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- [00:04]
Isaac Saul
What a difference a day makes.
- [00:08]
Ryan Reynolds
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- [00:31]
Isaac Saul
At Mint Mobile we like to do the opposite of what big wireless does. They charge you a lot, we charge you a little. So naturally when they announced they'd be raising their prices due to inflation, we decided to deflate our prices due to not hating you. That's right, we're cutting the price of mint unlimited from $30 a month to just $15 a month. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch $45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month New.
- [00:57]
John Law
Customers on first three month plan only.
- [00:58]
Ryan Reynolds
Taxes and fees extra speeds lower above 40gb why get all your holiday decorations delivered through Instacart? Because maybe you only bought two wreaths, but you have 12 windows. Or maybe your toddler got very eager with the Advent calendar. Or maybe the inflatable snowman didn't make it through the snowstorm. Or maybe the twinkle lights aren't twinkling. Whatever the reason, this season Instacart's here for hosts and their whole holiday haul. Get decorations from the Home Depot, CVS and more through Instacart and enjoy free delivery on your first three orders. Service fees and terms apply. From Executive Producer Isaac Saul this is Tangle.
- [01:57]
Will Kabak
Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, a place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of our take. This is Will Kabak. I'm one of Tangle's editors. I'm going to be filling in for Isaac today on this interview that we have with Dave O'Brien. He is the Policy Director at Represent Us, which is a cool organization. They're a nonpartisan anti corruption organization focused on reforms to address ineffective governments, corruption in government and money in government, which is the focus of the conversation that we had. They work with groups across the political spectrum and they focus on passing laws, dealing with special interests and representative government. All those kinds of things that we hear a lot about but aren't exactly sure how they manifest in our government and our elections. So we had a great conversation with Dave. Excited to share that with you all today. We put the transcript of this interview as our Friday edition in the newsletter, so if you want to read the interview, you can do so over at our website, readtangle.com or if you're subscribed to the newsletter, it'll be sent right to your inbox this Friday. Really excited to share this with you all. So let's jump into the interview with Dave. All right, Dave, thanks so much for joining us.
- [03:24]
Isaac Saul
Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
- [03:26]
Will Kabak
We are very excited to have you. This is a conversation that our audience has been asking for for a long time. So excited to get right into it. So I want to start off just talking very broadly about the role of money in our current politics and the way that you think about this issue. So I'd love if you could just outline kind of your broad philosophy when it comes to the role that money plays in our current politics and what you're working on right now in your role at Represent Us.
- [03:54]
Isaac Saul
Well, thanks. Wow. Starting off with a real easy question there. Yeah, yeah. So Represent Us was actually start as an organization, was founded in the sort of wake of the Citizens United case, which I'm sure all your listeners are very familiar with. But you know, long story short, it sort of, we, we'd always had a lot of money in American politics, but, you know, there had been, there had been a regulatory system in place to at least try to sort of restrict and control it a little bit. And after Citizens United, the floodgates opened, basically. So we started seeing just, almost just eye watering amounts of money pouring into our election campaigns. And as a result, there had been, there's always a certain amount of dissatisfaction with the political process in elections generally, it's a zero sum system. There's always winners, there's always losers. And you know, it's, and it's pretty common for many people to feel sort of like disempowered and not heard. So often people feel like their vote doesn't matter and it's really hard to get them to sort of like feel like that one vote they're casting an ocean of millions of votes makes a difference, but it does. We know it does. I think there is a house race in California that might be decided by a few dozen votes or something like that. Yeah, yeah. I mean, like, it's, yeah, it's, it's pretty wild to think about that. Like, you know, you know, maybe a neighborhood or a few dozen people are able to like, swing the outcome of a big election like this. And this does happen. And this happens. And it happens in the aggregate, too. You know, we always, we often feel like, you know, the elections are decided ahead of time. You Know, it doesn't matter what one. What one person does, but it does. We're actually seeing a lot of examples of that now. But when you add to that situation, not just millions, but hundreds of millions, and now billions of dollars coming in, and often not from a lot of people. Right. There is sort of an argument that, like, you know, money in politics is sort of democratic in a way because, you know, people, you know, people are giving money just like they're giving votes. Right. And it's just another way to sort of express their political views. But in reality, what we have is a situation where a very small number of people can, you know, spin, are able to spend tens, millions, hundreds of millions of dollars, more money than any of us will ever see in our lifetime. More money than, you know, entire, like, often more than the GDP of, like, a town or a small country kind of thing. And when you see a situation like this and when you have this persistent feeling that the people in charge aren't listening to you and you don't think they're responding to the problems that we have, you know, in everyday life, you know, people are worried about climate change, people are worried about, you know, basic civil liberties and kind of things. People worried about the economy. And you feel like the people and the people that you've elected aren't listening to you, but they are spending a lot of time listening to people who give lots of money. It's hard to escape the feeling that it's not your votes that they're paying attention to, it's the money that's being dropped on these races. And it also creates. And this sort of infusion of money creates a feedback loop where, you know, a big donor can drop a lot of money into a race, into an election. Someone gets elected, they then do things that are maybe beneficial to the finances of that big donor and may. And as a result, the donors will keep pumping money into it. We have, you know, there's been a persistent effort to, for the past several decades to erode the restrictions on money and politics. And as a lot of money has gone into that effort and it's almost as an investment. And now we have a situation where since some of those guardrails are down, even money can. More money can get into the system. And it creates this. This sort of vicious cycle where money continues to, like, grow and grow, where, and for everyday people feel like their influence is just getting smaller and smaller and smaller. We'll be right back after this quick break.
- [08:15]
Ryan Reynolds
Stop over in Qatar and enjoy pristine beaches and vibrant Souks relax in a 5 star hotel from just $48 per night. Go to visit qatar.comstopover Terms apply. Why get all your holiday decorations delivered through Instacart? Because maybe you only bought two wreaths but you have 12 windows. Or maybe your toddler got very eager with the Advent calendar. Or maybe the inflatable snowman didn't make it through the snowstorm. Or maybe the twinkle lights aren't twinkling. Whatever the reason, this season Instacart's here for hosts and their whole holiday haul. Get decorations from the Home Depot, CVS and more through Instacart and enjoy free delivery on your first three orders. Service fees and terms apply.
- [09:12]
Will Kabak
Yeah, I think that's a great segue into the next question I had, which is I think for a lot of people, we hear about the sums of money that's being poured into politics and it's such an, it's, it's an amount that's hard to wrap your mind around. But I think what can be more opaque for people is what exactly that money is being deployed to do and the degree to which it's effective in helping politicians win elections. So I would love if you could just talk a little bit about is this money mainly going towards advertising? Is it going towards staffing campaigns? How is this money being deployed in a way that's effective?
- [09:47]
Isaac Saul
That's a great question. And it goes to a few things, but it's one, one important thing to keep in mind is when we talk about like money and politics, it could be going to a few different places, like money and elections, a few different places. So one is it could go to the campaign itself, like, you know, you decide you're running for, you know, city council or something. You set up a city council campaign, you solicit donations and you will then use that money to pay, you know, to hire campaign staff and, you know, take out ads and, you know, rent places for rallies and things like that. Like the kinds of things we normally traditionally think about when we think of like the costs of an election campaign. So that is, that's one bucket. And then there are things sort of nearby. There are like the political parties themselves that will, you know, do some of those things too. Once they're, once they've got a candidate nominated, they'll take some money and, and they, and, you know, party staffs might, you know, help out on some things, then they'll do, and they might do some of their own ads or pay for canvassers and people to go door to door and encourage that kind of stuff. Those are the traditional areas where we go, we think of political committees and candidates, that kind of stuff. But there's this entirely different bucket that gets called outside spending or independent expenditures. And that's where we get our super PACs and a lot of what we think of as dark money groups and things like that. And those are organizations or entities that are not often not officially supposed to be like working directly with the candidate or the campaign. They're not supposed to coordinate a lot of the times, but they don't have the same kind of restrictions of accepting donations that say a candidate does. Right. So if you are running, if you are running for Congress, there's only a certain amount of money you can accept from individual donors. Those rules are still in place. But if you're running for Congress and say, I am a supporter of yours and I start a super pac, you know, the Will for Congress super pac. And as long as we don't officially coordinate, I can unraise unlimited sums. Now what can I do with that money? Well, I can buy ads like you said, you know, if you're in a swing state, I'm sure you have seen more political ads than you care to remember. And it'll often be said, and it might, and it might be something like in with this ad has been paid for. You know, it might be will for Congress, you know, like, you know, supporters of, you know, will or, you know, you know, America, freedom, good, happy everyone wins an election kind of thing. So, you know, pull yourself up by your bootstraps pack. Exactly. You know, all these sort of like vague names that sound kind of good. So, you know, so they might be spinning, so they might be spinning on ads, like that kind of thing. They might be hiring lots of political consultants just like the campaigns. Well, you know, any sort of personnel is going to cost money. They might be doing some sort of direct messaging stuff. So I think a lot of people probably got a lot of emails and text messages over the past year or so. It is not free to send those. And a lot of the money that, and those are often paid for are paid for by what we would, you know, by the political contributions here. Right. Which by the way, if for whatever reason you're not concerned about the effect of money in politics and like at being corrosive to democracy, if you get annoyed by the sheer amount of like spam you get in the elections, then you actually do care about money and politics a little bit. Right. Like it's, it, you know, at the very Least it's making your life that, that much worse. So, so that's the way to do it. And, and traditionally, you know, they would, it was thought that, okay, it would be much like those outside ads and things like that, but because they can't coordinate those independent expenditures would really just be limited to that. And I, and I don't. And it is expensive to run lots of ads, especially in swing states. But an interesting thing that we've started to see this year is that for some campaigns at traditional aspects of the campaign itself, like just really basic like, you know, travel arrangements and booking, get out the vote kind of stuff for a few campaigns we saw that with Ron DeSantis in the primaries and Donald Trump's campaign in the general sort of those roles that have traditionally been taken by the campaign itself have now been taken over by super PACs. So I think, so I think a lot of the travel for DeSantis presidential campaign when it was around might have been actually been done and paid for by Super PACs supporting his campaign rather than his campaign itself. Same A lot of Donald Trump's get out the vote work, I think everyone's probably seen, you know, news reporting about Elon Musk getting really involved like in Pennsylvania, swing states and like all of the things they were doing. He wasn't doing that as like a member of, you know, the Donald Trump official member of Donald Trump's campaign political committee. He was doing that like through a super PAC that he started and that was being paid for by funds from his super pac which he basically single handedly financed, you know, a few decades ago, even a few years ago, a lot of those things would have been taken care of by the campaign, which is under much more like strict donation like rules. But now that they've been outsourced to super PACs, you know, they can take even more money. So you can see the appeal of, you know, you know, giving up a little bit of control of the campaign to these outside groups who can, you know, spend as much money as they want. We'll be right back after this quick break.
- [15:30]
Ryan Reynolds
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- [16:00]
Farnoosh Tarabi
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- [17:19]
Will Kabak
Yeah, I mean, hearing you describe all the different facets of campaigns and elections that super PACs touch, it makes me think that if they were to go away tomorrow, the entire foundation of how modern campaigns are run would kind of crumble because sounds like there's so much reliance on them, like you said, outsourcing them for these key functions. Like, do you think now that these modern campaigns are just completely built, at least you know, on the level of like a presidential election or a major sense election, are completely reliant on these super PACs.
- [17:48]
Isaac Saul
Yeah. I mean, I don't think anyone. I'll say two things. One, yes, like, absolutely. They are like we are now at the point where that is just, you know, love them or hate them, you know, these kind of outside groups, super PACs are just so effective and so influential that just everyone has to utilize them to stay competitive. The second thing though is, I mean, yes, it's true, they're really dependent on it, but sometimes it's easy to forget just how new they are. Right. So super PACs are about a decade. The idea of super PACs are about a decade old. They, you know, right after the Supreme Court decided Citizens United, which was 2010, 2011. I should know that off the top of my head. But, you know, but around.
- [18:36]
Will Kabak
We'll put it in there, whatever.
- [18:37]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, we'll fix that in post? Yeah, like just, just a few months later, a sort of Another court, the D.C. court of Appeals, decided a case called SpeechNow.org and that created the Super PACs. And so, you know, about as long as we've been upset about Citizens United is about the length of time that super PACs have been around. And so in a pretty short period of time, they have almost totally dominated, like, come to almost completely dominate political spending. Now that's not just like there are regular packs. There are other groups that have a lot of money too. But you know, what we are seeing is just like the, just the increasing reliance upon these, on these entities because, I mean, they don't have to play by the same rules everyone else does. So it just makes more sense if you, you know, if you're a candidate or a party to rely on them. Now I want to say that, like, this doesn't mean we're stuck with them, right? Because, you know, super PACs are pretty new. We, we've had elections for hundreds of years before, you know, without them. So we can do that there, there are plenty of races where they're not a big deal. And also we should remember that we're not the only democracy on earth. In fact, most other countries have much, much stricter rules on spending. Some countries, it's illegal, like it's illegal to actually start campaigning more than a few months before the election. Some, a lot of countries have really strict rules about like how and where you can campaign, how much you can spend. Now, obviously different things are going to work for different countries. We've got a First Amendment that will sort of limit what we can do here. But this idea that like, oh, well, lots of money is the only way we can function, it has to be that way, just isn't true.
- [20:19]
Will Kabak
Real quick, could you distinguish for our listeners and readers who aren't super familiar with this, what's the difference just between a pack and a super pac?
- [20:27]
Isaac Saul
Yeah. So really the main, they're both PAC stands for Political Action Committee. And they've been around since like the 50s or something. They haven't become that big. It wasn't probably until like the 80s where they became as influential as they are now. They are both groups created to spend money on election, not just elections. They can spend money on, you know, other things, like other things campaign. But they're generally created to influence politics somehow. Like elections are just the way that we most do it, do it. The difference between them is that PACs can be much more tightly aligned with, say with like the candidates themselves in the campaigns, right? So it's pretty common for most candidates or elected officials to create their own PACs. So, you know, will, you're running for Congress, you will create your own pac. Nothing super about it. And that pack will, you know, that PAC can accept donations that some more donations that you know, your campaign can necessarily do. There are some, there'll be some rules about how you can use them and do different things, but crucially there are, there's going to be some restrictions on how many donations from different people your pack can accept. The difference is a super PAC is that a super PAC is not officially coordinating with your campaign. So, you know, maybe I'm a good, you know, a good friend of yours or your brother or like, you know, I used to work on your campaign and when it becomes clear you're going to run for office, I'm now going to create a super PAC to support it. So, you know, we want, like, we won't officially coordinate anything. You're not going to call me up and tell me your strategy or where you want me to spend money, but.
- [22:09]
John Law
Hey everybody, this is John, executive producer for Tangle. We hope you enjoyed this preview of our latest Friday edition. If you are not currently a newsletter subscriber or a premium podcast subscriber and you are enjoying this content and would like to finish it, you can go to readtangle.com to sign up for a newsletter subscription. Or you can go to tanglemedia.supercast.com and sign up for our premium podcast membership which will unlock this complete episode as well as ad free daily podcasts, more Friday editions, Sunday editions, bonus content, interviews, and so much more. We are working on trying to get together a bundled membership package where you're able to sign up for both the newsletter and the podcast. In the meantime, if you sign up for a newsletter subscription and you'd like to receive the podcast subscription as well, or vice versa, we will offer you a 33% discount to sign up for the other. This is the best we can do in the short term while we work on a long term bundling solution. Most importantly, we just want to say thank you so much for your support. We're working hard to bring you much more content and more offerings, so stay tuned. We've got a special surprise for this week's Sunday podcast and I will join you for the daily podcast on Monday. For the rest of the crew, this is John Law signing off. Have a fantastic weekend, y'all. Peace.
- [23:30]
Isaac Saul
Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited and engineered by John wall. The script is edited by our managing editor, Ari Weitzman, Will K. Back, Bailey Saul and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Bova, who is also our social media manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. And if you're looking for more from Tangle, Please go to readtangle.com and check out our website.