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Melissa Harris-Perry: You're listening to The Takeaway. Thanks for starting your week with us. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. After finally securing support from Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, Senate Democrats spent the weekend working all through the night Saturday to pass a new climate, health care, and tax bill dubbed the Inflation Reduction Act.

US Vice President Kamala Harris: The yeas are 50, the nays are 50. The Senate being equally divided, the vice president votes in the affirmative, and the bill, as amended, is passed.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, the Congressional Budget Office says the bill is actually going to have a negligible effect on inflation this year, but it does include funding to fight climate change, lowers the cost of some prescription drugs, and raises taxes on some major corporations while also working to reduce the budget deficit. The big ticket item in the bill is more than $370 billion earmarked for climate and energy programs. The largest investment and climate policy in US history.

To help pay for it, it will place a 15% minimum tax on billion-dollar companies. The House is going to interrupt its summer recess this Friday to vote on the measure and it's expected to pass. Now, there's been a lot of other political news in the last week too. We're now exactly three months away from the November 8th midterms. From the nation's Capitol to states like Kansas and primaries across the country, the parties have been making political news.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: Joining me to discuss all of this and much more is Joel Payne, Democratic strategist and host of the podcast Here Comes the Payne. He's also a CBS News political contributor. Joel, thanks for being on The Takeaway.

Joel Payne: Thanks for having me.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Also with us is Christina Greer, associate professor of political science at Fordham University, host of The Blackest Questions At theGrio. Professor Greer is also author of Black Ethnics: Race, Immigration, and the Pursuit of the American Dream. Christina, so glad you're with us.

Christina Greer: Thank you so much, Melissa.

Melissa Harris-Perry: All right, Joel, so we have DC lawmakers pulling an all-nighter on a weekend in August. Can you help me understand why this bill was so important to pass right now?

Joel Payne: Well, don't forget the pizzas and the cuts and the Cheetos whenever folks have to work past six o'clock, which I think most Americans have to do a lot more often. Look, despite all the histrionics, this was a big deal. I've been thinking a lot about what this means for the Biden presidency and for his legacy. Look, Teddy Roosevelt had his Square Deal, FDR had his New Deal, Truman had the Fair Deal. You could call this the Good Deal because it's a good deal.

It's not everything that every Democrat wanted. It's not all the things that President Biden promised on the trail or folks like Bernie Sanders were talking about going into the Biden administration last year, but it's a good faith investment on climate change. It's a big win for people who care about health care, about tax fairness. There's a lot of good stuff in here and it comes on the tail end of a really productive legislative session.

Legislation to support vets with burn pits, legislation to invest in semiconductors. There's a lot of good things happening. The administration of government really has never been the challenge for President Biden. It's the politics. It's managing all the things that are outside of the between-the-lines job of being the president. How do you sell this? How do you keep and maintain your coalition and how do you build political support to win this November and then potentially again in two years? That's the challenge that the president has.

Melissa Harris-Perry: This language of the Good Deal and I sort of appreciate almost Biden as kind of a moderate toner, which you talked about. Christina, I want to take a listen to the president back in late July.

US President Joe Biden: Look, this bill is far from perfect. It's a compromise, but it's often how progress is made by compromises.

Melissa Harris-Perry: All right. Christina, were the compromises worth it? We hear Joel telling us it's actually a good, strong, solid deal. Politically, is it enough of a good deal to keep folks excited, revved up going into midterms?

Christina Greer: Right. Well, I do think that it's a good deal and I think that compromise is the cornerstone of all things in American democracy. We've never gotten any progress without compromise, starting from the framers and sort of negotiating how we would even structure this government. I think Joel is incredibly astute when he says it's the politics piece. The Biden administration does not know, and I would say the larger Democratic Party writ large doesn't know, how to market and sell their wins and successes.

Melissa, you and I both know if you write a book and you don't publicize it, no one knows that you wrote the book. Writing a book is actually only 50% of the task. The other 50% is letting people know what's in the book and getting out there and explaining the ideas. The Biden administration, I think, has had quite a few wins to be quite honest, but they do it almost in a silo.

It's the politics of what the Biden administration now needs to do in the next three months before the midterms to explain to the American public. Because as we have seen, the Republican Party is more than comfortable, flat out lying about the wins and losses of the Democratic Party. Joe Biden and his folks need to explain how they have helped the American people. They need to explain how they're helping veterans. They need to explain what climate change means to people's particular communities.

Climate change is such a large concept. What does it mean when we look at Kentucky and they're underwater? What does it mean when we're trying to rebuild the Gulf Coast? What does it mean when the folks in New York are still struggling, and so thinking of how we use the money that the Biden administration is putting towards all these particular policies and walking Americans through the necessity to understand what it is the government is actually doing for them?

Melissa Harris-Perry: Speaking of understanding what the government's doing and I think also for me and I think for many observers on the politics, understanding how it's happening, right? Joel, I know that for many progressives, Senator Manchin, it feels like a stumbling block, but he's pretty legible. He could understand what both political and substantive concerns motivate his choices, in part because he will talk about them. Senator Sinema is different. She's far more inscrutable. Do you have any sense about her actions relative to this bill, giving a clear sense of her motivations to her Democratic colleagues going forward when it comes to policymaking?

Joel Payne: I like that term about Joe Manchin. He's legible all right. There are some other descriptors folks might want to use for him occasionally as well. I think when it comes to Sinema, I think Senator Sinema certainly wants to be seen as this independent voice. I heard one smart political consultant say she's from Arizona. She thinks she's John McCain, but she's going to turn out to be Jeff Flake, which is a person with no political country if she's not careful.

I think what makes it even more difficult for her is that she is not some anomaly in that state. She serves on the Senate with another Democrat who does not seem to have a problem, call it falling in line, call it being a good team player, but Mark Kelly doesn't seem like he has a hard time with the same issue she does. They're dealing with the same constituents. I even looked it up. He got half a million plus more votes than she did and they beat the same candidate two years apart.

What gives here? I think that's the question I always ask. Look, what we're talking about here, we can dive deep on the specifics and kind of quarrel with how we got there, what the journey was. The fact is politics is black and white. It's about wins and losses. Every Democrat, whether you're Kyrsten Sinema, Joe Manchin, AOC, it doesn't matter. Wes Moore in Maryland, whoever. You have something to campaign on. You have to choose to campaign on it.

You have to choose to frame it against Republicans who, I will remind you in the last two weeks, voted against funding to support vets and just in this last vote for the Inflation Reduction Act, voted against an insulin cap, a cap on how much money people are going to be charged for insulin, which is going to impact, I think, about 40% of the country. Those prices are astronomical. The Republicans voted against that. The funny thing is that's so baked into our politics that unless Democrats hang it on them, they won't be blamed for it. That's the choice that Democrats have to make.

Melissa Harris-Perry: That insulin cap, it feels to me like such a great example, Christina, of exactly what you were saying about not only do you have to write a book, ideally a good book, but you have to let people know that it exists. That insulin cap feels like such a critical one, especially when we look at where diabetes most affects folks, folks who are spending the large portion of their household income on prescription medications. How do you take something like that? That is in a bill called the Inflation Reduction Act, right? If you pull that out, how do you tell the story of that?

Christina Greer: I think it's really difficult for the Democrats to do because this reminds me of Jonathan Metzl's book, who's a friend of the show, Dying of Whiteness. Republicans have convinced many people in their base who need these cuts, who are diabetic, who rely on insulin, but they've convinced them that the Democrats are just spending your money on wasteful things and you should be against Obamacare, not walking them through the back that these cuts would actually help them and literally save their lives.

I think the Democrats oftentimes focus on, "Well, we're doing good, right? We are doing right." That's not the way politics is played out. In doing so, it has to be a local state and federal conversation where everyone is on the same page and has a focal point, but they have to have nuance depending on their particular region. How you talk about these particular bills in a place like Tennessee or Kentucky might be different than the way you talk about these bills in urban centers across the nation.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I want to talk about another part of this broader politics right now, Joel, that you just name-checked. That's the PACT, P-A-C-T, Act passed last week around burn pits. Can you talk a little bit about what was in this and this conversation around military veterans who are suffering from having an experience of toxic exposure and not so much the politics here maybe, but really the substance of this?

Joel Payne: The substance of that legislation is pretty significant. It's something that proponents of it have been fighting for somewhere in about a decade. Of course, Jon Stewart, famed comedian, was a big public voice pushing this, really has lent his advocacy to it. That money will make it easier for folks to get the health care that they need. Unfortunately, some of those folks who have been fighting for that have lost their battle with the ailments that they contracted fighting around those burn pits.

During that fight, there were people who began that fight alongside Stewart and those advocates who passed away. I think you're right to focus on the policy, but the politics do matter here as well. Republicans helped write the bill, right? There were Republican co-sponsors. It was a bill that passed the Senate a couple of months ago. Because Chuck Schumer outmaneuvered Mitch McConnell on the Inflation Reduction Act as retaliation and that's all it was, there was very little difference between the version that was in front of the Senate about a week ago and what they passed three months ago.

They, as a form of retaliation, voted to delay that bill. It obviously did eventually pass and they took a lot of political heat for it, but the fact that you would put veterans on the chopping block for political comeuppance for Democrats is pretty cynical. I think, again, related to this conversation about politics, people need to know that. Those are the types of things that you have to put in front of people over and over and over and over again. I think you'll be hearing a lot about that on the campaign trail this fall.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Joel, Chrissy, are these legislative wins enough to create some political momentum for Democrats going into the midterms? Chrissy?

Christina Greer: I hope.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Joel?

Joel Payne: Absolutely.

Melissa Harris-Perry: All right, we're going to take that quick break. We're going to have more politics just ahead on The Takeaway.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: Back with you now on The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. We've been talking politics with Democratic strategist Joel Payne and political scientist Christina Greer. All right, so we're 90 days from the midterms and I'm going to need you all to help me get a lay of the land here. Joel, is there yet a clear takeaway from Republican primaries?

Joel Payne: Oh, I got a takeaway. It's the fact that they're nominating, I think we need to normalize not saying "crazy." I'm going to try to use another term, but let's just say less-than-stable, less-than-desirable general election candidates. How about that? They are putting up some really, really difficult candidates to run with. You don't have to go any further than Georgia with Herschel Walker, who's running against Raphael Warnock.

This candidate in Arizona who just won the Senate primary, Blake Masters, is someone who believes in the great replacement theory. At the governor's level in Arizona, you've got Kari Lake, a former TV host who's the chief election denier. You've got Tudor Dixon in Michigan, who doesn't believe in exceptions for rape and incest for abortion. The list spans across the country, these candidates who do not represent the mainstream of the country but who do represent the mainstream with the Republican Party right now.

It's a very different, very radicalized Republican Party. It's the face they don't want to show to the public. It reminds me a lot of actually 2010 and 2012. I used to work for Harry Reid, Senate majority leader. The only reason Harry Reid-- I won't say "the only reason." My late former boss was a very talented politician and maybe found another way, but a very big reason why he won his 2010 reelection was because he was able to get the right candidate in the form of Sharron Angle.

There was a more moderate candidate that Republicans opted not to choose. You're seeing that over and over and over again in races this cycle and in an environment that should be favorable to Republicans, an environment where Democrats should have no chance historically. They've got a chance to hold the Senate. They don't have a chance to hold the House, but they've got a chance to hold and even grow their lead in the Senate. It's only because Republicans have picked these terrible candidates across the country.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Okay. Professor Greer, are they terrible candidates? I hear a little bit less, the substance of whether or not they create terror or terrible, and more, I guess, the politics of it. We have the DCCC actually supporting some of these candidates that Joel has just described as being so far. It suggests to me that D-Triple is believing that they're so terrible that, in fact, you'll get a Harry Reid effect. You'll have folks choosing a Democrat rather than these far-right Republicans, but this is a different time. The Republican electorate looks a bit different. I'm wondering what you think about that Democratic strategy of supporting Trump-endorsed candidates.

Christina Greer: I think it's a horrible strategy and I have no idea what Jamie Harrison is thinking in that. I don't think we are in the same moment as we were in 2010 and 2022. A lot has happened since then. The idea that these fringe far-right candidates who have become mainstream Republicans, by the way, are winning their primaries and are facing sensible, solid Democratic candidates.

What worries me is that, yes, in 2010 and 2012, there was no way they were going to win. In 2022, they absolutely could win. Sometimes there's polling that shows Herschel Walker is neck and neck with Raphael Warnock. Sometimes he's in the lead. How can we even imagine a world like that when we have candidates in battleground states who are election deniers, who have said that they would overturn any election that they don't agree with whether it's in 2022 or 2024?

We could be looking at the end of American democracy as we know. We could be looking at the end of free and fair elections. It absolutely is, I would argue, a cause to ring the alarm that the Republicans are putting up these candidates. Not only are they putting them up, but they're winning. I don't think that it's a fait accompli that Democrats will necessarily beat these candidates.

We know that Republicans in primaries are turning out in larger numbers, but we also know that the party that is in power tends to lose seats during the midterm. The party that's in power tends to not have people as aggressively go out and vote. Now, maybe what's going on with a woman's right to choose might motivate more Democrats. We also have to remember, Republicans have worked quite diligently to make sure they've made it more difficult for marginalized communities to even turn out and vote.

We're fighting voter disenfranchisement whilst also trying to put up candidates in an electoral season where many Democrats aren't as motivated as they are, say, in a presidential election year. When we compare what happened in Harry Reid's case to what's going on in 2022, I actually think it's apples to lobster in the sense that we are not comparing the same to moments in our American political history. The moment we're in with the Republican Party is way more dangerous than we saw just a decade ago.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I'm so fascinated to know which is the apple and which is the lobster in this case. [chuckles] Joel, let me come to you on this. In some cases when we're talking about a statewide election, so if we zoom on down to Arizona and we're looking at the Republican's nominee for governor there, Kari Lake, the state is the whole district. I guess the other piece here that Professor Greer is kind of gesturing towards is that idea that there are these structural elements as well that can affect how particularly the House turns out, right? The redistricting that has already moved towards much safer Republican districts for folks, I'm wondering if this, again, support of these far-right candidates makes sense when the structures have altered so much.

Joel Payne: Yes, I think this is a fascinating conversation. I actually completely understand the horror and the concern that you and Professor Greer are pointing out here. I guess what I would say is this one, maybe as a hack, as a practitioner myself, right? I'm used to living on a knife's edge. I think part of the work is figuring out the best way to win elections. Frankly, the best way to win elections is to make sure you have the best possible candidate and they have the worst possible candidate and that's as all this time.

I think these are very individualized decisions in terms of time and place. There are some states, some localities where I absolutely think it's malpractice to futz around with primaries and to mess around in other folk business. There are other places. Let's look at Peter Meijer, the congressman, now outgoing congressman in the Michigan district. Of course, he voted for President Trump's impeachment and lost very narrowly in a Republican primary.

That is a winnable seat now specifically because he lost. I understand it's hard-edged. In politics, it ain't being bad and it's tough. Yes, he did vote on the side of democracy. If you're a Democrat and if you care about having victories like Democrats just experienced over the last few days with the Inflation Reduction Act and you care about being able to do more, you need political advisors. You need politicians like Nancy Pelosi and her operatives to make decisions to go after folks like that.

I think that's a thing that Republicans never blench at and that Democrats always blench at. I understand the decision. It can be smart, it can be dangerous, and it can be cynical all at the same time. Ultimately, it'll be judged on the results. Every political observer and every political advisor knows that, that they will be ultimately judged on results and they are open to that.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Joel Payne is a Democratic strategist and CBS News political contributor and Christina Greer is associate professor of political science at Fordham University. Thank you both so much for being here.

Joel Payne: So good to be with you.

Christina Greer: Thank you, Melissa.

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