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Full Episode - Money Is Destroying American Politics + AI Needs Serious Regulation & Serious Regulators · The Chuck ToddCast

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Speaker 1: as well. Hello thereon, Welcome to the Thursday edition of
1:54
Speaker 1: the Chuck Podcast. I have today's going to be a
1:57
Speaker 1: bit more domestic, a bit moreocused on that obviously. Look
2:01
Speaker 1: that the most important story impacting American politics is and
2:06
Speaker 1: will continue to be the Iran War until it is
2:09
Speaker 1: not right because of the impact it has on our economy,
2:13
Speaker 1: the sort of symbolic impact it has on the economy
2:16
Speaker 1: with gas prices, things like that, but the actual war itself,
2:21
Speaker 1: the conduct of this war will we end up escalating
2:26
Speaker 1: all these questions securing the straight of horn moves. It
2:30
Speaker 1: is going to continue to be essentially, and I think
2:36
Speaker 1: if you're like I said, it's similar I said yesterday.
2:38
Speaker 1: If you're a Republican running on the ballot in twenty
2:43
Speaker 1: twenty six, you just wish this war would end in
2:46
Speaker 1: some form or another, that you could turn the page
2:48
Speaker 1: on this. But it isn't going to happen very quickly,
2:50
Speaker 1: very easily. This is going to continue to be I
2:55
Speaker 1: think the biggest story that will impact the larger sort
3:01
Speaker 1: of perception of the direction of the country, and it
3:04
Speaker 1: will certainly impact what is campaigned on. But at the
3:09
Speaker 1: end of the day, whether the war was happening or not,
3:12
Speaker 1: the issue of the economy and democracy issues would be
3:15
Speaker 1: in some ways front and center the issues. And in fact,
3:18
Speaker 1: a big issue that this episode's going to focus on
3:20
Speaker 1: today is the role of AI, and it's the fear
3:24
Speaker 1: of AI and the disruption of our economy, the fear
3:27
Speaker 1: of AI disruption to culture, the fear and the fact
3:33
Speaker 1: that there are more Americans today that feel apprehension about
3:37
Speaker 1: the development of AI rather more so than enthusiasm. The
3:41
Speaker 1: unpopularity of AI in the American public is starting to increase.
3:46
Speaker 1: And so it brings me to my guests that I
3:49
Speaker 1: am featuring today, and the long form interview that I
3:51
Speaker 1: have today is with a former Democratic member of Congress,
3:54
Speaker 1: long time, twenty years. Has been twenty years since he served,
3:57
Speaker 1: Brad Carson. He was an Oklahoma Democrat. He ran and lost.
4:03
Speaker 1: He left Congress when he ran for the US Senate,
4:05
Speaker 1: lost to Tom Coburn, who just recently not that long ago. Well,
4:10
Speaker 1: I guess it's been a while now since he passed away,
4:13
Speaker 1: but he was a long time member of the Senate,
4:17
Speaker 1: and in fact, Coburn getting elected in four was a
4:19
Speaker 1: big victory for some conservatives. He gets elected in one
4:22
Speaker 1: of the freshman senators that he befriends and becomes fairly
4:25
Speaker 1: close friends with is a future president in Barack Obama.
4:30
Speaker 1: But in Brad Carson. He is the head of a
4:32
Speaker 1: group called Americans for Responsible Innovation. And I know it's
4:35
Speaker 1: one of those what the hell does that mean? Right,
4:38
Speaker 1: who's not for responsible innovation? But it is basically the
4:43
Speaker 1: we're for regulating AI, but we're pro AI group. Right.
4:47
Speaker 1: This is if you're been following the battle between for
4:53
Speaker 1: AI supremacy between your chat GBT Claude Gemini. Well, Claude
4:58
Speaker 1: is the chatbot of Anthropic. Anthropic is the sort of
5:05
Speaker 1: spin off, is the company that grew out of those
5:08
Speaker 1: that left Open AI for fear that there wasn't enough guardrails. Obviously,
5:13
Speaker 1: you know the story of Anthropic now being banned from
5:15
Speaker 1: the Pentagon and being potentially seen as a as a
5:19
Speaker 1: supply chain risk if you do business with Anthropic. So
5:24
Speaker 1: what has happened is there is you know where this
5:28
Speaker 1: is getting into the political campaigns, and some of the
5:30
Speaker 1: biggest spenders in American politics right now are in the
5:33
Speaker 1: AI space. You basically have a collection of those on
5:37
Speaker 1: the no regulation side of AI, that most prominently being
5:41
Speaker 1: being Open AI and the folks behind chat GPT, and
5:45
Speaker 1: then you have Anthropic and that side of the space
5:49
Speaker 1: that is in favor of allowing and encouraging some regulation
5:57
Speaker 1: and some guardrails in the AI space. And the it
6:01
Speaker 1: is I bring this up because this all happened within
6:05
Speaker 1: the same week we had the Illinois primary, and my
6:07
Speaker 1: sub stack theme this week is about how the Illinois
6:10
Speaker 1: primary and I think there's some important political followup from
6:14
Speaker 1: that I'll share with you in a few minutes. A
6:16
Speaker 1: huge win for Juliana Stratton number one, but number two,
6:20
Speaker 1: and maybe in the near term the bigger winner might
6:24
Speaker 1: be JB. Pritzker, the governor of Illinois. I think we
6:28
Speaker 1: those of us. I'm somebody who's you know, not. I
6:32
Speaker 1: wasn't sure I didn't have him in my top tier
6:34
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty eight ers. Let's just say, you know,
6:36
Speaker 1: I'm paying a lot more respect than to him now,
6:39
Speaker 1: and I see him as I think, you know, you're
6:42
Speaker 1: the governor you're able to take on You're a billionaire governor,
6:47
Speaker 1: and you're able to take on these huge super packs
6:50
Speaker 1: from the crypto industry and from the tech and AI industries,
6:53
Speaker 1: and you're able to win. Although in this case, I
6:56
Speaker 1: think it was really more of the crypto folks that
7:02
Speaker 1: he was taking on more than anybody else. It says
7:04
Speaker 1: something and I certainly have and I want to get
7:09
Speaker 1: to that in a minute. But I want to tackle
7:11
Speaker 1: this issue of money in politics because it's all kind
7:14
Speaker 1: of tied in together a little bit. And let's just say,
7:21
Speaker 1: for years I didn't spend a lot of time on
7:26
Speaker 1: the issue of campaign finance and money in politics, not
7:28
Speaker 1: because I didn't think it was a problem. I just
7:33
Speaker 1: never really believed it would ever really become a big
7:35
Speaker 1: issue in American politics, even as you hear as I'll
7:39
Speaker 1: hear plenty of sort of you know, non professional in
7:44
Speaker 1: this space, I E. Voters, I E. Those that pay
7:47
Speaker 1: attention going, we've got to do something about money in politics.
7:52
Speaker 1: Because I was a skeptic when it came that there
7:55
Speaker 1: was any reform that was even possible, that there was
7:57
Speaker 1: no curbing of money. And it wasn't because I thought
8:02
Speaker 1: the system was healthy. Quite the opposite. I just assumed
8:06
Speaker 1: the problem was unbeatable. It was too adaptive, it was
8:10
Speaker 1: too clever, if you will, And I had this working
8:13
Speaker 1: assumption to I used to do this all the time.
8:16
Speaker 1: I'd quote Jeff Goldbloom's character in Jurassic Park when the
8:21
Speaker 1: old man reassures the scientists that he brings to show
8:24
Speaker 1: off his dinosaurs. Oh no, no, no, they're not going
8:27
Speaker 1: to pro create. I've been able to manipulate their DNA
8:31
Speaker 1: so that they can't pro create. And Goldblum's characters, you know,
8:35
Speaker 1: he's the guy who I guess promotes chaos theory and mathematics,
8:39
Speaker 1: and he basically says life finds a way and he
8:42
Speaker 1: turns out to be right. Well, I've always felt that
8:43
Speaker 1: way about money in politics, right, money always finds a way.
8:46
Speaker 1: You try public financing, it gets outgrown, You try to
8:49
Speaker 1: cap contributions. Well then you get bundling, which sort of
8:53
Speaker 1: work around. Every reform in my adult lifetime in Franctly,
8:57
Speaker 1: my entire lifetime has been has been turned against itself. Right,
9:02
Speaker 1: you ban soft money from the major parties, then that
9:06
Speaker 1: money moves outside the parties and you say, have less
9:09
Speaker 1: of an opportunity to keep control of your party. McCain
9:13
Speaker 1: find gold was supposed to clean things up, and instead
9:16
Speaker 1: it helped create the modern superPAC system that is absolutely
9:20
Speaker 1: destructive to the political campaign system as we know it.
9:23
Speaker 1: Every single reform I've seen tried created a workaround that
9:27
Speaker 1: became made the problem worse. So you get to the
9:30
Speaker 1: point you're like, well, just go find your you know,
9:33
Speaker 1: And you saw there was no neither party would ever
9:36
Speaker 1: have a permanent advantage on money, you know, because that's
9:39
Speaker 1: the way markets work, right, When one one side's up,
9:43
Speaker 1: the other side finds it finds disgruntled rich people to
9:46
Speaker 1: help them, right, And so there was an uneasy balance
9:49
Speaker 1: that you would see in this, and so you thought, well,
9:53
Speaker 1: at least it's fair, it's ugly, it's gross, but at
9:57
Speaker 1: least it's balanced between the two parties for time. So
10:06
Speaker 1: it was going to be messy, it was going to
10:07
Speaker 1: be imperfect, but ultimately it was probably unfixable, especially once
10:12
Speaker 1: the courts decided that money was speech, so then you
10:15
Speaker 1: had to have a constitutional moment, and what the hell
10:17
Speaker 1: would that constitutional moment look like? But I do think
10:20
Speaker 1: we missed something along the way because when we pushed
10:24
Speaker 1: big donors out of the parties, this was a I
10:26
Speaker 1: think this, you know, I have you know, McCain fine gold.
10:29
Speaker 1: And there were plenty of detractors of McCain fine gold
10:32
Speaker 1: because they just simply wanted more big money in politics.
10:35
Speaker 1: But there were other detractors of McCain fine gold who
10:37
Speaker 1: worried it would weaken them two political parties. And I
10:41
Speaker 1: think those folks have proven to be right. And let
10:43
Speaker 1: me explain, we didn't just move money. When we got
10:46
Speaker 1: rid of money big money checks being written to political
10:49
Speaker 1: parties directly, we actually removed one of the only guard
10:52
Speaker 1: rails in vetting candidates that we had. When you take
10:56
Speaker 1: the parties out of the candidate vetting business. And you
11:00
Speaker 1: do this when you no longer allow them to have
11:02
Speaker 1: the financial resources to help candidates win, then you had
11:06
Speaker 1: real consequences to what kinds of candidates would suddenly pop
11:10
Speaker 1: up for all of their flaws, and there were plenty.
11:13
Speaker 1: With the party organizations, they did serve a kind as
11:17
Speaker 1: kind of a filter. Wasn't a perfect filter, It wasn't
11:20
Speaker 1: always a fair filter, but they would ask basic questions
11:24
Speaker 1: like is this person stable? Do they have good judgment?
11:28
Speaker 1: Can they handle power? Can they handle stress? Sometimes just
11:31
Speaker 1: the basic vetting process and an HR department would have
11:36
Speaker 1: And because that's where you had to get your resources
11:40
Speaker 1: and your money, you as the candidate sort of where
11:42
Speaker 1: you kind of you had to apply to the parties,
11:44
Speaker 1: if you will, unofficially, and the parties had a stake
11:49
Speaker 1: in the long term health of the coalition. They couldn't
11:51
Speaker 1: just get behind somebody that could win now if they
11:54
Speaker 1: thought that person's reputation could end up harming the overall
11:57
Speaker 1: reputation of the party itself. But now well, that function
12:01
Speaker 1: has been entirely outsourced, and it's been outsourced to donor networks,
12:06
Speaker 1: to ideological entrepreneurs, to outside groups, and those actors aren't
12:12
Speaker 1: asking the same questions that leaders of the two actual
12:15
Speaker 1: political parties used to ask of their candidates. They don't
12:18
Speaker 1: ask is this person fit? They're asking can this person win?
12:23
Speaker 1: And will this person be useful, useful to fund, useful
12:28
Speaker 1: to protect, useful to stop something. They have their own incentive.
12:31
Speaker 1: They're looking for somebody that aligns with them on a
12:34
Speaker 1: specific issue, specific topic of issue focus. Right, So that
12:39
Speaker 1: then Trump's character it, Trump's ethics, Trump's morals, and Trump branding. Right,
12:47
Speaker 1: It's a completely different screening mechanism and it produces a
12:51
Speaker 1: completely different kind of politics. Then you layer on Citizens United,
12:56
Speaker 1: and now the system isn't just adaptive. It's protected. Political
13:00
Speaker 1: spending becomes speech, and suddenly meaningful restrictions are almost impossible
13:05
Speaker 1: without a constitutional fight. So for a long time I
13:08
Speaker 1: thought this is it, this is the system. Until recently
13:10
Speaker 1: that is because something has changed. There's always a tipping point, right,
13:17
Speaker 1: there's always, you know, everything in moderation, But eventually you're
13:21
Speaker 1: not moderating your habits. You've tipped. So let me give
13:26
Speaker 1: you a moment where I clicked for me, and I
13:28
Speaker 1: keep coming back to this, and I bring it up
13:29
Speaker 1: in a lot of my appearances now and I'm going
13:31
Speaker 1: to continue to do so. When Chuck Schumer reportedly told
13:35
Speaker 1: fellow Democratic senators to ease up on their opposition to
13:37
Speaker 1: the crypto industry, not because they changed their minds and
13:41
Speaker 1: they saw that crypto was going to be this incredible,
13:44
Speaker 1: maybe this would be a helpful tool in the financial sector,
13:47
Speaker 1: but because of the political firepower of a singular super
13:50
Speaker 1: pack called fair Shake, these were huge players in Illinois,
13:54
Speaker 1: and by the way, they get their ask kicked in Illinois,
13:56
Speaker 1: they did not have a good night for what it's worth.
13:59
Speaker 1: But think about that elected officials being told to soften
14:02
Speaker 1: their positions on a specific issue because an industry simply
14:06
Speaker 1: has too much money to challenge them. That's not influence,
14:09
Speaker 1: that's not persuasion, that's coersion. It's policy extortion. And once
14:15
Speaker 1: you see that clearly, then all the stuff starts to
14:18
Speaker 1: look differently, because what we're dealing with now is not
14:22
Speaker 1: just a lot of money in politics. It is something bigger.
14:26
Speaker 1: It's the shift from candidate centered politics to donor centered politics.
14:33
Speaker 1: And this is what was so crystal clear about all
14:36
Speaker 1: of the Illinois primaries that happened earlier this week, and
14:39
Speaker 1: it wasn't just in the Senate race. It was also
14:40
Speaker 1: in these house races, where every single candidate came with
14:44
Speaker 1: a descriptor that said the fair shake back candidate, the
14:47
Speaker 1: AI back candidate, the APAC back candidate, this back candidate. Right.
14:52
Speaker 1: It was never just about the candidate, even in Juliana
14:55
Speaker 1: Stratton's case, who didn't have one big industry behind her,
14:57
Speaker 1: she had a big billionaire governor behind her. She was
15:01
Speaker 1: Governor Pritzker's candidate, right, But it was not about the candidates.
15:05
Speaker 1: It was about their supporters, about the donors. So now
15:10
Speaker 1: there was a specific reason why Illinois became kind of
15:13
Speaker 1: ground zero for this moment. Right. It's a very blue state,
15:17
Speaker 1: and they had a bunch of elderly members of Congress
15:20
Speaker 1: who finally decided to retire, the big one being Dick Durbin. Right,
15:23
Speaker 1: you got elected in ninety six, you know, by the way,
15:26
Speaker 1: for what it's worth, I think if you were elected
15:27
Speaker 1: to office in the twentieth century, you probably shouldn't be
15:30
Speaker 1: seeking reelection in twenty six. And if you do, don't
15:32
Speaker 1: be surprised if you get primaried and you have a problem.
15:36
Speaker 1: But I digress. So Dick Derbin retires there's an open
15:39
Speaker 1: seat deep blue state, which means the primary becomes the
15:43
Speaker 1: election and it's not just an election for six years.
15:47
Speaker 1: Dick Derbin got elected in ninety six and was there
15:51
Speaker 1: for thirty years, worked his way up in the leadership,
15:53
Speaker 1: number two in leadership. So this is a very I mean,
15:57
Speaker 1: that's what you're investing in. You're not just investing in
15:59
Speaker 1: one six year two. You're potentially investing in one of
16:02
Speaker 1: the next leaders of the United States Senate over a generation.
16:06
Speaker 1: So if you're you've got interest before Congress, this is
16:11
Speaker 1: a valuable asset to acquire, i e. Having a senator
16:17
Speaker 1: that may feel beholden to your industry. So if you're
16:20
Speaker 1: that interest group and you think you can influence this primary,
16:23
Speaker 1: you may be buying influence for a generation. So what
16:28
Speaker 1: did voters get? Though? They didn't get a traditional campaign,
16:30
Speaker 1: They didn't get a real debate between the candidates. You know,
16:33
Speaker 1: in fact, if you didn't have one of these things yet,
16:35
Speaker 1: it was really hard for the candidates. I never felt
16:39
Speaker 1: like I got to know the candidates. I only knew
16:40
Speaker 1: them through their donors and through who their supporters were.
16:44
Speaker 1: And it turned into a proxy war. Right, you had
16:46
Speaker 1: crypto money, AI money, a pack, link money, billionaire money, governor,
16:49
Speaker 1: money front group, shell packs, you name it. By the
16:52
Speaker 1: end of it, voters knew what these interests wanted, perhaps,
16:56
Speaker 1: but did they really know what kind of candidate they
16:58
Speaker 1: were getting? Now. I think in Stratton she found a
17:01
Speaker 1: way to break through, interestingly enough, because she went viral
17:05
Speaker 1: with an ad that didn't err on mainstream television because
17:08
Speaker 1: you'd had to bleep it out too much. But it
17:09
Speaker 1: was the F Trump at and if you haven't seen it,
17:11
Speaker 1: I encourage you to go see it. During our livestream,
17:14
Speaker 1: we aired a vision of it, but it's just a
17:15
Speaker 1: whole bunch of voters saying F Trump, and then Stratton says,
17:18
Speaker 1: I'm not saying it. But it was her way of
17:21
Speaker 1: basically virtue signaling, Hey, she's going to be a fighter.
17:23
Speaker 1: She wants to punch the bully in the nose. And
17:26
Speaker 1: I think it mattered. It also mattered that the governor,
17:28
Speaker 1: I think is popular with rank and filed Democrats because
17:31
Speaker 1: he's been fighting Trump and he's been you know what,
17:33
Speaker 1: Gavin Newsom has gotten a lot more credit for arguably
17:36
Speaker 1: Pritzker's been doing before. Newsom thought it was a cool
17:38
Speaker 1: way to do. But we still had something odd take
17:44
Speaker 1: place this week in Illinois in that voters again I think,
17:49
Speaker 1: ended up having to select candidates based on what third
17:54
Speaker 1: party groups create. The character of third party groups were
17:59
Speaker 1: created by them. So we're watching messages written by people
18:01
Speaker 1: who may never actually have been on the ballot and
18:03
Speaker 1: will never be on the ballot. And here's the part
18:06
Speaker 1: that should bother everyone. These outside groups, they often don't
18:10
Speaker 1: even campaign on the issue they.
18:11
Speaker 2: Actually care about.
18:13
Speaker 1: Right. A crypto group may never mention Crypto, An AI
18:15
Speaker 1: group may never mention AI entirely. An Israel focused group
18:18
Speaker 1: may decide that's too politically complicated to lead with. So
18:21
Speaker 1: what do they do? They find another issue, immigration, crime, corruption, ideology,
18:25
Speaker 1: and they use that as the delivery system. So voters
18:28
Speaker 1: think they're watching one debate when they're actually being moved
18:31
Speaker 1: on to another. And that's not persuasion. That becomes misdirection. Right,
18:35
Speaker 1: And the candidates don't really feel accountable to it because
18:38
Speaker 1: in some ways they're not. They can't control these outside groups,
18:41
Speaker 1: and the outside groups have no accountability because none of
18:44
Speaker 1: us know who their donors are in time to cover
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Speaker 1: vary and the rates themselves may vary as well, but
20:26
Speaker 1: trust me, life insurance is something you should really think
20:29
Speaker 1: about it, especially if you've got a growing family. So
20:35
Speaker 1: as a candidate, you weirdly kind of stuck because you
20:37
Speaker 1: can't coordinate with the groups, and so they get pulled
20:40
Speaker 1: into campaigns they didn't design. They just sort of participate
20:43
Speaker 1: into a campaign that was created by an outside group
20:47
Speaker 1: on terrain. They didn't choose answering for messages they didn't write.
20:51
Speaker 1: So the whole idea of independent spending becomes part of
20:54
Speaker 1: the problem. And this is where the loss of party
20:56
Speaker 1: control I think matters a lot, because parties used to
20:59
Speaker 1: have to think about the entire electorate, the whole coalition,
21:03
Speaker 1: long term consequences. Now we didn't just decentralize money. We
21:08
Speaker 1: decentralized responsibility, and we hollowed out the institutions and had
21:12
Speaker 1: to care about more than one donor's obsession, which brings
21:16
Speaker 1: us to the core problem inanimity. If you want to
21:19
Speaker 1: vote in secret, you should. The secret ballot is sacred,
21:23
Speaker 1: that's a fundamental right. But if you want to spend
21:26
Speaker 1: millions influencing everyone else's vote, sorry, you don't deserve secrecy.
21:33
Speaker 1: You need to put your name on it immediately, not
21:36
Speaker 1: on some tax reform through a LLC six months later,
21:41
Speaker 1: in real time, in plain English. No shell companies, no
21:44
Speaker 1: front groups, no hiding three layers deep, stand by your money.
21:53
Speaker 1: In fact, let me make it simple, take a page
21:55
Speaker 1: from NASCAR. If you want to spend big money in politics,
21:58
Speaker 1: but the donor on the hood, every ad, every mailer,
22:01
Speaker 1: every digital buy, because that's the trade off. Influence comes
22:05
Speaker 1: with visibility. You want to have influence, everybody needs to
22:09
Speaker 1: know it with her democracy. It's on the ballot, and
22:12
Speaker 1: it needs to be put on the ballot now. Even
22:13
Speaker 1: if that doesn't solve the whole problem, because the deeper
22:15
Speaker 1: issue is what this system does to candidates. It doesn't
22:19
Speaker 1: just reward certain positions, it punishes others. So candidates learn
22:23
Speaker 1: they learn what fights are too expensive, like Crypto apparently,
22:26
Speaker 1: so they soften, they go quiet, they delay, or they
22:29
Speaker 1: stand down entirely not because they've been persuaded, but because
22:32
Speaker 1: they understand the cost that comes with dissent, which in
22:36
Speaker 1: some ways is what they Crypto. I mean, this is
22:39
Speaker 1: what they've done. They've amassed such a financial juggernaut and
22:42
Speaker 1: fair shape that they just want to intimidate politicians into
22:49
Speaker 1: legalizing what is a questionable what many people find questionable
22:56
Speaker 1: in its usefulness. So once that happens, the problem isn't
23:01
Speaker 1: just money in politics. It's that money is defining the
23:03
Speaker 1: boundaries of politics, what can be said, what can't be said,
23:07
Speaker 1: what gets debated, what gets avoided. And here's the thing,
23:10
Speaker 1: this is no longer just a left wing complaint. I'm
23:13
Speaker 1: now hearing it from Republicans, free market conservatives, people with
23:17
Speaker 1: their own scars from dark money, starting to say this
23:20
Speaker 1: out loud. And that's new. And this is why I
23:23
Speaker 1: think why we might have hit a tipping point where
23:25
Speaker 1: maybe the public is ready to do something about it,
23:28
Speaker 1: and maybe the politicians are going to grow a spine
23:31
Speaker 1: and do something about it, because the scale here is undeniable.
23:34
Speaker 1: Not that long ago, billionaire money was a rounding error.
23:37
Speaker 1: I'm not kidding. I mean, you've seen it. It was
23:39
Speaker 1: barely one percent of campaign money came from billionaires pre
23:42
Speaker 1: Citizens United. Now it's approaching one out of every five
23:47
Speaker 1: dollars spent on federal campaigns comes from a billionaire. We
23:51
Speaker 1: are moving towards something new, but it looks like institutionalized
23:57
Speaker 1: billionaire politics, a political gilded age. Now, to be clear,
24:03
Speaker 1: this doesn't mean every candidate backed by wealthy interest is corrupt.
24:07
Speaker 1: American politics has always had patrons, but the structure of
24:10
Speaker 1: it matters, right, and the structure we have now encouraged
24:14
Speaker 1: voters to believe candidates are simply stand ins for their donors,
24:18
Speaker 1: and that perception alone is what is so corrosive, and
24:21
Speaker 1: it creates a barrier to entry that should worry all
24:23
Speaker 1: of us. We got rid of poll taxes for a reason.
24:27
Speaker 1: You can't charge people for access to a constitutional right.
24:31
Speaker 1: But we've built something similar on the candidate side. A
24:34
Speaker 1: system we're running for office seriously requires access to wealth
24:38
Speaker 1: patrons or donor networks. That's a shadow tax on a candidacy. Now,
24:46
Speaker 1: candidates will tell you fairly that they didn't write these
24:48
Speaker 1: rules and they're right, they didn't. But a system can
24:51
Speaker 1: be rational for the participants and still be unacceptable for
24:53
Speaker 1: the public. And this is where we're at. The reforms
24:57
Speaker 1: aren't mysterious, real time disclosure, no anonymous money, clear donor identification.
25:03
Speaker 1: Maybe some structural fixes like runoffs or ranked choice voting
25:07
Speaker 1: won't fix everything, but it will restore one basic idea
25:09
Speaker 1: that voters should know who is trying to persuade them
25:12
Speaker 1: and why, because in many cases, it's not the candidates
25:15
Speaker 1: that are trying to persuade voters anymore. It's some anonymous
25:19
Speaker 1: donor who's funding that candidate. So the danger now isn't
25:24
Speaker 1: that money influences outcomes. It's that it defines the menu
25:29
Speaker 1: of choices itself, Like you don't even know there's an
25:34
Speaker 1: alternative because it doesn't have the funding to present itself
25:37
Speaker 1: on your menu of options before. It's like what happens
25:41
Speaker 1: in Iran? Right, you know, yes, it's a democracy, but
25:44
Speaker 1: the regime decides who gets to be on the ballot.
25:47
Speaker 1: So is it really a choice in anybody that is
25:50
Speaker 1: you know, any presidential candidate that's calling for actual, small
25:52
Speaker 1: de democratic reform, they somehow don't make the ballot that's
25:56
Speaker 1: essentially what we're seeing here, donors deciding who's viable, who's not,
26:00
Speaker 1: what's debated, and what gets dropped. That's how democracy gets
26:04
Speaker 1: reshaped into a kleptocracy, quietly before a single vote is
26:08
Speaker 1: even cast. And that's why this has finally potentially become
26:12
Speaker 1: a voting issue, not because reform is easy, but because
26:15
Speaker 1: voters are starting to see the system for what it
26:16
Speaker 1: is in Illinois. It's not the exception, it's just a warning.
26:23
Speaker 1: And it's interesting because Illinois features a billionaire governor, a
26:27
Speaker 1: billionaire governor who's tried to fight some of these other billionaires.
26:35
Speaker 1: And you know, this feeds into a notion and this
26:38
Speaker 1: is why I think that you know, hey, look we're
26:40
Speaker 1: going to look one. One primary does not make a
26:44
Speaker 1: presidential candidate, but it is a data point that matters.
26:48
Speaker 1: And you know, the f Trump add it's possible that
26:57
Speaker 1: you have a group of Democrats who say, well, this
26:59
Speaker 1: system so rigged that maybe they've got to find their
27:05
Speaker 1: billionaire to fight the other billionaires. And I'm not just
27:10
Speaker 1: making this up. One of you, my substact reader, made
27:15
Speaker 1: a comment on my substack column that was that was
27:20
Speaker 1: similarly themed here, and I just want to read you
27:24
Speaker 1: to hand in hand here because I think it. I
27:27
Speaker 1: think it's a It's illustrative of where I think there
27:30
Speaker 1: is a faction of the Democratic Party, and I've, like
27:32
Speaker 1: I said, I've heard other ad a progressive consultant tell
27:35
Speaker 1: me I'm looking for my own trump right anyway, let
27:38
Speaker 1: me read you to what one of my commenters to
27:40
Speaker 1: on substack said, this is the most terrifying thing I've
27:43
Speaker 1: read in a while, and I read a lot of
27:44
Speaker 1: AI doomsday articles. What do we do about it? Writing
27:47
Speaker 1: or calling your congress person feels inadequate. I've known campaign
27:50
Speaker 1: finance was a problem for a long time, but it
27:52
Speaker 1: feels like the only way to change it is to
27:53
Speaker 1: become a billionaire, win elections and then fight the other billionaires.
27:57
Speaker 1: What do normal citizens do short of pulling out the guillotine?
28:00
Speaker 1: This was just a simple question to him, and what
28:02
Speaker 1: I want to say to to Ryan asked who wrote
28:04
Speaker 1: this in is you may need to you may need
28:08
Speaker 1: to show your guillotine. I'm not saying you use the guillotine,
28:12
Speaker 1: but you almost need to. Like it's like you walk
28:14
Speaker 1: t you walk quietly and carry a big stick, like
28:17
Speaker 1: you're guillotine you're your stick, or maybe you hire a
28:21
Speaker 1: billionaire to do this, right, And that's I think the JB.
28:24
Speaker 1: Pritzker pitch. Hey, I'm a billionaire. I know how these
28:27
Speaker 1: guys work. And in some ways it's the it's the
28:29
Speaker 1: mirror image of how Trump convinced a frustrated Republican base
28:33
Speaker 1: that was tired of losing, tired of compromising, tired of
28:36
Speaker 1: the mccains and the Romneys of the world, and they
28:38
Speaker 1: wanted somebody who made them feel better and expressed what
28:43
Speaker 1: they thought they couldn't say anymore, right, and that was
28:45
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. Well, that's what the Juliana Stratton f Trump ad.
28:51
Speaker 1: I think there's a there's it's somewhat analogous, right, there's
28:55
Speaker 1: a group of Democrats who are tired of the ship, right,
28:57
Speaker 1: and they're like, screw it, give me my own billion Aaron,
29:00
Speaker 1: let me punch this bully in the house. And Pritzker
29:03
Speaker 1: has been playing this role for quite some time. And
29:05
Speaker 1: you know, I've been skeptical that the answer to the
29:09
Speaker 1: Trump eras for Democrats to go find their own billionaire. Right.
29:11
Speaker 1: This is why I've been a little skeptical of the
29:13
Speaker 1: Mark Cuban idea, a little skeptical of the Pritzker idea,
29:17
Speaker 1: but watching it in action in you seeing how much
29:21
Speaker 1: money and how big these entities are. You know, it
29:24
Speaker 1: took a rich guy named Teddy Roosevelt to take on
29:27
Speaker 1: the big rich guys, right. It took a rich guy
29:30
Speaker 1: in FDR to build the social safety net for the
29:33
Speaker 1: working class. It was a rich guy that working class
29:38
Speaker 1: America the last ten years has turned to or want
29:40
Speaker 1: to be rich guy, depending on your point of view
29:42
Speaker 1: of when Trump actually acquired actual wealth. But it doesn't matter,
29:45
Speaker 1: perceive Perception is reality in this case. And so I
29:52
Speaker 1: know this, Like you know, I always remind people I
29:55
Speaker 1: cover politics as it as it is, not as I
29:56
Speaker 1: wish it were. I'm not sure this is a good
29:59
Speaker 1: long term solution for where we're headed as a country.
30:02
Speaker 1: But I also it's possible. This is a this is something,
30:07
Speaker 1: this is something that has to be tried first before
30:09
Speaker 1: the next thing gets tried. Right, And if you you know,
30:12
Speaker 1: I always like to put my shove in the shoes
30:14
Speaker 1: of somebody fifty years from now looking back on this
30:17
Speaker 1: era we're living through, and how will they see it?
30:19
Speaker 1: What will it look like? And you know, you know
30:25
Speaker 1: I have a theory that we're we're going to we're
30:27
Speaker 1: probably going to have two or three more one term
30:29
Speaker 1: presidents before we have a president that's able to sort
30:32
Speaker 1: of solidify the country enough to earn a second term.
30:36
Speaker 1: And that's when, you know, we'll have turned the page
30:38
Speaker 1: on this era until we get there. So we've had
30:41
Speaker 1: three in a row. You know, we didn't. We went
30:42
Speaker 1: through the entire twentieth century without three one term presidents
30:45
Speaker 1: in a row. So I kind of think we're you
30:49
Speaker 1: got to go through these stages, right, and so you know,
30:51
Speaker 1: you can see this right if down the road we
30:54
Speaker 1: get you know, the next Eisenhower becomes president, say in
30:56
Speaker 1: twenty thirty six, but we have a one term president
30:59
Speaker 1: in twenty eight to one term president in thirty two,
31:02
Speaker 1: et cetera. And like, okay, what you know, what what
31:04
Speaker 1: will the explanation be? And it be something like, well,
31:07
Speaker 1: you know, the frustrated Americans they kept they kept voting,
31:11
Speaker 1: you know, they kept looking for something different, and they
31:13
Speaker 1: didn't like it, and they voted out. You know, the Democrats,
31:16
Speaker 1: they tried the conciliator candidate in Biden, and that didn't work.
31:20
Speaker 1: Then they tried you know, if they go with the
31:23
Speaker 1: a Pritzker. Let's say then it was oh, they tried
31:25
Speaker 1: the fighter, the billionaire fighter to fight back and that
31:29
Speaker 1: didn't work in the culture war, and then you know
31:30
Speaker 1: who knows, So you know it is it's possible. We're
31:35
Speaker 1: just in a this is the next step, you know,
31:39
Speaker 1: before you get to whatever the whatever the solution is,
31:42
Speaker 1: or maybe this turns out to be the solution, or
31:44
Speaker 1: maybe a leader sort of morps into something bigger and
31:47
Speaker 1: is able to rise above in a moment. You know, Well,
31:51
Speaker 1: that's that's what we do. We find out sometimes after
31:55
Speaker 1: we elect these presidents whether they're actually up to the job.
31:57
Speaker 1: We never, let's be honest, we're never quite sure these
32:00
Speaker 1: folks are up to the job until after they take office.
32:03
Speaker 1: There's a lot of skepticism about Bill Clinton, and then
32:05
Speaker 1: after a while you understood why he was there. Uh
32:08
Speaker 1: did it with w did it with Obama? You know
32:09
Speaker 1: there's always a moment where these people fill the suit,
32:12
Speaker 1: right and you just sort of see it, you know.
32:15
Speaker 1: I think Biden always struggled to fill the suit. I
32:18
Speaker 1: think Trump, you know, is always acting, he's always playing
32:22
Speaker 1: a role, so he struggles to fill the suit because
32:25
Speaker 1: it's never a full. It's never quite quite what he is.
32:30
Speaker 1: It's always a performance of some sort. You just have
32:33
Speaker 1: to figure out what that performance is at any given time.
32:38
Speaker 1: So it's uh, I'm always careful. I don't want to
32:43
Speaker 1: be definitive here. Right. We had one primary where the
32:47
Speaker 1: candidate who was preaching love instead of a fighter won
32:51
Speaker 1: in Texas. Now this one we got the fighter, the
32:53
Speaker 1: F Trump candidate.
32:54
Speaker 2: Right.
32:56
Speaker 1: By the way, every time I say F Trump, I'm
32:58
Speaker 1: channeling my old Chris Matthews. He'll be saying, are you
33:00
Speaker 1: saying F troop? You know some old TV show back
33:03
Speaker 1: in the sixties. So for some of my older viewers
33:05
Speaker 1: and listeners, that was a shout out for F Troop.
33:07
Speaker 1: Now I'm not saying F troop when I say the
33:09
Speaker 1: F Trump had. So, you know, two data points does
33:14
Speaker 1: not make a trend, but it's an intriguing data point.
33:18
Speaker 1: It's something I'm not going to dismiss about Pritzker. And
33:21
Speaker 1: I think that Pritzker's proven to be politically savving his
33:24
Speaker 1: own state, so we should be taking him seriously as
33:27
Speaker 1: a presidential candidate. I wouldn't put him at the bottom
33:29
Speaker 1: of the top tier anymore. I'd be putting them smack
33:31
Speaker 1: dab in the contender section of this as we go forward,
33:39
Speaker 1: all right, Like I said, coming up my conversation with
33:42
Speaker 1: somebody who leads one of these super packs that I'm
33:44
Speaker 1: talking about, and we get into whether this is a
33:47
Speaker 1: healthy system and what should be And Brad Carson, longtime
33:51
Speaker 1: Oklahoma Democrat, also gives his prescription of how Democrats could
33:56
Speaker 1: to could improve their brand and read play in red
34:00
Speaker 1: states like Oklahoma and elsewhere. So I think you'll find
34:05
Speaker 1: the conversation interesting, provocative, and enlightening. And with that, let's
34:10
Speaker 1: sneak in a break and when we come back, my
34:12
Speaker 1: conversation with about AI influencer politics and the Democratic Party
34:20
Speaker 1: with Brad Carson. This episode of The Chuck Podcast is
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35:57
Speaker 1: Well everybody is trying to figure out is when it
36:00
Speaker 1: comes to artificial intelligence, right, I think as consumers are
36:05
Speaker 1: trying to figure out, how is this impacting our lives?
36:09
Speaker 1: How is this going to impact our future of work.
36:12
Speaker 1: If you've got older kids, you're wondering are you even
36:16
Speaker 1: remotely giving them the education they need to survive in
36:20
Speaker 1: this new AI driven world. Governments are trying to figure out,
36:23
Speaker 1: you know, how do we help this great technology come around,
36:30
Speaker 1: but do so with some guardrails, considering how poorly the
36:36
Speaker 1: same tech companies that are trying to bring us AI
36:38
Speaker 1: brought us social media, and there certainly seems to be
36:42
Speaker 1: disputes about that. And what's been interesting is is how
36:47
Speaker 1: negative the country is becoming on AI artificial intelligence. And
36:51
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of fear out there. I
36:53
Speaker 1: think the fear is understandable. I think the technology is remarkable.
36:56
Speaker 1: I think, like many people, I think now we all
37:00
Speaker 1: every day we use it more. Sometimes we don't even
37:02
Speaker 1: fully realize how much we're using it, but we use
37:04
Speaker 1: it more. But the fear factor is definitely gone up.
37:09
Speaker 1: And in some ways that fear is driven by the
37:11
Speaker 1: people that are bringing us these AI companies because they're
37:14
Speaker 1: the ones that tell us, well, there's this small, small
37:16
Speaker 1: chance that whatever we're developing is going to consume us all,
37:19
Speaker 1: and you're sitting there going so why are we doing this?
37:24
Speaker 1: So it is Look, the next ten years probably are
37:28
Speaker 1: going to be defined politically by this battle of how
37:33
Speaker 1: do we integrate AI into society and how do we
37:38
Speaker 1: do it on our terms rather than on AI's terms.
37:40
Speaker 1: So my guest today is a former member of Congress,
37:43
Speaker 1: former Democrat Brad Carson from the state of Oklahoma, president
37:46
Speaker 1: of Fulsea University, and he's president of Americans for Responsible Innovation.
37:53
Speaker 1: So the idea is that he's trying to work on
37:55
Speaker 1: trying to create some better conditions perhaps, and I say perhaps,
38:02
Speaker 1: because we're what this conversation is about, of a regulatory
38:08
Speaker 1: environment that could earn the trust of the public. Because,
38:10
Speaker 1: as I point out, it's some very recent NBC News poll,
38:13
Speaker 1: but this has been pretty consistent so far. Most Americans
38:19
Speaker 1: see more negative coming from AI than positive. Now, we're
38:23
Speaker 1: unique around the world. Most other Western democracies are a
38:26
Speaker 1: bit more pro AI than we are. And I think,
38:29
Speaker 1: like I said, the experiences of social media on this country,
38:33
Speaker 1: in particular, the experience of what globalization did and the
38:37
Speaker 1: fact that that's still a living memory for many of us.
38:40
Speaker 1: So in many ways, Americans have earned their skepticism on this.
38:46
Speaker 1: Brad Carson, Welcome to the podcast.
38:48
Speaker 2: Thanks Chun, great to see you again.
38:51
Speaker 1: So let's let me start with that. I want to
38:53
Speaker 1: get into some overall politics, whether there's such thing as
38:57
Speaker 1: an Oklahoma Democrat anymore, and we can discuss that, because
39:01
Speaker 1: even then you were an outlier when you were in Congress.
39:06
Speaker 1: But let's start with this. Tell me about your organization
39:09
Speaker 1: and be transparent with me. Who's funding it, who's what
39:14
Speaker 1: you know? Because I tell you we're in the middle.
39:17
Speaker 1: There's so much money flowing into politics right now, coming
39:20
Speaker 1: from a handful of people trying to influence the regulation
39:24
Speaker 1: of AI. So tell me about organization and tell me
39:28
Speaker 1: who's buying it.
39:29
Speaker 2: So American's responsible innovation is now about two years old.
39:32
Speaker 2: We're by partisan group. I'm a Democrat, I'm the president
39:35
Speaker 2: of it. We have several Republicans who work for us,
39:37
Speaker 2: and we take great pride in working across the aisle
39:40
Speaker 2: because we believe AI should not be a partisan issue
39:43
Speaker 2: and that it's some one that both parties have a
39:45
Speaker 2: huge stake in managing well. We're funded by family foundations
39:49
Speaker 2: or charities. We take no money from the tech sector
39:53
Speaker 2: at all. So our biggest funders are groups like Coefficient Giving,
39:56
Speaker 2: Ohmed you are a Packard Foundation and a number of
39:59
Speaker 2: family offices. So we're independent of the tech sector entirely
40:02
Speaker 2: and more often critical of them. But we believe that
40:04
Speaker 2: AI can be powerful and transformative, and so we're not
40:08
Speaker 2: We don't want to kill the golden goose either.
40:12
Speaker 1: All Right, you say you're entirely independent from the tech sector,
40:14
Speaker 1: and then you also mentioned the Packard family. I mean
40:17
Speaker 1: that's part of Hewlett Packard. I mean I assume you
40:19
Speaker 1: have some family offices that made money in the tech sector.
40:22
Speaker 2: Sure, some people who gave give to us actually even
40:24
Speaker 2: work for the labs today. They might work for OPAI
40:27
Speaker 2: or Anthropy. We don't take any kind of corporate contributions
40:30
Speaker 2: like you might see at other groups in Washington, DC.
40:34
Speaker 1: Look the reason I asked that you've got We're in
40:36
Speaker 1: the middle of primary season, and you see you literally
40:40
Speaker 1: have super PACs that open AI is supporting versus a
40:44
Speaker 1: super pac that Anthropic is supporting. Because they're actually not
40:47
Speaker 1: always on the same page. When it comes to the
40:51
Speaker 1: regular regulation issue. Do you do you guys have that
40:56
Speaker 1: tension inside your organization.
40:58
Speaker 2: We do have a bit of a tension of that.
41:00
Speaker 2: Although you should know that that super pac network, of
41:02
Speaker 2: which Anthropic is a contributor, I actually run that as
41:05
Speaker 2: well as kind of something I do in addition to
41:08
Speaker 2: my work as AARI, and that's a group we found
41:11
Speaker 2: that kind of spun out of AARI and we raised
41:14
Speaker 2: a lot of money for it, and then we convinced
41:16
Speaker 2: Anthropic to contribute to it because to their credit, Anthropic,
41:19
Speaker 2: like the other donors, believe that we should have reasonable
41:21
Speaker 2: guard rails around that. So I'm very involved in the
41:23
Speaker 2: politics of it, very involved in the Illinois Races today
41:26
Speaker 2: as we tape this, but also involved to AARI and
41:30
Speaker 2: kind of the advocacy work on the hill. So both
41:32
Speaker 2: of those kinds of things.
41:33
Speaker 1: Do you why should we Yeah, let me put it
41:40
Speaker 1: this way, the amount of money you brought up the
41:43
Speaker 1: Illinois races. By time people hear this, we will have
41:45
Speaker 1: already had these primaries. But it's funny you bring up
41:48
Speaker 1: the Illinois Races. I think it's I'm just I can't
41:51
Speaker 1: believe the amount of money from outside groups that's involved
41:56
Speaker 1: in the center race. Now I understand it. The primary
41:59
Speaker 1: is the center race, right, The winner of the Democratic
42:01
Speaker 1: primary has like a ninety five percent chance of being
42:03
Speaker 1: the United States cent are barring some unforeseen event, scandal, etc.
42:08
Speaker 1: So the game is the primary. But you were you
42:12
Speaker 1: ran for office. Can you imagine having to run for
42:15
Speaker 1: office now in this era of super PACs where you
42:19
Speaker 1: may have a theory of the case of what kind
42:21
Speaker 1: of campaign you'd run a run, but the outside group
42:25
Speaker 1: that supposedly wants you to win has more money. And
42:29
Speaker 1: if they say, you know, we don't like your messaging,
42:30
Speaker 1: we're going to do another messaging, you're you no longer
42:34
Speaker 1: have control of your own campaign. Have you? Can you
42:38
Speaker 1: imagine what life would have been like for you as
42:40
Speaker 1: a candidate under these under these conditions.
42:43
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's one of the greatest changes in
42:44
Speaker 2: American politics that most people don't appreciate the hard dollars
42:48
Speaker 2: campaign raises, they're almost insignificant. You look at the Illinois primaries,
42:52
Speaker 2: candidates they're often raising one hundred thousand, two hundred thousand dollars.
42:57
Speaker 2: Super PACs are then spending four or five million dollars
43:00
Speaker 2: or against you We're involved in a race in North
43:02
Speaker 2: Carolina's fourth district. In the research triangle, each candidates spend
43:06
Speaker 2: about one hundred thousand dollars. The super PACs spent a
43:08
Speaker 2: couple of million on each side. So you see, happily
43:11
Speaker 2: in American politics is in some ways you would even
43:13
Speaker 2: have to raise money as a candidate. You could just
43:16
Speaker 2: sit back in your house let the super PACs fight
43:18
Speaker 2: it out. Because whatever you raise and asks hard it
43:21
Speaker 2: is to raise when you're running for office, how exhausting
43:23
Speaker 2: that is, it's going to be matched probably ten x
43:27
Speaker 2: or more by the super PACs. So really extraordinary should
43:31
Speaker 2: this should?
43:33
Speaker 1: It doesn't sound like you think this is a good system.
43:36
Speaker 1: Obviously they're working within the system that it is. I
43:38
Speaker 1: always joke I cover politics as it is, not as
43:40
Speaker 1: I wish it were, and you're participating in the system
43:44
Speaker 1: as it is, perhaps not as you wish it were.
43:47
Speaker 1: But my word, I mean this is if the candidates
43:52
Speaker 1: aren't in charge of their messaging or their campaign, then
43:55
Speaker 1: what's the point.
43:56
Speaker 2: That's a great question. American democracy is really at stake
43:59
Speaker 2: here the superPAC era. But you're going to really see
44:02
Speaker 2: it manifested this cycle and the next one. You know,
44:04
Speaker 2: Crypto pioneered this strategy. Apex very involved with it too.
44:08
Speaker 2: Both of them have a hut.
44:09
Speaker 1: You're not alone. I don't want to. You're right, I'm
44:10
Speaker 1: picking on you because you're here.
44:12
Speaker 2: No, Well, four or five of us were playing big
44:15
Speaker 2: are super PACs at seventy five million dollars. I'd be
44:18
Speaker 2: happy to stand down if everyone else would as well,
44:20
Speaker 2: because it's really destroying American democracy, changing the way elections
44:24
Speaker 2: are had. So it's a terrible system that we've to
44:27
Speaker 2: Supreme Court, both Supreme Court and FEC interpretations of that
44:31
Speaker 2: Supreme Court opinion. We permitted it to get completely out
44:33
Speaker 2: of hand.
44:35
Speaker 1: Look, when you served in Congress, do you think back
44:37
Speaker 1: about the do you have any regrets collectively, not you
44:44
Speaker 1: the individual member of Congress, but collectively, because it was
44:47
Speaker 1: the entire era had a hands off approach on the Internet,
44:50
Speaker 1: very hands off on regulating, you know. I mean, I
44:53
Speaker 1: remember at one point John McCain advocating we should have
44:55
Speaker 1: the Internet should be tax free forever, and I remember thinking,
44:58
Speaker 1: you know, at some point that's not going to work,
45:00
Speaker 1: and it didn't. The Internet shouldn't have any sales tax.
45:03
Speaker 1: You know, at some point that's not going to work,
45:04
Speaker 1: and it didn't right. But we had such a light
45:08
Speaker 1: touch on the Internet and it worked until it didn't right.
45:15
Speaker 1: Social media, to me, is the greatest failed experiment on
45:19
Speaker 1: the human brain that is still ongoing. And I don't
45:22
Speaker 1: know why we haven't stopped the experiment yet right looking back.
45:27
Speaker 1: And the reason I'm asking it that way, because how
45:30
Speaker 1: do we avoid the same mistakes with AI? And what's
45:33
Speaker 1: something you think Congress and government should have done differently
45:37
Speaker 1: in the late nineties and early adds with the Internet.
45:40
Speaker 2: Because I would actually say we did more than just
45:42
Speaker 2: not have a light or more than just a light touch.
45:44
Speaker 2: We effectively immunized all of the Internet companies from any liability.
45:48
Speaker 2: This is the famous section two thirty of the Communications
45:51
Speaker 2: Decency Act. And so it wasn't that we just said
45:53
Speaker 2: we're not going to regulate you. We said we will
45:55
Speaker 2: immunize you from any claims that you defamed people, that
45:58
Speaker 2: you hurt them in any way, that you intentionally inflicted
46:01
Speaker 2: emotional distress, that you're liable for products liability, all of
46:06
Speaker 2: those things. We actually told the companies you're free from
46:08
Speaker 2: having to worry about that. That was in nineteen ninety
46:11
Speaker 2: six at a time when only seven percent of the
46:13
Speaker 2: people even had Internet. Google and Facebook were just a
46:17
Speaker 2: gleam in their founder's eyes. So it was a terrible
46:20
Speaker 2: air for us. We celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of that
46:23
Speaker 2: this year. Well, we want to make sure with AI
46:26
Speaker 2: is we don't do the same thing. So one of
46:27
Speaker 2: the big fights in Washington, DC right now is about
46:30
Speaker 2: the preemption of state laws. So a lot of the
46:33
Speaker 2: venture capitalists Open AI has been in this camp that
46:36
Speaker 2: we want to pre empt all state regulation of AI
46:39
Speaker 2: in many ways, that's just two thirty reprized for the
46:42
Speaker 2: AI age. Basically say be no law. We're going to
46:45
Speaker 2: basically hold these companies unaccountable. And I think there's a
46:48
Speaker 2: way to have your cake and eat it too by
46:50
Speaker 2: saying we need some light touch regulation. They should be
46:53
Speaker 2: held accountable for their harms, which allow the courts to
46:56
Speaker 2: develop common law over the years, which is finally calibrated
46:59
Speaker 2: to the actual risks that the AI systems present, rather
47:03
Speaker 2: than like giving them a blanket immunity. That's what we
47:05
Speaker 2: did to social media, and the stories that come out
47:07
Speaker 2: of social media are obviously horrifying, and when those families
47:11
Speaker 2: sue Facebook, TikTok or someone, they have no recourse at all.
47:15
Speaker 2: That's a terrible system that obviously harms the family. It
47:19
Speaker 2: gives them no redress, but doesn't make the companies fully
47:22
Speaker 2: internalize the many costs are opposing on society.
47:25
Speaker 1: Well, and I get, I mean, many of my listeners
47:28
Speaker 1: know I have this pet peeve about Section two thirty,
47:32
Speaker 1: specifically when I don't understand how it is any not
47:36
Speaker 1: only that, I don't understand how it has any function
47:40
Speaker 1: anymore for this reason, not that you know, yes, government
47:44
Speaker 1: should have withdrawn it a while ago, but forget that
47:47
Speaker 1: the second Facebook or Instagram or Google created an algorithm
47:56
Speaker 1: to determine what I see and what gets fed to
48:01
Speaker 1: me quicker. They have become a publisher. They are an editor.
48:06
Speaker 1: They made the decision what goes above the fold, Brad,
48:10
Speaker 1: and what goes below the fold in the old fashioned
48:12
Speaker 1: news stand. That is a decision, it was not, you know,
48:16
Speaker 1: and you're a publisher at that point. So I don't
48:20
Speaker 1: understand how the courts have interpreted Section two thirty as
48:23
Speaker 1: even being functional anymore for any of these entities.
48:27
Speaker 2: It's a great question, and the use of algorithmic curation
48:30
Speaker 2: is one of the kind of emerging questions. I think
48:33
Speaker 2: you know, we've already talked about how the Supreme Court
48:35
Speaker 2: bollock stuff campaign finance and brought us the superpack era.
48:39
Speaker 2: Their interpretation of First Amendment law over the last few
48:42
Speaker 2: years is equally troublesome because they now hold things like
48:45
Speaker 2: the use of algorithm as being no different than you know,
48:48
Speaker 2: when you were back in the editor of Hotline, back
48:51
Speaker 2: when I first met you a long time ago. You're
48:53
Speaker 2: making editorial decisions every day, right, that's covered by the
48:56
Speaker 2: First Amendment. You can be for a candidate, you can
48:58
Speaker 2: be against a candidate, you can write for against. The
49:01
Speaker 2: Supreme Court now holds those kind of algorithms are equivalent
49:04
Speaker 2: to that. That makes no sense to me. But as
49:07
Speaker 2: long as that jurisprudence exists, right, it's very hard to
49:10
Speaker 2: argue that algorithms are outside of Section two thirty is immunity.
49:13
Speaker 2: So we have a problem with how the Supreme Court
49:15
Speaker 2: is interpreting the First Amendment as it comes to like
49:18
Speaker 2: these tech platforms as well.
49:20
Speaker 1: No, look, it's a fair pushback on my pushback, which
49:25
Speaker 1: is this First Amendment interpretation of an algorithm. But the
49:28
Speaker 1: point is is that they've the initial instance of section
49:32
Speaker 1: two thirty was, well, where they're not publishers, they're just
49:34
Speaker 1: a platform that they somehow don't have any influence on
49:38
Speaker 1: their platform. And while that might still be true of
49:41
Speaker 1: our reddit, you know, in the way that Reddit works,
49:44
Speaker 1: that is not true of X, that is not true
49:47
Speaker 1: of Instagram. They you know, yes, you know, they don't
49:51
Speaker 1: create the content, but they go out of their way
49:54
Speaker 1: to make sure I see certain content based on my
49:59
Speaker 1: profile that they have decided to suck up with data.
50:02
Speaker 1: So that's why I'm that's where my you know what,
50:06
Speaker 1: I don't understand of how they can then say no, no,
50:08
Speaker 1: no, no no, we're just a plot. We're just in charge
50:10
Speaker 1: of a platform. You can't hold us accountable for it.
50:13
Speaker 2: I mean that shows you the danger of a two
50:14
Speaker 2: thirty pass at a time when no one even understood what.
50:16
Speaker 1: The Internet didn't know what they were passing.
50:18
Speaker 2: So you pass these like vague terms that are in
50:20
Speaker 2: the law, Courts are forced to interpret them, and right
50:23
Speaker 2: courts go off on this or that tangent. And they
50:26
Speaker 2: have a lot of money now, the social media companies do,
50:28
Speaker 2: so they fight back in Congress with millions of dollars.
50:31
Speaker 2: They all have super packs of their own and so
50:33
Speaker 2: it's very hard to change. And so one of the
50:35
Speaker 2: great lessons of two thirty for AI is like, don't
50:38
Speaker 2: pass some kind of metal law before you even understand
50:41
Speaker 2: like what's going to happen in five years, because then
50:43
Speaker 2: you can't change it. You know, it's very hard to
50:45
Speaker 2: politics to get these things reversed.
50:48
Speaker 1: Well, this is what I love federal federalism. We have
50:52
Speaker 1: fifty states, and it does seem as if it's a
50:58
Speaker 1: we're The divide on whether states should be allowed to
51:01
Speaker 1: regulate AI is I think an interesting fight because it's
51:07
Speaker 1: not a left right divide. This really is a industry
51:11
Speaker 1: versus everybody else fight. Right, you have Ron DeSantis, who
51:16
Speaker 1: is who's marching forward on trying to get AI regulation
51:20
Speaker 1: in the state of Florida, while Donald Trump's still trying
51:22
Speaker 1: to give immunity to these companies. I imagine if you're
51:25
Speaker 1: taking anthropic money, you're on the side of letting the
51:28
Speaker 1: states give this a shot. First.
51:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, we actually said we've always advocated for that. They've
51:33
Speaker 2: brought it twice before Congress, and we led the coalition
51:35
Speaker 2: to AARI to defeat that. Again. Republicans and Democrats Republican ags.
51:40
Speaker 2: Sarah huckeby Standers was rallying Republican governors DeSantis. Steve Bannon
51:45
Speaker 2: was on the Hustings like really active in this. So
51:49
Speaker 2: it does transcend party label in some way, and really
51:52
Speaker 2: it's a world now. I think only people actually for
51:55
Speaker 2: this policy are like three people. They're a sixteen z
51:59
Speaker 2: Anderson with the VC firm that Mark Andrews ben Horowitz
52:03
Speaker 2: runs and the Open AI guys. That's really who's for it.
52:06
Speaker 2: Anthropics not for it again, anthropics of the industry. They're
52:09
Speaker 2: very divided. Anthropics says, well, we prefer to have a
52:12
Speaker 2: comprehensive federal standard. That would be wonderful, but the absence
52:15
Speaker 2: of that, you have to have the states do their work,
52:17
Speaker 2: and so through a lot of divisions, and it's actually
52:19
Speaker 2: just a few small people. Unfortunately, they have, you know,
52:22
Speaker 2: billions of dollars and the ear of the White House
52:25
Speaker 2: as we speak, because of the tech rights influence there
52:29
Speaker 2: that they can get their way against really people in
52:31
Speaker 2: both parties.
52:41
Speaker 1: So, I mean, is this when you're when you're getting
52:44
Speaker 1: involved in these campaigns. How much are you spending money
52:47
Speaker 1: on the issue of AI itself and how much are
52:49
Speaker 1: you just involved in helping somebody who you think will
52:52
Speaker 1: be on your side in the in the in the
52:55
Speaker 1: battle over regulating AAP.
52:57
Speaker 2: So it's a bit of both. It's people we know
52:59
Speaker 2: are going to be on our side, and then we
53:01
Speaker 2: are spending some money on trying to socialize AI make
53:04
Speaker 2: people more aware of it because right now many people
53:06
Speaker 2: have a lot of concerns, but it's not the top
53:09
Speaker 2: of mind for them in voting.
53:10
Speaker 1: So are you surprised that how negative people are about this?
53:13
Speaker 2: I know I'm not really because I can see it
53:15
Speaker 2: even here in Oklahoma where I still live. You know,
53:17
Speaker 2: people who are very Trump oriented, very conservative state. This
53:21
Speaker 2: is the seventy to thirty Trump state. You know, I
53:23
Speaker 2: don't know many liberal Democrats here, and many people are
53:26
Speaker 2: fired up. We have a huge data center rebellion from
53:29
Speaker 2: people who are deeply religious, conservative across the board Trump
53:32
Speaker 2: voters and they don't want data centers, which is one
53:35
Speaker 2: manifestation of this fight. And you know, we actually polled
53:38
Speaker 2: a lot. You know, the only thing more unpopular than
53:41
Speaker 2: Benjamin net and Yahoo in a Democratic primary electorate or
53:44
Speaker 2: AI companies. It's kind of extraordinary, actually, And I think
53:48
Speaker 2: you know what you said at the outset is actually
53:50
Speaker 2: really telling every other country in the world. AI is
53:52
Speaker 2: much more popular In China, something like eighty five percent
53:55
Speaker 2: of the people are very positive about AI. So it's
53:58
Speaker 2: not the technology itself it's unpopular. It's how it's interactive
54:02
Speaker 2: with our somewhat dysfunctional political system. That's what makes it
54:05
Speaker 2: so unpopular here. I think that does speak to the
54:08
Speaker 2: need to really have like a better social contract with people.
54:11
Speaker 2: You know, more people sense like this, the political system
54:14
Speaker 2: can't be hijacked by a couple of people that you know,
54:17
Speaker 2: we'll work against us. That's why I think what makes
54:19
Speaker 2: it so unpopular here because we are an outlier in
54:21
Speaker 2: that respect, and you the only explanation for it is
54:23
Speaker 2: our unique kind of socio political dynamic.
54:26
Speaker 1: Well, I hear you there. At the other two points,
54:29
Speaker 1: I think there's no doubt it's the fear of our
54:33
Speaker 1: politics and whether they can manage the moment. And I
54:35
Speaker 1: certainly have those concerns. But you know that, I just
54:41
Speaker 1: think trust in the tech companies is so low because
54:45
Speaker 1: I don't think you know, social media is one of
54:47
Speaker 1: these phenomenons that it really is turned into the smoking
54:52
Speaker 1: of the twenty first century. We all know it's not
54:54
Speaker 1: good for us. We all know it's unhealthy. We're desperate
54:58
Speaker 1: to make sure our kids, don't. You know, We're like,
55:01
Speaker 1: let's get it out of schools. You want to talk
55:03
Speaker 1: about it something by partisan right, that a matter of
55:05
Speaker 1: red state blue, get the social get the springs out
55:07
Speaker 1: of the schools. Right, And yet we can't quit. We
55:12
Speaker 1: all can't quit.
55:13
Speaker 2: Right.
55:14
Speaker 1: It's it powers economy. It helps to fuel this economy
55:18
Speaker 1: in some ways, we don't know how to. We know
55:24
Speaker 1: this is bad and we don't know how to stop it.
55:26
Speaker 1: And I think the fear that's my theory, and that,
55:30
Speaker 1: oh my god, if we do AI, then we'll never
55:32
Speaker 1: be able to unwind this.
55:34
Speaker 2: That's exactly right. I mean we know now from the
55:36
Speaker 2: various leaks, for example, from Meta who know about things
55:39
Speaker 2: they knew that they tolerated, that they were almost willing
55:42
Speaker 2: to encourage behavior that is criminal and shocking in lots
55:47
Speaker 2: of ways, right, because it promoted engagement. You know, we
55:50
Speaker 2: know the AI companies, especially we've seen Chat GPT because
55:52
Speaker 2: it's the most consumer facing of all the AI products
55:55
Speaker 2: out there, more than Anthropic or Google's products are right,
56:00
Speaker 2: people can like misuse them and become addicted to them.
56:03
Speaker 2: We can lead people to self harm, I think, I mean,
56:05
Speaker 2: because you covered DC so much. There's a question like
56:08
Speaker 2: take the Kids Online Safety Act, which is a response
56:11
Speaker 2: to the social media problems. It passes the House and
56:14
Speaker 2: the Senate overwhelmingly. It gets bottled up in leadership. Why
56:18
Speaker 2: because they're on the phone with like meta you know,
56:21
Speaker 2: that's got millions of dollars to give to the superpacks,
56:23
Speaker 2: the majority and minority leadership packs, these kind of things.
56:27
Speaker 2: And so that's the dysfunction. It's like people know it
56:30
Speaker 2: and their politicians look kind of the rank and vile.
56:32
Speaker 2: They do support changes, but it gets bottled up because
56:36
Speaker 2: again a couple of phone calls from people you know
56:39
Speaker 2: really kind of like can can stranglehold it. That's a
56:42
Speaker 2: unique aspect of American politics. That's again about the money,
56:45
Speaker 2: and it's one of the terrible aspects of American politics.
56:48
Speaker 1: Well this is I mean, look, you keep coming back
56:51
Speaker 1: to something that I don't think is unfair to coming
56:53
Speaker 1: back to, which is as you know, here we have
56:56
Speaker 1: a we have a democracy that desperately needs updating. I'm
57:01
Speaker 1: not going to call it broken, I'm going to call
57:03
Speaker 1: it in disrepair, and it needs modernizing. You know, we
57:07
Speaker 1: need some cases, it's just simply catching up to reality,
57:10
Speaker 1: particularly when it comes down money and politics works and
57:15
Speaker 1: things like that. But it is I don't We're not
57:21
Speaker 1: going to improve the democracy in time to get AI right.
57:25
Speaker 1: So let's put on our well, we got to deal
57:30
Speaker 1: with the politics that we have now that we wish
57:32
Speaker 1: we had. What's a safer way within this system that
57:37
Speaker 1: we can be rolling out AI to help people feel
57:40
Speaker 1: better about this.
57:42
Speaker 2: I think the first thing is we should let the
57:43
Speaker 2: stakes which are more agile, less captured by big money interests,
57:47
Speaker 2: have the ability to take a stab at this and
57:49
Speaker 2: to experiment with it. That's the first thing. I think
57:52
Speaker 2: The second thing is we should minimally demand that these
57:55
Speaker 2: frontier labs. These are the five big companies used to
57:57
Speaker 2: have the very well known model. This is ex Google,
58:02
Speaker 2: Meta aanthropic open AI right. They need to be more
58:05
Speaker 2: transparent about what they're doing. They need to be reporting
58:08
Speaker 2: to government authorities like can this great novel pathogens? Can
58:12
Speaker 2: it promote offensive cybersecurity risk? Can it help?
58:15
Speaker 1: By the way, what is the government entity that ought
58:17
Speaker 1: to be overseeing this?
58:18
Speaker 2: I would like to see something of the Department of Commerce
58:20
Speaker 2: or Department of Energy said, okay, are there already doing
58:23
Speaker 2: nuclear weapons or a lot of export controls, So that's
58:25
Speaker 2: where they should do it. They should be reporting up there.
58:28
Speaker 2: And I think, you know, if you have a model
58:30
Speaker 2: that actually say it can be proven to develop novel pathogens,
58:34
Speaker 2: and we already know that most of these models are
58:36
Speaker 2: better than PhD virologists, so they're incredibly good at this
58:39
Speaker 2: kind of thing. And if it could develop a bioweapon,
58:42
Speaker 2: you should be actually prohibited from releasing that. Today you're
58:44
Speaker 2: not prohibited in any way from releasing that, and you
58:47
Speaker 2: don't even have to test for it. And so the
58:49
Speaker 2: idea is like, there are certain things that should be
58:51
Speaker 2: testing for, you know, and that you shouldn't be able
58:54
Speaker 2: to release these, and you should have safeguards. So if
58:56
Speaker 2: you can develop child pornography, for example, we should know
58:59
Speaker 2: ahead of time and you should be.
59:01
Speaker 1: Rock Look at what GROC has pulled off, right, Elon
59:04
Speaker 1: must decides to sexualize GROC and usership what triples? Yes, exactly,
59:11
Speaker 1: I don't want to. We can make a comment about
59:13
Speaker 1: our own society about that. But let's humans are going
59:17
Speaker 1: to human okay, So that that is that is what
59:20
Speaker 1: it is. Humans are going to human You know, I
59:23
Speaker 1: always say our problems in this country are incentive structures, right.
59:27
Speaker 1: Good people can do bad things with bad incentives. Bad
59:30
Speaker 1: people will do good things with good incentives. So what
59:34
Speaker 1: Groc basically did is, Hey, let's imagine I have the
59:38
Speaker 1: worst incentives imaginable. Could I triple the amount of users
59:42
Speaker 1: I have?
59:43
Speaker 2: Well, the answers yes, exactly, either new deifying images. Of course,
59:47
Speaker 2: there's the whole Mecha Hitler episode. Do you know where
59:49
Speaker 2: it took on the persona of Adol Hitler. It kind
59:52
Speaker 2: of blows your mind. Actually, And these products like take Groc,
59:56
Speaker 2: the one we're just talking about, it's now embedded increasingly
59:58
Speaker 2: in the Defense department. You know, he's replacing Anthropic and
1:00:02
Speaker 2: the and Claude's product there in many ways. And this
1:00:04
Speaker 2: is the most, the least reliable, the least safeguarded of
1:00:08
Speaker 2: all of them. And so you know, someone who spent
1:00:10
Speaker 2: a lot of time working at the Department of Defense
1:00:12
Speaker 2: under the Obama administration and think, he's like, I can't
1:00:15
Speaker 2: I wouldn't want to rely on this. But well, again,
1:00:17
Speaker 2: because humans will be human, we often do rely on
1:00:20
Speaker 2: computer outputs that think like, oh, that must be right.
1:00:22
Speaker 2: The computer said this, and we don't actually interrogate it enough.
1:00:25
Speaker 2: So it's actually very parallel situation we're finding ourselves in.
1:00:29
Speaker 1: You know, I was speaking with he wanted to say
1:00:33
Speaker 1: this off the record, but it was a retired general
1:00:37
Speaker 1: who was knee deep in COVID, so he was helping
1:00:41
Speaker 1: in that world. Has does not, has not been has
1:00:45
Speaker 1: been in the private sector since. But he remarked to me,
1:00:49
Speaker 1: he said, I do not understand. He said, you know,
1:00:52
Speaker 1: the government made sure, you know, if they were in
1:00:58
Speaker 1: charge of the scientists making the nuclear weapons. The government
1:01:02
Speaker 1: created the Internet, then it took the internet public. We
1:01:07
Speaker 1: are letting the private sector do this without much government
1:01:11
Speaker 1: supervision at all. And I say this. We know how
1:01:16
Speaker 1: people feel about government these days, and you may not
1:01:18
Speaker 1: trust who's in charge of the government depending on your
1:01:22
Speaker 1: political persuasion. But previous instances, you know, collective collective concern
1:01:30
Speaker 1: by government proved probably a good thing with nuclear weapons,
1:01:36
Speaker 1: and proved a good thing with the initial creation of
1:01:39
Speaker 1: the Internet as a as a defense thing. This general
1:01:44
Speaker 1: was mortified that the government had no was not essentially
1:01:48
Speaker 1: holding the hands of these companies.
1:01:50
Speaker 2: I think he should be mortified. It's really the first
1:01:53
Speaker 2: kind of transformative military technology that's being developed by the
1:01:56
Speaker 2: private sector, private companies. We don't even see there. We
1:02:00
Speaker 2: sch we have no idea like what's happening in the
1:02:02
Speaker 2: skunk works of these labs, no visibility into it. And
1:02:06
Speaker 2: it's really quite extraordinary. And now we see with Claude
1:02:09
Speaker 2: and this whole be with p Hegseth Department of War,
1:02:11
Speaker 2: how reliant they are on AI and the Iraq War
1:02:14
Speaker 2: has shown some examples of Claude's use there and so
1:02:18
Speaker 2: I think, yes, he should be mortified because what's happening
1:02:21
Speaker 2: in San Francisco within you know, a six by six
1:02:23
Speaker 2: square mile area there. It's transforming the world. It's going
1:02:27
Speaker 2: to transform military power, and we really have no oversight
1:02:31
Speaker 2: or even insight into what's going on.
1:02:34
Speaker 1: Do you ever say to yourself that are we living
1:02:36
Speaker 1: a Bond movie? Right? I mean, this is the plot
1:02:40
Speaker 1: of one of those b minus Bond movies, like not
1:02:42
Speaker 1: even a really good one.
1:02:44
Speaker 2: It's some people, I think are waking up to it.
1:02:47
Speaker 2: And that's why people are scared about this. That's why
1:02:49
Speaker 2: the unpopularity is there. People are like, you know, I
1:02:51
Speaker 2: see a lot of polling data and people do recognize
1:02:54
Speaker 2: it might be able to do some amazing things, you know,
1:02:56
Speaker 2: cure diseases, new materials.
1:02:58
Speaker 1: Social media. Look, I'm old enough to remember the Arab Spring.
1:03:01
Speaker 1: We thought, wow, we have democratized the world. Social media
1:03:05
Speaker 1: is going to get rid of authoritarianism. Oops. You know,
1:03:09
Speaker 1: it's like, it's funny you bring up we all talk
1:03:11
Speaker 1: about the health benefits. There's a story out there about
1:03:14
Speaker 1: the guy in Australia who developed the cancer treatment for
1:03:17
Speaker 1: his dog. Right, and as a dog lover, you know,
1:03:21
Speaker 1: I was, I'm like, yeah, I might. I could see
1:03:23
Speaker 1: myself doing that for Cali, you know, my puppy. That's
1:03:29
Speaker 1: the good part. But if you can develop, if somebody
1:03:32
Speaker 1: without scientific training can develop this amazing treatment to shrink
1:03:37
Speaker 1: a tumor on their dog, what could they do to
1:03:41
Speaker 1: actually give you a tumor and to actually create cancers
1:03:45
Speaker 1: if they chose to. It's the same thing with the
1:03:48
Speaker 1: Arab Spring. That's what we learned with the Arab Spring. Right,
1:03:52
Speaker 1: what was a positive the minute, Well, you could break
1:03:56
Speaker 1: through until the authoritarians decided, oh we'll control the flow
1:04:00
Speaker 1: of information again.
1:04:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think that's one of the lessons of
1:04:03
Speaker 2: social media is there's good and bad to both these things.
1:04:07
Speaker 2: They're not unalloyed one way of the other. And you
1:04:10
Speaker 2: have to have a regulatory scheme that's flexible enough, which
1:04:13
Speaker 2: isn't easy to achieve, but it must be allowed to
1:04:15
Speaker 2: be flexible. Social media we froze it, you know, in
1:04:17
Speaker 2: ICE in nineteen ninety six, so section two thirty it
1:04:20
Speaker 2: was over, yep, and it's basically been unregulated since and
1:04:23
Speaker 2: immunize from any harm. And if you try to get
1:04:25
Speaker 2: after it, they always say, it's section two thirty. We're
1:04:27
Speaker 2: immunized from this. You can't allow that to happen for
1:04:30
Speaker 2: major technologies, and that is the danger of AI. That's
1:04:32
Speaker 2: really the big fight to AI.
1:04:33
Speaker 1: Now.
1:04:34
Speaker 2: It's like, do you want to repeat section two thirty.
1:04:36
Speaker 2: I think it's fair to say that like that tech
1:04:38
Speaker 2: rite crowd David Sachs A sixteen Z people like that
1:04:42
Speaker 2: open AI. That really is what they want to do.
1:04:45
Speaker 2: And the question is like, we have learned our lesson,
1:04:47
Speaker 2: you know. And it's not to say AI should be
1:04:49
Speaker 2: prohibited or that it can't do many good things. It can,
1:04:52
Speaker 2: but you do have to have a certain agility which
1:04:54
Speaker 2: the law permits, and to freeze that like we did
1:04:57
Speaker 2: with social media is just a disastrous mistake that you
1:05:00
Speaker 2: know has changed society irrevocably.
1:05:03
Speaker 1: What are some good state regulations being developed that you'd
1:05:06
Speaker 1: like to see. Let's see how that sticks. Maybe that
1:05:10
Speaker 1: will work. I mean, you know, this is the laboratory
1:05:12
Speaker 1: of we call the fifth we like to call the
1:05:14
Speaker 1: fifty States, right, the laboratory of democracy. What's what's a
1:05:19
Speaker 1: few in attempts you'd like to see to see if okay,
1:05:23
Speaker 1: and maybe this will be a good national regulation. But
1:05:25
Speaker 1: let's try it. Let's try it in Indiana or Oklahoma
1:05:28
Speaker 1: or yeah.
1:05:29
Speaker 2: First, I'll give you like three or four of those.
1:05:31
Speaker 2: For one thing, Ron DeSantis is opposing an AI Bill
1:05:33
Speaker 2: of Rights in Florida. It gives you know, your right
1:05:35
Speaker 2: to like hone your data and have transparency into AI
1:05:39
Speaker 2: decision making. I like laws like that. California and New
1:05:43
Speaker 2: York for the Frontier labs have required transparency in reporting requirements.
1:05:47
Speaker 2: I have added to those requirements. That's not enough, but
1:05:50
Speaker 2: that's a good a good step in the right direction.
1:05:53
Speaker 2: Maybe the third bucket is it's a whole different type
1:05:56
Speaker 2: of AI than like GROCK or chat GPT. It's very pervasive.
1:06:00
Speaker 2: It's how AI is being used in our day to
1:06:02
Speaker 2: day lives, for example, surveillance you know, facial recognition, algorithms
1:06:08
Speaker 2: deciding whether we're going to hire you or not, algorithms
1:06:11
Speaker 2: determining whether your health claim is going to be a.
1:06:13
Speaker 1: Prob Let me give you the one that I'm just
1:06:15
Speaker 1: rip us about surveillance pricing. I think this is so
1:06:21
Speaker 1: unconstitutionally illegal, and it's like, I am you want to
1:06:25
Speaker 1: really make you know, It's like, do you want when
1:06:27
Speaker 1: the middle class, an upper middle class decides to pick
1:06:30
Speaker 1: up a pitchfork. That's when politicians are troubled in Surveillance
1:06:33
Speaker 1: pricing is one of those.
1:06:34
Speaker 2: Well, this shows you the power of state law. So
1:06:35
Speaker 2: you know, you may have seen this. It kind of
1:06:37
Speaker 2: broke in the news last week where I'm a Washington
1:06:39
Speaker 2: Post subscriber online and to renew right, it quoted me
1:06:43
Speaker 2: a price and at the bottom it had a little
1:06:45
Speaker 2: note that this was based on an algorithmic determination. Right
1:06:48
Speaker 2: of my use patterns they knew about. The thing is,
1:06:51
Speaker 2: they know my credit history. They probably know how much
1:06:53
Speaker 2: money I make, so they probably you know Taylor, like, hey,
1:06:55
Speaker 2: he's a super user.
1:06:56
Speaker 1: Hey do you remember when you clicked when you accepted
1:07:01
Speaker 1: terms and conditions? That allowed the Washington Post to do
1:07:03
Speaker 1: a credit check on you.
1:07:05
Speaker 2: I don't I don't think I did that, but like
1:07:06
Speaker 2: all terms of said, I'm sure we did. That's my right.
1:07:09
Speaker 1: I hate those goddamn things because I'm sure they'll say, oh,
1:07:11
Speaker 1: you accepted terms and conditions. You mean oh, because you
1:07:15
Speaker 1: put a gun to my head to accept terms and
1:07:17
Speaker 1: conditions every time you update the app. But they looked
1:07:21
Speaker 1: at your credit report.
1:07:22
Speaker 2: Think about that, Brad, among other things. Right, they have
1:07:25
Speaker 2: all the consumer data you could want on me. They
1:07:27
Speaker 2: know what I else I subscribe to. They know I'm
1:07:29
Speaker 2: a New York Times subscriber and The Atlantic and things.
1:07:32
Speaker 2: But the only reason we even got who noticed about
1:07:33
Speaker 2: that is because New York has a law that says
1:07:36
Speaker 2: if you engage in algorithmic pricing, you have to put
1:07:38
Speaker 2: a little note on it. And they obviously have a
1:07:40
Speaker 2: lot of New York readers. And it's only because of
1:07:43
Speaker 2: that state law that I in Oklahoma got notified of that.
1:07:46
Speaker 2: So these are the kind of things like that's not
1:07:48
Speaker 2: frontier level AI. They're not using CHATDPT, that's AI, And
1:07:52
Speaker 2: the average American should know about that, and we should
1:07:55
Speaker 2: like have a debate and that goes into the broader
1:07:59
Speaker 2: question like surveillance. You know that anthropic Department of War
1:08:02
Speaker 2: got into the things that we call legal in this
1:08:04
Speaker 2: country that you and I my over cocktails call surveillance,
1:08:08
Speaker 2: or ordinary people like that's surveillance. The government doesn't call
1:08:11
Speaker 2: it surveillance. I mean, it's shocking the amount of data
1:08:13
Speaker 2: they have. Llms can create a whole dossier about you.
1:08:17
Speaker 2: You know that there wasn't possible before lllms existed to
1:08:21
Speaker 2: really assimilate all this data, and so those kind of
1:08:24
Speaker 2: things like I like that New York law, things like
1:08:26
Speaker 2: that that make you, at least even if we don't
1:08:29
Speaker 2: prohibit it, you need to be notified. Like if I'm
1:08:32
Speaker 2: doing a job interview and this happens in places you
1:08:34
Speaker 2: often now will like stare into the screen and the
1:08:37
Speaker 2: AI will say like is this person smarter or not
1:08:39
Speaker 2: because of my gestures or maybe my glasses. You know,
1:08:43
Speaker 2: it's like I deserve to know if AI is evaluating
1:08:46
Speaker 2: me in some way. Those kind of laws I like
1:08:48
Speaker 2: to see.
1:08:53
Speaker 1: What do you think what is your biggest concern in
1:08:57
Speaker 1: this fight that that you're you don't have enough of
1:09:02
Speaker 1: the big tech titans on your side.
1:09:05
Speaker 2: I think that's part of it. I think, you know,
1:09:08
Speaker 2: there's a political economy aspect of this right where you
1:09:11
Speaker 2: have to fight. And we know that good ideas don't
1:09:13
Speaker 2: just prevail because they're sound and even popular ones kids
1:09:17
Speaker 2: Online safety shows that big money can prevail in American politics.
1:09:21
Speaker 2: So I think that's the biggest concern. You know, if
1:09:23
Speaker 2: people are left my job leading a super pac is
1:09:26
Speaker 2: quite easy. The often aspect, well, what do I have
1:09:28
Speaker 2: to believe to earn your support? And I say, all
1:09:30
Speaker 2: you have to do is believe in having a democratic
1:09:33
Speaker 2: debate about AI. If that happens, I think most people
1:09:35
Speaker 2: will probably come to my side. What I don't want
1:09:38
Speaker 2: to do is for close it, you know, like we've
1:09:39
Speaker 2: had with crypto policy in this country, where today there's
1:09:42
Speaker 2: no real debate on crypto policy because the super pac
1:09:45
Speaker 2: has now made it impossible for people to be against
1:09:48
Speaker 2: that issue. We don't want that for AI right. We
1:09:51
Speaker 2: want it to be free where people can have actually,
1:09:53
Speaker 2: you know, an argument about what we should do, and
1:09:56
Speaker 2: if so, I have confidence in the American people to
1:09:58
Speaker 2: come to the right conclusion.
1:10:10
Speaker 1: It doesn't feel like we're having enough of it to date.
1:10:12
Speaker 1: It doesn't feel like we've had enough of a tutorial,
1:10:15
Speaker 1: you know, in a in a healthier democratic system, because
1:10:19
Speaker 1: there are systems, you know, some version of we have
1:10:22
Speaker 1: a cold, we can some of you may decide how
1:10:24
Speaker 1: bad are is it? The flu? Is it? How bad
1:10:27
Speaker 1: is it? But we're definitely not healthy. Who would be
1:10:33
Speaker 1: leading this conversation about about AI? I mean, do we
1:10:36
Speaker 1: need an old time fireside chat? Do we need a
1:10:41
Speaker 1: general Eisenhower to sort of, you know, explain things? You
1:10:46
Speaker 1: know what what would what what? What would a healthier,
1:10:49
Speaker 1: small d democratic system be doing right now with the
1:10:52
Speaker 1: development of AI and bringing the public along and making
1:10:56
Speaker 1: them feel a little more secure about it.
1:10:59
Speaker 2: I think two groups can do this. One is if
1:11:01
Speaker 2: the company leaders themselves were more open about it. I
1:11:04
Speaker 2: think Anthropic has actually done a good job of that.
1:11:06
Speaker 2: They've been pretty forward leading, They've expressed concerns. That's made
1:11:09
Speaker 2: people aware. If you had all the lab leaders come
1:11:11
Speaker 2: together and talk about these things more openly, not simply
1:11:15
Speaker 2: like be arguing their own book, like what's best for
1:11:17
Speaker 2: the narrow share interest here, but like the broader social context,
1:11:21
Speaker 2: that would help. I think my real hope is in
1:11:24
Speaker 2: the twenty twenty eight presidential race, you need someone at
1:11:27
Speaker 2: that level of platform, that level of free media covering
1:11:30
Speaker 2: them say look, America, look what's happening here, you know,
1:11:34
Speaker 2: and to like that it kind of like raises the
1:11:36
Speaker 2: consciousness of the whole country. Ron DeSantis has done a
1:11:38
Speaker 2: bit of that in Florida. Have been a great leader
1:11:40
Speaker 2: on this issue. But if you're Robert president and you said, look,
1:11:43
Speaker 2: you know, technology is actually a defining issue of our day.
1:11:45
Speaker 2: It's redefining party allegiances where Steve Bannon and Elizabeth Warren
1:11:50
Speaker 2: or like eye to eye on these kind of questions,
1:11:52
Speaker 2: you know, and you should be paying attention. And here's
1:11:54
Speaker 2: some solutions for it as well, not just decrying about
1:11:57
Speaker 2: solutions that works.
1:11:59
Speaker 1: You know. Strikes me is the safest place to be
1:12:01
Speaker 1: politically is if you're pro consumer. You know what you're describing,
1:12:05
Speaker 1: what essentially what Governor DeSantis is proposing. And in some
1:12:10
Speaker 1: ways it is very much a small C conservative approach,
1:12:13
Speaker 1: which is, hey, we got to have a specific essentially
1:12:17
Speaker 1: a bill of rights, right, which is really a consumer protection.
1:12:22
Speaker 1: You know, we can have larger arguments about, you know,
1:12:24
Speaker 1: what should this be allowed and should this be allowed? Right?
1:12:27
Speaker 1: And that's where sometimes you lose people on the right. Well,
1:12:30
Speaker 1: I don't want government to involved with all the decision making,
1:12:35
Speaker 1: but let's have some basic protections for the consumer, right.
1:12:39
Speaker 1: And it feels like if you put if the north
1:12:43
Speaker 1: star is consumer protection hardstop.
1:12:47
Speaker 2: I think it's a political message that.
1:12:49
Speaker 1: You probably can get to the right place without without
1:12:52
Speaker 1: feeling that you're too blue or too red.
1:12:54
Speaker 2: I think it is actually a great message, and I
1:12:56
Speaker 2: think though you need someone of stature to inject that
1:12:58
Speaker 2: into the debate. People know, like AI is changing your life.
1:13:02
Speaker 2: You may not even be able to see all the
1:13:03
Speaker 2: things that's doing right, you don't even know it. Sometimes
1:13:05
Speaker 2: it's invisible to you. But consumer protection claims are very
1:13:09
Speaker 2: powerful and to make kind of a major issue. That's
1:13:12
Speaker 2: what I hope twenty twenty eight brings. And I actually
1:13:13
Speaker 2: think it's going to be a major issue in twenty
1:13:15
Speaker 2: twenty eight. So I'm pretty optimistic that it's going to
1:13:18
Speaker 2: be a huge question. And once it's become part of
1:13:20
Speaker 2: the broader discussion, a few people can't control it anymore. Right,
1:13:24
Speaker 2: it can't be just like two guys in Silicon Valley
1:13:26
Speaker 2: plotting against you. Once it's in South Carolina, New Hampshire,
1:13:30
Speaker 2: it's a.
1:13:30
Speaker 1: Thing, you know, It's funny. You know, the Internet never
1:13:33
Speaker 1: did become a centerpiece conversation in a presidential election, not
1:13:38
Speaker 1: ninety six, not two thousand. You know, I remember McCain
1:13:42
Speaker 1: tried with the tax free Internet and thought there'd be
1:13:45
Speaker 1: some there would be a somewhat of a centralizing you
1:13:51
Speaker 1: know that you'd have been dismissed as a candidate if
1:13:55
Speaker 1: you didn't have a policy talking about how to integrate
1:13:58
Speaker 1: the Internet into every date, commerce, et cetera. I'm with you.
1:14:03
Speaker 1: I think twenty eight is going to be the year
1:14:06
Speaker 1: where that is focused on fear of AI job displacement.
1:14:09
Speaker 1: I'm not saying AI job displacement is going to be
1:14:10
Speaker 1: taking place, but the fear of it, I think is
1:14:13
Speaker 1: going to be at a more heightened state come twenty
1:14:16
Speaker 1: twenty eight. We've seen already a few things like the
1:14:20
Speaker 1: Jack Dorsey company where he just laid off forty percent
1:14:22
Speaker 1: of his folks. Whether that was really AI driven, you know, right,
1:14:27
Speaker 1: every you're like, oh, that's that's interesting. Let's see if
1:14:32
Speaker 1: two or three more companies do this, then it's a trend. Right.
1:14:36
Speaker 1: But I do sense fear of AI job displacement is
1:14:40
Speaker 1: probably going to be a a central concern particularly you're
1:14:48
Speaker 1: certainly seeing it in labor units right now.
1:14:50
Speaker 2: I think also rising electricity prices and perhaps water usage.
1:14:54
Speaker 2: Some of those concerns are more serious than others. People
1:14:57
Speaker 2: overestimate the use of water things. But you've seen Spanberger
1:15:01
Speaker 2: run all those kind of issues. Loud and County flip
1:15:03
Speaker 2: a seat from red to blue a couple Georgia political public.
1:15:07
Speaker 1: Well, Brad, I mean not to get like very specific here,
1:15:10
Speaker 1: because I've my electric bills gone up through the roof
1:15:14
Speaker 1: and I'm in Arlington County, which is not far from Loudon.
1:15:18
Speaker 1: But the reason we're paying a steeper price is because
1:15:22
Speaker 1: of how electricity is transmitted along off the grid into
1:15:26
Speaker 1: the mid Atlantic. And it turns out that you know,
1:15:30
Speaker 1: like you know, it's gonna hurt us more than it
1:15:34
Speaker 1: will hurt another state more because they get their electricity
1:15:38
Speaker 1: slightly differently than Maryland gets THEIRS. Then Pennsylvania gets THEIRS,
1:15:43
Speaker 1: Virginia gets THEIRS. You know, what it's done for me
1:15:47
Speaker 1: is that it's highlighted. Hey, our grid is a mess.
1:15:50
Speaker 1: We probably need to restructure the grid in a way
1:15:55
Speaker 1: to minimize consumer pain and maximize stability.
1:16:01
Speaker 2: You know, I think that's one of the underappreciated aspects
1:16:03
Speaker 2: of what AI has done is there's this incredible energy
1:16:06
Speaker 2: build out across the country.
1:16:08
Speaker 1: Yeah no, but it's exposed some problems problems too.
1:16:11
Speaker 2: But it's actually I think probably will lead more than
1:16:13
Speaker 2: anything else, has to some solutions to those. Right, you're right.
1:16:16
Speaker 2: The grid has to have probably a trillion dollars invested
1:16:18
Speaker 2: into it. Right, we need more interconnection agreements. The regulation
1:16:22
Speaker 2: is pretty come by.
1:16:23
Speaker 1: I know who should pay for it. We don't have
1:16:24
Speaker 1: to pay for it now, the friends that want to
1:16:26
Speaker 1: build these data centers, this should be the price. Nothing
1:16:28
Speaker 1: wrong with that.
1:16:29
Speaker 2: And that's the right, right, that's actually and this is
1:16:32
Speaker 2: why I think it's going to be a good issue. Actually,
1:16:34
Speaker 2: you know, you asked to me like Oklahoma democrats and
1:16:36
Speaker 2: like Southern democrats, like this is actually a classic wedge
1:16:39
Speaker 2: issue if you're a Democrat in these states, because you're
1:16:41
Speaker 2: something like you know what I'm I'm actually for lowering
1:16:43
Speaker 2: your electricity bill. I'm like, I want these data centers
1:16:46
Speaker 2: to pay their way. Sometimes like pro business Republicans have
1:16:49
Speaker 2: a hard time getting themselves to that position. And so
1:16:52
Speaker 2: you've seen in a couple of places, Right, it's a
1:16:54
Speaker 2: really good issue to kind of like get these conservatives
1:16:57
Speaker 2: who care about affordability and water, environment and use, I mean,
1:17:01
Speaker 2: who are skeptical at ai in Silicon Valley as well.
1:17:03
Speaker 2: Kind of inherently all that comes into kind of a
1:17:06
Speaker 2: world where he's going to make for a lot of
1:17:08
Speaker 2: strange politics.
1:17:08
Speaker 1: Actually, and let me let me end with a little
1:17:12
Speaker 1: bit of just your observations. What's going on in particularly
1:17:17
Speaker 1: in your I don't know, is it your former political
1:17:20
Speaker 1: party or your current one? First, do you consider yourself
1:17:22
Speaker 1: a Democrat?
1:17:22
Speaker 2: St Oh, yes, of course.
1:17:24
Speaker 1: Okay, what's the difference between an Oklahoma Democrat and a
1:17:29
Speaker 1: national Democrat these days? Or is there one?
1:17:32
Speaker 2: I'm about the last Democrat in the state of Oklahoma today,
1:17:36
Speaker 2: so I'm kind of like, you know, the last of
1:17:39
Speaker 2: the Mohicans here, I'd say, I think, you know, my
1:17:42
Speaker 2: view has always been that the parties do capture by
1:17:46
Speaker 2: the values of the professional managerial class, you know, whose
1:17:50
Speaker 2: concerns are almost post material, right about things like if
1:17:53
Speaker 2: you come like I do from eastern Oklahoma, small towns,
1:17:56
Speaker 2: that's what I represented in Congress where I was from,
1:17:59
Speaker 2: their concerns are very material health care, jobs, roads, schools.
1:18:04
Speaker 2: We have meth and opiate addiction that are endemic. You know,
1:18:08
Speaker 2: these concerns of like kind of esoteric social questions, which
1:18:12
Speaker 2: if you're like living you know in loud In County,
1:18:15
Speaker 2: one of the richest counties in the country, there are
1:18:16
Speaker 2: not that many people who like worry about these things
1:18:19
Speaker 2: with the same intensity.
1:18:21
Speaker 1: And to me, I like to say, you have the
1:18:24
Speaker 1: luxury to worry about those.
1:18:26
Speaker 2: Things, yeah, exactly, And so things that you know, even
1:18:28
Speaker 2: if they're in the right about it, they make them
1:18:30
Speaker 2: more salient than they should be. You know. It's like,
1:18:33
Speaker 2: you know, in my mind, like I think the whole
1:18:34
Speaker 2: question that the party's debating about trans issues, you know,
1:18:37
Speaker 2: you could be four or against it. These are different positions.
1:18:40
Speaker 2: It's really not that salient to the average voter. And
1:18:43
Speaker 2: so you know, we should focus on things that are
1:18:45
Speaker 2: like driving their their kind of household decision making, and
1:18:48
Speaker 2: Democrats need to be better about that. So that's the
1:18:51
Speaker 2: problem with the Coastal Party. But I still think Democrats
1:18:54
Speaker 2: have the best message for people who have those very
1:18:57
Speaker 2: material concerns about health care and public schools like that.
1:19:00
Speaker 2: So I'm working do my best to reclaim that tradition.
1:19:04
Speaker 1: I have a specific question about Oklahoma. You know, one
1:19:07
Speaker 1: of the things I like to remind people is that
1:19:09
Speaker 1: even in one party states and a political a strong
1:19:13
Speaker 1: political opposition develops some and it isn't Sometimes it's within
1:19:18
Speaker 1: the party. Right, We've seen that in Texas there are
1:19:20
Speaker 1: basically two Republican parties and they're clashing right now in
1:19:24
Speaker 1: that center base. But we had seen this, right, the
1:19:27
Speaker 1: one part of the Republican Party wanted to impeach impact,
1:19:30
Speaker 1: another part is trying to defend him. But you know,
1:19:33
Speaker 1: the weak Democratic Party and it's perhaps getting a little
1:19:36
Speaker 1: stronger down there today, but at the time, but you know,
1:19:39
Speaker 1: there's the reason the phrase exists, politics of horz vacuum.
1:19:42
Speaker 1: What I've noticed about in Oklahoma is as the Democratic
1:19:46
Speaker 1: Party has fallen away as the chief opposition to the
1:19:51
Speaker 1: to the majority governing governance in the state, that the
1:19:57
Speaker 1: tribes have become the Czech the oppositional check. And sometimes
1:20:03
Speaker 1: it'll be by the tribes funding a Republican primary candidate
1:20:07
Speaker 1: to a certain sitting governor or sitting attorney general. Maybe
1:20:11
Speaker 1: it will be finding a former Republican to run as
1:20:13
Speaker 1: a Democrat for governor or. It's, you know, is Oklahoma
1:20:19
Speaker 1: politics it's it's a two party state, but it's not
1:20:21
Speaker 1: Democrats and Republicans, it's Republicans, and that the next most
1:20:25
Speaker 1: powerful interest group is the tribes.
1:20:28
Speaker 2: That's probably a fair assessment of it. The tribes are
1:20:31
Speaker 2: historically very democratic. Unsurprisingly, over the last twenty years, I've
1:20:34
Speaker 2: become very wealthy and have a lot more political interest
1:20:36
Speaker 2: at stake, and they've spread that money around because Republicans
1:20:40
Speaker 2: are in ascendancy really and have like basically every office
1:20:44
Speaker 2: at every level. Right, They've played in a lot more
1:20:46
Speaker 2: Republican politics to find people who are supportive of them.
1:20:49
Speaker 2: They've been real at war with Kevin sitt or governess.
1:20:52
Speaker 1: They have, and that's basically been over a over good
1:20:55
Speaker 1: old fashioned economics. Right, how much does they get in
1:20:58
Speaker 1: the gambling revenue urisdiction?
1:21:00
Speaker 2: You know of things. But now they have people running
1:21:03
Speaker 2: for governor, which is all about the Republican primary. Again,
1:21:05
Speaker 2: there's no serious democratic cant is. Some of them are
1:21:08
Speaker 2: very strongly aligned with the tribes, some less so, and
1:21:11
Speaker 2: so the tribal issues are actually driving a lot of it.
1:21:13
Speaker 2: They fund a lot of things independent expenditures. So I
1:21:16
Speaker 2: think it probably is fair to say that after kind
1:21:19
Speaker 2: of state government. They have a kind of rump oil
1:21:22
Speaker 2: and gas industry that still has some power, but probably
1:21:25
Speaker 2: the tribes are the most organized kind of figures. They
1:21:28
Speaker 2: keep a check on government.
1:21:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're seeing Look, this is what you're seeing a
1:21:33
Speaker 1: little bit in the state of Florida, and what you're
1:21:34
Speaker 1: seeing a little bit in the state of California, where the
1:21:36
Speaker 1: tribes are becoming the sort of the bulwark against a
1:21:41
Speaker 1: majority you know, the majority party running amok, almost running unopposed.
1:21:46
Speaker 1: And I think we all know our democracy doesn't work
1:21:48
Speaker 1: without a little bit of friction, that's sure, And in
1:21:51
Speaker 1: that sense it develops a friction. What would you tell
1:21:54
Speaker 1: you gave some advice about, like how you viewed the
1:21:57
Speaker 1: party in general? What kind of anybody out there running
1:22:01
Speaker 1: in twenty eight that you're like, boy, they're at least
1:22:05
Speaker 1: talking about issues differently and it's about time, or you
1:22:10
Speaker 1: know who's who's just standing out to you is sort
1:22:12
Speaker 1: of like, well, I hope to hear from hear more
1:22:14
Speaker 1: from them after twenty six.
1:22:16
Speaker 2: You know, I hear John Assoff on the stump. I'm
1:22:18
Speaker 2: always very impressed by him and how he's thinking of things.
1:22:21
Speaker 2: And I hear Buddha judge that kind of similar rhetoric.
1:22:24
Speaker 2: I think kind of that analysis I gave, perhaps offered
1:22:27
Speaker 2: less stridently than I did, is one people recognize, you know,
1:22:31
Speaker 2: that we need to get back to more of a
1:22:32
Speaker 2: class based politics than that we've had in the past.
1:22:36
Speaker 1: Well that's what Trump did. He ran a good old
1:22:39
Speaker 1: flashion class wharf, you know, class warfare campaign which Bob
1:22:43
Speaker 1: Shrum used to help Democrats run back in the dates
1:22:46
Speaker 1: of Gore and Carrie and and and those campaigns, which
1:22:50
Speaker 1: were quite competitive.
1:22:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, I actually can envision. This is one of my
1:22:53
Speaker 2: goals in life is have a Democrat go on Steve
1:22:55
Speaker 2: Bannon's war room and say to the magabase that listened
1:22:58
Speaker 2: to him, like, the truth is, Trump has betrayed the
1:23:01
Speaker 2: MAGA base, right, all the things you cared about about
1:23:04
Speaker 2: the swamp and all this.
1:23:05
Speaker 1: That's my wife's theory. She's like that you should say
1:23:08
Speaker 1: he lied to you. Yeah, don't tell them they were dumb.
1:23:11
Speaker 1: Go the other way around. I mean, this has been
1:23:13
Speaker 1: the problem with the left. They keep attacking the voter
1:23:16
Speaker 1: for supporting Trump, rather than understanding why the voter wants
1:23:21
Speaker 1: Trump in the first place.
1:23:22
Speaker 2: So if you want to make America great again, so
1:23:24
Speaker 2: what a great thing that is you should vote Democratic, right,
1:23:27
Speaker 2: because we are the ones who are actually going to
1:23:28
Speaker 2: deliver this message to you. I actually think that's the
1:23:31
Speaker 2: jiu jitsu that that's probably too hard.
1:23:34
Speaker 1: For people to You're, well, it's why. It's a reminder.
1:23:37
Speaker 1: I always say, today's MAGA voter was a Clinton voter
1:23:40
Speaker 1: in the nineties.
1:23:41
Speaker 2: One hundred percent those were all Democratic voters.
1:23:44
Speaker 1: I think they were all Bill Clinton voters. I wonder,
1:23:46
Speaker 1: don't you agree they were Reagan voters and they were
1:23:49
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton voters.
1:23:49
Speaker 2: I bet they were. All of them were registered Democrats
1:23:52
Speaker 2: back in the day, and they were your constituents. Yeah, exactly.
1:23:54
Speaker 2: And my district now that I won is seventy five
1:23:57
Speaker 2: twenty five Trump And so it shows you like these people,
1:24:01
Speaker 2: they have certain interests, and Trump spoke to them in
1:24:03
Speaker 2: a brilliant way, and we shouldn't take that away from
1:24:06
Speaker 2: like the genius of his campaigning. We should try to
1:24:08
Speaker 2: like re channel that in some way.
1:24:11
Speaker 1: President of Tulsa University did love it or hate it.
1:24:15
Speaker 2: I left there actually Jane in June to do full
1:24:17
Speaker 2: time AI work, But I loved it. University of Tulsa
1:24:19
Speaker 2: is a great place.
1:24:20
Speaker 1: That's worst it is it as bad politically. I mean,
1:24:23
Speaker 1: you know that's the old joke, right, The politics are
1:24:25
Speaker 1: worse on a college campus because the stakes are so low.
1:24:27
Speaker 2: It was far harder politics than the actual being an
1:24:30
Speaker 2: elective office ever.
1:24:31
Speaker 1: Was well, it's I always had a soft spot being
1:24:36
Speaker 1: a Miami Hurricane. Boy. I always had a soft spot
1:24:39
Speaker 1: for the Golden.
1:24:39
Speaker 2: Hurricanes, exactly where the two hurricane in the world, right
1:24:42
Speaker 2: of course, being oh, you grad myself, I have to
1:24:44
Speaker 2: hate Miami.
1:24:45
Speaker 1: I know you don't, but that's all right. We had to.
1:24:47
Speaker 1: If it wasn't bar Oklahoma, Miami wouldn't have gotten into
1:24:49
Speaker 1: the top tier.
1:24:50
Speaker 2: That's true.
1:24:51
Speaker 1: Beating Oklahoma gave Miami an identity, so losing I'm very
1:24:56
Speaker 1: thankful for the old Big Eight sent to our.
1:24:59
Speaker 2: Coaches, Jimmy Johnson right from Oklahoma, since you are best people.
1:25:02
Speaker 1: That's right. Well, and then we sent you one back
1:25:04
Speaker 1: with Snellenberger that didn't go so hot, But that's that's
1:25:08
Speaker 1: neither hear door there. Hey, Brad Carson, this was great.
1:25:11
Speaker 1: I appreciate you coming on and uh, look this this
1:25:15
Speaker 1: is I see why you're engaged in this. I mean
1:25:18
Speaker 1: this really is in some ways more how if we
1:25:24
Speaker 1: got to get a right. We got to get this
1:25:26
Speaker 1: right because getting it wrong could be could be very,
1:25:30
Speaker 1: very damaging to me.
1:25:32
Speaker 2: It is the most important fight going on right now.
1:25:35
Speaker 1: That's for sure. All Right, we'll be well, let's let's
1:25:38
Speaker 1: stay in touch, sing you Chuck. Well, if you pass
1:25:53
Speaker 1: forwarded through the end of the Carson interview, I encourage
1:25:55
Speaker 1: you to go rewind and listen to the end. There
1:25:56
Speaker 1: he made an interesting observation about why he believes Democrats
1:26:00
Speaker 1: have lost touch with basically Democrats with voters in the
1:26:06
Speaker 1: middle of the country, in working class America, and it
1:26:10
Speaker 1: was an interesting observation about the coast essentially the coastal
1:26:14
Speaker 1: Democrats versus everybody else. So I highly encourage you to
1:26:18
Speaker 1: go listen to that portion. If you didn't, and if
1:26:22
Speaker 1: you did, I'm very curious in your reaction, So please
1:26:25
Speaker 1: feel free to share at Asschuck at thechucktodcast dot com.
1:26:29
Speaker 1: That email address again is Asschuck atthchucktodcast dot com. And
1:26:34
Speaker 1: speaking of ass Chuck, we got questions. You got had
1:26:37
Speaker 1: a lot of them today. Let's dig in ask Chuck.
1:26:43
Speaker 1: First question comes from Bill in Boston and he writes, Hey, Chuck,
1:26:47
Speaker 1: I started listening to your podcast after hearing you on
1:26:49
Speaker 1: Jim and Marjorie's show, and have not missed an episode since.
1:26:52
Speaker 1: Oh I'm glad to hear that. Jim and Marjorie are fantastic.
1:26:55
Speaker 1: They have a terrific daily program on BPR. Up there,
1:27:00
Speaker 1: Boston Public Radio, and they're two of my favorite people.
1:27:06
Speaker 1: I just adore them and it is it is probably
1:27:10
Speaker 1: my favorite guest appearance I make on anything I do.
1:27:13
Speaker 1: It's just a total joy with with with them. So
1:27:17
Speaker 1: thank you for giving them a shout out. You continue.
1:27:22
Speaker 1: I devour the commentaries as soon as they drop and
1:27:23
Speaker 1: then save the interviews for the weekend. So excellent. My
1:27:25
Speaker 1: niece just graduated from journalism school and is moving to
1:27:27
Speaker 1: DC to start her career in the world of political journalism.
1:27:30
Speaker 1: I was thinking of getting our membership at the National
1:27:32
Speaker 1: Press Club as a graduation. Get Is that still where
1:27:34
Speaker 1: the center of gravity is for the DC press these days?
1:27:37
Speaker 1: Thanks Bill and Boston. It actually isn't. The National Press
1:27:41
Speaker 1: Club is really it's really a PR mechanism. Now more
1:27:45
Speaker 1: public relations firms are members of the Press Club than
1:27:48
Speaker 1: actual journalists associations. It's still an if you're an international journalist,
1:27:53
Speaker 1: the Press Club is a helpful tool, but it does
1:27:57
Speaker 1: not play the role it once did. And it's interesting
1:28:06
Speaker 1: I might suggest, I know this sounds I might suggest
1:28:10
Speaker 1: just getting her a subscription, so like punch Bowl, right,
1:28:18
Speaker 1: and some one of these insider newsletters that you really
1:28:21
Speaker 1: need to know. You know, that can really help drive
1:28:25
Speaker 1: you know, on Congress that's punch Bowl, and that's not
1:28:27
Speaker 1: a cheap publication. But you know the DC publication world, right,
1:28:32
Speaker 1: whether it's your subscription, and it really is punchable for Congress.
1:28:39
Speaker 1: You know, this is what gets really expensive in the
1:28:41
Speaker 1: world of journalism, is being able to keep track of
1:28:44
Speaker 1: everybody else's work, whether it's the punch Bowl, Wall Street Journal, Politico, Axios.
1:28:52
Speaker 1: None of this stuff is free, and in many cases
1:28:55
Speaker 1: it's exuberant, it's uber expensive. But I think back on
1:29:00
Speaker 1: what I needed as a subscription to my old stomping grounds,
1:29:03
Speaker 1: the Hotline. You know, if you did punch Bowl, Wall
1:29:07
Speaker 1: Street Journal, Politico and the Hotline, that's probably what a
1:29:10
Speaker 1: membership to the National Press Club would cost. And I
1:29:14
Speaker 1: would dare say those publications if your niece doesn't end
1:29:19
Speaker 1: up working at one of them, and she may end
1:29:21
Speaker 1: up and yes, over time, if one of the not
1:29:24
Speaker 1: every news organization. Well we'll spring for some of these subscriptions.
1:29:30
Speaker 1: So anyway that I'm just thinking out loud, but that's
1:29:33
Speaker 1: probably you know, where I would begin to sort of engrace,
1:29:37
Speaker 1: you know, to have help somebody sort of get used
1:29:40
Speaker 1: to the rhythms of this town, you know, from an
1:29:43
Speaker 1: internal cultural sense, and that's where punch Bowl, Politico Playbook
1:29:47
Speaker 1: in particular come come in. And then with this particular
1:29:50
Speaker 1: White House axios in the Wall Street Journal, I think
1:29:52
Speaker 1: I have the best access to the to the west
1:29:55
Speaker 1: wing and have the probably the more consistent scoopages. You know,
1:30:01
Speaker 1: this is no disrespect to the times in the Post,
1:30:03
Speaker 1: but in this case, the times in the Post are
1:30:07
Speaker 1: a bit cheaper, and one could argue she could she
1:30:11
Speaker 1: could pay for those. Those other ones are a little
1:30:15
Speaker 1: price here, So just a thought. Anyway, I hope that helps, Bill,
1:30:18
Speaker 1: and congratulations and you know, at some point we're going
1:30:22
Speaker 1: to be hiring interns here at the Check Podcast, but
1:30:24
Speaker 1: we haven't fully fully expanded there for now. Next up
1:30:29
Speaker 1: is Howard W. From Los Angeles. Any rates, when the
1:30:31
Speaker 1: Declaration of Independence was signed, were we a country or
1:30:34
Speaker 1: thirteen colonies? Didn't we actually become a country when the
1:30:37
Speaker 1: Articles of Confederation ratified in seventeen eighty one. That is
1:30:41
Speaker 1: a fair point, right, we declared our independence and then
1:30:45
Speaker 1: we didn't really and we sort of formed an army,
1:30:48
Speaker 1: and you know, there was a coalition and it was
1:30:52
Speaker 1: I guess you could call it a tree, you know,
1:30:55
Speaker 1: a coalition of the willing, But it's a it's man,
1:31:02
Speaker 1: why do you want to mess up a good myth? Right?
1:31:04
Speaker 1: Are you telling us we have to put off the
1:31:05
Speaker 1: two hundred and fiftieth birthday for at least another six years?
1:31:09
Speaker 1: But it's a and we certainly have only been a
1:31:12
Speaker 1: constitutional republic I guess is probably since since seventeen eighty one,
1:31:18
Speaker 1: so the first time we attempted a constitution. But hey,
1:31:23
Speaker 1: that's a that's a that's a that's a fair that's
1:31:26
Speaker 1: a fair argument. So I had a little fun. You'll
1:31:30
Speaker 1: appreciate this. So I decided to tap I typed your
1:31:35
Speaker 1: question into chat cheept to see what our AI would say,
1:31:39
Speaker 1: when did America become an actual country? So here's the
1:31:42
Speaker 1: response that chat ChiPT gave and he goes, well, that
1:31:45
Speaker 1: depends on what you mean by become a country, because
1:31:47
Speaker 1: the United States didn't flip a switch over night. It
1:31:49
Speaker 1: emerged in stages, and each one answers your question a
1:31:52
Speaker 1: little differently. So the Declaration of Independence chat Chept calls
1:31:57
Speaker 1: a symbolic birth that they're commonly simply declared themselves independent
1:32:02
Speaker 1: from Great Britain. So there's that. Seventeen eighty three the
1:32:08
Speaker 1: Treaty of Paris, So this is when the international world
1:32:11
Speaker 1: recognized America as a country. The Treaty of Paris officially
1:32:14
Speaker 1: ended the war. Britain had to formally recognize the United
1:32:17
Speaker 1: States as a sovereign nation, and in other countries would
1:32:20
Speaker 1: acknowledge the existence of the United States. So they argue
1:32:26
Speaker 1: that the legal recognition recognized moment then would be seventeen
1:32:29
Speaker 1: eighty three, seventeen eighty nine, our Constitution takes effect, so
1:32:34
Speaker 1: you know, and you could then make your argument about
1:32:37
Speaker 1: the articles and confederation and that that being so, there
1:32:44
Speaker 1: you go, and arguably we still have to wait until
1:32:53
Speaker 1: we may have to. The two hundred and fiftieth anniversary
1:32:55
Speaker 1: of the Constitutional Republic would be the next decade, and
1:33:01
Speaker 1: so our two hundred and fiftieth celebration for the Constitution,
1:33:07
Speaker 1: I assume we'll all be centered around Philadelphia in twenty
1:33:10
Speaker 1: thirty nine, So make your reservations now. All right. That
1:33:16
Speaker 1: was a fun little exercise and I love the provocative question.
1:33:21
Speaker 1: See Howard, these are my listeners. This is what I expect.
1:33:24
Speaker 1: I expect this kind of this kind of nuance in details.
1:33:29
Speaker 2: So thank you.
1:33:30
Speaker 1: Next question comes from Brad Chuck. Greetings from Grand Rapids
1:33:32
Speaker 1: in Michigan's third district, and thanks for the great podcast.
1:33:36
Speaker 1: You often say citizens should reach out to their representatives,
1:33:39
Speaker 1: But what if you're a member of Congress like my
1:33:40
Speaker 1: representative Hillary Schulton and Michigan senators already share your concerns?
1:33:45
Speaker 1: Is it still worthwhile to contact them just to reinforce support,
1:33:48
Speaker 1: encourage them to push even harder in Washington? How much
1:33:50
Speaker 1: influence do constituents really have when they're asking leaders who
1:33:53
Speaker 1: already agree with them to do more. I think it's
1:33:55
Speaker 1: more of the tactical. You know, it's interesting. I am
1:33:59
Speaker 1: one of the fun pleasures I have in teaching. As
1:34:02
Speaker 1: many of you know, I teach a class called how
1:34:05
Speaker 1: Washington Works for USC and it's their DC program USC
1:34:10
Speaker 1: University of Southern California, and I to be confused with
1:34:12
Speaker 1: my friends in Columbia, South Carolina who believe the University
1:34:15
Speaker 1: of South Carolina is the original usc AS. I like
1:34:21
Speaker 1: to say to them, have a more successful program and
1:34:23
Speaker 1: you can reclaim usc IS yours. Sorry couldn't help myself,
1:34:29
Speaker 1: but about half the class is interning on the hill.
1:34:34
Speaker 1: And when you intern on the hill, what does that mean?
1:34:36
Speaker 1: You answer the phones? But answering the phones in a
1:34:38
Speaker 1: congressional office is fascinating, especially when you're a young intern,
1:34:43
Speaker 1: because usually it's calls from constituents, not always, you know,
1:34:49
Speaker 1: sometimes they're planned campaign sometimes they're genuine locals. But here's
1:34:56
Speaker 1: what I can tell you. I've learned from these conversations
1:34:59
Speaker 1: I've had these with people that answer phones over the years.
1:35:02
Speaker 1: It's all offices want to keep track. They want to
1:35:04
Speaker 1: know what issues are coming up, what's being called in
1:35:08
Speaker 1: it because a lot of times it is an early
1:35:09
Speaker 1: warning system. All of a sudden, you get some there
1:35:11
Speaker 1: might be some local thing that's happening that the congressional
1:35:15
Speaker 1: office is getting a lot of calls on. It actually
1:35:17
Speaker 1: is something that a local mayor ought to deal with.
1:35:19
Speaker 1: Maybe it's something the mayor of Grand Rapids has to
1:35:21
Speaker 1: deal with, and they're able to say, hey, we're getting
1:35:23
Speaker 1: calls about this. Are you aware of this?
1:35:25
Speaker 2: Right?
1:35:26
Speaker 1: So it can be just sort of an early warning system, right,
1:35:31
Speaker 1: but they but but the members care, and it's it's
1:35:37
Speaker 1: I think there's more power in numbers, right, But you
1:35:41
Speaker 1: don't want to look like you're manufacturing and you're reading
1:35:43
Speaker 1: from a script. So the point is is that sometimes
1:35:46
Speaker 1: it's not you may your representatives may support you generally,
1:35:50
Speaker 1: but are they doing something specifically? You know, you might
1:35:55
Speaker 1: you might want to say, how come you're not doing this?
1:35:58
Speaker 1: You know, I know you share the same concern I
1:36:00
Speaker 1: do about X. So explain to me why you're not
1:36:04
Speaker 1: doing why? You know. Maybe let's say you're you're skeptical
1:36:08
Speaker 1: of this around war, Well, maybe you might want to
1:36:11
Speaker 1: encourage them. Look, don't just vote symbolically, know against funding
1:36:15
Speaker 1: this war. What are you going to do to actually
1:36:17
Speaker 1: try to bring this to an end? You know, maybe
1:36:20
Speaker 1: force any answer out of them, force a response out
1:36:23
Speaker 1: of them. But I you know, or you can call
1:36:26
Speaker 1: other you know, these these these members of Congress. You
1:36:37
Speaker 1: won't for some of them, you won't be as impactful.
1:36:39
Speaker 1: But they do log complaints that come in from constituents
1:36:44
Speaker 1: that don't live in their district or state and just say, look,
1:36:46
Speaker 1: I'm and you should be honest about it, and I'm
1:36:48
Speaker 1: calling you, you know, my my senator's already believe in this,
1:36:50
Speaker 1: but I'm concerned, you know, and maybe find a way
1:36:53
Speaker 1: to connect with that senator. I you know, I thought
1:36:56
Speaker 1: Senator X really was worried about why so why why
1:36:59
Speaker 1: aren't they also standing up on this issue? But there's
1:37:05
Speaker 1: all sorts of ways to I think, influence a senator
1:37:11
Speaker 1: that you think already shares some of your values. Maybe
1:37:13
Speaker 1: it's more in what are they doing about it? How
1:37:15
Speaker 1: are they expressing themselves? You know, It's one thing to
1:37:17
Speaker 1: share your concerns, it's and other things to do some action.
1:37:21
Speaker 1: So that'd be another way to look at it. Next
1:37:25
Speaker 1: question comes from David and he writes, Chuck, I'm a
1:37:27
Speaker 1: twenty nine year old living in California now, but previously
1:37:29
Speaker 1: a federal worker in DC before being cut during last
1:37:31
Speaker 1: year's doze terminations. You've often mentioned mississippis a state to watch,
1:37:35
Speaker 1: even though most analysts don't see it as viable for Democrats.
1:37:37
Speaker 1: What can we learn from the Mississippi primaris past Tuesday
1:37:39
Speaker 1: in terms of turn out in enthusiasm and do you
1:37:41
Speaker 1: see the same potential for competitiveness there that we've seen
1:37:44
Speaker 1: in southern races like Alabama in twenty seventeen, in Georgia
1:37:46
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty. Well, look, I've had this Mississippi conversation
1:37:50
Speaker 1: with quite a few people, and I'm trying to remember recently.
1:37:55
Speaker 1: I feel like I can't remember if I did it
1:37:57
Speaker 1: in this podcast or it was a newspair episode, but
1:38:01
Speaker 1: when we talk about different states, or it may have been.
1:38:06
Speaker 1: It may have been a conversation I had with when
1:38:12
Speaker 1: I was moderating a panel up at Harvard and Jamie Harrison,
1:38:15
Speaker 1: who was the former DNC chair and candidate for office
1:38:18
Speaker 1: in South Carolina, and it was in this You know,
1:38:22
Speaker 1: the whole point of pointing out of Mississippi, for one thing,
1:38:26
Speaker 1: is is looking at what the electoral map could look
1:38:31
Speaker 1: like in twenty thirty two. When we have reapportionment in
1:38:33
Speaker 1: the electoral college, numbers shift again and the power continues
1:38:37
Speaker 1: to grow in the Sun Belt and in the South.
1:38:39
Speaker 1: So Democrats have to make inroads in the Sun Belt, right,
1:38:42
Speaker 1: You've got to make inroads where the people live. Texas
1:38:45
Speaker 1: and Florida are two obvious targets. They're big, they're huge,
1:38:47
Speaker 1: and they're very difficult. Georgia is a success story. It's
1:38:51
Speaker 1: an organizational success story. And the point is when you
1:38:54
Speaker 1: look at the population in Mississippi and you look at
1:39:00
Speaker 1: look at those general election results, they're always you know,
1:39:03
Speaker 1: Sydney Hyde Smith versus Mike Esipe in twenty eighteen fifty
1:39:07
Speaker 1: four to forty six race, that's not a blowout. That
1:39:11
Speaker 1: does not mean Mississippi's not competitive. Tate Reeves and the
1:39:19
Speaker 1: Presley cousin was also somebody that was also one of
1:39:27
Speaker 1: the closest governor's races in thirty years or in the
1:39:30
Speaker 1: last twenty years. Excuse me, but what you have is
1:39:36
Speaker 1: an under investment in the state party. And there's a
1:39:39
Speaker 1: there's an under voter, there's an under there's basically a
1:39:44
Speaker 1: lot of unregistered African American voters in Mississippi who've kind
1:39:48
Speaker 1: of given up on the system. It was a similar
1:39:51
Speaker 1: phenomenon in Alabama, and you had Doug Jones will tell
1:39:55
Speaker 1: you it was black women in particular that you know,
1:39:58
Speaker 1: helped organize for his camp and that upset over Roy Moore. Now,
1:40:02
Speaker 1: there's nothing like having an opponent who's an accused of
1:40:04
Speaker 1: pedophile in order to assist you in a in a
1:40:08
Speaker 1: very deeply religious state like Alabama, and I don't think
1:40:11
Speaker 1: we should we should overlook that factoid on that one
1:40:16
Speaker 1: success in Alabama. But Mississippi there's more consistent. You see it, right,
1:40:21
Speaker 1: there's a lower ceiling for Republicans than there is in
1:40:24
Speaker 1: an Alabama or but it's it's not a one cycle investment, right.
1:40:32
Speaker 1: And I think the problem, the difference between the Democrats
1:40:35
Speaker 1: and the Republicans in my adult lifetime is that Republicans
1:40:39
Speaker 1: have always taken a longer view in trying to flip
1:40:42
Speaker 1: a state and Democrats are always looking for a shortcut,
1:40:45
Speaker 1: and they've not taken that longer. One of the few
1:40:48
Speaker 1: exceptions to the longer views has been Arizona in Georgia,
1:40:52
Speaker 1: and now that is paid necessary dividends, right, it's kept
1:40:55
Speaker 1: them in the game. Without Georgia and Arizona, the downfall
1:40:59
Speaker 1: of the Midwestern states and of Florida and Ohio in
1:41:02
Speaker 1: particular would be catastrophic for the party. But it's not
1:41:06
Speaker 1: because of a concerted twenty year effort to essentially get
1:41:11
Speaker 1: competitive in Georgia and Arizona. And you had look the
1:41:16
Speaker 1: losing Stacey Abrams campaigns, did a lot made a lot
1:41:20
Speaker 1: of progress for George Democrats, and that's what you need.
1:41:23
Speaker 1: You need somebody that sort of, you know, makes progress
1:41:29
Speaker 1: in losing and sticks to it. And in Mississippi, you've
1:41:33
Speaker 1: had too many examples of well funded, singular campaigns that
1:41:38
Speaker 1: have never sort of stayed engaged after they've lost. And
1:41:43
Speaker 1: until you do, that's that's the moment. But it's if
1:41:47
Speaker 1: you look at the population numbers and you look at
1:41:49
Speaker 1: the voter registration numbers, that's why you see if you
1:41:52
Speaker 1: ever could maximize African American voter registration in Mississippi, you
1:41:56
Speaker 1: suddenly are in a different place competitively in that state.
1:42:10
Speaker 1: Next question comes from JR. JR. Rights. Hey, second time asker,
1:42:14
Speaker 1: Thanks again for taking questions. Virginia's leg Governor Spamberger signature
1:42:17
Speaker 1: bringing the electoral vote count for its triggering up to
1:42:20
Speaker 1: two twenty two still a ways off from the required
1:42:22
Speaker 1: two to seventy. But what do you think the odds
1:42:23
Speaker 1: are that the MPV will gain momentum and get the
1:42:25
Speaker 1: requisite numbers to go into effect. Do you think Trump's
1:42:28
Speaker 1: popular vote win in twenty twenty four may jostle free
1:42:30
Speaker 1: some reticent red states to join. Thanks interesting in your
1:42:33
Speaker 1: thoughts on the MPV Compact as a whole as well. Well, look,
1:42:36
Speaker 1: I've I dug into the compact quite a bit about
1:42:38
Speaker 1: fifteen or twenty years ago when it first started up.
1:42:40
Speaker 1: The guy who founded the University of Phoenix was sort
1:42:43
Speaker 1: of the initial brainchild of this. By the way, for
1:42:45
Speaker 1: what it's worth, and this goes back to two thousand
1:42:49
Speaker 1: and three, two thousand and four to two thousand and five,
1:42:51
Speaker 1: memory serves, I have this vision. I remember packing my
1:42:54
Speaker 1: office at the Hotline to move to NBC, and I
1:42:56
Speaker 1: remember this guy's the Voter Compact pamphlet wasn't a pamphlet.
1:43:02
Speaker 1: It was this massive if you remember the remember the
1:43:05
Speaker 1: old chain Kinkos, It was like a Kinko's put together book,
1:43:10
Speaker 1: if you will, And I you know, just to if
1:43:16
Speaker 1: people are going to wonder how this works. So the
1:43:18
Speaker 1: idea is that states, would you know, which is do
1:43:21
Speaker 1: the thanks to the commerce clause perveralily or states will
1:43:24
Speaker 1: agree that if if there are the minute there's enough
1:43:29
Speaker 1: states that add up to two hundred and seventy electoral votes,
1:43:33
Speaker 1: then the states agree that their electoral votes will go
1:43:40
Speaker 1: to the winner of the popular vote. And but not,
1:43:45
Speaker 1: but it doesn't trigger until there are enough states that
1:43:48
Speaker 1: add up to two hundred and seventy electoral votes. And
1:43:52
Speaker 1: so it is, as you noted, we're up to two
1:43:56
Speaker 1: twenty two, so there's still there's still forty eight electoral
1:43:59
Speaker 1: votes away. I haven't seen the latest list of states,
1:44:04
Speaker 1: but I think a lot of the big states haven't
1:44:05
Speaker 1: done it yet, if I'm not mistaken. So I'm a
1:44:17
Speaker 1: skeptic that it will be accepted by the public. I
1:44:23
Speaker 1: think you would have. I mean, look at all of
1:44:25
Speaker 1: the rage you see among Nebraska Republicans, the loan electoral
1:44:31
Speaker 1: vote that continues to nag at Republicans right with Omaha
1:44:38
Speaker 1: sort of almost now consistently voting voting against the state's interest,
1:44:48
Speaker 1: and the calls and demands for change, and the minute
1:44:51
Speaker 1: this compact has agreed to, the second a state feels
1:44:55
Speaker 1: as if their votes cost their guy an election, then
1:44:59
Speaker 1: there's going to right. So I'm skeptical that this will ever,
1:45:02
Speaker 1: even when it hits the requisite number, that it will
1:45:05
Speaker 1: ever be implemented. That essentially, this is an easy thing
1:45:10
Speaker 1: to say you're willing to do before you get to
1:45:12
Speaker 1: the number. Itself now on you. Once you catch once
1:45:16
Speaker 1: you're the dog that catches the proverbial car. What actually
1:45:19
Speaker 1: happens here? What do you plan to do with this?
1:45:23
Speaker 1: You know, I I'm I think we need a constitutional
1:45:30
Speaker 1: amendment to change this. If you want to change it.
1:45:34
Speaker 1: My work around these days is doubling the size of
1:45:36
Speaker 1: the house. If you did that, then you would write,
1:45:38
Speaker 1: then the electoral college would follow the popular vote in
1:45:42
Speaker 1: ninety eight percent of the circumstances, rather than in the
1:45:44
Speaker 1: situation we're in now, which is only about something like
1:45:47
Speaker 1: eighty five to ninety percent of the time, will the
1:45:50
Speaker 1: popular vote in the electoral vote be the same winner?
1:45:56
Speaker 1: And that that GAP's a big deal. That's a big
1:46:00
Speaker 1: you know, as I like to say, you know, would
1:46:03
Speaker 1: you get on a plane that had a ninety percent
1:46:05
Speaker 1: chance of landing safely? Would you get on a plane
1:46:10
Speaker 1: that had a ninety nine percent chance of landing safely? Right?
1:46:14
Speaker 1: You do that all the time. Nothing's one hundred percent.
1:46:17
Speaker 1: But once you hear that it's ninety how about eighty five?
1:46:20
Speaker 2: Right?
1:46:22
Speaker 1: Right? Then it's suddenly you're like, oh, I know, plenty
1:46:24
Speaker 1: of one in fifteen you know, I'm fifteen percent chance
1:46:26
Speaker 1: things happen. There's a ten percent chance of something happening
1:46:29
Speaker 1: wait a minute, that's that that could actually happen. So,
1:46:36
Speaker 1: you know, I'm I'm so, I'm I'm skeptical that this
1:46:40
Speaker 1: would ever successfully be implemented because I think there's states
1:46:44
Speaker 1: that have agreed to do it. You'll see, especially since
1:46:46
Speaker 1: we've become so one party. I mean, look at a
1:46:48
Speaker 1: state like Virginia suddenly as a one party controlled state.
1:46:52
Speaker 1: It's still kind of a I would argue, it's a
1:46:54
Speaker 1: fifty five to forty five dem lean overall, right, but
1:46:58
Speaker 1: it behaves like it's an eighty twenty state these days
1:47:01
Speaker 1: with its legislature and its democratic governance. Right, It's just
1:47:04
Speaker 1: like Mississippi's really like a fifty five to forty five state,
1:47:07
Speaker 1: but it behaves in governance if it's an eighty twenty
1:47:09
Speaker 1: Republican state. And so that's where I you know, So
1:47:14
Speaker 1: I'm I needed, like I said, I need to do
1:47:17
Speaker 1: a better analysis of how many which states in there.
1:47:19
Speaker 1: But I just have a feeling a bunch of them
1:47:21
Speaker 1: will chicken out when this starts, and just when it
1:47:25
Speaker 1: looks like they're getting to somebody, somebody will you know,
1:47:27
Speaker 1: it'll be it'll be like lucying the football. You know,
1:47:30
Speaker 1: she'll pull it away, some state will withdraw from the
1:47:33
Speaker 1: compact and all of a sudden they're short again. So
1:47:37
Speaker 1: you know, that's my guess. And again I go back
1:47:40
Speaker 1: to the the easiest way to fix this is just
1:47:45
Speaker 1: expanding the House. Then you don't even need a constitutional amendment.
1:47:48
Speaker 1: After that a constitutional amendment. But I do think you're
1:47:54
Speaker 1: not going to be able to get the constitutional amendment
1:47:56
Speaker 1: until you convince both parties that this will be helpful
1:48:00
Speaker 1: to that. And I think repealing the electoral College won't
1:48:04
Speaker 1: get you there. But expanding the House in theory benefits.
1:48:08
Speaker 1: You can make a case that it can strengthen both
1:48:11
Speaker 1: parties depending on how you look at it. You know,
1:48:14
Speaker 1: shouldn't you have more voting power in Congress than Wyoming has? Right?
1:48:18
Speaker 1: Shouldn't you have more voting power in Congress than Delaware has?
1:48:21
Speaker 2: Right?
1:48:21
Speaker 1: You can make that case to a Republican state or
1:48:23
Speaker 1: a democratic state. So that's why I sort of lean
1:48:28
Speaker 1: more in that territory. But thanks for asking about that.
1:48:32
Speaker 1: The MPV is always I got into it until I didn't.
1:48:38
Speaker 1: Next question comes from Kenny from Massive Pequa. Thank you
1:48:41
Speaker 1: for letting me say Massive Peak would approve that I
1:48:43
Speaker 1: can say it. Hey, Chuck, I share your dad's love
1:48:45
Speaker 1: of coins collecting, and while the bi centennial coins may
1:48:47
Speaker 1: not be worth much more than face values, sometimes the
1:48:50
Speaker 1: memories attached to them are priceless. My wife and I
1:48:52
Speaker 1: also have a question, what's the deal with daylight saving time?
1:48:54
Speaker 1: With Senator Rubio no longer championing the issue in the Senate,
1:48:58
Speaker 1: is there anyone likely to take up the push to
1:49:00
Speaker 1: either keep it permanent or in the clock changes together
1:49:02
Speaker 1: twice a year of the timeshift disrupts sleep, community and families,
1:49:05
Speaker 1: So is there any real chance Congress fundly fixes it?
1:49:07
Speaker 1: Kenny from Messapequa, Kenny, I hope you heard my time
1:49:10
Speaker 1: Machine segment earlier this week on this very issue, the
1:49:14
Speaker 1: initial creation of time zones, daylight saving and how often
1:49:18
Speaker 1: we've the problem is there is no solution because the
1:49:23
Speaker 1: solution for you becomes a problem for somebody else. And
1:49:27
Speaker 1: I went through three different periods of time where we
1:49:29
Speaker 1: had sort of permanent versions of you know, temporary permanent
1:49:33
Speaker 1: versions of our time, and the big the most recent
1:49:36
Speaker 1: attempt that we did this in seventy four to conserve
1:49:39
Speaker 1: energy during the energy crisis, where a year long daylight
1:49:41
Speaker 1: saving time is you basically had a hope. You know,
1:49:44
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of we had actual accidents. Kids were
1:49:47
Speaker 1: killed at bus stops because of traffic accidents before the
1:49:53
Speaker 1: sun came up. So, you know, I think this is
1:49:57
Speaker 1: one of those cases where and this is why I
1:50:00
Speaker 1: enjoyed that time machine. You know, before the Railroad's you know,
1:50:04
Speaker 1: every town noon was slightly different and everybody used the
1:50:08
Speaker 1: sun to decide while it's noon in Massapequa, which means
1:50:11
Speaker 1: it's eleven fifty nine some in the next town over,
1:50:14
Speaker 1: and it's eleven fifty eight two towns from there. Right,
1:50:18
Speaker 1: So anyway, I encourage you go check my last time
1:50:21
Speaker 1: Machine episode from the Monday episode. I'd like to think
1:50:27
Speaker 1: that after you listen to that, you'll be like, oh,
1:50:30
Speaker 1: this is why it will never change, because it's too complicated.
1:50:34
Speaker 1: There's no good answer because every every you know, now,
1:50:41
Speaker 1: when we were in a grarian economy, we just adjusted,
1:50:44
Speaker 1: you know, when living in this fixed time zone, this
1:50:46
Speaker 1: is going to be this is going to be the
1:50:49
Speaker 1: challenge here. And I think everybody has different interests, right
1:50:54
Speaker 1: if you're you know, I remember as a little kid,
1:50:57
Speaker 1: I couldn't wait for daylight saving time, and the older
1:50:59
Speaker 1: I've gotten I resent daylight saving time, right, So I
1:51:03
Speaker 1: think it that's another issue here, is that there's just
1:51:06
Speaker 1: not a there's no clean there's there's no clean answer.
1:51:10
Speaker 1: And in some ways, going through the motions of trying
1:51:13
Speaker 1: to figure out how we took control of time as
1:51:16
Speaker 1: it is as a country and as a government, I
1:51:20
Speaker 1: now feel I feel satisfied with my unsatis with this unsatisfactory,
1:51:27
Speaker 1: uncomfortable way that we've done this. Now, I do wish
1:51:30
Speaker 1: we would at least, you know, we keep we keep
1:51:34
Speaker 1: moving when we do daylight saving time more than the
1:51:37
Speaker 1: rest of the world does. I wish we would synchronize
1:51:39
Speaker 1: a little bit better with other countries so that it went,
1:51:42
Speaker 1: all right, we're all going to move our we're all
1:51:44
Speaker 1: going to move up an hour early here. But we
1:51:46
Speaker 1: keep we keep doing the mission creep and I think
1:51:50
Speaker 1: it also kind of messes things up there. All right,
1:51:54
Speaker 1: take one more question? No, Actually, I got to end
1:51:57
Speaker 1: it there. I'm going to wrap things up here.
1:51:59
Speaker 2: Though.
1:52:00
Speaker 1: It is the best weekend of one of the best
1:52:03
Speaker 1: sports weekends of the year. It's the first and second
1:52:06
Speaker 1: round of the NCAA Tournament. I will tell you I'm
1:52:09
Speaker 1: such an addict about the NCAA Tournament that I instituted
1:52:12
Speaker 1: no hotline Fridays for in celebration of the NCAA Tournament.
1:52:17
Speaker 1: We would literally put everybody we stop. We made Friday holiday.
1:52:23
Speaker 1: We published right before noon the twelve fifteen tip off
1:52:26
Speaker 1: on Thursday, and everybody scattered. It was one of my
1:52:31
Speaker 1: prouder managerial decisions that I made. And that's how much
1:52:37
Speaker 1: I love the NCAA Tournament. I have a couple of
1:52:41
Speaker 1: fun pools that I do want my favorite, and I've
1:52:44
Speaker 1: been doing it with a group of friends probably almost
1:52:47
Speaker 1: thirty years now, where there's eight of us and we
1:52:50
Speaker 1: do a draft. You know, we all throw two hundred
1:52:52
Speaker 1: bucks in and we do a draft and we do
1:52:54
Speaker 1: eight teams and randomized pick. So then you go through
1:52:57
Speaker 1: and you know you basically you have. So I thought
1:53:01
Speaker 1: i'd have some fun and share with you quickly what
1:53:04
Speaker 1: those what those picks are it is. So I and
1:53:11
Speaker 1: the draft, I had the fourth pick, so I got Florida.
1:53:15
Speaker 1: They were the remaining number one seed, and I came
1:53:18
Speaker 1: really close to drafting Houston, but I didn't want to
1:53:21
Speaker 1: leave a one seat on board, said Florida. And then
1:53:23
Speaker 1: when it came back to me in the Snake Draft.
1:53:24
Speaker 1: I got Arkansas, then I have Wisconsin, Miami, Saint Louis,
1:53:29
Speaker 1: South Florida, Wright State, and Howard. You get for every
1:53:34
Speaker 1: win your team gets, you you get and everybody throws
1:53:37
Speaker 1: a pile of money into the pool. So you know,
1:53:41
Speaker 1: there have been years where people have gotten two final
1:53:43
Speaker 1: four teams with their team, and there are years they
1:53:45
Speaker 1: are limited after the first weekend. Sometimes it's a bit random,
1:53:51
Speaker 1: but it's one of my favorite pools that I do.
1:53:53
Speaker 1: But like, you end up with teams you don't necessarily
1:53:55
Speaker 1: want to root for, Like I'm like, really Florida, but
1:53:59
Speaker 1: and I wasn't gonna leave my on the board. I
1:54:00
Speaker 1: don't enjoy rooting for but at least now if they win,
1:54:02
Speaker 1: I might win something. But I do. I am happy,
1:54:06
Speaker 1: Like I went out of my way to draft Miami,
1:54:08
Speaker 1: and I went out of my way to draft Saint Louis,
1:54:10
Speaker 1: an A ten team for Chocolate upgw SO. But my
1:54:16
Speaker 1: in case you're wondering the Final four that I read
1:54:18
Speaker 1: to Tony Kornheiser, my participation in their bracket challenge Arizona
1:54:22
Speaker 1: Duke Houston, and I have Houston beating Florida. There in Arizona.
1:54:30
Speaker 1: I have Houston winning the whole thing over. I think
1:54:37
Speaker 1: I've Houston beating Michigan in the final game. I believe
1:54:42
Speaker 1: that's what I ended up doing. So and if you're
1:54:45
Speaker 1: wondering what my first early round upsets are, I will
1:54:49
Speaker 1: say the only twelve seeds that intrigued me Akron Akron
1:54:54
Speaker 1: is one that I put in my pool to go
1:54:57
Speaker 1: a couple of rounds. I want to believe that one
1:55:03
Speaker 1: of the eleven seeds will do a little something for me.
1:55:06
Speaker 1: That's South Florida. I have them going around or two
1:55:11
Speaker 1: on that front. But mostly I think this is going
1:55:12
Speaker 1: to be chalky, chalky, chalky chalky, lots of ones and
1:55:16
Speaker 1: twos in the Elite eight, with maybe only Saint John's
1:55:21
Speaker 1: blowing up that party and being hot. The highest seed
1:55:25
Speaker 1: remaining in uh come the elite eight, I guess is
1:55:29
Speaker 1: the johnnies at five. If anybody over a five seed
1:55:33
Speaker 1: gets to the Elite eight, my guess is that it
1:55:37
Speaker 1: would be boy I struggle. You know, two a month
1:55:44
Speaker 1: ago I might have said Saint Louis, I don't buy
1:55:46
Speaker 1: it now, And a month ago I might have said Miami,
1:55:51
Speaker 1: but I don't. I don't think We're deep enough to
1:55:53
Speaker 1: make that type of run. But I like Miami's path.
1:55:57
Speaker 1: I don't hate Miami's path. I think they cannot Purdue
1:56:00
Speaker 1: off in the second round, and obviously they pull that off,
1:56:03
Speaker 1: then hey, than anything is possible. So there you go.
1:56:08
Speaker 1: Enjoy the weekend, enjoy college basketball. It's a good way
1:56:13
Speaker 1: to distract yourself from the craziness that is the world
1:56:17
Speaker 1: and this country in politics. Thanks for listening, and I'll
1:56:22
Speaker 1: see them on that