Pandemic Prioritization and Election Interference

Pandemic Prioritization and Election Interference

Topics Discussed:

  • It's Ok That We're Not Ok

  • Wildfires and Climate Change

  • Police Shooting in Los Angeles

  • Schools and Covid-19

  • Alabama Voting Options

  • Moment of Positivity

  • Election Interference

  • Outside of Politics

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Episode Resources

Transcript

Beth: [00:00:00] Hello everyone. Thank you for joining us for this episode of Pantsuit Politics, where we are going to be focusing in our main segment on election interference. Before that we're going to hit some of the headlines and as always, we'll end by talking about what's on our minds outside of politics. 

And I'm very excited for that conversation today, before we dive into things, one is to invite anyone who is not part of the nightly nuanced level of membership on our Patreon page to come join us this week, because we're going to be doing a really deep dive on election interference and how our government is positioned to respond to it there. So it connects really well to today's show. 

If you like this discussion, you can get lots more there by going to patreon.com/Pantsuit Politics. Sarah, not to just talk endlessly, but I wanted to tell you about something that happened.

Sarah: [00:00:46] I mean, that's kind of our job. That is that's our job. 

Beth: [00:00:49] I appreciate that. Thank you. I we'll talk endlessly for a minute then. Okay. I went to Chicago in a whirlwind trip this weekend to see my sister brother-in-law and new niece who is now a month old and on my drive, 

Sarah: [00:01:03] you really fast. I think it's nice that you list the adults.

You just went to see the babies. Let's be honest. 

Beth: [00:01:09] I did go to see the adults I really did because I went shortly after she was born and that's such a hard period and they're working so hard, just it's taken me back to how hard being a new parent is. And so I'm not doing that stuff. Eliza was great, but she will be greater down the road.

Let's all be honest, you know, and she will be more interested in me down the road. 

Sarah: [00:01:29] No, I love newborns. If I roll up into your house to visit your newborn, I might say nice things about how I'm checking on you, but really I'm there to see the newborn. I'm just, I'm just going to be honest and open it up front about that.

Beth: [00:01:37] Yeah, she's precious. And I love her, but really I do care a lot about my sister and brother in law right now. It's a hard time. Anyway, I'm going through Northern Indiana and I noticed we're driving on Friday, which was September 11th. I noticed at an overpass in Northern Indiana, a lot of United States flags and a gentleman with what I'm like 90% sure was a Make America Great Again hat. 

They're pretty distinctive, right. And a big visible holster standing on the overpass with all of these flags. And I thought. Huh, that's something you don't see every day. Like I didn't react too much. And then I kept driving and I get to the next overpass, three guys, flags, visible holsters.

a Never Forget sign. And I think, Oh, maybe this is some kind of 9/11 commemoration. Four total overpasses with this going on. Yeah, and I was really unsettled by it. And then I was unsettled by being unsettled because I try to live in this space of assuming the best of intent and everyone, especially right now.

Right. And I particularly understand that 9/11, we are all still like fresh in that grief in so many ways. So I didn't want to have words like. Occupation coming into my mind, but I also felt really uncomfortable driving. Through this with my two girls, the symbolism of it bothered me. And then I was bothered that I was bothered.

And I wanted to talk to you about that because it just reminded me that maybe we need to take a minute at the outset to say it is okay, that we're all not okay to use our friend, Megan Devine's language, which is there's too much going on. And it is okay that we're not okay. 

Sarah: [00:03:40] There is a cultural thing happening.

With Trump supporters that is pretty unique, at least in modern American history. You know, we didn't have Reagan campaign flags being flown bigger than the American flag. We didn't have Reagan or Bush or w like stores, there are Trump stores with just nothing, but Trump memorabilia memorabilia, you can go in and purchase and drape yourself in that is unique.

And it is deeply disturbing, but it's not surprising because there is a real cult of personality going on there. And those performances, as we talked to about in the last episode of really a show of force, they're supposed to be in settling. That's the point I went to a girl's weekend this weekend at Kentucky Lake and my friend was like, so you're going to see all these Trump flags.

And I said, well, hold on just a sec, because happens in the human brain is we see something unsettling and then it swells right. And I said, let's start counting every boat we see that does not have a Trump flag. She, I think she actually used language. They all have them. And I was like, Hmm, I bet that's not true.

And so every time about went by that didn't have a Trump flag. I'd say, see, look, there's about without Trump flag. And there were lots of them, but because the way, you know, the strategy they've used from the second, he put that hat on is to even the fact that it's red is to be so like, It's effort to get your attention.

And to a large extent it works. And I think, you know, the purpose is to have a reactive emotional response. And that's really important. I think we should all pay attention to how unsettling we feel or how unsettled we feel in those when we see those things and then immediately be like, okay, let's put this in perspective, like be aware of what they're doing and criticize it and call it out.

Absolutely. But always kind of keep that larger perspective in mind. Now, did you do any searching when you got back and figure out if there was like some sort of organized campaign around nine 11 or if it was just Trump related? 

Beth: [00:05:47] I didn't. I just let it go. I knew that Cincinnati had also had a Trump parade over the weekend and I thought just.

Be with the good memories of hanging out with your sister and kind of continue to process what this means. I also, as soon as I got back, got lost in research, preparing for the show today and for the nightly nuanced this week. Which wasn't super helpful to feeling unsettled by it. Because when I look at that larger context, I do see, I think you're right.

That just something weird is going on here. And I'm having trouble having conversations with people who are like, I just don't know about the selection because while I completely get not being comfortable with Joe Biden as an individual human or what you perceive as democratic policies more broadly, I don't get thinking that this is an equally problematic situation.

Or one that tips in favor of the president when you see things like this happening, I just, I'm struggling to have empathy for that right now. And my own personal reactions to things like some guys on an overpass with flags and guns is clearly feeding into that. And so when I was thinking about like, okay, We're just, I'm not okay.

And nobody else really is either. 

Sarah: [00:07:13] And those men on the overpass definitely aren't 

Beth: [00:07:15] right, right. We're all kind of in this and processing it in different ways. So there some grace than I can find, but I was realizing like, it's just a long list of things that everybody's dealing with right now. And so, um, I made a list cause that makes me feel better sometimes.

Sarah: [00:07:31] Absolutely. Right. I mean, We've all. I don't know if adjusted as the same, the right word. I mean, we just keep going. I'm not really sure what other choice we have. And so we're living with this the first and most obvious, which is the global pandemic 194,000 people are dead from COVID-19 and we have lots of people going well.

I mean, they were going to die from something else, or we have people saying it's just 9,000. It's not 194,000, you know, or we have people sort of saying, well, we'll just let it burn through our population. Okay. We'll just let thousands of other people die. Or my favorite, which is it'll be over after election day.

Beth: [00:08:15] Yeah. When people say it's only really 9,000 because people had preexisting conditions, I just always want to say, like, do you have any preexisting conditions? Like, should I do nothing to mitigate risks to you because you have a preexisting condition. Cause that's what I hear you saying. 

And I feel that, you know, I have some things that I think Covid could be really scary for me if I got it. And I just, I look at those expressions and think like, so you just, anybody who has any kind of health risk, we have no duty to protect what kind of thinking it's the same way I feel the civil war talk. I really want to start saying to people who are like, I don't know.

I just think we're headed for a civil war. Okay. Well then what I hear you saying is that you don't think I should exist because of my political views. That's that's what a civil war would be. You'd rather get rid of me so that you can have whatever you want from the government, uh, then work through this tension together.

I just think we need to really turn our attention into the language that we're casually using because. Our language and we'll get into this more. I think when we talk about what happened in Los Angeles, our language is becoming the language of absolutely nothing matters, and we can be as violent with each other as we want to.

As long as we shrouded in political opinion. 

Sarah: [00:09:42] I also think when people use the language of civil war, there's this sense of like, well, I'm deep within one territory. And so if there's a civil war, it will happen somewhere else. Well, friend, I've got really bad news for you. If there's some sort of civil war in the United States, they will touch everyone.

There will not be someplace that's untouched by the violence and the loss. If there's some sort of civil war in the United States, it didn't happen last time. And it won't happen this time. Like it will touch everything. And so this idea that like what it's going to happen elsewhere, and then we'll see what happens.

We'll just sit back and wait to see what happens on the other side. Like, no, no, that's not. No. And it's the same way I feel about the wildfires. On the West coast, there's this, you know, and I don't know if, how much of this is baked in to just living in the United States of America and as big of a, you know, geographic country as we live in an, as complicated as a demographic, but that we live in, if there's this always this sense of like it's happening elsewhere, it won't really affect me.

But if you live safely in Maine, as far as you can get. From the wildfires ravaging the West coast, and it feels like it's happening somewhere else and has nothing to do with you. You are fooling yourself, you are fooling yourself. This is one of our nation's biggest economies. This is thousands and thousands of people without homes or people who have lost their lives.

There will be people fleeing that area of the country and settling elsewhere. And I just. You know, not to mention that it's just this, this climate change impact. That's always been theoretical. That's now coming home in a real way to where, you know, you have even Iowa asking for billions of dollars in federal relief and giving a couple million.

I'm not even sure there is money to give out. We have a hurricane barreling towards the Gulf coast. Like all these situations are coming to fruition with no leadership from the federal government and the rest of us feeling like, well, it's just happening somewhere else. And like that is just wearing away at people.

It's certainly wearing away at me. 

Beth: [00:11:59] Something I'm noticing in the reporting about the West coast that I think is really helpful is that people are starting to get more specific about what they mean when they say climate change is at work. Here it is. Easier I think to wrap my brain around. Okay. Because it's hotter and drier, more bugs are eating away at trees.

And when more bugs eat away at trees, the trees basically are turned into kindling. Okay. I can get that. And I think just that that's one tiny example of many factors converging here, but. When I said it a few minutes ago, that language matters. I think that language is really helpful. Let's not just use climate change, even though I'm not afraid of all of that term.

Let's say what we mean so that we can understand it because if bugs are doing that to trees in California, bugs can do that to trees in all of the United States. Right. And that I think makes the risk a little bit more real and understandable. And I think, I think that could lead us to greater problems.

I don't know. But in addition to. Pandemic fires, the kinds of conversations that we're having. We have continued Sierra protests about systemic racism and over-policing accompanied by opportunistic violence from people who seek out. Places to do violent behavior, playing out all over the country. And over the weekend, we learned that two police officers in Los Angeles were just sitting in their car when someone came up and shot them at close range.

And after that, they were taken to the hospital where it looks like they will survive and recover. And. I don't know how many people it's been unclear to me from the reports, but more than one person stood outside the hospital saying that they wish for these people to die and that this is going to keep happening.

And it's. Awful. It couldn't be any worse to add this incident to the VA, very disturbing history that we have between citizens and their communities over the past few months. 

Sarah: [00:14:06] Yes. I immediately got an email from my father that was like, would you still hang up black lives matter flag in your home after this?

Because I don't know why, why he decided that these, uh, from the video, especially from the NPR reporter who got arrested by the police, as the Escalade, as the situation escalated, um, there was not more than a handful of people. And I told him, I'm like, there's no certification process. You don't go to black lives matter school and receive some sort of deputization that, okay, now you're an official black lives matter representation.

It's a de-centralized movement. And if you commit violence, I don't care if you are screaming black lives matter and you're wearing a black lives matter shirt, you are not a part of the movement because by definition it is nonviolent by definition. It is a de-centralized nonviolent movement. And so like, it's just so frustrating to me.

That there's this, this attempt to use violence and listen on conservative media. It's not just the violence, the violent language and the violence itself being attached to the Black Lives Matter of movement. They keep going. It's all Democrats. It's Joe Biden. It's like, they support this. They're not doing anything.

And it's just so. Absurd. And so escalating from the same people who were trying to prop up president Trump as a source of calm while he was trying to calm everybody down about COVID give me a freaking break, you know, and it just all plays into this because everything is already stressful. Everything is already escalating.

And everything gets put through the filter of the election, which is also stressful and escalating, and only 49 days away. It's like this really great filter over everything that just makes every single, stressful news story, terribly tragic event or systemic protest, whatever it is, it just makes it all worse because we all have to look through it through the lens of polling and election outcomes that we're all, you know, Sick to our stomachs about it's just it's so compounding, 

Beth: [00:16:03] I think your dad's point is just so symptomatic of how these stories get covered and discussed too, because look, what happened to these two police officers is shameful and unequivocally wrong. We can not about assassinating police officers, obviously, obviously, or anyone that and that same thing and still true at the same time. What happened to George Floyd was shameful and wrong. And obviously unacceptable in our society. And so when you say black lives matters, you're not talking about all people adhering to one code, just like all of this reporting about Hispanics and Joe Biden.

Hispanic is a term that encompasses so many different people with so many different interests from so many different places in the world. We cannot keep talking about each other in these. Umbrella terms as though if you share any characteristic with this group, then you must share all of the characteristics.

So you mentioned the 49 days till the election. Another number that is creating a lot of stress, especially for our listeners who are government employees, is that we are 15 days from the end of the fiscal year. Meaning that absent act. Action from Congress. We have a government shutdown. We do not need a government shutdown right now.

It seems that everyone knows that and agrees with it. It also is really unclear. What's going to happen. We'll probably see a last minute continuing resolution. It seems like that's what most members of Congress would prefer. Sort of kick the hard questions into January after we have election results.

But. That's not done. Hasn't happened yet. And the clock is ticking 

Sarah: [00:17:43] well, and you know, we have the ongoing spread of the virus, but we have all the different ways that the virus has continues to disrupt our day to day lives. You know, families and businesses are struggling. It's been four months since any sort of federal COVID relief and we might get the government funded, but I don't think there's any chance that there's going to be a second wave of aid from the government, which is. truly malpractice, truly malpractice and there's frustration. I think from both sides on that now I'm not sure the responsibility is equal on both sides, but the frustration I think, 

Beth: [00:18:14] well, and the, and both sides are not monolithic on that either. Right? You have people in both parties who are very unhappy with their party's leadership around this, 

Sarah: [00:18:22] and then you of course have continued conflict over schooling. My friend was showing me these videos and it's just like child after child sitting in front of a screen crying. it's just makes me so sad that, you know, we're all struggling, but sheesh at least we're adults. It just breaks my heart to think of all the children, feeling the stress and pressure of this moment, the stress and pressure on their parents.

There's not even this space at school where they can go and be kids. You know, I tell friends this weekend, The fact that my children are in five day a week school. Like I just, I feel like I, like, I have some sort of like survivor's guilt about it, which is not a situation I expected to be in that the, just the fact that my children are attending five day a week, public school fills me with survivor's guilt.

That's where we're at right now, 

Beth: [00:19:16] such a good article in the Atlantic about the pandemic spiral that we're caught in and the sort of nine errors and the way that we think in this country that have led us there. We'll put the link in the show notes. It's excellent. It's worth every minute and word. 

Sarah: [00:19:30] Yeah, it's Ed Yong. He's the one that was like writing about the pandemic before he even started being like, hi guys, there's a, it's coming for us. Hello? Hello. I'm fi I'm sounding all the alarms. Does anybody want to listen to me? And 

Beth: [00:19:40] one of the things that it says that I have said a million times in private conversation, and I felt so validated to see someone who knows what he's talking about is that if we are going to make school a priority, it has to be a priority over something else.

And it's schools should have been the priority. They should have been the last thing to close. And the first thing to open 

Sarah: [00:20:03] preach that gospel ed, you preach that gospel 

Beth: [00:20:05] stood up in the living room with my praise hands for them. It just, we just don't care enough about it to do it. That's this. We have no great options, but we have options and we haven't cared enough to exercise those options.

And it infuriates me. 

Sarah: [00:20:24] The only thing I'll push a little bit on that language. This is the role of the government. It's not that we don't care. You have people advocating strongly for adult interests, right. For people. And I, you know, any vulnerable person within our system, children, low income families, the elderly, there is not, we haven't.

We live in a capitalistic system. And when that is the currency, The voices that have money in the game are going to be loud. Right? It just makes sense. Right? If that's our value, there's a lot of that in systems. And when that's at stake, those voices are going to be loud. And the governments job is to advocate for places where there's no money in the game.

Like for the people, people who don't aren't and will never be the loudest voices in a market based system. That's why we have the government in the fifties and sixties were great because the government was standing up in a lot of places like that. For laborers, for even to a certain extent, then you see this with the civil rights movement, like their hand was forced, but it was because the government had there.

We do care, but we need the power to advocate for that. And that power comes through the power. We delegate to our representatives in our democratic system. And I just think like that that's, what's missing. There's no government saying. Yeah, we see these interests in they're important, but there are interests that don't have lobbyists that are also important in the system.

And we have to, we have to put our hands on the scales a little bit for them in a market based system. And like, that's just, you know, the people who wanted their bars open in their restaurants open, like. They have power within the system because it's a market system. And if you don't have somebody advocating for people outside the market system, this is where we're at.

We're opening bars and restaurants and gyms and churches before schools. 

Beth: [00:22:17] The only place I take a little bit of issue, I don't really disagree with any of what you said, but the reason that I frame it in terms of care is because in this article makes this point better than I can. We've talked about. Bars and restaurants as though they're in competitions, I can make a cow, but a list argument for needing to keep public school open first and foremost, because there's interests are aligned.

The economy does not thrive if school isn't there for a host of reasons. And that is not just talking about teachers as babysitters, because that's not what it is. There are so many domino effects of not having school work normally because it's. Baked in to the way the rest of the economy functions. And so we treated these things like it's adversarial, like we get bars and restaurants or we get school.

And because we did it in that order, that's right. That's what we got bars and restaurants. Instead of school, if we had gone first with school, we would have gotten bars and restaurants sooner. I'm convinced of it, but we've just kind of said, well, Everything's tough and that's no one person's fault. I don't, I'm not mad at any one person about that.

I am frustrated that honestly, like the thing that has helped me more over the past few months than anything else in my life is a common experience that you and I have from our adolescents, which was being in future problem, solving that program that we did as kids. Gives you what sounds like an incredibly farfetched situation and all those incredibly farfetched situations are now becoming our reality.

So 

Sarah: [00:23:53] my first one was cashless society. What do we live in now? They were 

Beth: [00:23:56] all over it in the mid nineties, but 

Sarah: [00:24:00] not a sentence. You say very often, 

Beth: [00:24:02] right? They gave, they gave you that far fetched scenario and then said, right. 20 problems that you see around this scenario. And there was a list of categories and they encourage you to think, how will this affect school?

How will this affect the economy? How will it affect public health? All of the pieces are in that category list. How will it affect art? You know, you thought very broadly about all those problems. You picked one. They taught you to prioritize. This is the problem that's most important to solve. And then you go through a process of rating and evaluating solutions around that problem.

And same thing as you do those solutions, you are supposed to work through all those categories and things very broadly. And that experience has been more valuable to me this year than it ever has in my life. Just. Making sense of what we're living through. And I wish that someone had sat down because I'm convinced that if you looked at COVID through that lens from a public policy perspective, you would have ended up with school as your underlying problem, that would help unlock everything else.

Anyway, that's my rant about it. 

Sarah: [00:25:08] And I think what I mean, when you say like, we should care it's that we do care, but somebody has to prioritize. Somebody has to prioritize. 

Beth: [00:25:16] And that care has to translate into action. It can't just be, we care of our hearts. We have to carry them. 

Sarah: [00:25:21] We have to prioritize. And there that needs to come from for the federal government who has been completely absent, has been completely absent.

There needed to be prioritization. You know, we've been giving a lot of talks right now about our book because it's election season and people need to hear from her book. And what I'm realizing is so often when we say we need to talk about our values, Like I do believe that for the most part values are universal.

Everybody wants their kids to be okay and better off than they were. Nobody wants people to starve on the street. There are people who, who speak harshly and hatefully from a place of emotional reactivity, but it's not a place of settled safety that where they're really articulating their values. And so.

I think sometimes when we, when we're saying, well, we need to have a conversation about this. What we're saying is we're going to have to prioritize, not compromise necessarily, but prioritize. And I think we've lost that skill and we've certainly lost federal leadership on it. This ability to say, we've got a lot going on right now.

Like how can we do this? And I'm going to say something right now. Joe Biden might not be the most exciting candidate you've ever heard of or seen or wanted to support. But there's one thing that I think Joe Biden will be exceptionally good at. And that's prioritization someone who's existed inside the federal government and the roles he has for as long as he has gets that when it's as big as the federal government.

And there are a lot of moving parts, we've got to prioritize. And I think he would be exceptionally good at that. 

Beth: [00:26:55] I think that's right. And I also think it's important to note that prioritization is often the opposite of compromise. We have had a very compromised response to COVID-19. And that's why we are in nowhere land with it.

Yup. We have, we've had a compromised approach. Prioritization means you choose it doesn't mean that all options are adversarial to one another. It means a sequence. And that's what I mean about school. I am not mad at business owners who want to be open at all. It means what's the sequence that gets us there.

Quickest and safest and most effectively. And. When I hear so many people, it's just like ingrained in those of us who want to be perceived as reasonable people talking about the middle. I think actually this is not a middle moment. I'm a middle kind of gal, but this is not a middle moment. This is a prioritization moment, which means you have to pick, 

Sarah: [00:27:52] but nobody wanted to make the hard call.

So they kept punting it down the line, especially with schools, no guidance from the federal government, the States punted it to the school systems and the school systems punted it to the parents. Like, that's just, you know, when there's no leadership that also trickles down and that's not to say that every state governor I've been mostly happy with our governor's leadership, I'm extraordinarily happy with our school districts leadership, you know, we're very blessed.

We have a board chair, that's a freaking infectious disease Dr. Wood that everybody would have had that that'd been an ice, but you know, like there's just, there's this sense of like, You know, I think part of the reason it got punted down the line is that you need data and resources to make that prioritization.

And if you keep pushing it down the line, they're not going to have access to the data and resources. Right. The States don't have the access to the federal government. Does the local school districts don't have the access to the state does and the parents most certainly don't have the, like, I don't know.

My county-wide. Positivity, right. There's some parts of the country. They know that, but it's not public here. And then that overcoat is getting more and more opaque. So when, as we're telling people to make the call, they have less good data to make the call with. They certainly don't have the expertise to interpret it.

A lot of the time we see that the Trump administration is putting pressure on the CDC to match up the data with the positive messages coming from the administration, like. It's we're like in that death spiral, man, like he just, he describes in the article, sorry, we're supposed to be processing and making us feel overwhelmed.

And I feel like I'm escalating. 

Beth: [00:29:32] Well, my friend, Anna, who lives in Oregon and she was telling me about she's safe. She did not have to evacuate, but the air quality where she is as hazardous. And so she can only be outside maybe five minutes a day and said, when she does that, it smells like a campfire. She gets terrible headache.

And she talked about that as like a psychic burden. And I thought that phrase, it was just on the money because all these things we just talked about, psychic burdens and what I really want to like reach through the microphone to each listener to say is, I think there are a lot of factors in all of our lives, making us feel that because we've been at this for seven, eight months now, there's this expectation that we should be adjusted and we should be doing our normal thing.

But actually our capacity is reduced. I have to keep reminding myself. I actually have less gas in the tank now than I did in March. And that is okay. And that's normal and that's actually. Like the logical place to be right now, but organizational forces that sense of, we do have to keep on keeping on and we do to an extent, but we can adapt it.

And this idea that you should be back on top of your inbox, that's garbage and you shouldn't accept that from anybody. I give this really strong sense. I'm in all, I'm involved with all these organizations that keep scheduling meetings. I feel pressure as the chair of a board to have our regular meetings.

Because it's been going on for so long, what are we going to do? And I just think like, Oh man, but we really have less to give right now than we did back in March. And it's probably going to be that way for a while. And we've got to have a sense of softening around all of those expectations. So 

Sarah: [00:31:14] I think even if there wasn't a pandemic, as we get closer to the election, we would all have less to give.

We're all still freaking traumatized from 2016. I don't care if you were a Trump supporter in 2016, you probably still have some trauma surrounding that election because of the conflict it caused with interpersonal relationships. And now we're here again. And because he escalates the tone and it's so combative, like even if there was no pain, like, I feel like we'd still, our capacity would be reduced to a certain extent.

Beth: [00:31:42] Well, speaking of 2016 trauma, that's an excellent segue to our main segment. But first we do have a moment of positivity. We got here, everybody. We got to a moment. 

Sarah: [00:31:51] I do want to say one thing before we do the positivity. I want to do a small. Additional piece of information about voting early in person.

Okay. I listed Alabama as a state that does not have an early in person voting and that is technically true. However, there's a workaround. You can universally request an absentee ballot and drop it off in person. Before the election. So it's sorta like an absentee in person voting. I don't know the correct term.

I think that you would probably have to make one up, but if you live in Alabama, you can request an absentee ballot and then drop it off in person. So I just wanted to clarify that we had a couple of Alabama listeners reach out and yes, please request your absentee ballot, drop it off at your local absentee ballot office vote early in person.

Y'all. We can do this. Okay. Now we're ready for the positivity. 

Beth: [00:32:45] We heard from a listener who is part of the national vote at home initiative, put together by the Stonewall democratic club in Las Vegas. And they have specific videos to every state in the country that you can find on their website. All the links for this will be in the show notes, but we're going to get out of the way and let you hear directly from Stonewall democratic club about this effort, which we are so grateful for.

Jonathan : [00:33:09] Hi, I'm Jonathan Welch 

Alex: [00:33:10] and I'm Alex Mahajan. 

Jonathan : [00:33:11] We are the co-executive producers of the national voted home initiative, a multimedia get out the vote project by the Stonewall democratic club. 

Alex: [00:33:19] We are targeting 16 key battleground States with daily video releases that provide them with all the information they need to vote by mail amidst the global pandemic, and we have recruited a talented roster of allies to help us get the word right out

Jonathan : [00:33:33] like Debra messing of Will and Grace and SMASH, she's on board targeting Michigan.

Alex: [00:33:38] Oh, I love smash. We've got The Walking Dead star, Daniel Newman targeting Georgia.

Jonathan : [00:33:42] Oh, and we have wonder woman herself, linda Carter targeting her home state of Arizona. 

Alex: [00:33:48] Oh my God. But we need your help getting the message out and we need your help to win this election. 

Jonathan : [00:33:53] So visit us@stonewall.vote or on Twitter and Instagram at Stonewall Dems to help amplify these videos, or if you're so inclined, register to vote and receive your absentee ballot right now.

Alex: [00:34:05] Look, we can safely and easily vote by mail in this election, but due to slow downs in the us postal service, and we got to get this done now. Make sure you're registered to vote. And if you're not do it. Stonewall.vote

Jonathan : [00:34:16] then request to receive your absentee ballot by mail and get it signed, filled out and in the mailbox no later than Kamala's birthday, October 20th. Stonewall.vote

Alex: [00:34:26] do it for Kamala, or bypass the mail altogether and drop your mail in ballot at your local voting precinct or drop off location in your County. stonewall.vote.

Jonathan : [00:34:34] And listen. If all else fails, be prepared to strap on your mask and go vote early.

Alex: [00:34:40] I don't know about you, Jonathan, but I am prepared to crawl over glass and through hellfire and brimstone to cast my ballot this year.

Jonathan : [00:34:46] Okay. Oh my gosh. Me too. And guys, contrary to what this administration wants you to believe, vote by mail fraud is not a thing. 

Alex: [00:34:53] The studies have been done. It is not a thing. 

Jonathan : [00:34:55] So Americans are voting this year. Please join us at the national vote at home initiative @stonewall.vote to find your state's vote by mail procedures, protocols, and deadlines.

Alex: [00:35:05] Or you can find us on social media. On Facebook we are Stonewall Democratic Club on Twitter and Instagram. We are @StonewallDems and on YouTube, we are youtube.com/stonewall,democrats. 

Jonathan : [00:35:15] Hey Pantsuit Politics listeners. You want to help us take back our democracy? 

Alex: [00:35:19] Come on. Let's vote at home, everybody.

Beth: [00:35:26] Sarah. We wanted to talk about election interference today. And I have realized during my research for this, that election interference is another one of those terms that is not super helpful because there are so many different ways to interfere in an election, both from a foreign perspective and a domestic one, and it might be helpful to just clarify that we plan to talk today about foreign election interference and specifically about covert foreign election interference.

So not the ambassador to such and such believes this is the better candidate, but when secretly foreign countries are working to undermine our elections, The other thing to keep in mind is that election interference just as a concept is as old as elections are. And so it's not that we are in this brand new world where countries are trying to interfere in elections.

And I think something that is true, that a lot of Americans discuss is that the United States has done yeah. Covert foreign election interference with other countries elections. And I also think it's really important to frame the context around that was during the cold war. And I'm reading this fantastic book called rigged by David Shimer.

That talks about two different planes of covert foreign election interference. One plane is the kind of interference that the United States did, which was either supporting or tearing down democracy. The United States interfered in elections during the cold war. And I'm not saying we should have where we shouldn't have, but the facts are, we did this beginning in Italy to try to support democratic rule and to combat authoritarian or communist rule.

The other plane is interference on behalf of specific candidates. And that is something that we see happening on the rise. From Russia. Now we have done that. We have interfered on behalf of specific candidates, but not for transactional reasons connected to that candidate. Again, it's been part of that strategy of, of propping up democracy.

And what Russia does is interfere on both planes, disruption of democracy for different reasons now than Russia did it during the cold war. But disruption of democracy and transactional reasons surrounding candidates believing that authoritarian minded candidates are better for Russia's interests than democratic candidates.

So we have these two different planes where the United States and Russia have operated sometimes in parallel and sometimes quite differently. And I think it's important to be. Thoughtful about that as we go through this discussion too, especially as we get into 2016. 

Sarah: [00:38:13] Well, here's where I'm just going to sound like a Republican from the 1980s.

So just everybody adjust your expectations accordingly 

Beth: [00:38:21] really excited for this now. 

Sarah: [00:38:23] Yeah. It kind of bugs me. I really. I understand, obviously the history of the United States in foreign elections, but I don't love the idea that American interference in supporting and growing democracy is classified as the same as Russian interference with tearing down.

Like you're either elected. You're either interfering to support democratic elections or you're interfering to tear down democratic elections. And so when we just call them all election interference, it kind of bugs me because one is trying to tear apart elections period, not just make a different outcome is trying to undermine the process of democratic elections.

And one is trying to support foundation of democratic elections. Now, listen, I'm not going to litigate every time we did something cause we did lots of bad things and some of them were absolutely anti-democratic. Please don't send me emails. Like I get that. Trust me. I understand that. And some of them were interfering with the democratic process because the democratic process wanted a dang socialist leader.

I got that too. I get it. I just think that like, when we call them all election interference, Something gets lost. 

Beth: [00:39:43] Yeah. I think that's actions are important. I also think they all fall under that category, which is why I think that category is kind of useless in a lot of ways, because disinformation is different from hacking an email system is different from actually manipulating a vote count is different from extorting people so they vote the way you want. There's a lot of behavior that falls under one umbrella. 

Sarah: [00:40:05] Yeah. Or just different from pouring millions of dollars into the candidate your country wants to see elected.

Right, right. You know what I mean? Like that's a whole different ball game. 

Beth: [00:40:12] There are lots of different things going on here. And that's the reason I wanted to talk. How about this at all was to say like, let's not just complacently go well, the United States has done it. So forget it because everybody has a specific objective and that objective has to be viewed in its timeline.

You know, one might argue against what you just said, Sarah, and I'm not doing that. I'm just kind of trying to follow this thread a little bit. That. Whether you are actually propping up democratic elections by trying to elect someone in the short term who says they're a Democrat, it depends on your timeline in terms of how it effective that behavior is because the democratic process leads you to an outcome that's less democratic.

Wasn't that the democratic process at work, but then you lose that process. So I get why this is a complicated calculus, but the timeline matters a lot in terms of how you're assessing this behavior. And you're looking at the objectives of different countries. So I just don't want to be like, Oh, well, nine States did it too.

No big deal. 

Sarah: [00:41:14] Well, here's the thing now. Here's why I think if you look at this history, if you look at our own country's history, is there ever a truly democratic process? I don't think there is if democratic means every person have their own fruition makes a completely uninfluenced decision where everyone is equally and franchised.

Then have we achieved that yet? Anywhere in the world? 

Beth: [00:41:46] I don't think so. The goal either. I mean, that's the other thing. It's not like you have election interference or you don't have it. It exists on a spectrum. And how democratic is the election? How are the risks mitigated? How subs significant are the risks in the process?

You know, these are all really difficult decisions. And I think that's why there has been some good analysis recently. And it's taken a while to get this really healthy analysis of the decisions the Obama administration made in 2016. 

Sarah: [00:42:17] When you're talking about that spectrum, the reality is gerrymandering is election interference.

Right. 

Beth: [00:42:26] That's our suppression purging, the voter rolls all kinds of domestic 

Sarah: [00:42:29] domestic interference. And so I, you know, I think the idea is like we get in this situation where it's like, well, again, not to harp on my new favorite talking point, but it's this individualism, as we see every voter as an Island, never, you know, breached or interfered with either through.

Marketing, you know, no one thinks they're susceptible to marketing. Everyone hates as they don't work, wait, spending millions of dollars on cause they don't work. You know, nobody, everybody thinks they're just, you know, coolly assessing the policy, but that's clearly not what's going on. And so when the pro you know, I think we have to be honest with ourselves about in the best case scenario, what's happening with voters before we can start thinking about.

What works and what doesn't work domestically, what we need to be concerned with and what we don't need to be concerned with with foreign election interference. Here's what else that's kind of bugging me around the narrative right now is now there's this sense of like, Oh, China and Iran are interfering in our elections. True.

Probably not, not without, without a doubt. True. There's this false equivalency that Russia and China and Iran are all equal and that is ludicrous. Like from the beginning of our relationship with Russia, that is ludicrous, particularly looking at the lens of 2016. That is ludicrous. Are Chinese and Iranian actors trying to interfere?

Sure. Are they at the like a peak performance level that Russians actors are at? Uh, no. Give me a freaking break. 

Beth: [00:44:04] Yeah. And understanding that we're kind of talking about different fruits with these different countries is really important to Russia and China, from what I understand, have really different objectives.

In interfering, it's not the Trump administration has kind of rolled this out like, well, uh, Russia prefers Trump's sure, but China is worse than it prefers Biden. And so does Iran. That's really weird when you look at what we actually know, especially about China, what China cares about best I can tell is the preservation of a global narrative about China, so that China has the maximum amount of influence and political and economic power that it can. 

And so that's why you see China working over time to make sure that no Hollywood movies make China look bad and that no NBA players are talking about the Uyghurs and that Disney thanked the Chinese communist party's propaganda outlet in the credits to Mulan for letting  them film in Xingjiang, where this massive genocide and internment of the Uyghurs is happening because China cares about looking awesome everywhere. Whereas China is working to prop itself up Russia's strategy is tear everybody else down. So Russia has a completely different calculus than China.

China's doing the standard things China's done in a lot of elections. They try to get into emails and campaign documents of both parties. They did this to John McCain and Barack Obama in that election. We know this, this is China's playbook. Russia's playbook is evolving because what they did in 2016 worked really well.

And instead of trying to just understand the players and manage their reputation around those players, Russia wants to get to the voters and change the voter's perspective either by making them stay at home or making them go vote in a direction that. Maybe wouldn't have been the way they voted before or for different reasons, because as long as democracy looks like a big corrupt fiction, Russia is in good shape and the more they can make that happen here, the more effective Vladimir Putin will feel.

None of these techniques are new. He is just refining what Russia, and to an extent the United States did during the cold war, through new technologies that make us all much easier targets. 

Sarah: [00:46:39] Well, and here's the thing, the reason. That his election interference has been so successful is that he found a person who also doesn't care about democracy.

Russia, tried this with Adelai Stevenson. I believe that there was outreach to the Hubert Humphrey campaign and those men decided and knew immediately that the interest of the United States were more important than their personal interests. But it should not come as a surprise to anyone that is listening to this podcast that Donald Trump's personal interests are always at the top of the list.

Protecting democracy, protecting America's security interests are in direct opposition to his personal interest when it comes to Russia and have been for a long time. You know what shocked me when we were looking at this, that like him, he was going to. Moscow to talk about a Trump tower in Moscow before the downfall of the Soviet union.

That blows my mind that as an American, who had lived through the cold war, that you would go into this country and pursue your personal financial interests. Like, I just, it's a little mind blowing to me, but like this, it should, it's not surprising. Like it started as a financial interest. And now I truly let you know, when you look at all this stuff with the Trump administration, as far as, you know, the incontrovertible fact that they worked with Russian intelligence officers in close proximity, particularly Paul Manafort, who was managing Trump's campaign to make sure the WikiLeaks came out the day as the Access Hollywood tapes and on and on and on.

Like, I think it started as this financial interest, but now the reason that he and his family have become so passionate and fervent and almost feverish about winning reelection is because like we have criminal prosecutions on the line right now. Like the stakes are extraordinarily high for him and his family that, you know, the sharks are circling and his position as president is what's protecting him from the consequences of embezzlement and fraud and all these other investigations.

 And so like his personal stakes are even higher. And so you see him telling intelligence officers, Oh, don't don't release that report. No, that doesn't fit our narrative or China and Iran are just as bad because the stakes for him personally have gotten even higher.

Beth: [00:49:17] And it just seems to me that that coloring prevents the kind of clear-eyed decision making required to know what to do, because this is hard. Yeah. What level of foreign interference in elections through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp, the government. Can do much about, that's a really hard question.

I think they can do a lot more than they're doing, but it's a hard question. What kind of relationship the government and the tech giants ought to have with each other through this is hard. Certainly there is a non-governmental responsibility, I think, on these tech giants, but those aren't all owned in the United States, as we've been talking about with TikTok for example.

And so. These are really difficult questions. Part of what I've appreciated in sort of the postmortem on the Obama administration's decision making is understanding that they knew that this disinformation campaign on social media was well underway and was a significant risk. They also knew if they took action against Russia, before votes were counted that Russia could escalate to direct vote manipulation.

Because we have 50 States doing their own thing. 50 States and the territories, we have this very decentralized process. There's some protection in that because it's hard to attack all those different systems, but some of those systems are really vulnerable and the federal government has very little opportunity to come in and protect those more vulnerable systems.

And so figuring out. The objective of the country doing the interference is critically important in knowing what the range of risks look like and evaluating which of those risks you're going to mitigate and which you're going to let play out so that you don't escalate them. And we can't do that when our government is just saying, well, we just don't want the president to look bad. 

And that's exactly what we're hearing from a whistleblower report. And this is not an anonymous whistleblower. This is a person named Brian Murphy, who was a Marine who was an FBI special agent in the New York office on 9/11. Who's done combat for this country in Iraq who has an extraordinary level of education.

This is a person who put his name and everybody else's in a complaint saying I blew the whistle. Five times I believe the whistle. And because of it, I was demoted. I was kicked out of meetings. I was threatened with firing constantly because this administration doesn't want intelligence. It wants political analysis at every turn.

Sarah: [00:51:52] When you look at what the Obama administration was trying to analyze, I think the sort of key information and, you know, I don't know, Barack Obama personally, But it does not surprise me that the analysis came down to the belief that at the end of the day, like the focus on the actual list election systems themselves were what they should pay attention to because there was a belief that this would go the way it had in the past that no matter who you were, and no matter how badly you want it to win, when a foreign government came to you and said, Particularly if that foreign government was Russia and Vladimir Putin, we want to help you.

You would say no and turn them into the FBI. That's what they were basing their decision making on. That's what I think ended up happening. Like we were really concerned about vote tallies. We're going to pay attention to the election system because surely to God, when Vladimir Putin comes to an American citizen running for president who wants to lead a country like ours, they'll say no.

You get out of here and turn them into the FBI, but that's not what happened. That's not what happened. They said, great. Let's do it, bring it on, share it. We want to know whatever you want to know our interest align because what's more important is winning, not the security interest of America. 

Beth: [00:53:17] There's also, you know, there was a documented assumption with most Obama administration officials that Hillary Clinton would win the election.

And I think there was a lack of understanding of how vulnerable the public would be to that disinformation. We weren't talking about Q Anon in 2016, the way we are now, we weren't seeing how susceptible the public is to this kind of sophisticated campaign. And look, as we learn more about that, the tactics are evolving.

So Politico has this excellent piece about a super targeted disinformation campaign toward Latinos in Florida, toward the Hispanic community in Florida through Spanish language channels, because they understand that as a demographic that is hugely important in a state that is hugely significant in the electoral college calculus, that it has a high percentage of older people in the population, so they know where those older voters are. They know where they get their information. 

They know they can use language as a wedge here. And they're doing it because they they're evolving as we evolve. I think this is the hardest one part of everything we're living right now and probably has always been true throughout history, but it feels so present that we're combating all these things that are living organisms and that are constantly changing, nothing static.

And so I think the take away here for me as a citizen is the importance of, we hate lately, especially talking about individualized solutions to systemic problems. This is one where they have to work in tandem. And especially as our government is just telling us as plainly as possible that it's going to put president Trump's interest ahead of the entire country having accurate information, we have to, as individual citizens, very carefully discern what we allow to come into our homes and our thoughts from social media in particular. 

Sarah: [00:55:20] We're going to talk about social media more in depth on Friday. There's a lot of you out there watching The Social Dilemma on Netflix. We're going to tackle that.

Um, but we just thought it was important to talk first and foremost about foreign intellect, election interference. Not only because of our history in 2016, but because of the acquiescence of the Trump administration in the face of these threats.

Beth: [00:56:01] Because I am. Um, the chattiest today. I want to tell you what I'd like to talk about in our outside of politics section. 

Sarah: [00:56:09] I like this 

Beth: [00:56:12] over the weekend one of the 8,000 browser tabs that I talked about in our last newsletter was open and I read it peace thinking I could just exhale a little bit called Instagram is Coming for Your Sock Drawer from New York magazine.

We'll link it. It was about Home Edit and the women who are the founders and brand, basically of Home Edit and the show that they're going to have on Netflix. I don't really want to talk about home at it. What I want to talk about is this one particular quote in the profile of these two women, where they say that they are so like wrapped up in each other, that they love to share a room in a hotel during business travel.

 And I thought, I don't think that can be possibly true because I love you so much. And we traveled together often when travel was a thing and we learned, and this was my fault. Okay. Because I'm the person who's always like, I don't want this to be too expensive for people.

We can share a room, we can do whatever. No, I am not. You're going, not going to get the best presentation from me that you can, if I sacrifice our travel like that, and you taught me that very quickly, but like sharing a room as two grown adults during frequent business travel is just a nightmare and no one should do it under any circumstances.

And I really don't want anyone to read that article and have the expectation that maybe they don't love their friends enough. Cause I promise, I love you so much and I do not want to share a room again, ever if we don't have to. 

Sarah: [00:57:42] Now it's total. I'm going to be a little harsher than you are. It's total crap.

They have little kids and they're very wealthy. Like, no, like when you have little kids in particular and there's a lot of your time as an adult at home, spent adjusting for other people, when you leave your home, you don't want to adjust for somebody else and that's not because the other person is demanding.

It's like, but the act of like just the constant sort of scheduling negotiation, do you need to take a shower? I can take a shower first, when you want to wake up like that. Just stuff like, it's not like either of us are particularly difficult in any of those areas. It's just like one other area that zaps pieces of your brain, you know, like it's just a processing task that is exhausting and completely unnecessary. 

Beth: [00:58:27] And for me, the essence of good, healthy adult friendship is finding people who are like, do whatever you need to do, and I'll do whatever I need to do and where we intersect that is awesome and I'm so delighted. And where we don't, no feelings about that what so ever because I see and respect that you are in the thick of living and so am I, and so let's just both do, do the best we can and trust each other that we have that connection and care, but we do not have to demonstrate it through the kind of sacrificial act that sharing a hotel room is. 

Sarah: [00:58:59] Well, I had a girl's weekend this weekend and, you know, girls weekends are never, they never end well for me because there is always the, a lot of that energy.

It's not like a martyr competition, but there's a lot of like, Are you okay? Are you okay? Do you need this? Oh, we can do this for you and look for better for worse. It's not my personality. I expect everyone to advocate for themselves and then adjust accordingly. Like everybody can adult, we don't have to do this.

Like, and so like, Often I'm a very disruptive force in an all female space because it's like a man walked into the room. Cause I'm like, wait, what, why can't we all just do what we want or just sort of figure out what works the best for most people. And you know, I'm  pretty loud and articulating that.

What always happens to me on girls trips is I want to go to bed. And there's like a little bit of like, but why, like we can't let you go to bed or are you sure you don't have to go? Or you can, like, there's just a lot of that. And so then I get really cranky because I am an extrovert without a doubt, but I do think I'm an extroverted introvert in that I do have a limit and then I am out 100%.

Out done finished. Yeah. In all female spaces, there doesn't seem to be a lot of room for just articulating. Like, I love everyone here and I'm done. I'm really, really done. 

Beth: [01:00:23] Yeah. What happens for me when I get to that place? Like if I don't stop short of none, I physically collapse just shut down in every way, lose the capacity to articulate it because I'm just.

So over the line and I just, I don't like that we kind of are portraying and again, no disrespect to the home ed people or anybody who wrote this article, whatever. But I just think there's a theme. When you talk about women and friendships, like we ought to carry the same energy into those friendships that we carry with our children.

And I just, I can't do it. I cannot do it. And I don't expect anybody to do it for me. 

Sarah: [01:01:01] Yup. I mean, my best friends are the ones who literally have no problem being like clearly articulating their needs. Cause look, I am a forceful presence. And so there's a lot of like, I have a lot of good friends that there have been moments where like, Hey, you're being cranky, go to bed, leave us all alone.

You know? And that's, that's, that's the appropriate response, you know? But like they're not mad at me about it either, but yeah, there's a sense of like who can be the last to articulate their needs in those spaces that kind of bugs me

Beth: [01:01:35] and honestly, I said this about parenting, I don't want to do that with my kids anymore either.

I'm getting a lot better at saying to Jane and Ellen, Hey, my ears are tired. I can't right now I'm closed right this minute and better at doing that with my husband and just better in the world at saying, I, sorry, person limited supply. There's only one of me it's front down. I got to find some version of a battery that doesn't involve you doesn't mean I don't love you.

Just means you're not part of my battery pack.

Sarah: [01:02:04] Well, and I don't know if this is because I'm an only child, but like, I really struggle with this, this sense that I get from other people that I really am supposed to like do that for another adult. And that's what wears me out. I'm not in charge of other adults, I'm in charge of myself.

And so there's like this sense of like, Oh, well, you know, What does that hurts their feelings or what is that? They can't do that. Well, then I expect them to articulate that is that bad? Like, I don't know. Sometimes I feel like what I'm saying, like, but when they articulate that for themselves, people are looking at me like I'm a jerk and it's not that I don't care about other people's feelings, but I can't, I cannot carry them.

And I can't. Anticipate them constantly. I'm pretty, I think we're all pretty bad at that. I don't know. I feel like I get strange looks sometimes when I'm like, yeah, but I'm not in charge of that person. And I feel kind of bad about, 

Beth: [01:03:00] I think we don't have a lot of good examples of people who are both considerate and not boundary crossers in that consideration.

So I've spent most of my life being a boundary crosser, where I do try to anticipate, I drew try to hedge for, I do try to manage the feelings. And that's where you cross the boundary. I think where you try to manage the feelings of other people. And this is something that Chad says to me sometimes, like you're trying to manage my feelings right now. It's not okay. 

Sarah: [01:03:26] Like awareness is important, but management is a problem. That's good. I like that a lot.

Beth: [01:03:30] You can be very considerate of other people in your choices and your planning in particular, and sometimes consider it usually consider it means asking a question instead of making a decision for somebody else.

And that's where I think maybe the line is. 

Sarah: [01:03:46] I like that. We need that on it. Tee shirt or something. That's good. I think that's a really good way to think about it for me, man. That's the language I need to use is like, I am very considerate of other people, but I don't try to manage other people. And I think there's a sense of it.

Like probably what I need to watch in myself as like, I don't want to management, but I also, I don't, maybe you don't do a good job of protecting it. If I'm aware something's out of whack. Does that make sense? Like adjusting my own behavior because I just have this very defensive reaction of like, I don't expect anybody to do that for me, so I don't do it for anybody else when probably that's not fair.

Beth: [01:04:25] Maybe the considerate thing is to just label it. Hey, it seems like there's something off here. Do you need a minute? You mean to take a minute? We can take all the minutes that we need. Cause I don't want there to be anything off. 

Sarah: [01:04:39] Im so glad everybody was able to witness this coaching session between. Yeah, that's really good.

Beth: [01:04:45] Has been reciprocal coaching over a long period of time.  if you like this conversation, you will love what we do on the nuanced life. So you can find us there anywhere you get your podcasts. We'll be back in your ears there tomorrow. And here again, talking about social media on Friday, we look forward to hearing from me between now and then keep it nuanced y'all.

Alise Napp3 Comments