As Michael Cohen testified in Manhattan, Biden notched a win by setting the parameters for two presidential debates. Senator Claire McCaskill and former White House Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri break down this week’s primary results and why healthcare should stay front and center in the 2024 campaign. Then, Deborah Scott of Georgia STAND-UP shares what her organization is doing to energize voting coalitions in her state, as new waves of voter suppression tactics keep crashing ashore. Lastly, Claire and Jen highlight the unsexy, but sorely needed infrastructure that the Biden administration is building to make our water cleaner, our roads safer and to bring US manufacturing into the 21st century.
Further reading:
Here is the map the White House released, showing the more than 56,000 infrastructure projects and awards that are identified or now underway.
Here are the state by state fact sheets to see how money is being spent in your state. Go look for what’s happening in your neck of the woods!
Further Watching:
Deborah Scott, along with other grassroots community leaders are featured in the MSNBC Films documentary: Battleground Georgia. The film breaks down the complex history of voting across the South and how Georgia came to lead the charge in this pivotal political moment. You can watch Battleground Georgia this Sunday, May 19 at 9pm Eastern on MSNBC.
Jennifer Palmieri: Hello. Welcome to “How to Win 2024.” It’s Thursday, May 16th. I’m Jennifer Palmieri, and I’m here with my co-host Claire McCaskill. Hi, Claire.
Claire McCaskill: Hey, Jen. Hey, guess what it is this week for real? Like I’m not screwing around here. We had 142 infrastructure weeks under Trump. When he did things like try to pretend like he could drive a big rig truck and do silly shit like that.
Jennifer Palmieri: Oh, yeah.
Claire McCaskill: We actually are having infrastructure week this week. Michael Cohen is testifying and trying to not lose his temper. And we’re actually having a real genuine infrastructure week. We’ll talk about it more in spotlight.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah. And it’s real. It’s all happening. And we’re going to check in with Deborah Scott. Interesting thing about Deborah Scott. She’s the head of Georgia Stand Up. This is a grassroots organization on the front lines of growing voting coalitions throughout the South. I met her in Georgia on January 5th, 2021. So the day before Jan 6th, interviewed her for the circus, the day of the Senate runoff vote for both Warnock and Ossoff in Georgia.
And it was such a great day because so many people voted and they set all sorts of records and democracy seemed safe. And then the next day happened. So each election cycle, her organization, Georgia Stand Up, rallies communities to fight for their right to vote as attempts to stifle voter participation continue. So we’re going to talk to her about that.
Claire McCaskill: Okay, but before we get to Deborah, let’s do if we were in the room. What kind of strategy should we talk this week? I think first up, we got to talk about the debate.
Jennifer Palmieri: Oh my God.
Claire McCaskill: I think Biden was a winner on that whole little deal.
Jennifer Palmieri: Oh, my God. I have to say it was like, I texted all my friends in the campaign, genius move, flawlessly executed, right? I mean, let’s go back over what they did. First of all, they were sort of on their back heels on the question of the debate, because Trump said recently, I’ll debate him anytime, anywhere. And I’d always thought the Biden would debate because those are good moments for him. He always rises to the occasion on the big moments and you need the big moments.
And you also need to get Trump on stage to kind of redefine this race as Trump versus Biden. But wow, all the pieces just fell into place miraculously. I mean, this is the thing with Trump. He will take the bait when you come after him, right, immediately. All Biden did was put out a letter from the campaign manager saying we’re not participating in the commission on presidential debates.
And then I want to do two. I’m going to do one in June I’m going to do one in September. And CNN said, we’ll take the June one. And Biden said, great, Trump over to you. I don’t know why he fell for it or why he just agreed, you know, but he agreed. They set the other one up in September. CNN’s got one. ABC has the other. Just also, you know, Claire, just the value of taking ownership and being proactive and going on offense when you’re the incumbent and Trump seems to dictate the terms of all the debate, that in itself is really good.
And, you know, I think we’ve talked about this before. If I were in the room, I would want this race defined by June. You want to go into the summer people understanding. This is like what we tried to do in 2012 when I worked for President Obama was get Romney in a box, have him defined by his record in the financial industry. And from June on, we kind of never looked back and we had some dicey days, but Obama was hard ahead.
Claire McCaskill: Including his first debate.
Jennifer Palmieri: A bad debate.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah, I remember it well.
Jennifer Palmieri: In Denver.
Claire McCaskill: It was a difficult conversation with him the next days.
Jennifer Palmieri: Oh, yeah. You’re one of the ones that got sent in to tell him, hey, pal, I know you still think you’re president of the United States. You got a day job, I know, but you got to prepare for these debates.
Claire McCaskill: So here’s a question for you. I originally was immediately of the mindset that the idea that Biden is insisting that they have microphones that cut off at the allotted time. I originally thought that was a really good idea. But, you know, I’ve thought about it some more. And, you know, sometimes when Trump keeps going is when he does the most damage.
Jennifer Palmieri: That’s true. You know, it’s true.
Claire McCaskill: You know, so I really think that that has to be kind of weighed here. When he goes on and goes off topic, that’s when he’s most likely to say, you know, stand back and be ready or whatever he said about the Proud Boys.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah, stand back and stand by, yeah.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah, stand back and stand by. So, that is TBD. And for another podcast, not this one, it would be really interesting to go behind the curtain and see how CNN and ABC, how that actually happened. I’m sure there’s a lot of talk about it, a lot of places over the last 24 hours.
Jennifer Palmieri: I know.
Claire McCaskill: But I will say this, we can rest assured CNN will beat us in the ratings on June 27th.
Jennifer Palmieri: On June 27th and only June 27th. You know, I dealt with CNN in ‘16 with all the debates and the forums and they were really aggressive. I mean, it was Zucker back in the day, right? Jeff Zucker, and he probably got a lot of the credit for it. But really, Virginia Mosley, who came from ABC, a longtime CNN executive, she was formidable and just relentlessly pursuing campaigns and also just being fast and smart and creative. So it kind of doesn’t surprise me that CNN at that level anyway, got this done so quickly.
Claire McCaskill: Quickly, a little bit on the Maryland primary, don’t you think we should mention —
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: — that the big money lost in a dynamic young African-American elected official at the county level, a large county, but a county level in Maryland is going to be the Democratic nominee. That’s exciting. I think the Republicans are counting their chickens before they hatch in Maryland.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: I think Maryland voters will realize this is much different than electing the governor that’s Republican.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: This is really about giving the Republicans control of the Senate. And obviously there’ll be plenty of money spent reminding them of that. So I think that’s all good.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah. That’s my state. And Angela, also Brooks, David Trone, who was the House member in the Democrat primary that spent a ton of money, like $60 million —
Claire McCaskill: Sixty, yeah.
Jennifer Palmieri: –$60 million. I mean, that just makes me want to vomit. $60 million. And also it didn’t work. And some people were speculating, like it shows your ads don’t matter. And that’s not true. She just had really good ads. Her ads were Governor Wes Moore, Senator Christiane Haaland, and dozens of Maryland electeds and just community members standing behind her talking about endorsing her. And it was just like face after face, Jamie Raskin, Brooke Lehrman, who’s our controller that had her back. And it made you want to be on her team. It was really well done. And, yeah, so it’s gonna be a tough fight though.
Larry Hogan, the Republican, like very popular. Abortion will be a big issue. Democrats are gonna have to spend a lot of money. They don’t normally have to spend a lot of money winning Maryland Senate seats, but she’s great. Oh, and then also with Maryland, the zombie primary continues. I find this so interesting. Nikki Haley continuing to get 20 percent of the vote. She got it in Maryland.
Claire McCaskill: West Virginia, she got one in 10.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah. Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: That’s —
Jennifer Palmieri: Some close primaries. And so that means that, you know, it wasn’t like Democrats were voting for Nikki Haley. These are actual Republicans who turned out at a non-competitive primary on the Republican side to vote for Nikki Haley.
Claire McCaskill: I think going from this zombie voting for Nikki Haley, I think we ought to go right into polling, because the interesting thing is Trump has very rarely gotten 80 percent of the vote in the Republican primaries he’s run in. He has really not coalesced the Republicans in those primaries. Now, some of those were open primaries and they’re going to blame Democrats that voted against him, but a lot of them were closed primaries. So how does that square with the polling that says —
Jennifer Palmieri: I know.
Claire McCaskill: — he’s got 94 percent of all the Republican voters?
Jennifer Palmieri: I know. That’s —
Claire McCaskill: There’s something off here and I’m not really sure what it is.
Jennifer Palmieri: Well, remember when we interviewed the research director of polling for NBC and he said he felt like all of these polls were overestimating the Trump vote. When they were looking at the model of likely voters that the universe that they were considering was too favored for Trump.
Claire McCaskill: And just like they assumed a climate too favorable for Hillary in 2016.
Jennifer Palmieri: Right. Right. This is what humans do, overcorrect. But that and the “Times” poll, and I wrote something about this for our “How to Win” newsletter, that their likely voters, 20 percent of them did not vote in the last presidential election. That’s a lot. That’s a lot, friends. That’s highly unlikely to happen. And the other thing that really struck me with that “New York Times” poll, 74 percent of people, they didn’t have a right track, wrong track question. They asked people if they were satisfied with the state of their lives and 74 percent said they were.
Claire McCaskill: Right.
Jennifer Palmieri: That’s a really high number. Those are not people looking for dramatic change and suggest to me that those people, you know, would be open to voting for Biden. And they continue to show a problem with him. Drop off voters, voters of color, young voters. There’s an argument to be made for these people. They’re doing it. And the polling suggests that it hasn’t had much of an impact yet.
Claire McCaskill: Or the polling is broken. We don’t know which.
Jennifer Palmieri: I mean, also the polling is broken.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah, I don’t know. So Smart, if I were in the room, I’d be applauding them on leaning into health care writ large.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: Health care as an issue of women’s freedom, health care as making sure we don’t go back to our pre-existing conditions, are a disqualifier in terms of you being able to get coverage. You know, all of the things that the ACA accomplished are on the line in November. Trump hasn’t read the room yet and hasn’t figured out that the ACA is now very popular. And he is continuing to pledge to wipe it off the face of the earth, including all of its protections for people that they now, frankly, hold very dearly. And that’s why it’s become popular. That’s why they couldn’t repeal it when he tried the last time.
But people need to realize, and I hope the Biden campaign keeps this front and center, that he will try again. I think it’s really smart, them pulling together doctors and nurses and health care providers. You know, I remember a day when almost all the doctors were Republicans.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: Not so much anymore.
Jennifer Palmieri: Not so much anymore.
Claire McCaskill: I mean, I know my doctors. I always do a stopwatch when I go in. I have an oncologist because I had breast cancer at one point. And, you know, I set a stopwatch. How long will it be before they ask me? Tell me we can beat him. Tell me we can beat Donald Trump. And that didn’t used to be the case.
Jennifer Palmieri: Right.
Claire McCaskill: There were some awkward pauses back in the day when I was an elected official talking to my doctors. So —
Jennifer Palmieri: I mean for health care, this is something that just cuts across. It’s like all voters. It’s particularly the ACA. It’s particularly popular with black voters, with Hispanic voters and with young people most likely to not have access to good health care through the employer based system.
Claire McCaskill: So the one thing that I want to circle back, though, just to touch on, the Republicans don’t get it about this abortion issue. They don’t understand because they keep trying to go further and further. And two things happened in regards to Louisiana this week.
One, Louisiana is actually trying to make Mifepristone and misoprostol illegal drugs like cocaine or methamphetamine. So, if someone is caught with these drugs, they could go to prison if they don’t have a prescription. That is not where America is. And they keep pushing that. And then at the same time, the Supreme Court yesterday said that they had to have two black districts, congressional districts. They are making them recognize that the gerrymandering of their congressional map did disenfranchise black voters.
So that’s a huge thing in Louisiana. Not only does Hakeem Jeffries probably pick up another vote in terms of becoming speaker, but Louisiana is continuing to go down a path that turns off most of America on women’s health care choices.
Jennifer Palmieri: You know what I just realized also, the debate will be right around the end of the Supreme Court, right?
Claire McCaskill: It will be.
Jennifer Palmieri: It will probably be right around the time of the Mifepristone —
Claire McCaskill: It will be.
Jennifer Palmieri: — ruling from the Supreme Court.
Claire McCaskill: That’s exactly right. Okay.
Jennifer Palmieri: All right. So, we’re going to take a break. But when we come back, Deborah Scott, CEO of Georgia Stand Up, joins us to talk about building voting coalitions in the South, even as voter suppression tactics continue. Back with Deborah in a moment.
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Claire McCaskill: Welcome back. As we’ve been talking about focusing on issues like health care and the economy are really important to get out the Democrats’ message. But frankly, all of that work is irrelevant if we don’t get our voters to show up. The reality is that the more people who show up to vote, the more representative our democracy is.
Jennifer Palmieri: Pew Research crunched the numbers. The elections of 2018, 2020 and 2022 were three of the highest turnout U.S. elections in decades. But even at our peak, only about two-thirds, 66 percent of the voting eligible population turned out in 2020, with the midterms ranking just under 50 percent.
Claire McCaskill: So how do you build that momentum? How do you get voters to register for the first time? How do you excite voters to participate, even when some local legislatures and frankly, way too many Republicans want to make it harder? Deborah Scott is the CEO of Georgia Stand Up, and she is on the front lines along with her organization, fighting for the right to vote, even in the face of active attempts to suppress voter participation. She’s going to join us now to talk about how to build community-based voting coalitions, to activate participation in our election. Deborah, thanks so much for joining us.
Deborah Scott: Oh, thank you so much for having me.
Claire McCaskill: So tell us about the history of your organization. How did it begin and how do you keep going? How are you funded and what does it entail?
Deborah Scott: So first of all, thank you for having me. I am excited to be here because today is yet another election day because we’re in early voting season for our general Georgia primary, which is on Tuesday. So we’re always in a voting season. But Georgia Stand Up is a think and act tank for working communities. We were founded 20 years ago. I can’t believe it’s been 20 years.
And one of the things that we do is we try to equalize the playing field. If we look at power in a couple of different ways, we’ll look at organized money or organized resources equals power. What we’re trying to do is to level the playing field for the voters. So in addition to voter registration and voter education and voter suppression work we do, we also do a policy institute, which is our leadership development program. And we do community development projects and we have a workforce development agency as well. And then we knock on doors and we talk to people and we try to get them excited about the voting process.
I’ve been doing this for 20 years, but I was raised and trained by the giants of the civil rights movement. John Lewis was one of my first bosses. Ed Brown, Voter Education Project. C.T. Vivian and Reverend Lowry were mentors of mine. And so I’ve been doing voter registration since I was in college. Our organization, Georgia Stand Up, is a culmination of not only my work, but the work of my husband and a number of organizations that have come together to look at how we can make sure that people who are left out of the process really get kind of the gas that they need.
We’re the gas station, if you will. So if there’s a Ms. Johnson or Ms. Jackson working on a community issue that she cares about, you know, they come to the policy institute, we give them some of the resources that they need, but we connect them to a larger coalition. So we merge a Ms. Jackson and a Ms. Johnson that may be working on different issues, but they’re aligned because it’s about getting their community what they need and what they’ve been promised.
So it’s about holding our elected officials accountable, but it’s also empowering our residents to speak for themselves. And then we go out in the field with them. Georgia Stand Up is one of those base building organizations that really helped to flip Georgia long before people thought it was cool. We knew that this was a 30-year project 20 years ago, right? So we weren’t surprised that Georgia flipped because it was a sustained effort of a lot of people working together. And a lot of Black women that are working at their kitchen tables, just caring about their community, did things because that’s what they thought was the right thing to do.
And so working in coalition with these organizations like Black Voters Matter and the People’s Agenda and GALEO (ph) has just been really amazing because it’s a real coalition. I call it the coalition of the willing, people who are willing to get dirty together and knock on doors, talk to people and encourage people to get out to vote. One of the things that we were known for during this last election cycle was our Party’s at the Polls.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah, I went to one of those Party’s at the Polls with you and I was telling Claire on January 5th, 2021, the Warnock and Ossoff runoff, I interviewed you for the “Circus” in the parking lot of the —
Deborah Scott: You sure did.
Jennifer Palmieri: — in the parking lot of the Natatorium. I forget the name of it.
Deborah Scott: C.T. Martin Natatorium.
Jennifer Palmieri: The C.T. Martin Natatorium. And it was a carnival. There was music, there were food trucks filled with chocolate, there were snacks, there were games for kids to play. I mean, I think what’s interesting about your organization, what you told me about then was it’s not just registering people to vote and telling people to need to vote. They need to have a reason to vote.
So the fact that you have a policy arm as part of your group and that you can tell people you’re worried about affordable housing. Let me tell you what’s happened. If you vote for this person or this party, this is what they’ve done. This is what you’re likely to get. So there’s some connection. They understand that there’s a substantive reason, a difference that has been made in their lives and will be made in their lives if they vote. So that seems really smart. But then you also, you have this sort of community-based excitement.
Part of what your operation does and part of your theory is we’re going to beat back voter suppression by making voting fun and not scary. They’re going to try to intimidate us. We’re going to make this a party. Bring your family, bring your kids. Tell us about that.
Deborah Scott: Absolutely. So part of what we do is we try to demystify the thing that is the bad thing, right? So whether we’re talking about voter suppression or registering to vote or even understanding what’s on the ballot, we’re trying to make it popular and make it fun. So we’re looking at what Black women between 18 and 80 would want to hear about this election. What are they concerned about, right? And one of the things that they were concerned about is safety, right?
And then another thing that they were concerned about is the long lines at the ballot box. Well, we know that that’s part of voter suppression and SB 202 was passing that you can’t hand out water. People are in line for four to seven hours. It’s just impossible to believe that that’s part of the law. So what we did is we went across the street. They said, you can’t talk to those voters and you have to be more than 150 feet away and you can’t give them water or anything. So we set up parties on the corners before they get to the polling locations and we have music and food and fun and voter information.
And so we make it a party at the polls because we want to show that the democracy process can be scary, but it also can be fun. And if you come together, then it’s not as intimidating. If you’re working together and you get to talk in line about, you know, what you’re interested in. And we tried, of course, we’re nonpartisan, but we try to make sure people understand that their values are on the ballot, that we break it down, that if you’re concerned about affordable housing or concerned about workforce development projects, all of those are on the ballot. You just have to know where to look for it.
Who’s responsible for that? Right. And then how do you translate those kitchen table issues into those ballot issues? And we try to give it as much joy as possible because we know it’s scary. It’s a hard thing to do. And it’s Georgia and it’s hot and it’s going to be hot. So we have to have ice cream and snowballs and all of those things.
And it’s not to incentivize voters because they were coming anyway. These are voters that had already gotten to the polls. And this is a little treat before they get there. So get your chair, get your umbrella, get your food before you get there. And if you’re going to wait in line four or five hours, might as well have fun to do it and bring your friends. So that’s what we’re trying to do is to show love and joy at the polls so that people understand.
It’s not just about ancestors did all of this to get this right. It’s about the future generation and the now generation. And we have to take this seriously.
Claire McCaskill: So you’re one of the grassroots leaders that are featured in an upcoming MSNBC documentary called “Battleground Georgia” that will air this Sunday. And I know the documentary covers a lot of the issues that your organization has specialized in for 20 years. One that has caught my attention in Georgia, which is really interesting to me, Trump has actually done himself a disservice by discouraging people to use mail-in ballots because they have to rely on same-day voting because he tells them all not to do early voting and not to do mail-in ballots, which, of course, is dumb, because, frankly, a lot of the older voters that traditionally have voted Republican were living in states where mail-in balloting was the norm for a long, long time.
So in Georgia, they passed a law in 2021 to make it much more difficult to have a mail-in ballot. How is your organization dealing with all of these new hoops that people have to jump through in order to have their ballot count if they put it in the mail?
Deborah Scott: So in addition to being a problem with the mail-in ballots, there’s also a problem with the post office right now. So we’re seeing that mail is now 24 to 27 days late in some cases. And we’re not sure if this is all a part of this movement, but we’re telling people that we want you to vote in the whole season, right? So early voting is important, and we want people to go vote early and in person as much as possible. And if they have to mail in their ballot, to request that ballot as soon as possible and to put it in the mail the very next day and to track it if they have to use mail-in ballot. And I think that that’s a viable option.
My concern is if people wait to the last minute, then this process will not happen. So we want people to vote early, vote the entire season, take five people with you, educate others, and check your registration before you even go. Make sure your polling location hasn’t changed. Make sure that your voter registration hasn’t changed, and bring five to 10 people with you because that’s really what the equalizer is. If we can come out in masses, then the people’s concerns will be heard.
Jennifer Palmieri: You know, so I worked in democratic politics for a long time, and up until 2016, we were told as practitioners in campaigns, do not talk about voter suppression because then it works. If you tell Black voters that there are going to be shenanigans at the polls, that people are going to try to mess with them, that they’re likely to use suppression tactics, then people will be discouraged and they won’t vote. They won’t turn out. And then in ‘16, and certainly I think, you know, in your state in ‘18 and ‘20, it was seen as, you know, my understanding was there was sort of a flip.
It was like voter suppression tactics were motivating because people were upset by them and felt that their rights, people were trying to take their rights away, and that made them motivated to turn out. Like, where do you come down on that question about if talking about voter suppression makes it self-fulfilling, or if it is something that can be motivating to voters because that they have power and someone’s trying to take it away?
Deborah Scott: Yeah, and that is the key, right? If they weren’t as powerful as they were, people would not be going through all of this to take their power away. But that’s the value proposition, is they have the power. The power is up to them and people are trying to take your power. So get your power and your power is part of the ballot. So it’s your ballot in the bullet, right? Or the ballot in the book. But it’s the ballot is always the equalizer. And so coming out in numbers is an important thing.
So what we do is we educate about some of the tactics. So when they see it, they know it. So when they see that people are trying to intimidate them and we tell them what that looks like, then they’re informed. If we tell them that, you know, your polling location might be changed, but so go early and make sure, then they’re informed. So we’re not doing it as a scare tactic, as a boogeyman is out there. It’s check your rights, check your ballot, check your polling location and check your family and bring your power to the ballot.
So I think part of what we’re trying to do is to not scare people, but to motivate them and empower them. And I think it’s working in a place like Georgia —
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah, has been.
Deborah Scott: — where we have seen change. But we hope that it not only works in places like Georgia, but we have the entire country and the rest of the South that is looking at what’s happening here in Georgia.
Claire McCaskill: Republicans completely underestimate Black voters. And I know this from experience. They underestimate their tenacity. They underestimate their passion. They underestimate how informed they are about the candidates. And I will never forget, I’ve had many people walk up to me in airports, but I had one that I will never forget. This woman who came up to my chin and she looked like she was 60. She proceeded to tell me she was 88.
She grabbed my hands and she said, Ms. Claire, which made my heart melt because she felt like she could call me Ms. Claire. I’d never laid eyes on her before. And she was just a beautiful, dignified, older Black woman. And she looked in my eyes. She goes, I just want you to know, we know what they’re trying to do and we will not let them do it. Remember our song, “We Shall Overcome.”
And I mean, I teared up in the airport. I tear up now when I talk about it. But it is incredibly powerful that the Republicans think that they can somehow fool Black people into voting for Donald Trump. In a way, I would think that would be motivating in and of itself.
Deborah Scott: Well, the thing about it is, if you center the people that people are disrespecting and disregarding, that they’ll make the best decision. We are resilient people and we have been through a lot in this country over all of these years. And we have seen this before. And that’s what the documentary shows is the same tactics that they did back in the 1800s they’re doing now. So we overcame then and we’ll overcome now.
And time is on our side and the numbers are on our side. But what we have to do is to boil down these high level issues and get it down to those kitchen table issues that Mrs. Johnson and Ms. Jackson really care about. Where are the jobs? How do I get transportation for my family? How do I get affordable health care? What about reproductive justice? We’re telling them that all of that is on the ballot. And that’s why they have to earn and make sure that their power is heard every single time that ballot box is open. So I’m excited about this documentary, but it also shows how far this country has come, but then how far we have to go. So we still have work to do.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah, I’m super excited. I mean, I love the work that you all do. I love your state. Love hearing about it. I’m excited for the documentary too. For our last question, Biden won your state by about 11,000 votes, my understanding —
Deborah Scott: Yeah, I heard that.
Jennifer Palmieri: — in 2020. We heard that mentioned on a call somewhere. He’s trailing pretty badly there now, or at least those polls say he is. What’s your expectations for ‘24 do you feel like? What’s going on here?
Deborah Scott: So we’re nonpartisan, right? But we know that our people don’t necessarily answer polls, that they’re not being called to ask how they’re going to vote, right? And most of our folks have cell phones. So most of those calls are going to landlines and are not necessarily going to our community. And we’ve surprised them before.
Jennifer Palmieri: Sure have.
Deborah Scott: So I’m excited to see what’s going to happen in November. But I really think the value proposition is people realizing that their life could be better with one candidate versus the other. We can’t tell them who to vote for, but we can show them what policy and good policy looks like and what has been done over one administration versus the other. So part of what we try to do is just to break it down for them, whether it’s trying to find where you can get a free ID. We have an orange book, so that it tells them where they get like a green book. It tells them where they can get a free ID.
We try to break down our toolkit so people know where to vote, not how to vote, but what’s on the ballot. One of the things that people really are confused about is sometimes the ballot looks very crazy to them and we’re trying to tell them the closer you are to the bottom of the ticket is the closer they are to their values and what’s local. So all politics are local. So we want people to study the ballot before they go so that they understand it’s not just about the president. It’s about the entire democracy and different forms of government.
So civics has been taken out of the schools. Part of what we have to do is popularize civics again and make sure people understand that the power dynamic is really in their hands. And the numbers of progressive people that will come out to vote in November will surprise the entire country once again, and it will start here in Georgia.
Claire McCaskill: Deborah, thank you so much for joining us. As my grandmother would say, you’re doing the Lord’s work. You are empowering people in a way that is going to make a difference in this country. And thank you, your organization, your family, for dedicating your life to this cause. I appreciate that you’re nonpartisan. So pardon me for getting partisan there for a moment, but you were very disciplined and didn’t go there. That’s good on you.
Jennifer Palmieri: That’s why she’s a trusted messenger. That’s why they’ve been doing this for 20 years.
Deborah Scott: Thank you.
Claire McCaskill: There you go. I’ll look forward to seeing you on MSNBC Sunday night in the documentary, Deborah. Thanks so much.
Deborah Scott: Have a great one. Thank you.
Jennifer Palmieri: Deborah Scott is the CEO of Georgia Stand Up. She, along with other grassroots community leaders, are featured in the MSNBC Films documentary, “Battleground Georgia.” The film breaks down the complex history of voting across the South and how Georgia came to lead the charge in this pivotal political moment. Watch “Battleground Georgia” this Sunday, May 19th at 9:00 p.m. Eastern on MSNBC.
Claire McCaskill: We’ll take a quick pause here, but when we’re back, we want to spotlight something that was once considered a punchline but is now making a real difference across the country. Back with that in a moment.
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Jennifer Palmieri: Welcome back. As we mentioned at the top, it’s Infrastructure Week. And while you may remember that from the Trump years as a joke, President Biden actually made it a reality. So he is using this week to highlight these legislative wins that galvanize long needed infrastructure updates.
Claire McCaskill: And it’s not just infrastructure. Biden is also pointing to progress from three other huge pieces of landmark legislation that are now being spent. The American Rescue Plan, the Chips and Science Act, and the IRA, which is the Inflation Reduction Act. Distributing this money is traditionally slow going. Hence, the White House is calling this the infrastructure decade. But let’s look at those four laws and how he needs to get this message out about what has been accomplished and what a difference it’s making in these communities.
Jennifer Palmieri: First of all, it’s kind of a hard sell because infrastructure moves slowly. It sort of inherently takes a lot of time. It’s partly why presidents have punted on it because it’s not something that you get immediate return on. Biden got this done after presidents talking about it for 10 years. And, you know, one thing that I do think people get, but they need to understand that Biden is responsible for, is cranes in the sky, right?
You hear that in focus groups all the time, is that when people talk about like, well, how do you feel like the economy is going locally? Well, it seems kind of good. Why do you say that? Well I see cranes in the sky. That means, you know, things are building, things are moving, but I think there’s more to be done for how you connect that back to Biden and how you show people that that makes a difference in people’s lives, because what are they really worried about? Prices, right?
So it’s like you need to make the argument all around infrastructure is creating jobs. It’s building a new foundation. There’s also all these things that I’ve done. It’s building a new foundation for the economy that will help America be competitive for decades, by the way. But there’s also things I’ve done to lower costs in your life as well.
Claire McCaskill: So, this is something that the federal government’s always been bad at. I remember we had a horrible, deadly tornado in Joplin, Missouri and —
Jennifer Palmieri: Oh, I remember that. Yeah, terrible.
Claire McCaskill: — remember being down on the scene with President Obama and looking around, and I knew that 80 percent of the money that was being spent to help that community recover was federal money. Now, keep in mind, this was the same community that when I did a town hall there, the first three questions to me were, don’t you understand we need to do away with the federal government?
There was no connection in Joplin, and the governor was there every day, and if you asked people, they would say, oh, yeah, this is state money. Well, no, it wasn’t state money. The vast majority of states’ budgets these days are federal money pass-throughs. I mean, remember when Trump insisted on signing those checks that went out?
Jennifer Palmieri: I know.
Claire McCaskill: Remember that? I mean —
Jennifer Palmieri: That was super effective. People still talk about it.
Claire McCaskill: I’m telling you, the White House needs to be so much more aggressive about taking credit for these projects and so much more aggressive about going after Republicans who are trying to take credit for these projects. I really think they’ve got to, especially if there’s a project in one of these states that is really going to matter, they need to geofence ads, but they need to even do more than that.
You know, they need to have huge signs on all these sites that people see when they drive by and they talk about brought to you by the Biden administration’s bipartisan infrastructure law. And that would be a way to show not only is it the federal government that’s helping him, but Biden got it done and he did it with Republican votes, too.
Jennifer Palmieri: Here’s some things that they are doing, and I believe we have some links in our show notes to this information. There’s an updated map that showcases the more than 56,000 projects and awards that are identified or underway. There are state-by-state fact sheets. Some people I know are doing work with a couple of unions building trades in the laborers. And, you know, you can be on a work site and not know it’s there because of Biden. But if you have geofencing that lets people know when they look at their phones.
Claire McCaskill: Explain what geofencing is.
Jennifer Palmieri: It’s that when you’re on a job site because of where you are, there will be a digital ad that will come up that will say this project bought by the Biden administration. There’ll be something that lets you know. So you can do that. It’s like one of the good things that you can do in terms of targeting.
Claire McCaskill: Now, that’s done by the campaign.
Jennifer Palmieri: That could be done by the campaign. That could be done by labor unions. That could be done by any —
Claire McCaskill: Not the government.
Jennifer Palmieri: But not the government.
Claire McCaskill: The government can do signage, though.
Jennifer Palmieri: I guess they could do signage. I know that’s another thing that the unions are doing. They’re doing signage because, you know, you can’t wait. During Obama, they did signage with the Recovery Act. And I don’t know why we don’t see that from the government now. But others are picking up the mantle here to do that. And the other thing is —
Claire McCaskill: Trump will take it away.
Jennifer Palmieri: This is the key argument. And again, I know from work I do with the unions that are backing Biden, you know, a lot of those folks voted for Trump. You know, a lot of union members do. And they gave him a shot. He didn’t deliver. And Biden did. And Trump and the Republicans will take it away because he just said so down in Mar-a-Lago, right? He told the billionaires that he’s going to give them more tax cuts.
These people don’t like apprenticeship requirements. These people don’t like the clean energy spending that was part of the IRA. There’s already efforts from Republicans to repeal all that. That’s all good things for a new economy. That’s all good jobs. And Trump will take that away. There’s just, like, we want to give people a little snapshot. Like, I think that in terms of spending, only 17 percent of the $1.1 trillion that these four laws provided for direct investments on climate, energy and infrastructure have been spent. There’s a lot more in the pipeline to come. There’s an important story to tell here. And then, you know, part of the campaign has to do is Trump will take it away.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah. Also, in our notes on the podcast, we have a state by state fact sheet. And I highly recommend that you take a moment and pull up that state by state fact sheet just so you can see what’s going on in your state. And don’t forget the power of talking to people about this stuff.
Jennifer Palmieri: Oh, yeah.
Claire McCaskill: I mean, you may argue with your neighbor about whether or not Trump is a ridiculous notion for this country. You may argue maybe there are Trump supporters, but they’re going to agree these projects are good. And it’s something that people can use to kind of calm the polarization, because people will get behind a bridge they’ve needed forever. People will get behind the highways finally working for them on their commute. They will get behind finally getting Internet in rural communities.
This is the kind of thing that can really help with these swing voters, the ones who really are crazy about Trump, but aren’t convinced that Biden’s been effective. So get those state by state data facts and share them with people you think are possible voters in November.
Jennifer Palmieri: And the other thing I think that’s important here is that it’s not that we should have to prove that each of these projects has impacted people’s lives now in order to have them support Biden. It’s just sort of credibility that government can work, government can solve problems and can take on big things, that he got this done, he can get more done. So I think it’s just sort of a good proof point, but also that these are investments that America will live off of for a long time.
And just to quickly just go through the four of them, bipartisan infrastructure law passed in 2021, bipartisan $838 billion, about $454 billion has been committed for that. The Chips and Science Act, this is to build the semiconductor plants. This is a huge, huge deal for American competitiveness. The Inflation Reduction Act, which is, you know, kind of best known as being a landmark climate law and investments in clean energy and also a lot of rebates and tax credits that are available for people through clean energy projects. And then the American Rescue Plan, that was the one that was passed at the COVID era pandemic relief bill.
Claire McCaskill: And let me say, you know, Trump likes to talk a good game on China, but the Chips and Science Act is probably the most important piece of legislation in terms of countering China. What we learned during COVID was our national security and economy were at risk because of supply chain issues. And we learned that Taiwan has the vast majority of this chip production. And in fact, 90 percent of the high level chips are produced by one company in Taiwan.
And think about what that means in terms of China and the moves they’ve been making on Taiwan and how much China would like to control that. So us being able to de-globalize chip production and bring it home so that we never again will have a situation where we are going to fall victim to one large major production facility that is in a part of the world that, frankly, we don’t have much control over. And that’s what happened during COVID. That’s why the economic fallout was as serious as it was.
So this is an investment in our national security and our long term economy and its ability to exist when there might be a crisis, especially if China were to ever make a move. And that’s what most Americans don’t get. And the Biden campaign has an obligation to make sure they understand it.
Jennifer Palmieri: Thanks so much for listening. If you have a question for us, you can send it to howtowinquestions@nbcuni.com or you can leave us a voicemail at 646-974-4194 and we might answer it on the pod. And remember to subscribe to MSNBC’s “How To Win” newsletter to get weekly insights on this year’s key races sent straight to your inbox. Might push back on some bad polls as well in there. Visit the link in our show notes to sign up.
Claire McCaskill: This show is produced by Vicki Verolina. Janmaris Perez is our associate producer. Katie Lau is our audio engineer. Our head of audio production is Bryson Barnes. Ayesha Turner is the executive producer for MSNBC Audio. And Rebecca Kutler is the senior vice president for content strategy at MSNBC.
Jennifer Palmieri: Search for “How To Win 2024” wherever you get your podcasts and follow the series.