[music]

Kousha Navidar: This is All Of It. I'm Kousha Navidar in for Alison Stewart, and now we'll turn to some politics. Maybe you heard, but today is primary day in New York. If you haven't voted early, check out your party registration and polling place at voterlookup.elections.newyork.gov and go vote. Be sure to first go and read about the choices on your ballot at gothamist.com. Polls are open until 9:00 PM by the way.

Plus, on Thursday, we'll have the first presidential debate of the 2024 election season between President Biden and former President Trump. Debates, of course, being a critical element of democracy, where two people have a healthy exchange of ideas in an effort to use logic and reason to convince people that you are more right than your opponent. We'll see how much logic and reason we get at Thursday's debate. It's been such a big week in politics that right now we're going to talk about American democracy. What's wrong with it, according to three Obama staffers, and what they say is the best way to fix it?

I'm talking about the guys from Crooked Media, Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, and Tommy Vietor. They just released a new book called Democracy Or Else: How to Save America in 10 Easy Steps, and they're here in the studio right across from me to talk about it. Jon, Jon, Tommy, welcome to All Of It.

Jon Favreau: Thanks for having us.

Kousha Navidar: Absolutely. It's such a pleasure to have you here. Listeners, we want you in the conversation too. We're here to take your calls for the Crooked Media guys about saving democracy. Hit us up 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. We'd particularly love to hear from people who are engaged with politics, whether it's for work, or maybe you volunteer on campaigns, or you think strategically about your financial contributions to political campaigns. What questions do you have for these self-described Obama Bros, who have been through every level of the political process--

[laughter]

Jon Lovett: Not self-described. Other described.

Kousha Navidar: Described by others. I was being generous. That is also true if then. Maybe you've got advice that you want to give to listeners. If you have questions, give us a call, 212-433-9692. Okay. Before we get into the book, I wonder if we can get your thoughts about the upcoming debate this Thursday from each of you. Jon, maybe we can start from you, Favreau. What are you looking for from each of the candidates to help us understand what the final four months of this race are going to look like?

Jon Favreau: Like most Americans, I'm a little bit terrified of watching this debate. I think if you're President Biden, you want to remind people of who Donald Trump is, what he's proposing for the next four years, what Joe Biden has done over the last four years, and what he will do over the next four years. For every incumbent president, you want to turn the race into a choice. The challenger wants it to be a referendum and that's no different this time around.

I think that in every answer, Biden will want to drive the choice. I think their theme, and they've been telegraphing this for a while now, and it's in their new ad that they released today, is that Donald Trump only cares about himself, and Joe Biden has been working hard for the American people. I think that if he could fit every answer within that frame, and if he's energetic, and peppy, and punchy then it'll be a win for

Biden.

Kousha Navidar: Tommy, what do you think? Is that the right frame to take? Is that how you're thinking about it?

Tommy Vietor: Yes, I am. First of all, I hope that they're forcing Donald Trump to take all kinds of tests for infectious diseases before this debate because last time he was spitting COVID on his opponent. I think Biden has to answer some threshold questions about his age. Whether that is done via how you look, or your demeanor and your energy level, or what you say is to be determined, but I think that's what voters are looking for.

Then I think Donald Trump's advisors are praying that he will be relatively reserved. If you guys remember, I watched the first debate from 2020 on the plane out here, and it's just a disaster. It's a spitting, angry crosstalk mess. They're hoping that Donald Trump doesn't show up, and that one shows up who seems like he has matured and doesn't remind people of all the things that they frankly hated about him four years ago.

Kousha Navidar: Yes. Jon Lovett, what do you think?

Jon Lovett: I'm just looking for a good clean fight.

[laughter]

Jon Lovett: My hope, I think a debate where Donald Trump comes out of it saying, Joe Biden's on drugs is a good debate. That's what I want. Because I hope he is, honestly. I hope they hit him with whatever they got to hit him with, and he goes out there like the State of the Union, Joe Biden. Then the story of the debate is Donald Trump seems extreme and he calls it fake and he calls it rigged.

Jon Favreau: Then he should stay on those drugs, the rest of the campaign.

Tommy Vietor: Which drugs?

Jon Lovett: I don't know what they are. All they need to do is they just need to last through November. Just get them to wherever you need to get them. That's how I feel about it.

Kousha Navidar: Do you feel like there's going to be any signals that we'll be able to see during this debate to give us a sense of what kind of fight it's going to be for the rest of the time because we got four months left, right?

Jon Favreau: Yes. I think we'll know fairly early for both candidates, right? If Trump goes out there and is trying to listen to his advisors and be somewhat disciplined and subdued, you give that 5, 10 minutes and then what happens? Same thing with Biden, honestly. Will Trump be able to get under his skin? I'm sure in that, I think I remember in that 2020 debate, Biden got a little annoyed at times.

Tommy Vietor: Just shut up man. Things like that.

Jon Favreau: Right. Can he get Biden flustered? It'll be interesting to see if both of them can maintain composure. If the yelling starts within five minutes, that's what the debate's going to be like. Then also, can Jake and Dana control the whole thing, and will muting the mics be enough? Will Trump start picking fights with the moderators? There's a whole-- Yes, we haven't even talked about the moderators.

Tommy Vietor: Jake could just arm-wrestle Trump at some point.

[laughter]

Jon Lovett: I think that if there's a person that's been training their whole life to moderate a debate with very carefully enforced rules, it is Jake Tapper. He has been training from this since the time he was a child. He was born for this. I'm excited to see that power in his eyes. I really am.

Jon Favreau: Trump people are all just whining and whining about Jake and Dana, and trying to preemptively spin the moderators being hard on him. The truth is Jake was a huge pain to every administration, Republican and Democrat. I would get into arguments with Jake when I was the White House spokesman that were so nasty that his wife would get looped in to calm us both down. He's a tough journalist who doesn't take up with any BS. We'll see how it goes.

Kousha Navidar: Listeners, we're talking to the guys behind Crooked Media Pod Save America. We're here to take your calls. Maybe you've got advice yourself about not getting discouraged in this political climate, staying engaged, continuing to believe that democracy can be saved. Give us a call. We're at 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. You can text us at that number as well. If you're on social, if you're on X, if you're on Instagram, hit us up. We're @allofitwnyc.

Do you have a question for Jon Lovett about the latest season of Survivor? Give us a call. 212-433-9692. I bet that NDA is longer than the transcription of a filibuster. I bet that's long.

Jon Lovett: I'm not sure. I wouldn't want to comment.

[laughter]

Kousha Navidar: Give us a call. We're at 212-433-WNYC. Okay. Let's talk about the book a little bit, Democracy Or Else: How To Save America in 10 Easy Steps. Jon Lovett, why that framework? Why 10 Easy Steps?

Jon Lovett: Oh, because it's 2024 and you got a lot of people who don't-

[laughter]

Jon Lovett: -want to get anything done. No. Look, we knew that this would be-- when we started writing this, who knows what the future holds. Who knows what the candidates will be? Who knows what the political environment will be? Regardless, we knew this would be a pessimistic and cynical time. People have been, especially people who have been paying attention, feel, I think, frustrated by the sense in which they were doing what they were supposed to be doing.

They got together and maybe if they were shocked by Donald Trump winning, they were able to get together and have wins in 2018 and elect Joe Biden in 2020. There's a feeling, I think of kind of exhaustion from all that. We wanted to write something that was reminding people about just how much agency they have. That all it takes to find joy, and purpose, and mission, and satisfaction in being involved in politics even in a broken system, even in a cynical time, is to actually put aside all those that negativity and just get in the mix. Get in the fight. Not just because it's good for the world and it is very good for the world, but it's good for you.

I think that we have been, just from a fire hose drinking political news nonstop, maybe our whole adult lives. I think our brains are pretty screwed up because of it. Nothing I think is more gratifying and nothing, I think, makes it easier to keep doing that than going and knocking on doors, meeting the people that are actually on the ground, doing the things that actually have an impact on people's lives. The more people who do that, the less reason to be cynical we'll have.

Kousha Navidar: Yes. It's this idea of approachability, agency giving people a way to go. 10 easy steps, it makes sense. I got to ask, Tommy, why a book? Because I'm looking at you three podcasts, speech writers. What was it about a book that felt like the right medium to give this message?

Tommy Vietor: Books are the future. Paper is the future.

[laughter]

Tommy Vietor: Internet, what is that? No, I mean, look, one thing for listeners to know is all the proceeds from this book are going to go to an organization we created called Vote Save America, which is helping progressive candidates and causes. The book is for a good cause. We did want to make a one-stop shop for people who are like, "I want to get more involved in politics but I have only a limited amount of time. What's the best way for me to do that?"

We walk you through this ladder of things you can do from getting good information, to voting, to donating. I think the book ends with you as the reader, as a disgraced one term president. We want to help you understand how you get involved, all the different steps. Also, we were lucky to come up in the Obama administration. Politics felt more hopeful, and inspiring than it has felt like a slog the last eight years or so, and we wanted to remind people that it can be fun.

The book is silly and funny. There's illustrations. The font is big. We won't bum you out, we promise.

Kousha Navidar: We are ready to take some calls. Let's go to Nora in North Salem, New York. Nora, welcome to the show.

Nora: Hey, I love the spirit of fun activism, and that's what I was calling about. I was a field organizer in 2016 on the Clinton campaign, and devastated by the loss. I was looking for a way to keep volunteering that felt really hopeful, and found this organization called Knock for Democracy, which is local based out of Brooklyn. Just a really friendly environment, whether you're seasoned or you've never even considered volunteering before. They create warm, accessible ways for you to join phone banks and even go knock on doors.

Plug for Knock for Democracy for anyone who's interested in getting out there and volunteering in a fun way.

Kousha Navidar: Nora, thanks so much for that call. We appreciate that. We appreciate that plug, and I hope that it's making you feel more enlivened about democracy. Folks, if you're ready to give us a question for the Crooked Media guys, or to talk about how democracy is showing up in your life right now in sense of what you're doing, give us a call, send us a text. We're at 212-433-9692.

I have a text. Jon Favreau, I want to send this one to you. It says, "Hi, guys. I love your candor, especially in politics because I see too much toxic positivity. Quick question, how doomed are we?"

[laughter]

Jon Favreau: I don't know. That's the honest answer. I do think as the guys were saying too, it's more in our hands than we think. Politics, and more importantly, democracy was never meant to be a spectator sport. I think that's what it's become, especially national politics, and so we watch, and we look for the latest polls, and what's going to happen at the debate. These are all things that we can't control. We can't control how Joe Biden does. We can't control what Donald Trump does. We can't control what the Democratic Party does, but we can control how we're involved.

I think that what we have learned over the years of doing Pod Save America, and why we wanted to get some of this down in this book, Democracy or Else, is that when you do actually go out and get involved, things still might not turn out okay. Even though we say How to Save America, this is not a-- this tongue in cheek, it's not a promise that everything's going to be okay. If you are active and involved and doing your best, then not only do we have a better chance of being okay, but that action itself will make you feel more hopeful, and it'll make you feel more fulfilled.

We've all been in politics for a very long time now, and I think that some of the best friends I have in life came from the times I had in politics. We were doing an interview yesterday, and we saw David Axelrod who was our old boss in the White House, and it transported us back already 10 years, more now, I guess. It's like you get back into conversations with people that you worked with for years in the trenches, and those are relationships you're going to have for life. The same is true for activists, and organizers, and volunteers, and people who are out in the field.

I just think it's good for the soul to actually get out there and get involved, and it is the best chance we have to not be doomed. Are we doomed? Who knows, but there's an impact that all of us can have.

Kousha Navidar: Well, one part of the book that I found helpful was actually pretty close to the beginning when you go through and list out key issues and rate them on how easy they are to fix, including cheese placement on tacos, which is part of democracy. It's all a metaphor. You go through, you give a scale of very hard to quite possible. What do you hope readers do with that analysis? Jon, I'll send that to you.

Jon Lovett: First of all, Taco Bell does put the cheese on the meat at the wrong time. The cheese should go directly on the meat, not after the lettuce and tomato. It's stupid, it doesn't melt. It should melt. It could be put on earlier. It costs them nothing, just move the little bucket closer to the meat.

Kousha Navidar: Absolutely.

Jon Lovett: That's just the first thing, and I think that's important to say. I think people aren't saying it, it could be said. Now, I'm remembering the question. Oh, yes. I think that there are a lot of people who are very cynical about the political process, and they're also not paying too close attention to it. That's a vicious circle. Things seem broken, I don't pay attention, I don't totally understand why they're broken.

Because you view the system as being screwed up, you don't see the trees for the forest and the fact that, "Hey, here are the people that are standing in the way. Here are the people that are trying to solve it." For people reading this book, you can be armed with the knowledge of, hey, if Joe Biden is trying to cancel student debt but it's being stymied by the Supreme Court, these are the steps and how difficult it would be to change the Supreme Court. This is what he can do with executive power. This is what it takes to get something through Congress. This is what it takes to change the courts. This is what you can do at the local level.

I think it's just a reminder that the more you understand the process, the more you pay attention, the better sense you have of the places where you actually know that there's a lever that you can turn. There are some levers right now that they just don't move. Don't spend all your energy trying to turn a lever that's not going to move. There are places where you can actually have an impact. There's a place where we collectively can have an impact.

Kousha Navidar: Well, it's interesting because we just got a text here as well that has a very straightforward question that speaks to that. It says, "How can a blue state resident make a difference in a red state?" A lot of what you say in this book touches on that. Tommy, what do you think? What would you say to that texter?

Tommy Vietor: Well, yes, it's a great question. It depends on how much time you have, how many resources you have. If you have some money that you feel like you could give to candidates, a financial contribution could go a long way, especially if it's a down ballot race where money is really important for these candidates. If you're able to make phone calls or text bank into another state, that's a great way to give your time.

If you're able to physically go to that state, that's even better. A lot of New Yorkers, maybe you could get down to Pennsylvania, knock on doors for one weekend a month, two, whatever you can give. It's all about the individual. It's not an all or nothing proposition. Everything you do with the margins will matter because when you add that all up at scale, that's when you have-- you're knocking on millions of doors or giving a million dollars, or whatever it might be.

Kousha Navidar: Before we go to break, I want to go to one more caller. This is Ken in Park Slope. Hey, Ken. Welcome to the show.

Ken: Hey, thank you. I just wanted to know whether you guys thought that whether Tapper would actually ask Trump point blank whether, who's the president-- Will they ask Trump whether he's actually acknowledged the fact that Biden has been president for the last four years?

Jon Favreau: Ooh, good question.

Kousha Navidar: Thanks, Ken. Yes, go ahead.

Tommy Vietor: For sure. Whatever the exact question is, he's definitely going to-- I'm sure push Trump on acknowledging who won the previous election, and whether or not he'll acknowledge this election if and when he loses.

Jon Favreau: I think we haven't been thinking enough for this debate. Donald Trump has not sat down with a non-right wing interviewer in quite some time, especially for sustained questioning. There are a lot of pretty basic Trump questions that could really trip him up. I think around January 6th, around the 2020 election, and his attempt to--

Jon Lovett: [unintelligible 00:18:32] become a law.

Jon Favreau: Well, there's that too, yes. There's this really fertile ground. I think what Jake and Dana are probably trying to figure out is, how much can they then follow up on that because you ask, "Okay, who won the 2020 election?" He'll say, "I did," or he'll say whatever. Then they'll say, "Well, actually, you filed lawsuits, and you lost all the court cases, and whatever else," and then he just is off to elections and like, "Do you keep following up?" I guess then you leave it to Biden to finish the job there. It's going to be wild.

Kousha Navidar: Well, we're going to take a quick break. We love getting these calls. When we come back, we'll talk more with Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, and Tommy Vietor behind Pod Save America and Crooked Media. We'll keep taking your calls, 212-433-9692. Stick around, we'll be right back.

[music]

Kousha Navidar: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Kousha Navidar, and we are talking to Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett and Tommy Vietor.

[crosstalk]

Kousha Navidar: I was just warned. I'm sorry to interrupt--

Jon Favreau: [laughs] We're talking about democracy.

Kousha Navidar: I was just warned about cursing and the fines that this [unintelligible 00:19:46]. We're live, and now, it's in my head.

Jon Favreau: Let me tell you, if Trump wins, the FCC is no longer going to be independent just like every agency, so he could change that up. Or he could heftier fines for public radio and less so for the right wing.

Kousha Navidar: There's a lot at stakes.

Jon Favreau: Yes, there's a lot at stake. That's just one. I'm just bringing it back to democracy.

Kousha Navidar: Bring it back to democracy--

Jon Lovett: That's why we're here.

Jon Favreau: This will make a nice state run media studio.

[laughter]

Jon Favreau: You know what I mean? This is great. I think Boris Epshteyn will feel very comfortable in here.

Kousha Navidar: You know what? For now, we are driven by listeners and for listeners, much like many people that are in this room right now with their own efforts. We are taking texts from you and calls from you. If you want to talk to the folks behind Crooked Media, behind Pod Save America, their new book is called Democracy or Else: How to Save America in 10 Easy Steps. Jon Lovett, you tried to step on me plugging your book, but I will come back to it for you.

Tommy Vietor: Not the first time he's done that.

Kousha Navidar: Second time today.

[laughter]

Kousha Navidar: If you have a call or a question, or if you want to let us know how you are engaging in democracy in this presidential election or just in your life, give us a call, send us a text. We're at 212-433-9692. Mr. Lovett, there is a text for you here. It's a question from a friend of the Pod particularly-- oh no, sorry. Tommy, this one's for you, particularly for Tommy. Is there a way to make foreign policy positive in this campaign? What indicators are you watching in that area?

Then this is the part for Favs and Lovett, so we'll take one after the other. I'm active in fighting gerrymandering in Pennsylvania where the state constitution gives us a lever. Can we win that fight on the national level? Are we fighting it the right way? Let's break that up into two. Tommy, for you first, foreign policy in this election, could it be positive? What would it take?

Tommy Vietor: I think the thing that's challenging with Trump is he broke from the traditional Republican neo-conservative outlook on foreign policy. In the campaign, he said that he thought the Iraq war was a disaster and that he never supported it. Of course, there's footage of him at the time saying he supported the Iraq war. He has taken this more of an isolationist position which cuts across parties, which I think is especially popular with younger voters. It's a mixed bag.

How to make it positive or negative, I'm not sure. I think what Joe Biden is going to talk about is fighting for the international order, fighting for international organizations like NATO, trying to continue support for Ukraine as they fight against the Russian invasion. I imagine those will be the issues at the forefront. I suspect the moderators will talk about Gaza. I think you're talking about managing crises though more than almost anything else.

Kousha Navidar: Yes. Let's move to the gerrymandering part of it. Jon Favreau, I want to point this to you. Give us the state. What would it take to win that fight?

Jon Favreau: The John Lewis Voting Rights Act was introduced a couple of years ago. It was blocked in the Senate because Democrats did not have the votes to eliminate the filibuster for that because of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. This time around, if Joe Biden wins the presidency again, and if Ruben Gallego replaces Kyrsten Sinema, and every other Democrat that's up in the Senate wins re-election and we have the House, I imagine one of the first bills that will be introduced after the bill that would restore Roe v. Wade as a constitutional protection will be the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. That bill is what would end partisan gerrymandering.

Gallego has said that he would support getting rid of the filibuster for that, and every Senate Democrat is on the record saying that both for the Rowe protections and for Voting Rights Act, they would in favor of getting rid of the filibuster for that. In that scenario, if we do well in the Senate, do well in the House, if we have the trifecta.

Kousha Navidar: Compare that to the difficulty of getting Taco Bell to change the way in which they put cheese on their [unintelligible 00:23:43]. There's got to be a reason Taco Bell won't do it. There's got to be some reason.

Jon Favreau: It is tricky. I think that for someone who has been complaining about the filibuster now for years, we are so much closer than I ever thought we'd be. We were in the Obama administration, and it wasn't even a thought that we could get rid of the filibuster and do that. Now, we've made a lot of progress with Democrats. We came up short with Manchin and Sinema, but everyone else is pretty much on board.

Kousha Navidar: Yes. Let's go to some calls. We've got Shelly in Westport, Connecticut. Hey, Shelly. Welcome to the show.

Shelly: Thank you. I'd like to ask our wonderful guests, how would they address people who say that neither candidate is worth their vote, so they're not going to vote at all because neither candidate is really somebody they can support? How do we help them understand that these are the choices, you need to vote for who's going to keep America strong in the best sense of the word?

Kousha Navidar: Shelly, thanks so much for that question. It's a wonderful question. Jon Lovett, what do you think?

Jon Lovett: I think there's two parts to it. I think the first part is to remind them that ultimately, yes, you are choosing between two candidates, but it's not really about them. It's not about giving one of them a job or giving one of them a win. It's about the impact it would have. It's about the stakes inside of the race. If you look at those stakes, you may be unhappy with Joe Biden as an option.

If you consider the stakes for abortion, for climate, whether you want a child tax credit or you want lower corporate taxes, whether you want someone that will try to unleash Texas National Guard on Seattle in the event of a protest. The stakes remain high even if people have a lot of very legitimate frustrations and concerns with politics. That's the first part.

The second part is, no vote solves everything. No vote changes everything. If you vote for Joe Biden, a better future is possible. If you vote for Donald Trump, it just isn't. There's a bunch of stuff that we'd all like to see, and some of it's hard. Some of it'll take years, some of it could take decades. We don't get closer to that if Donald Trump's in the White House. We can with someone like Joe Biden.

If you put it in that context, like this is part of a broader fight, this vote is part of how you find other levers and other places to use your power, I hope that that is part of how we can persuade people.

Kousha Navidar: I love that answer in terms of looking more holistically, and in the arc of the fight for democracy, because we actually just got this text here that says, "What advice can you give someone who's lost all hope in this election?" I went from campaigning for Obama to barely investing any energy in this upcoming mess. It sounds like you'd give the same answer, right?

Jon Lovett: Yes. I think one of the lessons from 2016 is people would ask this question like, "Do you have hope, or is everything doomed? Or is everything broken or will we win? What's going to happen?" I think sometimes what that really is a sort of like, "Do I need to worry about this? Are we going to be okay?" The answer is nobody knows, as Jon was saying. We don't know what's going to happen.

I do think the core mistake there was privileging how you feel in this moment. How you feel in the days leading up to an election will not matter when the election is over. The reality is that politics sometimes it's inspiring, sometimes it's a slog. Sometimes there's a candidate that makes you feel like they can make the world make sense. Sometimes you're pulling a lever like a graveyard shift nurse putting on gloves, just trying to get through the shift. What was the question?

[laughter]

Jon Favreau: You brought up 2016, and a lot of people in that election said, "I'm not inspired by either candidates." There was a lot of people, like, as the last caller said who said, "I don't want to vote for either one of them." Fast forward to right now, one in three women live in states with abortion bans. 65,000 women have been forced to give birth to their rapist's baby over the last couple of years.

If the people in 2016 who didn't feel as hopeful about Hillary Clinton, or didn't feel great about both candidates had just decided to vote for Hillary Clinton, then none of that would be happening right now. There would be a Supreme Court that was actually a progressive majority on the Supreme Court. There would be no abortion bans. Then maybe you still wouldn't have been excited by Hillary Clinton as president, but you probably would be excited that the right to choose is a right that is enshrined for all people in all 50 states.

It can feel like a slog, but also making a difference in your life, your family's life, in the life of your country by voting and watching that improvement. Even if it's slow incremental improvement, that's still improvement. You're still saving lives, you're still making people's lives better. You can't fix everything, but you can fix some things. That's what politics has to be about.

Kousha Navidar: Yes. Let's go to David in Park Slope. Hi, David. Welcome to the show.

David: Hi. I'm a Brooklyn resident, 77-year-old Vietnam era veteran. I want to give a shout-out to a terrific organization called VoteVets. I haven't heard them talked about too much in public. They're very focused and directed on the disrespect and awful qualities that Trump displays towards veterans. The whole thing with Normandy, the thing with John McCain where he prefers people who are not prisoners, all of the disrespect to the gold star vets, and yet he's willing to call out the military. It's a strange thing.

Anyway, this organization which one can donate to, they're very specific and directed in races around the country. Not so much in New York as far as I can tell, but in key states where congressional, district, senatorial votes might be close. They tried to pull that out-

Kousha Navidar: It's called VoteVets, David?

David: -that kind of attention. VoteVets.

Kousha Navidar: David, it's called VoteVets? Thanks so much for that call. We really appreciate it.

Jon Favreau: Great organization.

Kousha Navidar: I want to try to get to one more call. Here's Anne in Staten Island. Anne, you've got about 30 seconds. Go ahead.

Anne: Good afternoon. This is Anne in Staten Island. I have good news for you. Two colleagues and I, and we're in our 70s and 80s, organized a group called Seniors with Common Concerns. We had our first meeting last Wednesday, and 25 people showed up, seniors. I had preferred the word seasoned citizen, but I was voted down. Anyway, one of your guests used the word agency. That is a very important word.

I was one of the speakers last week, and I used that word in terms of seniors do have agency. We are not invisible. We have very informed ideas, and we have life experience and wisdom.

Kousha Navidar: Anne, thank you so much for that, totally hear you. We so appreciate you calling. I'm going to have to pause you there just for time. Tommy, I'm looking at the clock. Got about 40 seconds left. I'm going to give you the last question. You hear Anne talking. You hear all these folks saying, "I'm a part of this organization. This is what I'm doing." I'm sure there's so many more people listening out there who don't know what to do. Just put a book out there. What would you say to them?

Tommy Vietor: Listen, you can buy the book and get some great advice, or you could go to our website we put together called votesaveamerica.com, where we try to help people find places where they can volunteer or donate, campaigns to get involved in, great progressive organizations. Check that out.

Kousha Navidar: Thank you so much.

Jon Lovett: Anybody organizing in Staten Island, that's the place we need people. We need seniors to figure out how to turn that red little blotch blue, and it's going to take time. [unintelligible 00:31:40]

Tommy Vietor: We've got to help the seasoned citizen who's going to be debating Thursday night.

Kousha Navidar: Yes, we got two.

Tommy Vietor: I love seasoned citizens. We're going to tell that to the Biden campaign.

Kousha Navidar: Well, be sure to give Anne some credit there.

Tommy Vietor: Yes, deserves the credit.

Kousha Navidar: Shout-out to Anne from Staten Island.

Jon Favreau: Very seasoned. Maybe a little too seasoned sometimes.

Tommy Vietor: [unintelligible 00:31:55]

Kousha Navidar: We've been talking to Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, and Tommy Vietor, their new book, Democracy or Else: How to Save America in 10 Easy Steps. Thank you all three so much for coming by.

Jon Favreau: Thanks for having us.

Tommy Vietor: Thank you.

[00:32:13] [END OF AUDIO]

 

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