Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Chuck’s Commentary - The Rule Of Law Is Now Whatever Trump Says It Is + Why Democratic Voters Are Rewarding Progressives

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Chuck’s Commentary - The Rule Of Law Is Now Whatever Trump Says It Is + Why Democratic Voters Are Rewarding Progressives · The Chuck ToddCast

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Speaker 1: This episode of The Chuck Podcast is brought to you
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Speaker 1: board is what they're trying to do. At the end
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Speaker 1: even after you've done this. So look, I get it.
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Speaker 1: I think there's all sorts of space. You see a
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Speaker 1: lot of people are throwing themselves in this healthcare space.
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Speaker 1: When I like about these Chapter folks, I've spent time
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Speaker 1: with them. This is a very transparent organization. It is Medicare,
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Speaker 1: and all of its affiliated stuff can be very confusing.
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Speaker 1: The whole point of this is to make this easier
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Speaker 1: and less confusing. Okay, so look, take this cup deism
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Speaker 1: three four three nine eight five. Hello thereon, Welcome to
2:18
Speaker 1: the Monday edition of The Chuck Podcast, where we try
2:21
Speaker 1: to explain politics to the rest of us these days.
2:24
Speaker 1: And I have to tell you, look, I've got a
2:27
Speaker 1: show that's already pretty put together. I was aware of
2:31
Speaker 1: this story and I decided not to, but my producers
2:36
Speaker 1: and I were just cracking up. We can't get enough
2:39
Speaker 1: of this crazy story about Greenland, and it's sitting there.
2:43
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, with every Trump controversy, there's always
2:47
Speaker 1: this form of it's terrible and it's hilarious. And what
2:51
Speaker 1: do I mean by that, Like the action is terrible.
2:55
Speaker 1: It is said, you know, our relationship with all countries
2:59
Speaker 1: to pay a fight with picking a fight with Denmark
3:02
Speaker 1: and then sort of ignoring like the laws of Greenland,
3:06
Speaker 1: which apparently this is what's happening. And this has to
3:08
Speaker 1: do with this Texas based oil company who has decided
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Speaker 1: to just I guess think that they're going to get squatters'
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Speaker 1: rights to drill for oil on Greenland, not bothering to
3:20
Speaker 1: get the country's permission to see and I'm not going
3:23
Speaker 1: to get I'm not going to get into the full details.
3:25
Speaker 1: There is some question about whether they do have legal
3:27
Speaker 1: ability to drill whether they don't. And the details in
3:31
Speaker 1: some ways, like with every Trump controversy, sometimes are are
3:37
Speaker 1: beside the point, right this the entire whether there's whether
3:44
Speaker 1: this oil company is acting technically somehow on his behalf.
3:46
Speaker 1: But you know this Guardian story about it was out
3:50
Speaker 1: there and then like in the middle of the story
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Speaker 1: is a bizarre detail that noted this Texas based oil
3:56
Speaker 1: company decided to hire Phil McGraw, better known as Doctor Filled,
4:00
Speaker 1: to essentially document these wild catters, this new generation of wildcatters,
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Speaker 1: as they learn how to drill for oil and other minerals.
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Speaker 1: In this case, I think it's oil on Greenland. It
4:14
Speaker 1: is just you're just like doctor Phil, Like you know,
4:17
Speaker 1: here we are about to like break a treaty. Here
4:21
Speaker 1: we are creating all sorts of geopolitical problems in the
4:24
Speaker 1: United States. I mean, if you're wondering why the United
4:27
Speaker 1: States is stuck going and alone with its terrible decision
4:30
Speaker 1: about Iran, it's behavior like this, right. You know, the
4:33
Speaker 1: president's gone out of his way to alienate pretty much
4:35
Speaker 1: every ally in Europe in one one form or another,
4:38
Speaker 1: even those that were completely allied with him individually. Like
4:41
Speaker 1: look what he's done to the Prime Minister of Italy,
4:43
Speaker 1: and look what he's done to Poland and things like that.
4:48
Speaker 1: And yet there's always this ridiculous literally laugh out loud
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Speaker 1: and inflect of course that somehow this clown and I
4:58
Speaker 1: don't you know, you want to talk about a somebody
5:00
Speaker 1: whose legacy ought to at least you know, Oprah Winfrey.
5:06
Speaker 1: You gave us doctor Ours and doctor Phil. That's something
5:10
Speaker 1: you can't erase. You've given a lot of Americans a
5:13
Speaker 1: lot of positives. Those aren't two of them. And to me,
5:20
Speaker 1: every time I see Phil McGraw a part of something,
5:24
Speaker 1: I assume it's a punchline, because it's hard to take
5:27
Speaker 1: him or anything he's involved in very seriously at this
5:31
Speaker 1: So anyway, I'm digressing a little bit. This is not
5:34
Speaker 1: how I plan to open the show. I also wasn't
5:37
Speaker 1: planning on opening it with a Nats rant because I
5:38
Speaker 1: didn't have to. This weekend, once again, the Nats are
5:41
Speaker 1: back beating the teams that they should. Unfortunately, they just
5:44
Speaker 1: don't have the ball club to beat the teams that
5:47
Speaker 1: are ahead of them. But hey, I will take those
5:52
Speaker 1: I will take that. I guess i'd said we were
5:54
Speaker 1: two steps forward, four steps back. Maybe it's three and
5:58
Speaker 1: a half steps forward, three steps back. I still don't
6:01
Speaker 1: like what we got for Louis Garcia, what we didn't
6:06
Speaker 1: get for Luis Garcia at this point. But anyway, so
6:11
Speaker 1: we'll set that aside. We'll set all that aside. Let's
6:14
Speaker 1: focus in on why you listen, which is about what
6:17
Speaker 1: the hell is going on in American politics this week,
6:19
Speaker 1: this weekend, and the week ahead. Let me give you
6:22
Speaker 1: a quick rundown of what I've got on this episode
6:25
Speaker 1: my time machine. I guess in some way it's turned
6:28
Speaker 1: into Chuck Todd tries to explain America through history today.
6:32
Speaker 1: I got a good one, and it's basically America's flirtation
6:36
Speaker 1: with socialism. We flirt with it all the time, folks. Anyway,
6:41
Speaker 1: I've got two fascinating stories that I'm putting together whose
6:44
Speaker 1: anniversaries happen to fall this week and have given me
6:47
Speaker 1: an opportunity to delve into a topic that you're going
6:51
Speaker 1: to hear a lot about over the next ninety days. Socialism, socialism, socialism.
6:55
Speaker 1: You're going to hear a lot about it. And there's
6:57
Speaker 1: a I sort of think we have the democratic social
7:00
Speaker 1: of America that actually have named themselves, but the Republican
7:03
Speaker 1: Socialists of America, I think is the other name you've
7:07
Speaker 1: not heard of for MAGA these days. When it comes
7:09
Speaker 1: to how Trump believes in the power of government and
7:13
Speaker 1: where government should go from there, I will have some questions.
7:16
Speaker 1: But look, I'm going to begin with what was a
7:21
Speaker 1: lot of motion in Washington but not a lot of action,
7:24
Speaker 1: which in some ways is Hey, that's par for the
7:26
Speaker 1: course for Washington, DC these days. Right, the United States
7:29
Speaker 1: Senate finally went home. So before we get to everything else,
7:32
Speaker 1: I want to spend a minute on what actually happened
7:35
Speaker 1: before they left, because I think it does tell us
7:38
Speaker 1: something larger about where we are. The Senate stayed up
7:41
Speaker 1: basically all night Friday into Saturday. And you know they
7:45
Speaker 1: do these all nighters, so it looks like they're productive, right,
7:48
Speaker 1: and it's just like ridiculous. They don't get shit done
7:51
Speaker 1: all year long. They do these two day work weeks.
7:54
Speaker 1: They're barely here. They fly it out. But oh boy,
7:57
Speaker 1: right before the recess is about to be announced, they hey,
8:00
Speaker 1: they have a fifteen hour day. See we work hard. Please,
8:05
Speaker 1: So what did they accomplish? Well, Todd Blanche is now
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Speaker 1: a confirmed Attorney General of the United States. Congratulations, they
8:13
Speaker 1: got far enough on government funding that we're probably not
8:16
Speaker 1: going to have the stupidity of a government shut down
8:18
Speaker 1: right before an election. Don't rule out one right after
8:23
Speaker 1: the election. And let's see what else they got done.
8:25
Speaker 1: Let me see here, give me a minute. Crypto Oh
8:30
Speaker 1: nope no, crypto, college sports nope, nope. No. How about
8:32
Speaker 1: voting Nope nope, no, a whole bunch of things that
8:35
Speaker 1: Republicans told us were their priorities. Come back in September,
8:40
Speaker 1: they claim, Now here's a little lesson when they can't
8:45
Speaker 1: vote on something when fewer people are watching, which is
8:49
Speaker 1: right before the August recess. The last thing they're going
8:52
Speaker 1: to do is somehow take up those more controversial topics
8:56
Speaker 1: that they couldn't agree upon before the August research. They
9:00
Speaker 1: taking them up in September. Folks, all right, you will
9:04
Speaker 1: see what this is is a punt so that in
9:06
Speaker 1: September they'll say, we'll wait till after the election and
9:09
Speaker 1: figure this out. The lame duck is where some of
9:13
Speaker 1: the biggest, most consequential things happen. We got rid of
9:16
Speaker 1: don't ask, don't tell. The month after an election there's
9:19
Speaker 1: no way they would have done it in a month before.
9:21
Speaker 1: I think we will get this college sports bill someday,
9:23
Speaker 1: but it will be after an election, not before. And certainly,
9:29
Speaker 1: if you're the crypto folks, they're going they're just gonna
9:33
Speaker 1: have no choice. But half the wait till then, well
9:36
Speaker 1: we'll see, we'll see. But the fact that the Republicans
9:39
Speaker 1: had to say, punt, we're gonna come back in September.
9:42
Speaker 1: And let's not forget their political circumstances. Republicans control the presidency,
9:46
Speaker 1: they control the Senate, and they control the House. And
9:48
Speaker 1: now they're about there. They've gone home and they're asking
9:50
Speaker 1: voters to let them continue controlling Congress while their party
9:54
Speaker 1: also controls the presidency. And now their biggest accomplishment heading
9:58
Speaker 1: into the campaign is essentially, well, we probably aren't going
10:01
Speaker 1: to shut down the government before the election, and they
10:03
Speaker 1: want us to pat them on the back. Right, So
10:06
Speaker 1: congratulations for not setting the house on fire. It's not
10:10
Speaker 1: exactly the most inspiring governing platform, right, And look, I'm
10:15
Speaker 1: not going to sit here and I'm not saying that
10:16
Speaker 1: simply to beat up on the GOP, because what I
10:19
Speaker 1: want to talk to about today is actually much bigger
10:22
Speaker 1: than the Republicans. It's about why the public is so
10:24
Speaker 1: pissed at everybody and why we're seeing what appears to
10:28
Speaker 1: be a growing number of socialists or a growing number
10:31
Speaker 1: of nationalists. Do they really feel this way? Well, we'll see.
10:35
Speaker 1: The political alternatives aren't suddenly attracting people on the right
10:39
Speaker 1: and left because of ideas. I think the reason they're
10:43
Speaker 1: attracting support It tells us something different than what our
10:46
Speaker 1: political class thinks they're being told. But first, let's talk
10:49
Speaker 1: about Todd Blanche. I was wrong about this one. I
10:56
Speaker 1: really didn't. I really thought there was enough spinal fluid
10:59
Speaker 1: left and enough Republican senators that Todd Blanche would be
11:04
Speaker 1: the bridge too far, that they were just that they
11:06
Speaker 1: would finally learn to say no. So yes, I really
11:11
Speaker 1: thought Lucy was going to hold the football and I
11:13
Speaker 1: went and thought I was going to actually kick that
11:16
Speaker 1: sucker through the goalpost and say, see, I told you
11:19
Speaker 1: there was a line that they would not cross. When
11:22
Speaker 1: Todd Blanche, Oh how wrong I was. I think the
11:30
Speaker 1: circumstances surrounding his confirmation are more important than simply the
11:34
Speaker 1: fact they got confirmed. So fifty to forty nine, loosen
11:37
Speaker 1: Collins and Lisa Murkowski were not surprisingly the only Republican
11:41
Speaker 1: no votes. We knew they would be nos. The question
11:43
Speaker 1: was would there be two others? And it was fifty
11:47
Speaker 1: to forty nine. Because McConnell hasn't voted, he says now
11:50
Speaker 1: he's been once again, he put out a written statement
11:53
Speaker 1: saying he's been released into rehab. We have not heard
11:55
Speaker 1: the sound of his voice. Nobody has claimed to hear
11:58
Speaker 1: the sound of his voice. By the way, way, remember
12:02
Speaker 1: what folks have told us is that they've talked to McConnell.
12:07
Speaker 1: So he may have been on the phone and they've
12:11
Speaker 1: talked to him anyway. All right, I'm picking it here,
12:16
Speaker 1: but but I digress. But let's listen to the rationale
12:20
Speaker 1: some of the Republicans who did vote yes, including Bill Cassidy,
12:25
Speaker 1: when it came to Todd Blanche, and the conclusion he
12:29
Speaker 1: arrived at is this Trump needs somebody around him who
12:31
Speaker 1: can tell him no. I know. Stop, it makes me
12:35
Speaker 1: laugh just saying the line out loud, Right, it's hilarious.
12:39
Speaker 1: Todd Blanche has Trump's trust. Bill Cassidy claims, therefore, Todd
12:45
Speaker 1: Blanche maybe the person capable of telling Trump no. Sorry,
12:49
Speaker 1: I keep wanting to play the old sparrow agnew ad
12:53
Speaker 1: where there was this TV commercial that's at Sparau agnew
12:56
Speaker 1: Vice President. It's just somebody laughing out loud, like I
12:58
Speaker 1: can't believe actually going to do this shit, and I
13:02
Speaker 1: can't believe that. Bill Cassidy uttered what he uttered out
13:06
Speaker 1: loud at a floor speech of the Senate. One of
13:09
Speaker 1: the people who Cassidy said helped him reach the conclusion
13:13
Speaker 1: that hey, Blanche, yeah, he's got the president's trust, so
13:17
Speaker 1: maybe this is a good thing. It was Bill Barr,
13:21
Speaker 1: somebody who Donald Trump did not listen to very often,
13:25
Speaker 1: as we know, or he wouldn't have launched an insurrection
13:30
Speaker 1: against the United States of America. But yes, Trump's former
13:34
Speaker 1: Attorney General, Bill Barr is who Bill Cassidy leaned on
13:38
Speaker 1: in his Senate speech for his rationale to support to
13:41
Speaker 1: confirm the president's personal criminal defense attorney. Remember about Barr.
13:50
Speaker 1: Barr had an extraordinarily expansive view of presidential authority himself,
13:57
Speaker 1: and there was a point where Barr said, man, I
13:59
Speaker 1: can't do it anymore. I'm out, I am out. I
14:02
Speaker 1: can't defend this shit. Okay, Bill Barr, no friend of
14:06
Speaker 1: the left, no. Friend of the Trump resistance said, I
14:10
Speaker 1: couldn't take it anymore because Trump wanted Bar to validate
14:15
Speaker 1: the lie that the twenty twenty election had been in
14:17
Speaker 1: question or possibly stolen, and Barr wouldn't do it because
14:20
Speaker 1: there were no facts to support it. And eventually Barr
14:24
Speaker 1: chose to leave. And I think it was a cowardly
14:26
Speaker 1: way out, to be honest, He left it to his
14:29
Speaker 1: assistant ag to have to stand up there and eat
14:32
Speaker 1: the shit that Trump was feeding him. That basically he
14:36
Speaker 1: had to threaten the full resignation of the Justice Department
14:39
Speaker 1: mass resignations in order to keep Trump from doing it.
14:41
Speaker 1: He did, but Bill Barr chose to walk from the fight,
14:45
Speaker 1: and it's something I'll never forget. But now Barr's advice
14:51
Speaker 1: is essentially blanche as something valuable because Trump trusts him
14:55
Speaker 1: enough that maybe he can occasionally talk Trump out of
14:58
Speaker 1: doing something terrible. Maybe, Wow, man, you want to talk
15:04
Speaker 1: about a low bar now. And then compare Cassidy's reasoning
15:09
Speaker 1: with Lisa Murkowski's. Murkowski says, the country needs an attorney
15:13
Speaker 1: general who will check the worst impulses of this administration,
15:17
Speaker 1: and then she continued, I hope mister Blanch is able
15:20
Speaker 1: to achieve that if confirmed, but I simply do not
15:22
Speaker 1: have confidence that will be the case. That's the entire issue, folks,
15:28
Speaker 1: because this was the Senate's opportunity to find out. That
15:33
Speaker 1: was called leverage, and we actually watched the leverage work
15:36
Speaker 1: to a degree, right, John Cornet and Tom Tillis withheld
15:39
Speaker 1: support over that extraordinary IRS settlement and the nearly two
15:43
Speaker 1: billion dollar weaponization fund. Now, what really irritates me is
15:51
Speaker 1: that Blanch had no authority whatsoever to change the deal
15:54
Speaker 1: because Donald Trump has to sign the deal. So he
15:57
Speaker 1: didn't make he didn't make any problem. He did not
15:59
Speaker 1: put anything in writing to the This is not true.
16:05
Speaker 1: All he did was lament the whole issue and say
16:08
Speaker 1: I have to change the deal. Trump has to sign it.
16:16
Speaker 1: But they get a few concessions, and they made Blanche
16:20
Speaker 1: say a few things on the record and do a
16:22
Speaker 1: few things because Blanche needed their votes. And Corny said
16:28
Speaker 1: something after the committee vote that just told me he
16:34
Speaker 1: is completely unqualified to be a United States senator anymore.
16:38
Speaker 1: He said the following, there's nothing we could do to
16:40
Speaker 1: reign in the president. Oh really, there's nothing you can do,
16:44
Speaker 1: John Cornyn, Well, you did you reigned them in for
16:49
Speaker 1: a bit until you decided I'm going to vote for
16:52
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna use my leverage anymore. You had leverage
16:55
Speaker 1: because he wanted something from you. That's how the constitution works.
17:00
Speaker 1: That's why the Senate gets advice and consent, not advice
17:03
Speaker 1: and capitulation. That's why Congress controls appropriations. That's why we
17:08
Speaker 1: have three branches of government. The entire system assumes ambition
17:12
Speaker 1: will counter ambition. And yet we've reached this bizarre place
17:17
Speaker 1: with these Republican elected officials who are coward who are
17:21
Speaker 1: just freaking cowards, who know nothing about the actual powers
17:25
Speaker 1: of the constitution. Senators exercise their constitutional authority, they discover
17:30
Speaker 1: that it works, it worked, and then they tell us something.
17:34
Speaker 1: There's nothing they can do about it. Yes, there is.
17:37
Speaker 1: Do your fucking job. I'm sorry to curse. I don't
17:41
Speaker 1: like to just do it. Sometimes nobody pays attention anything else.
17:47
Speaker 1: Oh look, Chuck Todd told John Corny to do his
17:49
Speaker 1: fucking job. That's the job. And once Blanche is confirmed,
17:56
Speaker 1: your leverage is gone. So what is an attorney general?
18:01
Speaker 1: At this point? This is a larger philosophical issue with Blanche.
18:08
Speaker 1: It's not about whether Blanche the individual has the qualifications
18:12
Speaker 1: to serve in this post. The question is whether the
18:16
Speaker 1: president's personal criminal defense attorney should ever be given this
18:19
Speaker 1: authority whatsoever, under a president that this person once represented.
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20:47
Speaker 1: Coon's asking whether the Justice Department is independent from the
20:50
Speaker 1: White House, and here's how Blanch responded. Article two of
20:54
Speaker 1: the Constitution gives the power of the executive to President Trump.
20:58
Speaker 1: So basically, Todd Blanche's theory of the case says, no,
21:02
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is the rule of law. The rule of
21:04
Speaker 1: law belongs to Donald Trump. He made no attempt whatsoever
21:08
Speaker 1: to defend any sort of independence of the Justice Department.
21:11
Speaker 1: Right then and there he made himself completely unqualified to
21:14
Speaker 1: be Attorney General of the United States. And somehow fifty
21:19
Speaker 1: senators didn't hear what he said there. Fifty senators somehow
21:23
Speaker 1: missed this hearing. Apparently he said he was not going
21:27
Speaker 1: to be an independent attorney general. That's why he gave
21:30
Speaker 1: that answer. Wasn't an accidental answer, it's his quote theory.
21:34
Speaker 1: Because guess what nobody's going to get that job unless
21:37
Speaker 1: they agree with Trump that actually, you're the rule of law.
21:40
Speaker 1: At the end of the day, Blage believes in an
21:43
Speaker 1: extraordinarily muscular conception of presidential control over the Justice Department.
21:47
Speaker 1: I don't know whether he actually believes it, but it's
21:49
Speaker 1: what he had to say he believes in order to
21:52
Speaker 1: get Trump to nominate it. Because we know Trump certainly
21:55
Speaker 1: believes he has all power that he wants, and if
21:59
Speaker 1: he doesn't want want the power, then maybe he'll let
22:01
Speaker 1: the constitution decide. So we're in the middle of actually
22:06
Speaker 1: having a fundamental argument about whether whether an Attorney general
22:12
Speaker 1: is the president's lawyer or the people's lawyer. Right, a
22:17
Speaker 1: White House Council is supposed to be the president's lawyer.
22:19
Speaker 1: The Attorney General is supposed to be the people's lawyer.
22:23
Speaker 1: That's what Barack Obama called it. I know some of
22:25
Speaker 1: you are going to say, well, Barack Obama had Eric Holder,
22:27
Speaker 1: and Eric Holder was more loyal to Barack Obama than
22:31
Speaker 1: the rule of law. What part of Barack Obama launching
22:35
Speaker 1: personal investigations into his political enemies did he do? Right,
22:39
Speaker 1: Because he didn't. Whatever you think of Obama, he did
22:45
Speaker 1: not believe the attorney general was the president's consigliary. Donald
22:48
Speaker 1: Trump does. If he were alive, Donald Trump would have
22:52
Speaker 1: nominated Roy comp Since Watergate, presidents of both parties have
22:57
Speaker 1: generally understood that there needs to be distance between the
23:00
Speaker 1: White House and specific criminal investigations. Right Frankly, we had
23:04
Speaker 1: a Democratic president who put his brother in attorney general,
23:06
Speaker 1: which is just lunacy. And then remember Nixon's Nixon's attorney
23:13
Speaker 1: general was overseeing the presidential campaign, which is just as absurd.
23:18
Speaker 1: So post Watergate, we said, you know what, maybe the
23:22
Speaker 1: person in charge of the America's rule of law, the
23:24
Speaker 1: one thing that sort of keeps us different from every
23:27
Speaker 1: other place on Earth, ought to have some independence and
23:30
Speaker 1: some protection. Richard Nixon taught us this. You don't want
23:38
Speaker 1: presidents deciding who gets investigated and who doesn't. And yet
23:42
Speaker 1: we're voluntarily relearning lessons we already learned as a country.
23:48
Speaker 1: I tell you, it just chaps my ass here. Last
23:51
Speaker 1: week alone, the president's decision to get involved in Janine
23:56
Speaker 1: Kiro's decision to follow the rule of law and actually
23:59
Speaker 1: withdraw her charges on the ridiculous reflecting pool situation, which
24:03
Speaker 1: we know this is as much about Trump desperate to
24:06
Speaker 1: control little things since he can't control his presidency anymore.
24:11
Speaker 1: You know, this is like a Trump kind of like
24:14
Speaker 1: you know, he's clinging to his blinky I you know,
24:19
Speaker 1: I must go after these reflecting pool vandals, right like
24:22
Speaker 1: he could say that really loudly and boldly, since he
24:25
Speaker 1: can't even get the straight of hor moves open. But
24:30
Speaker 1: the fact is he got involved this week. That alone
24:35
Speaker 1: should have been at the proof. Lisa Murkowsky's figured this out.
24:39
Speaker 1: I don't know what world Bill Cassidy's living in, because
24:45
Speaker 1: this is what bothers me about this in confirmation. This
24:47
Speaker 1: is not about the individual Todd Blanche, who again i'm
24:50
Speaker 1: sure has qualifications. I'm sure comes across as a very
24:54
Speaker 1: competent individual. I'm sure has said, look, man, I'm dealing
24:58
Speaker 1: with a nut job as president. You know what, I
25:00
Speaker 1: know it. I'm going to do my best arraignment. I'm
25:02
Speaker 1: going to do my best to do it. I'm sure he's
25:04
Speaker 1: had I wish that we had recordings, as I promise you,
25:09
Speaker 1: he's probably thrown Trump under the bus in these meetings
25:12
Speaker 1: in ways to get votes. But this is not about
25:18
Speaker 1: a personality contest. This is about some fundamental lines in
25:22
Speaker 1: the sand. And yes, just because Trump could keep an
25:25
Speaker 1: acting attorney general, then you know what make them don't
25:29
Speaker 1: acquiesce to this bullshit because well, it's not fair to
25:32
Speaker 1: the Justice Department that there's an acting attorney general. That's
25:35
Speaker 1: what Trump counts on. His entire life has been built
25:39
Speaker 1: on wearing people down. So he gets involved in the
25:42
Speaker 1: dumbest controversies and people are like, oh, whatever, you know,
25:47
Speaker 1: if he wants to say, you know, just let it go,
25:49
Speaker 1: right like, and so this has been the if you
25:52
Speaker 1: give him out a cookie, you know, living example for
25:56
Speaker 1: the rest of our lives is Donald Trump's life? Right? So,
26:02
Speaker 1: but by confirming Blanche in this way, right, they have
26:06
Speaker 1: completely politicized the Justice if they have cemented the idea
26:10
Speaker 1: that again these Republicans thought that claimed that Joe Biden
26:15
Speaker 1: was politicized in the Justice Department, claimed that Barack Obama was.
26:18
Speaker 1: And their answer is to go further than where anything
26:23
Speaker 1: that either administration chose to go, whatever, however, wherever you
26:27
Speaker 1: you want to mythically draw your line, this administration has
26:33
Speaker 1: politicized everything worse if you want, and I'll if I'm
26:38
Speaker 1: going to accept your premise of that it was politicized
26:41
Speaker 1: under the Democrats. Two wrongs. I say this all the time.
26:46
Speaker 1: Two wrongs don't make a right. But the entire premise
26:50
Speaker 1: of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement is two wrongs
26:53
Speaker 1: do make a right. And this, my friends, is what's
26:58
Speaker 1: the most destructive part of that ideology. So now Congress
27:02
Speaker 1: is saying, we recognize that executive power is expanding and
27:05
Speaker 1: should get bigger. We recognize that the president needs constraints.
27:09
Speaker 1: We hope the guy the president chose will constrain him.
27:12
Speaker 1: It's like what I said last week, Chuck Schumer is
27:14
Speaker 1: trying to reign in the corruption of the president by
27:16
Speaker 1: hoping the president picks people that'll rain them in. It's
27:20
Speaker 1: just ridiculous. Does anybody in Congress understand the Constitution? Chuck
27:28
Speaker 1: Schumer doesn't, Bill Cassidy doesn't. Jesus freaking crime Andy. This
27:33
Speaker 1: is why so many people have gone, what the hell
27:35
Speaker 1: has happened to America? What the hell has happened on politics?
27:39
Speaker 1: Why does the normally sort of not so emotional Chuck
27:43
Speaker 1: Todd Gopes just pop off on this the channel, my
27:50
Speaker 1: friend in a few good Men, the fictional lawyer there,
27:56
Speaker 1: Lieutenant Caffey, did every buddy go to a government class
28:02
Speaker 1: for the galactically stupid, because nobody's learned the constitution? Who
28:06
Speaker 1: acts of the people that are swearing an oath to
28:09
Speaker 1: defend and protect it? All right? And this is where
28:16
Speaker 1: I want to zoom back out of it. Because Blanche
28:20
Speaker 1: got done, I guess, and I guess they think. You know.
28:24
Speaker 1: All you've done is weakened the Department of Justice for
28:30
Speaker 1: more Americans, created more distrust in this institution. And that's
28:35
Speaker 1: the shame that everybody who voted to confirm Blanche has
28:38
Speaker 1: to hold. And look, I'm not look, Bill Cassidy's got
28:41
Speaker 1: to sleep at night, but he is. He is the
28:43
Speaker 1: reason we have Robert F. Kennedy Junior in charge of
28:46
Speaker 1: our health policy, in our vaccines? How's that going? And
28:50
Speaker 1: he's now the deciding vote on allowing for the personalization
28:56
Speaker 1: and for an essentially an authoritarian over some sort of
29:02
Speaker 1: authoritative I don't want to go all the way authoritarian,
29:04
Speaker 1: but sort of the tary. This this control of the
29:09
Speaker 1: rule of law as if it's something that should be
29:12
Speaker 1: interpreted by a singular president. It was never the founder's
29:20
Speaker 1: intent that rule of law be decided. We revolted from
29:24
Speaker 1: a King. We had no There's no way at all
29:29
Speaker 1: that that constitution was written by people who said one
29:32
Speaker 1: man or woman, whoever, was going to be the president,
29:35
Speaker 1: they alone were going to be the rule of law.
29:39
Speaker 1: And the only thing they wrote in the constitution that
29:41
Speaker 1: gave the executive branch that power was the pardon power,
29:45
Speaker 1: which was probably the biggest mistake after after the biggest
29:52
Speaker 1: mistake obviously was a gender and race, but after those
29:56
Speaker 1: two things, the pardon power, huge mistake in that constitution.
30:01
Speaker 1: All right, so they got Blanche confirmed. What else didn't
30:05
Speaker 1: they do? Well, they didn't get Crypto done. And you know,
30:07
Speaker 1: it's interesting, for all the attention crypto gets, for all
30:10
Speaker 1: the money crypto is poured into politics, for all the
30:12
Speaker 1: promises made about creating regulatory certainty, they had to move
30:17
Speaker 1: to September. I'm sure the crypto folks were wondering, Hey,
30:20
Speaker 1: I thought we bought this legislation. Not yet. Then there's
30:23
Speaker 1: college sports, now, one of these issues where everybody agrees
30:27
Speaker 1: the existing system is ridiculous. Congress has been holding hearings,
30:31
Speaker 1: the conferences have been lobbying. Schools want certainty, athletes need rules.
30:35
Speaker 1: Courts keep effectively making national sports policy because Congress, like
30:39
Speaker 1: everything else that touches, has no ability whatsoever to do
30:43
Speaker 1: its job. They kicked that to September. There's that voting
30:47
Speaker 1: legislation that Donald Trump's been demanding. Republicans claim this issue
30:53
Speaker 1: is existential. It's so existential. They punted to September. Then
30:59
Speaker 1: they have government fund. Now, this is one where neither
31:01
Speaker 1: party wanted to roll the dice on whether who would
31:06
Speaker 1: get blamed for a shutdown, and because they both know
31:12
Speaker 1: that failure would have an immediate political cost for the
31:15
Speaker 1: party blamed for doing it. And that's pretty good metaphor
31:18
Speaker 1: for Washington right now. We have become much better at
31:21
Speaker 1: avoiding political consequences than solving public political problems. The incentives
31:27
Speaker 1: work beautifully when congressional careers aren't threatened, right, They don't
31:31
Speaker 1: work nearly as well when merely the public's problems need solving.
31:35
Speaker 1: And that brings me to what I actually wanted to
31:37
Speaker 1: talk about today. So, missus toddcast and I over the weekend,
31:42
Speaker 1: I've been talking about what's going on with the Democrats,
31:44
Speaker 1: third parties, the surge of progressives. Why do voters seem
31:48
Speaker 1: willing to entertain political ideas that I don't necessarily believe
31:53
Speaker 1: represent their actual ideology, and it struck me right. I
31:57
Speaker 1: talked about this with my deep dive on on what
32:00
Speaker 1: happened in Grand Rapids last week in the Michigan Primer,
32:03
Speaker 1: but I realized I haven't really I haven't shared with
32:05
Speaker 1: you lately my baseline theory of where I think the
32:07
Speaker 1: country is at at the moment. So here it is.
32:10
Speaker 1: I don't believe half the Democratic electorate is suddenly socialist,
32:14
Speaker 1: all right, don't. I don't believe Grand Rapids, Michigan suddenly
32:17
Speaker 1: became a hotbed for socialism. What I do believe is
32:20
Speaker 1: that Grand Rapids and its voters are really pissed off.
32:24
Speaker 1: And I think that's why it is. I think this
32:28
Speaker 1: is one of the more important debates internally. What do
32:32
Speaker 1: you think the motive of the voter is at the moment? Right?
32:36
Speaker 1: If you believe like I do, then you go down
32:40
Speaker 1: one path. If you believe this is ideological and this
32:43
Speaker 1: is about an actual shift, you would go down another path.
32:47
Speaker 1: So when somebody like I do, lsiet attracts voters outside
32:50
Speaker 1: what you would normally think of as the progressive base.
32:53
Speaker 1: My question isn't when did all these people become socialists?
32:57
Speaker 1: My question is what is he saying that these voters
33:00
Speaker 1: desperately want somebody to say. And I think the answer
33:04
Speaker 1: begins with the Democratic Party itself. Right. Some people think
33:08
Speaker 1: a flaw in Abdulla Lsied is his trashing of the
33:11
Speaker 1: party at times. And I think the voters that are
33:13
Speaker 1: attracted to him right now that aren't socialists, I think
33:15
Speaker 1: they see it as a feature. The governing wing of
33:18
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party has a problem that I think it
33:20
Speaker 1: has been remarkably reluctant to acknowledge their voters think they
33:25
Speaker 1: fucked up in twenty twenty four. Yes, I'm cursing again,
33:28
Speaker 1: but sometimes I do it because I'm trying to underline something. Period.
33:35
Speaker 1: That's what voters think. And you know why they think that,
33:39
Speaker 1: because they somehow Donald Trump became a better alternative than
33:42
Speaker 1: whatever the hell the Democrats put up. Voters aren't mad
33:47
Speaker 1: at other voters for making that conclusion. They're mad at
33:50
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party of leadership for putting up a terrible fight.
33:54
Speaker 1: That's the issue here, folks. And this time voters feel
33:58
Speaker 1: as though they didn't even get to decide who would
34:00
Speaker 1: try to stop Trump. And then, of course it's the
34:03
Speaker 1: accumulation of really three straight presidential elections where the leadership
34:07
Speaker 1: of the party decided who was going to be the nominee,
34:10
Speaker 1: not the voters. The voters didn't decide Clinton versus Sanders
34:14
Speaker 1: because people were kept out of the race from the
34:17
Speaker 1: get go. The voters didn't decide Joe Biden. That was
34:20
Speaker 1: an absolute Everybody panicked about Bernie covid happened, and everything
34:26
Speaker 1: aligned for Biden. And then, of course we know the
34:29
Speaker 1: Kamala situation. Now, that doesn't mean these voters are anti
34:33
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris. Okay, they weren't. They are. They like her,
34:36
Speaker 1: that wasn't it. They rallied around her, they got excited
34:39
Speaker 1: for her, but she lost, And after somebody loses, it's
34:42
Speaker 1: pretty natural to say, hey, wait a minute, I didn't
34:44
Speaker 1: actually pick her. She wasn't my choice to be the
34:46
Speaker 1: stand in. Maybe I would have, maybe I wouldn't have,
34:50
Speaker 1: but I'll never know because I didn't get a choice.
34:57
Speaker 1: So you know, and again happened in six If you
35:01
Speaker 1: didn't want Clinton in sixteen, and you weren't a Bernie
35:03
Speaker 1: Sanders progressive, your only other alternative was Martin O'Malley. It's
35:06
Speaker 1: no offense to Martin. I've knowne on a long time
35:10
Speaker 1: two term mayor, Baltimore two term governor, in some ways
35:14
Speaker 1: very successful resume, too thin skinned about his portrayal in
35:19
Speaker 1: the Wire, which I think was sort of told you
35:21
Speaker 1: something about him. But I digress. Maybe there's another alternative
35:25
Speaker 1: universe where he actually emerged in the twenty sixteen multiverse,
35:29
Speaker 1: but not in the one we live on. And then,
35:32
Speaker 1: of course we know what happened in twenty twenty by
35:35
Speaker 1: South Carolina, the establishment and made it pretty clear where
35:38
Speaker 1: they wanted this nomination to go. They wanted to support
35:41
Speaker 1: somebody who had yet to win a single Remember, Biden
35:44
Speaker 1: had yet to win a primary caucus before South Carolina.
35:48
Speaker 1: He didn't even finish in the top three. And I
35:49
Speaker 1: went the top three in New Hampshire, and he finished
35:51
Speaker 1: at distant second in Nevada, and the established and said, yeah,
35:54
Speaker 1: let's go with Joe Biden anyone. But guess what, And
36:02
Speaker 1: it's going to be hard for some people to accept
36:05
Speaker 1: whether you think Biden tried to be a good president.
36:08
Speaker 1: The public decided he wasn't a good president, and that's
36:10
Speaker 1: the problem. And if the country chose to turn to
36:14
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, then it means it was a failure of
36:16
Speaker 1: a presidency. I say this mindful. This is not personal.
36:22
Speaker 1: It's just what the voters have concluded. Right. So, now
36:27
Speaker 1: you've had three consecutive presidential cycles in which Democratic voters
36:30
Speaker 1: could reasonably conclude that their leadership put a very heavy
36:33
Speaker 1: thumb on the scale. And where did it leave them?
36:37
Speaker 1: Two terms of Donald Trump as president. So who's actually
36:41
Speaker 1: standing up and saying this leadership failed. It's not the
36:46
Speaker 1: governing wing of the Democratic Party. Right. Chuck Schumer hasn't
36:49
Speaker 1: said I messed up. Nancy Pelosi hasn't stood up to
36:52
Speaker 1: say hey we messed up. A Keen, Jefferies, Barack Obama,
36:57
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris. Nobody stood up and said hey, we messed up.
37:00
Speaker 1: It's only been the progressive they've said it. Chuck Schumer
37:03
Speaker 1: becomes the lightning rod because he's now the most obvious
37:06
Speaker 1: remaining face of the old leadership structure. Some of the
37:09
Speaker 1: criticism of Schumer is warranted, but the larger point isn't
37:13
Speaker 1: about Schumer. It's that the people challenging the establishment are
37:19
Speaker 1: willing to acknowledge the actual failure of the leadership. And
37:23
Speaker 1: this is the distinction that I think our political class
37:26
Speaker 1: keeps missing. You can disagree completely about the treatment while
37:29
Speaker 1: agreeing completely about the diagnosis. If I go to three
37:33
Speaker 1: doctors and two of them tell me everything looks fine,
37:35
Speaker 1: and the third says, no, something is seriously wrong, and
37:39
Speaker 1: I know something is wrong, guess which doctor I'm going
37:42
Speaker 1: to listen to. Now. I may ultimately think that doctor's
37:46
Speaker 1: treatment ideas or nuts, but at least he's looking at
37:51
Speaker 1: the same patient I'm looking at. That's our politics right now.
37:56
Speaker 1: The progressive says, these people fucked it all up, and
38:00
Speaker 1: the frustrated Democratic voter says, yeah, they're right, they did. Okay,
38:06
Speaker 1: now you've established trust. Now you can argue about socialism.
38:10
Speaker 1: Now you can argue about taxes. Now you can argue
38:12
Speaker 1: about Israel. Now you can argue about whatever you want.
38:15
Speaker 1: But the governing Democrat who begins by saying, actually, the
38:18
Speaker 1: Biden administration accomplished more legislatively than people appreciate, I forget it.
38:23
Speaker 1: You've already lost them because you're arguing about the treatment
38:30
Speaker 1: before acknowledging that the patient is sick. And this is
38:35
Speaker 1: precisely what Donald Trump understood in twenty sixteen. Trump said,
38:38
Speaker 1: they're all full of shit, the Republicans, the Democrats, Washington,
38:44
Speaker 1: the experts, the people who set your jobs overseas, the
38:47
Speaker 1: people who started wars, the people will tell you everything
38:50
Speaker 1: is fine. All those horrible media people, they're all full
38:55
Speaker 1: of shit. Now, did every Trump voter want every Trump policy?
39:01
Speaker 1: But they certainly agreed with his diagnosis. Yeah, that guy,
39:04
Speaker 1: he says what I'm thinking. Remember that, Well, that's what
39:07
Speaker 1: they're thinking. These people are all full of shit. And
39:10
Speaker 1: once somebody believes you're the only person willing to tell
39:14
Speaker 1: them what's wrong, they're going to give you enormous latitude
39:18
Speaker 1: on your ideas for the cure. And that's a danger, right,
39:22
Speaker 1: that's the danger of this. It's the danger of electing
39:26
Speaker 1: mister I alone can fix it, because he's proven he
39:29
Speaker 1: alone could break it, but he can't seem to fix it.
39:33
Speaker 1: But that's what's happening in portions of the Democratic Party
39:36
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41:28
Speaker 1: fascinating Washington Post story late last week that I can't
41:31
Speaker 1: stop thinking about. It's about a musical instrument factory. The
41:38
Speaker 1: company is called con Now, this one, there's a reason
41:41
Speaker 1: I sort of caught my eye more than just because
41:44
Speaker 1: it was about a factory. This one it's close to
41:46
Speaker 1: home for me because my French horn is a con
41:50
Speaker 1: c n n For those of you, those of you
41:52
Speaker 1: who know musical instruments a little bit, you know they
41:54
Speaker 1: make trump they make a lot of brass instruments. By
41:57
Speaker 1: the way, I still have my con horn, which I've gotten,
41:59
Speaker 1: you know, I created. There's this great there was this
42:02
Speaker 1: great musical instrument sort of tinker out here in rural
42:10
Speaker 1: Maryland who gave me a screwbell. I had sort of
42:13
Speaker 1: the old fashioned French horn, and then I wanted to
42:15
Speaker 1: get a screwbell. I got it done out here but
42:17
Speaker 1: it's a con Someday I'll bring it for a little
42:21
Speaker 1: show and tell. But this story is not about Chuck
42:24
Speaker 1: Tud's French horn or other French horns. It's about American
42:26
Speaker 1: manufacturing again. It's about private equity again and its promises
42:32
Speaker 1: about protecting American manufacturing again. It's a story about factory
42:37
Speaker 1: closing again. But the details of this one are almost
42:41
Speaker 1: a bit too perfect, which is why it's worth talking
42:44
Speaker 1: about it in whole. So here's what the story is about.
42:48
Speaker 1: This is conn Selmer's plant in East Lake, Ohio. It's
42:51
Speaker 1: outside of Cleveland. It's been making brass instruments in that
42:54
Speaker 1: factory for sixty one years, tubas sousophones, which are basically
42:59
Speaker 1: marching tubas French horns. These aren't widgets being stamped out
43:02
Speaker 1: by robots, right. A lot of this is very skilled
43:05
Speaker 1: work done by hand workers having the ben Brandt brass
43:10
Speaker 1: shape it buffet make instruments that ended up in the
43:13
Speaker 1: Cleveland Orchestra or the Ohio State Marching ban or frankly
43:17
Speaker 1: in Chuck Ta's house. So yeah, it's a personal connection
43:22
Speaker 1: for me. My French horn was made in this factory,
43:27
Speaker 1: and at one point this factory had about three hundred
43:29
Speaker 1: workers running three shifts, and by the end there were
43:31
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty. We know, we know these stories.
43:34
Speaker 1: Unfortunately they become quite familiar as of June thirtieth, though
43:38
Speaker 1: this summer, all one hundred and fifty remaining employees all
43:43
Speaker 1: lost their jobs. Now, the company claims the plan had
43:47
Speaker 1: been losing money for years and couldn't compete with manufacturers
43:49
Speaker 1: in Asia. It says it invested millions trying to make
43:52
Speaker 1: the factory more efficient, outsourced some unprofitable products, negotiated with
43:57
Speaker 1: the union, and ultimately concluded it couldn't make the non
44:00
Speaker 1: were Okay, that's the explanation. But here's where the story
44:03
Speaker 1: gets a little more complicated and quite interesting. Con Selmer
44:08
Speaker 1: is owned by Steinway Musical Instruments, and Steinway was bought
44:12
Speaker 1: in twenty thirteen by the investment firm of billionaire hedge
44:15
Speaker 1: fund manager John Paulson. Do you know who John Paulson is?
44:20
Speaker 1: John Paulson's a major Trump supporter. He's a major Trump fundraiser,
44:26
Speaker 1: and he calls himself an advisor to Trump. And in
44:29
Speaker 1: September of twenty twenty four, Paulson himself goes on CNBC
44:34
Speaker 1: and makes the case for Trump's tariffs. And what does
44:37
Speaker 1: he say. He says America has hollowed out as a
44:42
Speaker 1: hollowed out manufacturing base. He says, we need to protect
44:45
Speaker 1: American manufacturing and American jobs. And then he says American
44:48
Speaker 1: companies can't keep closing American factories and moving the jobs overseas.
44:55
Speaker 1: That Paulson's pitch to support Donald Trump on investm friendly CNBC. Meanwhile,
45:02
Speaker 1: the company he owns, this is when he's uttering this
45:05
Speaker 1: ins NBC. The company Pulse and owns had begun building
45:09
Speaker 1: a twenty one million dollar manufacturing facility in you guessed it, China.
45:18
Speaker 1: So when con Selmer finally shuts East Lake down permanently,
45:24
Speaker 1: guess where those jobs are going. Some professional French horn
45:30
Speaker 1: production will move to another con summer plant right here
45:33
Speaker 1: in the United States in Elkhart, Indiana. But it's going
45:36
Speaker 1: there because it's a non union plant. But the tubas, suzophones,
45:42
Speaker 1: and the student and intermediate French horns, they're all going offshore.
45:46
Speaker 1: They're all going to China. Union leaders themselves were told
45:51
Speaker 1: much of that production was going to that new facility
45:53
Speaker 1: Paulson was building at the time. He told CNBC that
45:58
Speaker 1: he was supporting Trump, so no more MANUFAC would leave
46:00
Speaker 1: the country. So think about it. The billionaire owner goes
46:04
Speaker 1: on TV to argue for Trump and tis because we
46:07
Speaker 1: have to stop American companies from closing factories and sending
46:10
Speaker 1: jobs overseas. And then what does he do, literally eighteen
46:15
Speaker 1: months later, closes an American factory and sends those jobs
46:20
Speaker 1: overseas well. What was interesting about this Washington Post story
46:25
Speaker 1: is that the workers thought, surely somebody is going to
46:27
Speaker 1: stop this because Trump knows Paulson, Ohio's former senator and
46:33
Speaker 1: current Vice President JD. Fance. He knows Paulson. Bernie Marino
46:38
Speaker 1: actually called con Selmer's CEO and tried to keep the
46:41
Speaker 1: plane open, but nothing changed. And then this is where
46:46
Speaker 1: the Post story became much more than a story about
46:49
Speaker 1: a musical instrument factory, because on the last day, these
46:52
Speaker 1: workers started talking politics. One retired worker says he can't
46:57
Speaker 1: stand Trump, but he likes what Trump does. Another guy
47:01
Speaker 1: looks at him and basically says, what the hell are
47:02
Speaker 1: you talking about? Look at the alternative Democrats have become
47:08
Speaker 1: socialist communists, and then another voter enters the picture. There
47:14
Speaker 1: in Nette Dombrowski. She's sixty four years old. She was
47:17
Speaker 1: a janitor at the factory, and she voted for Trump.
47:19
Speaker 1: And her conclusion isn't okay, I'm going back to the Democrats.
47:22
Speaker 1: Her conclusion is it's all false promises. They're all fullishit,
47:27
Speaker 1: even you, Donald Trump. And then she says, I'm done.
47:32
Speaker 1: I'm not voting ever again. That's the story, not that
47:39
Speaker 1: Donald Trump lost a voter to the Democratic Party. Donald
47:42
Speaker 1: Trump may have lost a voter to nobody. And if
47:45
Speaker 1: you want to understand the political moment we're living through,
47:48
Speaker 1: that's the woman to go figure out and understand. An
47:51
Speaker 1: Nett Dombrowski. She has concluded that that's it, sixty four
47:55
Speaker 1: years of broken promises, and she's out for what it's worth.
48:00
Speaker 1: She doesn't appear to be looking for socialism, and she
48:02
Speaker 1: doesn't appear to be looking for, you know, right wing socialism. Mega.
48:07
Speaker 1: She's looking at the entire system and saying, you all
48:09
Speaker 1: told me you were going to fix this, and none
48:11
Speaker 1: of you did. And towards the end, there are these
48:14
Speaker 1: other workers trying to figure out what that will happen,
48:16
Speaker 1: and one says, well, Trump let me down. Another one says,
48:19
Speaker 1: I thought Trump was going to stop this. Then it
48:22
Speaker 1: comes to question, what about the Democrats. Another person says
48:24
Speaker 1: they're worse. So what's the answer. They say, I'm out,
48:27
Speaker 1: I'm not voting again. I think that voters one of
48:31
Speaker 1: the most important political stories in America because Donald Trump,
48:35
Speaker 1: for a brief period of time, didn't simply convert voters
48:38
Speaker 1: from one party to another. He actually brought some people
48:40
Speaker 1: back into politics, so would essentially stopped participating. There's a
48:45
Speaker 1: pretty good history of interesting bit of political history here.
48:48
Speaker 1: Sean Trendy over at Real Clear Politics was sort of
48:51
Speaker 1: the chief sort of you know analysts out there sort
48:56
Speaker 1: of screaming this at the top of his lungs. And
48:58
Speaker 1: he was onto this before anybody else was onto this.
49:02
Speaker 1: After the twenty twelve election, everybody was looking at Mett
49:04
Speaker 1: Romney's loss and talking about the changing racial composition of
49:07
Speaker 1: the country, and obviously that was an important part of
49:09
Speaker 1: the story. But what Sean noticed was something else in
49:13
Speaker 1: the data. He thought millions of white voters who you
49:16
Speaker 1: might have expected to participate simply weren't participating anymore. And
49:20
Speaker 1: with the final numbers, he estimated he thought there were
49:23
Speaker 1: six million plus fewer white voters than you would have
49:25
Speaker 1: expected based on the twenty e eight turnout and population growth,
49:30
Speaker 1: And when he dug further to where they lived, he
49:33
Speaker 1: realized they weren't primarily suburban Republican establishment voters. Actually tended
49:37
Speaker 1: to be lower income, blue collar, more rural, disproportionately in
49:40
Speaker 1: the north and interestingly a lot in the same places
49:43
Speaker 1: where Ross Perrot had done well in nineteen ninety two
49:46
Speaker 1: and less well in ninety six. It's important because these
49:50
Speaker 1: weren't necessarily doctrinaire conservative Republicans sitting home because Mett Romney
49:54
Speaker 1: wasn't severely conservative enough. One of my favorite phrases that
49:57
Speaker 1: he came up, but if you have to call your conservatives,
50:00
Speaker 1: I'm severe, it's probably not a good thing. But I digress. Now.
50:03
Speaker 1: Shawn's theory was almost the opposite Romney, with the wealth
50:06
Speaker 1: of patrician image, the economic libertarianism. He just simply was
50:09
Speaker 1: a really bad fit for these voters. And guess what.
50:14
Speaker 1: In January twenty sixteen, before anybody knew Donal Trump was
50:16
Speaker 1: going to win the presidency, Sean wrote that a Republican
50:19
Speaker 1: candidate with more working class appeal might be able to
50:21
Speaker 1: bring some of these people back into the electorate. He
50:25
Speaker 1: was careful about it. He wasn't arguing these voters alone
50:27
Speaker 1: could elect a Republican president. But Trump's coalition obviously became
50:34
Speaker 1: much broader and more complicated than simply white working class voters.
50:39
Speaker 1: And then Shawn had identified something real. There was an
50:41
Speaker 1: electorate out there that neither party was reaching, right, The
50:45
Speaker 1: conventional leaders of either party was not reaching those folks.
50:48
Speaker 1: These are the people that gave up on both parties,
50:51
Speaker 1: people in places with complicated political histories, places that had
50:54
Speaker 1: voted for Democrats, Republicans, Ross Perrot, sometimes even Barack Obama,
50:58
Speaker 1: who weren't sitting around thinking about polics in these left
51:01
Speaker 1: right terms that we constantly shoved people into. They thought
51:05
Speaker 1: the system just simply wasn't working for them, and Trump
51:09
Speaker 1: saw them right. This is a form of identity politics.
51:13
Speaker 1: He heard them, or at the very least, Trump convinced
51:16
Speaker 1: them that he heard them right. And that's the difference.
51:19
Speaker 1: Some of it was economics, some of it was class,
51:22
Speaker 1: some of it was culture, some of it was race.
51:25
Speaker 1: And anybody who tells you they can neatly separate all
51:29
Speaker 1: those things into individual little boxes probably hasn't spent enough
51:32
Speaker 1: time talking to actual voters. Human beings don't easily sick me. Right.
51:39
Speaker 1: A guy doesn't wake up and say, today my vote
51:40
Speaker 1: is thirty seven percent economic anxiety, twenty six percent cultural resentment,
51:44
Speaker 1: and fourteen percent racial anxiety. Right, that's not how people think.
51:49
Speaker 1: They know something changed in their town. That's what they know.
51:52
Speaker 1: The factory isn't there anymore, Their kid moved away because
51:55
Speaker 1: there aren't jobs. The people running the country seem to
51:58
Speaker 1: live in a different world, and somebody finally comes a
52:01
Speaker 1: wrong and says, yeah, I see that too. Trump did that,
52:06
Speaker 1: and for a lot of these voters, that was enough,
52:08
Speaker 1: Which brings me back to the janitor or now the
52:12
Speaker 1: former janitor out of work janitor Inette Dombroski at that
52:15
Speaker 1: con musical instrument factory, because what happens when the guy
52:18
Speaker 1: who told you he saw the problem gets power and
52:20
Speaker 1: the factory still closes. Well, that's the question we're facing now,
52:25
Speaker 1: isn't it. And what I find fascinating is that her
52:27
Speaker 1: answer isn't fine, I'm a Democrat again, It's I'm done.
52:31
Speaker 1: And that's the big warning sign for both parties here,
52:36
Speaker 1: because Trump proved that politically dormant voters can be reactivated.
52:41
Speaker 1: But if those voters conclude that Trump failed them too,
52:45
Speaker 1: there's absolutely no reason to assume they automatically migrate back
52:49
Speaker 1: to the Democratic Party. And by the way, midterm success
52:54
Speaker 1: may not mean they came back. It could mean they
52:56
Speaker 1: just sat home. They could just disappear again. And I
53:00
Speaker 1: think that's one of the things our political analysis misses
53:03
Speaker 1: when we insist I'm looking at everything as Republican gains
53:06
Speaker 1: equal Democratic losses, or Democratic gains equal Republican losses. There
53:10
Speaker 1: is always a third destination, the couch, and maybe an
53:14
Speaker 1: eventual fourth destination. Let me introduce you to somebody we
53:19
Speaker 1: haven't met yet, because this is why I keep coming
53:23
Speaker 1: back to third parties and independence. Not because I think
53:26
Speaker 1: we have a long term hope of creating a third
53:28
Speaker 1: or fourth party in this country. I don't, But I
53:30
Speaker 1: do think either these two parties reform themselves or they
53:33
Speaker 1: will be replaced. That I promise you. One of these
53:37
Speaker 1: parties could be the Wakes. It's possible they're both the Wakes,
53:40
Speaker 1: but hang on so Ultimately, though, I think both parties
53:44
Speaker 1: need competition. I think they need to fear something besides
53:47
Speaker 1: losing to each other. Because if I'm Coke and you're PEPSI.
53:51
Speaker 1: Losing five points of market share to you is bad,
53:54
Speaker 1: but hey, everybody's still drinking carbonated cola beverages. Right. What
53:59
Speaker 1: would scare me is somebody inventing something people decide they
54:01
Speaker 1: like better than cola. Right. That's existential, and that's historically
54:08
Speaker 1: what successful third party movements do. They don't necessarily become
54:12
Speaker 1: permanent third parties. They threaten to replace one of the
54:15
Speaker 1: existing parties. That's when political parties recalibrate. But I think
54:20
Speaker 1: a lot of people in the independent movement have misdiagnosed
54:23
Speaker 1: this opportunity. Joe Manchin is a great example of this.
54:26
Speaker 1: Some of my friends forward have done versions of this too.
54:29
Speaker 1: They see forty something percent of Americans identifying as independents
54:32
Speaker 1: and conclude, ah, centrists. No no, no, no, no no.
54:37
Speaker 1: Not necessarily independent does not mean moderate. It means I
54:41
Speaker 1: don't want to join either of your fucking clubs. That's different.
54:47
Speaker 1: The opening isn't necessarily ideological centrism either. The opening is
54:52
Speaker 1: institutional rejection. So here's the test. Can you build a
54:58
Speaker 1: political coalition that inc clues the factory worker who just
55:03
Speaker 1: lost his job making musical instruments, the fifty eight year
55:07
Speaker 1: old middle manager who's done reasonably well, doesn't want a
55:10
Speaker 1: revolution and just wants the government to function. And the
55:14
Speaker 1: twenty five year old who did everything we told them
55:16
Speaker 1: to do, went to school, got the degree, learned to code,
55:19
Speaker 1: works hard, and still can't imagine buying a house. These
55:23
Speaker 1: people may disagree about immigration, by the way, they may
55:26
Speaker 1: disagree about taxes, abortion, guns, Israel, climate, one hundred things,
55:30
Speaker 1: but maybe they agree on something more fundamental, that the
55:34
Speaker 1: system isn't working for me anymore, and maybe that's enough
55:39
Speaker 1: to begin a political movement. This is where money, though enters.
55:43
Speaker 1: My theory of the case, politics has become so expensive
55:46
Speaker 1: that maintaining political power requires an extraordinary amount of money.
55:51
Speaker 1: And when your continued existence depends on people who can
55:55
Speaker 1: provide extraordinary amounts of money Elon Musk, those people inevitably
56:00
Speaker 1: gain extraordinary access Elon Musk. That's not necessarily corruption in
56:06
Speaker 1: the criminal sense, Elon Musk. It's capture Elon Musk. And
56:13
Speaker 1: it happens in both parties, sometimes by different interests, sometimes
56:16
Speaker 1: by the exact same interest hedging their bets. Think about
56:20
Speaker 1: what the two party system offers somebody with enormous financial
56:23
Speaker 1: interest in Washington, one investment vehicle on the right, another
56:27
Speaker 1: investment vehicle on the left. If one goes down, maybe
56:31
Speaker 1: the other goes up. It's a perfectly rational market, right.
56:34
Speaker 1: The crypto folks got Trump's kids involved in a crypto firm.
56:38
Speaker 1: The crypto folks also have Kirsten childebrands children involved in
56:44
Speaker 1: crypto deals, and she's a Democrat. There's your quote rational market.
56:49
Speaker 1: It's also a terrible way to operate a representative democracy.
56:53
Speaker 1: And eventually voters figure out that their representative seems more
56:57
Speaker 1: frightened of losing a donor than losing their vote. So
57:11
Speaker 1: here's the thing. I think Chuck Schumer is a pretty
57:13
Speaker 1: decent guy. I think our teen Jeffries is a pretty
57:16
Speaker 1: decent person. I know plenty of Republicans who are think
57:19
Speaker 1: are really decent people. This is not a morality judgment
57:23
Speaker 1: on individuals, But it doesn't mean they're good at their jobs.
57:28
Speaker 1: Good people can be bad at their jobs. Bad people
57:32
Speaker 1: can be very good at their jobs. Sports teaches us
57:35
Speaker 1: this constantly, doesn't it. We forgive the asshole. It's three
57:39
Speaker 1: twenty for our team. We hate the wonderful human being
57:42
Speaker 1: who strikes out with the bases loaded competence and morality
57:47
Speaker 1: are not synonyms. But our politics has become so tribal
57:51
Speaker 1: that admitting somebody on your team is failing somehow feels
57:56
Speaker 1: like admitting the other team is morally right. That's how
58:01
Speaker 1: you get Todd blanche a confirmed Attorney general. Jesus freaking crime.
58:06
Speaker 1: Any folks, somebody has to be willing to say, we
58:10
Speaker 1: fuck this up, not we need to communicate better, not
58:15
Speaker 1: we need to meet voters where they are, or we
58:19
Speaker 1: understand Americans are frustrated. Jesus, shut up and just say
58:24
Speaker 1: what it is. We fucked up. Our institutions stopped listening,
58:32
Speaker 1: Our parties became captured by businesses that they're supposed to regulate.
58:39
Speaker 1: Our leaders became more interested in winning the argument than
58:41
Speaker 1: solving the problem. And we're going to fix it. That's
58:44
Speaker 1: all I want to hear. And this is where I
58:47
Speaker 1: think we need to be careful about what the public
58:48
Speaker 1: is actually asking for, because I don't think America is
58:51
Speaker 1: becoming a socialist country, and I don't think America's going
58:53
Speaker 1: to become a fascist country. I think America has become
58:56
Speaker 1: a country that's desperate for a simple reset, And because
59:01
Speaker 1: nobody credible is offering the reset, voters keep sampling the revolutionaries.
59:06
Speaker 1: I don't blame them, and that's a different way to
59:08
Speaker 1: understand the moment we're living in. And that's how I
59:10
Speaker 1: understand this moment. You may not agree with me on this,
59:16
Speaker 1: but I have a feeling in a few years you
59:17
Speaker 1: may go, oh yeah, and mother fat son of a bitch,
59:20
Speaker 1: Chuck was right. I never like admitting that I know
59:24
Speaker 1: there's some of you out there. It's okay. I want
59:27
Speaker 1: you listening as well. I continue to believe there is
59:31
Speaker 1: an archetype though, that could help calm the waters offer
59:34
Speaker 1: revolution at the same time, and I think it's someone
59:37
Speaker 1: from the last institution that still enjoys cross partisan support.
59:41
Speaker 1: It's the military, right The two presidents that seemed to
59:45
Speaker 1: understand how absurd our partisan politics was the best happened
59:48
Speaker 1: to be the two people who have been commander in
59:52
Speaker 1: chief of our armed forces and in some ways in
59:57
Speaker 1: charge of our armed forces before they became president. That
1:00:00
Speaker 1: to General George Washington and General Dwight Eisenhower. So I'll
1:00:04
Speaker 1: give you an example of the kind of person I
1:00:07
Speaker 1: find myself looking for, at least one whose story is
1:00:10
Speaker 1: intriguing enough that I certainly am trying to find people
1:00:13
Speaker 1: who know this person, and I want to see if
1:00:15
Speaker 1: they're ready to be America's next Washington or Eisenhower or Lincoln,
1:00:19
Speaker 1: because we need a leader who isn't comfortable with any
1:00:22
Speaker 1: label other than one American. So I've been very intrigued
1:00:29
Speaker 1: by now retired General Christani Here. Now, I will confess
1:00:33
Speaker 1: I don't know the guy. I've never met him. I
1:00:37
Speaker 1: don't know his politics, and I don't know if he
1:00:40
Speaker 1: has any and I certainly don't know whether he'd have
1:00:43
Speaker 1: the slightest interest in public service as an elected official,
1:00:49
Speaker 1: because he's clearly has been involved with public service his
1:00:52
Speaker 1: whole adult life. But I am intrigued by his resume.
1:00:56
Speaker 1: Donna Hue is a West Point grad spent more than
1:00:59
Speaker 1: three d age in the Army, commanded Delta Force, served
1:01:03
Speaker 1: in Iraq, Siria, in Afghanistan, commanded the eighty second Airborne,
1:01:06
Speaker 1: and eventually became the four star commander of US Army
1:01:09
Speaker 1: forces in Europe and Africa. He's the guy in that
1:01:14
Speaker 1: extraordinary night vision photograph from August to twenty twenty one,
1:01:17
Speaker 1: the last American service member to board the final plane
1:01:21
Speaker 1: out of Afghanistan. Some people actually started calling him a
1:01:24
Speaker 1: real life Captain America. But he was forced out. He
1:01:29
Speaker 1: didn't voluntarily leave, he was forced out. He'd only been
1:01:32
Speaker 1: running army forces in Europe and Africa for about eighteen months.
1:01:35
Speaker 1: There were efforts inside the Army and on Capitol Hill
1:01:37
Speaker 1: to actually extend his career. He was that well regarded,
1:01:42
Speaker 1: but Pete haig Seth wouldn't approve it. Why, we don't know.
1:01:46
Speaker 1: His connection to the Afghanistan withdrawal has certainly made him
1:01:48
Speaker 1: a political target before, and that appears to be what
1:01:50
Speaker 1: hag Seth was focused on. Nobody established publicly though, that
1:01:53
Speaker 1: that's why haig Seth pushed him out. But I'm not
1:02:00
Speaker 1: nominating Christanna, You're a president right here now. I don't
1:02:03
Speaker 1: know nearly enough about him, but he's the type of
1:02:06
Speaker 1: candidate I think we need to be looking for. I'm
1:02:09
Speaker 1: curious about him being on the wrong side of someone
1:02:12
Speaker 1: as unqualified as hag Seth already gives him a leg
1:02:15
Speaker 1: up in my book. Given how atrociously hag Seth has
1:02:19
Speaker 1: been running our military, I do worry what he has done,
1:02:23
Speaker 1: how he's screwing up military recruiting. I mean the long
1:02:26
Speaker 1: term damage he's doing here. Boy, we have a lot
1:02:29
Speaker 1: of work to do. I mean, Haig, Seth, Blanche and
1:02:35
Speaker 1: Kennedy all three are next level disasters that are going
1:02:42
Speaker 1: to require like super fun to type cleanup situations. But look,
1:02:48
Speaker 1: I'm looking for people who have actually done difficult things,
1:02:52
Speaker 1: who've led institutions, who've served the country regardless of party,
1:02:56
Speaker 1: and we might have enough credibility to look at Americans
1:02:58
Speaker 1: and say, hey, all right, this is fucked up to
1:03:03
Speaker 1: this is foo bar and we need to make it
1:03:06
Speaker 1: unfood barred. The resume will get you in the door.
1:03:09
Speaker 1: The question I don't know the answer to is whether
1:03:11
Speaker 1: somebody like Donnie you could also channel the frustration of
1:03:14
Speaker 1: that factory worker in Ohio, that young person who can't
1:03:17
Speaker 1: afford a house, or that voter who thinks both political
1:03:19
Speaker 1: parties have just lost their minds. If he could, well,
1:03:22
Speaker 1: that's the kind of person I'm talking about. So let
1:03:25
Speaker 1: me finish something about this show and about why I
1:03:28
Speaker 1: think many of you tune in. Some of you are here,
1:03:31
Speaker 1: come here because you just want this straight of a
1:03:33
Speaker 1: political announceis you can get that isn't constructed around the
1:03:36
Speaker 1: knee jerk defense of either party. I've been doing that
1:03:40
Speaker 1: for thirty plus years, So that's easy for me, so
1:03:42
Speaker 1: I appreciate that. That certainly is what I'm trying to
1:03:44
Speaker 1: give you. That's one part. Some of you come here
1:03:46
Speaker 1: because there are questions you think are worth asking that
1:03:48
Speaker 1: our political system, and frankly, sometimes my own profession refuses
1:03:52
Speaker 1: to ask, let alone answer. I want to both ask
1:03:55
Speaker 1: those questions and I want to try to answer them,
1:03:58
Speaker 1: but I don't always know the answer. Sometimes there isn't one.
1:04:01
Speaker 1: Sometimes the answer is uncomfortable. Sometimes it indicts people I
1:04:05
Speaker 1: know and like, and sometimes it indicts people you know
1:04:09
Speaker 1: and like. It's okay. I think the bigger problem in
1:04:14
Speaker 1: American politics right now is that we've become terrified of
1:04:18
Speaker 1: acknowledging obvious failure if doing so somehow helps the other side.
1:04:24
Speaker 1: And this is how we're in this doom loop in
1:04:26
Speaker 1: both parties. That's what's killing us. Let me offer you
1:04:31
Speaker 1: a bottom line analysis where I think the country is
1:04:33
Speaker 1: right now. I don't think Americans are looking for nationalism,
1:04:36
Speaker 1: and I don't think Americans are looking for socialism. I
1:04:38
Speaker 1: think Americans are looking for a reset, good old fashioned
1:04:42
Speaker 1: control of the league. We're looking for honesty. We're looking
1:04:46
Speaker 1: for some basic morality without the judgment We're looking for
1:04:49
Speaker 1: leaders who can say something is right or wrong without
1:04:52
Speaker 1: immediately then turning it into a test of whether you're
1:04:54
Speaker 1: a good person or a bad person, and whether they
1:04:58
Speaker 1: can exploit it for political gain. They want what I
1:05:02
Speaker 1: can only describe as an American way of thinking, which
1:05:06
Speaker 1: means that, Yep, it's contradictory. We've always been contradictory. It's
1:05:11
Speaker 1: about individualism and community, it's about capitalism and fairness, it's
1:05:15
Speaker 1: about liberty and responsibility. It's about immigration and assimilation, distrust
1:05:20
Speaker 1: of government and enormous expectations of government. Yes, we contain
1:05:25
Speaker 1: all of these contradictions. That's what we are. That's America.
1:05:30
Speaker 1: But underneath all of it, there is traditionally been a
1:05:32
Speaker 1: belief that whatever our arguments are, we're ultimately supposed to
1:05:38
Speaker 1: be on the same side. That America is the good guys,
1:05:41
Speaker 1: or at a minimum, want to be the good guys.
1:05:44
Speaker 1: We're trying, and right now half the country is convinced
1:05:47
Speaker 1: the other half is the bad guys. Not just with
1:05:50
Speaker 1: the bad guys, but are the bad guys. Frankly, it's exhausting.
1:05:55
Speaker 1: It is exhausting to live inside of politics that demands
1:05:58
Speaker 1: that you hate half of your fellows citizens. It is
1:06:01
Speaker 1: exhausting to be told every election is the last election
1:06:04
Speaker 1: or the most important election. It is exhausting that every
1:06:07
Speaker 1: disagreement is existential, that every compromises betrayal, that every opponent
1:06:12
Speaker 1: is evil. We're just tired of it. And so right
1:06:17
Speaker 1: now we're gravitating towards anybody who agrees with the one
1:06:21
Speaker 1: conclusion that they already have reached. It's all fucked up.
1:06:27
Speaker 1: Say it with me now, folks, right, that's the entry point.
1:06:30
Speaker 1: If you don't share that conclusion, you're not going to
1:06:33
Speaker 1: have any constituency listening to you. That's how Trump pulled
1:06:36
Speaker 1: it off in sixteen. That's why some progressives are working
1:06:40
Speaker 1: right now and winning. That's why outsider candidates keep getting
1:06:44
Speaker 1: audiences and keep earning those audiences, because they begin with
1:06:48
Speaker 1: the diagnosis, this isn't working, and then the voters say, finally,
1:06:54
Speaker 1: somebody said it. But here's the distinction. I do think
1:06:58
Speaker 1: that matters. I don't believe most America actually want to
1:07:00
Speaker 1: burn the system down. They're not Steve Bannon and they're
1:07:05
Speaker 1: not Hassan Piker. What they what they want is that
1:07:09
Speaker 1: simple control delete same laptop, same computer, just a better
1:07:14
Speaker 1: functioning laptop and a better functioning system. Can we just
1:07:18
Speaker 1: reboot it. Let's get rid of whatever is causing this
1:07:22
Speaker 1: thing to freeze up all the time. Let's clean out
1:07:25
Speaker 1: the crap that's running in the background. Right, we need
1:07:28
Speaker 1: new people operating this system. They don't necessarily want a
1:07:32
Speaker 1: brand new operating system. And I think our political class
1:07:36
Speaker 1: does keep misreading this. The populace right, here's the anger
1:07:39
Speaker 1: and says they want nationalism. No, they don't. The progressive
1:07:42
Speaker 1: left here's the anger and says they want socialism. And
1:07:45
Speaker 1: I don't think that either. They just want some competence,
1:07:48
Speaker 1: They want some honesty, they want some fairness, and they
1:07:52
Speaker 1: want leaders who aren't so obviously captured by financial special interests.
1:07:57
Speaker 1: They want to politicians who can admit a mistake or two,
1:08:00
Speaker 1: government that does some basic things well. And most important,
1:08:03
Speaker 1: they just want to preserve the republic for which it stands.
1:08:10
Speaker 1: They're angry at it, they're disappointed in it. They don't
1:08:12
Speaker 1: trust the people running this country. But that doesn't mean
1:08:15
Speaker 1: they've given up on the idea that America is different.
1:08:19
Speaker 1: There's a difference between wanting to renovate the House and
1:08:21
Speaker 1: wanting to bulldoze the House, and I still think more
1:08:24
Speaker 1: Americans want to renovate this house. We're a bunch of renovators.
1:08:29
Speaker 1: They just can't believe who we've hired to maintain it.
1:08:34
Speaker 1: So yes, maybe eventually this country decides it wants an
1:08:37
Speaker 1: entirely different political system. That's always possible, but I do
1:08:41
Speaker 1: not think that's where we are right now, at least
1:08:44
Speaker 1: not yet. What Americans desperately want is a new generation
1:08:48
Speaker 1: of people willing to reboot the existing system while preserving
1:08:52
Speaker 1: the pieces that have actually worked. And that's why I
1:08:56
Speaker 1: keep looking for these people. That's why somebody like a
1:08:58
Speaker 1: Captain America Christian catches my attention, even though I know
1:09:02
Speaker 1: almost nothing about his politics and I have never met him.
1:09:04
Speaker 1: But again, if Pete Haigseth doesn't like him, I think
1:09:06
Speaker 1: eighty percent of America will. That's why I used to
1:09:10
Speaker 1: wonder about somebody like Bill mcgraven. I'm not here publicly
1:09:14
Speaker 1: recruiting either one of them, but I am describing the
1:09:16
Speaker 1: archetype that I think America needs. Someone who's actually done
1:09:20
Speaker 1: difficult things, Somebody who has run something besides a political campaign,
1:09:24
Speaker 1: Somebody who has demonstrated service to more than themselves. Somebody
1:09:28
Speaker 1: who understands and institutions aren't captured and shouldn't be captured
1:09:34
Speaker 1: by other institutions. Somebody who looks at all of this
1:09:40
Speaker 1: and sees what we see, that it is fucked up,
1:09:43
Speaker 1: but we're not burning it down. We're going to fix it.
1:09:46
Speaker 1: We're going to roll up our sleeves. This political space
1:09:49
Speaker 1: is just sitting there for somebody to fill this vacuum.
1:09:52
Speaker 1: Maybe it'll get filled by somebody inside one of these
1:09:55
Speaker 1: two parties. I have my doubts, but it might. Maybe
1:09:59
Speaker 1: there's a demo at that that has that has a
1:10:02
Speaker 1: little Barack Obama in them. Maybe there's a Republican in
1:10:06
Speaker 1: the little Teddy Roosevelt in them. I don't know. It
1:10:09
Speaker 1: probably comes from an independent who doesn't even win, like
1:10:12
Speaker 1: Ross Perot. And maybe it's somebody we haven't heard of yet,
1:10:20
Speaker 1: but that maybe that's the hopeful part of all of this.
1:10:23
Speaker 1: For all of the anger, all of the distrust, all
1:10:25
Speaker 1: the dysfunction, I don't think people have given up on
1:10:29
Speaker 1: this American experiment. They just want somebody to admit that
1:10:37
Speaker 1: what they're we're seeing is what they say. So let's
1:10:44
Speaker 1: just say it together. It's all fucked up, but it's
1:10:48
Speaker 1: no reason to burn it all down. We just need
1:10:52
Speaker 1: somebody who actually has served and understands the best part
1:10:58
Speaker 1: of this system. It's time machine time and I doing
1:11:12
Speaker 1: something a little bit different today with this week's time machine.
1:11:16
Speaker 1: As you know, there's a debate taking place. Shoot, I
1:11:18
Speaker 1: just spent some time hinting at it in the opening
1:11:21
Speaker 1: monologue of this episode. But there's a debate taking place
1:11:24
Speaker 1: inside the Democratic Party right now that we're increasingly describing
1:11:27
Speaker 1: as a fight over socialism. How much should Democrats embrace socialism?
1:11:31
Speaker 1: Is the word itself politically disqualifying? Is this an ideological fight,
1:11:35
Speaker 1: a generational fight? Are we allowing a label to do
1:11:38
Speaker 1: more work than the actual policies underneath it. Meanwhile, something
1:11:42
Speaker 1: almost as interesting as happening on the right right. Donald
1:11:44
Speaker 1: Trump's Republican Party certainly isn't calling itself the Republican Socialists
1:11:48
Speaker 1: of America. Quite the opposite, But if you look at
1:11:50
Speaker 1: their economic philosophy, it's embracing tariffs, industrial policy governing ownership
1:11:55
Speaker 1: stakes in private companies, and increasingly explicit willingness to use
1:12:00
Speaker 1: federal power to steer markets toward outcomes the government considers
1:12:04
Speaker 1: better for American workers or American national power, let's just
1:12:08
Speaker 1: say this ain't Reagan era free market conservatism either, right,
1:12:12
Speaker 1: So maybe the economic argument we're having isn't quite the
1:12:15
Speaker 1: one that our political labels suggest. But because Americans have
1:12:18
Speaker 1: always had a complicated relationship with socialism, we've spent generations
1:12:22
Speaker 1: denouncing it as fundamentally on American while repeatedly embracing individual
1:12:28
Speaker 1: policies that, depending on how you they're described, could easily
1:12:32
Speaker 1: sound socialist. Sometimes they come from democratic presidents and sometimes
1:12:37
Speaker 1: they come from Republican presidents. So as we're debating and
1:12:40
Speaker 1: decrying socialism again in this particularly polarized moment, I think
1:12:45
Speaker 1: a little historical reality check is useful. And let me
1:12:48
Speaker 1: just tell you the calendar this week cooperated with me
1:12:52
Speaker 1: like no other week because we have two anniversaries one
1:12:55
Speaker 1: day apart. They give us an almost perfect way into
1:12:58
Speaker 1: this complicated story of America's love affair with socialism. Maybe
1:13:04
Speaker 1: the real question is in whether America has periodically embraced
1:13:07
Speaker 1: socialist ideas. We clearly have. The better question is why
1:13:11
Speaker 1: some of those ideas become thoroughly American while others trigger
1:13:15
Speaker 1: exactly the ideological reaction you'd expect. And it brings me
1:13:20
Speaker 1: to one of my favorite little contradictions in American politics.
1:13:22
Speaker 1: Nobody says, my socialist retirement check showed up today. They
1:13:27
Speaker 1: say my social security check showed up today. And I
1:13:33
Speaker 1: want to start there because we have, like I said,
1:13:35
Speaker 1: two anniversaries this week, one day apart on the calendar,
1:13:38
Speaker 1: thirty six years apart in history that I think tell
1:13:41
Speaker 1: us something fascinating about America's relationship with economic ideology. August fourteenth,
1:13:47
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty five, Franklin Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act.
1:13:51
Speaker 1: August fifteenth, nineteen seventy one, Richard Nixon goes on television
1:13:55
Speaker 1: and announces a ninety day freeze on wages and prices. Now,
1:14:00
Speaker 1: if I wanted to make an ideological argument and a
1:14:03
Speaker 1: cheap six hundred word op ed and the Washington Post
1:14:08
Speaker 1: using these two anniversaries, it would be pretty easy, right. Hey,
1:14:13
Speaker 1: Look see, we've always been kind of socialists. Democratic president
1:14:17
Speaker 1: creates federal social insurance. Then Richard Nixon, the guy you
1:14:21
Speaker 1: know who went after Alger Hiss the House on American
1:14:22
Speaker 1: Affairs Committee, the Cold warrior. Richard Nixon tells private businesses
1:14:26
Speaker 1: what they can charge, in private employers, what they can pay.
1:14:30
Speaker 1: You could use just those simple facts to argue that
1:14:33
Speaker 1: America has always been more socialists than Americans want to admit. Well,
1:14:38
Speaker 1: the facts aren't necessarily wrong, but I actually think the
1:14:40
Speaker 1: conclusion is, or at least it's misleading, because when you
1:14:43
Speaker 1: dig into these two anniversaries, you actually discover something more
1:14:46
Speaker 1: interesting about the way Americans actually think about economics. We're
1:14:50
Speaker 1: not particularly interested in ideological consistency, as I said, America,
1:14:55
Speaker 1: or a walking contradiction. Right. Our initial constitution was a contradiction, right.
1:15:00
Speaker 1: We were trying to you know, all men are created equal,
1:15:03
Speaker 1: and we didn't write all white males are created equal. Right,
1:15:08
Speaker 1: and yet that is kind of what we were. Right,
1:15:10
Speaker 1: We've been this walking contradiction. But we are interested in prosperity.
1:15:17
Speaker 1: And when prosterous, when prosperity appears threatened, that's when we've
1:15:21
Speaker 1: shown ourselves willing to borrow from almost anybody. Karl Marx,
1:15:25
Speaker 1: John Mater, Kaines, Fretrire, Kayak, Milton Friedman, go all the
1:15:29
Speaker 1: way back to John Locke. I know all of you going,
1:15:31
Speaker 1: oh my god, Chuck, don't do this to me. Don't
1:15:33
Speaker 1: give me an economics lesson. No, no, no, I'm not giving
1:15:36
Speaker 1: an economics lesson. That was it. That's all you need
1:15:38
Speaker 1: to know. But the point is, if you're trying to
1:15:40
Speaker 1: fit the United States neatly into one of those intellectual
1:15:43
Speaker 1: traditions associated with those names, good luck. We've developed something
1:15:47
Speaker 1: considerably less tidy, a distinctly American economic ideology, prosperity by
1:15:53
Speaker 1: any means necessary, preferably while leaving us with the feeling
1:15:58
Speaker 1: that we're still in control of our lies. So let's
1:16:01
Speaker 1: start in nineteen thirty five, because you can't import the
1:16:05
Speaker 1: Cold War meaning of socialism backwards onto the Depression. The
1:16:09
Speaker 1: Cold War hadn't happened yet. The demonization of the word
1:16:12
Speaker 1: through the prism of the Cold War hadn't happened yet.
1:16:14
Speaker 1: So socialism certainly was still controversial in the thirties. Communism
1:16:18
Speaker 1: was certainly controversial in the thirties, but it did not
1:16:21
Speaker 1: have that black mark to it that the Cold War
1:16:24
Speaker 1: gave it. There was an actual argument taking place over
1:16:27
Speaker 1: these ideas because capitalism was in the middle of experiencing
1:16:31
Speaker 1: a catastrophic failure with the Great Depression. In fact, we
1:16:37
Speaker 1: shouldn't forget there was a guy named Norman Thomas who
1:16:40
Speaker 1: ran openly as the socialist candidate for president and received
1:16:42
Speaker 1: nearly a million votes in nineteen thirty two. Milwaukee, as
1:16:47
Speaker 1: Alice Cooper taught us in the movie Wayne's World, had
1:16:49
Speaker 1: a socialist mayor, had three of them, actually, but one
1:16:52
Speaker 1: of them Daniel Hoane. He served for twenty four years.
1:16:56
Speaker 1: Communists were organizing workers and an unemployed Americans. Upton Sinclair,
1:17:01
Speaker 1: who himself was a longtime socialist, switched to the Democratic Party,
1:17:05
Speaker 1: ran for governor in nineteen thirty four and what he
1:17:07
Speaker 1: called the Epic Program and poverty in California. He lost
1:17:12
Speaker 1: by eleven points, but he didn't lose by fifty. He
1:17:16
Speaker 1: came considerably closer than the political establishment of that era
1:17:20
Speaker 1: had expected. To freak some people out. Campaign scared the
1:17:24
Speaker 1: hell out of a lot of people. You see, ideological
1:17:27
Speaker 1: argument was real. In its day. Capitalism was being questioned
1:17:31
Speaker 1: because a low great depression. Now, Roosevelt's answer wasn't to
1:17:35
Speaker 1: replace capitalism. The New Deal, in many ways, was an
1:17:39
Speaker 1: attempt to make capitalism work well enough that Americans wouldn't
1:17:43
Speaker 1: want to replace it. It was intended to repair capitalism.
1:17:49
Speaker 1: And that's the world in which social Security arives. It's
1:17:53
Speaker 1: worth remembering what Roosevelt actually signed also because it isn't
1:17:57
Speaker 1: the Social Security system you know today. Teteen thirty five
1:18:01
Speaker 1: law created federal old age insurance for covered workers, financed
1:18:06
Speaker 1: through payroll taxes. It established a federal state unemployment compensation system,
1:18:12
Speaker 1: and it created assistance programs for vulnerable Americans. But the
1:18:16
Speaker 1: retirement insurance portion covered only part of the workforce. AG
1:18:20
Speaker 1: workers were excluded at the time, domestic workers were excluded
1:18:24
Speaker 1: at the time, many government workers were outside of it.
1:18:27
Speaker 1: Those exclusions disproportionately impacted Black Americans, particularly in the South.
1:18:32
Speaker 1: This was in a much smaller program than the one
1:18:35
Speaker 1: we now know today, and which may precisely be why
1:18:39
Speaker 1: they got it right, because then watch what happened. In
1:18:42
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine. Benefits are extended to dependent spouses and
1:18:45
Speaker 1: children and to survivors. In nineteen fifty, Congress springs roughly
1:18:49
Speaker 1: another ten million people into coverage, including many domestic and
1:18:52
Speaker 1: farm workers and the non farm self employed. Then farm
1:18:56
Speaker 1: operators themselves come in with the nineteen fifty four expansion.
1:19:00
Speaker 1: That same year, Congress creates the Disability Freeze, protecting the
1:19:03
Speaker 1: retirement records of workers who became disabled. Nineteen fifty six
1:19:08
Speaker 1: comes the actual disability insurance benefits as part of Social Security.
1:19:11
Speaker 1: Sixty one, men gained the option. Women already had to
1:19:15
Speaker 1: claim reduced retirement benefits at the age of sixty two.
1:19:19
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty five, Medicare arise as part of the
1:19:21
Speaker 1: broader social security architecture. Then in seventy two, Congress rights
1:19:26
Speaker 1: automatic cost of living adjustments into the law. Those are
1:19:29
Speaker 1: the first automatic COLA adjustments, and then it creates the
1:19:33
Speaker 1: supplemental Security income, which begins in seventy four. Then, of course,
1:19:37
Speaker 1: we had the rescue of the program in eighty three,
1:19:40
Speaker 1: and we're still doing changing this thing. In January of
1:19:43
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five, another law changed benefits for millions of
1:19:47
Speaker 1: public sector retirees. It used to be if you've got
1:19:50
Speaker 1: a state government pension, you had to give up your
1:19:53
Speaker 1: Social Security benefits. Now you don't have to do that anymore.
1:19:55
Speaker 1: So ninety years this legislation has been around, and we've
1:19:58
Speaker 1: made all these changes. So what Americans today casually call
1:20:02
Speaker 1: social security was never enacted in one burst of ideological
1:20:06
Speaker 1: ambition because guess what, it never would have been enacted.
1:20:11
Speaker 1: It accumulated peace by piece under presidents of both parties.
1:20:16
Speaker 1: And I've always believed This is an underrated political lesson
1:20:19
Speaker 1: for us. Imagine FDR walking into Congress in nineteen thirty
1:20:22
Speaker 1: five and asking for everything we eventually built as part
1:20:26
Speaker 1: of social security, retirement insurance, approaching universal coverage, survivor spouse's disability, medicare,
1:20:31
Speaker 1: automatic inflation protection. Do you think that thing passes no chance?
1:20:36
Speaker 1: Probably doesn't even make it on the floor, make it
1:20:39
Speaker 1: out a committee. But what did he do? Instead? He
1:20:42
Speaker 1: established a principle, and then people experienced the program, and
1:20:46
Speaker 1: then it develops a constituency. Well, then it's easy to expand,
1:20:49
Speaker 1: isn't it. Incrementalism gets treated in our politics it's evidence
1:20:53
Speaker 1: that somebody lacks ambition. Bullshit. What incrementalism actually is is
1:20:59
Speaker 1: how ambitious change becomes permanent, at least in our system,
1:21:04
Speaker 1: and eventually the ideological argument pads away. Nobody says, my
1:21:08
Speaker 1: socialist retirement check showed up. We call it social security.
1:21:12
Speaker 1: We americanized it. Now, before we get to my story
1:21:14
Speaker 1: on Nixon, there's an obvious interruption in this story. World
1:21:17
Speaker 1: War two America actually imposed price controls and rationing that
1:21:22
Speaker 1: were far more intrusive than anything Richard Nixon would attempt.
1:21:25
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy one, right. The Office of Price Administration
1:21:29
Speaker 1: controlled prices across enormous portions of the economy. Americans used
1:21:33
Speaker 1: ration books for gasoline, sugar, meat, and other necessities, and
1:21:37
Speaker 1: Americans largely accepted it. But there was a substantial black
1:21:41
Speaker 1: market meat, especially because even during a war, people found
1:21:45
Speaker 1: ways around economic controls. But politically the system held. And
1:21:49
Speaker 1: the reason matters. There was a war, So that was
1:21:51
Speaker 1: shared sacrifice, and everybody understood the controls were temporary. The
1:21:55
Speaker 1: emergency justified the intervention, and when the emergency ended, one
1:22:00
Speaker 1: of their normal economic lives back. So keep that in mind. Now,
1:22:04
Speaker 1: let's move forward exactly thirty six years and one day
1:22:07
Speaker 1: from Social Security to August fifteenth, nineteen seventy one, that
1:22:12
Speaker 1: socialist powerhouse known as Richard Millhouse. Nixon has a Sunday
1:22:16
Speaker 1: evening conversation with Americans. Now here's the difference from World
1:22:21
Speaker 1: War II. There was no war requiring economic mobilization. There
1:22:26
Speaker 1: was no shared sacrifice. There was no obvious moment when
1:22:29
Speaker 1: this intervention was supposed to be finished, if inflation didn't cooperate.
1:22:33
Speaker 1: If Social Security demonstrates how America can gradually absorb an
1:22:36
Speaker 1: idea that once sounded radical and socialist. Nixon demonstrates how
1:22:41
Speaker 1: quickly we'll throw ideology overboard when voters are angry enough
1:22:44
Speaker 1: about the economy. Inflation is becoming a political problem. In
1:22:48
Speaker 1: seventy one, the dollar itself is under pressure, and Nixon
1:22:52
Speaker 1: has his own election coming. So he goes on TV
1:22:55
Speaker 1: on a Sunday night and announces what became known as
1:22:57
Speaker 1: the Nixon Shock. He closes the gold window right essentially
1:23:01
Speaker 1: ends the gold standard. He puts a ten percent surcharge
1:23:04
Speaker 1: on imports, and for ninety days, he freezes wages and
1:23:07
Speaker 1: prices across the United States. For ninety days, Washington tells
1:23:12
Speaker 1: private businesses what they can charge and private employers what
1:23:15
Speaker 1: they can pay. Call it socialists, call it communists, call
1:23:19
Speaker 1: it whatever ideological label you want. Richard Nixon wasn't trying
1:23:23
Speaker 1: to change America's economic system. He just was desperate to
1:23:26
Speaker 1: stop inflation. And this won't surprise you. Initially Americans loved
1:23:30
Speaker 1: the idea. Why they were exhausted and sick and tired
1:23:34
Speaker 1: of inflation, and so any relief helped. They wanted somebody
1:23:37
Speaker 1: to make it stop. Ideological consistency was not nearly as
1:23:41
Speaker 1: important as getting prices under control. Again, what is our
1:23:47
Speaker 1: real economic identity in America, prosperity by any means necessary.
1:23:53
Speaker 1: Keep that in mind. The ninety day freeze was simple
1:23:56
Speaker 1: and then it ended, but the controls didn't face. Two
1:24:00
Speaker 1: created a price commission and a payboard. Washington now had
1:24:04
Speaker 1: to decide what constitute and a legitimate price increase, what
1:24:07
Speaker 1: constitutes an acceptable wage increase in which exceptions are justified.
1:24:14
Speaker 1: We had more phases. By early nineteen seventy three, food
1:24:17
Speaker 1: prices were surging. On March twenty ninth of that year,
1:24:20
Speaker 1: the administration imposes specific ceilings on beef, pork, and lamb prices.
1:24:27
Speaker 1: Then on June thirteenth, Nixon announces another broader price freeze.
1:24:31
Speaker 1: Eventually you get the wonderfully clarifying problem of empty meat cases.
1:24:38
Speaker 1: Washington could tell the supermarket what it was allowed to
1:24:41
Speaker 1: charge for beef, but it couldn't make a rancher sell
1:24:45
Speaker 1: cattle at a price they didn't think made any economic sense.
1:24:48
Speaker 1: So guess what the people that owned the cow said,
1:24:52
Speaker 1: I ain't selling my cows right now translation empty meat cases.
1:25:00
Speaker 1: So producers had their animals back. Processors reduced activity, and
1:25:04
Speaker 1: the shortages appeared. And actually, here's where history starts rhyming
1:25:09
Speaker 1: almost absurdly. So if you had gone back simply twenty
1:25:13
Speaker 1: seven years. In fact, nineteen forty six, I believe, the
1:25:16
Speaker 1: year Richard Nixon got elected to Congress. By the way,
1:25:19
Speaker 1: the wartime controls were coming apart. The inflation is a
1:25:22
Speaker 1: major political problem. There are strikes everywhere, meat disappears from
1:25:26
Speaker 1: stores as producers resist these still controlled prices. And then
1:25:31
Speaker 1: Harry Truman finally lifts meat controls in October, just weeks
1:25:35
Speaker 1: before the midterm election. So that election wasn't a referendum
1:25:38
Speaker 1: on beef. Inflation. Strikes, shortages, frustrations with controls were all
1:25:43
Speaker 1: part of that environment. But Republicans had a devastatingly simple
1:25:48
Speaker 1: slogan at the time. Add enough, and they took both
1:25:51
Speaker 1: houses of Congress. Twenty seven years later, another president who
1:25:55
Speaker 1: got elected in that class of Congress, by the way,
1:25:59
Speaker 1: is learning essentially the same lesson as the same meat
1:26:01
Speaker 1: at the same meat counter. And this is something presidents
1:26:04
Speaker 1: do from time to time. They rediscover old economic ideas
1:26:07
Speaker 1: and convince themselves, well, the circumstances are different enough, and
1:26:10
Speaker 1: maybe this time they'll work differently. Price controls, tariffs, industrial policy.
1:26:19
Speaker 1: Sometimes maybe maybe they're right for a moment, but sometimes
1:26:22
Speaker 1: history is sitting there waiting to say we tried this already.
1:26:25
Speaker 1: Nixon's controls in various phases, persistent until April of seventy four,
1:26:30
Speaker 1: for nearly three years. The public enthusiasm faded long before
1:26:34
Speaker 1: the publicly policy completely disappeared. And I think all of
1:26:38
Speaker 1: this helps explain a lot of the supposedly contradictory American
1:26:42
Speaker 1: economic policy. We subsidize agriculture because we decided food production
1:26:46
Speaker 1: and rural stability are too important to leave completely to
1:26:50
Speaker 1: commodity markets. Is that socialism? We created the GI Bill
1:26:54
Speaker 1: and spend enormous federal resources helping veterans attend college and
1:26:57
Speaker 1: buy homes. That socialism then to as an eight arise,
1:27:00
Speaker 1: and a Republican administration helps rescue the financial system because
1:27:04
Speaker 1: ideological consistently suddenly looks less important than preventing another depression.
1:27:09
Speaker 1: We don't usually call these things socialism. We give them
1:27:12
Speaker 1: American names, foreign policy, the GI Bill, financial stabilization. And
1:27:18
Speaker 1: there's another ingredient here that matters control. Americans want to
1:27:24
Speaker 1: believe we're making our own decisions. Sometimes we actually are.
1:27:28
Speaker 1: Sometimes the control is more perceived than real. Think about
1:27:32
Speaker 1: the original backlash to Obamacare. One of the most powerful
1:27:34
Speaker 1: fears was that government was going to take away control
1:27:36
Speaker 1: of your healthcare. Well, of course, plenty of Americans didn't
1:27:39
Speaker 1: have nearly as much of control of their healthcare as
1:27:42
Speaker 1: they claim they had at the moment. Their employer chose
1:27:44
Speaker 1: the insurance company. The insurance company chose the network to
1:27:48
Speaker 1: find the doctors that were covered. You lose your job,
1:27:51
Speaker 1: and you can lose the insurance. But the perception of
1:27:54
Speaker 1: control matter. And look at why other enormous government interventions
1:27:59
Speaker 1: feel nearly threatening. So security gives you money, and then
1:28:03
Speaker 1: you decide how to spend it. The GI bail helps
1:28:05
Speaker 1: pay for college, and you choose the school. A farm
1:28:08
Speaker 1: subsidy supports the farmer while the farmer still runs the farm.
1:28:12
Speaker 1: These policies use collective power to increase what feels like
1:28:16
Speaker 1: individual capacity. Central planning feels different. Government begins by making
1:28:22
Speaker 1: the underlying choices, and that's when Americans do get nervous.
1:28:26
Speaker 1: We've never been nearly as allergic to government economic intervention
1:28:30
Speaker 1: as our rhetoric suggests. We're much more allergic to concentrated
1:28:35
Speaker 1: control over what we think should be our choices and
1:28:40
Speaker 1: authoritarian governments illustrate the distinction. They can tolerate substantial market activity,
1:28:45
Speaker 1: but when market independence threatens political control, political control tends
1:28:51
Speaker 1: to win, and they become authoritarianism. This is why you
1:28:54
Speaker 1: never have Ultimately, you never really have a free capitalistic
1:28:59
Speaker 1: society in an authoritarian regime. The two can't coexist. That
1:29:04
Speaker 1: brings me to twenty twenty six, because we're running another
1:29:07
Speaker 1: American economic experiment right now. The Republican Party has spent
1:29:10
Speaker 1: generations identifying itself with free enterprise and skepticism towards government
1:29:14
Speaker 1: picking winners and losers, and yet today the federal government
1:29:18
Speaker 1: owns stakes and companies across semiconductors, critical minerals, and now
1:29:21
Speaker 1: quantum computing. Donald Trump's Republican Party did this. The Intel
1:29:26
Speaker 1: deal remains the most famous. The government acquired a ten
1:29:28
Speaker 1: percent stake, a figure that reflected still reflected and most reporting.
1:29:33
Speaker 1: They added aggressive tariffs in industrial policies, add government deliberately
1:29:37
Speaker 1: trying to steer private investment towards industries that Washington considers
1:29:42
Speaker 1: strategically important. This isn't a president reluctantly intervening because voters
1:29:48
Speaker 1: demanded a particular kind of rescue, but it is a
1:29:53
Speaker 1: governing philosophy. The administration believes federal power can be used
1:29:56
Speaker 1: to reshape markets in ways that strengthen American industry and
1:29:59
Speaker 1: national power. And some Republicans themselves do look at pieces
1:30:04
Speaker 1: of this, and they do use the word socialism. So
1:30:07
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm not saying Donald Trump is secretly
1:30:09
Speaker 1: a socialist. I bring it up because it's the Nixon
1:30:14
Speaker 1: rhyme here, right. Once again, a president whose party identifies
1:30:16
Speaker 1: itself with free markets is deciding what market outcomes aren't
1:30:19
Speaker 1: necessarily the outcomes the country should accept lost factories, foreign dependence,
1:30:25
Speaker 1: supply chain vulnerability. The answer becomes intervention. And once again
1:30:29
Speaker 1: we're discovering that American presidents aren't particularly interested in passing
1:30:33
Speaker 1: an ideological purity test either when they believe the perception
1:30:36
Speaker 1: of prosperity is at stake. Maybe some of these interventions
1:30:40
Speaker 1: will work, and maybe some won't, And maybe twenty years
1:30:43
Speaker 1: from now, another president will rediscover one of these bad
1:30:45
Speaker 1: ideas that failed and decide the circumstances have changed enough
1:30:48
Speaker 1: to try it again. That's part of the American experiment.
1:30:53
Speaker 1: So go back to these two anniversaries. April fourteenth, nineteen
1:30:56
Speaker 1: thirty five, Franklin Roosevelt signed Social Security August fifteenth, nineteen
1:31:00
Speaker 1: seventy one, Richard Nixon freeses wages and prices. You can
1:31:04
Speaker 1: use those two anniversaries to make an argument that America's
1:31:06
Speaker 1: always been more socialist than we'd like to admit. There's
1:31:10
Speaker 1: plenty of evidence you can martial. I just don't think
1:31:13
Speaker 1: you'd be explaining America very well. Social Security survives because
1:31:16
Speaker 1: Americans found it useful, because it grew incrementally, and because
1:31:20
Speaker 1: it leaves beneficiaries with substantial individual control of their own lives.
1:31:25
Speaker 1: And eventually, because it stopped feeling like somebody else's ideology,
1:31:28
Speaker 1: it became our idea, a very American version of it.
1:31:32
Speaker 1: Nixon's controls lasted almost three years and ultimately demonstrated the
1:31:36
Speaker 1: limits of asking Washington to administer prices throughout a complex economy.
1:31:42
Speaker 1: And now we're experimenting again with tariffs, which have proven
1:31:45
Speaker 1: time and again to be huge failures and only be
1:31:47
Speaker 1: taxes on American consumers. We're trying it again with industrial policy,
1:31:51
Speaker 1: which only I mean again the Boeing conversation. You know,
1:31:56
Speaker 1: when government props up one corporation, quality control will go down.
1:32:01
Speaker 1: Direct government stakes don't help things but it's what we do.
1:32:05
Speaker 1: We borrow, we improvise, We occasionally forget what happened the
1:32:08
Speaker 1: last time we tried it, and sometimes we try it
1:32:10
Speaker 1: again because we convince ourselves, No, this time is different.
1:32:13
Speaker 1: You even't done it the way I'm doing it now.
1:32:16
Speaker 1: Try fitting all that neatly into call marks. John maynerd Kaynes, Friedrich, Kayak,
1:32:20
Speaker 1: Milton Friedman, John Locke, good luck. America's developed its own
1:32:23
Speaker 1: economic ideology. Say it with me. Prosperity by any means necessary,
1:32:29
Speaker 1: preferably with freedom, preferably with a sense that we're still
1:32:33
Speaker 1: in control of our own lives. And when those goals
1:32:36
Speaker 1: contradict each other, well, we've sent two hundred and fifty
1:32:40
Speaker 1: years improvising the answer, now, haven't we. There's your explanation
1:32:46
Speaker 1: of history today on how America's always been kind of
1:32:50
Speaker 1: sort of flirting with socialism as Chuck so a little
1:33:01
Speaker 1: last chuck, all right? Mark d chimes in, Hey, Chuck,
1:33:06
Speaker 1: first time, long time. I was listening today's podcast, and
1:33:08
Speaker 1: your descriptions of Grand Rapids voters fit me almost perfectly.
1:33:11
Speaker 1: I was raised a Rakon Republican and voted GOP for years,
1:33:15
Speaker 1: but after supporting Trump in twenty sixteen, I became a
1:33:17
Speaker 1: committed never Trumper, and I have since voted Democratic because
1:33:21
Speaker 1: I see it as the best path to correcting the
1:33:23
Speaker 1: direction of the Republican party. Does my political journey reflect
1:33:26
Speaker 1: what you're seeing among college educated center right voters in
1:33:29
Speaker 1: places like Grand Rapids? And how significant do you think
1:33:32
Speaker 1: that group could be in future elections? Thanks for all
1:33:34
Speaker 1: the work you do, Mark d Well. Look you describe
1:33:36
Speaker 1: I mean, I jokingly say this is the bulwark if
1:33:39
Speaker 1: you follow the work of Bill Crystal, Sarah Longwell, Tim Miller,
1:33:45
Speaker 1: all of whom were Republicans in twenty sixteen. Still right,
1:33:49
Speaker 1: like yourself. So, and I do think there's a bit
1:33:52
Speaker 1: of a reformed smoker's mindset, which is, like, you know,
1:33:55
Speaker 1: the most anti smoking people are the ones that used
1:33:57
Speaker 1: to be change smokers, but who got and quit and
1:34:00
Speaker 1: then like become you know, almost more draconian about their
1:34:08
Speaker 1: anti smoking vibes. Right. I think the thing is is,
1:34:11
Speaker 1: I don't know yet. I have said there are two
1:34:15
Speaker 1: states in particular I've always singled out as being and
1:34:18
Speaker 1: I think Grand Rapids and you fit this, You fit
1:34:21
Speaker 1: this well. Both Colorado and Virginia were considered reliably Republican
1:34:26
Speaker 1: states in twenty oh four, and Barack Obama flipped them
1:34:30
Speaker 1: in eight and they literally went from purple to blue
1:34:33
Speaker 1: and about it feels like a blink of an eye.
1:34:38
Speaker 1: And I think they might have simply been Obama states.
1:34:41
Speaker 1: And then twenty sixteen came around and they were super
1:34:43
Speaker 1: allergic to Trump. And we've seen, right, you know, these
1:34:48
Speaker 1: are places where the Republican Party particularly. It's funny about
1:34:51
Speaker 1: Virginia and Colorado is they both had significant evangelical Christian
1:34:58
Speaker 1: footholds sort of factions Colorada Springs, Lynsburg, Virginia, And maybe
1:35:04
Speaker 1: that was the problem. To find the Republican Party is
1:35:06
Speaker 1: too far to the right, and it chased a bunch
1:35:08
Speaker 1: of people out of the party. The real test will
1:35:13
Speaker 1: be if the Republican Party changes who they are, they
1:35:16
Speaker 1: go back to sort of what you remember them as.
1:35:19
Speaker 1: You know, Glenn Youngkin's election told me that there's it's
1:35:23
Speaker 1: you know that it's dormant. It's not gone in Virginia.
1:35:27
Speaker 1: There hasn't been a similar election yet in Colorado that
1:35:31
Speaker 1: I would argue fully does that. I guess you could say,
1:35:34
Speaker 1: you know, Corey Gardner's went in twenty fourteen, but that
1:35:37
Speaker 1: was just before Trump. So that's why I don't quite
1:35:40
Speaker 1: quite I'm not quite there yet on it, but I
1:35:45
Speaker 1: sort of ultimately, I think there's a bunch of I mean, obviously,
1:35:54
Speaker 1: I think there's a bunch of voters who are like, well,
1:35:58
Speaker 1: we've got to change both the parties, and the only
1:36:00
Speaker 1: way to change the Republican Party is to is to
1:36:05
Speaker 1: strengthen the Democratic Party and change that party too. So
1:36:09
Speaker 1: I don't know. I guess I would ask you, is
1:36:15
Speaker 1: there is there a Republican Party you would trust in
1:36:19
Speaker 1: the near future if it reimagined itself, or do you
1:36:23
Speaker 1: think that Trump has soiled the brand for good? And
1:36:26
Speaker 1: I and I I put it this way. One term
1:36:30
Speaker 1: at Trump and I would have said, yeah, this is
1:36:32
Speaker 1: going to bounce back two terms of Trump. And I
1:36:34
Speaker 1: don't know. It could very well be that that the
1:36:40
Speaker 1: that this this the the never Trump Republicans that flipped
1:36:45
Speaker 1: not only never go back, but are the foundation of
1:36:48
Speaker 1: a new version of the Democratic Party that's just different.
1:36:52
Speaker 1: Maybe it's a little bit more pro capitalism, but it
1:36:58
Speaker 1: is also might be a bit more character based. I mean,
1:37:04
Speaker 1: what strikes me is that I feel like the never
1:37:06
Speaker 1: Trumpers are the character voters and it turns out there's
1:37:10
Speaker 1: fewer character voters than any of us thought there were.
1:37:15
Speaker 1: But I don't know if we can know the answer
1:37:17
Speaker 1: until Trump is out of the system. And that's a
1:37:20
Speaker 1: question that I have. And I think the two states
1:37:22
Speaker 1: that will test this, and then your community, Kent County
1:37:25
Speaker 1: is another place you know, you'll know the old Republican
1:37:30
Speaker 1: party pre Trump has its sea legs again. If you
1:37:33
Speaker 1: start to see those types of Republicans have success in
1:37:38
Speaker 1: your Virginia's, in your Colorado's and in your Grand Rapids.
1:37:44
Speaker 1: Lauren g in la Rights, Hey, how do you think
1:37:47
Speaker 1: I'll do all? El sayed should respond to the rise
1:37:50
Speaker 1: in Islamophobia since his primary victory, similar to how President
1:37:52
Speaker 1: Obama gave his landmark speech on race after facing racist
1:37:55
Speaker 1: attacks during his campaign. Is there an expectation that else
1:37:58
Speaker 1: say Ed should directly address prejudice he's facing, or is
1:38:01
Speaker 1: it better politically to stay focused on the issues and
1:38:03
Speaker 1: not elevated. So you know, I hate feeling depression about
1:38:10
Speaker 1: something I think I said before the primary even happened.
1:38:15
Speaker 1: I said, if Abdulasi had wins, I don't think we
1:38:17
Speaker 1: fully can appreciate the Islamophobia that's going to come and wow. Right,
1:38:23
Speaker 1: it has come in a hurry, it has been out
1:38:25
Speaker 1: of it has been I've heard elected officials say things
1:38:29
Speaker 1: I didn't think i'd hear them say. Right when Nancy
1:38:31
Speaker 1: Macy essentially indicted anybody who's Muslim in America? Right, which
1:38:35
Speaker 1: is just by the way, I mean, it's just fundamentally
1:38:39
Speaker 1: the single most un American thing you can be is
1:38:41
Speaker 1: to judge somebody but based on their faith. Right, what
1:38:44
Speaker 1: was why are we here? Why is there in America?
1:38:47
Speaker 1: It was over this issue of religious freedom and liberty? Right, Like,
1:38:50
Speaker 1: what was the fundamental reason why everybody, these these folks
1:38:54
Speaker 1: bolted the UK in the first place. So, I mean,
1:38:56
Speaker 1: you can't come up with a more hypocritical stance then
1:39:00
Speaker 1: somehow indicting an entire religious community. But I am worried
1:39:12
Speaker 1: that this fear tactic has enough people that believe some
1:39:17
Speaker 1: threat of it. This idea, right, whether it's the real
1:39:21
Speaker 1: law stuff, which I kind of think is nonsense, but
1:39:23
Speaker 1: some people buy by it. Or you know that this
1:39:29
Speaker 1: idea that if you're if you believe in a certain
1:39:33
Speaker 1: in certain religious belief, you can't also be an American.
1:39:40
Speaker 1: You know, we we sort of you know my feeling
1:39:44
Speaker 1: is every every faith has its moderates, and every faith
1:39:48
Speaker 1: has its fundamentalists, and pretty much, look, I'm a I'm
1:39:52
Speaker 1: a I'm a religious skeptic because the fundamentalism of religion
1:39:56
Speaker 1: to me is very undemocratic and very anti freedom. And
1:40:00
Speaker 1: usually the most fundamentalists of any faith are the ones
1:40:04
Speaker 1: that make me cringe the most. I have no beef
1:40:09
Speaker 1: with people who are believers, that's not the issue. But
1:40:14
Speaker 1: you know, when your faith is about helping you live
1:40:18
Speaker 1: an ethical and moral life, more power to you. When
1:40:22
Speaker 1: your faith is being used to decide who doesn't belong here,
1:40:27
Speaker 1: it doesn't feel like a religion. It feels like a
1:40:32
Speaker 1: some sort of feels like a threat to be honest,
1:40:36
Speaker 1: threat to a way of life. So I worry it's
1:40:44
Speaker 1: deeper than we think. And I wonder if abdul elsa
1:40:48
Speaker 1: Ed needs to do. Needs to sort of think that
1:40:51
Speaker 1: Kennedy had to do his Catholic speech and Obama had
1:40:57
Speaker 1: to do that race speech. When you're seeking to be
1:41:01
Speaker 1: the first, sometimes you have to allay conspiracy, conspiratorial beliefs
1:41:08
Speaker 1: that are out there for better or for worse. Now
1:41:14
Speaker 1: I'll do All'll say, I understands the attention economy as
1:41:16
Speaker 1: well as any candidate that I've seen in the twenty
1:41:18
Speaker 1: twenty six cycle period. Right, he's really under he gets
1:41:22
Speaker 1: it right. He's sort of online all the time and
1:41:25
Speaker 1: realizes if they're talking about you, that's probably a not positive,
1:41:28
Speaker 1: not a net negative. He very much is. Trump asks
1:41:30
Speaker 1: in his belief system like that. The political consultant advice
1:41:36
Speaker 1: would be, don't you know the focus on your faith
1:41:41
Speaker 1: is a distraction. They want you this is, they want
1:41:45
Speaker 1: you talking about it. They want this to be the
1:41:47
Speaker 1: issue they want every time they want they want swing
1:41:54
Speaker 1: voters to see nine to eleven every time they see you.
1:41:57
Speaker 1: And if he were not a well known f I'd
1:42:00
Speaker 1: be like, don't you don't need to talk about your faith.
1:42:03
Speaker 1: This isn't going to be a big part of the
1:42:05
Speaker 1: voting conversation. But he's going to. He's already a national figure,
1:42:10
Speaker 1: he's already pretty eigh profile, and there's this feels like
1:42:15
Speaker 1: one of those things you got to sort of deal
1:42:17
Speaker 1: with head on, and it would certainly grab a moment.
1:42:21
Speaker 1: It would make Democrats nuts if you did it right.
1:42:24
Speaker 1: Because of that, the consultant, the midterm consultant says, you know,
1:42:28
Speaker 1: it's sort of. I always think of this of the
1:42:31
Speaker 1: guy that just in Star Wars, that just is telling
1:42:34
Speaker 1: all these tie fighter planes stay on target, stay on target,
1:42:37
Speaker 1: you know, don't deviate, you know, don't look anywhere else,
1:42:40
Speaker 1: stay on target. You know. So the people, you know,
1:42:44
Speaker 1: Chuck Schumer would be say, just talk about lowering prices,
1:42:46
Speaker 1: just talk about economic anxiety. Stay on target, stay on target.
1:42:50
Speaker 1: And yet it's pretty clear this is going to be
1:42:55
Speaker 1: a very open and brazen Islamophobia rich campaign. And I
1:43:00
Speaker 1: don't say that as a positive. It's it's it's pretty brutal,
1:43:05
Speaker 1: it's pretty ugly, and it's frankly, it's just as a
1:43:11
Speaker 1: person who loves this country, just I hate it. I
1:43:14
Speaker 1: hate every part of this type of campaigning. I think
1:43:17
Speaker 1: it just makes us look even worse. So I think
1:43:19
Speaker 1: it sends a terrible message to the world. The country
1:43:22
Speaker 1: that is supposed to be open to all is got
1:43:27
Speaker 1: one political party wanting a religious test. I mean this,
1:43:30
Speaker 1: like I said, fun, you want to talk about just
1:43:33
Speaker 1: not a I mean Nancy Mace's comments about about her
1:43:37
Speaker 1: feelings on Islam. I mean literally, and you've you've taken
1:43:41
Speaker 1: the oath to protect and follow and abide by the Constitution.
1:43:50
Speaker 1: Did you even read it? Do you understand? I mean
1:43:52
Speaker 1: when you when you ask yourself, do we have a
1:43:54
Speaker 1: civics problem in this country? Right here and there? Right here?
1:43:58
Speaker 1: Anybody espousing this bizarre belief that your religious belief isn't
1:44:03
Speaker 1: American doesn't understand the story of America or its founding.
1:44:11
Speaker 1: So I think of all people who could walk in
1:44:18
Speaker 1: chew gum at the same time on something like this,
1:44:22
Speaker 1: and I think, because it is, that might be the
1:44:25
Speaker 1: difference between winning and losing. I think he has to
1:44:29
Speaker 1: take this head on and talk about his faith, explain
1:44:32
Speaker 1: his faith a little bit to people. You know, he's
1:44:37
Speaker 1: got a platform because you kind of want to draw
1:44:42
Speaker 1: a line in the sand. And I think he could
1:44:47
Speaker 1: weave the story of America back in seventeen seventy six
1:44:53
Speaker 1: and seventeen eighty nine and his role and place in it.
1:45:00
Speaker 1: So it's an I think it's an opportunity. And I
1:45:04
Speaker 1: think at this point it may it may be necessary
1:45:10
Speaker 1: if he wants to win, because it's going to be
1:45:12
Speaker 1: pretty blatant, it's going to be pretty ugly, and you know, uh,
1:45:17
Speaker 1: and I guess I would look at it. I think
1:45:18
Speaker 1: he should do it because he owes it to the
1:45:21
Speaker 1: next generation of Muslim Americans who choose to serve in
1:45:28
Speaker 1: elected life. All right, Patrick chimes in here from the
1:45:33
Speaker 1: city of Peace, the hey by way of Marlborough, Connecticut,
1:45:36
Speaker 1: the hometown of my buddy Chris Salissa, as he knows,
1:45:38
Speaker 1: all right, I think my best friend in high school
1:45:40
Speaker 1: actually played basketball with him as a kid. So there
1:45:43
Speaker 1: you have it, Solissa, here's hopefully my second swing at
1:45:46
Speaker 1: the five timers club. Do you candidates on the same
1:45:48
Speaker 1: ballot create measurable coattails from one another? For example, could
1:45:51
Speaker 1: have duel else I d help boost another progressive down
1:45:53
Speaker 1: ballot candidate, or could a more moderate cubernatorial nominee lift
1:45:56
Speaker 1: a Senate candidate? And do independent candidates have any meaningful
1:45:59
Speaker 1: effect congressional races when there's no major party nominee at
1:46:03
Speaker 1: the top of the ticket. Thanks for all the great
1:46:05
Speaker 1: insights and content, Patrick, So let me tell you the
1:46:08
Speaker 1: theory of the case that Andrew Yang, who's one of
1:46:11
Speaker 1: the co founders of the Forward Party, has, which is,
1:46:15
Speaker 1: you know, he thinks the best way to help normy
1:46:17
Speaker 1: politicians who are running statewide, whether they're normy Dems or
1:46:21
Speaker 1: Norman Republicans or independents is to get more, you know,
1:46:26
Speaker 1: is to contest more elections down the ballot, and he
1:46:29
Speaker 1: thinks that they're can have. It can have an upside
1:46:31
Speaker 1: effect that you if you have more uh, small party candidates,
1:46:35
Speaker 1: more independent candidates, sort of campaigning for your sort of
1:46:39
Speaker 1: type of politics on a super grassroots level in a
1:46:43
Speaker 1: super small part of of you know, in a super
1:46:58
Speaker 1: small part of your state or your community, that that
1:47:02
Speaker 1: can have a trickle up effect per se. So but
1:47:07
Speaker 1: I think it can. It can. It can work in state.
1:47:10
Speaker 1: I don't think it works across state lines. Here's how
1:47:17
Speaker 1: gov and Senate candidates can help each other. It's more
1:47:19
Speaker 1: about funding coordinated campaigns. It's about being able to combine efforts,
1:47:26
Speaker 1: you know, instead of having both the gubernatorial candidate and
1:47:29
Speaker 1: the Senate candidate knock on the doors of swing voters.
1:47:32
Speaker 1: You know, in a case like Jocelyn Benson and I'll
1:47:34
Speaker 1: do a ED, they probably have some similar voters. And
1:47:37
Speaker 1: John James and Mike Rogers are very similar Republicans. So
1:47:40
Speaker 1: in that sense, I think the two of them could
1:47:42
Speaker 1: help each other, you know, and could not do AlSi
1:47:45
Speaker 1: ed help Benson and a dearborn I think so could
1:47:48
Speaker 1: Joscelyn Benson help him in the black community, you know,
1:47:53
Speaker 1: that's going to be something that I you know, so yes,
1:47:56
Speaker 1: I guess I could see it a little bit. But
1:48:07
Speaker 1: I just you know, I I it is ultimately top
1:48:11
Speaker 1: of the ticket. Is the is having nine times out
1:48:17
Speaker 1: of ten has the biggest impact on turnout. But you know,
1:48:22
Speaker 1: we've seen Trump voters are shotgun voters, right, they're shock
1:48:24
Speaker 1: I call them shotgun Trump voters. They come in, they
1:48:26
Speaker 1: vote Trump and they leave, right. And there is a
1:48:29
Speaker 1: chunk of voters that do that. And sometimes a movement
1:48:33
Speaker 1: vote candidate like I'll do a LSA ED will have
1:48:36
Speaker 1: you know, just l SA ED voters or bust right,
1:48:40
Speaker 1: they'll be shotgun ls ED voters. They come in, they
1:48:42
Speaker 1: vote for him, and they leave. That is you know,
1:48:48
Speaker 1: especially with CULTI personality candidates, that's more likely, and so
1:48:51
Speaker 1: the cult of personality candidates have less impact on that.
1:48:55
Speaker 1: I am intrigued by the trickle up strategy, but I
1:48:57
Speaker 1: don't know if we've had enough examples yet to see, right,
1:49:02
Speaker 1: But I do know that in years that that that
1:49:07
Speaker 1: the out party does better in a midterm, it usually
1:49:10
Speaker 1: is because they've found more candidates down the ballot, and
1:49:13
Speaker 1: they just just having more people running in your party
1:49:18
Speaker 1: labeled down the ballot has I think a trickle up
1:49:22
Speaker 1: effect on turnout right that all over time accumulates, but
1:49:26
Speaker 1: it probably it's one of those things that is more
1:49:30
Speaker 1: it eventually helps down the ballot, but it is about
1:49:33
Speaker 1: almost helping get your numerator number up the most right
1:49:38
Speaker 1: your turnout numbers. So the more people you have advocating
1:49:41
Speaker 1: for people to come out and vote for your side
1:49:43
Speaker 1: of the aisle, the better. So filling out the ballot
1:49:47
Speaker 1: actually is probably the most important thing you can do,
1:49:49
Speaker 1: making sure you have a candidate, and is every single
1:49:52
Speaker 1: race that's on the ballot in your state in your
1:49:55
Speaker 1: party that matter. And you know that's the hardest part
1:49:58
Speaker 1: for these third party movements because the more of that
1:50:01
Speaker 1: they have, the better shot that they have. I think.
1:50:11
Speaker 1: All right, next question, This is an interesting sort of
1:50:14
Speaker 1: a play on the Grand Rapids question, but from another perspective.
1:50:17
Speaker 1: Here Tori asked, I'm listening to your Thursday podcast and
1:50:20
Speaker 1: was intrigued by your point that recovering Republicans and Grand
1:50:22
Speaker 1: Rapids have become resistance Democrats. Since I'll do else, I
1:50:25
Speaker 1: had ever performed it there so significantly. Is there any
1:50:28
Speaker 1: chance Republicans crossed over to vote for him because they
1:50:30
Speaker 1: thought he'd be an easier general election opponent for Mike
1:50:32
Speaker 1: Rodgers or do you think the results reflect a genuine
1:50:34
Speaker 1: shift among voters? Curious what you think? Thank you and
1:50:37
Speaker 1: loved the show. So I've heard this theory. I've tested
1:50:41
Speaker 1: it with my friend Dante Chini works for when Michigan
1:50:44
Speaker 1: State University knows Michigan literally like the back of his hand,
1:50:47
Speaker 1: whichever part you want to use to describe Michigan. Sorry,
1:50:51
Speaker 1: my dad joke there. It never gets old and he
1:50:55
Speaker 1: will tell you that if you look. I mean, this
1:50:58
Speaker 1: is why I did that whole trend line. Right, We've
1:51:01
Speaker 1: been watching this build, right, Abdul al Sayed wasn't on
1:51:04
Speaker 1: the ballot, and over one hundred thousand people voted on
1:51:07
Speaker 1: the Democratic side of the aisle in twenty twenty, Right,
1:51:10
Speaker 1: So I think you just see a fundamental shift taking place. Heartstop,
1:51:16
Speaker 1: and that's a big deal over there. Look the crossover stuff,
1:51:23
Speaker 1: you know, I remember Rush Limbaugh called it Operation Chaos, right.
1:51:26
Speaker 1: He wanted people to go vote for Hillary to sort
1:51:28
Speaker 1: of slow Obama's momentum down back during the eight primaries,
1:51:31
Speaker 1: and you know, I will tell you I know people
1:51:38
Speaker 1: in Northern Virginia that all voted for Marco Rubio who
1:51:41
Speaker 1: weren't going to vote for Marco Rubio in the fall,
1:51:43
Speaker 1: but it was all about stop Trump. But they genuinely
1:51:47
Speaker 1: wanted Rubio to win, and had Rubio won, I don't
1:51:50
Speaker 1: know some of those voters I think would have voted
1:51:52
Speaker 1: for me. So I think one of the biggest misconsumptions
1:51:55
Speaker 1: is the idea. I don't the number of quote unquote
1:51:59
Speaker 1: strategy voters. I think it's less than five percent. I
1:52:05
Speaker 1: really do. I'm a strategic voter. But you might say
1:52:10
Speaker 1: I know, as missus Podcast likes to say, well, you
1:52:12
Speaker 1: know too much. But I think when it comes to
1:52:17
Speaker 1: the power of crowds, we know strategicy good. If you're
1:52:22
Speaker 1: going to try to do that, you just it isn't
1:52:25
Speaker 1: going to work. And if you notice, anytime there's consolidation,
1:52:30
Speaker 1: usually it rarely works unless the threat on the other
1:52:34
Speaker 1: side is seen as so existential, which is why the
1:52:37
Speaker 1: arguably the Biden rally around effect did work at the
1:52:43
Speaker 1: very end with Democrats in twenty twenty because they, oh,
1:52:48
Speaker 1: he can win five We'll do that. But a lot
1:52:52
Speaker 1: of the times, whatever strategy you think you're orchestrating, most
1:52:58
Speaker 1: people don't vote that way. I mean, it's hard enough
1:53:01
Speaker 1: to get people to remember when the primary is, let
1:53:03
Speaker 1: alone be strategic about their vote. Next question comes from
1:53:12
Speaker 1: Mark h Texas three. He's hoping he believes this puts
1:53:16
Speaker 1: him in the five timers club. He goes, Hey, the
1:53:18
Speaker 1: Curtis Meat era didn't start the way that way my
1:53:22
Speaker 1: White Sox and I had hoped for. But that's baseball start.
1:53:26
Speaker 1: Curtis mead. We got from the White Sox to the Nationals.
1:53:29
Speaker 1: Now he's on the IL with the Red Sox, which
1:53:31
Speaker 1: I really feel bad about. But anyway, but that's not
1:53:33
Speaker 1: his question. His question is about Jennin and Piro's decision
1:53:37
Speaker 1: to dismiss the reflecting Pool vandamins in case. Do you
1:53:39
Speaker 1: think she acted on her own or was this coordinator
1:53:41
Speaker 1: with Trump to give him an off ramp from what
1:53:43
Speaker 1: had become a politically difficult prosecution. You always say to
1:53:47
Speaker 1: watch actions, not words, and despite Trump's public criticism, she
1:53:50
Speaker 1: still got her job. Huh. Well that's some Uh. Do
1:53:56
Speaker 1: you really think he's playing that kind of three dimensional chess?
1:53:59
Speaker 1: You know, the joke goes, not only is he not
1:54:01
Speaker 1: playing chess, not only is he not playing checkers, he
1:54:05
Speaker 1: just eats the checkers, right, And that's kind of where
1:54:08
Speaker 1: I am with Trump. No, No, this is he's trying
1:54:13
Speaker 1: to decide whether he needs to send a message to
1:54:15
Speaker 1: everybody else in his administration through purero I think here's
1:54:21
Speaker 1: the thing about Trump. If this were that, he'd eventually
1:54:24
Speaker 1: let you know that that was I didn't really want
1:54:26
Speaker 1: to get rid of her. I just was trying to
1:54:28
Speaker 1: get rid of the issue. Like, if that were the case,
1:54:30
Speaker 1: he'll eventually tell us this. I mean, the weirdest thing
1:54:33
Speaker 1: about Trump is as dishonest as he is, how often
1:54:35
Speaker 1: he tells us the truth, Like he really will let
1:54:38
Speaker 1: us know what he's really thinking, right, Like liquid he
1:54:42
Speaker 1: like popped off on Lisa Murkowski so mad about the
1:54:45
Speaker 1: Todd Blanche thing, you know, because he had to make
1:54:48
Speaker 1: sure that everybody knows whoever votes against him, he's going
1:54:51
Speaker 1: to come out and rail against them and make their
1:54:54
Speaker 1: life as miserable as he possibly can if he wants
1:54:57
Speaker 1: to keep the illusion of strength up with the rest
1:54:59
Speaker 1: of the Republican By the way, is a quick aside
1:55:01
Speaker 1: on that one. Every time he at tax Ley Sa Mrokowski,
1:55:04
Speaker 1: the Democratic number to win Senate seats starts to go
1:55:08
Speaker 1: down from four to three. I really believe she's more
1:55:12
Speaker 1: likely to be the senator that decides Senate control. And
1:55:17
Speaker 1: if she is Donald, you'll only have all these Donald
1:55:24
Speaker 1: Trump attack tweaks to blame John Thune, by the way,
1:55:28
Speaker 1: which I'm sure Don Thute knows, and he's getting there,
1:55:30
Speaker 1: so no I am. I know with Trump anything as possible,
1:55:36
Speaker 1: but man, if this were true, he'll eventually tell us.
1:55:39
Speaker 1: And I don't think this one is true. Again, he's
1:55:42
Speaker 1: eating the checkers. He's not playing three dimensional chess, all right.
1:55:48
Speaker 1: Chris im and Albany writes, Hey, I've been an enthusiastic
1:55:51
Speaker 1: fan since day one at MTP. Well, thank you, thank
1:55:54
Speaker 1: you for presenting politics for the rest of us all
1:55:55
Speaker 1: these years. My question is this, how does the average
1:55:58
Speaker 1: guy like me work to make meaningful change in a
1:56:00
Speaker 1: government that gets more corrupt by the day. I listen
1:56:03
Speaker 1: to you every day during my morning run, and I
1:56:04
Speaker 1: find myself feeling helpless while this unethical inter moral bs
1:56:08
Speaker 1: continues in the executive and legislative branches and the judicial
1:56:11
Speaker 1: two of our government. What can I do thanks Gonettes. Well, Chris,
1:56:17
Speaker 1: you're you're channeling how I feel. Some nice I will confess,
1:56:22
Speaker 1: I feel powerless, I feel helpless. I am like through this,
1:56:25
Speaker 1: I can't believe, you know, I feel like John Love.
1:56:29
Speaker 1: It's his character when he played Michael degatcaus, I can't
1:56:31
Speaker 1: believe I'm losing to this guy, right I I can't
1:56:33
Speaker 1: believe we're doing this crazy shit, you know, like of
1:56:38
Speaker 1: course he hired. Of course some Texas oil companies hiring
1:56:42
Speaker 1: doctor Phil to be their documentarian while they kind of
1:56:47
Speaker 1: do squatters rights on Greenland with Donald Trump's okay, right, Like,
1:56:51
Speaker 1: if I painted to you that scenario that this is
1:56:53
Speaker 1: what was going to happen if Donald Trump was president,
1:56:55
Speaker 1: I'd have been called the crazy person. And yet this
1:56:57
Speaker 1: is now reality of where we live. So I know
1:56:59
Speaker 1: exactly how you're failing. All I will say is all
1:57:03
Speaker 1: we can do is we have to just keep trying.
1:57:08
Speaker 1: Keep you know, I'm I am. All I can say
1:57:14
Speaker 1: is keep hope alive. You know, Let's let's channel Jesse
1:57:19
Speaker 1: Jackson and Winston Churchill. He Jesse always told us to
1:57:23
Speaker 1: keep hope alive, and Winston Churchill said Americans would always
1:57:25
Speaker 1: do the right thing after they've exhausted every other path.
1:57:29
Speaker 1: That's another way of saying, keep hope alive. Right, Look,
1:57:35
Speaker 1: you could run for office. I think, you know, we
1:57:38
Speaker 1: need to have I think right now the leaders of
1:57:42
Speaker 1: both parties are are are Sometimes I wonder that they're
1:57:46
Speaker 1: that the being crazy is a feature so that the
1:57:49
Speaker 1: normal us normal people will never get involved, will think
1:57:52
Speaker 1: Jesus chrime, I'm not going to join that club. I mean,
1:57:54
Speaker 1: that's just nuts. And it allows them to keep power,
1:57:57
Speaker 1: you know, because they're king of the crazies. Get involved.
1:58:04
Speaker 1: Channel you're in inner Samuel L. Jackson and say enough
1:58:07
Speaker 1: is enough. I want these monkey fighting snakes off this
1:58:10
Speaker 1: monkey fighting plane. Run volunteer. I happen to believe the
1:58:22
Speaker 1: third parties that's where I would be channeling my energy
1:58:26
Speaker 1: is to help because I think both parties need to
1:58:30
Speaker 1: be fixed, and the only way to fix it is
1:58:32
Speaker 1: through outside influence. And I don't mean my money. I
1:58:36
Speaker 1: mean by an outside voting voting force, like an independent candidacy,
1:58:41
Speaker 1: an independent movement that maybe displaces one of the parties
1:58:45
Speaker 1: and becomes a major party, or maybe it sobers up
1:58:48
Speaker 1: both parties. But we do need to move from pounding
1:58:53
Speaker 1: our fist against drywall and poking a hole in it,
1:58:56
Speaker 1: and then having to repair that and realizing we haven't
1:58:58
Speaker 1: accomplished anything atually trying to do something about it. Right, So,
1:59:04
Speaker 1: I know it sounds a little pollyannish, but that's a
1:59:07
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, our history shows that eventually, when
1:59:11
Speaker 1: enough people say enough is enough, real change does happen.
1:59:15
Speaker 1: Keep hope a lot. Speaking of keeping hope alive, a
1:59:19
Speaker 1: three game sweep of the Cincinnati Reds keeps my hope alive. See,
1:59:23
Speaker 1: this is the beauty of channeling some of my rage
1:59:27
Speaker 1: through my baseball fandom, because it's a lot more fun
1:59:32
Speaker 1: to live artificial highs and lows through sports than it
1:59:36
Speaker 1: is through the shit show that has been American politics
1:59:41
Speaker 1: since that man descended down that escalator. Anyway, with that,
1:59:45
Speaker 1: I will we will have a busy week another live
1:59:48
Speaker 1: stream that Wisconsin primary. DDHQ, our Decision Made production team
1:59:54
Speaker 1: is going to be right around the corner. You will
1:59:55
Speaker 1: see us on Tuesday live stream. Wherever you get live streams,
1:59:59
Speaker 1: we will be there. Please tune in exclusive coverage of
2:00:03
Speaker 1: that Wisconsin primary. We're finding out right, Francesca Hong, do
2:00:10
Speaker 1: voters really want this or are they just channeling frustration
2:00:14
Speaker 1: through her right, That's one of the questions we hope
2:00:17
Speaker 1: to see answered, and we're going to find out. Was
2:00:20
Speaker 1: there a bit of a media blits, a bit of
2:00:22
Speaker 1: a mistake over the last couple of weeks. Should she
2:00:24
Speaker 1: have either not done it at all or waited until
2:00:26
Speaker 1: after the primary? So we will have that. Of course,
2:00:30
Speaker 1: there's now my new show on Tuesday, Super Tuesday, and
2:00:33
Speaker 1: we've got a new Dynastic coming up. I'm very excited.
2:00:37
Speaker 1: None other than mister Paul Finebaum is going to be
2:00:40
Speaker 1: our expert guest to talk all things Alabama football later
2:00:43
Speaker 1: this month. So it is going to be a fun
2:00:46
Speaker 1: month of content that I'll have for you, and it's
2:00:49
Speaker 1: going to be as busy as you know what week,
2:00:51
Speaker 1: So I will see you along the way. Thanks for
2:00:54
Speaker 1: tuning in, thanks for liking it and subscribing, and until
2:00:57
Speaker 1: we upload again, Hey,