We Are Indivisible

Ed Chung on the backlash against bail reform in New York state — PLUS: Ezra Levin on the Indivisible movement three years on, his and Leah Greenberg’s new book, and the path to defeating Trump and saving democracy in 2020 and beyond. Subscribe to Off-Kilter on iTunes.

Three years ago, not long after the 2016 election, Ezra Levin, Leah Greenberg, and a handful of other current and former Congressional staff teamed up to create a document that would change the course of politics during the Trump era. That of course was the Indivisible Guide, which, learning lessons from the Tea Party movement, became the organizing document that inspired thousands of grassroots groups to form across the country, with the shared purpose of stopping the Trump agenda. To mark that three-year anniversary, celebrate the release of Ezra and Leah’s second book — We Are Indivisible — and shed light on the path to defeating Trump and saving American democracy in 2020 and 2021, Rebecca brings back Ezra Levin, co-executive director of Indivisible.

But first: As part of the growing bipartisan movement to overhaul the nation’s broken criminal justice system, money bail has risen high on the list of broken policies in need of a rethink. Advocates point out that money bail sets up a two-tiered system of justice based on wealth — wherein people who can afford to pony up bail walk free while they await trial, while those too poor to pay, sit in a jail cell while they wait for their day in court. For that and a great many other reasons, advocates and policymakers have been working to reform money bail, with the most recent jurisdiction to take the step being the state of New York, whose historic bail reform policy took effect earlier this year. However, in the wake of that policy taking effect, there’s been a massive backlash, with many in the state calling for major changes or even outright repeal of the policy. Joining us to unpack what’s going on in New York — and to set the record straight on what the research and evidence tells us when it comes to bail reform efforts, given all the myths flying about in context of that debate — is Ed Chung, Vice President of Criminal Justice at the Center for American Progress and co-host of The Tent, another podcast powered by the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

This week’s guests:

Ed Chung, vice president of criminal justice, Center for American Progress; co-host, The Tent (@edchungDC)

Ezra Levin, co-executive director, Indivisible; author, We Are Indivisible (@ezralevin)

For more on this week’s topics:

• For a deeper dive into New York state’s new bail reform law, check out this explainer from our friends at the Brennan Center — plus this powerful op-ed by Mara Gay of the New York Times editorial board: “Democrats Run From Their Own Shadows: Don’t Buy Into a Campaign of Fear on Criminal Justice Reform”
• For more on Indivisible’s work on impeachment, 2020, democracy reform, and more — and to get find an Indivisible chapter near you (or start one, if there isn’t one yet!) — visit Indivisible.org

This week’s transcript:

♪ I work and get paid like minimum wage

sights to hit the class by the end of the day

hot from downtown into the hood where I stay

the only place I can afford ’cause my block ain’t saved

I spend most of my time working, trying to bring in…. ♪

REBECCA VALLAS (HOST): Welcome to Off-Kilter, powered by the Center for American Progress Action Fund. I’m Rebecca Vallas. This week on Off-Kilter, I sit down with Ezra Levin, co-executive director of Indivisible, to mark the three-year anniversary of the release of the Indivisible Guide. We celebrate the release of Ezra and his wife and co-executive director Leah Greenberg’s second book as well — it’s called We Are Indivisible — and shed light on the path to defeating Trump and saving American democracy in the process in 2020 and 2021. No, no small thing there.

But first, as part of the growing bipartisan movement to overhaul the nation’s broken criminal justice system, money bail has risen high on the list of broken policies in need of a rethink. Advocates point out that money bail sets up a two-tiered system of justice based on wealth, wherein people who can afford to pony up bail walk free while awaiting trial, and those too poor to pay, sit in a jail cell while they wait for their day in court. For that, and a great many other reasons, advocates and policymakers have been working across party lines to reform money bail, with the most recent jurisdiction to take that step being the state of New York, whose historic bail reform policy took effect earlier this year. However, in the wake of that policy taking effect in January, there has been a massive backlash, with many in the state calling for major changes or even outright repeal of the policy just weeks after it went into effect. With me to unpack what’s going on in New York and to set the record straight on what the research and evidence tells us when it comes to bail reform efforts, given all the myths flying about in the context of that debate, I’m joined by my colleague and friend, Ed Chung. He’s the vice president of criminal justice at the Center for American Progress. He’s also the host, the co-host, of The Tent, another podcast hosted by the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Ed, thanks for coming back on the show. It’s been a minute.

ED CHUNG: It’s been a minute. Appreciate you having me.

VALLAS: Yeah. So, let’s start with some basics when it comes to bail. Explain for me how money bail systems work and some of the critiques that advocates and experts have for why they need to be changed.

CHUNG: Yeah. Let’s start with some of the data. So, we have between 2.2, 2.3 million people incarcerated. That includes prisons and jails. People who are awaiting trial comprise about 400–450,000 people. That is about two thirds of the jail population. So, about 650 people are in jail. The rest of that 200,000 who are in jail are serving sentences under a year. So, if you’re over a year or over, if your sentence is a year over, you’re in prison. So, we’re talking about a significant number of people. And again, we got to make sure to remember that people who are in jail pretrial on bail are legally innocent. They have not been convicted of the charge for which they are arrested and they currently face.

So, the way that cash bail or money bail works is that throughout the history — And this is in the Constitution, right? The Constitution, 8th Amendment prevents excessive bail. It doesn’t prevent bail, right? So, the system is that a judge determines, based on arguments by a prosecutor and the defense attorney, whether or not a person is a risk of flight. That is the main issue, whether the person will return to court for successive appearances. You know, historically, and this comes somewhat from English law, but also in the United States, you put up money to make sure that you return. It’s an incentive that historically has been used. The question now, especially the last couple decades or the last decade, has been whether or not that system has been very much abusive towards people who are of color and people who are poor and can’t afford it. And the data shows absolutely that it has been that, and that’s been the result of it. So, a lot of the reform efforts have been geared towards making sure that we’re using this in what I’m going to call kind of a parsimonious approach, so the lightest touch possible in order to make sure that people come back to court for their appearances.

VALLAS: So, some of the main critiques that you’re naming there, it obviously drives massive inequality in the criminal justice system. You’ve got well-to-do folks walking free on bail like Harvey Weinstein, right, where you’ve got someone like Kaleif Browder sitting in Rikers for three years, accused of stealing a backpack. Obviously, that was an incredibly high-profile and tragic case. Kaleif Browder being the young, black man who died by suicide while he was languishing in Rikers before he had been sentenced or even found guilty for any crime.

CHUNG: Yeah, and on that case — sorry to interrupt you, Rebecca — but on that one specifically, he was in there for three years stealing a backpack, $3,000 bail, right? For stealing a backpack.

VALLAS: Or being accused of stealing a backpack.

CHUNG: Exactly. Exactly. That’s a very important distinction. And then on top of that, it wasn’t that he committed suicide while he was in. It’s the effects of being in for three years. And when he was out, that’s when he committed suicide. And so, part of the, or main reason for all of this is the effect that even a day, even a short period of detention has on people. I mean, it is a mental torture. And there’s also, obviously, physical safety issues in there as well. And so, we have all, as a country, we reflexively gone to incarcerating people without considering the harms that it actually causes. And this is not only in jails, but it’s in prisons about harsh sentences and lengthy sentences. And do we have science to say that we need 10-year, 15-year sentences for even some serious crime? So, it all kind of relates to each other.

VALLAS: And you’re a former prosecutor, so you actually have background kind of seeing how these cases play out. Another one of the critiques that gets raised in the context of money bail is that it actually drives some defendants to plea bargain, to actually plead guilty because they got to get out.

CHUNG: Right.

VALLAS: They’ve lost their job. They’re separated from their family. They can’t pay rent. All those things that will cause their life to just fall apart, even though they haven’t been found guilty of anything. And the only way to get out, they’re sometimes told is, well, if you just plead guilty, because that’ll be faster than waiting for their day in court.

CHUNG: And so, that’s a great point to raise, because a person who is in that position has two things. They have to consider what the consequences are of a criminal conviction. And I think your work and my work jointly shows that that kind of exposure and that kind of understanding has grown exponentially about how many collateral consequences there are. And so, taking that versus do I stay in and fight? And if I am either not guilty of the crime that I’m charged with, or I may have done something but a lesser thing, it still takes time and effort to fight that charge. So, there is that aspect of having to make that really — I mean tough and difficult is an understatement — life-affecting choice of that.

Just kind of turning back to one other issue that you raised as well about public safety. I mean, a lot of folks talk about whether or not bail and detention enhances public safety. But if you can afford to pay bail, whatever bail is set, regardless of the type of crime that you’re accused of I mean, it doesn’t make sense that that makes us more safe. It’s actually the opposite. If you can afford bail, and you’re charged with a serious crime, you have more resources, [laughs] technically speaking to then potentially do something else. And so, the idea that money and securing somebody’s release based on money improves our public safety is a very convoluted concept.

VALLAS: Yeah, and we’re going to get back to that in the context of New York, because that’s obviously where it’s coming up right now. The last sort of nerdy point that I think is worth people knowing and that gets a lot less, I think, airtime in the context of the bail conversation is actually this new line of research in the past few years. You’ve written a lot about this, telling us that spending time behind bars, waiting for your day in court actually makes you more likely to be convicted. Some people, some researchers call that cumulative disadvantage. Talk a little bit about that research before we move on.

CHUNG: Yeah. I mean, I think it’s the idea that there is a huge obstacle and disadvantage while you’re in for a lot of different things. You’re talking about even communication with your attorney. It makes it so much more difficult when you’re there. Defendants have a right to put their case out there. So, there are investigators that public defenders and defense attorneys hire as well. You have to be able to participate in your own defense. And once you’re behind bars, it is very difficult to do that. And so, it’s not only the fact of kind of where on the mentality, but what resources and abilities and capabilities, and really kind of even the drive in the fight to do that as well. And so, there’s a huge question about whether the effectiveness of the criminal justice system is enhanced or is prevented by having cash bail and having more people detained prior to trial.

VALLAS: So, with all that as sort of the backdrop here, right, obviously, let’s get back to New York. New York is the reason that we are having a national conversation again about bail reform. And it’s not quite the conversation that I think either you or I wish we were having.

CHUNG: Yeah.

VALLAS: Because it’s largely devoid of facts like the ones you were just walking through. But before we get into some of the critiques of the New York law and kind of the state of play there, let’s just start by putting some facts out. What did that law that took effect in January of this year do?

CHUNG: Yeah. So, for the vast majority of cases now, whether or not — So, it didn’t get rid of cash bail altogether, but it severely limited the types of offenses for which somebody could be even eligible for cash bail. So, for misdemeanors and even most nonviolent felonies — again, these are distinctions on law when we’re talking about nonviolent felonies — cash bail is not an option. Detention is not an option. And so, judges at that point, it’s not even a presumption. So, some other states have this presumption of not being detained and being released. It is an outright release. But that doesn’t mean that somebody who is released prior to trial is just released and then they come back on their own. Judges can then consider, based on a variety of factors, very similar to what they did before when determining cash bail, whether it’s somebody’s criminal history or things like that, some conditions that your placed them. The very kind of minimal condition would be something like a text reminder from the court to say, “Hey, don’t forget.” And that’s huge, right? Because a lot of times, people just forget or people — And even if it’s something as important as this, there are a lot of people who forget going to court. And so —

VALLAS: There’s been a big push, actually, in the poverty is space on this, right?

CHUNG: Right.

VALLAS: Like text messages from, say, your welfare caseworker, hugely helpful at getting you to remember you have an appointment regarding your food stamp benefits.

CHUNG: Yeah, and low-tech, low-cost, just a thing to do just to make sure that people have it there. So, that’s kind of like the baseline. The more heavy-handed kind of conditions could be something like electronic monitoring, so better known as like an ankle bracelet or something like that, and there’s a huge thought around that. But even that is pretty much limited in terms of in what types of cases or what types of situations that can be there. So, it’s not just simply you’re out there out on your own. It could be frequent conversations or check in with pretrial services and so forth. So, that is the bulk of the cases.

But also the bulk of the cases in New York are nonviolent, lower-level cases. This is not a situation where New York is like 50 percent of cases there are really serious, violent cases. We’re talking about probably 10 percent I think is what the data shows. And so, for those 10 percent of cases that are considered violent crimes, violent offenses, judges have the opportunity in that situation to impose bail and also to potentially have detention at that point. The issue with bail here, the innovation here, is that New York’s system allows for what’s called unsecured bail as well. So, you don’t have to put up collateral like a house or something like that to it in order to get bail. And also on top of that, that unsecured bail can be paid directly to the court instead of to a bail bondsman. So, generally, when bail bondsmen are part of the system, that you have to pay like 10 percent to the bail bondsman that’s nonrefundable. It’s a fee, right? And then the bail bonds company then puts up the rest of it, and kind of vouches for the defendant at that point.

VALLAS: And makes a hell of a lot of money in the process.

CHUNG: Right. Again, 10 percent nonrefundable to that. So, it cuts out the middleman. And it cuts out the privatization of that, which for most criminal justice reform activists — I think maybe all — that’s a good thing. That’s a good thing because it doesn’t enrich a system, a company that kind of preys on people in very dire situations. So, that’s kind of the thing.

But just the biggest thing is that it’s really limiting by statute and really going further than a lot of other states by saying you cannot detain, and you cannot have imposed bail for a large subset of offenses.

VALLAS: So, they retain judges, retain that discretion in the case of the minority of cases where we’re talking about like serious violent stuff. But for the vast majority people in the system who are those kind of lower-level folks, that’s where we’re talking about no more cash bail.

CHUNG: Exactly. Yep, exactly.

VALLAS: So, now the policy is in effect as of early January. Even before the law took effect in New York, there was already a good amount of fearmongering. It was coming from prosecutors in that state, police unions in the state claiming that the law was going to take New York back to 1990s’ levels of crime, right? But it wasn’t until after the law went into effect that what some are now terming “a campaign to destroy New York’s bail reform” really took off. And it was fueled, in part, by a reported spike in anti-Semitic hate crimes. And actually, The New York Post and its kind of sensationalized coverage of some of this played a big role in that. Tell the story of kind of what happened and what’s the state of play now. Some people are calling for full repeal. Some are calling for changes. Where do things stand?

CHUNG: Yeah. I mean, I think The New York Post has a history of doing this, right? And a lot of media outlets honestly need education when it comes to criminal justice reform, because we cannot be making public policy based on how the media reports cases and sensationalized stories. I mean, that would go all the way back, obviously, to Willie Horton, but there are other situations. And the most recent example is a situation where was an assault based on Jewish survivors, Jewish victims, and the person was arrested, let out on bail, and then committed another offense after that.

One thing that we have to be sure not to do also on top of that is the fact that, I mean, we’re recording this in January, right? The law went into effect literally two and a half weeks ago. And so, in any situation, in any criminal justice reform policy, you will have situations that are bad, right? Whether it’s lowering sentences, whether it’s police reform, whatever the case may be, you are going to have those situations. But we cannot make public policy based on one or two or a handful of sensationalized stories. The thing that I think people across the ideological spectrum agree on is that you need data to support what the reforms, and to understand whether or not the reforms are working. And doing that within three, you can’t get that within three weeks. So, you have to see whether or not, after at least a few months, a reassessment at that point. If at that point it’s showing that things aren’t working, then fine. But then we have to understand why things aren’t working.

And let me give you one example of this, of a difference between New York and other states that may be a negative. The law, to my understanding, didn’t actually provide funding for pretrial services. And that’s huge. So, if you’re going to have more people out, which in my perspective is a good thing, then the pretrial services has to be robust, and they have to be trained. And judges need to be trained, and prosecutors and defense attorneys need to be trained. And all of that costs money. And you need to be able, as a state, you need to invest in those types of things in order for the system to be better on the whole. And it’s all this is going to take time. But that kind of financial investment is crucial.

VALLAS: One of the big sources of some debate that I feel it would be really useful for you, as kind of a wonk in this space, to unpack a little bit because it sounds really good and sensible on its face. But it’s obviously a lot more complicated is the consideration of dangerousness, right? Some of the folks who are not necessarily calling for full repeal but maybe are saying, you know, we should probably revisit how we structured this law. Let’s change it up. Judges should have to take a look at whether a particular individual is dangerous, a risk to the community, as they’re deciding whether they will set bail. I want to note, that condition has actually never been part of New York bail law, right? So, this would be introducing a new concept. But there’s a lot of folks out there going, “OK, well, why would that be unreasonable to do? Maybe that’s the fix.” What are the pros and cons there? It sounds sensible, but there’s a lot more going on.

CHUNG: Yeah, I think it’s right for everybody to want a system like the criminal justice system that’s so vast and big to be able to consider something like dangerousness. The problem is, is that the issue or the term “dangerousness” has so many different meanings, and it’s never defined. And it’s not something that actually can be defined, right? So, usually when we talk about dangerousness, and in other states and jurisdictions that do consider that, they consider it based on a few factors: whether it’s criminal history or the particular facts of the case that is before the judge. And usually, it’s a combination of the two. The question is whether or not that actually measures dangerousness. And the research doesn’t show conclusively that you can rely on that type of history.

For example — and this goes back to our definition of things like violent and nonviolent crimes as well — when you’re talking about a particular crime like an assault, right, and you know this. Anybody who’s in crim pro first year law school knows this: assault is not necessarily a beating, right? That’s the first thing. If I’m assaulting you, it’s a beating. An assault could be putting somebody in fear, right. So, it’s not the actual physical. So, you could have an assault conviction. It could be something that sounds bad on paper, but it really isn’t anything that is more than a very minor event. And so, when you rely on criminal history to then talk about dangerousness, it doesn’t really prove anything and show anything. So, then are you detaining somebody, and like we discussed before, subjecting them to all of the negative harms that could later on affect whether or not they’re actually dangerous because of the exposure that they have while incarcerated? Are you going to really consider something as amorphous and ill-defined as that on such an important topic as detention and depriving somebody of their liberty?

VALLAS: And particularly in the context of a criminal justice system, which for four decades has disproportionately been locking up black and brown people, right? Who are the people who have those criminal records and are there for more likely to be tagged as dangerous even if they don’t actually pose a greater risk than their wealthier, whiter counterparts.

CHUNG: Yeah, absolutely. I’m glad you specifically raised that, because we need to understand that all of this, dangerousness and criminality have often been code words for racist, systemic racist policies. And this is New York’s attempt to unwind a lot of that as well as other criminal justice reform efforts. And it needs to be at the center of all of our efforts and all of our thinking behind this.

VALLAS: So, we’ll obviously all be keeping our eyes on New York in the weeks and months ahead. And hoping, as I know I am, as I know you are, as I know many advocates out there are, crossing our fingers that the same elected officials who were championing this bill back in December as something they were incredibly proud of have, hopefully they can grow some spines and stand up for the policy that they knew needed to be put in place and wait for some actual data and evidence before they undo this really important work based on sensationalized press reports and anecdotes. But some are now starting to ask the question, what does this narrative, this backlash in New York around bail reform, what does it mean for bail reform efforts more broadly? Because it’s obviously not just New York where advocates are pushing for these. We’re also watching that debate play out in Congress. And what does it mean for bipartisan criminal justice reform prospects more broadly?

CHUNG: You know, what’s interesting is that New York’s neighbor, New Jersey, instituted bail reform as well, a pretrial form. They have a slightly different process. They actually have a tool that they use to help judges inform their decision. But that situation — And New York is a different state than the New Jersey as well. So, there are some considerations to me to be made there, even if they’re neighbors in terms of what’s in statute and what’s in their constitution, etc., etc. But New Jersey’s pretrial reform efforts have had amazing results. So, you’re talking about less than 10 percent of people who have failed to appear for their courts, which is better than most states that have cash bail systems, is similar, very low, single-digit numbers of people who are out pending trial but have not committed another offense. And so, pretrial reform works, bail reform works, and each state needs to figure out what is good for them.

But what I am, and I think you are, afraid of as well, is that because New York is such a huge jurisdiction, and New York City is such a futuristic jurisdiction, that the controversies from this are going to overwhelm other efforts that go forward in other states. I think that most states look at things, and people in most legislatures or at least governor’s offices and so forth, look at it across the country and not just one state. And perhaps this is one place where other states want to shun New York, as they always want to say in New York: “Oh, they’re different from us.” And they can be different. And hopefully kind of the media narrative and the advocacy on the ground, it doesn’t play out as what we’re seeing in the first couple of weeks here in 2020. But I’m still hopeful across the country that more states are going to pursue bail reform, pretrial reform.

VALLAS: Well, keep your crystal ball out because I also want to ask — and I think people are probably curious — we’re obviously now in an election year, right, for anyone who hasn’t noticed that.

CHUNG: Really?!

VALLAS: Hello? It’s 2020. We are.

CHUNG: I think we’ve been in an election year for about three years now, so. [chuckles]

VALLAS: [laughs] That’s probably right. But we are technically there now. And some of the conventional wisdom often says that in election years, you don’t ever see criminal justice reform actually happen in Congress because people don’t want to be running on that, dealing with the potential for “soft on crime” and all those kinds of ads. So, do you think that we’re going to be waiting for 2021 and a new president, a new Congress before we actually see some real opportunities for criminal justice reform to be back front and center in Congress? And I want to ask sort of a second part to that question, which is how important is continued bipartisanship around this issue?

CHUNG: Yeah, I think for 2020, you’re going to see continued movements on — and I hate to characterize this as big or small — but kind of just some more discreet types of single-issue legislation. For example, a lot of things that you and I are both concerned about when it comes to criminal records and when it comes to the effect of those records on somebody’s future opportunities, whether it’s kind of ban the box type things for federal contractors, or whether it is expanding Pell Grant opportunities for people who are currently incarcerated so that they can receive college education while they are in, those types of things, I think, which are very important, have an opportunity, maybe not as standalone legislation, but if they are packaged with some other priorities that are in issue areas adjacent to criminal justice reform, that that can move.

But kind of the bigger types of things that we’re looking at, whether it’s broader sentencing reform or whether it is police reform or things like that, those, I think, are tougher for Congress to move. That doesn’t mean that in the states those things aren’t going to move. Because I think many governors, many state legislators are looking to, those are positives. Because and going to your question about bipartisanship, in the states, criminal justice reform is a bipartisan issue and moves as a bipartisan issue. And so, those things are helpful for people who are up for election. And you see that in states going forward. On top of that, since 90 percent of the criminal justice system is state and local systems and not the federal system, then these have to be bread and butter issues for many of the legislators and politicians that are running. So, I think in the states, you’ll see much more bipartisan work, and you’ll see much more active work to pass laws that improve the system.

VALLAS: Including, I’m excited and folks know it’s a little nerdily close to my heart, but policies to automate criminal record clearing, which we’re going to see in a lot of state legislatures in this coming year.

So, we’re running out of time. But I would be totally remiss if I did not close by asking you sort of the million-dollar question for a lot of folks —

CHUNG: Uh-oh.

VALLAS: — who also have noticed that we are in an election year. So, heading into the election, Trump has honestly done no shortage of campaigning on the First Step Act, the piece of, the bipartisan criminal justice reform piece of legislation that happened last year. And he’s sort of framing himself as the president, you’ve got criminal justice reform done! This has obviously put some progressive justice reform advocates like yourself in a tough spot. You’re stuck candidly between the fight for improving policy on a really important issue and the pitfalls of handing Trump a major win politically. And just putting a finer point on it, he has been unabashed at saying he’s the best president we’ve ever seen for black folks in this country, which has a lot of folks deeply offended and experiencing no small amount of heartburn in response. How are you and others navigating that tension heading into the 2020 election?

CHUNG: So, I think first of all, the record’s pretty clear about where CAP and where I stood on the First Step Act, which was we came out ultimately in support of it after the Senate added sentencing reform provisions. We’ve got to remember that move through the Republican House at the time, as well as what the president and the administration and Jared Kushner all supported at the time was a prison reform bill. And for us, that was nowhere near enough. We needed sentencing reform. And it was only because of our champions in the Senate, such as Dick Durbin and Kamala Harris and Cory Booker, as well as Chuck Grassley, that those sentencing reforms got in there. So, one of things that we’ve got to make sure of is that all of the people that Trump is saying that he let out, it was because of those senators that those provisions were in there. So, he’s taking a bit of false credit as, in my opinion, he always does.

So, the policy first drives whether or not we support it. It’s not the politics, but the policy. And if he gets tangential benefit from this, fine. There are other ways to fight that fight. But at the same time, what we’re talking about here on criminal justice reform is that anybody who takes a look at his entire record and is not just looking at one piece of legislation, which everybody understands has positive elements, to say the least. And it’s just a first step. Everybody acknowledges that. You got to look at the entire record. You got to look at who he nominated as attorney general and who was confirmed as attorney general: Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr, two of the most hostile advocate against criminal justice reform. And you also have to look at what they have done. They have actively fought against policing reform, against progressive prosecutors, against even implementation of some of the First Step Act’s provisions. So, you can’t just say signing a piece of legislation and then having a department that’s responsible for implementing it put up roadblocks and obstacles. You can’t forget that. His entire record, on the whole, shows that he has not only not done enough for criminal justice reform, he has been an opponent of it.

VALLAS: Well, lots to continue to trumpet in the next several months to try to keep folks honest in how they talk about these issues in New York, in the campaign context, and more. And Ed, we’ll have to have you back as some of these states start to move really cool policies in the coming weeks and months in state legislative sessions. Ed Chung is the vice president of criminal justice at the Center for American Progress. He’s also the host of The Tent, another podcast hosted by the Center for American Progress Action Fund. And it’s always a pleasure to have you on the show.

CHUNG: Thanks for having me.

[hip hop music break]

VALLAS: You’re listening to Off-Kilter. I’m Rebecca Vallas.

Three years ago, not long after the 2016 election, Ezra Levin, Leah Greenberg, and a handful of other current and former congressional staff teamed up to create a document that would change the course of politics during the Trump era. That, of course, was the Indivisible Guide, which learning lessons from the Tea Party movement, became the organizing document that inspired thousands of grassroots groups to form across the country with the shared purpose of stopping the Trump agenda. To mark that three-year anniversary, celebrate the release of Ezra and Leah’s second book, We Are Indivisible, which came out late last year, and to shed some light on the path to defeating Trump and saving American democracy in the process in 2020 and 2021, I’m thrilled to bring back my good friend, Ezra Levin, who is one of the co-executive directors of Indivisible. Ezra, thanks so much for coming back on the show.

EZRA LEVIN: Oh, it’s so great to be here again.

VALLAS: Well, and I wish I were having you on to talk about Thomas Paine. Because [laughs] I have to say, I think back to that conversation that we had years ago on TalkPoverty Radio quite, quite often.

LEVIN: Oh, yeah. For your longtime listeners, or as I sometimes actually call them, your viewers, the way I got my start really in this whole biz was on this show, talking about Thomas Paine.

VALLAS: Yeah. It all comes back to TalkPoverty Radio, doesn’t it? [laughs] You heard it here first.

LEVIN: [laughs]

VALLAS: Well, Thanksgiving of last year marked the three-year anniversary of kind of what started it all: the publication of that Indivisible Guide to resisting the Trump agenda. At the time, you were working for an organization called CFED, the Corporation for Enterprise Development, as one of their leading antipoverty staffers. And you and I actually got to do a lot of work together back in the day in that space. And I have memories around that time of you and I nerding out about eliminating asset limits in public benefits programs and the like. But for folks who maybe don’t know, tell the story behind the guide. I mentioned that you guys were former congressional staffers, and you wrote something that at the time, you worried might actually be career ending. But talk about the moment when you realized that you wanted, or were really needed, to write the guide. You tell that story in your new book.

LEVIN: Yeah. So, I mean, I think I’m as surprised as anybody about what happened in the three years following. As you mentioned, Leah and I were former congressional staffers and then went on to be a policy advocates, Leah working on anti-human trafficking issues and me on property issues. And after the 2016 election, we were just going through the stages of grief, like a whole bunch of our progressive friends trying to figure out what on earth did we do in this moment. And, you know, as dark as that moment was, there was this really bright silver lining, which was people who had really never been engaged much in politics at all were suddenly coming out of the woodwork, our friends and family members and friends of friends trying to figure out how they could respond to this moment, what they could do. And they were reaching, some of them were reaching out to us saying, “Hey, I’m calling Paul Ryan’s office every day.” They didn’t live in Wisconsin. Or they were sending letters to the Department of Health and Human Services about the importance of the Affordable Care Act.

And we thought, well, it’s good that you’re engaged. That’s not probably the most impactful thing you could do. And so, we were talking with a friend back in Austin over Thanksgiving break. And she hadn’t been politically active much before either, but she was suddenly leading this secret Facebook group called Dumbledore’s Army. It was made up of a whole bunch of other folks like her trying to figure out what to do. And they were banging in their head against the wall on this basic issue too: what can we do that’s impactful? And having been on Capitol Hill during the rise of the Tea Party, we disagreed with their racism and violence, but we really saw the impact of local organizing, the impact of strategically focusing on your own elected representatives and playing defense. And so, we thought we could write some little guide to demystifying how Congress works and demystifying what constituent power looks like, how individuals can actually push back against a powerful administration.

And that’s why we wrote the Indivisible Guide. And it’s pretty simple. It recommended that people get together in their own communities, focus on their own elected officials. They could call themselves Indivisible Tallahassee if they wanted or just organize. That’s the key thing. Organize locally and focus on your reps. And I tweeted it out to my dozens of followers at the time after dinner, and after work one day in December of 2016, and shockingly, people read it. It went viral that night. But then I think more shockingly, people started actually putting it into action. We were getting emails from all across the country that first were pointing out all the typos in the Google Doc, of which there were many.

VALLAS: [laughs]

LEVIN: And then though, they were forming Indivisible East Tennessee or Indivisible Tallahassee or Indivisible Austin, you name it. By January 2017, there were thousands of these local Indivisible groups all over the country. And for the past three years, what they’ve been doing is building local progressive power in these community. That meant showing up in opposition to the Muslim ban or showing up at town halls in opposition to the Affordable Care Act being repealed or to fight back against the tax bill or against family separation. And in 2018 that meant endorsing candidates, registering voters, getting out the vote, texting, calling, canvassing to build the blue wave. In 2019, we spent a lot of time pushing House Democrats to use their oversight authority. From early on, trying to get them to move forward on impeachment and then praising them once they moved forward on impeachment. And now that we’re in 2020, it’s time to build an even bigger blue wave, and that’s what we’re engaged in.

VALLAS: And that’s a big part of what I want to get into today. But before we get to that, Indivisible hasn’t just been about fighting or putting pressure on the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress. It’s also been about, and a big part of it has been about pushing Democrats to, as you put it, have a spine, to stand up and to resist. How has that been received by the establishment inside and outside the halls of Congress? You tell several stories in the book about this aspect out of the journey, several which actually come from the healthcare fight. And one that really stuck with me took place on Father’s Day, as you tell it in the book.

LEVIN: Yeah. And this connects also to how he got around to even writing the guide. I remember vividly two events within a day of each other. This is soon after the election in 2016. One was that a future Trump appointee was giving an interview on TV and spoke positively about Japanese internment camps as a precedent for what maybe could be done with Muslims, immigrants, and refugees in America, which was itself terrifying. And then the other event was an interview that incoming Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer gave with The New York Times in which he was talking about what was to come in 2017. And the basic message was, look. Elections happened, we lost. Now we’ve got to figure out a way to make deals with the new president. We think maybe infrastructure is a path forward. And so, there was this really scary moment in late-2016 where the bipartisan future of 2017 was one in which the road to America’s new internment camps were well-paved. And that scared us. And so, really, on the first page of the of the original Google Doc, of the Indivisible Guide, we said, you know, half the battle is what you just said, Rebecca, is ensuring that your Democrats stand up for your values by ensuring that they can actually find their spines.

And I would say over the course of the last three years, it’s not been a switch that gets flipped. It’s not like suddenly your elected officials get it, and you don’t need to talk to them anymore. You’ve got to keep on putting pressure. You’ve got to hold even your friends accountable. And the example on Father’s Day, I’ll never forget either. And this was in the heat of the fight over whether to protect the Affordable Care Act or not, whether to beat back the repeal. And as a reminder for people who weren’t living and breathing this every day, the Republicans during Obama’s administration had repealed the Affordable Care Act dozens of times in the House. They had done it in the House, in the Senate once, and, of course, the presidential veto. It was literally the top legislative priority of this incoming conservative trifecta government in January 2017. And there were talks that they might do it immediately, like first day, first week, first month of the Trump administration, they might repeal the Affordable Care Act. And that really characterized a lot of the early legislative advocacy work that we did for the first six or nine months of the year was fighting that fight. Now, Democrats in the Senate and in the House were largely aligned around the idea that we need to protect the Affordable Care Act. There wasn’t a disagreement about the policy. There was a disagreement about to what extent should we use the legislative procedural tools available to us to fight back as hard as possible?

And that’s what the disagreement between us and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s office around Father’s Day 2017 was. Father’s Day came right before July 4th, which was important because July 4th is a week where Senators go back home, they go to parades, they kiss babies, they meet constituents. And so, what we wanted the Senate to do as it was considering this legislation to completely repeal the Affordable Care Act was to delay. We wanted them to delay. And the Democrats, being the House minority, or in the Senate minority, they didn’t have a ton of tools available to them. But they did have this thing called withholding consent. In order to move just about anything in the Senate, you need the consent of all Senators. It’s a unanimous consent in order to move forward at a quicker pace. And so, we were asking Chuck Schumer at that time to announce that the Democrats were going to withhold consent to slow everything down, to grind the Senate to a halt so that the bill would not pass before the July 4th recess. Which would give us an opportunity to put pressure on Senators like Susan Collins and John McCain and Cory Gardner and others.

So, we were talking to Chuck Schumer’s office. I was standing outside Leah’s parents’ house waiting to go in, and Angel Padilla, who’s our policy director and one of the coauthors of the original guide was on the phone. And we were telling Schumer’s staff, “Hey. So, we’re asking to withhold consent.” And they said, “Look. We understand. We’re on the same page on the policy. We agree with you, but we’re just not ready to withhold consent yet.” And luckily, we were ready by that time. There were Indivisible groups all across the country, including throughout the state of New York, the state that Chuck Schumer represents. And we said, “We understand. Just so you know, this Thursday, there are going to be Indivisible groups at every one of Chuck Schumer’s district offices in New York across the state, holding die-ins, asking you to withhold consent.” And so, we got off the phone thinking that we were just going to have to ramp up those events. And literally the next day, the Democrats announced that they were withholding consent. As a result of that, the bill could not get a vote. We got into the July 4th recess, and Susan Collins was at a rally in Maine and was met by constituents again and again and again, asking her to fight back against the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. It happened in Kansas. It happened with Senator Moran. It happened all over the country. It allowed us to apply more pressure, which allowed us to ultimately defeat the bill.

And that, I take as a sign of how things ought to work. I think of the story of FDR soon after he gets elected in 1933. He’s in his office in the White House, and a Labor leader who is a staunch ally who helped him get elected, comes into the office and says, “Hey. Congratulations. You’re president. You’ve got these big majorities in the House and Senate. Now we have a favor to ask. We want you to pass this legislation.” And FDR tells the guy,” Yeah, I totally agree. Now make me do it.” I think that is the role for grassroots power in the country during the legislative process. People can think that if we elect the right Democrat, the right progressive, the right independently-minded representative, that that’s going to solve all of our problems. But it doesn’t, actually. You’ve got to continually apply pressure to those elected officials to ensure you get the outcomes you want. Even if they are your friends, and that’s especially if they are your friends. And that’s how you can actually effect the change you want to see.

VALLAS: And it’s a hell of a reminder that folks who live in districts and states that have elected officials in Congress who are Democrats and folks often will say, “Well, you know, what can I really do? I’m represented by Democrats. Do I really have a role in resistance?” And you have been saying loudly and clearly for years,” Yes, yes, yes, for all the reasons that you just stated.”

LEVIN: And I think there is a tendency to view these two worlds as being totally separate, that there’s the advocacy world, and then there is electing the good representatives world. And, you know, some people work on one, and some people work on the other. What we have seen over the last three years is really there is a virtuous cycle between those two worlds, that when you are doing good advocacy, pushing candidates or pushing elected officials to go in the right direction and holding them accountable when they don’t, that helps build up your own grassroots power when there’s not an election. And also, it can encourage some members of Congress and some other elected officials at the state and local level that maybe they don’t want to do that job anymore. So, maybe they announce their retirement and let somebody else run for office. And then in an election year, after you’ve built up that power, after maybe you’ve driven some people into retirement, you are in a better position to elect people who are going to do a better job representing you. And that’s exactly the dynamic we saw in 2017. We didn’t win every advocacy fight that we engaged in, but we did build up power throughout the year. Sometimes we won. And when we lost, we used that loss to fuel future wins.

VALLAS: So, Ezra, you’ve said, and you’re obviously far from alone in this, that, and I’m quoting, “American democracy is currently at a crossroads.” You’ve also said that, “The only pathway to saving democracy in 2021 is building a trifecta,” as part of the 2020 blue wave that you’re portending and really pushing for, “and then making reforms.” And this is the part that maybe gets less attention, “making reforms to our democratic institutions that make them more reflective and responsive to and of the diversifying electorate.” Talk about the path to doing that, and then specifically what those reforms need to be. By my calculations, you spend about half of your time on Twitter making the case for eliminating the filibuster. So, I’m guessing that that’s going to be part of what you talk about.

LEVIN: Is it only half?

VALLAS: [laughs] Well, there’s at least a few tweets a day that are about your dog, right, so.

LEVIN: Right, right. That’s true. That’s true. That’s 25%. Yeah. So, about half the book that we wrote is about the Indivisible movement, how individuals can be part of the solution right now. How you don’t need to be in a swing state. You don’t need to have a long political career or background. That anybody can be part of that. And we wanted to demystify exactly how you do that. But the other half is exactly what you’re asking about here, which is so, what do we do with that power? What are we actually trying to accomplish here? And frankly, I’m optimistic right now for the future of American democracy, because I think we’re in this rare moment where we have the chance to actually make some big changes. I think in a year and four days from when I’m talking to you, we could be looking at the incoming new president of the United States, preparing her or potentially his inaugural address speaking out to a newly-elected Democratic House, Democratic Senate. And the focus of that address could very well be reforming American democracy to ensure that it is more responsive, it is more reflective of this diversifying electorate. And that political opportunity hasn’t been there for a really long time. So, I start from a place of serious optimism.

But we also recognize that we are under attack right now, that we have been fighting a fight not just for social and economic policy, but for whether we have a pluralistic democracy or a white plutocracy. And the white plutocracy is winning right now, and it’s winning because the other side has a structural advantage. If you look at the way the courts are structured, if you look at the way the Senate is structured, if you look at the legislative attacks on our representative institutions over the last several decades, you see that a reactionary conservative cohort of legislators and elites have been systematically making our democracy less responsive to the public. And so, in the book, we talk about those attacks. The way we start out the book, I don’t think it’s an inspiring quote, but the first quote we use is a motivating vote for me. And it’s a quote from a guy who is the co-founder of the conservative Heritage Foundation. He’s a real architect of the modern conservative movement. He’s somebody who helped forge the relationship between the religious right and the corporate sector, this guy, Paul Weyrich. And he’s speaking to a crowd in 1980, and he says, “Frankly, I don’t want everybody to vote. Our leverage in elections goes up as the voting populace goes down. I don’t want everybody to vote.”

And, you know, that is a scary statement, but it is a cynically accurate statement. Because if you embrace the kind of unpopular policy agenda that these reactionary elites do embrace — things like eliminating child labor laws and eliminating all taxes for corporations and individuals and eliminating the postal service, this really extremist right-wing agenda — you can’t accomplish that in a truly representative democracy, not one like ours that is increasingly unequal and increasingly diverse. You’ll lose. So, by necessity, if you maintain an extremist policy agenda, what you have to do is undermine our democratic institutions. And that’s what they’ve done. And you see that everywhere. Yes, Donald Trump is a particularly egregious example of this, somebody who is attacking democracy on a daily basis. But it’s not just him. This has been a multi-decade attack.

You see it in Georgia where the Secretary of State running for governor against Stacey Abrams disenfranchises hundreds of thousands of voters, particularly black voters, to steal the election. You see this in Texas where they’re making it more difficult for students to vote. You see this in Arizona, where they’re systematically gutting the early voting rolls again, attacking young people in communities of color. You see this in the courts where Donald Trump is appointed a fifth of the entire federal judiciary. 15 of the last 19 Supreme Court justices have been appointed by Republicans. So, what we see when we look at our democratic institutions is a decades-long attack on them to ensure that an increasingly small, wealthy, white, disproportionately male elite has control over the policymaking institutions for the entire country.

VALLAS: So, with all of those then as sort of the diagnosis, I think people are probably listening and going, “Great. Everything’s broken. How do we even deal with this scorched earth? Can we even come back from it?” You think we can.

LEVIN: And that’s the exciting thing, right? So, what we look at in the book is not long-term decades in the future a kind of reform. Those are important. I would love a constitutional amendment or a whole bunch of things. That’s not in the cards right now. But it turns out there are a ton of things that you can do legislatively to rebalance power in the hands of the people. And one of the things that we talked about is the filibuster, because that is a barrier to everything else. Without eliminating the filibuster, which can be done through a simple majority vote in the Senate, Mitch McConnell is going to be able to block everything. But let’s assume that in 2021, we have a Democratic trifecta. And the Senate says, “Hey, we want to actually pass some legislation. We want to pass some of these bills to expand the vote and to restructure power. We are going to limit the filibuster so we can do it with simply 50 votes.” So, let’s assume that. What can they actually accomplish? Well, they can rebalance the Senate. The Senate is very much tilted in the direction of conservatives. It’s disproportionately representing rural communities. It’s disproportionately representing conservative states. Let’s admit D.C., and if Puerto Rico wants it, allow Puerto Rico to become a state as well. We can also allow other territories to become a state, too. That will rebalance the power in the Senate a little bit towards a population that more accurately represents the country. So, that’s the Senate.

What about the courts? So, as I said earlier, the courts have been packed by conservative ideologues over the last several decades. What can do to the courts? Well, it turns out that there’s nothing in the Constitution that says we need to have nine Supreme Court justices. There’s actually flexibility within the Constitution to apply term limits as well. So, you can do something legislatively to unpack the courts and apply term limits to depoliticize the courts going forward. What about the House of Representatives? So, what we know is that gerrymandering is a scourge in the country, throughout the country. We know that. But 90 percent of the population lives in a safe congressional district, which means when they wake up and go to the voting booth, 90 percent of the country is always either going to get the Democrat or going to get the Republican. It’s not a competitive district. Well, you can change that. You can institute reforms so that everybody lives in a competitive district. You can introduce reforms so that they have ranked choice voting so they have more choices, and people aren’t acting as spoiler candidates. So that when you go to the voting booth, you actually do really have a choice.

What about the media environment? We’re living in a world where conservatives live in one reality, and progressives live in another reality, where Fox News and Sinclair Broadcasting are acting as propaganda arms of the Republican Party and where Facebook and Google operate as media operations that don’t actually face any of the regulations or responsibilities of actual media operations. And at the same time, we’ve had a almost extinction-level event for local and independent media with the rise of the Internet and Craigslist, which has taken away any kind of ability for them to sustain the business. Now, you can change that. We have a market failure when it comes to producing media in this country. And so, why not do what we did in the ’60s and create something that’s the equivalent of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting or create a media voucher that allows every individual American to invest in their own nonprofit news source? There are ways to make changes to actually tackle these problems.

So, we go through a few of these kind of bigger-scale structural changes in the book, but specifically looking at what can we do with a legislative majority and a friendly pro-democracy president? What can be done in 2021 to change this? And the bottom line is, it turns out there’s a whole bunch of stuff that can be done.

VALLAS: So, let’s talk 2020 for a minute, because obviously, the precursor to being in a 2021 world where we have a Democratic president who is actually championing these kinds of reforms, is that that Democratic nominee has to beat Trump and actually be in the White House. So, we can’t get into specific candidates, but Indivisible has been deeply, deeply engaged in the primary, including through a candidates score card. Some of the top issues you guys have asked about as you have done your work to assess who you think the strongest Democratic candidate or candidates are include, what are the progressive policy positions that the candidates are taking? How are they building grassroots movements and support? And then, of course, are they committed to that day one democracy agenda that you’ve been talking about? Talk a little bit about your view of what it will take to actually beat Trump. What is the type of candidate that we need to be nominating as Democrats? And I’m going to infuse into my question, because what would I do if I didn’t ask multipart questions is, there’s this kind of ongoing obsession, particularly in the more establishment spaces, with perceived electability as everyone’s top concern. And I’m curious your thoughts about how you view that that quote-unquote, “electability” conversation as it fits with your approach and Indivisible’s approach to figuring out who would be the strongest Democratic candidate.

LEVIN: Yeah. So, as soon as the 2018 elections were over, people started asking, “Well, how are you getting involved in the presidential race?” And as you can imagine, with a distributed movement of local groups in every single congressional district in the country, people have a lot of feelings about this, and they’re not always the same preferences. And with a really crowded field, our initial number one worry was that the primary process could fracture the movement, could fracture the progressive movement more broadly. And we knew, even before talking about it, which candidates are the strongest to beat Trump or which candidates have the best policy proposals or which candidate are espousing the values that most align with Indivisible. We knew that every single candidate in that race — and this is true today — is Abraham Lincoln compared to Donald Trump. So, at the end of the day, we have to get a line that we are going to ensure that Donald Trump is a one-term president.

And so, in early 2019, we came out with the Indivisible Pledge, which was an agreement that one, you’d engage in a constructive primary about what are the policies you’re looking to prioritize, what are the values that you’re going to lead with on your campaign? But two, at the end of the day, you’re going to rally around whoever wins. No ifs, ands, or buts. There’s no Monday morning quarterbacking. We are going to rally around who wins. And the third piece of the pledge, specifically for the presidential candidates, is you will put yourself at the disposal of the winning campaign. So, it’s not just you’ll issue a press statement saying, “Yeah, I dropped out, and I endorse the other guy or gal.” It’s, “I am going to do everything I can to ensure that they become president.” And as of the last presidential debate that we had in January, every single candidate on stage had signed that Indivisible Pledge. And Indivisible groups across the country are themselves signing it and preparing for unity events for the weekend after the Democratic National Convention in July. So, that’s where we start. We start with we’re going to beat Donald Trump. And then you get to this interesting question of, what does a constructive primary look like? And what are the values of the Indivisible movement? What do we want to see?

And so, yes, we met with the Indivisible groups. We talked to them about, what do you want to see? We get a big national gathering in D.C. in August of last year where we brought people together to talk about, what would be useful for the national organization of Indivisible to do to help individual groups make a decision? And the decision there was, let’s put out a scorecard. Let’s evaluate the candidates. Let’s expose the candidates to the movement and the movement to the candidates so that individual Indivisible groups can come to their own decisions, can make their own priorities. And that’s how we came up with a scorecard, which people can see at scorecard.indivisible.org. The three categories of questions that we included in an 80-question questionnaire for these candidates — and shockingly, they all filled it out, or just about all of them filled out — was what is their policy agenda overall? Immigration, health care, climate, economic justice, foreign policy. What are they doing to build grassroots power? Are they engaging with key movement partners? Are they engaging with Indivisible? Are they actively engaging with other candidates for lower office, whether it’s at state level or congressional level, to challenge the kind of establishment or conservatives for power? And are they prioritizing a day one democracy agenda to pass some of the reforms I just talked about?

And so, we put that questionnaire together. All of the candidates who signed the pledge were eligible to fill out the questionnaire. All the candidates who filled out the questionnaire were then eligible to have a direct interview with Leah and me. We did five of those interviews over the course of a couple days with the candidates and then ultimately released the scorecard. And just today, we pushed a Medium post reflecting on the scorecard. We’ve given candidates several weeks to then adjust their positions, if they wanted to get back to us now that we’ve put it out and say, “Hey. Actually, I do care a lot about democracy, and here’s what I’m going to do.” And if they’re willing to say that publicly, that’s great! That’s a success. That means we effectively pushed them in that direction.

At this point, we don’t really expect the scores to change that much. We expect that the rankings will be what they are probably right up until more candidates drop out, and then the rankings will obviously change. But the goal here now is to provide the movement something they can look at and say, okay, I care a lot about democracy. Here’s where all the candidates stand. Or I care a lot about immigration, and here’s where all the candidates stand. So that the groups across the country can make a choice. When we think about what is the candidate, though, that is going to beat Trump, I think that’s a really important question because nothing is more important at the end of this year than ensuring that Donald Trump is defeated and that we’ve got a Democratic president. The second, it’s close, the second most important thing is to ensure that Mitch McConnell’s not Senate majority leader next year. And we’re working on both of those.

But when we think about what is an electable candidate, I really bristle at the term “electability,” mostly because it’s usually used to make the argument that that’s why we need a conservative, white, rich guy to be our nominee, because only conservative, white, wealthy guys generally can be nominees. They’re the most, quote-unquote, “electable.” And there’s just not a lot of evidence to bear that out. I think when we look at who has been successful, both in the Trump era and before, that is not the profile of somebody who is best positioned to generate the interest and the turnout we need in order to win. So, when I think about this race specifically, what Indivisible is looking for, maybe not surprisingly, based on our name, we’re looking for somebody who can unite the various factions of the Democratic Party. There is a battle playing out right now within the Democratic Party of exactly which way we should go on confronting not just Trump, but Trumpism. There’s a debate within the Democratic Party about exactly how we should prioritize our social and economic policies. There’s a debate going on with the Democratic Party about to what extent we should be truly progressive or to what extent we should be reaching out to Trump voters. There are different candidates representing different parts of the Democratic Party there, and we need a candidate who, when they become the nominee, they’re able to pull everybody together and say, “Look. I might not be your number one candidate, but I will represent you. You can trust me enough that you will knock on doors, you’ll send texts, you’ll make calls, you’ll do everything you need to do in order to build the way to get not just me elected, but to get a whole slew of candidates elected when I’m at the top of the ticket.” So, we talk about that a fair amount, not in the scorecard, but in the Medium post.

VALLAS: Now, related question, which is on probably everyone’s minds as they’re hearing you discuss this is of course, there’s this looming specter of impeachment, which is happening on sort of a parallel track to that primary debate, which is really in full swing on the Democratic side. How do we balance impeachment and that ongoing process with continuing as progressives, as Democrats to sell a proactive progressive agenda that helps people envision life after Trump?

LEVIN: Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, we’ve got to be able to walk and chew gum. But I don’t think these two things are unrelated. When we talk about reforming American democracy, one of the problems we’re facing is we have this utterly corrupt figure in the White House, and he’s being supported by utterly corrupt figures in the House and the Senate. And so, if we’re going to have a democracy that actually functions, we’ve got to change the rules of the game to make it harder for these kinds of corrupt figures to succeed in public life. So, I do think they are related. But when I think about —

So, President Trump has now been impeached. He is the third president in United States history to be impeached. He will always be impeached. He is an impeached president. That is his legacy. That’s a big part of his legacy. Now, there is a big question now of what happens in the Senate? And what we know is that ultimately, there will be a trial of some sort. I don’t know if it will be a fair trial or a sham coverup. But there will be a trial, and then there will be a vote. And the great thing about a vote is you’ve got to go on the record. So, there are several Republican Senators who are up for reelection this year in states where Trump is unpopular, states like Arizona and Maine and Colorado and Iowa and North Carolina and Montana, states where Trump is underwater. And these Republican Senators who are going to be asking their constituents to vote to reelect them are going to then have to go on the record and either vote to acquit a clearly guilty president or vote to convict and alienate some of their base. I don’t know which choice they’re going to make, but I do think this ultimately helps the pro-democracy forces in this country, because this is no longer just an abstract, do you support the president or not? Or can you hide away from the prying eyes of the public or from the press who might want to ask you questions? You’ve got to go on the record. You’ve got to actually vote for democracy or against democracy. And I think ultimately, forcing the Senators, and as we did with the House members, to take a vote like that is going to help us in November.

VALLAS: Now, we’re running out of time, Ezra, and I wish I had all day with you, because this has been such a fun conversation, and there’s a lot more than I would love to get into. But before we wrap up, I would actually love to get a little more personal with you, because you’ve become sort of a national figure in politics and advocacy in a big way, but you’re also a person. And you’re a really interesting person. And I know a lot of our listeners are probably really curious to know a little bit more about kind of who you are and what you bring from yourself into this work. So, the first question I want to ask along those lines is, how did your background, how does your background as an anti-poverty advocate inform your work at this stage of the Indivisible organizing?

LEVIN: Yeah, you know, it’s interesting because what we are doing nationally now is fundamentally less about in-depth policy analysis and advocacy and more about organizing. And in some ways, you could say, and I often did say when we are first starting, I’m not a trained organizer. I’m not qualified to be doing this. My background is in writing in-depth papers on progressive tax policy that I think now Leah read and maybe my mom read, and I’m not sure if anybody else did.

VALLAS: I think I did, too! I’d like to be on that list.

LEVIN: Oh, thank you! Oh, thank you, Rebecca. Yeah, no. That’s great. And fighting against asset limits.

VALLAS: That’s right.

LEVIN: I’m very, very proud of that work. One thing that it turns out is that a whole bunch of people across the country who were never, quote-unquote, “organizers” or never politically involved, suddenly got politically involved and discovered that the skills immediately available to them as people who ran their kids’ soccer team or people who organized after-school events or people who did planning or scheduling for their jobs, that they were actually very qualified to organize. That these are not some kind of technical skills that you’ve got to go and get a specialized degree for, but they’re things that you can kind of take off the shelf from your normal life that is just interacting with people and figuring out how to set up systems to effectively coordinate them in order to do big things. And that’s the same whether you’re doing a bake-off or whether you’re coordinating people to try to confront fascism. It turns out the skills are quite similar.

The most useful thing, though, that I got out of my professional life is understanding how government works, how congressional bodies make decisions, what influences an individual member of Congress to make one decision or another. I think the strategic analysis of Indivisible as a whole provides is one of our big value-adds: that when we’re looking at what’s happening through the legislative process, we’re able to translate that down to groups in Tallahassee or groups in Denver and say, “Hey, you’ve got power right now because of the position your Representative or your Senator has on this committee or in this vote. Here’s what you can do. Here’s a script for you. And the timing of this is important. You should do it on X date because that’s going to be most impactful.” I think understanding how, having spent years either in Congress or doing political advocacy, that that allows us as an organization to service the movement better.

VALLAS: Well, here’s an even more personal question. What is it like working every day with your spouse?

LEVIN: Yeah. We talk about this frequently, obviously, because we live, sleep, eat, and breathe Indivisible. I think frankly, now that we run this big operation together, I don’t know how anybody is a sole executive director of an organization. There’s frankly just so much work to do that’s internal, that’s external about long-term strategy and little things that are blowing up day to day, that it seems like it’s just an impossible job for an individual person. And I’m amazed by the EDs out there who do it on their own. And I also don’t understand how anybody can be a co-executive director with somebody that they’re not married to.

VALLAS: [laughs]

LEVIN: Because the amount of trust you need with the other leader of the organization, the amount of alignment that you need with the other leader of the organization is so high, especially in the environment that we’re in, where emotions run high. Like we’re dealing not just with internal disputes, but we worry that democracy itself is under threat and that fascism is on the rise. So, it can be a high-stress environment. And if you don’t have that kind of trust, I think it would be very difficult. So, I think Leah and I work very well together. I would like to say that we’ve figured out ways to turn it off, and we haven’t figured out a ton of ways. The one thing I will say is, so, we adopted a dog several years ago. She passed away shortly after the 2018 election. And we immediately started writing this book. And the book time was just, it was a lot, I will say. We were both running the organization, and at the same time were spending our nights and weekends and free time drafting the book back and forth. And so, we didn’t feel like we could get another dog then. And we spent the next six or seven months finishing up the book manuscript.

And as soon as we were done with the book manuscript, we started fostering dogs again. And as soon as we started doing that, I got to say, it was just a huge emotional boon. There’s something about having a small creature that you have to take care of, and it’s really happy to see you whenever you get home that is really just emotionally healthy. And after fostering dogs for a little bit, we adopted this, it turns out she is a half-Dachshund, half-Pug mix, which is known as a daug. And so Dolly the daug is right now the love of our lives and is helping us get through this crazy time of rising white nationalism and hopefully, will be with us as we head into the Democratic trifecta in just a few months.

VALLAS: Well, and it is also adorable and features prominently in your and Leah’s tweets, maybe not as much, as I said, as the filibuster.

LEVIN: [laughs]

VALLAS: So, in the last minute or so that I have with you, what is your advice, and what lessons have you learned in this just absolutely mind-blowing whirlwind of the past three years — and you’re answering that in part by, adopt a dog — but taking care of yourself, avoiding burnout, how do you do it? What’s your advice for other people who are looking not just to survive the Trump era, but to head into 2021 healthy and ready and still motivated to fight?

LEVIN: So, I think obviously, figuring out ways to celebrate successes and figuring out ways to find joy in small things from here and there, where you can find them is important. But you know, one thing, one trap I think people fall into in this environment is just watching the news on a daily basis, reading the news on a daily basis, yelling at the screen, getting infuriated, watching O’Donnell or Maddow or Hayes or others, and that can feel overwhelming. And the best antidote I have seen to that overwhelming feeling is just getting engaged in some way, physically engaged: going locally to some group. Maybe it’s Indivisible. Maybe it’s Sunrise. Maybe it’s Moms Demand Action. But some way, finding a group in your own community, reaching out, and being part of that. There is no antidote for that kind of overwhelming sense of dread that is just very natural, there’s no antidote that’s better than doing something, than physically doing something.

So, we interviewed hundreds of Indivisible groups for this book that we put out and got a lot of great stories from all across the country, deep-red country where they haven’t elected a Democrat in decades to San Francisco or New York City. And the number one word that I heard when talking to these groups was “community.” The folks who got engaged after 2016, yes, they got engaged to fight fascism. Yes, they got engaged because they were worried about the state of the country. But one of the big benefits of getting engaged was they found this community. And the reason why we’re still here three years later is not because we wrote this brilliant Google Doc or because we have the graphics or scripts or what have you. It’s because there are local groups who’ve built this community that are providing real meaning to people. And even if we’re not winning every day, even if there are mass bad actions being taken by this administration every day, and there are, there are still people who are coming together and providing support to each other. And that’s not possible if the way that you spend your days is, frankly, on Twitter or on just watching news or reading news. That’s only possible if you actually get out and become part of the solution yourself. So, that’s the number one recommendation: find people who are like-minded and get together in real life and figure out what you can do.

VALLAS: I can’t think of a better note to end on. Ezra Levin is one of the co-executive directors of Indivisible. You can, of course, find out lots more about what they’re up to, not just in the context of 2020 and impeachment and a variety of other fights, including state and local fights at Indivisible.org and can get engaged and find a chapter near you. Ezra, it’s been a pleasure speaking with you and getting to hear a little bit of the story behind the story. And I wish you all the best for surviving the rest of this primary season.

LEVIN: Thank you, Rebecca. I can’t wait to come on again.

VALLAS: And that does it for this week’s episode of Off-Kilter, powered by the Center for American Progress Action Fund. I’m your host Rebecca Vallas. The show is produced each week by Will Urquhart and Alison Young, and our transcripts are courtesy of Cheryl Green. Find us on Facebook and Twitter @OffKilterShow, and you can find us on the airwaves on the Progressive Voices Network and the We Act Radio Network or anytime as a podcast on iTunes. See you next week.

♪ I want freedom (freedom)

Freedom (freedom)

Now, I don’t know where it’s at

But it’s calling me back

I feel my spirit is revealing,

And now we just trynta get freedom (freedom)

What we talkin’ bout…. ♪