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Full Episode - Democrats Wasted Political Capital In Virginia…For Nothing + What Makes The Rolling Stones “The World’s Greatest Rock Band” · The Chuck ToddCast

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Speaker 1: so use that code. Hello, They're happy Monday, and welcome
1:41
Speaker 1: to another episode of the check podcast. So I let's
1:46
Speaker 1: just say a lot happened over the last seventy two hours,
1:49
Speaker 1: both personally in my little world, which I shared with
1:53
Speaker 1: you a little bit of that, but in as far
1:55
Speaker 1: as campaign twenty twenty six, in some ways we got
1:59
Speaker 1: another re It's a it's as if the deck was reshuffled.
2:02
Speaker 1: I don't want to quite say the entire chess board
2:05
Speaker 1: was just overturned, but it's pretty close to that, as
2:09
Speaker 1: if what we thought the pieces were going to look
2:11
Speaker 1: like going into campaign twenty twenty six. Here we are
2:14
Speaker 1: on May eleventh, and we're still not sure exactly which
2:21
Speaker 1: lines are where? I mean imagine being somebody running in
2:24
Speaker 1: the new and the supposed new lines in Virginia who
2:28
Speaker 1: had raised a bunch of money. Are you going to
2:29
Speaker 1: give that money back? Are you going to stay running?
2:31
Speaker 1: Are you going to run in a different district. There's
2:33
Speaker 1: a lot of cleanup that has to be done. So
2:36
Speaker 1: a large share of my focus on this episode is
2:41
Speaker 1: going to be the fallout from that, both that the
2:43
Speaker 1: sort of the just the election fallout. What does this
2:47
Speaker 1: mean to the math of twenty twenty six? Democrats are
2:52
Speaker 1: still favored, but how you know to play it in
2:55
Speaker 1: point spread terms? Is it just a sort of a
2:58
Speaker 1: three to five point favorite or down from what was
3:02
Speaker 1: getting close to a double digit favorite? Right, So we're
3:04
Speaker 1: going to get into that, and yeah, I'm going to
3:09
Speaker 1: do a little I told you so in Virginia. For
3:11
Speaker 1: those of you that followed me very closely during that,
3:14
Speaker 1: you know, I had very strong feelings about it that
3:15
Speaker 1: I thought whatever was left of the Democratic Party's credibility
3:20
Speaker 1: and the reform movement they peed away. And now they
3:24
Speaker 1: peed it all away for nothing, literally nothing. They have
3:27
Speaker 1: hollowed themselves out. You know, doesn't mean they're not going
3:33
Speaker 1: to win control of the House and maybe even the
3:35
Speaker 1: Senate in twenty twenty six. But what got them to
3:39
Speaker 1: the place that they thought this was a good idea
3:41
Speaker 1: in Virginia is still should be quite troubling to those
3:47
Speaker 1: that are wanting to see the Democratic Party widen its
3:51
Speaker 1: aperture versus those that would like it to double down
3:55
Speaker 1: on fighting fire with fire. And as you see there
3:57
Speaker 1: there's a there's a real divide on the left in
4:01
Speaker 1: how to respond to Trump and it continues, it continues.
4:05
Speaker 1: Do I think flummex the party to be honest, and
4:09
Speaker 1: it's put them in a pretty rough spot. And I
4:13
Speaker 1: think that what we're watching overseas in the UK with
4:17
Speaker 1: the Labor Party, which is essentially the sister party of
4:20
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party in the UK, it has power and
4:25
Speaker 1: yet it has no influence, it has no trust at
4:29
Speaker 1: the electorate, and they cannot survive their next election. That
4:34
Speaker 1: is not where the Democrats are at the moment. But
4:37
Speaker 1: the thing that they ought to be concerned about is
4:39
Speaker 1: how quickly they could look like what Labor looks like
4:43
Speaker 1: in the UK. But let me give you a quick
4:45
Speaker 1: rundown of what we got today. It's the Monday episode,
4:47
Speaker 1: which means we go to the time machine, and let's
4:50
Speaker 1: just say, Supreme Court rulings are something that I've been
4:55
Speaker 1: hesitant to mark as time machine anniversaries, but this one's
4:59
Speaker 1: a big one, an anniversary of a Supreme Court ruling that,
5:04
Speaker 1: in many ways we are still litigating today. That's my
5:11
Speaker 1: hint for you on which one I'm going to be.
5:15
Speaker 1: I'm going to use as the time machine segment. We've
5:17
Speaker 1: got plenty of questions, including lots of handwringing about the
5:21
Speaker 1: current state of campaign twenty twenty six. I'll do a
5:24
Speaker 1: little bit of my hot takes on a few hot
5:29
Speaker 1: topic sports issues as well, of course, and then my
5:32
Speaker 1: interview is a fantastic interview if you're my age, and
5:35
Speaker 1: I'm just going to be honest, it is with Bob Spitz,
5:40
Speaker 1: who's become one of the great rock and roll biographers.
5:44
Speaker 1: He's done books on Led Zeppelin, on the Beatles, this
5:48
Speaker 1: book on the Rolling Stones is just amazing. It's fantastic,
5:52
Speaker 1: And I think the secret to Bob Sauce is he
5:54
Speaker 1: himself was a musician. He himself was in the business
5:58
Speaker 1: early Bruce Springsteen days, and it clearly gives them credibility
6:03
Speaker 1: with the artists because he gets them to talk in
6:06
Speaker 1: ways that I think just a traditional journalist who came
6:10
Speaker 1: up just writing just writing rock music critiques, what isn't
6:15
Speaker 1: going to be able to do in Bob's books. And
6:18
Speaker 1: this the interview is fabulous. We have a good time.
6:22
Speaker 1: I mean, the fact that the Rolling Stones are about
6:24
Speaker 1: to roll out a new album and are going to
6:26
Speaker 1: have their fourth generation of fans. It's remarkable and what's
6:32
Speaker 1: there to learn from it and the cultural decisions, the
6:35
Speaker 1: cultural impact that they've had. Look, if you you know me,
6:41
Speaker 1: I'm a big history junkie, So let's just say that
6:44
Speaker 1: informs a lot of the conversation. So you know, whether
6:47
Speaker 1: you're a Rolling Stones fan or not, you have to
6:50
Speaker 1: admire their staying power and their endurance. And I really
6:54
Speaker 1: think you'll enjoy this conversation. And the book is just
6:59
Speaker 1: coming out at the same time. Believe it or not,
7:02
Speaker 1: the Rolling Stones are putting on any album. So there's
7:06
Speaker 1: your rundown. So let's begin with the massive news late
7:10
Speaker 1: last week that is still reverberating that I think Democrats
7:15
Speaker 1: are still shaken from in that ruling in from Virginia.
7:21
Speaker 1: And what's been interesting is the reaction on the left
7:24
Speaker 1: of the Virginia ruling has been fascinating, Honestly. It's many
7:28
Speaker 1: on the left are treating this almost like they've an
7:31
Speaker 1: election loss in and of itself, right, that the battle
7:34
Speaker 1: against trump Ism is lost. It's not being viewed just
7:38
Speaker 1: as a simple court ruling or a legal setback, but
7:41
Speaker 1: an election loss. So it's I think people are taking
7:43
Speaker 1: it with the stomach punch because so many Democrats are
7:47
Speaker 1: counting on this strategically, sort of in the tactical sense
7:50
Speaker 1: of the word, to balance out what's happening with the
7:54
Speaker 1: fallout from the Voting Rights Act, the remaps in Florida
7:56
Speaker 1: and in Alabama, and in Mississippi and in Tennessee. Obviously,
8:00
Speaker 1: if California counteracted Texas, Virginia essentially was there to counteract
8:07
Speaker 1: the rest of the South, and now that is gone.
8:11
Speaker 1: But I do think the reaction that we've gotten from
8:14
Speaker 1: the left here tells us something much bigger than the
8:16
Speaker 1: ruling itself. Because I want to say something up front,
8:19
Speaker 1: I've been skeptical, you guys know this of this Virginia
8:23
Speaker 1: strategy from the very beginning, not because I didn't understand
8:27
Speaker 1: the impulse. I understood the political motivations behind it look.
8:33
Speaker 1: Republicans have been aggressive with maps for years. Texas, Florida,
8:36
Speaker 1: North Carolina. You can go down the list. They continue
8:39
Speaker 1: to sort of thumb their nose at the rule of law,
8:41
Speaker 1: thumb their nose at these things. So I understand why
8:45
Speaker 1: Democrats wanted to why some didn't want to stand on
8:51
Speaker 1: ceremony anymore, while why some wanted to punt their principles
8:54
Speaker 1: and simply wanted to CounterPunch the old fight fire with fire,
8:58
Speaker 1: do unto others as you're being done to sort of
9:01
Speaker 1: perversion of the Golden Rule a little bit more as
9:03
Speaker 1: a reactionary way of subscribing to the Golden Rule. But
9:08
Speaker 1: from the beginning it was always a part of this
9:12
Speaker 1: going but this isn't right. You're advocating for something you
9:16
Speaker 1: fought against for over a decade and it's the most
9:21
Speaker 1: horribly jerry mandered map that you could have come with anywhere.
9:27
Speaker 1: And then they went to battle in the campaign before
9:31
Speaker 1: knowing for sure whether the courts were even going to
9:33
Speaker 1: approve their gambit. Right, they were trying to follow the
9:37
Speaker 1: letter of the law and these constitutional amendments in Virginia,
9:39
Speaker 1: you know, saying that they were going to vote on
9:41
Speaker 1: the amendment in the Assembly have an election than vote
9:43
Speaker 1: on the amendment again, and they sort of just jammed
9:46
Speaker 1: it through. They didn't wait to see if they were
9:50
Speaker 1: going to get the Supreme Court who said that they
9:52
Speaker 1: needed more time to deal with this. They held the
9:54
Speaker 1: election anyway. You know, if the Assembly really actually cared
9:57
Speaker 1: about court review on this, they might have planned their
10:00
Speaker 1: primaries for August instead of instead of even June had
10:03
Speaker 1: pushed him off even further to give themselves a lot
10:07
Speaker 1: more time on this and to give the judiciary a
10:10
Speaker 1: lot more time to review. So and now I don't
10:16
Speaker 1: think they fully And if you're boy, if you're Barack
10:19
Speaker 1: Obama or Abigail Spamberger, you've got to be just furious
10:22
Speaker 1: at Louise Lucas and Don Scott. These were the two
10:24
Speaker 1: big drivers of this idea inside the Virginia Assembly, obviously
10:29
Speaker 1: the House majority pack and Speaker in you know, Speaker
10:33
Speaker 1: in waiting, Akim Jeffries, was very aggressive about this, and
10:37
Speaker 1: he was pushing on this hard. It was look tactically
10:43
Speaker 1: right if you're if you just viewed this as a war. Tactically,
10:46
Speaker 1: I understood the maneuver, and you understood the aggressiveness and
10:49
Speaker 1: it was if the map stuck, it was probably a
10:53
Speaker 1: guarantee that Democrats were going to pick up the House.
10:55
Speaker 2: Right.
10:56
Speaker 1: It was sort of in the in the same way
10:57
Speaker 1: that Ron DeSantis is sort of rigged map down in
11:01
Speaker 1: Florida in twenty twenty two. People forget this one had
11:04
Speaker 1: he not done it. I don't know if Republicans win
11:06
Speaker 1: the House in twenty twenty two. Literally, when you look
11:12
Speaker 1: at their majority that they got after the twenty two
11:15
Speaker 1: it is due to the Florida remap. And that's kind
11:17
Speaker 1: of what I think tactically, so many House Democrats we're
11:22
Speaker 1: counting on here, But what happens to the credibility of
11:25
Speaker 1: this party, right that has spent the last eight years
11:29
Speaker 1: arguing that democracy was on the line and that norms matter,
11:33
Speaker 1: institutions matter, process matters, right, And so what happens when
11:38
Speaker 1: a court says you didn't follow the process. Well, now
11:42
Speaker 1: we know, and let me just you know, here's the
11:44
Speaker 1: thing that Democrats need to be careful about. This was
11:46
Speaker 1: not some clean maga court versus democracy story. The Virginia
11:51
Speaker 1: Supreme Court is not elected through partisan statewide judicial races,
11:56
Speaker 1: which of course is just you know, antithetical to what
11:58
Speaker 1: the founders wanted. I will say this and say it
12:01
Speaker 1: loud and proud. Any state that elects or state Supreme
12:03
Speaker 1: Court justices does not give a shit about the rule
12:06
Speaker 1: of law. I find this to be the worst thing
12:08
Speaker 1: you could possibly do in a democracy is have your
12:10
Speaker 1: judiciary elected by the people, because you no longer will see.
12:15
Speaker 1: If a judiciary has to worry about voters and worry
12:17
Speaker 1: about donors, they're not going to be honest brokers. So
12:20
Speaker 1: it's a terrible precedent. Now, Virginia thankfully doesn't elect its judges.
12:24
Speaker 1: Far too many states do and it is just I mean,
12:26
Speaker 1: look at what's happened in Wisconsin. It's ridiculous. But anyway,
12:30
Speaker 1: I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole. But
12:32
Speaker 1: these judges in Virginia are chosen by the legislature, and
12:35
Speaker 1: they're chosen, and they were chosen during different political eras
12:38
Speaker 1: of this legislature. And guess what, Virginia has been a
12:41
Speaker 1: purple state that leans blue in presidential elections, right, But
12:45
Speaker 1: it really has been an evening divided state in the
12:48
Speaker 1: legislature in particular, and it's created very technocratic judicial appointments.
12:55
Speaker 1: These are not hard left or hard right people that
12:57
Speaker 1: make it through this legislature. The majority essentially included justices
13:01
Speaker 1: elevated during different moments of legislative control.
13:05
Speaker 2: And.
13:06
Speaker 1: So I would just be careful. I've seen some sloppy
13:10
Speaker 1: op ed writing that you know, from the left that
13:12
Speaker 1: just assumes a partisan that it's four to three, so
13:14
Speaker 1: it must have been a partisan ruling. And i've seen
13:18
Speaker 1: I think i've seen AOCS is sort of you know,
13:20
Speaker 1: need there's a knee jerk talking point that many many
13:24
Speaker 1: on the left use on the on the on the
13:27
Speaker 1: National Supreme Court. So they're just trying to apply it
13:29
Speaker 1: to the Virginia Supreme Court, and it is just not applicable,
13:32
Speaker 1: not if you're honest about it. The best way to
13:35
Speaker 1: describe the state Supreme Court in Virginia said, it's a
13:38
Speaker 1: very technical court. They do care more about process than
13:41
Speaker 1: they do philosophical arguments. This really is a court of
13:46
Speaker 1: that are closer to being umpires that maybe certainly have
13:50
Speaker 1: a right lean or a left lean, but they're umpires
13:53
Speaker 1: more than they are ideologues. So process is usually going
13:58
Speaker 1: to trump ideological arguments almost across the board. And you
14:02
Speaker 1: can see they've made process arguments that have helped environmentalists
14:06
Speaker 1: in the state, making people think the court leans left.
14:09
Speaker 1: There have been process arguments that have helped Republicans in
14:12
Speaker 1: the state right, but they very much. When you really
14:15
Speaker 1: examine the Virginia Supreme Court, it's a very it's a
14:20
Speaker 1: very technocratic, it's filled more and that's by nature because
14:25
Speaker 1: they were you know, this is to me, what is
14:28
Speaker 1: the ideal, which is you kind of don't want partisan leans,
14:32
Speaker 1: you kind of want umpires. Go read Federalist seventy eight.
14:36
Speaker 1: I know you've heard me talk about that one a lot.
14:39
Speaker 1: That's the one Hamilton wrote about the judiciary and what's
14:43
Speaker 1: the right way to select judges and that the ultimate
14:45
Speaker 1: goal was to get the least partisan judge you could
14:48
Speaker 1: possibly get. And I could argue that Virginia does it
14:51
Speaker 1: slightly better than most, and it's because the legislature has
14:55
Speaker 1: been so competitive. So the point is, it's just there's
15:01
Speaker 1: a lot of sloppy left wing commentary, particularly from the
15:04
Speaker 1: resistors and the resistance left. You know that just essentially
15:09
Speaker 1: that almost in some ways behaves similarly to how the
15:12
Speaker 1: Trump right works. When something doesn't go their way, they
15:14
Speaker 1: just automatically assume partisan corruption or actual corruption. And it's
15:18
Speaker 1: a it's dangerous that that disease has moved from the
15:22
Speaker 1: from the Trump right to the resistance left. But the
15:26
Speaker 1: court said the legislature violated the state constitution and how
15:29
Speaker 1: it put the amendment before voters. So again, it wasn't
15:32
Speaker 1: a political argument. They didn't talk about the maps themselves.
15:34
Speaker 1: They talked about the process. But then there's another uncomfortable
15:39
Speaker 1: part of this that nobody really wants to say out loud.
15:42
Speaker 1: The Democratic leadership in Virginia misled their own party here.
15:46
Speaker 1: They moved ahead with this referendum without actually knowing what
15:49
Speaker 1: the process, whether the process would survive state constitutional scrutiny.
15:53
Speaker 1: That's just a failure of leadership. I mean, if you're
15:56
Speaker 1: Barack Obama, who you know. Eric Holder really convinced and
16:00
Speaker 1: others convinced that, hey, he's the only one with credibility
16:03
Speaker 1: in the Democratic Party with particularly with Northern Virginia sort
16:07
Speaker 1: of independents who have become Democrats. They're Democrats because they're
16:10
Speaker 1: just anti Trump. They're not left wing Democrats, which has
16:14
Speaker 1: always been the misconception about Northern Virginia by many. But
16:18
Speaker 1: they're pretty anti Trump, there's no doubt about it. But
16:21
Speaker 1: they had to engage the one Democrat that has some
16:23
Speaker 1: credibility left in the party nationally, and that's Barack Obama.
16:28
Speaker 2: Boy.
16:29
Speaker 1: I wonder how he feels after seeing all this, you know,
16:32
Speaker 1: I wonder how honest everybody was about that the state
16:36
Speaker 1: Supreme Court could still overturn this. And we know, right
16:40
Speaker 1: Abigail Spamberger Hopefully now she'll grow a spine and realized
16:43
Speaker 1: why she was elected. She wasn't elected to be a
16:46
Speaker 1: partisan warrior. She was elected to zag while everybody else
16:48
Speaker 1: was saking. But I digress. So because it's one thing
16:53
Speaker 1: to take a legal risk, it's another to take a
16:55
Speaker 1: legal risk and then act shock when courts interpret the
16:57
Speaker 1: constitution politically. This hit the Democrats so hard because Virginia
17:02
Speaker 1: wasn't just a state fight, right, It was part of
17:04
Speaker 1: this national strategy. Democrats thought Virginia was going to help
17:08
Speaker 1: them offset those Republican gains. I was telling you about
17:10
Speaker 1: the South and now it's gone, which brings us to
17:14
Speaker 1: the larger map war now underway around the country. And
17:18
Speaker 1: I do want to go through that for a few minutes,
17:19
Speaker 1: because this is part people need to understand. We still
17:23
Speaker 1: don't fully know what the House map, particularly in the South,
17:27
Speaker 1: what the House map in twenty twenty six is going
17:28
Speaker 1: to look like. It's getting extraordinarily close to the actual
17:32
Speaker 1: midterm election, and we still don't know the lines. Normally,
17:34
Speaker 1: by now we would be talking only about Canada's money
17:37
Speaker 1: pulling mood, and we're still doing all that. The layered
17:40
Speaker 1: on top of this now is something even more fundamental,
17:43
Speaker 1: which voters are in, which districts, which maps survive, which
17:46
Speaker 1: lawsuits move fast, which courts intervene. Republicans right now clearly
17:51
Speaker 1: have more immediate upside from the current legal environment. Texas,
17:55
Speaker 1: that's obviously one big example. Republicans there see had a
17:59
Speaker 1: more fait savable court environment a week in Voting Rights
18:02
Speaker 1: Act framework only legalize it anymore, and so they maximize
18:07
Speaker 1: their seats, and they're doing it in Florida. And now
18:10
Speaker 1: here's something that I think is a possibility. It's very
18:13
Speaker 1: possible other state supreme courts will slap down their legislature's
18:17
Speaker 1: attempts to do this as fast as being done right.
18:21
Speaker 1: Whether it's in Alabama where there has been some question
18:23
Speaker 1: whether it did seem like as if the courts said,
18:25
Speaker 1: don't touch this until twenty thirty. I'm not convinced that
18:29
Speaker 1: whatever map Alabama comes with their state Supreme Court is
18:32
Speaker 1: automatically going to let it slide. There's a presumption of
18:35
Speaker 1: partisanship in the Florida State Supreme Court that I would
18:38
Speaker 1: just Hey, you never know until you see you see
18:42
Speaker 1: the ruling and you see the litigation. But the fact
18:45
Speaker 1: of the matter is what Florida did is clearly a
18:49
Speaker 1: violation of the constitutional amendment that was added in their
18:51
Speaker 1: unfair districts. It's just up to whether how much, how
18:56
Speaker 1: technically that Supreme Court's going to follow the letter of
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20:53
Speaker 1: the code toodcast it's possible, but the Virginia Supreme Court
21:01
Speaker 1: acting independently and not feeling as if they had partisan pressure.
21:05
Speaker 1: We'll make other state supreme courts in the South actually
21:09
Speaker 1: follow their state constitution and not allow fear of the
21:15
Speaker 1: MAGA right influence their interpretation of their state rule of law. So,
21:20
Speaker 1: you know, you know, this is one of those things
21:22
Speaker 1: that you know, and whether there's so much, so many
21:25
Speaker 1: sort of what ifs here, right, if the Virginia thing
21:28
Speaker 1: hadn't passed, Florida wouldn't have even tried. You know, it's
21:31
Speaker 1: just all the what ifs are across the board. And
21:34
Speaker 1: that's why, obviously, I think when you violate your own principles,
21:38
Speaker 1: which is what the Democratic Party did in making the
21:40
Speaker 1: case for this absurdity in Virginia, as they say, you know,
21:44
Speaker 1: it's like when you watch an NBA game and you
21:46
Speaker 1: see somebody get fouled that you didn't think was a
21:48
Speaker 1: foul and then they missed the initial free throw. You're like, uh, Paul,
21:51
Speaker 1: don't lie. That's kind of how this ruling feels to me.
21:54
Speaker 1: You know, maybe the Democrats will sober up and realize, oh,
21:58
Speaker 1: maybe we should have stuck to our principles and fought
22:01
Speaker 1: and kept the high ground and fought them on the
22:05
Speaker 1: high ground and made a high ground argument rather than
22:08
Speaker 1: trying to bring trying to play the hole. It's bring
22:11
Speaker 1: a gun to a gunfight type of mindset. Just remember,
22:15
Speaker 1: Democrats will never win a race to the bottom with
22:17
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's Republican Party. And if this Virginia isn't a
22:23
Speaker 1: proof of that, I don't know what is so Republicans.
22:29
Speaker 1: So when you start to go through the states and
22:33
Speaker 1: you look first of all, in Virginia, as I made
22:34
Speaker 1: it clear before, Democrats are likely to flip at least
22:39
Speaker 1: two seats. I don't know if they can get a third,
22:43
Speaker 1: and the second. Both of the two seats that they're
22:45
Speaker 1: going to target are are not going to be easy.
22:49
Speaker 1: And you know, I think there are more seats in
22:50
Speaker 1: the South for them to target if they if they're
22:53
Speaker 1: if the left wing of their party could get out
22:55
Speaker 1: of their way and they could get and they could
22:57
Speaker 1: find moderate candidates who do exact this, but who can't
23:01
Speaker 1: get out of primaries because of how much the left
23:03
Speaker 1: wing litmus tests have have sort of scared away some
23:08
Speaker 1: moderate candidates. But when you look at what they're going
23:10
Speaker 1: to do. If they, you know, they try to get
23:12
Speaker 1: rid of Jim Clivern in South Carolina, they're likely to
23:14
Speaker 1: create two possible districts of Democrats could target. If they
23:19
Speaker 1: can find the right recruits, may take them a cycle.
23:21
Speaker 1: You know, this is one of those cases where it's
23:24
Speaker 1: like what happened to when Republicans initially gained all this
23:27
Speaker 1: power in the South. They didn't do it in the
23:29
Speaker 1: first cycle. They got a few seats with their packing
23:33
Speaker 1: of minority Democratic voters into into majority minority districts, but
23:39
Speaker 1: by the second election cycle, the patterns were clear. And
23:43
Speaker 1: that's what I think here. I think the irony here
23:46
Speaker 1: is as while this is while the short term has
23:49
Speaker 1: become more difficult for Democrats to win in twenty six,
23:53
Speaker 1: in theory, there should be more swing districts or less
23:57
Speaker 1: less hard dark red districts in the South that with
24:00
Speaker 1: the right candidates they could possibly at least be competitive.
24:05
Speaker 1: And that's if the party wants to actually listen to voters.
24:08
Speaker 1: Now I'm going to get into that in a minute.
24:11
Speaker 1: And I also think that the backlash if Democrats figure
24:17
Speaker 1: how to channel the rage and the anger in the
24:20
Speaker 1: African American community about the essential elimination of political representation
24:24
Speaker 1: in the South. It should help statewide Democrats in these
24:29
Speaker 1: Southern races that are barely competitive, especially the African American
24:33
Speaker 1: nominees or potential nominees, whether it's Mississippi Senate, whether it's
24:38
Speaker 1: Georgia governor, Alabama governor, or even Doug Jones who's not
24:42
Speaker 1: African American, but who can't win without a massive African
24:45
Speaker 1: American turnout in Alabama in there as well. So you
24:50
Speaker 1: know it is there's always opportunity if you decide to
24:57
Speaker 1: search for that opportunity, but you have to actually seek
25:00
Speaker 1: it out if you want to do it. So the
25:06
Speaker 1: reason I think why though Virginia has been feeling like
25:08
Speaker 1: such a gun punch to Democrats is because it seemed
25:11
Speaker 1: to be the tactical way out. Many Democrats thought, fine,
25:14
Speaker 1: Republicans want to play hardball, so can we right? Maximum warfare?
25:18
Speaker 1: Right is what Kim Jeffries said the day after this vote.
25:23
Speaker 1: And this is where I think the party is making
25:25
Speaker 1: a profound mistake. I hear this argument constantly now from
25:29
Speaker 1: parts of the of the of the left. Fight harder,
25:32
Speaker 1: break more rules, stop caring about norms, fight fire with fire,
25:36
Speaker 1: go find your own Trump, somebody that will break rules
25:40
Speaker 1: but to the benefit of the left, rather than break
25:43
Speaker 1: rules to the benefit of the right. And this is
25:46
Speaker 1: where in a democracy that's not going to lead to
25:49
Speaker 1: small d democratic outcomes, that's just going to lead to authoritarianism,
25:54
Speaker 1: a left wing version or a right wing version of it.
25:56
Speaker 1: But we are no longer. We're sort of cutting out
25:59
Speaker 1: the whole purpose of a democracy, which is that there's
26:02
Speaker 1: enough voices in the room that we directionally represent a
26:06
Speaker 1: majority of the country rather than the concerns of the
26:11
Speaker 1: loudest minorities, either on the left of the right. But
26:17
Speaker 1: this is a case where I don't think you should
26:18
Speaker 1: have fought fire with fire. You run the other way
26:21
Speaker 1: when they zig uzac, because if both parties become pure
26:25
Speaker 1: procedural warfare machines all about just drawing lines and tactical
26:30
Speaker 1: that both parties basically decide, democracy is just about maximizing
26:34
Speaker 1: structural leverage however you can whenever you can do it.
26:38
Speaker 1: Then eventually the democracy itself becomes transactional. And that's you know,
26:43
Speaker 1: I would argue we're already in more of a kleptocracy
26:47
Speaker 1: than a democracy at the moment. Right, the voters still
26:49
Speaker 1: have a say, there's still a way to persuade government,
26:53
Speaker 1: but it is for sale, and it's certainly for sale,
26:58
Speaker 1: and Donald Trump's America. The question is whether this is
27:02
Speaker 1: now a virus that has spread to the left, because
27:08
Speaker 1: and if that's where we're head once voters conclude that.
27:10
Speaker 1: And that's why I think you've seen why the Democratic
27:13
Speaker 1: brand hasn't improved this year, even as Democratic performance has.
27:18
Speaker 1: I think they just see it's like, well, this is
27:20
Speaker 1: a bad transaction, let me try the other guys again.
27:23
Speaker 1: But I think long term this has been real damaging
27:26
Speaker 1: for the Democrats because then politics becomes who can gain
27:29
Speaker 1: turnout better, who can manipulate maps better, who can lawyer
27:34
Speaker 1: up better, who could exploit procedure better. That's not coalition
27:38
Speaker 1: politics anymore. That's system's warfare. And honestly, I think too
27:43
Speaker 1: much of the Democratic Party right now is behaving like
27:45
Speaker 1: a party searching for structural optimization instead of coalition rebuilding
27:52
Speaker 1: to win an actual durable majority of voters on their side.
27:56
Speaker 1: They think better maps, better lawsuits, better turnout models, sedal leverage,
28:02
Speaker 1: look at matters, It always matters in the margins, But
28:05
Speaker 1: none of it is a substitute for persuading voters or
28:09
Speaker 1: listening to voter concerns. And this is the part that
28:12
Speaker 1: Democrats really, I think, don't want to hear at the moment.
28:15
Speaker 1: Too many people inside the party now only talk to themselves.
28:20
Speaker 1: They don't talk to swing voters. They don't talk to
28:22
Speaker 1: the culturally moderate voters who can continue to leave the
28:25
Speaker 1: party when given a chance. They don't talk to working
28:28
Speaker 1: class voters who drifted away. They just chalk it up
28:30
Speaker 1: to racism. They don't talk to people uncomfortable with where
28:35
Speaker 1: parts of the party have gone. Culturally again, they just
28:37
Speaker 1: chalk it up as some sort of phobia. Insert your
28:42
Speaker 1: version of phobia there. They talk to each other and
28:46
Speaker 1: they spin each other up, and honestly, it's like they
28:49
Speaker 1: don't even want to know the answer anymore. Why did
28:52
Speaker 1: working class voters leave? Why did Latino men shift, Why
28:57
Speaker 1: did young men shift? Why are they still shifting? Why
29:00
Speaker 1: are some immigrant communities becoming more Republican. Once you learn
29:04
Speaker 1: the answer to those questions, shift the party. Rather than
29:08
Speaker 1: hoping you can just find more voters that agree with
29:10
Speaker 1: you and pack them into districts that will get you
29:13
Speaker 1: a power by a handful of votes. I think if
29:20
Speaker 1: they actually knew the answer to what why all these
29:22
Speaker 1: folks were leaving the party. They might have to change,
29:24
Speaker 1: and I actually think parts of the Democratic Party would
29:27
Speaker 1: rather lose elections right now than rethink some of their
29:29
Speaker 1: cultural assumptions that now dominate activist politics. That's the dangerous
29:35
Speaker 1: part here, because once a political party starts deciding the
29:39
Speaker 1: voters are the problem, then the party stops persuading. That's
29:44
Speaker 1: what happened on the right, That's what happened with how
29:47
Speaker 1: the Republican Party got hijacked by Donald Trump. They got frustrated,
29:53
Speaker 1: so they just started optimizing around voters instead. Now Republicans
29:58
Speaker 1: don't pretend they're doing it otherwise. They you know, they
30:01
Speaker 1: they somehow come up. They they are. They're not for
30:05
Speaker 1: majoritarian democracy in the way, at least Donald Trump's version
30:10
Speaker 1: of the Republican Party. I'm not saying all Republicans think this,
30:13
Speaker 1: but the Donald Trump wing does not. They just want
30:16
Speaker 1: power by any means necessary, whatever it takes. You can
30:20
Speaker 1: do it legally, great, do it illegally. It doesn't matter
30:23
Speaker 1: and justifies the means. Democrats were the ones that had
30:29
Speaker 1: a little bit of higher ground on here, and I
30:31
Speaker 1: think some of them still claim the moral high ground
30:33
Speaker 1: of democratic legitimacy. And that's why the hypocrisy here, I
30:37
Speaker 1: think matters more politically. You know, I get attacked a
30:44
Speaker 1: lot that I hold Democrats to a higher standard than
30:46
Speaker 1: I do Republicans, And I said, that's right. Democrats want
30:49
Speaker 1: to be held to a higher standard. They've they've asked
30:51
Speaker 1: for it, and then they don't like it when when
30:56
Speaker 1: some of us in the in the journalism wing of
30:59
Speaker 1: political discourse actually do that. And this is the part
31:05
Speaker 1: that bothers me the most about the Virginia failure. Here,
31:08
Speaker 1: Democrats literally use Barack Obama, the single most credible spokesperson
31:12
Speaker 1: they've had in the modern era, right on democracy, legitimacy, participation, fairness,
31:19
Speaker 1: to bless this ridiculous strategy. Think about that for a minute.
31:23
Speaker 1: Obama's whole political identity was built around the idea that
31:26
Speaker 1: process actually mattered, that you play by the rules, that
31:30
Speaker 1: democracy matter, that persuasion mattered, you show up everywhere, that
31:35
Speaker 1: legitimacy mattered. That was the appeal, not just liberalism or progressivism, legitimacy.
31:42
Speaker 1: And now suddenly Democrats are effectively arguing, well, yes, maybe
31:44
Speaker 1: the process was flawed, but Republicans are worse, so we
31:47
Speaker 1: should still get the maps. Nope, that's not Obama politics,
31:52
Speaker 1: or that's not what he practiced. That's survival politics. That's
31:57
Speaker 1: doing trumpsm with better vocabulary. So I think Democrats did
32:03
Speaker 1: real damage to their credibility here. The Republican Party has
32:06
Speaker 1: been hollowed out ideologically, and it was overtaken. That's why
32:09
Speaker 1: it was so easily overtaken by trump Ism. It was
32:12
Speaker 1: a dead carcass on the side of the road, and
32:13
Speaker 1: he animated in his vision. Well, the Democratic Party is
32:18
Speaker 1: increasingly looking hollowed out themselves philosophically. Do you know what
32:22
Speaker 1: they stand for anymore? Held together mostly by just anti Trumpism,
32:27
Speaker 1: institutional resistance and procedural politics, and the voters themselves feel
32:33
Speaker 1: the emptiness or else the Democratic Party ratings would be higher. Remember,
32:39
Speaker 1: Donald Trump did not hijack a healthy Republican Party. He
32:43
Speaker 1: ended up party where millions of voters had already concluded
32:45
Speaker 1: the leadership stood for nothing except donor maintenance, tax cuts
32:49
Speaker 1: and simply protecting itself. That vacuum created room for trump Ism.
32:55
Speaker 1: Democrats would be asking themselves whether they're creating their own
32:58
Speaker 1: version of that vacuum right now, because a voters start
33:02
Speaker 1: concluding the Democratic Party no longer stands for anything beyond
33:05
Speaker 1: stopping Trump and winning procedural fights. That's not a messaging problem,
33:09
Speaker 1: that's an existential problem. The hell do they stand for?
33:12
Speaker 1: And maybe Democrats hear all of this and decide fine,
33:15
Speaker 1: fight harder, map harder, sue harder, proceduralize everything even more.
33:21
Speaker 1: Maybe that works for a cycle of two. They could
33:23
Speaker 1: get the House back. Still, they're more likely to get
33:25
Speaker 1: the House back all right, Instead of fifty to twenty
33:27
Speaker 1: five seats, it's probably somewhere between ten and twenty. I mean,
33:31
Speaker 1: you know, Donald, you know what, what didn't happen last week?
33:33
Speaker 1: Donald Trump didn't end the war with Iran. The energy
33:37
Speaker 1: situation is only getting worse. He is getting humiliated by
33:42
Speaker 1: the Iranians here. So he's done nothing to improve the
33:46
Speaker 1: Republican Party image or his image or this economy, right
33:51
Speaker 1: he is, So you know, there's it is not hard
33:55
Speaker 1: to win a These guys don't get it. You need
33:58
Speaker 1: to check on trump argument. That ain't the situation now?
34:03
Speaker 1: Is it two hundred and thirty five House seats that
34:05
Speaker 1: they can get or is it probably two hundred and
34:06
Speaker 1: twenty eight House seats that extra six or seven matters
34:11
Speaker 1: if they want to try to have a governing majority
34:14
Speaker 1: in the House. But I keep coming back to this
34:17
Speaker 1: feeling that parts of the Democratic Party are trying to
34:19
Speaker 1: find ways to avoid confronting why voters drifted away in
34:23
Speaker 1: the first place. Right, they've buried their autopsy. They're afraid
34:26
Speaker 1: of whatever people's hurt feelings. And this is not a
34:32
Speaker 1: way to rebuild a political party. They have not accepted
34:38
Speaker 1: the premise that they blew this and that's the problem. Eventually,
34:43
Speaker 1: voters can tell when a party is talking at them
34:46
Speaker 1: instead of listening to them, and once that happens, history
34:51
Speaker 1: can move a lot faster than professionals think. And I
34:54
Speaker 1: know some of you may think, oh, the r two
34:56
Speaker 1: party system, it's very durable. These vehicles are impossible. Yeah,
35:02
Speaker 1: they're impossible to get rid of until one loses so
35:06
Speaker 1: much legitimacy that people are desperate for some sort of alternative.
35:11
Speaker 1: And right now the Democrats are just they're lost, and
35:17
Speaker 1: and they they know what they're against, they don't know
35:21
Speaker 1: what they're for, and they don't know how to create
35:23
Speaker 1: a message that somehow allows those that aren't as progressive
35:28
Speaker 1: but certainly consider themselves on the left side of the
35:30
Speaker 1: spectrum feel comfortable defending this Democratic Party, and those do
35:36
Speaker 1: those candidates even feel welcome by this Democratic party whose
35:39
Speaker 1: leadership has been is much more liberal than where where
35:43
Speaker 1: the median Democratic voter is in a primary, let alone
35:46
Speaker 1: the median voter in a general election. And so you know,
35:52
Speaker 1: they spent the last six months trying to tactically tear
36:00
Speaker 1: down a flood wall so that they could win the
36:01
Speaker 1: House as easily as possible. What this party has not
36:06
Speaker 1: done is try to figure out why did they lose
36:08
Speaker 1: the trust of the average swing voter in twenty twenty four,
36:16
Speaker 1: and why did they lose the trust of the average
36:18
Speaker 1: swing voter in twenty twenty two, which they did. You know,
36:20
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two was not a success. They lost the House,
36:26
Speaker 1: and they somehow behave as if they somehow succeeded. Right,
36:29
Speaker 1: It was one of the biggest, biggest misreads. And I
36:33
Speaker 1: think this is another misread by the party. And imagine
36:37
Speaker 1: being Governor Abigail Spamberger. You know, her instinct was right,
36:41
Speaker 1: I hope. I'm curious the lession she takes away from this.
36:44
Speaker 1: Her instinct was that this was a bad idea. I
36:49
Speaker 1: think voters. I think the reason she won by the
36:53
Speaker 1: landslide that she won by is I really think there
36:55
Speaker 1: was a lot of center left and center right voters.
36:58
Speaker 1: She thought, okay, she gets she understands, and then of
37:03
Speaker 1: course she got jammed by the Democratic leadership in the
37:05
Speaker 1: legislature and she got put in a couple of impossible situations.
37:13
Speaker 1: She decided not to stand up to the left wing
37:15
Speaker 1: of her party. She probably regrets that now. And I
37:20
Speaker 1: will say this. You know, the the Luise Lucas and
37:27
Speaker 1: company we're feeling were they thought they were. They thought
37:31
Speaker 1: they they had taken over for the Virginia Democratic Party,
37:37
Speaker 1: and tactically they did. But boy did they do some damage.
37:43
Speaker 1: All right, Barack Obama took ahead. It's recoverable. Abigail Spamberger
37:49
Speaker 1: took ahead again, depending on how she responds, it's recoverable.
37:53
Speaker 1: She's got plenty of time. But what I would say
37:59
Speaker 1: to the guys, you were the one in a swing district,
38:04
Speaker 1: You were the one who actually talked to swing voters.
38:08
Speaker 1: You knew better than the partisans in leadership, because that's
38:13
Speaker 1: the other issue here. The partisan leadership of the Democratic
38:16
Speaker 1: Party never talks to swing voters because they're in safe seats,
38:20
Speaker 1: they're in safe places. They just viewed swing voters as
38:24
Speaker 1: a necessary evil they have to cater to rather than
38:28
Speaker 1: adjust to. Abig Al Spamberger was in a swing seat.
38:35
Speaker 1: She understood the way swing voters thought. She understood they
38:39
Speaker 1: didn't like this chaos. She understood it.
38:41
Speaker 2: She got it.
38:43
Speaker 1: At least her campaign understood it. Her first three months
38:47
Speaker 1: as governor, she did not behave as if as the
38:50
Speaker 1: person that campaign. I know she's living at being sort
38:55
Speaker 1: of jammed with this, but this was a moment that
38:58
Speaker 1: you know, and look, she chose not to publicly push
39:01
Speaker 1: back because if maybe she would have gotten turned into Fetterman.
39:04
Speaker 1: I mean, look what the left is doing with Fetterman.
39:08
Speaker 1: If there's not room in the Democratic Party for John Fetterman,
39:11
Speaker 1: you may not like and what it was really uncomfortable
39:14
Speaker 1: with the sort of the Fetterman scapegoating and anger is it.
39:19
Speaker 1: There's really there's a bunch of people just upset with
39:21
Speaker 1: him over one issue, and that's Israel. If he broke
39:26
Speaker 1: with him on something else, would they be as upset.
39:33
Speaker 1: I'm going to let that question linger a little bit,
39:37
Speaker 1: but here's the big picture. The Democratic Party under Barack
39:41
Speaker 1: Obama was about who could they add? It was addition.
39:44
Speaker 1: They practiced the politics of addition. How do they appeal
39:48
Speaker 1: to a larger and larger piece of the electorate. He
39:51
Speaker 1: explains why he won more greater share of the electorate
39:55
Speaker 1: than any presidential candidate in the twenty first century. Since
40:01
Speaker 1: he left, Democrats have been practicing the politics have survival.
40:08
Speaker 1: It's been reactionary and it's just been what can they
40:13
Speaker 1: do to just try to get some power back? Rather
40:18
Speaker 1: then do they need to adjust? And it goes back
40:20
Speaker 1: to something that Tommy Thompson said to me, former Republican governor,
40:25
Speaker 1: had him and Jim Doyle in a joint interview about
40:27
Speaker 1: because I was getting that polarization Wisconsin seemed to be
40:30
Speaker 1: polarized for any other swing stake, And I said, why,
40:34
Speaker 1: you know, why are we you know now in our
40:36
Speaker 1: essentially twenty sixth straight year of polarization. I think I
40:39
Speaker 1: did this in twenty twenty two, so or a twentieth
40:40
Speaker 1: straight year of polarization in Wisconsin? He said, because neither
40:43
Speaker 1: party loses by enough to actually do introspection. Right, when
40:47
Speaker 1: you only lose by a point or two, you think
40:49
Speaker 1: one more, call one more fundraise. So these elections have
40:52
Speaker 1: been quite close, but they're close because a majority of
40:56
Speaker 1: the country doesn't like what Trump's offering, but the Democrats
40:59
Speaker 1: haven't presented able alternative. Now, the limited success that Democrats
41:07
Speaker 1: have had in the Trump era, I believe it's because
41:10
Speaker 1: voters have viewed them as the adult party, that the
41:13
Speaker 1: principled party, or at least a party that has more
41:16
Speaker 1: principles in the than Donald Trump's party. But after Virginia
41:22
Speaker 1: got asked, what does this party stand for other than
41:25
Speaker 1: resisting Trump? What have they done to adjust the perception
41:30
Speaker 1: of the party with the with the voters that they've lost.
41:35
Speaker 1: Nobody knows, because if they did an autopsy. Here's what
41:38
Speaker 1: I've learned, by the way, about that autopsy is that
41:40
Speaker 1: apparently when you were questioned, it was now, we're not
41:43
Speaker 1: you know, you know, we're not going to be blaming
41:45
Speaker 1: Joe Biden or Kamala Harris here individually. So you were
41:49
Speaker 1: told before you were interviewed that you know, certain things
41:52
Speaker 1: were off the table. This is not a party looking
41:59
Speaker 1: for answers, which means this is a party that does
42:02
Speaker 1: not have the right leadership at the moment. All right,
42:11
Speaker 1: But again I'll say this. It doesn't mean they're not
42:13
Speaker 1: going to win the House. It's still rather Democrats, I think,
42:17
Speaker 1: are still more likely to win the House in the
42:18
Speaker 1: Senate than to not win an They're more likely to
42:21
Speaker 1: win both the House and the Senate than they are
42:23
Speaker 1: not to hold either, not to win either, and they're
42:27
Speaker 1: still more likely to win the House than anything else.
42:31
Speaker 1: Chances are way over fifty percent of that, trust me.
42:37
Speaker 1: What's more likely, though, is that the majority is smaller.
42:42
Speaker 1: The question is is it as small as the one
42:44
Speaker 1: Mike Johnson has had or will be slightly bigger than
42:50
Speaker 1: the last two the Republicans have struggled to govern it
42:55
Speaker 1: all right, I'm sneak in a break and when we
42:59
Speaker 1: come back, this fabulous conversation Bob Smith, Bob Spitz, who's
43:08
Speaker 1: did this most recent book on the Rolling Stones. I mean,
43:10
Speaker 1: he's done this incredible books on the Beatles, on led Zeppelin.
43:16
Speaker 1: He confessed to me he wasn't the biggest led Zeppelin fan.
43:19
Speaker 1: I was a led Zeppelin guy before I ever became
43:20
Speaker 1: a Stones guy. I confessed during this interview when I
43:24
Speaker 1: finally became a Stones fan, and it's you know, to
43:30
Speaker 1: me to really appreciate the Rolling Stones is the experience itself,
43:37
Speaker 1: and in this era of AI and manufactured crap that
43:40
Speaker 1: we see out there, and there is something enduring about
43:43
Speaker 1: the idea that something is better when you see it
43:45
Speaker 1: in person than when you listen to it digitally. And
43:52
Speaker 1: I think the story of the Rolling Stones is just that.
43:55
Speaker 1: But what's beauty. Like I said about telling you about
43:57
Speaker 1: Bob earlier, the fact that Bob was in the industry,
44:00
Speaker 1: I think is why he is so effective at getting
44:04
Speaker 1: at getting rock stars to talk. When normally, as they
44:09
Speaker 1: said in US as the fake band still water set
44:14
Speaker 1: and almost famous, pointing to the journalists that they're the enemy,
44:18
Speaker 1: they were more likely to talk to a fellow rock star.
44:21
Speaker 1: So that we'll sneak it a break when we come back.
44:24
Speaker 1: My fabulous conversation with Bob spits on the Rolling Stones.
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Speaker 1: And yes, I too am a customer. Well, the beauty
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Speaker 1: of being in the world of independent media these days,
46:12
Speaker 1: into my own podcast is that guess what. Sometimes I'm
46:15
Speaker 1: going to do interviews and things that just interest me
46:19
Speaker 1: and my generation, if you will, but also what I
46:24
Speaker 1: do think, frankly, what cuts across cultural lines And there's
46:27
Speaker 1: no sort of bigger cultural touchstone for those of us
46:31
Speaker 1: of a certain age. And I'll get to that in
46:33
Speaker 1: a minute. Then the Rolling Stones, and there's a terrific
46:37
Speaker 1: new biography. It's not that it's not it's not. Then
46:42
Speaker 1: it's not as conventional of a of a rock band
46:44
Speaker 1: biography as you might be used to reading. This one's
46:47
Speaker 1: by Bob Spitz. He's my guest today. It's it's fantastic.
46:50
Speaker 1: It's sort of it is. It's just it's not fan service.
46:55
Speaker 1: And I don't mean that it doesn't respect everything that
46:58
Speaker 1: the Stones have done and all that, but it really
47:01
Speaker 1: is sort of trying to tell the story. And I
47:04
Speaker 1: think answer a question that I have still in my
47:08
Speaker 1: head today is who are the Rolling Stones and what
47:11
Speaker 1: are they now? What have they been? What did they
47:13
Speaker 1: want to be? And I say this, they're releasing a
47:16
Speaker 1: punk rock album almost at the time. It's almost as
47:21
Speaker 1: if Bob you your biography and they're focus on releasing
47:25
Speaker 1: new music when hand in hand.
47:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're doing this for me, Chuck. I mean I'm
47:30
Speaker 3: so poised.
47:32
Speaker 1: I mean, in all seriousness, right when you found out
47:34
Speaker 1: they were releasing new music and you have this coming out,
47:36
Speaker 1: I mean you're at least your publisher must be ecstatic.
47:39
Speaker 3: Well when we're doing handstands here in the apartment, So
47:41
Speaker 3: everything worked out great for us. So let's just talk.
47:45
Speaker 1: Look, you've written biographies about other rock bands. The beauty
47:48
Speaker 1: of this one is ever is well, not everybody's alive,
47:53
Speaker 1: but the key figures are alive.
47:56
Speaker 2: Right.
47:56
Speaker 1: The Beatles is a tough one because you know, one
47:58
Speaker 1: of the most important parts with John Lennon was was
48:04
Speaker 1: you were getting him through his spouse. I guess it's
48:06
Speaker 1: probably the fairest way to talk about it. So let
48:10
Speaker 1: me just say, how long have you been thinking about
48:12
Speaker 1: this and when did you know you had the right
48:15
Speaker 1: frame to have to write this book?
48:17
Speaker 2: Chuck?
48:18
Speaker 3: I mean, you know I had written the Bob Dylan biography.
48:21
Speaker 3: I got to the Beatles in the nick of time.
48:25
Speaker 3: I did lead Zeppelin. There was only one band left.
48:29
Speaker 3: It was completing Mount Rushmore. And it really give me
48:34
Speaker 3: a pause because the other bands had been together for
48:37
Speaker 3: maybe ten years, and so it was a nice concise story.
48:41
Speaker 3: But this was a sixty five year honesty, and so
48:46
Speaker 3: you know, I had to think long and hard about
48:48
Speaker 3: it and how I would be able to tell that
48:50
Speaker 3: story in any kind of a given page count.
48:54
Speaker 1: Well, and you also had two of the biggest names.
48:58
Speaker 1: They've told their own versions of this story. I mean,
49:00
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sorry. The Mick Jaggert memoir was something else, right,
49:04
Speaker 1: we learned a lot more. Actually, not the Jagger Keith Richards. Sorry,
49:09
Speaker 1: I was conflating and I didn't mean to Keith Richards
49:13
Speaker 1: memoir was something else. I mean, how you know, I'm
49:17
Speaker 1: and Jagger's been in charge of his story, uh for
49:21
Speaker 1: quite a bit. So was that a challenge a help? Both?
49:25
Speaker 3: No, it was, it was. It was a great help.
49:28
Speaker 3: I mean, look, Keith wrote a fabulous book. That guy
49:31
Speaker 3: pulled no punches.
49:32
Speaker 2: I was shocked.
49:33
Speaker 1: I didn't think that was the book we'd get out
49:35
Speaker 1: of Keith.
49:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's completely unshouldered. Uh, you know, happy to tell
49:39
Speaker 3: you anything you ask him. But that book is in
49:42
Speaker 3: myopic book. It's one man's view of what was happening
49:45
Speaker 3: at the time. And I felt that the Stones were
49:49
Speaker 3: part of our lives enough that they needed a really
49:52
Speaker 3: objective book, say the way Robert Carroll might write about
49:56
Speaker 3: Lyndon Johnson. So that meant that I had to talk to,
49:59
Speaker 3: you know, two hundred people who were colleagues of theirs,
50:02
Speaker 3: friends of theirs, family members, wives ex wives, and really
50:07
Speaker 3: trying to put this story together and at the same
50:09
Speaker 3: time give it a narrative so that you weren't going
50:14
Speaker 3: to be bogged down in it. You were going to
50:16
Speaker 3: want to turn the pages. And that was my biggest challenge.
50:19
Speaker 1: No, and I think trying to you know, get at
50:21
Speaker 1: what they're trying to. I mean, you know, I feel
50:26
Speaker 1: like you tackled this like a person rather you know
50:29
Speaker 1: that here you're it's a group that's also its own entity, right.
50:33
Speaker 3: It is its own entity, and and really the entity
50:36
Speaker 3: is Keith and Mick, you know, Uh, the entire enterprise
50:41
Speaker 3: depends on their rapport and that really, you know, is
50:45
Speaker 3: something to look at all groups that I've considered writing
50:49
Speaker 3: about dissolved after a number of years.
50:52
Speaker 1: You know it was that actually is what makes it
50:55
Speaker 1: compelling as a journalist. What went wrong? Why did it end?
50:59
Speaker 1: And in fact it's why somebody wants to buy the book,
51:03
Speaker 1: you know, you know constant when Why won't led Zeppelin,
51:06
Speaker 1: you know, get together? Why couldn't you Jason Bonham, you know,
51:09
Speaker 1: be the be the glue? What what happened between Jimmy
51:13
Speaker 1: and Robert? Right like it is with the Stones, you
51:18
Speaker 1: didn't have that They and I you know, I'm gonna
51:21
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do something. There's you know, the Stones. It's
51:27
Speaker 1: funny that you did them for right Like, if you
51:29
Speaker 1: think about it, right, Dylan, led Zeppelin, the Beatles all
51:34
Speaker 1: felt more innovative than the Stones, and yet the Stones
51:38
Speaker 1: endurance is what's made them innovative.
51:41
Speaker 3: Well, absolutely their endurance. But you know the Stones, what
51:44
Speaker 3: the Stones gave us is rock and roll. The Beatles
51:48
Speaker 3: at the time the Stones came about, we're doing two
51:51
Speaker 3: and a half minute pop songs for girls. You know,
51:54
Speaker 3: it developed into much more than that, of course, but
51:57
Speaker 3: the Stones did something different. They took these and they
52:01
Speaker 3: hot wired it and They gave us a rock and
52:04
Speaker 3: roll sound that is the foundation of everything that came
52:08
Speaker 3: after it. It was a garage band sound, and that's
52:11
Speaker 3: what everybody built on. That's what led Zeppelin build on.
52:15
Speaker 3: I mean, Fleetwood, Mac build on. Everybody built on that
52:19
Speaker 3: kind of garage band sound. And I think, you know,
52:22
Speaker 3: everybody was calling the Stones the greatest rock and roll
52:24
Speaker 3: band of all time. I shied away from that a confession.
52:29
Speaker 3: I was a Beatles guy in that great debate.
52:32
Speaker 1: This feels like Lebron versus Jordan by the way.
52:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly right. But the truth of the matter is
52:39
Speaker 3: that the Stones really laid the groundwork for all of
52:44
Speaker 3: this that came afterwards. And I was fascinated to watch
52:47
Speaker 3: how they did it. You know, not you mentioned punk before, Yes,
52:50
Speaker 3: the Stones. The Stones survived Disco, they survived punk, they
52:56
Speaker 3: survived grunge, all those people passed. By the way side,
53:00
Speaker 3: Mick and Keith are eighty three years old and they're
53:03
Speaker 3: about to go on tour again.
53:07
Speaker 1: Let's go to the issue of rock and roll. So
53:11
Speaker 1: what is rock and roll now? And it's and to me,
53:13
Speaker 1: this debate is always more intriguing to me. Right after
53:17
Speaker 1: you have the rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominees
53:20
Speaker 1: and all this stuff, and you're like, wait, we've now
53:23
Speaker 1: defined rock and roll as just countercultural, that it's more
53:26
Speaker 1: of a vibe than a sound.
53:29
Speaker 3: There isn't even rock and roll these days. I mean
53:31
Speaker 3: what the kids are making today, they're not music makers.
53:34
Speaker 3: They're producers, they're performers. They're not in control in the studio.
53:41
Speaker 3: They're not writing you know, original and.
53:44
Speaker 1: Miss electric guitar Bob, I knowess it.
53:47
Speaker 3: I think the only person who's out there, you know,
53:49
Speaker 3: making rock and roll is Bruce Springston. And aside from.
53:53
Speaker 1: That, I would argue there is some country that is
53:58
Speaker 1: called country that when I hear it sounds more like
54:01
Speaker 1: that it's been inspired by rock.
54:04
Speaker 3: Yeah, probably true, Chuck. But but you know what, my daughter,
54:09
Speaker 3: who's thirty two, listens to the music that you know,
54:13
Speaker 3: I turn off, of course the same way my parents
54:16
Speaker 3: turned off Elvis what I will, But you know she
54:20
Speaker 3: she listens to people like bts and and Telor Swift
54:24
Speaker 3: and they're they're doing something different. Do I like it?
54:29
Speaker 3: And yeah, it's not for me. It's it's time for
54:32
Speaker 3: me to step aside. Like Joe Biden, I'm going out.
54:38
Speaker 1: Well, I only asked that because if if rock and
54:42
Speaker 1: roll had it continued to evolve, would there be room
54:46
Speaker 1: for the Stone still?
54:48
Speaker 3: I think so?
54:49
Speaker 2: Yeah.
54:50
Speaker 3: You know, look, people still go to Stone's concerence and
54:53
Speaker 3: when you hear those opening chords to start Me Up
54:57
Speaker 3: or Jumping Jack Flash or Brown Show or or Satisfaction,
55:02
Speaker 3: those three.
55:03
Speaker 1: I think I was just going to say, I think
55:04
Speaker 1: I've been to three of those three. I think I've
55:09
Speaker 1: probably been in like ten Stones concerts, and I think
55:11
Speaker 1: three of those songs have started multiple versions of Stones
55:15
Speaker 1: concert certainly.
55:16
Speaker 3: And you can't get off your you have to get
55:19
Speaker 3: off your seat. I mean, it doesn't matter if you're
55:22
Speaker 3: a BTS fan or you know you're you're a country fan.
55:26
Speaker 3: Those Stones songs are killers, and that's what keeps that
55:31
Speaker 3: music alive and keeps them going. Plus, you know, those
55:34
Speaker 3: songs are kind of rebellious. They have that arrogance attached
55:38
Speaker 3: to them, and every generation adopts to that. So I
55:45
Speaker 3: kind of understand how they sustained all this career.
55:49
Speaker 1: One thing to me that seemed different, and you tell
55:51
Speaker 1: me and push back if you think this is wrong.
55:54
Speaker 1: I don't think you'll be shy about that, which is
55:57
Speaker 1: sometimes I've felt as if the Stones didn't have any
56:00
Speaker 1: anything to say, they were just more interested in their music.
56:03
Speaker 1: And I think this would probably be what John Lennon
56:06
Speaker 1: would say, right and maybe I'm channeling that that. You know,
56:09
Speaker 1: where the Beatles, there was always something they were trying
56:11
Speaker 1: to say. Even led Zeppelin at times, you know, they
56:15
Speaker 1: were trying to say, I say this, I think Brown
56:19
Speaker 1: Sugar is an important cultural song, that that that that
56:25
Speaker 1: that did matter for interracial relationships at a time when
56:27
Speaker 1: it was illegal in many states in this country. So
56:31
Speaker 1: I don't want to say they never were quote unquote political,
56:35
Speaker 1: but I've never they were, certainly less so than Dylan
56:38
Speaker 1: or the Beatles.
56:39
Speaker 3: Right, well, they flirted with it, you know, they did
56:42
Speaker 3: straight fighting man and Nick thought that was, you know,
56:46
Speaker 3: a real revolutionary take, and then they kind of decided
56:50
Speaker 3: not to do that anymore. So, you know, I think
56:53
Speaker 3: they put that beside them and then they started to
56:55
Speaker 3: make straightforward rock and roll. Their lives got in the way.
57:00
Speaker 3: You know, these are guys who grew up fast and
57:03
Speaker 3: grew up hard, and they are they're just continent rock
57:09
Speaker 3: and rollers. They they just want to play music, that's it.
57:13
Speaker 3: I don't think that they really think too much about
57:17
Speaker 3: any kind of message.
57:19
Speaker 1: Well, and it's funny. I think maybe that's what makes
57:21
Speaker 1: them endure.
57:23
Speaker 3: Makes it, yes, exactly, because they're not taking a stand right.
57:28
Speaker 1: And they're not well. They're also not trapped in a
57:31
Speaker 1: moment in time even though you I think, let me
57:34
Speaker 1: ask you this, do you think they could have they
57:37
Speaker 1: would have if they needed nineteen fifties and sixties post
57:42
Speaker 1: war Britain's culture in order to thrive.
57:45
Speaker 3: Oh, absolutely, no doubt about it. Look, it was a
57:48
Speaker 3: rebellious music that they were making. They were supposed to
57:54
Speaker 3: toe the line coming out of World War Two. All
57:58
Speaker 3: these guys were groomed if they weren't going to uh
58:02
Speaker 3: college like Nick was. But people like Keith Keith were
58:05
Speaker 3: destined to work as kirks for the railroad or in
58:09
Speaker 3: a factory until art schools came about. And that was
58:13
Speaker 3: the foment of all this music, all this thought, those
58:18
Speaker 3: art schools where the kids were just bringing their guitars
58:21
Speaker 3: in and making music, and they rebelled against that English
58:26
Speaker 3: You know that that tired English society. Then the music
58:31
Speaker 3: did it?
58:35
Speaker 1: Let's talk about was it a rivalry with the Beatles?
58:40
Speaker 2: Not in the least. No.
58:41
Speaker 3: I mean, these guys loved each other. They were great.
58:44
Speaker 3: The Stones came to see the Beatles. Well the other
58:47
Speaker 3: way around. I'm sorry. The Beatles came to see the
58:49
Speaker 3: Stones when they were just starting out in the Crawdaddy Club,
58:53
Speaker 3: and they walked in in black leather jackets and part
58:58
Speaker 3: of the crowd and good right in front of the
59:01
Speaker 3: stage as the Stones performed, and the Stones looked down
59:05
Speaker 3: and there were the four Beatles, but they all went
59:10
Speaker 3: back to this hovel that the Stones lived in and
59:13
Speaker 3: forged a friendship that lasted for as long as the
59:16
Speaker 3: Beatles lasted. When the Stones couldn't make a hit after
59:21
Speaker 3: their first song came out, who bailed them out? Well,
59:24
Speaker 3: the Beatles bailed them out. John and Paul came into
59:27
Speaker 3: the studio and wrote I Want to Be Your Man,
59:29
Speaker 3: and the Stones had their first hit record, and they
59:32
Speaker 3: were friends throughout their entire career. They socialized together, they
59:37
Speaker 3: rooted for each other. They made sure they didn't release
59:40
Speaker 3: albums at the same time. At one point, I guess
59:44
Speaker 3: in the late sixties, Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger got
59:48
Speaker 3: together over a beer and they decided that they were
59:51
Speaker 3: going to throw in together. It would be the greatest
59:54
Speaker 3: company in the world.
59:57
Speaker 2: Yeah.
59:57
Speaker 3: I wrote about it in the book because it was
59:59
Speaker 3: a kind of a novel situation that people hadn't heard
1:00:03
Speaker 3: about before. And Paul leased a brewery in Camden Town
1:00:09
Speaker 3: and it was going to be Beatleston's headquarters and they
1:00:12
Speaker 3: were going to open a hotel, have their own studio.
1:00:15
Speaker 1: My goodness, it sounds sounds so very twenty first century
1:00:18
Speaker 1: of them. I mean, that's a visionary I mean, by
1:00:21
Speaker 1: the way, you probably could start that today and you'd
1:00:23
Speaker 1: have a whole bunch of baby boomers wanting to vacation there.
1:00:25
Speaker 3: You bet, their own record label. It would all be together.
1:00:28
Speaker 3: And I guess you know, Alan Klein kind of threw
1:00:32
Speaker 3: the hand grenade in and blew it up. But for
1:00:37
Speaker 3: a while they both wanted to do it. And who
1:00:40
Speaker 3: better than Mick and Keith Keith Mick and Paul. Paul
1:00:43
Speaker 3: was the guy who kept pushing Beatles, Beatles, keep the
1:00:47
Speaker 3: Beatles together, and Mick, who was really the brains behind
1:00:51
Speaker 3: the rolling Stone Chuck. So interesting that after nineteen sixty
1:00:56
Speaker 3: seven the Stones never have another manager. Who's their manager?
1:01:01
Speaker 3: It's Mick, right, Mick is their manager. He negotiates every
1:01:04
Speaker 3: record contract, every concert tour with every promoter, designs the stage,
1:01:11
Speaker 3: works out the merchandising, negotiates for all of their travel,
1:01:15
Speaker 3: and tells the guys.
1:01:16
Speaker 2: What they're going to do.
1:01:17
Speaker 3: It is that London School of Economics three semesters never
1:01:22
Speaker 3: gone through it that, you know, it's fantastic. I mean,
1:01:26
Speaker 3: the guy is other worldwide.
1:01:37
Speaker 1: Well, both Paul and Mick were. I guess I had
1:01:40
Speaker 1: a little bit more of a you know, they let me.
1:01:44
Speaker 1: Let me ask you this way. Without Paul and Mick,
1:01:45
Speaker 1: would either the Beatles or the Stones been financially successful.
1:01:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe not, that's that's a good question. Paul was
1:01:53
Speaker 3: the one who pushed back against Brian Epstein's terrible deals,
1:01:57
Speaker 3: brought his father in law into negotiat new contracts, and
1:02:02
Speaker 3: of course Mick did the same thing. Unfortunately he brought
1:02:05
Speaker 3: Alan kleinan and for a while it looked good, but
1:02:08
Speaker 3: then it didn't look good and he got rid of them.
1:02:11
Speaker 3: But the two of them really were the guys who
1:02:13
Speaker 3: kept those groups financially fluid.
1:02:19
Speaker 1: Mick and Keith. Ah, Yes, how does this relationship survive?
1:02:26
Speaker 1: Because it it wasn't It's not. I mean, they don't
1:02:30
Speaker 1: want to say oil and water, but there is it.
1:02:34
Speaker 1: It does seem like an odd pairing. The more you
1:02:36
Speaker 1: learn about both of them.
1:02:38
Speaker 3: Look, it's a marriage. And sometimes it's like who's afraid
1:02:42
Speaker 3: of Virginia Wolf? You know, and sometimes it's it's good.
1:02:46
Speaker 3: The great thing about their relationship is that they have
1:02:51
Speaker 3: different tasks.
1:02:53
Speaker 2: You know.
1:02:53
Speaker 3: Mick is the libidinous peacock, the showman, and Keith is
1:02:58
Speaker 3: the riffmaster. And they don't compete, they really don't. Keith
1:03:05
Speaker 3: is happy to let Mick be the front man, and
1:03:08
Speaker 3: for most of the time when they're on the road,
1:03:11
Speaker 3: when they're working, the bad boys stay out of trouble.
1:03:15
Speaker 3: But there was that period in the mid nineties when
1:03:18
Speaker 3: it almost fell apart when Mick decided he was going
1:03:21
Speaker 3: to make a solo album and tour without the Stones
1:03:25
Speaker 3: but sing Stones songs, and Keith was furious and he
1:03:31
Speaker 3: wanted to blow up the Stones. At that time, those
1:03:34
Speaker 3: guys didn't speak Keith's slagg mick Off and the press
1:03:40
Speaker 3: he referred to him as.
1:03:43
Speaker 2: I remember that, Yeah, he always.
1:03:44
Speaker 3: Referred to him as her majesty or Brenda. Because Keith
1:03:48
Speaker 3: had walked past a bookstore on the rude Riveley in Paris,
1:03:52
Speaker 3: and there was a fiction book by a woman named
1:03:55
Speaker 3: Brenda Jagger, so Mick became Brenda all the time. But
1:03:59
Speaker 3: you know, when they weren't talking to each other, when
1:04:04
Speaker 3: it looked like it was all going to be rent asunder,
1:04:08
Speaker 3: Keith married Patty Hanson, and who stands up for him?
1:04:12
Speaker 3: Mick stands up for him as best man, So you know,
1:04:15
Speaker 3: go figure. I mean, these guys shouldn't have been in
1:04:17
Speaker 3: the same cage together, but they continue to find a
1:04:22
Speaker 3: way to work together. And it's the music that keeps
1:04:25
Speaker 3: them going. These guys love to play, they love to perform.
1:04:31
Speaker 3: I saw them at Sofi Stadium in California about a
1:04:34
Speaker 3: year and a half ago, and there was a presentium
1:04:37
Speaker 3: out from the stage jump that was at least two
1:04:41
Speaker 3: blocks long, and Mick danced on that thing for two
1:04:45
Speaker 3: and a half hours. And I had to jab my
1:04:47
Speaker 3: wife in the ribs and say, you're looking at an
1:04:49
Speaker 3: eighty two year old man.
1:04:52
Speaker 2: I am.
1:04:53
Speaker 1: It's always a marvel at watching Nick at a concert. Look,
1:04:58
Speaker 1: I will confess. So my first Stones concert was nineteen
1:05:00
Speaker 1: eighty nine. It was Steel Wheels, and my friends and
1:05:05
Speaker 1: I were really excited because the opening band was going
1:05:08
Speaker 1: to be Living Color on our side of the coast.
1:05:11
Speaker 1: It was a clever thing the Stones did. And you know,
1:05:15
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you about this sort of
1:05:16
Speaker 1: how they would help other bands. I think it was
1:05:18
Speaker 1: Guns n' Roses was the West coast opening act, and
1:05:21
Speaker 1: I believe Living Color was the East Coast opening act.
1:05:24
Speaker 1: And my friends and I we loved Living Colors a little.
1:05:28
Speaker 1: You know, it was they were a unique thing and
1:05:32
Speaker 1: African American rock band. There wasn't a lot in that space,
1:05:37
Speaker 1: and at the time, my feelings on the Stones were
1:05:41
Speaker 1: always and then you see their performance, and to see
1:05:48
Speaker 1: the Stones in concert is to finally appreciate them in
1:05:51
Speaker 1: a way that no album, no listening to them on
1:05:54
Speaker 1: the radio. They were I think are better as an
1:06:00
Speaker 1: experience than just simply showing up in your music feed.
1:06:05
Speaker 3: Oh, I couldn't agree with you more. They know how
1:06:08
Speaker 3: to electrify an audience. That's always been their secret. And
1:06:13
Speaker 3: you know it's those rifts that Keith comes up with
1:06:17
Speaker 3: that just they're ferocious. And the minute the minute the
1:06:21
Speaker 3: rift starts, mix starts and one mix starts, he entertains
1:06:28
Speaker 3: and you can't take your eyes off them. It is
1:06:30
Speaker 3: a whole experience that I agree with you doesn't come
1:06:34
Speaker 3: off records in the same way.
1:06:37
Speaker 1: No, it took me. You know at that time, I'm
1:06:39
Speaker 1: an eighteen year old. You know, That's when I was like, oh,
1:06:42
Speaker 1: I get it. You know, the stage just felt like
1:06:45
Speaker 1: a buck Jesus these guys that, by the way, Steele
1:06:47
Speaker 1: Wheels was their last concert tour. That's how they build
1:06:50
Speaker 1: it as that. That one was a farewell tour, the
1:06:53
Speaker 1: first of four How many farewell tours did they? They
1:06:56
Speaker 1: finally gave it.
1:06:57
Speaker 3: Up right, Yeah, you know they started asking Mick innineteen
1:07:00
Speaker 3: sixty six, is this your last tour? And they've asked
1:07:04
Speaker 3: him that after everyone since. In two thousand they asked Keith,
1:07:09
Speaker 3: is this the end? And he said the end? This
1:07:13
Speaker 3: is the beginning of the second half. Here we are
1:07:16
Speaker 3: twenty six years later. I mean, you've got to start
1:07:19
Speaker 3: taking these guys seriously, you know, it's it's incredible.
1:07:22
Speaker 1: No, the and endurance should mean something, right, if you're
1:07:27
Speaker 1: able to get to your fourth generation of fans, arguably, right,
1:07:34
Speaker 1: you know, that's that's that's saying something. I mean, I
1:07:38
Speaker 1: guess Mozart has everybody beat, but outside of Mozart, right,
1:07:42
Speaker 1: you know about it, you know.
1:07:44
Speaker 3: I mean you have to wonder how they have endured physically, because,
1:07:49
Speaker 3: as you know, Keith is not a queen living guy.
1:07:54
Speaker 2: And well the.
1:07:55
Speaker 1: Joke is that he must have been ingested so much
1:07:58
Speaker 1: stuff it like counteracted with each other and somehow made
1:08:01
Speaker 1: him bionic.
1:08:02
Speaker 3: Right perhaps, But I think what happened is these two
1:08:05
Speaker 3: guys went down to the same crossroads that Robert Johnson
1:08:09
Speaker 3: went down. They made some kind of pack with the devil,
1:08:12
Speaker 3: and you know that that is what has kept them
1:08:16
Speaker 3: going all this time. But you know, Mick, Mick stays
1:08:19
Speaker 3: in shape. I mean, this is a guy who his
1:08:22
Speaker 3: father was the Jack Lane of the UK. He had
1:08:26
Speaker 3: a television show like Richard Simmons, and he would say, okay,
1:08:31
Speaker 3: Mike show him how to do one hundred push ups,
1:08:33
Speaker 3: and Mick would fall to the floor and do one
1:08:35
Speaker 3: hundred bishops. Mike show them how to do chins. Mick
1:08:39
Speaker 3: would do chins. And he's been doing that ever since.
1:08:43
Speaker 2: Last night.
1:08:44
Speaker 3: I talked to an audience of two hundred people and
1:08:46
Speaker 3: I said, Mick, you know that Mick has a twenty
1:08:50
Speaker 3: seven inch waist. Let's see a show of hands of
1:08:53
Speaker 3: how many of you here have a twenty seven inch win.
1:08:55
Speaker 1: My god, and nobody raised the Mick has a twenty
1:08:59
Speaker 1: seven at Eddies. How tall he's about five eight it's
1:09:04
Speaker 1: five agg you know, he comes across taller on stage
1:09:06
Speaker 1: they do a bad jo, he's not.
1:09:09
Speaker 3: But he's a wiry little guy, you know. And he
1:09:12
Speaker 3: was a great athlete. He a great athlete with a
1:09:17
Speaker 3: sense of self, even from twelve years old. He ran
1:09:20
Speaker 3: a track meet when he was fourteen and somebody said,
1:09:24
Speaker 3: how did you do?
1:09:25
Speaker 2: Nick? Did you win?
1:09:26
Speaker 3: And he said, saad, how I won? How did my
1:09:29
Speaker 3: hair look? And that's Nick in a nutshell. You know,
1:09:33
Speaker 3: he has to look good, he has to be great
1:09:35
Speaker 3: on stage.
1:09:39
Speaker 1: So I'm just curious if the Beatles in the Stones
1:09:41
Speaker 1: were so what did did they? Did they embrace the
1:09:45
Speaker 1: idea of marketing against each other?
1:09:50
Speaker 3: They didn't market against each other. I think they you know,
1:09:54
Speaker 3: they made sure they wouldn't compete with their music.
1:09:56
Speaker 1: But the fans sort of felt that, right, oh they did.
1:10:00
Speaker 3: I mean that what I mean they were written called
1:10:02
Speaker 3: Beatles versus Stone.
1:10:04
Speaker 1: Right, That's what I mean. So it's like I've always
1:10:06
Speaker 1: felt like the fans of both have really strong opinions
1:10:09
Speaker 1: about this and in a weird way, what your burst
1:10:12
Speaker 1: the balloon you're bursting here is like it's almost like
1:10:15
Speaker 1: was it was it all for show?
1:10:18
Speaker 3: Yeah? It could have been. Look Andrew Oldham, who was
1:10:21
Speaker 3: their only manager, an eighteen year old cocky kid, decided
1:10:27
Speaker 3: that the Stones were going to be the anti Beatles.
1:10:29
Speaker 3: They were going to look different.
1:10:31
Speaker 1: He thought it was a good marketing gimmick.
1:10:33
Speaker 3: Oh absolutely, So he made sure that they didn't bow
1:10:37
Speaker 3: after songs, they didn't wear suits, they had no respect
1:10:41
Speaker 3: for the promoters who hired them. That they would be insulin.
1:10:45
Speaker 3: They would be known as the bad Boys. And you know,
1:10:48
Speaker 3: the Beatles were completely opposite. So of course there were
1:10:53
Speaker 3: different camps, and there always has been, and then there
1:10:56
Speaker 3: was there were different camps when it came to music.
1:10:59
Speaker 3: I can't tell you how many people I know who
1:11:01
Speaker 3: think that the Beatles much more sophisticated music puts the
1:11:06
Speaker 3: Stones to shame.
1:11:08
Speaker 1: And then the argument, that's the argument that my musician
1:11:11
Speaker 1: friends would.
1:11:12
Speaker 3: Make exactly, and I'm a musician and I've made that argument.
1:11:17
Speaker 3: And then there are the Stones people who say it's
1:11:20
Speaker 3: only the power of the music. Step aside. Beatles fans,
1:11:23
Speaker 3: you don't know what you're talking about. This is rock
1:11:25
Speaker 3: and roll. The beauty of it is that it all
1:11:28
Speaker 3: works together. You know that these two bands gave us
1:11:33
Speaker 3: song books in the sixties that have endured for sixty
1:11:38
Speaker 3: five years, and Chuck will outlive you and me. It's
1:11:44
Speaker 3: the music of our generation and generations that succeeded it.
1:11:51
Speaker 1: Why did a bunch of British white kids embrace the
1:11:59
Speaker 1: black inspired American blues better than American white kids.
1:12:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, it didn't happen in America at all, and in fact,
1:12:09
Speaker 3: even after the Stones broke out with blues, American kids
1:12:13
Speaker 3: couldn't figure it out. It happened because of the American gis.
1:12:17
Speaker 3: The American gis when they were in the UK listened
1:12:21
Speaker 3: to R and B and blues records, and when they
1:12:24
Speaker 3: left the UK after the war, they left their records
1:12:27
Speaker 3: behind and the kids grabbed a hold of them. The
1:12:30
Speaker 3: other thing that really did it is that the blues artists,
1:12:36
Speaker 3: the old Mississippi Delta and Chicago blues artists, they couldn't
1:12:40
Speaker 3: get gigs in the United States. You know, they could
1:12:43
Speaker 3: play some chicken shacks, but they couldn't play the white clubs.
1:12:48
Speaker 3: The UK embraced them so they went over to the
1:12:51
Speaker 3: UK and there were plenty of places for these people
1:12:54
Speaker 3: to perform, and so the kids got to see them
1:12:58
Speaker 3: and they kind of grew up with that music. And then,
1:13:01
Speaker 3: you know, leave it to the Stones to say we're
1:13:04
Speaker 3: going to play blues music. That was a big fight
1:13:07
Speaker 3: early on. Are we a blues band or we're going
1:13:10
Speaker 3: to play rock and roll? And there were people in
1:13:12
Speaker 3: the in the band who didn't want them.
1:13:15
Speaker 1: I would assume Keith still thinks they're a blues band, right.
1:13:17
Speaker 3: Oh, absolutely, yeah, absolutely, And Brian Jones, you know, was
1:13:23
Speaker 3: a gas that they would play rock and roll.
1:13:25
Speaker 2: And the sixth.
1:13:26
Speaker 3: Stone, Ian Stewart, who was with him for thirty five years,
1:13:33
Speaker 3: refused not only to play to play rock and roll,
1:13:38
Speaker 3: but he wouldn't play any song with a minor chord
1:13:41
Speaker 3: in it. He just said, when when you're playing songs
1:13:44
Speaker 3: with minor chords, I'm not part of the band.
1:13:48
Speaker 1: Wow.
1:13:49
Speaker 3: Yeah, because he was riding true blues, three chord blues.
1:13:55
Speaker 1: So what what is the tipping point? What's the tipping
1:14:00
Speaker 1: point that sort of mix it we're a rock and
1:14:03
Speaker 1: roll band?
1:14:04
Speaker 3: Had two words, Chuck and Barry. When they discovered Chuck Berry,
1:14:09
Speaker 3: they found somebody who had taken the blues to another dimension.
1:14:15
Speaker 3: Chuck sang the blues, but he with a rock and
1:14:18
Speaker 3: roll beat. And then the Stones took what Chuck did
1:14:22
Speaker 3: and they hotwired it and they jacked it up. And
1:14:26
Speaker 3: so you can see the progression right there. Chuck was
1:14:30
Speaker 3: the middleman and the Stones took it and ran with it.
1:14:37
Speaker 1: Let's talk about Charlie, because you seem to think that
1:14:40
Speaker 1: this is this has changed the band a lot, not
1:14:45
Speaker 1: a little explained.
1:14:48
Speaker 3: Well, you know, Charlie kept the beat, sure, but Charlie,
1:14:52
Speaker 3: Charlie was the heart and.
1:14:53
Speaker 1: Solely he kept more than the beat on stage is
1:14:57
Speaker 1: what it's sort of what you imply.
1:14:59
Speaker 3: Absolutely he was the heart and soul. I mean, whenever
1:15:03
Speaker 3: things were about to implode, Charlie would cut through it all.
1:15:09
Speaker 3: And he was a man of such few words that
1:15:12
Speaker 3: just three or four words would put these guys in
1:15:16
Speaker 3: their place. And he had this dry wit. Charlie was
1:15:20
Speaker 3: such an unusual guy. He was completely straight.
1:15:25
Speaker 1: He went that when you say completely straight.
1:15:30
Speaker 3: He didn't up until he was fifty five, never even
1:15:34
Speaker 3: smoked the joint, didn't do it.
1:15:36
Speaker 1: Wow. So he was just a very when you say
1:15:40
Speaker 1: straight and arrow that's what your meaning there.
1:15:42
Speaker 3: Well there, but there's more to it than that. When
1:15:45
Speaker 3: all the guys after every gig went out and picked
1:15:47
Speaker 3: up girls or grouping, Charlie went back to his hotel room.
1:15:51
Speaker 3: What did he do in his hotel room? He drew
1:15:54
Speaker 3: every hotel room to scale that he spent the night in.
1:15:59
Speaker 3: That's how we spent the night after gigs. He was
1:16:03
Speaker 3: impeccably dressed. He had two hundred and fifty Savile Rose suits.
1:16:08
Speaker 1: With That is always what you Charlie was Charlie's luck.
1:16:11
Speaker 1: That was sort of very interesting.
1:16:13
Speaker 3: His shoes were always shine. He hated rock and roll,
1:16:17
Speaker 3: he was he loved jazz. He just played rock and
1:16:20
Speaker 3: roll because it paid, It paid the bills. And here's
1:16:23
Speaker 3: some other unusual things about Charlie. He had one of
1:16:27
Speaker 3: the greatest collection of vintage cars any person. I mean,
1:16:31
Speaker 3: it would make Jay Leno droll. But Charlie didn't have
1:16:36
Speaker 3: a driver's license and never once drove one of those cars.
1:16:40
Speaker 1: So he would just like like they were matchbox cars,
1:16:43
Speaker 1: huh exactly.
1:16:44
Speaker 3: He would just get down to his garage, sit behind
1:16:46
Speaker 3: the wheel and kind of talk to the cars.
1:16:50
Speaker 1: Did he ever learn to drive?
1:16:51
Speaker 2: Never?
1:16:52
Speaker 3: Never, learned how to drive, never drove them, but he
1:16:54
Speaker 3: had maybe thirty of the most gorgeous cars you could
1:16:57
Speaker 3: ever say. He was also a man who raised Arabian stallions.
1:17:04
Speaker 3: Did he ever get on one? Never?
1:17:06
Speaker 2: Once?
1:17:07
Speaker 3: He just liked to have them. Yeah, he was an
1:17:10
Speaker 3: unusual guy, but he kept Mick and Keith well balanced.
1:17:14
Speaker 3: And there's a great scene in the book where Mick
1:17:18
Speaker 3: crosses the line with Charlie and it's one night in Amsterdam,
1:17:25
Speaker 3: and Charlie dexam in a very big way.
1:17:31
Speaker 1: Charlie was the only person Mick would listen to.
1:17:33
Speaker 3: Right absolutely, or Keith, actually no, it was Ian Stewart
1:17:38
Speaker 3: who would is the only person who everybody in the
1:17:41
Speaker 3: band could listen to when they were screwing around backstage
1:17:45
Speaker 3: when they couldn't get on stage. Ian Stewart would say
1:17:49
Speaker 3: to them, get your asses on stage, it's time to go.
1:17:53
Speaker 3: He said a few other words that I can't mention here,
1:17:55
Speaker 3: but they would listen to him right away, and Charlie
1:17:59
Speaker 3: and Steu would get that band hop in and that's
1:18:02
Speaker 3: what they needed, you know, Mick to keep the wheels
1:18:05
Speaker 3: running and Charlie and Stu to keep them in line.
1:18:09
Speaker 3: And that worked for a long time.
1:18:13
Speaker 1: Do you think without Charlie they can still feel creative.
1:18:18
Speaker 3: Oh, that's a very good question. That's a good you know,
1:18:22
Speaker 3: I'm not sure that Charlie was an impediment to their creativity.
1:18:26
Speaker 3: There were several songs, more than a handful, that Charlie
1:18:31
Speaker 3: couldn't figure out how to play. And Jimmy Miller, who
1:18:36
Speaker 3: was one of their early producers, the producers of the
1:18:39
Speaker 3: great albums Beggars Banquet and Let It Blead and Sticky Fingers,
1:18:44
Speaker 3: Jimmy was a drummer, and Jimmy played the drums on
1:18:46
Speaker 3: a lot of those songs on the album. So I
1:18:52
Speaker 3: think that when Charlie died it gave them they took
1:18:56
Speaker 3: a deep breath. But unlike and John Bonham died and
1:19:02
Speaker 3: the guys weren't talking to each other and and.
1:19:05
Speaker 1: It just it ended up the next day.
1:19:08
Speaker 2: That was it.
1:19:09
Speaker 3: But when Charlie died, they took a deep breath. But
1:19:13
Speaker 3: the stones had to go on because these guys just
1:19:15
Speaker 3: they not only did they want to play, but they
1:19:18
Speaker 3: liked each other at that point, and so life was
1:19:21
Speaker 3: good and they thought, we'll do it for Charlie, you know.
1:19:23
Speaker 3: In the next night after Charlie died, they still decided
1:19:27
Speaker 3: to play. They played, I believe. I'm not sure, but
1:19:29
Speaker 3: I think it was in Saint Louis and the lights
1:19:32
Speaker 3: went down and there was nothing but Charlie's drum kit
1:19:35
Speaker 3: on stage and the place went dessert.
1:19:46
Speaker 1: Darryl Jones and Chuck Level are they still the new guys?
1:19:50
Speaker 2: Hey?
1:19:50
Speaker 3: What, he's the new guy and he's been with him
1:19:52
Speaker 3: for fifty years. They still call him the new guy.
1:19:57
Speaker 3: But but yes, sure, Chuck Uh is definitely one of
1:20:02
Speaker 3: the new guys. I think that a lot of people
1:20:04
Speaker 3: don't recognize the fact that they're in the Rolling Stones,
1:20:08
Speaker 3: that the Rolling Stones will always be Mick and Keith
1:20:11
Speaker 3: and of course Woody now Ron would But I think
1:20:16
Speaker 3: some of the guys who were sidemen just just can't
1:20:20
Speaker 3: take on that aura. They're not the bad boys. I'm sorry,
1:20:23
Speaker 3: they're not the bad.
1:20:25
Speaker 1: But then the Stone stop being bad boys sometime in
1:20:28
Speaker 1: the mid nineties.
1:20:30
Speaker 3: There's still they still played to that image. You know,
1:20:33
Speaker 3: you see ry.
1:20:34
Speaker 1: Sir, But I guess you know, I don't know when
1:20:40
Speaker 1: you're getting into fights that's bad boys. You know, when
1:20:43
Speaker 1: you're not speaking to it, you know, it's some ways,
1:20:45
Speaker 1: like after they healed their last rift that it became.
1:20:48
Speaker 1: And that's where there's always let me put another way,
1:20:52
Speaker 1: there's always like, are you guys still performing because you
1:20:55
Speaker 1: like performing? Or you're still performing because you want the
1:20:57
Speaker 1: checks to keep rolling in?
1:20:58
Speaker 2: Yeah?
1:20:58
Speaker 3: Well, I think that they don't need money. Believe me,
1:21:02
Speaker 3: they don't need money, None of them do. But I
1:21:04
Speaker 3: think when they stopped performing, you know, as Keith would say,
1:21:09
Speaker 3: bring in the pine boxes.
1:21:11
Speaker 1: I want the bear there, Bear Bryant. I mean, you know,
1:21:15
Speaker 1: I always think about Bear Bryant, right and these with
1:21:17
Speaker 1: these older folks, I'm like, and I think i'd be
1:21:20
Speaker 1: the same way. I'm like that that guy died as
1:21:23
Speaker 1: soon as he stopped working. I don't you know, I
1:21:25
Speaker 1: fear that's me. So I wasn't kind of get it.
1:21:28
Speaker 3: I was in Keith's apartment one time and I asked
1:21:31
Speaker 3: him that question, and he took me by the shirt.
1:21:33
Speaker 3: And when Keith takes you by the shirt, you just
1:21:36
Speaker 3: go with it.
1:21:37
Speaker 2: He dragged me.
1:21:38
Speaker 3: Down the hall into his living room and he pointed
1:21:41
Speaker 3: to a photo of Muddy Waters, photos of Muddy Waters
1:21:45
Speaker 3: and bb King that were on his mantelpiece. He said,
1:21:48
Speaker 3: see those guys, those guys played until the very end
1:21:52
Speaker 3: into their eighties, and and that's that's what we're doing.
1:21:56
Speaker 3: I will never stop playing.
1:21:58
Speaker 2: That's me And I.
1:21:59
Speaker 3: Believe, you know, when you see Keith play on stage,
1:22:03
Speaker 3: take your binoccuars next time, because you'll be sitting, you know,
1:22:07
Speaker 3: in the next state. And and look at Keith's face.
1:22:11
Speaker 3: He grins the whole time he's on stage. He loves
1:22:14
Speaker 3: what he does.
1:22:17
Speaker 1: So one of the hallmarks of some Rolling Stones concerts
1:22:20
Speaker 1: are when Mick takes a break and Keith plays his stuff.
1:22:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, mix, having mix, having a bood transfusion.
1:22:27
Speaker 1: Probably I was just gonna say, I mean, I'm like, God,
1:22:29
Speaker 1: bless him, he needs a break, right, Does it bother
1:22:33
Speaker 1: Keith that everybody sits down?
1:22:35
Speaker 3: I don't think so. Keith is Keith is so bewildered
1:22:40
Speaker 3: by the fact that he can sing. You know, for
1:22:42
Speaker 3: years he didn't sing, and he found his voice. He
1:22:48
Speaker 3: made that album, you know, and that first solo album,
1:22:52
Speaker 3: and it took off and he realized, you know, I
1:22:54
Speaker 3: can step out and do a couple of songs. And
1:22:56
Speaker 3: when I saw them last time, he's beautifully I.
1:23:01
Speaker 1: Mean, I enjoy it. But it is a different style.
1:23:03
Speaker 1: I mean he really is a blues guy. I mean,
1:23:06
Speaker 1: to me, when you the solo album, you realize this
1:23:08
Speaker 1: is not a rocker. And I think that's probably why
1:23:12
Speaker 1: the crowd they hear the blues and they think, okay,
1:23:15
Speaker 1: this is sit down frankly to be to be totally
1:23:19
Speaker 1: you know, past the joint around music, not get up
1:23:22
Speaker 1: on your chairs. And you know, Yellen screen.
1:23:26
Speaker 3: Could be that exactly right. Yet you know, just watching people,
1:23:31
Speaker 3: they do sit down, But boy does he get a
1:23:34
Speaker 3: hand when he stops. Maybe because he stops saying who knows.
1:23:38
Speaker 1: I think it's the I do think it's like the
1:23:41
Speaker 1: the true diehard who love guitar right like and that
1:23:46
Speaker 1: you know, to me, that's like this lost art is
1:23:50
Speaker 1: I fear the guitar that that we're just not appreciating
1:23:54
Speaker 1: great guitarist anymore.
1:23:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's I mean, when Jeff Beck died, that really
1:24:00
Speaker 3: blue Hall and guitar or masters Eric Clapton and Jimmy
1:24:04
Speaker 3: Page are still around, but you know it's getting swim
1:24:07
Speaker 3: out there.
1:24:08
Speaker 1: Jack White is certainly great, and I don't want to
1:24:11
Speaker 1: take anything away from him. I mean, he's at least
1:24:13
Speaker 1: in the it feels like he is always paying homage
1:24:16
Speaker 1: to those guys you know a little bit.
1:24:17
Speaker 3: But what we don't have are guitar innovators anymore. That's
1:24:21
Speaker 3: the problem. There's no Jimmy Hendrix, you know, and Jimmy Page,
1:24:28
Speaker 3: who really kind of invented a way to.
1:24:30
Speaker 1: Think synthesized music killed it is that what killed the
1:24:32
Speaker 1: electric guitar.
1:24:34
Speaker 3: Absolutely everything is a push button right now. People who
1:24:38
Speaker 3: are are coming up these days aren't encouraged to play
1:24:42
Speaker 3: an instrument. They're encouraged to sing and let the producers
1:24:45
Speaker 3: do the orchestration and they push buttons in the studio
1:24:49
Speaker 3: and that's it breaks my heart.
1:24:51
Speaker 2: What can you do?
1:24:52
Speaker 3: It'll change again?
1:24:54
Speaker 1: Well, this is why the experience. I mean, look, I
1:24:56
Speaker 1: actually am a believer that the one thing AI is
1:24:58
Speaker 1: going to drive us towards us to be appreciate in
1:25:01
Speaker 1: person and live. And when you get to our Stones
1:25:04
Speaker 1: concert and you see that there's a small orchestra essentially,
1:25:09
Speaker 1: you know, and a lot of brass back there. You know,
1:25:14
Speaker 1: I couldn't tell you how. I was a frenchhorn player
1:25:16
Speaker 1: and got a scholarship playing the french horn, and when
1:25:20
Speaker 1: I went to the that was that was when the
1:25:23
Speaker 1: Stones brought out a french horn player or you can't
1:25:26
Speaker 1: always get what you want and didn't didn't do it
1:25:29
Speaker 1: on a on a sacks, which I could have, you know,
1:25:31
Speaker 1: which you know, because it's hard to get you know it.
1:25:36
Speaker 1: It was it was one of those that for me,
1:25:38
Speaker 1: it was like, oh, the french horn can play rock
1:25:41
Speaker 1: and roll. I've been trying to tell my friends that,
1:25:43
Speaker 1: and it was Yes, I felt seen, you know, it
1:25:47
Speaker 1: was this moment, as you know, eighteen year old kid,
1:25:49
Speaker 1: I was like, wow, I feel seen as a french
1:25:51
Speaker 1: horn player.
1:25:52
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I'll let's tell you that. Al Cooper,
1:25:54
Speaker 3: who played that french horn or Can't Always get told
1:25:58
Speaker 3: me that the reason he did it is because he
1:26:01
Speaker 3: came in the studio and Nick couldn't figure out a beginning.
1:26:04
Speaker 1: To that so to start the song.
1:26:05
Speaker 2: Yeah right, And.
1:26:06
Speaker 3: Cooper Cooper like you played french horn at the University
1:26:10
Speaker 3: of Bridgeport where he was in school, and he said,
1:26:14
Speaker 3: I've got the instrument. I know exactly what I'm going
1:26:16
Speaker 3: to do with this. And guys like you who played
1:26:20
Speaker 3: french shorn were all of a sudden cool guys. Trust me.
1:26:24
Speaker 1: I was able to participate in a few house party
1:26:28
Speaker 1: bands because I whipped out the French short, let's go.
1:26:31
Speaker 1: You can't always get what you want. I finally have
1:26:33
Speaker 1: my I have my reasoning. But what do you do
1:26:36
Speaker 1: for an encore? Well, I know that's the that's the problem.
1:26:39
Speaker 1: There's there's there's a couple of other small trust us
1:26:43
Speaker 1: as French shorn players know, like all five rock songs
1:26:45
Speaker 1: that you have on that front? What are they? So?
1:26:55
Speaker 1: What are they?
1:26:56
Speaker 2: You know?
1:26:57
Speaker 1: What do you whatether are they?
1:26:58
Speaker 2: Are they a rock band?
1:26:59
Speaker 1: Are they more than a rock band? Are they a
1:27:03
Speaker 1: cultural I mean, what is their place in the music universe?
1:27:07
Speaker 2: Hey?
1:27:07
Speaker 3: Look in nineteen sixty nine when they went on tour,
1:27:12
Speaker 3: their MC introduced them as the greatest rock and roll
1:27:16
Speaker 3: band in the world. And Mick went backstage and said, listen,
1:27:20
Speaker 3: don't ever do that again. That's just that's freaking embarrassing.
1:27:24
Speaker 2: Don't do it.
1:27:25
Speaker 3: And the guy looked him in the eye and he said, Mick,
1:27:27
Speaker 3: either are yarn what's it going to be? And Mick said, okay.
1:27:33
Speaker 3: So for the last forty years they've been introduced as
1:27:37
Speaker 3: the greatest rock and roll band in the world, and
1:27:39
Speaker 3: I think that's what they have come to understand. They are.
1:27:43
Speaker 3: They're not a blues band. Anymore. They do play the
1:27:47
Speaker 3: blues and it's in their blood. It will always be
1:27:51
Speaker 3: the foundation of it. But they are, without a doubt
1:27:55
Speaker 3: the greatest rock and roll band in the world. And
1:27:57
Speaker 3: it's the sound that gives says everything else that everybody
1:28:01
Speaker 3: aspires to. It's that it's rocket, it's garage band, it's
1:28:06
Speaker 3: honkey talk, it's it's the Rolling Stones.
1:28:10
Speaker 1: So the Stones endured led Zeppelin did not. Beatles did not.
1:28:17
Speaker 3: Hey the Everly Brothers, Brothers for God's sakes, right?
1:28:21
Speaker 1: And is it is? Is the sort of the norm
1:28:26
Speaker 1: that you there's only it. Most groups can only handle
1:28:30
Speaker 1: ten to fifteen years and the Stones are an outlier?
1:28:33
Speaker 1: Or did the Stones have have a recipe that if
1:28:36
Speaker 1: other bands had followed it, led Zeppelin would still be
1:28:39
Speaker 1: playing today, although I don't know if Robert Plant's voice
1:28:41
Speaker 1: could handle it.
1:28:42
Speaker 3: But still yeah, no, well Robert and Jimmy were never
1:28:46
Speaker 3: going to appear together again. But no, I think that
1:28:52
Speaker 3: I think that this the stone strening normally, and and
1:28:57
Speaker 3: bands can't endure it. It's like marriages only have so
1:29:03
Speaker 3: much time together and after a while you either say,
1:29:07
Speaker 3: you know, okay, we're not going to have sex anymore,
1:29:09
Speaker 3: but I love you and I can go with you
1:29:11
Speaker 3: for the rest of your life, or you say yeah,
1:29:16
Speaker 3: we're done righty, you know, and that's it. The Stones
1:29:21
Speaker 3: stop having sex together. But they love to play rock
1:29:25
Speaker 3: and roll, you know, they're Yeah, I don't think bands
1:29:28
Speaker 3: can you grow up and you grow apart, you know,
1:29:31
Speaker 3: they as they start as kids.
1:29:34
Speaker 1: Most bands do, and that's why they break up usually
1:29:37
Speaker 1: is somebody becomes an adult and somebody doesn't want to
1:29:39
Speaker 1: be an adult exactly.
1:29:41
Speaker 3: The Beatles are a prime example.
1:29:44
Speaker 2: They grew up and they.
1:29:45
Speaker 3: Grew apart, and so that's what happens, you know, or
1:29:49
Speaker 3: or you just you don't have that spark anymore. Yeah,
1:29:54
Speaker 3: the Stones, God bless them, man. I don't know how
1:29:56
Speaker 3: they did it.
1:29:58
Speaker 1: Do you imagine? Let me you know, I think some
1:30:01
Speaker 1: of us thought the Grateful Dead would stop touring when
1:30:04
Speaker 1: all the members of the Grateful Dead died. And I
1:30:06
Speaker 1: know they all haven't died yet, but some key members have.
1:30:09
Speaker 1: And now it's Dead in Company.
1:30:11
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:30:12
Speaker 1: Do you imagine in thirty years there is you know,
1:30:16
Speaker 1: relatives of the Rolling Stones who continue to play under
1:30:20
Speaker 1: the banner Rolling Stones a lah Dead in Company. I mean,
1:30:24
Speaker 1: is this how sustaining it could be.
1:30:26
Speaker 3: If they did that, Keith would rise from the ashes.
1:30:30
Speaker 3: And as Keith always says, you want to see the blade,
1:30:35
Speaker 3: Keith would show him the blade. Absolutely not, they would.
1:30:39
Speaker 3: The Stones would never participate in anything like that. I
1:30:42
Speaker 3: don't think it would ever happen. Plus, you know, there
1:30:46
Speaker 3: are not a lot of males in that family, so
1:30:50
Speaker 3: in Marlin and he's Marvelin. I think it's about sixty
1:30:53
Speaker 3: years old now, so.
1:30:55
Speaker 1: You know, we're probably talking about grandkids or grand nephew.
1:31:00
Speaker 3: You know, Mick is about to have great grandkids. But
1:31:03
Speaker 3: he's also got a thirty year old girlfriend, so you know, listen,
1:31:07
Speaker 3: it's the secret sauce pal.
1:31:10
Speaker 1: Everybody loves a rock star. That's what it turns out.
1:31:13
Speaker 1: Nick would just be a creepy old man if he
1:31:15
Speaker 1: couldn't start me up exactly exactly, Bob, you must be
1:31:19
Speaker 1: having a great time. What's left? Who's left a profile?
1:31:23
Speaker 2: Yeah?
1:31:23
Speaker 3: I'm working on a really interesting book now, can you
1:31:26
Speaker 3: share it?
1:31:27
Speaker 2: Yeah?
1:31:27
Speaker 3: Sure, It's going to be about John Lennon's second act,
1:31:30
Speaker 3: from the breakup of the Beatles until his tragic death.
1:31:34
Speaker 3: I think he's an interesting person to look at, like
1:31:38
Speaker 3: the Stones, like the Beatles, a lot of writers have
1:31:41
Speaker 3: tried to do it. I think I have a really
1:31:46
Speaker 3: good insight into it, and I believe the family is
1:31:49
Speaker 3: going to allow me to be the first person to
1:31:52
Speaker 3: have access to John's files, his diaries, his journal.
1:32:00
Speaker 1: That was fantastic no one's ever seen, you know. Obviously
1:32:04
Speaker 1: your relationships doing the Beatles book is bearing some fruit.
1:32:10
Speaker 3: I thought they'd never talked to me again. Apparently they
1:32:12
Speaker 3: like it, you know, strange.
1:32:16
Speaker 1: Well, maybe we've come around and people want, you know,
1:32:19
Speaker 1: they want the story told.
1:32:21
Speaker 2: You know, Chuck.
1:32:21
Speaker 3: In nineteen ninety seven, the New York Times sent me
1:32:25
Speaker 3: to Wanton to talk to Paul McCartney to do a profile.
1:32:29
Speaker 3: And while we were talking, I said, there's one crappy
1:32:32
Speaker 3: biography of the Beatles and it's a joke. And he said,
1:32:36
Speaker 3: you know, we gave hundred davies a story that was
1:32:41
Speaker 3: we made up half of it to protect our girlfriends
1:32:44
Speaker 3: and our wives and our family members, and what was
1:32:48
Speaker 3: just entering his fifties. And I was there at the
1:32:51
Speaker 3: right time, and I said, is that the way you
1:32:53
Speaker 3: want to go out? You want to leave that story
1:32:56
Speaker 3: behind you? And so he allowed me to the first person.
1:33:01
Speaker 3: There was a there was kind of a dictum among
1:33:03
Speaker 3: Beatles family and friends that if you talk to the press,
1:33:07
Speaker 3: you were out, you were finished. So for forty years,
1:33:12
Speaker 3: nobody had ever talked to who were in the miates
1:33:15
Speaker 3: of the Beatles, and so I would go there and
1:33:18
Speaker 3: ask them to speak to me and they'd say, well
1:33:20
Speaker 3: we can. I'd say, call Paul and they'd come back
1:33:23
Speaker 3: and say, boy, do we have stories for you? And
1:33:26
Speaker 3: I was just the lucky guy at the right time.
1:33:31
Speaker 1: Well, I uh, there'll be a lot of people interested
1:33:33
Speaker 1: in that one. You know, Lenin is one of the
1:33:36
Speaker 1: amazing what ifs.
1:33:38
Speaker 3: What amazing what if? Yeah, exactly, and I'm hoping people
1:33:43
Speaker 3: are interesting.
1:33:44
Speaker 1: Then let me close with the question I told you
1:33:46
Speaker 1: before we started that I was going to close with,
1:33:48
Speaker 1: Since you're going to work on Lennon, if it's Mick
1:33:53
Speaker 1: Jagger that gets killed and John Lennon lives, are the
1:33:57
Speaker 1: Beatles the Stones and the Stones the Beatles, Chuck.
1:34:02
Speaker 3: It would only depend if John could work with Paul,
1:34:04
Speaker 3: because we had ten years afterwards of John putting his
1:34:09
Speaker 3: own stuff out, and I just I think.
1:34:13
Speaker 1: That I'd like to believe that those live Aid concerts,
1:34:16
Speaker 1: farm maid concerts, right, all that stuff in the eighties,
1:34:20
Speaker 1: there is no way Paul would not have been able
1:34:23
Speaker 1: to talk John or vice ver. They would have done
1:34:26
Speaker 1: something together.
1:34:27
Speaker 3: Perhaps, but I don't know if they would have created
1:34:29
Speaker 3: music together. I think after the White Album they learned
1:34:34
Speaker 3: that they could write their own things and come into
1:34:36
Speaker 3: the studio under the banner of the Beatles, and so
1:34:42
Speaker 3: Paul wasn't there to smooth John's rough edges, and John
1:34:48
Speaker 3: wasn't there to sandpaper Paul's schmaltzy songs, and that's what
1:34:52
Speaker 3: they needed. And I think had they learned how to work,
1:34:55
Speaker 3: if they could continue to work together, yeah, they would
1:34:58
Speaker 3: have endured. They would have been great together. You know,
1:35:00
Speaker 3: It's like Rogers and Hammerstein, and you know, at a
1:35:03
Speaker 3: certain point, you know, it just doesn't happen anymore. Mick
1:35:07
Speaker 3: and Keith, God bless the man they figured out how
1:35:09
Speaker 3: to do this.
1:35:11
Speaker 1: Well, look, you didn't just write a book about a band.
1:35:14
Speaker 1: You also, you know, wrote about the last sixty years
1:35:17
Speaker 1: of American culture. And by the way, it is fascinating
1:35:21
Speaker 1: that American cultures and rock and roll is basically only
1:35:25
Speaker 1: one one actual American had an influence on it, at
1:35:28
Speaker 1: least that you've written about, which is Bob Dylan, that's.
1:35:30
Speaker 2: Right, that's true.
1:35:33
Speaker 3: I mean, you know Springsteen's around, he's pretty great. And
1:35:37
Speaker 3: the Beach Boys and Elvis Els Now.
1:35:40
Speaker 1: I mean, my friend Tony Krnheiser, you know, believes that
1:35:43
Speaker 1: without the Beatles.
1:35:44
Speaker 2: That the the that that the.
1:35:51
Speaker 1: Jeez, I just that Brian Wilson and that it would
1:35:55
Speaker 1: all they would be bigger. Perhaps, And it's not as
1:35:58
Speaker 1: if the Beach Boys aren't big, but that it their
1:36:00
Speaker 1: sound would have been seen as more innovative had it
1:36:03
Speaker 1: not been for the innovative sounds of the Beatles.
1:36:06
Speaker 2: No doubt.
1:36:07
Speaker 3: But we had the Beatles, we had we had the Boys,
1:36:11
Speaker 3: we had Bob Dylan, we had the Stones all at
1:36:14
Speaker 3: one time, and they begat everybody else, The Hollies, the Kinks, yes,
1:36:18
Speaker 3: they did, the Yardbirds. It was when I was growing up.
1:36:22
Speaker 3: It was music every minute and you couldn't get away
1:36:25
Speaker 3: from it. It was fantastic.
1:36:27
Speaker 1: Well, I've always been obsessed with the with the with
1:36:29
Speaker 1: the band family trees, right, the Yardbirds, beget the led
1:36:35
Speaker 1: Zeppelin and the Clapton stuff and all the different all
1:36:38
Speaker 1: the circles that all. How how close it was that
1:36:41
Speaker 1: some of these same bands might have had different members.
1:36:44
Speaker 3: And they all knew each other, and they you know,
1:36:46
Speaker 3: they all socialized, and they they were on triple and
1:36:50
Speaker 3: quadruple bills with each other, and and you know, fed
1:36:54
Speaker 3: each other, and everybody wanted to be better than the
1:36:57
Speaker 3: other guy, and so they worked harder and they gave
1:37:01
Speaker 3: us this incredible let's say, twenty twenty five years of
1:37:07
Speaker 3: I do.
1:37:07
Speaker 1: I feel like you're almost describing Bird versus Magic, or
1:37:11
Speaker 1: or you know, or Wilt versus Bill, or you know
1:37:14
Speaker 1: where the Jordan versus Lebron And yet here they were.
1:37:17
Speaker 1: I mean, what a what a you know, to almost
1:37:19
Speaker 1: put it all together.
1:37:20
Speaker 2: It's right again?
1:37:24
Speaker 1: Right anyway, absolutely, Bob, this was so much fun, and
1:37:28
Speaker 1: thanks for producing these books. I just you know, the
1:37:31
Speaker 1: Stones is one of those I like I said, I
1:37:34
Speaker 1: I feel like I appreciated him later in life sort of.
1:37:39
Speaker 1: You know, I was a led Zeppelin guy before I
1:37:41
Speaker 1: was a Stones guy.
1:37:42
Speaker 2: Oh okay, And.
1:37:44
Speaker 1: So there was this you know idea, well, that's yeah,
1:37:47
Speaker 1: that's radio rock and roll. Led Zeppelin was you know,
1:37:49
Speaker 1: if you were really a rock and roll right, you know,
1:37:51
Speaker 1: that was that was how all these arguments of course. Yeah,
1:37:55
Speaker 1: and yet the older you get, the more you realize
1:37:59
Speaker 1: Stones did something pretty impressive.
1:38:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, they did, and they're still doing it.
1:38:02
Speaker 1: They're killing still are right, right, my friend. I appreciate this.
1:38:06
Speaker 2: My pleasure.
1:38:07
Speaker 1: It was great. It all right. It is time machine.
1:38:20
Speaker 1: Let's see how many of you had an idea of
1:38:23
Speaker 1: which Supreme Court ruling I was going to be riffing
1:38:27
Speaker 1: off of today with our history lesson going back to
1:38:30
Speaker 1: the time machine. We're going back to May seventeenth, nineteen
1:38:34
Speaker 1: fifty four. So there are moments in American history when
1:38:37
Speaker 1: the political system decides something is simply too difficult to
1:38:41
Speaker 1: solve in the political system itself. Maybe it's too explosive,
1:38:46
Speaker 1: maybe it's too entrenched, maybe too politically dangerous, and so
1:38:50
Speaker 1: the issue just sits there, unresolved, until another institution has
1:38:55
Speaker 1: to step in. And that's what happened on May seventeenth,
1:38:58
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty four. Is Brown versus Board of Education wasn't
1:39:01
Speaker 1: just a school desegregation case. It was the moment the
1:39:05
Speaker 1: Supreme Court concluded that the country's legal fiction could no
1:39:10
Speaker 1: longer survive contact with reality. So what's the fiction? To
1:39:17
Speaker 1: understand Brown? You have to go backwards first, back to
1:39:20
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety six plus e the Ferguson Hopefully remember many
1:39:24
Speaker 1: of you remember that in your high school history classes.
1:39:29
Speaker 1: The Supreme Court ruled that ruling that legalized segregation under
1:39:34
Speaker 1: the doctrine of separate but equal, and for nearly sixty years,
1:39:38
Speaker 1: that phrase became the legal foundation for segregation all across
1:39:42
Speaker 1: the South. Separate schools, separate transportation, separate public life. The problem,
1:39:49
Speaker 1: of course, was that separate was almost never equal. Everyone
1:39:54
Speaker 1: knew it, including many of the institutions that were defending,
1:39:57
Speaker 1: and eventually those contradictions became personal and to pick at Kansas,
1:40:02
Speaker 1: a young black schoolgirl named Linda Brown had to travel
1:40:05
Speaker 1: farther in order to attend a segregated school, despite the
1:40:09
Speaker 1: fact that there was a whites only school much closer
1:40:13
Speaker 1: to her home. Her father decides to join this lawsuit
1:40:17
Speaker 1: challenging that very system, and eventually it's the case that
1:40:21
Speaker 1: reaches the Supreme Court. And this raises the obvious question,
1:40:26
Speaker 1: if segregation was so fundamentally unjust, why was it it
1:40:30
Speaker 1: ended through an Act of Congress could have easily been right.
1:40:34
Speaker 1: Why did it have to go to the courts. You know,
1:40:36
Speaker 1: I've made this argument before that sometimes the courts most
1:40:40
Speaker 1: of our most controversial court decisions are because Congress didn't
1:40:44
Speaker 1: have the guts to act, and I think this is
1:40:45
Speaker 1: one of them. But you also had you know, we
1:40:48
Speaker 1: had a broken Our Congress was already broken by the
1:40:51
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties because the same political system that created segregation
1:40:55
Speaker 1: still controlled Congress, especially the Senate. And of course, you know,
1:41:00
Speaker 1: not to get my old hobby horse here, but we
1:41:02
Speaker 1: were now thirty years removed and having put a hard
1:41:05
Speaker 1: cap on the expansion of the House of Representatives. And
1:41:08
Speaker 1: you now probably know why that cap was put on
1:41:11
Speaker 1: there the fear that there was always a fear if
1:41:14
Speaker 1: you kept allowing the House to grow that yeah, there'd
1:41:17
Speaker 1: be fewer and fewer whites with political power. That it
1:41:20
Speaker 1: would political power would become more diversified. But we've not
1:41:25
Speaker 1: done that. And even in the nineteen fifties you saw
1:41:30
Speaker 1: how that was harming us. But Southern Democrats had enormous
1:41:34
Speaker 1: power through the seniority system in Congress. They chaired the
1:41:38
Speaker 1: key committees that might have been able to get legislation through,
1:41:41
Speaker 1: They controlled the legislative calendar, and this blocked all sorts
1:41:46
Speaker 1: of what would have been easy votes had they just
1:41:49
Speaker 1: made it to the floor of Congress. Anti lynching bills,
1:41:52
Speaker 1: voting rights legislation, and it was blocked for decades. So
1:41:56
Speaker 1: the same system being challenged by Brown still had too
1:42:00
Speaker 1: much power inside of Congress to dismantle it itself. So
1:42:04
Speaker 1: that's why organizations felt like the NAACP felt like they
1:42:07
Speaker 1: were stuck pursuing another route. The constitution. By the way,
1:42:12
Speaker 1: it's what the public is doing right now with social media.
1:42:18
Speaker 1: Congress is too bought off to act and do the
1:42:20
Speaker 1: right thing. So now you have to do civil litigation.
1:42:23
Speaker 1: You got to use the courts to make the case
1:42:25
Speaker 1: that they made a defective product. So the courts become
1:42:30
Speaker 1: sort of a last resort. So this is where figures
1:42:35
Speaker 1: like Thurgode Marshall became central. The strategy was not sudden.
1:42:39
Speaker 1: It was actually a methodical strategy that built up to
1:42:42
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty four. It was careful, it was incremental. The
1:42:45
Speaker 1: NAACAP was chipping away at segregation case by case. They
1:42:49
Speaker 1: started with graduate schools and professional schools were proving inequality
1:42:53
Speaker 1: was a lot easier. They understood that that Congress as
1:42:57
Speaker 1: it was made up at the time wouldn't move, so
1:42:59
Speaker 1: they had to try to make the Constitution essentially move itself.
1:43:05
Speaker 1: And eventually that contradiction became too large to sustain. The
1:43:09
Speaker 1: Constitution promised equal protection, hard stop the country operated separate
1:43:15
Speaker 1: systems by race. That wasn't equal protection. At some point
1:43:20
Speaker 1: those two realities were going to collide, and they finally
1:43:23
Speaker 1: did in nineteen fifty four. Now here's the part, though,
1:43:26
Speaker 1: that people often forget. The Supreme Court itself was quite
1:43:29
Speaker 1: nervous about dealing with this question, not about the morality
1:43:33
Speaker 1: of segregation, but about the legitimacy of their own ruling.
1:43:37
Speaker 1: The Chief Justice at the time, Earl Warren, pushed aggressively
1:43:40
Speaker 1: for a unanimous ruling. He knew that five to four
1:43:44
Speaker 1: or even seven to two, if it wasn't unanimous, was
1:43:47
Speaker 1: just going to sit there. This one, especially, this one,
1:43:51
Speaker 1: needed to be unanimous, And boy did he work the
1:43:54
Speaker 1: court hard. He worked the court personally to get there.
1:43:57
Speaker 1: He spent months lobbying reluctant to justices one on one.
1:44:02
Speaker 1: His biggest get was Justice Stanley Reid of Kentucky, who
1:44:05
Speaker 1: was the last major holdout. But Warren understood something profound.
1:44:09
Speaker 1: This decision would only matter if the country believed the
1:44:12
Speaker 1: Court had the authority to make it. In nine nothing
1:44:14
Speaker 1: would give them real authority. The Court wasn't just deciding
1:44:20
Speaker 1: a case. It was trying to preserve its authority while
1:44:23
Speaker 1: overturning decades of its own precedent. Right, if you're going
1:44:26
Speaker 1: to overturn precedent, do it big, not narrowly. And there
1:44:30
Speaker 1: was another pressure point too, that I've talked about quite
1:44:32
Speaker 1: a bit, the Cold War itself. The United States was
1:44:35
Speaker 1: traveling the world talking about democracy, freedom and equality while
1:44:40
Speaker 1: legally defending segregation at home, and the Soviet Union noticed
1:44:45
Speaker 1: constantly Soviet propaganda hammered the United States over segregation. Look,
1:44:51
Speaker 1: I am convinced to this day, without the Cold War
1:44:55
Speaker 1: and without the need to prove that we would live
1:44:58
Speaker 1: by the by the rhetoric that we were throwing out
1:45:03
Speaker 1: there against the Soviets that finally got us to pass
1:45:06
Speaker 1: the Civil Rights Act in nineteen sixty four and the
1:45:08
Speaker 1: Voting Rights Act in nineteen sixty five. I think, without
1:45:12
Speaker 1: the Cold War, never happens something to stew upon. So
1:45:17
Speaker 1: the Cold War very helpful. So on May seventeen, nineteen
1:45:23
Speaker 1: fifty four, the Court rules unanimously separate educational facilities are
1:45:28
Speaker 1: inherently unequal. Period, And in that moment, something fundamental changes,
1:45:34
Speaker 1: not because segregation immediately disappears. It does not, but because
1:45:39
Speaker 1: the highest legal authority in the country can no longer
1:45:41
Speaker 1: defend it. Brown didn't end segregation, It just simply delegitimized it.
1:45:47
Speaker 1: Still took political leaders to end it, still took Congress
1:45:52
Speaker 1: to eventually end it. But we got a complication at first.
1:45:57
Speaker 1: A year later, in what becomes known as Round two,
1:46:01
Speaker 1: the Court orders desegregation to proceed quote with all deliberate speed.
1:46:09
Speaker 1: And that phrase becomes one of the most consequential, if
1:46:12
Speaker 1: not criticized, phrases in Supreme Court history, because it actually
1:46:15
Speaker 1: gives resistance room to maneuver deliberate speed, kind of an
1:46:21
Speaker 1: oxymoron that right. Delay becomes a strategy, defiance becomes procedural
1:46:28
Speaker 1: because Brown happens in nineteen fifty four, but all these
1:46:31
Speaker 1: standoffs at these universities happen after nineteen fifty four, where
1:46:37
Speaker 1: the government has to enforce a Supreme Court ruling. So
1:46:40
Speaker 1: Southern politicians organized massive resistance. School districts stalled, governors resisted,
1:46:47
Speaker 1: some schools shut down entirely rather than having to integrate,
1:46:52
Speaker 1: and even the president at the time, Dwight Eisenhower privately
1:46:55
Speaker 1: was uneasy about the Brown ruling, and he only offered
1:46:58
Speaker 1: lukewarm public support at first, and that mattered because Supreme
1:47:03
Speaker 1: Court rulings don't enforce themselves. Eventually, though, the contradiction reaches
1:47:08
Speaker 1: Little Rock, Arkansas federal troops escorting black students into Central
1:47:13
Speaker 1: High School. The executive branch finally was not lukewarm. They forced.
1:47:22
Speaker 1: They were forced to enforce what the judiciary had already declared.
1:47:27
Speaker 1: The court could announce the constitutional principle making the country
1:47:31
Speaker 1: live by It was something else entirely, and that's why
1:47:34
Speaker 1: it was important for that executive action to take place.
1:47:38
Speaker 1: But here's the backlash that nobody fully saw coming. And
1:47:42
Speaker 1: this is where the story becomes even larger, because Brown
1:47:46
Speaker 1: didn't just reshape civil rights law, it reshaped how Americans
1:47:49
Speaker 1: thought about the Supreme Court itself. The backlash wasn't only
1:47:53
Speaker 1: about schools or race. It was about power. Brown didn't
1:47:57
Speaker 1: just trigger resistance to desegregation, resistance to the idea that
1:48:01
Speaker 1: courts could reorder society. And in many ways this helps
1:48:06
Speaker 1: launch the modern conservative legal movement, but also the modern
1:48:08
Speaker 1: liberal legal movement, where the courts became replaced Congress as
1:48:15
Speaker 1: a place to debate didn't happen overnight. The seeds were
1:48:19
Speaker 1: planted with Brown in nineteen fifty four. Because after Brown,
1:48:23
Speaker 1: the courts increasingly become viewed not simply as legal institutions
1:48:28
Speaker 1: doing technical debates about what's constitutional and what isn't, but
1:48:33
Speaker 1: they become full political actors. And that argument expands through
1:48:39
Speaker 1: the Warren Court School, prayer rulings, reapportionment, criminal procedure, miranda rights,
1:48:45
Speaker 1: eventually Roe v.
1:48:46
Speaker 2: Way.
1:48:46
Speaker 1: It leads to an entire different, more realistic Supreme Court,
1:48:53
Speaker 1: frankly more responsive to the public as it is. And
1:48:58
Speaker 1: here's the irony. Many conservatives who spent decades criticizing that
1:49:01
Speaker 1: judicial activism would later become some of the strongest defenders
1:49:05
Speaker 1: of what is turned into aggressive right wing legislative judicial activism.
1:49:13
Speaker 1: So once the judiciary itself became more aligned with their
1:49:16
Speaker 1: constitutional philosophy, of course did they become advocates of judicial activism.
1:49:20
Speaker 1: And that reveals something a bit deeper about American politics.
1:49:23
Speaker 1: People rarely object to judicial power in the abstract. What
1:49:28
Speaker 1: they object to are the outcomes. Brown solved one constitutional contradiction,
1:49:33
Speaker 1: but it also helped create another. How much power should
1:49:36
Speaker 1: courts have when the political branches refused to act. So
1:49:42
Speaker 1: Brown versus Board of Education didn't solve America's racial divide.
1:49:47
Speaker 1: The ruling was definitive, the acceptance of it was not.
1:49:52
Speaker 1: The Court could strike down segregation and law, but it
1:49:54
Speaker 1: still required presidents to enforce it, Congress to eventually pass
1:49:58
Speaker 1: some laws to protect minority rights, more federal enforcement, and
1:50:03
Speaker 1: eventually public opinion, and that's what finally made the ruling world.
1:50:09
Speaker 1: But Brown still was a massive turning point because it
1:50:11
Speaker 1: was the moment the country's highest legal authority could no
1:50:14
Speaker 1: longer pretend segregation was compatible with our own constitution. And
1:50:20
Speaker 1: in trying to resolve one constitutional crisis, the Supreme Court
1:50:24
Speaker 1: may have helped create another over the role of the
1:50:28
Speaker 1: Court itself, which, guess what we still have not yet resolved.
1:50:34
Speaker 1: There's your history lessons with.
1:50:40
Speaker 3: Ask Chuck.
1:50:43
Speaker 1: First question comes from Bob as Providence, Rhode Island Love Podcast,
1:50:46
Speaker 1: A welcome voice of reason right now. You've mentioned that
1:50:48
Speaker 1: certain Republican strategies could drive higher turnout among Democrats and independence,
1:50:52
Speaker 1: but how much do you worry that the voter suppression
1:50:55
Speaker 1: efforts could blunt the impact? And with concerns about legal
1:50:58
Speaker 1: challenges or attempts to overturn results. Is it reasonable to
1:51:01
Speaker 1: question whether electoral outcomes will reflect that turnout or should
1:51:04
Speaker 1: we still have confidence in the system overall, Bob, I
1:51:07
Speaker 1: understand the concern. And you know, this is where I
1:51:09
Speaker 1: fear that so many people are being constantly fed fears, right,
1:51:16
Speaker 1: fears of what could happen versus what's likely to happen.
1:51:21
Speaker 1: And I know there's a lot of you know, places
1:51:24
Speaker 1: out there that are that just try to grow their
1:51:26
Speaker 1: traffic and influence by preying on fears like this. Right,
1:51:31
Speaker 1: it used to be a hallmark of the right, and
1:51:32
Speaker 1: there's some i'll just call it resistance porn of a
1:51:37
Speaker 1: few well, you know the podcast I'm referring to. Whether
1:51:43
Speaker 1: they attempt to save America or they think that they're
1:51:46
Speaker 1: going to be the bulwark against authoritarianism. I think their
1:51:54
Speaker 1: goals are noble. I think their tactics and the way
1:51:57
Speaker 1: they spin people up, you know, it's it's it's a
1:52:01
Speaker 1: form of sort of of fear, organizing via fear, and
1:52:07
Speaker 1: it can be effective, but you better be honest about
1:52:10
Speaker 1: it because if you sort of oversell it it actually
1:52:14
Speaker 1: you lose more influence over time. Our system is still
1:52:19
Speaker 1: really really convoluted, and that's the safety and security of
1:52:24
Speaker 1: this that's one I am. You know, I there is
1:52:31
Speaker 1: certainly plenty of efforts to try to make early voting harder,
1:52:38
Speaker 1: to try to make identifying if you're a voter harder.
1:52:41
Speaker 1: There's certainly hurdles that are being talked about, but many
1:52:44
Speaker 1: of them have not been erected. They've been threatened as
1:52:48
Speaker 1: to be erected, but they haven't been erected. Number one.
1:52:52
Speaker 1: And I do think those things drive turnout in a
1:52:56
Speaker 1: you know, in a reverse way. So look, I'm not
1:53:02
Speaker 1: I will say this. I do think that we do
1:53:06
Speaker 1: constantly underestimate the ability of some on the right to
1:53:13
Speaker 1: try to try stuff that are undemocratic. There are certainly
1:53:17
Speaker 1: some things that we've seen that you're like, Okay, you know,
1:53:21
Speaker 1: I understand why. You know January sixth alone, you know,
1:53:24
Speaker 1: And it's funny about January six. I think it's radicalized
1:53:27
Speaker 1: a lot of people left and right.
1:53:30
Speaker 2: You know.
1:53:30
Speaker 1: Before January six, I think Democrats did believe that they
1:53:34
Speaker 1: had to figure out how to how to talk to
1:53:36
Speaker 1: the middle better, how to you know, that there was
1:53:38
Speaker 1: this sort of there was a sixty percent majority to
1:53:40
Speaker 1: build here, how do they do it? After January six
1:53:43
Speaker 1: it became well, he has to be stopped, and he's
1:53:47
Speaker 1: going to If he's going to stop at nothing too
1:53:49
Speaker 1: great to get power, then the resistance is to stop
1:53:52
Speaker 1: at nothing to resist him. And again, if you believe
1:53:56
Speaker 1: our system is so weak that Trump can do this,
1:54:00
Speaker 1: then I'm then I could I could be, I could understand,
1:54:05
Speaker 1: I could rationalize the behavior of the left, but I
1:54:10
Speaker 1: believe our system is still stronger than you think it is.
1:54:13
Speaker 1: And you know, twenty twenty proved it. Twenty twenty two
1:54:18
Speaker 1: proved it to me, and in some ways even twenty
1:54:20
Speaker 1: twenty four because twenty twenty four the voters behaved, it
1:54:24
Speaker 1: behaved rather normally. I know there are people who were
1:54:29
Speaker 1: just couldn't believe that it's possible that there were voters
1:54:33
Speaker 1: out there who voted for Biden who thought, boy, this
1:54:35
Speaker 1: didn't go well, I'm going to try that, I'm going
1:54:36
Speaker 1: to go back to Trump. But when you looked at
1:54:41
Speaker 1: people's lived experiences, it made perfect sense. For those that
1:54:44
Speaker 1: have been who sort of view their vote a bit
1:54:48
Speaker 1: more transactionally, they're not viewing this through an ideological leans,
1:54:52
Speaker 1: you know, And that's that's always been an issue with
1:54:54
Speaker 1: I think both parties struggle to realize it. These these
1:54:57
Speaker 1: swing voters, they care about a couple of specific issues,
1:55:02
Speaker 1: but they're very mainstream issues. And you know which which
1:55:05
Speaker 1: party is going to worry about the average mainstream person
1:55:10
Speaker 1: versus which party is more worried about protecting some minority
1:55:15
Speaker 1: faction of their own party. And I do certainly think
1:55:20
Speaker 1: January sixth radicalized everybody under Again, Understandably, I'm not going
1:55:24
Speaker 1: to sit here and say it was not without it,
1:55:27
Speaker 1: it wasn't warranted, but I think it has made folks
1:55:30
Speaker 1: assume the worst is more possible than I think it
1:55:33
Speaker 1: actually is. So I'm pretty confident in this. I really am.
1:55:39
Speaker 1: There isn't you know. Look, they can draw different maps.
1:55:43
Speaker 1: Now the question is does the does the Democrats respond
1:55:49
Speaker 1: with a with a with with sort of a reality
1:55:51
Speaker 1: based campaign. Like again, if I were the Democratic Party,
1:55:55
Speaker 1: I'd be going hard in the Southern States. I wouldn't retreat.
1:56:00
Speaker 1: I'd be going hard to go win some state wide
1:56:02
Speaker 1: elections because they're more winnable than you think. But you
1:56:05
Speaker 1: got to do some investment in that. But in some
1:56:08
Speaker 1: ways the party has been so invested in just building
1:56:11
Speaker 1: up its own ideological floodwall that it hasn't thought about
1:56:15
Speaker 1: how it expands itself, how does it become a party
1:56:18
Speaker 1: of addition? Again, So I'm I am now everything that
1:56:26
Speaker 1: you're concerned about. If if everything is within if the
1:56:31
Speaker 1: results are super close, right and you know you're talking
1:56:35
Speaker 1: Democrats by a couple of seats, then yeah, there are
1:56:39
Speaker 1: is a lot of chickenery that can happen if the
1:56:41
Speaker 1: result is super close. The result isn't that close. This
1:56:45
Speaker 1: chickenery is just not It isn't going to go anywhere.
1:56:50
Speaker 1: So I'm probably eighty five percent trying to tell you
1:56:56
Speaker 1: you have nothing to worry about, but you shouldn't ignore
1:57:00
Speaker 1: nor that fifteen percent in my own voice that is saying,
1:57:04
Speaker 1: your concerns aren't I don't think you're off your rocker
1:57:10
Speaker 1: with your concerns. I don't think it's as acute in
1:57:13
Speaker 1: the moment as it's been presented by some Next question
1:57:19
Speaker 1: comes from hillmar Mahelde. I hope I have that grt.
1:57:22
Speaker 1: He's a professor of political science, Western Norway University of
1:57:26
Speaker 1: Applied Sciences. All right, so here's the question. What if
1:57:29
Speaker 1: Trump never becomes a traditional lame duct. I tend to
1:57:31
Speaker 1: view his influence through Max Weber's idea of charismatic authority,
1:57:35
Speaker 1: suggesting he could maintain a stronghold over the GOP and
1:57:37
Speaker 1: its voters regardless of election outcomes or political setbacks.
1:57:40
Speaker 2: Do you see his.
1:57:41
Speaker 1: Influence enduring in that way even beyond his time in office?
1:57:44
Speaker 1: Best wishes? Hmm. I guess if anybody could, it's him.
1:57:50
Speaker 1: He does seem to have a charismatic I love this
1:57:56
Speaker 1: phrase you have here, charismatic authority that you're borrowing. There's
1:57:59
Speaker 1: something to that that's different, And there's certainly like certain
1:58:04
Speaker 1: presidents have more sway post office than I mean. Barack
1:58:10
Speaker 1: Obama still has a lot of sway, not a little.
1:58:14
Speaker 1: The Bushes have less so sway right, not a little.
1:58:17
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan had a certain amount of sway. Still, Bill
1:58:20
Speaker 1: Clinton had a certain amount of sway until Barack Obama
1:58:24
Speaker 1: came along, and even then he still had some sway
1:58:26
Speaker 1: with some voters all the way through twenty twelve. So
1:58:34
Speaker 1: I still think that Donald Trump needs his handpicked successor
1:58:42
Speaker 1: to win for him to have this sort of charismatic
1:58:44
Speaker 1: authority you're talking about and avoiding lame duck status. And
1:58:50
Speaker 1: I think it matters even more if it's somebody that
1:58:52
Speaker 1: shares his last name. So that's the scenario that I
1:58:57
Speaker 1: think is like, what's the scenario where he still has
1:59:01
Speaker 1: that kind of influence. I think if it's somebody with
1:59:03
Speaker 1: his last name gets elected. But I'm pretty skeptical that
1:59:07
Speaker 1: that's going to happen. I mean it's I mean, how
1:59:10
Speaker 1: much worse do his poll numbers have to get? You know,
1:59:13
Speaker 1: we look, there's no doubt tactically Democrats had a bad
1:59:17
Speaker 1: week last week. But as far as the big picture,
1:59:21
Speaker 1: I mean Donald Trump with the ridiculous ballroom thing and
1:59:25
Speaker 1: all of this stuff, I mean, he is literally making
1:59:28
Speaker 1: it harder and harder. I mean Republicans they couldn't draw
1:59:31
Speaker 1: enough safe maps to protect them from losing the House.
1:59:35
Speaker 1: So you know it is Trump is making their life
1:59:38
Speaker 1: that miserable. And I guess I would the reason I
1:59:44
Speaker 1: don't think this is going to be the case that
1:59:48
Speaker 1: he sort of avoids being a lame duck. I go
1:59:51
Speaker 1: back to a poll number I highlighted a couple episodes
1:59:53
Speaker 1: ago where I was telling you how only ten percent
1:59:58
Speaker 1: of the public like the give him naming stuff after himself.
2:00:01
Speaker 1: I think if he had this charismatic authority that you're
2:00:04
Speaker 1: talking about, there are more people inside the Republican Party
2:00:08
Speaker 1: would be excited about naming more stuff after him, but
2:00:12
Speaker 1: nobody wants to do this. They sort of do it
2:00:15
Speaker 1: if they have to, but they're not thrilled with it.
2:00:18
Speaker 1: And it still tells me that a bigger chunk of
2:00:22
Speaker 1: Trump's supporters don't necessarily like Trump the individual. What they
2:00:28
Speaker 1: like is that Trump annoys the left, and when he's
2:00:32
Speaker 1: annoying the left, they like him more than when he's
2:00:39
Speaker 1: doing the reflected glory business. And that, you know, And
2:00:44
Speaker 1: what gave me that line, what makes me believe that
2:00:48
Speaker 1: was how little support there was for him naming stuff
2:00:51
Speaker 1: after himself. So I don't think they love Trump. I
2:00:57
Speaker 1: think they love that Trump annoys the left and that
2:01:01
Speaker 1: that's the bigger animating voice. So that would be my
2:01:06
Speaker 1: So for a small chunk, he will definitely be somebody
2:01:10
Speaker 1: that they follow through and through, but I don't know
2:01:13
Speaker 1: if it allows them to hold it longer. Do you
2:01:16
Speaker 1: know what I'm always I'm here in some ways. I
2:01:22
Speaker 1: love the idea. I always thought there's no political scientists
2:01:25
Speaker 1: that explained America better than somebody who was not an American,
2:01:29
Speaker 1: and it was to Toko. So I take what you're
2:01:35
Speaker 1: observing very very seriously, and I hope to hear from
2:01:38
Speaker 1: you some more, and I'd love to hear more of
2:01:41
Speaker 1: your thoughts and observations here in the mailbag. Next question
2:01:45
Speaker 1: comes from Mark M in Silver Spring, Maryland. An. He writes, hey,
2:01:49
Speaker 1: devoted listener, first time questioner. With increasing redistricting and more
2:01:53
Speaker 1: one party dominant states, is there any viability to candid
2:01:56
Speaker 1: it's effectively running in the dominant parties primary, even if
2:01:59
Speaker 1: their views aligned more with the opposition, since that's often
2:02:02
Speaker 1: the only competitive race. Could that strategy produce more moderate
2:02:05
Speaker 1: candidates and heavily gerrymandered states or does it run into
2:02:08
Speaker 1: practical and political limits? Thanks, It's an interesting question. I
2:02:12
Speaker 1: would counter that what you want to have as you
2:02:15
Speaker 1: find you go back to finding candidates that fit the state, right,
2:02:19
Speaker 1: you know, politics of horors of vacuum. It's a phrase
2:02:22
Speaker 1: that I believe you know, does say a lot. It's
2:02:26
Speaker 1: not just a cliche or a mantra. It does say
2:02:29
Speaker 1: a lot. Take the state of Texas. It became a
2:02:32
Speaker 1: one party state and yet one party couldn't hold and
2:02:35
Speaker 1: it sort of was divided amongst itself, and it's provided
2:02:38
Speaker 1: the openings for either moderates to win primaries at times
2:02:43
Speaker 1: moderate leadership in the state house because enough moderates one generals.
2:02:47
Speaker 1: We've seen it in Kansas right where he is. Essentially
2:02:51
Speaker 1: was you know the first you know, the first one
2:02:53
Speaker 1: basically former Republicans becoming Democrats. So I do believe that.
2:02:58
Speaker 1: I think, you know, there's always every state as a
2:03:02
Speaker 1: folk crown, Okay, that would divide the state into a
2:03:06
Speaker 1: fifty to fifty place. Now you could look at it.
2:03:10
Speaker 1: Idaho isn't going to be fifty to fifty based on
2:03:12
Speaker 1: this definition of the Democratic Party versus this definition of
2:03:15
Speaker 1: the Republican Party. But if you eliminated parties, I could
2:03:19
Speaker 1: find you the fifty percent line, right, and it probably
2:03:22
Speaker 1: is those that are that are it's you know, those
2:03:26
Speaker 1: that sort of are pro government and those that are
2:03:29
Speaker 1: anti government. That's probably more of a dividing line there
2:03:35
Speaker 1: in a place like Idaho that's definitely got a group
2:03:37
Speaker 1: of base voters who are sort of libertarian conservatives in
2:03:43
Speaker 1: that sense. So, you know, this is why being a
2:03:48
Speaker 1: you know, when the party got nationalized, both parties got
2:03:50
Speaker 1: so nationalized, and our politics got nationalized, it really prevented
2:03:54
Speaker 1: the opportunity to be sort of a Southern Democrat, a
2:03:57
Speaker 1: New England Republican, a westernative, a Midwestern populist right. That
2:04:02
Speaker 1: is what the politics I grew up with in the
2:04:04
Speaker 1: seventies and eighties and even a little bit into the nineties,
2:04:06
Speaker 1: where there were still these different flavors within the parties,
2:04:09
Speaker 1: and the parties celebrated it because it kind of knew
2:04:12
Speaker 1: there were regional differences, right, there's regional differences and what
2:04:15
Speaker 1: food we like. You know, you have people in the
2:04:18
Speaker 1: North who think it's good to put sugar on grits.
2:04:20
Speaker 1: God bless you, right, but you guys are insane, all right,
2:04:23
Speaker 1: and that's a crazy thing to do, right.
2:04:25
Speaker 2: You know.
2:04:26
Speaker 1: If you don't see that grits are more savory treat
2:04:29
Speaker 1: than a sweet treat, that's your business. But the point
2:04:33
Speaker 1: is we do have differences among ourselves, even among the
2:04:36
Speaker 1: grit eating world, right, So it's a I look at this,
2:04:43
Speaker 1: and there's always an opportunity if you're if as a
2:04:47
Speaker 1: party or there's an independent alternative, right, And I think
2:04:50
Speaker 1: this is where if I were the Forward Party, for instance,
2:04:53
Speaker 1: who's trying to get traction as sort of an alternative
2:04:55
Speaker 1: major party here, I'd start going to these one party
2:04:59
Speaker 1: states and finding candidates who are not burdened by the
2:05:03
Speaker 1: national brand of the other of the minority party in
2:05:06
Speaker 1: that state. Right, whether you're you know, the Republican brand
2:05:09
Speaker 1: is just totally you know, toxic in the Massachusetts and
2:05:12
Speaker 1: the Democratic brand is totally toxic in South Dakota.
2:05:16
Speaker 2: You know. So it is.
2:05:20
Speaker 1: You know, you could be an alternative of the party
2:05:22
Speaker 1: in power and not have to identify yourself with the
2:05:24
Speaker 1: other national party.
2:05:25
Speaker 2: Right.
2:05:26
Speaker 1: So I think that's there's there's opportunity there, there's always
2:05:31
Speaker 1: you know, this is what frustrates me about politics the
2:05:34
Speaker 1: way it's practiced today. It's assuming that voters can't be
2:05:40
Speaker 1: persuaded that there isn't an argument to be made that
2:05:44
Speaker 1: can get you fifty percent plus one. There's always an
2:05:47
Speaker 1: argument to be made. Now, the question is does it
2:05:49
Speaker 1: fit principally within you know, the a political party you
2:05:53
Speaker 1: may choose to join. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe that's why
2:05:55
Speaker 1: you have to run as an independent, you know, or
2:06:00
Speaker 1: look alternatively, you may see just that. And in fact,
2:06:05
Speaker 1: in tech to go back to my Texas story here
2:06:07
Speaker 1: Mark in the early odds as it was clear the
2:06:10
Speaker 1: Democratic Party, and I think it's in a slightly better
2:06:13
Speaker 1: place today, believe it or not in Texas than it
2:06:15
Speaker 1: was fifteen years ago. But if you remember two thousand
2:06:19
Speaker 1: and six governor's race is one of my favorite governor's
2:06:21
Speaker 1: races to focus on because the trial lawyers, who were
2:06:24
Speaker 1: a Democratic donor group for decades and still are in
2:06:28
Speaker 1: many many places, decided that hey, they still wanted influence
2:06:34
Speaker 1: in the Texas government. So they found they helped fund
2:06:38
Speaker 1: moderate Republicans. So I do think that that's what you
2:06:41
Speaker 1: know again, politics of worts a vacuum, there will always
2:06:45
Speaker 1: be somebody filling the gaps. Right, the one party rule
2:06:48
Speaker 1: in California has sort of divided the Democratic Party right
2:06:52
Speaker 1: between sort of the progressives and the sort of pro
2:06:55
Speaker 1: business wing of the party. They're culturally united there, but
2:07:00
Speaker 1: they but they have different views of how of how
2:07:04
Speaker 1: of how to manage the economy and how big the
2:07:06
Speaker 1: social safety that should be. I don't think the Republican
2:07:10
Speaker 1: Party is mature enough or diverse enough to exploit that,
2:07:16
Speaker 1: but an independent could exploit it, right. But I think
2:07:19
Speaker 1: it explains why there's been such a why it feels
2:07:23
Speaker 1: like something's missing. I'm I do think somebody made a mistake,
2:07:28
Speaker 1: not trying to run as an independent. And in fact,
2:07:31
Speaker 1: I remember having a conversation with Steve Hilton two years
2:07:33
Speaker 1: ago and I said, why are you run as a Republican? Said,
2:07:35
Speaker 1: you're just always good. You're going to run up against it.
2:07:38
Speaker 1: I said, you'll only have some credibility if you run
2:07:40
Speaker 1: as an independent. And I think ultimately he's going to
2:07:43
Speaker 1: find that out the hard way, but we'll see. And
2:07:47
Speaker 1: I think maybe Matt Mayhon, if he was there, you
2:07:51
Speaker 1: weren't that the move was to run as an I,
2:07:54
Speaker 1: not as a D and I think that that was
2:07:56
Speaker 1: the mistake and that could be sort of how this
2:07:59
Speaker 1: works go forward. You know, I don't care where you live.
2:08:03
Speaker 1: Voters always want a choice. It's up to you to
2:08:06
Speaker 1: get to present one. It's up to the up the candidates,
2:08:10
Speaker 1: up to parties. Jeff b Right, Hey, regular listener here.
2:08:21
Speaker 1: I really value your perspective and the thoughtfulness you bring
2:08:23
Speaker 1: to the show. Your recent comment about baby boomers caught
2:08:25
Speaker 1: my attention, and as a boomer, while I understand the
2:08:27
Speaker 1: broader point, maybe reflecting my own experience working hard, contributing
2:08:30
Speaker 1: to social security, and planning for retirement. Given the challenges
2:08:33
Speaker 1: facing programs like social Security, and the national debt. What
2:08:35
Speaker 1: do you think of the most realistic fair solutions moving
2:08:37
Speaker 1: forward for both current retirees and future generations. Sincerely, Jeff B.
2:08:42
Speaker 2: So.
2:08:43
Speaker 1: I know I give boomers a hard time because it
2:08:45
Speaker 1: does feel like that boomers have sort of they have
2:08:49
Speaker 1: been catered to, right. The politics of the social safety
2:08:53
Speaker 1: net expansion in many ways has been about sort of
2:08:56
Speaker 1: catering to this huge generation and et cetera. And then
2:09:00
Speaker 1: of course the leadership never went away. The leadership hung
2:09:03
Speaker 1: on forever. So there's also that aspect of things. So, yes,
2:09:07
Speaker 1: you know, we're all and a sort of you know,
2:09:11
Speaker 1: one of the I think one of the one of
2:09:14
Speaker 1: the more intriguing aspects of about our politics is something
2:09:18
Speaker 1: that I brought up in the time machine today, Brown
2:09:19
Speaker 1: versus Board. You know, there's a you know, we are
2:09:23
Speaker 1: still a country where there are people alive who live
2:09:27
Speaker 1: during segregation. And I am very curious if our politics change.
2:09:31
Speaker 1: What are how our politics will change when when there
2:09:34
Speaker 1: is no more living memories of segregation. Just something that
2:09:37
Speaker 1: I've thought about. I'm not wishing for the end of voting,
2:09:41
Speaker 1: and I don't want that to come across as some
2:09:43
Speaker 1: sort of death to boomers or anything like that. In fact,
2:09:47
Speaker 1: I do think boomers are going to be the one
2:09:49
Speaker 1: that lead the way to death with dignity for what
2:09:53
Speaker 1: it's worth on that. On that front, but you know,
2:09:58
Speaker 1: on the social security thing, there's sort of too easy solutions.
2:10:03
Speaker 1: And this is what's frustrating, right, it's it's and it's
2:10:06
Speaker 1: easy solutions on medicare, right, you let people buy in
2:10:09
Speaker 1: early to medicare. First of all, the influx of of
2:10:14
Speaker 1: younger people will help make the system a little bit cheaper. Uh.
2:10:19
Speaker 1: Influx of that cash will help the system as well,
2:10:23
Speaker 1: So I think you do that. The second thing is
2:10:28
Speaker 1: some means testing combined with getting rid of the Social
2:10:33
Speaker 1: Security tax donut hole, where you know that you know it,
2:10:37
Speaker 1: whether you're you know that your contributions to social Security
2:10:41
Speaker 1: should grow with your income and there shouldn't shouldn't be capped,
2:10:48
Speaker 1: and it's obvious you get rid of the donut hole. Uh,
2:10:51
Speaker 1: and you and you do it, and you can maybe
2:10:53
Speaker 1: change the rate of taxation on that if if you
2:10:56
Speaker 1: want to sort of make it more gradual over time,
2:10:58
Speaker 1: but we have that RULs to do it. It's the
2:11:01
Speaker 1: fairest solution, right, which is where everybody is paying their
2:11:05
Speaker 1: fair share. Everybody contributes to Social Security with the same
2:11:09
Speaker 1: percentage of their income, regardless of how much or little
2:11:11
Speaker 1: they make, and then you qualify for a certain amount
2:11:16
Speaker 1: of payout depending you know, you've got your max, you've
2:11:18
Speaker 1: got your metal. You know it is. I don't think
2:11:21
Speaker 1: that this is very hard. You just have to agree
2:11:24
Speaker 1: to it. And yeah, there'll be some means testing and
2:11:28
Speaker 1: so does that mean you would get nothing, No, it
2:11:29
Speaker 1: doesn't mean you would get nothing. But maybe you know,
2:11:32
Speaker 1: if you if you have a certain amount of money,
2:11:34
Speaker 1: then you know, you you you you get more of
2:11:38
Speaker 1: the of the minimum or something like that. But there
2:11:43
Speaker 1: are ways to do this. I've you know, for what
2:11:46
Speaker 1: it's worth. I expect my generation gen X to be
2:11:49
Speaker 1: the first one to see benefits cut where we're only
2:11:52
Speaker 1: getting two thirds of benefits because the fear of tax,
2:11:56
Speaker 1: of raising taxes, and that's yes, the tax you know,
2:11:59
Speaker 1: you be richer. People would have to contribute more to
2:12:02
Speaker 1: Social Security instead of sort of you know, if you
2:12:04
Speaker 1: make a certain amount of money. Some people only contribute
2:12:06
Speaker 1: to social Security with you know, the first essentially their
2:12:10
Speaker 1: first month of earnings for the calendar year, and then
2:12:14
Speaker 1: they are done making their contributions to social security. So
2:12:18
Speaker 1: again it you know, which is why I would be
2:12:22
Speaker 1: which is but it's also the same reason why I
2:12:24
Speaker 1: don't think you should do these targeted wealth taxes and
2:12:28
Speaker 1: things like this, because if you just got rid of
2:12:30
Speaker 1: these protective loopholes, you'd have the tax structure, the progressive
2:12:37
Speaker 1: tax structure. And progressive here is not an ideological term.
2:12:40
Speaker 1: It's sort of the idea that that sort of you know,
2:12:44
Speaker 1: you keep the percentages flat, you know, you know, you
2:12:48
Speaker 1: make the you sort of raise you know, the less
2:12:52
Speaker 1: you make, the less the less your tax rate is.
2:12:54
Speaker 1: The more you make, slightly higher your tax rate is.
2:13:00
Speaker 1: But it's how we've it's about the fairest system of
2:13:02
Speaker 1: taxation as we could come up with, and then we've
2:13:05
Speaker 1: made the system more unfair because we've created these different
2:13:08
Speaker 1: loopholes and carve outs, and you know, people somehow wealth
2:13:13
Speaker 1: growth isn't salary, so then they hide the taxes and
2:13:16
Speaker 1: things like this. You know, there's a way to simplify
2:13:20
Speaker 1: our progressive tax code, not a flat tax. I think
2:13:24
Speaker 1: that that also, you know, harms the poor and benefits
2:13:27
Speaker 1: the wealthiest taxpayers. But you know, to me, the answers
2:13:32
Speaker 1: are there. They're pretty simple, you just need the political
2:13:35
Speaker 1: will to do it. Number five, fifth question today Jeremy
2:13:45
Speaker 1: in Japan, And this is his second question that he's
2:13:49
Speaker 1: gotten into the podcast. So three more Jeremy, what do
2:13:53
Speaker 1: you see as the political future for Nicki Haley and
2:13:56
Speaker 1: rondas Ants after their twenty twenty four runs. Does time
2:13:58
Speaker 1: improve their standing for twenty two or was too much
2:14:01
Speaker 1: damage done? And if DeSantis doesn't run again, what path
2:14:03
Speaker 1: do you think his career takes? Also at this point,
2:14:05
Speaker 1: who would you consider a true dark horse candidate in
2:14:07
Speaker 1: each party for twenty twenty eight Jeremy in Japan. Well, look,
2:14:13
Speaker 1: I don't think I think I think Nicki Haley could.
2:14:23
Speaker 1: If there's a full fledged rejection of Trump and trump Ism,
2:14:27
Speaker 1: there might be room for Nicki Haley.
2:14:29
Speaker 2: But I.
2:14:31
Speaker 1: It may be that she's not the vehicle, but that
2:14:34
Speaker 1: her wing of the party can become ascendant again right
2:14:38
Speaker 1: less individually her. But if you told me in a
2:14:41
Speaker 1: decade she was the vice president for a successful non
2:14:45
Speaker 1: Trump Republican that wouldn't surprise me either. Right that she is,
2:14:49
Speaker 1: you know, sort of assumed some sort of senior status
2:14:53
Speaker 1: and that she ages well, she ages better as the
2:14:58
Speaker 1: assuming the Republican Party. Those through this sort of I
2:15:04
Speaker 1: think many I don't want to speak for others. I
2:15:07
Speaker 1: believe that there is going to be a Trump reckoning
2:15:10
Speaker 1: in the Republican Party, and that the reckoning will eventually
2:15:16
Speaker 1: benefit the Niki Halees and the Mike Pences in some form.
2:15:19
Speaker 1: But it may benefit their wing of the party more
2:15:21
Speaker 1: than them individually. But I'm a believer that a Trump
2:15:25
Speaker 1: reckoning is going to come. I don't know if it
2:15:27
Speaker 1: comes in two years, four years, or eight years, but
2:15:30
Speaker 1: I think it's coming. Desanta says, I don't think any
2:15:34
Speaker 1: future in this version of the Republican Party.
2:15:37
Speaker 3: Now.
2:15:37
Speaker 1: He's younger, he's a little bit younger than I am.
2:15:40
Speaker 1: He's still I think. I don't think he's turned fifty yet,
2:15:43
Speaker 1: So you know, I think the most likely thing DeSantis
2:15:46
Speaker 1: does is run for statewide office in Florida again in
2:15:49
Speaker 1: the next four to eight years. And you know, I
2:15:56
Speaker 1: don't think I'd be shocked if Up gives him a job.
2:16:01
Speaker 1: There are people in Trump's orbit who have pledged that
2:16:05
Speaker 1: they will they will do whatever it takes to prevent
2:16:08
Speaker 1: rond DeSantis from ever getting back into Trump's good graces.
2:16:12
Speaker 1: It's very personal.
2:16:14
Speaker 2: You know.
2:16:14
Speaker 1: Remember there was a big Florida divide and essentially the
2:16:16
Speaker 1: people that got Ron DeSantis elected resuscitated Donald Trump. And
2:16:21
Speaker 1: I think there's if as long as there they've got
2:16:23
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's here. Ron de Santis is going nowhere in
2:16:26
Speaker 1: this party for now, but his ambition isn't over. There's
2:16:30
Speaker 1: no doubt about it. I mean, look, if Casey DeSantis
2:16:33
Speaker 1: could could compete successfully, she'd already be running for governor.
2:16:38
Speaker 1: But they see the riding on the wall and they
2:16:39
Speaker 1: realize that Donald Trump will you know that the people
2:16:42
Speaker 1: that work for Trump, that used to work for him,
2:16:44
Speaker 1: will go to the end. We'll spare no expense to
2:16:47
Speaker 1: make sure that DeSantis has failed here, which is why
2:16:50
Speaker 1: I think he's been smartly kind of staying out. It's
2:16:54
Speaker 1: sort of letting it go. He lost control of the
2:16:56
Speaker 1: Florida Republican Party. It is not his, but he is
2:17:02
Speaker 1: not old, and so he could easily I could easily
2:17:11
Speaker 1: see him. You know, let's say Democrats pull an upset
2:17:16
Speaker 1: in a Senate seat in the next cycle or two,
2:17:20
Speaker 1: that he would be a Republican that would choose to
2:17:22
Speaker 1: run to try to knock off that Democratic incumbent or
2:17:25
Speaker 1: if there's an open seat, he might jump in. But
2:17:30
Speaker 1: I think that's his most realistic future. I mean, let's
2:17:35
Speaker 1: be honest, he's just not charismatic enough to become president, right,
2:17:39
Speaker 1: he It's just that's what's missing, right, And if he
2:17:46
Speaker 1: had it, he would have been good enough to stop Trump.
2:17:49
Speaker 1: But he didn't have it. And you know, I think
2:17:56
Speaker 1: he almost didn't win the governorship because he didn't have
2:17:58
Speaker 1: it back in twenty eight, team, right, he almost lost
2:18:01
Speaker 1: to the mayor of Tallahaffen because of this sort of
2:18:05
Speaker 1: charismatic awkwardness that he has. He just does and I
2:18:09
Speaker 1: just that, you know, I just sort of see that.
2:18:12
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean he accepts the premise that he doesn't
2:18:16
Speaker 1: have the personality to winning enough, or a charismatic enough
2:18:19
Speaker 1: personality to win, you know, to win the presidency or
2:18:23
Speaker 1: something like that. But you know, I always knew his
2:18:25
Speaker 1: own campaign knew he didn't have the charisma because most
2:18:29
Speaker 1: of his reelection ads in twenty two had somebody else
2:18:31
Speaker 1: voicing them over. It was never him. Right, He is
2:18:35
Speaker 1: personally not as well liked, even if his go some
2:18:40
Speaker 1: of the decisions he made voters approved of. So that's
2:18:45
Speaker 1: why I'm a little bit more skeptical on him, but
2:18:47
Speaker 1: like I go back, he's young, and maybe Casey Desanti's
2:18:50
Speaker 1: runs first statewide office, maybe it's a Senate seat. Maybe
2:18:54
Speaker 1: she runs for a congressional seat in a couple of years,
2:18:57
Speaker 1: starts working her way up that way as well. I
2:18:59
Speaker 1: think that it's quite possible. But boy, as long as
2:19:04
Speaker 1: the people that are around Trump have a say in
2:19:06
Speaker 1: the Republican Party, there's a bunch of people who have
2:19:08
Speaker 1: got such grudges against DeSantis that they will do whatever
2:19:10
Speaker 1: it takes. And if you don't believe me, just look
2:19:13
Speaker 1: at the state of Florida's lineup this cycle, right, DeSantis
2:19:17
Speaker 1: wanted to have a lot more sway on it, and
2:19:19
Speaker 1: essentially he is. He's a bit of a guy, no
2:19:24
Speaker 1: a governor in name only when it comes to influence
2:19:26
Speaker 1: over his own party. All right, last question, This one
2:19:34
Speaker 1: comes from rayd Las Vegas, Nevada, a long time listener,
2:19:36
Speaker 1: first time question, and he hopes to be working towards
2:19:39
Speaker 1: that five timer status. I'm curious, towards the end of
2:19:42
Speaker 1: a term, could there ever be a scenario where Democrats
2:19:44
Speaker 1: and some Republicans align on impeachment to limit potential use
2:19:46
Speaker 1: of pardons and if someone like Vance were in the
2:19:49
Speaker 1: picture politically, but that changed the calculus at all from
2:19:52
Speaker 1: a sad New York Jets fan. So there's some to this.
2:20:01
Speaker 1: It was a and I'm going to have Lamar Alexander
2:20:04
Speaker 1: for his memoir on before he got sworn into the
2:20:08
Speaker 1: governorship early in Tennessee because literally the outgoing governor was
2:20:11
Speaker 1: selling pardons and everybody knew it, and so a democratic
2:20:14
Speaker 1: legislature worked essentially with Republicans to hurry up and impeach
2:20:19
Speaker 1: and get rid of the governor essentially to to stop
2:20:22
Speaker 1: the sale of pardons. So there's there's precedent sort of historically,
2:20:31
Speaker 1: I go to, like I said, Tennessee, I think it
2:20:33
Speaker 1: was in seventy five, seventy after the seventy four midterms
2:20:37
Speaker 1: or after the seventy eight midterms. I think it was
2:20:41
Speaker 1: after the seventy eight mid terms. So that would be
2:20:45
Speaker 1: one precedent i'd point to in the scenario you literally
2:20:49
Speaker 1: you point to there. You know, I don't want to
2:20:56
Speaker 1: rule it out. You know, if Donald Trump's approval rating
2:20:59
Speaker 1: is in the twenty towards the end of twenty eight
2:21:03
Speaker 1: and people thought he were selling pardons and his brand
2:21:08
Speaker 1: had become so toxic that Republicans wanted to distance themselves anyway.
2:21:12
Speaker 1: I mean, look, I do think the constitutional amendment that's
2:21:16
Speaker 1: circulating in Congress right now that has at least one
2:21:18
Speaker 1: Republican co sponsor in Don Bacon, which would give a
2:21:21
Speaker 1: nullification process to Congress on presidential pardons, is sort of
2:21:28
Speaker 1: a way to test to find out which Republicans are
2:21:30
Speaker 1: willing to go on the record against Trump. But I
2:21:34
Speaker 1: think it's a safe way to do it. And if
2:21:36
Speaker 1: I were a Republican looking to tiptoe away from Trump
2:21:42
Speaker 1: co sponsoring that pardon amendment, that constitutional amendment to limit
2:21:47
Speaker 1: for a potential nullification of presidential pardons would be some
2:21:50
Speaker 1: might support. So if it's incredibly egregious, I wouldn't rule
2:21:59
Speaker 1: anything out, and frankly it might. You know, there's you know,
2:22:08
Speaker 1: it's funny the scenario lay out. It's almost like, man,
2:22:10
Speaker 1: I hope he tries to to to do some just
2:22:13
Speaker 1: terrible pardons that just make people so sick that you
2:22:17
Speaker 1: do get this bipartisan opposition, right. I mean, in some
2:22:20
Speaker 1: ways you have to see somebody attempt some of the
2:22:22
Speaker 1: worst things blatantly, you know, literally robbing you in plain
2:22:26
Speaker 1: sight that that maybe it can shake shake some good
2:22:32
Speaker 1: Republicans out of their out of their zombie state of Trump,
2:22:37
Speaker 1: of of of Trumps sycopancy, because we got to reform
2:22:43
Speaker 1: that part in power. It's pretty clear, and it so
2:22:47
Speaker 1: in someone. There's a there's a dark part of me
2:22:50
Speaker 1: that says, boy, you know, well Trump, how brazen will
2:22:54
Speaker 1: he get? And could it actually get so brazen that
2:22:56
Speaker 1: it would? I think right now partnering Glayne Maxwell might
2:23:03
Speaker 1: inspire some Republicans to join Democrats on this idea. But
2:23:08
Speaker 1: right now it's about the only only pardon I could
2:23:11
Speaker 1: think of that he may give that could spark that
2:23:14
Speaker 1: kind of of outrage. All right, that does it for
2:23:19
Speaker 1: questions for this episode, nothing too much on the sports world.
2:23:25
Speaker 1: I will give you a little bit of color from
2:23:29
Speaker 1: my daughter's graduation. Greg Olsen, a former University of Miami
2:23:33
Speaker 1: tight end, first round draft pick and currently a Fox
2:23:36
Speaker 1: Sports broadcaster, was her commencement speaker. And look, I didn't
2:23:42
Speaker 1: know what to expect. I knew a little bit about
2:23:43
Speaker 1: his story and the struggles that he had with maybe
2:23:46
Speaker 1: he just huge medical issues with his with a with
2:23:50
Speaker 1: a young child when they were born. All these heart
2:23:53
Speaker 1: surgeries and his brother passed away from brain cancer, and
2:23:59
Speaker 1: so he really did I think he did a good job.
2:24:03
Speaker 1: He did a good job sort of showcasing the importance
2:24:06
Speaker 1: of life, no matter, no matter, you know, as you're
2:24:09
Speaker 1: pursuing your goals, but the importance of little things in
2:24:12
Speaker 1: your life, whether it's your family, you know, whether it's siblings,
2:24:16
Speaker 1: your children. He did a good job. So it was
2:24:25
Speaker 1: it was I didn't know. I didn't have a bar
2:24:28
Speaker 1: for him. I didn't have expectations good or bad and anyway,
2:24:31
Speaker 1: and but it's a reminder. I'm giving a commencement next
2:24:35
Speaker 1: week at John Carroll University and outside of Cleveland, and
2:24:40
Speaker 1: I've I've done a couple of them, and I always
2:24:42
Speaker 1: you know, this is the this is the first time
2:24:45
Speaker 1: one of my kids was graduating, right, and a commencement
2:24:48
Speaker 1: for college, right, So you you you do realize the
2:24:51
Speaker 1: parents listen to everything. I don't know if the students do,
2:24:55
Speaker 1: but the comment, you know, it is a reminder. I
2:24:57
Speaker 1: always say the commencements are probably probably more for the
2:25:01
Speaker 1: parents and the students, but you hope the students here
2:25:04
Speaker 1: one or two things. But anyway, I'm just through the
2:25:09
Speaker 1: moon and as many of you. If you follow me
2:25:14
Speaker 1: on social you'll know that I shared a few I
2:25:16
Speaker 1: shared a few proud father things. And you know what
2:25:20
Speaker 1: I appreciate is that I didn't get the I did
2:25:23
Speaker 1: proud father stuff and I didn't get stupid blowback from
2:25:25
Speaker 1: people's from you know people you know, well, you're you're this,
2:25:29
Speaker 1: you're that, you know all this stuff. You know, people
2:25:31
Speaker 1: actually just you know, if they didn't have anything nice
2:25:34
Speaker 1: to say, they didn't say it, which is which is
2:25:38
Speaker 1: a way to live that I wish more people on
2:25:40
Speaker 1: social media live that way. You don't have to comment
2:25:43
Speaker 1: on everything, even if you don't like what you're reading.
2:25:46
Speaker 1: You know, not every fire needs more kindle, because it
2:25:50
Speaker 1: not every fire needs to keep burning.
2:25:56
Speaker 2: The NBA.
2:25:59
Speaker 1: Poor Lakers and the poor Sixers, right, these are two
2:26:03
Speaker 1: teams that if they were healthy, they could be really interesting.
2:26:08
Speaker 1: They could be you know, a couple of old guys
2:26:10
Speaker 1: seeing if they can you know, get one more time
2:26:12
Speaker 1: Joel embiid lebron right. And it's just a bummer that
2:26:15
Speaker 1: they're not healthy. And you see that, you know, these
2:26:17
Speaker 1: are why we're probably looking at those you know why
2:26:20
Speaker 1: those series are probably over, either will be by the
2:26:24
Speaker 1: time you hear this. I'm recording before for one of those,
2:26:27
Speaker 1: for one of those games tonight, so it could be
2:26:31
Speaker 1: over already for one of them, but it's a it's
2:26:37
Speaker 1: a uh, it's I will say this, thank goodness for
2:26:41
Speaker 1: the Spurs Timberwolve series. That has been some incredible basketball.
2:26:46
Speaker 1: Anthony Edwards Victor wurb Manyama, I mean that has been amazing.
2:26:49
Speaker 1: That has been a fantastic series so far. And it's
2:26:53
Speaker 1: been a game I've I've wanted to watch every quarter,
2:26:56
Speaker 1: like you don't want to miss a minute of it,
2:26:59
Speaker 1: and that's not been the case with the other series.
2:27:05
Speaker 1: Sort of like your glance at it, eh, all right,
2:27:07
Speaker 1: you're sort of off and on on it. But it's
2:27:10
Speaker 1: really intriguing there and it is. Uh, I'm still enjoyed
2:27:16
Speaker 1: watching these nets. They're fantastic. By the way. One thing,
2:27:20
Speaker 1: one little rant I went on in a few weeks ago,
2:27:22
Speaker 1: having to do with the expansion of the NCAA tournament,
2:27:26
Speaker 1: I will say this, I think the media coverage of
2:27:28
Speaker 1: the expansion has been really atrocious and really shitty, and
2:27:32
Speaker 1: I'm sorry everybody is just writing that this is some
2:27:34
Speaker 1: sort of disaster. Well, you know what, screw you all. Right,
2:27:37
Speaker 1: if you went to a mid major school, if you
2:27:39
Speaker 1: care about the mid majors, if you care about seeing
2:27:42
Speaker 1: you know, yes, I do think the criticism of expanding
2:27:45
Speaker 1: to seventy six, if it only gives five hundred teams
2:27:48
Speaker 1: or people below five hundred and powerful conferences more opportunity
2:27:51
Speaker 1: to make it, that isn't what it should be for
2:27:54
Speaker 1: all right, And I think I would love to see
2:27:57
Speaker 1: some sort of rule. And I go back to this.
2:28:00
Speaker 1: I think the seventy six expansion or any of the
2:28:02
Speaker 1: expand I think it should expand to ninety six. But
2:28:05
Speaker 1: the expansion, if it includes more twenty plus win teams
2:28:12
Speaker 1: from smaller conferences, will be much more embraced than if
2:28:15
Speaker 1: it includes seventeen and sixteen teams. And ultimately, I think
2:28:21
Speaker 1: there's this fear that it's all going to go to
2:28:23
Speaker 1: this one aspect of things where everything's going to be
2:28:27
Speaker 1: done by a computer rather than well, how many games
2:28:29
Speaker 1: did you win versus how many games did you lose?
2:28:32
Speaker 1: And good losses are going to matter more than bad wins,
2:28:36
Speaker 1: which is a total perversion of competition. So ultimately, I
2:28:40
Speaker 1: hope the committee does this and realizes, hey, these extra
2:28:45
Speaker 1: slots are not for teams like Auburn who couldn't beat
2:28:49
Speaker 1: good teams just because they played them closely. Their numbers
2:28:52
Speaker 1: are good, but they couldn't win those games. They don't
2:28:54
Speaker 1: belong in the tournament, and I hope they wouldn't get
2:28:58
Speaker 1: in under this circumstances. But these twenty five win twenty
2:29:02
Speaker 1: four to twenty five win teams from smaller conferences who
2:29:05
Speaker 1: didn't that's who we want to see in here, and
2:29:08
Speaker 1: that's the whole purpose of this expansion. And if this
2:29:10
Speaker 1: is not how the expansion is used, then that's a
2:29:13
Speaker 1: failure of the committee, and it's a failure of how
2:29:16
Speaker 1: the NCAA runs this. It is not about a failure
2:29:19
Speaker 1: to give more opportunity and to open up the doors.
2:29:21
Speaker 1: And again, we've expanded the number of Division One schools,
2:29:25
Speaker 1: so of course you should expand the size of the postseason.
2:29:29
Speaker 1: So I don't like a lot of the coverage has
2:29:33
Speaker 1: been with people that are more consumed about are we
2:29:38
Speaker 1: going to get the right final four teams than about
2:29:40
Speaker 1: whether we have one of the great because again, if
2:29:43
Speaker 1: you wanted to make sure you always had the right
2:29:44
Speaker 1: final four teams, then you wouldn't have one and done anyway, Okay,
2:29:48
Speaker 1: the entire format of the tournament is not designed to
2:29:51
Speaker 1: get you the best team. If you really care about
2:29:54
Speaker 1: the best team, then you would do what the NBA
2:29:55
Speaker 1: does is bore us to death for two and a
2:29:57
Speaker 1: half months with best four of sevens constantly so that
2:30:01
Speaker 1: there is no chance for an upset team to ever
2:30:03
Speaker 1: make it through. And ultimately, what do we enjoy most
2:30:07
Speaker 1: about sports? What you expect or the unexpected? And more
2:30:12
Speaker 1: people watch sports for the unexpected than the expected. And
2:30:15
Speaker 1: I wish more people who ran sports, whether you run
2:30:18
Speaker 1: a league or you're in charge of college sports, would
2:30:22
Speaker 1: understand that. Ultimately, that's why people follow sports. All Right,
2:30:28
Speaker 1: ran over, I'll see in forty eight hours. Thanks for listening,
2:30:31
Speaker 1: and don't forget pie can subscribe