TAPPER: If we’re saying that there’s no election that are legitimate if there are efforts to suppress the vote, then when has there ever been a legitimate election in this country? (snickers) Trying to suppress American votes has been going on since the founding of this country.
PSAKI: That’s not what we’re saying, Jake. People should be confident in the protections that we’re going to continue to enforce. But also, we know it’s not long-ago historical. It is recent history —
TAPPER: Sure!
PSAKI: — when the former president tried to overturn the outcome. That is different than the effort to suppress the vote. We need to fight against both. We need to assure we’re using every tool at our disposal. Uh, obviously, a lot of those would be through the Democratic National Committee, uh, and a lot of those are gonna be through local efforts. And that’s what the president was — was attempting to speak to.
BUCK: Their narrative doesn’t make any sense. Can we just…? Let’s dive into this for a second. That was Tapper over on CNN asking a real question, and welcome back to the Clay and Buck show. Let’s take a look at this for a second. They’re telling us, Clay, that unless dramatic changes are made — I just want to put this in, and then we do have to talk about the updated M&Ms.
CLAY: (laughing)
BUCK: I got my cut sheet confused here for a second, but their argument seems to be — and this is why they’re having so much trouble now selling this to the public. Forget about it the fact that they were never gonna really pass this and that it was all for show because they’re not gonna get the filibuster chang and they knew that. But they’re really emotionally, it seems, and politically invested in this narrative of “protecting voting rights.”
They’re the ones that want to make dramatic changes to existing voting laws that have been in place — depending on the law we’re talking about — for decades, right? It’s been the way that things are going, talking about when early voting occurs, talking about voter idea, all these different things. And so they say, “If you don’t do what we want, maybe we can’t really trust this election’s legitimate.” Well, if that’s their pitch, Clay, for this fall, how is it that they can tell us that they accept all the previous elections where their preferred changes weren’t actually made? It doesn’t hold water, doesn’t hold up.
CLAY: What we need, Buck, is an absolute ass-kicking in 2022 and 2024 where it’s not an in-the-margin election, right? Because the truth of the matter is, when the election is really close — and we’ve seen a lot of really close elections over the past, really, 21st Century. In fact, the only real election that I remember happening in the 21st Century were where people said, “Yeah, I think that wasn’t really in question,” was Obama-McCain, right?
Obama won by enough over John McCain that nobody was like, “Okay, we need to go look at the specifics in this individual state.” But if you look back, Gore-Bush, super tight. Bush against Kerry. John Kerry and the Democrats, they argued about what happened in Ohio, right? They argued that one was close. Then you had Obama-Romney which came down to a couple of states, people argued about that.
Trump and Hillary, certainly, Trump and Biden. What really, I think, is the essence of all these arguments over elections is when you lose closely, you can look at the data and figure out a reason why were you wronged, right? Whether you’re a Democrat or Republican, everybody argues that they actually won unless they get their ass kicked, and that’s why we need — I really mean this, Buck.
In 2022 and in 2024, it needs to be such a thorough ass kicking. Nobody argued about the election results in 1984 when Ronald Reagan destroyed Walter Mondale, right? Everybody was like, “Well, you know, what? This was a crushing.” Nobody argued in ’88 when George H. W. Bush took it to Michael Dukakis. I don’t really remember arguments in ’92 or ’96. What we really have to have is just a real win — a win that is not disputable in the margins based on a few thousand votes in an election state — and that’s where I think we need to be sooner rather than later.
BUCK: I totally agree, by the way. We have to win by so much that it’s not something that can be reasonably questioned because if it can, they will, and they’ll just use it as a political weapon in the most cynical fashion, which is what they’ve done in the past anyway. But this time around, I’m with you. They’re gotta get crushed.
CLAY: Can’t be close.