Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Full Episode - U.S. Is Drifting Toward Competitive Authoritarianism +  How To Fix America’s Broken Political System

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Full Episode - U.S. Is Drifting Toward Competitive Authoritarianism +  How To Fix America’s Broken Political System · The Chuck ToddCast

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  Speaker 1: that code. Hello there, Happy Monday, and welcome to another
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: episode of the Chuck Podcast. We are ticking ever so
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: closer to the holiday break first night of Hanukkah, ten
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: days to Christmas, the New sixteen days to New Year's Eve,
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: and of course when I'm counting down five days until
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: the University of Miami's debut in the college football Playoff,
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: I've got a pretty good I've got a pretty sort
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: of robust show today that's going to hit a bunch
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: of topics. A fascinating and an incredibly important study by
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: some from some folks from the Council on Foreign Affairs
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: about the state of the United States and its democracy.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: It's extraordinarily important read. I'm going to pass on the
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: highlights in a minute. Fascinating new poll from the Searchlight
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: Institute on corruption and more and portantly, it's not about
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: the concern about political corruption. It's about what voters believe
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: is corrupt versus sometimes what lawmakers view as corrupt. Here's
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: a hint it let's just say that they don't share
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: the same definition of what is political corruption these days.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: The interview today is with Nick Troyana. He is a
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: founder and runs an organization called Unit America. They've been
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: He also wrote a book called The Primary Problem, meaning
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: it is the primaries, a partisan primaries that are at
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: his thesis, that are at the root of our polarization,
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: the root of pretty much, probably seventy percent of our problems,
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: particularly our problems and our inability to get things done.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: We talk about a lot about various small the democratic
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: reforms that could be necessary, would be necessary. He's somebody
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: that tried to run as an independent and saw all
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: of the barriers to entry for third party third parties
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: and independents. And part of the goal I think of
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: United America is just simply to open up the democracy
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: to everybody. Right now, this democracy is not open to everybody.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: When it comes to competition for political parties or ideas.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: There is a major barrier to entry. And it's not financial,
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: it is structural, and that is the heart of that conversation.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: It is Monday, which means we're going to hop into
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: the time machine, and I'm just going to give you
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: one hint at what I'm going to be talking about
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: in the time machine monorail, monorail, monorail. How many of
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: you will figure out what I'm going to talk about
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: based on that hint? Guess what. I won't actually find
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: out the answer to that, but I thought that would
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: be a fun little clue. We'll do some ask Chuck
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: and I have a few thoughts on the state of
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: college athletics, given what happened what we're watching at the
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: University of Michigan. But I'm going to start with the
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: news out of Australia. It's pretty painful first Ia Hanka
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  Speaker 1: around the world that this is what all of us
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: had to wake up to on Sunday morning here in
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: the United States and what the world is grappling with,
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: and that is just yet another reminder that anti Semitism
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: is at an ugly level globally right now. Look, this
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: is anti Semitism is not new. We've gone through fits
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  Speaker 1: and starts. Anybody who's Jewish knows the history. We know
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: the history of this quite well, the rise and falls
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: of attempts eradicating Jews, blaming Jews for financial problems, blaming
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  Speaker 1: Jews for cultural problems. We are the smallest of the
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: major religions. We are the smallest of groups that there are.
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  Speaker 1: It's amazing how much power so many people try to
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: attribute to us, and we're not even three percent of
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  Speaker 1: the world's population. Obviously, what we've been you know, there's
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: a lot of people that are looking at this and
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: immediately trying to make a political argument, to make the
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: case that it's the left that is supercharging antisemitism or
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: the right that is supercharging antisemitism. I will remind you
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  Speaker 1: all once again, I have only experienced it in stereo.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: All right, before twenty fifteen, I experienced very little anti semitism,
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  Speaker 1: if any at all. I think I shared a story
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: with you an old friend of mine. We were talking
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: about this one time, and sort of right right when
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: the rise of sort of it was those of us
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: in the press that were starting to feel at first,
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: and then it sort of broke open out into the mainstream.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: But in twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, you can say it
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: was coincidental with the timing of the rise of Donald Trump,
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: or if that is what sort of essentially lifted up
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: the pretext on all of this. But essentially the rise
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: of the populace left with Bernie Sanders and the rise
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  Speaker 1: of the populist right with Donald Trump has given a
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  Speaker 1: permission slip to anti semits to either to either use
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: it to promote a left wing ideology or use it
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  Speaker 1: to promote a right wing ideology. Here's what I will say.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: If you're using anti semitism to try to promote the
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  Speaker 1: left or the right, you're obviously doing it wrong and
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  Speaker 1: you're not very small d democratic and you certainly don't
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  Speaker 1: believe in freedom, that's for sure, freedom of anything, let
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: alone freedom of religion on that front. But I remember
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: talking with this old friend of mine and we were
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: talking about how our mothers would tell us these stories
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: about anti about their butt, their anti Semitic experiences in
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  Speaker 1: grade school and high school. My mother's second generation in America.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: I believe his parents were first generation, and you know,
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: they would tell us these stories, and my friend and
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: I would sit there and go, you know, my mother
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: would tell these stories about you know, kids in her
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: high school looking for her horns or asking about her tale.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: And you know, he would say that, you know his
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: mother would you share similar things? And we would just
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: look at them like they were strange beings. That's this
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: can't be the case. What do you tell? You know,
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: I didn't dec I didn't want to say I was
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: dismissing mother. But you know, you think, well, maybe our
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: parents are exaggerating a little bit, you know, maybe, And
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you ten years later, All right, eleven years now,
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  Speaker 1: we're almost we're getting close to the eleventh year of
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: sort of this what has been a consistent uptick, really
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: really you can. I do believe the line of demarcation
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  Speaker 1: is June twenty fifteen. But you can see this uptick
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  Speaker 1: and it is this is not something that either side
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: if we're going to try to make this always a
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: two way fight between whose fault is it is that
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  Speaker 1: the left is of the right. This is collective and
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of there's a lot of blame to
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: go around, but I think the one that's sing singularly
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  Speaker 1: singular for blame and most important is social media. In this,
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  Speaker 1: we've always had to anti semis. We've always had a
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  Speaker 1: hate in the world. Okay, just it's just a fact.
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  Speaker 1: We've always had small minded people who have wanted to
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  Speaker 1: blame an ethnicity or a religious sect for their for
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  Speaker 1: their own personal problems. That's in it, and that is
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  Speaker 1: that is not new. Sometimes these sick people end up
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: leaders of countries see Hitler, Comma Adolph. Sometimes these sick
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: leaders end up leaders of political movements. And then there's
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: always this what about is that comes along with with
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: folks that are trying to defend their side from charges
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: of anti Semitism, And it'll be like, yeah, but you know, yeah,
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: but this disselected leader of Israel's bad about X, Y
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: and Z. That doesn't justify hate on little kids celebrating
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: Hanukah in Australia. There's nothing that justifies that. So I
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: don't want to hear the Abbots and I ignore. And
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you this the beauty of social media and
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: stories like this is it becomes self selecting. You see
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: the people that immediately want to point fingers and say, aha,
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: it's the left, A hats the right, And I'm like, aha,
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: it's somebody that doesn't have a mirror in their own frickin' house.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: But I want to put the emphasis on the distinguishing
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: characteristic here of this era of anti Semitism, and that
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: is social media.
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  Speaker 2: I put my.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: I want to align myself with some remarks that Spencer Cox,
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  Speaker 1: the Governor of Utah, Republican governor of Utah said last week.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: And it wasn't on a specific thing, wasn't specifically about
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  Speaker 1: anti Semitism, but it was more about the toxicity, the
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: toxic culture, the increase in violence that we've seen in politics.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: And what's interesting is my friend Jonathan martin Wright wrote
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: in Politico this week. The following comment received the loudest
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: applause he did a joint form with Josh Shapiro on
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: this issue Spencer Cox and Josh Shapiro in conversation with
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: my friend Savannah Guthrie, And the loudest applause at the
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: form was when he said the following, If you want
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: to be angry at someone, be angry at the social
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: media companies. These are the wealthiest and most powerful companies
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: in the history of the world, and their profiting off
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: of destroying our kids and destroying our country. And the
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: amplification the algorithms, the fact that fellow crazy anti semites
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: can find other fellow crazy anti semites online and think, oh,
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: I'm not the only one that thinks this, And the
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: minute you think you're not the only one, that you're
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: not alone. It's somehow rationalized. Is it makes you feel better?
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  Speaker 1: It makes you think, oh, and then when you set
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: up an ecosystem and a bubble that sort of is
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: self reinforcing, you think you're the mainstream. Everybody thinks their
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: own media diet is a mainstream diet, right. It is
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: the inability of so many people to put their feet
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: in other people's shoes and other people's media filters. In fact,
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: I think there's been some experiments. I really would like
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: to see people sort of spend a day in a
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: media filter of somebody else, and you do these various
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: media filters just you know, I look at it as
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: an academic exercise to try to understand the electorate. As
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: you guys know, I have been referring to myself as
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: a political anthropologist, meaning that that is constantly what I'm
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: ultimately always trying to figure out is what is why
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: are we in this place? And if you're trying to
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: figure out why, you have to understand the various political
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: tribes in America. Some of these tribes overlap. People are
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: members of multiple tribes, sometimes remember of only one. But
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: ultimately that's why I say I'm a political anthropologist. I'm
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: trying to figure out how do these tribes align? Hey,
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: gress what I know, I'm in my own tribe. I
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: just try my best to roll down the window in
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: my bubble and see what's going on outside of my bubble.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: But you have to It is hard to do it.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: You have to intentionally do it. You have to have
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: the crazy ass Twitter feed that I have. That I
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: promise you most people at America probably don't because I
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: do try very hard to get the normies and the
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: extremes because I want to understand what the conversation that
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: is going on. Trust me, I'm sure some of you
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: go some of you listening to me wouldn't even know
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: who Candice Owens is. And by the way, God bless you,
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: I'd love not to know who this woman is. But
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: there are people, there's an entire community on the right
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: that is consumed with trying to extricate this crazy woman
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: from the mainstream of the MAGA world because of her
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: just outlandish conspiracy theories. I can't tell if she's mentally
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: ill or just simply a shameless grifter, or perhaps the
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: two of the two go hand in hand. But there
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: are plenty of people in mainstream America. I'm sure if
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: I said the words Candice owned, my mother and my
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: brother in law, my sister in law, who all are
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: pretty pretty smart about this, would be like, who the
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: hell is that? And I wouldn't blame them. But that's
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: because this is the world that we've all constructed. But
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: it's the world that social media has gone out of
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: their way to construct. And this is why, you know,
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: I look at this rise of anti Semitism, and I
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: look the fact that this was not a lone nut right,
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: but there appears to be some coordination down there in Australia.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: I do I can't, you know, I know that ultimately
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: individuals are to blame, not a computer, not an algorithm,
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: but these tech platfor to amplify, and you know, you know,
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: I think they have a responsibility to make sure that
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: what they're doing is not putting more people in harm's way,
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: and their amplification, their algorithms, are doing just that, they
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: deserve no protection on Section two thirty, the part of
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: the law that supposedly says, hey, we're just you know,
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: we're not doing the minute they put an algorithm on
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: these things, the minute they amplify, the minute they allow
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: for the connection. Look, our First Amendment guarantees free speech.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: It doesn't guarantee if bullhorn, It doesn't guarantee a right
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: to be the loudest voice in the room. It just
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: simply guarantees that you have a right to free speech.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: So you have a right to be a hateful anti
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: semi okay, but you don't have the right to have
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: your extreme, hateful and hurtful political views be the dominant
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: piece of conversation and be mainstreamed in to America. No, because,
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: by the way, we don't want it mainstream, and the
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: tech companies do not have to protect you and do
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: not have to amplify your speech. In fact, they can
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: dial it down. In fact, there's plenty of academic studies
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: that show if you dial down hateful content, you're not
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: getting rid of it, you're just prioritizing it less than
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: these algorithms. It's shocking how much turning that temperature down
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: actually helps the conversation. So it's troubling, but I really,
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: you know, you look at the situation we're in, and
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: there's no doubt we have bad leaders around the world
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: that are exploiting hate and anger to try to make
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: a political argument. You have people on both sides of
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: the aisle attempting to weaponize anger at Israel or anger
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: at the economy and trying to somehow connect that to
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: Jewish folks. The left does it with bb at times.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: The right does it with George Soros. I mean George Soros.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: There is no greater victim, there's no greater victim of
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: anti Semitic mythology, uh and gross mischaracterizations than George Soros.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: And I don't know where he gets to go to
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: get his reputation back considering the character assassinations that have
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: taken place through the prism of his faith. There's there's
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: no no, no doubt in my mind on that front.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: But ultimately, why do we have more collective conversation about this?
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: Why is there more collective talk about this? Why is there,
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: frankly more insecurity for many Jewish Jewish people around the world.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: Why do we feel so less secure today than we
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: ever have before. I think we can thank social media.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: I think the tech companies have not only not gotten
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: the focus of this, they've not taken responsibility, but I
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: think they need They need to be the focal point.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: Which brings me to that column that my friend Jonathan
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: Martin wrote, which he says, you know, perhaps Spencer Cox
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: needs to be the anti tech candidate. Somebody needs to
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: take it to the tech community. Right, the tech community
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: has brought us a lot of positives. Okay, there's a
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: ton of positives, and there's a ton of tools that
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: have been invented that have helped me create a better
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: communications system with you guys. Right, There's no doubt there's
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: plenty of upsides from the tech community, but what they
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: have done with social media, And this is why I
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: don't think the public is going to be supportive at
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: all of this light touch, non regulatory process that the
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: President's trying to do an artificial intelligence. The same industry,
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: the same industry that gave us social media without regulation,
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: now wants to give us artificial intelligence without regulation. Considering
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: how well social media went, how the hell are we
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: doing this right? This is the most illogical thing you
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: could come up with. I can't believe the President is
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: doing this. I think this is you want to talk
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: about convincing more mainstream Americans to go get a pitch
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: for it and start sharpening up, sharpening that sucker up.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: It is just crazy that we don't want to put
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: any guardrails on the growth and expansion of the AI industry.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: It is absolute insanity. Okay, if you think social media
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: created more toxicity in our culture and more violence in
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: our culture thanks to the lack of regulation, what do
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: you think is going to happen with artificial intelligence if
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: we don't have some attempt at making sure there are
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: constant guardrails being erected as we build this super highway.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: It is something that I think I've talked about this before.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: I think it is politically absolutely going to be frankly
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: an easy thing to exploit potentially. And you know, that's
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: why the tech community is really making a mistake here
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: that they are not grasping just in what kind of
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: precarious position that they're in. And maybe they think we
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: don't need America and if America shuts us down, we'll
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: just go somewhere else where we will be treated with
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: lot we can just buy our way into a policy
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: that we want. And obviously, right now we have a
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: situation where they can get whatever the hell they want
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: from this administration if they just write a check. And
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: that's disturbing, but that's why we still have a competitive democracy,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: although I'm going to get to that in a minute,
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: where the voters can sort of have a say in this,
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: because right now we have zero say in what social
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: media has done to us, and we don't seem to
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: have the collective will. It's growing. I mean, look, I
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: think it's a huge start that you've got. I mean, look,
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: Australia is trying to ban social media for people under
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: the age of sixteen. Spencer Cock made Cox made this
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: mention that we wait to hand the keys to a
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: car to a kid until sixteen, Yet we give them
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: an algorithmic driven phone at twelve. You know, perhaps we
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: can give them a phone at twelve with no social
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: media on it. Right, maybe it's flip phones from twelve
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: to sixteen, because plenty of parents want to have some
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: access to their kids and all that. I think that
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: that's a legitimate concern. But you know, we can essentially say,
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: you know, no, just you can't have a you know,
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: because I don't know how else you're going to be
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: able to monitor this. But if you actually just make
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: the device itself against the law for somebody under the
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: age of sixteen to have, that might be a start.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: It is the one area where we're starting to see
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: some bipartisan consensus, which is about access to screens and
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: social media for people under sixteen. And we've decided this
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: is a problem. Well, guess what do you think that
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: our minds are only fragile from sixteen and younger, or
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: that we've got these fragile minds that are much older too,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: and that social media warps those warps those over the
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: age of sixteen almost as badly as they could warp
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: those under the age of twelve. One other point on
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: the social media front, Jonathan mentioned an interesting new report
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: that noted about. It was a poll about the mano sphere,
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: if you will, what do men want? And it revealed
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: that a majority of males sampled in that survey said
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: social media feeds have gotten a lot more extreme. I mean,
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: most of this is thanks to Elon Musk and his
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: insanity and what he's done to Ax and taking away
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: all guardrails on acts, and of course every other social
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: media company followed because they didn't want to get left behind.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: But what's interesting is that men themselves revealed in this
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: poll that most controversial content reaches the men who are
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: online the most, especially younger men, white men, black men,
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: Hispanic men across the board. And we're seeing a more
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: radical youth thanks to warped social media algorithms. So when
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: we see this rise of hate, we see this rise
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: of violence, and we're looking, you know, the easy thing
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: is to try to point left, point right, point at Israel,
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: point Gaza, point a Hamas, point of protesters. People want
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: to point it. A whole bunch of figures, except for
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: the culprit that is in charge of the information ecosystem
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: that destroyed the information ecosystem. And trust me, I'm aware
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: of the irony that I am speaking to you in
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: that ecosystem, and hopefully it gets to you it doesn't
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: get shut down by the algorithms of these big tech companies.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: But they're the culprits here. They've created this environment that
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: has made it a lot easier for these hateful, awful,
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: mentally ill people to find comfort in their bubbles because
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: it looks like they're not alone and that they're somehow namestream.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: Having good life insurance is incredibly important. I know from
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: personal experience. I was sixteen when my father passed away.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: We didn't have any money. He didn't leave us in
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: the best shape. My mother, single mother, now widow. Myself
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: sixteen trying to figure out how am I going to
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: pay for college and lo and behold, my dad had
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: one life insurance policy that we found. It wasn't a lot,
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: but it was important at the time, and it's why
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: I was able to go to college. Little did he
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: know how important that would be in that moment. Well,
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: guess what. That's why I am here to tell you
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: about Etho's life. They can provide you with peace of
• 24:53
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• 24:57
  Speaker 1: comes to pass. Ethos is an online platform that makes
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: getting life insurance fast and easy, all designed to protect
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: your family's future in minutes, not months. There's no complicated process,
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• 25:11
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• 25:14
  Speaker 1: can get a quote in as little as ten minutes,
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• 25:19
  Speaker 1: your home. You can get up to three million dollars
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: in coverage, and some policies start as low as two
• 25:24
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• 25:28
  Speaker 1: March twenty twenty five, Business Insider named Ethos the number
• 25:31
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• 25:35
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• 25:39
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• 25:42
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• 25:47
  Speaker 1: the rates themselves may vary as well, but trust me,
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: life insurance is something you should really think about, especially
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: if you've got a growing family. I want to pivot
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: quickly to my Newsphere interview this week because some alarming
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: new facts that I had not seen anywhere else from
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: Mark Warner. He's the vice chair of the Senate Intel Committee.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: Mark Warner has seen the second He has seen the
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: video of both the September second second strike on those
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: survivors from the first strike of the boats off the
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: coast of Venezuela, and he revealed two facts that I
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: had not seen anywhere. Fact number one is that the
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: time that elapsed between the first strike and the second
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: strike was somewhere between thirty and forty minutes because of
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: cloud cover, so thirty to forty minutes, and then the
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: clouds come up, and then apparently what is revealed, according
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: to Senator Warner, was not fully clothed survivors clinging to
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: their life, and then the second strike. Let's just say
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: this is what look He believes that if Americans see
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: this video, they will be appalled. There will be and
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: there's a reason why the Pentagon is fighting the release
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: of this video. There is no defense. There apparently is
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: going to be no defense of what this video looks like.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: This is appalling, and there are probably going to be
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: concerns that there are people that might have legal jeopardy here.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: But realistically, I don't know where you get the legal
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: jeopardy when the president will likely just pardon anybody that
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: is investigated. But there's a reason people are fighting very
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: hard not to release this second video because if what
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: is what Warner described to me a delayed thirty to
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: forty minutes and they were not fully clothed, Essentially, just
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: put yourself for the situation. Your boat explode, You're alive,
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: you're swimming, You're clinging to the remnants of a boat
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: in order to stay afloat not drown. Half your clothes
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: are gone, been blown off. Maybe you're just sort of
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: trying to use it, and we decide to use the
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: second shot. No wonder there are questions why the phrase
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: war crime is being tossed around although we're not at war,
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: because you know, as many a person has pointed out,
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: the question is whether there is not whether this second
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: strike was legal, but we still have real doubts about
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: whether the first strike is legal. And it is worth
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: noting that earlier this week, earlier last week, Trump offered
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: a veiled threat at Colombia because the president of Colombia
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: has been critical of this, saying that he might not
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: be out of the crosshairs. And then the President has
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: said that they might target some of these folks on land.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: Whose land is it? Venezuela is a Colombia. Where's this headed?
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: And again there is no Senator Warner could not give
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: me the authority that that he could not explain very
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: well the authority that the White House was using that
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: they claimed these strikes were legal. I mean, they've cited
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: an authority. It's not the for if you're wondering what
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: Senator Warner said, it is not the am au m
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: F that was passed by Congress that that allowed for
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: the invasion of Iraq, but and which has been used,
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: which was used by Obama as justification for strikes, and
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: I believe Yemen and some other places. So that is
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: not there. So we still don't have a clear picture
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: of the legal authority the White House is claiming to
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: go after these folks. But he has threatened land strikes
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: without asking for any authority from Congress and additional authority
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: from Congress, nor has he made his case to the
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: American public. And by the way, the decision to essentially
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: commandeer an oil tanker rather than just blow it up,
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: although blowing up an oil tanker would have been catastrophic,
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: essentially starting a fire on the Pacific Ocean potentially or
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: the Caribbean Sea, depending on where they were hitting this tanker.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: But if we can board a tanker, we could have
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: boarded these boats. And I think the decision not to
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: attack that tanker and simply to just commandeer it under
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: totally undermines the rationale and justification of the strikes themselves.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: Why there is no good explanation for why we're not
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: just essentially stopping these boats, grabbing these people and getting
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: some intelligence so that we can actually learn something. And
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: I want to just keep one thing in mind here,
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: just one more thing in mind, which is the president's
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: political standing is not great. He has had a terrible month.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: He had a terrible Friday, excuse me, Thursday last week
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: when his retribution campaign. You know, basically he's the Emperor
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: with no clothes as far as Indiana Republicans are concerned.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: Grand Juries in Virginia are not. Might might want to
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: indict at Ham Sandwich, but they won't indict Leticia James
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: when he's not feeling, when he feels as if things
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: are going bad, that's just when he might do crazier
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: stuff and might attempt crazier stuff to either change the
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: subject or change the picture. One more thing before I
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: get to an important essay that I think you guys
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: have to make note of the president. It is notable
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: to me that the President did an interview with the
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal over the weekend, and the most fascinating
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: aspect of it was his tone change. He essentially is
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: admitting that he's going to lose the mid terms. He said,
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: you know, he basically said, we're going to try our
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: best to win. We'll see what happens. We should win,
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: but you know, statistically it's very tough to win. Yeah,
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: I know, it doesn't make So it's the beginning of
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: the excuse making. It's the beginning of the his way
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: of admitting this economy, that the public doesn't like this economy.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: This was the interview saying, Oh, it's going to take time,
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: my investments haven't gone through. It will happen. Just be patient,
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: and as he said, hopefully it happens before the election.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: But it's notable, right he went from this is a
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: hoax two weeks ago to at least in this interview
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: with the Wall Street Journal sort of accepting the premise. Yes,
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: we realized the public doesn't feel it or see it yet,
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: but they will, But they will, he promises, He swears.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: These are these stages. It's we should call it stages
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: of political it's not quite political grief. But it's sort
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: of like, you know, first there's a dial right, then
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: there's you know, somehow you're argumentative. Then there's a form
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: of acceptance. He's getting into the form of acceptance, but
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: he's not accepting the premise that his policies are a problem.
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: He's just simply saying his policies haven't kicked in yet,
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: And that says he's no different than any other president
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: trying to defend a bad economy. No, no, no, no, my
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: policies haven't kicked in yet. It's always my policies haven't
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: kicked in yet. I'm dealing with the predecessor's policies. So
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: in that sense, it's a familiar pattern. Perhaps the best
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: part of that Wall Street Journal interview was the fact
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: that you know, he's doing the interview with the Wall
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: Street Turnal reporters, but he's taking calls and doing all
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: sorts of stuff at the same time, right, And here's
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: the I'm going to read directly from the article. At
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: one point, the President, sitting at the resolute desk with
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: a glittering Christmas tree at its side, asked an aid
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: to show him the latest market data. He took calls
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: from friends and allies multiple times during the interview, including
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: from Interior Secretary Doug Bergham, who joined by speakerphone to
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: discuss the administration's plans for Washington, d C. Area public
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: golf courses. That is right, the President seems to not
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: be worried about the price of groceries as much as
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: he's worried about the designs and who's in charge of
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: redesigning Washington d C's three public golf courses, Rock Creek Park,
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: Haines Pointston. I mean, if you're trying to hand Democrats
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: easier fodder to say, you know, he promised this, to focus,
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: laser focus on this, this and this, and instead he
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: cares about building a ballroom, changing the name of the
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: Kennedy Center, singing ymca UH, and redesigning Washington DC's golf courses,
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: all of course extraordinarily important priorities to bringing down the
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: costs of electricity and groceries in your home. Anyway, just
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: uh not not the smartest politician, but Donald Trump's never
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: been the smartest about messaging in that front. But that
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: brings me to I think a very important essay from
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: a quarterly journal. I'm a politically like I say, I'm
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: a want to be political scientist, I call myself a
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: political anthropologist. That means I actually read political science quarterlies.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: And there's an extra jordinarily important one that's out this week.
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: It's an essay in Foreign Affairs, which is the flagship
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: journal of the Council on Foreign Relations. This isn't a
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: partisan outlet, it's not a resistance blog. It's the magazine
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: where American presidents, Secretary of States, national security advisors have
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: gone for generations debate how the world works and how
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: the United States role it should be. So three of
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: the most respected democracy scholars in the world from Harvard
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: Toronto and the Council on Foreign Relations, Steven Levitzky, Luke
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: and Way and Daniel Ziblat. They're not cable pundits. They're
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: not people you're going to see in the round tables
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: of Sunday shows. They're not political activists. They're simply political
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: sciences who spent their career studying how democracies erode around
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: the world, how they fail, and occasionally how they recover. Well,
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: they have an essay called with about out competitive Authoritarianism,
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: and in fact this is what they write, and this
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: is why I took it very seriously. This was not
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: something I read, no offense to my friends at the Bulwark.
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: It's not something I read in the Bullwark. Not something
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: you're going to see it here in pod Save of
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: America certainly, now you might. I doubt you'll hear this
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: from my friend Eric Ericson either. But here's this essay.
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: In twenty twenty five, the United States ceased to be
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: a full democracy in the way that Canada, Germany or
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: even Argentina are democracies. Okay, they're just making a classification.
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: And then comes the line. The game, however, is far
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: from up. They're not saying all is lost. Okay. It
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: is an important essay because they deal with this tension
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: of yes we have had erosion and no, this isn't permanent. Okay.
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: So they argue that Donald Trump's second term the United
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: States crossed a definitional line into something political scientists call
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: competitive authoritarianism. Here's how they define it a system in
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: which parties compete in elections, but incumbents routinely abuse their
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: power to punish critics untilt the playing field against their opposition.
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: So elections still happen, but perhaps you threaten lawmakers to
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: redraw the maps to make more favorable elections. Opposition parties
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: still exist, but perhaps you raise the threshold for petition
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: signatures to get on a referendum, or you change the
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: dates and stuff see Missouri. But the referee is no
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: longer neutral, right, and the House rules keep changing. And importantly,
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: they're not saying this might happen, because it's already happened
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: in this country. A year ago, this group predicted that
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: this would be Trump's trajectory, that he'd weaponized state institutions
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: the way elected autocrats have done in Hungry, Turkey, Venezuela,
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: and India. And those are the four most important examples
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: to follow here, because Venezuela obviously the helm election the
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: leader loss, and he wouldn't leave Turkey, Hungary and India
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: have are what are considered faiish elections. But we'll find
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: out when the ruling party loses one day just how
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: fair they are. But they write this indeed, the Trump
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: administration has done exactly that. But here's what the authors say.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: They didn't anticipate. What's surprised even then wasn't the speed,
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: but it was the scope. And they write, this, one
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: form of authoritarian behavior that we did not anticipate a
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: year ago was the Trump administration's routine subversion of the
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: law and even the US Constitution. Well, we've seen that
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: with the strikes, with that as well. I mean, there
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: is very little, very little doubt here that this is
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: not yet not constitutional. The question is whether they'll even
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: try to give some congressional authority on that. So let
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: me outline a few more things that they write here,
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: weaponizing the state. They call it the blueprint. Every competitive
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: authoritarian regime follows a familiar playbook. Purge, then pack, so
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: removing professional civil servants who see their job as the law,
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: and replace them with loyalists who see their job as
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: the leader. Just look at the FBI. That's exactly what
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: they document happening inside the Justice Department, the FBI, and
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: other key agencies. When officials resisted, they were just simply removed.
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: We've seen US attorneys, deputy US attorneys just summarily fired
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: when replacements were chosen, they weren't selected for experience, but
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: for loyalty, including, as the author's note, Trump's own personal
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: lawyers installed as senior Justice Department officials. It's just right
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: out of, right, out of sort of. There's a fun
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: parody about authoritarianism called Moon over Parador with Richard Dreyfus.
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: I do to write that what seemed like parody is
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: now real. Right, And then even when prosecutions don't lead
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: to convictions, the authors explain why that doesn't matter. Such
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: investigations themselves are the powerful form of harassment, right, making
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: Adam Shift hire a lawyer, making Letitia James deal with this,
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: making James Comy deal with this, legal fees, time, reputational damage,
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: career disrupt eruption. The punishment is often the process itself.
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: They don't care if they ca convictions. They just want
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: them constantly made to be, you know, unhireable, don't get
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: them on corporate boards, make them seem as if they're
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: controversial figures. Then of course you got to follow the money.
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: Because this is what's happened with their next move, going
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: after civil society. How's the Trump administration done this? They've
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: ordered investigations into Act Blue, the primary arm of the
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party, Open Society Foundations, the George Soros founded organization.
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: The Wall Street Journal reported that that there are plans
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: to target Democratic donors through the IRS. That's right out
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: of the competitive authoritarian handbook that these political scientists know.
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: Then there's the pressure campaign against the media. Trump sue
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. The
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: FCC opened silly investigations into ABC, CBS, PBS, NPR, Comcast,
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: which owns NBC. We've seen the FCC chair act like
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: a thug in threatening Jimmy Kimmel, Disney and NBC. It
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: is it is, and what makes this so dangerous and
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: so effective is is not just what happened, but because
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: of what didn't happen. In fact, our authors are arguing
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: that the most insidious change isn't the repression, it's been
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: the self censorship. They point that outlets i've become realigning
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: and pull back, like the Washington Post, like the editorial
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: page is kind of a clown show. Now it is
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: just outside of George Well, there's not a readable columnist
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: left in that place. It is just a joke. The
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: editorial page itself is sort of. It's like they have
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: one thing they do every time if there's some economic controversy,
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: they write some convoluted editorial attacking Elizabeth Warren. I guess
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: that makes Chef Bezos feel better, but it has nothing
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: to do with the point itself or any of the
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: actual rational debate that's gone on. You've had the teen
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: Vogue has sort of gotten rid of their political coverage.
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: CBS clearly just has a new owner and they just
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: wiped out, you know, brought in virtue signaling new editors
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: to run thing. We've seen Disney cave in, We've seen
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: plenty of again, all of these legacy media, these corporate owned,
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: shareholder driven media organizations that all fall under Donald Trump's
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: potential influence due to government regulation, they've all capitulated, which
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: is why frankly, we're doing so well here at the podcast,
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: So in some ways, thank you, But unfortunately, this is
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: why we've all gone down this independent road. Because if
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: you want to be honest and if you want to
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: tell the truth, you're gonna have to find a different
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: outlet because you're not gonna be able to do it
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: at the Washington Post. You're not gonna be able to
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: do it at the major legacy TV networks that are left.
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: I'm not saying individuals aren't trying, but collectively they're not
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: even giving the chance. And here's the other thing. Here's
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: the part we don't know. What makes self censorship so
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: insidious is that it is virtually impossible to ascertain its
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: full impact. So wrote these authors, right, we can see
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: a firing, we can see a cancelation. What we can't
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: see are the stories that are never pitched, the investigations
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: that get quietly abandoned, or the headlines that are softened
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: out of fear, or the questions that don't get asked
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: on camera because executives in New York tell their correspondence
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: please don't do it. Because our corporate overlords are afraid
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: of blowback from the president that is happening. You can
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: guess where that's coming from. That's how democracies hollow out.
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: And this is where the essay draws a crucial historical line.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: America has had its stark chapters Jim Crow read Scare,
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: Japanese Internment, McCarthys, and Nixon. But the authors also argue
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: that after Watergate, the overt authoritarian abuse largely disappeared. Since
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four, no democratic or Republican administration had systematically
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: politicized law enforcement or targeted political rivals the way Donald
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: Trump is doing. George W. Bush his Justice Department investigative
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: Republicans and Democrats. Barack Obama appointed James Comey, a Republican,
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: to be the head of the FBI. Joe Biden kept
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: Christopher Ray as head of the FBI and a pointee
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: of Donald Trump. Mind you, Merrick Garland bent over backwards
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: as Attorney General, sometimes to a fault, to avoid the
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: appearance of political interference. So the conclusion is fun in
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: each of those critical areas that Trump administration stands alone
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: in its authoritarianism. Now, none of this is inevitable. And
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: here's where the essay shifts from diagnosis to prognosis. He says,
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: the US still has advantages that most competitive authoritarian regimes
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: do not. There's still an independent judiciary. There's still a
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: professional military, though Pete hagg Seth is trying to erode it.
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: There's still strong federalism. I mean, look at the way
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: Ron DeSantis is pushed back on the AI issue in
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: the AI moratorium that Trump is done. There's still a
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: vibrant civil society. Helloo, and there's a unified opposition party.
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: And Trump himself lacks the single most important asset the
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: author's note for authoritarian consolidation overwhelming popularity. Successful autocrats often
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: rule with approval ratings over eight. Trump is stuck in
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: the low forties. And it's actually trending downward that matters.
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: So that brings us to what they argue is the
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: greatest danger of them all. The greatest danger is not repression,
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: but demobilization. It's not tanks, it's not mass arrests, its
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: acceptance and resignation. It's people deciding not to run, not
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: to donate, not to sue, not to vote. And then
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: this line, which is really the thesis of the piece,
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: The outcome of this struggle remains open. It will turn
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: less than the strength of the authoritarian government than on
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: whether enough citizens act as though their efforts still matter,
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: because for now they still do. So there you go, Levitzky,
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: Way and Ziblat. They aren't telling Americans to panic, They're
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: just telling you what is okay. This is what has
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: happened to America the first year of Trump's second term.
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: We have slipped into something called competitive authoritarianism. He is
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: trying to create an authoritarian regime. There is democracy still,
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: there is still competition, okay. And our future is not
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: set in stone or the cement is still wet. Okay.
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: They're warning against two equally dangerous instincts, complacency and fatalism.
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: The future is going to be unstable, okay. Neither full
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: democracy nor entrenched dictatorship is going to happen. It's going
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: to be a struggle. This is going to be a fight.
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: The next elections may be fought in theory over policy differences,
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: but they're really going to be about the larger issue
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: of what kind of system are we choosing to live under?
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: And that danger isn't that democracy disappears overnight. It's the
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: dangers people stop believing that they can defend it. So
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: please go read this piece. It's extraordinarily important. It's well argued,
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: it is you know, evidence based, it is data driven.
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: Is it is not just alarmist cable commentary. And that's
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: the most important thing. And it comes from a place
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: in the Council on Foreign Relations where important ideas sort
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: of get launched for debate, and this is one that
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: more and more mainstream Americans need to understand what is
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: happening and what it's taking place. All Right, I've gone
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: on a little bit longer with my first half monologue
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: here before than I have, But in some ways that
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: goes right into the need for open primaries, the need
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: to structure our politics so that we have more voices
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: that have a shot here, not fewer voices. The manipulation
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: of our political system sort of begins with this attempt
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: at picking who your voters are, if you will, and
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: that is a huge problem. So we'll sneak in a
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: break and when we come back, we're going to talk
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: to Nick Troiano ahead of United America on how we
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: make this democracy great again. Do you hate hangovers? We'll
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  Speaker 1: for thirty percent off. Joining me now to talk a
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: little bit about reforming are the infrastructure of the democracy.
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: It's somebody I've had conversations with before. Somebody I've known
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: a long time, Nick Triano. He's the executive director of
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: Unite America, the organization that brought ranked choice voting to
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: the state of Alaska in particular, had been fighting to
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: get essentially to get rid of partisan primaries, whatever form
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: that can be done. If it's ranked choice voting, it's
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: ranked choice voting simply getting rid of the need for
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: party registration, then it's getting rid of the need for that.
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: But it has been the through line of Nick's work.
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: But I know that he's essentially been in this game.
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: He look he ran for Congress as an independent, he's
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: and he realized these bare to entry were extraordinarily high.
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: You know, if you're not a far left or a
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: far right person, is there a home for you in
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: American politics? Is there a home for you in primaries?
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: And I think Nick has been devoting himself to trying
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: to find that place for those of us that aren't
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: stuck in the wings. And he joins me, now, Nick,
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: good to see you.
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: Good to see you.
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: Check. So let's start with sort of your this is
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: United America, what are we up ten years.
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: Coming up on ten years running the organization, and we're
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: not more united than I then we started. However, we're
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: still working on it.
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: So look, the let's start with ranked choice voting, because
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: I think the first time you and I had a conversation,
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: there was a lot of there's a lot of bullishness,
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: a lot of excitement about the idea. It kind of
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: worked right pretty It seemed like it worked the way
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: it was supposed to work in Alaska, it worked the
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: way many people were hoping it would work. In New
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: York City in twenty twenty one, you know, the main
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: experiment has been less successful because of the decision that
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: main lawmakers made to to only have this somehow count
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: for federal not for state, which is just a head scratcher.
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: And frankly, I find the whole New York City set
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: up so the Democrats use rank choice voting, but that
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: trust me, there are a lot of voters who wanted
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: rank choice voting, I think during the general election. But
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: I know you know this, over the last four or
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: five years, I feel like there's been a movement against it,
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: even people that were supportive going it's hard to explain.
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: You and I've had this conversation I've always said it,
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: you know, hey, as somebody who has walked people through
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: election nights and talks about, you know, vote dumps and
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: things like that, explaining ranked choice voting getting it out
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: of the black box is very difficult. So that's a
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: long lined up. Where are you on this? Where's United
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: America on rank choice voting? And is this a method
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: that you still think is the answer?
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: Well, I in you in America are focused on solving
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: what we call the primary problem, which is the role
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: that party primaries play in exacerbating our divisions, in increasing
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: dysfunction and government because they incentivize candidates and elected officials
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: to play to the base of both parties in order
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: to win the only elections that really matter these days,
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: which is not the November election when most people vote,
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: but the primaries when the candidates are nominated, because most
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: districts and states right now lean so heavily one way
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: or another. So that's the problem, in our view, low
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: turnout party primaries dictating the outcomes of most elections before
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: most Americans can even vote. The solution set for what
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: we can do to solve that problem is varied, and
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: when we talk about solutions to the primary problem. It
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: could look like opening up primary so that all voters
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: can participate, including independent voters that are currently locked out
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: of primaries in sixteen states. It can look like getting
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: rid of party primaries and replacing it with all candidate primaries,
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: so there's a single ballot in the primary, everyone gets
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: to vote for whomever they want, and the top finishers
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: go to the general election. There's a system that's called
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: top two that's used in California and Washington for example,
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: or what Alaska adopt it in twenty twenty, which is
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: a top four system. And when you advance four candidates
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: from the primary to the general election, you want to
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: ensure that one of them wins with majority support, not
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: just plurality. And there are two ways of accomplishing that.
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: One is you can hold a runoff election if no
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: one gets over fifty percent, or the other is you
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: can have an instant runoff where people rank their candidates
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: according to preference, and if no one gets a majority,
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: there's a process of elimination using voters' backup choices. That's
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: what ranked choice voting refers to specifically, which is the
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: part of the reform in a top four primary, that
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: is focused on ensuring a majority winner. Ranked choice voting
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: is used in other circumstances, and in our view, it's
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: most powerful when it's combined with a reform to the
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: primary system. So Alaska's reform is a top four primary
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: reform plus ranked choice voting in the general election. And
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: other places like New York City or Maine are what
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: we would think of as partial reforms because they only
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: have ranked choice voting and they don't really have any
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: other kinds of reforms to the primary system that could
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: improve governing incentives by widening the electorate.
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about the mechanics of ranked choice voting, because
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: I think that's been the stumbling block. Can you is
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: there any way to make this feel more transparent where
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: you feel like you can see the You know, I
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: have not come up with one, but I'm curious if
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: if you have, or you know of other folks who tried.
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: Well, there's two parts to the ranked choice voting process.
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: There is the part where voters show up to the
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: voting booth or get their ballot in the mail and
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: they fill out their ballot. And that part is simple,
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: which is you have the option of ranking your candidates
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: or you can just vote for your favorite, and in
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: all of our exit polling, we found that eighty plus
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: percent of voters say that they find this simple to do,
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: and that number goes up over time as people get
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: used to it. The second part is how the votes
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: are tabulated, and that is done by election administrators. They
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: have a range of options for how they do it,
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: and some jurisdictions in the country, particularly those that have
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: been using it for a decade or more, have found
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: ways that this can be an instantaneous process and it
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: could be fully transparent, which is to say, they release
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: the cast vote records so that there is a way
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: that anyone can audit the results. There is a way
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: to make sure that there's results delivered on election night,
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: and there's ways of displaying the results that make it
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: intuitive for people to understand exactly what happens at each
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: round of the tabulation. So the charge sometimes that it's
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: a complicated or confusing system is really used by opponents
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: to say, you know, let's not change the way that
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: the elections are currently working, because the current way works
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: for them. It works for the two major parties, it
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: works for the incumbent politicians. They're afraid of change. But
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: you know, election reforms like the ones we champion have
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: been used successfully in America and abroad for many years,
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: and it's a necessary part of what it's going to
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: take to foster a more functional and representative government.
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: Look, I am, I am. If we could get if
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: we could go to a top four I fully believe
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: we should be a top four democracy. I'd love to
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: see that in our presidential race, you know where, and
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: then and that I wouldn't do rank choice. I think
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: the country suit there's a runoff, then the top two
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: face off, we have one more debate, like there's a runoff,
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: right Like it feels like that that is that we
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: you know, we wouldn't have a big drop in turn
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: you know, the concern and when we got rid of
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: general election runoffs, the concern is always, well, you're not
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: going to have a good turnout. Well that's not true anymore.
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: I mean, my god, I look at the special election
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: in Tennessee earlier this during the earlier part of December,
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: and for a special election in December. Uh, you know,
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: there were something like one hundred and fifty thousand total votes.
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's impressive for that. I mean, I think
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: the engagement with the democracy. And you know, I think
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: there's a I think there's a commentary about our country
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: that our electric gets engaged when when they when they
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: think they feel it slipping away. But you know, it
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: turns out that apathy was a sign of stability. But
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: it is, so I don't mind that. What but if
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: we had thirty states holding runoffs but the other two
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: and he didn't, then I could see that that would
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: be an issue.
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: Well, runoffs get a bad rap for some good reasons,
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: including that they have been used historically in ways.
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: To diss It was about denying black representation in the South. Right,
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: that's why why did we have Southern runoffs? Every Southern
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: state had runoffs for one reason, and one reason only,
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: to prevent black people from winning elections.
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: Right, And two things can be true, which is that
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: there are systems that have runoffs today that don't necessarily
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: have that negative impact that you actually do see turnout
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: increase in the runoff. That is the case in Louisiana,
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: for example, in their governor's races. Louisiana has a very
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: interesting election system where there is effectively no primary, there
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: is a general election. Everyone gets to be on the ballot.
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: They're kind of top two, right, just like Washington, and
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: if no one gets majority, there's a runoff, and so
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: in that case, the top two finishers advance, or if
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: someone gets a majority of the vote, it's a one
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: and done election. And by the way, it's simpler for
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: election administrators, it's simpler for voters, and it's better for
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: democracy because the election that matters is the one in
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: which most people are already voting, and so you get
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: a more representative outcome and there's not this initial primary
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: filter where only ten percent of voters, who are usually
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: on the most extreme fringes of the political spectrum are
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: deciding you know, election outcomes. And so this will sound
• 59:21
  Speaker 2: wonky and maybe mechanical to people, but it has an
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: impact on public policy because when you look at Louisiana,
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: it's one of the only Deep South. It is the
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: only Deep South state that's expanded medicaid, for example, and
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: was one of the first states to really lean into
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: charter school reform. And when you think about the purpose
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: of government and is it representing people, in Louisiana, more
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: citizens have access to healthcare and too education than a
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: lot of other peer states. And the reason for that
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: is they have a more functional political system with leaders
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: who are intended and focused on solving problems rather than
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: just these partisan squabbles every day, and so performing our
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: elections improve and center, but ultimately in per his governance
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: so that we can solve problems that matter to people.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: Of course, I think Bill Cassidy wishes that they would
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: have kept the old system, but now they're going to
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: go to a primary system, which certainly complicates his path
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: to renomination. Let's talk about where you're active on the
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: playing field here. What's the status in Alaska, what's the
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: status in Nevada. I know, those are two places that
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: you've been active. And where else are you guys active
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: in trying to expand access to primaries.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: So Alaska is a great success story for primary reform
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: because after the state adopted it through the ballot initiative
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: process in twenty twenty, it's now gone through two election
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: cycles where more voters than ever before have been able
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: to cast what we call a meaningful ballot, you know,
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: which is a ballot in election that's truly competitive in
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: which of their vote matters. And what that resulted in
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: Chuck is the State House and the state Senate now
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: have bipartisan governing majorities. It's not just one party that's
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: in charge. There's a coalition of members Democrats, Republicans, and
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: independents by the way, that are working together to address
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: the problems important to the state, most recently overriding a
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: governor's veto to increase education funding. And so Alaska has
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: been a success story of how better elections result in
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: better governance, and it's produced a backlash from those who
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: used to be in power and liked elections when it
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: only represented a handful of people, and so they've been
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: trying to repeal this system. They were unsuccessful in that.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: Last year, a majority of voters in Alaska voted to
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: defend the system, and opponents are going to likely try
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 2: again next year. And I suspect that support for the
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: system is going to continue to grow over time, not
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: just because people in theory like the concept of the
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: freedom to vote for whomever they want, but now they're
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: getting real and better results from the system that they
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: voted in a few years ago.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: Did you think you were going to have to fight
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: multiple election years in Alaska to keep the system in place.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 2: I don't think it's a surprise that every action has
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: an equal opposite reaction. There's the forces of trying to
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: make government better fighting against the forces that are trying
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: to protect the status quo. I think that the period
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: of defense is most important in the immediate years after
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: the adoption of reform, but that it gets better over
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: time because the new incumbents, there are those elected under
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: this system who actually like it and want to defend it.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: And so it's not the legislature that's trying to repeal it, right,
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: it's a small faction of partisan activists that are.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: The other perception problem rank choice voting has, and I
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: say it's a perception problem because it obviously depends on
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: where you sit, is that it appears to have benefited
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: the center left more than it has benefited anybody on
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: the right.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: Well, I think the challenge that we saw in twenty
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: twenty two was that the candidates who were running the
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: two Republicans were late to adopt their campaign strategy to
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: this new system. So instead of telling voters vote for
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: me first and the other Republican second, they ran against
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: the system that the voters just adopted. And so without
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: that adoption of a new strategy to build broad coalitions.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: A moderate Democrat, Mary Potola, you know, was able to
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: win that US House race. By the way, a couple
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: of years later, voters voted differently and the Republican now
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: represents that US House seat. So I do think that
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: there's this transition period in which the parties and the
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: politicians have to get smarter in how they campaign under
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: the new rules of the system, rather than campaigning under
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: what the old rules used to be.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: So that's Alaska. So you're likely having a is it
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: the same ball on initiative that the opponents are putting
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: up or are they rewarded.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: It they actually expanded what they're trying to repeal to
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: include repealing dark money disclosure requirements that were originally passed
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: in twenty twenty.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, that actually helps your cause. People don't like
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: dark money.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: People don't like dark money, and they don't like party primaries,
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: and they don't like plurality winners and elections, and so
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: opponents are trying to do something unpopular for the sake
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: of protecting, you know, what was their own political power.
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: And I'm confident that, you know, the system will continue
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: to endure and be a proof of concept that other
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: states could you know, potentially replicate. And that's what we
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: did see in last year's elections. You know, multiple other
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: states pursued ballot initiatives for an Alaska style kind of system,
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: and while none passed, three states came within three percentage
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 2: points of passing.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: In a pretty to be honest, though, five years ago,
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: I thought all of those were going to get pass easily.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: You know, I remember when we were first talking, and
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: you know, you're like, yeah, we got to do Nevada twice.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: You were pretty you had you were kind of bullish
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: about Missouri, I believe, if I'm not mistaken, And it
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: did seem as if the opponents got savvier in pushing
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: back at you guys in Nevada and elsewhere.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: Well, what we're up against is the two party do
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: optly that wants to.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: Protect actually working with each other this one.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: Right, It was the Democrats that spent over fifteen million
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 2: dollars against this in Alaska and Republicans who spent over
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: seven million in Montana to try and fight it, and
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: they would sort of weaponize the issue and say like, actually,
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: these reforms are about the stocking horse for the other party. Well,
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: they both can't be right when they're saying that, and
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: so we have work to do to build more early
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: and durable support among voters for these policies. We don't
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: need to convince anyone that our political system is broken.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 2: What we do need to do is educate voters about
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: the benefits of these systems and why it is worth
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: a change. And as you know, the threshold of getting
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: a voter to vote yes on an initiative is much
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: harder than getting them to vote no, because you have
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 2: to kind of prove your case beyond a reasonable doubt.
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: And I think that's the that's the task that you know,
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 2: we've signed up for and we're going to continue to
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 2: work on because the status quo is unacceptable and it's
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: leading us in a direction in which we're seeing our
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 2: politics unravel, you know, even further.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: There's a reason results matter more than promises, just like
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  Speaker 1: Their fee is free unless they win. So if I
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: were in your shoes, I'd actually think that this is
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: about as opportunistic of a period of a year as
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: you can have. And when you think about the re
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: redistricting orders, it is taking you know, the issue of
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: political party manipulation and putting it right in the voter's face, right,
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: so you know, I throw that in there, you throw
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: in that the electorate that you're likely to get in
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: a midterm environment. Is an electorate that's going to be
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: more open to changes in the primary system. I think
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: the electric you would get in a mega induced environment.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: I think we I think you know where I'm going there.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: So what states do you expect to be on the
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: ballot in trying to do primary reform and is and
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: let me know and differentiate whether it'll be the top
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: four or it's just open primaries, et cetera.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: There is a lot of activity happening in the movement
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: to reform our politics. There is litigation happening to open
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: close primaries in states like Maryland or Pennsylvania.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: I'm convinced there's an equal protection argument on this. I
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: do not the idea that that there is a poll
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: tax against me as an independent voter, and you're telling
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: me that the only way I could participate in a
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: taxpayer funded election is I have to join a private club.
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: I believe that's a poll tax. I don't see how
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: that's constitutional.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 2: It's certainly not in our belief under many state constitutions
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 2: that have even more protection for voter rights than maybe
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: the federal constitution. And so there's work happening on that
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: there's work happening in legislatures to at least open the
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 2: primaries to all voters. We saw earlier this year in
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: New Mexico, after a multi year campaign, there was a
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 2: bipartisan bill that passed to allow unaffiliated voters to start
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: to participate in party primaries starting next year, over three
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: hundred and thirty thousand of them. And then, of course
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 2: there is the ballot initiative pathway, and there's at least
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 2: two states where local groups are pursuing the top two
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 2: all candidate primary initiative. And that's in both Massachusetts and Oklahoma,
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 2: two very different states politically, but what they have in
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 2: common is that all of their congressional seats are decided
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: in the party primaries, and in Oklahoma those are closed
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: to unaffiliated voters. And so those are two states I
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 2: think to be watching for. And to your point, the
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 2: environment has never been more ripe because our political system
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: has never been more dysfunctional. We just emerged from the
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 2: longest government shutdown that we've seen in history, motivated by
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: in this case, democratic leaders who just want to fight.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's what this has become. I mean the
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: of the year. The Oxford Dictionary new word is rage bait.
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: That's reflective of where our politics is. Right.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: I'm still trying to understand how the word of the
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: year is two words.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: But that's a good question. But that's reflective of our politics,
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 2: which is it's about playing to the base. It's about
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: demonstrating the fight, not about solving problems. And that's why
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: this primary problem, the incentives, is behind so much of
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: the dysfunction that we see our inability to solve problems.
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: Another issue we can look at is immigration. As you know, Chuck,
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 2: a decade ago, there was a bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: bill that passed the Senate, it goes to the House.
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 2: Why does it fail? Well, the House majority leader was
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 2: primaried out of office that summer because he was open
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 2: to some compromise on this issue. And then here we
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 2: are a decade of pendulum politics. We had, you know,
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 2: effectively open borders under the Bided administration, and now we
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 2: have ice raids with even American citizens being snatched off
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 2: the streets under President Trump. People don't want these extra
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 2: dream policies that we've been seeing of late. They want
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 2: these issues to be addressed in a sensible way. That's
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 2: not going to happen until we change the incentives of
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: our political system.
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: You and I go back, I think almost two decades now,
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: our mutual mentor the late Doug Bailey, and you know
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: you've been in this, You've been in this what I
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: call radical centrism, you know, movement for some time. I
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: use that phrase. I'm going to be a bit self
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: referential and name drop here. Bono called me a radical
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: centrist one time at a salon dinner that we were
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: at together, and I said, are you I'm going to
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: take it as a compliment. He says, Okay, he wasn't.
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: He goes, it's sort of a compliment. He goes, there's
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: sometimes that I wish you would take up this cause here,
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: this cause there. And I always say, I'm not a centrist.
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: I'm an incrementalist, meaning late are some things I'm on
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: the left and some things I'm on the right. But
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: I know that the only way to make change in
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: america's one step at a time. And I don't think
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: you try to do big things. You try to do
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: baby steps and eventually you get your hockey stick moment.
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: Why do you think it's been so hard to galvanize
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: the frustrated center in America.
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 2: Well, first I would, I would. I was also say
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: on this topic of what, you know, what is the
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 2: ideology of this movement that wants to make politics better?
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 2: I think centrism comes short in describing it because it
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: really is not about living in what many people view
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 2: as a mushy middle.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: It is about No, it's not about just everything's a compromise.
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: It's just that it's that's that's not what it is.
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: That's why I always say no, no, no, I'm an incrementalist.
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: You know, I empathize with your idea on here, let's
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: try with let's try one step.
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's about also people that want to find common
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 2: grounds and no matter where you are in the political spectrum,
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 2: you can work with others to see what you have
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 2: in common to actually get something done. And that's how
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 2: the biggest, most durable change that we've seen as a
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 2: country work. When we look at the landmark pieces of
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 2: legislation that have passed the Congress, whether that was civil
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 2: rights or social security, or medicare or welfare reform and
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 2: a balanced budget, these things were votes of a majority
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 2: of both parties doing it together and to be sustainable,
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 2: not what we're seeing today. The promise of primary reform
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 2: is that for every state that adopts it, it effectively
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 2: liberates both senators and the representatives from those states from
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 2: being beholden to the base to being representative of the whole.
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 2: And so you don't need to win in all fifty states.
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 2: If we can abolish party primaries in ten states, that's
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 2: twenty US senators. It's a fifth of the Senate that
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 2: actually can have more leaders who are willing to work
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 2: with each other on issues of national importance. That's never
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 2: been more important for the country. When I think about
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 2: where we're at right now facing the rise of artificial intelligence.
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 2: Whether we get this right in terms of setting the
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 2: right rules for the road, having the right over set
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 2: in place, making the right investments, that's going to be
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 2: hugely consequential for our economy and national security in our society.
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: And if we don't have a representative Congress that can
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 2: do that, other countries will, or the corporations themselves will,
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 2: and we're all going to be worse off for it.
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 2: So whether we have a Congress that works affects us all,
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 2: and the reason why it doesn't today is not just
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 2: because of this partisan paralysis. It's because without competitive elections,
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: we wind up getting career politicians who stay in office
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 2: for way too long. We have a quarter of the
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 2: Congress that's over the retirement age, over a third of
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 2: the sentence above age seventy. It's how we get congressional
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 2: hearings where they're asking about tik tak instead of TikTok.
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: And these aren't the folks that we needed making the
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: decisions that are to affect maybe the biggest transformation our
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 2: economy and society, you know, going forward.
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: The biggest difficult I have. And I'll just speak for myself,
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: and I'm curious where you're where you are on this
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: what I'm about to bring up, which is I am
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: I am easily persuaded in the reform movement, right, I
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: think there's a lot of I'm I look at the
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: last sort of crisis moments in American history, and each
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: one of them came with serious periods of reform. You know,
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: after the Civil War, during the basically after the Gilded Age,
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: and the and the and the robber barons right after,
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: you know, during and after FDR, and you know, both
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: for good and for bad, right like when when, And
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: so I'm optimistic that we're about to hit one of
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: those periods that we know, look, we've got to do
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: something about the pardon power. We've got to do something.
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: You know, it's clear the Constitution is going to have
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: to deal with campaign finance issues because you can't do
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: it legislatively. And we've got to deal with age limits. Right,
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: I'm all for this age issue, but they're only you
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: have to do it in the Constitution. So the point
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: is is that I can be I'm almost like a
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: squirrel with this. I'm like, oh, I like that reform.
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I want to do this. There's a lot
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: of I've been you you go to these gatherings too.
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: I get invited to many of these sort of gatherings,
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: whether it's a fledgling third party movement, fledgling reform movement,
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: you know, those advocating a constitutional convention, the folks at
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: the Forward Party. You've got the World Open Primaries, which
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: is another organization that's working in a similar fashion. I
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: know there's a loose connectivity between these groups, right you guys,
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: you know, you're all rowing in the same direction, but
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: everybody has their own sort of lane in their own thing,
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: and maybe it's you already are biased that you have
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: got to start. Do you think you feel like there
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: is an order to the reform that's necessary here, that
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: you know, before we get to we've got to do why,
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: and before we get to why, we got to do z.
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 2: Well, I think two things are true. One is, we
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 2: have a beautiful system of federalism in our country, and
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 2: we can do this in an experimental way at the
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 2: state level. I mean, and that is the way that
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 2: these reforms have gotten done in the past and will today,
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 2: which is states can change these rules without an Act
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 2: of Congress or a constitutional amendment, and by virtue of
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 2: building momentum around reform, it will put more pressure on
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 2: Congress and potentially create an environment in which constitutional change
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 2: is possible. So I think the state by state route
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 2: is both a strategy and an opportunity to try different things.
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 2: And the second thing is I and we did not
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 2: start with primary reform as being our north star. We
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 2: got there through examining what sits at the center of
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 2: both what is most viable and could be most impactful.
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: And I do think that abolishing party primaries is the
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 2: biggest possible change that we can make right now that
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 2: can open the window for other potential changes down the road,
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 2: particularly changes that will require legislatures to do something, because
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 2: for them to do something on this issue, they need
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 2: to be more representative of the population who supports these
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 2: reforms than they are today. So I both support an
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 2: experimental approach to this and we support primary reform for
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 2: a very particular reason, which I do think it is
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 2: the most solvable problem right now.
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: Well, and that's the key, which is what's a problem
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: you could solve first? And I think there's no doubt
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: about that. This feels like a you know again, I
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: called myself an incrementalist. This is an incremental step that
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: could actually, you know, open the door to a whole
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: bunch more of ideas. Do you find yourself frustrated that
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: other reform minded folks don't see this as the core problem?
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 2: I think I was frustrated in year one when more,
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 2: you know, or year two, when we're back at the
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 2: same table and arguing no this one, no this one,
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 2: and realize, like we're thirty people in the room, there's
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 2: three hundred and fifty million people out there. Those are
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 2: the folks that we need to be kind of talking to.
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 2: And so my orientation changed, like this is a positive
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 2: sum approach to a movement. You know, when you look
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 2: at the environmental movement or other movements, there's not just
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 2: one policy that they're behind. It's a diversified approach, including
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 2: what could be done on the state or federal level.
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 2: And so it doesn't frustrate me that there are multiple
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 2: potential pathways to making our democracy better. The thing that's
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 2: frustrating to me is around apathy or defense of the
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 2: status quo, because can anyone look around today and say, oh, no,
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 2: this is actually fine and we're moving in an okayed direction.
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 2: If you can't, then choose something, choose one of these
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 2: things to be for and get behind it, because I
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 2: don't think the path that we're on, you know, is sustainable.
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: What's been You know, there's a lot of statistics that
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: show that the the youngest voting generation is not registering
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: D or R. The registering is I or no party affiliation.
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: So in theory, this should be the core of the
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: activists that you're able to recruit to make this change.
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: Are you making some inroads? Is this something that can
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: be turned into a something that's galvanizable with the college crowd.
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 2: I do believe that. And what we saw last year
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 2: was that the number one predictor for voters that would
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 2: support election reform at the ballot was not by party affiliation,
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 2: It was really by age. Younger voters disproportionately in favor
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 2: of changes to a political system they've only known has
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 2: been broken. An older voter is sort of more hesitant
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 2: around any potential changes to a system they've known the
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 2: same way while all of their lives. And that's good news,
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 2: because young voters become all voters and just a question
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 2: of time. And so I think time is a really
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 2: important lever here when you look back as your reference
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 2: before or to the progressive era, when we got major
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 2: reforms down the women won the right to vote, the
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 2: direct election of the Senate, banning of corporate campaign contributions,
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 2: income tax, the big party primaries.
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: People don't realize the income tax amendment was important because
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: it also helped create the property tax structure in America,
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: which is, you know how we fund so many local services.
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 2: And that didn't happen in just a couple of years.
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 2: That was a thirty year period of time. And so
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 2: when I think about, oh, Alaska won this transformational reform
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 2: four years ago. It suggests to me we're at the
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 2: beginning of a very exciting decade plus era of reform
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 2: in reaction to you know, historic levels of polarization and partisanship.
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 2: The country knows is just not working for them right now.
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: You know, we've sort of danced around this issue, but
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: the biggest opponent to everything you're trying to do is
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: the duopoly, and it's you know, the Democrats in party,
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: in the Republican Party doesn't really work together on anything
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: other than this right, which is sort of protecting their
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: status at the ballot. You can sometimes win over local
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: members of a party or local party organizations if they're
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: in a state where they've been marginalized. But I imagine donors
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: are hard to come by because a donor usually is
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: a partisan right. They usually are passionate about something. Is
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: it hard to find people passionate in the very wealthy
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: space about reform.
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 2: But unit in America over the years is built across
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 2: partisan community. Now over one hundred and twenty what we
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 2: call political philanthropists, and many of them have not traditionally
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 2: been partisan donors, investing in politics for a partisan outcome.
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 2: That's fine. But there's been a lot a lot of
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 2: people who have come into this movement because their interest
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 2: is not trying to elect or oppose one political party
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 2: or another. It's about people who have been philanthropically mind
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 2: who care about an issue, that knows we're not going
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 2: to make progress on that issue, but for government being
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 2: able to be functional and representative of the electorate. So
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 2: I would say it's a different profile oftentimes of a
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 2: donor that gets involved in this space, and from across
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 2: the political spectrum as well. It's really interesting in this work,
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 2: not just at our team or board level, but also
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 2: in the donor community of people that may not agree
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 2: a lot on particular candidates or particular policies, but we
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 2: do agree that government should represent a true majority of Americans.
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 2: And then let's have the argument once we have a
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 2: government that can represent us.
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: I know you said in a few states where there's
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: not a referendum option that you're trying to work in
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: the state legislature, obviously you have to go with the
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: lowest common denominator. Stuff is it? Is it simply allowing
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: independence in primaries? That's about the about the best you
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: can hope for in convincing a legislature to do.
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 2: Something in the near term. I do think that legislatories
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 2: will take more time to bring along to more ambitious reforms.
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 2: But let's remember that California adopted its all candidate primary
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 2: system by legislative referral, so some states legislators might be
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 2: willing to at least put it on the ballot. It
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 2: takes leadership, though Governor Schwarzenegger was instrumental, you know, in
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 2: that campaign. And when I look at incoming governors like
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 2: an Abigail Spanberger who serves in you know, have one term,
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 2: there's in Virginia. Maybe this is something that schol champion
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 2: is part of her legacy there to say this will
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 2: be good for the commonwealth out into the future. Let's
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 2: get this done. I think when we have executive leadership
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 2: that leans into the issue, legislatures may be more likely
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 2: to follow.
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: Look, I mean, I'm just ecstatic that is a Virginia voter.
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: I don't have to register by party, and I at
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: least get a choice what primary, you know, and I
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: always just find the competitive primary and I vote in it.
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: So I you know, Virginia is a place where where
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: you feel like no matter where what your ideological stripe
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: is you at least have some say in the conversation.
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: But Virginia may also repeal a constitutional amendment on redistricting
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: reform in a couple of months, and California just did it.
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: And I look at what happened there. There was real
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: momentum on redistricting reform just four or five years ago.
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: And I would bet frankly that movement had more momentum
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: than your movement. Did.
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 2: We were part of that, actually, yeah for.
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: Me, but it had a and and it's amazing how
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: that flipped that quickly. Are you at all I mean,
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: are you at all demoralized at how people who are
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: reformers are going? Yeah? But on this, I mean I
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: just have struggled, you know. And I've had this debate
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: with friends out in California. I said, look, I just
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: don't understand why if disenfranchising voters in Texas is bad,
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: why is the answer disenfranchising voters in California.
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 2: I'm with you. I think fighting fire with fire means
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 2: everything just burns down. So it was not in favor
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 2: of what California.
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: Is a good expression.
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 2: However, a fair way the instinct which is that I
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 2: get it, I get it.
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 2: And I also think it's important to bring it back
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 2: to why it's happening When Texas redistricted, when Missouri followed suit,
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 2: and now there's pressure in Indiana. It's because the president
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 2: right now is weaponizing the primary system to get it done.
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 2: When he goes sweeps into a state, it is get this,
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 2: find me five more seats, or I'm going to primary
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 2: you in your next election. So I think it's important
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 2: we connect the dots to the political incentives piece, which
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 2: is how primaries can be weaponized not just to push
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 2: people to the extremes, but to push them to do
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 2: undemocratic things to consolidate power. The opposite is true as well,
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 2: or the other side of the coin, which is that
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 2: if we didn't have party primaries, this challenge of safe
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 2: districts or districts that are heavily lapside would matter less
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 2: check because there would be more competition in the general
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 2: election if we advanced more than two candidates rather than
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 2: what it is you know right now. And so I
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 2: think the answer to go ahead and create a partisan primaries. Right,
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 2: go ahead and create a partisan plus twenty district in California.
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 2: At least there'll be a top two in the same
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 2: party and then they fight over you know, you know,
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 2: left versus center. I mean, I always thought Berman Sherman
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 2: was the first one of these, and it was Howard
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 2: Berman and Brad Sherman. They got redistricted into the same
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 2: thing together and they both advanced to the they were
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 2: in the top to and so.
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: It was a D on D general election. And I
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: remember the dividing issue was actually tart at the time,
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: and one of them had been you know, voted against it,
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: one of them voted for it. And then essentially they
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: were wooing the third of Republicans that were in their district. Right,
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: they were both Democrats, and there was a third of
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: Republicans that were the swing voter. And I thought, boy,
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: that could really if we could have that system everywhere where,
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: at any point in time, even if you're in the minority,
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: your vote could be the swing vote. You get to
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: decide do I want, you know, do I want a
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: libertarian conservative or do I want a evangelical conservative? Right,
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: if that's the two choices, well, I you know, it
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: may not like either, but I have a preference of
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: which I want less, you know exactly, Yeah.
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 2: You think about it. The midterm elections that we're going
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 2: to go into in ninety percent of the districts, these
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 2: elections are over before people show up in November, and
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 2: their vote, if they cast, it really doesn't matter.
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: We're one hundred and ten million, you know, I think
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: we'll get one hundred and ten million midterm voters. Maybe
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: one hundred and fifteen. It's turnout. It's been amazing in
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: the Trump era again.
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 2: And.
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: Maybe there'll be thirty five congressional seats decided by ten
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: points or less out of four hundred and thirty five maybe, right.
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 2: So that's tens of millions of people, you know, who
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 2: is A vote effectively does not matter. It's impooring people vote,
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 2: but on participation without competition does not result in representation.
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 2: If we want your vote to matter, you have to
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 2: have a choice that is real. And so the idea
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 2: that in red districts you get to choose what kind
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 2: of Republican you want, during blue districts, what kind of
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 2: Democrat you want in the general election, is much better
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 2: than showing up to an election that's already been you know, decided.
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: You know, it's funny. I grew up growing up in Miami,
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: up in the seventies and eighties, and I remember my
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: dad was a Republican Conservative, but he was a registered Democrat,
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: and I remember asking him, I said, why are you
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: Originally he says, well, there's no Republicans down here because
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: at the time the South, this was back in the seventies,
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: every politician in the South, everybody was a Democrat, but
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: half the Democrats were really Republicans. But all the local offices,
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: he said, if I want to have to say in
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: local primaries, you know I got to vote. So in
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: some ways, conservatives, older conservatives in the South have actually
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: been participating in primaries this way for a long time.
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 2: I mean, it all boils down to the idea that
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 2: every American should have the freedom to vote fro whenever
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 2: they want and every taxpayer funded election period. Right seventy
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 2: eighty percent of voters, regardless of party, believe in that.
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 2: In addition, though to the attacks on redistricting, what we're
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 2: also seeing in nine states right now is attempts by
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 2: legislators to close the primaries and actually start to register
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 2: voters by party in order to do so. That is
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 2: extremely unpopular. I mean, we just released a poll today
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 2: from Republican polster in Texas that found two thirds of
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 2: Republican primary voters support the current system. They like to
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 2: have the freedom to vote. They don't like the idea
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 2: of government overreach and starting to have to register publicly
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 2: what party you're from. So these attempts are driven by insiders,
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 2: driven by extreme factions. What they're trying to do is unpopular,
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 2: and that's one of the reasons why you Know in
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 2: America is working hard in these states to defend the
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 2: current system from going backwards. And what we have found
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 2: is that our allies in this in many cases are
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 2: Republican legislative leaders who know that not only is this
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 2: bad for America, it's bad for their party. When the
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 2: largest and fastest growing part of the electorate are those
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 2: that don't belong to either party, How can you expect
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 2: to win those voters over if you're kicking them out
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 2: of the process in which you're choosing your candidates. And
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 2: so it really is, you know, courageous Republican leaders in
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 2: many of these states that are standing up to forces
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 2: within their own party that want to close elections to
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 2: create more pure ideological purity that might wind up costing
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 2: them elections.
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: Is there a good privacy argument. I mean, you know,
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: I don't want to have to join one of these
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: two clubs. Don't make me join a club. I want
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: the privacy of keeping my you know, I may lean
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: one way or the other, but I'd prefer the government
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: and anybody that checks my voter registration to just see
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: I'm a registered voter period. I don't think you should
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: know my politics. Now. You may learn it over time,
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: but I don't want to have to identify. I mean,
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: it's sort of a strange thing that government is making
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: people do this in a quote unquote democracy percent.
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 2: I mean, we adopted the secret ballot a century ago
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 2: to give people privacy over their right to vote. In
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 2: many states, however, we force people to register publicly with
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 2: a political party. Go in some database, I can see
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 2: what party you belong too. In many states don't have
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 2: this system today, and that's what those those states are
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 2: trying to change. And I agree with you that it's
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 2: an invasion of privacy, particularly in an era of politics
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 2: in which one's party affiliation can be used against them.
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: No, it gets weaponized culturally, it can be weaponized at
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: your job, it can do this. I mean, you know
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 1: the local part well, the local Democratic Party here in
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: Arlington County if you want to participate in some of
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: the county primaries, because Virginia, each county can sort of
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: party can decide how they want to do it. So
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: they don't have party primaries, they don't have taxpayer fund
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: of primaries, but they do have their own party primary
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: and you have to sign a pledge if you want
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 1: to participate in it, and I just won't do that.
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: I know the pledge is meaningless, but I kind of feel,
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 1: you know, but I don't think they have the right
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: to ask that right now. It is a privately funded
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: election that they run, so okay, it's a private organization.
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: They can have that say. So I just don't particip in.
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: I won't justicipad in because there're sometimes the Republicans have
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: gone off and on about doing the same thing where
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: they make you sign an oath because there isn't a
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: there isn't party registration in this state. So let me
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: shift in our last few minutes here to the other
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: areas of reform to focus on. So I agree with you.
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: I think primaries number one are sort of easy to
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: communicate to people that it's a problem, right, it's a
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: we're polarized. Hey, it's this primary issue. People get it,
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: So I'm with you. I think it is the good
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: first reform to focus on what's next. What's two, three,
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: and four in your head? I think it's a good question.
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: I think we need to do something on campaign finance.
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: It's a salient issue for most voters. They don't like
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: the idea of special interests or wealthy interests having disproportionate
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: say in our political system. That will likely require a
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: constitutional amendment. There's something the other number two when you
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: ask people what's wrong with politics today ones money in politics.
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 2: The next is career politicians. And I think there is
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 2: something to do with age limits and term limits to
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 2: make sure that we have a Congress that can reasonably
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 2: turn over with time and remain both nimble to the
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 2: issues of the day, you know, and representative of people. Again,
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 2: those may require amendments, so those are harder, you know, lifts.
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 2: I'm also frankly interested in what may not be a
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 2: reform that requires a change in law or state constitutions.
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 2: But how do we think about other ways we do
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 2: democracy outside of an electoral context, And there's a growing
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 2: movement around deliberative democracy. And citizen assemblies, which are essentially
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 2: randomly assembled groups of citizens that can deliberate on issues
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 2: and make recommendations to government. I think they're interesting ways
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 2: where they can actually be integrated into the government, like.
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: A jury pool, but instead of for deciding somebody's guilt
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 1: or innocence. Okay, Arlington County is going to do a
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: random jury of one hundred citizens because we want to
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: decide whether we want to put bike lanes.
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 2: Everywhere, right, yeah, I mean, and this goes back to
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 2: Athenian democracy. I mean, this is not a new idea.
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 2: This is actually how democracy was done in the very
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 2: early days, and.
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: The idea it's what Datokville loved about our democracy. It
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: was how local it was and how engaged we were
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: at the township level.
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 2: And I think it's gonna be even more important as
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 2: our information ecosystem is transformed and in many ways polluted
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 2: and distorted by artificial intelligence. How do we protect the
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 2: spaces in which democracy can be done.
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 1: So mean, this intrigues me is who's trying this? Any
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: community out there trying this?
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 2: There are local communities in fact here in Montrose, Colorado
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 2: and for Collins have done citizen assemblies there have been.
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 1: How does it work? Give me an example of how
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: the citizen assembly work. Poor columns especially.
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 2: People will approach in different ways. The sort of ideal
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 2: way is a process of what they call sortition, which
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 2: is random selection of citizens. They are incentivized for participation,
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 2: like compensated for their time, but they might meet a
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 2: few times on a weekend over the course of a
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 2: few weeks. They're presented with information and arguments from different
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 2: perspectives on an issue, and then they deliberate in a
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 2: facilitated way together to render a particular you know, recommendation
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 2: or perspective that then say, goes to the city council
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 2: and so binding. No, although it could be set up
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 2: in a binding way, but right now many of the
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 2: ones that are being done are advisory, you know in nature.
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 2: I think there are interesting ways in which may be
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 2: integrated into the citizen initiative process itself. We can use
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 2: CITIS assemblies to determine what gets to go to the ballot.
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's just it's an improvement in what direct
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 2: democracy you know, can look like. So I'd say like
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 2: over the next decade plus, there's going to be needs
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 2: to reimagine what democracy looks like. I mean, we're coming
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 2: up on our two hundred and fiftieth anniversary as a country.
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 2: We've gotten here. I think by continuing to look at
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 2: and innovate and improve the way that we can self
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 2: govern and we need to be responsive to the times.
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 2: And so whether it's these election reforms or citizen assemblies,
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 2: the idea is that we need to keep democracy fresh
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 2: to keep it working.
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you I would. I would. I've always thought
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 1: about this, and you know, I joke that if you
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: live in the state of New Hampshire for more than
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: ten years, you're going to end up in the state
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: legislature at some point when you have a four hundred
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 1: members state House. But I used to think, what if
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: that were just a four hundred random people that were
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: selected to be in the you know, and then you
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: brought them together just like you would a jury, and Okay,
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: this is the legislature. We're going to compensate you for
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: your time. You're the citizen legislature for the leg Any. Look,
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: if you feel like any, you vet them, maybe you
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: know certain people can't serve, and you know whatever, you
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: can come up with some criteria, but compulsory representation is
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: something that I've actually been curious about, where you basically, Okay, yeah,
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: once every twenty years, I got to sit on the
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 1: city council, you know, once every twenty twenty years, I
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: got to do six months. I got to do six
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: weeks at the state capitol. You know. I think we
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: would get better. I think we would certainly get outcomes
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: that were more reflective of the population.
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 2: I mean, if you put in a poll right now
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 2: and ask most Americans, would you rather keep the five
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 2: hundred and thirty five leaders we currently have in Congress
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 2: or do a lottery and try out something new for
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 2: a couple of years. I'd be interested in how to
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 2: come back. But I wouldn't be surprised if a lot
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 2: of people would be open to trying something a bit new.
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 2: And this model, like you said, it is not a
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 2: foreign concept. Juries make life or death decisions. Surely they
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 2: are also capable of informing what our marginal tax rate
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 2: could be.
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: Now you look at it, it feels like there are
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: a couple of rural states that would be more open
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 1: to trying this first, you know, And it could be
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: interesting whether it's a you could see easily see one
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: of the new England states being open to this concept.
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 1: I mean, the New Hampshire State House can be such
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: a pain in the ass with how many specials, you know,
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 1: we have foreigner members. There's always somebody who's you know,
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: can't do it, or can't go or this or that.
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: If you told me they transition to something like this
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: in twenty years would shock me.
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 2: By the way. The pathway that many of these reforms
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 2: take at the state level is through the initiative process,
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 2: where citizens get to decide this and shape their own
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 2: government directly, and that process needs to be protected. It
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 2: is under attack in many states right now by legislatures
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 2: that are trying to increase the threshold of what it
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 2: takes to pass the ballot initiative to make it harder
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 2: to qualify. So I think everyone who cares about democracy,
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 2: and especially in the reform movement, ought to be working
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 2: together to make sure that we protect and improve the
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 2: citizen initiative process. There will be initiatives on the ballot
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 2: next November that will both attempt to make things worse
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 2: that we need to defeat, and a couple of states
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 2: actually innovating with constitutional protections of the initiative process so
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 2: that legislatures can't undo them in the future.
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: I scared Jack dan Forth on the idea of a
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: constitutional convention. He fears it that you know that, you
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: know it implies that we're scrapping the Constitution. And he's like,
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: I love our constitution, we just need to amend it.
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, well, it's a gathering to basically consider amendments,
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: is what I'm what I'm advocating, But not everybody is.
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: There's always when when you throw the idea out there,
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 1: it's more folks on the left who are skeptical of
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: it these days than folks the right. And in fact,
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 1: at Clinton won in ninety six, I think it was
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: Greg Abbott at the time as governor of Texas was
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: basically wanting to to lead a movement of states to
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 1: call for a constitutional convention. And you know, had Clinton
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: one in sixteen, that might have been what the right
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 1: would have focused on. It might have been an interesting exercise.
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 1: But you think it would Is that a fool's errand
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 1: in your mind? Or is it something that whose time
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: might might be now?
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 2: I think the time was before now for a convention
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 2: to re examine some of the not principles of our
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 2: constitutional design are checks and balances our separation powers. But
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 2: the structures, I mean, whether you believe there ought to
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 2: be an electoral college or not, no one can argue
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 2: that it's functioning in the way the founders designed it.
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 2: So what does it look like to improve and modernize it.
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: That Well, I got a simple solution to that. Double
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 1: the size. Go back to increasing the size of the
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: House every ten years, and then your electoral college and
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: your popular vote will no longer I mean right now
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 1: every four years, the likelihood of a split decision between
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 1: the electoral college and the popular vote is more likely,
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 1: not less likely, because we have not expanded the numerator
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: of the electoral vote of the electoral college. And if
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: we double the size of the House, I promise you
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: nobody'd be complaining about the electoral college.
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 2: As you know, what people fear about a convention? Is
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 2: it the runaway convention? Will they do something to radically
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 2: But we're skipped. But those critics forget there's a ratification process. Whatever.
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 2: The practician comes up quite high.
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: Yes, right, you don't fear the voter.
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think we should fear it. I think
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 2: we need to treat it seriously. Be cautious and smart
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 2: about it and embrace it as a tool the founders
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 2: gave us to sure that we can continue to endure
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 2: as a representative republic for centuries to come.
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: Why isn't someone trying to be the leader in convening this.
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 2: I think that there's this sort of psychological barrier about
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 2: whether constitutional change is possible. It's been what thirty years
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 2: since the last amendment, you know past, But I think
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 2: pressure is going to build, especially because of how if
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 2: power continues to consolidate in the way that it does,
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 2: if the initiative process deteriorates, then the other levers we
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 2: have to make change become harder, and I think people
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 2: may view this other pathways becoming increasingly necessary.
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's been I just feel like that the I
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: think that there's agreement with this, but in some ways
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: you have to have a leader right to galvanize people
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 1: to get there.
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 2: Well, your next project, Chuck.
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 1: Oh man, We've all got a lot of projects. Right.
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: Let me get you on this. You ran for office
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 1: once before, you still have the itch.
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 2: Not under today's party primary system. I can tell you that.
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: No, you live in Colorado, it's the least partisan or
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: the least primary impact. I mean, certainly primaries have some
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 1: certainly or but it's less so, right.
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Although I think Colorado is heading in the direction
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 2: of many other places where the primary sism is causing
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 2: our state to become a lot more partisan. It's one
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 2: of the states that we can tine to work on
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 2: for form. But we'll say having had the experience of
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 2: running for office early on was good in being grounded
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 2: and how voters actually think about democracy and elections, not
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 2: just an academic perspective on this. And I feel grateful
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 2: to be in a role right now to make the
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 2: biggest impact I can that can impact how people who
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 2: runs and how they govern and at scale.
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: You ran as an independent, So let me get you
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 1: out of here actually on this topic, which is what
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 1: do you think Mike Duggan is running into right now?
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: Running is independent in Michigan? That he expect that you
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 1: would have been able to tell him how he asked
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 1: you that, Oh yeah, this is how many voters view
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 1: third party candidates are independent.
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, be wary of the early polls that show voters
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 2: would like the idea of an independent.
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 1: And looks really good at first, doesn't it exactly?
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 2: But I think the most important thing for any independent
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 2: is to achieve escape velocity, which is to say, you
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 2: have to be able to prove that you are viable
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 2: before voters really start paying attention and ask if you
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 2: are and that happens well before election day. So unlike
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 2: the traditional playbook where you spend most of your resources
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 2: in the last ninety days, you know your November election
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 2: is actually months earlier because you have to be interesting
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 2: that you can be a.
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 1: What does that look like being showing up in the
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 1: conventional places that other candidates do? Is it money? What
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 1: is it that you think? And I know this is
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: a bit subjective, but generally, what do you think that
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 1: voters are looking for to decide, oh, you're legitimate.
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 2: I think in the past, the houristic would be like
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 2: traditional media coverage, the press taking you seriously when you
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 2: get a debetia are you as the what are you
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 2: pulling at? But today I think that's changing because the
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 2: metric that probably matters most in our politics is attention.
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 2: Are you getting attention? Am I hearing from you? Are
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 2: you breaking through? I think that works in the favor
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 2: of independent candidates the extent that there are a fewer
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 2: gatekeepers that are saying, whether you're credible or not, but
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 2: you can reach voters directly in a more democratized way
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 2: than ever has been the case. I'm hoping that we
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 2: might see a couple of these candidates actually break through
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 2: what has been that glass ceiling and then show that
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 2: it's possible.
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: Nick Treada, you always give me a little more. Hope
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: your your glasses have full on this.
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 2: Reform movement, aren't you yntinue to stick there? There's no
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 2: other choice, so let's get it done.
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 1: Right, There's only forward, right, there's there's my friends at
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 1: a certain third party like to say, you know, we
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 1: only have one choice. You have to move forward. Thank you,
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 1: Jo great stock with me. Well, I hope you enjoyed
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 1: that conversation. Look, I don't care where you are, left,
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 1: right or center. It doesn't make sense for our our
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 1: our democracy to somehow lock people out of our You know,
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 1: we don't know where we live, We don't know whether
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 1: we're going to have a Republican in charge or a
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 1: Democratic Democrat in charge. We should have us say and
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 1: who gets into these general elections across the board. It
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 1: is odd to me that we have just accepted this
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 1: premise that you have to join a private organization in
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 1: order to participate in many states in a taxpayer funded election.
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: We need some We need some better lawyering out there
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 1: on this front, all right, We need some better lawyering, because,
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 1: trust me, there's a lot of equal protection arguments that
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 1: I think should be made on this front. All right,
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 1: it's time to jump into the time machine. We're going
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 1: to go back to December seventeenth, nineteen eighty nine, a
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 1: young Chuck Todd was a senior in high school. In
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 1: case you were wondering what I was doing, December seventeenth,
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine, it was the debut of an animated
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 1: series for adults called The Simpsons. And who knew what
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 1: kind of impact is? I would argue, bigger than Saturday
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 1: Night Live, Bigger than Meet the Press, right, sort of
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 1: the launch Sunday Affairs conversations, right in some ways before
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 1: it was the first place you ever had back and
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 1: forth on politics in a first radio and televised arena.
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 1: We had Saturday Night Live sort of the king of parody,
• 1:49:59
  Speaker 1: and then there the Simpsons. And in some ways the
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 1: Simpsons are probably is important of a participant into the
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 1: changing ways that we satirized politics than any other program
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 1: that has been launched in the last in the history
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 1: of television. So that's the subject of my time machine
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 1: history lesson of the Day. How the Simpsons rewired politics,
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 1: media and animation. And it all started December seventeen, nineteen
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 1: eighty nine. It was a Christmas special. I remember it
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 1: was a short on The Tracy Omens Show back in
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 1: the day, but this Christmas special aired on Fox and
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 1: it looked loud, rough and kind of disposable. Right, thirty
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 1: five years later, that cartoon hasn't just outlasted its peers,
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 1: it's outlasted entire media eras Right. The Simpsons didn't just
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 1: mock American politics, that's easy. What they did is they
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 1: reshaped Americans understand power, persuasion, and performance, and in the
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: process they what animation itself can be. And what I
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 1: loved about what the Simpsons did is they did it look.
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 1: Was there a social socially liberal lean to the show, sure,
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 1: but it was not necessarily a liberal show or a
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 1: conservative show. In many ways, really mocked process and it
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 1: was really good at surfacing hypocrisy and surfacing the absurdity
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 1: of the professionalization of politics, and in fact one of
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 1: the early ways they did it. And I want to
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 1: pop through a few shows that I think where they
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 1: really were brilliant and what they did. And when you
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 1: watch these shows today, you're think, oh, I've seen this
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 1: in other places, But at the time, nobody had ever
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 1: done this before. So Burns for Governor. When Moni Burns
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 1: ran for governor, the Simpsons showcased in the pop culture
• 1:51:49
  Speaker 1: area that something that we political reporters already knew, we
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 1: political junkies already knew that campaigns were a business. The
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 1: episode two cars in every garage and three eyes on
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 1: every fish, burn earns he doesn't just run for governor
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 1: because he believes in anything. He runs because regulation threatens him.
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 1: That's why he decides he wants to run for office.
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 1: The telling moment isn't the mutant fish. It's when Burns
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 1: instructs Smithers to assemble a campaign operation the way a
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 1: CEO would assemble a management team. And so for the
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 1: wider world, they understood, give me a pollster, a media handler,
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 1: speech writer, an image consultant, and the episode showcase that
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 1: Burns understood something essential. Campaigns aren't moral arguments. They're simply
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 1: logistical ones. Now he loses not because voters rejected his policies,
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 1: but because he fails to convincingly perform as a relatable figure. Right,
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 1: he won't eat the fish. It's a lesson that campaigns
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 1: still learn relearn every cycle. Another episode that I thought
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 1: did a good job at sort of mocking government and
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 1: politics the monorail episode and the use of Broadway to
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 1: explain infrastructure failure. The episode Marge versus the Monoail endures
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 1: because it understands persuasion better than most policy memos do.
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 1: The episode is a deliberate homage to the music band
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 1: Monorel Monreel. Sorry Lyle Lanley is Harold Hill selling civic
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 1: fantasy through charming song. Well, the Monorail isn't about transportation,
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 1: it was simply about identity. Springfield doesn't choose the mono
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 1: rail because it's efficient. I don't think they really needed one.
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 1: They choose it because it made them feel important. That's
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 1: how it was sold to them. In some ways, what
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 1: it was mocking were all the smaller cities that were
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 1: getting talked into debt financing arenas and other sort of
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 1: supposedly public arenas or entertainment complexes or concert halls, but
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 1: they were really about just helping a private entity make money.
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 1: The episode's genius, in some ways was showing that democracy
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 1: can be overwhelmed by spectacle, not ignorance, and mister and
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 1: mister Lisa goes to Washington. It remained one of the
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 1: smarter portrayals of civic education that we've had on television.
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 1: Lisa's faith in democracy is shaken, but it's not destroyed.
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 1: The system works barely because exposure still has power. Sometimes
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 1: the episode frequently is cited an academic work, believe it
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 1: or not, because it models critical citizenship skepticism without disengagement.
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 1: It goes back to the essay I had at the
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: beginning of this episode, right, don't give up. Even when
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 1: you think the system is rigged and it's messy and
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 1: it's ugly, there are still ways that you can make
• 1:54:18
  Speaker 1: the system work. Then, of course, there was sideshow Bob
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 1: Roberts good homage to that mockumentary back in the day.
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 1: That show went further side show Bob riggs an election,
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 1: it's revealed and he wins. Anyway, sound familiar. Episode predicts
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 1: scandal fatigue, the idea that information alone no longer guarantees accountability. Unfortunately,
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 1: that was something that I think when people watched it
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 1: at the time. Oh no, that wouldn't really happen. Let's
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 1: just say the episode has aged uncomfortably well. Trash of
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 1: the Titans populism, deferred costs, or moral hatcher. Trash of
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 1: the Titans is local politics done brutally right. Homer runs
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 1: for Senate Commissioner, promising more services, less effort, and no responsibility.
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 1: His slogan, can't someone else do it? It isn't laziness,
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 1: it is actually resentment. Once elected, Homer delivers exactly what
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 1: he promised, and the system collapses under the weight of
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 1: deferred costs. Right, the most revealing moment isn't the failure,
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 1: it's the response. Springfield exports its garbage to another town.
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 1: The episode captures a timeless political truth. When costs are
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 1: delayed or displaced, accountability totally evaporates. Look, it was. One
• 1:55:33
  Speaker 1: thing about The Simpsons is after a while their success
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 1: at mocking actually made it where politicians wanted to be
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 1: seen as on the side of the Simpsons, that on
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 1: the side of the reasonable people, that they weren't the
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 1: crazy runs. And you've had all sorts of people who
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 1: have participate let their voice. Barack Obama, I think Joe
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 1: Biden did once Outdore Rush Limbaugh, did I believe you've
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 1: had The George hw Bush episode when he moves across
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 1: the street from Homer is really well done and it
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 1: is almost, in some ways an homage hw Bush. So
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 1: it is. It was proof and certainly plenty of media
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 1: figures participated over the years Springfield became a legitimate public square. Then,
• 1:56:21
  Speaker 1: of course there's the impact that the Simpsons had on
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 1: what we all watched today. Right. I know, I'm a
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 1: fan of a lot of adult animation these days, and
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 1: we have the Simpsons to thank, right, think about it,
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 1: Before the Simpsons animation in America simply meant kids. After
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 1: the Simpsons animation meant tone and not age, right, And
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 1: what we all figured out was it was easier to
• 1:56:43
  Speaker 1: see an animated figure tell us an uncomfortable truth that
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 1: a real person telling us an uncomfortable truth. Right. Without
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 1: the Simpsons, we wouldn't have had King of the Hill,
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 1: South Park, Family, Guy, Futurama, Archer, BoJack, Horseman, Rick and Morty.
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 1: I know I'm leaving a bunch out. You want to
• 1:56:59
  Speaker 1: tell me your favorite you want to tell me what
• 1:57:02
  Speaker 1: you think the Simpsons did to impact political culture. I'd
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 1: love to hear from you. And then, of course, there's
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 1: one of my favorite homages to the Simpsons. Two thousand
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 1: and two, South Park aired an entire episode that might
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 1: be the most honest tribute of them all. It was
• 1:57:15
  Speaker 1: called Simpsons Did It. And the premise was simple. Every
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 1: idea of the South Park writers were trying to come
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 1: up with had already been done by the Simpsons. And
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 1: the whole punchline of the episode is over and over
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 1: again character shout out Simpsons did It. It wasn't being
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 1: a mockery, it was simply acknowledgment. It was clear our
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 1: friends at South Park probably had writer's block that week,
• 1:57:34
  Speaker 1: and it may be why they went to decide to
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 1: just stick to parroting in the moment stuff on that front.
• 1:57:41
  Speaker 1: But that episode captured something every creator understands. The Simpsons
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 1: didn't just open the door. They mapped the room right
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 1: and they and they allowed so many other creators to
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 1: come in and have their own version of this in
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 1: their own take an entire generation of writers to find
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 1: the boundaries of what animated storytelling could do politically, culturally,
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 1: and emotionally. So the Simpsons still kicking. They didn't just
• 1:58:07
  Speaker 1: survive history, They've explained it. They taught audiences how to
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 1: spot performative leadership, civic spectacle, deferred accountability, media driven politics,
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 1: and they did it while teaching animation how to grow up.
• 1:58:20
  Speaker 1: So that's why the show still matters. And somewhere creator
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 1: is still pitching an idea, only to hear a familiar
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 1: voice in the room say, Simpsons did it? All right,
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 1: let's get into a little ask Chuck, Ask Chuck. We're
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 1: going to do. Here's my promise to you. Some of
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 1: you probably been wondering, Hey, I threw a question in
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 1: here a while ago. How come you haven't dealt with it?
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 1: I thought it was a pretty good question. Well, I'm
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 1: going to have an entire episode where I'm just answering
• 1:58:49
  Speaker 1: questions and trying to play catch up a little bit.
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 1: That'll happen in a couple of weeks. And yes, if
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 1: you want to chalk it up to oh, it's the holidays,
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 1: but yes, okay, it's going to be new content. I
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 1: promise it is not. It is not me just trying
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 1: to well, it is me trying to have a couple
• 1:59:07
  Speaker 1: of days off. I'm not going to lie about that,
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 1: but it will be timely and it will be useful,
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 1: I promise. But let me get in here. Get three
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 1: or four questions in the here. First one comes from
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 1: Tiffany and she writes, did Adam Schiff hurt or help
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 1: Mandela Barnes by endorsing him for Wisconsin Governor? I live
• 1:59:22
  Speaker 1: in Wisconsin. I have voted Republican until twenty eighteen. I
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 1: think there are a lot of people like me politically
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 1: in Wisconsin. I don't know that anyone in Wisconsin will
• 1:59:28
  Speaker 1: appreciate endorsement from California. Also, recent history shows that big
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 1: endorsements from the Republican Party fail in Wisconsin. It seems
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 1: a little out of touch for the Democrats to do
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 1: big endorsements like this, thoughts, thank you Tiffany well Tifically,
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 1: There's one simple reason why an Adam why a Mandela
• 1:59:43
  Speaker 1: Barnes would consider an Adam Schiff endorsement meaningful or helpful
• 1:59:48
  Speaker 1: to him, and that is that Adam Schiff has one
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 1: of the most lucrative emailress of fundraising lists in the country. One,
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 1: he's from the largest state, particularly the largest liberal state,
• 2:00:03
  Speaker 1: in California. Two by being the face of impeachment, he
• 2:00:07
  Speaker 1: build a massive donor list, then being attacked by Donald
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 1: Trump constantly has only served to make that donor list
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 1: more active, more viable. So you are right. I don't
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 1: think anybody, any Wisconsin voter is going to be moved
• 2:00:23
  Speaker 1: by the endorsement. And if Mandela Barnes actually puts uses
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 1: Adam Shift's endorsement and paid media, he'd be a fool.
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 1: No offense to Adam Shift. But I don't think any
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 1: make cares. I think you're absolutely right. But if you're
• 2:00:35
  Speaker 1: wondering why why does this endorsement mean something to Mandela
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 1: Barnes to Ching to Ching to Ching to Jing. It
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 1: is access to that email list, That's what it is.
• 2:00:49
  Speaker 1: And Adam Shift probably only only president Presidential nominees probably
• 2:00:56
  Speaker 1: have bigger and more interesting level like Kamala Harris's list
• 2:01:00
  Speaker 1: that she controls was going to be a good one,
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 1: but Adam Shift is probably the single best left leaning
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 1: fundraising list in America. That is not that for somebody
• 2:01:11
  Speaker 1: who never ran for president. He's just all the ingredients
• 2:01:15
  Speaker 1: are there, the impeachment, the attacks from Trump's and being
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 1: from California, you throw all that in there. That was
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 1: why Mandela Barnes wanted that endorsement, and why the endorsement
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 1: matters to him. It is not intended to try to
• 2:01:28
  Speaker 1: persuade you, and in fact, it sounds like that that
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 1: stuff might actually dissuade you. And I think in some
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 1: ways some of these endorse I don't think. I don't
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 1: think endorsements matter unless they bring you something else. And
• 2:01:38
  Speaker 1: in this case, what he's looking for is just access
• 2:01:40
  Speaker 1: to grassroots dollars, and Adam Shift probably has the single
• 2:01:44
  Speaker 1: best fundraising list there is. Alright, let me go to
• 2:01:46
  Speaker 1: next question comes from Max w Hey, Chuck and Chris
• 2:01:49
  Speaker 1: ah Hey, Solissa, you're not answering your mail bag, so
• 2:01:52
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to answer your leftovers here. Max w. Rights,
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 1: I posted this as a comment for Chris Silia's mail
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 1: bag already, but I want to suggest again what I
• 2:02:01
  Speaker 1: think is a great wager. Oh on the Aggies versus
• 2:02:04
  Speaker 1: Kane's matchup, loser shaves his head. Why are we doing this?
• 2:02:07
  Speaker 1: No shaving of heads or goatee's or anything like this,
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 1: But okay, let me listen, he goes. It's don monetary
• 2:02:13
  Speaker 1: demonstrates actual commitment to the schools you both support. I've
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 1: made a few loser shaves bets in my day, and
• 2:02:17
  Speaker 1: I'll be honest, I've never felt more invested in a result.
• 2:02:20
  Speaker 1: Maybe Reginald could handle the Clippers well if you know,
• 2:02:23
  Speaker 1: you know, but you'd better get them to him before
• 2:02:26
  Speaker 1: he hits the Johnny Walker blue things. I will I have.
• 2:02:30
  Speaker 1: I'm one time let Tapper, Jake Tapper talk me into
• 2:02:33
  Speaker 1: a This was back Philly's Dodgers Serica twenty thirteen, twenty
• 2:02:40
  Speaker 1: twelve NLCS, maybe twenty fourteen NLCS. I'm just trying to
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 1: remember when the Dodgers were, you know, still hadn't quite
• 2:02:47
  Speaker 1: gotten broken through. They were still still you know, thinking,
• 2:02:52
  Speaker 1: you know, they were still believing Matt Kemp was the
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 1: best player they could sign. Right. They weren't quite the
• 2:02:57
  Speaker 1: Dodgers yet. They hadn't been big the juggernaut that they
• 2:03:01
  Speaker 1: had become. And the Phillies were pretty good juggernaut that
• 2:03:04
  Speaker 1: team that was the sort of the last gasp of
• 2:03:07
  Speaker 1: Ryan Howard in that crowd. And Tapper wanted to create
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 1: some social media fun and he wanted to make it
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 1: he was going to grow and I was going to
• 2:03:18
  Speaker 1: shave one. I never agreed to the bet, but he
• 2:03:21
  Speaker 1: tried to social media bully me about it anyway, So
• 2:03:26
  Speaker 1: no I I lost and made a nice sizeable contribution
• 2:03:31
  Speaker 1: to the charity of his choice. Look now, I will
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 1: say this, I'm probably more comfortable trying to shave my
• 2:03:42
  Speaker 1: head now that I would have been ten years ago,
• 2:03:44
  Speaker 1: because as you could see, it is thinning, and maybe
• 2:03:47
  Speaker 1: you know, my only fear is if I totally do it,
• 2:03:52
  Speaker 1: what happens if it, even this doesn't come back, right
• 2:03:55
  Speaker 1: the fear us middle aged men have about what what
• 2:03:58
  Speaker 1: if it doesn't come back? I was watching a basketball
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 1: game over the weekend. The GWA Revolutionaries were in the
• 2:04:05
  Speaker 1: in the Orange Bowl, this Orange Bowl tournament down in
• 2:04:08
  Speaker 1: Fort Lauderdale. We were playing GW was playing Florida. I
• 2:04:12
  Speaker 1: think they hung held pretty well, they'd hit their free throws.
• 2:04:15
  Speaker 1: They might have won that game. I think it was
• 2:04:18
  Speaker 1: a pretty good test that you know, GW, I think
• 2:04:21
  Speaker 1: is a mid major that may make a strong case
• 2:04:25
  Speaker 1: to get into the NCAA tournament. But the other game
• 2:04:28
  Speaker 1: was UMass versus Florida State. And UMass is coached by
• 2:04:31
  Speaker 1: a Miami native named Frank Martin. He was the guy
• 2:04:34
  Speaker 1: that took South Carolina. Well he's gone full head shave,
• 2:04:37
  Speaker 1: and he looks great. I mean, kudos to him. I
• 2:04:40
  Speaker 1: would not have thought that he would have done the
• 2:04:42
  Speaker 1: c ball thing very well. He does it well. He
• 2:04:44
  Speaker 1: looks good, just as menacing. I'd still be afraid of
• 2:04:48
  Speaker 1: him coaching a team on the other side, but it
• 2:04:52
  Speaker 1: looked like there's nothing that will grow back, you know.
• 2:04:54
  Speaker 1: So that's my fear of playing the head shave game.
• 2:04:59
  Speaker 1: We'll see. I'd say that I think solicit fears he
• 2:05:03
  Speaker 1: can't grow beer. We'll see. I'll ask him about this
• 2:05:06
  Speaker 1: on our next episode. All right. Next question comes from
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 1: Andre from Los Angeles An. He writes, Hey, Chuck, why
• 2:05:11
  Speaker 1: is it that when someone announces a run for office,
• 2:05:13
  Speaker 1: the first focus is always on who their donors are
• 2:05:15
  Speaker 1: and whether these donors will approve It feels like candidates
• 2:05:18
  Speaker 1: are vetted by donors, consultants, and party brass long before
• 2:05:21
  Speaker 1: they ever reached voters, which makes them seem into authentic.
• 2:05:24
  Speaker 1: Voters want real, opinionated leaders who feel genuine, not prepackaged
• 2:05:27
  Speaker 1: for donor approval. Why has the donor class become the
• 2:05:29
  Speaker 1: priority over the general public? Andre la go bruins hashtag UCLA. Well,
• 2:05:36
  Speaker 1: because of how expensive campaigns have become I'm not saying
• 2:05:39
  Speaker 1: that's a good answer, in just telling you it is
• 2:05:42
  Speaker 1: the answer, And there is a perception of viability has
• 2:05:48
  Speaker 1: to do with access to money, whether you have it yourself,
• 2:05:51
  Speaker 1: you have the donor. You know, it's sort of this
• 2:05:53
  Speaker 1: dovetails pretty well with the question about Adam Schiff. Look,
• 2:05:57
  Speaker 1: there's no doubt we have made money in politics. The
• 2:06:00
  Speaker 1: fact that there is no regulation of money in politics,
• 2:06:02
  Speaker 1: right we have essentially have unregulated money in politics. They're okay,
• 2:06:06
  Speaker 1: so you have to follow a couple, You have to
• 2:06:08
  Speaker 1: jump a very small hurdle or two to maybe spend
• 2:06:12
  Speaker 1: money that raised a certain way on these few logistics
• 2:06:16
  Speaker 1: things for a campaign. But then you spend money over
• 2:06:19
  Speaker 1: here there is no we have. This is why I'm
• 2:06:23
  Speaker 1: a huge fan of a constitutional you know, we need
• 2:06:25
  Speaker 1: a constitutional amendment to deal with this. We're going to
• 2:06:27
  Speaker 1: have to. I think there's some common sense campaign finance
• 2:06:32
  Speaker 1: regulations that people could agree on. I think the idea
• 2:06:37
  Speaker 1: of keeping corporations out of politics makes a hell of
• 2:06:39
  Speaker 1: a lot sense. Figuring out how to have complete transparency,
• 2:06:43
  Speaker 1: I mean, anonymous donors dark money are terrible. We basically
• 2:06:47
  Speaker 1: have one or two people that are representing somewhere between
• 2:06:52
  Speaker 1: thirty and thirty percent of all money spent is probably
• 2:06:55
  Speaker 1: among a group of people that's less than ten. That
• 2:06:59
  Speaker 1: is an out of democracy, right, That is a plutocracy
• 2:07:02
  Speaker 1: or an oligarchy, if I to borrow some language that
• 2:07:05
  Speaker 1: are out there. I hate saying oligarchy because it sounds
• 2:07:08
  Speaker 1: like I'm taking a political side, but we have the
• 2:07:11
  Speaker 1: fact of the matter is the richer you are, the
• 2:07:14
  Speaker 1: more access you have to political leaders hard stop. And
• 2:07:21
  Speaker 1: that's a maybe that's never going to change, but we
• 2:07:25
  Speaker 1: could put some more transparency and some more limits on
• 2:07:29
  Speaker 1: how that works. But I'm not saying it should be
• 2:07:33
  Speaker 1: this way. But you're asking why does this happen? Because
• 2:07:36
  Speaker 1: viability goes through money. Now, the good news is the
• 2:07:38
  Speaker 1: Internet has been a bit of a leveler there. Act
• 2:07:42
  Speaker 1: Blue and When Red both have found a way to
• 2:07:46
  Speaker 1: take to allow at least grassroots donors to power candidacies.
• 2:07:52
  Speaker 1: And you can now do that, right Marjorie Taylor Green
• 2:07:56
  Speaker 1: can do it. AOC can do it, and they've figured
• 2:07:59
  Speaker 1: out how to tap into that. So the power of
• 2:08:02
  Speaker 1: the small donor is not totally in fact, in some
• 2:08:05
  Speaker 1: ways small donor because of the collective nature of it
• 2:08:09
  Speaker 1: have become a more powerful as powerful of an entity
• 2:08:13
  Speaker 1: at times that some of these corporate super PACs can be. So.
• 2:08:17
  Speaker 1: But look, we do this in this case, the system
• 2:08:20
  Speaker 1: has broken. We have unregulated amount of money. I'm sort
• 2:08:24
  Speaker 1: of a Nascar person in this respect. Let's go full transparency.
• 2:08:27
  Speaker 1: But you have to actually identify your major donors, if
• 2:08:31
  Speaker 1: you if you made every person have to spell out
• 2:08:36
  Speaker 1: the names of donors who have given them, say more
• 2:08:39
  Speaker 1: than one hundred thousand dollars or more, I promise you
• 2:08:41
  Speaker 1: they'd never take a donation more than nine nine and
• 2:08:44
  Speaker 1: ninety nine dollars, right, whatever threshold we create, you know,
• 2:08:50
  Speaker 1: like I'm all for you want to have unlimited funding
• 2:08:52
  Speaker 1: in your elections, fine, but anybody that gives you more
• 2:08:54
  Speaker 1: than ninety nine hundred dollars, you have to name them
• 2:08:58
  Speaker 1: in every single app and you've got to where their
• 2:09:01
  Speaker 1: logos on your paraphernalia, if you will. Right, That's what
• 2:09:05
  Speaker 1: I mean by the nascarization of it. I think that
• 2:09:10
  Speaker 1: if as long as people know who's behind things, then
• 2:09:15
  Speaker 1: at least you're giving the voters a fighting chance to
• 2:09:18
  Speaker 1: make their decision. All right, I'm mistaking one more question here,
• 2:09:23
  Speaker 1: So I can say that at least knock out four today.
• 2:09:25
  Speaker 1: This one comes from Sean McElroy Byfield, Massachusetts, and he writes, Hey, Chuck,
• 2:09:30
  Speaker 1: why is it that corporations going to absorb tariff costs
• 2:09:32
  Speaker 1: for months but push back immediately when asked to raise wages?
• 2:09:35
  Speaker 1: After COVID, we saw quick inflation tied to wage increases,
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 1: but terif related price hikes seem delayed. I've read that
• 2:09:41
  Speaker 1: Costco expects TARI free funds, that is, offering credit now
• 2:09:43
  Speaker 1: to investors to soften consumer impacts while boosting future profits. Curiously,
• 2:09:47
  Speaker 1: if you've heard more about that, any thoughts on the
• 2:09:49
  Speaker 1: disconnect between political focus and stagnant worker incomes. Well, look,
• 2:09:53
  Speaker 1: I think on the tariff, the reason some of this
• 2:09:55
  Speaker 1: is you had a lot of companies stockpile right. You know,
• 2:10:01
  Speaker 1: Trump made it clear what he was going to do
• 2:10:03
  Speaker 1: with this tariff, So you did have plenty of company
• 2:10:06
  Speaker 1: stockpile inventory where you could. Right you couldn't do it
• 2:10:11
  Speaker 1: in food, in fresh food and produce and things like that,
• 2:10:15
  Speaker 1: but you could stock up on certain goods in your
• 2:10:19
  Speaker 1: and essentially warehouse them. And a place like Costco is
• 2:10:22
  Speaker 1: something that has the has the ability to do that
• 2:10:26
  Speaker 1: and so I think that's why they could quote unquote
• 2:10:30
  Speaker 1: absorb some of it early because they had still had
• 2:10:33
  Speaker 1: a majority of their inventory out there that they had
• 2:10:35
  Speaker 1: purchased without having to pay, without having to deal with
• 2:10:39
  Speaker 1: extra tariffs. But look, you're you know, why do corporations
• 2:10:44
  Speaker 1: constantly look for ways to show that they're saving money? Right?
• 2:10:47
  Speaker 1: That might be another way that you asked that question, right,
• 2:10:49
  Speaker 1: They constantly It's why why are companies not hiring at
• 2:10:53
  Speaker 1: the moment? They all want to see how many jobs
• 2:10:55
  Speaker 1: can they replace with AI. They're not going to they
• 2:10:58
  Speaker 1: know they can't replace all jobs with A, but they
• 2:11:01
  Speaker 1: want to know which ones they can, and before they
• 2:11:03
  Speaker 1: replace anybody, they want to try to see if they
• 2:11:05
  Speaker 1: can replace them of AI corp. A publicly traded companies
• 2:11:11
  Speaker 1: simply have a fudiciary responsibility for their shareholders, and their
• 2:11:13
  Speaker 1: shareholders only reward cost efficiencies. That is, that is not
• 2:11:18
  Speaker 1: good for rising you know, for the hopes of rising wages,
• 2:11:21
  Speaker 1: and it is certainly makes stockpiling expensive inventory difficult as
• 2:11:28
  Speaker 1: well if you're going to load them up with tariff.
• 2:11:30
  Speaker 1: So you know, this is why what Trump has done
• 2:11:34
  Speaker 1: to this economy, that the rise of tariff costs also
• 2:11:37
  Speaker 1: in it inadvertently end up costing working class people a
• 2:11:44
  Speaker 1: chance at a raise. Right, If goods were cheaper, more
• 2:11:47
  Speaker 1: people might buy them, and you might need more people
• 2:11:50
  Speaker 1: to actually delve out that inventory. So you know, this
• 2:11:53
  Speaker 1: is why this tariff policy of the presidents is so
• 2:11:57
  Speaker 1: bad for the economy. It just simply shrinks our GDP
• 2:12:01
  Speaker 1: shrinks in a way that that will just hurt everything.
• 2:12:06
  Speaker 1: Fewer people buy items, which means you'll have fewer employees,
• 2:12:10
  Speaker 1: fewer wage, fewer people gaining a wage as it is,
• 2:12:13
  Speaker 1: and fewer people getting higher wages. Bottom line is, tariffs
• 2:12:18
  Speaker 1: are bad for everybody. There is no good that comes
• 2:12:21
  Speaker 1: from these tariffs. Hard stop. I don't know how many
• 2:12:26
  Speaker 1: thousands of different ways we can put that before we
• 2:12:38
  Speaker 1: go a little A few things in college football, and
• 2:12:43
  Speaker 1: and look, I don't want to. I got a few
• 2:12:45
  Speaker 1: emails about the mess in Michigan. And what's uncomfortable about
• 2:12:50
  Speaker 1: the mess in Michigan is Sharon Moore and some in
• 2:12:53
  Speaker 1: what happened there is is this uncomfortable truth there seem
• 2:12:58
  Speaker 1: to be you know, in the world of college sports
• 2:13:01
  Speaker 1: right now, if you win, your behavior will get They'll
• 2:13:06
  Speaker 1: find a way to bury your behavior, overlook it, or
• 2:13:09
  Speaker 1: just suspend you a game or two, slap you on
• 2:13:11
  Speaker 1: the wrist. But as long as you produce a national title,
• 2:13:13
  Speaker 1: Jim Harbaugh, nothing is going to go wrong. But when
• 2:13:17
  Speaker 1: things don't go well, then and and and maybe your
• 2:13:21
  Speaker 1: offense isn't going well, then suddenly people have decided that
• 2:13:25
  Speaker 1: your morals or ethics are a problem. And we don't
• 2:13:29
  Speaker 1: know the full story in Michigan, but let's just say
• 2:13:31
  Speaker 1: I haven't I know enough people in the sports industry world,
• 2:13:34
  Speaker 1: in the world of agents. This is not rank speculation.
• 2:13:40
  Speaker 1: You know, there was a there was a concerted effort
• 2:13:42
  Speaker 1: that that more had to go, but they needed a reason,
• 2:13:46
  Speaker 1: in a rationale, and they didn't want to spend on
• 2:13:48
  Speaker 1: the buyout. Now that doesn't excuse his behavior, and he
• 2:13:52
  Speaker 1: and I you know, for the life of me, you know,
• 2:13:54
  Speaker 1: to me, if you're if you're going to sleep with
• 2:13:57
  Speaker 1: an employee at a public institution, you're consequences any institution,
• 2:14:02
  Speaker 1: and you know, you get caught, you're going to live
• 2:14:04
  Speaker 1: with the consequences. And this has been a very expensive
• 2:14:06
  Speaker 1: consequence for him on that front. But we need to
• 2:14:11
  Speaker 1: learn a lot more about when was this first known, how,
• 2:14:16
  Speaker 1: what would this and when when did this investigation happen?
• 2:14:19
  Speaker 1: Why was it cleared once? Right? Sounds like there was
• 2:14:23
  Speaker 1: no they had no cooperating evidence, and then suddenly they did.
• 2:14:26
  Speaker 1: Why did this person suddenly provide evidence to the school
• 2:14:29
  Speaker 1: when they did? And why didn't they do it before?
• 2:14:32
  Speaker 1: How is it that it conveniently happened after signing day? Anyway,
• 2:14:36
  Speaker 1: the point is is that the corruption of college sports, right,
• 2:14:39
  Speaker 1: we know, it's there's a there's a It is a mess.
• 2:14:42
  Speaker 1: It is ugly, it is scandalous, and even an elite
• 2:14:45
  Speaker 1: institution like the University of Michigan is not immune from this.
• 2:14:49
  Speaker 1: But the problem is, we have no entity who's going
• 2:14:52
  Speaker 1: to investigate the University of Michigan. Do the NC DOUBA
• 2:14:54
  Speaker 1: have any credibility to do this? Will they even listen
• 2:14:57
  Speaker 1: to the NC double A? Right? When when Michigan was
• 2:15:01
  Speaker 1: sign stealing, you know they yeah, okay, they suspended somebody,
• 2:15:04
  Speaker 1: they find somebody. But last I checked, the University of
• 2:15:07
  Speaker 1: Michigan won a national title miraculously after they've suddenly figured
• 2:15:11
  Speaker 1: out sign stealing seemed to improve. You know, Jim Harbaugh
• 2:15:15
  Speaker 1: was having a hard time winning nine or ten games.
• 2:15:17
  Speaker 1: Then suddenly they started sign stealing and everything got better.
• 2:15:21
  Speaker 1: So it's a I'm singling out Michigan here because I
• 2:15:25
  Speaker 1: think Michigan is you know, this is sort of like, boy,
• 2:15:28
  Speaker 1: how many how much rotten fish is in this program
• 2:15:31
  Speaker 1: on these different things. But it's really this is not
• 2:15:33
  Speaker 1: about Michigan. This is about the entire sport, right, you know,
• 2:15:36
  Speaker 1: I love it. I love college football. You guys know this.
• 2:15:40
  Speaker 1: I ache for all this paid me. Look, University of Miami,
• 2:15:43
  Speaker 1: We've been through this. We've had our own bad apples
• 2:15:47
  Speaker 1: do some things in the past, don't get me wrong,
• 2:15:50
  Speaker 1: So I'm not gonna you know, this is not a
• 2:15:52
  Speaker 1: case we all the entire world of college football lives
• 2:15:55
  Speaker 1: in not just a glasshouse. I would call it water
• 2:15:58
  Speaker 1: for crystal houses, if you will, right, And there's our
• 2:16:02
  Speaker 1: broken windows everywhere. But you know, ultimately the problem is
• 2:16:07
  Speaker 1: the conferences have too much power, and we need you
• 2:16:11
  Speaker 1: need a singular commissioner of college football, a singular commissioner
• 2:16:15
  Speaker 1: of college basketball, a singular commissioner of sort of the
• 2:16:21
  Speaker 1: for profits sports. Right. We probably have to separate it
• 2:16:24
  Speaker 1: out a little bit, if you will. But this the
• 2:16:28
  Speaker 1: amount of influence that agents and boosters now have over
• 2:16:34
  Speaker 1: and above academic leaders or institutional leaders, athletic directors, you
• 2:16:38
  Speaker 1: name it. You know the athletic directors are not in
• 2:16:41
  Speaker 1: charge in most of these places. It's the person that
• 2:16:44
  Speaker 1: runs the outside nil and raises the hundreds of the
• 2:16:49
  Speaker 1: tens of millions of dollars. At these major college institutions
• 2:16:52
  Speaker 1: need to make payroll. They're in charge. The football coaches
• 2:16:58
  Speaker 1: do not work for the university residence. The football coaches
• 2:17:02
  Speaker 1: work for the entity that has promised to give the
• 2:17:06
  Speaker 1: most money. I saw that. I saw that at my
• 2:17:10
  Speaker 1: beloved institution, right some major donors were willing to give
• 2:17:13
  Speaker 1: more money if a certain person was hired as coach.
• 2:17:17
  Speaker 1: That's been true of a lot of institutions. So it
• 2:17:22
  Speaker 1: is the system is broken. It is messed up. Perhaps
• 2:17:28
  Speaker 1: you write rules that maybe allow for this in some form,
• 2:17:31
  Speaker 1: but you've got to have an accepted, shared set of rules,
• 2:17:34
  Speaker 1: and right now we really don't have any. It is
• 2:17:39
  Speaker 1: only media reports that at best create the opportunity for
• 2:17:43
  Speaker 1: shame to kick in. But this is you know, there's
• 2:17:48
  Speaker 1: the specifics themselves of what happened at Michigan, and then
• 2:17:52
  Speaker 1: there's the So there really needs to be an investigation
• 2:17:57
  Speaker 1: of how the initial investigation happened and how new evidence
• 2:18:00
  Speaker 1: popped up. That's all I'm going to say here. Okay,
• 2:18:03
  Speaker 1: I I am, I've got I've got plenty of interesting
• 2:18:10
  Speaker 1: sources that have that have told me some interesting things
• 2:18:12
  Speaker 1: about this situation. But the reason it needs to be
• 2:18:15
  Speaker 1: rooted out because it's this is again, Michigan is just
• 2:18:19
  Speaker 1: an example of what is a larger, more broken and
• 2:18:24
  Speaker 1: uh and I don't think any of us would be
• 2:18:28
  Speaker 1: comfortable finding out what our favorite schools were doing. I
• 2:18:32
  Speaker 1: think there would be I imagine there's not a major
• 2:18:35
  Speaker 1: college football program in America that does things that would
• 2:18:38
  Speaker 1: make every single alum prout, every single fan proud. And
• 2:18:44
  Speaker 1: it is I hate. I hate having to defend the
• 2:18:48
  Speaker 1: system at times as a fan because I still love it.
• 2:18:50
  Speaker 1: It's still I think college football because of the unpredictability
• 2:18:55
  Speaker 1: of what kids. There's still kids, they're still growing up,
• 2:18:58
  Speaker 1: they're still learning. There's that unpredictability. There's the passion of
• 2:19:01
  Speaker 1: fan bases, which other than the Steelers and the Packers,
• 2:19:05
  Speaker 1: there's really no you know, maybe Eagles and Cowboys too,
• 2:19:09
  Speaker 1: but there's really the pro fan bases are not like
• 2:19:12
  Speaker 1: college fan bases. They're just different hanging out with drunk
• 2:19:16
  Speaker 1: twenty year olds is better to watch than hanging out
• 2:19:19
  Speaker 1: with drunk fifty year olds too, right, if you're at
• 2:19:21
  Speaker 1: an NFL game versus a college game. But ultimately, we're
• 2:19:28
  Speaker 1: going to have to have Congress step in. They're going
• 2:19:29
  Speaker 1: to have to give an antitrust exemption in some form
• 2:19:32
  Speaker 1: because they're going to have to create We can't have
• 2:19:35
  Speaker 1: small d democratic tools attempting to govern college sports. You're
• 2:19:38
  Speaker 1: going to need a commissioner AKA some sort of almost
• 2:19:43
  Speaker 1: authoritarian type of situation, chairman of the board, board of
• 2:19:48
  Speaker 1: directors CEO, that sort of thing, with some accountability because
• 2:19:52
  Speaker 1: this is embarrassing the sport all the time, and there's
• 2:19:55
  Speaker 1: too much money at stake, and we have that much
• 2:19:57
  Speaker 1: money at stake, you're gonna have lawsuit, You're gonna have
• 2:19:58
  Speaker 1: people being live and all of that stuff. So you
• 2:20:01
  Speaker 1: kind of need a structure and some sort of rule
• 2:20:04
  Speaker 1: of law to govern college sports. That is fair, all right.
• 2:20:08
  Speaker 1: I will stop with my rant there, but I felt like,
• 2:20:11
  Speaker 1: as much as I want to celebrate, and I've got
• 2:20:13
  Speaker 1: a lot I'm going to celebrate on the later this week,
• 2:20:17
  Speaker 1: I will share with you my favorite pathways for Miami
• 2:20:20
  Speaker 1: and the different storylines on different potential matchups that they
• 2:20:25
  Speaker 1: can have in the college football playoff. Let's just say, boy,
• 2:20:28
  Speaker 1: for Miami's own reputational sake, they better win one. They
• 2:20:31
  Speaker 1: better win one, and we'll go from there. All right,
• 2:20:38
  Speaker 1: I've gone on a bit now. This is a pretty
• 2:20:41
  Speaker 1: thick Monday episode. We did some dark, some light, and
• 2:20:44
  Speaker 1: everything in between. I really appreciate you listening. Our growth
• 2:20:48
  Speaker 1: has been amazing. I know part of the why independent
• 2:20:52
  Speaker 1: media is growing because you've lost so much trust in
• 2:20:55
  Speaker 1: what's happened with the intimidated corporate owned media, which is sad.
• 2:21:01
  Speaker 1: I have a lot of good friends over there who
• 2:21:03
  Speaker 1: are fighting a good fight, but the institutions are just
• 2:21:05
  Speaker 1: trying to trying to prevent them from doing the work
• 2:21:08
  Speaker 1: that they want to do, which is a huge disappointment.
• 2:21:11
  Speaker 1: But guess what, there are always alternatives, including right here.
• 2:21:15
  Speaker 1: So thank you for listening. I appreciate it, and I'll
• 2:21:17
  Speaker 1: see in forty eight hours.