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Transcript

Lacking The Courage Of His Convictions · Politix

0:00
SPEAKER_02: You need to accept invitations to go on television.
0:03
SPEAKER_02: Like, tell the booker, like, yes, I want to come on CNN and talk about these executive orders.
0:08
SPEAKER_02: And then we're like, what do you think about these executive orders?
0:10
SPEAKER_02: Just say,
0:11
SPEAKER_02: I think that Donald Trump is doing everything in his power to avoid standing trial
0:15
SPEAKER_02: for an insurrection.
0:16
SPEAKER_02: Like, just do it.
0:17
SPEAKER_00: Hey, everyone, you're listening to a free preview of The Politics Podcast.
0:26
SPEAKER_00: In this episode,
0:27
SPEAKER_00: we discuss the solidifying Democratic Party response to Donald Trump's felony convictions,
0:33
SPEAKER_00: which were still taking shape when we recorded our emergency podcast last week.
0:38
SPEAKER_00: Now that we see the party stance more clearly, we have some questions.
0:42
SPEAKER_00: Why are Democrats demurring when the facts on the ground are so advantageous to them?
0:48
SPEAKER_00: How consistent is this with the party's past practice of sort of shrugging off
0:54
SPEAKER_00: Trump accountability moments?
0:56
SPEAKER_00: And what would we like to see them do instead?
0:59
SPEAKER_00: I hope you enjoy the conversation.
1:00
SPEAKER_00: And if you want to hear the whole thing, you can upgrade your subscription to paid at politics.fm.
1:11
SPEAKER_00: Hey, everyone, welcome to the Politics Podcast.
1:12
SPEAKER_00: I'm Brian Boitler.
1:13
SPEAKER_00: I'm Matthew Iglesias.
1:15
SPEAKER_00: So we put out a special episode Thursday evening.
1:18
SPEAKER_00: You're welcome.
1:19
SPEAKER_00: With an update for listeners on the big news of Donald Trump's
1:24
SPEAKER_00: felony conviction and to assess the very early reaction from all sides, but particularly from Democrats.
1:31
SPEAKER_00: So the earliest indications were were fairly promising.
1:35
SPEAKER_00: The Biden campaign put out a decent statement to kick things off.
1:39
SPEAKER_00: But as the full picture came into view, it became clear that the official response was
1:44
SPEAKER_00: would be a bit weak and disjointed from Joe Biden on down.
1:50
SPEAKER_00: So the leaders did not prepare a party-wide strategy for this or any other potential verdict.
1:56
SPEAKER_00: And so quite apart from the Republican response,
1:59
SPEAKER_00: which was all in on Donald Trump,
2:03
SPEAKER_00: it's not clear that Democrats intend to do anything with this news other than to
2:08
SPEAKER_00: sort of refer to Trump as a felon over and over again.
2:11
SPEAKER_00: So anyway,
2:12
SPEAKER_00: before I claim vindication for my view that Democrats are just pathologically like this,
2:18
SPEAKER_00: I want to hear Matt explain why he also finds this response wanting.
2:23
SPEAKER_00: So,
2:23
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
2:23
SPEAKER_02: I was a little surprised,
2:24
SPEAKER_02: you know,
2:25
SPEAKER_02: Brian and I often disagree about this kind of thing and often in two different directions.
2:32
SPEAKER_02: You know, sometimes people who I trust tell me that, you
2:36
SPEAKER_02: you know,
2:37
SPEAKER_02: the messages that sort of Brian and some of,
2:41
SPEAKER_02: you know,
2:41
SPEAKER_02: do something Twitter want to hear more about,
2:44
SPEAKER_02: like really just like don't resonate with people.
2:47
SPEAKER_02: But that's not the case here.
2:49
SPEAKER_02: Nobody who I've talked to seems to,
2:53
SPEAKER_02: you know,
2:53
SPEAKER_02: from an analytic point of view,
2:54
SPEAKER_02: seems to feel that there's a bad issue for Democrats.
2:57
SPEAKER_02: Another thing is that
3:00
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
3:01
SPEAKER_02: I don't know how to put this bluntly,
3:02
SPEAKER_02: but all of Democrats' issue positions right now are really weak.
3:09
SPEAKER_02: The only good policy issues for Democrats are prescription drugs and abortion rights,
3:15
SPEAKER_02: which are not often in the news,
3:19
SPEAKER_02: right?
3:19
SPEAKER_02: And they themselves...
3:22
SPEAKER_02: don't even have like,
3:23
SPEAKER_02: you could agree or disagree with a strategy that's like,
3:27
SPEAKER_02: we don't want to talk about Trump being a criminal because we're pressing this big
3:33
SPEAKER_02: message push on pharmaceutical pricing,
3:36
SPEAKER_02: but they're not doing that,
3:37
SPEAKER_02: right?
3:37
SPEAKER_02: There's nothing else that they're doing.
3:39
SPEAKER_02: It's just a kind of day-to-day chaos and defensiveness in which most of the topics
3:45
SPEAKER_02: in the headlines,
3:46
SPEAKER_02: right,
3:46
SPEAKER_02: are the Israel-Gaza war and border security stuff.
3:51
SPEAKER_02: which are just like known to be divisive issues for Democrats, right?
3:56
SPEAKER_02: I mean, however you handle them, it's something that the party's going to disagree about.
4:00
SPEAKER_02: So that's odd.
4:01
SPEAKER_02: Then the third piece of it is that
4:04
SPEAKER_02: Often,
4:04
SPEAKER_02: I think that like Brian and the resistance heads are underrated the extent to which
4:11
SPEAKER_02: the issue is that the progressive movement is like trying to push something substantive.
4:18
SPEAKER_02: Right.
4:18
SPEAKER_02: So like, I mean, I think we'll talk about this later, but in the early days of the Biden administration.
4:24
SPEAKER_02: Part of the reason for wanting to like turn the page on Trump wasn't just some kind
4:30
SPEAKER_02: of like swing state fecklessness.
4:32
SPEAKER_02: It was this incredible seriousness with which people wanted to enact this care agenda,
4:39
SPEAKER_02: this climate agenda,
4:40
SPEAKER_02: all this other kind of stuff that was going to take time,
4:42
SPEAKER_02: was going to take energy.
4:44
SPEAKER_02: They needed to spend a lot of their messaging efforts on disciplining the more
4:48
SPEAKER_02: moderate members of the caucus to pass these bills.
4:51
SPEAKER_02: But nothing like that is happening right now.
4:54
SPEAKER_02: Democrats don't have some kind of kitchen table messaging strategy that's crowding out Trump is a crook.
5:01
SPEAKER_02: Democrats don't have a substantive policy agenda,
5:04
SPEAKER_02: which to be clear,
5:05
SPEAKER_02: like it's June of an election year,
5:07
SPEAKER_02: like nobody has a substantive policy agenda at this point in the calendar that's
5:12
SPEAKER_02: crowding it out.
5:13
SPEAKER_02: Right.
5:16
SPEAKER_02: People are telling me,
5:17
SPEAKER_02: you know,
5:17
SPEAKER_02: the group chats are blowing up and they're like,
5:21
SPEAKER_02: oh no,
5:21
SPEAKER_02: Boitler is right.
5:22
SPEAKER_02: So it's...
5:25
SPEAKER_00: Their worst nightmare came true.
5:28
SPEAKER_02: I know to Brian, it just seems like same old, same old, which obviously on some level it is.
5:34
SPEAKER_02: But I do think it's worth noting that many people who normally think that this is
5:42
SPEAKER_02: the correct strategy are instead pulling their hair out a little bit.
5:48
SPEAKER_02: I'm also noticing...
5:51
SPEAKER_02: the Biden campaign seems to be much stronger on this than the Biden White House, right?
5:59
SPEAKER_02: So like his campaign put out this kind of strong initial statement.
6:03
SPEAKER_02: Then he did remarks at a fundraiser, you know, which is a campaign event.
6:08
SPEAKER_02: And it like leads with, we're in unprecedented territory.
6:11
SPEAKER_02: Trump is a felon.
6:12
SPEAKER_02: A second Trump term is going to be more dangerous than the first, you know, going on like that.
6:17
SPEAKER_02: But the White House, like,
6:19
SPEAKER_02: If you're an incumbent president running for reelection,
6:22
SPEAKER_02: I think that fundamentally,
6:24
SPEAKER_02: like what you do as a communication strategy as the president is a lot more
6:29
SPEAKER_02: significant than what you do as a communication strategy as a candidate.
6:33
SPEAKER_02: And,
6:33
SPEAKER_02: you know,
6:33
SPEAKER_02: they're not I don't want to say they're not doing anything because like things
6:38
SPEAKER_02: continue to happen,
6:40
SPEAKER_02: but they're not talking about this at Senate Democrats.
6:43
SPEAKER_02: I mean, Chuck Schumer did a kind of, you know, random speech to the floor.
6:48
SPEAKER_02: You know, one of those like C-SPAN to the empty room speeches last night.
6:51
SPEAKER_02: That was pretty good.
6:52
SPEAKER_02: But he hasn't done anything as like a legislative strategy.
6:56
SPEAKER_02: There was no press conference with his five key lieutenants.
7:00
SPEAKER_02: There's no hearing.
7:02
SPEAKER_02: There's no something that's going to keep it in the news.
7:05
SPEAKER_02: When just like self-evidently, Donald Trump found guilty on 34 felony convictions.
7:10
SPEAKER_02: Like that's a bad story for Trump, right?
7:12
SPEAKER_02: Particularly relative to the other stories that are conceivably in the news environment right now.
7:18
SPEAKER_02: And...
7:19
SPEAKER_02: You know, just you would think that there would be a push to keep it on the agenda.
7:23
SPEAKER_02: But I'm looking like New York Times right now,
7:27
SPEAKER_02: battlefield losses for Ukraine,
7:29
SPEAKER_02: the election in India,
7:31
SPEAKER_02: Israeli airstrikes,
7:34
SPEAKER_02: something happened with China,
7:36
SPEAKER_02: you know,
7:37
SPEAKER_02: AI,
7:37
SPEAKER_02: nonpolitics stuff.
7:39
SPEAKER_02: So it's like the fact that Trump is a criminal is gone from the headlines several days later.
7:45
SPEAKER_02: And you could put that on the media,
7:46
SPEAKER_02: but it's like,
7:48
SPEAKER_02: it actually isn't the new,
7:49
SPEAKER_02: like they report the news in the newspaper.
7:52
SPEAKER_02: And like, you have to make news on the stories that you want there to be headlines about.
7:57
SPEAKER_02: And they're just not doing it.
7:59
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for ending on that note.
8:00
SPEAKER_00: Cause I need to defend my honor from the people in your group chats.
8:03
SPEAKER_00: First of all, I need some group chats.
8:04
SPEAKER_00: I don't have any.
8:06
SPEAKER_00: Um, I just kind of, Oh, you're missing out on the world.
8:08
SPEAKER_00: Like, uh, yeah, like, um, uh, like, um, like, uh,
8:11
SPEAKER_00: Lonely, wandering thinker.
8:13
SPEAKER_00: That's why my my ideas are so unique.
8:16
SPEAKER_00: But but but apart from that,
8:20
SPEAKER_00: like whoever they are who say,
8:23
SPEAKER_00: you know,
8:23
SPEAKER_00: in general,
8:25
SPEAKER_00: Brian's ideas are like do something Twitter ideas about what Democrats should say
8:31
SPEAKER_00: or do about Donald Trump.
8:34
SPEAKER_00: Don't resonate.
8:35
SPEAKER_00: I want to know what that means,
8:37
SPEAKER_00: because I I don't I don't have group chats,
8:39
SPEAKER_00: but like I've tagged along and focus groups over in my career and I have seen how
8:46
SPEAKER_00: polling gets put together.
8:48
SPEAKER_00: And when when I see like an opening for Democrats to do something that I think might.
8:55
SPEAKER_00: be bad for Donald Trump.
8:56
SPEAKER_00: I'm not really thinking like, will that message pull well?
8:59
SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking about what you ended on, which is, will this keep a bad story in the news?
9:04
SPEAKER_00: And if you ask a focus group, what do you think of this idea?
9:09
SPEAKER_00: They might think in the context of a focus group,
9:12
SPEAKER_00: well,
9:12
SPEAKER_00: that sounds really combative and unpleasant and,
9:15
SPEAKER_00: you know,
9:17
SPEAKER_00: Whereas if you ask them about drug prices, they'll say that sounds good and constructive and whatever.
9:21
SPEAKER_00: But we know from experience,
9:23
SPEAKER_00: from long experience,
9:25
SPEAKER_00: that getting sustained public debate about drug prices is extremely hard.
9:32
SPEAKER_00: Whereas getting sustained public debate about something bad Donald Trump did is relatively easy.
9:38
SPEAKER_00: And it's like,
9:40
SPEAKER_00: I'm not even sure that there would be a scientific way to determine whether an
9:44
SPEAKER_00: issue that fares poorly in these sort of pseudo-statistical or pseudo-scientific
9:51
SPEAKER_00: message test realms could ever actually ascertain whether it would be a good idea.
9:57
SPEAKER_00: Because if you try the thing and it works, you can't actually quantify how good it is for you.
10:03
SPEAKER_00: It's just the front pages were full of shit that was bad for Donald Trump for a long time.
10:09
SPEAKER_00: And
10:09
SPEAKER_00: how do you even measure that?
10:10
SPEAKER_00: But like, it would definitely be good.
10:12
SPEAKER_00: And that's why I think they, in this circumstance, understand why an opportunity is being frittered away.
10:19
SPEAKER_00: Whatever the survey data says about how various messages work, right?
10:23
SPEAKER_00: Like,
10:26
SPEAKER_00: If it'd be right in this circumstance,
10:27
SPEAKER_00: it would be right with Donald Trump taking money from the Chinese when he was
10:32
SPEAKER_00: president because they spent it at his hotels.
10:34
SPEAKER_00: Like you can just make that a thing if you want, even if it doesn't like focus group well.
10:39
SPEAKER_02: I mean, to some extent, I mean, I think you picked a strong example there.
10:44
SPEAKER_02: You know,
10:44
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
10:44
SPEAKER_02: I think the concern with a lot of these things is that,
10:49
SPEAKER_02: you know,
10:49
SPEAKER_02: people's sensibilities vary.
10:51
SPEAKER_02: Hillary ran a lot of advertising.
10:54
SPEAKER_02: based on Trump scandal stuff,
10:56
SPEAKER_02: that when you look at it in sort of an experimental framework,
11:00
SPEAKER_02: it seems like it backfired.
11:02
SPEAKER_02: You know, that like, there's just like differences in people's moral values and people's intuitions.
11:08
SPEAKER_02: And I think that it is dangerous.
11:13
SPEAKER_02: You know, I think that there's something very appealing, right?
11:15
SPEAKER_02: Like any,
11:16
SPEAKER_02: like Beto O'Rourke,
11:18
SPEAKER_02: when he was running for Senate in 2018,
11:20
SPEAKER_02: part of his standard speech- No one ever says he's too old.
11:24
SPEAKER_02: No, no, no.
11:24
SPEAKER_02: But part of his standard subspeech was these lines about how he didn't have any
11:28
SPEAKER_02: consultants or any pollsters on his campaign.
11:31
SPEAKER_02: And crowds ate that up.
11:33
SPEAKER_02: That kind of message, consultants love that message.
11:36
SPEAKER_02: It polls really well.
11:38
SPEAKER_02: And anybody would tell you to talk about how you don't rely on pollsters and
11:42
SPEAKER_02: consultants to tell you what to say.
11:43
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
11:45
SPEAKER_02: The problem is that when you rely on pure intuition,
11:49
SPEAKER_02: right,
11:50
SPEAKER_02: you tend to lean into things that appeal to what's by definition this like
11:55
SPEAKER_02: incredibly unrepresentative group of like political activists,
12:00
SPEAKER_02: right?
12:01
SPEAKER_02: Something that I think in some ways Republicans benefit from is that like a really
12:07
SPEAKER_02: big part of the Republican Party coalition is rich businessmen who like don't
12:13
SPEAKER_02: actually care that much about politics.
12:15
SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
12:16
SPEAKER_02: Like they have like they want their taxes personally to be lower and they want like
12:22
SPEAKER_02: some regulatory issue that impacts their company specifically to be more favorable.
12:28
SPEAKER_02: But like they're not interested.
12:30
SPEAKER_02: They like wouldn't get into a conversation with you about like what's happening in the Ohio Senate race.
12:36
SPEAKER_02: Right.
12:36
SPEAKER_02: Like unless they had some specific interest in it.
12:40
SPEAKER_02: And people like that,
12:42
SPEAKER_02: right,
12:43
SPEAKER_02: are more like normal people than people who are like in political activist groups,
12:51
SPEAKER_02: people who sign up to do politics professionally.
12:54
SPEAKER_02: And that's why it's important to like sometimes take things to some kind of experimental setting.
13:02
SPEAKER_02: And so I do think it's important,
13:03
SPEAKER_02: though,
13:04
SPEAKER_02: that you then not get,
13:05
SPEAKER_02: because here's what I,
13:06
SPEAKER_02: at least part of what I think has happened,
13:08
SPEAKER_02: is that
13:11
SPEAKER_02: you can just like stop paying attention,
13:15
SPEAKER_02: you know,
13:15
SPEAKER_02: and just like tune everything out and decide like,
13:18
SPEAKER_02: oh,
13:18
SPEAKER_02: you know,
13:18
SPEAKER_02: we tried that.
13:19
SPEAKER_02: Like Hillary did all this stuff about how Trump's a scumbag and it didn't work that well.
13:23
SPEAKER_02: So now we're not going to do that anymore.
13:25
SPEAKER_02: But like,
13:26
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
13:26
SPEAKER_02: as we were talking about last week,
13:27
SPEAKER_02: there's a different group of voters out there that we're talking about.
13:32
SPEAKER_02: But also these are different.
13:35
SPEAKER_02: Like this is a different story.
13:37
SPEAKER_02: I think that like,
13:39
SPEAKER_02: There are evidently some people out there who actually have a lot of confidence in
13:46
SPEAKER_02: the due process of the American justice system.
13:50
SPEAKER_02: And it makes a great deal of difference to them that Donald Trump was found guilty of a crime.
13:56
SPEAKER_02: Not that some people said he was guilty of a crime,
14:00
SPEAKER_02: or there was a news story in which it was alleged that he did a crime,
14:04
SPEAKER_02: but an actual jury...
14:06
SPEAKER_02: People get called on to 34 accounts of felonies.
14:09
SPEAKER_00: They won't like that he's trying to tear down the jury system because he got convicted by one.
14:15
SPEAKER_02: And you see it just like the polls,
14:16
SPEAKER_02: you know,
14:17
SPEAKER_02: so it's like...
14:18
SPEAKER_02: The other thing is,
14:18
SPEAKER_02: right,
14:19
SPEAKER_02: if you went back in time 15 years ago,
14:22
SPEAKER_02: you would think this would be like way more damaging to Trump than the polls show
14:26
SPEAKER_02: that it is.
14:27
SPEAKER_02: You know, like 58% of people are like, oh, it's bad that he's a criminal rather than 75.
14:33
SPEAKER_02: But like 58, that's enough to win the election with.
14:36
SPEAKER_00: Like resoundingly.
14:38
SPEAKER_02: Right.
14:38
SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's what I mean.
14:40
SPEAKER_02: So it's like...
14:42
SPEAKER_02: And the other other thing,
14:43
SPEAKER_02: which I think is like a tough pill for everybody to swallow,
14:47
SPEAKER_02: but it's just that like Democrats issue messages have gone from it's like it's
14:53
SPEAKER_02: challenging to get attention for these to like actually mostly bad.
14:57
SPEAKER_02: Right.
14:58
SPEAKER_02: Like Trump is preferred on most of the issues that are out there.
15:02
SPEAKER_02: Right.
15:04
SPEAKER_02: And so like switching the conversation like is good in a way that I think was not true.
15:10
SPEAKER_02: Like Joe Biden in 2020 had like a big advantage on handling of like all different kinds of things.
15:18
SPEAKER_02: He's now down to an advantage, like really just on abortion.
15:22
SPEAKER_02: So, you know, it's like you got to go with what you got.
15:26
SPEAKER_02: And the fact is his opponents are criminals.
15:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
15:29
SPEAKER_00: Well,
15:29
SPEAKER_00: and also look like there is a huge gulf between the dumbest thing a Democrat has
15:36
SPEAKER_00: ever done,
15:36
SPEAKER_00: which is probably like raise your hand on a debate stage to say you support
15:40
SPEAKER_00: decriminalizing border crossings or defund the police.
15:44
SPEAKER_00: And like your opponent just got convicted of felonies, should you talk about it?
15:49
SPEAKER_00: And I I have always said and I agree that like,
15:53
SPEAKER_00: you know,
15:55
SPEAKER_00: I refer to it as pseudoscience or but like that.
16:00
SPEAKER_00: That kind of data is useful as sort of guardrails,
16:03
SPEAKER_00: like in the Obama-esque sense of not doing stupid shit.
16:08
SPEAKER_00: It is good to know what would be a really stupid thing to do.
16:14
SPEAKER_00: And I do think that like Democrats are – and their advisors sometimes are prone to thinking this –
16:23
SPEAKER_00: or this idea that gets big applause when we do a rally that is packed with people
16:29
SPEAKER_00: who have been brought in by activist groups will be popular with the general public.
16:34
SPEAKER_00: That's a bad way of thinking.
16:37
SPEAKER_00: But Donald Trump has consistently said,
16:40
SPEAKER_00: hold below like 55% or higher disapproval ratings.
16:45
SPEAKER_00: Nearly all of the people who disapprove of him strongly disapprove of him.
16:49
SPEAKER_00: And so any message that at its core is Donald Trump did a bad thing and there
16:55
SPEAKER_00: should be consequences is going to poll well.
16:57
SPEAKER_00: You don't need to take a five-day break or a seven-day break or a 10-day break.
17:02
SPEAKER_00: To start,
17:03
SPEAKER_00: you know,
17:04
SPEAKER_00: and then you can use your your your little focus groups to figure out what is the
17:09
SPEAKER_00: actually optimal path and try to try to hit that.
17:12
SPEAKER_00: What I have found so galling is that whether they're drawing their lessons from
17:18
SPEAKER_00: Hillary Clinton's defeat in 2016 or the long hangover of the 2020 primary and the
17:26
SPEAKER_00: damaging issue positions that some of the Democrats took is that there is like
17:31
SPEAKER_00: basically never –
17:34
SPEAKER_00: a we have the confidence that this is a good opportunity to go for the jugular and
17:40
SPEAKER_00: so we're just going to go for it and like maybe the blood sprays somewhere we don't
17:45
SPEAKER_00: want it to we'll clean that up later the main thing is we just don't want to lose
17:49
SPEAKER_00: this possibly fleeting advantage and you know i don't want to people listening to
17:55
SPEAKER_00: think well the democrats sat out the
17:59
SPEAKER_00: the Trump conviction for five days.
18:01
SPEAKER_00: And so now it's yesterday's news and it'll never like they can't revive it.
18:05
SPEAKER_00: And like,
18:06
SPEAKER_00: obviously,
18:06
SPEAKER_00: he's going to be sentenced,
18:08
SPEAKER_00: you know,
18:08
SPEAKER_00: like things are going to happen to bring this back into the news.
18:11
SPEAKER_00: But in the in the meantime,
18:12
SPEAKER_00: like Republicans have unified the unified almost instantly,
18:16
SPEAKER_00: like the it's in an issue that polls obviously better for Democrats than for Republicans.
18:24
SPEAKER_00: You have this perverse situation where
18:26
SPEAKER_00: It has united Republicans, but Democrats remain divided.
18:30
SPEAKER_00: And the salvos you see about it as this kind of pops back up are all about
18:36
SPEAKER_00: Republican unified rage that this is some sort of con job on the American people
18:43
SPEAKER_00: and that their buddies on the Supreme Court are going to take care of it,
18:46
SPEAKER_00: just like –
18:47
SPEAKER_00: Like we know that that's ridiculous,
18:49
SPEAKER_00: but if you're trying to make this penetrate deep into swing voter territory,
18:53
SPEAKER_00: people who have no idea as a matter of first principles what to think about this development,
18:59
SPEAKER_00: they are getting a lot of passion,
19:02
SPEAKER_00: doubt-inspiring passion from Republicans and a lot of like,
19:08
SPEAKER_00: you know,
19:08
SPEAKER_00: kind of mealy-mouthed crap from Democrats.
19:11
SPEAKER_00: And I think that that thing, when we've seen it happen over and over, that dichotomy,
19:18
SPEAKER_00: um, is like, is kind of how opinion forms.
19:22
SPEAKER_00: And so you will always end up with something like this polling 55, 45.
19:28
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not saying that do it my way.
19:30
SPEAKER_00: And you end up with what you say,
19:31
SPEAKER_00: you know,
19:32
SPEAKER_00: 75,
19:32
SPEAKER_00: 25,
19:32
SPEAKER_00: but you might get it to 60,
19:34
SPEAKER_00: 40,
19:34
SPEAKER_00: like,
19:35
SPEAKER_00: and that is important,
19:37
SPEAKER_00: right?
19:37
SPEAKER_00: Like if, if, if, if you can dominate a 60, 40 issue for months, um,
19:42
SPEAKER_00: you're probably going to do pretty well in the election.
19:44
SPEAKER_00: If you fritter away five of those points because you lack the courage of your
19:48
SPEAKER_00: convictions and you don't ever respond to anything in a normal way,
19:52
SPEAKER_00: that is outrageous and I am outraged.
19:55
SPEAKER_00: It's just wasted opportunity.
19:57
SPEAKER_00: And there are people who crunch numbers for a living who will say, well, that sounds kind of vague and...
20:08
SPEAKER_00: non-quantitative and how, how can we, but I, yes, I acknowledge it is, but I, I'm right.
20:14
SPEAKER_00: And you're wrong.
20:15
SPEAKER_00: Like it.
20:17
SPEAKER_02: Well,
20:17
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
20:19
SPEAKER_02: I'm just like,
20:19
SPEAKER_02: I'm torn though,
20:20
SPEAKER_02: because like,
20:21
SPEAKER_02: so like,
20:23
SPEAKER_02: I would like to convince Democrats to go more aggressively on this issue.
20:29
SPEAKER_02: Right.
20:29
SPEAKER_02: And like, part of that is I would like to convince them that they are making a mistake.
20:35
SPEAKER_02: By not going more aggressively on this issue.
20:38
SPEAKER_02: That they are not driving an alternate message strategy on any other topic.
20:43
SPEAKER_02: That they do not have a significant vulnerability on any other topic.
20:47
SPEAKER_02: Right?
20:48
SPEAKER_02: And like... I mean...
20:51
SPEAKER_02: It might be true that we should replace this entire two,
20:56
SPEAKER_02: three generations of Democratic Party politicians with totally different group of
21:01
SPEAKER_02: people who practice a much more intuitive style of politics.
21:05
SPEAKER_02: I think that that would probably backfire catastrophically, actually.
21:09
SPEAKER_02: And that like,
21:10
SPEAKER_02: Because I think that people like you who want that actually like really underrate
21:16
SPEAKER_02: how small a share of the Democratic base electorate people who are like,
21:22
SPEAKER_02: OK,
21:23
SPEAKER_02: I'm just saying,
21:23
SPEAKER_02: like,
21:24
SPEAKER_02: I think it's like very dangerous.
21:26
SPEAKER_02: What I'm saying in this case is that I would like the timid,
21:30
SPEAKER_02: gutless,
21:31
SPEAKER_02: chicken shit people who only want to listen to what their professional
21:35
SPEAKER_02: pseudoscientific message testers say to actually listen to what they're saying and
21:40
SPEAKER_02: go more aggressively on this topic.
21:43
SPEAKER_02: Because the note that the specific thing that Biden did do,
21:46
SPEAKER_02: right,
21:46
SPEAKER_02: he didn't like move to a message of bipartisanship.
21:49
SPEAKER_02: He didn't like move to some attack on health care.
21:52
SPEAKER_02: What he did was he tried once again to like cauterize the Gaza war.
22:00
SPEAKER_02: Right.
22:00
SPEAKER_02: Like that's the thing that the White House did that made news.
22:04
SPEAKER_02: Now, obviously, I see the thinking there.
22:06
SPEAKER_02: Right.
22:07
SPEAKER_02: If Biden had announced this peace plan.
22:10
SPEAKER_02: And then two hours after that, peace broke out.
22:14
SPEAKER_02: And then the day after that, there was like an Israel-Saudi normalization.
22:19
SPEAKER_02: And then like the day after that, OPEC was like, and now we're opening the spigots up.
22:23
SPEAKER_02: Like that would be great, right?
22:24
SPEAKER_02: Like that would be better for Biden than like a three-day news cycle about Trump.
22:30
SPEAKER_02: The problem is like it didn't work, right?
22:32
SPEAKER_02: Right.
22:32
SPEAKER_02: Like Joe Biden does not.
22:35
SPEAKER_02: And I estimate his Israel policy fairly generously.
22:38
SPEAKER_02: But like he doesn't have a like magic speech he can give that's going to cause all
22:43
SPEAKER_02: these dominoes to fall in exactly the right direction.
22:47
SPEAKER_02: I get that that's what he wants to do, right?
22:50
SPEAKER_02: He has always loved foreign policy.
22:53
SPEAKER_02: He cherishes his personal relationships with these different foreign leaders.
22:56
SPEAKER_02: It's the topic.
22:58
SPEAKER_02: He's more interested in it intellectually than any of his domestic type things.
23:03
SPEAKER_02: But they keep, of their own volition, elevating what they know is their own worst issue.
23:14
SPEAKER_02: And they're doing it because they want to solve it, because they know it's a bad issue.
23:19
SPEAKER_02: But like, you got to find some other way.
23:23
SPEAKER_02: You know, like, literally, they did this big press conference the day after.
23:27
SPEAKER_02: And like, I...
23:30
SPEAKER_02: I would love like it sounds stupid to be like you should have spent the day like
23:34
SPEAKER_02: honing your quips about how Trump is a convicted felon rather than trying to bring
23:39
SPEAKER_02: peace to the Middle East.
23:40
SPEAKER_02: But like also if you spent the day trying out some different quips about how Donald
23:45
SPEAKER_02: Trump is a felon,
23:46
SPEAKER_02: like you would have made headway.
23:48
SPEAKER_02: You would have gone for seven quips and two of them would have been good and you would have gotten it.
23:53
SPEAKER_02: Any day of the week, you could try to bring peace to the Middle East and you're going to fucking fail.
23:58
SPEAKER_02: Everybody fails.
23:59
SPEAKER_02: Normally, presidents get obsessed with this after they're lame ducks because it doesn't work.
24:05
SPEAKER_02: You got to do something that you could succeed at.
24:09
SPEAKER_00: I actually find myself simultaneously sympathetic to Biden on that and also...
24:15
SPEAKER_00: Like, even though I'm more mad than you, I think about how the party structures itself.
24:20
SPEAKER_00: So I I think that the vast majority of members of the Democratic caucus.
24:25
SPEAKER_00: don't have the first clue what an optimal strategy for the caucus would be.
24:31
SPEAKER_00: And they take a lot of cues from leadership,
24:33
SPEAKER_00: and leadership get their idea from consultants and strategists and quants.
24:37
SPEAKER_00: And so when there's something that might be partisan,
24:40
SPEAKER_00: they first ask,
24:42
SPEAKER_00: what will this do in Abby Spanberger's district?
24:46
SPEAKER_00: And if it's potentially risky in Abby Spanberger's district, then
24:50
SPEAKER_00: Don't go there.
24:51
SPEAKER_00: Right.
24:51
SPEAKER_00: Like that.
24:51
SPEAKER_00: But if you replaced not two thirds of the party,
24:54
SPEAKER_00: but like basically the leadership and the people who have been advising them for 30 years,
24:58
SPEAKER_00: you're talking like a dozen people.
25:02
SPEAKER_00: Then you could replace them with people like Jamie Raskin, who are not.
25:06
SPEAKER_00: Like they like they they know how to run the House and they have good ideas about
25:13
SPEAKER_00: like what what the party should like.
25:16
SPEAKER_00: It has a sort of constitutional obligation to do, but be like is like politically shrewd to do.
25:23
SPEAKER_00: And they would take over the party and it would be fine.
25:25
SPEAKER_00: That's that's one thing.
25:26
SPEAKER_00: The second thing is I when I saw that that Biden was going to celebrate the Trump
25:32
SPEAKER_00: felony day with a with a Gaza rally.
25:35
SPEAKER_00: Update, I was with you.
25:38
SPEAKER_00: My understanding of that,
25:43
SPEAKER_00: and I don't really want to shunt us into a sidebar about whether he sort of had to
25:50
SPEAKER_00: do this as a matter of urgency and statesmanship,
25:53
SPEAKER_00: but there was a plan that Israelis had kind of privately agreed,
25:59
SPEAKER_00: Benjamin Netanyahu had privately agreed to and offered to Hamas a ceasefire plan.
26:05
SPEAKER_00: And Biden,
26:06
SPEAKER_00: because he rightfully no longer trusts Bibi Netanyahu,
26:09
SPEAKER_00: was like,
26:12
SPEAKER_00: we believe that he is going to torpedo this if it doesn't become public.
26:16
SPEAKER_00: So we need to go out there now today and say this is the Israeli agreed upon plan.
26:24
SPEAKER_00: And if Hamas agrees to it, then it must be put into place.
26:28
SPEAKER_00: And like, it's sort of sucks for Biden that that's how the timing worked out.
26:35
SPEAKER_00: But I do feel like that rises to a like,
26:39
SPEAKER_00: it would have been kind of malpractice in a in a like,
26:44
SPEAKER_00: almost like maladministration sort of way for him to say,
26:47
SPEAKER_00: I know that this is important,
26:49
SPEAKER_00: and it might not work anyway.
26:51
SPEAKER_00: But
26:53
SPEAKER_00: This is the only window of opportunity for it is now.
26:57
SPEAKER_00: And it's crappy that it happened on this day, but often events make presidents' lives shitty.
27:06
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I get that.
27:07
SPEAKER_02: But I do think, because here I'm trying to be more boitler.
27:11
SPEAKER_02: One thing.
27:14
SPEAKER_02: There's a question of, like, who does what and in what forum.
27:17
SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
27:18
SPEAKER_02: Like, making this public, right, could have been a State Department official on Israeli television.
27:28
SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
27:29
SPEAKER_02: Because, like, the relevant audience for, like, generating peace here is the Israeli electorate.
27:37
SPEAKER_02: That's true.
27:38
SPEAKER_02: That's true.
27:39
SPEAKER_02: Whereas, like, you know what I mean?
27:40
SPEAKER_02: Like, Joe Biden in English...
27:43
SPEAKER_02: from the Rose Garden is like a way to get Americans.
27:47
SPEAKER_02: And,
27:47
SPEAKER_02: you know,
27:48
SPEAKER_02: the reaction in America to Biden's speech was exactly,
27:52
SPEAKER_02: literally anything Biden could possibly say about this would generate this reaction.
27:56
SPEAKER_02: Pro-Israel people get mad at Biden for not just saying, Bibi, you can do whatever you want.
28:02
SPEAKER_02: And anti-Israel people get mad at Biden for not saying,
28:07
SPEAKER_02: comma,
28:08
SPEAKER_02: or else we're going to impose a comprehensive arms embargo.
28:11
SPEAKER_02: You know,
28:11
SPEAKER_02: like it's just like it's a very starkly polarized issue in which like 60 percent of
28:16
SPEAKER_02: the country wants Biden to do one thing.
28:19
SPEAKER_02: But 60 percent of Biden's base wants him to do like the opposite thing.
28:23
SPEAKER_00: Well, I think it's even worse than that.
28:24
SPEAKER_00: Like everyone who wants Biden to do the different things are part of his base.
28:28
SPEAKER_00: So whatever he says.
28:30
SPEAKER_00: Right.
28:30
SPEAKER_02: So it's just like.
28:31
SPEAKER_02: And so it's like, again, like that's a great way to like get go down, whereas like.
28:38
SPEAKER_02: On the day that Trump is found guilty of a felony,
28:42
SPEAKER_02: like anything Biden says about it,
28:44
SPEAKER_02: just Biden's to I mean,
28:46
SPEAKER_02: credit where due like.
28:48
SPEAKER_02: Biden's remarks at the fundraiser are not like going to go in the Hall of Fame of
28:53
SPEAKER_02: presidential rhetoric,
28:55
SPEAKER_02: but they got a lot of pickup just because he said it like it's noteworthy.
29:02
SPEAKER_00: Listeners might not have heard.
29:03
SPEAKER_00: So if you have.
29:04
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
29:04
SPEAKER_02: So let's let me let me grab it.
29:07
SPEAKER_02: You know, so it's like a question of what do you allocate to?
29:10
SPEAKER_02: I think,
29:11
SPEAKER_02: you know,
29:11
SPEAKER_02: your point about the leadership,
29:15
SPEAKER_02: you know,
29:15
SPEAKER_02: is always sort of important and we should talk about it.
29:19
SPEAKER_02: But, you know, here we go.
29:21
SPEAKER_02: So Biden says, you know, folks, the campaign entered uncharted territory last week.
29:25
SPEAKER_02: For the first time in American history,
29:26
SPEAKER_02: a former president that's a convicted felon is now seeking the office of the presidency.
29:31
SPEAKER_02: But as disturbing as that is, even more damaging is the
29:34
SPEAKER_02: all-out assault Donald Trump is making on the American system of justice.
29:40
SPEAKER_02: You know,
29:41
SPEAKER_02: and so he goes on about that for a while,
29:43
SPEAKER_02: about,
29:43
SPEAKER_02: like,
29:44
SPEAKER_02: not just the substance of the felony,
29:47
SPEAKER_02: but the,
29:48
SPEAKER_02: I don't want to say the process,
29:49
SPEAKER_02: but,
29:50
SPEAKER_02: like,
29:50
SPEAKER_02: the threat to the integrity of the overall justice system that Biden has posed,
29:55
SPEAKER_02: which is a natural next place to take it,
29:57
SPEAKER_02: because this is what the judge and the jury can't do,
30:00
SPEAKER_02: right?
30:00
SPEAKER_02: Like, it would be inappropriate for Alvin Bragg
30:03
SPEAKER_02: to say,
30:03
SPEAKER_02: like,
30:04
SPEAKER_02: and the larger point of this trial,
30:06
SPEAKER_02: right,
30:06
SPEAKER_02: is that,
30:07
SPEAKER_02: like,
30:07
SPEAKER_02: Donald Trump attacks judges who don't agree with him and da-da-da-da-da.
30:11
SPEAKER_02: Like, he's a prosecutor.
30:14
SPEAKER_02: For whatever reason, you might have wanted to keep quiet about this case while the case was happening.
30:20
SPEAKER_02: Like, that's why you need to get noisy about it, right, once it's over, right?
30:24
SPEAKER_02: You say, like, look...
30:25
SPEAKER_02: I was not here.
30:26
SPEAKER_02: I was not leaning on it.
30:28
SPEAKER_02: I had nothing to do with this prosecution.
30:30
SPEAKER_02: Now that it has happened, though, like here's the facts, here's the situation.
30:36
SPEAKER_02: What you were saying about Democratic leadership, right?
30:38
SPEAKER_02: You mentioned Abigail Spanberger, who's leading the House.
30:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, just a district that I know that Pelosi was very concerned about that district once in a while.
30:46
SPEAKER_02: I know,
30:46
SPEAKER_02: but I mean,
30:47
SPEAKER_02: it's relevant,
30:48
SPEAKER_02: though,
30:48
SPEAKER_02: because like Nancy Pelosi used to be very concerned about some of her members who
30:53
SPEAKER_02: were representing Trump districts.
30:57
SPEAKER_02: Chuck Schumer is clearly I think Chuck Schumer in a misguided way is asking Sherrod
31:04
SPEAKER_02: Brown and John Tester,
31:05
SPEAKER_02: what do you want me to talk about?
31:07
SPEAKER_02: And they're saying, well, we don't really want to talk about this Trump verdict.
31:11
SPEAKER_02: And Schumer has been just an incredibly soft leader across the board.
31:16
SPEAKER_02: You know, he he's.
31:18
SPEAKER_02: He wouldn't tell anybody no during the Build Back Better negotiations.
31:21
SPEAKER_02: He wouldn't make any kind of choices about anything.
31:25
SPEAKER_02: He was more string.
31:26
SPEAKER_02: It was going on forever and ever and ever.
31:28
SPEAKER_02: And eventually, Joe Manchin and Ron Wyden had to get together and fucking do something.
31:35
SPEAKER_02: And I've talked to people who worked for Reed,
31:39
SPEAKER_02: complaining about Schumer on messaging,
31:41
SPEAKER_02: complaining about Schumer on substance.
31:44
SPEAKER_02: And...
31:45
SPEAKER_00: for better or worse, for worse.
31:47
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
31:47
SPEAKER_00: like for listeners benefit before Harry Reed retired after the 2016 election,
31:54
SPEAKER_00: he and Schumer,
31:55
SPEAKER_00: um,
31:56
SPEAKER_00: kind of co-ran the caucus.
31:57
SPEAKER_00: Reed was leader.
31:59
SPEAKER_00: Schumer was, uh,
32:00
SPEAKER_00: Not whip, but like caucus chair.
32:02
SPEAKER_00: But it was kind of understood that Reed was like the bare knuckle politician and
32:07
SPEAKER_00: Schumer was the sort of wily,
32:10
SPEAKER_00: stereotypically Jewish,
32:12
SPEAKER_00: politically shrewd guy.
32:13
SPEAKER_00: And so they created like a single office.
32:16
SPEAKER_00: So a lot of Schumer staff and Reed's staff kind of cross pollinated with each other.
32:20
SPEAKER_00: They were sort of loyal to that position.
32:23
SPEAKER_00: um partnership and then harry reed retired and died schumer became leader and a lot
32:30
SPEAKER_00: of the people who have left that office are very flummoxed by reed's lack of um
32:37
SPEAKER_00: muscle like he just doesn't have any of the i'm sorry schumer's lack of muscle he
32:41
SPEAKER_00: doesn't have any of harry reed's kind of uh like it's for the jugular and it shows
32:47
SPEAKER_00: in in what matt's describing here that's the that's the background
32:51
SPEAKER_02: I don't, like, I'm not sure I understand the House caucus dynamics as well.
32:59
SPEAKER_02: I don't know Jeffrey's or his team really the way I have known Schumer or did know Pelosi's people.
33:12
SPEAKER_02: You know, his elevation to the leadership was so uncontroversial.
33:19
SPEAKER_02: that I think it may almost be like counterproductive.
33:23
SPEAKER_02: You know, like he didn't, there was no like pitch through which he became leader.
33:27
SPEAKER_02: Like nobody else was trying even like in a token way.
33:30
SPEAKER_02: I mean, Schumer was not contested when he became leader, but he kind of like muscled Dick Durbin out.
33:37
SPEAKER_02: to get there and like hustled his way up from these DSCC roles.
33:42
SPEAKER_02: The whole house leadership situation over the past couple cycles got odd because
33:48
SPEAKER_02: several different era parents like left the house because they were frustrated with
33:53
SPEAKER_02: how long the old guys were hanging on.
33:55
SPEAKER_02: And then Clyburn and Hoyer were occupying the number three and number two slots for all this time.
34:01
SPEAKER_02: So Jeffries wasn't...
34:04
SPEAKER_02: wasn't really a senior member of the leadership before he became minority leader.
34:08
SPEAKER_02: And
34:11
SPEAKER_02: Just like it's a shame.
34:12
SPEAKER_02: Like,
34:13
SPEAKER_02: I think of the like three top Democrats at the moment,
34:16
SPEAKER_02: he's like the best at like going on television and talking about stuff,
34:21
SPEAKER_02: kind of like baseline politics.
34:22
SPEAKER_02: Like, you know, he's the youngest.
34:25
SPEAKER_02: He's kind of the best public speaker.
34:27
SPEAKER_00: He runs the House minority, so he doesn't have tons of official power to squander.
34:32
SPEAKER_00: So all he has to do is nail the rhetoric.
34:35
SPEAKER_00: And he's pretty good at that.
34:36
SPEAKER_00: I think.
34:36
SPEAKER_00: Right.
34:37
SPEAKER_00: Jeffries.
34:38
SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
34:38
SPEAKER_02: And I don't think, I mean, I may be wrong, but it's just like, it's not my understanding that like,
34:46
SPEAKER_02: He's incredibly solicitous of Jared Golden's opinions about everything and obsessed
34:54
SPEAKER_02: with holding on to this single Trump plus seven seat that they have.
34:59
SPEAKER_02: I mean, that that might be true.
35:00
SPEAKER_02: I just like I don't I don't know it to be true.
35:03
SPEAKER_02: And the way that I do know that like Schumer has this reputation of being
35:08
SPEAKER_02: incredibly deferential to Trump.
35:10
SPEAKER_02: Just, like, trying to be deferential to everyone, and in this case, to sort of the Red State Dems.
35:15
SPEAKER_02: And,
35:15
SPEAKER_02: like,
35:15
SPEAKER_02: Pelosi,
35:16
SPEAKER_02: when she was Speaker,
35:18
SPEAKER_02: absolutely,
35:19
SPEAKER_02: like,
35:19
SPEAKER_02: had this view that,
35:21
SPEAKER_02: like,
35:21
SPEAKER_02: she was,
35:22
SPEAKER_02: like,
35:22
SPEAKER_02: the human shield for the vulnerable members of her caucus,
35:26
SPEAKER_02: right?
35:28
SPEAKER_02: And you can agree with that or disagree with it, but, like, I...
35:31
SPEAKER_02: like you who are very critical of that strategy,
35:34
SPEAKER_02: I think could state what the strategy was in a way that she would reply like,
35:39
SPEAKER_02: yes,
35:39
SPEAKER_02: that is my strategy.
35:41
SPEAKER_02: Like I'm trying to protect my most vulnerable members.
35:44
SPEAKER_02: And then we're going to try to legislate.
35:46
SPEAKER_02: I don't,
35:49
SPEAKER_02: Like, I just like I don't know what House Democrats are doing.
35:53
SPEAKER_02: It's like they're the minority.
35:55
SPEAKER_02: So they have like the least juice.
35:58
SPEAKER_02: But also traditionally,
36:00
SPEAKER_02: like a House minority is the most empowered to be just kind of like bomb throwers.
36:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
36:07
SPEAKER_02: They don't do anything.
36:09
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
36:09
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
36:10
SPEAKER_00: I think that Mike Johnson is acting more like a minority leader,
36:13
SPEAKER_00: a House minority leader,
36:14
SPEAKER_00: than Jeffries.
36:17
SPEAKER_00: And Jeffries is behaving more like a speaker than Mike Johnson.
36:20
SPEAKER_00: Like, Mike Johnson went to New York first to try to
36:24
SPEAKER_00: like increase the salience of the Gaza protests at Columbia.
36:29
SPEAKER_00: And then a week or two later to do what Donald Trump wanted him to do outside the
36:33
SPEAKER_00: courthouse in New York,
36:36
SPEAKER_00: which,
36:36
SPEAKER_00: you know,
36:36
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying that that was necessarily like some brilliant strategy,
36:39
SPEAKER_00: but it was a way to make sure that Trump's view of the trial was front and center when,
36:45
SPEAKER_00: where,
36:45
SPEAKER_00: where Democrats were kind of leaving a void and,
36:49
SPEAKER_00: Jeffries doesn't do anything like that ever.
36:52
SPEAKER_00: We've joked about, not joked, I think it'd be great.
36:55
SPEAKER_00: He could go lead a protest in Texas about abortion.
36:58
SPEAKER_00: He could do a lot of things.
36:59
SPEAKER_00: New York, he represents a district in, is it Manhattan or Brooklyn?
37:04
SPEAKER_00: I can't remember.
37:06
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter.
37:06
SPEAKER_00: His district is within subway distance of the Manhattan courthouse.
37:11
SPEAKER_00: And if he wanted to go defend the rule of law from the Republicans who gathered there,
37:14
SPEAKER_00: he could have done it very easily.
37:16
SPEAKER_00: He just doesn't.
37:17
SPEAKER_00: operate in that way and it's a it you know it's a it's a it's a form of squandering
37:23
SPEAKER_00: in and of itself and like um you know so i think that like two things one is that
37:36
SPEAKER_00: nancy pelosi wouldn't have had to take my word for it king jeffries wouldn't have
37:40
SPEAKER_00: to take my word for it that there's another way defend people like
37:45
SPEAKER_00: uh, Spanberger, who's not even running for Jared golden, right?
37:48
SPEAKER_00: Like is to make the leader of the other party much more unpopular.
37:55
SPEAKER_00: And that will have downed out consequences for everyone.
37:57
SPEAKER_00: This was what Mitch McConnell did with Barack Obama.
38:00
SPEAKER_00: Like he wasn't hyper solicitous of what Olympia snow or Susan Collins cared about.
38:07
SPEAKER_00: He was just like, we are going to take Obama from 70% popularity down to 42% popularity and,
38:14
SPEAKER_00: and it will solve whatever problems you think.
38:16
SPEAKER_00: And he was correct.
38:18
SPEAKER_00: And there's no reason why the same logic doesn't apply in Maine to a Democrat.
38:25
SPEAKER_00: The second thing is like,
38:27
SPEAKER_00: You know,
38:28
SPEAKER_00: I harp on this a lot because I think it's a pathology,
38:34
SPEAKER_00: not a like question of like it's sort of a 60-40 proposition.
38:39
SPEAKER_00: They took the 40.
38:40
SPEAKER_00: I'm on the 60.
38:41
SPEAKER_00: But reasonable minds can disagree.
38:43
SPEAKER_00: So this is how it always goes.
38:44
SPEAKER_00: And like if if if Democrats were like,
38:47
SPEAKER_00: we understand where Brian is coming from,
38:49
SPEAKER_00: but we are picking our battles a little more carefully.
38:53
SPEAKER_00: Then he would have us do.
38:54
SPEAKER_00: I would say that's great.
38:55
SPEAKER_00: And my main thing is I'm not.
38:59
SPEAKER_00: Like ranking these things, I just want you to do more in this vein.
39:02
SPEAKER_00: And if you did, I would I would just hush.
39:05
SPEAKER_00: I'd be thrilled.
39:08
SPEAKER_00: And I sensed in the days before the verdict that like this was no different than
39:14
SPEAKER_00: when we learned Donald Trump was.
39:17
SPEAKER_00: you know, sending resources to his clubs.
39:21
SPEAKER_02: I want to get you like a little bit,
39:23
SPEAKER_02: a little bit off this fixation though on the swing state Democrats,
39:27
SPEAKER_02: right?
39:27
SPEAKER_00: Do you want to do that on the other side of the paywall or do you want to do it now?
39:30
SPEAKER_00: Let's do it.
39:31
SPEAKER_02: Let's do it on the other side.
39:32
SPEAKER_00: All right.
39:33
SPEAKER_00: If you want to hear Matt grill me, go to politics.fm and upgrade your subscription.