Patrick Gaspard

Impolitic with John Heilemann

Audacy | Puck

News, Politics

4.8 • 4.5K Ratings

🗓️ 18 January 2022

⏱️ 82 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In which John Heilemann talks with the longtime Democratic strategist Patrick Gaspard, currently president and CEO of The Center for American Progress and previously president of George Soros's Open Society Foundations, U.S. Ambassador to South Africa, executive director of the Democratic National Committee, and political director for Barack Obama's 2008 campaign and in his first term in the White House. Heilemann and Gaspard discuss President Biden’s push for voting rights legislation and filibuster reform in the Senate, and the political realities standing in the way of both; the prospects for Democrats heading into the 2022 midterm elections, and why Gaspard remains optimistic despite the enormous headwinds facing Biden and his party; and how the legacies of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, and Frederick Douglass have shaped Gaspard's philosophy and approach to politics. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone, John Highlaman here and welcome to Hell in High Water.
0:17.6	My podcast for the recount about politics and culture on the edge of Armageddon with
0:21.5	Big Ups my pal Rizza, the presiding genius behind the sound of Wu Teng Clan and the producer
0:25.7	of our dope, Thee Music.
0:28.2	It's the day after the federal Martin Luther King Junior Holiday and the day when Senate
0:32.4	Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has said that the upper chamber will take up federal voting
0:36.7	rights legislation by which we all know Chuck Schumer to actually mean that the federal
0:42.5	voting rights legislation will not be taken up by the United States Senate because of the
0:46.7	filibuster brought to bear by Republicans in the Senate who are eager, in fact committed
0:53.4	to stopping federal voting rights legislation from being passed.
0:56.5	So the plan is a theory to then move on to reforming the filibuster which we also know
1:02.6	is going nowhere because not only are Republicans against reforming the filibuster at this moment
1:07.0	but Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema also have stated their emphatic opposition to changes,
1:13.6	reform, scrapping, really doing anything about the filibuster.
1:17.2	This is a sorry state of affairs to be sure and to talk it over what it means for the Biden
1:23.8	presidency and the Democratic Party more broadly.
1:26.6	We have with us today one of the most important and influential progressives in the country
1:31.3	and one of the smartest and saddest people in politics full stop.
1:35.8	President and CEO of Center for American Progress, my old friend Patrick Gaspar.
1:41.5	The state of our union is perilous, damn perilous, not as bad as the polling would suggest
1:48.1	but as bad as we feel at the level of community.
1:51.1	And so I'm excited to have a conversation about what that means and how we fix it.
	...

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