gotten people to kind of fight or take it back
or something like that. In a way, we're seeing like
the reverberations maybe of germandering or I don't even know
how to put it, but it does seem interesting that
there are these two processes playing out.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
I mean, the fact is, and it doesn't matter because
facts don't matter in this time and age, is that
New York has had the lowest crime rate that it
has had in decades. So for people it is the
fear mongering, which is how we ended up with a
crooked ass mayor in Mayor Adams, former cop who is
a grifter and a cheat and a liar to come
into power by saying that crime crime, crime in New
(17:01):
York is skyrocketed, and none of that has been true,
None of it is true. And by giving police more
power here, which is what he's done, and increased their
budgets which were already ballooned to disgusting places, there have
been more shootings by police in New York City. So
I feel like, while sure, where I am from out
(17:22):
eastdal Long Island is definitely very red, but I remind
people constantly that that was not the experience for more
than half of my life. Is that where I grew
up had always been a democratic stronghold for like middle class,
lower middle class, working class people, the teachers, the firefighters,
(17:45):
the police officers, the you know, the small business owners.
Like that is the area that I grew up in,
and it has become republican. So to me, it's like
anything that was democratic that's become republican can make a
return again with the right kind of candidate, the right voice,
and the right infrastructure.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
But also like you know, we're seeing a moment now
where the whole game of politics is finding people who
will tribalize on your behalf and who will vote unflinchingly
for filling the blank as a wedge issue, the issue
itself almost as secondary because nobody's really I mean, actually,
(18:24):
what I like about THEIRS campaign is like they're actually
going to fix the problems if they win, or address them.
But for the most part of the game of politics
is getting people to vote for your thing as a
wedge issue. I mean, I see it with guns, like
nobody's taken anybody's gun, but this fear that people will
vote because Libs are going to come take their guns.
It just mobilizes base and it puts you in a tribe.
(18:46):
And we've seen that I think in New York. I mean,
I just I'll be really interesting to see what happens
in New York with these myths and all these kind
of things. But there's a lot of stake in your state.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Also, there's going to be a lot at I think
that if there's anything that we can learn from the
last nine years of politics is that there isn't good
We're never going to go back to a time when
elections we can say that elections don't matter, that like
we can just kind of rest on our laurels and
(19:15):
the machine is going to run itself. I think that
people are finally really conscious and waking up to the
fact that, like, I need to have a voice and
participate in my elections state, local, and federal, because if
I don't, if I look away, then I have book
bannings that are happening at the school level. I have
cities that are allowing, like you said, eighteen year olds
(19:37):
to walk around with ar fifteens. I have all of
these things that I have judges that are being put
in place that are magified, right, Like, I think that
people are recognizing, oh, we can't just kind of vote
every four years and hope for the best.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
And also, let me add, I mean, how many people
do you know in New York that get their healthcare
from the Affordable Care Act?
Speaker 1 (19:58):
It's a lot myself.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Yeah, And so if Trump wins, they're going to destroy
the Affordable Care Act. They have messaging people, but I mean,
if I was in New York, I'd be out there
in Staten Island telling people they are going to lose
their healthcare. I mean, there are things that will happen
that it's not like red state blue state separation, Like
you know, most Blue states depend on the Affordable Care Act.
(20:20):
If Trump sinks that, it will be a massive guided
missile directed at the heart of blue states. And so
this is what drives me crazy about even with respect
all this, like people in Michigan are going to lose
their healthcare. People are going to lose their healthcare. So
I don't know, it's I don't know, Let's get through
the next two weeks and then we'll go on a
(20:41):
beach somewhere sip a cocktail or something.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Probably not because I feel and I'll you know, i'll
give you the last word. But my it's like, let's
get through the next two weeks. But then depending on
what happens in the next two and a half weeks,
the time between then and inauguration, I'm very concerned about.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
You know, I think I told you before, like I
think of the guy in the third year of the
One Hundred Years War who said, I can't believe this
thing is lasted three years already. You know, we're in
the beginning of something. We don't know how long. It's.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
All right, here's my last question for you. Okay, what
are you going to be for Halloween?
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Unfortunately I was going to be dressing up with my
god daughter, but now I am summoned to DC for.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Work, so oh okay.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
I will not be there. So yeah, what are you
going to be?
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Anybody can steal this out in our listening audience. I'm
going to be slutty Moodang now I'm just kidding. I
don't know. I haven't thought about it yet.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Oh God. All right, Well, when we come back next week,
you can tell us what the decision is. Okay, thank you,
my friends, and good luck on your continued lecture tour
and series. Talk to those people in those red states.
Let them know what they're gonna lose.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Yeah, we appreciate you hanging everybody.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
That is it for me today, dear friends on Woke
A app as always power to the people and to all
the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.
Good morning, Peeves, and welcome to ok F Daily with
me your girl, Danielle Moody recording from the Home Bunker, Folks.
In today's conversation with our dear friend, doctor Jonathan Metzel,
we talk about where we think the energy is right
now with less than two weeks to go until the election,
(00:32):
and Jonathan gives his own anecdotes on his experience thus
far trying to vote in Tennessee, and we talk about
a bit of good news that early voting in battleground states.
Tennessee is not a battleground, but early voting in battleground
states are breaking records, and usually that bodes as a
(00:56):
really good sign for Democrats. After Jonathan and I record,
I went back and was looking at headlines that would
surface later in the day, and it said Republicans are
voting in historic numbers and Republicans are early voting, and
it's you know, breaking records and all of these things.
And so I realize we don't know who to believe
(01:19):
and what to believe anymore. And that's kind of the
point of MAGA and the point of Donald Trump over
the last nine years of terrorism in this country is
that we can no longer rely on polls, we can
no longer rely on the news, we can no longer
rely on institution. We don't know which way is up
(01:42):
and which way is down, and nothing that used to
make sense makes sense anymore. And a part of me
feels like we are living inside of black mirror, living
inside of Orwell's nineteen eighty four, that it's already here,
and I don't know, oh, to be honest, how we
(02:03):
backpedal out of this. Obviously, I think that the election
of Kamala Harris would be a really major step in
the right direction, But I'm on the fence of if
that happens or not. Folks like, no one knows. None
of us know, and we won't know, probably for a
couple of days following the election. And that's what's so disheartening,
(02:25):
I think, is that how could you have all of
this information about Donald Trump and still think to yourself
that he should lead this country is obscene and absurd.
But on the other hand, like I just said, so
many of us, millions of us, feel absolutely disoriented and
detached from what we've known to be normal and true,
(02:49):
and that has been done on purpose, so that you
can believe that a figure like Donald Trump, maybe he
isn't as bad as people think he is. Fucking Ezra
Cline who wrote that bullshit and the New York Times,
And so I understand where people are in this moment,
and all I can encourage you to do is find
(03:10):
whatever grounds you, whether that be you know, meditation, walking
your pet, gardening, you know, doing whatever grounds you and
just allows you to feel and see and taste and
smell like reality. Double down on that, because I feel
(03:32):
that over the next couple of months we are going
to be kind of just embedded deeply inside of this
tornado of misinformation of disinformation, and you're not alone in
your disorientation of where things are. So ground yourself. Really
(03:52):
engage in community, in your own community, and stay sane,
my friends, because we are in this for the long haul.
Coming up next, my conversation with our friend, our in
house doctor, doctor Jonathan Metzel. Folks, you know that whenever
we have the opportunity to speak with our in house doctor,
(04:15):
doctor Jonathan Metzel, we are always always thrilled and grateful. Jonathan,
you are back in Tennessee, and Tennessee, I sent you
a video. I will tell folks that I sent Jonathan
a video because I am vacillating, Jonathan as time gets
closer to the final day to vote, between feeling good
(04:36):
and feeling really anxious, feeling excited and feeling really depressed.
And then I watched this video of this white woman
in Davidson, I think Davidson County in Tennessee, where you are,
and she had just finished early voting. She'd gotten into
her car and she'd burst into tears because in her
(04:57):
twenty years of living in Tennessee and voting, is never
experienced the type of lines and packed parking lot and
she was just beside herself. I wanted to get your
reactions to the video and then your own reactions to
having voted already in Tennessee and just give us like
(05:17):
a bit of the experience that you have.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Well, it's funny, I actually haven't voted yet, because.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Oh you haven't voted yet. Okay.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
I went and the line was like around the block
nine times, So actually had to get back to my
day job. Like that woman in the video. Early voting
is usually like ten minutes, and I got there and
I'm just like, oh my god, So I'm going to
go back again today. So it's interesting, right, we're in
(05:44):
a really we're in such an information vacuum right now,
Like it's so unprecedented. All the modeling we have doesn't
account for anything that's happening now, Like are people being
honest with the polls or are they hiding from the polls?
What will be the effect of Kamala Harris engaging Liz
Cheney And how are people going to respond to that?
(06:05):
Well this push Elon Musk is saying he will reproduce
with your wife if you vote, or something like that,
and so it's just like all these weird things and
all of it is so it's all so unprecedented, and
so I understand that everybody's then focusing on their own
their own world. Right in Tennessee, I've never seen more
(06:26):
people vote than or talk about it or engaged. I've
been having a lot of the candidates come to my
class and they're saying the same thing. So I guess
the question is what I liked about that video? As
the woman said, we've been jerrymandered out of existence. That's
what I feel like. People really felt like their vote
didn't matter, and now people feel like their vote matters,
and so it's kind of like trying to fight back
(06:46):
against jerrymandering.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Well, wait, hold on, because I don't want you. I actually,
I'm actually I'm going to shrink you for a moment
because I actually don't want you to dive into posing
a question. I want to ask you, like, in all seriousness,
how does it feel? How has it felt? And how
have the candidates that have visited your classes and they're
all remarking in the same way that they've never seen
(07:09):
lines in this manner that they've never seen people or
heard people in conversation about voting. How does that actually feel?
Regardless of where we think that these people are voting
or who they're voting for, what does the actual experience
feel like?
Speaker 2 (07:25):
I'd sell you what it has felt like for the
past decade here. Is that member in the cartoons when
somebody would get run over by the steamroller and then
they're just like a flattened pancake on the road. That's
what it's felt like to be a Democrat here for
the past ten years. It's just there's something about germandering,
the kind of gearmandering that we see in Tennessee. It
(07:45):
does two things. First, it makes it you feel like
your vote doesn't matter, because everything is so incredibly predetermined
that you know you're voting out of a civic duty,
but your vote doesn't count in a way. And that's
just not not just for presidential elections, I mean, that's
for everything. But the other thing about jerymandering is that
it pushes the party in power. There's no checks and
(08:07):
balances on the party in power, so it pushes them
into what we see now, which is just pornographically obscene
right wing extremist and this is probably be true whoever
is in power, but it's like when there's no natural competitor,
the rush is to go more extreme. And so in
Tennessee we've had these terrible mess shootings, and then the
(08:29):
party in power lets eighteen year olds walk down main
Street with AR fifteen's without any training or regulation or
anything like that. So I guess in a way, what
we're seeing is this a moment of the natural limits
of germandering, which is that the extreme nature then pushes
back toward the center, which is what's nice about it's
happening here in Tennessee. But I also want to just
(08:51):
be clear, we've had the renaissance of a whole new
kind of political engagement here in Tennessee, which I never
thought i'd see was Covenant Moms after the Covenant School
shooting here, who were Centrists or Republicans who were just
sick of the stance on guns. But that's kind of
broadened out to voting rights. Obviously, abortion is a huge, huge,
(09:14):
huge issue here, and so I'm curious to see. I mean,
you hear me being a little hesitant, and it's just
because I've gotten my hopes up before, but this, somehow,
this feels different. There is something, there's something happening here
that I would pay attention to. Trump's going to win
the presidential race. But everything else is just you know,
(09:36):
we have got Gloria Johnson here, We've got the just Times.
We're doing a huge event here about guns in next week.
There's real activity here that is part about people being
sick of the extreme nature of some of this. Part
of it is that we've had a lot of people
move here from other parts of the country who are
not as extreme. So I would keep your eye on
(09:57):
Tennessee right now.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
I mean, this is one of the reasons why I'm
asking one. I think that your kind of description of
gerrymandering is exactly the point. It is to squeeze out
any hopefulness and any belief that you have any power, right,
And that's like what has happened in Tennessee, what's happened
in Texas is a microcosm of what Republicans want to
do nationally. Your vote doesn't count. You squeeze out the hopefulness,
(10:25):
and then people feel just depressed. The voting becomes depressed,
and they're able to literally get away with murder. And
so I think that what is happening, what we're seeing
in Tennessee, what we saw with the early voting as
the day started in North Carolina, in Georgia last week,
you're seeing these historic numbers that are superseding twenty twenty
(10:49):
by doubling the numbers from twenty twenty. And look, people's
hopes get up and they get down. That's just the
nature of being human. But I think that denying ourselves
in this moment an opportunity to feel hopeful and allow
that hopeful energy to spurn us forward. Like I feel
like that also is really necessary and important, right, Like
(11:12):
I don't want people to be like, well, I've had
my hopes let down before. Yeah, you're human, it's going
to happen. But I think that it's really encouraging to
look at and for you, you know, from your first
hand experience, to be like, yeah, early voting here usually
in and out because nobody's doing it, and now you're
having to go back a second day to vote. I
(11:32):
think that that means something. What do you think I mean, Jonathan,
you mentioned that abortion is very big there, but we
know because of the Covenant shooting and because of what
the legislature did by trying to quiet these mothers, trying
to quiet any type of action, trying to censure and
kick out the two Justins from the state House who
(11:52):
were duly elected and then forced to do a special
election and then censured again. I think that the egregious
action that has been taken against the Tennessee three, and
particularly the two young black men, the Justins, how do
you think that that is playing out in this early
voting that you're seeing, Like, how do you think that
(12:12):
the civic engagement? Do you think it is at all
connected with what folks have experienced by watching what Republicans
have tried to do with this group.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
It's not just the bad treatment they got, it's actually
what they tapped into and mobilized. I mean, there was
a grounds well, there's a strong progressive streak here. There
are many many young people who have felt left out,
and I think what they were tapping into before they
were censured, before all that stuff, was they mobilized in
a way that we thought was not possible. There was
(12:45):
just such a feeling of helplessness here, honestly, that these
shootings were going to keep happening, that this stuff was
going to keep happening, and so they kind of modeled
a kind of fighting back in a way that I
think was very timely and very empowering. And part of
the story with Tennessee in a lot of other places
is there's also a profound old guard. I mean, I
(13:06):
just drove to work here and I just rushed in
to speak for our conversation because I was in traffic
for an hour. But I could have ridden my bike.
It would have taken me twenty minutes. We have a
transit bill on the docket here, but there's tremendous resistance
from kind of people who are like, I don't want
my tax dollars doing that. There are a zillion Trump
signs here and a zillion Harris signs here, and so
(13:29):
it'll be interesting to see how this plays out. But
it does feel like something has been tapped into here
that is hopefully something that's going to spread and go national.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
I mean, I hope that it does as well. And
you know, I get the tempered like emotions that folks
are having right now with two weeks to go, I
know that I am vacillating with a lot of emotion.
Like I said at the top, I think that it's
all like hitting me that like either this is the
beginning of something of a new era of democracy or
(14:02):
it's the end of democracy, like there is no in between.
And I think that the stakes and now that the
time has arrived where people are already voting, that it's
starting to like hit me that in a couple of
weeks this country could be profoundly changed.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
No, And in a way that's why, I mean, we're
all so I've been doing four different stops on my
lecture tour a week in addition to my day job
and working with campaigns and stuff like that, and so
it does feel like these are, on one hand, the
two most important weeks. You know, these are the two
most important weeks. So you can't. You can't let down now,
(14:43):
but it does feel like everything's at stake, and you know,
just watching I'll be in Pennsylvania tomorrow. I'm going tonight
to Pennsylvania, and so I'm really curious to see what
the mood of all of this is. It's just I
don't know. There's again so many variables and if you
could ever design in a system to keep people engaged,
(15:03):
like def gone one, this is kind of where we're at.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Yeah, I think that this is right, and I think
that it's fair to say that these two weeks are
the most important because it is when I mean, I'll
be voting in New York on Friday, when early voting starts.
It will be actually the first time that I'm early voting.
I usually have been very old school about the process
and have stayed, you know, to election day. But I
(15:30):
am not going to be able to do that because
I will be working and I don't want to let me.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Ask you because in a way, what's also interesting about
this election, there is some kind of like it's like
the revenge of the forgotten Gerrymander voter or something like that.
So you do kind of see a flip side in
New York of what's happening in Tennessee. Obviously not exactly,
but in New York, a lot of Republicans felt like
(15:55):
their vote was didn't matter because it was such a
blue state. But it feels like in New York, and
this is a question, they've found their hook, which is
immigration and crime to get people who felt like their
vote didn't matter. We're kind of right wing people from
Staten Island or Long Island or something like that, and
so control of the Congress could go through New York,
(16:18):
and so New York in a way, you're seeing the
almost a mirror image of what's happening here in Tennessee,
but the opposite where people there's an issue that has
gotten people to kind of fight or take it back
or something like that. In a way, we're seeing like
the reverberations maybe of germandering or I don't even know
how to put it, but it does seem interesting that
there are these two processes playing out.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
I mean, the fact is, and it doesn't matter because
facts don't matter in this time and age, is that
New York has had the lowest crime rate that it
has had in decades. So for people it is the
fear mongering, which is how we ended up with a
crooked ass mayor in Mayor Adams, former cop who is
a grifter and a cheat and a liar to come
into power by saying that crime crime, crime in New
(17:01):
York is skyrocketed, and none of that has been true,
None of it is true. And by giving police more
power here, which is what he's done, and increased their
budgets which were already ballooned to disgusting places, there have
been more shootings by police in New York City. So
I feel like, while sure, where I am from out
(17:22):
eastdal Long Island is definitely very red, but I remind
people constantly that that was not the experience for more
than half of my life. Is that where I grew
up had always been a democratic stronghold for like middle class,
lower middle class, working class people, the teachers, the firefighters,
(17:45):
the police officers, the you know, the small business owners.
Like that is the area that I grew up in,
and it has become republican. So to me, it's like
anything that was democratic that's become republican can make a
return again with the right kind of candidate, the right voice,
and the right infrastructure.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
But also like you know, we're seeing a moment now
where the whole game of politics is finding people who
will tribalize on your behalf and who will vote unflinchingly
for filling the blank as a wedge issue, the issue
itself almost as secondary because nobody's really I mean, actually,
(18:24):
what I like about THEIRS campaign is like they're actually
going to fix the problems if they win, or address them.
But for the most part of the game of politics
is getting people to vote for your thing as a
wedge issue. I mean, I see it with guns, like
nobody's taken anybody's gun, but this fear that people will
vote because Libs are going to come take their guns.
It just mobilizes base and it puts you in a tribe.
(18:46):
And we've seen that I think in New York. I mean,
I just I'll be really interesting to see what happens
in New York with these myths and all these kind
of things. But there's a lot of stake in your state.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Also, there's going to be a lot at I think
that if there's anything that we can learn from the
last nine years of politics is that there isn't good
We're never going to go back to a time when
elections we can say that elections don't matter, that like
we can just kind of rest on our laurels and
(19:15):
the machine is going to run itself. I think that
people are finally really conscious and waking up to the
fact that, like, I need to have a voice and
participate in my elections state, local, and federal, because if
I don't, if I look away, then I have book
bannings that are happening at the school level. I have
cities that are allowing, like you said, eighteen year olds
(19:37):
to walk around with ar fifteens. I have all of
these things that I have judges that are being put
in place that are magified, right, Like, I think that
people are recognizing, oh, we can't just kind of vote
every four years and hope for the best.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
And also, let me add, I mean, how many people
do you know in New York that get their healthcare
from the Affordable Care Act?
Speaker 1 (19:58):
It's a lot myself.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Yeah, And so if Trump wins, they're going to destroy
the Affordable Care Act. They have messaging people, but I mean,
if I was in New York, I'd be out there
in Staten Island telling people they are going to lose
their healthcare. I mean, there are things that will happen
that it's not like red state blue state separation, Like
you know, most Blue states depend on the Affordable Care Act.
(20:20):
If Trump sinks that, it will be a massive guided
missile directed at the heart of blue states. And so
this is what drives me crazy about even with respect
all this, like people in Michigan are going to lose
their healthcare. People are going to lose their healthcare. So
I don't know, it's I don't know, Let's get through
the next two weeks and then we'll go on a
(20:41):
beach somewhere sip a cocktail or something.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Probably not because I feel and I'll you know, i'll
give you the last word. But my it's like, let's
get through the next two weeks. But then depending on
what happens in the next two and a half weeks,
the time between then and inauguration, I'm very concerned about.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
You know, I think I told you before, like I
think of the guy in the third year of the
One Hundred Years War who said, I can't believe this
thing is lasted three years already. You know, we're in
the beginning of something. We don't know how long. It's.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
All right, here's my last question for you. Okay, what
are you going to be for Halloween?
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Unfortunately I was going to be dressing up with my
god daughter, but now I am summoned to DC for.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Work, so oh okay.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
I will not be there. So yeah, what are you
going to be?
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Anybody can steal this out in our listening audience. I'm
going to be slutty Moodang now I'm just kidding. I
don't know. I haven't thought about it yet.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Oh God. All right, Well, when we come back next week,
you can tell us what the decision is. Okay, thank you,
my friends, and good luck on your continued lecture tour
and series. Talk to those people in those red states.
Let them know what they're gonna lose.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Yeah, we appreciate you hanging everybody.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
That is it for me today, dear friends on Woke
A app as always power to the people and to all
the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.
Host
Danielle Moodie
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