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CBS Sunday Morning / Jane Pauley
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January 16, 2022 12:00 pm

CBS Sunday Morning,

CBS Sunday Morning / Jane Pauley

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January 16, 2022 12:00 pm

On this week's "CBS Sunday Morning," Correspondent John Dickerson speaks with political experts about President Joe Biden's first year in office.

The incomparable Liza Minnelli, sits down with Jane Pauley to discuss how she still continues to honor the works of Gershwin and the life of her mother, Judy Garland.

Kirsten Dunst, who has starred in such films as "Interview with the Vampire," "Melancholia" and "Spider-Man," is getting Oscar buzz for her poignant acting in Jane Campion's period drama, "The Power of the Dog." She sits down with Correspondent Luke Burbank.

"Leave It To Beaver" actor Tony Dow talks with Correspondent Jim Axelrod about looking beyond the curse of being linked forever to the character of Wally Cleaver.

Finally, Did Thomas Edison really invent the light build? Contributor David Pogue finds out!

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Let's partner for all of it. Learn more at edwardjones.com. Good morning. I'm Jane Pauley and this is Sunday Morning. This week marks a year since Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th President of the United States. It's been a year marked by some major legislative victories, but plenty of disappointments too. All playing out in the shadow of COVID, an unsettled economy, and more. John Dickerson takes stock of how President Biden and our divided nation are doing one year on. One year ago today presidents get credit and blame for what they do and for things they have no control over. Lyndon Johnson said that sometimes means the job is like being a jackass in a hailstorm.

You just have to sit there and take it. How's Joe Biden doing? Biden can't really claim that this has been a victorious year. It's okay.

It's eh. Coming up this Sunday morning, taking stock of Joe Biden's first year in office. For Liza Minnelli, the word legend runs in the family. This morning we're catching up. I love a violin. I love a violin. Whenever I'm with you.

Whenever I'm with you. It's been a while since we've seen Liza Minnelli. When I'm singing to an audience, I'm not singing to an audience.

I'm singing to you. So it's a one-on-one. The one and only Liza, later on Sunday morning. Luke Burbank talks with Kirsten Dunst about her talked about new movie. Jim Axelrod catches up with the Beavers big brother.

We're talking classic sitcoms, actor Tony Dao. Plus a story from Steve Hartman, opinion from historian Douglas Brinkley and more on this Sunday morning, January 16th, 2022. And we'll be back after this. President Biden's first year in office has been marked by both big plans and nagging problems. John Dickerson considers the highs and the lows. It is a cliche of politics that candidates campaign in poetry, but govern in prose. We lift our gaze not to what stands between us, but what stands before us.

But at Joe Biden's inauguration, Amanda Gorman's poetry anticipated the rough pros to come. We've seen a forest that would shatter our nation rather than share it, would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy. Workers were still repairing the windows in the capital behind her from the violent attempt to overturn the election results.

The broken glass is gone now, but not the threat. I sometimes feel like the sun has not set on January 6th, that the day continues. Jill Lepore is a Harvard University historian. So long as the idea that an armed insurrection against a democratically elected president being certified into office or taking office is seen as legitimate and defended as legitimate or not repudiated by so many public figures.

I hate to evoke images of such violence, but it just seems to me like it's a series of buried landmines. Through the lens of the January 6th convulsion, the Biden administration at the one year mark is a success merely because it exists at all. Democracy held. But presidencies are viewed through many lenses and any way you look at it, the first Biden year looks muddy. How's Joe Biden doing? I think Joe Biden's doing okay. He ran for president on this promise of a return to normalcy, on a return to America, maybe not quite as it was before President Trump, but much less chaotic.

Jamel Bouie is a columnist for the New York Times. The persistence of the pandemic and the persistence of the pandemic disruption on American society, I think means that Biden can't really claim that this has been a victorious year. It's okay. It's eh. This is not the chant Biden wants to hear at the next rally.

Four more meh. The bluntest story of the Biden presidency is told in his approval ratings. They started to drop last summer with America's messy departure from Afghanistan and have continued to fall while COVID cases, crime and inflation have been rising. A presidency that started with heady comparisons to FDR now invites the headline, it's not over for Joe Biden. But history tells us that the bluntest story is not always the lasting one, especially for presidents in their first year. The impressions people have one year in very rarely have any bearing on how that president is seen at the end of a first term or a second term, how that person is seen in history. Author James Fallows was a Carter speechwriter. Jimmy Carter, who as history knows was not reelected, is extremely popular in his first year in office.

Carter's first year approval rating was higher than Ronald Reagan's and his party lost fewer seats in the midterm House elections than Reagan did, though Reagan is considered the more successful president. Measuring presidents in the moment is hard, says Jill Lepore, because people focus only on what's right in front of them, like a protracted global pandemic. Kind of puzzling over this, how do you measure a president?

What most of us are measuring day to day are the COVID case numbers. Does that basically mean the approval rating is a general thermometer of public feeling and if the public's unhappy, the president as the best known politician is the one that gets blamed? Yeah, I mean, I think that's what it is, sort of a proxy for the national mood rather than an evaluation of the efficacy of an administration, right?

And most of us don't have the ability day to day to evaluate the efficacy of the administration. In a way, with Trump it was a little different because people did know what Trump was doing every day because he was tweeting all day long. Being president means sitting in the national complaint window.

You are the target of public anger whether you caused a problem or not. Biden's success delivering vaccines into arms was undermined by ideological hesitancy and viral variants. Those aren't his fault, but he is responsible for the mixed public health messages, and the president admitted being caught flat-footed on testing.

We're on track to roll out a website next week where you can order free tests shipped to your home. The withdrawal from Afghanistan fits a similar pattern. Some part of public upset was the inevitable unpleasant result of doing what the public wanted, but it's also true that the Biden team failed to account for how quickly the country would fall. Biden made the decision to leave Afghanistan so he can be judged up or down based on that decision. I judge him up on that because it is what his predecessors have said and what he promised and is running for office.

His predecessors have said and what he promised and is running. Then there's the execution, and there is room for fair commentary about whether the human cost was needlessly grave. Even if the decision to leave Afghanistan had been carried out in the most perfect possible way, it would have been a tragedy there. On the economy, inflation in December rose 7 percent, a spike that hasn't been seen since 1982 during Ronald Reagan's first term, and that economists in both parties predicted would be caused by Biden's early spending programs. I've lived through times of hyperinflation. I've lived through times of mass layoffs. Let me tell you, mass layoffs are way worse.

The trauma to families and to communities and to companies is much worse than the genuine problem of inflation. The unemployment rate is moving in a more encouraging direction, just 3.9 percent, down from 6.3 at the start of Biden's tenure. This is probably the strongest economy for workers that the United States has had in some time, but Biden gets no credit for any of this.

Columnist Jamel Bouie. So without credit for a strong economy and with the resistance from Republicans and a Democratic Party that is feeling unenthusiastic, he's in a tough spot. Democrats are unenthusiastic because Biden has not been able to pass the robust social spending legislation he initially proposed, or voting rights legislation — tough to do when Democrats have the thinnest possible majority in the Senate and can only afford to lose three Democrats in the House. So as you feel it, given the margins that Biden faces, has he been stymied or is this just kind of the slow process that it takes when you have these kind of margins?

I think I'm somewhere in between the two. The infrastructure bill, depending on how you count, is either, you know, $600 billion or $1.1 trillion. And the COVID relief bill was $1.9 trillion. In a year, President Biden has signed $3 trillion for the spending into law, which is, I believe, more than his Democratic predecessors signed in his entire eight years in office. So by that standard, Biden's doing great. But by the standard of the coalition and the coalition's expectations, and by, I think, the administration's expectations, he's probably behind.

Biden, feeling the heat from his base, signaled his urgency about voting rights. I've been having these quiet conversations with the members of Congress for the last two months. I'm tired of being quiet.

Neither quiet nor loud worked. At the end of last week, Democratic senators Manchin and Sinema wouldn't support changing Senate filibuster rules to pass voting reform. I hope we can get this done. The honest to God answer is I don't know whether we can get this done.

The same day, the Supreme Court struck down the administration's employer vaccine mandate, another setback at the end of the first year of Joe Biden's presidency, which means the second year starts not with poetry or prose, but with the blues. Gee, Wally, it's yours nice to help me out. Look, I'm only helping you because if Dad gets mad at you, he always winds up getting mad at me. That's Tony Dow and Jerry Mathers in the 1950s TV hit Leave It to Beaver. So whatever happened to Wally?

Jim Axelrod catches up with an older, wiser Tony Dow. This piece is the second piece I ever did and this is called Alter Ego. In the studio where he spent the last 20 years sculpting meditations on our humanity. What is the emotion or feeling you're getting at here? It's going to represent hope. This artist is carving a gnarled piece of burlwood into a dramatic figure that will then be cast in bronze, wrestling some sense of optimism from the struggle life so often presents. So this face is pain. That's pain. And you're changing it to what? To one of hope. As many as 50 hours of work go into a single piece before it's ready for his signature.

T. Dow. Once you start a piece, that piece takes control. What it does is it tells you what you need to do next.

Finally, at the age of 76, the artist is happy to relinquish control of his work. It wasn't always like that. From the time I was 11 or 12, I was being told what to do. I was told on the set. I was told at home. I didn't have control of my life. You were literally given your lines.

Yeah. Leave it to Beaver. T. Dow is Tony Dow, who at the age of 12 began starring as Wally Cleaver on Leave it to Beaver. A TV series depicting a mythical version of mid-century American life. Hey, can I take a sandwich in my pocket? They're grilled cheese.

Chi-Mom, these are all pans. And a show so popular it's never left the screen since its debut in 1957. What was the genius of Leave it to Beaver? Well, the genius of Leave it to Beaver was that the show was written from a child's point of view. Born in Hollywood, Tony Dow was a competitive swimmer as a kid when he tagged along with his coach to an audition.

The coach didn't get the part, but as his mother told him at lunch, Tony got an offer. I took a bite of my hamburger and I took a sip of my malt and I said, okay. And there went my life. What's this, Wally? That's an official scout compass.

I don't know exactly how it works, but when you start out somewhere, it's supposed to tell you which way you're going. Overnight, Dow's life headed in a direction no compass could help him navigate. A teen heartthrob before he could drive.

His adolescence unfolded in front of millions as he played the polite, trustworthy, all-American big brother. You didn't think Wally was going to define you? No, I didn't, but it did.

Yes, sir. I was going to have to live with it for the rest of my life. I thought, this isn't fair. I mean, I'd like to do some other stuff.

I'd like to do some interesting stuff. You know, it's sad to be famous at 12 years old or something and then you grow up and become a real person and nothing's happening for you. The sadness turned to anger, setting Tony Dow up for a struggle that would mark the rest of his life.

Anger, if it's untreated, anger turns to depression, but depression isn't something you can say, cheer up about, you know, it's a very powerful thing. And it's had a lot of effect on my life. Lauren Dow is Tony's wife of 41 years. What's it like to listen to Tony talk about the depression?

Well, I'm very proud of him for talking about it, for dealing with it, and for sharing it with others. She's helped him balance the curse of being linked forever to Wally by helping him see clearly the blessings. What did you fall in love with? His sweetness, softness, vulnerability.

I hate to do this, it's so trite and cliche, but spit it out. Sounds like Wally. Is there any Wally in him? I think there's a lot of Tony in the character. They're intertwined.

Wally was very much like Tony. Silver, buttons, and crystal. An artist herself, she makes mosaics in her own space in their shared studio. Beautiful. Yeah, I think the art is like the best thing for him and he's created some very interesting things while depressed. Dow too credits his art combined with medication and therapy for getting a handle on his depression. And I've got it under control pretty much, you know. I think people should take the leap of faith that they can feel better. The world up above is ideal and beautiful and the whole series is like that, so.

I want this in the air in two weeks. Can you do it? He still takes an occasional acting job, always aware that Wally is lurking nearby, but no longer troubled by it. I felt that way probably from the time I was 20, maybe until I was 40. And then at 40, I realized how great the show was, how appreciative I should be for being in that show. So long, Beaver.

Around his home in the hills above Los Angeles are plenty of signs of that appreciation. A pennant from the fictional Mayfield High, Wally attended. A bound collection of Leave It to Beaver scripts. There's something about nostalgia. Even a box of corn flakes with Tony and Jerry Mathers, who played the beaver, all grown up. This is my very first car that I ever had. And in his driveway sits a sleek example of the benefits Wally Cleaver still provides Tony Dow.

His first car, a 1961 Corvair, he bought with Leave It to Beaver money, only to sell four years later. You're sure this was it? I'm sure. Oh yeah, it's got the same license plate.

Before the guy who bought it died a few years ago, he decided to leave it to Tony, returning the car. And with it, a reminder that perspective is the foundation of making peace with pain. So anyway, pretty cool. Yeah. I mean, it is one of the rewards of being who you are.

They knew where to find you. Yeah, yeah. You're giving me all this positive stuff that I should be thinking about instead of all the dumb stuff I think about. This is Intelligence Matters with former acting director of the CIA, Michael Morell. Bridge Colby is co-founder and principal of the Marathon Initiative, a project focused on developing strategies to prepare the United States for an era of sustained great power competition. The United States put our mind to something we can usually figure it out. What people are saying and what we kind of know analytically and empirically is our strategic situation, our military situation, is not being matched up with what we're doing.

Follow Intelligence Matters wherever you get your podcasts. You may recall Spider-Man was head over heels for Mary Jane Watson, as played by Kirsten Dunst in the movie Spider-Man. Luke Burbank tells us Dunst's latest star turn is getting a similar reaction from fans and critics alike. One, two, three, to the side.

One, two, three, and back. Kirsten Dunst remembers shooting a particularly poignant scene from her new film, The Power of the Dog. In it, she and her real-life partner Jesse Plemons play two deeply lonely people who finally find a connection in 1920s Montana. I want to say how nice it is not to be alone.

Do you want to know the truth? I felt like, oh my god, this feels so corny right now to be this proper and I'm going to teach you how to dance. Like, I felt a little silly to be honest. But Dunst had complete faith in director Jane Campion.

Yeah, that's better. So she went along. I'm very director driven so I would have done anything for Jane. She could have talked about this gray couch and I would have done the movie and played the green pillow, you know what I mean? That's her next project. Yeah, exactly.

Reading about it in variety. I really would have done anything for Jane. That faith seems to have been well placed as The Power of the Dog and Dunst performance in particular are getting rave reviews and even rumors of Oscar consideration.

Is everything all right? Yes ma'am. For Dunst, now 39, an Academy Award nomination would be the latest step in a life spent in front of the camera starting at age three in New Jersey when her mother would drive her into New York City for modeling gigs. Claudia! What have you done? But it was her role at age 11 as Claudia in Interview with the Vampire opposite Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt that really put her on the map. Which one of you made me the way I am?

What you are? A vampire gone insane that pollutes its own bed. And if I cut my hair again? I mean even kids in my school who had never acted before were auditioning and it was a worldwide search, you know? So that was a really, I knew that it would be like a life-changing thing. Her star was rising. My dearest family. Fast. With roles in classics like Little Women.

Mr. Davis said it was as useful to educate a woman as to educate a female cat. Indies like The Virgin Suicides. We've been waiting for you guys. Hits like Bring It On.

This is not a democracy, it's a cheerocracy. I'm sorry but I'm overruling you. And blockbusters like the Spider-Man franchise. You have a knack for saving my life. I think I have a superhero stalker. It's interesting, I always felt like this nice safety net going back to Spider-Man. So to speak.

I didn't realize how on the nose that was like a safety web or whatever. I always liked that I got to go back to this like to this home base of working with these people again. And yet amidst all the outward success, something inside Dunst just didn't feel right.

And at age 27 she checked herself into a Utah rehab facility for treatment for depression. I just really was very much more a people pleaser. You know I think you're just growing up in that industry. You're wanting to do good for the director. Wanting to do good for your other actor. Like there's a lot of pleasing and I think that that starts to affect someone unconsciously or whatever and can hit you over the head.

And I think that like you know it's something that I think is just like part of being a human being. You know did you consider walking away from acting at that point? I just knew however I approached acting it had to change. And so there was like a more cathartic way of entering into a role as opposed to performative.

I was like freed basically to try anything and not feel fearful at all. That's on display in The Power of the Dog when her character Rose Gordon develops a drinking problem, Dunst resorted to an unusual acting technique. I would come out of the house a lot in distress in this film and so yes spinning around in circles is my is a very helpful trick.

Closing your eyes and spinning around in circles like rolling you're just like and then actually I just kind of stumble out of the house. Rose what's the matter? The final product seems to have paid off with one review saying few actors have played drunk as convincingly or sympathetically. The fact that the project let her work with partner and fellow co-star Jesse Plemons was also a plus.

You are marvelous Rose. The couple has lived in Austin, Texas during much of the pandemic raising their two small boys. Is it just because of less paparazzi attention? No it's like it's everything. People care less because it's not a movie town. They're better with children. The parks are nicer.

I just feel like in general it's just like I've had a more fun time living here. After a life spent making movies Dunst understands just how unique this moment is for her. It's like it has to be a good movie and you have to give a good performance.

You don't want to be the weakest link and like it's like so many things and then everyone has to like it and then it has to be the buzzy one and it's a rare thing that this happens. I'm so sorry. I can't seem to play.

I played in the cinema pit for hours and hours. I'm so sorry. But if the Oscars don't come calling. Listen if it ended tomorrow I'd figure something else out. I love my life separately. It's not like all of my confidence and everything is wrapped up in this industry. I think finding Jesse and having children it gives you stability and it gives you when you find your person like a way that just grounds your life.

So it feels like a time that like I can really really soak things in and appreciate them and feel good about them. Steve Hartman has the story of a lifelong love that almost got away. For most of her adult life 68 year old Jean Gustafson has suffered from chronic regret. I can't turn back the clock.

I wish I could. Would you do anything different? Yes I would have married him. I would have married him. What Jean so regrets is breaking up with her college sweetheart. So this was the spring of 72. A guy she met in the German club at Loyola University in Chicago.

This is Steve and I in the back here. Jean says he would have made the perfect husband. A lot of memories here. If only he'd been white. My mother was absolutely livid. What did she say? What didn't she say?

How could I disgrace the family? It was not pretty. Partly because of those pressures Jean broke up with Steve Watts and never saw him again. Until a few months ago when she tracked him down at this Chicago nursing home. What I found was sort of a broken man. Like Jean Steve was divorced with no kids but life for him had been much harder. He'd fallen on terrible times. He was homeless, had two strokes and was almost unrecognizable the day Jean walked back into his life. But he's still the wonderful gorgeous man that I knew. Did all those feelings come rushing back? Yes for both of us. And so with her mother no longer in the way Jean made arrangements to move Steve from the nursing home to her home in Portland, Oregon.

I feel terribly lucky that I get a second chance. Steve's health issues have left him bedridden but his mind is sharp and his heart young. In fact if you listen closely you can still hear his devotion unwavering after all these years. Race drove its wedge and love wormed its way back.

And their story isn't over I don't think. Has he proposed? I'm not at liberty to say. Hypothetically Hypothetically if he did propose what would your answer be? Hypothetically yes. Sounds like a follow-up. Should I book a ticket?

Hypothetically yes. It's a show-stopping number from the film Cabaret. 50 years later the movie still stands out and so does its star the legendary Liza Minnelli.

Embrace me my sweet embraceable you. We caught up with Liza Minnelli where she's most at home at the piano with Michael Feinstein and a tune by George and Ira Gershwin. Still the one and only Liza. Yet even now uncertain of her own immeasurable gifts do you recognize that you have achieved the status of legend? No I have to be told a lot. Like I keep saying to Michael is that all right? You know I had great people around me.

The biggest thing I got was to recognize somebody else's talent. So long as I care. No one knows Liza like Michael Feinstein her best friend and confidant. I mean we met each other and were joined at the hip. You understand human nature better than almost anyone I know. Well I think that's one of the extraordinary things about her. I think that's why she's a great artist because she's able to channel a fundamental understanding of the human condition into her art. It takes talent, tenacity, originality to become a star.

But the great ones have an undefinable something that endures. And Liza had it from the start. She won her first Tony in her teens.

It's gotta happen. And both an Oscar. It's Liza with a Z not Lisa with an S because Lisa with an S goes. And an Emmy in a single year.

Simple as can be see Liza. The Grammy Legend Award made it a grand slam. Fame was practically her birthright. She was just a toddler when she appeared with her mother Judy Garland in the movie musical in the good old summertime. I thought my mother was perfect. Perfect.

Every little thing she did. But my father there was no one in the world like my father. And I'm so much like him. Film director Vincent Minnelli was a Hollywood giant in his day. Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Kay Thompson were literally household names. I grew up around all these wonderful people and yet my parents always said to me no you're your own.

There's nobody like you. At 17 she began to see it herself. I remember my first gig was in a show called Best Foot Forward. Off Broadway.

And I mean off Broadway. I don't know I just knew then that from the minute I walked on stage that wasn't me. I was the person that I knew so much about because I had thought so much about her habits about her thoughts. Ladies and gentlemen Miss Liza Minnelli.

And then November 1964, London's famed Palladium. Judy Garland filled the house. But her teenage daughter was a revelation.

And not just to the audience. But my mom is my mom. You know other people think of me as Judy Garland. That's mama. If I get frightened I'd look at her and she would somehow know. And she would calm me down. Just by her look. Judy Garland died five years later.

For months before the premiere of The Sterile Cuckoo in 1969, Liza's Oscar-nominated performance at 23. I even apologized to Helen Upshaw. Listen to me. And I told her I learned that I didn't know that she wore dentures.

That it was just an accident and a coincidence. I don't even remember saying about Helen. I mean just give me another chance okay.

Oh yes there's one take which is astonishing. But I knew that character so well. And I really tried to get that part. And thank God I did.

In 1972 she shifts into a higher orbit and credits a Frenchman. Charles Hasselaer changed my life. He changed my entire life. Asnavor, who some call the greatest entertainer of the 20th century, taught her how to deliver a song. Because I wasn't a good singer. I was not.

And I knew because my mom was the best in the world. But I went to see Charles Hasselaer and he sang a song. But it wasn't his voice that got me. What got me was why he was singing it.

I just thought that's what I want to do. It helps me to think of all or two and pass it right along to you. And just for starters you should know I think you've let yourself go. He told that story to the song. Life is a cabaret old chum. Asnavor even helped shape her Oscar-winning performance in Bob Fosse's film version of Cabaret. Fosse also directed TV's Liza with a Z. Dressed by Halston, wearing that iconic pixie cut.

She brought the house down. At the end of it the show is over and there's a shot off stage now and the look on your face is it's uncertain. It's not happy. It's not joyful.

I don't know what it is. It's usually and I say it to Michael. We go off and we're just in the mood and everything and we'll stop and I'll say was I all right?

It's that simple. Was I all right? If she was born to the spotlights there was the dark side too. Following her mother down the road to addiction.

There were also failed marriages and miscarriages. All captured by the prying eye of the paparazzi. Liza is currently working with Michael Feinstein as executive producer of an upcoming album called Gershwin Country and producing his new tour celebrating Judy Garland's 100th birthday this year. At 75 Liza Minnelli doesn't perform in public that often so this is something special. I am my own best friend. When I'm singing to an audience I'm not singing to an audience I'm singing to you. What I want to say to the audience is have you ever felt like this because it's what I'm going through now.

I just want people to know that I've been through what they've been through. Tomorrow of course is the holiday marking the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. which prompts these thoughts from historian Douglas Brinkley. Why is it so hard for Americans to vote these days? It shouldn't be. After all in a free democratic society no right is more precious.

The equation's really simple. No universal voting rights, no democracy. Nearly six decades ago we thought we'd won this war. As part of the civil rights struggle Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. exposed all the Jim Crow tricks designed to keep black voters from registering and casting their ballots including literacy tests poll closures and police intimidation. In early 1965 King had organized peaceful voting rights demonstrations in Selma, Alabama only to be arrested. Then just over a month later on a day that came to be known as Bloody Sunday, Alabama state troopers and sheriff's deputies beat and gassed 600 peaceful marchers crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge while TV cameras rolled causing a national outrage. In the wake of that violence then President Lyndon Johnson addressed a televised joint session of Congress on March 15th demanding that legislators enact expansive voting rights legislation. He concluded with words from the popular civil rights anthem.

And we shall overcome we shall overcome. In short order the Voting Rights Act of 1965 became law loaded with provisions ensuring that federal state and local elections would at last be free fair and racially inclusive. In the years to come the act proved to be a triumph for freedom yet in 2022 that historic achievement is being dismantled. Republican controlled state legislatures are writing laws that impede voter registration, reduce early voting hours, cut the number of polling places in urban areas, limit mail-in and drop box voting and politicize how elections are run. Meanwhile GOP gerrymandering of legislative districts is trying to lock in Republican control at the state level no matter how many people vote for the other person.

Sound familiar? It should. It's the new Jim Crow. That's why the national rallying cry this Dr. King holiday should be remember Selma. Remember the sacrifices made then to guarantee voting rights for all Americans now. And remember that other great civil rights leader John Lewis who had been beaten by police on that bloody Sunday and in whose name Democrats are trying to pass the new Voting Rights Advancement Act. As Dr. King said so powerfully in 1965, yes we were on the move and no wave of racism can stop us. Thank you for listening.

Please join us when our trumpet sounds again next Sunday morning. best chance of taking a Democratic seat away. Nevada, New Hampshire. Not Georgia. Well, Georgia's right up there but New Hampshire is a surprise. In New Hampshire people really just kind of don't like Maggie Hassan. For more from this week's conversation follow the Take Out with Major Garrett on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-01-29 12:47:44 / 2023-01-29 13:02:03 / 14

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