Covid-19 Surge and the Electoral College

Covid-19+Surge+and+the+Electoral+College.jpg

Topics Discussed:

  • Covid-19 Surge & Vaccines

  • Lisa Marie Montgomery Case

  • Moment of Hope: NASA & SpaceX

  • Election Update & Electoral College

  • Outside of Politics

Thank you for being a part of our community! We couldn't do what we do without you. To become a tangible supporter of the show, please visit our Patreon page, purchase a copy of our book, I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening), or share the word about our work in your own circles. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook for daily news briefs, GIF news threads, and our real time reactions to breaking news. To purchase Pantsuit Politics merchandise, check out our TeePublic store and our branded tumblers available in partnership with Stealth Steel Designs.

Episode Resources

COVID-19 SURGE AND VACCINES

LISA MARIE MONTGOMERY

NASA & SPACEX

ELECTION & ELECTORAL COLLEGE

Transcript

Beth: [00:00:00] Leadership to me is not ignoring or silencing dissent, even the worst placed dissent. It's acknowledging it and going on anyway. And I think that's what you see in the Biden team right now. I don't hear them talking about the election wasn't stolen, shut down all of the dissent. It's just, we hope people will give us a chance.

We won this election. We have this responsibility, now we're going to do it.

This is Sarah and Beth. 

Sarah: [00:00:30] You're listening to Pantsuit Politics. 

Beth: [00:00:32] The home of grace filled political conversations.

Hello everyone. Thank you for joining us for another episode of Pantsuit Politics, we have a lot to talk about today and the first segment we're going to talk about where we are with COVID-19. In the second segment, we're going to follow up on our electoral college conversation from Friday. If you've not yet listened to five things you need to know about the electoral college, you probably want to hop on over and do that.

We'll give you an update on where this election stands as well. And we'll end as always with what's on our minds outside of politics. Before we get started, we would love to invite you to submit questions for our, ask us anything episode that we're preparing to give us all a little bit of levity in a time that needs it.

So if there is something you don't know about us and would like to, or just something you'd like us to chat about, you've not heard us talk about before, even if it is unrelated in any way to politics, you can send your question to hello@pantsuitpoliticsshow.com and Alise will get all those organized and we'll be excited to host that episode for you in a couple of weeks. 

Sarah: [00:01:47] The paradox of human existence continues and to me, no place, is that more clear right now than with the pandemic. We are both at the precipice of an unbelievable, positive, innovative, groundbreaking vaccine research. It's it's right there. We're getting such positive news that we'll talk about in just a minute. And at the exact same time we are facing the most frightening, horrific numbers, as far as this current surge, I don't know if surge is the right word for it anymore. 

We have daily new cases consistently above 140,000. We're almost to 250,000 deaths, Texas passed 1 million cases. You have every metric rising at an incredibly alarming rate. Hospitalizations, positivity rates, um, mortality.

It's so frightening to see what's taking place in every single state in our country. 

Beth: [00:03:01] There is this current in the discussion comparing this moment to March. And I think that's an inaccurate comparison in ways that are both good and scary. On the good side, we've learned that ventilators aren't as effective as we thought they were.

We have some treatments that are very effective with many populations. There is a better chance of surviving this now than there was in March because of all of the learning in the medical community. And that's amazing and shout out to the medical community that is already so burned out and exhausted and tired of having to be the heroes who go in every day and deal with this.

And those are the people who more acutely than anyone else know what we're facing right now and are trying to warn the public, even in the midst of their burnout. So thank you to everyone who works in that space. On the other hand, what's really different from March is that we are not seeing new cases concentrated in major metropolitan areas.

It's everywhere. And that poses some really specific healthcare challenges. Axios has done a very nice job highlighting the danger of rural areas having to deal with surges in COVID cases, they have to airlift patients to hospitals better equipped to manage severe cases. Nursing homes in rural areas in particular are struggling with staff shortages.

You have healthcare workers less able to relocate for emergency situations because they're more likely to be needed exactly where they are. So in many ways, this is a very different situation than March and a more dangerous one. 

Sarah: [00:04:42] What's so important to consider is that our healthcare community has greater knowledge, but they can't apply it if they're overworked, not there, homesick, quarantined, or as the New York times is reporting, taking early retirement or shutting down their practices. You know, to me, that's, what's so scary is now what we've realized is it's not ventilators that will save people. It's healthcare workers and if there are more people than they can get to, or that they can care to, to the level that will save lives because of overrun floors, understaffed facilities, like then it doesn't matter. If there's no one there to apply the knowledge, then more people are going to die.

And I think that's what's so difficult about this current moment is, you know, we can't bring in healthcare workers from other parts of the country like we did to New York city because every part of the country is reaching capacity, including in my own area of the country. And I know many nurses that went up to New York city in the spring from my area.

 But they can't do that now they're needed here. Everyone is needed. It's looking from these numbers that eventually, and probably pretty soon our needs will eclipse the staff. 

Beth: [00:06:10] Everyone is needed is such a good framework to evaluate the entirety of the situation because we continue to be stuck in an adversarial mode in a situation where that just doesn't work.

The debate about school reopening is such a good example of that. And we'll link in the show notes, Emily Oster continues to do really excellent work here. I think she just cuts through the noise and makes it really clear that this is about risk assessment and prioritization and that the most valuable tools policymakers have to them right now, really center around transparency with the public in terms of how they are assessing risk and how they are establishing priorities.

 When we talked here last Tuesday, Sarah, I was sharing with you that my kids were going back to school for four days that week. Well, on Friday, last week, At 6:30 in the morning, we were notified by the school that school was canceled for the day. Not going virtual, just canceled because too many staff members either had COVID or had to be in quarantine because of close exposure to COVID. 

There was this immediate sense of are teachers lying? Is this a sick out? Are they protesting because they didn't want to do this. And we got this very heartfelt message from our principal saying we had not a single person call in sick today. Our teachers are working harder than they've ever worked before. They want to be in school. We simply are out of personnel county-wide.

And so now we're back to being completely virtual until at least after Thanksgiving, I can't imagine that they'll safely be able to bring kids back after everyone's been on Thanksgiving break, but being stuck in that adversarial place doesn't work. This is just a full fledged crisis. The kinds of options that tend to be available when you're thinking adversarially just arn't right now.

Sarah: [00:08:02] Yeah, well, and it's not just healthcare workers and it's not just teachers, it's nursing home workers. They're really struggling with staff shortages in particular because that population is so vulnerable. I was looking at a woman's tweet that her mother broke down. Um, as a nursing home manager, she went from zero cases to 45 cases in an incredibly short amount of time.

And that is just psychically and spiritually and physically and emotionally exhausting. Everyone is pulling, you know, way more than their weight. Everyone's doing lots of jobs. And I think you see this in so many areas, grocery stores, healthcare workers, teachers. We're going to talk about this in a minute.

Mothers at home with those kids that are virtual schooling. And I think what's so difficult right now, I read a really great piece in ProPublica about the sort of psychological tricks our brain plays on us when we're assessing risk. And, you know, I see this in my own life. I was reading this article. And it was talking about availability, how we really depend on our personal experiences and the availability of that information when we're assessing risk and making hard choices.

And I think what's so difficult in this current moment is that we are all leaning on our personal experiences in the spring and the summer. You know, I found myself thinking, well, staying outside, being around the same people I was around the summer worked. And so I'll just keep working it, but that's not the case because in the summer, especially in my area of the country, the rates were not as high and there were not as many infected people.

And so I'm going to be more at risk, even when following the same protocols than I was in the spring in the summer. And that's hard, you know? You and I both talked about that we've attended social gatherings and gotten there and realized this was a mistake. And I think I've seen that play out a lot in my community.

Like you get somewhere this weekend, I was supposed to go to a friend's birthday party outside at a restaurant and the restaurant moved us inside. And I said, I can't come. I'm sorry. I'm like in part of it for me is it's not even worth it because the anxiety that it produces and being in any gatherings of people right now is so high for me that any sort of psychological game of socialization is not high enough. And I wish everyone else could see that calculus. And I'm not, you know, I'm trying not to be angry because I really do think our brains, they're not there. They did not evolve to assess viral risks. Right. Like it's just not. That's not the way our brains evolve to work over thousands of years.

But if we can see those flaws, if we can recognize like, Oh wait, I'm depending on my experiences in the summer, and this is not the summer. And so the risk is different and my behavior needs to be different. It's not just that we need to watch our bubbles, it's that we need to reduce our bubbles. We need to stay home as much as we possibly can.

And that, you know, that's a hard sacrifice right now, but also we have the promise of a vaccine very close on the horizon. So, you know, I was telling a friend, I can do lots of hard things, as long as I know there's a deadline and, you know, We can see that coming. And so the sacrifices hopefully will be a little easier to stomach.

I know we're all exhausted. You know, I had a really hard weekend, a really hard weekend. I just feel sad and I feel overwhelmed. And I just had to let myself feel that and say like, well, that's, that's an appropriate emotion for right now. And there's nothing we can do to fix that. Right. We're just going to have to persist and survive and be resilient and find that deep well of grit that hopefully so many of us can access to get us through this incredibly difficult phase we're currently in.


Beth: [00:12:02] Anne Helen Petersen did a fantastic interview with sociologists Jessica Calarco and the headline was "Other Countries Have Safety Nets, the United States Has Women", but this paragraph really stuck out to me, just knowing our audience and hearing where so many of you are knowing where Sarah and I are personally.

And I wanted to share it here. Jessica Calarco says. Mothers are blaming themselves for their failures in this pandemic. For failing to be the kind of perfect worker who doesn't let her kids distract her from her work. For failing to be the kind of perfect mother who sacrifices work to meet her kids' needs. For failing to be the kind of perfect wife who never gets angry and always defers to her spouse. As a sociologist, it's easy for me to see how that blame is deeply misplaced, how women should be blaming our government for failing to stop the spread of the virus, for failing to pay people to stay home, for failing to provide an adequate social support system with affordable childcare, affordable healthcare and sufficient financial protections for people who can't make ends meet. 

How women should be blaming their employers for putting profits before people, for setting unrealistic expectations and for failing to provide the support that workers need. How women should in many cases, be blaming their own spouses or partners for prioritizing their own careers, for not doing enough at home and for denying the science about COVID-19. And I bring this up, not because I think blame is super helpful right now, but because so many of us direct blame inward.

And when you look at where our government is, at least at a federal level, the answer is nowhere and harming itself in the process. The Washington Post reported today that more than 130 secret service officers are in quarantine because of infection or close contact with a person infected with COVID-19.

The Biden team is not yet being briefed officially on COVID-19 because we still don't have that ascertainment issued from the general services administration. We still don't have any relief progress. And Congress is now focused internally on their leadership elections. Government funding runs out period in 25 days.

And it's been five months since the president attended a COVID 19 tasks force meeting. And I think putting those pieces together is important. We are all struggling individually because we are all struggling collectively and we are struggling collectively because the type of leadership we need from the federal government isn't there right now. 

Sarah: [00:14:27] That individualistic approach is not only harming the people that blame themselves, but harming all of us because it really props up those psychological weaknesses in our own reasoning. Right. It's so driven by our personal experience and we in, so, because we're only thinking about our personal experience, we're only thinking about the repercussions on us as individuals, on our person. Right. 

So it's not just that we're looking back and only assessing through our personal experiences, but we're only looking forward in assessing through our personal experiences. And so you have people, well, it doesn't matter if I get sick and I think it's just so important as much as we can to reach out to those around us and say, no, it's not just about you. And I know that you are a caring, loving person, and I need you to see the impact of this decision.

I need you to see that my kids can't get the schooling they need if people don't make the sacrifices, that indoor dining is spreading this virus and causing people to die, it's causing really huge problems in our economy. I don't, I mean, I think it's true that some of the economic messaging around Coronavirus during the election shows us that people are scared of another shutdown and the economic fallout of that.

And I'm not sure if you know, definitely leadership at any of us have, have done a good job of saying, especially those of us who are protected economically. Right. Of saying like, no, I get it. But this economic fallout will just continue to expand unless we get this under control. It's not just about public health at the cost of everything else.

It's that nothing else can flow freely until public health is safe and we're not safe right now. 

Beth: [00:16:27] And that just requires us to pay people to stay at home. That just requires us to subsidize businesses for a while. It does. No one wants that. People like to make their livings. People like to feel that they are working. Work is essential in some ways to feel that we're doing something meaningful, whether it's work in the way that we traditionally define it, or another way is we all want to do something meaningful.

We all want to be with other people. I am an extreme introvert and  I feel that need for other human contact right now, I do outside of my own house. I am craving being with people right now. It's very unusual for me. I don't quite recognize it, but that's where we are. 

And we're all worried about our kids who absolutely need that socialization and the freedom and independence that school provides for them in addition to the learning. Some things are just going to have to go on hold if we want to satisfy those most basic needs right now. And I think that we are upside down on how we're categorizing our basic needs.

 Before we move on. I wanted to really briefly mention another place where I think we're upside down and I will talk more about this on tonight's Nightly Nuance.

For those of you who are there with me on Patreon. But one of our listeners is part of a team of people working hard to help Lisa Marie Montgomery, who is scheduled to be executed by the federal government on December eight. She'll be the first woman in about 70 years to be killed by the federal government for a variety of reasons that are pretty interesting when we think about gender and crime, but her crime was horrific. 

She did a terrible, terrible thing. Her entire life is one where she has suffered enormous trauma and abuse and every person who was supposed to protect and love her, has failed her in terrible ways. And it's my view that she is being systemically failed right now because the Trump administration scheduled her execution in October with the execution scheduled for December 8th, that's a very short amount of time to go through the clemency process. 

Her appeals process has been exhausted. And so now her option is to ask for clemency. That is very involved and to do that in the middle of a pandemic where the type of experts needed to attest to her mental state. She is not well, she has to take psychotropic drugs every single day. And since her execution was scheduled, she's been put in isolation and is dissociative. For experts to be able to evaluate her and make that case to the president, it just can't happen right now. In the course of visiting with her, her lead lawyers contracted COVID-19 and are essentially bedridden.

And I just think it is such a grave injustice for her to be incapable of going through that clemency process fully for us to be executing someone who is so clearly dealing with extreme trauma and mental health issues and for a lame duck administration to prioritize the execution of people on death row over working to keep more of us alive through this pandemic.

 So we'll put in the show notes, a petition that you can sign if you care about this, links to learn more about it, I will talk more on the Nightly Nuanced, but I want to mention it here because this is the kind of thing that does wake me up in the middle of the night sometimes. It just makes me feel like we are so off base in our priorities in this country. And I want us to not look away from it, even though there are so many hard things that we're contending with right now. 

Sarah: [00:19:59] As we are continuing with so many hard things, we wanted to share a moment of hope and that is to look to the sky.

We have another landmark mission from NASA and Space X, a fully operational crewed mission. Following up the test mission in may that carried Doug and Bob. I like to just call him Doug and Bob we're on a first name basis, but this one carried four astronauts on board the space X crew, dragon capsule to the international space station.

And we watched them launch last night as we're recording on Monday. And it was so exciting. And it really does feel like we, with every space X launch are witnessing the beginning of a new age. This one was at night. A launch is very exciting. It's very exciting, very different from the launch we watched during the day in may.

And I, you know, I think that with every single one of these, we get closer to commercial space travel, which we've all been waiting for since the Jetsons. So it's about dang time. 

Beth: [00:21:07] We also get some new research. This mission is created by a couple of physicists. They're going to be looking at the effects of micro gravity on the heart. For example, they're going to attempt to grow some radishes. It also to me is important because of what it represents in terms of a cooperative international effort. And that always gives me great hope. 

Sarah: [00:21:26] Next step, we are going to give an election update and talk about the electoral college

Election updates, same as before. Joe Biden won, but we, we seem to have the final electoral vote tally now. 

Beth: [00:21:51] As we are recording on Monday and appears that Joe Biden has one, 306 electoral college votes to Trump's 232. There are some ongoing lawsuits, but not as many as the last time we spoke to you. A lawsuit in Arizona has been withdrawn by the Trump campaign because there are not enough votes at issue to impact the outcome.

Sarah: [00:22:10] That was Sharpie gate. That was the ballots being filled. That was Sharpie, right? 

Beth: [00:22:14] That's right. And the Trump campaign lost an emergency motion in Michigan to block certification of the results. That's really the goal right now to block certification of those results. So that state legislators would be appointing elections. There's as we talked about on Friday.

 Again, that's a huge lift, but the courts are not complying with this effort to slow down certification. The Trump campaign also withdrew one of their claims in Pennsylvania on the observation of counting ballots. As we talked about before they have admitted in court that yes, they were allowed to do some observation.

And so one of those claims is actually what been withdrawn. In Pennsylvania, they do still have claims related to mail-in ballot practices. Pennsylvania announced though that the margin is too great and it's state for any automatic recounts to be done in any counties. If recounts are to happen, they will have to be done at the campaign's expense.

We also had 16 assistant us attorneys writing a letter to attorney general, Bill Barr saying we don't see any fraud out here. And the memo that you sent out, encouraging investigations was harmful and we don't agree with it and we hope that you will resend it. Now, the attorney general said, well, you should have read the memo because it said only if you see this evidence.

But I think that there's an important public relations stand being made within the department of justice about the security of elections here. 

Sarah: [00:23:32] You have an increasing number of Republicans, I think the Republican governor of Arkansas was the latest to say that it's time to move into a Biden transition.

But as of now on Monday we're recording ,the Trump administration is still refusing to brief or involve the Biden transition team and any of this important process as we move from a Trump administration to a Biden administration. Anthony Fowchee, the governments lead expert on infectious disease spoke about that this weekend and said like, you know, we're in the middle of this massive crisis.

And to be able to transfer power and make that transition smooth is of the utmost importance, especially with operation warp speed, as we need to be able to get as many of these vaccines out into the American populace as quickly as possible. And that's not just gonna, you know, the next person walks in the next day and says, okay, we're in charge now.

We've got it. Let, just follow through your checklist. These are massive, massive undertakings. I wonder if we will see a shift in the, the resistance to transition as we begin the certification of the results at the end of this week and next week. What do you think? 

Beth: [00:24:44] I don't know. I am coming around to the viewpoint that some people are never going to respect the outcome of this election. I think that's different than the way that some people never respected the outcome of the 2016 election, but there are some similarities. And it comforts me to know that we just went through four years of resistance efforts and still had a presidency. It's a presidency where I didn't agree with the outcome.

And I understood many, not all, but many of those resistance efforts, but we still made it. And we had an administration. It didn't function well, but it functioned. And I'm encouraged that the Biden team is so cool headed in this moment and is assuring us that they're doing their work and they're getting information where they can get it.

And if the administration isn't going to officially cooperate with them fine, but that's not going to slow them down. And so I'm just recognizing that we will always have a relative, a neighbor, a friend who says the election was stolen. Okay. That's what's going to happen then, but we're going to continue on with the government.

And I think a government that's going to be much more competent in that. That just settles me tremendously. 

Sarah: [00:25:52] I had to have some hard moments of self-reflection, especially as the right wing conservative media and Donald Trump himself started talking about Dominion, which was the electronic voting company.

I think it's used in Georgia. I'm not sure where else. And look, there have been Democrats that have spoken about their concerns with dominion previously, and that the reason I had this moment of really what Dave Chappelle counseled us all to look at, is that feeling that feeling of it's not fair, is I remember that feeling vividly under the George W. Bush administration. 

I remember lots of conversations about, um, electronic voting companies that they were controlled by Republicans, that Dick Cheney was invested in many of them. And I remember that feeling and how awful it was, feeling like the deck was stacked against you. And so that specific storyline kind of hit me like, Oh man, I've been there.

I've been where they are right now. And it's really, really hard. It's not that I am overwhelmed with love and compassion for the people who flooded the streets of Washington DC for the stop, the steal rally, particularly as those gatherings turned violent in the evening in Washington, DC. I'm not, I'm still really frustrated, but it was just enough of a glimmer of like some of these storylines.

Some of this, these concerns have been felt on my quote unquote side before as well. And what, you know, maybe that's an important thing to consider as we transition into talking about the electoral college, but, you know, I. Also took that whole Dominion storyline as, as a moment of hope, because it felt like, you know, after lots of hand waving and concerns, the 2016 election where we know that there was foreign interference into some of these systems, including at the state level, um, led to a real dialing up from our national security apparatus in 2018 and 2020, that.

You know, for all of this trauma that we've experienced over the last two presidential elections led to more security in our election systems. So that is promising, but that feeling on the other side, that it's not fair, that the deck is stacked against you. You know, there's enough of. I have enough sympathy and enough pragmatism that I think we should understand that yes, some people are never going to respect the outcome and we have to acknowledge that that is an important force to pay attention to because I think silencing or ignoring or discounting it as idiots and ignorance has led to in many ways, the moment that we are experiencing. That led us to Donald Trump. And I don't want to do that again. I want to let people have enough of a release valve that it doesn't fester into something that infects all of us 

Beth: [00:28:54] Leadership to me is not ignoring or silencing dissent, even the worst placed dissent. It's acknowledging it and going on anyway. And I think that's what you see in the Biden team right now. I don't hear them talking about the election wasn't stolen, shut down all of the dissent. It's just, we hope people will give us a chance. We won this election. We have this responsibility, now we're going to do it.

And I do think that there is going to be an opportunity in the next 60 / 90 days for people to see a shift in leadership that is really helpful to this country. And I'm willing to be patient and wait for that. I wish we could have it today. I wish we had a president right now who was attending briefings by a task force on COVID-19.

I wish we did, but we have a president elect who's doing that. And we're just going to have to give people some space. We get a lot of questions right now. How am I supposed to talk to these people? Well, maybe, maybe right now is not the time to talk about this. Maybe now is the time to give everybody a little bit of room around political conversations, because it is very hot and it's very emotional and we're not our best selves for any reason.

It doesn't mean that we're forever writing each other off. And I, I do feel very optimistic about where all of this is going. To your point, Sarah. I think that's an excellent transition to the electoral college because the big picture question for me, when I think about the electoral college is how do we have a United States where more people feel that their, their voices are heard. I hate to use the word vote votes matter because votes always matter. And they will never matter in the way that people mean that when they say that. Right. But how can we feel like more voices are heard through a different or reformed system?

Sarah: [00:30:48] You know, we talk about value so often here, and we say that values should drive our priorities. And I think if you asked most Americans the value that they either believe drives our electoral system or believe should drive our electoral system is one person, one vote. And the electoral college is the biggest impediment to that.

It is not one person, one vote under any stretch of the imagination. And so to motivate participation in a democracy, which I think should also be a really fundamental goal. Although I think what you see in this system and in many, our systems is that population is driving representation, not participation.

I mean, that's where we got to such a horrific compromise in the early days of our founding is because we were paying so close attention to population. It's where you see people manipulating the census results, right? Because it drives electoral college, it drives the house of representatives. And so, you know, that number, that population number.

I think the idea that what's really driving us is population instead of participation when our articulated narrative is that. It's about participation and then it's one person, one vote, and I think that's true and right, and should be where we're headed, but we can not get there. As long as the electoral college continues to exist.

Beth: [00:32:08] Sarah, we talked on Friday about a number of proposed reforms, uh, different systems. I wonder where your head is right now in terms of the best path forward. 

Sarah: [00:32:19] You know, when the polling for Joe Biden and the democratic party was looking so positive, particularly in Texas, my husband and I had this conversation and I said, man, maybe we shouldn't waste any political capital on the electoral college if we turn Texas blue. 

And I thought falsely that we would just continue to see these blue waves and the demographics are, are in our favor. And I think that's still true. But, you know, as we look back through the history of the electoral college and I thought about it, and I saw these moments, these inflection points either how close we came to an amendment at the end of the 1960s, um, the election of 1800 Andrew Jackson's election.

What I think is so important is we're so bad at telling the future. And every time we think we understand how the electoral college will help or hurt our side in perpetuity. We are wrong. It is dynamic. Our country is dynamic and you know, hedging your bets, that the electoral college will benefit your party.

And so that's why you should need to protect it or hedging your bets, that it will never benefit your party. And that's why you should tear it down. It's just not a steady ground to stand on because our country and the politics and the politics of the parties are ever-changing and this system is so ill suited not only to the dynamics of are changing politics and demographics, but to the values of one person, one vote.

 And so, you know, I think that we should move forward at all fronts, you know, keep pushing for the interstate compact. But I do think ultimately we need a constitutional amendment. I think maybe a middle ground between them is to lobby our state legislators to do it based on districts, which is, I think what the founding fathers originally intended, where we can get closer to proportional representation and away from the winner, take all system that really perverts one person, one vote, but this is untenable. 

We must with clear eyes and a soulful conviction, call out people who want to protect it to protect their own power. You know, I say this as a southerner, the history of the South and electoral college is so disturbing, it was about protecting white supremacy and protecting power and it still is. And so, you know, I think part of the success of the progressive movement in the early 19 hundreds, where people calling that out and saying, you don't care about us, you care about your power. I think this is true for even small States.

Who wants to protect their power and the electoral process, because at a certain point, it's not about your power. It's about the country. We are the United States of America States don't vote. People do. And I think just articulating that, that, and saying over and over again. That the values of America and the, the lifeblood and the energy that keep our institutions healthy and functioning is the belief that the power comes from the people, not small States from the people and this institution has severed that trust. 

And until, like I said, we get it out of the way and we find a better and it will be hard and it will not be perfect. We would have to change a lot of our electoral process. We would have to move to a more federalized system, which would bring its own risks especially if we, as we talk about foreign interference.

But for me, it's just staying really, really focused on the fact that our fundamental values are one person, one vote, and that is the power and the energy through which our democracy functions. And this is a block. It's a blockage that has to go 

Beth: [00:36:36] as I've thought more about what I've learned this year from the pandemic, from the election, from the racial reckoning.

My big conclusion is that none of us have the education that we need about our country historically civically, legally, geographically to have the best answer to any particular question. And so I'm trying to come to this conversation about the electoral college with a lot of humility, recognizing that I am still learning many things about my country that I need to know to be an informed participant in this conversation.

It also helps me recognize that that civic education that I think we've gotten more of in some really horrific ways over the last few years, that I hope that we continue to get more of in more productive ways over the next few is a long process. And it's one in which we don't want to leave people behind.

I don't want to leave behind the people who have historically been left behind. In fact, I'd like to center their concerns and I don't want to leave behind people who are accustomed to being dominant in these conversations in a way that's disrespectful or condescending, or that further divides the country and provokes backlash.

That is a tough needle to thread. So I've been landing on that proportionate representation as a first step. You mentioned Sarah as like an in the meantime step, I think in, in the meantime step. Just to help us all learn more about our country would be for all of us to vote as Nebraska and Maine do.

Instead of winner, take all with your electoral college votes, your congressional districts would earn those elector votes and you might see more split decisions. And I think that could be enormously beneficial to all of our education.

 I like to watch election returns on MSNBC because Steve Koernke is so good at saying this area is this particular County. Here's what drives the economy here. Here's what the history of this County has looked like. Here's, you know, a, a major issue that's always on the minds of voters in this County. I love that. And I think that if more counties mattered in the map, It would help. Now that is our congressional districts are not well-designed right now.

This is not a full fledged solution, right? Our congressional districts need a lot of work. Our apportionment as Sarah talks about very eloquently and frequently is a problem that we need to fix. I think step one though, could really be just getting us all familiar with more pieces of the country. And seeing a map that where States are not all red and blue and that, that could shake things up in a way that creates openness to more change.

Sarah: [00:39:35] As I was listening to Throughline's history of the electoral college. They were talking about how at the founding, because of our media environment, because of the transportation environment, because it was just a completely different universe that I think is hard for us to comprehend politics was really, really local.

And so they were so concerned that the populace in these far flung parts of the United States would not understand that the presidential race or would not be fully informed? I do not think that was the reason that we ended up with the electoral college. I think the reason we ended up with the electoral college is because the oligarchy of the South that wanted to protect its power has been successful at protecting that power for most of our country's history.

And. I thought, well, how fascinating that now we're in the opposite situation, right? Where people are obsessed with national politics and neglecting their local politics. And I think it's it's that we don't just need to understand. And be in meshed and involved in our local politics. I think that's essential.

I think a better, a better prioritization of what's happening in our communities. More involvement in school boards or local governing boards. All of that. I think that's essential, but it's like, we also need a combination of the two. We need, and I can't fathom how the pandemic has not illuminated this more than it has.

We need to see our own communities and we need to see that what's happening there and how important it is. And we also need to hold that what's important in our community might not be important in another community, but that we- none of our communities can succeed unless all of our communities succeed.

Right? Like we take the worst parts of both, right. We neglect our local community, or we decide that my region of the country's priorities are all that matters and that I must protect my success. It's it's a very like, For the United States of America and for the stories we tell about ourselves, when we get together as regions of the country, we have a real scarcity mindset and we don't see.

 You know, that was one of my favorite parts of Joe Biden's interview with Brené Brown. When he talked about discussing with someone in the West, why Amtrak was important to them and he was, and he was basically like the reason it matters to you that the trains run on time, where I am is the same reason it matters to me that the Hoover dam functions and provides water to your community because we are the United States and our destinies are tied up together.

And I think the electoral college perpetuates this idea that we're not striving together to a better future, but that we are competing with each other for scarce resources and scarce political power. And I think in a, in a paradoxical way, investing in our local communities and seeing how important that thriving is in our individual spaces and geographies across this very big and complex country would hopefully open our eyes to that's true everywhere. 

That I care as much about my children's driving and succeeding and the school board doing well as you do. And so if we can find a policy, we can find a way. And we have at moments in American history of pooling our resources and understanding that there are ways for all of us to thrive and to flourish together, then that would be available to us. But you know, a system that, that pits us against each other that perpetuates the idea.

That if cities thrive, rural areas fail, or if the coasts thrive the middle of the country fails, or if the North thrives the South fails, you know, that's not, that is not a path to success. And I think any institution, but particularly this one that perpetuates the idea that we are, that we have to fight each other instead of work together to flourish, it's gotta go. It's gotta go. 

Beth: [00:44:13] I have a bias that decisions made on a small scale are usually higher quality decisions than decisions made at a large scale. And that is a bias that is often proven wrong for me. I don't know that proportionate representation would change much in the way of outcomes. I suspect it wouldn't, but I think over time it would change the way we think about the process.

And I think changing the way we think about it would change our behavior. And I don't know exactly how I know that my congressional district just reelected an objectively ineffective representative to Congress. If you look at the number of bills that he gets even into a committee, it's almost non-existent. He has not been part of any meaningful legislation while he's been in Congress.

He is ineffective. As he is interviewed in the press, he almost suggests that his goal is to be ineffective in Congress. And that bugs me. It bugs me to live in a place where that's the case. I wonder if our community would think about our district differently if we saw on a map, how we were leaning in the presidential contest, I don't know, but I wonder what would happen if more of us could see that we are not the only Republican in California or the only Democrat in Oklahoma. If our friends and neighbors could see that they are not part of all red dots throughout this state or all blue dots throughout this state. I think we need something to shift because so many of the issues that we are contending with right now are cultural.

 We need something to shift in our thinking about our culture as much as about our government. I'd listen for the nightly nuance to justice Alito's remarks to the Federalist society. I had a lot of thoughts and feelings about it that you can hear in that episode.

But my big takeaway is that here is a Supreme court justice, someone with more influence over the direction of this country for a longer period of time than most of us can fathom. And he was lamenting his inability to shape American culture. I don't know how you see that address any other way. 

So as I look for reforms, because I agree with you that the electoral college is not serving us. As I look for reforms, I'm looking for reforms that shape us culturally, as much as anything else. I believe that if we get into a binary of, we do it exactly this way, or we go to a national popular vote, we're just going to increase the culture Wars. We're going to increase the space that we seem stuck in this adversarial mindset. And I want out of that cycle somehow. Well, 

Sarah: [00:46:54] and I think the binary of decisions made closest to the local level or big decisions is a false binary. Absolutely. The truth is the better decisions you make at the local level. And the more mess you are in your local community, it is also abundantly clear how important state and federal decisions are and what good ones look like and how they affect your community and how, when it works for the state of Kentucky, it works for you too.

That was my experience as a commissioner. I didn't grow in my scarcity mindset. I felt like I understood better how interconnected this all was and how if I wanted to flourish the whole had to flourish. And, you know, I think you're right. I think this, you know, we're, we're talking around this, but so much of it is that we don't think about the priorities as Americans.

We think about the priorities as Democrats and Republicans. You know, I was reading the really disturbing interview with Tommy Tuberville the Senator elect from Alabama. And I was just heartbroken that the people of Alabama chose this man who doesn't understand the role, who is clearly not informed over Doug Jones, who has had such an amazing career and it's easy to get in that spot and be like, Oh right the dumb people of Alabama, but then you, that's not fair. That's not reasonable. It was like, when you look at the numbers of that election, it was like, A hundred thousand more people voted for Doug Jones than did in the special election.

I read an amazing statistic about the electoral college, that 800,000 Democrats voted in Alabama. That's equal to the population of about nine electoral votes in other smaller States. So even Alabama, the state that, that is so easy to have a narrative about as a Democrat is just not true. It's just not true.

And. I think you're right. I think if we could talk proportionally and we could see that when we think we're fighting over resources, that that picture is not as simple. That the picture we paint about our fellow citizens in our communities or our fellow citizens in other States is not that simple. I mean, if we could see the complexity of a state like Alabama, even through the lens of partisanship, would it help the partisanship and the anger we feel towards one another?

 I don't know. Maybe, hopefully. You know, I think you're right. I think getting at that cultural conversation, any reforms that can get us to some more complexity with which we view each other, particularly through partisan lenses would be incredibly helpful, you know, and I don't think that this is, let me not perpetuate to some sort of both side argument.

Uh, David French wrote a really good email from the Dispatch. And he talked about that it was easier to be a conservative Christian in Massachusetts than it was an independent in Tennessee. That the hate and the cruelty he felt when he announced that he was not supporting Donald Trump was intense. I don't think it's, I don't think the, the ranker and the disconnect is the same, whether you're in a red state or a blue state, I don't believe that to be true. 

And I think the cultural conversation, when we start to have cultural conversation, it begins to feel like we all own it equally, but it's like that conversation we had at the first of the show where we, we, we take the blame on ourselves instead of looking at societal issues.

And I don't think that blame has to be melted out equally. And I do not, even though I see some of the, I see enough of the threads through the way I felt in 2000 running through the way the. MAGA people feel right now in 2016 enough to like recognize their humanity and see enough of that. I still don't think that this is that some of the arguments presented and supported the electoral college or in support of even the culture Wars are made in good will.

I don't think that they are. And I think we have to say that. That's what I was talking about with, uh, with reforms about the electoral college. It's not about small States, it's protecting it, your party's power and you are prioritizing your party above the function of our democracy. I think there's a lot of objective evidence that that's happening on the right side of the aisle right now.

And so, you know, I want to be clear out about that too, but I think we just have to, we have to call a thing, a thing as Brenda Salter McNeil said in the ally. And I think about a lot, we have to call a thing, a thing and the protection of your partisan power over the healthy function of our democracy needs to be called out.

Beth: [00:51:32] Many of you have asked us, what can you do as a next step on changing the structural topics that we discuss? The best thing you can do is look in your state to find what efforts are already underway, and if they are not underway in directions that you think are productive to talk to the people in your sphere of influence about who's interested in working on it.

I think so often about the story that professor Josh Douglas from UK, his college of law shared with us about the woman who started the redistricting efforts in Michigan with a Facebook post. She just said on Facebook, Hey. I think our districts are messed up. I'm interested in working on this. Anybody else interested and she was overwhelmed with responses, mostly from people that she didn't know. 

So if you're thinking, well, my friends and family don't care about this. That's okay. But they might know someone who does, and eventually that idea might get some legs and you might start to chip away at a big problem. The electoral college is not going to be changed in the next year or the next four years, most likely, but a lot of progress has been made and will continue to be made. And the more we work at our state levels, I truly believe the more momentum will be created to work on this and other structural issues on a national level. Well, 

Sarah: [00:52:54] and I think there's a good case to be made that those state efforts on redistricting are much further along. And there's no doubt in my mind that they would impact the ultimate goal of changing or eliminating the electoral college.

Beth: [00:53:16] Sarah what's on your mind outside of politics? 

Sarah: [00:53:18] Well, I shared on Instagram that I am starting my 10th year of the Week in the Life project. This was something I found in Real Simple magazine over a decade ago. It's a project launched by one of our executive producers, Allie Edwards. And it's so important to me and my family and a lot of people on Instagram ask for more details.

So what I do is for one week, I take pictures upon pictures upon pictures throughout our day. Allie has these really great free printables where you kind of like write down hour upon hour what's going on with everybody. You write down your meals, you write down observations or funny things people have said.

So I fill out those sheets throughout the day, I journal. I'm sort of just hyper aware of, Oh right now we're spending it, Felix is spending a lot of time drawing Ninja comics. So I write that down. I take pictures of it. Just to, to capture that the intricacies of our daily lives and the beauty of our everyday lives.

I mean, I think that, you know, 20 years from now, yeah. I definitely want pictures of birthday parties and I definitely want pictures of vacations, but I also really value the fact that I can go back and see that. Oh yeah. When Griffin was a baby, Nicholas would bring his bottle in at. 6:00 AM and he'd sleep with me for another hour.

Those little things that you just kind of fade away as your, as your routines change. And I'm just so grateful that I found Allie in that she's, you know, she does classes and she has all these amazing resources and, you know, it's just been such a gift. And looking back over 10 years of these, when I started in 2010, you know, I was staying at home, I'm with Griffin.

I had one kid and we lived at a different house. Like everything about our lives was different. And I just so value the, the awareness, it brings to that and to having all of these, and that's a lot of work and definitely by the last day, I'm like, I'm so ready for this to be over. Um, but there's lots of ways to simplify it.

You know, just taking pictures on your phone, just taking a couple notes in your phones. Like you can dial it up or dial it down, but I'm just so grateful for this process. And I love it so, so much. 

Beth: [00:55:26] Well, I always love seeing the conclusion that you post from it. Conclusion is probably the wrong word, but I feel like you give the gift of sharing a peak with everyone else usually of having them as an I love seeing it. 

Sarah: [00:55:38] What are you thinking about outside politics? 

Beth: [00:55:40] Over the weekend. I read Girls Burn Brighter, which was a selection for our extra credit book club. Probably several boxes ago. It's been kind of sitting because I looked at it and it seemed overwhelming to me at many different points, but I picked it up.

The writing is gorgeous. It reads like poetry all the way through. And so I made it through basically a 400 page novel in two days because it read so quickly and beautifully. It is mostly set in India and it is a hard read in that there's incredible suffering. You come to very much care about two main characters and they go through incredible suffering.

And also the power of their friendship comes across in a way that I needed right now, just that reminder of what friendship can do for us. So it was lovely. The other two things I did to kind of tune out from the world over the weekend, I watched a bunch of episodes of Ted Lasso on Apple plus Apple TV.

Plus, is that how you say it? 

Sarah: [00:56:42] Well, I don't know. We started it last night too. I watched an episode of the Crown and an episode of Ted Lasso and I'm not going to binge either of them. I'm going to be good. I'm going to watch them like once a week. I'm trying to be really. You know, divvy it out like you did Schitt's Creek.

Beth: [00:56:55] Did you like it? Did you like Ted Lasso? 

Sarah: [00:56:57] Yes. I thought he was, it was everything that everyone has said. Like, it's just so pure of heart is true. I really like his character and the coach and coach, is it coach beard? I liked them both so much. I think it's very like the first episode. I was like, I get it. This is nice. I dig this a lot. 

Beth: [00:57:13] It's a lot like Schitt's Creek in that there's some very sharp humor. It's not saccharin at all. You know, there, there is his purity and there's this sweetness about it, but there's an edge to, in a lot of the humor. It's just really lovely and it is such a great followup to Schitt's Creek.

I think different, but really pulling at my heart in a good way. So I'm enjoying that and I don't know anything about soccer at all, and I've never really liked Jason Sudeikis. It's just really good. It's really well done. Um, we're also watching the Queens Gambit, which is great. Complex. Some suffering in it that makes it hard too, but also fun and interesting and unusual.

And so I've enjoyed both of those things. We hope that you are finding bits of enjoyment in a tough time. We have this episode helped you process some of that tough time and think maybe a little bit differently about some of what's going on in our country. We'll be back here again with you on Friday to continue the political conversation.

You can always spend some time with us on Wednesdays thinking more deeply about life. This Wednesday, we'll be talking about friendship and specifically when friendship ends. So Wednesday, the Nuanced Life, anywhere you get your podcast. And until we speak with you again, keep it nuanced, y'all

Pantsuit Politics is  produced by Studio D podcast  production. 

Sarah: [00:58:42] Alisse Knapp is our managing director. Dante Lima is the composer and performer of our theme music. 

Beth: [00:58:47] Our show is listener supported. Special thanks to our executive producers. 

Sarah: [00:58:51] David McWilliams. Allie Edwards, Martha Bernitski. Amy Whited, 

Beth: [00:58:56] Janice Elliot, Sarah Ralph, Barry Kaufman, 

Sarah: [00:59:00] Jeremy Sequoia, Laurie LaDoe, Emily Neslie, Alison 

Beth: [00:59:05] Luzador, Tracy Pudoff 

Sarah: [00:59:07] Danny Ozment, 

Beth: [00:59:08] Angie Erickson.

Julie Hallar. 

Sarah: [00:59:11] Jared Minson, Marnie Johanson, 

Beth: [00:59:14] The Creeds, Sherry Blem, Tiffany Hassler, Morgan McCue, Nicole Berkless, Linda Daniel, Joshua Allen and Tim Miller. 

Sarah: [00:59:23] To support Pantsuit Politics and receive lots of bonus features, visit patreon.com/pantsuit politics. 

Beth: [00:59:29] You can connect with us on our website, PantsuitPoliticsShow.com.

Sign up for our weekly emails and follow us on Instagram.

Alise NappComment