Hate Congress, love your Congressmember: Rachel Maddow on a familiar political paradox

[0:00] Let's talk a little bit about that Cori Bush, Wesley Bell race. This is an interesting one. [0:04] I know that you had your eyes on this, Chris, coming into tonight. [0:06] Well, it's interesting because Cori Bush won that seat. She was primaried by Wesley Bell. [0:11] And Cori Bush was in a class of sort of Justice Democrats that were, you know, [0:16] there's Ilhan Omar and there was AOC and Rashida Tlaib. There was also Jamal Bowman in New York. [0:20] And after Cori Bush and Jamal Bowman lost their primaries to sort of more centrist candidates, [0:25] basically, with a fair amount of outside money, some of which ASAP related, some of which not, [0:30] there was a little bit of like, oh, this moment of sort of leftist insurgent primary challenges is over. [0:36] I think that obituary was very premature, as we've seen. But it is very interesting that in this year [0:41] in which there has been a lot of success by left insurgent candidates, that's a place where there [0:45] was a rematch. It was the same two candidates in the same sort of axes of disagreement. [0:49] And clearly the incumbent won. The other thing I'd say, which relates to what Lawrence is saying, [0:54] is in the context of all this, in all the races that are going to happen, the incumbent's going to [0:58] win 95 percent of the time or 92 percent of the time or maybe 89. [1:03] Like when it's somebody who used to hold the seat and has a lot of name recognition against [1:07] somebody who's currently holding the seat, the incumbency, I think it's a little. [1:10] I agree. But so he beat her. I mean, look, he clearly has a better connection to that district. [1:16] All I'm saying is what ends up happening is because of how, you know, novel, right, [1:23] the sort of man bites dog aspect of news is when a challenger beats an incumbent, right? [1:28] When an incumbent loses, it's news because most of what happens in politics here in the U.S. [1:33] and in Democratic politics in most places is that incumbents coast to victory. [1:37] But a lot of that has to do with how the system is built. [1:41] Totally. Yeah. [1:41] The system is built for incumbency. And if I'm a member, this is getting into the redistricting [1:47] issue. Who draws the line? The state legislature. Well, who has an influence over the state [1:52] legislature? The person who wants the lines drawn, you know, so it's that whole kind of soup. [1:57] But it's interesting to me, to Lawrence's point, both your points, actually, that you have all of [2:03] this, you know, the establishment's not listening to me. The establishment doesn't care. They're not [2:07] paying attention. And yet I'm just going to put the establishment incumbent back in office. [2:13] And a lot of that has to do with what they've done versus what they've not done. How have you [2:17] offended me as a voter? How much have you paid attention to me? The constituent services aspect [2:23] of this is always very, very important, particularly when you get into congressional offices and how [2:29] they deliver. There is an amazing Barack Obama interview that he recently did around the opening [2:34] of the library. And he talked about how he hired the ex-chief of staff, Tom Daschle, a guy named [2:39] Pete Rouse, legendary, who was, you know, seen as the 101st senator. And he said his first meeting [2:44] with Pete Rouse is Pete Rouse comes in and he says, you know, he's got this brain trust in front of him. [2:48] And he goes to the young senator, the best thing you can do is answer your mail, answer your mail. [2:54] Every letter that comes in gets a response. And that was one of the first things they said about [2:58] doing was setting up the office of Illinois, new Illinois Senator Barack Obama, phenom to the [3:04] world, the guy that gave the speech that when you wrote to the senator, because you were mad about [3:10] an intersection near you in Joliet, Illinois, that you got a response from the senator. [3:15] That's it. [3:16] I remember in the stone ages when I was in college taking political science classes, [3:20] literally like before the invention of the pencil, like what you learned on day one is that in general, [3:27] in every state, in every party, on every part of the ideological number line, if you ask people [3:32] if they like Congress, the answer is no, they hate Congress. And do you like your member of [3:38] Congress? Yes, I do. Everybody likes their own. Everybody likes the inchoate other that is making [3:43] world, making life hard for them. That's why anybody labeled the establishment is almost by [3:48] definition the enemy, whether or not they've done anything. But it doesn't necessarily mean that [3:52] people want to turn out their own piece of the establishment, who is the person they know, [3:55] who they have voted for, and who may have answered, who may have answered their mail. [3:59] Yeah, the establishment, I get what people mean by it. But what if you really analyze what it is, [4:06] it's really a speaking style. That's really what it is. I mean, it's impossible for Bernie Sanders to be [4:12] more a part of the establishment. He's a committee chairman. I mean, when they're in the minority, [4:18] he's called the ranking member. But he's been the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. [4:22] He has collaborated with Chuck Schumer on every single thing Chuck Schumer has done. [4:27] He's voted with Chuck Schumer on everything. There's never been. Remember the big fight [4:32] on the Senate floor between Chuck Schumer and Bernie Sanders, where they really slugged it out over, [4:37] no, it never happened once. Those two people agree about 99% of the time. Tactically, [4:45] they might have disagreements inside about what we should go for next and all that sort of thing. [4:49] But Bernie Sanders has a way of sounding like he's not from inside the building. And that is the key [4:58] to that perception of establishment. And Chuck Schumer is so much a creature of the building, [5:04] and he can't pretend otherwise, that he is from that building. [5:07] Can I add one addendum to that, which I basically agree with? I do think the super PAC role here [5:13] is worth shining a light on. I mean, there really were $60 million dropped on Abdul El-Sayed's head [5:19] from money from out of, like, there was no, there was nothing on the other side of that, right? So [5:24] there is a pool of money that is, has been marshaled in these races, often on behalf of what's been [5:31] coded as the establishment candidate, whether that's a fair establishment or not. And I agree with you, [5:35] that super PAC money is a bit orthogonal to the actual, like, tactical and ideological debates. [5:41] They don't line up. They have been sort of collapsed into the same. But when we're talking [5:44] about the Michigan Senate race in this establishment, there really was one candidate [5:48] who had $60 million. $60 million of TV ads. [5:51] Of TV ads, super PAC money that was dropped against him, where it wasn't for the other candidate. [5:56] Like, that is just the fact. And that's been true in a lot of these races where it has been the [6:00] case that outside money, sometimes it's crypto money, sometimes it's AI money, [6:04] sometimes it's sort of party donor money. And in many places, it's a PAC associated money [6:08] has been directed at one person, whether that's like the establishment or not. I don't really [6:14] think that really makes sense because they've all been collapsed together. But that is one [6:18] vector where we really have seen a difference.