Latest / Politix / Golden Sour

Transcript

Golden Sour · Politix

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of polycules, apparently, too.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of polycules.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_02: I think that polycule thing is overstated.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_02: Because these are ugly nerds.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_02: I think in particular, it's a very, very cosmopolitan movement.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_02: You know, EA is, in a sense, the diametric opposite of America First.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: They're such rootless cosmopolitans that they're thinking about future societies
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: on other planets and stuff.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, everyone.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: You're listening to a free preview of the Politics Podcast.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: Donald Trump and the GOP are in deep shit.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: His polls are terrible,
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: theirs are following his, and suddenly they're starting to break from him.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: If not by name, then by deed.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: They're opposing the Iran war,
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: calling for investigations of his family, and criticizing his immigration policy.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: Democrats are poised to benefit, but they also seem to hate each other.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: And it's exposing cracks in the united front.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: Can they snatch defeat from the jaws of victory?
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: Then, as the artificial intelligence reckoning continues,
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: the people most hostile to AI safety advocates are homing in on one of
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: the field's little-known subcultures, effective altruism.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: We'll talk about EA,
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: what it is,
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: whether it's a cult,
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: whether EA tech people deserve the scrutiny, or whether it's all just a witch hunt.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to hear the whole conversation, you can upgrade to paid at politics.fm.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome to the Politics Podcast.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Brian Boyler.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Matthew Iglesias.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Matt, I want to rattle off a few observations and then kick it over to you for your response.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: Are you ready?
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_02: Let's do it.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: America's greatest polling outfit,
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: a longtime favorite of mine,
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: ARG, American Research Group, clocked Donald Trump at an approval rating of 29%.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: In Florida...
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: Maria Elvira Salazar cut an ad warning Donald Trump,
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: be careful what your advisors are telling you about immigration policy.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: Also in Florida,
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: Byron Donalds,
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: the party's gubernatorial nominee,
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: the Republican Party's gubernatorial nominee,
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: has taken Donald Trump off of his campaign page.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: In Utah,
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: Senator John Curtis,
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: who's not in cycle,
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: But who may be trying to be helpful,
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: called on the GOP Congress to investigate Donald Trump Jr.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: for accepting money from a Vladimir Putin-aligned oligarch.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: And then in Michigan and Iowa,
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: Republicans at the top of the ticket have called on Donald Trump to end
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: the Iran War.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: I guess I should specifically say they have called on the Iran War to end
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: by some mystical means, but it's clear that they want it over.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: So my question to you is, how good of news is this for John McCain?
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_02: John McCain, he's doing great.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_02: I would bracket the Curtis thing a little bit because he was kind of slotted
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_02: in there by Mitt Romney.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: You know,
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: to like deliberately orchestrate a like reasonable Republican
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_02: with honor Mormon guy out there.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_02: So he's always been a little bit of a plant.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_02: And also, what's her name?
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_02: The Florida rep, Salazar.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: You know, she distanced herself from Trump on immigration in the 2024s.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_02: She represents a very idiosyncratic district
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_02: that is super duper duper heavily Latino, but also quite Republican leaning.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of Cubans there.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_02: I'm really right wing,
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: but also concerned about racial profiling of Hispanics is like her sort
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_02: of wheelhouse.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: But the Iran stuff, you know, that's the real signal in the noise.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, people like Ashley Hinson and Mike Rogers, who, you know.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: Not just supported this war when it started,
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: but like Mike Rogers has been a supporter of this whole policy trajectory over
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_02: a 10-year arc, right?
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_02: Because the war is the war.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_02: It's a particular kind of disaster.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_02: But the war isn't just something Trump dreamed up one day.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_02: This is what going back to when Republicans opposed the Joint Comprehensive Plan
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_02: of Action, this was the alternative policy.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_02: That they've been pushing for for a decade.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: And Rodgers has been there the whole time.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_02: And it's killing them.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I mean,
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know how much voters actually understand that this increase in gas
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_02: and diesel prices is specifically due
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_02: to Trump's foreign policy versus something else Trump is doing.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: But it is, you know, and it's a real puzzle there for them to solve.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think that members of the public should be intelligent enough
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: if they're voting to know that the astronomical increase
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: in diesel prices has something to do with things happening in the world?
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I mean, we don't know.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, because I think we know that, like,
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_02: people in the past have gotten very upset about gas price spikes that weren't
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_02: the fault of the incumbent president.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_02: This one, like, it is.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think that there's a—
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe this election will help us suss this out, but there's always this question.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: If gas prices are high,
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: if this economic metric is bad,
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: if the stock market's in a tumble,
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: whatever,
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: smart people usually say the president has little control over all that
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: and has
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: to rely on the public being intelligent enough about what a president does
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: and doesn't do to not make wild political swings as a result of these fluctuations,
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: right?
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes that happens,
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: like Barack Obama was reelected when gas prices were fairly high for the time.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: But now we have a situation where these problems are extant
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: and they've been around now for a while entirely because
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: of actions Donald Trump has taken unilaterally.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: And it's obvious to all the people who normally say,
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: hey, you shouldn't be so quick to blame this on the president.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so I feel like it's out there a lot.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I would like to think that citizens of a great republic would be attuned to it
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: as well and would take it into account as they make their decisions about who
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: to vote for.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: And it kind of looks like that's what's happening.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think at a minimum what's happening is that Republicans
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_02: in swing races are telling Trump that they know that That
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_02: the war is what's driving up the cost of energy and they need the cost of energy
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: to go down like fast before the bottom falls out on their races.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, the Florida thing is most telling
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_02: because like I don't think anyone really thinks Democrats are making a big run
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_02: at Florida governor this year.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: It's just like there's not.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_02: There's not much money in it.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_02: You know,
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_02: it's like the Democratic Party kind of like left Florida for dead,
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_02: even though, I mean, I wrote about this, I think, six months ago.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_02: By the numbers, Florida is a stretch, but it's not more of a stretch than Iowa.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_02: And the whole time,
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_02: Rob Sand has been really in the hunt in Iowa and Josh Turek increasingly may be in
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_02: the hunt in Iowa.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_02: So in principle...
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_02: There's no reason David Jolly couldn't win a gubernatorial election in Florida.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_02: If anything,
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_02: it's easier to win a governor's race in a state with a huge Republican legislature,
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_02: right?
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_02: Because there's no legitimate basis to worry that public policy in Florida is going
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_02: to go off the rails to the left.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_02: If you have some problem...
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_02: It'll be interesting to see how much the Republican cash advantage ends up mattering
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_02: in those kind of races.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_02: Because like Florida,
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_02: there's just,
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_02: these are states that have not been targeted,
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: you know, like,
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_02: and Democrats are not,
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_02: I think,
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_02: going to pour last minute money into them the way they did in 2020
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_02: when they had more cash.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: But, you know...
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_02: People are quite upset.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: I think the only thing I want to take issue with is your framing at the top where,
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: I agree that the biggest issue because it's national and because it has to do
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: with war and so on is the Iran war and the knock-on effects on energy costs.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: But I think that these are all telling the same story, right?
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like, Trump's numbers are bad everywhere.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: Republicans' numbers are bad everywhere,
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: which means that where they normally expect to be strong, they're weak.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so the fact that Salazar is speaking up to say something different because
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: the issues in her district are different is of a piece with the slide
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: that is universal across issues, right?
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: And...
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: I could have added more to the list.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: In Nebraska, I keep screwing up.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's Kansas,
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: where Adam Hamilton is mounting a really,
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: really strong underdog Senate race against the incumbent Senator Roger Marshall.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: There is a big story that our friend Sarah Cliff broke for the New York Times
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: a couple of weeks ago about how Marshall,
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: as a doctor,
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: he's an OBGYN,
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: I think,
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: has
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: referred scores and scores and scores of patients to law enforcement for failure
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: to pay Their medical bills.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: And in many cases, these are like highly sympathetic stories.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: People who needed emergency C-sections.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: They
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: couldn't afford some remnant of their bill.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: He tried to take them to court over it.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: They missed a court date.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: They ended up in jail.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like crazy stuff.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so...
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: This guy is suddenly getting scrutiny that he's never gotten before
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: because it's Kansas and who scrutinizes Republican senators from Kansas.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: But you have a different story also out of Florida about the DeSantis political machine.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: Stealing a big chunk of a Medicaid settlement and directing it into
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: the Republican Party's coffers.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think you also have this nationwide awakening
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: That admittedly should have happened in the first term about rampant corruption
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: in Republican politics.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so when somebody like John Curtis,
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: who is not like necessarily a friend of Donald Trump,
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: but he's here to help the party,
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: ideally, starts talking about how we need to investigate corruption.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think he's trying to be the fly in the Chardonnay.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think he is making a statement to the Republican Party is that the public is on
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: to us about how how complicit we are in all this,
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: how in some cases directly involved we are in all this.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: And if we are going to survive this election,
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: we need to convince at least some of those people that they're wrong.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: And we can do that by like whipping up a last minute investigation of Don Jr.,
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: you know, just like we can, you know, maybe.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: Salvage a point or two here or there in Michigan and Iowa if we ban exports
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: of diesel or if we get the Iran war over lickety split,
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: prices will drop just enough to save us.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's a pan-election mindset,
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: even though it manifests in different ways where the issues that are salient differ.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so my interpretation of that is a little bit different.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_02: I think that we are...
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_02: Starting to see, you know, Trump
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_02: as a lame duck coming into focus, right?
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_02: And part of the deal for,
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_02: if you're,
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: there's this block of sort of quiet internal resistance inside the Republican Party,
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_02: like people who have not gone,
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_02: bulwark or whatever,
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_02: but who would prefer it If the 2028 Republican Party nominee is a significant change
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_02: of direction from Donald Trump.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_02: Like people who wish they could wave a magic wand and slot Mike DeWine in there.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: And and that's Curtis.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's Curtis and it's probably Todd Young
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_02: and probably several other senators who you just like don't see very much
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_02: on television.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_02: We're chattering a little bit after January 6th and then really sort of went quiet,
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_02: you know, as Trump picked up steam again.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know,
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_02: the question is,
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_02: is if Republicans take a big midterm thumping,
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_02: as it seems like they are going to, does that become a new...
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_02: Perestroika moment,
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_02: not even necessarily to say it's time to throw Trump overboard because it's sort
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_02: of too late.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_02: It's too baked into the cake, but to, you know, let's open up some possibilities for 2028.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_02: You know,
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_02: that like Trump has been dragging
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_02: the Republican Trump has been spending political capital.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_02: Among other things,
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_02: like his son's Russian oligarch bribes,
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_02: you know, things that are not ideological goals of the conservative movement.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_02: So, I mean, I'll be interested to see what happens there after it comes.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_02: Something I've been trying to look at today is,
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_02: if you do like a really naive projection,
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_02: right, you assume a uniform swing, which is wrong, but it's an okay approximation.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_02: Democrats could win a trifecta in Arizona.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_02: As well as winning back the trifectas in Michigan and Minnesota.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_02: They have an outside chance of winning the trifecta in Pennsylvania, although it's hard there.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_02: They will break the Republican supermajority in North Carolina so
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_02: that Josh Stein's veto will hold up against everything.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_02: They'll probably flip the House in Georgia as well as win the governor's election there.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_02: So there's like a lot in the mix that's a little bit,
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_02: it's flying below the radar because,
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_02: of course, people are mostly focused on these sort of marquee Senate races.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_02: But the deeper you go, the more you get into –
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_02: Deep shit for sort of random Republicans who thought they were safe,
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_02: because even if you're not,
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_02: very few members of the Arizona state legislature are going to lose their seats.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_02: But if you're in that Republican caucus and throwing...
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think the predominant view on the right is still...
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_02: You know,
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_02: that the polls are skewed,
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_02: that this is 2020 all over again,
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_02: that it's going to be okay,
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_02: that MAGA Inc. Is going to bail us out with its $400 million of spending.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_02: But you're beginning to see, you know, the potential indicators of a panic.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think it's – my expectation is that there will be,
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: much like there was in 2024,
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: a unified national swing – That is different in highly contested
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: states than
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: in not highly contested states.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't actually know which way that cuts.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: Presumably where Republicans are campaigning most heavily,
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: you'll get more Republican turnout to offset what I think of as baked in mass,
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: like Democratic and independent revulsion at Donald Trump.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know, some correlates, right?
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you mentioned Florida and Iowa in the same breath a few minutes ago.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: And like, I actually don't view those states as having too much in common.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: But like the Sun Belt politics tend to resemble one another,
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: just like the Upper Midwest politics tend to resemble one another.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: And...
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway,
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: my sense is that the way that washes is like 2018,
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: but instead of Trump being at 40%, he'll be several points below that.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: Instead of the public being like, okay,
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: this is working out all right,
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: because even though he's boorish and maybe a little bit ignorant,
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: like he's doing a decent job, the economy is good.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: It was in that climate that they gave Democrats- An eight to nine percent,
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think, national popular vote victory for the House of Representatives.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: I do think the big difference- But everyone hates him now.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_02: Well, but also,
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_02: in 2018, I think Democrats felt great about the 2018 result at the time it occurred.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_02: But I think Republicans,
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_02: after, you know, they dusted themselves off- Decided that they felt okay about it.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_02: Like they gained Senate seats in 2018.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and some of that was the map and so on and so forth.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_02: But it was like, okay, well, we passed our big law, big reconciliation bill.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_02: And we confirmed our Supreme Court justice.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_02: And we gain Senate seats so we can actually just keep filling the judiciary
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_02: and we're going to just fight on to the reelection because it's normal.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_02: Like almost every presidency takes a step back in the midterms.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think it was actually reasonable of them to say that they absorbed
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_02: the 2018 backlash in a reasonably healthy position.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_02: And here we are looking potentially at something quite different from that,
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_02: where they blow a lot of favorable Senate and governor's races, right?
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_02: Like I think Amy Acton is now favored in the Ohio governor's race.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_02: Rob Sand is definitely favored in the Iowa governor's race, right?
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think there is like a big backlash against the Republican governor
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_02: in Nevada,
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_02: but there's a very good chance that he's going to lose anyway because it's a it's
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_02: a blue state and Republicans are super unpopular.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_02: And he hasn't been like a Phil Scott mode,
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_02: you know, super heterodox Republican and stuff like that.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_02: So we're going to see if this polling holds up a lot of people.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, a broad range of stakeholders in conservative politics.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_02: You know,
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_02: paying the cost here and not being able to get what they want over
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_02: the next two years.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it was I think it was what you said.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: They because the map was bad.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: It was you know, it was two cycles on from from the big Democratic sweep in 2006.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: So you just had a lot of Democrats representing states that they.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: Probably had no business winning, some of which they kept when Barack Obama was reelected.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so all that got washed away.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so Republicans won two Senate seats, which gave Trump something to hang.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: He never admits defeat.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: And if he loses big this time,
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: he will just blame it on fraud and Republicans not doing what he told him to and
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: the Supreme Court betraying him and all that.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: But he was able to come out in 2018 and say, this was great.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: It was almost a perfect victory.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's like a direct quote from him.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: And then the third aspect of it,
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: and this will happen this year too, because it's almost mechanical.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's that in a wipeout, the people who are left over tend to be the most ideologically extreme.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: And in the Republican Party, that means the most closely aligned with Trump.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: So you get this like really hardened...
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: Rump.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: And, uh, in 2018, that was what was left over in the house.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: So instead of being like, whoops, we should detach from this guy.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: He just cost us a lot of, you know, our, our, our majority in the house.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, he's dead weight.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: They were like, you know, full, full steam ahead.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I do want to talk about the money though,
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: because, um,
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: money's coming, uh,
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: coming in hot and, um,
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like the national environment
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: is so good that it should,
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: in some sense,
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: be this unifying force,
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: this almost like a tailwind that gives Democrats an internal sense
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: of forward momentum so that they're projecting strength and confidence.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: In practice, they are at best, I think, trying not to upset the apple cart.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: And then there was a Politico story late last week about how in frontline races,
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: they talked to three frontline race consultants,
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: but I think it's more widespread than that.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: The guidance is don't...
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: Don't go too hot on AI stuff because then the money is going to come after you and
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: then we don't know if we can see you through to victory even though
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: the national environment is so favorable.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then in addition to all this fear of the money, you have typical factional stuff.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: You have Jared Golden,
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: who's retiring,
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: going out by trying to get his Republican friend Mike Lawler reelected,
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: endorsing an endangered House Republican.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if there's anything new on the John Fetterman front,
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: but we threw him into our, does that say I'm sorry?
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_02: It says fuck Jared Golden.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_02: No, so this is, the Golden and Fetterman stories in my mind are linked, right?
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_02: Because the problem is, right,
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_02: like Jared Golden last cycle when Joe Biden was still on the ticket
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_02: and looked like he was staying there stubbornly and it seemed like it was going
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_02: to be borderline impossible for a guy in a district like Golden's to hold out.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_02: He did the thing that I think is unforgivable to normie Democrats, even in a really tough race.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_02: And he was like, I don't think Donald Trump is a threat to democracy, right?
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_02: Which in a way is a really smart moderation.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_02: You know,
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_02: it has a lot of impact with the crossover voters who Jared Golden is trying to get
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_02: and also has no like concrete meaning.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_02: At any rate, Biden left the ticket, was replaced by Harris.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_02: Biden won Golden's district very handily.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_02: Golden won re-election narrowly.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: Wait, Trump won.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_02: Trump, Trump, rather.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_02: Golden then returns to Congress and he's like a quite loyal Democrat.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_02: Like he voted with the party on the Protect Women's Sports Act.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_02: Like he was not defecting on the big...
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_02: Policy issues.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_02: He had kind of threaded this moderation but not on a vote thing, you know, sort of just right.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_02: But people were really mad at him over that.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_02: He was getting a lot of shit at town halls and stuff from Indivisible.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_02: And the state auditor was going to hop into a primary and run against him from the left.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_02: And then Golden decides that he's going to take his marbles and go home.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's like, you can't fire me, I quit.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_02: And ever since stepping aside,
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_02: it's not like Golden has been, well,
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_02: now I can vote whatever and I'm not concerned about my re-election,
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_02: I'm going to live out.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's been more like Golden is mad.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_02: And so...
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_02: He's just beefing with people about different stuff.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_02: Then this guy,
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_02: Baldacci,
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_02: who Golden wanted to win the nomination to run to replace him,
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_02: lost the primary to the state auditor, Matt Dunlap.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_02: And then Golden broke party discipline on a rule vote in order
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_02: to get this lobster regulation thing done.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: Just so listeners know, before any vote on a bill in the House...
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: They typically pass a rule, right?
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: And it just like establishes what the procedure is going to be for the final passage vote.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: And the standard thing and really in both parties is that you don't.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: Don't break with the party on the rule vote.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: I want some nuance though,
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: because- I just want to,
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: this is me like establishing terms for listeners because it's arcane Congress shit.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: And like one way to gauge party unity
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: is to see how well
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: the leadership can enforce unity on those votes.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: And in recent weeks,
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: Jared Golden and Marie Klusenkamp Perez have- Seemingly
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: without like giving anyone heads up, just defected on the rule vote.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: And in doing so,
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: helping salvage a rule that would have failed,
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: thus derailing all of Republicans' plans.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, that's the news.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, progressives defected from the rule en masse twice during the Biden presidency.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_02: Once about a crime bill and once about...
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_02: A Ukraine aid package.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_02: So it's not like this never happens.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_02: Those were, though, bipartisan rules, which passed easily.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_02: The difference with this rule vote on a package that included the lobsters,
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_02: but was mostly about the Russia sanctions, is that Jared and Marie...
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_02: Really just Jared,
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_02: because it seems like Glusenkamparas was doing it as a favor to him,
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_02: could have sunk the whole thing in a way that would have been, I mean,
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_02: Republicans would have gotten it done one way or the other,
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_02: but it would have been embarrassing.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_02: And it's just like good partisan politics fun.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_02: And so you see like two guys who are the opposite of gold in this sense,
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_02: like Henry Cuellar and They've just voted with Republicans, but they...
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_02: Upheld party discipline on these process votes because they intend
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_02: to win re-election in November and continue to be members of the party
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_02: in good standing.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, so it's Golden is saying, fuck you on his way out the door.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_02: And then the real fuck you is he...
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_02: Wrote an op-ed for a local newspaper in Westchester to endorse Mike Lawler,
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_02: vouch for his bona fides.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_02: When Lawler is running against Kate Conley,
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_02: who's like a pretty good moderate recruit, Lawler's very vulnerable.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_02: He's a piece of shit, too.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_02: Like, he sucks.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_02: I wouldn't endorse him.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_02: I like his beard, you know.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_02: I mean.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_02: He's got some good stuff
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: going on.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's just.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: Ask your buddy.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, she's my buddy too, I guess, in some, you know, whatever.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: Ask Liz Smith what she thinks of Mike Lawler.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, she doesn't like him.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_02: Not a fan.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_02: She's working for Kate Conley.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_02: But this is what I mean.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of things Golden could do with his waning days in Congress.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_02: Blue Dog Pack has a bunch of challengers who they're endorsing.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_02: Golden could be trying to help them.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_02: He could be doing anything, and this is what he's choosing to do.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_02: He'll be gone and it sort of doesn't matter.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_02: But I think we're going to have this same problem with Fetterman,
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_02: who people have gotten increasingly mad at over different things that he's said
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_02: and done,
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_02: and who couldn't possibly win a Democratic primary under these conditions,
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_02: but who has that seat until 2028.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I think if Democrats,
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_02: do really well,
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_02: And end up with 51 Senate seats that the odds are really high that Fetterman's going
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_02: to flip because nobody has known,
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_02: not just over the past week,
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_02: but over the past year,
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_02: how to like get out of this spiral of Fetterman has antagonized the base.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_02: The base wants to say antagonistic things about Fetterman.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_02: And so nobody wants to be like the Fetterman defender,
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_02: but then,
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_02: he's like,
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_02: Angry and there's no leverage because he's not within a million light years
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_02: of winning re-election as a Democrat in that state.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_02: And so we may just be totally fucked on that front.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_02: Now, Nate Silver's latest model says he thinks Democrats will get 52 Senate seats.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_02: I can't even contemplate that level of optimism about the Senate map.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_02: That's a I mean, you know, he's got a lot of math.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_02: 52 is a lot.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm concerned.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_02: You know,
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_02: it's like who who amongst us would run a kiss John Fetterman's ass initiative
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_02: at this point in time?
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_02: And yet it could be urgently needed come winter.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: Why do these moderate men just like why are their egos so fragile?
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: Why can't they just be be men?
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, I mean, John Fennerman's not really a, not really a moderate man.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_02: He was the, he was the left's champion, the alternative to Conor Lamb.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, but,
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: but like,
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: there's been this whole,
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: like, where, where do I go to give Conor Lamb his apology or whatever?
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like, like the, the progressives who,
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: Supported Fetterman over Lamb have been pretty abject in their regret.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: But like what I want to say in their defense and everyone's defense, really,
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: including Fetterman's,
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: is that he had a horrible stroke and then a major depressive episode.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it has
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: not really been his old
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: self for a single day since those things.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: And Republicans, because they're.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they're like they're they're.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: Ends justify the mean sort of people.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: They're going around pretending that he's the bee's knees,
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: that he's just like their favorite guy.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: And like they're,
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: they're exploiting this
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: unwell person in the hope that he does what,
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: it seems like he might do with a 51 vote Democratic majority is like steal
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_01: the majority back for Republicans.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: But like.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody had that on their bingo card.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: Golden is like a young guy, good looking, accomplished.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: I don't agree with his politics.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't think it was smart of him to write that story or give that quote.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: I forget what it was about how- He did it as an op-ed.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then what he could have done is Trump could have- Showed his ass in early 2025.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: And Jared Golden could have said, you know what?
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: I was basing what I wrote in that op-ed on what Trump did in his first term.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: And things have changed.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: And now I no longer believe that.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I see the threat clearly.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't do that.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: All he's doing is just being a petty little bitch.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the other thing.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_02: We're going through all of this.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_02: Why didn't the Biden administration just do what he wanted on the fucking lobster regulations?
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know enough to say, honestly.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, no.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_02: But I mean,
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_02: but like,
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_02: but this is what I mean,
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_02: you know, like,
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_02: because it's like,
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_02: I'm here and I'm like,
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_02: I had my post-it and, you know, like, I don't think Golden should have done this.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_02: But like,
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_02: there was a time years ago when Golden was not in this level of fight
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_02: with leadership and But he was saying,
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_02: not uniquely,
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_02: he was saying the same thing as the governor of Maine,
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_02: as Angus King, as what's her name with the safer house district.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_02: Every Maine politician was saying,
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_02: this lobster regulation that you guys want to put in, like it's no good.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_02: And for the Democrats in safe seats,
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_02: it was just kind of a press release that they put out and it was their thing.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_02: But for Golden, who was there in a Republican seat, It became a big deal.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_02: You know, he was fighting for the Maine lobsterman.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_02: He was showing independence from Joe Biden on a question of substance
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_02: that had nothing to do with the future of American democracy, right?
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_02: Like the preservation of right whales,
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_02: if you took only hardcore environmentalists and you asked them,
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_02: how important is this on your stack rank?
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_02: Like, it's not a top five thing.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_02: And they just, they wouldn't give it to him.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_02: And then it became an issue that the way to get this bill about the lobster thing
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_02: over the hill was to break on this rule.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_02: And nobody came to him and was like,
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_02: here's our plan and we're going to fix this lobster thing for you.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I get it.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_02: It's like mainstream Democrats think this is petty bullshit and they don't care.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_02: And the way they handle issues that they don't care about is Is they just kind
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_02: of defer to this advocacy group infrastructure.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_02: The advocacy group infrastructure has decided that we need
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_02: to impose tougher regulations on Maine lobster people.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_02: And normal Democrats think it's unreasonable for anyone to care or engage about this.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_02: But the fact is, is like, you need to kiss the asses of your pivotal people.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_02: And this Fetterman thing is, I just think, the clearest example of that that can be imagined.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_02: That, as you say,
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_02: Republicans believe that the ends are important here,
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_02: and so they're trying to be nice to him.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I think there's some wisdom to that.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I don't actually think that these two things are – like,
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: they bear a family resemblance because you're talking about two
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: guys who are on
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: the – Like right wing of the party at this point and acting out in sort
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: of similar ways.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_01: But the point you're making about how you might have appeased Golden is a point
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_01: about like basically like how you
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_01: attend to the needs
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: of your frontline members given how precarious They talk about what a great guy is.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_01: And there's no concession that he's asking Democrats to make
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: other than,
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know,
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: like don't elect Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, which is not really up to them.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so you can't, I mean, sure,
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: go ahead,
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_01: like appoint somebody to go on TV and talk about how nice a guy Fetterman is,
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_01: if you think it'll help.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_01: But you're talking about mental illness in his case.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: In Golden's case,
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: it's like,
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: it's about like the party's psychology about frontline members is,
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think, a little bit misguided.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_01: And without having any comment about The whales or the lobsters?
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: Because I just don't know.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like the way you phrase it makes me think, sure, they should have just handed this one to him.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: But in general,
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: the way I see Republicans deal with their frontline members is they basically say,
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: like, join
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: our all-in fight against the Democrats, keep them toxically unpopular.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_01: And you might have a fighting shot of winning your re-election,
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_01: but that means you're going to have to vote with us on a lot of shit.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: You're going to have to cave.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: You're going to have to put up fake stands and then cave.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: And the way Democrats think
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: about frontline members is these are magical political creatures who figured out how
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: to win in very tough territory.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so we need to cater to their needs so that we don't lose those seats.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to do that.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hang on.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I think a little bit less of that and a little bit more understanding
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: that waves wash these people in and then another wave is going
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: to come sweep them out would be a little bit healthier.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: And for Golden to understand his own circumstance is I'm not going
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_00: to be around forever because of my district.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_02: I can't get past it.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, you have this whole worldview.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_02: And what I'm trying to do is to introduce a dissonant piece of information.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_02: There was one issue,
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_02: one policy issue that Jared Golden was saying was And
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_02: that everyone agrees is not important.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_02: But the way the Democratic Party operates,
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_02: it's just it doesn't operate the way that you think it operates.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_02: It is asymmetrical for the Republicans in the opposite direction.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_02: It is this massive borg of policy demands that is relentless and all consuming and crushing.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_02: So that like you just they don't let anything go ever.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: But do you think are like.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: Is your take on this that if Biden had
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_01: done the lobster thing,
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_01: that Golden would have either run for reelection or
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_01: at least not endorsed some random Republican on his way out?
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't get what.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_02: I think it would just be a whole different universe.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_02: I think like if the thing that you say Democrats do was in any way it made contact
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_02: with reality, then we would have a totally different dynamic.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_02: But it's just not true.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: What aspect of it is not—I guess I'm asking,
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: what is the connection between Biden deferring to the environment?
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_02: The Biden administration,
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_02: congressional leadership,
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_02: and the entire progressive movement just spent years treating Joe Manchin,
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_02: treating Jared Golden, treating other frontline members like garbage.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_02: They let Joe Manchin write the whole fucking Biden agenda.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_02: It just didn't.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, I can't debate.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_02: To me, this whale thing is a crux.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_02: It did not matter.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_02: There were no stakes.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_02: Nobody in the left was asking for this or cared about it at all.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_02: And they wouldn't let Jared Golden get a win.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think you should go back to putting the post-it on your forehead
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: because it sounds like you want to,
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_00: like say that that is like merits everything that's happened since then.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_02: I don't say it merits it.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't merit it at all.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody,
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_02: like if they just,
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_02: Jared Golden comes in and people just treat him like shit day in,
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_02: day out,
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_02: give him nothing, grind him down, it is still his obligation to do the right thing.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_02: But I'm just saying that like your characterization of how
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_02: the Democratic Party operates is not true.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_02: It is true.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_02: And then Democrats spend all this time recruiting this great class
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_02: of new Senate people to come in, Peltola, Tallarico, et cetera.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_02: But like if they win,
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_02: they are going to be relentless in saying,
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_02: I know you ran and won like as a moderate,
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_02: but like now here's this giant laundry list.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think I understand what you're saying.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_00: Let me put it – You take issue with me saying
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_01: that the leadership is attendant to
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_01: the needs of the frontline members because there are these niche issues that when
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_01: the groups don't support the frontline members,
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_01: the leadership or the president, whoever it happens to be, go with the groups.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_02: But it's the groups themselves.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's like that they exist.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: I know that, but the way that the Democratic Party...
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_00: AI constructs a national policy agenda or votes on this or that,
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: the question of impeachment,
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_00: the big moral issues of our time, what to say about AI in the current context.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_00: They do all that by like, hey, we need to protect our frontliners.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: But they don't.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_00: They do.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_02: This AI thing, to me, is bizarre, right?
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_02: So, like,
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_02: what happened was is Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries and Barack Obama all came out
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_02: with, like, we got to regulate AI.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_02: And then Politico was like some consultant said Democrats change.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_02: And then every fucking lib and progressive on social media was like,
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_02: this is why nobody likes the Democrats.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like,
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_02: all the party leaders had,
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_02: before the story was published,
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_02: had already done the thing that you guys wanted them to do.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_02: Like, it's, I don't know.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: But so what do you think that when,
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: like assuming Democrats win the House,
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_01: do you think that when they put forward an AI bill,
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_01: they're going to do it on the basis of Barack Obama's articulation of the problem,
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_01: or are they going to do it on the basis of like what spares the frontliners from
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_01: the money?
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_02: I think they're torn between Barack Obama's ideas and the brain poisoned leftists
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_02: who we talked about last week,
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_02: who have like just insane ideas about this and who ran economic regulation policy
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_02: under Joe Biden.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: I think that they're going to be unwilling to Take the 70% side of a 70-20 issue
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_00: or whatever it is because they're scared about the money.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_02: What issue are we talking about?
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about AI still.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_02: But what aspect of AI?
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_02: What are they going to be unwilling to do?
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_02: They're all running against data centers.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_02: They're doing it.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_00: No, what's happening right now is a little bit weird because Trump has staked out
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: a maximalist pro-AI position.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that right now,
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_00: Democrats just want to
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_01: get through the election without taking the 70% chunk
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_01: and being like, no, we need to do the pause.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_01: We need to stop this until we figure out what We as citizens
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_00: like get to do.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean, what do you want
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_02: them to come up
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: with?
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I am like more and more partial to something like the Sanders bill, but personally.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_00: But I think that and it's like this is a problem for popularism,
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: as like you articulated,
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: that with Trump taking the 20 percent side,
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: instead of Democrats being like, We're going to take the 70% side.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_00: They say we can't afford to take the popular position.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_02: But I don't understand.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_02: I literally don't understand what your complaint is.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_02: It seems to me that they just literally are doing it.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_02: That's Chuck Schumer today.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, on the Senate floor.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_02: This is just like,
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_02: there's this bizarre rug pull tendency where like when the Democratic Party,
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_02: which is like super left wing.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: What bill do you want him to do?
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_00: I want him to say,
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_00: I want him to take,
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: either say like Bernie Sanders has gotten us off to a great start and we need
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_00: to make some tweaks to that so that it's administrable, whatever.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_00: But we're going to pause and there's going to be liability and we
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_00: as Americans are going to chart our own course here,
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_00: unlike the president who wants to turn it all over to them.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_02: But that's what he's saying.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_02: There's a Klobuchar bill.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, Donald Trump, to his credit, took a position.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_02: Uh-huh.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like a policy position.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_02: But like you're saying it's a 70-30 issue.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_02: It's an 80-20 issue, right?
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_02: And it is.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_02: But like the way that it's an 80-20 issue is characterized as should we slow AI
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_02: or should we speed AI, right?
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a little bit vague.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_02: And so what Democrat,
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_02: what Trump is doing is like vague position taking on the super unpopular side of
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_02: the issue.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_02: And all the Democrats have taken the opposite.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_02: It's quite specific.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_02: The Democrats have taken the opposite side of the issue.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_02: They have positioned themselves as the party that wants to restrain and slow down AI.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_02: But then what happens whenever you try to do anything is like
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_02: the Bernie people are like,
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_02: nope, you got to sign up for the most extreme possible version of this.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_02: And then people get, it's just, I don't know.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's a pretty good plan.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_02: Like Democrats are fucking winning the election as we were just talking about.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what do you want from them?
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I,
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_00: I guess I'm curious about if Hakeem
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_01: Jeffries is going to issue this
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_01: contract
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_01: with America 2.0 thing that he's been teasing and what it will say about AI and
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_01: whether that will contradict the story that Politico reported,
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_00: which I think is revelatory, right?
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_02: No, like Politico did a fake story.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_02: And then because the thesis of the story was Democrats are bad
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_02: because they're not left wing enough.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_02: I just like I read what was in the article.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_02: None of the reporting supported the headline.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_02: It's just like.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_02: It
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_00: was straightforward.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_02: It's chum in a sea of sharks.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_02: Like I could just write tomorrow and be like, oh man, Dems, they're not left-wing enough.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_02: And everyone would be like, he finally admits it.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, it's stupid.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_01: They said they talked to consultants for three
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_00: frontline members and that
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_00: the advice was- Take it easy on AI because you don't want the money to come
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_00: after them.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_00: And if that is the advice that they're getting,
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_00: and I don't believe Politico is lying about that,
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_00: then it's a real question because if what the politically optimal thing
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_00: for Democrats to do is talk about – take the popular side of issues and talk
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_00: about them a lot.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's what I think.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that's not my opinion.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_00: But that's the advice that they are getting.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like you ought to be mad about that instead of mad at me for pointing it out.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_02: To be clear, it's just like what I'm mad about now is like that story was fake.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_02: Now, I completely agree.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_02: Democrats care way too much.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_02: Way too much.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_02: Way too much.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_02: So much too much about campaign fundraising, right?
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_02: Caring about campaign fundraising is why Democrats are so left-wing on environmental issues.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_02: It would be worth a billion dollars to just tell the climate people,
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_02: fuck you, I don't give a shit.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_02: And it would be great, right?
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_02: And the LGBT donors, I don't give a shit.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_02: I'm taking the popular stance on this issue.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_02: This gets invoked very selectively by people.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_02: There's just a...
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_02: Headline, Hakeem Jeffries, colon, Congress must act immediately to rein in AI.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_02: The House Democratic leader said Republicans have abandoned their responsibility
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_02: on AI and called for the House to stay in session.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_02: Quote,
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_02: That's not a hoax.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_02: It's very real, despite what Donald Trump has to say about this issue.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_02: And it requires decisive congressional action immediately in a manner consistent
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_02: with what the leading AI voices in this country are saying needs to happen.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_02: Slow it down to protect the health, safety, and well-being of the American people.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_02: And nobody fucking gave a shit because they're just addicted to being angry
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_02: at Democratic leaders.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I didn't, I did not say anything about Democratic leaders.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about the consultants in,
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_00: that Politico talked to,
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_00: as the guidance that they are giving to people,
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_00: not literally Jared Golden,
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_00: because he's out,
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_00: but to people in districts like that,
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_00: reinforcing to them that they shouldn't ever do any, like,
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_00: even if it's popular because,
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_00: and does this not strike you as like,
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_00: like a crippling way of,
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_00: If, if,
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_02: if, if, if we could apply this consistently, then yes, yes, yes.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_02: Democrats should ignore the donors across the board,
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_02: which on net means being much, much, much more moderate.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, fine, fine.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_02: But you can't ignore the donors
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_00: selectively and just be left on everything.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now that we've established that like,
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_00: if the kind of advice of frontline members is like this advice,
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_00: like always,
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_01: always, always be in a defensive crouch, even when the issues are on your side.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_00: But who is it?
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_00: Hang on, hang on, hang on.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then the party as a whole constructs itself around like, we got to protect our frontliners.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_00: Then you have a whole party-wide problem of just like, I
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_02: think this is fundamentally false.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_02: The impact of donor influence on net viewed holistically in the Democratic Party is
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_02: to push members to the left.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_02: What party leaders do
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_00: all the time.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_00: But we're talking about donors who are going to run attack ads against them,
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_00: not give to their campaigns.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_00: And they're taking a dive in defense against that threat.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_02: Right, but they are also taking tons of,
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know,
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_02: like I've said what I said about this,
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_02: like they're not protecting the frontline members,
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_02: they're protecting the fucking whale donors.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_02: Like they're not telling people, It's just like it's not what's happening.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_02: And there's a very selective reading of journalism that occurs
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_02: where it's like anything that has a whiff of like, ah, those bad consultants.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_00: Because Nancy Pelosi spent years talking about the frontline members
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_00: as her majority makers,
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_00: like being rude to the most progressive members of her caucus.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_00: She like altering legislation to make it so that they will vote for it.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, a decade ago when the Democratic Party was different, things were
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_00: different.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then Joe Biden comes in and he has his whole agenda and Joe Manchin says, uh-uh.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so they bring Joe Manchin to the White House over and over and over again
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_00: so he can write
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_02: the legislation.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_02: I can't give a deal.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's like you're not making any contact with reality.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_02: In this depiction of the relationship between the Biden administration and Joe Manchin.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they didn't, they started as friends.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_00: By the end, I guess Joe Manchin decided he hated.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_02: But it's the whole progressive movement.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_02: Just like from day one was like Joe Manchin's a criminal, not Joe Manchin's our greatest hero.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_00: But like you said about Golden, his job is as like- And I think, to
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_02: be clear, this is different.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_02: Like on the merits, Joe Manchin was correct.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_02: And the ideas that the left was trying to push on him were bad.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_02: Like Joe Manchin was right about inflation.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_02: He was right about the House's Build Back Better bill.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_02: Like they should thank their lucky stars.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_00: But whatever you think about it,
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_00: he did get to write those- Yes, because
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_02: he objectively has the leverage, you know?
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_02: And like the whole left is just very immature and can't like grapple with this stuff.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_02: I don't even have that much battery left on my laptop.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_02: We gotta wrap things up.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_02: But like, it's just like-
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, like,
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_02: if you're right,
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_02: then like- Like,
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_02: why is it that the Democratic Party as a whole is so far to the left of
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_02: the median voter, like all the time, constantly?
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we should have a different conversation about that if you want.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_00: Not on this episode.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_00: But, like,
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_00: if I'm wrong about my model of the Democratic Party,
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_00: then you'd expect to see some surprising stuff happen next year.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_00: You'd expect to see,
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_00: like, more, like, aggressive efforts to check Donald Trump to bring— No, no, no.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_02: To be clear, I am always agreeing with you about this.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_02: The Democrats don't care about checking Donald Trump.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_02: They care about having very left-wing positions on public
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_00: policy issues.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_00: No, like— If their concern is not,
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_00: as I hold,
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_00: to make sure that the frontline members never encounter friction in their lives,
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_00: then that would open a lot of doors.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_00: You'd be able to do things like, hey,
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_00: we will shut the government down unless you end the trade war,
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_00: or we will shut the government down unless you end the Iran war,
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_00: or we are going to impeach all of your cabinet secretaries.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just like none of that's going to happen,
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_00: and it's not going to happen because They're worried about MGP's next race.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_02: I just feel like – I'm repeating myself on this all the time.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_02: They don't care about that stuff.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_02: Democrats don't care about that stuff.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_02: What they care about is catering to the very left-wing public policy
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_00: views of their base.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_02: And so this is what they come up with, right?
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_02: They will not give Jared what he wants on the whaling regulations, right?
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_02: They will, sure, cater – Because it's a small ball.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's just so small.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_02: Like for – They're fanatical zealots.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_00: There's a whole world of shit out there that they give all that stuff to the frontliners.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_00: And you're right.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_00: They should do it the other way around.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_00: They should give him the whale regulation,
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_00: the lobster regulation, but then say you're with us on impeachment or whatever.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_00: But like they won't do it.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I agree.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_00: They won't do that.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because they think the politics is the other way around.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's just because they're very
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_02: left wing.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_00: Put a pin in that.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_00: We will talk about that another time.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_00: We promised in the intro to talk about effective altruism.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_02: Fucking A, man.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_02: Effective altruism.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_00: Quick break, and I will let you define effective altruism for people.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_00: We'll do this fast, all right?
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we'll figure it out.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to hear me rant about another cult, go to politics.fm and upgrade your subscription.