 Yeah, politics for the people here on ThinkDeck. I'm Jay Fidel, Libra Clock Block on a Thursday. Let's talk about voting rights. Are we losing it on vote? Are we sailing right into a voting rights disaster? Our guest today, Tim Apachello, Winston Welch. Thank you for joining us, gentlemen. Good morning. So let's begin with you, Tim. Where are we on voting rights? It's like it's not on the top of the media priority list. People used to talk about it a lot. They're not talking about it so much. Where are we? And how much time do we have? And what are the prospects of running a federal voting statute? It's not on the top of the list because infrastructure is. We said earlier on in the administration that the Biden administration can walk and chew gum at the same time. I don't think they can. So infrastructure has sucked all the air out of the room. It is a priority. And I think as soon as infrastructure gets done at 1.75 trillion, that they will move ahead on it. And I think Joe Manchin has to look at where he is. He was tasked with the responsibility of getting 10 Republican votes to come over the other side of the aisle and vote in a reasonable voting rights bill. He hasn't been able to get one vote. And I think because he was a co-signitor on that legislation, I'm wondering if he's now willing to look into some modification of the filibuster that pertains strictly to voting rights. And I think maybe he will. It's got to take a certain form and a shape that he'll find that's not too onerous. But I think he'll come over and there will be some modification of a filibuster. And we get something done. It won't be, again, it's like the infrastructure. You don't get everything you want out of a bill. You're going to have to, you know, it used to be not a dirty word, but now you're going to have to compromise. And that's not a dirty word. That's how politics used to be. And that's how it should be versus my way or the highway. Yeah, Winston, but in politics before, we didn't get a stroke by stroke, conversation by conversation, caucus by caucus, point by point discussion. We find out, you know, in the newspaper that a bill had passed. OK, it passed. And then we look at it. But the specifics are known to so many people. The specific conversations, negotiations, you know, and really it's in a huge amount of time and we want to call it oxygen, attention by the public to hear about everybody's aspirations for what's in, what's out, how much, how little. Is this constructive or is this a waste of time when we should be focusing other things like voting rights? Well, ideally it's that the people having input on all of these things is what we aspire to. But in fact, as you point out, it may just create chaos, confusion and dissent so that everything gets killed before it even has a chance to see the light of day. And that can be problematic, certainly, and we see that now with so many angles coming in. No, I would like to think that everyone sort of chiming in is exactly what we need. But when these positions are so hardened in advance, it makes these, for lack of a better word, kind of backroom deals where the work actually gets done and is able to get done, almost impossible to do. And I think that Joe mentioned, you know, and I said before, we have a political class or we have a ruling elite. In a sense we do, I mean, we are in charge of those folks but they're the ones that have to go down, drill down deep, they rely on advisors, they rely on think tanks and associations and all types of unions or whatever to have input in that. But you look at Joe Manchin, and I think he probably actually is still believing that there is this idea in the Senate that you come together, that you discuss ideas that the best ones float to the top, that you can have this sort of comedy in the Senate where you can reach across the aisles, you can meet your friends, you can say this is reasonable and rational and sane and he fell completely flat on his face as Tim just pointed out, not one person across the aisle when he said, I'm not gonna do what you Democrats wanna do, I'm gonna do what I think is best for the country. And I'll do that. Aren't you being charitable with him? Aren't you being charitable with him? I mean, the fact is, the bottom line on this is he dragged it out for 120 days. And it's hard to actually get a beat on what he wants or what he has wanted, but the net effect is he's dragged it out for 120 days. Yes. And I almost think he's working for Mitch McConnell. Well, I mean, that idea was floated last week when they said, are you thinking of changing parties? And we've discussed on here that he's essentially, I mean, it's amazing that he's still even nominally in the Democratic Party, but he's clinging onto that for whatever reason. So he has no, you know, he could switch to being a Republican or an independent in five seconds. And he would not be heard in his home state in the state that probably had the widest margin or one of them for Donald Trump. So he wouldn't be hurt by switching. That makes me feel like there's, I mean, he could be a plant and just to obstruct the Democrats, but why bother? Why not just switch over to the Republicans? I think he actually does have an old fashioned desire which I think most of us do to bring back sanity and an ability to come together and compromise, like Tim said, on getting the work of the people done. And he has stalled a lot. Meanwhile, we are spending an enormous amount of time and energy following bills that are, you know, maybe Tim wins the bet between us and maybe I do, but there may be no infrastructure bill. And there may be no change in the filibuster. And at the end of the day, it's a dull thud. And the bottom line is with all of that, no voting bills. And let me ask you, Tim, and how important are the voting bills in the larger sense, in the sense of preserving our democracy? Critical. But before I answer your question, I want to get just comment on a point that Winston made. I think Joe Manchin wouldn't be elected dog catcher in West Virginia because Donald Trump would label him as a rhino and whatever Donald Trump says goes. So I think Joe Manchin would have a problem if he declared himself as Lisa Republican. Now, maybe he can get away with it as an independent, I don't know, but I think you would have problems. And that's why I think he's sticking with the Democratic Party. Let me add one point to your point, Tim. He may not care. At the end of the day, he has interests in coal and while we're fiddling, he is making millions in coal and he is pulling the environmental provisions, the renewable energy provisions right out of Biden's legislation. And everybody knows it and everybody knows why. So he may be going back there, West Virginia, a rich, rich man and it may not matter. Yeah, okay. Point well taken. To answer your question, it's absolutely critical. I think what's critical part of it is the aspect that these states are ripping out professionals, unbiased, objective secretaries of state and election officials and all these state bills that give the legislature the right to put their own people in to oversee the election. That is the most dangerous critical part of what these states are doing. And we all know how these states came about to do this because they said, of course, Donald Trump's election was stolen from him through fraud and all the false things that they keep drumming about. But so yeah, you need a national bill to stop the placement of your cronies to oversee and count election results. And if that doesn't get fixed and repaired, we're in big trouble. What is that mean? Democracy is at stake if that aspect does not get repaired. What scenario do you see? This is like the ghost of Christmas future out of Dickens. What scenario do you see? We're in big trouble, but what is that? Well, okay, let's say it's, let's say that the Democrats realize that things are in jeopardy and they get out of their laser boy armchair and they go and either fill out a mail-in ballot if they can get away with it or they stand in line for five hours, six hours. And there's an overwhelming turnout from Democrats. Well, it makes it a lot harder to fudge the numbers if you're counting ballots and votes. But let's say it's a close one. Let's say it's neck and neck and you can push things one way or the other if your cronies are in there counting ballots and how they're reported. So an election result is at stake here. And I think that once the Republicans get back in and solidify these voting rights or eliminate the voting rights and solidify their voting bills, we may not see a Democratic party back in for a long time. Yeah, Winston, there's more here too, isn't there? You know, there's suppression and every day that goes by without a voting bill, the suppression continues and all these really incredible, outrageous bills and all these Republican states are being adopted. I think they see the vacuum as an opportunity and they're taking these draconian sinister steps like every day to make it worse. The question I have for you is whether Joe Biden fully understands the importance of voting. He may say so, but does he fully understand? Here's a guy who went to the ballgame. He went to Rome to see the Pope which is very nice religious point of view, but it doesn't have too much to do with the country and policy. He's making these pitch stops around the country to pitch his infrastructure bill. Does he really have to do that? Does the country work on pitch stops these days? Can't you reach people by other ways without having to leave Washington? He doesn't seem to be focusing on voting at all. So my question to you, Winston, does he understand the priority here? Well, remember why Joe Biden is president. He's an honorable, he's a good man. He's a good politician given good faith partners. But the reason why he was elected wasn't because he was Joe Biden. It was because he wasn't somebody else. And we all know that. He's not using his cabinet to their full potential, I don't think. He's not having Pete Buttigieg go out all the time on Fox who loves him apparently and likes to have him on because he kind of talks back in a sassy way and gives him what they want. He's not using Kamala Harris. I don't even know where she is. The attorney general is independent and we're glad to have that. But there's a lot of other departments that could be out there pounding the pavement, getting out the message, being the Eleanor Roosevelt's across the land and selling what we need to have sold. I mean, we need to be buying wholesale. He's also dealing with an insane pandemic which is not gone by the way. And maybe, who knows? Maybe he's going to Rome. The pope did say that it's a duty of followers of that faith to get vaccinated. So that may have helped get a little pushed behind having some moral authority from the head of the Catholic Church. Joe Biden, he's got so much to deal with. I don't know how he wakes up in the morning. He decides what he's going to focus on. But it looks like he's getting some sort of, some sort of infrastructure bill that's coming through. You have these obstructionist two folks of Kristen Sistema who I can't understand what she is thinking about. And Joe Manchin who is a little, seems a little bit easier. And we may say, yes, he's gotten a lot of money off a call. I don't know, Tim, when you say about the Donald calling Marino and that he could, that might be, but I think these people in West Virginia are particularly loyal to him. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, we'll be seeing who is primaried as it were. It does Joe Biden fully understand. Trump took West Virginia by 40 points. Yes, yes. He did. No, there's solid on you. Joe Manchin's the only Democrat elected and the only one who could be elected with a D after his name. I don't think they're voting for him because he's a Democrat. I think they're voting for him because he's Joe Manchin. And he was what, he was the governor and he was a mayor and a Congress representative. He's well loved, no two ways about it. Well loved and he brings home the bacon as much as he can to West Virginia. So, and right now he's saying no clean energy. You know, if Exxon or Shell or Tesla wants stations around the country, you guys put them in yourself or maybe it'll go to the States. Maybe California will put them in. I don't know how that's gonna work, but Joe Biden's going for what he can get at this point. And at this point, it's a very truncated version of what he was looking at doing, but anything at this point is gonna be better than nothing. Yeah, well, but voting, I think we agree that voting is critical. Does he fully understand that? He's been focusing on all these other things, including the Pope, including the ball game, including trips to Pennsylvania and other states that pitch his infrastructure bill. Does he understand about voting? I mean, does he accept what Tim has to say? Even if he does understand about voting and let's assume that he does and that everyone around him does, including the Democrats and the Republicans, how many voting bills have been enacted in the state legislatures around the nation that are anti-voting that it's a- Well, I mean, it could be Winston that he has written it off. He has written it off. Tim, okay, Tim, what are your thoughts about that? Is it possible that Joe Biden has written voting off? No, no, not at all. No, but Jay, it was in my first answer. He's got to get infrastructure done. He's got to show that democracy works. He's got to show that this is his only shot. You know this is his only shot. And unfortunately, because it's his only shot, they threw in the entire kitchen sink with the both infrastructure bills. Was that a good idea? No, of course not. But you know what, the nature of the Senate now is such that if you don't get it in the first or second try, you're in the midterm elections and it's all over. So he's trying to get as much as he can in as fast as he can. And he knows that the kitchen sink's not going to work, strategy's not going to work. So he'll settle for whatever he get, but he has to get something. That's why he knows he's on the weekend of negotiations with Joe Manchin and cinema. He knows it. He knows they have them over a barrel and he'll give them whatever they want. You know, right, it's just like in a business negotiation or a legal negotiation, you know, the worst possible position to be in is making two offers in a row. Yeah, I agree. It demonstrates weakness and you will never settle on your terms that way. You will always be chasing the other guy. And that's what's happening. Manchin and cinema say, well, that's not good enough. Come further, come some more. We're not going to tell you when you actually hit pay dirt here. Just come further, give us more. And I think that speaks of a tremendous delay and also a failure. I want to address your point there because in all critical negotiations, you try not to get in front of the media and let it out what you're negotiating about. You keep it under wraps. And for, you know, Jayapal and Joe Manchin and to be out in the camera each and every day talking about what they're not going to give up, it puts them in a corner so that if they do give it up, they look like they're not true to their word. They look like a flip-flopper. So Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, should be saying to everyone, would you keep out of the cameras until we have a firm agreement, until we have a solid deal? But they don't. And this is why this thing has been protracted and has gone on as long as it has because all the positions become fortified. And then it's harder to budge away from them. It's harder to compromise. So one last point Jay, you know, regarding Joe Biden to the Pope, a lot of white male over 55 are Catholics and they're Trumpers, definitely Trumpers. And so any kind of photo ops that Joe Biden get with the Pope would only help somewhat in that effort to try to sway them a little bit, not a lot of bit, but a little bit. How about the trip to Scotland? Well, that's the environment, that's critical. Yeah, we gotta be seated that we're a nation of action versus lip service. And I think that's why he's willing to give up a lot of the negotiations over to a mansion because he's gotta have something in his pocket before he goes to Glasgow. Okay, I just, I get a guy with too much on his plate. Now, these are critical meetings that he's attending and I see where you're coming from but they're still critical too. When I was a kid, you know, my mother would put a plate of food out in front of me and it would have the peas and the carrots and the potatoes and as I was eating the peas, she would say, what's the matter with my potatoes? Eat the potatoes and then I would eat the potatoes. And a minute later, she would say, what's wrong with my peas? You're not eating my peas. The problem is that, you know, the political calls are calling him and he's dancing from the carrots to the peas to the potatoes. And I wish he'd just focus Winston. And letting the Swiss stick get cold. Winston, you know, one of the problems that we really haven't addressed is this. We have all these Republican states doing voter suppression and gerrymandering. It's really horrible. There was a piece I think on Rachel Maddow the other day where she showed you how they twisted an area, a Latino area in Texas and made it into a non-Latino area. Millions of people are gonna be disenfranchised. It's incredible what they're doing. It's shameless. But, you know, this is happening around the country and we have suppression. We have gerrymandering. We have impossible, you know, provisions on voting, voting officials that the legislature can turn the vote over. I mean, I could go on. It's a, you know, at least half a dozen really, really awful things that are in the playbook and the playbook repeats itself from state to state. Not exactly the same. But what's happening is, A, people are wondering what happened to infrastructure? You know, we get all this noise about it but we don't have it. And how long do we have to wait? And what's it gonna be like when it's over? They're confused. Okay, and then you hear about the Roe v Wade thing which, you know, was also very confusing what's gonna happen here. And the Supreme Court is gonna take it up in the Mississippi case in December. That's gonna be really interesting to see, hopefully resolve properly. But what I get is complete confusion because as the Republicans are undermining our voting rights all over the country, people all over the country are getting confused. What they did in Wisconsin, does that count for me? What they did in Texas, does that count for me? What are the real voting limitations? What are my voting rights? What do I have to do? Where's the guide? Where's the checklist of things I have to do to get the vote? And I think that as time goes by and this kind of thing happens and there are no voting rights bills in Congress, people are gonna be completely confused. And then after the election, whether it's close or far, the Republicans are going to confuse it further. They're gonna turn it around, turn it over, have the voting officials do bizarre things. And nobody will know which way is up. It'll be in the courts for years about who won. Don't you see the confusion as a huge side effect of failing to best the bills in Congress? Of course, I'm also confused why you didn't bring up carrots in your example. You just focused on peas and mashed potatoes. I got confused with the rest of it because I was like, what about the carrots? Who's advocating for the carrots? And that's basically how it is in our society is we've become so divided into little tiny cells. What's my cause? Is it environment? Is it abortion? Is it gay rights? Is it voting rights? Is it balanced budget? What's my cause? And so we're not able to follow all the moving parts. It's like someone with a shell game. And honestly, the reality is the people don't even know about the infrastructure bill. Those that do know, don't know what's in it. They barely have the faintest idea that there's something out there. This is not something people are concerned with. For voting rights, yeah, of course they want voting rights. Does it make the top 10 list of the things they worry about in the morning? No, they worry about COVID. Do they have their masks? Are their kids sprayed down? Do they have to get a shot today? Do they need to be tested? Is it safe to visit their mother? Is their job secure? Is their husband getting, you know, whatever? We're confused by so many things, absolutely. And these voter suppression things are gerrymandering. It's been going on forever. It's just very egregious and seeing it happening right now really is terrible. The problem, and you're talking about for Joe Biden, he doesn't have any room to maneuver. He is at the complete mercy of Joe Manchin, who seems to be at least rational and Kristen Sestema who does not, but I can't understand what's going on in her head. So Joe doesn't have a lot of things to go. When he goes to Europe, it's at least show that he's saying we're gonna be a part of this someday. Hopefully we'll get our act together. It's not gonna happen anytime soon, so don't hold your breath. How many climate conferences have there been? There was Paris, there was Brazil, there was, you know, others that have happened in here in America that they all say the same thing. And yet we pump out more and more carbon every year because the average American doesn't know and doesn't care and if you tell them you're gonna have a tax now and here's this and they see they might be watching something and they're worried about their kids getting what's revisionist history or what are they called? It's a real history, but a critical race. All of these things that are just shiny flashy objects and meanwhile, country's still burning and Joe Biden is like the firefighter with one fire truck and he's gotta put out 10 fires at the same time and if he can get a win out of this infrastructure bill, fine, but he's got other things to do and I think what he needs to do is ask his attorney general or suggest strongly that the attorney general start investigating these laws across the land for federal voter rights violations that are based on laws that were passed in the 60s. These are basic laws that we have other mechanisms to go about. It's not gonna happen through Congress. It's certainly not gonna happen in the state legislature. Well, it may or may not happen with the Department of Justice. Tim, you look like you were gonna say something on that very point. Yeah, you know, Winston does bring me to a thought and that is one of the critical things that's happening right now is the threat of violence and intimidation to our public election officials and they're starting to quit. They're starting to resign. So the threat and imitation, the tactics are working and the Justice Department needs to get involved and stop that immediately. You can't afford to lose professionals and unbiased election officials due to threats and intimidation tactics. And I'm not seeing Joe Biden getting, well, it's not Joe Biden's issue. It's really the- Yeah, Garland in the Justice Department to get involved in that kind of stuff, but that needs to move fast in 2022 is right around the corner and you just can't afford to have this and judges are being threatened too, by the way, not just election officials, school boards are being threatened and all this stuff has to stop. Well, the problem is that, you know, in a crisis, a political crisis, a constitutional crisis, there has to be a tremendous effort. I remember the hanging chads, remember the hanging chads in 2000 and there were lawsuits popping up like brush fires all over the country on both sides of the issue. And it was pandemonium, it was chaos legally. And I suggest that that is just a small stuff compared to what's gonna happen in 2022. For the very reasons you identify, there's gonna be all this litigation, but I think, you know, Winston's point and Tim's point, very good point. The Department of Justice, so what's it doing? How come it doesn't get involved in voting itself? These things are outrageous and the Department of Justice is quiet, quiet like a peep, what happened here? Is there a defensible reason for the Department of Justice not to be doing anything? What I see is the Department of Justice really isn't doing a whole lot. You know, I haven't heard anything about the insurrectionists, they essentially got away with it up till now. And I haven't heard anything about the proud boys and all those organizations. I don't know if they're being prosecuted or not. There's some civil actions like in Charlottesville, but that's like old news. Where is the Department of Justice? Why did it not initiate some, you know, prosecution over the insurrection or investigation or grand jury proceedings over the insurrection? It never did. And now we have this voting crisis and it's nowhere to be found. What's going on, Winston? You know, it's as if the inner sociopath has psychopaths been released across the nation everywhere. You see it on airplane flights, you know, on meltdowns. I saw an interesting meme and said, do you remember those kids where they were screaming in the carts at the supermarket and you wondered why the parents didn't stop them? Guess what, those kids have grown up now. You know, when you have people having full scale meltdowns because of they got a Diet Coke instead of a Diet Pepsi or whatever it is, they didn't want to wear their mask. They had to wear the, I don't know, they had to wear their mask, all of these things. But when it's a small scale thing, this is a human-to-human interaction. When you're talking about a little old lady from the League of Women Voters who's monitoring the election, she's not a Democrat or Republican, she's an American. She's a, you know, a Boy Scout leader, a Girl Scout leader. She's just Mary Smith or Mary Tanaka. Is that an adequate? And that's the person when she's thinking, I'm not gonna sit here and be abused or threatened by these folks. So when you're, like Tim was saying, when you're losing these basic things, a ground grassroots efforts in democracy, neighborhood boards, commissions where people just are either threatening them or having full-scale meltdowns or people are thinking, I'm just gonna go home and watch the Sopranos or whatever's on, you know. Well, I think a lot of people do that. They have fatigue, not only fatigue on the carrots and the peas, but they have fatigue on the whole plate. And they're tired of hearing their mother saying, you have to go to the peas or the carrots now. They just wanna go watch the TV now, forget about it. Okay, Winston, let's go to closing because we have another event in the studio that we have to take care of at 1130. So take a minute and give us your closing thoughts here. Closing thoughts are that unfortunately, just like the child that's having the meltdown in the supermarket, parent needs to take them outside, pick them up and say, not having this in public. This is unacceptable behavior. We need to do that as a society at large, where we say when you have these meltdowns, when you have these threats or this harassment of officials, whether it's a neighborhood board on up to a judge or commissions or city employees or whatever it is, you will be arrested, prosecuted. This behavior will not be tolerated. We need to enact it at the city, the state and the federal level and the department of justice and our state attorney generals need to be involved with this and city. I agree, totally, thank you. Tim, your closing comment. My closing comment, no matter where we go from this point forward, there's enough vitriol from one side to the other, specifically, the Republicans hate Joe Biden and Democrats. So it's time for the Democrats to wake up. It's time for them to realize, no matter what great policies or great incentives we give or stimulus we give to Republicans, they hate our guts. So it's time to realize that, say, there's no pleasing them. The only way they're pleased is if they get back in power and they stay in power. So what do you have to do? You're gonna have to do as Wista suggests. You're gonna have to indict and prosecute, stay within the boundaries of the rule of law but not play naive and simplistic. Go and play hard, play tough. Don't bring a soup ladle to a gunfight. And the second the Democrats finally realize that they're not liked or not loved, they're gonna have to play tough. And that will settle the playing field a little bit. Clearly we're at a tipping point. And the fulcrum of the tipping point is voting rights because that's where it's gonna play out. That's where we're gonna retain our democracy or not. Tim Apachello, Winston Welch, thank you very much gentlemen. Politics for the people, Aloha.