The “I’m Sorry If …” Edition
S1: Slate plus members, would you please tell us what you think about Slate Plus and Slate? We have a short survey for you. They’ll only take a few minutes and you can find it at Slate dot com slash survey. Thank you. Now on with the show.
S2: Hello and welcome to the Slate political gabfest for March 4th. Twenty twenty the I’m sorry, Ed..
S1: I am David Plotz City Cast. I am in Washington, D.C.. Joining me from New Haven, Connecticut is Emily Bazelon at the New York Times Magazine and Yale University Law School. Hello, Emily. Hey, David. And from not Manhattan, but somewhere somewhere else. John Dickerson of CBS’s 60 Minutes. Hello, John.
S3: Good morning. Hello to you both.
S1: You guys are in the same state, aren’t you? You’re both in Connecticut. That’s so exciting.
S3: Oh, I thought you meant denial. No. It’s just it’s not it’s not just a river in Egypt. Yeah. Yeah, we’re we’re it’s true. We’re in the same state.
S1: We’re getting ever closer on today’s gabfest AAFP. The American rescue plan passed the House on party lines at one point nine dollars billion. Rescue package will pass the Senate. And is AAFP the right relief bill then?
S4: Is it the right thing to call it ARPC?
S1: It’s my favorite. It’s my favorite of those because what do you call them? Acronymic all bills. It’s nice. It’s like he’s Biden, the dog guy. He likes AAFP urp. Then will Andrew Cuomo survive the sexual harassment scandal that is engulfing him? And then we will talk about the assault on voting in state capitols across the country as Republican state legislatures try to restrict voting in many, many different ways. Plus, we will not talk about former Justice Stephen Breyer, his dramatic speech denouncing the partisanship of conservative justices on the Roberts court, his first since his resignation from the Supreme Court because he has unfathomably not yet resigned and therefore is not giving such a speech. Plus, we will have cocktail chatter. The American rescue plan, the aforementioned TARP, the Democratic bill to provide one point nine trillion dollars and covid relief and other things has gone to the Senate after a party line. Passage in the House are largely party line passage in the House. The bill would do a lot of things. It would send checks to many American families for fourteen hundred dollars. It would extend unemployment aid through the summer. It would provide hundreds of billions of dollars for schools and covid testing and state governments. It would give a expanded child care child tax credit. It will probably pass because Democrats really have one chance to pass a big bill like this. And Joe Biden really wants it passed and the country needs something like it, but it won’t pass exactly as many Democrats would like. So, John, what are the pieces of this bill which seem safe and which do not seem safe right now?
S3: Well, versions that the we should say it won’t pass the way many Democrats would like because there was never a chance in hell it ever would. And a 50 50 Senate where you have to get every single Democrat, there was no way that a bill that could pass the House Democratic conference could be something that all 50 Democratic senators would sign up for. The two pieces that have fallen out of the bill that from its house construction are one is the 15 dollar minimum wage, which is a result of a sort of ruling by the Senate parliamentarian, which made it not in order through reconciliation. And then the second is a reduction in the number of families and individuals eligible for the fourteen hundred dollar direct payment. Basically, the president agreed to essentially not send that direct payment to I think for individuals. The House bill was if you made over one hundred thousand dollars, you wouldn’t get it. Now, the president has agreed to capping it at 80000 and then those numbers are adjusted for whether you have kids or whether you’re a couple. But generally the ceiling for for the fourteen hundred dollar payment in the Senate is lower than in the House. And that was to keep the support of Senator Sinema and Manchin and maybe a few others in the Democratic ranks who wanted that number to be lower. Felt like the families that were in those higher income brackets didn’t need that payment. So the rest there will be a lot of fighting and there will be lots and lots of amendments that will be put forward by Senate Republicans trying to create mischief, creating tough votes for Democrats. And then there might be the interesting thing to watch is these Democratic amendments from somebody maybe like Manchin or cinema or others who will try to pass amendments and a 15 dollar minimum wage amendment, probably from Sanders or the Sanders wing of the party. And those will be interesting to watch as they come through and senators vote for them because they might destabilize that 50 vote coalition. You need for Democrats to pass it.
S1: John, isn’t it? It is true that the Senate parliamentarian has ruled this 15 dollar minimum wage provision out of compliance with whatever it is, the Byrd Rule. I mean, who the just I don’t even get me started. I’ve already riffed on my distaste for this. But it’s kind of not really true that the reason the 15 dollar minimum wage isn’t going through is because of the Byrd Rule. It’s not going through because because a bunch of Democratic senators don’t really support it and doesn’t want a 15 dollar minimum wage. And the parliamentarian’s ruling is a way to get around him having to take a vote on it.
S3: Well, it’s true and it’s not true. So what they could do is what Republicans did when the parliamentarian ruled something out of order, which is they fired the parliamentarian and you get to get yourself a new parliamentarian and and make sure the new parliamentarian sees things the way you do. The Democrats could have done that. But then to your point, David, they wouldn’t have gotten 50 votes because they would have lost Manchin in cinema at least. So they would have done something extraordinary and wouldn’t have gotten the benefit. So you’re exactly right.
S4: The the idea that the parliamentarian is is doing this at the behest of the Democrats to save Manchin and send them a vote. There’s no evidence of that. It would be contrary to what the parliamentarian’s job is. So it would be pretty shady thing to do.
S3: And there’s reasons that the minimum wage might, you know, that you can argue isn’t allowed in reconciliation. So anyway, that’s, I think where this things where things stand.
S5: I think as a policy matter, the minimum wage is a really big loss because it’s, you know, permanent change that would really help redistribute wealth. And there’s a lot of research at this point showing that the costs are minimal. You know, there’s a legitimate concern that if you pay people more, they’ll be employed less collectively, like they’ll be fewer jobs. But it seems like that is a fear that we worry about, like more than we really have to. So I am really sorry to see that go. I also think that this bill and maybe this is like the grew up in the 80s and. Like, parsimonious part of me, but I was OK with having it be more targeted, I feel like there is so much money pumping out in this bill and there’s a reason to not target the 14 hundred dollar check too narrowly because you want the bill to be popular. We have lots of evidence from the past that when you give more general benefits like Social Security and Medicare are examples that that actually helps them and helps the party that passed them. But I just feel a little bit nervous, even though I know that, you know, we’re supposed to be thinking like getting the economy pumping along as the main task here. And the debt doesn’t matter as much as we thought. And like the Fed will keep an eye on inflation and what we care about is full employment. But I was personally OK with that change. I don’t know what you guys think.
S1: Well, I think the problem with the targeting of the the relief check, the fourteen hundred dollar relief check, so narrowing it from people making up to a hundred thousand dollars, individuals making up two hundred thousand dollars only to individuals making up to 80000, it really starts to to fall off. It’s seventy five thousand is really that they’re the the the fadeout is so abrupt that it’s one of these things where if you make seventy four thousand dollars and ninety nine hundred ninety seven four thousand eight hundred eighty nine dollars, you get all of it. And then if you make eighty thousand and one dollar, you get none of it. And that’s just these policies work better when they have more tering and more more fadeout. And so so that group of people who are between 75 and 100 thousand dollars are now, you know, that’s a real large group of people. It’s in the millions and millions of families. And it doesn’t save that much money. It’s only saving 12 billion dollars in this bill. So that felt like, you know, as a principle. Yes. Narrowing it sort of makes sense to to target it to the people who need it most. But they’re not using the money. They’re saving for something else better. They’re just not spending it. And the other point I want to make is, are adding to what you’re just saying, Emily. It is weird to me that basically what we have gotten to is, is that the purpose of Congress now is to throw huge amounts of money at people, just to throw checks at people, whether in the form of of child tax credit or or for to drill a relief check or extended unemployment. It’s just like, let’s give people money. There is no public policy being made. No no attempt to kind of do things like the minimum wage or very little. There’s attempts, but they don’t go anywhere because Congress is incapable of passing bills around policy because of the partisanship that’s consumed it, and in particular because Republicans just won’t let Democrats do anything like that. And so a policy is just made by executive action. And then the job of Congress is to print money. And that debt is certainly it’s a way to run a government. It is. It is not I think the way anyone thinks is optimal or the way the founders intended, let’s put it that way.
S5: And meanwhile, there’s this big Voting Rights Act that’s going to pass the House but is going to probably struggle in the Senate unless they change the filibuster rule. But we don’t want to have to rant about that. I just want to say, David, your points about the targeting were convincing to me.
S3: Well, this is a little bit of a special case, though, David, although you’re right. But I mean, you know, I mean, responding to the pandemic has it has a is slightly different than normal legislation that’s passing. But but it isn’t to defend the way that it’s being put together or the way it’s being the attempts to undermine it. Senator Ron Johnson has said he’s going to have them read the entire bill out loud, which means some poor set of clerks are going to have to read the bill to in an attempt to just kind of slow it down. This isn’t an age old trick, but it’s kind of stupid. And I mean, it’s always been stupid. It was stupid. When the when they read the League of Nations legislation out loud, the Ron Johnson even have to be on the floor for that entire time.
S1: I don’t think if you’re demanding it, that you’d be the one you’d have to read it out loud or something.
S3: Yeah.
S5: You would think go eat your lunch and your dinner and your breakfast the next morning.
S3: Yeah, because it’s going to take 10 or 12 hours to the things that are part of this that interest me is one. The deadline here is mid-March when expanded unemployment benefits expire. And so what that may mean, I believe, is that so the Senate bill is now different than the House bill. There is not. You know, the process of reconciling the two would take longer than mid-March, which means expanded unemployment benefits would expire. So I believe the case will be the basically the House is going to have to vote on whatever passes the Senate. And obviously, you could imagine a bill, a Senate bill that passes that is so objectionable to liberals in the House that they don’t vote for it. I don’t know that that’s a real possibility, but it’s going to be a source of of drama. And the other one other point is that the Republicans are barking about the state and local, the 360 sixty billion going to state and local governments and arguing basically the states don’t need that either, arguing they don’t need the money or they don’t need that much money. One thing. It’s been interesting, but hard to tease apart is actually the states did not take some states did not take as big a hit as they had expected. Basically, states that relied on tourism took a big hit, states that relied on sales tax and had enough residents who were making money on on in the market did well. Some stayed flat even relative to twenty nineteen. But what is incredibly maddening about those figures, one is, is they’re still about a three hundred billion dollar shortfall through twenty twenty two. So that’s still a, you know, a lot of money that states in the aggregate need.
S4: And secondly, all the stories I read about this didn’t talk about the increased spending as a result of managing covid-19. And so it was incredibly frustrating to hear that, hey, the revenue side wasn’t as bad as we thought, but that’s only half the picture in terms of why states need to have money.
S5: I’m so glad you pointed that out. And I see the unevenness of the way that states took a hit for the pandemic. And I just really don’t care. I think state and local governments being solvent is really important and have been worrying a lot in my own state, which has struggled with some of these issues for a long time. And I feel like, frankly, just having a reason to give money to state and local government because they can’t spend like the federal government can, they have to balance their budgets every year. It’s a much more constrained operation. And so I think this is a good thing for that reason.
S1: And also, I think it’s worth distinguishing state and local governments because local governments face a kind of real looming catastrophe. The local governments that have depended, as most city governments do, on the tax revenue from commercial real estate and the tax revenue from local retail and especially sort of urban downtown urban activity are about to be in a terrible state because the office work is not coming back. Those rents and the kind of taxes being paid on those commercial office building are not going to be paid at the rates they were. And that’s a huge portion of a lot of city budgets. And that’s going to be a big hit. That needs to be a big gap. That needs to be finished.
S5: We also say about the money for schools, you know, since we’ve talked a lot on this show about schools like that, should be helpful for getting them open again. And that also is really important. The ones that I actually have a question about that.
S1: So I read that I didn’t do enough reading on it to have been an educated opinion. So I have an ignorant opinion and let me share my ignorant Magner opinions looking at it. The money to improve ventilation systems, reduce class size by PPE and implement social distancing. Isn’t this like another horse at a barn situation that by the time this money gets to schools, we’re talking about September? It’s not that those things are completely unnecessary, but that we’re relying really on massive vaccination and and a stop of sort of spread through the population. We’re not relying as much. These other things are not as important, but the idea of spending hundreds of billions of dollars on that, as opposed to, say, raising teachers salaries or whatever it is, is slightly discordant to me. Why am I wrong? Not wrong.
S5: I think you might not be wrong, I will say I did just think to myself that improving ventilation systems could be good in the long run for kids with asthma. For babies in my city, they been cleaning the filters in the schools and these nice new buildings. And that was a minor scandal last week. So I sort of thought, ah, but yeah, I did wonder about the horse out of the barn problem. I guess I was hoping that they have some flexibility. I mean, reducing class size can be a good thing across the board as well. But yes, increasing teacher salaries, salaries for school staff I think would be a really good use of some of that money personally.
S4: Yeah, I think they do have a little flexibility.
S3: But, you know, to your previous point, David, there’s a school component to it as well, which is that you were talking about the outyear costs to towns that are going to basically have a different economy after covid-19 than the one they had before. School districts have to deal with the gap, you know, the last year, essentially. So, you know, some are trying to have a robust summer school programs to try to help with what kids lost during the year that they were doing school. Virtually, there are a lot of costs that that will be associated or could be associated with trying to help make up for the lost year. And those those will be costs that would be incurred or would they need money for in the in the years to come. Whereas you’re quite right, some of the, you know, buying a bunch of masks after. Well, I guess we’re going to be wearing masks for a while, but dealing with money spent as if this were a year ago or money allocated as if this were a year ago, is not going to go for the same things as it would today.
S1: Slate Plus members, our bonus segment this week is going to be what was the moment that you knew this virus, this pandemic, this disease, the situation was different, was going to upend the world? What was? Ah, the moment there’s a hashtag, the moment we’re going to talk about are the moments. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is teetering now in his third term. He has had a bumpy last 12 months. He was lionized last year for his straight talk pandemic briefings early in the pandemic. He is now beset by scandal. Turns out his administration withheld data about the death of nursing home residents to mislead covid deaths, to mislead the Trump administration, apparently, and to make themselves look better now more urgently for him. At the moment, he has been credibly accused of harassment and sexually assaulted behavior. I guess I don’t know what it is when you like an unwilling kiss.
S5: Is that what does that count is technically the word assault means touching someone who doesn’t want to be touched while assault and battery.
S4: I thought assault. You thought you could assault without touching them.
S1: Assault is the intent. Is the threat. Right. And batteries, the access.
S5: And it is just touching. So I suppose very technically. But I think when most people hear the term sexual assault, they well, at least. Right.
S1: But I just don’t know what the right term because it’s more than just it’s more than just words. It’s he’s done something physical to to do. Yeah. It’s confusing. He’s accused of that. Although he did. That is the thing he denies anyway. Multiple women, three women, including two in his employ effectively in the employ of the state of New York, have accused him and he has now apologized in a way, he apologized.
S5: You said he was sorry if he said I’m sorry, like Marfil on and I’m embarrassed. Right.
S4: Instead, if I were his first right, his first one was he says, I acknowledge some of the things I’ve said have been misinterpreted as an unwanted flirtation to the extent anyone felt that way. I’m truly sorry about that, which is I’m sorry if your feelings if you feel if you were upset, I mean, it’s just like the classic non apology, an apology.
S1: So much he he said I mean, you know, I don’t know. This is a better apology than most of these apologies.
S4: The second multimeter, not the ultimate apology, deeply apologize for it.
S1: Yeah, right. That was the ultimate one was unintentional. It was unintentional like. It’s not unintentional to kiss someone. Is not unintentional to kind of like, you know, talk them up and hope that they’re going to be respond respond to your overtures.
S5: Yes. It’s a very intentional. It was unintentional. Successful.
S6: Maybe this is funny. Yes. It did not attempt to apologize for my unsuccessful adventure. I did not intend for you to be horrified and complain about it publicly. No, I did not intend for those.
S5: There is I’m just going to say one thing, though. This whole thing of unwanted advances and I’m not defending him, I’m making a more general statement. It is a little tricky. Like, how do you know in advance is unwanted until you advance it anyway, right?
S1: No, that’s that is a really good question, although. But if it is a a a woman in your employ, that’s someone who works for you. And I know that, you know, these were all adult women. They were all, you know, of age. They’re everyone’s everyone’s an adult. But maybe it’s maybe it’s just so puritanical of me or something. But there’s something. Like, extremely yucky about a 63 year old man doing this to twenty five year old women when also when the power divide is so extreme, we’ve absolutely agree. It’s even even though, again, everyone is they had the capacity to consent, which they did not to. John Cuomo appears to be trying to do a Northam that’s the governor of Virginia who did not resign. And Northam rode out the scandal in Virginia, basically because my read was that his lieutenant governor, who would have been a perfectly credible just and fair replacement just in Fairfax and engulfed in even worse scandal. And so they sort of they they made a pact where they both rode it out together. Nobody got to advance their career. And they the Democrats just decided we’re going to hold our nose and let this. But this pass is Cuomo. We’re going to be able to to ride it out.
S3: Do you think we’re redefining what ride it out means? Because what’s Virginia also has a single term for the governor, which matters, I think, because Northan would have run for re-election if there was a second or there would have been that issue if there could have been a second term for him. So we’re in the we’re in this moment where riding it out means, you know, what is the pressure you feel within your own party and what is the pressure your party exerts on you? I mean, in twenty seventeen, the Democratic Party ejected Al Franken immediately. And and then he accepted that and accepted the the sort of the norm in this case. It’s been kind of light on Cuomo. I mean, light certainly by his own standards. Remember when the attorney general of New York, Schneiderman, was was accused of of worse behavior, more abusive behavior? I think that’s fair. Tell me if I’m wrong. But what’s important as we sort through all of this is that in that instance, Cuomo not only appointed somebody to investigate the allegations, but he said the brave women who chose to come forward deserved swift and definitive justice in this matter. So you have two things. It’s what to do with the person, whether they did what they did and and what the sanction should be. But then also there’s the question of listening to women, which is at play here, and that’s all being decided and redefined because I think there is some rethinking in some quarters about the response to Al Franken.
S4: But there’s no question by the previous by the twenty seventeen standard, Cuomo should be getting denounced by basically all Democratic officials, probably all the way up into the president.
S5: So I find myself a Dahlia Lithwick who wrote a really good piece this week, saying the fact that Cuomo has agreed to an investigation and that we’re waiting for the results of that to decide what the consequences should be is a good development. And that’s my current way of reconciling my own ambivalence about this. I think the other issue that’s kind of lurking here is the difference between relatively minor offenses and bigger ones and how to define that and who gets to define it. People have different I don’t know what like I think women and men just disagree about this. And because there’s no, you know, criminal code of, like sexual harassment in the fifth degree versus the first degree. And we’ve never had any kind of set of rules. Exactly. It’s really hard to decide. And it’s sort of a moving target as well, right? I mean, 10 years ago, it would have been much harder for a politician of this stature to get in trouble for this stuff. Right. And so I think it’s good that there is a reckoning. I don’t think that, you know, men should go around propositioning their aides or like being grabby, which is how I take that kind of leering photo. And yet I really think it’s important to have some kind of way of thinking about minor versus major offenses. And so an investigation is an appealing way to begin to pass all of that.
S1: A couple of points. One is, I do think like that it is now kind of clearly the price of entry in Democratic politics, not in Republican politics and Democratic politics, to not be grabby, lecherous creep. It’s just clear that if you’re going to be a grabby, lecherous creep, this party doesn’t want you or shouldn’t. I feel like that that that is that is it doesn’t and this doesn’t necessarily apply for Republicans. And the Republicans are there’s a there are different standards there. And we’ve seen that with the various Republicans who have survived scandal that would have taken down Democrats around this issue. Cuomo if he after twenty seventeen, if he doesn’t realize that this has changed, you know, shame on him. It was obvious to me. It was obvious to everyone following politics like, yes, you were allowed to get away with this for a number of years. Not anymore, my friend. Just not doable. That’s point one.
S5: So does that mean I’m sorry. Go ahead.
S1: I don’t know. No, point two is. The investigation point is a really good one, although it’s it’s right, and I think that is the right answer ultimately, Emily. But I’ve been struck, John. I don’t if you’ve been following the Washington football team investigation a little bit, the Washington football team has just diabolically wicked owner Dan Snyder. And it and it’s been a it’s just been a den of sexual harassment and grotesque behavior like the the way the cheerleaders were treated is it’s like out of something out of the worst 1950s thing you can possibly imagine. I mean, just it’s gross. What that team has kind of done is they could have kept having an investigation after investigation and the investigations have gone on and on and on. I think what’s happened is if you let the investigations go on long enough, people sort of forget like they’ve moved on. And my worry is like, if if if Cuomo gets to push this to an investigation, it becomes six weeks to two months later and everyone’s focused on something else and like, well, yes, but he’s got to deal with these issues. And and let’s let’s let’s let’s not rehash we’ve rehash the past enough. Let’s move on. That’s the mob mentality is dangerous, but so is losing the energy that the mob mentality creates. That’s interesting.
S3: Yeah. One thing that we should mention here, that’s also a part of this and presumably it will be at the center of the investigation is not just his behavior, but when Charlotte Bennett, who is the twenty five year old former aide who Cuomo asked a series of these questions about her sex life and so forth, were she reported it to, by her account, immediately to the chief of staff and then she was reassigned or transferred bad. So that’s bad. So one thing is the behavior so that we have to figure out. But then if there is a system that doesn’t treat these things seriously or treats them as a retaliation offense, yeah, it’s retaliation. That’s the big thing to keep an eye on here. To to Emily’s excellent point about the gradations of behavior here. It’s more important than ever to get those gradations. Right, because the truly predatory behavior, the multiple instances, the the far more aggressive grabbing and touching and so forth is not in the same category. But the only way to adjudicate all those individual cases is to have some system to do that. And if somebody says something that’s, you know, boorish and over the line and you can stop it because there’s a system in place to stop it when it starts, then then you can kind of address these things in a way that doesn’t lead to a point where you basically having the same process for adjudicating Category two violations as Category five violations.
S5: That’s a really good point. I just want to say one more thing, which is I really salute these three women. There is a way and right like they came forward. They’re very straightforward. They don’t take a whole bath of shame, which they have no reason to feel ashamed. I think there’s something generational about this like or at least I’ll speak for myself. I would not have been so brave. And I really feel like my generation, or again, at least me has a lot to learn from moments like this. So thank you to these three women.
S7: Indeed, so brave. H.R. one is a bill that will pass the House of Representatives that massively expand voting rights, put new kinds of federal guidance and control on voting, and try to take away some of the chaos and distress that that has happened for people who wish to vote in the recent years.
S1: It will pass. The House, Democrats will vote for it, and it will almost certainly not pass the Senate unless there is filibuster reform. Even then, it probably won’t pass the Senate because not every Democrat supports it. However, at the same time, there’s this effort by Democrats to expand voting rights. There is a huge wave of legislation moving through state legislatures around the country, Republican legislatures generally to roll back voting rights to massively limit absentee voting, voting by mail drop boxes, ballot harvesting, early voting. It is a clear, obvious effort to prevent people from voting because there is a strong belief that that Democratic voters are more likely to be deterred by those restrictions than Republican voters. And it is a also a clear effort to confirm or to to compound these baseless, disgusting, heavily damaging claims that Republicans made in the wake of the 20 20 presidential election, that the election was not to be trusted and had been somehow stolen. So, Emily, I know you’ve been following these issues really closely. Give us a sense of the variety of state measures and which ones are likely to happen. It’s going to be, I assume, in states that have Republican legislatures and Republican governors.
S5: Yes, I assume that as well, for the most part, so according to the Brennan Center at NYU, there are more than two hundred and fifty bills in forty three states. And it’s everything from making it harder to vote absentee, making it harder to register to vote, taking away the lists that automatically send ballots to people once they’ve requested them. Once taken away days of early voting, eliminating the possibility of having other people collect your ballot and stricter voter ID laws and a number of states that somehow don’t already have them. So what you’re seeing here is just a kind of eating away to make it harder for people to vote. And in the Supreme Court argument this week about two voting restrictions in Arizona, there was a kind of amazing moment where the lawyer for the Arizona Republican Party, when asked, why, why don’t you want people to be able to cast a ballot at one precinct, even if it’s not their precinct and have it provisionally counted if they are indeed a voter? He said that proportionally speaking, that hurts Republicans, and that’s why he doesn’t want those people to have a little slack in how they vote, because disproportionately the people who cast ballots at the wrong precincts are Democrats. Now, we should also say this is because they are constantly moving polling places around in Arizona, which is confusing for people. This has happened to me. You can definitely show up at the wrong place for unless you’re paying super close attention. And that’s just a lot to ask of people. So, you know, I think what we’re seeing here is a kind of aftermath of the 20, 20 November election, which was an incredibly clean election. But all of President Trump’s claims about fraud, stealing cetera, which other Republican officials are continuing to repeat are bearing this? You know, in my view, quite evil fruit of just constricting the democracy. There was a lot of voting by mail. It went well. What we should be doing is making it easier to continue that because it has a small effect on voter participation, a beneficial effect. It has not been shown to have a partisan effect in the past. And yet Republicans remain convinced that if fewer people vote, that’s going to help them.
S3: It also I mean, just to pick up on this idea of of the bad fruit from the president’s lie that the election was stolen through a poisoned tree.
S4: Yeah, well, it’s the. Yes.
S1: I just. You just love that.
S4: I love that phrase. I did. But I didn’t. I chose I chose not to become an arborist aphorist arborist anyway, aphorism arborist. Anyway, the cost of letting the president lie for as long as he did. We’ve talked about the market. What all these bills allow is for Republicans who if, when pressed, won’t necessarily say the election was stolen, but nevertheless recognize there’s a lot of energy in the the voters they want along those lines. This is the safe place to be. It’s like putting forward the guy yells fire in a crowded theater. There is no fire. And then all of his legislative friends say, well, maybe no fire, but let’s pass lots and lots of theater fire management bills. Right. Which all is exists on the energy of the false fire that was created. And this is the sort of apex of this is Vice President Mike Pence, who was the most directly targeted public official from the Big Lie. Nevertheless, publishing a I guess it was an op ed or talking about election security this week. So the person who was most directly potentially harmed, as people said, hang Mike Pence by the big lie, is nevertheless finding safe harbor and talking about the scourge of of election fraud and talking about a troubling pattern of voting irregularities, which exactly which is which is an effort to try to plug into the same energy that got people wanting him hanged. It’s it’s so it’s another it’s another huge cost from people not speaking up when the big lie was first in court. And it’s just another way in which we see the the future party creating an entire arena, which may not be directly about the big lie, but which would not exist.
S5: But for the big lie, I realize it’s naive, but it just makes me sad that we can’t all agree that more people voting is good and yes, we should prevent fraud. But most of these laws have really zero to do with that. And we have a lot of evidence in that regard at this point.
S1: Emily? It is so easy to get lost in the. Lists the Brennan Center’s lists of different kinds of restrictions and the provisions of H.R. one, the seven hundred ninety one page bill, that is H.R. one, the expansionary provisions there. Can you just you’ve looked at these issues for a while. What are the two expansions in voting that have the most effect and encouraging people to vote? And what are the two restrictions in voting that have the most deterrent effect on people?
S5: I feel like I should have been prepared to take a quiz. Well, helpful provision, automatic voting registration. I think that would be huge if just every time you went to get a driver’s license or get one renewed, they just put you on the voting rolls because then you don’t have to deal with that Ticketek task and you’re just there. And I think the second answer is the kind of corollary to that, which is to prevent purges of the voting rolls that are not done very carefully with the burden on the state or locality to prove that the person has moved or has died. Right. I mean, we have now a Supreme Court law that makes it pretty easy to purge a lot of people who turn out to be legitimate voters. I think those are the two most important things. I’m sure other people would have different ideas in terms of the bevy of restrictions. I’m not sure this is the most impactful, but I’m really distressed that we’re going to make it harder to vote by mail after we had an election in which there was such a surge and that went well. And the states that have essentially universal voting by mail, which include the red state of Utah, have had a lot of success with doing this and very little fraud. And I just think it would be a really good change in the United States. The other thing that would really affect participation, which I know is not in H.R. one and not even on the radar in the United States, but going to throw it out anyway is mandatory voting. It would be illegal at this point because of federal law. I think for a state or city to say you get a tax benefit for voting, but I wish we didn’t have that law. I wish just the pure act of voting and you don’t have to vote. You can leave it blank. You can write in your mom. But I wish we had a kind of incentive system. Australia has much higher voting participation than we do and they find people for not voting. I would rather give them a little carrot than a stick. But anyway, this is more in the realm of, you know, platonic Emily Bazelon policy than reality.
S1: Would it pass muster to have something which said if you show up on Election Day and stand in a line which also happens to be line to vote, and at the end of if you do that through the end of the line, we’re going to give you a fifteen dollar tax benefit or two hundred dollar tax benefit. Like would that be legal? Like you haven’t required anyone to vote. You’ve just said show up at this day, at this place, and you’ll have stood in this line. Then you could then you can vote to I mean, I guess you could try it.
S5: I sort of feel like it’s pretty obvious that what you’re really doing in there is like a kind of smell test or things like that in courts. But sure. Why not? I wish somebody would try to figure out how to get around this federal law. I feel like you’re right. Some clever lawyer could find some way to offer some incentive. That would be a good start.
S1: There’s a gabfest listener. If our audience does not have that clever lawyer in it, I will write seriously.
S5: And obviously, we shouldn’t have the parties be able to bribe voters to come to support them. We’re talking about just voting and it doesn’t have to be voting for a candidate on the slate, just the act of participating.
S1: No, I’ve seen you don’t even get to vote. I’m just saying you’re like you happen to stand on the floor and it’s just so easy then.
S5: But maybe we shouldn’t have people standing in line for very long either.
S3: Anyway, there’s an interesting strategic question, at least I think it’s interesting for Democrats here, because the one of the reasons Republicans are trying, I mean, there are lots of reasons. But one of the benefits, I should say, for Republicans raising all of these questions about the integrity of the vote is that it’s it works really well with their with the voters. They want to turn out in twenty, twenty two. It’s like cancel culture. And it’s basically all these other people, the others, the people in the box of of, you know, behaviors and colors and types that you don’t like are sneaking in and voting against you. And that’s incredibly motivating. So the Republicans, even if they lose the battle in some way like this, to be a big national fight. So if you’re a Democrat and you want these reforms to pass and the big the big benefit would be a big national conversation about these reforms, maybe it wouldn’t pass, but it would help tie up a lot of issues that you think are important and might and might begin the slow roll towards actual reform, maybe get the president involved. Do you want that for all those reasons when, you know, it will essentially be a turnout mechanism? Four, you’re up for the opponents and perhaps an even more powerful turnout mechanism for your opponents than for your side, I don’t know what the answer to that is. And even the premise upon which that question is based might have some giddiness in it. But it it it interests me.
S5: So I just want to know the Supreme Court case this week, because it’s one of the biggest election cases in the decade. It’s about Section two of the Voting Rights Act, which is the main provision and how what the test should be for having to prove a violation of this part of the Voting Rights Act. And this is a big question because we lost the other part of the Voting Rights Act that had the Justice Department in the role of approving things like closing polling places. And so now what’s left is this after a fact ability to sue if the vote has been abridged or denied to African-American or Hispanic or language community voters like Native Americans in the Supreme Court arguments this week, in some ways, it seemed like the parties weren’t that far away from each other for what the test should be, some kind of substantial effect on a minority group, except, I should say, for the Republican Party of Arizona, which wanted the standard to be that basically any race neutral voting regulation would pass muster no matter what disparate effect it had on those groups. But what I think really is very likely to come from this conservative majority is a ruling that makes it much harder to sue that you’re going to have to show a substantial effect that has nothing to do with socioeconomics, for example, that they’re just going to really raise the bar here. And I should note that Chief Justice John Roberts has been a longtime interest of his since he was a Supreme Court clerk. He’s the author of Shelby County, which gutted the other part of the Voting Rights Act in 2013. And so this is one where it looks like the liberals on the court are probably going to lose and it’s going to be quite a big deal. So one to watch.
S1: Let’s go to cocktail chatter. When you are sitting perhaps with the spring breeze. Over you, I was able to go on the deck of my building yesterday and have a drink on the deck of my building was a cocktail and drink in my building. I was able to chatter with my son on the deck of my building. What would you chatter about, John Dickerson, if you had the chance to chatter outside on the on the deck of my building, it would be with me, I hope.
S3: I know that would be lovely. My chatter is about the civics test. The Bush administration announced that it will begin using the 2008 version of the civics test, which is the test you take to become a citizen. The Trump administration changed the citizenship test. They had made it a little harder. They’ve changed some of the questions. The argument was that the Trump administration had made it harder as a way to limit immigration. And now the Biden administration is is changing it to make it make that a little bit easier and more fair.
S4: But what struck me when I took the test, first of all, everybody should take the test at the US Citizenship and Immigration Services test because it’s we’ve talked about this before. It’s sort of amusing the questions they ask. And also you kind of wonder, what are they wanting people to know about those tests?
S3: I mean, some of it is to our conversation about voting rights is things like what month do we vote for president? So it’s if you want citizens to be engaged is a good thing for them to know when the voting takes place, although you’d have to really work on your disconnecting from society to not know that we vote for president in November.
S4: But anyway, I came across one question, though, which I thought was particularly amusing. Question number 16. What is the rule of law? A government does not have to follow the law. B, everyone must follow the law. See everyone, but the president must follow the law. So in contemporary, contemporary times, this may or may not throw those who are studying for the citizenship test. And so what I really wanted was those who were practicing with this online version.
S3: I wish that they kept records of people’s responses. And I wonder if there would, based on contemporary events or perhaps the last four years have been a change in the way people responded to that. And then it made me think maybe we should have a national citizenship test for the purposes of just gauging knowledge and so that you could chart things like this, not for I mean, just for the for the purpose of learning, not for the purpose of anything that you’d have to do anyway. So that was what I would be chattering about.
S1: Emily, what’s your chatter?
S5: You can force people to take a civics test, right. As we should force them to show up in line at the polls. That’s what they’ll do while they’re standing there. We have lots of exciting tasks for people this week.
S8: I have a fun chatter and a more serious one. I’m going to start with the more serious one, which is that I was so interested to see this week that more than 250 scientists and social scientists asked the Biden administration to advocate to decriminalize sex work. And what’s interesting about this is the consensus. When I wrote about this a few years ago, there was just a huge fight going on among social scientists. And it did seem like the people who were making harm reduction and other arguments in favor of decriminalization had the better evidence. But this suggests that the debate has really moved in that direction. And the argument that these scientists and social scientists are making is that the federal government’s trafficking prevention budget is being used almost exclusively to arrest consensual adult sex workers instead of to detect coercion or to assist victims. And that’s the key distinction here, right, that we should be preventing trafficking and coercion and any involvement of children and teenagers under the age of 18. But this reality that we have, this very expensive federal operation that actually ends up catching and it’s not people who are doing sex work for a living is something these social scientists think like enough. And so it’ll be interesting to see if the Biden administration actually takes any action in response. Switching gears entirely to a different subject. I met, so to speak, on Zoome this week. This lovely writer I had not encountered before. I named Nafisa Thompson Spires. And so then I downloaded her book. She is this wonderful book of short stories from twenty eighteen called Heads of the Colored People, and I’m just enjoying it so much. It has this really propulsive churning energy and I’ve only read a couple of the stories so far, but I really recommend it. So Heads of the Colored People by Nafisa Thompson Spires.
S1: All right. My chatter is put a little work into this one.
S5: Oh, I’m so excited for this. But maybe I shouldn’t say that I don’t want to set you up.
S6: No, don’t forget that to raise expectations.
S1: I we talked about talking about the cancellation of Dr Seuss, that the Dr. Seuss controversy. We decided not to talk about it, but I just had to chatter about it. Here we go.
S9: He’s called Teddy or Geisel or wise Dr. Seuss. He drew cats and some hats and one big hearted moose and his poems, Stupendous Do Mendis do rorris. We hailed his fine rhymes, all of us, and a chorus from a magnanimous pachyderm with impeccable hearing to his battling Buderus apocalypse fearing Seuss bewitched all the parents with his views, pioneering Ted’s for peace and for trees and for love, they said, cheering. Then one day in one house, a house so sweet a sharp eyed young mom sat with tot’s at her feet and opened a Seuss book, prepared for a treat and to think what she saw on that Mulberry Street. Yes, she saw cops and parades and those old timey dramas, but also some drawings not fit for hip mamas or anyone really. Not kids, dads or llamas. Old timey drama, not old timey racist, appealing to stereotypes. The worst and the basest suits drew to Chinese people and hats so conical. Not funny, not clever and oh so not comical. Six books now deep sixed. It seems the right action. But look over there at the right satisfaction. The right’s in a frenzy from Shapiro to Fox. This Fox, I should note, loves its stocks more than socks. Ted spins canceled. They say if you’re the Mahvish Blue Flock’s before they come for most sendek, let’s change all the locks. Fox shouts Don’t be woak. You should just be awake. But before we go, friends, I’ve got one last hot take. Oh, poor dear Dr. Seuss. Yes, he made a mistake. We all do. You do mistakes we all make. But we can ditch those six tails and not fully forsake his books with redfish and that hat cat on break.
S5: That was really pretty amazing.
S4: I think that should be published in some form.
S6: I was just so much fun. Oh my God. It’s so good at that.
S4: That was just so much fun. I just listened to one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish, because I was going back and looking at the books, audio books that I bought for the kids many, many, many years ago on this old device. And it was transporting.
S1: Yeah, right. Like fish, blue fish, old fish, new fish.
S5: And we can so that this looks like that’s OK. It’s it’s just now part of the Louvre.
S1: However you say that of love. I am sad to lose on beyond zero which is.
S8: Oh really. I never even heard of on Zebra.
S1: It’s really it’s it’s the writers book, the book for writers. But I haven’t, I didn’t investigate. Well I’m sure I trust that there’s something really not good in it. The Mulberry Street one is not good. Dear listeners, you have sent us chatter. Please keep them coming. Please tweet them to us at at Slate Gabfest and we are getting the chance to hear you do your chatter. And this week’s listener chatter is from Lily Shields. Let’s hear from Lily.
S10: Hi, my name is Lily. I live in Barcelona and my listener Chatur is a very important piece of investigative journalism from The Nation by the badass reporter Amy Littlefield, who full disclosure is a good friend of mine. It’s called As the pandemic rage abortion access nearly flickered out. Littlefield makes the case that while abortion access has been under attack since long before covid-19, the pandemic has been like a preview of the imminent end of Roe vs. Wade. States like Texas have used covid as a ruse to stop clinics from providing abortions. In South Dakota, abortion services went dark for a full seven months. The legal battles over these bands have caused abortion care to go from legal to illegal and back again. Even as patients are sitting in clinics waiting for their appointments. Alongside the chaos and despair these bands have caused are quiet stories of heroism from people on the ground and online who have continued to fight to make sure patients can access the abortions they need. One story that stands out is of a patient who was pushed to 26 or 27 weeks of pregnancy because she couldn’t get the money together for an abortion. And when she finally did get the money together, her car broke down. Activists on the ground somehow managed to get a private pilot to fly her from Montana to Colorado, where she could finally have her abortion.
S5: Thank you for that chatter and for that story in the nation, which sounds important and necessary. And I will go read. I just want to note that for people who are seeking abortions and having trouble accessing services where they live, there are abortion pills that you can order online. This is not necessarily the ideal way to have abortion services in the United States of America, but the organization, if when how big has resources on the legality of self managed abortion and illegal helpline as well, which can help women and people?
S1: In this situation, that is our show for today, the gabfests is produced by Jocelyn Frank, our researcher is Richard Dunlap. Gabriel Roth, June Thomas and Lisa Montgomery are the Power Brain Trust of Slate audio and podcast. Please follow us on Twitter at Slate Gabfest and tweet Chatur to us there for Emily Bazelon and John Dickerson and Theodore Geisel.
S2: I’m David Plotz. Thanks for listening. We’ll talk to you next week.
S1: Hello, Slate, plus, it is now where it is today, March 4th. It is now a year basically since the pandemic started, as we’ve all learned, and there has been this hashtag going around the various inter webs hashtag the moment, the moment when we realized everything changed. So we’re going to do are at the moment, what was it like to be back in late winter of twenty twenty as this terrible disease began to spread throughout the world and the realization that the world was going to be different? So anyone want to start?
S3: So I remember when I posted something from a New York Times article that said basically, don’t travel if you don’t have to. And I was confused because I thought the guidance at the moment was don’t travel if you’re in one of the groups that might be in danger. But this was suggesting you shouldn’t travel no matter who you were. And so I posted something on Twitter and Andrew Ross Sorkin, among others, responded and said, don’t travel communities spread is real.
S4: And that was the moment where I thought it’s more severe than maybe we think. And also that we’ve got to reset our understanding of the advice we’re getting because it’s going to be confusing. And so, you know, we’ve got to kind of seek out three or four pieces of information before you take action.
S3: That was that’s the moment where I thought that I associate with the complete change in life. And the other was being at 60 Minutes. This is almost about the same time in the office. And we had some people who got early cases of covid. Everybody’s OK now, but they shut they said, you know, go home. And that was the last time I was at work. So that was a year ago. I mean, physically in the building.
S1: Emily.
S8: Yeah, so one of my kids is taking a class last year just by coincidence on global pandemics, and I think that saved me from denialism, which is in the beginning of any risky situation might go to Pasteur. So I had this awareness of like, hmm, this really could be something I can’t just pretend it’s not going to be.
S5: And in the second week of March, this is really next week I was trying to plan a birthday party for my husband, whose birthday is in the middle of March.
S11: And it went from being like a full on birthday party to where I ordered all the food to being like, ha, maybe we really can’t do this to realizing that we absolutely couldn’t do it. And when I called it off, I got all these messages that were like, oh, thank God. Like we couldn’t come. Of course we were going to come, but like, we felt bad about not coming.
S8: So thank you so much for canceling it. And I think that was my main awareness, although I did have this one other moment. The last time I went to New York last spring was on March 10th and I actually went to a public event which took place, which I still really can’t believe in Brooklyn. And I kept thinking they were going to cancel it and they didn’t. And when I got on to Metro North to come home, the train station was already just semi deserted. And there were people in masks. And I realized that I was not going to be back in New York for a really long time getting on that train. And I just had this sense of total foreboding.
S5: Then that I was glad to be going home.
S1: I had a couple to. One was actually actually I’m just you just reminded me of Emily, which is that our former state colleague, Josh Levine, was having a birthday party in a was going to be in a public venue. I can’t remember what day it was scheduled for, but a couple of days before is his partner called me and said, hey, we’re not going to have this party, but we’re going to have just a couple of. I made a cake already. So if you want to come over for cake and sit with me and Josh and and Jess and and one other friend had cake, but just. Which I wouldn’t do now, obviously, but in their in their house. But I remember that. But the other one was the other one involves The New York Times, in fact, which would have been on March 3rd. So a year ago yesterday, I, as you guys may remember, used to commute to New York because I was CEO of a company, Atlas Obscura, in Brooklyn. And March 3rd was my last day as CEO. And so I had a I had a kind of goodbye thing there. And I remember my poor successor took over as the CEO of a travel and media company on March 3rd. Twenty twenty, which is not a good day to take over as CEO of a travel media company. He’s done an amazing job, Warren. What great job, Warren. But I remember thinking, oh, my God, this poor guy, this poor guy had to have to take it over on that day. But then I went to The New York Times to have a meeting with with a woman I was doing some work with. And we were going to there was a third person was going to join us, Sam Sifton. I think it was going to join us for this meeting. And I got to the Times and Dorothy said, oh, Sam can’t join us. He had he had a cough and he decided he better take precautions and not come in given this disease. And so we didn’t have the meeting. This was in the presumed era. We just like there was no meeting because Sam wasn’t there. And I remember thinking, like, wow, that’s a change. That’s weird. He just doesn’t show up to work with a cough, but that’s how it’s going to be. And that was the last I left the Times. And I have not been in a meeting in person with anyone since since March 3rd. By the way, I just just to note, it seems often I think it was fine, I don’t know whether he had covered or not, but I believe he’s fine. I think he was just taking a useful, good precaution.
S8: You know, the other thing I’m really embarrassed about looking back is how scornful I felt about mask’s in February and early March. Like I would see people in mass, especially in New York, and be like, oh, like that just is so crazy.
S11: What was the big deal like?
S5: This is the thing I feel maybe the most strongly about of all the precautions. Like, I know it’s not the most pleasant thing in the world all the time, but it now just seems to me like I just I cannot imagine why I thought that was such an alien notion and anything to be the least bit worried about.
S4: The thing is, though, Emily, I think your feeling was, you know, a reasonable one, which was hysteria will have its own snowball effect. And so. I think you were thinking early mask wearers are possibly being overly hysterical and therefore will create this this mindset that could be damaging to me too much credit.
S5: OK, just like I had never worn a mask for any reason before, and I just didn’t think that was like a real thing. I mean, it’s I think it was like really dumb, honestly. But thank you for trying, though.
S1: I’m with you, Emily. I apologize to anyone.
S5: I knew your dad was really just stupid. It’s not that there’s zero loss from mask’s. Right? Like, I miss seeing people smile. I miss getting to smile at people. I look forward to the day when we don’t need to rely on them anymore. But it is such a small price to pay and they’ve really proven to be helpful and protective.
S7: Goodbye, Slate. Plus, talk to you next week.
