The Conversation with Dasha Burns

UCLA political scientists Lynn Vavreck and Chris Tausanovitch and Vanderbilt’s John Sides argue that political party identity has become increasingly “calcified” in surprising new ways. Their latest book,“The Bitter End,” describes both the long-term trends and short-term shocks that shaped the 2020 presidential election and continue reverberating today. What’s driving the increasing distance between the parties and the growing homogeneity within the parties? Playbook Co-Author Ryan Lizza met Vavreck on UCLA’s campus to learn why so-called “identity-inflected issues” are the great new dimension of political conflict and present a dangerous direction in America.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kara Swisher has hosted the annual Code Conference for the last twenty years. Recently she announced that this was her final year organizing and running the event, which concluded on Thursday in Los Angeles.At the final big panel on Wednesday evening, Swisher ended things where she started: with a conversation about Steve Jobs.She gathered the famous Apple designer Jony Ive and the widow of Steve Jobs — Laurene Powell Jobs — and the CEO of Apple — Tim Cook — who flew to Los Angeles for Swisher hours after unveiling the new iPhone 14 at Apple's headquarters in Cupertino. The event ended much more poignant than one would expect at a conference about technology and politics.Afterward, Playbook Co-Author Ryan Lizza met Swisher in a suite on the 8th floor of the Beverly Hilton at what was Code's last secret poker party. They talked about the end of her running the Code Conference, her long and winding career … and why she loves saying no.Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Afra Abdullah is associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is senior editor for POLITICO audio.Adam Allington is senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Tuesday, Leahy, who is retiring this year after representing Vermont in the Senate since 1975, released “The Road Taken,” an engrossing memoir that covers his long career, from his politically fraught vote against the Vietnam War to his account of rallying his fellow senators back into the chamber on Jan. 6 after they fled the mob that stormed the Capitol. In between, you meet dozens of politicians, Supreme Court Justices, presidents, world leaders, musicians, and Hollywood celebrities. Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) is the president pro tempore of the United States Senate.Afra Abdullah is associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is senior editor for POLITICO audio.Adam Allington is senior producer for POLITICO audio. Jenny Ament is executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The White House suddenly has a lot to brag about. And the president’s aides, led by chief of staff Ron Klain, are reaching deep into the 20th century to make the case that Joe Biden is a transformational president with “historic achievements.” We ventured over to the White House and sat down with Klain in the Roosevelt Room to review the last 18 months of the Biden presidency and talk about what’s next. At the start of the summer, this conversation would have been vastly different. Now, gas prices have dropped, the last CPI report hints that inflation may finally be trending down after hitting a peak. Election forecasters are writing pieces at least entertaining the idea that Democrats might not suffer the long-predicted midterm wipeout. And there’s that burst of legislative victories that were squeezed out of Congress in July and August that had Biden, a lover of alliteration, calling this period “a season of substance.”Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Ron Klain is the White House Chief of Staff.Afra Abdullah is associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is senior editor for POLITICO audio.Adam Allington is senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week the Senate passed the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 using the process known as budget reconciliation. The upside? No filibuster is allowed. You only need a majority to approve a reconciliation bill. And the downside? There are strict rules about what can be included. On the last episode of Playbook Deep Dive, Eric Ueland and Greg D’Angelo, two GOP budget nerds, previewed the final challenges that the Inflation Reduction Act would face to pass the Senate. They even nailed one of the parliamentarian’s rulings: she nixed a portion of the bill that would have applied inflation caps to the private pharmaceutical market.For their most significant policies, neither party has sixty votes. Reconciliation is how presidents get big things through Congress now. And it’s likely to be that way for the foreseeable future. To understand how major policy changes can happen these days, you need to know how this byzantine process works.In this week’s episode, Eric and Greg step back and explain the long history of reconciliation and how it has come to dominate lawmaking in ways never anticipated when the process was created in the 1970s.Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Eric Ueland is a commissioner on the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.Greg D'Angelo is a partner at the Nickles Group.Afra Abdullah is associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is senior editor for POLITICO audio.Adam Allington is senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The biggest remaining obstacle for the Democrats is now Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, who will continue to host Democratic and Republican aides behind closed doors today (no press allowed) to scrub the reconciliation bill for potential violations of the Byrd Rule.MacDonough broke the hearts of progressives on several occasions last year, including when she nixed the minimum wage from the Covid relief bill, which was passed using reconciliation, and rejected three different versions of immigration reform from the Democratic reconciliation bill that was eventually scrapped in December.Republican budget nerds reviewing the latest reconciliation bill still believe they can knock out certain provisions. On Thursday, for the latest episode of the Playbook Deep Dive podcast, we sat down with two of the party’s leading experts on the process: Eric Ueland, who spent 25 years in the Senate, including as staff director of the Budget Committee, and Greg D’Angelo, who spent nearly a decade on the committee.Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Eric Ueland is a commissioner on the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.Greg D'Angelo is a partner at the Nickles Group.Afra Abdullah is associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is senior editor for POLITICO audio.Adam Allington is senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here’s something about Washington, D.C. that even a lot of people who live here don’t know: Psychedelic mushrooms are basically legal. In 2020 voters approved a ballot initiative that made growing, purchasing, and distributing mushrooms the lowest law enforcement priority for D.C. police.Cities and states are way ahead of the federal government. There are movements in more than two dozen states to either study, decriminalize, or outright legalize mushrooms and other psychedelics. It’s happening in blue states like California, New York and Vermont, as well as in red states like Utah, Kansas, and Florida. Cities such as Ann Arbor, Oakland, Seattle, and Denver, have, like D.C., all decriminalized mushrooms.The epicenter of this movement, as was the case with cannabis legalization, is Colorado. In November, voters will decide whether to approve the Natural Medicine Health Act of 2022, which would create state-regulated “healing centers” where anyone over 21 could receive psilocybin-assisted therapy.In this week’s episode, Ryan traveled to Littlejohn, Colorado and sat down with Veronica Lightning Horse Perez, the co-leader of the Colorado mushroom campaign. They talked about how psychedelics helped treat her mental health issues, what it’s like to undergo psychedelic therapy with mushrooms and ayahuasca, and her journey to becoming the unlikely political activist at the forefront of mushroom legalization. Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Veronica Lightning Horse Perez is co-organizer of Natural Health Colorado.Afra Abdullah is an associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is a senior editor for POLITICO audio.Adam Allington is senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ryan caught up with the former treasury secretary — and thorn in the side of Biden White House economists — Larry Summers on the sidelines of the Aspen Security Forum for a wide-ranging interview about last 18 months of economic debates, why so many policymakers got the inflation debate wrong, what Summers thinks about Joe Manchin blowing up Build Back Better over inflation concerns, what Biden — and Pelosi — are getting wrong in their approach to China, and why we are almost certainly headed into a painful recession.Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Larry Summers is the former U.S. treasury secretary.Afra Abdullah is an associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is a senior editor for POLITICO audio.Adam Allington is senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

THE PLAYBOOK INTERVIEW: GEORGE GASCÓN — Gascón was elected district attorney of Los Angeles County in November 2020 with 54% of the vote. “I won handsomely,” he reminisced Wednesday during a 90-minute conversation at the Hall of Justice in downtown L.A. “I got over 2 million votes.”It was a big victory for criminal justice reformers: the leading progressive prosecutor in the country taking over the movement’s top target, the largest county in the country and one that has long been hostile to change. California makes it relatively easy to recall an elected official. It’s been part of the state constitution since 1911. There was talk of recalling Gascón as soon as he was sworn in. And those calls were coming from inside the Hall of Justice, where many of his deputy district attorneys revolted against the changes. “The week that I got sworn in, they started talking about recalling me,” Gascón said. “And they had to be told you have to wait at least 90 days.” Voters will know by August 17 whether a recall of Gascón will be on the November ballot.Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.George Gascón is the District Attorney of Los Angeles County.Afra Abdullah is an associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is a senior editor for POLITICO audio.Adam Allington is senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The question of why so few Republicans have stepped forward to testify about what they heard and saw in the Trump White House, is very much at the heart of much of the House Jan. 6 committee’s work — and of Tim Miller’s new book, “Why We Did It,” which, by chance, was released the same day as Hutchinson’s explosive testimony.Miller’s arc is, by now, somewhat familiar: At the dawn of the Trump era, he was an in-demand Republican strategist and a top aide to Jeb Bush. He watched in horror as Trumpism swallowed the Republican establishment and his fellow GOP strategists jumped on the MAGA bandwagon. He resisted, left the party, and devoted himself to Never Trumpism.In his new book, Miller sets out to understand the mindset of those Republicans who remained — friends and former colleagues who weren’t all that different from him, but who enthusiastically worked to elect Trump and later joined his administration. In one chapter, he traces the journey of Alyssa Farah Griffin. In 2016, she was a 20-something conservative and top Capitol Hill aide who couldn’t bring herself to vote for Trump. By 2020, she was director of strategic comms in the Trump White House — before resigning that December.On the outside, Griffin joined Miller in the ranks of the Never Trumpers, and began helping others do the same. Most recently, it was Griffin who helped guide Hutchinson, her good friend, through the fraught process of breaking away from the Trump world, a journey that culminated in Hutchinson’s devastating account of Trump’s actions on Jan. 6. On Thursday, Ryan met with Miller and Griffin at the Georgetown Club for lunch — and to talk about Miller’s new book, their respective journeys navigating Trumpism and what Hutchinson’s testimony could mean for the future of Trump’s grip on the Republican Party.Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Tim Miller is a political strategist and writer-at-large for The Bulwark.Alyssa Farah Griffin is a political commentator and former Trump White House aide.Afra Abdullah is an associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is a producer for POLITICO audio.Adam Allington is senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices