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Is The Biden Campaign's Theory Of The Election Panning Out? · Politix

0:00
SPEAKER_00: In the same way that reporters gave FDR cover for being in a wheelchair,
0:05
SPEAKER_00: reporters appear to be giving Donald Trump cover for atrocious farts or something
0:11
SPEAKER_00: like that.
0:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
0:16
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
0:39
SPEAKER_00: But the polling picture has improved at least somewhat in the past few weeks.
0:43
SPEAKER_00: And the surrounding developments sort of raise the question of whether the Biden
0:46
SPEAKER_00: campaign's theory of the case has been vindicated.
0:50
SPEAKER_00: I hope you enjoy the conversation.
0:52
SPEAKER_00: And if you want to hear the whole thing, you can upgrade your subscription to paid at politics.fm.
1:02
SPEAKER_00: Hey, everyone.
1:03
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Politics Podcast.
1:04
SPEAKER_00: I'm Brian Boitler.
1:05
SPEAKER_00: I'm Matthew Glacius.
1:06
SPEAKER_00: So a few weeks back when the primaries were still technically unfolding and polls
1:11
SPEAKER_00: looked really bleak and liberals were agonizing over whether Joe Biden should find
1:16
SPEAKER_00: some pretext to drop out and maybe name a successor,
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SPEAKER_00: the Democratic pollster Simon Rosenberg said,
1:23
SPEAKER_00: in essence,
1:24
SPEAKER_00: this is all super premature.
1:26
SPEAKER_00: This fake primary that we're living through will be over soon.
1:30
SPEAKER_00: And then the actual race will come into focus for voters.
1:33
SPEAKER_00: And by late April or early May, I predict Biden will be up a point or two in the polls with room to grow.
1:41
SPEAKER_00: Here we are in late April.
1:43
SPEAKER_00: And in the most literal reading of things, I kind of think Simon's been pretty well vindicated.
1:50
SPEAKER_00: But Matt, why don't you give me the best case?
1:53
SPEAKER_00: Well,
1:53
SPEAKER_00: I guess like in either direction,
1:55
SPEAKER_00: either that Simon's right and Biden has room to grow and things are looking up or
2:00
SPEAKER_00: that things are actually still gloomier than they appear on the surface.
2:03
SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, things are...
2:07
SPEAKER_01: You know,
2:07
SPEAKER_01: I think I think Elliot Morris,
2:10
SPEAKER_01: who's taken over 538,
2:13
SPEAKER_01: he said that Biden has gained maybe one,
2:15
SPEAKER_01: one and a half points in the polls over the past six weeks,
2:19
SPEAKER_01: which is good.
2:20
SPEAKER_01: Some some like teen election Twitter people have a very literal poll aggregator that doesn't try to.
2:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
2:28
SPEAKER_01: you know, do like sophisticated modeling.
2:31
SPEAKER_01: That looks more optimistic for Biden because polls,
2:35
SPEAKER_01: I think it was Marist most recently that has a kind of a pro-Biden house effect
2:40
SPEAKER_01: came out most recently.
2:41
SPEAKER_01: I think the best news for Biden,
2:44
SPEAKER_01: the closest thing to like real vindication of I think the Simon Rosenberg Biden
2:51
SPEAKER_01: administration theory of the case is that Trump's favorability rating
2:57
SPEAKER_01: which had been improving over the course of the Republican primary as he was like
3:02
SPEAKER_01: consolidating Republicans behind him,
3:05
SPEAKER_01: has started trending down again.
3:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
3:08
SPEAKER_01: And that is really the thing that they said was like,
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SPEAKER_01: once this campaign locks in for real and we are messaging against Trump that he is
3:21
SPEAKER_01: on trial,
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SPEAKER_01: Trump's numbers will start going down again.
3:26
SPEAKER_01: That part is clearly happening.
3:28
SPEAKER_01: I think the rest of the theory of the case where people vote for Joe Biden is a little bit less certain.
3:35
SPEAKER_01: The other thing I would notice is that
3:38
SPEAKER_01: I have been very optimistic that electoral college bias would decrease.
3:45
SPEAKER_01: People don't pay a lot of attention to the electoral college when the popular vote
3:50
SPEAKER_01: winner also wins the election.
3:52
SPEAKER_01: But what happened in 2020 is that Biden won the popular vote very, very, very handily.
3:58
SPEAKER_01: But he won Wisconsin actually relatively narrowly by like about one point.
4:05
SPEAKER_01: So the Electoral College skew was huge in 2020.
4:09
SPEAKER_01: Biden just happens to have won.
4:11
SPEAKER_01: But if the map stays the same and he beats Trump by two or three points, he would still lose.
4:18
SPEAKER_01: I
4:19
SPEAKER_01: I think we had some reason to believe that EC bias was declining,
4:24
SPEAKER_01: that Biden's losses were primarily with Black and Hispanic voters who are thin on
4:30
SPEAKER_01: the ground in Wisconsin,
4:31
SPEAKER_01: and that he'd held up or even gained a little bit with white voters.
4:36
SPEAKER_01: But if you look at the state-level polling,
4:38
SPEAKER_01: it is less optimistic because the much-discussed Michigan has gone pretty strongly
4:47
SPEAKER_01: against Biden and is now two to three points to the right of the national average.
4:53
SPEAKER_01: People sort of can argue the relative significance of Gaza versus electric car problems in that.
5:00
SPEAKER_01: Well, but – But either way –
5:06
SPEAKER_00: endorsement, which should be a big deal.
5:08
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
5:09
SPEAKER_01: This is a bigger structural issue.
5:15
SPEAKER_01: It's like labor unions declining ability to deliver their members for Democrats,
5:22
SPEAKER_01: which we've seen across many,
5:23
SPEAKER_01: many cycles and is a big issue.
5:27
SPEAKER_01: Long story short though, I
5:30
SPEAKER_01: I think things are panning out, at least in the direction that the optimists said they would.
5:37
SPEAKER_01: You know,
5:38
SPEAKER_01: that,
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SPEAKER_01: like,
5:39
SPEAKER_01: Trump being on trial for this hush money thing,
5:44
SPEAKER_01: for example,
5:44
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
5:45
SPEAKER_01: you can't prove that that's why his favorable ratings are going down.
5:49
SPEAKER_01: But, like, he hasn't done anything notable in the past two weeks except be on trial in New York.
5:58
SPEAKER_01: And that...
6:00
SPEAKER_01: Like it appears to be hurting him,
6:02
SPEAKER_01: you know,
6:03
SPEAKER_01: and it's there's always that kind of a sense with Trump that it's like,
6:06
SPEAKER_01: well,
6:06
SPEAKER_01: maybe maybe he's Teflon,
6:08
SPEAKER_01: maybe nothing sticks to him.
6:10
SPEAKER_01: But I don't really think that that's right.
6:12
SPEAKER_01: When when the news like zeroes in on something specific.
6:17
SPEAKER_01: about Trump instead of this kind of like frenetic seven different scandals every hour,
6:22
SPEAKER_01: it does seem to hurt him quite a bit.
6:26
SPEAKER_01: Also,
6:26
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
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SPEAKER_01: a really bad sign for Biden is that if you look at like,
6:31
SPEAKER_01: which candidate do you trust more to handle,
6:34
SPEAKER_01: you know,
6:34
SPEAKER_01: X,
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SPEAKER_01: Y,
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SPEAKER_01: Z,
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SPEAKER_01: Trump like,
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SPEAKER_01: dominates in those polls.
6:39
SPEAKER_01: And yet he's about tied in the popular vote because these scandals and criminality really hurt him a lot.
6:49
SPEAKER_01: And having that front and center, I think is bad for him.
6:53
SPEAKER_00: So let's before before we get too deep into the question of like,
6:57
SPEAKER_00: what is driving this directional change in the election?
7:01
SPEAKER_00: Because there's a lot like just even in the last two weeks that I think you can
7:05
SPEAKER_00: point to is contributing either to help Biden or hurt Trump.
7:09
SPEAKER_00: like you said a lot about polling and why the,
7:13
SPEAKER_00: you know,
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SPEAKER_00: why,
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SPEAKER_00: why there's a question mark around how much Biden's polling has improved and also
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SPEAKER_00: around whether it matters for him to like really run up the score nationally so
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SPEAKER_00: that he can win the electoral college in,
7:28
SPEAKER_00: in the,
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SPEAKER_00: like in the,
7:29
SPEAKER_00: in the polling aggregators that incorporate,
7:33
SPEAKER_00: you know,
7:34
SPEAKER_00: um,
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SPEAKER_00: fundamentals and historical what have you is there like um like a kind of a lag
7:41
SPEAKER_00: effect where it takes a long time for polls that now are like a bit in the rear
7:47
SPEAKER_00: view that had trump ahead to drop out of significance and the more recent polls
7:51
SPEAKER_00: which have biden maybe up one or two to really like
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SPEAKER_00: For the aggregator to spit out that, yeah, that's reflective of the state of the race today.
8:01
SPEAKER_00: There's different ways to do it.
8:04
SPEAKER_00: No, I know.
8:05
SPEAKER_00: And they're a bit opaque.
8:07
SPEAKER_00: But if you just take polling from the last two weeks and average it out,
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SPEAKER_00: and it says Biden's up two,
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SPEAKER_00: but you put it into the model that The Economist uses or whatever,
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SPEAKER_00: and it's tied or Biden down one,
8:20
SPEAKER_00: what accounts for that?
8:22
SPEAKER_00: Why would we believe that over just like...
8:27
SPEAKER_00: Add up the polls, divide by the number of polls, and that's the aggregate.
8:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
8:31
SPEAKER_01: I mean, so different pollsters have different house effects, right?
8:39
SPEAKER_01: So some polls systematically show Democrats doing better than Republicans.
8:46
SPEAKER_01: And the analysts know that because they have years and years worth of polling right now.
8:51
SPEAKER_01: So, like, the most sophisticated way to do this is when a new morning consult poll comes out.
8:57
SPEAKER_01: You don't compare it to the last poll that came out.
9:01
SPEAKER_01: You compare it to the last morning consult poll that came out, right?
9:06
SPEAKER_01: And so you get a sense of, like –
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SPEAKER_01: Does each pollster, according to itself, show a pro-Biden trend?
9:15
SPEAKER_01: And then you look at how recent the different polls are and you try to interpolate
9:19
SPEAKER_01: where the race actually is.
9:21
SPEAKER_01: Most of these pollsters are putting numbers out pretty irregularly at this point.
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SPEAKER_01: You're not like getting a fresh poll from each outfit every day or not even every week, right?
9:32
SPEAKER_01: So there's a small pro-Biden trend like internal to each pollster,
9:39
SPEAKER_01: but a larger pro-Biden trend just in terms of which polls have come out most recently.
9:44
SPEAKER_01: Like we haven't gotten a Rasmussen poll,
9:46
SPEAKER_01: I think,
9:47
SPEAKER_01: in this past week,
9:47
SPEAKER_01: which is the one that has kind of the strongest GOP house effect.
9:53
SPEAKER_01: All which is to say like there's different ways you could do it.
9:56
SPEAKER_01: Like RealClearPolitics does the crude polling average, which kind of –
10:01
SPEAKER_01: maximizes instability in the numbers and creates the most newsworthiness.
10:07
SPEAKER_01: Nate Silver's old model did the opposite and maximizes stability,
10:12
SPEAKER_01: has just a strong bias to say that anything new is probably a house effect rather
10:18
SPEAKER_01: than a real change in the campaign.
10:20
SPEAKER_01: Unfortunately, that model is not...
10:23
SPEAKER_01: not being published anymore due to intellectual property disputes.
10:26
SPEAKER_01: The Economist's one puts on like a ton of Lowe's smoothing,
10:32
SPEAKER_01: I think is the technical term for it,
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SPEAKER_01: which creates these like attractive looking like wave shapes in terms of where the
10:40
SPEAKER_01: polling goes.
10:41
SPEAKER_01: One thing they show that's interesting is a huge number of undecided voters.
10:45
SPEAKER_01: The Economist has the race tied at 44-44.
10:49
SPEAKER_01: It feels to me,
10:50
SPEAKER_01: it's like hard for me in my heart to grasp the idea of 12% of the public looking at
10:56
SPEAKER_01: two men who've been running for president nonstop for many years now and being like,
11:02
SPEAKER_01: I don't really know.
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SPEAKER_01: I need to learn more about these gentlemen.
11:07
SPEAKER_01: But that's where it has it.
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SPEAKER_01: Real clear politics has Trump up 0.2%.
11:13
SPEAKER_01: But, you know, had a strong Marist number come in for him recently.
11:16
SPEAKER_01: Did they add it?
11:16
SPEAKER_00: Because I feel like real clear.
11:18
SPEAKER_01: No, they put it in.
11:19
SPEAKER_00: Because it's like conservative owned and operated.
11:21
SPEAKER_00: I feel like they sometimes play funny games about when they add polls in.
11:25
SPEAKER_01: They put it in and they've been slow to drop this old Rasmussen poll that has prompted.
11:31
SPEAKER_01: At plus eight, that's kind of the game that they're playing with it.
11:35
SPEAKER_01: The other thing that Rasmussen shows,
11:37
SPEAKER_01: though,
11:37
SPEAKER_01: which is consistent with The Economist,
11:39
SPEAKER_01: is this rising number of undecided voters,
11:42
SPEAKER_01: which just,
11:42
SPEAKER_01: again,
11:43
SPEAKER_01: feels odd.
11:44
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there are multiple third-party candidates in the race.
11:50
SPEAKER_01: Then there's this third-party question,
11:52
SPEAKER_01: where RFK has...
11:54
SPEAKER_01: Another thing that's interesting I looked at is when you put RFK in...
12:01
SPEAKER_01: The number of undecideds goes up.
12:05
SPEAKER_01: Right.
12:05
SPEAKER_01: So it's like because you want to ask yourself, like, who does RFK take votes from?
12:10
SPEAKER_01: Right.
12:10
SPEAKER_01: And so when you add RFK,
12:12
SPEAKER_01: like Trump goes down and Biden goes down and some people say they're voting for RFK.
12:17
SPEAKER_01: But there's a number of people who say they're voting for none of those three candidates.
12:21
SPEAKER_01: And that's actually more.
12:23
SPEAKER_01: Then if you create the binary choice.
12:26
SPEAKER_01: Cornel West, bros.
12:28
SPEAKER_01: No,
12:28
SPEAKER_01: and that appears to be what's like hurting Biden mechanically in the race is that
12:34
SPEAKER_01: if you give RFK as an option,
12:35
SPEAKER_01: it's not so much that even people take him.
12:37
SPEAKER_01: It's that they defect to being undecided.
12:40
SPEAKER_01: So I do still think that among like low information Democrats,
12:46
SPEAKER_01: a lot of people seem to still not really believe that Biden will be the nominee.
12:51
SPEAKER_01: Or they're hoping that somebody else might be or something like that.
12:55
SPEAKER_01: It's hard to say.
12:58
SPEAKER_01: You continue to see incredulity among a lot of people that these are the options
13:03
SPEAKER_01: that are available,
13:04
SPEAKER_01: even though the primaries are over.
13:07
SPEAKER_01: And this was always part of the Biden will be in better shape by April sort of thesis,
13:12
SPEAKER_01: is that people will hear that these are officially the nominees,
13:16
SPEAKER_01: which they still haven't fully,
13:18
SPEAKER_01: fully,
13:18
SPEAKER_01: fully done.
13:19
SPEAKER_01: But, you know,
13:21
SPEAKER_01: It's it's bad.
13:24
SPEAKER_01: This sounds silly to be a contrarian take,
13:26
SPEAKER_01: but like it's bad to be on trial for crimes in the middle of your presidential campaign.
13:30
SPEAKER_00: Right.
13:30
SPEAKER_00: OK,
13:31
SPEAKER_00: so let's actually talk about like the state of the campaigns,
13:34
SPEAKER_00: because it's not just that Trump is on trial.
13:37
SPEAKER_00: And I do want to talk about it, even though I covered it last week with Rebecca Roife.
13:41
SPEAKER_00: By the way, I owe her a small correction.
13:43
SPEAKER_00: I think I referred to her as an NYU law professor.
13:46
SPEAKER_00: And she's actually a professor at New York Law School, which is a different law school.
13:52
SPEAKER_00: So my apologies to Rebecca.
13:55
SPEAKER_00: But Biden,
13:57
SPEAKER_00: I don't feel like this is actually reflected in polling about Joe Biden versus
14:03
SPEAKER_00: maybe polling about the state of the race.
14:05
SPEAKER_00: But Biden has had like –
14:08
SPEAKER_00: at least relative to the kind of news he was having for months prior to this,
14:13
SPEAKER_00: like a pretty decent run of good news,
14:18
SPEAKER_00: right?
14:18
SPEAKER_00: Like he finally wore House Speaker Mike Johnson down.
14:23
SPEAKER_00: He got...
14:25
SPEAKER_00: um you like 60 69 billion dollars in ukraine aid locked in like it's going to
14:32
SPEAKER_00: become law um and he he like he managed to assemble well he i guess i would say is
14:39
SPEAKER_00: he's like he's like proved that he's holding together an alliance in the middle
14:43
SPEAKER_00: east that's that's
14:46
SPEAKER_00: committed to not letting the war between Israel and Gaza spread.
14:50
SPEAKER_00: There was a high tension moment a week ago where it seemed like Israel and Iran
14:57
SPEAKER_00: might be going to war with each other.
14:59
SPEAKER_00: And it really does seem like Biden taking the lead on an international effort to
15:04
SPEAKER_00: to make that simmer down was effective.
15:07
SPEAKER_00: There was another,
15:08
SPEAKER_00: you know,
15:08
SPEAKER_00: I mentioned the UAW in Michigan,
15:10
SPEAKER_00: but United Auto Workers won a big victory in Tennessee,
15:14
SPEAKER_00: which is not necessarily statewide relevant to the election,
15:18
SPEAKER_00: but it is a reminder that,
15:21
SPEAKER_00: that labor has made at least,
15:25
SPEAKER_00: you know,
15:25
SPEAKER_00: real and symbolic gains under Biden.
15:29
SPEAKER_00: And like, is it,
15:32
SPEAKER_00: Really just Trump being stuck in trial that's causing the race to even out?
15:38
SPEAKER_00: Or are people who are now probably paying more attention than they were six months
15:42
SPEAKER_00: ago tuning in and saying,
15:44
SPEAKER_00: oh,
15:45
SPEAKER_00: Biden's actually not asleep at the wheel.
15:48
SPEAKER_00: He's governing well.
15:50
SPEAKER_00: He's bringing people around.
15:53
SPEAKER_00: In exactly the way that,
15:55
SPEAKER_00: like,
15:55
SPEAKER_00: A,
15:55
SPEAKER_00: you'd want,
15:56
SPEAKER_00: and B,
15:57
SPEAKER_00: you know,
15:58
SPEAKER_00: maybe people were led to believe he was incapable of doing.
16:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I hope so.
16:01
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I continue to find that just on the merits, right, like the age thing is vexing.
16:10
SPEAKER_01: You know, like Biden objectively is old.
16:12
SPEAKER_01: He's got this kind of old guy shuffle and an old guy squint.
16:17
SPEAKER_01: But, you know, FDR couldn't walk at all.
16:21
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's not a physical strength competition.
16:26
SPEAKER_01: The question, you know, anytime you say this, right, it's like, you know...
16:31
SPEAKER_01: Twitter pundits,
16:32
SPEAKER_01: Nate Silver,
16:33
SPEAKER_01: et cetera,
16:33
SPEAKER_01: will pop up to be,
16:34
SPEAKER_01: well,
16:34
SPEAKER_01: it's legitimate for people to wonder about the president's mental fitness.
16:38
SPEAKER_01: And, like, it is completely legitimate to wonder about.
16:42
SPEAKER_01: But, like, you have to look at what's happening.
16:46
SPEAKER_01: And, like, Biden is this incredibly effective person.
16:52
SPEAKER_01: legislative wheeler and dealer.
16:54
SPEAKER_01: He has the positive attributes that you would want and expect from a very experienced political leader.
17:02
SPEAKER_01: And you keep seeing that in different ways.
17:05
SPEAKER_01: He got major partisan legislation enacted that required essentially unanimity from his Senate caucus.
17:12
SPEAKER_01: And
17:13
SPEAKER_01: He got a bunch of bipartisan bills done under unified control, but he got that infrastructure bill.
17:19
SPEAKER_01: He got the CHIPS Act done.
17:21
SPEAKER_01: He managed to thread this incredibly difficult needle around Israel-Ukraine funding,
17:27
SPEAKER_01: Mike Johnson's intra-caucus dynamics.
17:30
SPEAKER_01: You pointed this out when we were talking yesterday, but like –
17:35
SPEAKER_01: Mike Johnson's own testimony about how this came together is that Joe Biden
17:42
SPEAKER_01: personally put in a lot of time in talking to him and working through these issues
17:48
SPEAKER_01: and bringing it to a mutually acceptable resolution that is being hailed by leaders
17:54
SPEAKER_01: of many countries around the world.
17:56
SPEAKER_01: Similarly, getting the Israel-Iran situation calmed down
18:01
SPEAKER_01: Required getting Jordan and Saudi Arabia and other Arab states to cooperate with
18:08
SPEAKER_01: Israel in the midst of this Palestinian conflict.
18:11
SPEAKER_01: That's hard to do.
18:15
SPEAKER_01: It requires the president of the United States' personal involvement.
18:19
SPEAKER_01: And so,
18:20
SPEAKER_01: you know,
18:21
SPEAKER_01: when some people tell me like they don't like Biden because they just disagree with
18:25
SPEAKER_01: his positions on issues,
18:27
SPEAKER_01: I'm like,
18:27
SPEAKER_01: yeah,
18:27
SPEAKER_01: fair enough.
18:28
SPEAKER_01: Right.
18:28
SPEAKER_01: Like it's politics.
18:30
SPEAKER_01: Not everybody agrees with everything the president does.
18:33
SPEAKER_01: But the idea that he is like somehow not capable of presidenting.
18:38
SPEAKER_01: Just like it keeps being defied by all of the events that we see in the world.
18:43
SPEAKER_01: And so I hope that it,
18:44
SPEAKER_01: you know,
18:45
SPEAKER_01: it helped him,
18:46
SPEAKER_01: I think,
18:46
SPEAKER_01: when he did the State of the Union was very forceful.
18:48
SPEAKER_01: I think it helps him when you see legislative wins on the board.
18:52
SPEAKER_01: It's a very frustrating aspect of the situation, though, that people seem to just like forget.
18:59
SPEAKER_01: You know, like every 10 minutes, people are like, oh, Joe Biden, like, what's he even up to?
19:05
SPEAKER_01: And it's like, what's what is any president up to?
19:07
SPEAKER_01: He's like running executive agencies.
19:09
SPEAKER_01: He's running a legislative effort.
19:11
SPEAKER_01: He's running a reelection campaign.
19:14
SPEAKER_01: He seems to be getting as much, if not more done than the like more than I thought.
19:19
SPEAKER_01: Right.
19:19
SPEAKER_01: Like on Election Day of 2020.
19:21
SPEAKER_01: I thought,
19:22
SPEAKER_01: not because of any like personal views of Biden,
19:24
SPEAKER_01: but just counting the numbers in Congress,
19:27
SPEAKER_01: I was like,
19:28
SPEAKER_01: not much is going to get done in this guy's presidency.
19:32
SPEAKER_01: You know, like the votes just aren't there in Congress to do anything.
19:36
SPEAKER_01: And I think,
19:36
SPEAKER_01: you know,
19:37
SPEAKER_01: the votes have not been there for a like transformational Ronald Reagan style
19:43
SPEAKER_01: sweeping reworking of American society because that's not how Congress works.
19:49
SPEAKER_01: But like we have all kinds of legislation on important topics and big diplomatic
19:53
SPEAKER_01: and military events and,
19:55
SPEAKER_01: you know,
19:55
SPEAKER_01: some stuff that's bipartisan,
19:57
SPEAKER_01: some stuff that's partisan.
19:58
SPEAKER_01: It's like a totally skillful thing.
20:01
SPEAKER_01: mentally competent, effective president.
20:04
SPEAKER_01: And like the discourse around his administration is dominated by total bullshit.
20:09
SPEAKER_00: I mean, so like the, the, the frustrating thing about the, like there's two frustrating things.
20:14
SPEAKER_00: Um,
20:15
SPEAKER_00: one is like,
20:17
SPEAKER_00: you're kind of alluding to it is that like,
20:19
SPEAKER_00: even if,
20:20
SPEAKER_00: even if the,
20:21
SPEAKER_00: the it's okay to be concerned or it's totally legitimate to be concerned,
20:25
SPEAKER_00: um,
20:26
SPEAKER_00: people are on point and Biden was showing really worrying signs of aging.
20:35
SPEAKER_00: It's still a US election.
20:38
SPEAKER_00: It's a zero sum contest between two people.
20:41
SPEAKER_00: And it only really matters
20:44
SPEAKER_00: Like any contrast point only really matters if there's an actual contrast, right?
20:48
SPEAKER_00: Like,
20:50
SPEAKER_00: you know,
20:51
SPEAKER_00: we used to joke about how like it was dumb to home in on Hillary Clinton's emails
20:55
SPEAKER_00: in 2016 because...
20:59
SPEAKER_00: Like in a fair analysis of things,
21:02
SPEAKER_00: single issue document retention slash ethics voters actually had a choice between
21:08
SPEAKER_00: two candidates and she was the better of the two on that narrow score,
21:12
SPEAKER_00: right?
21:12
SPEAKER_00: Trump is like infamous for like,
21:14
SPEAKER_01: you know,
21:14
SPEAKER_01: this like mob boss,
21:16
SPEAKER_01: don't write anything down because we're doing crimes.
21:20
SPEAKER_01: I mean, to me, actually, that's like the important part of this hush money trial is not –
21:28
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, the crime itself is significant, but it's... You see the testimony, right?
21:33
SPEAKER_01: And it really is these, like, Sopranos methods.
21:37
SPEAKER_00: Okay, but you're pivoting too quick.
21:39
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
21:40
SPEAKER_00: Sorry.
21:41
SPEAKER_00: So, like, on the age...
21:44
SPEAKER_00: And he fell asleep.
21:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he fell asleep and allegedly farting all over the place.
21:50
SPEAKER_00: In the same way that reporters gave FDR cover for being in a wheelchair,
21:56
SPEAKER_00: reporters appear to be giving Donald Trump cover for atrocious farts or something
22:01
SPEAKER_00: like that.
22:03
SPEAKER_01: Have the farts been documented?
22:04
SPEAKER_01: I mean, how how how solid are we on on fart?
22:07
SPEAKER_00: We're like we're like probably would not clear New Yorker fact checking levels of rigor.
22:13
SPEAKER_00: But, you know, enough enough that like a tabloid reporter could could like raise the question.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: Oh.
22:21
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we'll see.
22:23
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it'll happen.
22:24
SPEAKER_00: But,
22:25
SPEAKER_00: okay,
22:25
SPEAKER_00: so there's the,
22:26
SPEAKER_00: like,
22:27
SPEAKER_00: if age is an issue,
22:27
SPEAKER_00: then it's an issue for both candidates,
22:29
SPEAKER_00: and you want people who are single-issue age voters to have a clear sense of whose
22:35
SPEAKER_00: age is a bigger liability for them.
22:37
SPEAKER_00: And, like, Trump's, you know, conduct in the trial maybe raises questions about that.
22:43
SPEAKER_00: But the other thing is, like, when it comes down to it, even people who, you know...
22:51
SPEAKER_00: within the spectrum of political journalists we think of as more serious minded
22:56
SPEAKER_00: more you know just like like assess the record like is you know are these people
23:04
SPEAKER_00: like what what have they accomplished how capable are they are they using their
23:09
SPEAKER_00: abilities to do good things right um like that's i think like what the ideal is
23:14
SPEAKER_00: that's where you'd want political analysts to be looking in and instead even like
23:21
SPEAKER_00: the top tier of high-minded journalists
23:26
SPEAKER_00: when it comes down to it are like,
23:28
SPEAKER_00: no,
23:28
SPEAKER_00: like what we're really looking for is like who can match George W.
23:32
SPEAKER_00: Bush on the pile of rubble with the bullhorn talking about like,
23:36
SPEAKER_00: I can hear you,
23:38
SPEAKER_00: the people hear you and the people who took these,
23:40
SPEAKER_00: you know,
23:40
SPEAKER_00: like just like what they want is like a performance of bravado to satisfy their
23:48
SPEAKER_00: notion that the old president is actually on top of his game as a leader.
23:54
SPEAKER_00: And I think that like Joe Biden can't deliver that kind of impromptu rally of the troops style thing.
24:04
SPEAKER_00: But he is a much better president than George W.
24:07
SPEAKER_00: Bush was like just much more capable across the board of working across the aisle,
24:13
SPEAKER_00: managing international affairs.
24:15
SPEAKER_00: coalitions,
24:17
SPEAKER_00: and to the extent that the things that are in the news are not lifting Biden up
24:25
SPEAKER_00: even further or aren't maybe even helping him much at all,
24:28
SPEAKER_00: I kind of wonder if it's that he is trying to,
24:33
SPEAKER_00: in some sense,
24:35
SPEAKER_00: prove his critics wrong about his age by governing well,
24:39
SPEAKER_00: and what his critics want is for him to transform into
24:44
SPEAKER_00: Somebody who's 15 years younger and can can kind of like physically move in the
24:49
SPEAKER_00: world like somebody who's 65 instead of 81.
24:52
SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, and I think not even that.
24:54
SPEAKER_00: Right.
24:54
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
24:54
SPEAKER_01: I think about Biden,
24:56
SPEAKER_01: who,
24:56
SPEAKER_01: again,
24:56
SPEAKER_01: has been around in politics for a long time and ran for president multiple times.
25:02
SPEAKER_01: is that Joe Biden was just never that good at delivering campaign speeches.
25:12
SPEAKER_01: There's a reason he didn't win in 2008.
25:15
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's not just he didn't win in 2008.
25:16
SPEAKER_01: He didn't come remotely within 1,000 feet
25:21
SPEAKER_01: of winning.
25:21
SPEAKER_01: And it's not because there was like such a cosmic,
25:25
SPEAKER_01: you know,
25:26
SPEAKER_01: policy gulf between him and Obama that,
25:29
SPEAKER_01: you know,
25:30
SPEAKER_01: I was like,
25:30
SPEAKER_01: no,
25:31
SPEAKER_01: it's just like Obama was way better at,
25:34
SPEAKER_01: you know,
25:35
SPEAKER_01: being on a multi-candidate debate stage,
25:38
SPEAKER_01: at giving a speech at a rally,
25:39
SPEAKER_01: like at all those kinds of skills.
25:42
SPEAKER_01: And,
25:42
SPEAKER_01: you know,
25:43
SPEAKER_01: if you think about the Obama administration,
25:45
SPEAKER_01: right,
25:45
SPEAKER_01: like the Biden VP pick was like a classic,
25:49
SPEAKER_01: okay,
25:49
SPEAKER_01: like we've got the guy,
25:51
SPEAKER_01: right,
25:51
SPEAKER_01: who's like the charisma dynamo presidential candidate,
25:54
SPEAKER_01: but now we need to backfill some like Washington veteran,
25:59
SPEAKER_01: right?
25:59
SPEAKER_01: And he's like Bush and Cheney, right?
26:01
SPEAKER_01: And like Biden...
26:04
SPEAKER_01: Biden was Obama's Cheney, essentially, which is, you know, a little bit insulting to both of them.
26:09
SPEAKER_01: But like, but I mean, it's true, you know, and then like Cheney never ran for president.
26:17
SPEAKER_01: Right.
26:17
SPEAKER_01: Because like that wasn't the idea.
26:19
SPEAKER_01: Right.
26:19
SPEAKER_01: And Republicans cycled through after Bush, like three other charismatic front men.
26:25
SPEAKER_01: You know,
26:25
SPEAKER_01: of whom,
26:26
SPEAKER_01: like,
26:26
SPEAKER_01: the best and most effective was John McCain,
26:29
SPEAKER_01: who just happened to have run in,
26:31
SPEAKER_01: like,
26:31
SPEAKER_01: an unwinnable year.
26:32
SPEAKER_01: And the most lonesome was Donald Trump.
26:34
SPEAKER_01: But, like, all three of those guys are, like, good TV talker guys.
26:39
SPEAKER_01: And it's just,
26:40
SPEAKER_01: like,
26:40
SPEAKER_01: a longstanding dysfunctional aspect of American political media that,
26:47
SPEAKER_01: like,
26:47
SPEAKER_01: they really—it craves and rewards—
26:53
SPEAKER_01: Like performative presidencies,
26:55
SPEAKER_01: you know,
26:55
SPEAKER_01: like if you look at any fictional president,
26:59
SPEAKER_01: like what you see them do is give stirring speeches that are delivered by movie
27:04
SPEAKER_01: stars and written by professional screenwriters.
27:08
SPEAKER_01: And then the speech is always portrayed as having a lot of efficacy.
27:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
27:13
SPEAKER_01: When Michael Douglas and the American president lays it all out there with a really
27:18
SPEAKER_01: good speech in the well of Congress,
27:20
SPEAKER_01: you're supposed to believe that that speech causes gun control legislation to be
27:26
SPEAKER_01: passed in Congress.
27:28
SPEAKER_01: Joe Biden actually passed gun control legislation.
27:31
SPEAKER_01: I don't think he gave any speeches about it because it's a legislative negotiation.
27:36
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
27:36
SPEAKER_01: And that's not how it works, right?
27:40
SPEAKER_01: And,
27:40
SPEAKER_01: like,
27:40
SPEAKER_01: Biden at his current age is not an amazing orator,
27:44
SPEAKER_01: but,
27:44
SPEAKER_01: like,
27:45
SPEAKER_01: young Biden was also not an amazing orator.
27:48
SPEAKER_01: What young Biden was was a Senate committee chairman who was responsible for some –
27:54
SPEAKER_01: important pieces of legislation,
27:55
SPEAKER_01: then later went to the Foreign Affairs Committee and did some Sub Rosa diplomatic work.
28:01
SPEAKER_01: Then as vice president,
28:02
SPEAKER_01: he was like Obama's emissary to Senate Republicans and oftentimes an emissary to
28:08
SPEAKER_01: foreign world leaders.
28:09
SPEAKER_01: And now as president, he's his own Dick Cheney.
28:14
SPEAKER_01: And he does diplomacy and he does legislative work.
28:17
SPEAKER_01: And his speeches are fine.
28:19
SPEAKER_01: But if you were picking...
28:21
SPEAKER_01: like all the people in contemporary American politics to deliver a State of the Union speech.
28:26
SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't think you would pick Biden.
28:30
SPEAKER_01: And not just because he's old.
28:31
SPEAKER_01: You wouldn't pick time traveling Biden to deliver those speeches either.
28:35
SPEAKER_00: But like- Have you considered that maybe it's just cocaine?
28:38
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
28:38
SPEAKER_01: You know, like Donald Trump was literally the star of a television show.
28:45
SPEAKER_01: You know, like he's good on TV.
28:48
SPEAKER_01: He's a he's a magnetic sort of presence who can hold the camera.
28:53
SPEAKER_01: And even as Trump has entered this kind of senescence and can barely string
28:58
SPEAKER_01: together like coherent speeches,
29:00
SPEAKER_01: he's still a kind of magnetic figure.
29:03
SPEAKER_00: He has a kind of charisma.
29:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
29:05
SPEAKER_01: It's interesting to watch him.
29:08
SPEAKER_01: fuck up his lines and like stumble over what he's saying and try to see what he comes up with.
29:14
SPEAKER_01: And like when he goes off script and like rambles, it's pretty funny.
29:19
SPEAKER_00: It's really funny.
29:20
SPEAKER_00: He'll be,
29:20
SPEAKER_00: he'll be like what,
29:21
SPEAKER_00: you know,
29:22
SPEAKER_00: uh,
29:23
SPEAKER_00: like I,
29:23
SPEAKER_00: like the greatest figure who's ever stayed at the white mouse and also the white house,
29:28
SPEAKER_00: you know,
29:28
SPEAKER_00: like he'll never like be like,
29:29
SPEAKER_00: oops,
29:29
SPEAKER_00: I like,
29:30
SPEAKER_00: I,
29:31
SPEAKER_00: I came out wrong.
29:32
SPEAKER_00: What I meant to say was white house.
29:33
SPEAKER_00: He'll be like, I meant both things.
29:35
SPEAKER_00: And like naturally, and then he just moves on.
29:37
SPEAKER_00: Like it never happened.
29:40
SPEAKER_01: He's a legit,
29:40
SPEAKER_01: you know,
29:41
SPEAKER_01: I was watching the Lakers last night and like LeBron James is not as good as he
29:46
SPEAKER_01: used to be,
29:46
SPEAKER_01: but he's still really good at basketball.
29:49
SPEAKER_01: Donald Trump is quite old and I think has has lost a step or two.
29:55
SPEAKER_01: But like he's a charismatic television celebrity.
29:58
SPEAKER_01: Like there's no there's no denying that.
30:00
SPEAKER_01: And Biden isn't.
30:01
SPEAKER_01: But also like it's a presidential election.
30:03
SPEAKER_01: And Joe Biden is just like very effective at doing the job of the presidency.
30:10
SPEAKER_01: Now, that being said, like, you know, I'm I'm a realist about politics.
30:13
SPEAKER_01: You know,
30:13
SPEAKER_01: if you went back to 2019,
30:16
SPEAKER_01: like one thing I would say is that like life isn't fair and Democrats would be
30:20
SPEAKER_01: better off.
30:21
SPEAKER_01: nominating someone who is better at playing a president on television.
30:26
SPEAKER_01: They've sort of stuck with a guy whose primary focus is on doing the president's job.
30:31
SPEAKER_01: But it's no excuse for obfuscating the issue.
30:36
SPEAKER_01: If your critique of Biden is just, he is not a super...
30:41
SPEAKER_01: telegenic camera presence like say that like that's true um it was true when he was
30:49
SPEAKER_01: younger it is not a function of his age and if you're saying well you have concerns
30:54
SPEAKER_01: about his job performance like you have to talk about his job performance not about
31:00
SPEAKER_01: his television performance um yeah
31:03
SPEAKER_01: I have some criticisms of the decisions he's made, but that's like the substance of the policy.
31:09
SPEAKER_01: And like when he's trying to do stuff that I agree with, like he just like – he seems good at it.
31:14
SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah.
31:15
SPEAKER_00: I mean like even where I disagree with him, I never like –
31:18
SPEAKER_00: am concerned that he's just not applying some level of good judgment to like,
31:23
SPEAKER_00: we just might disagree about what,
31:24
SPEAKER_00: what it is.
31:25
SPEAKER_00: I like,
31:26
SPEAKER_00: I feel Biden has like disabused me of,
31:28
SPEAKER_00: of a couple of preconceived notions that I still kind of held onto as of the time
31:33
SPEAKER_00: he became president.
31:35
SPEAKER_00: The first was that like this idea that in order to be a successful politician and
31:40
SPEAKER_00: in particular,
31:41
SPEAKER_00: a successful president,
31:42
SPEAKER_00: you needed to engage in,
31:43
SPEAKER_00: In this kind of see no evil,
31:47
SPEAKER_00: back slapping,
31:50
SPEAKER_00: like fret guy camaraderie with people of the other party and people in Congress who
31:57
SPEAKER_00: might annoy you.
31:57
SPEAKER_00: And if you don't do that kind of thing, it's really going to limit your potential to get things done.
32:02
SPEAKER_00: Like I thought that that was like a very overstated thing.
32:06
SPEAKER_00: Idea that kind of came out of movie politics,
32:09
SPEAKER_00: like you were just saying,
32:10
SPEAKER_00: and didn't really have much bearing on what bills could pass or what the limit of
32:17
SPEAKER_00: the possible was for a president relative to the size of their majorities or
32:23
SPEAKER_00: whatever in Congress.
32:25
SPEAKER_00: I do think that like Biden, as Barack Obama's antithesis, has kind of proven that it does matter.
32:32
SPEAKER_00: And like you can you can quibble a little bit about whether it matters a lot or a little,
32:36
SPEAKER_00: but it's not nothing.
32:37
SPEAKER_00: Right.
32:37
SPEAKER_00: Like the fact that he's known Mitch McConnell for 35 years and calls him at least a friend,
32:43
SPEAKER_00: like will be sad when Mitch McConnell dies.
32:45
SPEAKER_00: Things like that are are are meaningful things.
32:50
SPEAKER_00: to some degree or other.
32:51
SPEAKER_00: And the fact that,
32:52
SPEAKER_00: you know,
32:52
SPEAKER_00: Obama was standoffish to Mitch McConnell and rubbed his victory in the face of
32:56
SPEAKER_00: Republican leaders and talked about how he was like the sweep of his charisma was
33:02
SPEAKER_00: going to create huge bipartisan majorities for liberal ideas that,
33:06
SPEAKER_00: you know,
33:07
SPEAKER_00: past candidates never would have thought possible.
33:10
SPEAKER_00: Like that just gave, that was like waving a red flag in front of a bull for someone like Mitch McConnell.
33:15
SPEAKER_00: Whereas Joe Biden saying like, I like Mitch and can work with him is,
33:18
SPEAKER_00: actually a way of, of like reducing McConnell's appetite for raw obstruction.
33:23
SPEAKER_00: So, so he proved me like he proved that my preconceived notion there was wrong.
33:29
SPEAKER_00: Um,
33:29
SPEAKER_00: but I still had some preconceived notion as of 2020,
33:32
SPEAKER_00: although it was on the wane that like governing well was sort of a skeleton key to
33:38
SPEAKER_00: political success,
33:39
SPEAKER_00: right?
33:40
SPEAKER_00: That like,
33:41
SPEAKER_00: if you had,
33:41
SPEAKER_00: if you had asked me in 2019,
33:43
SPEAKER_00: if you'd said Joe Biden's going to win,
33:45
SPEAKER_00: he's going to be old,
33:47
SPEAKER_00: but he's going to,
33:48
SPEAKER_00: like pull the country out of the depths of a recession induced by a global pandemic
33:53
SPEAKER_00: that his predecessor screwed up.
33:55
SPEAKER_00: And by the time he's running for reelection, unemployment will be 3.5 or 6%.
34:01
SPEAKER_00: Inflation will be 3%.
34:02
SPEAKER_00: Real wages will be growing.
34:05
SPEAKER_00: The economy will be booming.
34:07
SPEAKER_00: I would say, and he'll be running against Trump again.
34:10
SPEAKER_00: I would have guessed that.
34:12
SPEAKER_00: He's going to be up in the polls 55,
34:13
SPEAKER_00: 45 at least,
34:15
SPEAKER_00: you know,
34:17
SPEAKER_00: and like all the effort that,
34:19
SPEAKER_00: you know,
34:20
SPEAKER_00: obviously Republicans would try to lie about that or or or muddy muddy the waters
34:25
SPEAKER_00: with propaganda or whatever.
34:27
SPEAKER_00: But like the truth would out.
34:30
SPEAKER_00: enough that it wouldn't be a close race.
34:33
SPEAKER_00: And it is definitely, at least right now, a close race.
34:37
SPEAKER_00: And I think that that suggested my preconceived notion of how much these governing
34:44
SPEAKER_00: things that Joe Biden's good at and Donald Trump is bad at matter.
34:47
SPEAKER_00: That was wrong.
34:48
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
34:49
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm not sure how much to rethink.
34:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
34:54
SPEAKER_01: Exactly what I think on the kind of governance stuff,
34:58
SPEAKER_01: in part because we have to see what happens with the election.
35:02
SPEAKER_01: You know,
35:03
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
35:04
SPEAKER_01: something I remember arguing about Obama administration officials with sort of
35:09
SPEAKER_01: midway through their time is,
35:12
SPEAKER_01: like,
35:12
SPEAKER_01: I kept saying,
35:13
SPEAKER_01: like,
35:14
SPEAKER_01: we got to,
35:14
SPEAKER_01: like—
35:15
SPEAKER_01: You guys got to do more to reduce unemployment.
35:17
SPEAKER_01: And they're like, what could you do?
35:19
SPEAKER_01: And I toss them some ideas their way.
35:21
SPEAKER_01: And one thing they would say to me is like,
35:23
SPEAKER_01: well,
35:23
SPEAKER_01: you know,
35:23
SPEAKER_01: if we did that,
35:24
SPEAKER_01: there would be more inflation.
35:26
SPEAKER_01: And I said, sure.
35:28
SPEAKER_01: But like if people were getting jobs more rapidly and their wages were going up.
35:35
SPEAKER_01: Like, why would it be so bad if inflation was also a little bit higher?
35:40
SPEAKER_01: And they were telling me, it's like, you kids don't know.
35:42
SPEAKER_01: You don't know what it was like in the 70s.
35:44
SPEAKER_01: Like, we'd get killed if we had 5% inflation.
35:48
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, really?
35:49
SPEAKER_01: If it caused unemployment to fall much more and people's wages were going up,
35:54
SPEAKER_01: like people's wages were going up faster than inflation?
35:57
SPEAKER_01: And they were like, you'll see.
36:00
SPEAKER_01: And so I have definitely rethought my position on that.
36:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
36:03
SPEAKER_01: you know, it's clear that like, there's some kind of like bitterness, right?
36:09
SPEAKER_01: Because now,
36:10
SPEAKER_01: if you try to just argue with anyone about inflation,
36:14
SPEAKER_01: now that it's down,
36:16
SPEAKER_01: they'll be like,
36:17
SPEAKER_01: oh,
36:17
SPEAKER_01: but inflation did go up a lot in the past.
36:21
SPEAKER_01: And so bread is still much more expensive than it was five years ago, which like is true.
36:26
SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, you want to come back and be like,
36:28
SPEAKER_01: But all these people died of COVID in the past.
36:32
SPEAKER_01: Things happen.
36:33
SPEAKER_01: To me,
36:34
SPEAKER_01: on the merits,
36:36
SPEAKER_01: getting rapid reemployment with a burst of inflation that is then brought back
36:41
SPEAKER_01: under control with unemployment staying low and wages growing,
36:45
SPEAKER_01: that's really good.
36:46
SPEAKER_01: And it's clear that people don't feel that way about it.
36:49
SPEAKER_01: Right.
36:49
SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, and exactly why they don't feel that way about it is is a fascinating subject.
36:57
SPEAKER_01: But like I thought that people would feel good about it.
37:01
SPEAKER_01: And some of the problem is messaging.
37:05
SPEAKER_01: But like the messaging effort has been pretty aggressive.
37:08
SPEAKER_01: Like when they started in on Bidenomics the first time, I was like, this is a good message.
37:12
SPEAKER_01: Like this is going to work.
37:13
SPEAKER_01: We're going to kick people's ass.
37:15
SPEAKER_01: And then when politics.fm's own Will Stancil came on,
37:19
SPEAKER_01: and he was leading the charge on Twitter,
37:21
SPEAKER_01: and I think did a good job of getting people organized and more disciplined.
37:26
SPEAKER_01: But that hasn't had a transformational impact on public opinion.
37:30
SPEAKER_01: Trump continues to have just a huge edge there.
37:34
SPEAKER_01: on the inflation topic, even as he advances this completely inflationary agenda.
37:40
SPEAKER_01: And so I'm now reverting to like some of my older,
37:43
SPEAKER_01: more like black pill opinions about politics,
37:46
SPEAKER_01: which is just like,
37:49
SPEAKER_01: You cannot get people to pay attention to the logic of anything over an expanded period of time.
37:59
SPEAKER_01: Inflation did happen.
38:01
SPEAKER_01: Biden downplayed it while it was happening.
38:04
SPEAKER_01: Republicans have the position that it is bad and they will make there be less.
38:10
SPEAKER_01: And you just cannot get a... The people who write campaign stories...
38:18
SPEAKER_01: Like will not consider issues on the merits.
38:24
SPEAKER_01: You know,
38:25
SPEAKER_01: like you can maybe get them every once in a while to write a story that's like
38:28
SPEAKER_01: Biden says that Trump's policies would be worse for inflation,
38:32
SPEAKER_01: right?
38:33
SPEAKER_01: But it's like, would they be worse?
38:38
SPEAKER_01: With all these things, sure, you need to do some fairness.
38:41
SPEAKER_01: You need to do some balance.
38:42
SPEAKER_01: But call Greg Mankiw.
38:43
SPEAKER_01: Call Republicans.
38:46
SPEAKER_01: Ask them.
38:47
SPEAKER_01: Just putting a 10% tax on all imports while shrinking the labor force and
38:52
SPEAKER_01: increasing the budget deficit,
38:54
SPEAKER_01: what is that going to help with?
38:56
SPEAKER_01: And it's like it's very frustrating.
38:58
SPEAKER_01: And it reminds me of when Bush was president.
39:02
SPEAKER_01: And I was just like constantly mad all the time at people and their coverage of things.
39:10
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, like that's very, very, very disappointing.
39:13
SPEAKER_01: The other thing about Biden,
39:14
SPEAKER_01: though,
39:15
SPEAKER_01: is that I think every president sort of flatters themselves that if they –
39:21
SPEAKER_01: The job of the president is to do things.
39:25
SPEAKER_01: And that if you are effective at that job and get a lot done, that voters will reward you for it.
39:32
SPEAKER_01: And every veteran of every White House is like,
39:35
SPEAKER_01: oh,
39:35
SPEAKER_01: man,
39:36
SPEAKER_01: we really wanted to be rewarded for the things that we've done.
39:39
SPEAKER_01: But it turns out that voters actually don't want you to do stuff.
39:44
SPEAKER_01: You want to do stuff because you believe in it on the merits, and that's why you do it.
39:49
SPEAKER_01: But you just sort of need to own that.
39:52
SPEAKER_01: Your historic climate legislation is either its own reward or it isn't.
39:58
SPEAKER_01: But the reason you tackle big problems is because you think that they...
40:06
SPEAKER_01: And,
40:06
SPEAKER_01: like,
40:07
SPEAKER_01: one reason Trump,
40:08
SPEAKER_01: like,
40:08
SPEAKER_01: never tackled big problems is that,
40:10
SPEAKER_01: like,
40:11
SPEAKER_01: he doesn't think anything matters and is just,
40:14
SPEAKER_01: like,
40:14
SPEAKER_01: very focused on lining his own pockets and tweeting.
40:17
SPEAKER_01: And...
40:20
SPEAKER_01: He was not punished by the public for that.
40:22
SPEAKER_01: Like, the, like, laziness and incompetence parts of his administration worked fine for him.
40:28
SPEAKER_01: Whereas, like, overturning Roe v. Wade and cutting rich people's taxes, like, faced backlash.
40:35
SPEAKER_01: If he'd been,
40:36
SPEAKER_01: like,
40:36
SPEAKER_01: quote-unquote better at the job and,
40:39
SPEAKER_01: like,
40:39
SPEAKER_01: signed more bills,
40:40
SPEAKER_01: people would have liked him less because...
40:44
SPEAKER_01: You know, they would be conservative activist bills and people don't want that.
40:47
SPEAKER_00: I think I think liberals to some extent drank some like historical fan fiction
40:52
SPEAKER_00: Kool-Aid about about the New Deal,
40:56
SPEAKER_00: you know,
40:57
SPEAKER_00: by rescuing the country from the Depression,
41:00
SPEAKER_00: creating,
41:01
SPEAKER_00: you know,
41:01
SPEAKER_00: decades of Democratic majorities in Congress.
41:04
SPEAKER_00: And it's like there's like there's like kernels of truth in telling a history.
41:08
SPEAKER_00: But it is also the fucking Great Depression and the New Deal.
41:12
SPEAKER_00: And like it doesn't mean that every time you get a governing majority,
41:16
SPEAKER_00: you're going to get rewarded for like – like the political capital expenditure
41:22
SPEAKER_00: metaphor is actually like more on point.
41:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
41:27
SPEAKER_00: Like unless you inherit Dust Bowl levels of poverty and unemployment –
41:37
SPEAKER_00: your being a good president is a matter of spending down political capital,
41:41
SPEAKER_00: not doing things that people will see the wisdom in and reward you for,
41:46
SPEAKER_00: even if,
41:47
SPEAKER_00: you know,
41:47
SPEAKER_00: surrounding circumstances are much less dire than they were in the Great Depression.
41:54
SPEAKER_01: Right.
41:54
SPEAKER_01: And I mean, I think that's right.
41:55
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
41:56
SPEAKER_01: and,
41:56
SPEAKER_01: you know,
41:56
SPEAKER_01: if you look at the Biden presidency,
41:58
SPEAKER_01: like that's how you have to see it in part,
42:01
SPEAKER_01: right?
42:01
SPEAKER_01: And it's like he had political capital.
42:06
SPEAKER_01: And he spent it on Inflation Reduction Act,
42:08
SPEAKER_01: which has some provisions that I think are a little bit pointless,
42:12
SPEAKER_01: but has some provisions that are very significant.
42:14
SPEAKER_01: Like I think that they are significant.
42:16
SPEAKER_01: And I got involved in political journalism because I think issues matter.
42:21
SPEAKER_01: And I think most of like Biden's core – like I don't know,
42:26
SPEAKER_01: like people who care a lot about policy,
42:28
SPEAKER_01: like that's why you –
42:30
SPEAKER_01: Do it.
42:30
SPEAKER_01: It's like you want the political capital to be spent.
42:34
SPEAKER_01: But like elections are decided by people who don't care that much about politics
42:40
SPEAKER_01: and are just like not that enthusiastic about your policy achievements.
42:47
SPEAKER_01: Evidently, things were different in 1932, but that was like a really weird time.
42:52
SPEAKER_01: You know, much worse than anything else that's ever happened again.
42:56
SPEAKER_01: And we'll just and that's I just think something that like people have to have to
43:02
SPEAKER_01: steal themselves for,
43:03
SPEAKER_01: you know,
43:03
SPEAKER_01: that you you spend the capital down to achieve things that you believe in on the merits.
43:10
SPEAKER_01: And that means that you have to think hard about your priorities.
43:15
SPEAKER_00: And ideally that you have leaders that spend their political capital avoiding politics.
43:20
SPEAKER_00: more Great Depressions because even though another Great Depression might be the
43:26
SPEAKER_00: path to like certain progressive
43:29
SPEAKER_00: goals.
43:30
SPEAKER_00: We'd be better off if we got there incrementally over a few decades than if we put
43:36
SPEAKER_00: 330 million people through a decade of misery in the hope that on the other side of that,
43:42
SPEAKER_00: you get something better.
43:43
SPEAKER_01: I'm against that.
43:44
SPEAKER_01: Also,
43:44
SPEAKER_01: there was a large war happened in the middle of FDR's presence,
43:48
SPEAKER_01: really much bigger than any other war.
43:51
SPEAKER_01: I've heard.
43:52
SPEAKER_01: World War II getting recognized more and more.
43:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
43:55
SPEAKER_01: Funny thing about history, right, is people like to draw analogies to the best known events.
44:00
SPEAKER_01: But the best known events are like incredibly extreme.
44:03
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they're black swans.
44:04
SPEAKER_01: Right.
44:05
SPEAKER_01: And weird versus this kind of like normal to and fro of politics.
44:11
SPEAKER_01: You know, Biden –
44:13
SPEAKER_01: You know, we've talked about this before, right?
44:15
SPEAKER_01: But like part of what you want to do if you're an incumbent is like scare people
44:20
SPEAKER_01: about your opponent,
44:22
SPEAKER_01: which is always a little bit hard because it's hard to get people to focus on
44:25
SPEAKER_01: hypothetical things.
44:26
SPEAKER_01: And it's particularly hard because Trump was president already.
44:31
SPEAKER_01: And people...
44:33
SPEAKER_01: Again, because like swing voters don't they don't like think through the whole chain of causal events.
44:40
SPEAKER_01: Like when Trump was president, he tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
44:45
SPEAKER_01: And that was incredibly unpopular.
44:48
SPEAKER_01: And then John McCain stopped him from doing the unpopular thing.
44:52
SPEAKER_01: And his numbers, like, drifted back up in subsequent months.
44:56
SPEAKER_01: Like, now he is running for president again.
44:58
SPEAKER_01: And if you try to say,
44:59
SPEAKER_01: like,
44:59
SPEAKER_01: all these terrible things will happen if he wins,
45:02
SPEAKER_01: I've heard from people,
45:03
SPEAKER_01: they're like,
45:03
SPEAKER_01: come on,
45:03
SPEAKER_01: guys.
45:04
SPEAKER_01: Like, he was already president before, and those things didn't happen.
45:07
SPEAKER_01: But, like...
45:08
SPEAKER_01: Tim Sheehy is not going to stop ACA repeal.
45:13
SPEAKER_01: Like Marsha Blackburn is not going to play the role that, what was her predecessor?
45:21
SPEAKER_01: Some fucking – Corker?
45:22
SPEAKER_01: Bob Corker?
45:22
SPEAKER_01: Bob Corker.
45:23
SPEAKER_01: Like restrained the size of the Trump tax cuts.
45:28
SPEAKER_01: He was all for like a $2 trillion regressive tax cut, but he wouldn't go for four.
45:33
SPEAKER_01: But like those guys are gone in favor of like new, more MAGA-type people.
45:39
SPEAKER_01: And like –
45:41
SPEAKER_01: That's just clearly true.
45:43
SPEAKER_01: You ask anyone in the Trump camp, and they're like, this is great.
45:47
SPEAKER_01: We've got our shit together more now.
45:48
SPEAKER_01: We're going to have a more bracing and aggressive policy agenda.
45:52
SPEAKER_01: But it's hard to make people believe that.
45:56
SPEAKER_01: And I'm annoyed.
45:59
SPEAKER_01: I keep trying to write articles, and they don't get good traffic.
46:03
SPEAKER_00: I wrote one that was kind of about this last Friday and it did terribly.
46:06
SPEAKER_00: All right,
46:06
SPEAKER_00: let's put the paywall here and do like 15 or 20 minutes on like the upside or
46:13
SPEAKER_00: downside potential that Biden and Trump have.
46:16
SPEAKER_00: If you want to hear that part of the conversation,
46:19
SPEAKER_00: you can go to politics.fm and upgrade your subscription.