Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Full Episode - Ken Paxton’s Victory Gives Dems An Opportunity In Texas - Tackling Trump’s Rampant Corruption & Pay To Play Politics

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Full Episode - Ken Paxton’s Victory Gives Dems An Opportunity In Texas - Tackling Trump’s Rampant Corruption & Pay To Play Politics · The Chuck ToddCast

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  Speaker 1: podcast at checkout. This is a sponsor I absolutely embrace,
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  Speaker 1: so use that code. Hello there, Happy Wednesday, and welcome
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: to the midweek edition of the Chuck Podcast. It is
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: day after a big primary night. Those of you that
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: watched in the live stream last night, thank you for that.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: You will note would did not have a big late
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: night because it was not let's just say, the outcome
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: not only was not surprising, but it was a blowout.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: I'm going to get to that in a few minutes.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: But i also going to spend a few minutes focused
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: on what the Pope said about AI, because, oh my goodness,
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: this was a lot more about AI. There's about seventeen
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: other headlines in his proclamation about power. It really was
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: about power and the concentration of power, and in many
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: ways was a broadside. You might argue an ideological broadside
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  Speaker 1: against the United States of America. But I think it's
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: important to go through because I think Pope, you know,
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: I've talked about, you know, sort of the sort of
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  Speaker 1: we have. We have a bit of a moral decay, right,
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: particularly in our politics. Right, there's very little morality in
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: our politics, very little ethics in our politics. And I
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: do think a lot of people are seeking moral guidance.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: And while and I've often lamented about where we headed
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: morally and ethically, as we become individually more secular, right
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: we are more people identify with no religious affiliation than
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  Speaker 1: ever before, and it seems to be a growing cohort.
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  Speaker 1: And I think the question is, you know, if we're
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  Speaker 1: not going to get moral and ethical teachings from religious
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: school that many people did for generations, where are we
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: going to get it? And I do think the Pope
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: has not just influence with Catholics, but I think there's
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  Speaker 1: a certain a certain sort of Trump resist set of
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: Trump resistors, if you will, that I do think the
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: Pope speaks to as well. And I don't mean that
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: the Pope is seen as an anti Trump force. But
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: I think the moral I think the Pope has moral
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: authority with a group of people that are with with
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: some parts of this country who are not a religious
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: group of people. But I think look, I think see
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: the Pope of sort of sharing their more sharing a
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  Speaker 1: similar morality and an ethical code. So I think this
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  Speaker 1: is going to have a lot more influence than people realize,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: and I think it's important to go through it with
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: a little more detail than we saw today. And my
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: interview is about where are we going speaking of ethics
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: and morality, what kind of changes are we going to
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: see to the infrastructure of American politics. People don't like
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: this system, you know, in particular campaign finance reform. We
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: seem to have a huge money issue and the money
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: in politics issues becoming more a bigger concern among a
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: growing set of folks left and right in this country.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: So I have the head of Common Cause, Virginia case
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: Solomon on common Cause for me is a group I've
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: always associated with this issue of trying to of trying
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: to bring more transparency and ethics to the financing of campaigns,
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: more attention and perhaps more guardrails, an organization that that basically,
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: you know throughout you know, slightly predates Watergate, but it
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: basically grew out of uh grew out of Watergate, and
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: so I thought it would be a good place to
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: check in. There, got my top five list and some
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  Speaker 1: questions for you. So there's your rundown. So let's get started,
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  Speaker 1: of course with the big news, and that is the
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: Texas Tornado, that is Ken Paxton. Not surprising that Ken
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  Speaker 1: Paxton won, I'll be honest with you, I am shocked
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: that he won by twenty five points. I certainly, you know,
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  Speaker 1: when you look at all of the dynamics. John Cornyn
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  Speaker 1: was out spending Ken Paxton, he seemed to have the
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: better organization, He out pulled him in the first round
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  Speaker 1: of the primary. So you know, while I think ideology
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: ideologically and of course with the last minute Trump endorsement,
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  Speaker 1: Paxton had more advantages twenty five points. So I think
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  Speaker 1: it's a fair question to ask of what are we
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: missing here? What am I I'm looking at it? I
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: want to know what am I missing? What am I
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: not seeing? We had a couple of interesting guests on
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: the live stream, and I really highly encourage you to
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: check out our primary night live streams every Tuesday night, myself, Chris, Eliza,
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: Jeffrey s Kelley. You know, were essentially the official live
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: stream of Decision s HQ, which is the most most
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: reliable and fastest way to get election results anywhere in
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: the United States these days. And one of our guests
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: from Split Ticket are Thomas noted, he said, look, he goes,
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: you know, I really and he was. It was a
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: bit of a it was a I think a fair critique.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: He said, I think a lot of the national observers
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  Speaker 1: don't fully understand how the Texas Republican Party is wired.
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  Speaker 1: That this is a you know that they were insurgents,
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: this is sort of this is this is Trump's base.
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  Speaker 1: But in some ways they're more Maga than MAGA. They're
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: more insurgent than than the Trump insurgency that in any
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  Speaker 1: ways they were, They're the roots of what grew into
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: Trump and MAGA nationally. And you know, the fact is
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  Speaker 1: he's right, and we I think have I think part
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  Speaker 1: of it is Texas hasn't been a competitive state. And
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  Speaker 1: when it's not a competitive state, I know, I don't
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  Speaker 1: spend as much time studying the different different intricacies of it.
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  Speaker 1: The way I do say the dynamics of Florida or
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  Speaker 1: Ohio or Iowa, places that have been swinging states on
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: and off for the last thirty years. And I think
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  Speaker 1: we didn't underfully understand the dynamics of the Texas Republican Party.
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  Speaker 1: And I think it is you know, one thing that
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  Speaker 1: happened at nine pm Eastern time, which is when we
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  Speaker 1: call the race officially, is the Bush wing of the
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  Speaker 1: Republican Party is now officially dead in Texas. It was
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  Speaker 1: on its last legs. It was on a respirator, it
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  Speaker 1: was in hospice care, if you will, whatever horrible metaphor
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: you want to try to use there that I just butchered.
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  Speaker 1: But with Cornin's defeat, that's it. I mean, even then
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  Speaker 1: the Railroad Commission race right and incumbent was ousted for
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  Speaker 1: essentially being you know, too close to foreigners who may
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  Speaker 1: want to buy Texas oil. If you haven't seen both
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: French ads for Railroad Commission, do yourself a favor and
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  Speaker 1: see it. This is this he is speaking. He believed
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  Speaker 1: he was speaking to a majority of Texas Republicans, and
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  Speaker 1: since he's ended up on the winning side, I think
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  Speaker 1: he was right. And it tells you and I think
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  Speaker 1: where that the Texas Republicans put it this way, the
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  Speaker 1: Texas Republican primary electorate, and who Senate Republicans think they
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: are couldn't be too. It's it's is. The difference is
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  Speaker 1: as stark as the difference between red and blue nationally.
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  Speaker 1: And so I say this because I think, you know
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  Speaker 1: it's important for you don't know what you don't know,
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  Speaker 1: and I think we all need to. I certainly think
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  Speaker 1: nationally I needed a better understanding of this dynamic in Texas.
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  Speaker 1: And you know it is win in doubt. Incumbents have
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  Speaker 1: been in trouble in Texas when there's been a matchup
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  Speaker 1: of the establishment versus the insurgent wing. The insurgent wing
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  Speaker 1: is one each time Ken Paxton defeated a Bush. The
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  Speaker 1: last time he got dragged into a runoff and for
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  Speaker 1: attorney General and lost to George P. Bush, Jeb Bush's
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  Speaker 1: oldest son. And now he beat the establishment again, a
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  Speaker 1: man who had raised, by his own estimates, nearly half
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  Speaker 1: a billion dollars for Senate Republicans over the years, and
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  Speaker 1: that wasn't enough. Now. So I say all this in
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: that I think the Trump endorsement was meaningless, right, we're
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: telling you how important it is, and I've been telling you,
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: and it certainly matters. You know, if you don't have it,
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: you're in trouble. But in this case, I don't know
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  Speaker 1: if the Trump endorsement is the difference. I talked to
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  Speaker 1: one very wired Paxton inn sultant who said to me
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: that before the day before Trump and Doors, they had
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  Speaker 1: a pull that came back that showed him up seventeen points.
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  Speaker 1: But they thought that was a little bit of an outlier,
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  Speaker 1: but they had that's where they had the race before
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  Speaker 1: Trump and Doors. So it sort of reinforces this narrative
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  Speaker 1: that you know, the Texas Republican Party, where the where
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  Speaker 1: the party is most animated, is further to the right
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  Speaker 1: than even where the National Republican Party is, And it's
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: certainly further to the right than where John Cornyn and
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  Speaker 1: the Senate Republicans I think are on the national spectrum
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  Speaker 1: of things. So what does that mean for November. Here's
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  Speaker 1: what we do now. Paxton is the least electable person
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  Speaker 1: they could have nominated, but that doesn't mean he's not electable.
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  Speaker 1: This is a case where I think the prediction markets
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  Speaker 1: cal in this instance gives packs it about a fifty
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  Speaker 1: four percent chance tall Rico's the market is trading at
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: about a forty six percent chance. I think that's fair.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: I think that's about right. One thing to keep in
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  Speaker 1: mind on tall Rico's numbers. And John cuvillian made this
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  Speaker 1: note on our live stream on Tuesday night when he said,
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: you know, and I said, we've seen this a lot
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: where you'll see a party's nominee overperform early in polls,
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: you know, And he used the Tim Ryan jd Vance example.
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  Speaker 1: Tim Ryan's sitting at forty five in April. Tim Ryan
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: still sitting in but he leads by seven over jd Vance.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: And he's sitting at forty five in August, but he
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: now leads by two. He's at forty five in October
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: and he now trails by two, right, meaning that the
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: out party, the minority party, is so excited they know
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: who their candidate is and they already know how they're
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: going to vote. The remaining undecided are people that lean
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: in one direction and it's not the direction of the
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: of the party out of power, right, And so that's
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: a question. I have a taller Rico. He's been polling
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: at forty five the whole time. Can he start to
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: pull at do you start to see him polling forty seven,
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  Speaker 1: forty eight, forty nine, or is he sort of stuck
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: at forty five? Do you start to see that as
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: more of a ceiling rather than a sort of durable floor.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: And I think that's the unknown here, which brings me
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: to where I think this race is going to be.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: There's no doubt there is a drift of Texas towards
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: away from where it has been. Right, it has been
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: very slowly. This is not this is not happening with speed, right,
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: Colorado and Virginia when they move, they move fast. Georgia
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: moves slowly until it moved quickly. Texas arguably is where
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  Speaker 1: Georgia was in two thousand and eight, twenty twelve. Squint,
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: You're like, you know those races are they're not blowouts,
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: but you know, is there a ceiling on the Democratic number?
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: And then suddenly there wasn't a ceiling? Now it took
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: what took Republicans in fighting in Georgia. It took a
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: bad set of candidates and a bad set of circumstances.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: But then they did it again in twenty two, and
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: then you're going to say, well, but did they have
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: the bad nominees. Well it's happening again, and you know,
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: well they might have bad nominees. Well okay, but at
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: some point, you know thing, you know, the ground has shifted.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: And I think it's clear something has shifted in Georgia.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: And you know, Georgia is a different state today than
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: it was when Barack Obama did surprisingly well but still
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: lost the state in two thousand and eight. Is that
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: where we are in Texas and we're just waiting for
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: the breakthrough moment? And this is what look what breakthrough
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: moments look like. When a party that hasn't won in
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: a state and a long time finally wins, it always
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: comes with a flawed nominee. Right, Sam brown Back in Kansas, right,
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: or excuse me before after him, it was actually the
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: anti immigrant Attorney General Chris Kobak. Right, That was a
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: that was a helpful boogeyman. But the two of them
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: were helpful boogeyman on that front. You need when when
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: something when something you haven't seen in a long time
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: finally happens. You need a convergence of forces. You need
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: your own overperforming candidate who has an ability to appeal
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: in independence that previous nominees have said party have not, and
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: a very weak general election candidate from the party in
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: power that looks like a more of a caricature of
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: what people don't like the most about the party in power.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: So in that sense, it fits all the ingredients. So
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: what's this race going to be like between Paxton and
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: tall Rico. It's not going to be about Ken Paxton
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: and it's going to be about James Talerico. Now the
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: question is is that good or bad for him? You
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: know the old politics pre Trump said if if it's
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: a referendum, if you're the referendum, you're going to lose. Well,
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: Trump's been the referendum essentially in every election we've had,
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: and about half of them go Trump's way and half
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: of them don't. So you know, I don't want to
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: sit here and say now, I think if there is
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: a pattern with Trump, he's better. He's better running against
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: incumbents than he is defending incumbency. Right. In eighteen he
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: was defending incumbency, and in some ways in twenty and
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: he was terrible at it. Twenty four and in sixteen
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: he was running against incumbency, right, and he was more
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: comfortable at it, and in twenty two he was sort
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: of a It was a mixed mess, right, He was
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: kind of the nominee in exile, but not quite accepted
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: by everybody in the party at that point in time.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: If you recall, there were still more people hoping in
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: the party that Ron DeSantis would be the standard bearer
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: rather than Trump. That didn't shift, if you recalled, until
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: after the twenty twenty two midterms. During twenty twenty two,
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: there was a real tension there. So and if anything,
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: connection to Trump was probably more of a net negative
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: in November of twenty two. It wasn't wasn't as much
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: of a negative as I think Democrats hoped it would be,
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: but it was certainly enough of a net negative to
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: cost them, cost Republicans in places like Arizona and in Pennsylvania,
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: which were two big places. So I do think this
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: is gonna be about Tallerico, and it's going to be
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: about you know, because look the National Republicans, the numbers
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: it's like having It's like what they did for jd Vance.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: Remember Jade Vance when he wins the primary in twenty
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: two with the last minute Trump endorsement after you know,
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: Peter Tele, the you know, the famous Silicon Valley investor,
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: is a huge helper of Jade Vance, and he was
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: really pushing this and they drag him across the finish line.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: And for the longest time, Senate Republicans are like, screw it,
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: Peter tele you know, you fund the race. You know
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: we're going to fund other priorities. And there's a bit
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: of a staring contest. Eventually, the Senate Republicans pooned up
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: because it's a winnable race. As much as they were
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: angry about the way the Vance thing went down, they
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: were upset at each other and all this stuff, the
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: numbers were the numbers, and it was a winnable race.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: And as much as that John Thune doesn't want to
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: serve with Ken Paxton. Tim Scott probably doesn't think much
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: of kN Paxton. It's never going to get better. Tim
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: Cruz probably is not looking forward to having to serve
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: with kN Paxton. The fact of the matter is, if
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: they want to keep their Centerate Republican majority, it's a
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: more winnable race than say, North Carolina. If you're the Republicans,
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: it's a more winnable race perhaps than Georgia it's a
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: more winnable race than Michigan. It's more winnable race maybe
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: even than OHIOA and Ohio. So you're going to throw
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: money at it. The national Democrats don't have to throw
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: money at it. Taller Rico is his own fundraising machine.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: So this is where strategically, Democrats don't have to win
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: the Texas Center seat for it to have a huge
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: impact on the Senate landscape. And that's what makes you know,
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: Paxton's candidacy here such a liability for the party. It's
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: not that he can't win the Senate race. He can
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: win the Senate race. It's that he's not a good
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: fundraiser and they're going to have to spend a gazillion
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: dollars and have to drop the anvil on Tollerco and
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: turn him and essentially try to make this race a
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: referendum in tall Rico. And I don't know whether there's
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: anything more that can be said about Paxton that will work, right.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: We went through this with Trump, and that's the one
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: question mark I have. Is there already? You know? Can
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: you say anything new about Paxton that will grab voters attention?
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: Versus there's still a lot of things people are learning
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: about tall Rico. Some of you may say, what is
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: wrong with our politics? And I would say, have you
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: been watching this is I'm not telling you this is
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: the way it should work. I'm just telling you how
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: it's work and how it's likely to work. So you're
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: going to have this huge amount of money, and it's
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: going to be We're going to find out how talented
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: of a political athlete is James hallercom right. So far
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: in Maine, Graham Platinird's had an anvil dropped on his head,
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: and he's shown himself to be quite nimble. He's you know,
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: I described him on the livestream as sort of it's
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: like he's got those Wonder Woman bracelets and he can
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: just bullets just you know, whatever gets fired at him,
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: whether it's Janet Mills, whether it's seems to bounce off
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: at him. For now, now he's been able. Main's a
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: small state. He's been able to already crisscross the state
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: a few times. It's a lot harder to get to
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: know everybody in a state the size of Texas. You
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: can get it can be hard to shake a caricature.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: It could take a while to shake a caricature. So
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: it's not going to be easy, but we're going to
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: find out. It's going to be a real test of
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: just how talented of a messenger, of a political athlete
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: as tall Rico, because it is it is. It is
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: going to be a nasty race. Is this is? And
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: maybe he plays the you know, this is literally zags
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: while everybody zigs with the negatives, and maybe that helps him.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: But I could see that working in a small state.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: It's much like I said, it's much harder in a
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: state that where you have to get to know people
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: via via mass media. It is hard to go county
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: to county. One question that was raised by John Pouvillian,
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: he goes, I wonder what is what is a shtick's
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: going to be right? And what he meant by it.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: Beto tried to visit every county and that clearly was
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: a smart strategy. He overperformed in a lot of places
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: that Democrats don't normally overperform in. You know, does he
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: do the work days, does he do what does he do?
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: He needs to do something right? That is that it
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: gets him around the state, that makes him you know,
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: that makes it look like con Paxton is hiding right,
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: that sort of thing. What will he do? How will
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: he do it? You know it will be the this
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: will be the magnet Senate race that national reporters spend
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: more time covering, even if it's they're literally six more
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: races that might matter more at the end of the
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: day than this one. But again, I go back to
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: what we saw in Georgia. If the Democrats get a breakthrough,
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: and that's what they haven't had, they haven't won a
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: statewide office in Texas since nineteen ninety four. They now
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: have a very radical candidate that they can run against
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: on the right for railroad commissioner. They've got it. You know,
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: They've got perhaps a governor who's not been this week
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: since Rick Perry two thousand and six. He was, that
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: was a multi candidate race. He was held under forty
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: five if you know that, right, and a week Senate nominee.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: So if Democrats can't break through in this environment with
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: an unpopular Republican president, this is one of those. If
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: they can't break through somewhere statewide in this environment, under
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: these circumstances in Texas, then after this cycle, it would
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: be fair to ask is it worth it? Right? You know,
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: what's it going to take that They got a lot
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: much further to go. But the environment's never been better
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: for Democrats to have a chance to come back, really,
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: not since so two when they had their so called
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: dream ticket of Tony Sanchez, Ron Kirk, and John Sharp
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: running for the top three state wide offices that year
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: Lieutenant governor, US Senate, and governor. It failed spectacularly on
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: that one. This is this is a different environment. This
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: is a now, you know, two thousand and two was
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: a pretty good national environment for a Republican and a
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: Republican president. Twenty twenty six isn't going to be that.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: So what's this all going to look like? Here's what
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: we do now? This is ken Paxton has cost the
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: National Republican Party probably a half a billion dollars. That's
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: got to come from somewhere. Does that mean less support
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: in Georgia, less support North Carolina, less support in New Hampshire,
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: less important Michigan? Right? It could, It could. It could
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: be a lot of campaigns. But if you're you know,
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: we know what they're going to prioritize. I got to
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: prioritize holding their seats. But if North Carolina looks unwinnable
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: in October, they can pull the plug there and throw
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: the resources straight into Texas. That's the only race in
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: an expensive place that I would suspect could be a
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: wide enough margin where the party might pull I can
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: you know, on their worst day, Ohio is still going
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: to a two point race, So you wouldn't leave there.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: You certainly new Hampshire's probably one that that they may
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: end up fading away from because that's one where they
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: need a little national wind at their back and they're
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: not going to have that this year.
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: Uh.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: And then let's I think Michigan is very primary dependent
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: who's the Democratic nominee will determine how seriously Republicans take Michigan.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: But the point is, if Cornant had been the nominee,
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: they'd had a luxury to play in all those races.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: Without Cornan as the nominee. With Paxton now as a nominee,
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: this is a much more expensive problem that they have
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: on their hands, and that will have trickle down effect.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: You know, should should help Democrats in some house races
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: down the ballot, should help them break through somewhere in
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: the state, But the bigger impact is what it has
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: on the national landscape and it it, you know, I
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: think I think one thing is clear, Ken Paxton as
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: the nominee. This morning, Democrats woke up with a better
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: chance at getting the Senate on Wednesday morning than they
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: had when they didn't know Ken Paxton was the Republican
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: nominee for Senate, and that in itself is an important development.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: All right now, I want to move to what got
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: overshadowed in my world because I was focused on the
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: Texas runoff, and I don't want to presume some of
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: you did not pay attention to this, but I wanted
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: to spend a little extra time on this because I
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: do think this pope speaks to more than just Catholics
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: in this country. I think there is a secular left
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: in particular that is longing for some morals and ethics,
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: but maybe doesn't have a lot of faith and organized
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: religion that does that does like what they've seen so
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: far far from this Pope. I could just tell you
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: the bubble I live in, and I mix with a
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: lot of folks from multiple religions. I mean, the pope
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: is is somebody that's being taken seriously by a wide
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: variety of people in my life, and I will tell you,
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: even the most sort of Trump leaning folks in my
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: life all sort of are pro Pope, right, And I
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: think it has to do with that. Hey, it's an
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: American that's there. So there's a little bit of almost
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: like a patriotic rallying around the So my point is
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: is that I think the Pope has I think this Pope,
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: in particular, the first American Pope, is a more formidable
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: influencer in this country. I guess that's the word we
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: all are going to use these days, influencer. I think
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: he's a big influencer. Sorry, Joe Ropen, but I think
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: the Pope slightly bigger. Well, this episode of the Chuck
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  Speaker 1: Quints dot com slash chuck use that code. And I
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: want to go through with what we learned. And I'm
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: not going to pretend I am a Catholic scholar. I
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: am not. My obsession with the Catholic Church is I.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: You know, I long to observe one election. I know
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: I will never be able to observe. I want to
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: see a conclave. I think it's the most interesting form
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: of politics that I've yet to observe. I assume it
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: probably works very similarly to various elections I've observed over
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: the years, whether for party chair, house leadership, or a
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: Iowa caucus or two. So I preface that in my
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: Latin pronunciations may stink magnifica humanity, humanitis. I hope I
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: said it correctly, because that's the essentially the name of
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: this of this document. But here's I think an important
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: place to start. The Pope just declared because this thing
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: was more than just about AI. He also tackled just
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: war theory. And if you recall JD. Vance and the
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: Pope got into a debate about just war theory. Well,
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: this Pope has changed the conversation on the just war.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: This pope just declared that the theory of just war
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: is obsolete. He compared autonomous weapons to slavery, and he
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: did it in a document that was ostensibly about artificial intelligence.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: Most people missed it. That's why I'm obsessed over this. Now, Poplio,
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: as you know as American born, this is the second
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: year of his pontificate, and this document he's writing on
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: the one hundred and thirty fifth anniversary of the document
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: that launched Catholic social teaching. So this isn't just a
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: religious story. This is a power story. So let me
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: try to explain what magnifica humanitis actually is. This is
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: not some niche theological text. The closest secular analog is
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: the equivalent of saying ahead of a political party or
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: a head of state issuing a comprehensive policy framework. Except
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: this one has a billion person audience in the Catholic Church,
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: and there's no electoral constraint. There's no political constraints. Now.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: Realm Novarium, issued in eighteen ninety one by another Popolio,
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: by the way, was the church's response at the time
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: to the Industrial Revolution. Right, what was happening at the time,
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: this perception that the concentration of power and capitalism in
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: the hands of a few. This document in eighteen ninety
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: one was lamenting child labor unsafe conditions, noting the lack
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: of worker protections. The Church said at the time that
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: this is a moral emergency, not just an economic one. Well,
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: in some ways magnifica humanitius humanitius, I am just butchering
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: this right. You didn't come here for my Latin is
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: the same argument one hundred and thirty five years later,
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: and it's aimed at a different concentration of power. The
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: fact is every era produces a new technology that concentrates
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: power every era. The Church eventually responds, the question is,
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: as always, how fast do we make these changes? How
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: fast does this concentration of power happen now? The document
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: makes an interesting, very difficult claim. It says AI is
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: never morally neutral. Every design choice embeds a vision of humanity.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: I think the Pope's right here. When an algorithm decides
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: who gets credit, who gets hired, who gets flagged by
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: law enforcement, that's a moral act. This document argues, the
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: person who built it is morally responsible. The institution that deployed,
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: it is morally responsible. The machine decided in quotes here
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: is not an acceptable answer. So this is where this
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: document is focused. Right, A handful of companies now control
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: the data, the infrastructure, and the computing power that increasingly
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: governs daily life. The document explicitly says this surpasses the
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: power of most governments, and unlike governments, these entities have
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: no small d democratic accountability. And Pope Leo's framing that
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: the same principle that said the industrial capital had to
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: be regulated in eighteen ninety one now requires that technological
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: capital be regulated in twenty twenty six. All of this
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: is important with what he's saying, And I'm guessing many
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: of the things he's saying, whether you're Catholic or not,
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: you're like, yeah, we got to be worried about these things.
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: Then the document goes somewhere most people didn't expect it
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: to go. It goes to war. So the Church has
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: maintained just war theory for roughly sixteen hundred years, traceable
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: to Augusty formalized by Aquinas. The framework is that war
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: could be morally permissible under strict conditions, legitimate authority, just cause,
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: last resort proportionality, protection of civilians. Right, all of those
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: things have to be factored in. And if you're factoring
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: all that in, then the church will say, Okay, that's
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: a just war. Not this Pope. Pope Leo says that
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: the framework is now outdated, not weakened, not in need
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: of revision, just simply outdated. Why, well, this is where
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: AI comes into play. The document argues that just war
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: theory assumed three things that autonomous webs and systems systematically destroy.
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: Just war theory assumed human deliberation. I ees an actual
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: human being has to make the call, proportionality assessment. That
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: means some human being has to weigh civilian cost, identifiable accountability,
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: someone has to answer for the outcome. This document argues
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: that autonomous weapons dissolve all three, that the decision cycle
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: compresses below human reaction time, the enemy becomes a targeting profile,
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: and when something goes wrong, the accountability diffuses into the system.
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: And of course, then the document argues, no algorithm can
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: make war morally acceptable. Look, I know, I've been trying
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: to come up with a better way to explain what
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: should be A bit should scare us that defense that
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: decisions to kill a target are going to be made
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: by an algorithm, by essentially not a human decider, but
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: essentially a calculation. And you're going to take the human
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: response time out of the system, which maybe can be
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: too slow, right, but by taking the human out of it,
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: who is upholding a moral code? Now? Quietly the document
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: also calls into question of nuclear deterrence, calls it an
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: erroneous belief. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons,
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: which has been signed by seventy plus countries, is called
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: an important step, but it's largely symbolic because the major
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: nuclear powers have never signed that document. The implication the
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: moral consensus exists, the political will does not. And then
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: there was a pretty provocative historical argument kind of buried
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: in the document. The Pope does something unusual for a
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: papal document. He apologizes formally explicitly on behalf of the
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: church for its complicity and slavery, not as an aside,
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: but as a structural argument about AI. The Church had
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: the theological resources to condemn slavery from nearly the beginning
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: of its existence. Created in the image of God, infinite dignity,
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: no person to be treated as property. The logic was
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: always there, and yet it took eighteen centuries to formally
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: act on it. Papal bulls in the fourteen hundreds actually
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: legitimized certain forms of enslavement. The formal condemnation did not
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: come until Lee of the Thirteenth in eighteen eighty eight.
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: But this is the parallel that Pope Leo draws here.
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: Autonomous weapons systems reduce human beings to targeting data. They
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: diffuse accountability so completely that no one answers for the outcome.
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: They make violence faster, cheaper, and more impersonal. That he argues,
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: is the same to humanizing logic as slavery, different technology, say.
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: Moral structure is essentially what he's arguing, and the warning
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: embedded in the apology is pretty pointed. We don't get
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: to claim we didn't know. The Church's defense on slavery
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: was partly that moral awareness developed over time. That defense
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: is not available in twenty twenty six. The analysis exists.
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: The warnings are being issued in real time. The question
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: is whether institutions will act before the atrocities by autonomous
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: weapons systems get normalized. He's essentially asking, are we building
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: the moral framework now or are we going to be
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: apologizing for it in a century. Now. The most important
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: thing that the document never says, Leo the fourteenth never
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: names the United States in the document. Now he doesn't
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: have to if you walk through the indictment without the name.
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: The world's largest arms exporter, the United States, home of
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: the dominant AI companies, the United States primary developer of
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: autonomous weapons systems. The United States has not signed the
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: Nuclear Weapons Prohibition Treaty. The United States the military industrial complex,
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: described as a quote defining feature of the current political landscape.
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: Every structual critique in this document, particularly in the war chapter,
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: lands on American policy and American corporations. Written by a
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: pope who was born in Chicago. This is why I
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: think it's so important for us to spend time on this.
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: I would not have spent as much time at this
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: with Pope Francis. But he doesn't just speak English, he
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: speaks American. And this is going to have a bigger
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: impact than just on the Catholic Church. This is a
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: document that constitutes a sustained moral indictment of American military dominance,
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: framed in the language of Catholic social teaching, addressed to
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: a billion people. And so far this has been essentially
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: covered as a tech ethics story about the Pope and Ai.
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: It's so much more than the Pope and Ai. You know,
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: It's interesting. During the Reagan years, the Catholic bishops issued
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: a pastoral letter in nineteen eighty three called the Challenge
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: of Peace, and at the time it created a bunch
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: of friction because it was questioning the idea of nuclear deterrence.
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: That that was a you know, that was that was
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: tiptoeing to where Pope Leo ended up going, and that
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: letter nearly tore apart the American Catholic Church really can
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: divided the United States. This document goes further. So I'm
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: curious to see how is this going to be received now.
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: Pope Francis and Pope Leo have changed the makeup of
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: the American cardinals and what was once more of a
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: conservative bulrick inside the Catholic Church might be less so
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: to this day. But again, I am not going to
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: pretend to be an expert on the politics of the
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: Catholic Church. Now there's a bunch of stuff he doesn't
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: have answers for in this text. For instance, while the
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: document rejects autonomous weapons, it also repeatedly carves out the
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: right to self defense in the strictest sense. Now, what
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: does that mean when your adversary is using autonomous systems? Right?
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: Ukraine doesn't get the luxury of philosophical coherence. Neither does Taiwan.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: The document doesn't address this. Right. It may say it's
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: morally repugnant to use autonomous weapons systems. What are you
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: supposed to do if they're being used against you? What
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: is just in self defense? And while calling nuclear deterrence
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: an erroneous belief is theologically nice, the counter argument is
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: pretty serious. No great power war since nineteen forty five,
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: it's not nothing. We don't know for sure that its
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: conclusion about this is correct, since again, we've had no
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: great power war since we've gone to this mutually assured
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: destruction model. Now, the obviously the biggest issue here is this.
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: You know, there's a call for regulation, and you know
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: that means political will and all of those things. Every
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: single solution that's proposed in here, international frameworks, multilateral governance,
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: diplomatic norms runs into a bunch of institutions that the
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: document itself acknowledgers are failing, namely the United Nations. Right,
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: major powers don't even accept the idea of international law.
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: So the prescription and the diagnosis are completely intentioned. Here.
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: We know who the audience was for this. It was
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: the It was American politicians, because ultimately AI, if the
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: United States doesn't regulate AI, no one else is going
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: to have the power and authority to do it. Europe
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: may try, but they're not going to have the same
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: effectiveness as the United States. So this was this was
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: more about trying to stiffen the backbone of politicians who
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: have said we need you know, the government needs better
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: regulation here of this industry to actually do it. And
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: in some ways he's trying to provide an environment where
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: there is a where a call for a moral code
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: and AI is something that can maybe be above the
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: political fray, but at the same time can engage a
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: larger audience in the need to do this. Bottom line
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: is the document's biggest argument isn't just about AI or weapons.
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: It's about a moral lag, right, the gap between when
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: a civilization acquires a capability and when it develops the
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: ethical framework to govern it. Industrial capitalism, the moral lag
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: was roughly fifty to seventy five years before we got
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: effective labor law. You know, we got rid of child labor,
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: got rid of horrible working conditions. Nuclear weapons is still
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: not resolved. We're eighty years since they started spreading and
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: we don't really we haven't really dealt with it, morally
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: autonomous weapons and AI while the clock has started, right,
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: are we going to? Are we going to provide some
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: moral framework and some guardrails before the worst happens? This
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: pope is essentially arguing that the church failed the slavery
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: test by being too slow. It cannot afford to fail
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: this one by being too slow. Again, That's how he
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: worked the slavery apology into this document. So, whether you're
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: a Catholic or not, whether you find the theological framework
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: compelling or not, it's still a serious historical document, a
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: serious argument from a serious institution that deserves a hearing.
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: And again, you know, it's not necessarily the place many
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: people look to that aren't Catholic. But I think this
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: is a unique pope at a unique moment in time,
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: and I think he has an audience in this country
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: that is larger than just the Catholic population. So I
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: think it's worth taking note. Because this wasn't a religious
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: this wasn't this wasn't a religious edict of any kind.
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: This was something that I think a lot of people believe,
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: and not all of them are Catholic. All right? With that,
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: we'll sneak in a break and when you come back,
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: can we get any morality around campaign finance reform? This
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: episode of the Chuck Toodcast is brought to you by Soul.
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• 48:48
  Speaker 1: code podcast for thirty percent off. And yes, I too,
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: am a customer well as many of you know, trying
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: to figure out how to reforming govern ments, bringing some
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: transparency and focus into maybe codifying norms and dealing with
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: the ethical breakdowns that I feel like politics has been
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: teeming with lately. I wanted to dive into some of
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: the advocacy groups that are out there that have been
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: doing this for a while and trying to figure out,
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: you know, why does it seem to be harder to
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: get elected officials focused on government reform. So joining me
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: now is the tenth president of Common Cause. It's Virginia Solomon, Virginia.
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: It's nice to meet you.
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: It's nice to meet you tochtic, thanks for having me.
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: So I will confess when I think of common Cause,
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: I think of Watergate. And I know that common Cause
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: technically started before Watergate, but in many ways Fred Wertheimer
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: sort of the legendary figure at common Cause, not the founder,
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: but certainly put his stamp on it. And then some
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: over the years in the post Watergate era, common Cause
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: sort of was the was the engine of producing you know,
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: what can we do to make government more transparent, more,
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: you know, a little less captured by special interests. And
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: you know, like any organization, it's had to evolve over
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: the years, and I know that you guys are evolving.
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: And so let me just start before we dive into
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: sort of today. How would you describe common Cause to
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: somebody who's perhaps listening to my podcast twenty six, twenty
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: seven years old, and maybe doesn't you know Watergate is
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: as relevant to them as teapot Dome is to me.
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So we like to describe ourselves as the ones
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: who hold power accountable. We call ourselves the People's Lobby
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: because we recognize that special interests, big corporations, everybody has
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: their interests being represented in Washington except for everyday people
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: who are impacted by a lot of the decisions that
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: are made. And so we're an army of over a
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: million members throughout the country. We're in every congressional district,
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: and these are everyday folks who are joining with us
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: to address issues both locally and in their states as
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: well as federally, and so being able to address corruption
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: because corruption doesn't happen in Washington, that's a misnomer. We
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: see this all over the country. We see it happening
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: in states. In every state house, there are lobbyists. There
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: are people who have undue influence in ways that is
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: so disproportionate to the everyday voter that we feel like
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: this is our mission, this is our purpose to make
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: sure that government is doing what it's doing should be doing,
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: and that we're holding power accountable.
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: I will just say my bias when I think about
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: Common Cause has always been on the issue of campaign
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: finance reform? Yeah, is that is that as much of
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: a focus today as you would argue it was maybe
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: in the early part of the late twentieth and early
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: twenty first century.
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: I think yes. No. I think what we've seen though,
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: is that post Citizens United, there were a lot of
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: people who just kind of threw their hands up and said, well,
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: we can't really do anything about it now.
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: So let's see if we I don't want to put
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: my hands up, but yeah, what do you do? What
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: do you do? I mean, you know, I have certainly
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: stopped believing that there is that limits on campaign finance
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: reform work.
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, and so we have to look at
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: it through I think a twenty first century lens, right,
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: And I think what's happening right now is horrible as
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: it is when we see the amount of corporate influence
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: that's happening, particularly with this administration in Washington. But it's
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: not limited to that, right, Like, let's be very real.
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: Corporations have had influence for a very long time. It's
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: just gotten worse since Citizens United, and so thinking about
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: kind of new and innovative ways to change that. So,
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: for example, the CAP the Center for American Progress they
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: have had this theory for some time. That actually just
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: passed in Hawaii, one of our states that we're working with,
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: where secretaries of state actually get to dictate the rules
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: of corporations who are registered in that state, so being able.
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: So they just little known thing people don't even know.
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: It's actually in the House in Montana right now.
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: Attention in Montana.
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, changing the rules as to whether or not
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: they can make those political contributions. So when you see
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: things like that, this is an innovative solution, not something
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: anybody had thought about, but yet here we are in
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: Hawaii the first one to try it out. Montana will
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: be number two to figure out how do we change
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: the rules.
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: Particulate what the rule is because I think I understand it,
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: which means you have to be incorporated in the state
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: if you want to be able to contribute. Is that
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: what it is?
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: Well, no, no, this actually turns it all upside down.
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: So let's take a state like Delaware. I'll give it
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: because it's not happening in Delaware yet.
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: Well, they've only got more companies registered there than any other,
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: So that's an interesting case to pick, So let's pick it.
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like Delaware has more corporate entities than probably
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: any other state in the country. In order to be
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: incorporated in the state, you go through either the Secretary
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: of State or whatever their process is for becoming an
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: entity in that state. That is where you incorporate. That's
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: where you get all of your irs designation, that is
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: where you get your licenses to operate in that state.
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: But you have to be incorporated in a state within
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: the United States of America. That is where your company exists,
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: and so they can be in all these other places.
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: You'll do your designations to be able to operate in
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: other states, but your home state is where your company,
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: your company is created instead of just going through and
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: thinking about I'm trying to think of the best way
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: to describe this. So you're registering in this state, that
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: they determine all the rules for how you get to
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: operate in that state. Okay, so that's all the rules.
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: Now what they can do is change those rules to say,
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: in order to be incorporated in our state, you can
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: do all these things, but you can't give political donations,
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: or you can't contribute to political campaigns over a certain
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: amount of money, or whatever those rules are that they
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: want to determine. In the case of Hawaii, they said,
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: you're not going to be able to make political donations
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: in order. It's a risk for the state in some
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: ways because there is a fear for some that companies
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: will then go to another state, right, they'll just move.
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: But at the end of the day, the state is
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: actually the one who determines how you get to operate
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: as a corporation in the state that you are registered in.
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: By taking their ability to do that, they can no
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: longer be registered in your state if they're going to
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: be making these contributions.
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: So I get it, I think, but let me be
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: captain skeptic here, and it's it goes to I've always
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: described this about sort of my sort of evolution on
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: this over watching attempts to you know, just McCain find
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: gold is such a great example of how this happened.
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: There's this line in the movie Jurassic Park, and it's
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: the Jeff Goldblum character, and the old man is bragging
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: about how we've made it. These dinosaurs can't mate, don't know,
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: they're all the same gender, there's no way they're going
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: to procreate, And Jeff Goblum says, life finds a way.
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: And the story of campaign money in my lifetime, going
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: back to every rough form that we came up with,
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: money has found a way, right, like you stop it
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: in one place, somebody come find something in the tax
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: code and we go to a you know, first it
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: was five twenty seven's because that was the number in
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: the tax code that they used. Became five oho ones,
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: then five oh three's and five oh four's. Right, it's
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: all these little entities in the tax code that people
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: have now overinterpreted of what you can do with money
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: like that, and you don't have to report it right
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: away and all of this stuff. Yeah, and my fear
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: of the system you've just designed. So company X is fine,
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to incorporate there. I'm going to incorporate
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: somebody else. I'm going to write this check to some
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: entity called Americans for America and Americans for America. The
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: super pac isn't going to report that donation, and they're
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: going to go right back and be able to spend
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: that money in Hawaii. Why am I tell me why
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: I'm being too cynical.
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: If you think you're not being too cynical, I mean,
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: the reality is I think that we have to experiment
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: with as many ways or opportunities to figure out how
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: do we plug some of the holes in the dike,
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: you know, and how? But it does feel at times
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: like we're playing whack a mole.
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: Right, I mean you come up with I mean, look,
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: there is now growing consensus among sort of whatever you
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: want to call people like me. I call myself a
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: political anthropologist these days, but sort of people that are
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: sort of watched this stuff for a living and reported
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: on it that McCain fine Goel had more negative unintended
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: consequences than positive. Right, taking money out of the two
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: parties turned out to hide that big money. Right, There
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: was a time where we knew who was writing the checks.
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: Then when we told the two major parties they couldn't
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: do this, it moved elsewhere. And then it did something
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: else that we weren't fully appreciative of till so we
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: say about the last ten years, which is when parties
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: no longer became the epicenter of money. They also lost
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: the ability to vet candidates and decide who would make
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: a good standing Republican or Democrat and wouldn't right it
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: sort of it took and now some might say, well,
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: that's good. The party shouldn't have that control. And yet
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: there's been arguments that we've had some bad actors end
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: up get elected because political parties had no ability to
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: sort of say, hey, this person's not good for the country.
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: Well, yes, and I mean, I think one of the
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: things that we have to really think about in this
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: moment is that we have to seek solutions and we
• 59:24
  Speaker 2: don't always know what the unintended consequences of those solutions
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: will be. But at the end of the day, in
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: a democracy, if we're saying that we want to be
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: able to have a healthy, thriving democracy, we know that
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: it can't be up to the person who has the
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: most money to determine what the democracy looks like. And
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: so at times I feel like we're trying different solutions.
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: They might not all work, but it's just like ranked
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: choice voting, for example. There are people who say ranked
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: choice voting is like the end all be all. I'm
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: not one of those people. I think rank choice voting
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: is great in certain places, but is it a one
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: size fits all. And so I do think that the
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: more creative that we can be around thinking about or
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: stop to stop thinking about silver bullet solutions to everything.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: You know, I think that's part of the challenge that
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: we have in this country is that we're always looking
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: for a silver bullet, and the reality is it's a
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: whole bunch of different things that we need to do.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: Well, here's the good news on this issue. And this
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: is another reason why I want to do on is
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: that I can't believe how many bipartisan calls I'm hearing
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: now to do something about money and politics, and it's
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: sort of refreshing, right, I'm you know, take my friend
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: the former governor of Ohio, John Kaiseik, who fifteen years
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: ago would have never talked about campaign finance reform. Pat McCrory,
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: the former governor of North Carolina, who fifteen years ago
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: admits would never have thought about campaign finance reform, right,
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: sort of stuck to the talking point of Republicans of
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: that era. No, that isn't necessary in all this stuff,
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: And now they both it takes becoming a victim of dark,
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: big money for people to see the light sometimes. And
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: I say this, you know, look to me, life is
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: about experiences, and if we're if as long as you
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: learn from your experiences, then you're living a good life. Right.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: So I do think there's there's a large agreement now,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: whether it's elected officials or just rank and file on
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: both sides of the aisle, who have identified that money's
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: got too much power right now in politics. So that's
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: step one, right, you can if you've got consensus that
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: you have to do something, then you're there. Has you
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: have you been able to translate this yet? I mean,
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: have you notice this yourself that suddenly hate there are
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: more people from the right side of the aisle suddenly
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: kind of interested in some campaign solutions on this campaign
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: finance front.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: Yes, at the state level. And I will say I'm trying.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: I always try to figure out because I don't like
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: to paint a mon lift of any group. I think
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: it's the Republicans who were kind of in the desert,
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: wandering the desert right now looking for their party.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: It's a little bit of that. And I certainly described
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: two people that probably would not have gotten endorsements or
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: actually did not get endorsements from dear leader.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 2: So yes, So I think that yes, there are people
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: who I think are people who are of good intent,
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: who have different political beliefs than myself, for example, but
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: who also believe in the promise of this country and
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: realize that we're on this runaway train and we have
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: to figure out a way to stop it or at
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: least pull the brakes. And so yes, I have seen that,
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: particularly at the state level. I think the ones that
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: we're not seeing are quite frankly, the people who were
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: standing on the diet is behind President Trump when he was,
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: you know, on election.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I laugh about this. I've noticed
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: people say, oh, big tech is now Republican. I said,
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: big tech is never Democrat or Republican. Big tech was
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: just going to give money whoever was in power. And
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: it was the mistake the left made about their relationship
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: with big tech at the time. And I think they've
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: learned a hard lesson. But I would tell my friends
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: on the right, guess what, the minute you're not in power,
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: they're not gonna be that interested in you either. No.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's it's there's a politics of convenience. Whatever
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: is going to help you and your business, especially when
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: that is what we lived to a great phrase.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: By the way, politics of convenience.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it really.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: Is a terrific phrase.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: And so it's what is convenient for me, What is
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: going to be the lowest threshold for me right now.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: I mean, if you give a few million dollars to
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: help build a ballroom, which may or may not be
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: happening because now the taxpayers may be paying for that,
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: But depending on what you're able to do. It's just
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: this constant quid pro quo because we're running the country
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: as if it's a corporation in this moment. And they're
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: not stupid people. The people who run these companies, they
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: know exactly what they're doing, and it is politics of convenience.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: It is convenient for me to be able to get
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: what to give a little bit of money away to
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: get what I need. They're not stupid. But the problem,
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: I think is that when those corporate interests and those
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: people who are you know, when capitalism has more of
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: a voice in this country than the people who are
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: impacted every day individuals who live here. There's a real
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: problem there. And I think going back to what the
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: solutions are, I mean, if we ever get a Congress
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: again who is actually serious about reform, I think there
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 2: are some great things that could be done. But in
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: the meantime, we're going to have you know, Jamie Raskin
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: just started this anti corruption task force and they're looking
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 2: at what, you know, corruption that's happening both within the
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: administration and even on Capitol Hill. With the stock trading,
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 2: for example, there's been this We've been on a hope
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: and a prayer of getting a stock trading ban for
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: really long time now it still has not happened.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: You know, it's one of those depressing moments because you know,
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: this is an issue, that's what seventy thirty eighty twenty
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: with the public right, it's not even there is no
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: This is one of those where I think eighty percent
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: of republic as eighty percent of Democrats are like, yeah, yeah,
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: members of congresshouldn't be able to trade stocks like this.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: That makes sense to me. It's amazing and why getting
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: the details on paper has been so difficult.
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: And I think part of it is not that there
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: is a lack of will or interest. It is that
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 2: there is a leadership issue. You know, we're non part
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: is an organization, but I like to say we don't
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 2: endorse or support candidates or parties, but we're like the
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: umpire we called balls and strikes, And the reality is
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: that for us, as we see it. This is the
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: most corrupt administration, but it is also an administration that
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: has such strong a thought oritarian tendencies that there is
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 2: a huge fear among people that if you go against
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: this president and his wishes, what will you will? You
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: will lose your job. And so there's also a lack
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 2: of moral courage I think that we're seeing come out
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: of here, or maybe it's just ego for some who think, well,
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 2: if I'm not here to do this, then somebody else
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: won't do a good job, like, you know, as good
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 2: a job as me. But the reality is that people
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: are fearful to even put certain pieces of legislation forward
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: because it will upset the president and that that's a
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 2: scary place to be.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: So let's start with one that I'm an advocate of
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: what I call the NASCAR approach, instant disclosure forced. You know,
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: when I've been thinking about different ideas for to sort
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: of limit money without a constitutional amendment, there are some
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: things that I think are are not easy, right. I mean,
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: we have the judicial We may not like how the
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: judiciary branch is interpreting the First Amendment when it comes
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: to money, and that's a twenty five year it's going
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: to take years in order to get that sort of change.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: So in the meantime, you either fight for a constitutional
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: amendment or there might be a way to do things.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: And so one thought I've always had is if you
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: allowed for unlimited donations, but once you give a certain
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: amount of money, once you take a certain amount of
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: money from somebody, you have to print their name, say
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: their name every time you communicate to the public. You know,
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: instead of the stand by your at it's you know,
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: I'm Chuck Todd, and I approve this message which was
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: paid for by Jeff Bezos, Mark and Dreesen and Mark Zuckerberg,
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: and that it a minute them. Let's say I made
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: the threshold ninety nine thousand dollars nine hundred and ninety nine, right,
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: anything one hundred thousand or more, you'd have to say
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: the name. I promise you Mark Zuckerberg would only hand
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: out checks of ninety nine hundred and ninety nine dollars, right.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: What do you think of ideas like that? I'm sort
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: of being a little exaggeration where you open the door
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: its instant disclosure or an unlimited But if you want
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: to take unlimited you've got to basically talk about your
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: donor the every time you communicate in your campaign.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: You know, it's funny because clob Senator Cloba Sharer has
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: something called the Disclosed Act that she's put forward pretty
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: much every Congress. Yeah, and I actually testified on this
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: a couple of years ago in the committee, and the
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 2: opposition they're basic pushback on this was well, what didn't
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: the commercials have to be really long then if we
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: because they would have to name all of the people.
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 2: And I was thinking to myself, if you're worried about
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: how long a commercial or an ad is going to be,
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 2: like your priorities are completely messed up. But I think
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 2: this is the kind of thing when I was saying,
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: you know too earlier about having innovative solutions, we might
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 2: not be able to get everything that we want. We
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: know DC is slow, we know reform is slow. We
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: also know that constitutional amendments, I mean, how it took
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 2: seventy two years for women to have the right to
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 2: vote for the.
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: Last meaningful amendment we added was lowering the voting age,
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: and that was you know, before I was born, that was.
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 2: In the seventies, and that was actually common Cause who
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: spearheaded that. So I'm just going to plug that from
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: it in addition to sunshine laws. But I will say
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 2: that it's these kinds of solutions that you're talking about
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 2: that it's a level of we have to be more
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: innovative here because while we're trying to move the big pieces,
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 2: we have to think about even in a small way,
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: just like that kind of the disclosure. It gives more
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 2: information to the people. And at the end of the day,
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 2: transparency is a big part of this. If people don't
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: know where it's coming from. And we're not always on
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: the same page as our friends. Look, Anthony Romero from
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 2: ACLU is a good friend of mine and a mentor
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 2: somebody I adore. ACLU is not on the same page
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 2: as we are around disclosure.
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I've noticed that there's this argument, like the counter
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: on disclosure I always hear is, well, you know, some
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: people don't want to advertise their politics. Yeah, I'm like, okay,
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: then don't give money. But I mean, I don't like
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: I don't like that. Doesn't you know if you don't
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: want to advertise your politics, and why are you giving money?
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: You clearly you're you're you're deciding, you know, so you
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: want to anonymously. You know, look, you get to vote
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: just like everybody else, but you want an unfair advantage
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: to finance a campaign. But that's one of the arguments
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: I hear.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's one of I think. But that's the
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 2: bigger issue here. And so I think what we've seen,
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 2: I'm kind of grateful. And this might sound strange when
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 2: it comes to this administration, because what we've seen is
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 2: so egregious, right, what we've seen.
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: Oh, it's an MRI. I'm so glad you said it
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: that way. I believe this. I think fifty years from now,
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: we'll look back and thank and basically say, well, Donald
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: Trump showed us where we had our vulnerabilities. He was
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: an MRI for our vulnerabilities.
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 2: Maybe even a cat scan. I mean, like literally we
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 2: can see inside the intestines. But it's wild, right, And
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 2: so we sit here every day, and I mean, just
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 2: like yesterday with the one point and I have to
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 2: say one point seven seven six billion, Yeah, the symbolism.
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: Before I refuse to do it, it's one point eight.
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: I'm rounding. I'm not giving in that.
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 2: It's seventeen seventy six. The symbolism behind it, which is great.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 2: You know, just wild. But you know what we've seen.
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 2: I think it makes Watergate look quaint.
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: It was as I wrote I wrote on my substack earlier,
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: and this is going to air next week, so I'll say,
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: you know, late late last week, Nixon had enough shame
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: to hide this stuff.
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: No, no, but Donald Trump isn't ashamed. This is exactly
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 2: who he said he was.
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: Going to normalize. He's normalizing it. And my great fear
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: is that he's going to make people think well because
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: Trump basically says this, Yeah, all politics is corrupt. I'm
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: just honest about my corruption. Yeah, basically saying it.
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: Think about It's really interesting because my staff we have
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 2: about one hundred and fifty staff members, and many of
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 2: our staff are younger gen z or you know, young millennials,
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: and you know they're coming in. And it was wild
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 2: for me when we were asking folks in a recent
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: staff meeting, you know, what is your first memory of politics?
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 2: And none of them remember Barack Obama being president or
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 2: George Bush being president. So many of them, you know,
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 2: some one of the young folks, they were in elementary
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 2: school when Donald Trump, or maybe middle school, in high
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 2: school when Donald Trump became president. So their orientation and
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 2: their political awakening that was happening. This is this is
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 2: all they've seen. And for many who came before that
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 2: were like, there was actually a world before this where
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 2: the biggest concern that Republicans had was or the biggest
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 2: job they could could make towards Obama was wearing a
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 2: tan suit. I mean, there's a level of corruption here
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 2: that I don't think any of us have ever seen
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 2: in our lifetimes, and so I think there is going
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 2: to be a backlash at some point.
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: People we all agree with that, right, we just don't
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: know when did we hit the you know, I'm a
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: I'm Churchillian in this respect because Churchill once said the
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: Americans always eventually get it right after they've exhausted every
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: other path, and so we'll figure it out.
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 2: We'll figure it out. But the question is how much
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 2: damage is going to be done as a result. And
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 2: I think one of the things that is both concerning,
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 2: you know, just for us here as the American people,
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 2: but it's what our standing is in the world globally
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: and what this means for us because we see some
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 2: of the people that we have aligned ourselves with, or
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: the countries that we have aligned ourselves with are also
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 2: not necessarily folks who have the best interest of the
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 2: United States at the end. And so you know this
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 2: there we are at this crossroads right now where not
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 2: only is it a moral decision that we need to
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 2: make for our country and whose interests are represented, but
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 2: I think there's also something to be said about our
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: long term global standing, which has been severely damaged.
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: So look, there's a lot that Common Cause could focus
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: on when it came to priorities. And you've talked about
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: some of these things, but you know, this is one
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: of those like how do you eat an elephant? And
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: it is you know, the cliche is one by at
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: a time, but this is this this corruption issue, this
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: this sort of cat scan or MRI that that the
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: president has sort of handed us and we see, oh
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: my god, we've got to update this and this, and
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: you know, it's like find it's like getting your house
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: inspected and finding out, my god, there are termites everywhere.
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: Do I just bulldoze the place or where do I
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: start the repair? So walk me through what is your
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: priority this calendar year, this election season, and then what's
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: your priority for the next two years? And then what
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: are some issues that you'd love to tackle, but you know,
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: you got to do one, two, and three first and
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: then we'll let other groups focus on four and five.
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So on the corruption piece. In the immediate we
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 2: have been trying to stop the bleeding, so to speak,
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 2: and so we've been heavily engaged in litigation. I mean,
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 2: we are filing lawsuits left and right. We just had
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 2: litigation that we filed against Trump and the I R
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 2: S last week. We are we have been in this
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: kind of I refer to it as a rapid response
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 2: phase because what we're seeing is coming so fast, and
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 2: then working at local level reforms. I think one of
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 2: the things that a lot of people forget is that
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 2: when you're able to work at the state level, you're
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 2: building momentum for the federal government. You're building momentum towards
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 2: large scale reform. We're working also with people like Senator
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 2: Warren's office. We're working, you know, both with members of
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 2: the House and the Senate to look at where we
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 2: can again put our fingers in the dike stop some
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 2: of the purge. Are there some immediate things? How are
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 2: we bringing light We're doing a lot of research, a
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: lot of investigative research. We work with partners, and so
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 2: we have great groups like Campaign, Legal Center and Demos
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 2: and there are all these great groups who are doing
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: the work, and then also groups like Protect Democracy, Ian
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 2: Bassing who you know. We just have this amazing group
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 2: of partners who we have created kind of a coalition
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 2: of both thinkers and doers, the thinkers and the practitioners.
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 2: So as we think about what reform looks like, we're
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 2: also putting plans in place to be able to figure
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 2: out how do we test some of these reforms at
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 2: the state level. So that's kind of the immediate The
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 2: other thing is, though, the organizing piece of this, and
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: I think community organizing and anti corruption is not something
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 2: that naturally comes to people's minds. But I will tell
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 2: you we have something called our Million Conversations campaign, and
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: we have a goal to have a million conversations with
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 2: everyday people before the twenty eight election. And we're talking
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 2: to folks all throughout the country, whether you are a
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 2: farmer and rural in the breast.
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: What are these canvassers? What's the idea?
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 2: These are organizers and these are members of our organization
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 2: or I told you we have a million members already.
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: When people go door knocking from Common Cause or going
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: to neighborhoods. What's the we're.
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 2: Having town halls, We're having what we call kitchen table conversations.
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 2: We're asking our members to each have these conversations at
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 2: least twenty five individuals. Forty thousand of our members have
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 2: signed up to have twenty five conversations, to talk and
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 2: to record what are the things that are most pressing,
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 2: what are the solutions that they see that are most necessary.
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 2: What do they want from their elected leaders? And we're
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 2: asking them to talk to other people, and we're getting
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 2: this information back, and we're hearing because pulling, you know,
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 2: is as good as the sample that you have, and
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 2: you're asking these quick questions.
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: Pulling is good for what, it's not good for whys exactly?
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 2: And when we're hearing from and I like that actually,
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 2: and what we're hearing from folks is that there is
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 2: a fatigue that people are feeling, not only because they're
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 2: seeing the amount of information, but people are struggling just
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 2: on an everyday basis. That affordability piece ties to the
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 2: anti corrupt work in a way that I didn't even imagine,
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 2: Because people are saying, I can't afford to pay my bills.
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 2: We don't have enough money for groceries. Farmers are saying,
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 2: we can't buy the fertilizer. But yet, you know, and
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 2: what's going to happen. We're going to have to charge
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 2: more for food later on down the line because it's
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 2: going to cost us more to yield these crops. And
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 2: they're saying, but I see all of this happening, and
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 2: I'm saying, the rich keep getting richer. You know, we
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 2: talk about it as a case shaped economy, but the
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 2: reality is that the people are on the downside of
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 2: that k they are feeling it much differently than the
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 2: people who are on the upsite, and they're angry. And
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 2: so this all does also come back to voting and
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 2: voting ties in because people need to not only be angry,
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 2: but when we bring the conversation to everyday people, and
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 2: I'm talking about people from all walks of life, black, brown,
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 2: Native American communities, rural farmers, people who live in the
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 2: inner city, suburban moms, they're all saying the same thing.
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 2: And people are looking for a sense of agency, a
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 2: sense of something to belong to that isn't one of
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 2: the political parties and by creating a home for them,
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 2: it gives people the opportunity to act. So organizing for
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 2: us is not just about putting policy being you know
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 2: this Washington group who is putting forward ideas to give
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 2: to politicians. No, we're saying to everyday folks, how can
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 2: you be part of the solution. Because John Gardner, our founder,
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 2: that is exactly where he started. We're bringing it back
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 2: to the basics until there's a real movement of everyday
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 2: folks who are demanding this. And I'm not talking about
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 2: marches and rallies. I'm talking about people who are going
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 2: to show up to their town halls, people who are
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 2: going to push their local legislators. That's where I think
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 2: real hardcore organizing comes in, getting people to stand up
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 2: and do something.
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting as you were talking about that,
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: I was thinking about the election in Hungary because I
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: feel like and I want to learn more. I want
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: to keep learning more about about his victory. But it
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: appears to me what you know, Look, there was political
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: opposition to Orbon before they pointed out the corruption, before
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: it was widely known how corrupt things were. What the
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: moment the reason the opposition when this time is it
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: seemed to connect with people's lives, right, they were able
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: to see that what you just described, I'm having trouble.
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: And wait a minute. Government's not only not paying attention,
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: they're actually transacting over here. And you know, while they're
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: making money off of stock trades, I'm paying more for chicken,
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: I'm paying more for gas and this. And you know,
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: I've always said, and it's I'm My greatest fear is
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: if we don't view this corruption as alarming and instead
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: it's just seen as just as just the way business
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: is done. Because look, I'm watching this Jerry meandering business
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: and when you start to one side says we're going
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: to do it, and the other side says, well, we
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: think it's a bad idea, but now we have no
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: choice to do it. Good people will do bad things
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: if they think the incentives are aligned the wrong way.
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: And I worry that if this corruption essentially gets normified,
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: it's sort of where the voters are essentially accept it,
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: right because they don't punish it, that you'll see all
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: parties start to do this.
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 2: But I think we've already gotten to that point, right.
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 2: I think it's just a different approach to it. So
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 2: when when President Trump reached out to Governor Abbott and said,
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 2: you know, we want you to redistrict the state mid
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 2: cycle redistricting, you know, redistricting in the middle is usually
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 2: only done because there's some core order, because a map
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 2: wasn't done like correctly, and the Voting Rights Act was
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 2: the main protection that we had. It's usually because because
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 2: you know, in our Rucial v. Common Cause case that
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 2: was decided by the Supreme Court a few years ago,
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 2: they basically gave a green light on political gerrymandering. Excuse me,
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 2: it was the protections of the Voting Rights Act that
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 2: really prevented it from being completely out of control. And
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 2: we know, particularly in the South, Black people in the
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 2: South are the ones who are going to be most
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 2: harmed by these political gerrymanders. But in California, when Gavin
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 2: Newsom said, hey, you know we're going to do this here,
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 2: we're going to fight back. One of the things that
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 2: we did was we put forth something called fairness Criteria.
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 2: We knew that we weren't going to be able to
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 2: stop this, but at least we were trying to say
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 2: you're not going to crack and pack districts to do
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 2: harm to people of color, specifically black people Native Americans.
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 2: With the recent Calais decision, all bets are off. Basically
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 2: it was the death of the Voting Rights Act in
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 2: many ways, and so this is happening. It's going to happen.
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: And that's my point is that like and there are
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: people who may have good intentions who are going to
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: pursue essentially what are undemocratic ideas. And that's my concern
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: of this sort of there the whole fight fire with
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: fire approach, you know where. Look, if you believe what
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: Texas is doing is disenfranchising voters, the answer isn't to
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: disenfranchised voters in your state, right And I understand that's
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: what you said you were trying to do in California,
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: and I get it. But to me, this is my
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: concern about this corruption that we see pay to play,
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: pay to play becomes an accepted practice. Trust me, it
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: isn't going to stay in one party.
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 2: But the difference was with California and for Virginia recently,
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 2: which also is not happening now, is that there was
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 2: a vote that was brought to the people.
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: Well, so they did at least go to the I
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: will I yes, it's better than not going to the voters.
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 2: It's better than not good to the people. But it's
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 2: all race to the bottom, right, and I think.
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: And there's nobody's going to win that race. There's no winner.
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 2: Supreme Court has not helped either in the sense that
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 2: they have not given any solutions. So first, you're not
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 2: going to determine how much political jerry mandering is too
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 2: much jerry mandering. And then you're basically saying that we're
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 2: living in a post racial society where we don't need
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 2: this protections anymore.
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's kind of well, the problem with jerrymandering,
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: and this is where you know, so I'm I'm I'm
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: one of these weird dorks that believes that they answered
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: all this is actually expanding the house. I think if
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: you if we if we right size the house, founders
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: intent right, they thought the house should grow with the people,
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: and we haven't let the house grown over one hundred
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: basically one hundred years. It makes jerry mandering more effective. Sadly,
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: where if you had more members of Congress, I'm not
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: saying you're not gonna have jerry mandering. And by the way,
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: we all now self sorted, so you could if if
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: your goal is to create competitive districts, you might have
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: to jerrymander in order to create a competitive district these days.
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: So there's all sorts of I think challenges. Is it
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: better to pursue the to zag here instead of fighting
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: over how we should determine maps? Is it possible that
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: we just don't have a big enough Congress to properly
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: represent this three democracy that's three hundred and fifty million people. Oh?
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, I mean you have four hundred and thirty five
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 2: members of the House and you have one hundred people
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 2: in the Senate. I mean, the Senate is a bigger
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 2: issue for me in a lot of ways becausely malapportioned.
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the apportionment issue, and it is a bigger
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 2: issue in the sense that it's you have two senators
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 2: in California and you have two senators from Delaware, for example. Well,
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 2: that's like completely different populations. How is that a fair
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 2: representation of the people?
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: So, I think, and more important, you've also you know,
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: the reason that compromise happened was that the House was
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: supposed to at least be right sized on your population.
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: So California is not only underrepresented in the Senate. California
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: is also underrepresented in the House, I promise you Virginia
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: and Massachusetts, which were the two states that everybody else
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: was worried was going to have too much power at
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: the founding. You know, they had right sized power in
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: the House based on their population. So California is hurt
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: twice here, not just once.
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, And so you know that is another thing
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 2: I need. I mean, at the end of the day,
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 2: you asked me something earlier about what the solutions are,
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 2: and me saying, you know, I'm kind of thankful in
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 2: a way that some of this stuff is happening because
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 2: I think it's going to force us into or hope
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 2: it forces us to think about what this country and
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 2: what democracy should should look like, you know. And what
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 2: I mean by that is we haven't changed that much
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 2: over time. You still have, you know, basically the same rules,
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 2: the same people, and the way that they were operating
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty years ago. You know, two hundred
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 2: years ago, we're coming up on the what is it,
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 2: the semi quincentennial.
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: I had to learn how to how to say I
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: don't know what right two hundred why can't we just
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: say two fifty. It's sort of like, you know, there's
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: certain things we come up with these nobody says these words,
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: except for when we're trying to come up with a
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: word for two fifty.
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 2: But that's okay, right, But at the end of the day,
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 2: you know, we are not the same country we were
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 2: when we were founded, and the way that our system
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 2: of government was applied then is no longer working for us.
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 2: And so my.
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: Fear go to their credit, they gave us tools to
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: update it. It's actually, you know, every historian I've talked to,
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: I said, how what would founders think if they came
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: back today? They like, they wouldn't believe there's only twenty
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: seven amendments. They would they just assumed we would be
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: an active democracy.
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 2: The tools, but not necessarily the will.
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: Well, that's true.
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 2: And and so you can have all the tools. You know,
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 2: you can lead a horse to water, but you can't
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 2: make it drink. Wasn't that the old saying? But a
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 2: lot of this does go back to the money and
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 2: the corruption, and the self serving and the self dealing.
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 2: And I think that there is also a lack of
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 2: a sense of community that has that exists now in Washington.
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 2: I mean, I came to d C twenty five years ago,
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 2: and I'll never forget I was a young woman, you
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 2: know where in Connecticut, Connecticut heart for Connecticut, and so,
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 2: you know, I came and Barbara Kennelly was my representative
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 2: when I when I you know, back in the olden
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 2: days and so but when I first came, I'll never forget.
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 2: I went to my first House Judiciary Committee meeting and
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 2: John Conyers and Henry Hyde were there and they were
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 2: going at it, and I was just, you know, clutching
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 2: my pearls, like, oh, my gosh, they're going out in
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 2: this committee. And then afterwards they said, Okay, come on,
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 2: you're ready to go get a drink. And I'm sitting
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 2: there and I'm thinking to myself, Oh, these guys are
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 2: actually friends. They're able to have compromise behind closed doors.
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 2: And this also happened back in the early twenty tens
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 2: when we were going through when we almost got immigration reform,
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 2: and Eric Canter was up next to be Speaker of
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 2: the House. This is when he got primary down.
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: I lost and they all got spooked.
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 2: And immigration reform did not happen. We came very close,
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 2: but there were relationships. You know, Gutierres and Eric Canter
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 2: were able to have conversations or were able to get
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 2: to something different behind closed doors, and right now they
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 2: don't even speak to each other.
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, the word bipartisan is a bad
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: word to regular voters to these days. In fact, I've
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: been working with some groups that are trying really hard
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: to figure out to create new incentive structures for people
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: to break from their party, but not leave their party. Right,
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: There's plenty of people who would like to had to
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: have their own opinions. They want to stay a Democrat
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: or stay a Republican, but they don't agree with where
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: leadership is going on a specific issue. They'd like to
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: cross the aisle and work there. But if they do it,
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: particularly on one side of the aisle these days, they
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: could lose everything, right, rather than just sort of going, oh, yeah,
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: so and so it's seventy percent with us, but yeah,
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: thirty percent of the time they're over here. But you
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: know what, seventy percent is better than nothing, right, So
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 1: that's why they're a member of our caucus. Right, Whether
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: you know, I could be referring to Joe Mansion or
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: Lisa Murkowski, right, that's not you know, that's that's sort
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: of a real It is really hard. I want to
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: I don't want to violate confidence. But there was a
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: there was an individual member of Congress who broke from
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: their party and they explained what happened when they did it.
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: They got all these text messages from people that they
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: knew very well, or going what are you doing? Why
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: are you giving aid and comfort and all this stuff.
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: And it was like the person said, they had no
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: problem on the issue, moving, you know, going in a
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: different direction. But the peer pressure was rough. Yeah, and
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: it was, and it made it gave me an empathy
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: for some of these elected officials that maybe I was lacking.
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: That there are and you just brought it up. There
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: are individual members who know we've got it, this isn't working,
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: but the incentive structure makes it that speaking out You
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: mentioned it earlier, right, that they're afraid, and that's that's
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: something that I don't know how you reform an incentive structure.
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, it's interesting we all remember this, right
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 2: like if you know, you know the thumbs down moment
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 2: from John Mcking there there aren't we've lost statesmen through
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 2: this process, you know, John McCain was a statesman. He
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 2: cared I think deeply about the country. I didn't agree
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 2: with a lot of his policies. There were policies that
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 2: I did agree with, but he stood behind his values
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 2: and what he thought was right. He voted his conscience.
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 2: And there are very few people left in Congress who
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 2: have the ability to vote their conscience, who have the
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 2: ability to show up in a way. Because of the
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 2: way that the system has changed, it's in all or nothing.
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 2: This is a zero sum game. It's you know, we
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 2: describe people as good versus evil when we talk about
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 2: our country, and so I think, again, going back to
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 2: what needs to change, it's more than legislative policy. There
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 2: is in some way many of many people have become
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 2: morally bankrupt in order to financially benefit and or because
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 2: they their goal is to be a politician. Their entire lives.
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 2: Being a politician and an elected leader used to be
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 2: about service. I don't know that it's about service anymore.
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 2: So I think there's a bigger examination that we have
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 2: to have for ourselves as a country when we think
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 2: about what the expectations of our leaders are, where we
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 2: are creating job descriptions for them, That's why when I
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 2: was talking about these million conversations. We're tired of having
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 2: leaders put forward a platform and we have no input
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 2: into what that should be. We want to be able
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 2: to have the American people actually have a say and
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 2: where they want this country to go. And I think,
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 2: you know, politics are always a dirty business, but at
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 2: this point, it's like we're basement level.
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: You know, one of the issues, and I know you
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: wanted to talk about this, so I want to sort
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: of lead you to it a little bit, which has
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: to do with what's happening and how you campaign in America. Right,
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: it's not just money. But we've now got AI. We
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: certainly there are we don't have rules yet for how
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: AI should be used, which means we are going to
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: see and we're already seeing it, right, like the AI
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: slop with some campaigns that we're already seeing in certain places.
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: And I don't want to single out campaigns right now
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: because then you get down a rabbit hole about a
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: specific campaign. But there's some AI slop out there, and
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: it's and one side is doing more slop at the
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: moment than the other. But I know it's just a
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: matter of everybody. Nobody wants to ever have a disadvantage, right,
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: so we know it's coming, yet we have no rules
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: around this. And I you know, I'm now in my
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: mid fifties and I'll admit, like I'll see stuff and
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: someone will say, well, that's obvious AI, and I'm like,
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: it is, you know, and I'm like, I think my
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: eyes are a little bit older now. I'm worried, Like
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: my kids figure it out. But some of this stuff,
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: and it's like, I don't know what are the you know,
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: what what is it? Is there current laws in the
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: books that you think could govern against the use of aislot, No, this.
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 2: Is the wild West, and that's what makes it so scary.
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 2: You know, there are some social media platforms, for example,
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 2: that self regulate content. So, for example, on TikTok, they
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 2: do require you to say this is an AI generated content,
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 2: and they do a pretty good job of you know,
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 2: whatever issues people might have with TikTok, they're actually probably
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 2: better than most. Meta does not provide those same requirements,
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 2: and so we see an X. I mean, x's forget
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 2: about it.
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: The amount of area really is the wild West? Now?
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: It is XES?
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 2: I mean, I don't even know what to say. About that,
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 2: but the amount of AI generated content, and like you said,
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 2: it's so good. It's not like even you know, three
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 2: years ago, where somebody would put a picture and there
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 2: might be like a sixth finger or something on somebody's hand. No,
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 2: it is so very lifelike and realistic. And the part
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 2: of the challenge I think is that Congress is always
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 2: behind the eight ball when it comes to knowing how
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 2: to I mean, look, we have an age issue in
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 2: Congress as well that ties to this because we have
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 2: people a lot of you know, we have a lot of.
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: Other But in fairness, even if we had a younger Congress.
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: Government does not move fast, no, in general, but the
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: understanding of it and technology is moving so fast. I
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: don't know what the right way to regulate AI because
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 1: the minute you figure it out, it changes on you.
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 2: And that is that in itself lies the issue. But
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 2: again going back to we might not be able to
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 2: regulate everything in this moment, But going back to that
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 2: idea around transparency and disclosure and being required especially with
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 2: political content, that you should there should be something in
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 2: place that requires political content to be labeled as AI
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 2: if it's AI.
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: And like out loud, like it can't be you know
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: how you'll see some prescription drug ads and it will
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 1: if you if you read care for they'll say this
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: the portrayals are actors or they're paid actors or paid endorsers.
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: They don't say it. It is written that if you
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: squint right, or you have a big enough screen TV,
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: you might notice it. Like it. The disclosure's got to
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 1: be this is AI material, like I want it to
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 1: be like louder than the actual commercial itself.
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 2: You know, and and and AI isn't completely harmful. Look,
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 2: we use it every day in our lives. You just
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 2: have to do a simple search, and there's AI assist.
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: That can't avoid it. I know these people. I never
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 1: use AI. Really, you're not on the you're not on
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: the internet like trust me, you're using if you're doing search,
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: you're using AI whether you want to or not.
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 2: But the political content, the deep fake videos which are
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 2: really canning and last election was one of the times
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 2: where I think we saw some of this in twenty
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 2: twenty I mean twenty twenty four in a real way,
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 2: but it was I think the first time where I realized,
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 2: oh this is actually we had to litigate in twenty
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 2: twenty four over some of the deep deep fake content
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 2: because it was so disparaging to people.
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: And so is that problem. I mean, it's funny you
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: bring up litigation. Sometimes civil litigation is the only way
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: we create some of these guardrails, you know, basically, I
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: guess you make a bunch of AI defamation suits.
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's part of the challenge though, is that again,
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 2: going back to this idea of creativity, we're facing things
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 2: nobody has ever faced before. This is stuff that we
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 2: nobody knows what to do with it, and there is
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 2: the will. Like in Europe, there's a lot of regulation
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 2: that happens around AI content, and I think they're probably
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 2: doing better. At least folks in the U European Union
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 2: are doing a better job.
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: If you care about privacy help the EU passes something.
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, But but here we're not even like there is
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 2: even no real attempt at this point, and so civil
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 2: litigation really is the only way to go to bring
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 2: these things in the forefront and then figuring out where
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 2: we can draw legislative solutions or propose legislative solutions. But
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 2: the complexity, I mean, it's like, you know, asking big
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 2: tech to regulate themselves, is I mean, it's not going
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 2: to happen, and so what do we And again there's
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 2: there there was a lot of ethical There was a
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 2: much more of an ethical approach to AI, I think
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 2: just a few years ago and the way that people
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 2: spoke about it. And now it's just a race or
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 2: a competition to see if we can beat China and that.
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 2: And that's really scary because when it's looked at as
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 2: a competition to see who can go further and faster,
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 2: as opposed to what is the impact of the people
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 2: who will be on the recipients of this technology, we've
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 2: found ourselves in a really dire place.
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: Before I let you go, you brought up something. You know,
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: one of the founding successes for Common Cause was the
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: fight for sunshine laws. And I grew up in Florida
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: and we've had sunshine laws, and you know, it's one
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: of these It's ironic to me, the party that now
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: is trying to kill it was the party that actually
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 1: was the one who championed it because they used to
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 1: be in the minority and now they're in the majority.
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: And that happens quite a bit with political parties. You know,
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: they they're pro something until they get power, and they're like, oh,
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: I don't know if I want that anymore. But these
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: sunshine laws have stock and they certainly serve as a
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 1: pretty good check on what is I think kind of
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: a weak legislature in Florida. Ditto in Texas. Right, if
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 1: we didn't have the sunshine laws in Texas, there'd be
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: a lot more things we didn't know. What's the status
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 1: of sunshine laws around the country. Who are some of
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: the better states and where are you worried that there's
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 1: going to be some rollbacks?
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 2: You know, I think, by and large, well Florida. Actually
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 2: it has been a stop gap in Florida, which is
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 2: really interesting, and in states around the country. I think,
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 2: you know, that's a hard question for me to answer
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 2: because I think in the states that have them, and
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 2: which is pretty much every state in the country have
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 2: them to.
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: Very form of them.
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's a varying degrees.
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: But Florida, you go to Florida, like any individual, any citizen, like,
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: it's a little more some states are we're more responsive
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 1: to their sunshine laws is probably a better way to
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 1: put it.
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think there are states like Rhode Island,
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 2: who's doing a great job, and they continue to expand
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 2: sunshine laws. I think that some of the states where
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 2: I am more concerned are states like North Carolina. For example.
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 2: North Carolina is an interesting state.
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 1: Superpower legislative and super weak executive branch exactly.
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 2: And so where you see that there is not parody
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 2: between the or the balance of power doesn't exist, there
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 2: becomes an opportunity. So when you see one of the states,
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 2: North Carolina is also a state that has an elected
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 2: Supreme Court these this is a partisan court. And so
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 2: when you see jerrymandering combined with partisan elected Supreme Court officers,
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 2: and then you see a government that is very much
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 2: jerrymandered or the state is very much cheerymandered, and then
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 2: you see just how the balance of power is off.
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 2: Those are the states where I see the biggest opportunity
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 2: to roll back sunshine laws. And so again, this is
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 2: just really about having a government that is for and
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 2: by the people, and that means having some norms and
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 2: set having balance in place. And when that balance gets off,
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 2: you're a you're in a world of try.
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: Is there can we have a movement to get rid
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 1: of elected judges? You know, Alexander Hamilton in Federalist seventy
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: eight when he was making his case for judiciary, was
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: making the case you know, he doesn't. He makes the
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: case against the election of Supreme Court judges and saying
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: electing judges is you know, you got to have He's
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 1: basically making the case for umpires and is least part
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 1: at least factional. I think he calls it factions. Back
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 1: then we didn't have parties yet that they're not going
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: to favor one faction or the other. Or you try
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: to find as neutral of an arbiter as you can find.
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: So the reason I always like to ground this argument
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: in the Federalist papers is because anybody wants to play
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: originalism with me or any of that stuff, it's like
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 1: this was founder's intent. Yeah, And ultimately, you know, and
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 1: I do not understand these states that elect Supreme Court justices.
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: And it's just I don't, you know, it's it's really
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: seems so corruptible. You know, I'm not saying everything like
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: that Supreme Court justice is corrupt, but it's a corrupt.
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: It's a more corruptible process than doing it through appointments now,
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: because some would argue, well, you know, an executive is
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 1: biased and this is you know, you can still have
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: these things. It's like, yeah, but the judge to actually
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 1: take the money themselves right to know that they need donors.
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: You know, that's going to show up in their courtroom.
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: You know. It just it's it's inevitable.
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 2: It is inevitable. And I think you're absolutely right. I mean,
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 2: and look at the most recent Supreme Court case in
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 2: North Carolina with Alison Riggs. I mean, it was millions
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 2: and millions and millions of dollars the most expensive court
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 2: race because it wasn't just about the race itself, which
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 2: she won, it's that it was contested and so there
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 2: were just a ridiculous amount of money for it to
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 2: take months and months and months to say, oh, actually
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 2: she she did win. And so what happens is when
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 2: you have Supreme Court justices who have to spend more
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 2: of their time, a big large chunk of their time
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 2: fundraising prior to an election, the business of the people
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 2: is not happening. But again it comes into this, there's this.
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 1: Somebody you take a donation, you've potentially compromised yourself well.
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 2: Exactly, and then you have to step back and say, well,
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 2: I mean, and this is if people.
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: Step back in you right, and that everybody does it right?
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 2: Not everybody is going to do that, and so it
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 2: is Look, I would love to leave with some hope
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 2: and what I.
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 1: Was going to get. Don't worry, I was actually going
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: to do that give And so you're right, I'm look
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: because you know, it's like a you know, I joke.
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: I got a lot of you know, every day is
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: festivus on the Check podcast with our politics right now,
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: I got a lot of problems with you people. But look,
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 1: what if you don't have optimism, you're not going to
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 1: get out of bed, right, So what what what gives
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: you hope? I mean, I like to call myself short
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 1: term pessimistic, but long term optimistic. So tell me why
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: you're optimistic.
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 2: I'm optimistic because the people in this country aren't stupid.
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 2: For as much much as we see people trying, even
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 2: the people who are pushing back against what we see
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 2: right now, they are as much of a patriot as
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 2: the person who stands outside every day waving a flag.
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 2: People love this country, and people want to be able
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 2: to live in a country that loves them back. And
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 2: I think sometimes that means standing up and pushing back
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 2: and we've been in this place before. We went through
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 2: McCarthyism in the nineteen fifties, during the same time where
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 2: Jim Crow was happening, during the same time in the
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 2: nineteen sixties where we saw the women's rights movement happening.
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 2: So many things that happened, and on the edge of that,
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 2: after that that when that next chapter was written, it
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 2: was always so much better, whether it was the Great
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 2: Depression and then seeing the big New Deal that came
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 2: out of it, the great New Deal that came afterwards
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 2: after the World War Two, and we saw, you know,
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 2: a very prosperous nation. This is a dark time for
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 2: our country, but we will get through it, and we
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 2: will be able to be better as a result. And
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 2: it's going to be the American people everyday, folks who
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 2: aren't connected to the wealthy and the powerful, standing up
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 2: and taking back their country and using their vote and
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 2: their voice. Who we're going to do it.
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 1: Well, Look, a group like Common Cause has to have
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 1: some idealism in it, or we're not going to get
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 1: compromise solutions. Center effective is what I always say. You
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: sort of have to aim for the aim for the
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 1: perfect in order to get people to sit down and
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 1: make things a little bit better.
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 2: I couldn't have been doing this work for the past
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 2: thirty years if I, you know, wasn't hopefully optimistic all
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 2: the time. And the reality is that we're it's rough
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 2: right now, but we're going to be okay. But everybody
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 2: has to do their part. Being a citizen in this
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 2: country means you have to It's more than just go
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 2: into the ballot box. It's actually showing up at the
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 2: local level and then doing everything you can to help
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 2: your fellow neighbor while we're fighting this fight.
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 1: It's well said, Look, we all need to realize that
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: citizenship is active, right absolutely, like what you see. Get
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 1: up off your took us anyway, Virginia, this was a pleasure.
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Chuck, really appreciate you having.
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 1: Great to know what's going on there at Common Cause. Well,
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 1: i'd love to hear your reaction to my conversation with
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 1: the head of Common Cause there, Virginia K. Solomon, and
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 1: what you'd like to see them pursue. What reforms seem
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 1: you know, it's funny with reforms. There are reforms that
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 1: are good for the democracy. Does it matter left or right?
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 1: There are reforms that are good for the Republican Party
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 1: but less so for the Democrats and vice versa. Ultimately,
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 1: the north star should be what's good for the small
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 1: D democracy, what gives more voice? You know, I try
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 1: to weigh down on the side of more democracy, not less.
• 1:49:59
  Speaker 1: If you're t to limit democracy in some way, yeah,
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 1: I think you're on the wrong side of this. So
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 1: I'd love to hear thoughts from you on sort of
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: reforms that really do would increase democracy and try to
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 1: take try to take your own partisan hat off, because
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 1: I think a lot of reforms are done through the
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 1: prism of what would make it better for my quote
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: unquote side versus the north star being what makes for
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 1: better small D democracy. And with that, let's move to
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 1: my top five list, Top top five top So look,
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 1: it's a little twenty twenty six and a little twenty
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: twenty eight. And here's the theme this week. And I've
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 1: been playing with these themes, but this is the one
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 1: this week. These are the top five candidates potential candidates
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 1: for president who's twenty twenty six performance is necessary to
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 1: make them viable in twenty twenty eight, meaning, you know,
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 1: obviously a loss or falling on their face or eking
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 1: out an ugly win, you know. And this isn't just
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 1: people who are on the ballot in twenty twenty six.
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 1: Is there's four or five candidates that are going to
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 1: be on the ballot in twenty twenty six who are
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 1: already know are more focused on running for president perhaps
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 1: in twenty twenty eight. Alexandrio Cosio Cortez certainly seems more
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 1: focused on twenty eight than her reelection in twenty six.
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 1: I think she feels comfortable in her reelection. She's got
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 1: to run for center, She's gon to run for president.
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 1: Wes Moore, JB. Pritzker, Jos Shapiro are all on the
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 1: ballot in twenty twenty six, but none of them face
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 1: a very difficult reelection challenge, and so they're all in
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 1: some ways, you know, want to flex their muscles in
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty six in order to maybe make a case
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 1: to donors. But the list that I'm trying to create
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 1: here is a distinction. It's people who if they if
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 1: they win. Not all of these candidates may win in
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty six. But the theory, and this goes to
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 1: my substack this week, which you'll also be able to
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 1: read on news fair, which is, you know, the Democrats
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 1: have a tendency of always looking for new and fresh. Right, Kennedy, Carter, Clinton,
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 1: and Obama all had one thing in common. The first
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 1: time they ever ran for president was the was when
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 1: they won. Right. Joe Biden is the loan exception in
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 1: the modern era, if you will, of a Democratic, successful
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 1: Democrat getting elected president having already run multiple times for
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 1: the presidency. So the Democrats have always tended to look
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 1: for the new, the fresh. And that's before we had
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 1: a media ecosystem that even biased towards the new and
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 1: the fresh, and the viral even more so. So, it's
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 1: the likelihood that we are going to see somebody whose
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 1: name is not on most polling lists at the moment
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 1: as a viable, at least co front runner for a
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 1: while enormous. I mean, look just even years when when
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 1: the Democrats went conventional and went with a with a
• 1:53:07
  Speaker 1: legacy resume, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Walter Mondale, there there
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 1: were insurgents that sort of came out of nowhere to
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 1: become legitimate frontrunners. Howard Dean Paul's songis Pete Bootage to
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 1: name a few, Gary Hart, to name a few who
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 1: were all sort of one percenters when they first started
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 1: running and then captured lightning in a bottle seemingly out
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 1: of nowhere, And so to me that's something Look and
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 1: even look six twenty eighteen created Beto O'Rourke. Without his
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 1: close loss, he doesn't be treated as a viable presidential candidate.
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 1: So with that said, here are my five UH and
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 1: I'm going to go from five to one where performance
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 1: UH this year could catapult them into becoming serious candidates
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 1: for twenty twenty eight. Number five on my list is
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: Amy Acton. She is the Democratic nominee for governor in Ohio.
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 1: She is incredibly competitive with Republican Vivik Ramaswami. I think
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 1: he is uniquely weak in this campaign. It is a
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 1: tough year in general to defend Trump policies. He's even
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 1: though running in a state race, having to defend more
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 1: Trump policies. He's running less as the heir to Mike
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 1: the Wine and more as sort of the first governor
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 1: from the Trump wing of the Republican Party. So I
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 1: think that both is helpful in theory to Ramaswami to
• 1:54:46
  Speaker 1: be a change candidate. But on the other hand, it
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 1: means he has to carry some of the national baggage.
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 1: His fingerprints on Doze is not necessarily a net positive.
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 1: His fingerprints on cutting the size of government, and he's
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 1: put some unium things about cutting state funding and consolidating
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 1: state universities which are very parochial in every and did
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 1: not go over well with voters across the board. So,
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 1: you know, Amy Acton, who was essentially became prominent during
• 1:55:19
  Speaker 1: COVID due to Mike the Wine, had an unusual trajectory
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 1: to becoming suddenly the potentially the leading Democrat in the
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 1: state of Ohio, because if she wins, or you're the governor,
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: you're the leader, you run the party, you're in charge,
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 1: and Ohio pulls this off, and Acting pulls this off.
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 1: Trust me, she's on the and she's coming in every
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 1: short list. But it probably will also change how changed
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 1: the comfort level, right, because you see national Democrats are
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 1: still afraid of talking about science and defending some of
• 1:55:53
  Speaker 1: the some of the things off of COVID. A successful
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 1: Acting came I think would certainly I think change change
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 1: that perception a little bit. And again this is one
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 1: of those a victory suddenly resets the board, right, you know,
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 1: she pulls off a win in Ohio. That's not any
• 1:56:20
  Speaker 1: It's not in any ordinary state, right. That's why number
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 1: four on my list after Acting is Rob sand of Iowa.
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 1: I think I told you earlier about and I've had
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 1: him in a previous list of sort of candidates that
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 1: I think are flying under the radar that could end
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 1: up being viable twenty twenty eight candidates. Now, I think
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 1: he is going to quickly shut this down, and my
• 1:56:43
  Speaker 1: guess is Acted would too. But knowing I know Sand
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 1: a little bit, I know him both a little bit,
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 1: but I think he is he would shut that down
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 1: pretty quick. He's pretty young, and I think he thinks
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 1: he would have plenty of time if that ambition even
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 1: enters his mind, and I don't know for sure that
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 1: it is. I think one of the mistakes many people
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: make is presuming just because someone runs for governor means
• 1:57:02
  Speaker 1: they want to run for president. Not everybody wants to
• 1:57:04
  Speaker 1: do that, So I would imagine he shuts it down
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 1: pretty quick. But the way he's running his race is
• 1:57:12
  Speaker 1: one that many Democrats would like to see replicated. He
• 1:57:15
  Speaker 1: is really trying to run a very patriotic race. He
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 1: opens his rallies with America the beautiful. It's a fascinating again.
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 1: You think, oh, roll your eyes, it's corny, blah blah blah.
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 1: It works. It works. Now. Maybe it's a place, you know,
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 1: something that's going to work better in the Midwest that
• 1:57:30
  Speaker 1: it's going to work on the coasts. Maybe it doesn't
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 1: work in Hollywood donor rooms, but who knows, maybe this
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 1: stuff would actually start working in Hollywood donor rooms because
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 1: they want to feel a little more patriotic themselves. So
• 1:57:41
  Speaker 1: he is number four on my list. Number three on
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 1: the list is Grand Platner. Look, I am simultaneously both
• 1:57:51
  Speaker 1: a skeptic of Platner's candidacy in twenty twenty six and
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 1: somebody who understands why he has traction and why there
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 1: are so many rallying around him at the same time.
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 1: You know, I superficially, I do think the main race
• 1:58:06
  Speaker 1: looks an awful lot like twenty sixteen for president, with
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 1: Susan Collins and Hillary Clinton in one corner and Graham
• 1:58:12
  Speaker 1: Plattner and Donald Trump and another, and watching based Democratic
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 1: voters do rhetorical gymnastics to rationalize supporting Platner despite some
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 1: of some of the tattoos and the rants on Reddit
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 1: and things like that, very similar to what we saw
• 1:58:27
  Speaker 1: with Republicans and particularly evangelicals doing rhetorical gymnastics to try
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 1: to rationalize supporting Donald Trump once he became the nominee.
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 1: So there are no doubt I've enjoyed some of some
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 1: of that, some of those similarities there to to sort of,
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 1: and it's a reminder that both parties will mirror each
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 1: other when push comes to shove. But Plattner has been
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 1: a has been an impressive candidate. He's been hard to
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 1: I mean, they've the kitchen sink's been thrown, it's been
• 1:58:59
  Speaker 1: hard to rattle the guy. He seems almost above the
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 1: fray and how he goes about it. He's got this
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 1: ad hitting the Boston Red Sox about sat on private
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 1: equity and private equity is destroying everything. I oh, by
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 1: the way, it's even killing the Boston Red Sox. Now,
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 1: if you really wanted to get nitpicky with him on that,
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 1: it'd be like, well, private equity was good for the
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 1: Red Sox until it wasn't right, But because the same
• 1:59:23
  Speaker 1: owners did did get a bunch of world series for
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 1: them this century. So it's been a but once they've
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 1: I think what you learn about private equity, and the
• 1:59:33
  Speaker 1: better head is once they've gotten what they've wanted out
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 1: of their investment, they don't care anymore and they walk away.
• 1:59:38
  Speaker 1: And that's I think a lot of Red Sox fans
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 1: feel that way about John Henry and the money people
• 1:59:44
  Speaker 1: behind the Red Sox these days. But that's the thing, right,
• 1:59:48
  Speaker 1: it was a smart little hit, It went viral, it
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 1: went the right way. The Red Sox overreacted pulled his ad,
• 1:59:53
  Speaker 1: which only gave it more traction because Red Sox fans
• 1:59:56
  Speaker 1: are really pissed right now at the ownership, so it
• 1:59:59
  Speaker 1: only gave even more attention. But the point is is that, look,
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 1: this guy seems to get the modern media ecosystem in
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 1: a way that that many don't, and that could give
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 1: him a leg up. And and I you know, if
• 2:00:13
  Speaker 1: he if he has a big win over Collins, and
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 1: no outcome would shocked me in May. If he won
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 1: by double digits, it wouldn't shock me. And if he
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 1: lost by three points, it wouldn't shock me. I'd be
• 2:00:22
  Speaker 1: shocked if he lost by a lot. That that's the
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 1: one shocking result I'd have out there. But a big win,
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 1: and I think I mean, look, Fetterman for president became
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 1: a thing until it didn't, right until he sided with
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 1: the Republicans one two, one too many times. But go
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 1: look at at his before he sort of started citing,
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 1: you know, before the essentially before October seventh, when Israel
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 1: wasn't front and center in the conversation and wasn't front
• 2:00:53
  Speaker 1: and center in Fetterman's In sort of the list of
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 1: issues that Fetterman breaks with his party on, there were
• 2:01:00
  Speaker 1: a lot of people talking about, Hey, the Democrats ought
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 1: to be thinking differently, and maybe John Fetterman is that guy. Help.
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 1: He was my first guest on this podcast, and I
• 2:01:08
  Speaker 1: was openly wondering, are you running for something in twenty
• 2:01:11
  Speaker 1: eight and then, like I said, everything seemed to change
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 1: a little bit on that one issue. But so Platner
• 2:01:19
  Speaker 1: at number three, number two, Number two on this list
• 2:01:27
  Speaker 1: is James Tallerico, and I've floated him before. Tell Rico
• 2:01:31
  Speaker 1: feels like Pete Boodagic right, feels like Paul Songis, feels
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 1: like Howard Dean, somebody that came out and seemingly came
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 1: out of nowhere gaining some traction, sort of saying what
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 1: other candidates wouldn't say. Obviously, a big win in Texas
• 2:01:49
  Speaker 1: gives him some cachet. He's already running on national issues,
• 2:01:55
  Speaker 1: it's a little bit easier to immediately. I think the
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 1: hard thing for an act than or a sand is
• 2:02:01
  Speaker 1: it's tough to quickly move from winning a first term
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 1: as governor and trying to run a national campaign Senate.
• 2:02:09
  Speaker 1: It's all the same thing. So in that sense, it
• 2:02:11
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be a huge a huge difference or distinction. And
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 1: you know, we already saw a failed Democratic Senate candidate
• 2:02:20
  Speaker 1: from Texas parlay a close result into a viable presidential
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 1: campaign for a period of time. Why not tall Rico?
• 2:02:28
  Speaker 1: And he certainly has people around him that certainly would
• 2:02:31
  Speaker 1: like to see some national ambitions. I'm also drinking a
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 1: little bit of the skeptical kool aid on taller Rico.
• 2:02:42
  Speaker 1: You know, I think Paxton is just beatable by pretty
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 1: much any mainstream Democrat. My only concern on taller Rico
• 2:02:50
  Speaker 1: is I don't know how well the religious stuff plays.
• 2:02:52
  Speaker 1: I don't know, if you know, I think he is
• 2:02:56
  Speaker 1: what a religious person is that the left may envision
• 2:02:59
  Speaker 1: who's not very who might be a pretty secular person.
• 2:03:02
  Speaker 1: So that's why I'm not is convinced he plays as
• 2:03:04
  Speaker 1: well in religious communities as some secular people think he might.
• 2:03:11
  Speaker 1: And I think that is still that is something. Let's
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 1: see what he looks like after, because the one thing
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 1: we do know is in order to hold the Senen, See,
• 2:03:22
  Speaker 1: you're not going to see a lot of money spent
• 2:03:24
  Speaker 1: on Paxton, You're going to see money spent against taller Rico.
• 2:03:28
  Speaker 1: So what does tall Rico's image look like at the
• 2:03:32
  Speaker 1: end of this campaign? He holds up, well, that could
• 2:03:36
  Speaker 1: be interesting. But number one on my list is somebody
• 2:03:40
  Speaker 1: who I think is the most likely of my list
• 2:03:42
  Speaker 1: here five to run and most likely to I think
• 2:03:46
  Speaker 1: potentially be in a top tier candidate. And I think
• 2:03:49
  Speaker 1: that winning re election automatically puts them in the list.
• 2:03:55
  Speaker 1: And I think assuming another person from Georgia decides not
• 2:03:59
  Speaker 1: to run, Raphael or not, that suddenly John Ossoff becomes
• 2:04:03
  Speaker 1: a real player, because you know, here's a guy who
• 2:04:07
  Speaker 1: is a swing you know, getting reelected and is the
• 2:04:10
  Speaker 1: swinging as to swing states. Without he doesn't come across
• 2:04:15
  Speaker 1: as a guy who tries to apologize for being a
• 2:04:18
  Speaker 1: Democrat representing a swing state. You know, sometimes and it's
• 2:04:24
  Speaker 1: not just you get it on the Republican side of
• 2:04:26
  Speaker 1: the outsoud. Sometimes when you when you're a you represent
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 1: a swing state, that kind of politician will will come
• 2:04:32
  Speaker 1: across as almost they're apologizing for their base. They're apologizing
• 2:04:36
  Speaker 1: for the stereotype that the party is. You know, I'm
• 2:04:38
  Speaker 1: not one of those type of Republicans or I'm not
• 2:04:40
  Speaker 1: one of those type of Democrats. Will be a constant
• 2:04:43
  Speaker 1: refrain you'd hear from a from a politician like that,
• 2:04:49
  Speaker 1: and Osoff has a way, so he doesn't. Here's a
• 2:04:52
  Speaker 1: guy who is got friendly relations with business and friendly
• 2:04:56
  Speaker 1: relations with progressives. I think he leans slightly more to
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 1: the left then maybe you'd think was necessary to hold
• 2:05:06
  Speaker 1: a Senate seat in Georgia. But he's he works hard,
• 2:05:11
  Speaker 1: he communicates well, He you know, is clear. When he
• 2:05:18
  Speaker 1: thinks he may have disagree with this state on an issue,
• 2:05:22
  Speaker 1: he's pretty clear about it. So I think he's got
• 2:05:28
  Speaker 1: you know, if the biggest knock on him is he
• 2:05:32
  Speaker 1: says he looked, you know, does he look too young
• 2:05:34
  Speaker 1: to run for president? I don't think youth's going to
• 2:05:37
  Speaker 1: be a negative in twenty twenty eight, considering how the
• 2:05:41
  Speaker 1: Olds have done running this country or the last couple
• 2:05:44
  Speaker 1: of cycles. So you know, that would have been something
• 2:05:48
  Speaker 1: that maybe in the in the pre Trump era, I
• 2:05:50
  Speaker 1: would have said more seasoning, does he look too young,
• 2:05:54
  Speaker 1: does he look like he's ready, et cetera, et cetera.
• 2:05:57
  Speaker 1: I don't think any of that days, and I really do.
• 2:06:02
  Speaker 1: And Asov's the guy who came up with Epstein class,
• 2:06:05
  Speaker 1: I think Epstein class is the most brilliant phrase to
• 2:06:08
  Speaker 1: use in this campaign season because you don't have to
• 2:06:11
  Speaker 1: explain it. People here hear it immediately right now. They
• 2:06:16
  Speaker 1: may have their own definition. Some may emphasize more about elites.
• 2:06:20
  Speaker 1: Some in their head may say, oh, rich, people want
• 2:06:23
  Speaker 1: their own set of rules. Some may be directly about
• 2:06:26
  Speaker 1: the sex trafficking. But either way, you get the words
• 2:06:30
  Speaker 1: class in there in Epstein, and it's so much is
• 2:06:33
  Speaker 1: said with so few words. And I'm not saying he
• 2:06:37
  Speaker 1: invented it, but he has popularized it better than most
• 2:06:45
  Speaker 1: of all. So he's to me number one and one,
• 2:06:50
  Speaker 1: it's time to start putting him on the lists. Everybody
• 2:06:54
  Speaker 1: else here is a bit more speculative in my book,
• 2:06:57
  Speaker 1: not also, I think I think this is this is
• 2:07:03
  Speaker 1: you know, he's looked, he's got isn't going to be
• 2:07:06
  Speaker 1: easy but if he does win, I think it's more
• 2:07:12
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• 2:08:10
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  Speaker 1: let's sneak in a little ass, Chuck. I think we're
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  Speaker 1: going to try to do We'll see. We'll try to
• 2:09:15
  Speaker 1: do five questions today. Max W from Alexandria notes, Hey,
• 2:09:20
  Speaker 1: you've refer to the proposed weaponization funds one point eight billion,
• 2:09:23
  Speaker 1: though the actual figure is one point seven to seven
• 2:09:25
  Speaker 1: six billion, seemingly a nod to the nation's founding. Is
• 2:09:28
  Speaker 1: there a reason for rounding it up? Is it to
• 2:09:29
  Speaker 1: avoid reinforcing that symbolism or simply not worth highlighting? As
• 2:09:33
  Speaker 1: you say, as you used to say, what say you,
• 2:09:35
  Speaker 1: I'll hang up and listen. Lets you say, yeah, I'm
• 2:09:39
  Speaker 1: not you know, I think it's as ridiculous symbolism and
• 2:09:45
  Speaker 1: I'm not interested in reinforcing it. It's, i mean, about
• 2:09:49
  Speaker 1: as dumb as it comes. And it's really vile that
• 2:09:54
  Speaker 1: this is this January sixth what fund to help the
• 2:10:01
  Speaker 1: January sixth rioterers to somehow equate them with the revolutionaries
• 2:10:09
  Speaker 1: of seventeen seventy six. I guess it tells you something
• 2:10:12
  Speaker 1: about him, so you know, a reference is necessary, but
• 2:10:17
  Speaker 1: I'm not reinforcing it. I think it's you know, it's
• 2:10:20
  Speaker 1: one of those issues you don't have to repeat the
• 2:10:24
  Speaker 1: propaganda if you think the propaganda is utter bullshit, right,
• 2:10:29
  Speaker 1: So it is what it is. It's a slush fund.
• 2:10:33
  Speaker 1: It's I'm pretty sure it's unconstitutional. I see how they're
• 2:10:37
  Speaker 1: trying to make it legal, but yeah, that's exactly it.
• 2:10:42
  Speaker 1: I am not interested in spending any time explaining it.
• 2:10:50
  Speaker 1: It's obvious they're trying to create propaganda, and I can
• 2:10:55
  Speaker 1: cover the story without repeating the revolutionary propag Ken Writ's
• 2:11:02
  Speaker 1: longtime listener and fantasy has I actually met you in
• 2:11:03
  Speaker 1: New Hampshire during the twenty sixteen primaries while covering the
• 2:11:06
  Speaker 1: race for a radio show in Maine. Here here, there's
• 2:11:10
  Speaker 1: nothing like covering a campaign in New Hampshire. There's a
• 2:11:14
  Speaker 1: nice central location Manchester. That boy, what is it now?
• 2:11:19
  Speaker 1: It's been a ramata, it's been a ratison, it's been
• 2:11:22
  Speaker 1: a holiday inn, it's been all sorts of things. But
• 2:11:25
  Speaker 1: it's right there at the center of town. Radio Row
• 2:11:28
  Speaker 1: has been there. I feel like I know that hotel
• 2:11:30
  Speaker 1: about as well as any hotel in the country. Right anyway,
• 2:11:35
  Speaker 1: I've spent decades around politics and now hosts a podcast
• 2:11:37
  Speaker 1: of my own. Here here. My question, I a Greek
• 2:11:39
  Speaker 1: character should matter most, but I also view elections through
• 2:11:41
  Speaker 1: the lens of judicial impact. How do you reconcile not
• 2:11:43
  Speaker 1: wanting to vote for a candidate you'd find and qualified
• 2:11:46
  Speaker 1: while also opposing the alternative because of how they vote
• 2:11:49
  Speaker 1: on judicial confirmations. Appreciate your insight. Well, Ken, Look, I
• 2:11:52
  Speaker 1: think this this is how we ended up with Donald
• 2:11:56
  Speaker 1: Trump as president. I will believe. I believe that of
• 2:12:02
  Speaker 1: all the butterfly effects that impacted twenty sixteen, I think
• 2:12:07
  Speaker 1: the most important one was Scalia's death. And without Scalia's death,
• 2:12:11
  Speaker 1: I think there are some Republicans that more Republicans stay home,
• 2:12:15
  Speaker 1: and I think a handful of Republicans just chose not
• 2:12:17
  Speaker 1: to stay at home over the Supreme Court and voted
• 2:12:20
  Speaker 1: for somebody. So the fact is, I'm not going to
• 2:12:24
  Speaker 1: say whether somebody should or shouldn't do it right. Everybody's
• 2:12:27
  Speaker 1: vote is theirs. The question is do people vote this way?
• 2:12:31
  Speaker 1: And the answer is yes, they do. I think Donald
• 2:12:33
  Speaker 1: Trump won his first term because of Scalia's death. You know,
• 2:12:37
  Speaker 1: I wish I had you know it is you know,
• 2:12:41
  Speaker 1: it's hard. It's hard to measure because it's hard to
• 2:12:45
  Speaker 1: get people. You know. One of the I've had, I
• 2:12:48
  Speaker 1: remember Peter Hart, who was one of our founders, one
• 2:12:50
  Speaker 1: of the founders of the NBC Wall Street Ternal pull
• 2:12:52
  Speaker 1: back in the day, used to say, don't be careful
• 2:12:55
  Speaker 1: asking questions that ask respondents to be fortune colors. And
• 2:13:02
  Speaker 1: so it's hard to get people to say, hey, pretend
• 2:13:05
  Speaker 1: this didn't happen, would you still be voting this way? Right?
• 2:13:08
  Speaker 1: It is, It's just an impossibility. But I absolutely believe
• 2:13:13
  Speaker 1: twenty sixteen was that that was an important counterfactual, absolutely gigantic.
• 2:13:22
  Speaker 1: I think there were some character first voters who held
• 2:13:25
  Speaker 1: their nose on Trump over the Supreme Court. And that's
• 2:13:28
  Speaker 1: Scalia's scene because that was it wasn't just any seat
• 2:13:31
  Speaker 1: right that was going to that was going to change
• 2:13:34
  Speaker 1: in the makeup of the court in a way, right,
• 2:13:38
  Speaker 1: just like Amy Conebert was a change in the makeup
• 2:13:40
  Speaker 1: of the court because she replaced it with Bader Ginsburg, Gorsa,
• 2:13:44
  Speaker 1: Truscalia and theory wasn't a change in the makeup of
• 2:13:46
  Speaker 1: the court, so it would have been. So you know,
• 2:13:54
  Speaker 1: you're asking, I, here's there's a candidate running. My wife
• 2:14:02
  Speaker 1: and I've had this discussion. There's a candidate running who
• 2:14:07
  Speaker 1: we think is a questionable character, and I think it's
• 2:14:13
  Speaker 1: you know, I my politics. I'll vote for the other candidate,
• 2:14:19
  Speaker 1: or I'll vote for a third party candidate or an
• 2:14:21
  Speaker 1: independent if I think they're the other person's unqualified too.
• 2:14:28
  Speaker 1: My wife would skip the race if she didn't politically
• 2:14:31
  Speaker 1: agree with the candidate who had a higher character. She
• 2:14:35
  Speaker 1: said that her indicator her she would she would skip
• 2:14:40
  Speaker 1: versus not actually casting the vote. I'm more likely to
• 2:14:45
  Speaker 1: cast the opposing vote on something like that. But that
• 2:14:50
  Speaker 1: might be the difference in our politics. You know, mine
• 2:14:52
  Speaker 1: is not. I'm not as attached. And I say that
• 2:14:57
  Speaker 1: just because I've not I've never been a member of
• 2:15:01
  Speaker 1: a party and she has. So I get it. I
• 2:15:05
  Speaker 1: get it. But you know, so I understand the different
• 2:15:07
  Speaker 1: distinctions there. And there's there's there's choosing to vote, they're
• 2:15:11
  Speaker 1: choosing not to vote. There's skipping races, there's you know,
• 2:15:14
  Speaker 1: there's all sorts of ways to to protest somebody's character
• 2:15:23
  Speaker 1: if you're not comfortable voting for. And the question is
• 2:15:26
  Speaker 1: what does it take? You know? Right, there was a
• 2:15:28
  Speaker 1: great and this wasn't over the judiciary. This wasn't over judges,
• 2:15:33
  Speaker 1: but the infamous Edwin Edwards versus David Duke race for
• 2:15:36
  Speaker 1: governor in nineteen ninety one in Louisiana, where the bumpser
• 2:15:39
  Speaker 1: sticker said vote for the crook. It's important right. Edwards
• 2:15:42
  Speaker 1: had served time Duke was who he was, and you know,
• 2:15:48
  Speaker 1: I vote for David Duke would have created economic boycotts
• 2:15:52
  Speaker 1: of the state of Louisiana, would have crushed New Orleans,
• 2:15:55
  Speaker 1: would have been just an economic disaster, let alone a
• 2:15:57
  Speaker 1: moral failure for the state as well. But vote for
• 2:16:03
  Speaker 1: the crook it was important, right. That was one where
• 2:16:05
  Speaker 1: you felt like, boy, you got to hold your nose
• 2:16:07
  Speaker 1: on character on that front. So look, it's a I
• 2:16:12
  Speaker 1: think it's the fact is I understand. I Am not
• 2:16:17
  Speaker 1: going to sit here and tell somebody how they view
• 2:16:20
  Speaker 1: the importance of their vote is wrong. I think that's
• 2:16:23
  Speaker 1: the beauty of this country, right, is that we all
• 2:16:26
  Speaker 1: have things. But if you have a core issue that
• 2:16:29
  Speaker 1: you think the courts have more impact on than anything else,
• 2:16:32
  Speaker 1: I understand the decision. And it's a different type of decision. So,
• 2:16:39
  Speaker 1: you know, I remember my father's death. Bet He died
• 2:16:45
  Speaker 1: about two weeks after the eighty eight election, and I
• 2:16:48
  Speaker 1: helped them vote absentee. He couldn't he was on a respirator,
• 2:16:52
  Speaker 1: but he was well aware. We were using a dry
• 2:16:54
  Speaker 1: erase board, one of the old This is eighty eight,
• 2:16:58
  Speaker 1: so there wasn't a lot of They didn't sell these
• 2:17:00
  Speaker 1: many boards at the ink wipe being that wasn't a
• 2:17:03
  Speaker 1: big thing. We literally used the old toy, the sketch
• 2:17:06
  Speaker 1: where you wrote on the thing and you peeled it up.
• 2:17:09
  Speaker 1: Forget what they called that thing, but that whole. As
• 2:17:12
  Speaker 1: a kid, it was great. You know. My father couldn't speak,
• 2:17:15
  Speaker 1: but he could write and so and I remember going
• 2:17:20
  Speaker 1: over his ballot with him, and he he was like I.
• 2:17:24
  Speaker 1: He didn't like the can He liked one candidate for
• 2:17:29
  Speaker 1: Senate better than the other, but it was of the
• 2:17:32
  Speaker 1: wrong party. And he says, I'm not going to die
• 2:17:36
  Speaker 1: with that party, you know, if my party isn't in
• 2:17:40
  Speaker 1: charge of the Senate. So we voted party, not person.
• 2:17:45
  Speaker 1: Now they were both decent character people in that race.
• 2:17:49
  Speaker 1: But you know, the point being is, I think there
• 2:17:54
  Speaker 1: are all sorts of rationales voters use, and to me,
• 2:17:59
  Speaker 1: there's no law that says which rationale should matter the most, right,
• 2:18:03
  Speaker 1: there's nothing in that order. And there's certainly enough impact
• 2:18:07
  Speaker 1: on judicial nominations that this is as good of a
• 2:18:11
  Speaker 1: reasoning as any as there is. And like I said,
• 2:18:17
  Speaker 1: I think we've already had a president elected almost solely
• 2:18:21
  Speaker 1: on this issue. Next question comes from Eric from Denver,
• 2:18:25
  Speaker 1: boy Man, this is another one that ends with la
• 2:18:28
  Speaker 1: cheeser ree the cornhyser. The littles are coming out in
• 2:18:32
  Speaker 1: full force this week, he says, not sure if you
• 2:18:35
  Speaker 1: follow Ben Thompson at Strategy, but he recently interviewed the
• 2:18:39
  Speaker 1: CEO of Parallel AI about a new tool that scores
• 2:18:41
  Speaker 1: content based on its value to AI agents, not readers,
• 2:18:45
  Speaker 1: prioritizes originality and scarcity over traffic, which could have real
• 2:18:48
  Speaker 1: implications for independent local journalism. The idea is that as
• 2:18:51
  Speaker 1: AI driven research grows, unique reporting, especially local, could become
• 2:18:54
  Speaker 1: more valuable and better compensated. Turely but felt directly relevant
• 2:18:58
  Speaker 1: to conversations you had having let's she's a Reeric from Denver,
• 2:19:02
  Speaker 1: boy I did not know about this. I've heard about
• 2:19:05
  Speaker 1: Parallel AI and it does make a lot of sense
• 2:19:08
  Speaker 1: to me, And I think, you know, this is where
• 2:19:11
  Speaker 1: I am increasingly less concerned that we're going to have
• 2:19:15
  Speaker 1: like one AI, you know, lead us down some doomed results,
• 2:19:22
  Speaker 1: you know, like the movie War Games, and that you know,
• 2:19:27
  Speaker 1: AI is going to develop the same way everything else
• 2:19:30
  Speaker 1: is developed. There's going to be certain AIS that are
• 2:19:33
  Speaker 1: more pornographics, certain AIS that are going to be better
• 2:19:37
  Speaker 1: at certain things, certain AI long language models that we
• 2:19:40
  Speaker 1: better at other things. You'll have ones that specialize in
• 2:19:44
  Speaker 1: hard to find research, you know, you'll have ones that
• 2:19:47
  Speaker 1: specialize and data and ones that specialize, and frankly, that's
• 2:19:52
  Speaker 1: the better use, you know, instant we you know, as
• 2:19:57
  Speaker 1: long as we're making concentrated AIS, I think it keeps
• 2:20:00
  Speaker 1: us away from having this uber you know, I think
• 2:20:03
  Speaker 1: too many people think of AI as some like uber
• 2:20:07
  Speaker 1: intelligent source that's going to determine how everything works. And
• 2:20:12
  Speaker 1: maybe that is the fantasy of Elon Musk as a kid,
• 2:20:15
  Speaker 1: or of Altman and Dario and all the names that
• 2:20:20
  Speaker 1: we're all starting to get to know in the AI space.
• 2:20:24
  Speaker 1: But that isn't going to be the reality. And so
• 2:20:28
  Speaker 1: I am increasingly of the belief that you know, we're
• 2:20:34
  Speaker 1: it isn't going to be one AI. It's going to
• 2:20:36
  Speaker 1: be like eight. You know, We're all going to have
• 2:20:38
  Speaker 1: different models that we are accustomed to because of the
• 2:20:41
  Speaker 1: jobs that we have or the interests that we have,
• 2:20:45
  Speaker 1: and writers are going to tend to, you know, look
• 2:20:48
  Speaker 1: for places that have more arcane research and maybe specialize
• 2:20:51
  Speaker 1: in independentness. And I think that that's an asset. And
• 2:20:54
  Speaker 1: I think you will see large language models, you know,
• 2:20:57
  Speaker 1: compete for traffic based on the feature the things that
• 2:21:01
  Speaker 1: they believe their large language model is more of an
• 2:21:06
  Speaker 1: expert at. And so this could be the market behaving
• 2:21:10
  Speaker 1: the way a market is supposed to behave. But I'm
• 2:21:14
  Speaker 1: increasingly believing that ais that are sort of siloed, if
• 2:21:20
  Speaker 1: you will, within certain issue areas, certain specifics, are going
• 2:21:24
  Speaker 1: to be the ones that are more relied upon and
• 2:21:28
  Speaker 1: the most viable. And there'll be the ones that are
• 2:21:32
  Speaker 1: that are easy adopted with ease because it will feel
• 2:21:36
  Speaker 1: more like a tool rather than a replacement. Maybe I'm
• 2:21:42
  Speaker 1: pollyannishing my way out of this, but I'm sort of
• 2:21:48
  Speaker 1: leaning in that area. But I definitely want to learn
• 2:21:50
  Speaker 1: more about this, but I tend to believe this is
• 2:21:54
  Speaker 1: where this is all heading. Greg from Puery, Illinois writes,
• 2:21:58
  Speaker 1: how's the plant in Pueria? Gregg, that's what we all
• 2:21:59
  Speaker 1: want to know? He goes, welcome to summer here once again.
• 2:22:02
  Speaker 1: My walking podcast. Right on, I had a question about
• 2:22:04
  Speaker 1: campaign financing. How do candidates and parties balance spending between
• 2:22:07
  Speaker 1: primaries and general elections and when do those funds start
• 2:22:09
  Speaker 1: to run thin? Also Construnger civics education have helped prevent
• 2:22:13
  Speaker 1: some of the issues we're seeing today. Well, I will
• 2:22:15
  Speaker 1: tell you this, and this is based on a question
• 2:22:17
  Speaker 1: we got earlier this week. But the best question I've
• 2:22:21
  Speaker 1: got is this idea that no child left behind prioritize
• 2:22:26
  Speaker 1: the wrong things. And we've never made civics a priority
• 2:22:29
  Speaker 1: for graduating high school getting into college. If we want
• 2:22:31
  Speaker 1: to improve civics, we know how to do it. We
• 2:22:34
  Speaker 1: have to make it as important as English and math,
• 2:22:37
  Speaker 1: and we've chosen not to do that. We've chosen english
• 2:22:40
  Speaker 1: and math to be more important. Right, how do we
• 2:22:42
  Speaker 1: know this? Just look at it, the SAT and the acat.
• 2:22:46
  Speaker 1: If we want civics to matter more than we would
• 2:22:48
  Speaker 1: make it a bigger part of graduating high school and
• 2:22:52
  Speaker 1: a bigger part of getting into college. Anyway, I think
• 2:22:58
  Speaker 1: that's just it was such an it was such a
• 2:23:03
  Speaker 1: tremendous observation by this by this reader, by this listener,
• 2:23:06
  Speaker 1: that I want to repeat it loud and proud. As
• 2:23:11
  Speaker 1: for your specific questions about primaries in general, so for
• 2:23:16
  Speaker 1: federal elections, obviously the rules are all the same. And
• 2:23:19
  Speaker 1: you know you can raise so you can raise money
• 2:23:22
  Speaker 1: for a primary election, and money for a general election,
• 2:23:25
  Speaker 1: you cannot if you are in a primary. The money
• 2:23:28
  Speaker 1: you've raised specifically for your general election cannot be used
• 2:23:31
  Speaker 1: in a primary. But once your primary has passed, if
• 2:23:34
  Speaker 1: you have leftover primary money, your primary money then can
• 2:23:37
  Speaker 1: be used in a general election. Now, if you raise
• 2:23:40
  Speaker 1: general election money and you lose your primary, you're supposed
• 2:23:43
  Speaker 1: to return it. Now, some campaigns ask their donors, give
• 2:23:49
  Speaker 1: them an option, would you like your money back or
• 2:23:52
  Speaker 1: we're going to go you know, alternatively, if you don't,
• 2:23:56
  Speaker 1: this is what we plan to do with the money.
• 2:23:58
  Speaker 1: Some of them want to start their own you know,
• 2:24:00
  Speaker 1: maybe they want to run for office again. You know,
• 2:24:03
  Speaker 1: campaigns don't like to give money back. They don't like
• 2:24:06
  Speaker 1: to return money. But in theory, you're supposed to keep
• 2:24:09
  Speaker 1: it separate so that you know, it's almost like an
• 2:24:11
  Speaker 1: s growth. You raise general election money and you'll see
• 2:24:14
  Speaker 1: that sometimes you'll be like, oh, you've raised a ton
• 2:24:17
  Speaker 1: of money, but a bunch of it you can't touch
• 2:24:19
  Speaker 1: until after your primary, and so that can happen. So
• 2:24:23
  Speaker 1: that's a that's something that you have to and you can't.
• 2:24:29
  Speaker 1: There's no you know, you can't borrow against general election money.
• 2:24:33
  Speaker 1: I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but you're not supposed
• 2:24:35
  Speaker 1: to and if you get caught that could be real problems.
• 2:24:39
  Speaker 1: But you know, the FEC is as feckless as they
• 2:24:42
  Speaker 1: come of independent agencies. It's basically these days designed not
• 2:24:47
  Speaker 1: to work. But in theory it's against the law to
• 2:24:51
  Speaker 1: do that, and you could get you know, the charges
• 2:24:55
  Speaker 1: can be brought up against you. It could cost you
• 2:24:57
  Speaker 1: a lot of money. And sort of think of it
• 2:24:59
  Speaker 1: as it's an can do an IRS audit. You know
• 2:25:01
  Speaker 1: you may and you know, if it's really bad, you
• 2:25:03
  Speaker 1: could go to jail. So that's the uh. But there
• 2:25:10
  Speaker 1: is so a lot of times campaigns will have plenty
• 2:25:13
  Speaker 1: of money in a general, but they're running short of
• 2:25:15
  Speaker 1: their primary money and maybe it gets expensive, like I imagine,
• 2:25:19
  Speaker 1: you know Paxton in Corn. I mean, my guess is
• 2:25:23
  Speaker 1: Paxton was running low on cash. Now you can if
• 2:25:26
  Speaker 1: you have a runoff, you can usually then get a
• 2:25:29
  Speaker 1: third bite at the apple. If you've got a maxed
• 2:25:31
  Speaker 1: out donor in the primary and they maxed out in
• 2:25:33
  Speaker 1: the general, but you can't touch that money you have
• 2:25:36
  Speaker 1: an extra election like a runoff, usually there's you can
• 2:25:40
  Speaker 1: you can hit them up a third time and get
• 2:25:43
  Speaker 1: you know, there's some maxed out donors, you can get
• 2:25:45
  Speaker 1: them to max out one more time on what it is,
• 2:25:49
  Speaker 1: but that's generally, uh, you know, they're basically they're not
• 2:25:56
  Speaker 1: allowed to mix general at all with primary, and you're
• 2:25:58
  Speaker 1: only allowed to mix your primary money with the general
• 2:26:01
  Speaker 1: after you've won your primary, which frankly feels pretty logical
• 2:26:07
  Speaker 1: on that front. And that's, like I said, I'm just
• 2:26:10
  Speaker 1: describing Senate and House elections. The governor's elections are all
• 2:26:15
  Speaker 1: governed by state laws, and they're literally fifty different sets
• 2:26:19
  Speaker 1: of loss when it comes to gubernatorial spending. All right,
• 2:26:24
  Speaker 1: Philly Mike writes, this might veer a little into tinfoil
• 2:26:27
  Speaker 1: hat territory, but I'd love your take. I don't mind
• 2:26:30
  Speaker 1: a little tinfoil in my hats. There's a pattern some
• 2:26:33
  Speaker 1: people point to where Democrats do the hard work of
• 2:26:35
  Speaker 1: fixing the economy, Republicans inherit and take credit, and then
• 2:26:38
  Speaker 1: things cycle again. Do you think there's any long term
• 2:26:40
  Speaker 1: strategy behind the GP is handling Trump's second term or
• 2:26:43
  Speaker 1: is that reading too much into it? My totally off
• 2:26:45
  Speaker 1: base here. Well, there's been a pattern right in the
• 2:26:51
  Speaker 1: twenty first century. Bill Clinton handed George W. Bush healing economy.
• 2:27:00
  Speaker 1: He had a recession pretty quickly. Now there were some
• 2:27:03
  Speaker 1: signs of a slowdown in late two thousand. That was
• 2:27:06
  Speaker 1: happening at the end of Clinton's watch. Clinton inherited a
• 2:27:09
  Speaker 1: healing economy from a Republican president in George H. W. Bush,
• 2:27:13
  Speaker 1: and Bill Clinton wouldn't have had near the success in
• 2:27:16
  Speaker 1: his term economically if George Bush hadn't worked with the
• 2:27:21
  Speaker 1: Democrats to raise taxes in the nineteen ninety budget deal.
• 2:27:28
  Speaker 1: And certainly Carter handed a crappy economy to Reagan, and
• 2:27:31
  Speaker 1: it took a while for Reagan to get a good economy.
• 2:27:34
  Speaker 1: But in the twenty first century, right Bush, it was
• 2:27:38
  Speaker 1: an economy in tatters once Obama got it. Obama hens
• 2:27:42
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump literally a healed economy. And it is whoever
• 2:27:47
  Speaker 1: was the next president was going to get a booming economy,
• 2:27:50
  Speaker 1: and he got a booming economy. Then COVID happened, right,
• 2:27:56
  Speaker 1: So damage happens mostly not him. You know, he probably
• 2:28:01
  Speaker 1: didn't help things. The economy starts to heal, and just
• 2:28:07
  Speaker 1: as it's healing, Biden Trump takes over and then so
• 2:28:12
  Speaker 1: you know, it's we've we've seen this pattern certainly play
• 2:28:15
  Speaker 1: out a couple of times this century, but it's not
• 2:28:17
  Speaker 1: new and we've seen the pattern go and reverse in
• 2:28:20
  Speaker 1: the in the late twentieth century where healing economy, you know,
• 2:28:24
  Speaker 1: on one end ends up helping the person and the
• 2:28:29
  Speaker 1: other party. And that's the irony. Right, Presidents get credit
• 2:28:35
  Speaker 1: for economies created by their predecessor, get credit or blame
• 2:28:38
  Speaker 1: for economies that many times have the fingerprints of their
• 2:28:43
  Speaker 1: predecessor on. So you know, that's why you hear that cliche.
• 2:28:51
  Speaker 1: You know, president's probably get too much blame and too
• 2:28:53
  Speaker 1: much credit, too much credit and good economies, too much
• 2:28:57
  Speaker 1: blame and bad economies. Trump, though, and what he created,
• 2:29:01
  Speaker 1: He took a good healing economy and he made it worse.
• 2:29:04
  Speaker 1: Trump is the I mean, this is he made decisions
• 2:29:08
  Speaker 1: that all you know, left and right said we're probably
• 2:29:11
  Speaker 1: going to hurt the economy, and well they certainly did.
• 2:29:15
  Speaker 1: So we've not had this in a long time where intent,
• 2:29:18
  Speaker 1: you know, basically going against the grain. After all the
• 2:29:21
  Speaker 1: advice said, this is bad for the economy, don't do it,
• 2:29:24
  Speaker 1: whether it's tariffs, whether it's the war with Iran, and
• 2:29:28
  Speaker 1: he did it anyway. So this is why this one
• 2:29:32
  Speaker 1: could damage the Republican brand of the economy for some time. Right,
• 2:29:36
  Speaker 1: this is a distinct brand of Trump economics that's probably
• 2:29:42
  Speaker 1: going to linger as a negative like Democrats will start
• 2:29:45
  Speaker 1: to use, well, you don't want to go back. I
• 2:29:47
  Speaker 1: mean the way Republicans used fear of the Carter economy
• 2:29:51
  Speaker 1: and Carter weakness against Democrats for a good decade. I
• 2:29:55
  Speaker 1: think that the Trump economy is going to be such
• 2:29:58
  Speaker 1: a bad be seen as almost like a four letter word,
• 2:30:03
  Speaker 1: that they're going to be there. It's going to take
• 2:30:05
  Speaker 1: a good decade or so for them to get out
• 2:30:07
  Speaker 1: from under this this second of you know where where
• 2:30:10
  Speaker 1: folks are not going to believe Republicans having answers on
• 2:30:12
  Speaker 1: the economy because of what Trump's done on this one.
• 2:30:17
  Speaker 1: All right, that wasn't too tinfoily, Mike. You know, you
• 2:30:22
  Speaker 1: know somebody that calls themselves Philly Mike, I expect that
• 2:30:24
  Speaker 1: even more tinfoil. So come on, do better next time.
• 2:30:29
  Speaker 1: Let's go down some real rabbit holes in the next time. Anyway,
• 2:30:31
  Speaker 1: Great questions is always appreciate it, Thanks for listening, Thanks
• 2:30:34
  Speaker 1: for tuning in to the live stream last night. Texas
• 2:30:38
  Speaker 1: told you it's a big one. Uh, and we've been
• 2:30:40
  Speaker 1: enjoying these live streams. As always, I appreciate you liking
• 2:30:44
  Speaker 1: and subscribing. Thanks for your support. I'll see you twenty
• 2:30:46
  Speaker 1: four hours