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Wham, Bam, Thank You Zam · Politix

0:00
SPEAKER_01: Do you remember when Nancy Pelosi called Donald Trump morbidly obese?
0:04
SPEAKER_01: I think she faced a tiny, tiny bit of pushback, but mostly people were just happy.
0:09
SPEAKER_01: You know, that she went out there and did it, just like he's a slob.
0:12
SPEAKER_01: I think that if Democrats change nothing, Donald Trump's going to take office.
0:15
SPEAKER_00: We must body shame Donald Trump.
0:22
SPEAKER_01: Hey everyone, you're listening to a free preview of the Politics Podcast.
0:26
SPEAKER_01: This is our first episode since Kamala Harris officially lost the 2024 election,
0:31
SPEAKER_01: and we've had about a week to brace ourselves for the incoming Trump administration.
0:37
SPEAKER_01: Democrats are mired in recriminations, as you'd expect, after losing.
0:41
SPEAKER_01: But we want to try something a little different here.
0:44
SPEAKER_01: We want to talk through how our differing views of the Democratic Party's
0:48
SPEAKER_01: liabilities headed into the election can actually work together in a complementary
0:54
SPEAKER_01: way as Democrats regroup.
0:57
SPEAKER_01: I hope you enjoyed the conversation.
0:58
SPEAKER_01: And if you want to hear the whole thing, you can upgrade your subscription to paid at politics.fm.
1:07
SPEAKER_01: Hey everyone, welcome to the Politics Podcast.
1:09
SPEAKER_01: I'm Brian Boitler.
1:10
SPEAKER_00: I'm Matthew Iglesias.
1:12
SPEAKER_01: So last time we connected here,
1:13
SPEAKER_01: I think Matt and I were both clinging to the dying hope that there might be enough
1:18
SPEAKER_01: votes in Detroit and Milwaukee and Philadelphia to save America from fascism.
1:23
SPEAKER_01: And then like 30 minutes after we finished recording, Fox News called the election for Donald Trump.
1:29
SPEAKER_00: I think we picked the timing of when to go live actually really well.
1:33
SPEAKER_00: I'm proud of us.
1:34
SPEAKER_00: And thanks for the people who tuned in.
1:37
SPEAKER_00: Because it was like, you know, it's like surfing or something, right?
1:40
SPEAKER_00: It's like you got to catch the wave.
1:42
SPEAKER_00: It's true.
1:42
SPEAKER_00: Before it's called or it's boring as live commentary.
1:46
SPEAKER_01: We watched the concurrent viewership tick up as more and more people...
1:52
SPEAKER_01: Got got the big picture and started realizing that this was going very badly.
1:57
SPEAKER_01: So we did a we did a great job as sub stackers.
2:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
2:02
SPEAKER_00: So Harris lost.
2:04
SPEAKER_00: Um, Democratic Senate incumbents in West Virginia, Montana, and Ohio.
2:09
SPEAKER_00: Uh, well, incumbents in Ohio and Montana lost, uh, the open seat in West Virginia was lost.
2:14
SPEAKER_00: I think all that was the super predictable stuff.
2:17
SPEAKER_00: Um, Democrats also lost the Senate race in Pennsylvania, which I think is a bitter pill.
2:23
SPEAKER_00: Um,
2:23
SPEAKER_00: but pulled it out in the other contested Senate races,
2:27
SPEAKER_00: um,
2:27
SPEAKER_00: including in states like Wisconsin,
2:29
SPEAKER_00: Arizona,
2:30
SPEAKER_00: Nevada,
2:31
SPEAKER_00: um,
2:32
SPEAKER_00: That at Michigan, where where Harris was defeated.
2:37
SPEAKER_00: So Senate Democrats ran well ahead of Harris.
2:40
SPEAKER_00: House Republicans, though, ran ahead of Trump.
2:44
SPEAKER_00: But due to some House map weirdness.
2:48
SPEAKER_00: it appears that House Republicans,
2:50
SPEAKER_00: while getting a lot of votes,
2:52
SPEAKER_00: it seems like are going to get a very narrow House majority.
2:56
SPEAKER_00: Has that even been called yet as we record this?
2:58
SPEAKER_00: It has not been officially called,
2:59
SPEAKER_00: but they are at 216 called seats with I think like 12 still outstanding.
3:07
SPEAKER_00: Almost certainly going to be a narrow House Republican majority.
3:09
SPEAKER_00: It's weird because what
3:12
SPEAKER_00: A big thing that happened with the House popular vote is that there's a ton of like
3:16
SPEAKER_00: ultra safe Democratic seats where Democrats are normally getting like 80,
3:20
SPEAKER_00: 85 percent of the vote.
3:22
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of those seats, they fell to more like 70.
3:24
SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, just like really big fallbacks.
3:29
SPEAKER_01: But those amount to wasted Republican seats.
3:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
3:32
SPEAKER_00: but not significant because it's like Republicans gerrymandered Democrats into
3:36
SPEAKER_00: ultra safe seats that
3:38
SPEAKER_00: and then won votes in the fake vote sinks of their own devising, which is just one of those things.
3:45
SPEAKER_00: Life is always a little...
3:47
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
3:47
SPEAKER_00: I think in terms of our perspective conversation,
3:50
SPEAKER_00: it's a reminder that politics is unpredictable.
3:54
SPEAKER_00: Republicans controlled the majority of the gerrymandering and drew seats that both
4:00
SPEAKER_00: they and Democrats believed would be highly favorable to Republicans.
4:05
SPEAKER_00: But
4:08
SPEAKER_00: people realigned in a different way from how they had guessed.
4:10
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
4:10
SPEAKER_01: this is a bit like,
4:11
SPEAKER_01: like we were concerned after 2010 that like the Republican gerrymander would hold
4:16
SPEAKER_01: until 2020.
4:17
SPEAKER_01: And then it would,
4:19
SPEAKER_01: if they renewed it,
4:20
SPEAKER_01: it would be like Democrats would be locked out of the house forever.
4:21
SPEAKER_01: And then what happened is Trump came along and his coalition was a bad fit for the,
4:26
SPEAKER_01: you know,
4:26
SPEAKER_01: the map that Republicans drew when they thought it was going to be Mitt Romney forever.
4:31
SPEAKER_01: And, and so Democrats won the house back and something similar is happening still.
4:35
SPEAKER_00: Right.
4:36
SPEAKER_00: Um, so life is strange.
4:38
SPEAKER_00: Um, I found Donald Trump's original roster of cabinet appointments to be a little bit surprising.
4:43
SPEAKER_00: Uh,
4:46
SPEAKER_01: To me,
4:47
SPEAKER_01: it's like if you're wondering because there's like no correspondence between what
4:53
SPEAKER_01: Trump says on the campaign trail and what he might end up trying to do or whatever.
4:57
SPEAKER_01: So if you're thinking that the least bad case scenario is that it's kind of like
5:02
SPEAKER_01: the last administration and the worst case scenario is that anyone who ever said
5:06
SPEAKER_01: anything negative about Donald Trump gets iced out and it's just a bunch of –
5:10
SPEAKER_01: like aggressive fascists who are intent on like American elections being rigged for Republicans forever.
5:17
SPEAKER_01: Like you can breathe easily.
5:20
SPEAKER_00: Well,
5:21
SPEAKER_00: I don't even,
5:21
SPEAKER_00: I don't even have an opinion so much as to like whether I'm breathing easily or not,
5:25
SPEAKER_00: but like Trump closed the campaign by really heavily emphasizing a kind of like
5:32
SPEAKER_00: goofy brand of outsiders,
5:35
SPEAKER_00: right?
5:35
SPEAKER_00: Which included Elon Musk, who's, you know,
5:39
SPEAKER_00: a very important person in the American establishment, but totally new to politics.
5:43
SPEAKER_00: It included RFK Jr.
5:45
SPEAKER_00: It included Tulsi Gabbard, right?
5:47
SPEAKER_00: Like a lot of like weird people.
5:49
SPEAKER_00: But his first group of appointments are Susie Wiles, his campaign manager, who is...
5:57
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to say she's not a Trump person, but she's actually new to the Trump orbit from 2024.
6:03
SPEAKER_01: She's a professional Republican.
6:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, a longtime Republican Party operative to be chief of staff.
6:09
SPEAKER_00: Stephen Miller, who –
6:12
SPEAKER_00: People don't know.
6:13
SPEAKER_00: I mean, Stephen Miller used to work for Jeff Sessions.
6:15
SPEAKER_00: He was sort of the leader of the opposition.
6:19
SPEAKER_00: Sessions was, but Miller as his press aide to the 2007 immigration reform bill.
6:25
SPEAKER_00: So just like a veteran fanatical anti-immigration guy who worked for Trump.
6:30
SPEAKER_00: as a deputy chief of staff for policy.
6:33
SPEAKER_00: Tom Honan, who ran ICE under Trump previously for a nebulous border czar portfolio.
6:42
SPEAKER_00: Marco Rubio as secretary of state, which I think is...
6:46
SPEAKER_00: Fairly surprising.
6:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
6:49
SPEAKER_00: Turn of direction for Trump.
6:50
SPEAKER_00: And then it contextualized.
6:51
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
6:52
SPEAKER_00: anytime with appointments,
6:53
SPEAKER_00: right,
6:53
SPEAKER_00: it's like,
6:54
SPEAKER_00: so Trump is appointing as his national security advisor,
6:57
SPEAKER_00: a guy named Michael Waltz,
6:58
SPEAKER_00: who is not very well known.
7:00
SPEAKER_00: But he was an army special forces guy, became a backbench House Republican.
7:05
SPEAKER_00: He does a lot of like Fox News, like right wing media hits as a real hawk.
7:12
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I wouldn't call him like a quote unquote a neocon,
7:15
SPEAKER_00: but definitely not a, like, Donald Trump is the peace candidate guy.
7:19
SPEAKER_00: So he's a little bit random, a little bit underqualified, a little bit not that well known.
7:24
SPEAKER_00: So him as national security advisor, plus other... It's hard to say.
7:29
SPEAKER_00: But Marco Rubio is very well established.
7:35
SPEAKER_00: To the extent that the word neocon means anything in the post-Trump era...
7:42
SPEAKER_00: It's Rubio.
7:43
SPEAKER_00: You know,
7:43
SPEAKER_00: he is the guy who,
7:46
SPEAKER_00: you know,
7:46
SPEAKER_00: he pushed for increased lethal aid to Ukraine during Trump's prior administration.
7:52
SPEAKER_00: He co-sponsored Joe Biden signed a bill clarifying that the president of the United
7:57
SPEAKER_00: States does not have the authority to unilaterally abrogate the North Atlantic Treaty.
8:02
SPEAKER_00: And Marco Rubio wrote that bill.
8:05
SPEAKER_00: Marco Rubio seems to want to go to war with Cuba and Venezuela and Iran,
8:12
SPEAKER_00: as well as being hawkish on Russia and China.
8:16
SPEAKER_00: It's not just a sort of like conventional Republican Party foreign policy hawk,
8:22
SPEAKER_00: but if anything,
8:22
SPEAKER_00: like on the other side of conventional from where Trump at least like tried to tell
8:27
SPEAKER_00: people he was.
8:28
SPEAKER_01: So like those two national security picks,
8:34
SPEAKER_01: I think are amusing insofar as there are people who at least pretended to believe
8:39
SPEAKER_01: that Trump would be like a peace candidate or maybe,
8:44
SPEAKER_01: you know,
8:45
SPEAKER_01: interested in unwinding the American empire in a way that would get the US out of foreign entanglements.
8:50
SPEAKER_01: And now they're like, whoa, what's this about?
8:52
SPEAKER_01: And so that's funny.
8:55
SPEAKER_01: And then Rubio is super hawkish,
8:58
SPEAKER_01: but I think the reason the picks surprised me is less that Trump violated his own pacifism,
9:07
SPEAKER_01: because I don't think he actually has any kind of pacifism.
9:10
SPEAKER_01: It's that he picked somebody who...
9:13
SPEAKER_01: in addition to being a hawk,
9:15
SPEAKER_01: does seem to have some sort of like moral vanity about being a real national
9:22
SPEAKER_01: security professional,
9:23
SPEAKER_01: right?
9:23
SPEAKER_01: He, Rubio is, was vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
9:30
SPEAKER_01: And he is like, tries to play an active role in legislative foreign policy debates.
9:37
SPEAKER_01: And, and,
9:38
SPEAKER_01: When he does those things, he behaves in a different way than when he does his regular partisan shtick.
9:44
SPEAKER_01: He forges cordial and productive relationships across the aisle.
9:51
SPEAKER_01: He seems like he'd be the kind of person who'd be less inclined to just punish
9:55
SPEAKER_01: State Department employees because they work for the State Department than for
9:58
SPEAKER_01: trying to...
10:00
SPEAKER_01: Ease them into moving in a different diplomatic direction.
10:04
SPEAKER_01: And that could be,
10:07
SPEAKER_01: you know,
10:07
SPEAKER_01: something that we,
10:09
SPEAKER_01: like,
10:10
SPEAKER_01: come to breathe a sigh of relief over if they don't pull us into war.
10:14
SPEAKER_00: But I would say it also seems like,
10:15
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
10:15
SPEAKER_00: something I said many times during campaign 2024 is,
10:20
SPEAKER_00: like,
10:20
SPEAKER_00: this time is going to be different because,
10:22
SPEAKER_00: like,
10:22
SPEAKER_00: this time,
10:23
SPEAKER_00: like...
10:25
SPEAKER_00: There's not going to be any adults in the room.
10:27
SPEAKER_00: Like Trump's going to build an entire cabinet of lickspittles and yes men.
10:34
SPEAKER_00: The more optimistic approach was that,
10:35
SPEAKER_00: no,
10:36
SPEAKER_00: like Trump has a new sophisticated grasp of public policy and like a new network of people.
10:42
SPEAKER_00: This seems to be like a third thing, like just like literally rerunning Trump.
10:46
SPEAKER_00: the 2017 cabinet formation where a bunch of people come in on the premise that like,
10:51
SPEAKER_00: they're going to somehow babysit the president of the United States and make him do
10:55
SPEAKER_00: policies that aren't the policies he believes in.
10:58
SPEAKER_00: And it's gonna just like end in tears.
11:01
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
11:01
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
11:01
SPEAKER_00: I don't know,
11:02
SPEAKER_00: but you know,
11:02
SPEAKER_00: it's just like,
11:03
SPEAKER_00: it,
11:04
SPEAKER_00: I think like a story that we've seen so many times with Trump is people,
11:10
SPEAKER_00: right of center people developing like a condescending view of him.
11:15
SPEAKER_00: And be like, ah, this guy, you could just flatter him into doing anything.
11:18
SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to come in and I'm going to be like the puppet master.
11:21
SPEAKER_00: And I just like, I feel like that never works really.
11:25
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, you can manipulate people, but I don't know.
11:29
SPEAKER_00: Trump just keeps like dominating all these guys.
11:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
11:32
SPEAKER_00: Then the other one,
11:33
SPEAKER_00: the other one that I thought was interesting was Kristi Noem as head department of
11:38
SPEAKER_00: Homeland Security.
11:41
SPEAKER_00: Trump made these like two Miller and Honan sort of like White House immigration appointments.
11:46
SPEAKER_00: So...
11:49
SPEAKER_00: I assume the idea is for those two guys to actually run immigration policy and the
11:53
SPEAKER_00: Homeland Security Secretary to not do anything.
11:57
SPEAKER_00: But I would expect a governor of a state like South Dakota to have at least like
12:01
SPEAKER_00: some appreciation of the role of immigrant labor in the agricultural system.
12:08
SPEAKER_00: You know, like the big, like the most obvious.
12:13
SPEAKER_01: How big is the population of immigrant agriculture workers in South Dakota?
12:19
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
12:19
SPEAKER_00: I think it's large.
12:20
SPEAKER_00: I mean, for me, for me, they said that anybody lives in South Dakota.
12:24
SPEAKER_01: For me,
12:24
SPEAKER_01: the hope would be that she'd come into the Department of Homeland Security being like,
12:27
SPEAKER_01: yo,
12:27
SPEAKER_01: I'm from South Dakota and we have a really big white extremism problem.
12:32
SPEAKER_01: And maybe we shouldn't like scoff at that as like a priority to avoid, you know, uh,
12:37
SPEAKER_01: mass shootings at synagogues.
12:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but I mean, she's not going to care about that.
12:42
SPEAKER_00: But, you know, I mean, I'm just I'm just reading here.
12:44
SPEAKER_00: Lack of action on immigration is holding South Dakota back.
12:47
SPEAKER_00: Dairy farmers say South Dakota search.
12:50
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't know.
12:51
SPEAKER_00: You know, I don't know what's going to happen.
12:52
SPEAKER_00: I just think like an obvious question looking at Trump's just like Trump as a
12:57
SPEAKER_00: policy agenda versus what people are mad about is that in a straightforward way,
13:02
SPEAKER_00: like all of his ideas are going to make groceries more expensive.
13:06
SPEAKER_00: And I think people were clearly very upset about grocery prices.
13:10
SPEAKER_00: I don't know to what extent anyone is going to be able to think these things through.
13:16
SPEAKER_00: You know, we also keep waiting for the key economic policy jobs, right?
13:21
SPEAKER_00: CEO, NBC, Treasury, none of that's been announced.
13:25
SPEAKER_01: What's striking to me about the people he's announced so far is that the ones that
13:29
SPEAKER_01: require Senate confirmation can almost certainly get Senate confirmation.
13:33
SPEAKER_01: And he is withholding maybe people he intends to nominate who he'll have a hard
13:38
SPEAKER_01: time getting through even a 53-47 Senate.
13:41
SPEAKER_01: He's been tweeting about how senators need to pick a leader who will let the Senate
13:45
SPEAKER_01: go into recess so that he can just appoint people during recess directly,
13:50
SPEAKER_01: which suggests to me that he has some people in mind that he knows will –
13:53
SPEAKER_01: create some trouble for him.
13:54
SPEAKER_01: But it is true that if you look at these first dozen or so or half dozen appointments,
14:01
SPEAKER_01: that it,
14:02
SPEAKER_01: it,
14:02
SPEAKER_01: it's hard to square them with the,
14:06
SPEAKER_01: like the early sense that Trump would come into office guns a blaze and try to shut
14:11
SPEAKER_01: down broadcasting licenses and,
14:15
SPEAKER_01: and in,
14:16
SPEAKER_01: in immediately implement tariffs and just be shambolic all over the place.
14:21
SPEAKER_01: Like,
14:23
SPEAKER_01: the people who he is bringing in around him seem like they would not want to be,
14:28
SPEAKER_01: like,
14:30
SPEAKER_01: partake in something crazy.
14:32
SPEAKER_01: Like, they'll get messy right away, you know?
14:34
SPEAKER_00: If you put me into a coma two years ago,
14:36
SPEAKER_00: and then I woke up and you told me,
14:40
SPEAKER_00: Doug Burgum has been elected president of the United States,
14:42
SPEAKER_00: Marco Rubio will be Secretary of State,
14:45
SPEAKER_00: Elise Stefanik will be UN Ambassador,
14:48
SPEAKER_00: Kristi Noem will be Homeland Security Secretary,
14:51
SPEAKER_00: I'd be like,
14:52
SPEAKER_00: okay.
14:53
SPEAKER_00: You know,
14:54
SPEAKER_00: like I wouldn't vote for Doug Burgum,
14:56
SPEAKER_00: but I mean,
14:58
SPEAKER_00: none of those are oddball characters who- I mean,
15:03
SPEAKER_01: Christy Noem did that weird dentist ad.
15:05
SPEAKER_00: Yes, sure.
15:07
SPEAKER_00: But I mean, they're not, they're-
15:09
SPEAKER_00: They're people who any Republican might be appointing to jobs.
15:13
SPEAKER_00: They're just like Republican Party politicians.
15:18
SPEAKER_00: And I don't totally know why.
15:22
SPEAKER_00: Oh, sorry.
15:22
SPEAKER_00: The other one was Lee Zeldin, the Long Island House Republican.
15:26
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
15:27
SPEAKER_01: He's a real asshole.
15:28
SPEAKER_00: He overperformed in a midterm race against Kathy Hochul.
15:33
SPEAKER_00: But then I think this guy, Mike Lawler, did so well in his race against –
15:39
SPEAKER_00: Mondaire Jones, that Lawler is now by far the frontrunner to be the GOP gubernatorial nominee.
15:45
SPEAKER_00: So Zelda needed something else to do.
15:48
SPEAKER_00: I don't know why he wants to run the EPA.
15:50
SPEAKER_01: Oh, because they always just appoint wreckers to the EPA.
15:54
SPEAKER_00: No, but I mean, just if I...
15:57
SPEAKER_00: He seemed like he had future political ambitions, right?
16:00
SPEAKER_00: So if I was a New York Republican doing a job in the Trump administration,
16:05
SPEAKER_00: I would want either,
16:06
SPEAKER_00: like Elise Stefanik,
16:07
SPEAKER_00: right,
16:09
SPEAKER_00: her role as UN ambassador is going to be to yell on behalf of Israel at the UN,
16:14
SPEAKER_00: which will be very popular in her home state of New York.
16:18
SPEAKER_00: um, fucking around on climate policy.
16:20
SPEAKER_00: Like that's like the kind of, I don't know.
16:22
SPEAKER_00: We'll see what happens.
16:22
SPEAKER_00: But again,
16:23
SPEAKER_00: it's just a Republican party,
16:24
SPEAKER_00: a former house Republican,
16:26
SPEAKER_00: just like the kind of guy who would be in the mix if he wanted to,
16:32
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
16:33
SPEAKER_01: for some kind of role in no different to me than like Trump's last EPA picks and HHS,
16:38
SPEAKER_01: you know,
16:39
SPEAKER_01: like you put,
16:39
SPEAKER_01: you put,
16:40
SPEAKER_01: uh,
16:40
SPEAKER_01: somebody like Tom price in an HHS because,
16:44
SPEAKER_01: you know,
16:44
SPEAKER_01: he's just going to make people's lives.
16:45
SPEAKER_01: They're miserable.
16:46
SPEAKER_01: And,
16:47
SPEAKER_01: you know, try to slow crap down and throw wrenches into gears and stuff.
16:51
SPEAKER_01: I think that that's the logic more.
16:53
SPEAKER_00: So I've also got to say, I mean, this is what's happening.
16:58
SPEAKER_00: And I think we have to faithfully record the facts of what's happening.
17:02
SPEAKER_00: But like, I don't, I don't buy it.
17:05
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm waiting to see what's next.
17:07
SPEAKER_00: This early thing where you have 53 Senate seats and you start immediately talking
17:12
SPEAKER_00: about how you need carte blanche to do recess appointments.
17:15
SPEAKER_00: Like that's weird.
17:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
17:17
SPEAKER_00: Something's coming.
17:19
SPEAKER_00: We are recording on the morning of Tuesday,
17:21
SPEAKER_00: November 12th,
17:23
SPEAKER_00: and we do not yet know what is the crazy thing that he thinks Lisa Murkowski and
17:29
SPEAKER_00: Susan Collins will be fundamentally opposed to.
17:33
SPEAKER_00: And that he's then worried.
17:36
SPEAKER_00: Oh, because he's... Because it's not one.
17:39
SPEAKER_00: He would need two senators other than Collins and Murkowski.
17:44
SPEAKER_00: And it's just like...
17:46
SPEAKER_00: I don't – he must – he has somebody in mind.
17:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
17:50
SPEAKER_01: I mean it could be RFK Jr., you know?
17:52
SPEAKER_00: Right.
17:52
SPEAKER_00: But I mean it's – we're – I think we will have a much more interesting podcast once
17:58
SPEAKER_00: those names are available,
18:00
SPEAKER_00: which is why we should turn the page.
18:03
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we should talk about how we allowed this to happen.
18:08
SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't actually want to talk about how we allowed it to happen.
18:11
SPEAKER_00: So you did a post today talking about calling for investment in media media.
18:18
SPEAKER_00: you know, sort of properties, right?
18:20
SPEAKER_00: First party media.
18:22
SPEAKER_00: It was Friday?
18:23
SPEAKER_00: It was not today, but whatever.
18:25
SPEAKER_00: It's out.
18:25
SPEAKER_00: It was recent.
18:27
SPEAKER_00: You know,
18:27
SPEAKER_00: which I mean,
18:27
SPEAKER_00: I think is good and is something that I am supportive of and is something that I
18:31
SPEAKER_00: have talked about from time to time.
18:35
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I do think is a...
18:40
SPEAKER_00: My best reference point for anything happening now is after 2004,
18:46
SPEAKER_00: which was the last time Democrats lost the popular vote.
18:49
SPEAKER_00: And it's like the popular vote doesn't matter,
18:51
SPEAKER_00: you know,
18:52
SPEAKER_00: officially,
18:53
SPEAKER_00: but I think it matters a lot psychologically.
18:55
SPEAKER_00: When Democrats lost the House in 2010,
18:58
SPEAKER_00: it was like,
18:59
SPEAKER_00: you know,
18:59
SPEAKER_00: midterms,
19:01
SPEAKER_00: or maybe it's a turnout thing because turnout goes down in the midterms.
19:05
SPEAKER_00: When Democrats lost in 2016, there was a sense that they'd kind of been like cheated out of it.
19:10
SPEAKER_00: Then
19:11
SPEAKER_00: Won very well in 2018.
19:13
SPEAKER_00: Actually lost the Senate, but it's fine.
19:17
SPEAKER_00: Won the House.
19:19
SPEAKER_00: 2020 did very well.
19:20
SPEAKER_00: The Senate map looked terrible, but then won those special elections.
19:24
SPEAKER_00: 2022 lost the House, but gained a seat in the Senate.
19:27
SPEAKER_00: So you're just always optimistic.
19:29
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like things seem okay, even if there's struggles.
19:33
SPEAKER_00: Lose the popular vote, okay, we got to do something new.
19:36
SPEAKER_00: So one set of things is arguing about issue positions,
19:39
SPEAKER_00: but another set of things is arguing about what kinds of institutions do we need.
19:45
SPEAKER_00: At that point, you know, in 2005, 2006, right, we had Air America.
19:54
SPEAKER_00: We got Think Progress.
19:57
SPEAKER_00: Um,
19:57
SPEAKER_00: where I worked for a time,
19:59
SPEAKER_00: I think some extra money went into,
20:01
SPEAKER_00: um,
20:02
SPEAKER_00: did you,
20:03
SPEAKER_00: you worked at the,
20:03
SPEAKER_00: did you work at the American independent at some point?
20:06
SPEAKER_00: No, I think it's somebody else.
20:07
SPEAKER_00: Spencer Spencer.
20:08
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
20:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
20:08
SPEAKER_00: I, that existed.
20:10
SPEAKER_00: Um, and some kind of local version.
20:12
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, there were media plays, um, uh,
20:17
SPEAKER_01: I feel like the 2004 example is apt both in what lessons it provides and also in how inapt it is.
20:27
SPEAKER_01: Because there was the internet in 2004, but there really wasn't the internet as we know it now.
20:34
SPEAKER_01: And so there wasn't like...
20:37
SPEAKER_01: a huge sense in which Democrats,
20:40
SPEAKER_01: as they assessed the fallout from that election,
20:44
SPEAKER_01: were looking at the medium for their message.
20:48
SPEAKER_01: It was about the message itself.
20:50
SPEAKER_01: It was about George W.
20:52
SPEAKER_01: Bush's political capital after 9-11,
20:56
SPEAKER_01: their own positioning on the war,
20:58
SPEAKER_01: stuff like that.
20:59
SPEAKER_01: But that's when the internet started to look like it did today.
21:02
SPEAKER_01: And so we got the net roots.
21:03
SPEAKER_01: And that was a project that maybe to some extent was underwritten by progressive money,
21:10
SPEAKER_01: but was really just like,
21:12
SPEAKER_01: people posting on blogs and then getting some readers and then building more
21:16
SPEAKER_01: readers and,
21:17
SPEAKER_01: you know,
21:18
SPEAKER_01: a kind of organic wellspring of,
21:20
SPEAKER_01: of new thought on a new platform.
21:22
SPEAKER_01: And there,
21:24
SPEAKER_01: I don't think is,
21:25
SPEAKER_01: I don't think there's a media technology revolution on the foot,
21:29
SPEAKER_01: a foot that's,
21:30
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
21:31
SPEAKER_01: I guess maybe the AI revolution could screw this all up,
21:35
SPEAKER_01: but basically the tools available are pretty well known now.
21:39
SPEAKER_01: It's just that I think Democrats have fallen behind in exploiting them, right?
21:45
SPEAKER_01: And I've been worried about this all along.
21:49
SPEAKER_01: And so rather than like hope that a movement emerges organically that can help
22:01
SPEAKER_01: delivered them big victories in the midterms, they should proactively try to create that.
22:06
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
22:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
22:07
SPEAKER_00: So,
22:07
SPEAKER_01: so,
22:07
SPEAKER_01: so,
22:08
SPEAKER_01: so I want to,
22:09
SPEAKER_01: I do want to,
22:09
SPEAKER_01: I do feel like I have specifics on like what I think that would look like,
22:12
SPEAKER_01: but I also,
22:13
SPEAKER_01: I do want to put it into a,
22:15
SPEAKER_01: the context of politics,
22:17
SPEAKER_01: the podcast about like,
22:20
SPEAKER_01: We end up arguing about this stuff a lot,
22:21
SPEAKER_01: but I do think that what I see is the Democratic Party's big liability,
22:27
SPEAKER_01: like what its liability has been and what it remains now.
22:30
SPEAKER_01: And yours,
22:32
SPEAKER_01: they're not mutually exclusive and in,
22:34
SPEAKER_01: I think,
22:35
SPEAKER_01: a lot of ways are complementary now that Democrats are in the market for new approaches,
22:40
SPEAKER_01: right?
22:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
22:42
SPEAKER_01: So let me – I think that your –
22:45
SPEAKER_01: The basic gist of your thought on all this is that Democrats should figure out ways
22:50
SPEAKER_01: to broaden the tent,
22:52
SPEAKER_01: specifically by chilling out a little bit,
22:55
SPEAKER_01: making the center-left a more welcoming,
22:58
SPEAKER_01: low-judgment environment,
23:01
SPEAKER_01: and that to do that,
23:03
SPEAKER_01: they can move their policy agenda to the right,
23:06
SPEAKER_01: and they can relatedly disempower this blob of progressive groups that keep pulling
23:10
SPEAKER_01: the party to the left.
23:12
SPEAKER_01: That's the Iglesias model, right?
23:17
SPEAKER_01: I feel like that is an approach aimed at making the Democratic coalition bigger.
23:25
SPEAKER_01: The counterpart is how do you shrink the other team's tent?
23:29
SPEAKER_01: And what I found alarming throughout the Trump years is how uninterested Democratic
23:33
SPEAKER_01: officials seem to be in making discrediting Donald Trump a bigger priority than
23:40
SPEAKER_01: basically anything else.
23:41
SPEAKER_01: Right?
23:43
SPEAKER_01: It's not just the funders and the groups stand to right.
23:45
SPEAKER_01: It's the people who actually wield power who didn't want to play that game the way
23:51
SPEAKER_01: Republicans do when they come to power.
23:53
SPEAKER_01: And it's like,
23:53
SPEAKER_01: let's just make the leader of the Democratic Party so unpopular that Republicans
23:57
SPEAKER_01: win elections.
23:58
SPEAKER_01: And so my two main approaches –
24:00
SPEAKER_01: would have been for Democrats to use their various official powers to air out all
24:07
SPEAKER_01: of Trump's dirty laundry.
24:08
SPEAKER_01: And that's like a means of basically forcing the public and the mainstream media to
24:14
SPEAKER_01: not allow themselves to become desensitized to Trump's depravity.
24:18
SPEAKER_01: And then –
24:21
SPEAKER_01: Similarly,
24:21
SPEAKER_01: or these two things dovetail,
24:23
SPEAKER_01: and for everyone,
24:25
SPEAKER_01: including big Democratic funders,
24:26
SPEAKER_01: to think about the related problem,
24:29
SPEAKER_01: which is right-wing dominance of the media.
24:33
SPEAKER_00: Okay,
24:34
SPEAKER_00: so I want to talk a little bit about the Netroots analogy,
24:38
SPEAKER_00: because I think it's interesting and it's important,
24:41
SPEAKER_00: right?
24:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
24:43
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you're right.
24:45
SPEAKER_00: The Democrats was not,
24:47
SPEAKER_00: like,
24:48
SPEAKER_00: incepted by the Democracy Alliance,
24:51
SPEAKER_00: which was the sort of big cabal of,
24:55
SPEAKER_00: you know,
24:55
SPEAKER_00: anti-Bush funders who came together.
24:58
SPEAKER_00: Also worth keeping in mind when we're talking about Bush era politics,
25:02
SPEAKER_00: there were very wealthy people in Democratic Party politics who wrote some large checks,
25:08
SPEAKER_00: but Democrats were systematically outspent.
25:12
SPEAKER_00: throughout Bush era politics, which is different from how Trump era politics work.
25:17
SPEAKER_00: It was a genuine, there were people and they had money, but it was a scarcity kind of environment.
25:25
SPEAKER_00: And they spent some money on media plays,
25:29
SPEAKER_00: but there was also this organic ground up network of sort of like
25:35
SPEAKER_00: anti-establishment blogs on the left.
25:41
SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that Democrats did, though, was they – it was a grassroots movement.
25:48
SPEAKER_00: But party leaders,
25:51
SPEAKER_00: I think starting with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi,
25:54
SPEAKER_00: but with encouragement from certain institutions like –
26:00
SPEAKER_00: the Century Foundation,
26:02
SPEAKER_00: like cultivated the grass,
26:05
SPEAKER_00: you know,
26:06
SPEAKER_00: and so they would do things like bring some leading bloggers in to talk to top officials.
26:14
SPEAKER_00: Henry Waxman, you know, who was like the investigations guy in the house.
26:19
SPEAKER_00: I was in his office and so were other people and he was like telling us about his plans.
26:24
SPEAKER_00: And
26:24
SPEAKER_00: I feel like less actually came of that than he represented it was going to.
26:29
SPEAKER_00: But, you know, he was doing it, right?
26:31
SPEAKER_00: And they were trying to both, like, build up the clout of the Netroots as a movement and also...
26:41
SPEAKER_00: tilted toward like being on their side, right?
26:46
SPEAKER_00: Because a lot of sort of Netroots blogging originally started with people who were
26:51
SPEAKER_00: angry at- At Democrats for supporting Iraq.
26:54
SPEAKER_00: Tom Daschle and stuff for supporting the Iraq war.
26:56
SPEAKER_00: And-
26:58
SPEAKER_00: You know,
26:59
SPEAKER_00: most,
26:59
SPEAKER_00: I think,
26:59
SPEAKER_00: Netroots people wound up supporting Obama for president in 2008,
27:04
SPEAKER_00: in part on that reason.
27:06
SPEAKER_00: But there was never, like, a purge of the pro-Iran Democrats, right?
27:11
SPEAKER_00: Like, Harry Reid was, I would say, like, the leading figure in Netroots cultivation, right?
27:17
SPEAKER_00: And he was, at the time this started, he had voted for Iraq.
27:23
SPEAKER_00: He was like an NRA endorseee.
27:25
SPEAKER_00: He was even anti-abortion.
27:27
SPEAKER_00: He switched on that without really telling anyone or explaining why, sometime in the mid-aughts.
27:34
SPEAKER_00: But the point was that a guy who was a fairly,
27:38
SPEAKER_00: a quite moderate Democrat,
27:40
SPEAKER_00: stepped into a position of party leadership and tried to get these feisty...
27:46
SPEAKER_00: blogs, like, to be on his side.
27:49
SPEAKER_00: Right?
27:50
SPEAKER_00: And some of that was, like, by being nice to them.
27:52
SPEAKER_00: But some of it was that they, we, like, were really mad at George W. Bush and wanted to defeat him.
28:03
SPEAKER_00: If you look at the current... There are, like, leftist YouTubers.
28:10
SPEAKER_00: You know?
28:11
SPEAKER_00: Like, it's a real thing that exists.
28:14
SPEAKER_00: But the...
28:16
SPEAKER_00: I don't know exactly how to characterize it,
28:18
SPEAKER_00: but I say broadly,
28:20
SPEAKER_00: like,
28:21
SPEAKER_00: the unhealed wounds of the 2016 primary mean that far and away,
28:28
SPEAKER_00: like,
28:28
SPEAKER_00: the dominant affect of,
28:30
SPEAKER_00: like,
28:31
SPEAKER_00: grassroots left content creation is,
28:35
SPEAKER_00: like,
28:35
SPEAKER_00: hostility to the Democratic Party.
28:39
SPEAKER_00: And so it matters when people talk about
28:44
SPEAKER_00: Like they just like use words, right?
28:47
SPEAKER_00: But I think it really matters when we like choose our words, like exactly what it is we mean, right?
28:54
SPEAKER_00: And there's a need to cultivate some kind of, you know,
29:04
SPEAKER_00: media content,
29:05
SPEAKER_00: probably in the video space,
29:07
SPEAKER_00: TikTok,
29:07
SPEAKER_00: YouTube,
29:08
SPEAKER_00: Reels,
29:09
SPEAKER_00: et cetera,
29:10
SPEAKER_00: that is on the left in the sense that it says Donald Trump is bad.
29:17
SPEAKER_00: but that says that Democrats are good.
29:21
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
29:22
SPEAKER_00: And that, to me, is the thing that has truly not existed.
29:26
SPEAKER_01: I think that if somebody went to Hakeem Jeffries or whoever's going to be the
29:30
SPEAKER_01: leader of the party while they figure out who their next presidential candidate is
29:34
SPEAKER_01: and said that...
29:36
SPEAKER_01: Democrats and their funders should go try to co-opt the Young Turks and Chapo Trap House.
29:41
SPEAKER_01: I'd say, kick that person out of your office.
29:43
SPEAKER_01: It's not going to work.
29:46
SPEAKER_01: And there's not much you can do about those outlets continuing to exist because I
29:51
SPEAKER_01: do think the internet is a really great place for disaffection.
29:55
SPEAKER_01: And that's why you end up with a lot of very successful far-right online content
30:00
SPEAKER_01: and a lot of very successful far-left online content.
30:06
SPEAKER_01: It's just the content itself lends itself to people's feelings of frustration or grievance or whatever.
30:13
SPEAKER_01: The rabbit hole takes them there.
30:20
SPEAKER_01: You really do need to farm new talent and build new institutions.
30:26
SPEAKER_01: You're behind the eight ball a bit because you can't build compelling media around
30:34
SPEAKER_01: milquetoast liberalism.
30:35
SPEAKER_01: It's not that exciting.
30:39
SPEAKER_01: I really do think that these groups,
30:40
SPEAKER_01: the net roots was a positive force for Democrats at that time,
30:46
SPEAKER_01: but a lot of it bled into the group's dynamic that you now despise.
30:50
SPEAKER_01: I think part of that evolution was that the people who invested in them saw it
30:56
SPEAKER_01: mostly as a media play,
30:57
SPEAKER_01: not as a ideas play.
30:59
SPEAKER_01: They weren't
31:00
SPEAKER_01: funding these bloggers or nurturing these bloggers and to become policy experts who
31:09
SPEAKER_01: could then advise future governments.
31:11
SPEAKER_01: It was that their followings on the internet,
31:17
SPEAKER_01: on social media,
31:17
SPEAKER_01: et cetera,
31:18
SPEAKER_01: would amount to like a big audience for pro-democratic ideas.
31:23
SPEAKER_01: And it didn't work out that way.
31:25
SPEAKER_01: Because it's not really what,
31:29
SPEAKER_01: you know,
31:29
SPEAKER_01: like they were trying to build a media based progressive movement.
31:35
SPEAKER_01: And so they built an issue based one, and it made boring media that's ultimately unhelpful for Democrats.
31:41
SPEAKER_01: But within what I would call progressive media,
31:48
SPEAKER_01: which is like spans or liberal media,
31:52
SPEAKER_01: call it liberal media.
31:53
SPEAKER_01: It spans like really party aligned media,
31:58
SPEAKER_01: like you put crooked media in there,
32:01
SPEAKER_01: positive America at least,
32:02
SPEAKER_01: to mainstream media.
32:04
SPEAKER_01: And you can scour all of the internet for the stuff that you would call liberal
32:13
SPEAKER_01: media and find that there are very compelling voices in there that aren't
32:19
SPEAKER_01: balkanized by issue.
32:20
SPEAKER_01: Their main focus is that democracy is under threat.
32:24
SPEAKER_01: We are not going to like what replaces it.
32:28
SPEAKER_01: That Donald Trump is the avatar for this anti-democratic movement that he needs to be defeated.
32:36
SPEAKER_01: seeks and gains power by deceiving people and that the people he deceives,
32:42
SPEAKER_01: some of them are victims of him and that the others of them are predators
32:47
SPEAKER_01: themselves who hope to manipulate just everyday Americans into being fearful,
32:54
SPEAKER_01: et cetera,
32:54
SPEAKER_01: right?
32:55
SPEAKER_01: And so for me,
32:58
SPEAKER_01: If I was trying to spearhead a project like this,
33:03
SPEAKER_01: I would advise whoever has the money and the resources,
33:07
SPEAKER_01: and they could take the money and the resources from the groups for all I care and
33:10
SPEAKER_01: reroute it in this direction.
33:12
SPEAKER_01: It would be to go do a detailed analysis of the best viral pro-democratic or
33:18
SPEAKER_01: anti-Trump content from the campaign.
33:22
SPEAKER_01: I watched...
33:24
SPEAKER_01: Lots and lots and lots of random TikTok things.
33:28
SPEAKER_01: And for all I know,
33:28
SPEAKER_01: the Democratic Party might have been supporting some of this stuff behind the
33:31
SPEAKER_01: scenes anyway.
33:32
SPEAKER_01: But like, you know, people who didn't conform to stereotype delivering solid ads.
33:39
SPEAKER_01: anti-Trump messaging from communities where Trump had a lot of support.
33:44
SPEAKER_01: These were people who did not look like they were out of place in their communities.
33:49
SPEAKER_01: They looked like they were what you would expect in rural or working class parts of the Midwest.
33:57
SPEAKER_01: And they were very talented communicators, like just naturally.
34:01
SPEAKER_01: Go find them.
34:02
SPEAKER_01: Go find them and buy them one of these microphones and an amp and some cameras and
34:08
SPEAKER_01: give them some money and tell them to turn that into a job.
34:11
SPEAKER_01: And the job is to...
34:15
SPEAKER_01: do podcasts or to make lots of TikTok.
34:17
SPEAKER_01: So it's not just during the campaign, it's all the time.
34:19
SPEAKER_01: Become an influencer and what you're trying to influence is people to see Donald Trump for what he is.
34:27
SPEAKER_01: That's like one project.
34:31
SPEAKER_01: I think another project would be like a more money intensive one of buying existing
34:36
SPEAKER_01: communications infrastructure and finding...
34:41
SPEAKER_01: charismatic,
34:42
SPEAKER_01: telegenic people who want to broadcast in a way that has integrity,
34:48
SPEAKER_01: but also in a way that isn't issue balkanized,
34:52
SPEAKER_01: right?
34:52
SPEAKER_01: So you find people who have succeeded in doing news reporting that's focused on
35:00
SPEAKER_01: things like the threat to democracy or the threat to the,
35:03
SPEAKER_01: you know,
35:04
SPEAKER_01: where it's
35:06
SPEAKER_01: the critique is big tent, not small tent, right?
35:10
SPEAKER_01: And like,
35:11
SPEAKER_01: not everyone can be Rachel Maddow or Chris Hayes,
35:14
SPEAKER_01: but there are a lot of talented people who I think see the world broadly similarly,
35:19
SPEAKER_01: are articulate and smart and funny.
35:23
SPEAKER_01: And they ought to have real pride of place in progressive media.
35:29
SPEAKER_01: Like if
35:30
SPEAKER_01: If somebody were to buy up a bunch of radio stations or local broadcast stations or
35:38
SPEAKER_01: a cable channel,
35:40
SPEAKER_01: like you would want that kind of person to be the rule,
35:47
SPEAKER_01: not the exception in the programming,
35:50
SPEAKER_01: right?
35:51
SPEAKER_01: And then the third thing is like, I don't think that all of this should come at the expense of
35:59
SPEAKER_01: Journalism,
35:59
SPEAKER_01: like reporting,
36:03
SPEAKER_01: no fear or favor,
36:06
SPEAKER_01: the facts are what they are,
36:08
SPEAKER_01: let the chips fall,
36:09
SPEAKER_01: whatever,
36:09
SPEAKER_01: pick your cliche.
36:10
SPEAKER_01: But I do think that if a billionaire who was not mainly interested in kissing
36:18
SPEAKER_01: Donald Trump's ass were to control a major newspaper,
36:24
SPEAKER_01: The people who work at that newspaper should be confident that they'd be allowed to
36:29
SPEAKER_01: continue doing their jobs in a professional and principled way.
36:35
SPEAKER_01: But that the people who are basically doing the editing on the politics side of things would –
36:45
SPEAKER_01: communicate to reporters that the old ways both sides' approach to covering the
36:54
SPEAKER_01: parties was going to come to an end,
36:57
SPEAKER_01: and that coverage would just reflect the facts that
37:01
SPEAKER_01: All of us who work in this kind of journalism know in our heads.
37:04
SPEAKER_01: And currently,
37:04
SPEAKER_01: that might mean that the reporting from the politics desk will be politically
37:08
SPEAKER_01: disfavorable to Republicans,
37:09
SPEAKER_01: but that's only because of the fact that Republicans,
37:12
SPEAKER_01: as currently constituted,
37:14
SPEAKER_01: engage in more lying and in more corruption than Democrats do.
37:18
SPEAKER_01: But that doesn't mean that if some reporter uncovers a big Democratic Party
37:24
SPEAKER_01: corruption scandal that you squelch the story.
37:27
SPEAKER_01: No, it's still...
37:28
SPEAKER_01: it still gets covered.
37:30
SPEAKER_01: It's just the agenda setting nature of the political coverage will not be in trying
37:36
SPEAKER_01: to find an equivalence between them.
37:39
SPEAKER_01: And so I think that that would make political news reporting much better.
37:43
SPEAKER_01: And you would have a seamless blanket between
37:52
SPEAKER_01: what you would think of as maybe like propaganda media,
37:55
SPEAKER_01: all the way to independent journalism that faithfully conveys the dangers of the
38:02
SPEAKER_01: rising right-wing authoritarian movements in the US and abroad.
38:07
SPEAKER_01: I think that is a project that funders and democratic leaders with –
38:13
SPEAKER_01: attention and determination could pull off.
38:17
SPEAKER_01: It's big and it requires lots of money every year.
38:21
SPEAKER_01: You want the infrastructure to be permanent and you want people to be tolerant of it.
38:24
SPEAKER_01: If it doesn't produce profit, keep funding in any way.
38:31
SPEAKER_01: But if you could do it, I think it would
38:35
SPEAKER_01: offset a lot of what we see now, which is basically right-wing dominance of the broad information space.
38:41
SPEAKER_01: And that's important because I don't think that the people who went from like
38:48
SPEAKER_01: Biden-Trump voters or first-time voters who decided to vote for Trump or whatever
38:54
SPEAKER_01: were confronted with a balanced information environment.
38:59
SPEAKER_01: And even if they don't watch cable news, like –
39:03
SPEAKER_01: Stay on Twitter,
39:05
SPEAKER_01: Facebook,
39:06
SPEAKER_01: TikTok,
39:08
SPEAKER_01: or just scroll through podcasts long enough,
39:10
SPEAKER_01: and you are going to be inundated with right-wing ideas,
39:14
SPEAKER_01: but very few liberals.
39:15
SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's take a break.
39:17
SPEAKER_00: You can pick me apart on the other side.
39:20
SPEAKER_00: Well, I want to deepen our understanding of some of these topics.
39:25
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
39:27
SPEAKER_01: If you want to hear Matt dismantle my argument for a broader,
39:33
SPEAKER_01: bigger,
39:33
SPEAKER_01: better liberal media,
39:34
SPEAKER_01: you can go to politics.fm and upgrade your subscription.