This members-only episode was originally published on September 20, 2020 and moved to this feed for full member access.

President Trump will not shut up about voting by mail, repeatedly asserting that the system that has been used in elections prior is “rigged.” Meanwhile, Republicans have tried endlessly to block certain states from making it happen. In this new bonus episode of The New Abnormal, Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) explains the motivations behind the constant anti-mail-in ballot rhetoric and it’s deeper than Trump trying to prevent Americans from voting. “Really, what they want to do is two things: They want to undermine the confidence voters have in the election. And they want to undermine the confidence that people have in the post office,” he tells Rick Wilson and Molly Jong-Fast. Why? Privatization and manipulation, aka “get people to believe that this simply cannot be done” so they give up and continue to yell at each other on Twitter. But there’s something that Americans can do and that’s voting right away. “As soon as you get the damn thing, turn it right around,” says Schatz. There’s also another thing that voters can do, he says, and he failed at it in 2016. It’s taking social risks to stick up for Biden “in ways that are actually going to cause discomfort at the human level between people that care about each other, because the other side did that.” He tells Rick and Molly exactly where he himself went wrong. Plus! Schatz shares why Facebook will almost always take Trump’s side. And the gang trio discuss why Kansas and American “housewives” there are more progressive than we think.

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