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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. With us now, Amber Phillips, Washington Post political reporter and author of The Post's widely read politics newsletter, The Five-Minute Fix. She's written a piece to come out of the gate with to start the year called The 9 biggest political questions of 2022. Let's see how many we can get to. We'll also touch on a new Washington Post poll with the January 6th insurrection anniversary this week that finds 40% of Republicans and Independents say it's sometimes justified to take violent action against the government. That's a lot higher percentage, 40% condoning violence, at least in theory than in the decades of The Post and other news organizations asking that question.

Just 23% of Democrats said violence against the government is sometimes justified. We'll try to put that in context. Happy new year, Amber Phillips. Thanks for starting it with us. Welcome back to WNYC.

Amber Phillips: Happy new year, Brian. Thank you for having me.

Brian Lehrer: With that poll finding in mind, Amber, let me start on your question number four for 2022, how much will Trump's anti-democratic, meaning anti-democracy, push take hold? Do you think your poll finding is an indication of how important a question that is right now?

Amber Phillips: Yes, I do. When I talk to activists trying to focus on our democracy, and apparently there is such a thing now as those people in 2022, they say, "Listen, we're pretty concerned with what we're seeing. Yet we're not seeing this as a dinner table conversation among most Americans, no matter your political persuasion," and that concerns them as well, but people tracking Trump's efforts, which were just out there in front of us for everyone to see to overturn his 2020 election loss, they're very worried it could morph into a successful effort to deny the winners of future elections. His allies, they continue to make up fraud claims out of [unintelligible 00:02:09].

There are audits going on that aren't producing any results and yet I talk to people in Trump world who say, "Well, we need more audits and essentially endless audits of elections and states," and I've talked to experts who say that undermines Americans' faith in elections and the results. Meanwhile, we're seeing poll after poll that shows the majority of Republican voters think the last election was stolen and they might not believe the results of another. Then finally, President Trump is actively propping up people from the local school board of elections to secretaries of state to run in 2022 in the hopes that they are in office by 2024 when he might run.

There's no doubt, if that happens, he would persuade them to try to overturn any election results in certain states he didn't like.

Brian Lehrer: Then, there's the violent overlay of that, which of course we saw on January 6th, and in a way, I guess it's not a great question for a poll whether violence against the government is sometimes justified because, yes, if the government is an authoritarian one that's being violent against you or your community, a lot of people in a lot of countries would say it's sometimes justified. The American revolution was violence against British rule. Most Americans would say justified. What's new here is the change in the percentage who say it, and that it's mostly Republicans, the former party of law and order, would you say?

Amber Phillips: Yes. I think that's right. It's mostly Republicans and it's overlaid with President Trump's efforts to deny a legitimate election. In that same poll, we found 30% of Americans say there's solid evidence of widespread fraud, despite that being false. Then, 58% of Republicans think Biden was not legitimately elected. Meanwhile, for the violence on January 6th, most Republicans give Trump a pass, like 72% of them say he bears just some responsibility or none at all. You have this dynamic where more and more Republicans don't believe the legitimate results of an election. Well, actually a majority of Republicans.

Then, one in three Americans, including 40% of Republicans, think violence is justified, and a year ago, almost exactly to the day, we had political violence that was perpetrated by President Trump's supporters on an institution of federal government. When you look at all that, I think you have to take more seriously American's, even if it's a smaller percentage of Americans, belief that political violence is sometimes justified because we're living in an era where there are a lot of people with anti-democratic beliefs at this moment and people who engaged in political violence.

Brian Lehrer: Another one of your nine political questions for 2022 that's related is what will the January 6th committee ultimately do? Of course, there'll be a lot of conversation on this show, in your paper, the Washington Post, and all your associated podcasts, and everything else about the January 6th anniversary coming up on Thursday, but what about the committee? What are you looking at? How are you framing that question?

Amber Phillips: Sure. They are racing to try to answer a really key question and we don't know if they've answered it yet, which is, did the President of the United United States launch a coup attempt, not just against Congress itself on that day on January 6th, but in key states to try to stay in power? We know that he called the secretary of state in Georgia and urged him to find enough votes to overturn his election loss there. We know that he talked to Michigan and Wisconsin legislatures and tried to convince them to overturn the results of the popular votes in their states. What else did he do? This committee is racing to try to answer that question and paint a comprehensive picture because they understand two things.

One, they're going to be out of time soon because it's likely Republicans take back the majority in Congress next year. By this time, next year, they could be completely disband because Republicans are openly hostile to this committee and that they need to find a way to tell this story in a comprehensive, engaging narrative because this is tough stuff. I think not a lot of Americans, myself included, want to really spend time digging into it. It's hard to hear about what happened and then how do you try to make sure it didn't happen again? This committee, I will say, is the only official investigative report on what happened, much like the 911 commission was, the official book that we look at 20 plus years later.

Brian Lehrer: Is it possible that they'll focus too much on Trump because it's a-

Amber Phillips: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: -political body, when in certain respects, what Trump did throughout his presidency and his candidacy was to run to the head of a parade that was already marching, a white supremacist, if you want to call it that, or radical right, in a variety of ways, movement that was rising, and even if Donald Trump were to not run for reelection in 2024 or fade from the scene for any reason, the oath keepers are still out there? The people who ran the famous Charlottesville rally, which turned deadly are still out there. That parade is marching with or without Donald Trump as perhaps the real basis of January 6th.

Amber Phillips: You always crystallize things so well, Brian, which is why I love coming on your show. I think it is absolutely possible the committee focuses too much on Trump. They even have the small possibility of uncovering something potentially criminal and referring that to the justice department, which has this unprecedented decision to make, do they try to indict a former President, and that's led to down Democrats here in Washington worried that the committee looks too overtly political against this president, but the committee is very aware of these dynamics.

It's filled with really, really savvy partisan Democrats and two Republicans who are trying their best to put partisanship aside for what they believe is the right thing to do, which is to make sure this doesn't happen again. They have a very tough road ahead to try to navigate that. I will say they are also trying to piece together, based on reporting we learned over the holiday, of who is funding the Oathkeepers, the proud boys, who's propping up these groups that allow them to keep being such a huge presence in America right now because even if you don't have a leader, you need money, and no one really understands the finances yet of that side of America.

Brian Lehrer: Amber Phillips from the Washington Post, including the newsletter, The Five-Minute Fix with us right now, her article, The 9 biggest political questions of 2022. You have a few questions that all have to do with whether the Democrats can keep control of Congress in the midterm elections this year, or whether the Republicans will take it. How much do you think the Democrats will or should run on the threat to democracy? You started your first answer in this thread by saying, "Hey, this is not a dinner table topic of conversation for so much of the country."

How much is that not the key question for the dilemma facing the Democrats, which is that they have to get the passionate base to turn out at the same time as keeping the independent swing voters, thinking that the Republicans are worse than them?

Amber Phillips: Right. They've got a really, really tough 2022 and things have to coalesce for them pretty soon because I would say in history, the general consensus of American political history is that by the summer, American's minds are made up more or less about who they'll vote for in the midterm elections this November. Democrats need to figure out a couple of things, how do they actually show their base that they're governing for the first time of being in power in Washington for the past decade? They have not passed any major voting rights changes to push back on some of these anti-democratic efforts in the states we just talked about. They have not passed a major climate change legislation bill.

The only pieces of legislation they passed that are really major they're campaigning on so far is on infrastructure. That was supported by Republicans. Then, they had a coronavirus stimulus package. I think they are still trying to figure out how much they talk about the threat to democracy in January 6th because the Washington Post, my colleagues had a great piece up this weekend where they talked to Democrats who wondered how do you campaign on that when people are focused on the rising costs of food and gas and medicine, and trying to keep their family safe and trying to entertain their kids and work when they're out of school. I'm dealing with that today.

These are just really big picture questions for the average American that Democrats want to win over in order to keep the house in the Senate. Political scientists will say the average American is really focused on what's right in front of them because life is hard right now for a lot of Americans.

Brian Lehrer: Do the Democrats run on the radical right? We talked on the show last week about the radical right Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor green putting out misinformation about Kwanzaa. Now she's been blocked on Twitter, permanently suspended her personal account by Twitter just over the weekend after that for putting out misinformation about COVID. Does that sell in suburban America right now, the voters who walked away from Donald Trump in the 2018 midterms because they saw him as too radical but then seem poised according to some political analysts to walk away from the Democrats because they see Biden as out of touch with their needs?

Amber Phillips: I don't know that it sells. Let me say that I'm skeptical because look at what happened in Virginia this year, where toward the end of this campaign for governor, Democrats did try to throw the anti-democracy plate and everything in it at Republicans, from attorney general on up to the governor, and Republicans ended up sweeping those seats, despite the fact that the governor of Virginia Glenn Youngkin during his campaign in the primary refused to say Biden was legitimately elected. Virginia certainly has its conservative far-right Republicans, but for the most part, it's a more moderate state, purple, maybe even trending blue.

That did not turn off voters in supporting Youngkin and turning away from the Democratic Party.

Brian Lehrer: We know that Joe Manchin keeps being talked about as the X factor for Senate Democrats getting anything passed, whether it be Build Back Better and that whole safety net agenda, or whether it be suspending the filibuster for voting rights or for other things we know that came crashing down at the end of the year when Biden hoped to get Build Back Better built. Then, there was a glimmer of hope that they would still even yet now in the new year before the 2022 midterm campaigns really get underway full throttle, be able to come to some compromise, scale it down further to suit Joe Manchin, and pass something. What are you seeing?

Amber Phillips: Right. I see that there won't be a deal until Joe Manchin decides he wants a deal and until the rest of the Democratic Party from President Biden, all the way over to the squad, these liberal lawmakers who are mostly women of color in the house, realize or I guess are willing to drop a lot of proposals that they've been campaigning on for years, maybe even decades. A good example of that is Joe Manchin, we know he wants next, and they largely have this major climate change initiative to force coal-fired power plants to reduce their emissions and switch over to other more renewable forms of energy. That's a huge thing that Democrats don't want to have to give up on.

He is urging Democrats to drop the expanded child tax credit, which is this program that Democrats started this year during the pandemic by just mailing out checks to many, many, many American families. He wants that cut in some way. All those things are really, really, really hard for the rest of the Democratic Party to swallow, but they have to, I believe, in order to get a deal with Joe Manchin because there won't be a deal until Manchin signs off on it. That's just the reality of how many seats Democrats have in Congress right now.

Brian Lehrer: Another thing that you brought up on your list that people don't think about and don't talk about at the kitchen table, at the dining room table, that might be crucial for whether Democrats hold the house or not is redistricting. You asked how bad will redistricting be for the Democrats. For people who don't even know why that question would be salient right now, redistricting of congressional districts comes once a decade after the census. We just had the 2020 census and now all these state legislatures around the country, and most of them are controlled by Republicans, get to redraw the congressional map. How bad is it for Democrats?

Amber Phillips: It has the potential, I'll say it succinctly, to lock Democrats out of power in these key state legislatures and in key states that defined control of Congress for the next decade, period. They in 2020 tried really, really hard to win back a lot of legislatures ahead of this redistricting cycle. Democrats failed. In fact, Republicans gained more seats in 2020, and now Democrats have no choice but to fight these maps in court, but that's going to take a couple of years. Before then, 2022, this midterm elections coming up in November will define control of Congress.

Republicans have the potential by some estimates from the nonpartisan cooked political report to simply draw themselves within a couple of seats of power. Add to that the fact that right now they do have the political winds at their backs for many different reasons and it's very easy to see how they take control of the house. Democrats have a really hard time getting it back short of like a 2018 election where they won the popular vote by a lot just to overcome the hurdle of gerrymandering and regain the majority. It took them eight years from the last redistricting cycle in 2010 to do that.

Brian Lehrer: Before we run out of time, let me take one phone call for you, circling back to where we started, the new Washington Post poll just out that finds, and it really confirms a lot of other polls that you and others have taken, that so many Republicans actually believe, a large majority of self-identified Republicans actually believe that the 2020 election was stolen. Salvador in Greenwich Village, Manhattan has a question about that. Hi, Salvador.

Salvador: Hi, Brian. [unintelligible 00:18:30] come up with this 46, 47% of Republicans believe the election was stolen and find it illegitimate. Now, I doubt that they actually believe that, but they say it to stir the pot and to get people all wound up to motivate their base. They don't really believe the election was stolen. They just say it.

Brian Lehrer: Right. Well, the problem is the poll is among the base. The poll is among actual regular people out there who apparently have been successfully stirred. Maybe we need to turn that question around a little bit, Amber, and separate whether the professional Republicans, the politicians really believe it, or just say it to stir the base and whether the base that more than 50% of Republicans in your poll around the country who say they believe the election was stolen. Maybe we need to separate the people who are--

Maybe as I think about this while I'm talking about it, maybe it gets to the political essence in a certain respect and shows the vulnerability of democracy in a certain respect, that if you have a political class that is willing to say something that they don't believe that's destructive to stir the pot because they think it's to their political advantage, democracy becomes at stake.

Amber Phillips: Yes. I think that's a heavy and fair question to ask. [chuckles] I don't necessarily have an answer to that. Let me say this, a year out from January 6th, I think a picture is coalescing of a president Donald Trump who is outgoing and tried everything in his power, rather ham-handedly because he didn't have a lot of time to plan for this, to stay in power. He didn't, but there was a violent insurrection against the capital trying to keep him in power and then we have the residual effects of that of a majority of Republicans believing that the election was stolen or the current president isn't legitimately elected.

Like you said, Brian, this is might not come just down to him because there's this whole political class that is echoing what he says. You have people that want to be next speaker of the house, Kevin McCarthy, to top Republicans in the Senate saying essentially, "Yes, we believe the election was stolen," or downplaying the January 6th attack or even giving outright lies about what happened. With that backdrop, you have president Trump in 2022, I'm watching him really lay the groundwork to try to have a much more careful, methodical, concerted effort to ensure election results are to his liking.

Brian Lehrer: Washington [crosstalk]--

Amber Phillips: I think that's a possibility that happens and let me add this, the political class here in Washington of Republicans give him a pass on that. We've seen no evidence to the contrary so far.

Brian Lehrer: Washington Post political reporter Amber Phillips. Her article The 9 biggest political questions of 2022. Amber, thanks a lot. Let's keep talking this year.

Amber Phillips: Oh, thank you, Brian.

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