>> c-span is your unfiltered view of government. we are supported by these television companies and more, including buckeye broadband. ♪ buckeye broadband supports c-span as a public service along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. >> coming up, supreme court correspondent lawrence hurley talked about yesterday's drug sentencing decision. daily beast senior columnist matt lewis talks about political challenges for both artie's. -- for both parties.

magazine writer edward-isaac dovere talks about his book battle for the soul: inside the democrats' campaigns to defeat trump. you can join the conversation with phone calls, facebook comments, and tweets. washington journal is next. host: good morning. from reuters, the supreme court yesterday declined to expand crack cocaine reform. lawrence hurley reports that the supreme court ruled that potentially hundreds of low-level rat cocaine offenders cannot benefit under the 2018 firststep law that reduces certain sentences and part meant to reduce racial disparities. more coming up. we want to get your thoughts on drug laws in this country. do they?

need to be changed? if you live in the eastern or central parts of the country, (202) 748-8000. mountain and pacific, (202) 748-8001. if you want to text us with your thoughts, text us at (202) 748-8003. include your first name, city and state. you can go to facebook.com/c-span. send us a tweet at the handle @cspanwj. how should drug laws be changed in this country, if at all? stricter or looser depending on the crime? we want to know your thoughts on it this morning. on the senate floor, judiciary committee chair to durbin in -- committee chair dick durbin in april talks about the war on drugs. here's what he had to say. [video clip] >> at the same time as we grapple with the opioid academic

-- epidemic, we are in the midst of a national reckoning about racism and mass incarceration in america. more prisoners by far than in the country. this is due to our failed war on drugs, which disproportionately targeted people of color. while the majority of the legal drug users and dealers in -- the illegal drug users and dealers in our country are white, the vast majority in prison for drug offenses are african-american or latino. that's a fact. more than three decades ago, congress responded to the dramatic rise of the use of crack cocaine by dramatically increasing sentences for nonviolent drug offenders. for example, at a sentencing -- for example, a sentencing guideline compared for

crack cocaine compared to regular cocaine of 100 to one. it didn't work. overall use of illegal drugs increased after we increased these penalties between 1990 and 2014 and the availability of drugs like heroin and methamphetamine, instead of going down, increased. senator corey booker is the chair of the judiciary committee. he has brought these concerns to the floor time and time again. i was proud to join him as well as senator grassley and senator lee. we offered the first step act, to begin reforming our criminal justice system from the previous war on drugs. senator booker has raised serious concerns about extending -- when it comes to these fentanyl analogs. he notes significant racial disparity infant no analog rustic.

-- disparity in fentanyl analog prosecutions. he also notes that it is a public health crisis and we cannot prosecute ourselves out of the opioid epidemic, a lesson we should have learned in the war on drugs. host: turbine from the floor in april talking about the history of congress making laws when it comes to drug sentencing and we are wondering this morning, do drug laws need to be changed? you heard him talk about the statistics. look at these. total americans incarcerated for drug offenses. look at what it was in 1980. over 40,000. in 2019, over 430,000. the average time served for a federal drug conviction, 1986, it was 22 months. in 2004, it was 62 months.

these statistics from may 21. listen to the republican side. here is josh hawley, missouri republican, questioning now associate attorney general gupta in march about her prior commitments to decriminalizing low-level drug possession. [video clip] >> you have said in the past you believe states should decriminalize the simple possession of all drugs, particularly marijuana, and other drugs. are you advocating -- is that including -- is that as broad as your statement says? are you talking about the decriminalization across the board? that's a policy you advocate? >> senator, i don't. i have supported decriminalization of marijuana possession. that was a prior position.

i am very clear that i do not support decriminalization of all drugs. there are many drugs that are having a devastating impact, ravaging communities. i believe, however, that substance use disorder is a public health problem and an enforcement problem and it is important to treat those things as such, but i don't support decriminalization of drugs. >> thank you. mr. chairman, i want to say on that point they raised -- point that you raised, that in my state, missouri, we have been paralyzed by fence and all. thank you. host: from the confirmation hearing of the associate attorney general. we are asking you this morning how should drug laws be changed in this country? eastern and central parts of the country, dial in at (202) 748-8000.

mountain and pacific, (202) 748-8001. text us at (202) 748-8002 --(202) 748-8003. include your first name, city and state. we will read your tweets if you include the handle @cspanwj. this from norml.org. 92% of those surveyed in america say marijuana should be legal under certain circumstances. do you agree with that? is that how drug laws should be changed? take a look at filter magazine, a magazine that advocates for less criminalization of drugs, and they know this. polls show huge public opposition to the war on drugs after for years. they write, after 50 years,

public opinion has changed slowly but drastically on drug use. advocates have gained ground in the decriminalization of some drugs. oregon has decriminalized small-scale possession of all drugs. the poll shows that 83% of respondents believe the drug war to be a massive failure. respondents of various political stripes overwhelmingly share this view. 85% of independents, 83% of democrats and 82% of republicans responded that nixon's plan did not help americans. 82% of all respondents wanted the federal government to reform

u.s. drug was. do you? tom in ohio, good morning. what do you think? caller: greta, i am 86 years old. we have no office. -- we have no laws. i have always said, crooks, politicians, a three ring circus. a good example is the predatory lending then i lost my home to in 2001. now i am fighting with our great electric company, dayton power and light. i have a $100 termination fee. it is not the money, but -- host: let's stick to the topic. what about drug laws? caller: i am 86 years old. i have never taken any drug other than prescribed, which i am ready to quit taking because they are all connected into the

scheme. host: all right. on facebook -- abolish the laws. regulate them and attacks them like alcohol. -- them and tax them like alcohol. we have everything to gain by legalizing drug sales and usage. as long as the market is controlled and regulated and the sales are taxed. you have this from eric in seattle. the first step act. this is what the court ruled on yesterday. it is a scam and publicity stunt and did nothing to help any prisoners. 87 percent of those incarcerated are in state prison anyway. listen to the oral argument before the supreme court on this first step act in may. justice stephen breyer talked about why he didn't think the first step act language could be expanded to these low-level

crack usage cases. here's what he had to say. >> look, the ratio between crack and ordinary cocaine was ridiculous, 100 to one or something, so congress got around to modifying that. fine. and anyone sentenced under the old range, get resentenced. fine. the problem is what does this section have to do with it? because this section seems to have nothing whatsoever to do with that ratio. it punishes people for 20 years or for 30 years if they commit a felony, for example, of any drug, schedule one, scheduled to plus two others, any of those -- schedule one, schedule two plus two others, any of those. and if you look at the career

criminal category, that has nothing to do with it. that not only picks up the -- people who twice committed that felony and also people who committed forms of robbery, and twice committed. if you win this case, i don't see what is to prevent any person, any person, certainly convicted of any drug felony, career criminal, from going out and asking, judge, resentenced me. now, that's the practical problem i have as well as the language not really applying. host: joining us now is lauren turley, supreme court correspondent, to talk about this ruling yesterday. let's begin with justice breyer. what is he saying? guest: criminal sentencing.

not just about drug laws. the point is that the first step act would do more than reduce sentences for crack cocaine. retroactively, the law meant to reduce disparities. it didn't really address the issue of people, low-level offenders, who were covered under other laws. and the court was unanimous on that in their ruling yesterday. it was more that congress should have written the law and a way that would allow low-level offenders to be included. host: who brought this case before the court and what was their argument? guest: there are cases, a bevy

of cases pending before this court on this issue. someone made the case that possession of small amounts of crack cocaine -- and yet he got a very long sentence. [indiscernible] and lots of inmates are making the same argument. and the people who have been in prison for quite a long time. as was terry, who will be released in september. so that's why they decided the case quickly. he is arguing he should be included within the reforms because the whole point of these reforms, going back to the fair sentencing act in 2010, was to reduce the disparity between crack cocaine and cocaine

sentencing, which disproportionately affected black offenders. host: you heard justice breyer say what would stop any criminal from asking the court to resentenced them -- to resentenced them -- to resentence them. what was he getting at? guest: a sort of broader provision, not just about crack cocaine. therefore, if you allow the crack cocaine offenders to be resentenced, lots of other people who were convicted of -- as he mentioned, career criminal offenses, might be able to argue [indiscernible] host: what do you suspect congress will do next now that the court has ruled this way? guest: interestingly, the first

setback was in 2017, when -- but initially, republicans and democrats, unusually these days, agreed and president trump signed it into law, so it might be an issue where there could be bipartisan agreement, if, indeed, there is will there to do what justice sotomayor says they should do in her separate opinion, which is [indiscernible] host: who made up this bipartisan group? do you think that they now, under the biden administration, have the momentum to make these changes? guest: the biden administration supported this -- supported the offenders in this case, which is a switch from with the trump administration said, so the

biden administration would probably be supportive of that. in the senate, there was bipartisan support in the judiciary committee, and they filed a brief supporting the offenders as well, so you would think that maybe the members of the judiciary committee at least might work on this together. host: lawrence turley covers the supreme court for reuters. thank you very much for your time this morning. appreciate it. you heard him talk about this 2018 law that was passed with bipartisan support, signed into law by president trump. it was the first step act. there were people like van jones and other well-known personalities who were advocating for the first step act and this is what the law does. it was signed by the president in 2018. it reduces the mandatory minimum sentences for drug-related crimes for repeat offenders,

establishes mandatory minimums for violent offenses, and expands credit inmates receive for participating in recidivism reduction programs. now, the court ruled unanimously yesterday that this does not apply to certain drug offenders. in light of that, we are asking you, do you think the drug laws should be changed in this country? let's go to ruby in richmond, virginia. what are your thoughts? caller: i think they ought to be changed because my grandmother told me about the 1920's prohibition and it just went underground. it just didn't help. when they repealed it in 1932, you know, alcohol was regulated. i don't think -- i think people ought to be helped and put in programs and stuff like that. host: ruby, if you regulate,

legalize these drugs and then regulate it, how do you respond to people who say they will just become more prolific, the drug use? caller: i don't think that's true. i think that, you know, people want to be helped. i had uncles who were alcoholics. they didn't have any programs in those days. they had to do it on their own. all we want to do is punish people. we need to be more compassionate. try to help people. host: ruby in virginia. andy in vermont, what do you say? caller: we need to totally drop all -- i am very opposed to the law enforcement being dragged into this. they are not the psychologists, the social workers that really need to address the issue. education, opportunity and compassion are the weapons that

will stop heroin, and i am just totally devastated that -- i am semper fi, so leaving the taliban to just manufacture anything they want, and now they are in the state where ephedrine grows in their weeds, apparently. they were photographed by one of our b-52s, 300 in one square mile. we need to wake up. our foreign policy is probably the most effective method against heroin, not the poor little kids being devastated because they cannot read a book and nobody cares anymore. host: joel in mountain home, arkansas, good morning to you. caller: good morning. if you ever have someone killed,

whether it was by alcohol, driving drunk, or someone on drugs that overdosed, and there's many, many thousands of people that we lose each year due to alcohol and drugs. i think we should do just like the vietnamese did during the fall of south vietnam. we need to reeducate these people. we need to take them, just like the north vietnamese did, give them a sack of seeds and -- host: david, good morning. caller: good job. i just want to see the hope for the future, that we will rehab these people. we have a lot of people incarcerated, who have been in jail for 20 something years for crack cocaine.

i sat on a case here in richland and i saw a guy get 26 years for 26 grams of cocaine. that's excessive to me. we can rehab these people, one year, maybe two years. let's see if we can rehab these people ok. host: dave and orlando says drug laws should be severe for the major killer drugs and minor for marijuana. you have robber in michigan saying america is a drug addled country. changing laws will not change that. illegal immigration is a direct result of american consumption of drugs. big pharma, who enabled addictions for 40 years, should pay for this. another says -- the people who want stricter drug laws are the same who don't want the government interfering in their lives. if the government is controlling the sale and distribution of drugs across the board, it will

put cartels out of business. margaret in kansas. margaret, good morning. what do you think? caller: good morning. am i on the air? host: you are. how should drug laws be changed in this country? caller: i think we are getting too lax with drug laws. we have gone from one extreme to the other. lock them up forever or let them be. there has to be a better medium, a middle ground for this, and just letting people out of jail is really not the right way to go. there has to be some consequences for people who deal drugs, selling drugs. this is my main concern. i live in a small town in

kansas. a little over 4000 people. they are basically -- it is bible country out here, but there are a small pocket of drug dealers who prey on people, things like that, who just turned to drugs as a way of escape, and if they don't have consequences, this will never end. just letting them go is the wrong way to go. host: ron in cleveland, tennessee says marijuana needs to be legal in this country because it is no worse than beer or cigarettes. just tax them and that would make the government and marijuana smokers happy, including me.

your thoughts on how drug laws should be changed in this country. we are asking you this this morning because the supreme court yesterday said that the first step act passed under president trump doesn't allow resentencing for all crack convictions. from robert barnes, he writes an opinion -- writes in an opinion written by clarence thomas, the act passed by trump and 2018 makes resentencing available for those sentenced for possession of crack under mandatory heightened punishments. as for those who did not get convicted under those heightened punishments being eligible for resentencing, they do not. justice sotomayor wrote

separately to chastise thomas and the majority for including an unnecessary, incomplete and sanitized history of what lake -- what led congress to impose greater penalties for crack cocaine then powder. -- than powder. sotomayor wrote that the history was far less benign, adding that black defendants were far more likely to be convicted for crack crimes, while powder defendants were more likely to be white. -- the text will not bear that reading, she wrote. fortunately, congress has numerous tools to right this injustice. do you think congress should act now that the supreme court has ruled that their first step act does not include low-level offenders? today need to right, in your opinion, this wrong?

stephen, in columbia, maryland, good morning. caller: they need to rewrite the law to include small amounts of illicit substances. it starts with cannabis. and we are starting to see a lot of progress in that area, but these are -- you know, victimless crimes, and what someone -- and when someone is put in jail for drugs, guess what they are doing in jail? doing drugs. he comes back to this puritanical idea -- it comes back to this puritanical idea that if you do something that makes you feel good, you shouldn't feel guilty, and that's ridiculous. republicans and democrats can both get behind this legislation and reform and, you know, it is something that really has left me wondering what is happening here, like, why are people still

being punished for, you know, these victimless crimes? so i'm happy to see that there is progress being made, but there can always be a little bit more progress. host: all right, stephen. mary in south dakota sending us a text to write how many senators have big pharma in their back pocket? band drug commercials on tv. we need to scrub the dirty floor. big pharma's goal is not the welfare of americans. dn in tacoma, washington. -- dan in tacoma, washington. it is your turn. caller: we should repeal all drug laws. what you do with your body should be your own decision and i think we are enabling people to feel sorry for themselves. what you put in your own body

should be your own thing. the idea of addiction has been highly inflated. too many people stand to make money off of people's misery in the prison system. the whole thing is very bizarre. i agree with the last caller, who said that it should be your own choice. host: ok, dan. look at the reaction from the majority leader chuck schumer, democrat of new york. he wrote on june 8, we must end the federal prohibition on marijuana while ensuring restorative justice for those harmed by the war on drugs. he says he is working with senator booker and senator wyden on comprehensive marijuana reform legislation, so the majority leader of the senate says on the legislative agenda is changing possibly marijuana laws. do you agree or disagree with that?

karen -- sharon in springfield , vermont. go ahead. caller: i believe, myself, because i come from new jersey and i wound up in vermont think god, but i believe -- in vermont thank god, but i believe that if you give these people training for school or something like that, it will help them instead of putting them in prison. given the opportunity for a training program or prison. there are a lot of people in my town on drugs. they need more rehabs. for them -- they need more programs for them. that is what should happen instead of putting them in prison. host: karen in vermont. democrats for liberty posted this on our facebook page. decriminalize all of it. drug prohibition has failed. the drug war targets people of color. mary in north carolina. hi, mary.

caller: hey. how are you doing? host: how should drug laws be changed if at all? caller: first of all, when they say that marijuana takes away pain, it does not. i have been smoking for 45 years and what it does is it will relax you. it will make you calm. if you are stressed out, you will calm down. if they say it takes away your pain, that is because you have never smoked it or they are putting something, chemicals, and it -- and it, to take away the pain. natural marijuana is grown by water and sun only, not by light and chemicals. they put some chemicals in that pot when it sparkles so it will take away your pain.

we will start with medical marijuana. there isn't no medical marijuana. it is just marijuana, because to make it medical, they have to put other drugs into it so it will take away your pain. host: marion. you have been smoking for 45 years. is it legal in north carolina? caller: of course not. host: what do you think should happen? caller: it is really not a bad thing if they don't put chemicals in it. i think they should -- i guess let people make their own choice, you know? try it. they will know for themselves if it takes away pain. people that's never smoked it, maybe they feel that it took away your pain, but if you know

marijuana, it don't take away pain and less they add things to it. -- pain unless they add things to it. host: understood. vinny in albany, georgia writes that the pharmaceutical companies are as guilty as street-level dealers but very few are convicted. steve in anaheim, california, good morning to you, steve. caller: good morning. i don't think you can really change the law. are you still there? host: yeah. you don't think you can change the laws. caller: yeah. this has gone on for too long. look at the pharmaceuticals. you can go get ritalin or adderall, which is cocaine and speed, if you can afford it, but you have to look at the problems that are causing drugs, like of jobs, opportunities. the caller from vermont is

correct. these people, the only business they have is to sell drugs. these are not the drugs from the 60's and 70's. you are seeing fentanyl and all the drugs coming across the border. that's about it, and less you have a question for me. host: well, what do you think should be done? caller: i am listening to the supreme court -- it was it? i forget who was talking. but it shows you how the people in the parkway are so clueless about the drug problem adhere. 10% to 20% of the population does drugs. it doesn't mean they are all addicts or laying around like you see on tv. they function in society but they do drugs. it is a way that people used to smoke, relieve stress, anxiety, whatever. as far as the log goes, you

cannot legislate morals. -- the law goes, you cannot legislate morals. but as for what you can do, i don't have an answer for you. host: all right. we will go to barry in washington, d.c. hi, barry. caller: hey. how is it going? host: good morning. caller: as far as if the law should be changed, it should be changed -- [indiscernible] for people who possess minor amounts of drugs. overall, we don't want cartels, you know, as well. you just don't want to harm the people of the united states, especially, who have worked so hard, and we don't want to have our taxpayer money to go to people who maybe need a little bit of rehab.

so [indiscernible] i think we just need to legalize cannabis and drugs that have been proven to be efficient and, for other drugs that are not efficient, we just need to ban them overall, but also decriminalize small possession. also, target the big people, heroin and cocaine and stuff like that, which are obviously a problem in the u.s. host: all right, barry. vicki and mayfield posts on facebook -- remove marijuana from schedule one. this is an insane law. legalize marijuana at the federal level. about the schedule one status of marijuana, this is from the congressional research service , which is an arm of congress,

researchers that aided congress and their staff in changing laws. they write this -- the controlled substance act places various substances in one of five schedules based on their medical use, potential for abuse and risk for dependence. schedule five are substances regarded least dangerous and addictive, schedule one the most. schedule one substances are considered to have a high potential for abuse with no currently accepted medical use in the u.s. the fda -- the u.s. prohibits the possession and sale of schedule and substances -- of schedule one substances except for studies. they write congress can do two things. it could amend the controlled

substances act to move marijuana to a less restrictive schedule. it could create an entirely new schedule or other category for marijuana. three, remove it entirely from the controlled substances act. if there remains a controlled substance under the csa under -- if marijuana remains a controlled substance under the csa under any schedule that is a conflict with states that have legalize marijuana. bill in florida, good morning. it is your turn. how should drug laws be changed? one last call for bill. i will go on to linda in staten island. caller: good morning. i don't know how much drug laws should be changed, but from my experience, i think the individual possession of marijuana should not be -- folks

, the manufacturing and processing of marijuana, because i know here in my neighborhood, i don't know if it is marijuana and they are processing it, but one of the crops they have going here, it is not marijuana. that's where they should focus the drug laws, on the manufacture. if they are going to regulate it, regulate it from that perspective and not from the individual use. because my guys, i tell them, you shouldn't smoke period, but as i said, in my neighborhood, it's not marijuana. his latest with something -- it is laced with something, i don't know. but from a manufacturing perspective. host: a text that says do not legalize marijuana. those who fought to keep drugs out of the u.s. and nearly lost their lives in the military are

being slapped in the face by those clamoring for legalization. the homeland security committee in the house, on the gop side, sent out this tweet recently saying that the opioid crisis is being made worse by president biden's open border policies. right now, cartels are leveraging their expansive network to smuggle lethal drugs like heroin and fentanyl into our country. jamaal and alabama, what is your opinion on this? caller: my opinion on drug laws is that the drug laws ought to be changed. from the standpoint of focusing on politicians. in terms of how they enforce drug laws. i know here in the state of alabama, we have legalized cannabis, but cannabis, marijuana has been illegal in

the state of alabama for the past 45 years, and people are still going out arresting people for possession of marijuana, and, as a matter of fact, the former attorney general of the state of alabama ran on the fact that marijuana has been legalized in the state of alabama, so i think the focus should be on the politicians in terms of bringing arrest warrants against them for not properly enforcing the law as it is on the books. host: ok. greg in denver, good morning to you. caller: good morning. first, i would like to say we need to get to the root of the cause, those who lobbied to keep marijuana illegal, and these are american corporations willing to

do this and turn good americans into criminals. alcohol corporations lobby against it. tobacco corporations lobby against it. we have the prison industry that lobbies against legalizing marijuana. we have private prison unions lobbying against it. pharmaceutical companies lobbying against it. it is insane that these u.s. corporations have -- can use their lobbying power to turn good americans into felons. it is unbelievable. i still cannot understand why the alcohol and tobacco commissions are in charge of our marijuana laws. if you look at those two substances alone, they kill 700,000 people a year in america, and they are lobbying to keep marijuana illegal? it doesn't make sense. it doesn't seem to me that they care about americans. they don't care so much about americans being hooked on drugs as much as it is which drugs they are hooked on.

the founding fathers he used to plant. george washington, thomas jefferson, abraham lincoln, john quincy adams, bill clinton, george bush, barack obama. look up the statistics. tobacco, 480,000 dead americans last year. 17,000 babies died in the mother's womb because of tobacco. another 56,000 die from secondhand smoke. look at how many people died for marijuana smoke? zero. they want to tell us this is about safety? these marijuana laws are not about safety. they are about profit and control. the american people are starting to see that. we are changing the marijuana laws and the people in power don't like it. host: greg, colorado is one of the first states, and what have been the benefits and

pitfalls of legalizing in colorado? caller: i don't see any. host: the benefits? caller: prison populations down, rest records down -- arrest records down, the courts are as -- courts are not as full. i don't use hard drugs. marijuana doesn't lead to harder drugs. misinformation does come lies due, propaganda does. if you want to make america a better nation, we need to get these corporations and politicians out of the way. our politicians have to listen to us and they do not. i do not see any benefit. we have the largest prison population on earth due to our draconian drug laws.

it makes no sense. how can -- a woman who loses her baby due to tobacco smoke, no one is punishing her, but if a woman gets caught smoking marijuana when pregnant, and there is no death to the fetus, they take the baby away, they punished her, they put her in jail for endangering the life of a fetus. none of that stuff happens with tobacco and alcohol. host: i will leave it there appeared susan in florida texts to say advertising for alcohol needs to be banned, just like cigarettes. in an arizona paper, aps -- a piece -- we can arrest all the kingpins we want but it is a losing strategy. while the crisis at the border

has monopolized headlines, another crisis has unfolded, a flow of illegal and deadly drugs into the u.s. most of these enter our country over the southern border with mexico, transported by or at the behest of powerful criminal organizations based there. as the most recent ambassador to mexico, part of my job was urging mexico to take a more aggressive stance to interdict the flow of drugs and hold accountable those responsible for appeared unfortunately, our narcotics agencies remain trapped in a mindset that the main goal is to catch the bad guys. that objective is laudable, but cannot be the basis of our national narcotic strategy. there are two problems with that approach, one practical and one conceptual. most of the cartel kingpins live in mexico so their apprehension and prosecution necessarily

depends on the actions of the mexican government. and he says in any event, it is far less clear that mexico's law enforcement and judicial institutions are up to the task of prosecuting these people. but the former ambassador writes is that we must focus on education in the u.s. he says efforts begin with education and prevention programs, particularly in american schools. do you agree or disagree? bill in venice, florida, unit. good morning. caller: five. -- hi. we have been through this before with alcohol prohibition at the federal level, and to do that, in a minute the constitution was created -- that, an amendment to the constitution was created. it didn't work. the amendment was replaced by

the 21st, which was a repeal of the 18th. so my point being the same process has not been used with the prohibition of drugs. there was no amendment to the constitution, as they did with alcohol, so in my view, and in any rational view, what has been going on without amending the constitution is totally illegal, and to add to that, no victim, no crime. by the way, i don't use marijuana. i don't smoke tobacco. i don't do any of that, but the constitution is what it is. the federal government has no authority presently to enforce these laws on anybody outside of washington, d.c. or federal employees. host: bill's thoughts in venice, florida. grace texts to write that if drugs and prostitution are

legalized and if everyone is carrying guns and we defined and villain eyes our police, america's enemy has won. i wish prohibition was still in effect. tim? caller: i see a completely different. marijuana. you come home from work. you smoke marijuana. i don't see any problem with that, but the next day, when you get in your car to drive anywhere, you are considered under the influence even though you are not. for 30 days, you are considered under the influence. and we are no more stoned in the morning than a drunk person is when he drives to work the next day. they have to be able to tell how high you are. i mean, it is one thing to get blitzed and it -- and you

shouldn't be out there, but if you smoked a little yesterday, it is unfair that you are considered drunk the next day. host: this text -- laws should be changed. in louisiana, a 48-year-old man was giving a 13 year sentence for having two marijuana cigarette joints, although he had two low-level drug offenses. his prison's hard labor without the opportunity for parole for the equivalent of two marijuana cigarettes. james in buffalo, kentucky, hi there. hi, james. james, are you there? james, good morning to you. caller: yes. thank you. thank you for having me. i am here. host: can you hear me? caller: you have to turn down that television.

host: thank -- you have to turn television. caller: thank you. i know you have a lot of crackheads calling in this morning. marijuana shouldn't illegal. no drug should be legal. that is why this drug is falling apart at the seams. these liberal cities, they let the drugs pile in there to control people. if they legalize it, the kids will get all of it. they don't realize it is a trickle-down effect. all of these people saying there should be programs and stuff for offenders. well, first of all, they have them. before they started using illicit drugs, they had opportunities. people say their main jobs. -- people say there ain't jobs. there are plenty.

i'm sorry our countries taking this sad state of affairs. it is going to get worse. they need to delegalize everything and putting these people where they belong. host: someone in new jersey says it stronger laws don't necessarily equate to a better outcome. my 26-year-old son knew which stores would sell him tobacco at 15. now he is hooked. whose fault? stephen and gladstone michigan says they need to quit treating marijuana the same as heroin or crack. it needs to be legalized, regulated and federally taxed. we can use the money to pay down the debt. john and french ville, pennsylvania -- john, pennsylvania, good morning. caller: good morning. there are so many points.

first, america has to come to the realization that alcohol is a drug. i can drink a gallon of milk and walk a straight line backwards. you give me three fingers of whiskey and i can barely walk. if that is not a drug, then what is? for someone -- again, for someone to say that it is not a drug, it is alcohol, is the same as someone saying it is not a drug, it is cocaine. you have a drug that is capable in sufficient quantities of stopping the heartbeat of an african bull elephant in alcohol. it is ludicrous. there are so many aspects.

does a person own his own body? and when people say more training and education and opportunities, that's fine. that's great. there is so much inequality in this country, but there's also -- people need to recognize that a lot of people, not all, enjoy different forms of intoxication. it is natural. animals do it. ask people that drink wine. host: john, what should be done? caller: first off, america, this country is so bent on prosecution of people.

if someone -- you shouldn't throw someone in a cage because they are getting intoxicated on something that's not legal according to our politicians. host: i will move on to larry, in eugene, oregon. good morning. caller: good morning. i have been listening to your callers. fascinating as always. listen, like so much of american law, our drug laws are irrational and, frankly, very stupid. they are counterproductive. they don't work. they hurt people far more than they help people. we are spending a fortune, as we all know, on a drug war that has never worked. remember prohibition? same thing. we are creating criminals. we are creating social conditions that harm the entire society.

we are doing it to ourselves. and i think complete decriminalization of all drugs -- they can still be regulated. you don't have to throw people in prison. we regulate cigarettes and alcohol. we regulate automobiles. to some extent, we regulate guns. what we're doing is harming individuals, societies, whole regions like appalachia have suffered from this. we are breaking up families. there is no point to our drug laws. they protect no one, and they hurt many. therefore, i propose entire decriminalization, a complete overhaul of the drug laws everywhere. it has to start with the feds. host: all right. look at nbc's reporting. house introduces bill to decriminalize cannabis and create social equity programs.

they write that after voting overwhelmingly last year to decriminalize cannabis at the federal level, congressional leaders reintroduced a bill friday to strike marijuana from the list of controlled substances and invest in communities disproportionately affected by the so-called drug war. the marijuana opportunity reinvestment and expungement act of 2021 would also eliminate criminal penalties, clear criminal records and create social equity programs focused on repairing damage to individuals and communities impacted by decades of prohibition. the bill was introduced by judiciary committee chair jerry natalie -- jerry nadler, democrat of new york. the bill failed last year in the senate, where a companion bill also died. a second senate bill is expected to be introduced later this year with the backing, as you heard earlier, of senate majority leader chuck schumer and senators cory booker of new york

and ron wyden of oregon. it contains social justice measures intended -- measures, including something that would -- it would set a 5% tax on cannabis retail sales that would increase to 8% over the years. revenue would go to the opportunity trust fund, which would pay for job training, reentry services, legal aid and health education programs for impacted communities. let's hear from lewis in arizona. hi. good morning to you. caller: hi. i am from arkansas and i am for legalizing marijuana only, or maybe something else that helps people, but there needs to be something because you cannot have marijuana legalized in one state but not the next, making heroes out of that state but making criminals out of this state, and you know, i would

legalize marijuana right now for everyone. it is a free weed. no one controls it, only god. and only the person whose hand it is in. host: let me read greg in cleveland, ohio. he writes the neighbor sold crack next to my house growing up because they were high school dropouts and more made more money -- and made more money as opposed to getting a job. the house was condemned and torn down for the drug laws do not need to be changed. it is the people. what do you say, eldon? caller: good morning. host: go ahead. caller: i am totally against the sale, the legalize of marijuana, because the people that have invested in the drugs.

what are we going to invest in, pork and beans? i am against it. if you have one joint of marijuana, i think you should do at least 20 years, because if they ever legalize because if they ever legalize marijuana, it will bankrupt a lot of people. what are we going to invest in? host: we are at the top of the hour and we will take a break. when we come back, we will speak with matt lewis about the political challenges facing both parties. later, in discussing the book, battle for the soul. we will be right back.

♪ >> coming live today on the c-span network, the house needs at 10:00. at noon they a word congressional gold medals to police officers who protected the capital on january 6. on c-span2, a comfort nation -- a confirmation vote. taking up the president's nominee for personnel management. that starts live at 10:00 a.m. the senate judiciary committee takes up a reform bill. at two :00 p.m., the oversight committee continues into the january sixth attack on the capital.

>> washington journal continues. host: matt lewis joins us. you can find him at matt lewis.org or on twitter. we are talking about party politics. you wrote in a recent piece that the honeymoon is over for the administration. reality has set in. why? guest: joe biden wins the presidency. that gives everyone a big boost. whoever wins the presidency thinks that they have a mandate but usually they do not. his mandate was do not be donald trump, but people who run for president have all sorts of ideas and plans, but his agenda was going to be fairly modest until he won those senate seats

in georgia. all of a sudden, he has democrats controlling both houses of congress. there was a sense of, we could be lbj. we can pass a lot of progressive legislation. it was not a good thing for joe biden. the expectations were raised. it just steamrolled republicans. it set the expectation that this would be easy. it has not been. host: you wrote that joe biden can quit trying to be fdr or lbj. he can reinvent himself and rewrite his own narrative.

he can start acknowledging that he was elected to study the ship, not -- steady the ship, not rebuild it. guest: i believe that joe biden's mandate was, do not be donald trump. it was not, pass a lot of legislation. there are progressives. i do not think that is why joe biden won the presidency. it was a presentation of folks, some of whom voted for donald trump last time. there was a sense in america that donald trump was very chaotic and we needed to return to normalcy. there is this golden opportunity

. in some ways, that was a trap for joe biden. success is measured by how much you accomplish and how many points you put on the scoreboard. the problem is that was never joe biden's raison d'etre. i think that joe biden, by virtue of being himself can do that. it is about expectations. success means passing a bunch of legislation. they might be disappointed.

lbj and fbi both had overwhelming majority of democrats to work with. joe biden has a very of -- very narrow majority. i think it is time to reset the expectations. i feared for his sake that if his success is measured solely by how much legislation he passes, it might be disappointing. host: call in this morning and let us know how you think the president can be consequential. if you voted for him, i am curious as to what you think the president can do to be consequential. or if you disagree, those that supported the president, he flipped five states.

he flipped four senate seats. so why not go for big change? >> part of the problem is, i do not think he can do it. -- guest: part of the problem is, i do not think he can do it. you are what your record says it is. i might be proven wrong, but the problem for now is that even to pass things via reconciliation --there are specific types of legislation that can pass. just to do that, he needs to have all 50 democratic senators supporting him, and he does not have that on a lot of things. just to name the most prominent

democrats who are not necessarily on board with everything that joe biden might want to pass. if he can do it, he can do it. i am skeptical of the fact that he can pass a lot of landmark legislation. when i look back at other presidents who are considered your great in recent history, i think of ronald reagan. he passed a lot of legislation and did things like tax cuts and amnesty, which may not be popular with callers today. they consequential president. when you look at what are the most important things that reagan did, there were things like winning the cold war and restoring faith in america. they are not legislative bills,

per se. these are things that encompass a lot of things, including rhetoric. that is what he does. it is a big deal and it will not require congress to make that a victory for him, if he ends up having a good showing. i am not suggesting that joe biden should give up legislation. a bunch of things via executive order. i think it is time now. he has hit a bit of a wall to evaluate what he once sprang from his presidency and maybe reset expectations. host: help explain the role that

joe manchin plays. guest: he is a u.s. senator from west virginia, a former governor of west virginia, a democrat, sort of an old-school democrat. from the days when west virginia was a predominantly democratic state. obviously a rural state that donald trump won by almost 40 points last time. politically speaking, he has different political incentives than other democrats, certainly cortez, a more progressive member. joe manchin is more conservative and old-school. he probably, on principle, has different ideas. he was meant toward by robert

byrd, the former senator from west virginia who was an unofficial or official historian and had great belief in institutions, including things like the filibuster and preserving things like the filibuster. it informs the politics today and is part of the controversy. a lot of the anger that democrats have towards him. host: you wrote this article. abortion is why never trump republicans cannot work with democrats. what does that mean? guest: there is a sense out there that those who are never trump should give up on the republican party and throw in with democrats and basically

become democrats. there is a schism. 10 people in america who are never trump conservative. most of them live in or near washington dc. i consider myself loosely part of this group. there is even disagreement among us and some never trump conservatives think that the party is long gone. therefore, we should join with the democrats and vote for joe biden. others --even elected officials, people like liz cheney or the former congresswoman barbara comstock. they tried to reform it and restore it. my argument has been -- it is a

debatable question, whether or not the republican party could ever be restored to its former glory. in terms of joining with the democrats, there are a lot of reasons not to, if you are conservative. the one issue that i think is a moral issue is the pro-life issue. the democrats -- joe biden actually was a pro-life democrat. later, he was pro-choice. he opposed using tax funding. he has reversed his position on that. even if you hate a lot of things that donald trump and the party has done, it has a vastly

different worldview. host: let's go to henry in michigan. go ahead. caller: good morning. here is the way that i see things. joe biden and the democrats have a very unique problem. that is that about 70% of the republican party is fascist. they have authoritarian leanings because of their devotion to donald trump. joe biden is a seasoned politician. messaging is the number one key. they have legislation that they are trying to pass. they have a way to message, to

get the message across to people that it is the republicans that are obstructing this progressive improvement that joe biden wants bang to build america back better. joe manchin has to do the bipartisanship route. he has to play the theater route. we have to show the american people who it is. in our social infrastructure, in our police reform, we have been retarded as a society by a small group of the american body politics. they are extremists on the far right.

guest: democracy is messy. if we had a dictator, we could do infrastructure quickly. we have a very messy system. some people might even call that gridlock. i'm not sure if he is engaging in theater. i'm not sure if we can play it out in front of the american public. kind of a permission structure. it is possible.

the one thing i do agree with is what we need is for some leadership. i do not want to criticize joe biden. i do not think any of our recent presidents have done this. we need to go to the american public. use the bully pulpit. just kind of call on the public to go over the heads of the other party. again, we live in a very polarized country right now. to push the opposing party to do the right thing. if joe biden could say, we need

to do infrastructure and went over the american public sufficiently, that would be a positive thing. it has not happened in america in a long time. host: a bipartisan block in the senate sent to sell its compromise. what is the possibility of this getting passed and signed by the president? guest: this will tell us a lot. either republicans are engaging in good faith, which is to say there are a handful of republicans, people like susan collins, mitt romney and others who are sincerely negotiating in good faith and are willing to make a deal. or they are not. maybe they are stalling and this is a ploy to drag out, run out the clock on joe biden so that

he cannot accomplish things. we might be about to find out. i do not know the answer to it. i hope that republicans are just holding to their principles. i shared concerns about the price tag on some of these things. i think joe biden had about six trillion dollars in mind. you do not think that there are going to be problems with the budget and inflation and other externalities? they have a defensible point about wanting to control. i think -- we do need infrastructure. i am curious as to how this plays out. if republicans do this whole lucy pulling the football away from charlie brown at the last minute act, that might persuade

someone like joe manchin to go ahead and support the democrats, if they act unilaterally. >> 19 6 -- color: i remember a man went to jail for smoking marijuana and 1970, i was sworn in. the very next year, they decriminalized marijuana and i think around 1980, they passed a law that you could have marijuana, but you could not deposit it in a bank. they put tax so high that it was cheaper to buy it on the street. they said that they attempted to

bring america back to what it was. remember, i have 80 years on this earth and politics have never been good. h we were talking -- host: we were talking about this. putting the money back into communities that have been hurt. chuck schumer is looking at legislation as well. he think they can get on board? >> i think it is definitely possible. this is one issue that we have talked about the cultural warriors. the fact that this is not a terribly controversial issue anymore speaks to how things have shifted. there was a time when this was a hot button issue and people

would have been very divided about this as a gateway drug. the fact that i do not think i have heard any color yet who opposes decriminalizing marijuana. there are a lot of republicans who would be fine with it. it will be curious. one trend that we are seeing is a spike in violent crime in major cities. this is something i am keeping an eye on. it seems like inflation, the border crisis and crime would be the three things that i am watching that joe biden really has to be wary of. you can imagine that if crime becomes a major issue in america , public opinion could shift

again on the issue of marijuana, but as of right now, i think you will get plenty of republicans who support this. host: what is the impact of marjorie greene. there was a holocaust comparison after she visited the holocaust museum. you have democrats who wanted to put a resolution on the floor, center --censuring her for those comments. republicans wanting to censure democrats like congresswoman omar for her rhetoric. speaking of marjorie taylor greene, what is the impact of her election on the republican party? guest: i was happy to see her apologize. that is something that is rare

in politics today. we have seen a message from donald trump that you never apologize. that was sort of the mantra. it was noteworthy that she apologized. it is good that she did it. otherwise, i think i kind of look at marjorie taylor greene as more of a symptom of a broken political system then someone who will be driving things that much. i know that she drives a lot of news coverage because of her outrageous rhetoric, but mainly, the take away is that she is a symptom of a very dysfunctional political system. the fact that she got kicked off of her committees and still raised over $3 million in the first quarter speaks to some

real institutional problems. it used to be that there were party bosses in smoke filled rooms. they decided who the nominee's work. there were some problems with that system. he probably got some competent, experienced people nominated to represent your party. we have a different system now where you can be super outrageous, and you can even get kicked off of your committees, and your political party -- the bigwigs in your party, the gatekeepers and elites -- the leaders of your party do not have much leverage over you. it is almost like a utopian thing. they can crowd source and fund you.

it is actually really bad. we need some gatekeepers because the inmates are running the asylum. i think that marjorie taylor greene is probably a good example of that. host: i think party politics could be tempered if the administration made changes to secure the border. we need acknowledgment of operation warp speed from him. guest: not everything that donald trump did was bad. some of the things that donald trump did, they --take the border. the implementation of it was flawed and uncompassionate. then i think joe biden made a mistake coming in, signaling that the border was open again.

that borders do not even exist, so we had this rush of people and migrants to the border which led to a humanitarian crisis. even kamala harris is saying, do not come to the border. she is angering some progressives. what we have to do -- i agree. it is bad if joe biden cannot control the border. inflation, crime --a border crisis is not good for joe biden. what --if a country is going to be successful, we need a lot of immigrants and legal immigrants. we need to control our border. you cannot have people coming into your country illegally. you are not a country if you

cannot control your border. we need to be humane and compassionate about how we police it. if people are fleeing, we need to have a system to rapidly adjudicate that and determine if they can stay or not. i guess i am a moderate on this. we have to control the border. we need to find a way to do it compassionately. we have not been able to strike that balance in a long time. host: robert is a republican. welcome to the conversation. caller: perfect segue to my question. joe biden. does he support sanctuary cities? if he does, it is in violation of current immigration law. how can he be sworn to uphold the laws and ignore sanctuary

cities? for the vice president to say, do not come here when you have dozens of cities that are saints immigrants, if you can get in here, break our laws and game the system, we will take care of you. i think the president is doing a great disservice to america. can you explain how sanctuary cities benefit america? guest: i am against sanctuary cities. i do not know where joe biden stands on it. it is one of the benefits of joe biden is that she has not --during the presidency, during the presidential primary season, when a lot of democrats like kamala harris where endorsing the medicare for all and defunding police, kind of

sticking out progressive controversial positions that were very popular on woke twitter, joe biden resisted the urge, or if he supported things, there were always caveats and nuances. it was hard to label joe biden. people want to call joe biden medical, socialist and marxist, and it is kind of laughable to say that. he is a democrat and a liberal. you could argue that in some ways, because of the way our politics have shifted, the most progressive president, but he has also avoided many landmines, those issues that are hot button issues. we are probably one google search away from knowing the

answer, but it certainly has not hurt him so far. host: let's go to our democratic color. caller: good morning. my comments are as follows. we are constantly talking about bipartisanship, however the republican's mission is to make sure that the democrats are not able to implement anything. their whole, entire goal is to block joe biden from doing anything, and every time a democrat gets in office, the republican party does this. they talked about tax, tax, tax or always spending. let's look at the debt that we are currently in because of the last administration. it boggles my mind that my percentage of taxes is higher

than those of proctor and gamble. i am just amazed, yet we continue to bash the democratic party by saying that they will not do anything. your entire goal is to shut it down. >> it definitely seems that way. if you go back and you actually look at barack obama's presidency, there was a lot more bipartisan accomplishment than people appreciate or realize. we think of these issues that get covered on cable news. there are a lot of things that happened in congress, a lot of bipartisan legislation that does not get through the headlines.

i do think that the way to win power is to stop the other party from accomplishing anything. it is a different dynamic. there was a time when democrats had been really dominant. they controlled the house for something like four decades. they were complicit in this. newt gingrich came along and said, no, we are not going to take deals and take our share of the crumbs left over. we are going to fight. that probably began the political era that we are in, for better or worse. i think that part of the problem

is that there is not a dominant political party. since 2000, we had the 2000 election, which was obviously incredibly close. we had control of the house, back and forth, control of the senate --that has not been one political party that has emerged as the dominant party. some of that is because republicans have been able to win by virtue of things like the electoral college. it is beside the point. neither party has been able to put together a coalition that would make them dominate. if one political party is dominant for long enough, the other party will realize that

they have to cooperate. that has not been the case. the lesson has been that obstruction works. if you prohibit the party in power from accomplishing things, then you will get back in power. that is obviously such a horrible system, but that is kind of where we are right now. caller: hello. how are you doing? i just want to say, if you do not go back in history and look at political parties, you do not realize what we have here today. my history with the political party started with eisenhower. and you go through all the different republicans and democratic presidents. back in the day, some of them

had the same ideas of low taxes producing a viable economy. now you move through nixon. he had good ideas and policies. moving through the history, now we are here with the democratic party. if you have a party that is dominant for a long period of time, the other party has to come in and cooperate to get anything done. that works for both parties. if you do not work together, you come to where you are at now. the democrat party gone so far left that they want socialism or communism. they want to be the dominant party. all the other parties, they would have to come in along with the program, but what you have

to vote for, you do not vote for the ideology. evoke for the policies. if the person has good policies, it works for you. i do not care if you are republican or democrat, but i do not think you could get a communist to do the right thing because they do not care about how you vote. they just care about your money and that you work for the state. guest: a few things there. it is interesting to see how the medical parties align and reform. in many ways, the republican party is really focused on winning working-class white men. republicans --donald trump made some strides there, but the working class white and populist

vote. the caller mentioned kennedy and nixon. nixon created the epa and price control. this is a weird business. just the way that things shift, if we are not careful, we could lose track of that. the color also talked about things like communism. i have to say, again, if one political party were to be dominant for long enough, it is like a bully on the playground. you do not have a lot of fight if there is an established bully. it is when the different sides think that there is a competition.

among the many scary developments that we are seeing is that these two sides are becoming more radical. we have had colors report -- referring to republicans as having an authoritarian or fascist strain. the last caller talked about democrats as communists. in modern american policies, we were much more centrist. we called bill clinton a communist, but certainly right now, i think joe biden has a moderate temperament. when you look at people like those on the left and those on the right, they are not president, but you can begin to see how the extremes in our

politics are certainly becoming more mainstream and prominent. caller: yes. good morning. two things. everybody keeps talking about communism, but this is a fascist government i'm aware politics are hand in hand. that is why corporations --nobody goes to jail, but they want to be known as a person. look at the way that wells fargo does business. they should not be allowed. let's get back to immigration and the illegal situation. this is a definition of racism. it is to control the black community. that is exactly what you are

doing. you are telling your citizens, not only must we learn english but spanish. you are telling them that we can come over here and if you want english, press one. this is crazy, but it is a racist situation because the biggest employer of illegals is the government. that is crazy. it is like getting a license and saying, we are going to automatically register you to vote. host: we will leave it there. guest: i do not think immigration is a conspiracy theory. maybe democrats like a lot of immigration because they assume --maybe wrongly that immigrants will be more likely to vote for democrats, but i do not think there is a grand conspiracy

theory to keep down african-americans. there is always just been this assumption that the way to win hispanic votes and other minority votes is to be pro-immigration and pro-amnesty. i'm not saying that this color as -- is representative of a large swath of voters, but you can see that there are americans out there who are minorities, who see immigration, illegal immigration differently. you could be someone who immigrated to this country from central america and resent other people coming in illegally. they might end up driving down the price of labor. it is a complicated issue.

the fact that donald trump did surprisingly well among hispanics in places like florida speaks to this notion --this whole idea that the way to attract immigrants and minorities is to be open borders -- that is not necessarily a correct analysis. host: matt lewis is a senior columnist and you can find him on mat lose.org on the daily beast.com and on twitter. thank you for the conversation. coming up, next. what have been the lessons learned from the pandemic? nearing 600,000 deaths. we ask you, what are the lessons learned? if you have lost a loved one to covid, dial in& --dial in (202)

748-8002. pres. biden: much of the country is returning to normal and our economic growth is leading the world. the numbers of cases and deaths are dropping dramatically, but there are still too many lives being lost. we are averaging the last seven days. 370 deaths is significantly lower than at the peak of this crisis, but it is still a real tragedy. we are approaching a sad milestone. almost 600,000 lost lives because of covid-19 in america. my heart goes out to all of

those who have lost a loved one. i know that black hole seems to consume you, that fills up your chest when you lose someone that was close to you. i continue to say to america, if you have not been vaccinated, get vaccinated. get vaccinated as soon as possible. we have plenty of vaccinations and sites. we have more work to do and now is not the time to let our guard down. please get vaccinated as soon as possible. we have had enough pain. >> c-span's landmark cases explores the stories and constitutional drama behind significant supreme court decisions. for the next few weeks, watch key episodes from our series.

fred challenged the policy for forcibly interning people of japanese descent during world war ii. the court favored the u.s. watch on c-span, c-span.org or listen on the c-span radio app. >> fbi director christopher wray will be talking about the january sixth attack on the capital. he will testify before the oversight and reform committee. live coverage begins on c-span3, online at c-span.org or live on the c-span radio app. >> washington journal continues. host: as the country approaches 600,000 deaths, we ask, what are

the lessons learned from this global pandemic? dial in at (202) 748-8000. mountains -- mountain pacific at (202) 748-8001. if you have lost someone to covid, call in at (202) 748-8002 . 600,000 in the u.s. the u.s. on monday approached the 600,000 death mark. a stark reminder of the enduring told. the remarkable progress against coronavirus thanks to a concerted vaccination effort has lifted restrictions and a sense that the pandemic is over. the seven day average is less than 1/7 of the 3300 daily

fatalities during the gas leak --during the peak. washington post with headlines, virus retreating in places that vaccinated but keeping a grip on those that do not. nationally, 43 percent of eligible americans are vaccinated. the country is averaging less infections per day. levels not seen since the early days of stay-at-home orders in march of 2020. reporting fewer than 30 5% of residents are fully immunized. from one of those counties in missouri, less than a quarter of the population of roughly 30000 and is fully vaccinated and reported nearly 90 new infections, an increase after

months of decline. lessons learned from this pandemic. that is ever a question to you this morning. what are the lessons learned? caller: hello. how are you? i am from new york. i was part of the first clinical trial. living in harlem, it rolled out disastrously, just like everything else that rolled out. people were still dying, even after it rolled out, but we had expanded access to these pills. you could get on it for free. i did not see any of that done. it did not expand access.

a lot of people could have gotten on it for free. host: relate this to the covid-19 pandemic. caller: the pandemic, the way that it rules out, there was no trust in it. there was no trust in it. host: in the vaccination effort. caller: exactly. even i was skeptical. we still do not have an aids vaccine and it has been years. for them to come out with something so quick, of course everybody got skeptical. i live in washington heights. they are scared they will not be able to have kids. i do not know how all these rumors were able to get out. i do not know if it was the republican party and trump

putting doubt in the vaccine. i still think that is going on. but just the way it all came out , i met fauci before. if i were to tell him --there was just too much information, and the information was boggled. host: what could have dr. fauci done differently? >> i am trying to think of what he could have done differently. it was such a panic mode. i think he could have called the aids community. he really could. host: ok. i will go to janice. caller: the lesson i learned was

that trump lied to us in the first place. he said it was a democratic hoax. he lied and did not tell us the truth. this man is still walking around free after he killed over five hundred thousand people. if that had been a democrat, they would have wanted to put him up. dr. fauci said what trump would not say. he went around and tried his best. when he got out there trying to say the truth, trump got mad and angry at the one to tell the truth. that man lied and people died. trump lied and people died. schools closed down because of donald trump. he needs to be held accountable.

host: it went into effect tuesday, putting the state into compliance. pending updated guidance. california is at a crossroads. setting aside 12 billion. evictions can getc away with anything. o be held accountable.

uld pending -- stephen, what have been the lessons learned? caller: this is like a previous caller, a second pandemic that i have survived. i am well over 31 years with the aids virus. i was very involved from the beginning, trying to seek help and get answers, trying to get rid of all the homophobia going on. i cannot imagine any american watching the news during that period of time, who have relatives who went through polio health and issues that does not want to take medications that are readily available, including the vaccine. it is all trump's fault and he has not even come out to tell his followers to take the vaccine. he does not want biden to have a

win. it is a sad state of affairs. host: lessons learned? caller: we should never allow a trump or anybody affiliated with him to have any power in our government. that is our lesson to be learned. host: next: from ohio. -- next caller from ohio. caller: we have a poor educational system. people do not seem to understand scientific methods. they do not seem to believe in science. when this virus came out, they called a the novel coronavirus. this means new. scientists had studied it from the start because it was different than a lot of the other viruses. there were consequences but the scientists, when they first discovered some things, the cdc

said absolutely, everyone should wear a mask. science is testing and testing to see if the other person was right. you need to do it this way. people do not understand the scientific method. host: rebecca says on twitter, you cannot ignore a pandemic. that is what she learned. caller from oregon, you are next. caller: what i learned is what the previous caller said about how uneducated parts of this country are. all the taxes that we pay for school have gone to waste because people do not understand the danger. dr. fauci tried to educate the people, but he was controlled by the political environment.

many times, i saw him on the stage with trump. trump was so nervous that dr. fauci was going to tell us more than he wanted us to know. it is a sad lesson that we learn that they are willing to let 500,000 americans die, rather than tell us the truth and tell us what to do. i learned not to trust anybody from the republican party. host: today in the opinion section of the new york times, two senators writing "there will be another pandemic, are we prepared for it?" this is from senator bob menendez and senator susan collins. they are right that the devastating events of september 11 two thousand one shook the united states to its core and sparked immediate and consequential action to protect american lives. congress formed the independent

9/11 commission to investigate the security missteps that contributed to the attack and to issue prescriptions for what we as a country could do to prevent future attacks of foreign terrorism on american soil. the death toll from the covid pandemic is now more than 200 times the death toll of the 9/11 attacks, but congress has yet to establish similar blue-ribbon commissions to investigate the vulnerabilities of our public health systems and issue guidance for how we as a nation can better protect the american people from future pandemics. we are just now beginning to emerge from a pandemic that has claimed more than 600,000 mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, spouses, friends, neighbors, and coworkers in the u.s. alone. it will claim more lives before it ends and the economic costs of the pandemic have yet to be fully realized even though we have finally begun to reopen owing to the swift pace of vaccinations and the flow of billions of stimulus money into

the economy. it is not too soon to call for an independent 9/11 style commission, do you agree with these two senators? that we need if we are going to have an independent commission to investigate? robin and altona, florida. what do you think are the lessons? caller: i think that americans are uninformed, and we don't go out and research information, we just listen to what is either on the news stations that we choose to listen to and people don't do their independent research. and follow the money. sometimes information that is given out there, if you follow where the money comes from that's the most useful information you can get. i'm vaccinated and my family has all gotten vaccinated. i'm a republican and my husband

is a democrat, so we are a house divided but we still listen to one another and we don't always agree on policies, but we still try to do our own research and form our own opinions. i watched a documentary on the bee gees. it's about truth and he was talking about his younger brothers and what had happened so there would be three different stories because they all have their own truth. the people need to listen to one another and do their own research and let's get america back on track, love your neighbor. even if you don't agree on the same things. try to work with one another, that's what i've found. >> another tweet from a viewer who writes in america making money is more important than saving lives. the front page of the wall street journal, the legacy of

the lockdown, $11 trillion in debt. before the pandemic u.s. companies were borrowing heavily at low interest rates and covid-19 lockdown triggered a recession and they pulled back and borrowed more and paid less. interest rates on corporate debt plummeted to their lowest level on record, bringing a surge in new bonds. nonfinancial companies issued 1.7 trillion dollars in bonds in the u.s.. by the end of march total deaths stood at $11.2 trillion, about half the size of the u.s. economy. the torrent of inexpensive money benefited all types of businesses, cruise operators, airlines, and movie theaters whether the pandemic by replacing lost revenue with correct -- with cash raised from bond sales. susan in kittery, maine, what do you say, what are the lessons

learned? caller: good morning. i'm susan, from maine. host: susan, very hard to hear you. maybe you can call back on a more stable line. doug in oregon. caller: morning. i think some lessons learned would be our supply line for the medical part of our country in that the outsourcing of things like n95 masks would be an example we had them warehouse, then apparently those got shut down for financial reasons and then they were made overseas in a variety of things that could have stemmed the spread of the virus. i think another lesson is that

nature itself will have the last word. we can only hope to contain it. we can't control it. host: you may be interested on this piece from cnbc, another shipping crisis looms on covid fears in southern china. businesses and consumers bracing for another shipping crisis as a virus outbreak in southern china affects deliveries threatening to drive up costs again. waiting times for vessels at the container port in china have skyrocketed from an average waiting time of .5 days to 16 days. linda from new jersey. caller: good morning. i wanted to remind people that when they are talking about reinstituting a commission to investigate the covid and what we should do in the next

pandemic, i wanted to remind people that president obama, after the ebola and sars scares had an over 90 page report on exactly what to do when there is a next pandemic, and it was trump and -- in his infinite wisdom who decided to throw that out and toss it aside. why don't they just look at what obama had already had in place and had we had a decent president, maybe this wouldn't have gotten to 600,000 deaths. host: dave from tennessee, dave? good morning. caller: good morning, thank you for taking my call. it's a real shame that politics is still so heavily involved in this and there is so much rage out there. i'm tickled that we had a smart

enough man to get the vaccine in place. the pandemic thing is going to play out and show that -- it's going to shoaf ouchi -- it's going to show fauci's true hand. there's stuff that's coming out. the press has instilled fear like we have never seen before into the population. we have a tremendous amount of rage and frustration going on. we need to understand that we are all part of the human race, and we have a common foe.

we have a lot of things in common that would help us solve most all of our problems. host: ok, dave. in the national health section of usa today their headline from yesterday, breaking news, the novavax vaccine is over 90% effective at blocking some variants of the virus. the front page of this morning in the usa today health section. this piece in the wall street journal. companies are pushing staff on their vaccination status. companies are stepping up the pressure on workers to get vaccinated, not necessarily with mandates, but with strong nudges. for months many employers have attempted to coax workers into receiving a covid-19 vaccine. companies dangled cash, time off, and other prizes to encourage vaccinations. executives made personal appeals at town hall meetings. now some of those efforts are

taking a more concerted and urgent tone. while most employers have not ordered staff to get vaccinated many are asking workers to report their vaccination status or are implementing policies that restrict the activities of unvaccinated workers. diane in mechanicsburg, pennsylvania. good morning, what do you think the lessons learned are? caller: good morning. i think the lessons learned are we never would have gotten the vaccine out this fast had trump and his administration not reduced the regulations and pushed everything through. the other take away is i think the media has caused us to lose faith in our government. vaccine has always been good. all of these factors have caused us to be where we are today. science is science. it doesn't change.

americans wanted to know the science and all trump gave them was politics. everything trump did was not going to work. here we are, 600,000 deaths because people are unsure to take the vaccine because of trump and are unsure of how many deaths have happened in america. i think we need a reckoning with the media and what i think they are pushing down our throats. host: all right, diane. as you have seen in the papers this morning, the headlines about reaching 600,000 deaths in this country. yesterday speaker pelosi led the house in a moment of silence for those 600,000 victims. take a look. >> the chair asks all members in the chamber as well as members and staff throughout the taboo

-- arise for a moment of silence in remembrance of the 600,000 americans who have passed away from the covid-19 virus. host: moment of silence on the house floor to mark 600,000 deaths in this country. we will go to jackie who is in bethlehem, pennsylvania. this is how the pandemic and the headlines around it are pate -- playing out on front pages across the country. we will go to richard in

rockville, maryland. your turn. caller: i'm responding to the gentleman from tennessee. it's primarily republicans that have been politicizing a health crisis and trying to make political hay out of every single issue whether it's masks or vaccines. you still have tucker carlsen on fox telling people he doesn't know if the vaccine works. it's a public health issue, and most democrats have not made an issue of following dr. fauci and the cdc, but the republicans, everyone of them are talking about the issue of masks our freedom. that's a false issue. 600,000 people died because of this. host: lessons learned from the global covid-19 pandemic, what are they? michael in florida, texas says the number one lesson is to get healthy. overweight humans

disproportionately affected. we will save a fortune on future health care costs. mike, we will go to you next in florida. what do you think are the lessons learned? caller: the lessons are be smart, look out for your family. if you hear something bad out there you have to take action. the number of covid deaths i think is over exaggerated. i think any medical professional will tell you that. the flu kills 220,000 a year. it became a political weapon. i believe donald trump was doing a good job at the time, i believe dr. fauci was doing the best he coded the time. i'm not sure the experts knew how to handle this and at the same time they were trying to keep the economy going as best as possible and we see the effects today that businesses have been wiped out and major cities have been wiped out and the group to blame is the

communist chinese government. they knew they had this and they shut down all flights within the country of china and cap the international flights going for 60 days. they spread this virus because they knew they needed help for someone to come up with a vaccine and it was america who came up with the vaccine. stop pointing fingers at dr. fauci or president trump, they did the best job they could. i believe the biden administration is doing the best job they can and the american people were the victims from the chinese government. host: a headline in the wall street journal, vaccines offer significant protection against covid-19 delta variant according to the u.k. analysis. public health officials in the u.k. say they are increasingly confident that vaccines offer significant protection against the delta variant. hopeful sign is a highly transmissible strain spreads across the world. separate studies from researchers in england and scotland found that while

protection against infection was somewhat diminished compared with more established a variance, two doses of vaccine offered considerable protection against severe illness and hospitalization. the findings are the latest indicator that the covid-19 vaccines are able to protect people against new variance despite early concerns that the variance might be able to elude them. they u.k. prime minister on monday said a planned easing of public health restriction slated for june 21 are now being delayed for up to four weeks after cases of the delta variant began rising rapidly in the country. brent in nashville, tennessee. caller: good morning, greta. i'm in boston now thanks to the pandemic. what i learned like everyone else is the inequalities in medicine and health care distribution. the supply chains and the availability of fresh food.

half of the people born now are going to make it to 100. a third are going to have diabetes. that is my prediction, that half will have diabetes. what is health? what is national security, the health of the people. i think we should socialize agriculture. we should socialize medicine. health is wealth. it's food and exercise, it's mental, it's social. it's a lot of different factors. each person is different. we used to have a presidential award for physical fitness. i don't know when that went away. that and home economics, teaching people how to save and how to spend and to not get into debt. what is national security but the wealth and the health of the people? host: kevin in d.c., good morning. caller: morning.

from my personal experience, in november i lost my sense of taste. i found out from my favorite coffee ice cream it tasted like dirt and coffee still tastes like dirt. i wanted to say something about the covid untruths coming from trump, the color that complained about the media, they get it wrong sometimes like with the russia report, and they did not retract a lot of that. [indiscernible] i just want to say welcome, or appreciation, she just got out of prison yesterday. i hope biden gets her a pardon. host: we are going to take a break, when we come back we will talk with edward isaac, a staff

writer and political correspondent with the atlantic. he has a book called battle for the soul. inside the democrats campaign to defeat trump. we will be right back. ♪ [fireworks] >> today, testimony from former director of u.s. citizenship and immigration services nina rodriguez and others on immigration policy in front of

the senate judiciary committee live on c-span three, online at c-span.org, or listen live on the c-span radio app. >> washington journal continues. host: joining us is edward isaac dovere the author of "battle for the soul: inside the democrats' campaigns to defeat trump." what is this book about? edward: we tried to sum it up in the title and the subtitle. it's a story about what happened with the democratic party, shocked and dispirited by trump winning in 2016 and the path back from that to what is at least for right now power in washington. biden in the white house, democrats in control of the house and senate. how did biden become the nominee? what was happening within the democratic party? what are the coalitions that were made or alliances, and what were the fissures exposed, and

tell us not just what happened, but what is happening now ongoing. in the way things are in the party. it's also an in depth human story about all these candidates who were running, 20 six people who ended up running for the democratic nomination for president and getting to see them behind the scenes and what they were like and going through in the moment as i was reporting it, and a lot of moments you wouldn't have heard of even if you are covering the election closely. i was covering it day today and there are so many things that came up in the reporting of the book that i was shocked and surprised by constantly. it's action-packed. host: the road or the path for president biden you right began election night 2016. from your book, "close to 11:00 biden stepped out to call the mayor of detroit who had been

fighting with the clinton campaign for months trying to take control of the turnout operation in the city. three weeks earlier he had gone to the headquarters in brooklyn, making one last push and getting one last brushoff from top aides, which showed him the statistical model they had built off of their polling showed clinton five points ahead in michigan. what if your model doesn't match the world the echo he told biden that night and had not. what is going to happen, duggan guessed that clinton would lose the state by 10,000 votes. oh lord, biden replied. they talked about why biden had not run. biden was emotional. i wanted to be the first person to sign-up for the 2020 campaign because this never would have happened if you were the candidate. biden was quiet and deflected. michigan wound up going to trump .

talk about that moment. >> the book starts in that way with this never before told story of biden watching trump win and obama watching trump when as they were trying to process what is going on here. for biden, running in 2016 had never been a real serious situation until his son died on memorial day weekend of 2015. in that summer of 2015 there was the beginning of exploration for it and some plans being laid and some conversations happening. it was not at the level that would have been needed for a successful campaign to be mounted. a lot of what was going on was biden processing and coping with the death of his son and looking at this as a way of carrying on those legacies, and not thinking about his own grief. we know he did not end up

running in the 2016 race. he pulls out with a lot of pressure from a lot of people. some of that is straight from the book, including how obama tried to ease him out of running. when clinton loses, he sees the confirmation of a lot of things he was worried about going on in the democrat party. i was sitting with him in his office in the west wing, the vice president's office about a week before the trump inauguration, and we started talking about what happened in the election, and he started to discuss what he thought went wrong for democrats, not speaking to people anymore, that they were losing touch with the traditional democratic ideals and values and constituency. i said that sounds like a stump speech and he said no, well, maybe for someone else. starting then, the beginning of 2017 there is this process that i traced in the book where he

goes from saying he's not running, or if he's walking he's running and teasing it back and forth until charlottesville happened in august of 2017 and that changes everything for biden. it's a seminal moment where he sees what is going on in america not about donald trump as a republican because he's a democrat and they have issues on policy issues, but something more fundamental, something he calls the battle for the soul of the nation. he gets into it under those terms, he gets into the 2020 race under those terms thinking what he is going to do is be resetting politics and policy and not with a concept of what actually turned out to be ahead of him, with all of what 2020 brought with the pandemic and the reckoning over race after george floyd's murder, all of these things and what happened with the supreme court after ruth bader ginsburg died before the election and the economic crisis. everything that has changed what

we are all thinking about and what the presidency is. i did another interview with biden at the beginning of february for the book and i said we are going to call the book battle for the soul and he laughed in the short sarcastic way he does some time and said the difference between you and me is i actually believe it. i said when you look at all the things here you are actually on to something. host: those dynamics you outlined happened after the primary. how does joe biden the candidate traverse the landscape when he has all those competitors running? edward: it was hard for him and what you see in the book is how there were so many moments when things could have turned a different way. not just a biden campaign looking at several important parts of the story like it was just over including to him, but how it was that bernie sanders

surged, and what ended up bringing him down in the end. how close pete buttigieg got to the nomination in ways i don't think most people appreciate. how really close he was to being the nominee. what went wrong for elizabeth warren or kamala harris or cory booker. all of these things that if you shift one piece around and things look different. mike bloomberg was in that race for only a couple of months but it was a couple of months where a lot of people were starting to think he might be the nominee, it he was going to spend his way into making this happen. the chap told -- the chapter title about bloomberg is called $1 billion. the only primary ended up winning was american samoa. >> you right in the book about how all of those prospective candidates made a pilgrimage to the 2016 candidate, hillary clinton. you write that many of them made their pilgrimage to hillary clinton to ask her advice and

blessing. remember, she joked to the governor of montana, you can win the whole thing and still lose the electoral college. she tried to be helpful. much like biden she wasn't convinced any of those who came to see her could get far against trump. this was also giving clinton us -- a chance to size up herself against the pump -- competition. she spoke with a number of black leaders concentrated in the south and wondered if biden really would be able to pull off the campaign. she talked it over with her husband and they discussed potential campaign staff, especially as other candidate started making hires. they talked with donors who said they would support her if she ran. she waited at against biden loyalties among democrats and doing more damage to her and her husband's reputation. one's clinton decided she and biden couldn't both run without guaranteeing sanders would be the nominee they backed off. tell us more about this.

edward: i've never run for president or lost a race for president. this was hillary clinton's to lose especially when going into election night she thought she was going to be the president-elect of the united states. she cared about what was going wrong in the country in her mind. she looked at trump's presidency as everything she had wanted to stop and had not been able to. she was concerned as a lot of democrats were that trump might have been unbeatable by most of the figures in the field. you see that going on about joe biden himself including with barack obama expressing skepticism about whether biden at the outset would be able to pull it off. hillary clinton was looking at this and saying that she would like to be the president still

and that she wants to make sure trump loses. that existential fear that he might win was pushing her in addition to this desire to be the president. she ends up -- she ends up looking at this and saying if she runs and biden is running that what that probably does is split the vote in a way that bernie sanders benefits. she has three reasons why she doesn't want bernie sanders to be the nominee. she doesn't think he can win against trump. she doesn't like his politics and once that debate -- doesn't want that to be representative of the democratic party. she doesn't like him and blames her for hurting him in the primary which explains our loss to trump. she saw biden was going to go forward and as soon as that was clear to her she said they probably shouldn't do that and if she runs the only thing that will happen is she gets beat up more and build into and will get

beat up more. she decides to back off. after the book the resto conversation for a long time in the democratic primary race there was this question of "are they going to be able to figure it out?" hillary clinton would have casual conversations that if it goes to a contested invention -- convention what happens. they might not be able to land on a candidate and maybe she could be the compromise candidate. at that point late in the race she would have hide name recognition and the ability to raise money. >> we are talking with edward about his book "battle for the soul: inside the democrats' campaigns to defeat trump." what are your questions? about the 2016 and 2020 campaign? you say that former president obama talked with now president biden about not running.

what were those conversations like? edward: there were two conversations. in 2015 he was trying to ease biden out of running great for the 2020 race the consideration was different. he has a deep personal love for biden that he expressed, not just with biden directly but with many people around. everyone who knows obama knows that's the way he feels about biden. he was concerned about whether biden would have the ability -- he was concerned about whether biden was where the democratic party overall was ideologically anymore. he was also, he would make comments about that the presidency really is not a job for a young man and every time he would say this people could tell exactly who he was talking about. one of the other things obama would say a lot is that

americans like their president to have swagger, and that is something that he wondered whether biden would have, would have that ability to connect with people on a visceral level. that is the obama look at biden. obama there are a lot of conversations in the book that i traced of obama being more involved behind the scenes than anyone realized in talking to all the candidates, not just biden. anyone who got it all serious about running for president he would invite over to his office in washington, d cnb on the phone with them. that meant bernie sanders and elizabeth warren and pete buttigieg and beto o'rourke, keeping an open line of communication which continued through the race for all of these candidates and importantly at the moment when each of them was dropping out he would call

and congratulate them and also try to see what their plans were for bringing the party together. host: what did you learn about president biden picking senator kamala harris as a vice president as his running mate? edward: there is no question that the first primary debate where she attacked him for his record on busing and said that little girl was me, and that line i know you are not a racist, that left a lead -- that left a real mark on biden at the time and for a much longer period on people close to biden. there was a question of whether he could trust her to be part of the team, whether that would get in the way of the working relationship that he wanted to have with his vice president. among the people he talked to about this is barack obama who said listen, joe, you called me unqualified to be president and we got over that. you have to remember that the beginning of our relationship it was not a close brotherly

relationship where michelle obama and jill biden are friends and obama's children are friends with biden's grandchildren, and there is this brotherly bond. obama said, give that time, and it can develop. your first order of business has to be winning the presidency. you have to think about who will help you win. there's a chapter in the book that gets deep into the details of all the other people they really took seriously in the biden campaign of who might be the right fit. some of those names will perhaps be a little surprising, including gretchen whitmer, the governor of michigan, became one of the top prospects, because biden really felt like he was connecting with her. host: how did then senator kamala harris use the police reform bill to her advantage in becoming the picky echo -- to

become the pick? edward: after george floyd was murdered there was pressure to move that police reform bill. for harris, this gave her an ability to be involved in a significant piece of legislation that drew on skills and backgrounds that she had and in addition to that it gave her a reason to be out and doing interviews where she could talk about something substantive, but not just talking about politics. she could essentially audition for the biden team who are watching her performance and see how she was doing without having to have everyone ask her the same question with her giving the same dodges. that was really important and it also gave an ability to push back on some of the criticism of

her record as a prosecutor which had come up during the primary, and show that there were benefits to her prosecutorial background. host: what did she do? edward: she went out a lot and was involved in the bill and one of the cosponsors in the senate with cory booker negotiating and trying to figure out a solution. we are still waiting to see if a police reform bill will pass through this congress, and she will be potentially involved in that way potentially only as a tie-breaking vote. there was the question last summer of whether they could make a bipartisan effort happen, and whether donald trump would sign a police reform bill supported by democrats in congress, and it did not happen. host: we are taking your questions and comments about the 2016 and 2020 campaigns and what edward calls in his book the battle for the soul inside the

democrat campaigns to defeat donald trump. fill in wilmington, north carolina. hi, bill. caller: good morning, appreciate you taking the call. not too many years ago on the news was the homeless people in the united states. and the news would cover that every once in a while i'm just saying that from memory. people living under bridges and tents and porta john's, no sanitation, disease. i was listening to chairman chang this morning on c-span about separating children, illegal immigrant children and what we are doing for them. we spent 700 $75 a day per child

to make sure they are safe, bed, have a clean environment, a bed to sleep in, medical care. host: what's your question about politics? caller: it's over. i live on what we have. host: i'm going on to james in pennsylvania, democratic caller. caller: first off, i'm loving the book. i study history and it's an interesting read to look into the campaign. my question is about progressives, bernie voters and warren voters, do you see them having a stronger voice in government in the future, or a stronger voice in the democratic party i should say? host: good question, go ahead. edward: it's a good question. i think what we are seeing is that is being sorted out now. the biden coalition that one in

november was not one that looked like probably what bernie sanders or elizabeth warren would have tried to put together exactly if either of them had been the nominee. you are seeing a lot of pressure from progressives led by bernie sanders over the infrastructure bill and whether democrats can put together something that will satisfy them and not just joe manchin and kyrsten sinema block of democratic senators. that's how that gets sorted out. we will see what that looks like. there's also a question of longer-term and generationally what this looks like. among a lot of younger democratic voters there's a push to go further to the left then joe biden himself would seem to represent. i'm glad to hear you are enjoying the book. if you get towards the end of it the interview with biden, he says to me at the beginning of february that he is the most progressive person that has ever

been president. that was pushed back to bernie sanders and elizabeth warren and also barack obama and biden saying, you should get excited. you may not have thought the 78-year-old white moderate guy running for the nomination was the president who would excite progressives, but if you look at the work that he is doing biden is trying to say -- then you see the opportunities opened up to him by the pandemic and the responsibilities to rework some of how america does everything and that leads to a more progressive vision that has ever been done before. host: ingrid in washington, d.c.. democratic caller. caller: many of the contenders dropped out of the primary before the south carolina primary. including tal c gabbard, who had

promised her supporters she was going to take her antiwar message to the convention. do you know if all of this dropping out was organic, or did the dnc order this to facilitate and clear the road for biden? edward: it absolutely was not orchestrated by the dnc. candidates tend to drop out when they run out of money. that's what was happening here and that's what happened when kamala harris dropped out right after thanksgiving in 2019. her campaign was literally not raising as much as the congressional candidates would be raising. that happened for many of the candidates and by the time of south carolina there had already been three votes, three states that had voted. most of the candidates who dropped out were not significant candidates as before the south carolina primary.

there was that crazy period of saturday, february 29 was the south carolina primary last year and three days later was super tuesday when biden has a loss that surprises him. it wasn't orchestrated by him or the dnc, it was not orchestrated by barack obama. it was a confluence of things you can see being traced in the book. the chapter in the book is entitled 72 hours to change history. the time between south carolina and super tuesday. a lot of the book explains how that all happened. what's happening in very fast motion was things that had been set in place, dynamics that were there for a long time building. >> talk about the endorsement by james clyburn, who was talking to who and how did it come about? >> the clyburn endorsement is the most powerful politician in south carolina by a lot. he had wanted to endorse biden,

he was always a biden guide. he wanted to stop bernie from being the nominee. he didn't like bernie sanders politics and did not think bernie could win. clyburn was eager to endorse biden but was skeptical that biden would be in strong enough shape to take the endorsement and do much with it. biden comes in fourth in iowa and fifth in new hampshire and a distant second in nevada a week before the south carolina primary. at second-place finish is enough to convince clyburn that there is a reason to jump in. he jumps in and jumps in really hard for biden and the affect of the endorsement is reverberating in a way that clyburn had not anticipated. there was a meeting that pete buttigieg was supposed to have with a bunch of mayors in south carolina before the primary. it was just a sit down at a restaurant and a photo opportunity, buttigieg learning

that. the clyburn endorsement was so powerful in that moment that the mayors canceled on buttigieg and didn't even want to look like they were sitting at the table with another candidate. al sharpton was prepared to endorse bernie sanders right before the south carolina primary. he told bernie sanders that he was ready to endorse him, he just had to clear it with his board at the national action network. he heard clyburn was going to endorse biden and decided he was not going to cross clyburn. you see all these pieces coming together. if sharpton had endorsed sanders , would sanders have done better in the south carolina primary? probably. if the south carolina primary had not been as big of a win for biden but that have led to a different super tuesday result? probably. host: what did you think when at john lewis's funeral former president bill clinton took that moment during the funeral to thank james clyburn for that

endorsement of now president biden? edward: it's not just him, at the inauguration in january george w. bush says to clyburn you are the one that has made this happen. there was a sense at all levels that clyburn was the thing that changed the contour of the race in a very significant way. from california, a democratic caller. caller: hello? good morning, greta and edward. this sounds like a good book, i've read a lot of political books, and this one sounds pretty honest. i like it. i was never going to vote for joe biden until he had to run against trump, and that's the only reason why i voted for him. these sound like some honest facts.

i really think that bernie sanders could have one. i'm right up there with al sharpton and a lot of other people. james clyburn, like you said, he pulled it off with joe biden. what obama did is he went for the soul of the country itself and he talked about change and that's what it seemed like people wanted in the last three presidential elections, some kind of change. jobs have stagnated and wages have stagnated, education, everything has stagnated and everybody is blaming everything on each other. bernie sanders would definitely have given us some change, and that's the only reason why trump one over hillary, is because bernie israel clean and doesn't have nothing on his record illegal or anything like that. edward: what did it come down to

in the 2020 election? why did biden win? edward: he won for many different reasons including the pandemic and the complete recoil from trump for a lot of voters. i think rodney is picking up on a point, i hope you do pick up the book and you will see it there, that there was in 2016 the candidate that ran away with the election in a lot of ways where donald trump and bernie sanders, they were different in almost every way except that they both represent the desire to do something completely different from how they planned. there is a focus group i described in the book early out that was done around thanksgiving of 2016. obama and his team had decided to go to iowa and look at the obama and trump voters, the people that voted for obama and 2008 and 2012 and ask them to

explain that and what they get back is voters saying to them, we supported obama because we wanted him to be different, then washington stopped him. we need trump to do it in a more violent and aggressive way. that is a continuation of obama to trump. what happened by 2020 is a lot of voters who look at this say, what we really need now is somebody who can manage the pandemic and even with these other issues going on, that ends up being the defining thing for many voters. including swing voters and obama trump voters decided. host: are those undecided voters? what role did they play? edward: undecided is one of

those words, they were swing voters, be where they obama trump voters, another set of focus groups that i look at that were done right before the 2020 race, these are obama and trump voters that could not decide if they were with trump or biden and they were very turned off by trump personally and they thought he was good about the economy and could be the one to put the economy back in shape once the pandemic was done, but they didn't think trump could handle the pandemic and get us through it area they looked at biden and were not sure about him on the economy, but they weren't sure about things with the funding the police and other issues on the left flank of the democratic party. nonetheless, it looked like biden could be the one to get the country out of the pandemic

and that became the overriding concern. host: will hear from lou in barrow beach, florida, independent. caller: donald trump has been out of office for five or six months, yet you can turn on cnn, msnbc, and all you hear almost any time you turn them on his trump this, trump of that. can't we just go on with the news and forget about trump? he's gone. what's get on with our lives. i'd like to see what joe biden's going to do but we never hear enough about it. that's my big beef. edward: i've got good news, this is not another trump book. trump is the context for a lot of what happens, but he rarely appears in the book itself. this is reporting about lots of other stories that you have not heard about and that most people were not paying attention to

because trump was so all-consuming. this is the story of what happened over these for years but it also sets up where things are now and where things are for joe biden and the people who for the moment are in power. >> robert from new jersey, a democratic caller. caller: i had always been steadfast on the idea that a party establishment, the dnc should not coalesce around a particular candidate and sway voters towards them or cause them to win the primary, and being a firm supporter of bernie sanders from the beginning i have been kind of angry as a result of that. you are saying that's not what happened in the primary. i'm curious and would like to know what happened. from the way it looks, joe biden needed a miracle to win that primary and i want to know what happened if it was not any influence by the dnc. edward: it was not the dnc

involved there, the dnc, even if it at wanted to get involved it did not have the capacity to do it. what you will see in the book is there was after sanders came in a very close second in the iowa caucuses one the nevada caucuses and there was a week where it was becoming accepted by all sorts of democrats including many i would assume you don't agree with politically that bernie sanders was going to be the nominee and they were all reconciling themselves for that. there were some things operationally that happened for the sanders campaign that did not work out. sanders went on 60 minutes in a play to try to appeal to older voters ahead of the florida primary which was two weeks after super tuesday, and he made some comments about cuba that

got blown into a problem for him. he was trying to get jesse jackson to endorse and before the south carolina primary. jackson did not endorse him because he didn't want to choose between elizabeth warren and bernie sanders. it was also a factor on super tuesday that warren was in the race and that she was taking votes that probably a lot of them would have gone to sanders otherwise. as these things come together it can be easy to look at this from a distance and say it seems like there was a lot of opposition to sanders and things fell into place easy for biden, and that's true. when you see what happened it's not biden or the dnc or obama or anyone orchestrating it, it's a lot of chance that happened and bits of different factors, lauren in the race and clyburn coming in as heavy as he did,

stopping sharpton from endorsing and mike bloomberg ring in the race which gave a different pole for people to run around for a bit. all of those things came together in the way they did. if joe biden thought things would work out as much as they did on super tuesday he probably would've had a bigger event planned. he was at a community center in baldwin hills in los angeles. a small event and he was absolutely surprised that he was becoming as strong of a nominee as he was. host: lee in new york, a republican. caller: i'm here. host: we are listening, question or comment? caller: i have to make a comment. one of my comments is i think biden won the democratic primaries because behind closed doors he was being backed by the rest of them because he was

running as a moderate and some of his opponents had off-the-wall things. he promised they would all get key positions in his administration. now we have all this chaos because everybody wants their own agendas, and we are going to be trillions of dollars in debt because he has to appease all these people. even bernie sanders commented and said he was impressed that biden had gone so far left. thank you. edward: again, there was not some secret deal that was made here or a secret orchestration. what you can see when you read the book now is how this actually worked out in reality, which often is messier and less

planned out than the way it can seem from a distance. of biden's opponents, the only ones who got appointed to anything are kamala harris being picked for his running mate and pete buttigieg as transportation secretary. those were not deals made at the time for support. you see in the book what happened in that weird period between the south carolina primary and super tuesday when buttigieg very suddenly dropped out of the race and immediately goes to endorse biden. in full view of what happened in the book you can see as buttigieg is crumpling in his campaign into the south carolina primaries why he decides that night and in a concrete way the morning after the primary that he is dropping out, and how he

struggles to think about when he should endorse biden and what he should do for his own sake and for biden's sake. what is definitely true is that buttigieg wanted biden rather than sanders to be the nominee. that's not because there was a deal being made, it's because that is the way he was looking at the race and what he wanted to happen. host: upper mall borough maryland, independent. caller: i really respect and support you as a political voice and an author. here's the thing. you had a gentleman call in earlier that said he was a bernie sanders supporter, so mia, and i still am. it really just reeks of you continuing to be another voice in the media that is covering up what we know and what we saw happen. even if you say there was no behind-the-scenes deals or anything like that, even if you

say that the dnc did not regular primaries, which we saw with our own eyes and you're saying something different, the media blackout that happened just so bernie sanders was not promoted to the country at large is enough of an argument for us bernie sanders supporters not to believe anything that any of you political voices are saying. host: what do you think when you hear that? several calls? edward: there is definitely a lot of feeling of that sort that is out in the country. i think you will see some of that talked about in the book and how sanders was pushing back on msnbc in particular, a channel that tilts more towards the democratic side, including what happened after sanders won the nevada caucuses and part of the reaction in the book is not just how democratic leaders were responding, but how it was being

covered on tv. there's a moment in the book where chris matthews and the host of hardball was giving his analysis and he compared sanders winning the nomination to the nazis marching on france, very strange analogy and that led to matthew's departure from msnbc among other things. you are right that there was definitely among some folks in the media a pushback on sanders, and that is one of the factors that went into this. as you will see in the book and i hope you read it and see all that's in there, there were a lot of things that were in sanders favor, there were a lot of things that were against him, and there were some things about chance that worked against them. you will not find anybody from bernie sanders on down who believes that elizabeth warren had gotten out of the race earlier that he wouldn't have an

offended from that. you will see in the book what happened when elizabeth warren was deciding whether she should endorse biden or sanders. either decision was her trying to figure out what would benefit joe biden. you see all these factors coming together. host: what did you learn about president biden or the race that you did not know before you started writing? edward: so many things. i've covered biden for years since he was vice president. there is so much in this book i was not expecting to be there and covering it day-to-day as a reporter that i thought i knew what had happened in a bunch of these moments, and you see how biden's conception of himself and of the presidency changes over time and how it get so that by the time i'm talking to met

the beginning of february he is pointing out the portrait of fdr that he put over the fireplace in the oval office. when he got into the race in 2019 he was not conceiving of that being the kind of presidency that he would have before him, but it is now. and you see how things about his sons affect him and run through him constantly as he's thinking about the connection between the personal and the political and the policy that comes together in a distinctive way for joe biden and when you look at the book now you can see for democrats it's a portrait of what happened and how we got the party we have in front of us and what that means going forward. the story is not done. for republicans it's to look at this book what is this party and

what are we going up against in 2022 and 2024. how are these coalitions built and what does that mean for what it will all look like when joe biden is not on the ballot in 2022. when he says he will be on the ballot in 2024. there are some who are skeptical. he says that's what's going to happen. when the pandemic is not a factor, and when donald trump is not in the ballot on 2022. host: the book is "battle for the soul: inside the democrats' campaigns to defeat trump.". thank you. the house is in. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] cuellar to act as speaker pro tempore on this day. signed, nancy pelosi, speaker of the house of representatives. the speaker pro tempore: pursuant to the order of the house of january 4, 2021, the chair will now recognize members from lists submitted by the majority and minority leaders for morning hour debate. the chair will alternate recognition between the parties