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From LeverNews.com — Lever Time is the flagship podcast from the investigative news outlet The Lever. Hosted by award-winning journalist, Oscar-nominated writer, and Bernie Sanders' 2020 speechwriter David Sirota, Lever Time features exclusive reporting from The Lever’s newsroom, high-profile guest interviews, and expert analysis from the sharpest minds in media and politics.
Arjun Singh
From the levers reader supported newsroom, this is lever time. I'm Arjun Singh Do or do not there is no try. Those are the words of Jedi Master Yoda. But these past few weeks it's been the mantra of Democrats across the country. After a debate performance that fermented an existential crisis in the party. Joe Biden has defiantly said that he is the Democratic nominee. Yet little in the past few weeks have calmed the nerves of anxious Democrats who worry Biden won't be able to run a vigorous campaign to defeat Donald Trump in the fall. Now the party is divided. And there's no clear consensus of whether it's better for the party to stick with Biden or not. That makes the August Democratic Convention a potential inflection point, not just in the campaign, but in American history. It could be the first time since the national primary system was implemented, that convention delegates revolt in oust the party's presumptive nominee. And that's exactly what some Democrats are hoping to do. But what happens then, who will ultimately get to pick the nominee? And will a floor fight reflect the will of the voters or the donors and lobbyists who are deeply embedded into the convention process? Today on lever time, we're going to hear from a DNC member who's pushing for a delegate revolt, then we'll hear how corporate lobbyists and their allies could have an outsized influence over what happens at the convention. If it does. That's today on lever time.
Arjun Singh
It's been a weird couple of weeks. It started with the debate. Yeah, that debate, you'd be able to right wipe out his debt, we'd be able to help make sure that all those things we need to do childcare, elder care, making sure that we continue to support and strengthen our healthcare system, making sure that we're able to make every single solitary person
Joe Biden
eligible for what I've been able to do with the with the COVID asked me with
Joe Biden
dealing with everything we have to do with what if we finally beat Medicare?
Arjun Singh
Since then, Biden's tried to calm nerves and he's held rallies, despite that some folks don't seem to care who you voted for.
Arjun Singh
But guess what? They're trying to push me out on the race. Let me say as clearly as I can. I'm staying in the race.
Arjun Singh
He defiantly called into his favorite MSNBC show Morning Joe to rally his case,
Joe Biden
federated the bottom line here is that we're not going anywhere. I am not going anywhere. I wouldn't be running if I didn't absolutely believe that I am the best candidate to beat Donald Trump in 2024.
Arjun Singh
And his elected officials headed back to Congress. They were mobbed by reporters hungry to know if they think Biden should remain on the ticket.
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez
Joe Biden is our nominee. He is not leaving this race. He is in this race and I support him. Now what I think is that
Arjun Singh
a lot of Democrats are still worried about him being the nominee, and they're not shying away from speaking up.
Michael Bennet
Joe Biden was nine points up at this time. The last time he was running. Hillary Clinton was five points up. This is the first time in more than 20 years that a Republican president has been up in this part of the campaign. Donald Trump is on track I think to win this election, and maybe win it by landslide and take with him the Senate and the House
Arjun Singh
on Wednesday, Vermont senator Peter Welch became the first Senate Democrat to formally demand Biden withdraw from the race. And he may not be the last either. If you've been watching the news these last few weeks and wondered what the hell is going on. You're not alone. I have to and still have millions of Americans and others around the world. For Biden's supporters, the media scrutiny and the panic that's ripped through the party has been frustrating. Like Biden, they've tried to shrug off the debate is a bad episode.
Joe Biden
No indication of any serious condition. I was exhausted. I didn't listen to my instincts. In terms of parents, bad nights, but for a lot of people that debate night affirm their worst fears that Joe Biden was simply not up to the job anymore, and that he could very well lose in November to Donald Trump.
Arjun Singh
And that's what we're going to talk about today. That fear. See, for Democrats, what's happening isn't about Biden versus Trump. It's about Biden and himself. Trump, meanwhile, has seen an opportunity in this moment. Recent reporting has said that Trump prefers Biden to stay in the race. And that's what terrifies Democrats about Biden's public posture, that it could spell an almost certain return of Donald Trump. One of those people is Joe Salazar.
Joe Salazar
No Democrat presidential candidate should ever be trailing Donald Trump. That dude is a treasonous lyin multiphone. There's no way in any other frickin normal world. We would not be traveling, we'd be cleaning this guy's clock. Salazar is a former Colorado State Representative, a member of the Democratic National Committee and he will be one of Colorado's delegates at the DNC in August. He thinks if Biden doesn't step aside, then the delegates should revolt and push them off the ticket themselves. I've been hearing from people before Biden announced his reelection campaign. And people were concerned then back in August and September, about the fact that he was thinking about running again. And so he decided to run. People just watched, and they waited to see what was going to happen. We didn't have an actual primary, because those who were wanting
Joe Salazar
a look, we're concerned about our president and his ability to move forward. They were shut down very quickly by the DNC. And so that led us until that Thursday's debate, but I'll tell you after Thursday, there's not a day that doesn't go by that I'm hearing from regular folks, from people who are attorneys from people who are blue collar folks to you know, male, female, Latino, non Latino, you know, LGBTQ you name it, I'm hearing a spectrum of Coloradans who are really upset with his performance on Thursday night and who are asking me as a DNC member, I'm not just a delegate, I'm a DNC member for the state of Colorado. And, you know, who are who are begging and pleading to figure out a way to ask our president to step down. Now, this is all very theoretical, and a lot of details still need to be worked out. But it does appear there could be a mechanism by which delegates who attend the National Convention could boot Biden off the ticket.
Arjun Singh
See, Biden still isn't technically the nominee. Instead, Biden want a slate of delegates that have pledged to vote for him at August convention in Chicago. And only after the delegates vote, will Biden be the official nominee. Conventions actually used to be how parties selected their candidates on the local level communities would elect delegates to represent them at the convention. But up until 1972. In many cases, those delegates were free to pick whoever they wanted. In fact, that's exactly how John F Kennedy won the Democratic nomination in 1916 68
Unknown Speaker
votes for Senator Kennedy.
Speaker 1
Carmen
Newsreel
Wyoming's VARK will make the majority for Senator Kennedy.
Arjun Singh
delegates would literally hang out in smoke filled rooms to select a candidate. But that all changed in 1972 when the party decided to give more power to voters and presidential primaries, but they didn't hand over total control. Some delegates to the convention are known as super delegates, and they vote on the second round of ballots. If no candidate secures a majority, officially 95% of the Democratic convention delegates are currently bound to vote for Biden based on the state primary results. party rules do lay out a process for how those delegates can be freed up should the presumptive nominee drop out. But if Biden doesn't budge, Salazar and others hope that DNC rules could allow them to file a petition call for a different candidate, and essentially revolt at the convention. He added that this is still a hypothetical point. But he and an official in the Colorado Democratic Party are actively exploring whether their idea of a petition could be a provable workaround. And Salazar's push highlights the clear division within the Democratic Party. And he's certainly not alone in considering that the best path forward.
Speaker 2
I mean, I can't imagine what could be more chaotic than what's going on right now. Where the vast, vast majority I mean, a huge super majority of Americans do not believe the current Democratic nominee is able to run or even serve out his tongue do his job effectively. This
Arjun Singh
is Branko Marsha tech, a staff writer for Jacobin and the author of the book yesterday's man, the case against Joe Biden,
Branko Marcetic
so And meanwhile you have leaks every single day. You have damaging stories. You have speculation about the President's health, you have Democrats completely unable to focus on attacking Trump, you know, one of the most disastrous and unpopular candidates who has ever run for office and they're not able to land a single blow on him because they are entirely focused on the internal disarray and on getting rid of the prison, the top of the ticket, so I can't see what can be more chaotic.
Arjun Singh
I caught up with Bronco the other day to learn more about why he thinks it would be worthwhile for Democrats to find a new nominee at the convention, that
Branko Marcetic
actually could be an adjustment for the party. But people have not been happy with Joe Biden for a long time, way before the debate appearance kind of took us to the moment we're in now. People felt like the party did not care about their concerns, their daily concerns about the cost of living about a whole host of issues that the party was out of touch. They didn't feel that Biden's presidency was going all that well. You know, I mean, maybe hardcore democratic pauses that but most of them were announced is not the Democratic Convention, even if it is messy, even if it's a slightly chaotic process, as I think was James Zogby said this in the nation, it actually gives the party a chance to energize the voters because it gives us something to be excited about and actually refocuses public and media attention, not on Biden's ongoing difficulties, but on competing ideas and contestation for what exactly the party's agenda is going to be moving forward similar to, you know, the Democratic primary process and 2020 2018, there was lots of chaos, you could argue, then, you could argue that there were certain things said attacks launched from one candidate or another that you know, people always say, well, these attacks are going to hurt them in the long run, so on and so forth. But in the end, actually, that was a pretty healthy process, even though you know, I was not really happy with Biden as the nominee. But as a result of that process, not only did excited Democratic base, but also you ended up you know, Joe Biden's a very conservative politician for his entire life. But he and I are getting pushed into adopting a fairly ambitious platform and enacting at least some parts of that platform as president.
Joe Biden
And this is a movement we're building it isn't. And we need that movement to beat Donald Trump. And to build a future we all know is possible. You know, I'm especially proud that our campaign is generating so much enthusiasm, driving up voter turnout all across the nation, this idea that we didn't have a movement, look at the results. Look at who's showing up, we are bringing out this campaign, the people behind me are bringing out people who have not participated. And it's way up, way up.
Speaker 3
In 2020. The day after Super Tuesday, I was in Los Angeles and Biden gave this kind of triumphant day after speech. That's
Arjun Singh
David Day in the executive editor of The American Prospect, David's one of the sharpest political minds. I know, and someone who's closely been tracking the work of the Biden administration,
Speaker 3
I remember thinking this isn't really the same guy who was vice president. And that was four years ago. Right. And, you know, I'm not like hanging out in the west wing all the time. I don't, you know, I don't I don't interact with the guy on on a day to day basis. But that feeling has sort of been in the background. I personally think that presidencies are accumulations of 1000s of people. And there are a lot of people in the Biden administration that are doing a very, very good job and, and really transforming some of the sort of perceptions and common ways of doing business that have, I think, infected Washington for a long time. And then there are others who, you know, are sort of going along with the old consensus
Arjun Singh
since the debate, Biden and his allies have argued that the push to oust him isn't coming from the public. Instead, it's coming from party insiders and democratic donors. An argument that hits son is strange coming from someone who spent a majority of his life as a politician
Arjun Singh
on a nominee, the Democratic Party. I'm a nominee this party because millions of Democrats like you just voted for me in primaries all across America. You both need to be your nominee. No one else. You the votes. The voters did that. And despite the spite that some folks don't seem to care who you voted for, well, guess what they're trying to push me out on the race. Let me say this,
Arjun Singh
those supporting Biden's ouster have pointed to his low approval ratings, and the fact that in polling averages he's losing to Donald Trump. And a few polls that came out in the last two weeks have indicated significant and in some cases, a majority of Democrats want Biden off the ticket. That however, doesn't change the fact that the fate of the nomination is ultimately in the hands of the delegates at the convention, something which could make the process feel illegitimate to the public. And that's an argument the Biden team is really stoking right now, voters
David Dayen
have generally had this, this thought at the top of their mind for a long time and I Unfortunately, you know, nobody really sees the presidency, as this agglomeration of a party and all of the various functionaries who do it, there is a sort of great man of history, kind of through line to American politics, where they think that, you know, the one person is, is the government in many ways. So it is important who that person is, I think, that the political dynamic has been, it's easy for Biden to go back to his traditional kind of me against the world mentality, and have that work for him. In reality, I think the public and the donor class are more aligned on this than maybe anything else in politics in the last few years. But the problem with them with democratic politics in particular, is that there's no real mechanism for the people to get their viewpoints heard in Washington at a high level. And especially in a situation like this, where the primaries such as they were, are done. And the decision on whether to give up these delegates is really Biden's and Biden's alone. The only way that you're going to do that is to convince the guy that he has lost the trust and the faith of the American people. And there's no way to do that. In current Democratic politics. There's this group called pass the torch, Joe, and they've put a petition out. And they've they've said, you know, our petitions to ask Biden to step aside, and they pledged to support whoever it is, comes out of the process after that. And they have gotten several 1000 signatures, they've made a lot of calls to members of Congress to try to get them to come out and publicly state their opposition to Biden, continuing to be in the race. But it's hard they started last Friday, you know, there, it's, it's hard to spin that up from nothing, especially if you don't have you know, this this existing channel of, you know, mobilizing and motivating the public. So I mean, starting a new organization from scratch, for a decision that needs to be made in like the next few weeks. That's a tough road to hoe. And it speaks to this deficit we have in converting popular opinion, to democratic policy, you look at that debate. And you know, one thing that politicians need is trust. And that debate, saps at the trust of Biden, at least to run for president, maybe not to be president. But I think that's also part of it. And once you lose that, and once you have that public moment, it's very hard to reverse that and get back as far as the dynamic within the party. And now I'll talk about sort of elected officials. There's like this mass Waiting for Godot moment. I mean, everybody wants somebody else to solve this problem. There's a very ingrained fear of confrontation within democratic politics. And it's driving this moment, I feel like nobody wants to be the one to go at Joe Biden for fear that they lose and then lose their stature within the party. It's a very, it's very much institutional based. And I think that the ultimate problem there is going to be that there's there's this huge problem of collective action.
Arjun Singh
On Thursday, Biden was dealt another blow, this time in the form of a Washington Post ABC News poll, which found that two and three adults surveyed wanted Biden to step down, including more than half of the Democrats who participated. Polls are tricky things, but they do provide a snapshot of a moment. And for Biden, which raised more alarm bells, as the polls repeatedly show similar sentiment towards the president. But that leaves Democrats in a tricky place. If Biden steps aside or is ousted, as Joe Salazar wants, who comes next? And more importantly, who gets to decide
David Dayen
that? It's absolutely true? I mean, if there is a sort of donor led push to get Biden out of the race, and it succeeds, who do you think that they're going to put in his place? And do you think that person will be you know, oppositional the Capitol? I seriously doubt it. And so, yes, I mean, I think it speaks to this deficit, the fact that the Democratic Party is driven in many ways by you know, wealthy Foundation funded advocacy and donor class elites, whether from Hollywood or Wall Street. Wherever it means that the kind of work that Biden is doing and is doing successfully is always pretty contingent. And yes, you can hold two things in your head at the same time. Biden is a flawed candidate who has serious challenges in defeating Donald Trump in November. But also, he has led this ability to challenge corporate power that is at risk if he is deposed for another candidate by those very scions and tribunes of corporate power that are at the front of the line.
Arjun Singh
After the break, we'll hear about how corporate lobbyists have embedded themselves into the party's convention and the influence they'll have over who would be the next nominee if Biden steps aside or is pushed out.
Arjun Singh
This election cycle might be one of the most expensive of all time. To be clear, it's not just the presidential race. There's also Senate races, House races and governors elections happening all over the country this year. The presidential elections bring in cash holes that would put a lot of Silicon Valley startups to shame. The Biden campaign is no stranger to big money. In fact, it's Biden's bread and butter. Take, for example, a celebrity filled fundraiser thrown in New York City for Biden and the DNC. In just one night alone, they managed to raise $26 million. And donors don't really donate at a vacuum. In exchange for their contribution. They get close access to candidates, and in many cases, they're even awarded government titles.
Speaker 4
Looking at the list of Biden ambassadors. One name that jumped out at me was David L Cohn, who was rewarded with a ambassadorship to Canada. David L. Cohen was a Comcast executive. And of course, Comcast was a major Biden campaign supporter in the company donated a million dollars to the Biden Inaugural Committee as well. David
Arjun Singh
Moore is the co founder of sludge a news outlet that closely tracks money in politics.
Speaker 4
Inaugural donations are another area where mega donors and wealthy corporations write a huge check in one fell swoop and have a big thank you for a politician who's just won election. So the ambassadorships are another area where you know more than a dozen figures, who had raised more than $100,000 received ambassadorships, according to a review, that was in MarketWatch of the campaign Legal Center data. The
Arjun Singh
reason I wanted to sit down with him is because corporate lobbyists have a chance to play an influential role at the Democratic Convention in August, especially if the party needs to choose a new nominee. The
Speaker 4
DNC is a sort of a notoriously opaque thing is what I'll say. Because after all, if you stand back and you say, what is the Democratic Party, it turns out, it's a private corporation. It's not a nonprofit. It's not a membership organization. It's a private corporation that operates by its own rules. And there's very few methods of accountability for an average Democratic Party voter over what the DNC rules are. Over the years at sledge, we've done a DNC reporting series, and we found that dozens of DNC members work as corporate lobbyists, or as corporate consultants or as corporate lawyers, or sometimes the term is Shadow lobbyists. Someone who works as a consultant, many of the corporate lobbyists are just that they're lobbyists for Big Pharma for News Corp, and Fox Corp. And these are, many of them are also appointed by the DNC chair, previously, Tom Perez, and currently by chair Jamie Harrison, under the Biden political operation,
Arjun Singh
dozens of lobbyists will be amongst the ranks of delegates, and also possibly have a role in crafting how the convention processes will work. So
Speaker 4
there's this body of 75 at large members who are appointed to the DNC. But what you have is that many of these corporate lobbyists, who are effectively appointed to the DNC take seats on these top committees chair Jamie Harrison nominated, among others, a lobbyist for Fox Corporation named Marcus Mason, a person who was at the time and director of international strategic response for Facebook named Nicole Isaac, there's an executive at Pepsi named Kenny Thompson. And Pepsi is a member of the chamber of commerce that has fought the Democratic agenda on so many fronts, and as well as a bank executive, Tony Williams. And as we've seen now, with the uncertainty around the possibility that Biden might step down. Many of these appointed lobbyists are in conversations right now to discuss the convention rules. And there's very little public visibility into what kind of conversations are happening. DNC member sources who Have we've spoken to over the last four years that we've been doing this reporting have told us that the the meetings are run very much top down these opaque committees like the DNC rules and bylaws committee. It's chaired by party insiders. And oftentimes, many of the other members don't feel that they have adequate visibility about what's going on in these meetings. These are things that the DEM DNC members, people who are elected by their state parties have to really clamor for, and are still pushing for, they're still telling us that they're not getting the kind of visibility that they need into the process. And there's still accountability lacking. So based on that, based on the experience of DNC members who are telling us these decisions are top down, I think it very much matters that these corporate lobbies, insiders, they do have influence to exert over the process, other DNC members will be looking to them to understand what the options are, and what the sense of the party is. And in this way, whatever happens with the convention over the next six weeks or so the lobbyists and corporate consultants who are DNC members, I think will be having very weighty conversations with another fellow members around what Biden should do. That lack
Arjun Singh
of transparency is a growing trend in politics, too, is campaigns are raking in more cash and spending more money. The money is becoming harder to follow at
DAvid Moore
sledge, we reported that, as of May, that the largest provider and SuperPAC had raised more than $37 million in dark money donors since the start of 2021. And that's more than half of the 61 point 7 million total it had reported raising during that period. And there's been a few more dark money donations since a couple more million dollars flowing in as well. So when one of every $2 Going into the largest provider and super PAC is coming from unknown sources, I think the Democratic voters are fair to bring up the question, you know, who's got the ear of Biden White House political team, and the Chief of Staff's office, it's fair to presume that with so many 10s of millions of dollars in dark money flowing in, that there's a reason that they're using these dark money channels, because after all, they could be donating under their names to the super PAC and donate the same amount. There's a reason that donors on both sides of the aisle use these masking and dark money groups. And it's because they want to exert their influence under the radar. So in a democracy, it's it's up to voters to try to press for as much transparency as we can. A lot of
Arjun Singh
Democrats don't think the process is ideal. But to people like Joe Salazar, the DNC member we heard from earlier, it's the unfortunate price of politics in modern day. And if Biden does step aside, it's the only mechanism the party has left to be able to find a new nominee months before November's election. Oh, hell,
Joe Salazar
the corporate lobbyists are always meddling in the Democratic National Committee. They sit on committees, they sit in very, you know, influential position. So even outside of this process, there's always that concern that they're meddling. So that's number one. And number two, yeah, they're gonna metal. That's what they do. That's what they always do. And so you know, we're going to keep an eye on that, because it shouldn't be the current corporate lobbyists that decide the the direction of our our nominee and ultimately the direction of the country. It should be us because we're the ones that are elected by our state parties.
Arjun Singh
On Thursday evening, Biden gave a much anticipated press conference, the first one he's given since the debate, and actually the first one he's given since last November. At this point, anything can happen. Ultimately, it may be Biden and only Biden who can decide to step aside. And the stakes are really high, especially for those who don't want to see a return of Donald Trump. But I do wonder something. Amid the chaos, the punditry and the push and pull between Biden and the party. Is this also a sign of a healthy democracy, as David Sirota has said on the show before, maybe the messiness, the debate and the tension, these are all signals that at least the Democratic Party is in some ways responsive to calls for change. After Biden's press conference, several more elected Democrats called for Biden to drop out. And some reporting has said that the White House is looking into plans for what would happen if Kamala Harris took things over. It's caused a lot of concern and a lot of anxiety. And plenty of people wish that this entire debacle was just over. But it's also a sign. It's a sign that even one of the most powerful heads of state in the world can't stay in power too long without the support of the public, or at minimum, his own political party.
Arjun Singh
Thanks for listening to another episode of leisure time. This episode was produced by me our June saying with help from Chris Walker and editing support from Joel Warner and Lucy Dean Stockton. Our theme music was composed by Nick Campbell. We'll be back next week with more episodes of leisure time.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai