Well, we’re in the final stretch of the election. And as we consider so much that is at stake, it’s a great treat to have one of Chris’ favorite people to talk politics. There’s a lot to discuss, including the Senate battlefield for Democrats and why it can be so hard to get things done in the political world. Our guest this week represents one of the most unique states in the union. Senator Brian Schatz is a U.S. Senator from Hawaii and serves the chair of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. He joins WITHpod to discuss Vice President Harris, affordable housing concerns in the Aloha state, effects of climate change in his home state, his favorite part of the job, why he says Trump could be vanquished and more.
Note: This is a rough transcript. Please excuse any typos.
Chris Hayes: Hey, WITHpod listeners, before we get into today’s episode, I just want to note, we recorded this episode a few weeks ago. So you might hear some references like for instance, the debate, which was much fresher in our memory at that time.
Brian Schatz: I think if we win that Trump is done. And I know there are a bunch of people, in fact, you know, some of the Pod Save bros were talking about, you know, Trumpism is going to outlast Trump. I am not so damn sure.
Chris Hayes: Hello and welcome to “Why Is This Happening?” with me, your host, Chris Hayes. I am talking to you after what appears it will be the only debate, the first and only debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Kamala Harris cleaned his clock, knocked him out 11 out of 10, hit it out of the park, pitched a shutout, slam dunk, choose your sports metaphor. That I think was clear to anyone with eyes in the same way that Joe Biden’s poor performance in the first debate was clear to anyone with eyes and ears to listen. And it was, I think, one of the most impressive performances I’ve ever seen politically under incredibly high stakes situation. And we are in it now. I mean, we’re in the last days of this incredibly high stakes election.
And Kamala Harris, it’s not just the top of the ticket. It’s obviously the House and the Senate and the Senate battlefield is really difficult for Democrats. And we’ll talk a little bit about why that is and what the United States Senate has come to mean in terms of its representational gravity and how it sort of has a kind of partisan valence to it. But I’ve just been trying to talk to everyone I can basically in politics as we’re down the stretch. And one of my favorite people to interview in the United States Senate is today’s guest. He’s a colleague of Kamala Harris when she was a U.S. Senator. He’s got a really interesting perspective because he represents the most unique state in the union, if I can say that, the state of Hawaii. His name is Brian Schatz. He’s the chair of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. He is also the chief deputy whip, and he joins me now. Senator, welcome to the program.
Brian Schatz: Thanks for having me, Chris. I’m excited to be here.
Chris Hayes: You know, can we just talk about your background, like how did the Schatz people get to Hawaii?
Brian Schatz: It’s good. Via Kyiv originally, believe it or not.
Chris Hayes: Really?
Brian Schatz: Yeah, grandparents on both sides came, Kyiv, Poland, and then into Canada, and then into St. Catharines, Canada for my mother and Ann Arbor, Michigan for my dad. When I was two years old, my dad, got offered a job at the University of Hawaii Medical School. And so he sort of rounded up the four boys and the family. And that’s how I ended up in Hawaii at the age of two.
Chris Hayes: Was he a doctor?
Brian Schatz: Yeah, a doctor and a professor of medicine. And it was, according to him at the time, it was a very quick decision, easy one. He was there at a conference.
Chris Hayes: Did he get the offer in like early February in Ann Arbor? And he was like —
Brian Schatz: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: — yeah, let’s do it.
Brian Schatz: Yes, and by letter, of course, right?
Chris Hayes: Right.
Brian Schatz: They tender these offers via the postal service back in the day.
Chris Hayes: Well, so you grew up in Hawaii. You grew up in Honolulu, I imagine, right?
Brian Schatz: Yes.
Chris Hayes: That’s where medical school goes.
Brian Schatz: Yes.
Chris Hayes: And is that where you live now?
Brian Schatz: Yeah, I live right in Honolulu, near Chinatown, near downtown.
Chris Hayes: So I made a huge mistake for the first 40 plus years of my life, which is that I didn’t go to Hawaii. And if you’re on the East Coast, it really is far away. It’s a pretty big undertaking and you know, there’s expense and all those things, but I’ve gotten to go three times, I guess, in the last few years. And I just think it’s the most incredible place on earth. I mean, it’s a little weird to have the senator, a U.S. Senator on to start here, but like, man, Hawaii, hell of a place, huh?
Brian Schatz: Well, but it’s true in the sense that I think, I mean, look, I’m not the executive director of the Hawaii Tourism Authority, but I agree with you. I think the food is great. I think the spirit of aloha, which sounds too, sort of unfamiliar, like it’s some sort of slogan, is a real thing. The spirit of aloha is a real thing. And we have found a way, listen, it’s not that we always get along, it’s not that we lack disagreement, but I think it comes from the plantation itself, this sense that we are all in it together. There is more mixing of food, mixing of language. There is more fun and humor around the kind of patchwork that makes the state of Hawaii that I think there is a fair amount to learn from Hawaii about how we should all be to each other.
Chris Hayes: It is a genuinely just on its face, clearly pluralistic, multiracial place. That of course comes with incredibly fraught and bloody and at times awful history. I mean, the U.S. intervention in Hawaii is like, just in many cases, totally morally indefensible.
Brian Schatz: It was an overthrow.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Brian Schatz: I mean, it was an illegal —
Chris Hayes: Straight up.
Brian Schatz: — overthrow of a monarchy.
Chris Hayes: It was straight up illegal and recognized as being illegal at the time. In fact, it was so illegal, the U.S. government tried to stop it because it was basically a bunch of American planters taking the place by force and the U.S. government being like, this is illegal and then it just happened.
Brian Schatz: Yeah. And they imprisoned the queen. I mean, they imprisoned the queen in her own palace. Since then, under President Clinton, there was the Apology Resolution —
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Brian Schatz: — where the federal government officially apologized for its actions. So you’re right. But then in a lot of ways, that is the story of also the continental United States.
Chris Hayes: Totally, yes. Fair point.
Brian Schatz: But I think it is felt more acutely when you are from the continental United States, you go to this beautiful place, and you can kind of imagine in your mind’s eye a native Hawaiian culture that is fully thriving, that is literate, that has multiple treaties with other countries, that is sovereign, and then overthrown.
Chris Hayes: And a sophisticated, essentially legal culture and legal system, and yeah. So I want to just acknowledge that in segueing to the point you made, which is one of the things that I found so striking about it as a child of New York City and the Bronx, which is an incredibly pluralistic, multiracial place, that it is just really pluralistic, multiracial place. It’s different cultures mixing. That is the norm there. And it’s just, yeah, it’s an incredible place and I do think kind of a window to the future because, which is not to say there’s not tons of tensions and conflict amongst that. But what we’re trying to do as a country as a whole, right, is to get a whole bunch of people that are from different places and different trajectories to be together in one polity.
Brian Schatz: And also I think that one of the things that Hawaii gets right is a lack of seriousness. It doesn’t feel like you’re in a faculty lounge —
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Brian Schatz: — where everyone is hypersensitized.
Chris Hayes: That’s interesting.
Brian Schatz: It’s almost the opposite. Like we all grew up with the kind of humor that made us all laugh at each other. Songs, music, the Pidgin English language was all based on, hey, we’re all different and isn’t that fun. And hey, we’re all different and isn’t that fun is a very difficult thing to say. I think on the left, sometimes people don’t want to acknowledge differences or embrace them or enjoy them.
Chris Hayes: This is an interesting point because it’s similar in New York City and it’s similar in the Bronx. And I think it’s complicated because sometimes humor can be deployed in really gross and oppressive ways and it could be insidious. But it also is true that part of the way that actual multiracial cultures, multiethnic cultures exist is through the kind of like processing of difference via teasing and humor.
Brian Schatz: Right.
Chris Hayes: That that was a huge part of growing with the Bronx. And I know in the Bronx, I was often, you know, one of a few white kids in spaces where I was the only white kid, or one of a few white kids. And you know, that came with its own teasing and mockery. But the point is that in those spaces, you’re not always on one side or the other, which creates a kind of foundation for communication about difference that isn’t top down in a way that can be really insidious.
Brian Schatz: Right, and it should just be joyful. The fact that people are different, the fact that cultures are different, the fact that food is unfamiliar, all of that should be a source of joy in living life as opposed to some sort of difference that we should either ignore or accentuate for our politics.
Chris Hayes: What is it like being a U.S. Senator from Hawaii, because it is a really distinct place. In a logistical sense, you have the longest commute to Washington, D.C. It’s the hardest to go back and forth. I think the state can probably often feel like an afterthought in American politics. It’s definitely not a swing state. There’s definitely no presidential candidates. It’s not like the voters there matter the way that the voters in Wilkes-Barre matter, which is true of a lot of places. No presidential candidates go into New York or Wyoming either. But do you feel that sort of distance difference as a member of the U.S. Senate?
Brian Schatz: Oh yeah, we’re the most isolated, I mean, we’re certainly the furthest away from Washington, D.C. except for some parts of Alaska, but we’re also the most isolated, heavily populated place on the planet. And so —
Chris Hayes: Literally.
Brian Schatz: — a lot of my job is to explain Hawaii to folks. And when we did the, for instance, the infrastructure bill and we did a bunch of broadband deployment, there’s a part of the broadband that is called the last mile. And the last mile was basically written by a bunch of West Virginia senator’s staffers. And we started to explain, hey, our last mile happens to be underwater, right? And we had to go back and forth. And I had to threaten to withhold my vote for the infrastructure bill, because the last mile infrastructure was not going to work for, for our particular topography.
Chris Hayes: Wow.
Brian Schatz: But it is a daily fight. A good buddy of mine who runs political campaigns and has done so in like 30 or 40 states says every place you go they will say it’s different. And that is only true in Hawaii and Louisiana.
Chris Hayes: That’s a good line.
Brian Schatz: Yeah, and it really is different. On the other hand, I think we’re the most special place on the world. I think anyone who is in the United States Senate is by definition, fortunate, and not just fortunate, but lucky. And to be able to represent, I think the best state in the best country on the planet is a very fortunate thing. The other thing I will say is that my constituents actually sympathize with me about the commute. They know how hard it is. Almost everybody’s done it once or twice, maybe not all the way to the East Coast, but they just know crossing the Pacific is a hard physical job. And so I get a lot more sympathy from my constituents.
Chris Hayes: That’s interesting.
Brian Schatz: And the other thing is even people who disagree with me, I rarely get confronted in a nasty way at the shopping center or at the beach park or wherever. People may disagree with my politics, but they appreciate that I’m trying like hell to help the place.
Chris Hayes: You, I imagine, watched the debate this week and —
Brian Schatz: I did, twice.
Chris Hayes: Did you really?
Brian Schatz: Yeah, I rewatched it.
Chris Hayes: Well, that’s interesting. Well, were you nervous going in? Because it was funny. We had Cory Booker on beforehand and Gavin Newsom. And I said this on the show the other night, they were both doing this thing where they were talking about how great she is and how she’s going to be great. And I was sitting there on set being like, guys, this is not generally the move right before a debate to like raise expectations. I’m not sure this is your best play here because this is a very high pressure situation then she just completely, absolutely delivered.
Brian Schatz: Yeah, I was super nervous. I have a sort of a, it’s not quite a tradition but it’s a habit on election night, especially if I’m on the ballot, but usually even if I’m not, I closed the door and I set up a laptop and a TV and my iPhone and I just stare at all the results alone until I’ve metabolized it, intellectually, emotionally, and then I can go and like do my politics. And I actually found myself like 15 minutes before it started, I was with my wife and my youngest kid and they were talking and whatever, and not particularly nervous. And I just kind of got real grouchy and said, I got to go. So I went upstairs and I watched like the first 15, maybe 10 minutes of it. And then I was immediately like, I realized it was going quite well and I didn’t want to miss the fun downstairs. So I poured myself —
Chris Hayes: Right.
Brian Schatz: — a whiskey and walked downstairs and joined the group.
Chris Hayes: Yes, that first 15 minutes was just because it was clear that she was in command and she knew what she was doing. Were there parts of her as someone again, who was a colleague of hers and who’s a professional politician, were there parts that stood out to you particularly that maybe didn’t stand out to everyone else or were the main parts the things that sort of stood out to you?
Brian Schatz: No, I don’t think I have like special insights. I will just observe that the split screen thing can be super, super painful. And it’s the old Dolly Parton line. It takes a lot of money to look this cheap. It takes a lot of effort to look this effortless. And I think the way the vice president handled Trump’s outrageousness was quite unique and quite effective. And her sort of bemused, befuddled look on her face while he was saying outrageous stuff is exactly, I think, tonally what you’re looking for because, you know, Trump’s superpower has always been, among other things, to hijack the national conversation and to upset people. Just by saying one thing, he could upset tens of millions of people. And I think one of the things that she achieved that Hillary Clinton couldn’t achieve and Marco Rubio couldn’t achieve is he just looked small.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Brian Schatz: He looked irrelevant. He looked old. He looked unfunny. And even when he was saying an outrageous thin and like didn’t get under my skin in the way that it used to. And I think that could be that she’s a beneficiary of people just being tired of the dude. But I also think she was uniquely skillful in giving him the right level of disdain, but not enough credit as some incredible strong man that we must vanquish, otherwise American democracy collapses. Now, he probably is someone we must vanquish, otherwise American democracy will collapse, but I think we shouldn’t give him that power over the way we feel.
Chris Hayes: I totally agree with that. And it’s something that I battle with internally, just in terms of how we handle this editorially on the show, which is that I genuinely think he does pose a genuine threat to our system and to our democracy, but it always just feels, they kind of like playing the Bond villain because it gives them a certain dark power. And so when you’re talking about what a menace he is, it feels like at some level you’re ceding some power to him.
Brian Schatz: That’s right, that he’s the tough one.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Brian Schatz: And we’re the weak, complaining, professorial ones. And Kamala just sort of said, I don’t know who this guy is ranting at the bus stop, but I’m going to walk right by him.
Chris Hayes: How are you feeling generally about this election?
Brian Schatz: You know, I don’t trust happiness. So I will remain nervous all the way through. I think winning and losing feels the same until the end. So I just don’t know.
Chris Hayes: What do you mean by that?
Brian Schatz: I always feel like we’re losing. I always feel —
Chris Hayes: You’re saying like in the campaign, there’s no like visceral, you don’t have some special magic crystal in your chest that tells you whether you’re winning or losing.
Brian Schatz: Nope, I’m always in just an absolute state of panic all the way through and I hide it until the end. But look, I obviously think things have improved. I think we have the kind of candidate that strikes the right contrast. I think we are well positioned, but I have no idea. I would have said that by the way, at around this time when Hillary Clinton was running and when Joe Biden was running. So I do not prognosticate, I’m relatively effective at predicting Hawaii elections. I’m not sure there’s anyone that’s particularly effective at predicting national elections.
Chris Hayes: What do you think about the Senate map? Because the Senate map, it’s a fascinating situation. Democratic candidates have really overperformed in election after election in Senate races, partly because the Republicans keep insisting through their primaries on nominating real freaks and weirdos, or rich carpet baggers. It really seems like those are their two categories. It’s either the person the base selects or like, we’ve got a hedge funder from Connecticut, maybe we can run him in Pennsylvania.
Brian Schatz: I mean, to be fair, sometimes it’s both.
Chris Hayes: Yes. Occasionally, yes.
Brian Schatz: Yeah. I think they again have a candidate quality problem. And I think, you know, Hovde in Wisconsin and a couple of these people are just come off as odd and spend too much time in their actual homes in California. And so there’s just a bunch of like weird dudes, but structurally speaking, we’re playing almost entirely defense. So, you know, I think this is the toughest year we’ve had in several election cycles and we’ve had several very tough election cycles. The other thing I would say is nobody expected for us to pick up those two seats in Georgia.
Chris Hayes: No.
Brian Schatz: And so, I still think that we have a fighting chance, not just to win the Senate, but for the trifecta. And the governing implications of winning House, Senate and presidency are absolutely enormous.
Chris Hayes: They’re enormous, but I want to talk about another arrangement that I think is a possibility and is fairly uncharted. So just go with me here because it’s a thing that people are going to have to deal with and it’s a bridge you’ll cross, but it’s a total possibility that Kamala Harris wins the race. I think it’s a 50-50 race. That the Democrats even take the House, which seems possible, but because of the just the way that the Senate map is structured this year that Democrats lose the Senate. A situation in which the new president is inaugurated having only one of two houses and not having control of the Senate. And it would just have pretty profound implications for appointments, judges, all sorts of stuff. And I wonder if you’ve thought about what that would look like and what it would mean.
Brian Schatz: I have. I’ve pretty much gamed out every scenario, but that one I think is particularly fraught because we really haven’t had a president. I don’t think we’ve had an incoming president without the trifecta in quite a while.
Chris Hayes: It’s been a while, yeah.
Brian Schatz: And to be clear, it’s not just that it’s been a while, we are now in a new era where all cabinet nominees are really generally opposed by the minority party. And so the chances of Kamala Harris being president and not being able to even field a cabinet is non-zero. And that’s why —
Chris Hayes: Exactly.
Brian Schatz: — obviously the Senate matters for governing purposes, for Supreme Court nominations, but also like, do you want a secretary of state or a secretary of education or a secretary of human services? It is not obvious to me that we would even be able to confirm cabinet nominees without being in the majority. Now, I do think there are a couple of senators on the Republican side who would probably not immediately want to deprive a new president of their choices, but it would be a bloodbath before we even got started.
Chris Hayes: There was a moment in late 2016 that’s now been lost in the midst of time because of the fact that Donald Trump won somewhat unexpectedly, in which Antonin Scalia had died, Mitch McConnell had almost immediately announced that there will be no vote on any nominee whatsoever. President Obama nominated Merrick Garland to succeed Antonin Scalia. There was no hearings, there was no votes, there was no nothing, a total blockade. Down the stretch of that election, there were multiple Republican senators who said, even if Hillary Clinton wins, we’re not going to confirm a Supreme Court justice. In fact, John McCain actually said that somewhat, a little bit surprisingly. Ted Cruz indicated it, there were a few others. That never got tested, but we have never had that, we haven’t yet tested what has been this growing dysfunction and sort of maximalism with a new president, who is of one party and a Senate of the other, particularly when you’re talking about Senate Republicans.
Brian Schatz: Yeah, I think you’re right. I’m not sure there’s much to do about it now other than —
Chris Hayes: No. Yeah.
Brian Schatz: — to put a pin in it.
Chris Hayes: Yeah, right. Yeah, I’m just sort of trying to game it out myself.
Brian Schatz: Yeah, I hate that scenario. I hate it less than the other scenarios.
Chris Hayes: Yes, exactly, I was going to say.
Brian Schatz: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: I asked Senator Chris Murphy, your colleague, this recently, I’ve been asking a lot of people. So one of the central things I’m sort of obsessed with, the current political environment, is basically the following. I think this administration, and props to the Fed Chair Jerome Powell as well, has done the best job of macroeconomic policy and stewardship of any president of my lifetime. Under incredibly difficult circumstances, inheriting the aftermath of global pandemic and coming out of it, the brutal shocks to global supply, the inflation that hit every country basically across the world, and piloted it through this very difficult set of crises. And yet people are just not happy with the economy. How do you understand that? Think about it? What does it say to you? Are there priors that you’re re-examining? Are there things that’s made you think I was wrong about? Like talk me through how you understand that.
Brian Schatz: I think, first of all, we may have underestimated the extent to which people think of the economy as the price of things —
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Brian Schatz: — especially when there’s economic growth. When there’s not economic growth, people understand in a depression, in a recession, there’s not going to be inflation, but people are still not thrilled.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Brian Schatz: But if you do have inflation, it can wash away everyone’s sense of how well things are going. That’s number one. Number two is I continue to think Democrats kind of talked themselves out of talking up the economy when we had a moment to do so. And it’s sort of, I mean, you know, I do think there’s a little bit of this that is generational from like the Democratic Leadership Council and the old school centrism, which is hey, don’t talk too much about how well things are going because that’ll just invite the other side to say X, Y, and Z. And so we’re kind of constantly arguing against our own interests and against even making the case that things are going well because we’re afraid it’ll show some level of insensitivity. Now it seems to me, and this is the way I communicated with my constituents back home, that it wasn’t all that hard to say macroeconomically, things are actually going fantastic, but I know you’re suffering, right, and we’re working on that too. And look, we’re doing basically the best among all Western countries in terms of rebounding from this unprecedented COVID crisis, but that doesn’t mean that the price of eggs is low enough.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Brian Schatz: That doesn’t mean you’re not suffering with your utility costs and high interest rates and everything else. And like, look, I just said it, and I’m a pretty good communicator, but I’m not like the world’s best communicator. I just don’t think we even tried to make that case. And frankly, I think Joe Biden has been an extraordinary president and will go down as an American hero. And to your point, on the macroeconomic side, one of the more effective presidents in many, many generations. But he wasn’t very good at explaining what was going on.
Chris Hayes: More of our conversation after this quick break.
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Chris Hayes: You live in a state where things are expensive. For obvious reasons, it’s hard to get stuff there. You have to import a fair amount of things and that’s going to be expensive. Housing particularly has been a sore point in Hawaii and Hawaiian politics, but is now nationally a huge thing. It’s interesting to me how front and center Kamala Harris has made housing, how it’s ascended up the list of voter concerns. And as someone from a state where this is probably one of the preeminent issues I would imagine in your state. I mean, the times I’ve been there talking to people, it clearly is a huge issue. How central you think housing is? How ready you think the Democratic Party is to move legislation on it, should there be a trifecta?
Brian Schatz: Yeah, I think it’s a couple of things. First, you know, in Hawaii, we’re one of the more expensive places to live and we have, as we should, bedrock environmental and cultural protections enshrined, not just in statutory law, but in our constitution itself. And I’ve been fighting for that for basically all my political and activist life. But what I have found is those same protections prevent us from doing like walk-up apartments for nurses and affordable housing for the elderly. And all of that stuff is getting weaponized against the society that we all say we want to build. And I have been maybe not quite radicalized, but I have turned on this issue because it is my judgment that there is nothing progressive about preventing people from building the thing that we all say we want.
And yes, utility costs matter and yes, groceries and fuel and all the rest of it, but nothing costs more than either your rent or your mortgage.
And nothing is more likely to cause somebody from Hawaii to have to move to Reno or Eugene or San Bernardino or whatever it is because they just can’t make it and its housing, housing. And so I have had to have some very difficult conversations with both my personal friends and my political friends from my base in Manoa Valley, Makiki Valley, Tantalus, which you know, it’s a beautiful suburb of Honolulu. It’s where the University of Hawaii is. It’s where Punahou School is. And it’s an extraordinary place with great people, but they are not interested in densification. And so, you know, I ran it, we passed some, you know, quite aggressive housing reforms at the Hawaii legislature. I generally don’t weigh in with individual bills. I made an exception for this because I think we need political space on the left for a recognition that this kind of excessive proceduralism, like we’re all —
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Brian Schatz: — as progressives prepared to say, that the crankiest person on the block should not determine what library books are in the public library. But we are not prepared to say that the crankiest person on the block should not be authorized to block affordable housing. It’s the same person, right? And so, you know, I’m having some very difficult conversations in the family about this issue, but I think the next generation of Democrats is going to be in favor of constructing the future that we say we want and not just talking about it.
Chris Hayes: It’s so interesting you say that because I think people sometimes use the term YIMBY, yes in my backyard, to name this ideological tendency. I think a lot of people have had this transformation. I think Kamala Harris is in that camp, at least based on what she said in her big unveiling of policy.
I want to stay on this because it’s such a crucial issue. You talk about your base in this beautiful suburb. I’ve actually been to the University of Hawaii Law School to watch Kate do some “Strict Scrutiny” there that I want to sort of press on this thing because I think it’s important. Yes, there are cranks that show up to community development meetings, but it is also the case that maybe it would be nicer to live in a part of Hawaii where you have a nice house and there’s not a lot of people than it getting denser. Like there is an actual conflict and trade-off here that I think sometimes we skate over like. You know what would be my favorite way to drive around New York City is? When no one else is on the roads. What I would like is for me to be the only person driving around New York, because then I can get everywhere. What everyone wants is for them to have —
Brian Schatz: All the land?
Chris Hayes: — their thing and space and not have other people because yes, that’s more, but that creates a collective action problem.
Brian Schatz: Yeah, I agree. I mean, everyone wants to build the rail system so that everyone can get on the rails so that the freeways open.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Brian Schatz: And so, no, I think you’re right. I think there are trade-offs, but I think one of the things that is changing the politics of this, at least in the state of Hawaii, is a lot of those families in Manoa, Makiki and Tantalus are trying to figure out how their kids —
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Brian Schatz: — and their grandkids can live anywhere on the island of Oahu, anywhere in the state of Hawaii. And so —
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Brian Schatz: — what’s funny is, while sort of individual activists may be opposed to this, once this bill passed, everyone says, well, hold on second. I can do an accessory dwelling unit. I can do up to 900 square feet. Huh. My kid and their spouse are like going to try to get pregnant and come home and like they can’t afford a, you know, median home price is about a million dollars and these are old, old houses.
Chris Hayes: Jesus.
Brian Schatz: And so if you drop down a modular house in your front yard and then you got grandma and grandpa, and by the way, in a multicultural Polynesian-Asian community, living three generations on one property is like the way to do it.
Chris Hayes: Totally.
Brian Schatz: Even if you have enough money not to do it that way. And so I think what’s happening is we’re kind of crossing the Rubicon. Everyone’s staring at each other and going, actually, this isn’t that bad, right? This is not building a tower in Manoa Valley. This is simply allowing a few more houses to be built adjacent to us. I’ll also say that for those people who are in a position to travel all over the world, and they visit all these beautiful places, right? And they say, you know, why can’t my hometown be like that? Well, listen, most of those places that you’re visiting have density, right? They have body heat.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Brian Schatz: They have homes stacked on homes —
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Brian Schatz: — stacked on homes, and they have courtyards and they have mixed use. And all these things that we think we’re supposed to oppose are the things that we’ll travel across an ocean to enjoy.
Chris Hayes: Yes. Someone had this take. I’m repeating it without credit, but someone said, the reason people love Disney World is it’s a walkable community. Like people fly from all over the world and it’s like, you just walk around all day and you walk around with your kids and no one has to get in the car. And it’s true, there’s something. And when people go to Paris, wherever they go, it is really people love to go to places that they can walk around and they don’t have to sit in traffic. But we don’t build for that desire. We build, you know, in the opposite of it. And I was struck actually when I was in Hawaii, how complicated the politics around land use must be there for a million different reasons. But I was always also struck, and this remind me of Chicago a little bit, how public beaches and how important public space is there and how much that’s clearly been a priority in a way that was pretty striking that you could just turn off the road onto a public beach and go swim there.
Brian Schatz: Every beach is public. There’s a state law called the Shoreline Access Act that no beach, no coastline in the state of Hawaii may be owned privately. It is all part of the public trust and that everyone may have access to it. And so there are accesses to every beach —
Chris Hayes: Yeah. It’s so cool.
Brian Schatz: And actually, as a matter of fact, my predecessor in the state legislature was the author of the Shoreline Access Act. He was 26 or something. He was right out of law school surfer guy and he was the author of the Shoreline Access Act and I think about, you know, that kind of legacy is no joke. I didn’t even know, by the way, I’m sorry to say, that beaches were private, like you could privatize a beach until I started spending more time on the continent, as they say.
Chris Hayes: Yeah, the reason I compared it to Chicago is there’s one narrow strip up by Sheridan Road on the north side that they have no beach access, but for all of the entire lake is public and the same idea and it’s invaluable. I mean, if you had it at a development juncture, made a different choice, you would have destroyed one of the greatest things about the city, right? You can’t put a price on that kind of thing.
Brian Schatz: Look, I mean, I think this is probably worth clarifying, and I always use this example, like the corner of King Street and Eisenberg is right in the middle of Honolulu. It was the Stadium Bowl-O-Drome, is the old stadium. It’s long gone. And it was a little bowling alley. And you know, we should build in the Stadium Bowl-O-Drome. We should build affordable housing and market rate housing and apartments there. We should also not build in Kawela Bay, right, which is an extraordinarily beautiful natural and cultural resource on the north shore of Oahu. And we’re not too stupid to know the difference, right?
Chris Hayes: Right. Your point being that it’s not all or nothing and that you can preserve. You know, that impulse to preserve natural beauty, preserve public spaces can be paired with more densification without just, you know, throwing things up everywhere.
Brian Schatz: They’re not just compatible. They’re connected. The more you allow for densification, the less development pressure you’re going to have elsewhere.
Chris Hayes: The other big issue that I think uniquely affects Hawaii is the climate and Hawaiian politics have been at the front edge of the climate fight. Your state Supreme Court, which is a remarkable body. I’ve actually had the pleasure of meeting a bunch of the Supreme Court justices of the state of Hawaii who are really cool and interesting people. You’re uniquely exposed to climate effects. It’s a little depressing how absent climate is from this election, and I get it. I get it. I look at the same polling you do. If you ask the median voter in a swing state in Pennsylvania, their biggest priorities, climate is not in the top three, it’s not in the top five. But I wonder what you think about the state of the climate conversation in our politics right now.
Brian Schatz: I am not as worried about whether people talk about it right now as whether or not we win.
Chris Hayes: Yes, I 100% agree with that. Just to be clear, I’m with you on that.
Brian Schatz: But it sounds like you have a little creeping anxiety that the elections have not just consequences in terms of who’s in charge, but the thing you talk about is often —
Chris Hayes: The thing you prioritize.
Brian Schatz: — you know, the thing you prioritize. So, I think it’s worth worrying about and being vigilant about there. I do think that if we’re going to take big climate action, it’s going to originate from the United States Congress. And I am very confident that Senate Democrats will prioritize another round of big climate action. Look, the Inflation Reduction Act was the biggest climate action ever taken by any legislative body anywhere on the planet by a lot. It’s also true that it’s probably one eighth or something, one sixth of what we need to do. So my view is that, you know, I came to the Senate to take action on climate. And for the first time I could look my kids in the eye and say, yeah, we did something meaningful, not nibbling around the edges, not continuing to lose, but we really did something that is moving the needle. But I do think this is a generational fight. It is not one of those things where we say, we got dental coverage for Medicaid recipients, so check, we’re moving on to the next issue. There is no checking the box and moving on from climate. There is only fighting the climate crisis and managing the adjustment and the transition into a clean energy economy. So we got to take another swing at this in 2025 and I’m very, very confident that we will, as long as we win.
Chris Hayes: We’ll be right back after we take this quick break.
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Chris Hayes: Well, one thing that I’ve been thinking about because this unites the last two topics is if there’s a big housing bill, there’s a lot you can do in a housing bill on climate, a lot. I mean, the built environment matters tremendously. There’s huge questions about rooftop solar and cogeneration and how efficient buildings are. So climate is something that can be present in lots of legislation that isn’t headlined as this is the climate bill.
Brian Schatz: Yeah, I agree with you, but I worry a bit, right? Because I think, for instance, you could build like a LEED certified, super platinum, energy efficient, all the great stuff home. And if it’s at 45 minutes from the employment center, it is worse for the climate —
Chris Hayes: Yup.
Brian Schatz: — than an old school apartment —
Chris Hayes: Yup.
Brian Schatz: — that’s right in town.
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Brian Schatz: And so sometimes people —
Chris Hayes: Great point.
Brian Schatz: — in the climate movement get kind of like attached to the trappings of, cool, we’re going to have like electric car plug-in station and we’re going to have all the newest materials and all that. And by the way, that might cost 25,000 more per unit. And my view is like, wouldn’t it just be better if we built houses where people didn’t need to use their cars?
Chris Hayes: Yes. That’s a great point.
Brian Schatz: Yeah, I agree there’s a climate play, but I think part of what I’m trying to do is make sure that the Democratic Party, as we make policy, is grounded in like actually fixing it rather than just like satisfying groups who want to think.
Chris Hayes: Let’s stay on this because I mentioned Kamala Harris. She’s a little older than you are, I think, but you said you’ve been radicalized as a change. I sense that there is a generational shift among democratic politicians on this question about density, YIMBY, housing supply is a huge thing. Would you agree with that?
Brian Schatz: A 100%. And it’s not like, you know, it’s not like an age cut off.
Chris Hayes: No. Over time, I think, yes.
Brian Schatz: But over time, I think there’s a reckoning. First of all, it’s driven by the voters, right? It’s driven by people in Hawaii who, you know, in the sort of age 20 to 40 are coming to us and saying, yeah, please don’t build in an inappropriate way. But to the extent that it, you know, takes me 36 months to get a permit from the Department of Planning and Permitting just to get an accessory dwelling unit. I mean, at one point, the State Historic Preservation Division was preventing the Navy from building a solar farm because they decided that the runway itself was a historic site. And what we came back to them and said, it’s Pearl Harbor, every single thing in Pearl Harbor is historic. So I guess we can’t ever renovate anything. And so there’s a kind of eating of the menu.
Chris Hayes: Wait, the local Hawaii planning board —
Brian Schatz: The Historic Preservation Division, yeah.
Chris Hayes: Okay, Historic Preservation Division was stopping the U.S. Navy from putting a solar array or solar field co-locate around Pearl Harbor in the base.
Brian Schatz: On an old runway because that runway had historic significance. And you kind of went back to them and said like, hey, you know, this whole place is pretty historic, right? And so there’s a kind of literalism, proceduralism, what an old operative friend of mine used to call eating the menu thing that I think we just have to be the party of government being able to solve problems. But we don’t have to defend stupid stuff that the government does. We can be in charge of fixing what the government does. By the way, I think that’s why people were attracted to Josh Shapiro, because get shit done is very appealing to someone who’s left of center, but not tolerant of like Soviet level bureaucracy.
Chris Hayes: This is one place where I think blue state, blue city governance has had a really hard time. I mean, you know, you’ve seen growth in lots of these Sun Belt places that have just lower levels of regulation on housing, on zoning, you know, Texas, Arizona, Florida. Now part of that is weather, but Hawaii’s got great weather too. And, you know, people would love to live there, but it’s too expensive. And it’s actually having a profound effect on the map. I mean, it’s like on where political power is located and where people are going.
Brian Schatz: Yeah, it’s going to affect everything. Census, electoral votes, the allocation of U.S. House seats. But, I mean, it’s bigger than that, right, because they’re the party that promises nothing and does nothing, right? And we’re the party that promises something and sometimes gets it done. And we have to be a little more focused on execution. And I don’t think it’s a question of like just executing harder. So I’ll give you a kind of nerdy example. The State Historic Preservation Division, you know, the first thing we tried to do is get them additional staff to like process all the applications. And then it became clear you can’t get people to join the Historic Preservation Division when they can make four times as much in the private sector so we couldn’t fill the positions. And then we said, well, what if they just had a shorter pile? What if they just had less to consider? What if we didn’t presume that every building in the state of Hawaii that was 50-years-old or older was subject to historic review? By the way, because we have so little new construction, most homes are 50, 60. My home, I think, is now 101-years-old.
Chris Hayes: Whoa.
Brian Schatz: And that’s not unusual. But the point is to actually remove, not just to execute harder, or to think that you’re just going to ride some middle manager and some civil servants to like do 30% more. The point is to give them less to do and to make sure that what they’re doing is meaningful. There are historic sites that should be preserved. They’re just not every home across the island of Oahu.
Chris Hayes: It’s funny you say that because one of my first impressions that was slightly surprising when I first went to Hawaii was how time capsule-y it felt. And I think it’s because the buildings, there was a certain time where a bunch of stuff got built that is kind of the look of a lot of Hawaiian architecture and houses and stuff, but it’s a very specific time capsule and, like, there really isn’t a lot of new stuff.
Brian Schatz: No. Now some of that is the cost of materials and shipping and all that.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Brian Schatz: But you’re right. It is hard to recapitalize our building stock, whether it’s commercial buildings or government buildings or residential buildings. It’s just really hard to upgrade ourselves. And there’s nothing right-wing about wanting to have a more bright, a more modern, a more robust economy that includes construction. I want us to be the party of building stuff. And when we did IRA, when we did IIJA, when we did the CHIPS Act, we made a national commitment, a political and a policy commitment to being the party of making things and building things and imagining a future where we are kicking ass together. But we’re not going to be able to do that unless we literally permit people to break ground.
Chris Hayes: What is your favorite part about your job?
Brian Schatz: That the small things are big. You know, there are moments. I’ll give you an example. I had a staffer come to me and sort of explained to me 12 years ago, telehealth, right? And my eyes glazed over and I listened politely and I said, okay, come back to me, right? And then because of her hard work and her successor’s hard work and all the rest of it, I became this sort of Senate lead on telehealth. And this is never going to get me on “All In,” right? It’s never going to get me on the Sunday shows.
Chris Hayes: We’re not booking you on telehealth, you’re right.
Brian Schatz: Right. And I’m not even going to like run an ad about how good I was on telehealth. So I get no like political credit for it. And yet we’ve really transformed the healthcare system together on a bipartisan basis. So, I mean, some aspects of this job are sort of obviously enjoyable and fun and rewarding, but the, maybe the more surprising part is that, maybe it’s like Matty Yglesias’s, you know, quiet Congress, where you can get extraordinarily important things done that nobody’s even heard about. I mean, I have taken a deep interest in Asia Pacific Island nations. And because the Senate is only comprised of a hundred people, I’ve become the sort of Senate lead on a lot of those issues. And I’ve been able to help the Compacts of Free Association states and the Federated States of Micronesia and the Cook Islands and the Pacific Island Forum in ways that are sort of outsized. And so the most fun part of the job is the part that I never get to talk about because it’s not that damn interesting unless I’m on a podcast.
Chris Hayes: And that gives you a sense of accomplishment. Like it seems to me that sometimes a lot of, I mean, famously being say in the minority in the House can feel like spinning your wheels, right? That you don’t get the governing agenda. But it’s also the case that the tangibility of accomplishments gives you a sense of like real reward.
Brian Schatz: Yeah, and again, like there’s not zero relationship between what I get credit for and what I’m working on. But I just have to make my peace with I might do something that is important, but I wasn’t like the main person on it and I’m like splashed across the headlines back home. And there might be something else that I’m deeply proud of, like we raised the tobacco age to 21 or provided family leave for all government workers under the Trump administration as our little rider on the defense bill. And those are really cool things and nobody really noticed. But that’s the kind of thing, it’s like I’m a terrible golfer, but it is like that where you hit one good shot and you go, this is pretty cool. I should come back.
Chris Hayes: It’s funny too, because there is, when you’re saying this sort of an inverse connection, I mean, the way that American polarization works and partisan dynamics work, the less attention paid to something often the better for its chances of being a consensus bipartisan position.
Brian Schatz: That’s right. And I think it’s a little bit advantageous to me as I’m not afraid of being partisan, but I don’t wake up every morning trying to figure out how to get on TV. I wake up every morning trying to figure out how to get a bill across the finish line. So my willingness to, you know, not give up credit, but my lack of focus on that, I think makes me just a little bit more effective in the actual job part of the job.
Chris Hayes: You said you’re a nervous person, that basically you’re sort of in a kind of fight or flight state for all of the election, which I find very relatable. It’s not particularly Aloha. I’ll say, that’s not generally the vibe. Of course we all contain multitudes. What are you sort of most hopeful about?
Brian Schatz: I think if we win, that Trump is done. And I know there are a bunch of people, in fact, you know, some of the Pod Save bros we’re talking about, you know, Trumpism is going to outlast Trump. I am not so damn sure.
Chris Hayes: I actually agree with this take. Keep going. But yes, I sort of agree with it too.
Brian Schatz: Like I think you could just look objectively at J.D. Vance or Robinson in North Carolina. There’s a bunch of Trumpy people who just like aren’t as well liked as Donald Trump. And I think part of the problem is like, it’s hard to admit that this guy is like uniquely charismatic and maybe good at politics in a really unconventional way. But I think if we vanquish him, people are going to move on. That doesn’t mean that the Democratic Party is like going to be dominant for decades.
Chris Hayes: No. In fact, actually, part of the price —
Brian Schatz: It might kill us.
Chris Hayes: Yes. Part of the price of it is it might trade a partisan advantage for deeper, longer term stability around the rebuilding a consensus around American democracy.
Brian Schatz: I think that’s exactly right. I think there are a bunch of people who do hate Trump and are going to vote for Kamala. But because of their own disposition and maybe even their own tax bracket, they’re going to try to find the first available, acceptable Republican, especially if Trump’s gone. And that’s going to be challenging electorally, but I don’t care.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Brian Schatz: I do think that this guy poses a unique threat and I think we have a unique opportunity to vanquish him.
Chris Hayes: Brian Schatz is a Senator from Hawaii. He is the Chair of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, Chief Deputy Whip. What a great conversation. Thank you so much, Senator. Really appreciate it.
Brian Schatz: Thanks, Chris. I appreciate you doing this.
Chris Hayes: Once again, my great thanks to U.S. Senator Brian Schatz, who I find a really fascinating guy to talk to. I learned a lot from that conversation. I hope you did too and would love to hear your feedback. You can e-mail us withpod@gmail.com. You can get in touch with us using the hashtag #WITHpod. Search us on TikTok by searching for WITHpod. And I am followable at Threads, Bluesky, and the site formerly known as Twitter, all with the same handle, @chrislhayes. Be sure to hear new episodes every Tuesday. “Why Is This Happening?” is presented by MSNBC and NBC News, produced by Doni Holloway and Brendan O’Melia. This episode was engineered by Cedric Wilson and features music by Eddie Cooper. Aisha Turner is the executive producer of MSNBC Audio. You can see more of our work, including links to things we mentioned here by going to nbcnews.com/whyisthishappening