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Joe Biden Put America First · Politix

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Also,
• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think if the other Arizona Senate seat opened up,
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: that probably the frontrunner on the Dem side might be Phoenix Mayor Kay Gallego,
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: who is Ruben Gallego's ex-wife,
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: and it would be very funny for them to serve in the Senate together.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_03: Hello, and welcome to the Politics Podcast.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_03: I'm Brian Boitler.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_03: I'm Matthew Iglesias.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_03: We are doing a special free episode because earlier this afternoon,
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_03: Sunday,
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_03: July 21st,
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_03: President Biden announced,
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_03: as I think was becoming pretty clear this was coming,
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_03: but we didn't know when,
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_03: that he will not seek bail.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_03: the presidency in 2024.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_03: He will decline the nomination.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_03: He's asked his delegates not to nominate him for president.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_03: He has endorsed Kamala Harris to be the Democratic Party nominees,
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_03: essentially asking the delegates that had been pledged to him to
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_03: nominate her instead.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_03: Already,
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_03: even just three hours now or so,
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_03: two to three hours since Biden's statement came in,
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_03: many influential Democrats,
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_03: including James Clyburn,
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_03: I believe,
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_03: who's
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_03: big dog at the congressional black caucus has endorsed Harris too.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_03: So it looks like in short order,
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_03: this is going to,
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_03: it is no longer the Biden Harris campaign against Donald Trump and JD Vance.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_03: It'll be Kamala Harris and whoever she picks as vice president against those two.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Wait, is it Kamala or is it Kamala?
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_03: Kamala.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_03: Have I been saying it Kamala?
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, man.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_03: Should we start from the beginning?
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_03: How embarrassing.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: I just think it's okay.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: So you said that you thought it was becoming increasingly clear that this was going to happen.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_03: Over the last like three.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I okay.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: I am proud to have kept my head.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: Ultra pessimistic doomer text messages in private rather than public.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: But it was not increasingly clear to me.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: I felt all weekend like it had gone in the other direction.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, no, no, no.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: As long as you're going to claim to have had foresight, let me hear it.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_03: I don't want to... It's not like foresight.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so...
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_03: My view on how likely this was has been a bit like a roller coaster because things
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_03: did not go super smooth after the debate.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_03: But so after the presidential debate three weeks ago, the reason –
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_03: That was the thing that called the question is Biden performed so badly in that debate,
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_03: so evidently like diminished by age in that debate that it couldn't help but force
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_03: the Democratic Party and himself to reckon with whether he should be the nominee.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_03: And very quickly you saw –
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_03: elite Democrats, elite liberals reconsider their view on it.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_03: And there was an early sort of drumbeat for him to stand aside.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_03: And then for about a week or two, Biden really hunkered down.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_03: First,
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_03: his first inclination was to try to prove his doubters wrong by going out in public
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_03: and doing some unscripted news events.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_03: He did a press conference and a big interview with Lester Holt and some other things.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_03: And those did not go super smoothly either.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_03: And then he decided he was going to hunker down any like further anyway.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_03: And he did.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_03: supposedly like um edged some very close long-term advisors out of his inner circle
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_03: he was uh taking counsel from hunter biden and so at that point my confidence that
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_03: we were going to get a new race dwindled and some somewhere around or below 50 but
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_03: it was then you had the the the shooting at the trump rally things kind of went
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_03: into abeyance
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_03: And you had the RNC.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_03: And there was a...
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_03: After the sort of feeding frenzy around the rally shooting had subsided,
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_03: you saw a real outpouring of...
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_03: Democratic elites asking Biden to step aside.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_03: I think that they made it so that if he had said,
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_03: screw you,
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_03: I'm staying in,
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_03: it would have been a murder-suicide sort of situation.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_03: Democratic candidates and leaders wouldn't have been able to put their comments and
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_03: their concerns,
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_03: sweep them under the rug and run a normal campaign.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_03: The whole campaign would
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_03: would have been about how can you run this guy after you said you had no confidence.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: That was how I felt on Friday.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: On Friday, I got dinner with my least coconut-pilled friend in politics, and he had thrown in the towel.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: He was like, Pelosi has made it clear this is going to be an endless world of pain.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's aligned everybody's interests.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: Biden's going to have to give up.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, all right, you know, like I got him.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then Saturday I woke up and it was like, Biden was digging in his heels.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: There were these reports about like Bill and Hillary Clinton calling donors and supporting him.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: And then the wave of stories today that was trying to like point the finger at Obama and be like,
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's like, Biden's mad at Barack, and, like, that's only making it more resistant.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then there was,
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: like,
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: a real,
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: like,
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: kind of,
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: like,
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: Mad King-type report about,
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: like,
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: somewhere,
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: like,
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: only,
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: like,
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: Donilon is talking to him or something.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: Or the one where Donilon was saying that,
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: like,
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: this is my last campaign one way or the other,
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: which from the...
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: I believe I used the name Mike Donilon on this podcast for the first time the day
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: after the debate because I know he's not only very close to Biden and a very senior
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: advisor in the Biden situation,
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: but he's been with Joe Biden since 1981.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: And he's himself old.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this was going to be his last campaign.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_03: Since before I was born.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, not not since before I was born.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: But yes,
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: it's an example of a guy for whom the party and Joe Biden are not like meaningfully
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: stinked at this point,
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: as opposed to lots of other senior people in this orbit,
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: like Anita Dunn,
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: who,
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: you
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: or Jeff Zients,
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: who,
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know,
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: after being chief of staff is probably going to just get out of the game,
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: but like as a young guy who's going to keep being around.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: And like whenever I see his name in the news, Donalyn, I'm like, oh shit, you know?
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: Although actually he's like, seems like a good guy, but like it made me really nervous.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I was like, I went to the movies this afternoon.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: This announcement came out like right when my son, who's a real rule follower, and also riding for Biden.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: He was yelling at me in the movie theater.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: He was like, you got to turn your
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: the movie's starting.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, okay, but Joe Biden just announced that he's not running.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: And the kid was like, now Trump is definitely going to win.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: There's just not going to be enough time for Democrats to get a campaign together, which is like a
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: I swear to God,
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: people often do these like woke nine-year-old takes where it's like,
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: oh,
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: these kids have so much insight.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: That take was totally wrong.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's like a, like a terrible, that's why I'm a professional and he's in third grade.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_03: So I,
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_03: I,
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_03: we,
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_03: I don't,
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_03: we don't need to talk exclusively about like the interiority of our thinking about this,
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_03: but the reason I didn't like fall back,
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_03: uh,
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_03: like,
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_03: like,
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_03: um,
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_03: what I want to say.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_03: The reason I didn't start having like renewed misgivings about whether Biden would
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_03: ultimately do what the obvious and right thing is that like after the RNC,
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_03: basically,
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_03: um,
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_03: there was still a huge appetite among reporters for scoops about this new information,
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_03: but the,
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_03: obviously very few people with real information.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_03: And so you could tell that a lot of these stories,
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_03: the ones that were,
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_03: I think,
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_03: driving you to despair,
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_03: were sourced from people close to people close to Biden.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_03: And they were trying to,
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_03: not that there was like people were bullshitting,
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_03: but they were trying to do their best to interpret the situation from the other
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_03: side of the veil.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_03: And that what I was looking at was what is like Nancy Pelosi doing?
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_03: What is Chuck Schumer doing?
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that if Biden had somehow made clear to them that he had given them the
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_03: middle finger and he was just going to press ahead,
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_03: we would have known.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_03: What they did was after mounting this full court press and freeing all their
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_03: lieutenants and stuff to come out with these statements and basically box Biden in.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_03: that there was silence from Biden and they stepped back.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_03: It was as if to say like this,
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_03: he knows he has to do this,
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_03: but he needs the space to be able to make this very difficult decision.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_03: That was consistent to me with confidence that he was going to do it and that
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_03: The last thing they wanted to do was upset the apple cart by having more and more
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_03: and more and more people pile on and having themselves out there saying,
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_03: what's taking you so long,
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_03: Joe Biden?
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_03: And so I wouldn't say that I was sanguine.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_03: I've been losing sleep over this situation for weeks now.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_03: But I was still pretty confident that this moment was coming.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_03: I just obviously had no –
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_03: insight into, or, or inside knowledge about when it would come.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_03: So obviously like when they hit send tweet at two,
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_03: whatever PM,
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_03: um,
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_03: uh,
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_03: I was just as surprised as everyone,
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_03: but I,
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_03: it,
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_03: what I,
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_03: I wasn't like,
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_03: I hadn't given up on
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_03: there being a new ticket.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_03: I couldn't bring myself to conceive of a 100-plus day campaign that looked like the
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_03: last three weeks,
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_03: which is what we would have been.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I agree.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so let's talk about what's next here.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: It seems like what's next is going to be nothing.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: over the past,
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: both over the past six months and especially over the past three weeks,
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: a lot of time has been spent
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: mulling over who would be the nominee if the nominee is not Biden.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: This was like
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean,
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: I know,
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: this started like Ezra's column wasn't Joe Biden should step down,
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: endorse Kamala Harris.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: She immediately gets a wave of endorsements from mainstream Democrats all across
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: the board and all opposition is quashed.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: It was like, we should have an open convention.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: And just earlier today,
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: I was talking to a guy who I like a lot,
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: who I respect a lot,
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: who's doing,
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think,
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: good stuff on pragmatic factional politics.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: And he was like,
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: working the phones to try to find 300 delegates to,
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: do something,
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: something,
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: something,
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: something.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: And like, I can read a map.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: And just like obviously Gretchen Whitmer and Josh Shapiro as a ticket,
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: I think like would be the strongest ticket Democrats could muster because there's
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: like only three swing states and the governors of two of them.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: And if you could put Tony Evers on it too, like that would be even better.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_03: It's like campaign manager,
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: vice vice president,
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: or,
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: he's going to be secretary of education.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, whatever it is.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um,
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: And it is a little bit frustrating to me that the nature of American politics is
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: such that you can't just go to the smoke-filled rooms and do the clearly optimal thing.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: But also, you really can't.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: Whitmer already put it out.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if Whitmer had balls of steel,
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: and was prepared to press this argument publicly,
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's a chance that she could win with it,
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: like 20%,
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: 25% chance,
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: because it's correct.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't even know anybody who disagrees with it.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: But she already took her hat out of the ring.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: And even though I think there's probably lots of politicians who,
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: like the boys in the labs in the basement,
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: are going to tell you would be a stronger nominee than Harris,
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: other than Whitmer, I just can't imagine anybody pulling it off.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I think nobody's going to try.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: Or the thing that made people afraid of a contested primary a year ago is that you
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: could see a challenge from the left because if you run against Harris,
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: some people are going to say like,
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: that's racist,
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: it's misogynistic,
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: et cetera.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: And if your counter argument to that is like, no, I'm just like, I'm a socialist.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: then that's a perfectly good argument.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: But if you come at her with just like,
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: well,
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: I think Pete Buttigieg is more electable,
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: I both think that's very important,
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: but also not really the basis of a presidential campaign.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_03: So what I've been writing to off-message subscribers and telling people in my life who ask is,
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_03: since long before the debate,
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_03: was that Joe Biden is not doing great in the election,
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_03: and if it doesn't improve,
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_03: it's going to make this question one the party really has to confront.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_03: And it won't be in February or March.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_03: It'll be closer to the convention.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_03: But if they get to that point and start having a real debate about it,
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_03: there's not going to be a new ticket unless, at a minimum, Biden is persuaded to step aside.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_03: And then what's going to happen is going to flow out of whatever wishes he
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_03: articulates in making that decision.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_03: And the only way that circumventing Harris makes sense politically, like you can...
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_03: Your observation about Michigan and Pennsylvania being swing states and their
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_03: governors being popular is totally true.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_03: And they probably poll ahead of Harris on raw electability.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_03: But there is obviously more to politics than just what those numbers say.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_03: And if...
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_03: Joe Biden were to say,
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_03: I am not going to seek reelection and I release my delegates and my wish is that
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_03: the delegates pick a Whitmer Warnock ticket.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I mean, I think that the delegates would probably do that, but it would raise this question.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_03: Why did you pick Kamala Harris for VP?
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_02: Kamala.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_03: Look,
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_03: getting really deep into fantasy land,
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_03: if Kamala Harris were Kamala...
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_03: Am I fucking this up over and over again?
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_03: If Harris...
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_03: whose first name may be more difficult for me to pronounce than I realize,
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_03: had decided,
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_03: well,
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_03: look,
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_03: our whole ticket is not doing well,
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_03: and that may be in part because of me,
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_03: and I'm not as popular as these governors.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_03: And with Joe deciding to take one for the team, I'm also going to take one for the team.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_03: Then...
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_03: Biden's endorsement of a totally new ticket would not be seen as an indictment of
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_03: his own decision making as a presidential candidate and then as president.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_03: It's just that Harris wanted the job.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_03: And so you can't really have the president front runner and say,
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_03: actually,
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_03: I don't want you to succeed me,
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_03: or else it calls his own judgment into question.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_03: So
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_03: When I just accepted that Harris would want the job if Biden stepped aside,
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_03: I essentially knew it would have to be her and started thinking about what the
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_03: upsides to that decision would be and how it could be
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_03: Beyond,
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_03: obviously,
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_03: like the questions about Biden's judgment,
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_03: she can start campaigning tomorrow with the whole apparatus behind her.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_03: And she was a prosecutor and Trump is a felon and she cares about women's rights.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_03: And Trump is a rapist who banned abortion in half the country.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's just like there's there's a lot to work with.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_03: And it really is like a whole new day.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_03: Even if,
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_03: like,
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_03: even if there is some quant highly respected in some quarter of the party who still,
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_03: like...
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_03: kicking that it would be better if we could somehow.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to put a last minute pitch out there just like before this is totally
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: cooked though,
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: which is that like beyond the like math of electability,
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: right?
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: The reality is like Biden's age was a significant problem for his candidacy.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: But I also don't think that like people were saying, I mean, inside the democratic parties,
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: there's actually a lot of enthusiasm for the achievements of the Biden administration.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: Because Joe Biden has done less punching left rhetorically than Barack Obama,
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: Bill Clinton,
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: or Jimmy Carter.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: You've got to go back way in time to find a president who was such a good citizen
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: of the progressive coalition.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: And Biden was a very effective legislator.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like when the election results of 2020 came in, I think the instant take was like,
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: I'm relieved that Trump is out of office, but not much is going to get done.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: And Biden got a lot of stuff done.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: And the intense policy demanders at the core of the Democratic Party really like
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: that about Biden,
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: because they got into politics because they want to get stuff done.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: And Biden not only did get a lot of stuff done,
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: but he really critically got more done than people thought he was going to be able
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: to get done.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's been the case that from day one,
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: a lot of swing voters weren't necessarily that excited about Joe Biden getting so
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: much stuff done.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: And also that inflation,
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: which sort of came and went,
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: but people got really upset about it when it came and didn't necessarily forgive him.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: So
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: What are the big advantages?
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: I think one of the main reasons why all these random swing state governors are more
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: popular than Biden or Harris is just like,
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: they weren't in the White House in 2022 and 2021.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: And that's like the biggest strength of the biggest reason to take this opportunity
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: to fully shake the edge of sketch.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: Is that talk to Biden's campaign people or now Harris's campaign people, any Democrats all along.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: They've wanted to say they've wanted to make this election about Donald Trump.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: And the best way to make this an election that's about Donald Trump is to run
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: against him,
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: somebody who has not been involved in federal politics for the past several years.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: Somebody who has sort of banal state political profile and just like normal
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: mainstream Democrat like positions,
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: quote unquote,
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: on the issues,
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: but who like...
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's going to be awkward.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: I think Harris is going to want to say,
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: or,
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: before some of this stuff,
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: it's like,
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think we all know,
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: like the vice president doesn't actually sit there at the president's right hand,
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: like making all these calls,
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: to Bibi Netanyahu,
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: to the Fed,
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: to whatever else,
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: whatever else.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: But,
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: the optimal thing for Democrats is to just like not fully defend the worker of the
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: Biden-Harris administration.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: administration, Harris as the vice president, I think, is going to have to do that.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: But other people could just sort of like duck a couple of the punches and then just
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: like hammer in abortion,
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: Medicare,
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: he's a crook,
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: et cetera,
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: et cetera.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: That's my take.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's cooked anyway.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_03: So ultimately, I feel like it's an academic argument because
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_03: Harris wanted the job and Biden endorsed her.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_03: And so that's kind of the end of the story.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_03: And if like,
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_03: if,
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_03: if maybe there was a window at some point to try to convince her not to want the job,
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_03: but like,
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_03: The arguments for Biden choosing to step aside were very strong.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_03: The arguments that also Kamala Harris, you know... Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_03: She's also not great shakes, and so she should take one for the team as well is like a much heavier lift.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_03: And so there was no talking her out of it.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_03: And so we get what we get.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not that...
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_03: I agree with this idea that there's going to be some significant drag on Harris for
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_03: being Biden's VP that wouldn't attach to a brand new ticket and vice versa.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_03: I agree.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_03: Like, it makes sense as a purely theoretical matter and just as like a continuity matter.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_03: But, you know, Biden is going to get...
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_03: lots of almost like obituary-like coverage.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_03: There's going to be a lot of retrospectives about his political life,
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_03: his political career,
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_03: and his presidency.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_03: And it's going to flush,
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_03: I think,
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_03: a lot of the dumb shit coverage of the economy that drove his unpopularity and a
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_03: lot of the dumb shit coverage of his age which drove his unpopularity out of the discourse.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: I agree with that.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: I agree with that.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: In some ways, like, as a...
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: And obituary is a great comp, right?
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like the best campaign ad that any politician ever gets is like the day they die.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: And like nobody, every prominent politician attracts a certain number.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: prominent politicians attract like big picture criticism,
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: but they also attract like nonsense criticism,
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: just like the flies that swat around.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what like falls out.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: Whenever the media is like, let's do like a big take, you know, about this guy.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: And that'll be good.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: I want to shout out.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder when the story will ever be told.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: But like Alex Seitzwald tweeted that holding the debate so early is
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: which the Biden team pushed for was like one of the great unforced errors in American politics.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like that's wrong.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like that's like an ungenerous read of what everybody was up to here.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: Now, in part,
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: they held the early debate to quiet intra-party doubts about Biden's age.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: But precisely because of this scenario,
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: that people who were nervous about Biden's age were reassured both by Biden's
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: bullishness about his own debating capacity,
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: but also by the knowledge that if you did a debate before the convention,
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: you could switch nominees.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's just like smart.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I mean, there's going to be discourse until the end of time.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_03: It's a big bet with a strong hedge, right?
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_03: Like it's optimal in a way.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: And also,
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: is it true that Biden stepped aside for the good of the country because he's like a
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: better person than Donald Trump?
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: Now, of course, in part, he was muscled out by party elites.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: But I think the decision to schedule the early debate like that
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: It reflects the fact that Biden really is a better person than Trump.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: When he was trying to think of how to play this out,
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: he did not play to minimize the odds that he would be forced off the ticket.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: He played to maximize the odds of beating Donald Trump.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the right thing.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: If you look at that debate play, it's like, if you want to...
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to beat Trump, doing the debate early was the right way to do it.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's the right way to do it because it was the best way for Biden to set concerns
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: about his age aside,
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: but also because it preserved this party-wide optionality.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: I can't x-ray Biden's brain, but his team, they set this up correctly.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: given the situation.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: And it's an example of political smarts and of real political smarts.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: Because of course,
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: when they scheduled it that way,
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: it's not like Jen O'Malley Dillon is going to put in a tweet,
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: we pushed for an early debate so that if our candidate fucks up,
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: he can be replaced on the ticket.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: Because that would be insane.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: But like,
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_03: Everyone understood that it would leave us this window and that's what happened.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why they did it.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that it's going to be a powerful piece of evidence insofar as there's
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_03: going to be,
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_03: because Republicans have agency in all this too,
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_03: like an inquiry into Biden's capacity,
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_03: right?
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_03: Like Republicans are going to, I think they have already subpoenaed, I forget if it was Donilon or-
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_03: A couple of senior Biden White House advisors to try to get people to believe that
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_03: they've been basically running the government while Joe Biden's been weakened at Bernie's.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that the fact that they scheduled the debate for when they did.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_03: is like a really really good piece of circumstantial evidence that what they say
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_03: about him now that he's fit enough to serve out his term but not fit enough to run
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_03: for president and be president and then serve four more years after that is totally
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_03: valid like that scheduling the debate when they did is consistent with them
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_03: genuinely believing that to be true and
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_03: I think we should give them a little bit more credit that, that that is the case, right?
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_03: Like this, this has not been a situation where like Biden suddenly fell off a cliff of mental acuity.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_03: Everyone lied about it,
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_03: did a coverup and have been running the government in,
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_03: illegitimately in some sense,
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_03: like while he's been in bed or whatever,
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_03: like they.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: I think what I think is, is that,
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: they had clearly reduced Biden's pace of activity.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: And it was a kind of a known unknown as to like,
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: I think they believed clearly and hoped that he'd been resting up over the winter
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: and was going to step it up and win the election,
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: right?
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's not that, like, they were like, oh, this guy, you know.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: He's a zombie, basically.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right, right, right.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: That he's a vegetable,
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: so we're going to schedule an early debate to make ourselves look like idiots,
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: right?
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, right.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they both knew that there was a chance that it wouldn't work.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: so it was done early enough to make a switch, but also like, you know, yeah.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: Like they, they, they believed in, you know, their guys.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: They had been seeing him behind the scenes.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: They knew more than we did.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: They obviously had some awareness that he was not,
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: a hundred percent of what he used to be,
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: but like with any of these things,
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think if you understand,
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you don't really know until you put it to the test.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: Doing a presidential debate seems like a stressful situation that is different from
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: other kinds of stressful situations that a person might be in.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: I hate debating.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not into it.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: I saw somebody complaining that podcasts are too agreeable,
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: but it's because two people yelling at each other is tedious and weird.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, who should be the VP?
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_03: I knew you were going to ask that,
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_03: but I did want to say one thing about what you alluded to about the progressives in
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_03: the party who supported Biden because he was a good partner to them and a good
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_03: faith negotiator with them.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_03: Because I think we actually do disagree about this.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_03: I'm thinking specifically of Bernie Sanders and AOC here.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_03: who,
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_03: unlike the party leadership,
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_03: went to bat for Biden,
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_03: said he's the candidate and the issue's closed and we should get his back.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_03: Because I know that that distressed you and it made me feel some stress because I
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_03: thought it was pretty important for Biden to step aside.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_03: But I also...
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_03: tried to like interpret what they were doing through a more strategic lens and i do
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_03: think that it has a lot of merit and what what i think that they were doing worked
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_03: on two levels you can argue a third one that's more cynical but the two that i have
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_03: in mind are these um because biden was so much more solicitous of the progressive
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_03: wing of the party than any president since forever um
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_03: They felt obligated, and I think in a healthy way, to return the favor of loyalty.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_03: Many,
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_03: many,
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_03: many left-wingers and progressives were happy that Biden turned out to be more
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_03: solicitous to them than anyone anticipated,
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_03: and then were really quick to throw him under the bus.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_03: Two years ago.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_03: And then again, after October 7th and so on.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_03: Like there was a really unhealthy dynamic there.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_03: It was going to end if Biden lost with the next Democratic president telling the
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_03: progressives to go fuck themselves.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_03: And I think AOC and Bernie realize that if we want the next president to be
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_03: similarly solicitous of us,
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_03: we can't abandon this guy now in this moment.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_03: knowing that they could climb off the ladder or the tree or whatever after the writing was on the wall.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_03: There's a bunch of metaphors there.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that that's what you're going to see happen.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_03: And then secondarily,
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think that this is what – I think that they were motivated by gratitude to
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_03: Biden and loyalty.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_03: But there is another sense in which this was magnanimous in that if Biden gets –
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_03: persuaded, but real hot persuasion, right?
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_03: If he gets driven out of the candidacy in what is easily interpretable as like a
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_03: left-wing push,
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_03: that's bad.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_03: And bad in a way that I think you particularly can appreciate.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_03: And so for them to be like,
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_03: no,
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_03: while the center of the party says you got to go,
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_03: that makes it look like the party's being taken over by the reasonableness people,
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_03: not by the radicals.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that that benefits the situation.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I agree that I was not surprised that Bernie Sanders wasn't leading the charge
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: to depose Biden,
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: nor did I want him to do that.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think it would have been constructive on any level.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_01: I do think that they went
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: like publishing a New York Times op-ed or AOC recording this video, stuff like that.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: That was above and beyond.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I do sort of get the strategic logic of it, as you played out.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_01: But four months ago,
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: I was losing my mind over how much leftists were attacking Biden for exactly this reason.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so I just hope that everyone can
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: follow the logic forward of things that we have seen.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_01: When Donald Trump says he doesn't know what Project 2024 is,
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_01: and that it seems too right,
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_01: whatever it is,
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_01: when Trump says that stuff,
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: I don't see any leftists saying either,
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: oh,
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: this is great,
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_01: Trump is way better than we thought he was.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I also don't see any leftists saying, what a fiasco.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: Trump is going to demoralize his base.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: When the other side does it,
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: everybody understands that the best way for Trump to win the campaign is to try to
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_01: reassure swing voters and for right-wing people to just applaud politely.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_01: As Trump does that,
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_03: because everybody knows they didn't mention the word abortion at the Republican National.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_01: And part of this is and I just like I want to I want to emphasize this is not because like lying is good.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's because what everybody knows,
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: if you just ask me,
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_01: ask you,
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: ask any journalist like what from the Project 2025 playbook is actually going to
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_01: happen if Republicans win in 2025?
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_01: And the answer is, the biggest factor in determining that is just what happens in congressional races.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: Most of the stuff in that book would be really challenging to get the votes for.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't, like, matter.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, some of it, and because it's Trump, there's some, like, psycho Trump stuff.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean, I think even more so for the Democrats.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: You look at, like, Biden rolled out some, I guess, like, exciting progressive promises.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like, he wants to cancel medical debt.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: And,
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: like,
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_01: the question of 2025 for Democrats,
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: for progressives,
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: is not,
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: will Kamala Harris verbally commit to signing a bill that would cancel medical debt?
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, does Ruben Gallego win the Senate election?
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_01: Does Tammy Baldwin hold her seat?
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: Does Alyssa Slotkin win the open race in Michigan?
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_01: I can't tell you exactly what bills 50 Democratic senators will pass,
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_01: but they will pass some progressive bills.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: If it's a Republican president, there's not going to be any progressive bills.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: If it's a Republican Senate, there's not going to be any progressive bills.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: If Democrats retake the House, there will be some progressive bills.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_01: If they don't retake the House, there will be no progressive bills.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's how politics works.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_01: Trying to make the Democratic Party presidential candidate tie herself to the mast
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: of aspirational public policy doesn't achieve anything.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because like, there's just, there's like a lot of polarization in politics.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like if Democrats have a trifecta,
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what the fuck bills will pass,
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_01: but it'll be some bills and I hope they'll be good ones.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_03: I think that this,
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_03: this,
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_03: uh,
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_03: family of points that you make about how every leftist and every progressive and
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_03: every liberal can see that when Trump lies about or pretends to move to the middle
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_03: on an issue like abortion,
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_03: uh,
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_03: Like we all realize that's a threat,
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_03: not something that is going to cause him big problems with his right flank or whatever.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_03: And that thus Kamala Harris will be best served if she can run a disciplined
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_03: campaign that isn't like driven by a primary like desire to appeal.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_03: to appease various interest groups.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_03: It's like Dobbs and Trump being a felon and billionaires in Project 2025.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_03: And let her allies,
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_03: just people who admire her in the world with big platforms,
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_03: talk about the history-making nature of the campaign and the first woman president,
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_03: the first black woman president,
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_03: et cetera.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_03: All that stuff is going to be quite clear to everybody, but it takes on a different form.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_03: political note if she uses it as part of a sales pitch because it's not a sales
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_03: pitch that appeals very widely outside of liberal and progressive spaces where
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_03: glass ceiling breaking is a value in and of itself.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_03: I do think that Project 2025 ought to get another look since the immunity decision
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_03: by the Supreme Court because there are some –
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_03: basically like spending related laws out there,
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_03: like the impoundment control act and the anti deficiency act.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_03: I think that basically presidents wouldn't want to violate because they could go to
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_03: jail for violating them.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_03: But now that that's fully immune, you can just break those laws.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that like,
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_03: a real systematic rethink of what Trump would just be able to do.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_03: Lie throughout the election about Project 2025 and then implement as much of it as
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_03: he can administratively.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_03: The percentage of it he can just do whoever wins Congress is higher now with that decision.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_03: VPs.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_03: Ever since the debate, to me it was always Bashir, Roy Cooper of North Carolina, and Josh Shapiro of
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_03: um,
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_03: uh,
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_03: Pennsylvania on the,
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_03: on the logic that,
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_03: um,
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_03: for like obvious,
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_03: um,
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_03: representational ticket balancing reason regions,
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_03: you should want like a white male who's not from California.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: So,
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: so the,
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: the logic of Cooper and Bashir in particular is that those guys have gotten the
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: votes of some Trump,
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like particularly Bashir has gotten a lot of them.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_03: And Shapiro is very popular in his state, which means he's popular with some Trump voters.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_01: Although Shapiro just is a little bit of a different case in good ways and bad.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: Because like part of how Roy Cooper and Andy Bashir have managed to do so well with
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: their very Trumpy electorates is that given the configuration of state legislatures,
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: they like literally haven't done anything.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_01: Shapiro benefits from the fact that I think Republicans hold one house of Congress,
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: of the Pennsylvania state legislature,
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_01: or at least it's like 50-50.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_01: So he's done less than Whitmer has in Michigan.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_01: And people like politicians who just fight with their enemies in the state
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_01: legislature rather than signing bills.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: So my concern about Cooper...
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: Cooper is like the exact age that Biden was when Obama picked him.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: Which like,
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_01: as I think we learned from the Barack Obama experience,
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_01: Joe Biden was definitely young enough to be an effective presence on the
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: Obama-Biden ticket,
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_01: not only in 2008,
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: but also in 2012.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: But like seemingly part of the premise of that selection was that he wasn't going to run in 2016.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's clear that a lot of ill will was generated by the fact that,
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: Biden,
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_01: exactly what Obama did or didn't do in 2016 cycle,
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: I think will be debated forever in the history books.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_01: But what he definitely did not do was enthusiastically back Joe Biden.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't want to rerun that play.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_01: I like Roy Cooper a lot,
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_01: but I want him to sign in blood that he's not running for president if they put him
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_01: on the ticket,
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_01: which is a totally reasonable outcome as far as I'm concerned,
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: but I really do.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_01: I want it on paper.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_01: Bashir, super young, nice looking.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_01: I saw a picture of his family.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_01: It was described to me by a friend as the whitest picture I've ever seen.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, which, you know, could be good.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Shapiro swing state.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_01: I, you gotta like it.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_03: I really, I really did.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_03: I really did.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_03: Like it was those three, but I was really thinking mostly between Bashir and Shapiro.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_03: And the reason is, is that like what Bashir's ability to win in Kentucky.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, he's a legacy there.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_03: So there's, it's like, he's got like, um,
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_03: like a little bit of a handicap benefiting him there, but, uh,
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_03: He is super charismatic and polished and appeals, obviously, well beyond the Democratic Party.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_03: And you should be able to transpose that skill nationally.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_03: There's a lot of Trump-curious or Trump-supportive voters in Tennessee who act and
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_03: think a lot like Trump-curious voters in Pennsylvania,
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_03: Wisconsin,
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_03: Michigan.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_03: And if he's won them over in Kentucky –
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_03: He'll probably do the same in those other states.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_03: Shapiro has proven he can do that pretty well himself.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_03: I like him.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, he's a short Jewish king like me.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_03: And we need more of us in politics, I guess.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_03: And he's charismatic.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_03: He delivers a really good, impressive speech.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_03: Stump speech.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_03: And he was attorney general of Pennsylvania when Donald Trump was trying to steal the 2020 election.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_03: And he beat Trump in court in the most important cases in that effort.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_03: And so he would be a really good avatar for that flank of the Harris Shapiro ticket against Donald Trump.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_03: I also think that, you know, Harris definitely does not need to win Kentucky.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_03: She's not going to.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_03: She could win North Carolina.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_03: It's not out of the question, but if she wins North Carolina, the election's hers anyway.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_03: She needs to win Pennsylvania.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_03: And Shapiro's from there.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_03: So of the three, I've always kind of gravitated to him, but I have to say that I'm not
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_03: I'm so relieved that this is over and that's part of why I don't care that much,
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_03: but also they're all talented.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, it's like a, it's like a, um, uh, something of riches.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_03: There's a,
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_01: what do you,
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_01: what do you think the reporting is that these three are being looked at as is Mark Kelly.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_03: Embarrassment of riches.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_03: There it is.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_03: Um, Mark Kelly seems like a fine.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_03: I, I,
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_03: There's a Democratic governor, so he'd be replaced by a Democrat, I think.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but then there'd be another special elected.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: It would just be endless Senate elections in Arizona.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and I just feel like— Where for a variety of circumstances, they keep having vacancies.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_03: Look,
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think it would be some sort of world historical error to do,
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_03: but I think it could backfire in obvious ways.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_03: I think if you're going to do something outside of the three obvious ones— There
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_03: was a Fourth of July party right after the debate,
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_03: and somebody asked me if Harris takes over—
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_03: And those were the three that I came up with on the spot.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_03: And then within days, it was conventional wisdom within the party.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_03: So it's not like I had some special insight.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_03: It's like they are the best match for her.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_03: But if you're going to go outside those three,
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_03: I would rather her go in a direction like JB Pritzker,
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_03: who's extremely rich,
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_03: which could be useful.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_03: And he's a bulldog.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_03: He's like...
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_03: If Chris Christie were a Democrat, but also not obviously corrupt.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_03: And I would like to see him debate J.D.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_03: Vance.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I'm not saying that this would be an important factor in how the election comes out.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_03: I just think it would be really satisfying to watch him debate J.D.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_01: Vance.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_03: And Mark Kelly, less so.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, Mike Kelly, got to support him because of the shaved head.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_03: Dude went into space.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_01: Plus he's a fucking astronaut, which is awesome.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_01: I think it would be cool to just keep having Senate special elections in Arizona.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_01: Also,
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_01: I think if the other Arizona Senate seat opened up,
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_01: that probably the front runner on the Dem side might be...
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_01: Phoenix Mayor Kay Gallego, who is Ruben Gallego's ex-wife.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_01: And it would be very funny for them to serve in the Senate together.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_03: Awkward.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_01: They have a strong political partnership, notwithstanding the dissolution of their marriage.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_01: And,
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_01: these are all...
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_03: Oh,
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_03: here's another advantage,
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_03: is that if it is Mark Kelly,
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_03: Gabby Giffords is like a true shooting victim.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, yes.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_03: Unlike Donald Trump,
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_01: who's hiding his medical...
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's good for the shooting truthers to,
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_01: like,
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_01: like,
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_01: real bullets injure you.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_01: But, okay.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_01: I also think that they should look at a true out-of-left-field option like Mark Cuban.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think that's a bad idea.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: To help people who...
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_00: They just hate the Democratic Party brand.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: And who feel like.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_01: So there was an idea that Biden was going to return to normal.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not like 100% clear what that meant or what anybody meant by it.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't think that this whole experience has made people who are just skeptical
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_01: of the process or establishment politics feel like this return to normalcy has been amazing.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_03: No,
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_03: I do want to say that it's really it's really Trump,
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_03: like you can't say I'm going to return to normal,
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_03: but also there's going to be this Avignon presidency of Donald Trump.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean,
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: it's there was a fundamental,
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_01: I think,
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_01: like conceptual flaw because like they didn't want to go after Trump more
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_01: aggressively because that.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_01: would have been abnormal, but it's also abnormal as it is now.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_01: Biden being forced off the ticket by former speaker Nancy Pelosi is like very abnormal.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so as long as there's a kind of a state of abnormality,
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_01: there's something to be said for like trying to,
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_01: um,
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_01: like make it work for you, you know, like do something fresh and interesting and new.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_01: And that like,
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_01: we hear you people who are not like super invested in the system,
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_01: that like,
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_01: like I put this,
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't post about the West wing a long time ago.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: And like,
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_01: What I think the West Wing got profoundly right about American politics,
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_01: because everyone does takes now about what they get wrong,
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_01: but this thing it got really right,
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_01: which is that both Jed Bartlett and Matt Santos are framed on the show as outsiders,
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_01: but not radicals.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_01: And the idea is that they are men of integrity and principle who are apart from the
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_01: grubbiness and corruption that people associate with establishment politics.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_01: This is part of why the whole Mark Kelly astronaut thing also works.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_01: He's a senator, but he's not a politician either.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like,
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_01: I think he could say credibly,
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_01: like,
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a pilot and a spacefarer who stepped up because my country needed me.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_03: If John Tester weren't... If we didn't need him to run that, right?
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_03: If Democrats didn't need him to run that race, he'd be a good option in that regard, too.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_03: I think that the... You said Cuban, and I had not just... Had not thought outside the box that way.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_03: And it's...
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_03: I think that there's an appeal there very related to what you just said,
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_03: but that,
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_03: the...
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_03: Biden's situation,
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_03: um,
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_03: and also his,
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_03: um,
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_03: alliance with labor unions and his,
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_03: um,
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_03: antitrust,
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_03: um,
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_03: operation and a few other things really did conspire to,
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_03: um,
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_03: In theory,
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_03: I think the idea was this will be a workers' party election versus a capitalist
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_03: party election.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_03: But all the capitalists lined up behind Trump, or most of them, and the unions have been okay.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_03: But the unions themselves are also just weak.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_03: And so it was not translating into some obvious we have the people and they have the money sort of thing.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_03: side by side.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that Harris's ticket should keep Biden's commitment to labor and to,
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_03: I think that he's just been basically good on these issues.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_03: You can quibble around the edges,
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_03: but I think the Democratic Party is better off parked where it is under Biden than
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_03: where it was parked under Obama on these issues.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_03: But that means that
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_03: they also should be thinking through how do you persuade people who care about
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_03: essentially like the bosses,
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_03: the management classes,
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_03: interests like the,
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_03: um,
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_03: that when,
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_03: when you're,
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_03: when,
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_03: um,
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_03: a swing voter or whatever looks around and says,
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_03: I don't like the tax cut stuff and I don't like the abortion stuff,
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_03: but it worries me that like all the people who,
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_03: um,
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_03: Like, make sure that the country's businesses are working or are so adamant that Biden has to go.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_03: And so there are these characters in the world of big money who see things clearly
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_03: and they're like,
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_03: Donald Trump is a criminal and he shouldn't be president.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_03: Again, and that will be really bad for business if he corrupts the rule of law, as he's promising to do.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_03: And so supporting Biden is not just good because it's morally good.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_03: It's good for business.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_03: And getting somebody who can make that case persuasively onto the ticket does seem
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_03: to make a lot of sense.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_01: The thing I would say, because I feel like liberals sometimes like don't.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_01: Why would people want to side with the plutocrats?
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_01: But I think if you talk to somebody who lives in our critical swing states,
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_01: Pennsylvania,
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_01: Michigan,
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_01: Wisconsin,
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_01: Arizona,
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_01: Georgia even,
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_01: but especially the three Midwestern swing states,
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_00: people there are aware,
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think,
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_00: that
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_00: most of the growth in America,
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_00: like the people,
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_01: people,
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_01: these are like States in economic decline,
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_01: and that like red States are faster growing,
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_01: particularly Texas and Florida.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_01: And that, you know, like business people have something to do with economic growth.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_01: And just like on a vibes level, um,
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_01: Kamala Harris is not going to give the whole United States of America the weather
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_01: that California enjoys or,
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_01: the hikes and the proximity,
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_01: the ability to like both drive to the ski slopes and to the beach,
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_01: right?
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like those kinds of things.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_01: And people worry that if you just kind of like California ties a like normal place
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_01: that you would drive all the businesses away.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and like they don't.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's good if you're a Democrat, just like it's good for J.D.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_01: Vance to have these like vague vibes that somehow he's for workers and like he's
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_01: against the billionaires.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's good for Democrats to have like some reassurance from business people who are like,
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_01: it's ticket balancing,
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_01: but a different dimension.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_01: And it's just and it's just like you have to do it.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's like it's asymmetrical.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's good to get some people to vouch for you.
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_01: not just to attack Trump,
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_01: yes,
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_01: but to even just say,
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_01: Kamala Harris understands what we need to do to make the economy grow.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_01: She's not a communist.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_01: I just saw somebody... So that's all fine.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_01: Harris Cuban.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_01: Quick question for you.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just thinking through the early Harris controversies.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_01: How should she respond to
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_01: When people call her a DEI candidate or a diversity hire.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know what the exact words are,
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_03: and I know that people will say,
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_03: oh,
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_03: wait,
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_03: no,
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_03: it was Carly Fiorina or was it,
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_03: I forget.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_03: Somebody Donald Trump was running against in 2016.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_03: He said something horribly sexist about her, and she was asked to respond.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_03: And I think she said something like,
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_03: I don't have much to say that every woman in America who just heard that isn't
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_03: already thinking.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_03: Something along those lines.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_03: That's not an exact quote, but that was the flavor.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_03: I think,
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_03: obviously,
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_03: the right answer is not to freak out and start throwing haymakers all over the
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_03: place in a...
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_03: in an unstrategic way.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_03: But I think it's also not to let them pull the whole campaign into a debate about
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_03: the merits of DEI or the importance of representation in politics and the
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_03: importance of breaking glass ceilings and stuff because that really is,
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_03: it's fraught.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_03: It's not, I think, obviously a loser, but it does lead to
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_03: like rhetorical traps that can just be difficult.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_03: Like you don't, like in 2020, in 2020 it was like,
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_03: There was this moral imperative to support Black Lives Matter after the Floyd killing.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_03: But then, you know, you have these cynical people and you have to expect that they will do this.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_03: They say, well, what about all lives?
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_03: And then Democrats have to answer that question.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_03: Do you think Black Lives Matter or all lives matter?
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think it's just a shitty place for a campaign to be.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's like a more pointed thing about this, right, which is that.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_01: This is what,
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_01: the reason I asked that question,
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_01: because I think this is what the Harris Brain Trust needs to think about,
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_01: like hard but fast,
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_01: which is that as you and I have both,
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_01: I think,
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_01: experienced in our personal lives,
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_00: inside progressive politics,
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_01: overt mobilization of identity considerations is a really powerful move.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yo, that's sexist and yo, that's racist will like freeze people.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like people will, in particular, if the identities are flipped, right?
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_01: If a white man is arguing about something with a black woman and she says that the
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_01: white man is being racist,
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_01: other white people will hesitate to like even speak up for you.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_01: Knowing what's going on.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's just, it's a, it's an argument that carries a lot of power in progressive circles.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_01: Kamala Harris,
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_01: there's this kind of like infamous Ezra Klein headline from 2016 about like,
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_01: it's time to admit that Hillary Clinton is a skilled politician or something like that.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_01: And the point he was making there is that there's like more to politics than like
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_01: going on TV and giving amazing speeches.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_01: And that Hillary had all these skills of coalition building.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_01: To go from being a line prosecutor in San Francisco to the United States Senate to
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_01: the vice presidency is really challenging.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like a fucking billion people live in California.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_01: To get in those Senate seats is really, really hard.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_01: But it's a political ascent that takes place exclusively inside progressive spaces.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, how do you outflank the incumbent DA?
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_01: How do you beat the DA of Los Angeles County, which is a bigger county?
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_01: How do you get on the governor's list to be appointed to the Senate vacancy?
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so those kind of identity moves are really powerful in Harris's personal political experience.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_01: But what she needs to do now is,
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_01: for the first time in her career,
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_01: do the opposite of that and reassure people.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_01: who,
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_01: like Democrats enough to vote for them half the time or more,
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_01: who think Donald Trump is bad,
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_01: who actually agree with the fundamental elements of the case against Trump,
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_01: but just to reassure him that she's not like one of those bad Democrats.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_01: And that means shying away from when people...
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_01: There was this story about how Republicans have been deliberately mispronouncing
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_01: her name.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_01: And as a person experiencing a difficult to pronounce name,
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just telling you,
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_01: it's like what she needs to do on that name attack is shrug it off and say,
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_01: I don't care how they pronounce my name.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_01: I care that they are
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then like try to ban abortion.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_01: Something awesome fills in that black, you know what I mean?
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_01: But like, I have thick skin.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_01: I am not going to like cry foul at like the, there's this end of the thing.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_01: I am here fighting for you.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_01: I think that like, she's got to do, you can let other people make that case for her, but it's like,
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's a trap.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_01: In a progressive silo, you can win an argument that way.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_03: We're saying the same thing.
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_03: I have to give full credit to this observation to Adam Serra,
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_03: who I was just talking to about this stuff,
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_03: like offline,
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_03: just as friends.
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_03: And he has a lot of... He's well-read in on Italian politics because I think he used to live there.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_03: And he basically said he thinks that Harris should...
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_03: not follow the Maloney script because they're obviously very different kinds of candidates,
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_03: but basically his point was like the,
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_03: the gender politics in Italy are,
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_03: um,
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_03: are really fucked and they're particularly fucked for somebody like coming out of
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_03: right wing spaces.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_03: Like the, the voters that you need are the ones who are, um, uh, sexist.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so Maloney and her race did in, in the,
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_03: in a right-wing Italian way,
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_03: kind of what Barack Obama did when he was trying to persuade swing voters in the U.S.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_03: that even though he seemed so different and exotic that he understood their needs
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_03: and interests and he wasn't going to
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_03: you know uh he wasn't some sort of i don't know um manchurian canon or anything
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_03: like that like maloney would basically wink to the to the um chauvinists in italy
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_03: that like i i don't really care what your gender politics are so long as you vote
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_03: for me um and like i'm not gonna be the kind of person who like hears a sexist joke
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_03: and uh hits the fainting couch and condemns you and um and it worked you know it it
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_03: it helped assuage doubts
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_03: among voters who she needed and thus she was able to, um, win her election.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and there's a, there's a, like the, I think the analogy is solid.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_03: Like it's, it's an analogy.
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_03: It's like not a,
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_03: it's not a one-to-one and like,
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_03: I think Harris is an admirable person and Maloney is not and blah,
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_03: blah,
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_03: blah.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_03: But, um, but that like, um, uh, that,
• 1:00:01
  SPEAKER_03: she has,
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_03: um,
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_03: there are,
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_03: there are like many good ways for her to signal that she's not interested in being
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_03: dragged into those fights.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_03: And also that she's still interested in the votes of,
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_03: of the people that Trump thinks that he's appealing to when he calls her a DEI candidate,
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_03: right?
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_03: Like,
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_03: um,
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_03: that just because that kind of attack might land well with a certain kind of voter
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_03: doesn't mean she's decided that those voters are like beneath contempt and that she
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_03: doesn't want to
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_03: pursue them.
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that she could do it.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's not like the biggest challenge in the world.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_03: It really isn't.
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_03: She just,
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_03: like,
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_03: there is a world of difference between a Democratic primary campaign in 2019 and a
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_03: presidential general election in 2024.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_03: I agree.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I believe that they know that.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_01: But I did, I thought, I don't want to put this.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_01: Both Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_01: And the reaction of women who work in professional Democratic Party politics to
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_01: Clinton losing struck me as reflecting a kind of not those insights that you just delivered.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's a two things can be true thing, right?
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_01: People attack politicians who they are running against.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_01: and they attack them in mean-spirited and often unfair ways.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_01: If the candidate is a woman,
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_01: like if you were to attack somebody in mean-spirited and unfair ways,
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_01: and also that person was a woman,
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_01: some of those attacks will be sexist attacks, right?
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's totally true.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_01: And like sexism exists in the universe.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's a powerful force in society.
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_01: Even nominal acceptance of women as equals is like really, really new, right?
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_01: To say nothing of like true acceptance.
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_01: So like this is all real and like it's a real issue.
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_01: But Joe Biden treated his age as a political vulnerability that he had to try to address.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_01: Ultimately, he failed, but he tried.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_01: Barack Obama took racism as a political vulnerability that he had to try to address,
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_01: and I think he succeeded at it.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_01: Donald Trump saw the perception that he wants to ban abortion as a political
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_01: vulnerability that he had to try to address,
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_01: and he is trying to address it.
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_01: And it's just like, you can't take this stuff too personally.
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_01: I know it's hard.
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's easy for me as a white man to be like, don't take racism and sexism so personally.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_01: But it's just still true.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's politics, and you've got to try to win.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know who else is a white man?
• 1:02:45
  SPEAKER_01: Joe Biden.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_03: No, Kamala Harris's husband, right?
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_03: Like the subtext of a lot of the coming attacks are going to be she hates white guys.
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_03: She hates white men.
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_03: And we're the party for you if that offends you.
• 1:02:59
  SPEAKER_03: And she could be like, but she likes Jews.
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_03: We'll just call him Doug M. Look, I take your point.
• 1:03:09
  SPEAKER_01: The great replacement is still on with the Harris-Emhoff ticket.
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_03: I think that there's this unknowability thing.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_03: If Hillary Clinton had taken this kind of advice and applied it to her 2016 campaign,
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_03: and handled the gender politics of it in a slightly different way or whatever, would she have won?
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_03: Probably because it was such a close election.
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_03: But I think that the big story of that election was that everyone just slept on her
• 1:03:31
  SPEAKER_03: because they thought that she was a shoo-in.
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't think Kamala Harris is going to have that problem.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that as long as she doesn't like fully biff this thing that we're
• 1:03:41
  SPEAKER_03: talking about,
• 1:03:42
  SPEAKER_03: which I don't think that there's any reason to assume she will.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_03: Like,
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think that even if she keeps the whole suite of advisors she had in 2019
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_03: and bring brings them to Delaware,
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_03: where I guess they'll probably keep the campaign based out of.
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_03: And they say, like, will they?
• 1:03:57
  SPEAKER_03: That's a great question.
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I mean, it's there and they don't have that much time to move it to Cal.
• 1:04:04
  SPEAKER_03: Why would they do that?
• 1:04:04
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, they should move it.
• 1:04:06
  SPEAKER_01: Originally the campaign team wanted to put the office in Philadelphia.
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, since like there's no airport in Delaware.
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_01: And doing it there was really, really inconvenient.
• 1:04:17
  SPEAKER_01: Swing stage.
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_03: I will try to get intel on that.
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_03: But I don't think that we should assume that even if she brings all those people in,
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_03: that they're going to say,
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_03: you should run the exact same campaign you ran in 2019.
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_03: I think it'll be better.
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that the electorate and the Biden White House and the campaign itself,
• 1:04:37
  SPEAKER_03: they are going to be much more reactive.
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_03: They're going to be much more
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_03: more willing to do extraordinary things to make sure that she wins because they
• 1:04:53
  SPEAKER_03: know that they made a big mistake in 2016,
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_03: assuming that Hillary Clinton's polling lead made her a shoo-in.
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_03: And that's going to be important because Republicans are going to try to rat-fuck the election.
• 1:05:06
  SPEAKER_03: It's easier for me to imagine the Democratic Party falling back into that kind of
• 1:05:11
  SPEAKER_03: complacency than to imagine
• 1:05:13
  SPEAKER_03: um harris showing up for day one on the campaign trail and talking like she's
• 1:05:18
  SPEAKER_03: trying to win a democratic primary i just i don't think that's going to happen and
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_03: i also think that most likely um the these institute these big organizations are
• 1:05:28
  SPEAKER_03: going to be operating at like top quality because they everything is on the line
• 1:05:33
  SPEAKER_03: they know they have to all right um well we'll be back this week yeah maybe with an
• 1:05:39
  SPEAKER_03: answer about if they're going to move the campaign headquarters sure
• 1:05:42
  SPEAKER_01: We'll break that story.
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_03: Important, important scoop.
• 1:05:47
  SPEAKER_01: Since I do have my New York Cuban shirt on,
• 1:05:50
  SPEAKER_01: we should mention that I kind of feel like they should consider a Hispanic running name.
• 1:05:58
  SPEAKER_01: You specifically?
• 1:05:59
  SPEAKER_01: No, not me, but just like somebody.
• 1:06:01
  SPEAKER_01: Put it out there.
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_01: I can't think of anyone good, but they should still consider it.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean – Ken Salazar.
• 1:06:08
  SPEAKER_03: I think one thing that – I think that like Biden being on board with this and – Yeah.
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of people who are under less urgent circumstances would want to pull this question into like –
• 1:06:23
  SPEAKER_03: committee and hash it out with all the various internal caucuses and blah, blah, blah.
• 1:06:29
  SPEAKER_03: I think that, that there's just going to be much less appetite to upset this apple cart.
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_03: Like they're going to defer to Biden on Harris and they're going to defer to Harris on her choice.
• 1:06:37
  SPEAKER_03: And it's not going to be this tug of war,
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_03: um,
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_03: because there's just,
• 1:06:41
  SPEAKER_03: that's not a luxury that we have anymore.
• 1:06:44
  SPEAKER_03: And I think through that,
• 1:06:45
  SPEAKER_03: we're going to see that at the end of the day,
• 1:06:48
  SPEAKER_03: even the people who partake in politics that way understand that it's,
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_03: um,
• 1:06:53
  SPEAKER_03: it's like not actually the most important thing about politics.
• 1:06:57
  SPEAKER_03: The most important thing about politics is keeping the bad guys out of power.
• 1:07:00
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:07:01
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
• 1:07:01
  SPEAKER_03: Let's do it.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
• 1:07:03
  SPEAKER_03: We'll see everyone on Wednesday.
• 1:07:04
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:07:04
  SPEAKER_01: We'll be back.