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PRINTER?! He Hardly Knew ‘Er! · Politix

0:00
SPEAKER_01: Get on the phone with Hillary Clinton and say, like, will you endorse my campaign?
0:04
SPEAKER_01: Because like, why not?
0:06
SPEAKER_01: There's this group of people,
0:08
SPEAKER_01: including certain third-way donors who,
0:10
SPEAKER_01: you know,
0:11
SPEAKER_01: I may or may not have tried to discuss this with,
0:13
SPEAKER_01: who are like really fired up about Israel and factionalism.
0:17
SPEAKER_01: And there's lots of moderate Democrats who like sincerely believe
0:21
SPEAKER_01: that somebody like Abdul will underperform, but would like him to win.
0:25
SPEAKER_01: And he can get those people to endorse him and he just should.
0:29
SPEAKER_01: And he should wear those endorsements as a badge of pride and he should do his best
0:32
SPEAKER_01: to win the election.
0:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I don't know that I agree with you about the Hillary Clinton thing.
0:41
SPEAKER_00: Hey everyone, you're listening to a free preview of the Politics Podcast.
0:44
SPEAKER_00: This week, John Ossoff says he has no interest in running for president in 2028.
0:49
SPEAKER_00: But between his fundraising prowess and narrative shaping
0:52
SPEAKER_00: and attention driving abilities,
0:54
SPEAKER_00: he's doing a better job of it than almost anyone else in the Democratic Party.
0:59
SPEAKER_00: So we'll talk about how he made Natalie Harp famous,
1:03
SPEAKER_00: and by doing so,
1:04
SPEAKER_00: grabbed the country by the lapels and made it confront how aberrant and dangerous
1:09
SPEAKER_00: the late Trump era is.
1:12
SPEAKER_00: Then, primary season is winding down and the Democratic Party is unified.
1:18
SPEAKER_00: Or is it?
1:20
SPEAKER_00: We'll talk about how things stack up after a big progressive win in Michigan and
1:23
SPEAKER_00: a big progressive defeat in Wisconsin.
1:27
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1:30
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1:36
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1:37
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1:39
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1:42
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SPEAKER_01: paid at politics.fm.
1:50
SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to the Politics Podcast.
1:52
SPEAKER_00: I'm Brian Boitler.
1:53
SPEAKER_00: I'm Matthew Glacius.
1:55
SPEAKER_00: How are you doing?
1:55
SPEAKER_00: It's your last week in Maine.
1:57
SPEAKER_01: It's great.
1:58
SPEAKER_01: New background coming.
1:59
SPEAKER_01: I'm really hoping to be in like a hotter, more humid place.
2:04
SPEAKER_01: Want some less scenery.
2:05
SPEAKER_00: We got you covered.
2:07
SPEAKER_01: I hear the statues are more golden than when I left, you know, so that's good.
2:13
SPEAKER_01: I'm looking forward to that.
2:15
SPEAKER_01: There's going to be an F1 race,
2:17
SPEAKER_00: I hear.
2:17
SPEAKER_00: I saw, yeah, a car is going to crash into something priceless.
2:22
SPEAKER_01: Hopefully not into my house.
2:24
SPEAKER_00: My father was visiting the previous weekend and just almost on a lark.
2:29
SPEAKER_00: There's this...
2:31
SPEAKER_00: Like almost intentionally bad boat tour that you can take up and down the Potomac
2:37
SPEAKER_00: that Kelly and I take at least once a year, just mostly to amuse ourselves.
2:41
SPEAKER_00: And we took him on it and it goes right by, it goes right under Memorial Bridge.
2:45
SPEAKER_00: And so you can see the gold plated statues there.
2:49
SPEAKER_00: And we also took him to the Kennedy Center so that he could see the- It's
2:53
SPEAKER_01: the Trump Kennedy Center, I believe.
2:55
SPEAKER_00: No, well,
2:55
SPEAKER_00: so now it's just the John F.
2:57
SPEAKER_00: Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, but you can't tell because it's shrouded.
3:00
SPEAKER_00: But now the board wants to say the John F.
3:04
SPEAKER_00: Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts as renovated and restored
3:07
SPEAKER_00: by President Donald J. Trump.
3:09
SPEAKER_00: And so we're going to have to have another.
3:11
SPEAKER_01: That's the kind of wise compromise that we need.
3:14
SPEAKER_01: It's like King Solomon.
3:17
SPEAKER_01: I love it.
3:19
SPEAKER_01: So.
3:20
SPEAKER_00: We're talking about John Awesome.
3:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Natalie Harp.
3:23
SPEAKER_01: Who is she?
3:24
SPEAKER_01: What's going on?
3:24
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so for those who don't know...
3:28
SPEAKER_01: John Ossoff has become known, I would say, for the video clips of his set piece speeches.
3:36
SPEAKER_01: They're putting a lot of work into the production.
3:38
SPEAKER_01: You can see a lot of different camera angles, stuff like that.
3:42
SPEAKER_01: And so he did one over the weekend where he was talking about various things.
3:48
SPEAKER_01: And there was a line in the speech where he said- I
3:51
SPEAKER_00: have the quote if you want me to read it.
3:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, let's get the exact quote.
3:54
SPEAKER_00: So he's talking about Trump here.
3:57
SPEAKER_00: He says,
3:57
SPEAKER_00: while the sailors on the Lincoln fight his war,
4:00
SPEAKER_00: while he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves,
4:03
SPEAKER_00: the president sleeps through his meetings.
4:05
SPEAKER_00: He golfs and trades stocks.
4:07
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't want to do the job.
4:09
SPEAKER_00: He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie
4:12
SPEAKER_00: on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar.
4:18
SPEAKER_01: So I saw that in a clip and I thought it was like a pretty good speech.
4:24
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know who Natalie was.
4:26
SPEAKER_01: Oh, you didn't.
4:26
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
4:27
SPEAKER_01: And I didn't make anything of it,
4:28
SPEAKER_01: but then helpfully other twitter.com clippers informed me
4:34
SPEAKER_01: that John Ossoff was insinuating that Donald Trump is having an affair with Natalie.
4:40
SPEAKER_01: And then I asked other people who Natalie is and I was read in.
4:46
SPEAKER_01: She's his kind of Personal secretary.
4:49
SPEAKER_01: She is the woman who is responsible for printing out things that are then handed to him.
4:57
SPEAKER_00: She has a nickname as a result of this,
4:58
SPEAKER_00: which like tickles me because it's like simultaneously antiseptic,
5:03
SPEAKER_00: but also a little bit porny.
5:06
SPEAKER_01: Which is?
5:08
SPEAKER_00: The Human Printer.
5:09
SPEAKER_00: Ah.
5:10
SPEAKER_00: I guess.
5:11
SPEAKER_01: So anyway.
5:12
SPEAKER_00: You're going to make me print.
5:13
SPEAKER_01: You're going to make me print.
5:15
SPEAKER_01: Oh God, I'm printing.
5:16
SPEAKER_01: I thought that this was a little bit of a like comically orchestrated thing where
5:21
SPEAKER_01: if you read that quote,
5:22
SPEAKER_01: as you just did, he doesn't, like Asaf doesn't really say anything about Natalie.
5:31
SPEAKER_01: The hot take is that he's sleeping through meetings.
5:34
SPEAKER_01: That's like the direct allegation that he made.
5:37
SPEAKER_01: But everybody said that Ossoff was making an insinuation about Trump's relationship
5:42
SPEAKER_01: with Natalie.
5:43
SPEAKER_01: And then the White House took the bait and like blew up at Ossoff and said
5:48
SPEAKER_01: that he was demeaning this female staffer and,
5:52
SPEAKER_01: you know, all women everywhere should be ashamed.
5:55
SPEAKER_01: And then progressives got to fire back.
5:57
SPEAKER_01: Obviously, uh,
5:59
SPEAKER_01: Respect for women is not really a hallmark of the Donald Trump movement and so on
6:03
SPEAKER_01: and so forth.
6:04
SPEAKER_01: And then Ossoff Monday night was on MS Now with Jen Psaki and she asked him about it.
6:12
SPEAKER_01: And he gave this kind of like,
6:14
SPEAKER_01: Aw shucks response where he was like,
6:17
SPEAKER_01: I'm just saying that instead of focusing on his work,
6:20
SPEAKER_01: he's like spending a lot of time in a bubble with these aides
6:24
SPEAKER_01: and he's not really getting the information he needs about what's going on out there
6:27
SPEAKER_01: in the American people.
6:30
SPEAKER_01: So I would say that that is a triumph of I don't know what.
6:37
SPEAKER_01: Well, okay, okay, okay.
6:39
SPEAKER_00: I want to explain what I think he did.
6:41
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm very confident that he did.
6:44
SPEAKER_00: Because like no doubt he was being cute, right?
6:47
SPEAKER_00: Like the bait was to not make an allegation about Trump and Natalie Harb,
6:54
SPEAKER_00: but to leave this question lingering that is most easily answered by,
7:00
SPEAKER_00: oh, they must be having some kind of affair.
7:03
SPEAKER_00: Otherwise he wouldn't have said it.
7:04
SPEAKER_00: But he knew because he's well-staffed and
7:07
SPEAKER_00: because this is all actually pretty current,
7:09
SPEAKER_00: that there's a lot of reporting about Trump.
7:13
SPEAKER_00: Harp's role in Trump's administration and the way she seems to idolize Trump,
7:19
SPEAKER_00: whether it's romantic or just kind of like a hero worship kind of thing.
7:25
SPEAKER_00: So she's like a somewhat prominent character in the Maggie Haberman,
7:31
SPEAKER_00: Jonathan Swan book about the Trump White House.
7:35
SPEAKER_00: I think Haberman has called Natalie Harp Trump's human binky or blankie, right?
7:40
SPEAKER_00: Like he really needs her around to feel level.
7:47
SPEAKER_00: And she,
7:48
SPEAKER_00: because of that,
7:49
SPEAKER_00: isn't just doing the functions of what you would – Think of as a personal secretary.
7:56
SPEAKER_00: But what,
7:57
SPEAKER_00: if you kind of know about how White has their staff,
8:00
SPEAKER_00: she's kind of operating almost like as a de facto staff secretary,
8:04
SPEAKER_00: which is a much more important job because that's the person
8:08
SPEAKER_00: Who controls what paper gets in front of the president.
8:11
SPEAKER_00: And that person is supposed to exercise a lot of judgment,
8:15
SPEAKER_00: like public-minded judgment about what the president sees
8:20
SPEAKER_00: and how his time is allocated.
8:22
SPEAKER_00: And when that person becomes somebody who's tending to Trump's emotions,
8:26
SPEAKER_00: who is herself emotionally invested in his personal well-being,
8:31
SPEAKER_00: it actually creates like a,
8:34
SPEAKER_00: threatens to create like a spiral of misgovernment,
8:37
SPEAKER_00: which is You know,
8:39
SPEAKER_00: what we're seeing for,
8:40
SPEAKER_00: I think,
8:40
SPEAKER_00: many reasons,
8:41
SPEAKER_00: but also in part because Trump has chosen to surround himself with people like her.
8:47
SPEAKER_00: And so look, like she was with him on that plane when he had to make the escape.
8:54
SPEAKER_00: And a lot has been made about the fact that she went along with him.
8:59
SPEAKER_00: But so did Dan Scavino and so did Pete Hegseth, right?
9:03
SPEAKER_00: And it's no,
9:03
SPEAKER_00: you know,
9:04
SPEAKER_00: you can see that John Ossoff was playing games because he didn't say he wants to fly
9:09
SPEAKER_00: with Natalie and Pete and Dan.
9:11
SPEAKER_00: He singled out her knowing that it would get this storm whipped up.
9:16
SPEAKER_00: And it did.
9:17
SPEAKER_00: And so now he can be like, hey, I didn't say anything about an affair.
9:20
SPEAKER_00: That was get your minds out of the gutter.
9:22
SPEAKER_00: But also...
9:24
SPEAKER_00: The fact that they took the bait is actually like Trump being a hoist
9:28
SPEAKER_00: on his own petard in a way because he has dined out for years on the idea
9:33
SPEAKER_00: that he would say things that are controversial but maybe not actually
9:37
SPEAKER_00: that politically damaging.
9:39
SPEAKER_00: But the controversy would force the underlying tape to be replayed over and over and over again.
9:47
SPEAKER_00: And so what he's done by trying to – Get everyone to pretend to believe
9:52
SPEAKER_00: that Ossoff is some kind of sexist or whatever,
9:55
SPEAKER_00: is get people to watch that clip and hear that quote that I read,
9:58
SPEAKER_00: which contains not just the line about Natalie,
10:01
SPEAKER_00: but the fact that he has stranded sailors on the USS Lincoln.
10:06
SPEAKER_00: He's sleeping through his meetings,
10:07
SPEAKER_00: he's golfing, he's trading stocks, which is an important one.
10:10
SPEAKER_00: And so it's like, okay, let's play this clip a thousand times.
10:14
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
10:16
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to say literally every Democrat,
10:18
SPEAKER_01: but dozens and dozens and dozens of Democrats have been trying to get more focus
10:26
SPEAKER_01: on things like the stock trading and the Qatari jet and so on and so forth.
10:31
SPEAKER_01: And they have been struggling for months,
10:33
SPEAKER_01: if not years,
10:35
SPEAKER_01: because for whatever,
10:38
SPEAKER_01: you know,
10:39
SPEAKER_01: the press doesn't want to cover normal banal Democrat says
10:44
SPEAKER_01: that Donald Trump is corrupt.
10:46
SPEAKER_01: It's not considered interesting.
10:49
SPEAKER_01: Like what's interesting is factional infighting that we're going to discuss after
10:53
SPEAKER_01: the break and stuff that Trump is doing and so on and so forth.
10:58
SPEAKER_01: And Ossoff,
11:00
SPEAKER_01: by including the Natalie line,
11:02
SPEAKER_01: and then I don't know what the level of collaboration was,
11:06
SPEAKER_01: but all I would say is Ossoff did not say that Donald Trump is having
11:11
SPEAKER_01: a sexual affair with Natalie.
11:13
SPEAKER_01: But after the clip of him putting that was circulating on Twitter,
11:19
SPEAKER_01: lots of progressives said that that's what Asaf was saying.
11:24
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
11:25
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if there was coordination behind that or not,
11:28
SPEAKER_01: but like Dan Pfeiffer said, like,
11:32
SPEAKER_01: this speech is going to raise a lot of uncomfortable questions in many newsrooms
11:35
SPEAKER_01: across Washington.
11:37
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
11:38
SPEAKER_01: And like the allegation that Donald Trump...
11:42
SPEAKER_01: Doesn't rely on the best impartial advice is not going to raise any questions
11:47
SPEAKER_01: in any newsrooms, right?
11:49
SPEAKER_01: Like that's not the question that's being raised.
11:51
SPEAKER_01: And so the whole thing was a kind of a masterclass in,
11:57
SPEAKER_01: I think the like somewhat overrated politics of attention in the Trump era.
12:04
SPEAKER_01: But this is definitely something that a lot of Democrats have been sweating intensely about.
12:10
SPEAKER_00: It's the question of how do we manipulate the news environment?
12:15
SPEAKER_00: This is the thing, because it's like attention can mean anything.
12:19
SPEAKER_00: It can be on things that are important or unimportant.
12:21
SPEAKER_00: It can mean attention on things that are helpful or unhelpful.
12:24
SPEAKER_00: But the question of what is an election about in the minds of voters is a very,
12:29
SPEAKER_00: very, very, very important question.
12:31
SPEAKER_00: And Republicans are able to use a lot of tricks.
12:35
SPEAKER_00: And they don't always work, but they try.
12:38
SPEAKER_00: Every time to make the election about the thing they want it to be about.
12:42
SPEAKER_00: And Democrats struggle with that because the issues they tend to want elections
12:47
SPEAKER_00: to be about are a little bit technical and antiseptic.
12:51
SPEAKER_00: They're not scandalous or salacious or about like hordes and caravans coming north
12:58
SPEAKER_00: from Central America or whatever.
13:01
SPEAKER_00: And they don't really have like the kind of propaganda media
13:05
SPEAKER_00: that can make Trump's corruption,
13:07
SPEAKER_00: which is salacious, the thing that we're all talking about.
13:11
SPEAKER_00: And so there's just been this kind of...
13:15
SPEAKER_00: Competition underway among Democrats to figure out how to do this.
13:19
SPEAKER_00: And some money has gone to influencers to try to get them to like talk about it
13:23
SPEAKER_00: in fake organic seeming ways.
13:26
SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
13:28
SPEAKER_00: Robert Garcia has done a pretty good job as the ranking member of
13:32
SPEAKER_00: the Oversight Committee of the House.
13:33
SPEAKER_00: And there's this and that effort underway to try to give these issues more lift.
13:39
SPEAKER_00: And like Ossoff just like knocked this one out of the park, I thought.
13:44
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
13:44
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I guess another way that I would put it is that,
13:49
SPEAKER_01: you know,
13:50
SPEAKER_01: I went on Pod Save America,
13:53
SPEAKER_01: did an interview with Jon Favreau about moderates and 2028 and issue positions
14:00
SPEAKER_01: and stuff.
14:01
SPEAKER_01: And his thing that he kept coming back to is that he thinks that all
14:05
SPEAKER_01: the moderate Democrats are too boring and
14:09
SPEAKER_01: that like what is exciting is Is these more progressive candidates who are against
14:14
SPEAKER_01: the establishment, etc.
14:16
SPEAKER_01: I don't really know how moderate Asaf is.
14:19
SPEAKER_01: He has a very, I would say, undefined policy profile.
14:24
SPEAKER_01: But certainly he hasn't defined a policy profile as no...
14:29
SPEAKER_01: He hasn't defined himself as notably more progressive or notably less progressive
14:34
SPEAKER_01: than anybody else, really.
14:36
SPEAKER_01: Oh, so if you
14:37
SPEAKER_00: want to skip ahead a little bit,
14:38
SPEAKER_00: I was going to ask like towards the end of this segment,
14:41
SPEAKER_00: like how you think about him in terms of presidential material.
14:45
SPEAKER_00: And one of the things I was going to say is that like he has many things going
14:51
SPEAKER_00: for him at the moment and he's certainly gotten better.
14:54
SPEAKER_00: But he voted for the Lake and Riley Act,
14:56
SPEAKER_00: which as we saw in Minnesota,
14:59
SPEAKER_00: It can be a problem because it invites attacks from the left.
15:06
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what that does to his DW nominate overall score,
15:09
SPEAKER_00: but that was,
15:10
SPEAKER_00: I think,
15:11
SPEAKER_00: he was among the handful of Democrats that were like,
15:13
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to stake out a position myself as to the right of where the party was
15:17
SPEAKER_00: under Biden by voting for this bill.
15:20
SPEAKER_00: And I think it's backfired politically, but that's where his instincts were.
15:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I think it will be interesting to see what happens.
15:28
SPEAKER_01: I guess what I'm saying is that in terms
15:30
SPEAKER_01: of like some people are just like hard-bitten leftists and they want people
15:37
SPEAKER_01: who are very left-wing on everything all the time and they own it up.
15:42
SPEAKER_01: Another thing that many people say, I mean,
15:46
SPEAKER_01: this again,
15:46
SPEAKER_01: this was the Pod Save America appearance,
15:48
SPEAKER_01: is that like,
15:49
SPEAKER_01: You know, like I'm all for moderation, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
15:52
SPEAKER_01: But all these mods are like, they're so boring, blah, blah, blah.
15:56
SPEAKER_01: Assoff is a guy who is trying to put that to the test,
16:02
SPEAKER_01: I would say, because he has on two issues, right?
16:07
SPEAKER_01: On Lake and Riley and on whatever the Clarity Act is, some like crypto thing.
16:14
SPEAKER_01: Asaf has definitely sided with the moderates on those issues.
16:20
SPEAKER_01: And he went with the left on one Israel arms sale vote under Biden,
16:26
SPEAKER_01: which is how he got praised by Hassan Piker and stuff.
16:29
SPEAKER_01: But he hasn't really made news on any of that stuff.
16:33
SPEAKER_01: He hasn't made waves on any of that stuff.
16:36
SPEAKER_01: And he has done a good job of getting attention to You know what I mean?
16:43
SPEAKER_01: Like the things that he is most known for to a national audience,
16:48
SPEAKER_01: to the extent that he's known at all,
16:50
SPEAKER_01: he is not that well known,
16:52
SPEAKER_01: like almost every politician who's not, you know, Kamala Harris or Bernie Sanders.
16:57
SPEAKER_01: But he has gotten a lot of attention.
17:00
SPEAKER_01: We're sort of pure partisan anti-Trump takes for things like this maybe insinuation
17:06
SPEAKER_01: that Trump's having an affair with Natalie,
17:08
SPEAKER_01: but it's really just about getting people to pay attention to the situation on
17:12
SPEAKER_01: the Abraham Lincoln, the stock trading, the Qatar stuff, et cetera.
17:16
SPEAKER_01: And he's just like taking a,
17:19
SPEAKER_01: I don't know,
17:19
SPEAKER_01: taking a dive,
17:20
SPEAKER_01: but whatever it is, like on a couple of key votes, he's tacked to the center.
17:24
SPEAKER_01: So that's interesting.
17:30
SPEAKER_01: Progressives who hate me say that they like John Ossoff.
17:36
SPEAKER_01: And most moderates who are freaking out about Abdul and others say that they like John Ossoff.
17:44
SPEAKER_01: And the reason that most people say they like John Ossoff is
17:48
SPEAKER_01: that most people actually don't pay that much attention to the ins and outs
17:52
SPEAKER_01: of congressional votes and do pay a lot of attention to like what they see
17:58
SPEAKER_01: On social video.
18:01
SPEAKER_00: That a robust and muscular anti-Trumpism is the solution to all that ails the Democratic Party.
18:11
SPEAKER_01: They're paying a lot of attention to social video clips, right?
18:14
SPEAKER_01: So like Alyssa Slotkin, I think has a fairly similar voting record to Ossoff's, right?
18:21
SPEAKER_01: But she has attracted a lot of national attention for her like takes
18:27
SPEAKER_01: that Democrats should be more moderate.
18:29
SPEAKER_01: And Ossoff hasn't done that.
18:31
SPEAKER_01: Right.
18:31
SPEAKER_01: Like he voted for the Lake and Riley Act,
18:34
SPEAKER_01: but he didn't have like a viral video about how like Democrats need to be tougher
18:38
SPEAKER_01: on immigration.
18:40
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, this may work in New York.
18:42
SPEAKER_01: So I just I don't know, because in the course of a contested primary.
18:46
SPEAKER_01: Right.
18:47
SPEAKER_01: It's not like Ossoff's opponents are going to forget that they should criticize him.
18:53
SPEAKER_01: On his policy votes.
18:54
SPEAKER_01: And like, I think a lot, I don't know.
18:57
SPEAKER_01: Like, I think a lot of the people who say that they like Ossoff and
19:00
SPEAKER_01: that Ossoff shows whatever may have a different opinion of him
19:05
SPEAKER_01: when his opponents criticize him more severely.
19:08
SPEAKER_01: And he's also going to have to weigh in on stuff that he's been,
19:12
SPEAKER_01: you know, mostly ducking, right?
19:15
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
19:16
SPEAKER_01: Angie Craig,
19:17
SPEAKER_01: I don't think actually did a lot of like big provocations
19:22
SPEAKER_01: that progressive minded people hated,
19:25
SPEAKER_01: but like she cast votes that progressives didn't like.
19:28
SPEAKER_01: And then Peggy Flanagan,
19:29
SPEAKER_01: as the Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota,
19:31
SPEAKER_01: like beat her in a primary because like that's what you do, right?
19:35
SPEAKER_00: Like you get to run against your opponents.
19:37
SPEAKER_00: So I agree with you that I think that like he's going to be in for,
19:41
SPEAKER_00: he's going to have to do This is not going to get him all the way to the finish line
19:45
SPEAKER_00: on its own.
19:46
SPEAKER_00: And it's not like Angie Craig is a talentless politician, right?
19:49
SPEAKER_00: She's not Haley Stevens,
19:51
SPEAKER_00: who I shouldn't say is, I shouldn't imply that Haley Stevens is just talentless.
19:54
SPEAKER_00: But like there was a,
19:56
SPEAKER_00: for the upper Northwest,
19:57
SPEAKER_00: there was Haley Stevens,
19:58
SPEAKER_00: who I think was widely understood as not a very good or polished primary candidate.
20:03
SPEAKER_00: And there was Angie Craig,
20:04
SPEAKER_00: the moderate from the neighboring state,
20:06
SPEAKER_00: who I think most people think of as actually a fairly magnetic candidate.
20:11
SPEAKER_00: Moderate candidate, more so than Stevens.
20:13
SPEAKER_00: And she was not able to adequately explain away the votes
20:17
SPEAKER_00: that I think ultimately cost her the nomination.
20:20
SPEAKER_00: And if John Ossoff enters a primary,
20:22
SPEAKER_00: he might be more polished still than Angie Craig and be better at explaining
20:29
SPEAKER_00: that vote.
20:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
20:31
SPEAKER_00: But he's going to have to do it at some point if he's,
20:34
SPEAKER_00: as I think we both kind of suspect,
20:36
SPEAKER_00: if he's lying and really does see himself running for president next year.
20:42
SPEAKER_01: Well, I just think,
20:44
SPEAKER_01: I don't think, the way I would put it is not that he's going to have to explain it.
20:48
SPEAKER_01: It's like,
20:49
SPEAKER_01: I think Democratic Party primary voters are going to have
20:52
SPEAKER_01: to decide what it is they really think about.
20:55
SPEAKER_01: Well, okay,
20:56
SPEAKER_01: but- Because,
20:57
SPEAKER_01: you know, like, again,
21:00
SPEAKER_01: If you're a Minnesota primary voter, right,
21:03
SPEAKER_01: and you're like,
21:04
SPEAKER_01: I've got this House member, Craig,
21:08
SPEAKER_01: who is a proven electoral overperformer,
21:11
SPEAKER_01: and I have the lieutenant governor of the state.
21:14
SPEAKER_01: And I feel like, sure,
21:17
SPEAKER_01: it's true that Angie Craig is a good electability candidate,
21:21
SPEAKER_01: but there is absolutely no reason to doubt that Peggy Flanagan can win
21:25
SPEAKER_01: a general election in Minnesota, right?
21:27
SPEAKER_01: Like, she's not.
21:30
SPEAKER_01: And she's not Francesca Hong.
21:33
SPEAKER_01: And Minnesota is a more liberal state than Wisconsin or Michigan.
21:36
SPEAKER_01: So if you're just like,
21:38
SPEAKER_01: I'm voting for Flanagan because I agree with Flanagan more,
21:41
SPEAKER_01: I might vote for Angie Craig,
21:43
SPEAKER_01: like if this was a more conservative state or something.
21:47
SPEAKER_01: But like, I'm just, I'm voting for Peggy Flanagan, right?
21:51
SPEAKER_01: With Ossoff,
21:51
SPEAKER_01: it's like, I just,
21:53
SPEAKER_01: I often find that people,
21:56
SPEAKER_01: um, People don't always know their own hearts until it is put to them.
22:01
SPEAKER_01: And I think a lot of people think You know, I'm like, I'm open to a moderate Democrat.
22:07
SPEAKER_01: I believe in electability.
22:09
SPEAKER_01: I believe in pragmatism.
22:11
SPEAKER_01: But I want that Democrat to be inspiring and good at giving speeches and speaking to my values.
22:18
SPEAKER_01: And I want that moderate Democrat to really take it to Trump and not be this kind
22:22
SPEAKER_01: of like mealy mouthed.
22:24
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I don't know.
22:25
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
22:25
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
22:26
SPEAKER_01: And Ossoff is just like he is he is.
22:30
SPEAKER_01: I think like trying to put that to the test,
22:33
SPEAKER_01: he is meeting most of the bars that fired up resistance Dems say they set
22:40
SPEAKER_01: for themselves.
22:41
SPEAKER_01: But I think that a lot of fired up resistance Dems are just like actually quite left wing.
22:48
SPEAKER_01: And when somebody is like,
22:49
SPEAKER_01: this guy voted for an industry backed crypto bill,
22:52
SPEAKER_01: this guy like Voted for like an immigration crackdown when that seemed like
22:58
SPEAKER_01: the thing to do.
22:59
SPEAKER_01: This guy like won't endorse Medicare for all, whatever, whatever.
23:02
SPEAKER_01: Like they may lose their faith in Ossoff or they may not
23:06
SPEAKER_01: because I don't I just like I don't know.
23:08
SPEAKER_00: I mean, part of the reason we can't answer the question is because he did not face
23:12
SPEAKER_00: a primary this cycle.
23:14
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
23:14
SPEAKER_00: He would have to beat other candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination.
23:19
SPEAKER_01: But I can't quite tell if you're disagreeing with Favreau or
23:23
SPEAKER_00: agreeing with him.
23:24
SPEAKER_00: And like, I think a way to square this is to like,
23:31
SPEAKER_00: look at how Ossoff distinguishes himself from the moderates that I think Favreau had
23:39
SPEAKER_00: in mind when he talked about like them being boring, right?
23:44
SPEAKER_00: And I mean, look at how Ossoff is running...
23:49
SPEAKER_00: In Georgia,
23:50
SPEAKER_00: you know,
23:51
SPEAKER_00: you mentioned that a lot of moderates are running scared from Abdul El-Sayed,
23:55
SPEAKER_00: and they are, but John Ossoff isn't.
23:57
SPEAKER_00: He's endorsed him and is, I'm guessing, going to give him a lot of money.
24:01
SPEAKER_00: He is, despite being in a red-purple state,
24:05
SPEAKER_00: he is running a—I mean, in one sense, it's sort of a paint-by-numbers for me.
24:10
SPEAKER_00: Like, he keeps doing the same thing over and over again,
24:13
SPEAKER_00: like delivering a screed against Donald Trump that gets a lot of viral attention,
24:17
SPEAKER_00: that draws Trump into the race, which allows him to raise more money.
24:21
SPEAKER_00: But what he's not doing is running scared of conflict with Republicans in a state
24:27
SPEAKER_00: that is still not blue, right?
24:29
SPEAKER_00: He is— Calling Mike Collins a bigot.
24:33
SPEAKER_00: He's not worried.
24:34
SPEAKER_01: I mean, to be clear,
24:35
SPEAKER_01: this is why I am absolutely convinced that Ossoff is lying about his 2028 ambitions
24:41
SPEAKER_01: because he is not acting like a guy who is really worried about running
24:47
SPEAKER_01: for reelection in 2032 in a potentially different national political climate.
24:53
SPEAKER_01: He's acting like a guy who's like, I'm holding down a red seat.
24:58
SPEAKER_01: But I'm in a midterm and Trump is really unpopular.
25:01
SPEAKER_01: So I can just let the fundamentals carry me to victory in November and build my brand.
25:08
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's smart.
25:09
SPEAKER_01: And it's a good example of,
25:12
SPEAKER_01: in some ways,
25:13
SPEAKER_01: the most Obama-esque thing about Ossoff is that Obama,
25:20
SPEAKER_01: when he hit the Senate, was just going for it.
25:25
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
25:26
SPEAKER_01: Like he didn't spend a lot of time thinking about like Illinois politics, right?
25:31
SPEAKER_01: And in Obama's case,
25:32
SPEAKER_01: that actually meant running more moderate than you would as an Illinois politician,
25:37
SPEAKER_01: because he was like a super duper duper blue state.
25:40
SPEAKER_01: And he was like,
25:41
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to like hang out with Dick Lugar and like do these various other kind
25:44
SPEAKER_01: of like non-obvious things for a blue state freshman.
25:47
SPEAKER_01: And also he was doing I mean, it's kind of the opposite and kind of the same thing, right?
25:53
SPEAKER_01: He's just like, he's running with an eye to 2028.
25:57
SPEAKER_00: The thing that Ossoff,
26:00
SPEAKER_00: when you read local coverage in Georgia,
26:05
SPEAKER_00: and you actually listen to,
26:06
SPEAKER_00: Eric Erickson is a right-wing commentator who's based in Georgia,
26:10
SPEAKER_00: and he has acknowledged this,
26:12
SPEAKER_00: is that what Ossoff has done to try to buy himself The goodwill from
26:18
SPEAKER_00: the purple-red parts of the state
26:21
SPEAKER_00: to run this really fairly partisan campaign is like a very,
26:28
SPEAKER_00: very, very attentive constituent services.
26:31
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
26:32
SPEAKER_00: Right?
26:33
SPEAKER_00: And this is something that Obama has written about,
26:37
SPEAKER_00: is like, how do you establish yourself as like a...
26:42
SPEAKER_00: How do you get headlines written about you in places
26:46
SPEAKER_00: where normally Democrats would get skeptical, partisan, anti-left coverage?
26:53
SPEAKER_00: Is you make it clear to the people in the red parts of the state
26:57
SPEAKER_00: that You're their senator and you take care of their problems.
27:01
SPEAKER_00: You make sure that their roads get paved.
27:04
SPEAKER_00: Somebody answers the phone and then gets back to you with an update.
27:08
SPEAKER_00: And he apparently is on that game really, really, really well.
27:13
SPEAKER_00: And so part of the reason he's going to win by such a big margin,
27:17
SPEAKER_00: yes, he drew a really bad Republican candidate, but so did Roy Cooper, right?
27:24
SPEAKER_00: And Roy Cooper is not running a hyper-partisan campaign.
27:27
SPEAKER_00: But Ossoff is the sitting senator and he's just doing a good job at senator.
27:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
27:34
SPEAKER_01: But I just like,
27:35
SPEAKER_01: I want to draw attention to biography,
27:39
SPEAKER_01: history, and the specifics of the political cycle, right?
27:42
SPEAKER_01: Which is that like,
27:45
SPEAKER_01: Roy Cooper has won many statewide elections in North Carolina and And that's good.
27:53
SPEAKER_01: And it speaks well of him.
27:54
SPEAKER_01: But he's also in a can't teach an old dog new tricks phase of his career.
27:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's true.
27:59
SPEAKER_01: Where like if he just like emerged in 2026 as like a ferocious partisan warrior,
28:06
SPEAKER_01: that would like strike people as really odd.
28:08
SPEAKER_01: You know, like he was attorney general, I think for 16 years or something.
28:13
SPEAKER_01: He was two-term governor.
28:14
SPEAKER_01: Like it just is what it is.
28:16
SPEAKER_01: And what he's doing works very well for him in North Carolina.
28:20
SPEAKER_01: And like, he's just not going to change it.
28:22
SPEAKER_01: And now,
28:23
SPEAKER_01: in addition to having won statewide North Carolina in many bad cycles,
28:27
SPEAKER_01: he has a favorable cycle to run in.
28:29
SPEAKER_01: So, you know,
28:31
SPEAKER_01: it's all gravy for Roy Cooper,
28:32
SPEAKER_01: but that's also Roy Cooper, a man of limited ambitions.
28:35
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
28:36
SPEAKER_01: Ossoff has the privilege of being young and new to politics and a little bit undefined.
28:42
SPEAKER_00: And handsome.
28:43
SPEAKER_00: He's very handsome.
28:44
SPEAKER_01: But I mean, we can ask ourselves, right?
28:47
SPEAKER_01: There's a universe in which Kamala Harris does two points better in 2024.
28:54
SPEAKER_01: So she carries Pennsylvania.
28:55
SPEAKER_01: She carries Michigan.
28:56
SPEAKER_01: She carries Wisconsin.
28:58
SPEAKER_01: She's elected president.
29:00
SPEAKER_01: In that universe, she would have still narrowly lost Georgia, right?
29:03
SPEAKER_01: And Ossoff would be running for reelection in
29:06
SPEAKER_01: a difficult national political environment,
29:08
SPEAKER_01: you know, with an incumbent Dem president.
29:11
SPEAKER_01: And again,
29:13
SPEAKER_01: I'm not claiming to be a clairvoyant or to like truly know John Ossoff's heart,
29:18
SPEAKER_01: but I think that if he was running for reelection in a Kamala Harris midterm,
29:23
SPEAKER_01: he would be running quite differently.
29:26
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's just, this is a young guy.
29:27
SPEAKER_01: He's new to the Senate.
29:29
SPEAKER_01: He's not Roy Cooper.
29:30
SPEAKER_01: He's also not Elizabeth Warren.
29:32
SPEAKER_01: You know, like, He gets to decide through an act of volition how he's going to define himself.
29:40
SPEAKER_01: We saw, I think,
29:41
SPEAKER_01: with the Lake and Riley vote that it was like,
29:44
SPEAKER_01: you know, he was kind of nervous about that reelection.
29:47
SPEAKER_01: And then as Trump got more and more unpopular,
29:51
SPEAKER_01: he's just smart, you know, and he like read which way the winds are sailing.
29:55
SPEAKER_01: And he's like, you know what?
29:56
SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't need to spend a lot of time tacking to the center to get reelected
30:00
SPEAKER_01: in Georgia in this cycle.
30:02
SPEAKER_01: And I'm interested in my 2028 brand and I'm going to work on all this stuff.
30:07
SPEAKER_01: And I'm just, I don't know if I agree or I disagree with Favreau or you or anyone else.
30:13
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, I am...
30:15
SPEAKER_01: I am sincerely uncertain.
30:17
SPEAKER_01: I think that on the basis of what a lot of people say they want in a 2028 candidate,
30:24
SPEAKER_01: Asaf meets that.
30:26
SPEAKER_01: And I am just not sure that it's true
30:30
SPEAKER_01: that that's what they want versus they genuinely want
30:33
SPEAKER_01: a dogmatic progressive ideologue.
30:36
SPEAKER_00: So let me tell you where I agree with you and where I don't agree with you.
30:42
SPEAKER_00: I think I agree with you about the...
30:49
SPEAKER_00: Mostly about how events sort of broke Ossoff's way to allow him to run the race
30:57
SPEAKER_00: that he's running.
30:58
SPEAKER_00: But it's worth noting that he was doing this.
31:00
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he hadn't done the Natalie Harp thing per se because it wasn't.
31:06
SPEAKER_00: But he was giving the same basic speech and running the same basic play
31:12
SPEAKER_00: when he wasn't sure whether he was going to be facing Mike Collins
31:16
SPEAKER_00: or what's his name,
31:17
SPEAKER_00: who was like the one that the governor was trying to get nominated.
31:22
SPEAKER_00: Help me out.
31:24
SPEAKER_00: In the Georgia Republican primary, there was an electability candidate.
31:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I forget.
31:30
SPEAKER_01: Okay, you can Google it and say it.
31:33
SPEAKER_01: The Georgia Republican Party had been,
31:36
SPEAKER_01: under Brian Kemp,
31:38
SPEAKER_01: steering in a slightly non-MAGA direction, and that's like falling apart.
31:44
SPEAKER_00: Yes, but the point is that Ossoff was doing this before he knew
31:50
SPEAKER_00: who his challenger was going to be.
31:52
SPEAKER_00: And so I think that there is something real here
31:55
SPEAKER_00: about how he thinks— Electability works is that like if you if you do the job
32:00
SPEAKER_00: of Senator well and you marshal your charisma in this way and you
32:05
SPEAKER_00: that you can have more running room than the sort of modal centrist Democrat
32:13
SPEAKER_00: who tends to shy away from the kinds of tactics that Ossoff is adopting
32:20
SPEAKER_00: in this race.
32:22
SPEAKER_00: And that like what I read, you know, you know.
32:25
SPEAKER_00: Progressives will be like, what can the Democratic Party learn from Mom Donnie?
32:29
SPEAKER_00: And you counter,
32:30
SPEAKER_00: I think,
32:31
SPEAKER_00: compellingly,
32:32
SPEAKER_00: the problem of how you elected progressive in Manhattan was solved a long time ago.
32:37
SPEAKER_00: What can we learn about Roy Cooper?
32:38
SPEAKER_00: And what I think is materializing before our eyes is the possibility
32:44
SPEAKER_00: of what can we learn from John Osso
32:48
SPEAKER_00: about how you do the alchemy of Wedding,
32:53
SPEAKER_00: fight, and moderation.
32:56
SPEAKER_00: But here's where your concern about Ossoff's voting record and stuff becomes live.
33:05
SPEAKER_00: It's not just his voting record.
33:06
SPEAKER_00: I think that we know that the Lake and Riley Act can be potent as
33:10
SPEAKER_00: an attack line delivered from the left against somebody who voted for that bill.
33:15
SPEAKER_00: And crypto, I think similarly, it's not quite as visceral because...
33:22
SPEAKER_00: Lakin-Reillyak prefigured the Trump deportation regime.
33:26
SPEAKER_00: But, you know,
33:28
SPEAKER_00: Ossoff has gotten a lot of mileage out of speeches and interrogation sessions as
33:35
SPEAKER_00: a member of various Senate committees.
33:38
SPEAKER_00: But as you say, he does not have a super progressive voting record.
33:41
SPEAKER_00: He does not support Medicare for all, per se.
33:45
SPEAKER_00: I think he can square that by basically saying, I support the Abdul El-Sayed position.
33:52
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, sure.
33:55
SPEAKER_00: But he early in his career,
33:58
SPEAKER_00: like his first two years,
34:00
SPEAKER_00: for some reason,
34:01
SPEAKER_00: Chuck Schumer made him chairman of this very powerful Senate subcommittee.
34:07
SPEAKER_00: It's like the only committee in all of Congress where
34:09
SPEAKER_00: the chairman can issue subpoenas unilaterally, right?
34:15
SPEAKER_00: And like,
34:16
SPEAKER_00: I don't totally blame him for squandering that opportunity
34:19
SPEAKER_00: because he was super green.
34:23
SPEAKER_00: Like he was new to the Senate.
34:24
SPEAKER_00: He was probably thought his main thing was like,
34:27
SPEAKER_00: don't fuck this up because you got to get reelected in Georgia.
34:30
SPEAKER_00: But he did squander it, right?
34:31
SPEAKER_00: Like it was a very important moment for Democrats to really bury Trump after the insurrection.
34:36
SPEAKER_00: And he did not use that.
34:39
SPEAKER_00: He was not doing in that committee what he's doing on the campaign trail now.
34:43
SPEAKER_00: And I think that like you're going to be like if if progressives recruit somebody
34:49
SPEAKER_00: to fill the Bernie slot,
34:51
SPEAKER_00: they are going to be able to point to that whole record
34:53
SPEAKER_00: and be like you are mistaking him for a fighter because he's got this silver tongue.
34:58
SPEAKER_00: And he like landed some good rhetorical shots on Trump.
35:02
SPEAKER_00: But when it has come time to vote,
35:03
SPEAKER_00: when it has come time to actually use power,
35:05
SPEAKER_00: when it has come time to like draw, like trace his own agenda, he's not doing it.
35:12
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know how he's going to grapple with that because he did not have
35:15
SPEAKER_00: a primary challenger this cycle.
35:17
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
35:17
SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, I agree with all that.
35:19
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think that's maybe like another way of saying what I'm saying,
35:21
SPEAKER_01: but it's like- Yeah, that's where I agree with you.
35:23
SPEAKER_01: It's like the other stuff where I'm like- There's this kind
35:25
SPEAKER_01: of just ambiguity floating around as to like,
35:28
SPEAKER_01: when people say we want like someone who fights Trump,
35:33
SPEAKER_01: like what does that mean exactly?
35:36
SPEAKER_01: You know,
35:37
SPEAKER_01: because like Asaf absolutely like sticks it to Donald Trump,
35:42
SPEAKER_01: but- You know,
35:44
SPEAKER_01: he doesn't have maximal public policy disagreement with the Trump administration
35:49
SPEAKER_01: on every issue.
35:51
SPEAKER_01: One reason I call attention to the crypto issue,
35:53
SPEAKER_01: I agree that it probably carries less juice with voters than the details of Blake
35:59
SPEAKER_01: and Riley.
36:00
SPEAKER_01: But in terms of like the factional machinations inside the Democratic Party,
36:05
SPEAKER_01: I think crypto is a big deal because crypto money,
36:12
SPEAKER_01: Has come in on the moderate side of a lot of different primary campaigns.
36:18
SPEAKER_01: You know,
36:18
SPEAKER_01: so like the institutional progressives are like very suspicious
36:25
SPEAKER_01: of crypto-friendly Democrats.
36:27
SPEAKER_01: You know,
36:27
SPEAKER_01: whereas like,
36:29
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to say like nobody cares about Lincoln Riley
36:32
SPEAKER_01: because obviously many people care,
36:34
SPEAKER_01: but it's like these votes come and go and you can kind of like Make your peace with
36:41
SPEAKER_01: the immigration advocates if you want to around some
36:44
SPEAKER_01: of their other policy advocacy ideas.
36:46
SPEAKER_01: But the crypto thing will be seen by elites,
36:51
SPEAKER_01: you know,
36:52
SPEAKER_01: by like,
36:53
SPEAKER_01: Big decision makers,
36:55
SPEAKER_01: people who run advocacy organizations as like a true test of character and like
37:00
SPEAKER_01: whose side are you on on the like larger effort to purge the corporate Democrats
37:06
SPEAKER_01: and establish a populist party.
37:09
SPEAKER_01: I kind of think it's the
37:09
SPEAKER_00: other way around.
37:10
SPEAKER_00: I kind of think it's the other way around.
37:11
SPEAKER_00: I think Ossoff will be able,
37:13
SPEAKER_00: because he's a money raising juggernaut,
37:15
SPEAKER_00: but he's not like inviting corporate PACs to come be his financial base, right?
37:21
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
37:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
37:23
SPEAKER_00: He will be able to,
37:24
SPEAKER_00: over the next two years,
37:27
SPEAKER_00: like join the progressives in the money out of politics stuff that they're going
37:32
SPEAKER_00: to do if Democrats win in 2026 and be able to say like, crypto is a fact of life.
37:39
SPEAKER_00: We needed some kind of regulation.
37:40
SPEAKER_00: That's why I voted for that bill.
37:41
SPEAKER_00: But if they think that they can buy me, well, like proof is in the pudding.
37:45
SPEAKER_00: I didn't need their money and I didn't take it.
37:47
SPEAKER_00: Whereas I think that like- Like the country is wounded by like what Trump is doing to people.
37:57
SPEAKER_00: And Lake and Riley is,
38:01
SPEAKER_00: there was a world in which Democrats voted for Lake and Riley and
38:05
SPEAKER_00: then Donald Trump did a different thing with his immigration authorities.
38:09
SPEAKER_00: And then the relevance of Lake and Riley just kind of dissipated.
38:11
SPEAKER_00: It became one of those votes, like the kind you're talking about.
38:14
SPEAKER_01: No, no, I know.
38:14
SPEAKER_01: But you're, you're talking about normal people.
38:17
SPEAKER_01: What I'm talking about is like,
38:18
SPEAKER_01: so like,
38:20
SPEAKER_01: Cory Booker spent Trump's first term racking up
38:24
SPEAKER_01: an extremely progressive voting record.
38:27
SPEAKER_01: But when he started trying to run for president in 2020,
38:30
SPEAKER_01: he was defined very rapidly as like a moderate.
38:35
SPEAKER_01: Who was like unacceptable to progressives.
38:37
SPEAKER_01: And that's because Cory Booker in Obama's term and when he was mayor
38:42
SPEAKER_01: of Newark was supportive of charter schools.
38:45
SPEAKER_01: And I don't think like rank and file Democrats are super hostile to charter schools.
38:50
SPEAKER_01: Like charter schools poll fine with Democratic Party primary voters.
38:53
SPEAKER_01: Normal people don't talk about it.
38:55
SPEAKER_01: The most insane leftists who I am personally friends with in Washington,
38:58
SPEAKER_01: D.C. send their kids to charter schools.
39:02
SPEAKER_01: But like- This is a big deal for teachers unions.
39:05
SPEAKER_01: And so they, from the get-go, saw Cory Booker coming a thousand miles away.
39:12
SPEAKER_01: And we're like, we don't like that guy.
39:14
SPEAKER_01: He's not a good progressive.
39:15
SPEAKER_01: We're going to drag up shit on him.
39:18
SPEAKER_01: And so by the same token,
39:19
SPEAKER_01: it's like Matt Stoller really hates John Ossoff and is like very focused on the idea
39:26
SPEAKER_01: that Ossoff is pulling off a fraud on the progressive rank and file of America.
39:31
SPEAKER_01: And that's because the Thought leaders see this crypto thing as a really big deal
39:36
SPEAKER_01: and are going to try to take him down over it.
39:39
SPEAKER_01: I agree with you.
39:41
SPEAKER_01: Normal people care a lot about the symbolic politics of immigration and see
39:47
SPEAKER_01: it as a real values question.
39:52
SPEAKER_01: Whose side are you on?
39:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
39:54
SPEAKER_01: But- The deciders,
39:57
SPEAKER_01: I think,
39:57
SPEAKER_01: of the Democratic Party don't care about immigration at all,
40:01
SPEAKER_01: except on a sort of instrumental level.
40:04
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, we'll see what happens.
40:05
SPEAKER_00: I mean, also, like,
40:06
SPEAKER_00: Bernie has basically,
40:09
SPEAKER_00: like,
40:13
SPEAKER_00: pulled the consensus point on immigration back to where it was in 2012.
40:19
SPEAKER_01: I mean, Bernie has held every conceivable position on immigration over the years.
40:23
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's...
40:26
SPEAKER_00: I just say, I think that it's just going to be like,
40:31
SPEAKER_00: there is going to be an argument,
40:33
SPEAKER_00: whatever the tastemakers in the party say,
40:35
SPEAKER_00: that if Ro Khanna is running in that primary,
40:38
SPEAKER_00: AOC is running in that primary,
40:40
SPEAKER_00: they're going to be able to see what Trump was about to do to immigrants
40:44
SPEAKER_00: in this country was eminently foreseeable.
40:47
SPEAKER_00: And Ossoff either didn't foresee it or he knew it was coming and decided to-
40:51
SPEAKER_00: But can I ask you a question?
40:53
SPEAKER_00: Whereas,
40:53
SPEAKER_00: whereas I think that like,
40:55
SPEAKER_00: Stoller might be right about, about,
40:57
SPEAKER_00: about Ossoff,
40:58
SPEAKER_00: like perpetrating a,
41:01
SPEAKER_00: like a fraud,
41:02
SPEAKER_00: whatever, like,
41:04
SPEAKER_00: like sucking, like,
41:05
SPEAKER_00: like hoovering up progressive adulation while having designs on being a sort
41:10
SPEAKER_00: of crypto guy.
41:12
SPEAKER_00: But I think that if Ossoff wants out from under that one, he can get out.
41:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
41:16
SPEAKER_00: And like,
41:17
SPEAKER_00: and like probably,
41:18
SPEAKER_00: and probably like with enough finesse, even Stoller would, Get over it.
41:23
SPEAKER_01: What were you going to say?
41:25
SPEAKER_01: Like Trump has done all kinds of stuff on immigration that people hate.
41:31
SPEAKER_01: What of it was like actually wouldn't have happened if Democrats had filibustered
41:36
SPEAKER_01: the Lake and Riley Act?
41:37
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no, no.
41:39
SPEAKER_00: That's what I'm saying is that if they had filibustered the Lake and Riley Act,
41:44
SPEAKER_00: like this was a sign that they were like prepared to Surrender on this issue, right?
41:54
SPEAKER_00: Like that they were willing to throw immigrants under the bus to some extent
41:58
SPEAKER_00: in order to get right with the electorate because they thought that's the way
42:02
SPEAKER_00: to get right with the electorate.
42:03
SPEAKER_00: That turned out to be wrong.
42:05
SPEAKER_00: And there was no cost even then to just standing up and not voting for a bad bill.
42:12
SPEAKER_00: And it was like a way to sort wheat from chaff and Ossoff's was with the chaff.
42:19
SPEAKER_00: I have a question for you.
42:22
SPEAKER_00: Would it even be physically possible for a man with such poor Venus return to have
42:27
SPEAKER_00: a sexual affair with his secretary?
42:32
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's a very interesting question.
42:34
SPEAKER_01: Trump is at an age where I think he might be beyond that kind of thing.
42:39
SPEAKER_01: I have always suspected,
42:41
SPEAKER_01: this is my personal conspiracy theory,
42:45
SPEAKER_01: that the essence of the Stormy Daniels scandal was that Trump is only pretending
42:50
SPEAKER_01: to have had an affair with her.
42:52
SPEAKER_01: Because he wants to be seen as more virile than he is.
42:58
SPEAKER_01: And there's actually, there is no illicit sex happening.
43:02
SPEAKER_00: Wait, but Stormy Daniels has said we had sex and it was unimpressive.
43:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I know.
43:09
SPEAKER_01: He wants people to think that it was more than that is what you're saying?
43:12
SPEAKER_01: He wants people to think that there was sex.
43:14
SPEAKER_01: I think he just paid her to pretend.
43:16
SPEAKER_01: No, I don't know.
43:17
SPEAKER_01: I've got no take on this.
43:19
SPEAKER_01: I have no opinion.
43:20
SPEAKER_01: I think Asaf is being very clever.
43:21
SPEAKER_01: I think, but I think that like we're both right.
43:27
SPEAKER_01: That I think that like for now,
43:29
SPEAKER_01: Asaf has done a good job of just like ducking the waves of factionalism that are
43:36
SPEAKER_01: at times tearing the Democratic Party apart.
43:40
SPEAKER_01: But a lot of that is just the happenstance that like he didn't face a primary opponent.
43:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
43:47
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
43:48
SPEAKER_01: And like,
43:48
SPEAKER_01: there's some,
43:50
SPEAKER_01: you know,
43:50
SPEAKER_01: I don't think the reason Haley Stevens faced, like,
43:58
SPEAKER_01: Michigan had a contested primary because Abdul El-Sayed lives in Michigan, right?
44:03
SPEAKER_01: Like, And he's a guy, he's an ambitious guy.
44:07
SPEAKER_01: He's been like in podcasting circles,
44:09
SPEAKER_01: in Bernie circles, doing all kinds of different stuff for a long, long time.
44:13
SPEAKER_01: In a lot of ways, like everybody might've been happier if he lived in Maine.
44:18
SPEAKER_01: But he doesn't live in Maine.
44:20
SPEAKER_01: He lives in Michigan.
44:21
SPEAKER_01: So he ran in Michigan.
44:22
SPEAKER_01: There just wasn't a prominent, ambitious, charismatic Bernie guy in Georgia to run against.
44:30
SPEAKER_00: Also, correct me if I'm wrong,
44:32
SPEAKER_00: but what Mamdani did in New York City is sort of the exception that proves the rule
44:39
SPEAKER_00: in that I don't think that the Bernie people primaried any incumbent There was
44:47
SPEAKER_01: a good political article about Mamdani and AOC's weird collaboration around this.
44:54
SPEAKER_01: But AOC did not endorse any House primary challengers,
44:59
SPEAKER_01: and Mamdani did not endorse any state legislature primary challengers.
45:05
SPEAKER_01: Instead, AOC endorsed in the state ledge, and Mamdani endorsed in the...
45:11
SPEAKER_01: House races.
45:12
SPEAKER_01: And so that's like, just like New York has this like big leftist infrastructure.
45:17
SPEAKER_01: It is like two different celebrity Bernie factionalists,
45:22
SPEAKER_01: you know, in AOC and Mabani, et cetera, et cetera.
45:24
SPEAKER_01: So there's like all this stuff out there.
45:27
SPEAKER_01: As we saw in Wisconsin,
45:29
SPEAKER_01: where like ultimately like Bernie just like threw and just hung under the bus.
45:35
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's just like, there's a lot of happenstance to this kind of stuff.
45:40
SPEAKER_01: And Asif has been really smart.
45:42
SPEAKER_01: He's been really effective.
45:44
SPEAKER_01: But he has also caught some lucky breaks.
45:47
SPEAKER_01: And it's just really hard to luck your way into a primary nomination.
45:52
SPEAKER_01: Like, presumably,
45:53
SPEAKER_01: either AOC or Ro Khanna or potentially both of them will run for president in 2028.
45:59
SPEAKER_01: And we'll just like squarely challenge him.
46:04
SPEAKER_01: People who have shown any degree of moderation on these kind of vulnerabilities
46:10
SPEAKER_01: and we'll have to see what happens.
46:12
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's like Obama was very fortunate to run in a cycle where
46:17
SPEAKER_00: the furthest left candidate was Dennis Kucinich and the left had not emerged
46:23
SPEAKER_00: as this major force in democratic politics.
46:27
SPEAKER_01: But not just that,
46:28
SPEAKER_01: but that like Hillary Clinton Was like clearly gonna run for president in 2008,
46:37
SPEAKER_01: right?
46:38
SPEAKER_01: And she got an infrastructure of people who like wanted to elect
46:46
SPEAKER_01: the first woman president to like line up behind her.
46:50
SPEAKER_01: And she also made a political calculus as a blue state Dem Senator to vote for
46:55
SPEAKER_01: the Iraq War in 2002.
46:57
SPEAKER_01: And like the intersection of all those things Wound up making her beatable.
47:04
SPEAKER_01: But like if it had been Obama versus Barbara Boxer, I'm not sure Obama wins.
47:10
SPEAKER_01: Or if Hillary had said, you know what, I'm going to save blue state.
47:14
SPEAKER_01: I'm voting no on this Iraq war resolution.
47:16
SPEAKER_01: Obama definitely doesn't win, right?
47:18
SPEAKER_01: And it's just like, you know- I mean, what's the joke?
47:23
SPEAKER_01: Like, I'd rather be lucky than good.
47:25
SPEAKER_01: It's really hard to be elected president and like you need both.
47:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
47:29
SPEAKER_00: Obama was lucky and good.
47:31
SPEAKER_00: All I'm saying about Ossoff is that the real good luck will come
47:35
SPEAKER_00: if this succession gap that I Okay.
47:36
SPEAKER_00: Let's take a break.
47:37
SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about the Midwest.