Laboratories of Autocracy
The Bill Press Pod
BP Pods
4.7 • 601 Ratings
🗓️ 6 September 2022
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We say it all the time. Down ballot races are very important. Lauren Baer is someone doing something about it. She is the Managing Partner at Arena, an organization convening training and supporting the next generation of candidates and campaign staff. With an emphasis on diversifying young people going into Democratic politics. But she is no newcomer to policy and politics. She spent six years in the State Department working for Hillary Clinton and John Kerry and Samantha power at the United Nations. She ran for Congress in Florida in a Purple to Red district and got more votes than any Democrat ever had.
Today Bill is highlighting the work of Lauren’s organization, Arena. You can help support their work at Arena.run.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Greetings, friends, hope you had a good Labor Day weekend, and welcome to this latest edition |
| 0:12.6 | of the Bill Press Five. Well, with Labor Day behind us, it's now nine weeks until Election |
| 0:18.9 | Day, November 8. We are off to the races. Most attention, of course, focused on those big Senate campaigns. In Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, Ohio, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Florida, and New Hampshire, where Democrats have a good chance of not only retaining control of the Senate, but may be increasing their majority. |
| 0:39.3 | Great interest in the House as well, where Republicans hold the edge, but Democrats are gaining, |
| 0:45.3 | and could still block a Republican takeover. And then, so important, there are all those down-ballot races |
| 0:53.3 | for state legislature, secretary of state, election officials, and school boards, which never get enough attention, but are increasingly important these days because MAGA Republicans are targeting them as part of their plan to undermine our democracy. |
| 1:09.0 | But here's the good news. |
| 1:11.6 | There's a new effort underway to focus on and win those down-ballot races, all led by a relatively |
| 1:16.6 | new political organization called Arena. |
| 1:20.6 | Arena's managing partner, Lauren Baer, joins us on today's podcast to remind us what's at |
| 1:26.6 | stake in this election and how we can help. |
| 1:30.8 | Lauren Baer, welcome to the Bill Press Pod. |
| 1:33.2 | Thank you so much for joining us. |
| 1:34.8 | Thank you so much for having me, Bill. |
| 1:36.9 | So last week, President Biden went to Philadelphia to Independence Hall, gave a very, very strong speech in which he told the American |
| 1:45.5 | people, our democracy is on the line in 2022. Do you agree, is our democracy in peril? And if so, |
| 1:56.0 | what can we do about it? It is, Bill. And the speech that Biden gave is the speech that I've been waiting for someone to give |
| 2:05.6 | for some time. |
| 2:06.6 | And by way of context here, I work in domestic politics now, but my background is in foreign |
| 2:12.6 | policy. |
| 2:13.6 | And I spent six years as a senior official in the Obama administration. |
| 2:18.1 | And my job was to advise the Secretary of State on democratization and democratic |
... |
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