Latest / Q & A, Hosted by Jay Nordlinger / A Political Feast, with J-Mart

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A Political Feast, with J-Mart · Q & A, Hosted by Jay Nordlinger

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Hello everyone and welcome to Q&A, the podcast at Onward and Upward.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Jay Nordlinger and our guest today is Jonathan Martin, Jay Mart,
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: one of the leading political reporters and analysts in America.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: He writes at Politico.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: He hosts an interview show, On the Road,
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: in which he sits down with prominent politicians and political operatives
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: at well-known local eateries.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Jay Mart seems to be everywhere all at once.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Jonathan, thank you for joining us.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: This week for you, I guess, is something like the World Series for a baseball writer?
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: I was joking around.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's like every birthday you've ever had with Christmas morning, Halloween,
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: and like throw in the Fourth of July and Easter on top, you know.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Wonderful. Well, we're here to talk midterms,
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: but there's been this news that Donald Trump has made Stephen Miller his chief
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: of staff.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I'm the host and the guest should speak first.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to be rude and give you my riff on this and then ask you to expand,
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: contradict, whatever.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: So Donald Trump is president.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: The American people in their wisdom have elected Trump president
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Stephen Miller kind of goes with Trump.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, my line is, you know, whom did you expect?
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Bryce Harlow?
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, Trump and Miller are kind of a natural pair.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: You want Trump to be president.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: You got Miller as chief of staff.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was deputy chief of staff before.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, really Americans.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm rather...
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Quasi-blase. Enough of me.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Jonathan Martin.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm here for anybody that can drive a Bryce Harlow reference into a casual conversation.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: What a wonderful man. And for folks who don't know, read the Lamar Alexander memoir,
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: who goes into great detail about one of the finest Oklahomans and Americans
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: to ever walk the earth, Bryce Harlow.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: To me, it's like giving Donald Rumsfeld a promotion after the 06 election instead of firing him.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: I had this image in my mind of a sort of AI doctor photo of Donald Trump
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: and Stephen Miller going off the cliff, Thelma and Louise style, hand in hand.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I think a lot of Republicans fear that that could be the political idea.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: It is dousing, not kerosene,
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: but dousing the entirety of the Permian Basin on the fire.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's also something else, Jay.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: It is game on.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: It is the battle joined for the soul of the Republican Party.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: I say that with no hyperbole whatsoever.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: I really think there's a fight that begins now that won't end in 2028,
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: will go beyond 2028, About whether or not this is going to be the GOP
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: or the American version of the AFD.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: And those are the lines.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: Which side are you on?
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: People have tried to blur it for the last 10 years.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think Trump makes it easier to blur because he doesn't really have a true north ideologically.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: He's, for whatever he perceived as winning in the moment.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: His true north is Trump. Yeah.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah. And Trump winning.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: Trump winning, right?
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: The perception of victory.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: And as Maggie Haberman likes to say, how do you win the next 10 minutes?
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's his reality.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: But I think the end of Trump is coming.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the fight really begins now, though, that's going to extend into the 2030s.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: Is this a Reaganite party
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: that is different from most right-wing parties in Europe
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: and other parts of the world that's uniquely American?
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: No, it is more of a populist nationalist party that would be home on the European continent.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: And that is just what the moment demands the party.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that's the fight.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: And when you make Stephen Miller your chief of staff,
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: we kind of know which side Trump's going to because Susie Wiles,
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: for all of her accommodation and Trumpism, was wholly from the Reaganite party.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, literally from the Reaganite.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: She and her ex-husband were Reagan hands.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: They come from that branch.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: And she tried to kind of balance it,
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: have a foot in both worlds and keep the traditional pre-Trump party happy
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: and also stay in Trump's good graces.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: She's gone, replaced by somebody who was firmly in the other faction.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that is the fight that begins now.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: And Jay, it's almost like Trump wants the fight.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: He goes to the reflecting pool on Monday, suffers landslide losses on Tuesday,
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: says it wasn't his fault, I wasn't on the ballot, goes to the ballroom Wednesday,
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: and then fires Susie Wiles Thursday night and replaces her with Stephen Miller
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: on Friday. Trump wants this fight.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: He is saying, bring it on.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: And the question of our time is,
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: will the rest of the Republican Party have the testicular fortitude to join
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: the fight now or put it off until later?
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I have to tell you, just as a side note, Jonathan, and this has to do with my age.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: To me, the amazing thing about Susie Wiles is that she's the daughter
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: of Pat Summerall, with whom I grew up
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: announcing golf tournaments,
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: sort of anchoring golf tournaments with Ken Venturi in the booth.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: He was a big, big deal when I was growing up.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: And John Madden on Sundays.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: John Madden on Sundays.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: I was less an NFL guy. Yeah, right, right.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: But now that I mention it, yes. Oh, yeah.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, John Madden on Sundays,
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: and I can still hear his voice doing the CBS promos in between game action.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: Tonight on CBS, Murder, She Wrote.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, right.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: Followed by 60 Minutes.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's the voice of my youth, right? Absolutely.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah. Yeah.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Jay Mart, you and I like elections, election years, election days and nights,
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: presidential ones in particular, I think.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: And midterms are, you know, once in a while you get consequential midterms.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: 1946, I guess.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: 1974, 1994.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: But midterms are, you know, presidential years are sexy.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: These midterms are...
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: Am I right about that?
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, you're absolutely right.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I have to confess, I've got a soft spot for a midterm because as somebody
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: that loves the road and loves seeing parts of America that you wouldn't see
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: during presidentials, I get a real kick out of being in Tupelo, Mississippi.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: On a Friday night and hearing Bill Clinton at 80 still try to throw
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: the high heater fastball.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: That to me or in 2018 getting two trips to North Dakota in the same cycle.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: I would never get that in the presidential year.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: I went to the Oofda Day Festival,
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: Jay in North Dakota in 2018 and saw Kevin Kramer and Heidi Heitkamp march
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: in the Oofta Day Parade before enjoying a sort of bevy of Scandinavian treats.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: Anyways, I like midterms, but you're absolutely right that most midterms tend
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: to come and go and they're memorable for political nerds like us,
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: but they don't leave an imprint in the conscience of the nation.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: And this last Tuesday night was different.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: It does belong in the pantheon of 46, 74 and 94.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: It was a transcendent midterm because it did a couple of things.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: It rebuked the party in power.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: And it sent an unmistakable message to the party in power.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: This is a vote of no confidence.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: And our vote is clear and emphatic.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's the fire bell in the night.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: Secondly, it reordered, I think,
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: the political map and has begun basically undoing the red versus blue map
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: that we've lived with for a generation.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then lastly, it began a fight for the soul of the Republican Party that I think,
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: as I said earlier, will start now and go into the 2030s.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: Those three things to me are enormously important and made this midterm different
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: beyond justification. Just the kind of nature of, oh my God, Democrats won Texas.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: Whoa, they control everything in Texas.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: Mississippi, South Carolina, Annie Andrews is just taking Strom Thurmond.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: Holy, you know what?
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's all fun for us. But I think you're right.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's a bigger impact than just that.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: Jonathan, one of the most famous political slogans
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: in American history had just two words and a question mark.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: That was in 1946.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: Had enough.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: Had enough.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I saw, you might have posted this, a billboard,
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: a Democratic billboard this year that said, had enough.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a powerful question, a powerful slogan in some years.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yes. Yeah, and I think that was it.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: As Shakespeare said, brevity is the soul of wit.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: And it's also the essence of good campaign messaging, too.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: The shorter, the better.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: That's why it's called a bumper sticker slogan.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: And boy, did it work.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: One of the most fascinating and unreported until the end Moments or themes,
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: I should say, of this campaign, Jay, was the relevance of the corruption issue.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: And it became bigger and bigger as the cycle went on because there were more
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: and more vivid and kind of Frankly,
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: appalling examples of corruption in and around the Trump White House.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: Our friend Peggy Noonan's column this weekend talks about it in some detail.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: And it was just like one after another, almost on a weekly basis, in some cases a daily basis.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that played with the frustration about prices and groceries and gas
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: and creating a sentiment of these... Sorry.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no. I've interrupted, John. Forgive me.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: But Trump said something like...
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: The $5,000 I promised you, that won't go very far at Mar-a-Lago.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I guess it's amusing to some, but sorry, this is populism?
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's a middle finger.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's a middle finger.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: And then to go there on Halloween night and swan around
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: with those folks – It's almost a sort of political death wish in some ways,
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: asking for it.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: You're flaunting your wealth and your elite status while people are struggling
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: to put gas in the car, in the truck.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it exacerbates.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: The cost of living frustration.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: It made it more personal. How dare you?
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: You live in this life, your family and your advisors are getting rich.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm busting my rear to get
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: by and you're going to rub it in my face.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: I got news for you, pal.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: Come the first Tuesday in November, I'll give you my response and you won't like it, you know.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: Jonathan, immediately after the elections, in the immediate wake of those elections,
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: Donald Trump was almost, dare I say, meek.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: And he accepted the results.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: And some people have said something like this.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Last April in Hungary, the opposition crushed Orban, just crushed him.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: And he conceded and went.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: But not all elections are going to be landslides.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Some are going to be close.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: Some are even going to be razor thin, like the American presidential election in 60,
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: 68, 2000.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: What then?
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I guess I'm not putting my question very clearly.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: What I mean is Trump didn't have much room to...
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, that's exactly right.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I've long felt this.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: What's the difference between 2018 in Texas and 2026 in Texas?
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: Why does Beto lose by three and a half to Ted Cruz?
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Cruz is a better candidate than Paxton, fine.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: Texas wasn't as energized around Democrats this time around.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, back then as now, fine.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: But there's something else.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: Republicans and Republican acting independents said,
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: As long as things are going well and I'm doing just fine,
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: I will avert my gaze from the buffoonery and the corruption and the absurdity
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: of it all.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: I don't like it, but I don't like the other guys and I'm doing pretty well.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: So let's make the best of Trump.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: When they're not doing so well and...
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: The corruption is in your face every day.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: That Republican says, you know what?
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: I've had enough to borrow those two words.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I ain't going to keep doing this.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm either not going to vote for my team or I'm voting for the other guys.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: Because how else do you send the message, right?
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: That is how you register your displeasure.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's one of the big stories of this cycle is
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: the so-called soft Republicans who said no mas.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right. Roberto Duran.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: So the day after the election, J.D.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: Vance published a rather lengthy post.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: And he said the problem was the Iran war, which he apparently opposed.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: And to me, it was a little like this is a bit of a stretch, Jonathan,
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: but a little like looking for your car keys under the street lamp.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, right.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so what's his what's his game?
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's awfully convenient to blame the Iran war when you were against the Iran war.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: And it's in your mind the way to start creating separation from yourself and Trump
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: in a year and a half.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's funny how that kind of works out.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: But it's also a way to get off the hook about A, Trump's corruption.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: B, the tariffs, and C,
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: the total lack of an affirmative agenda for the next Congress.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: Jay, you could ask 50 Republican members of Congress today what their agenda was
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: for the next Congress for the final two years.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: You'd probably get 47.5 different answers, right?
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the answer was follow the lead of Trump, whatever that lead is.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, whatever Trump's impulse is or women will be for that.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, it gets him off the hook for all that.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: But it also is a reminder of what animates J.D.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: Vance more than anything, which is a kind of nationalist populism that...
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: Anything in opposition to the perceived old guard or establishment is what he's for, right?
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: And it's an irony of history that he was made to own a Middle Eastern war
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: while vice president for somebody who he thought was going to do the exact opposite
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: of that.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: In some ways, it's cruel that he has to own this, but own it he does,
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: and he's trying to get off the hook,
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: but He's the vice president of the president who prosecuted the war.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure how you get off the hook for that, you know?
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: John McCain owned George W. Bush.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: John McCain was no friend of George W. Bush.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: They ran against each other for crying out loud.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: They were fierce rivals. J.D.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: Vance is tied to Donald Trump.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: He's got the big, beautiful golden handcuffs on.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure how he gets them off.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I think he believes that maybe creating separation on the war will do it.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, when he preemptively says we're not going to do amnesty and, you know, Israel...
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: Was unpopular too.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's obvious where this is going.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: And again, the fight for the party's soul is on.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: AFD territory, like you said.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yes. I don't think it ends with 28, but we know where Vance is going.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: Vance is more MAGA than Trump, Jay.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Vance is much more of pure,
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: uncut MAGA in terms of any kind of agenda that you would connect with MAGA
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: and And so that's obviously where he lands, where the president's eldest son lands,
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: who, if you noticed, put out that statement with a sort of attaboy.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's where they want to take the party.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: And the great question is, what does the rest of the party say?
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: Are they going to speak up or are they just going to let this thing go?
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: What I wrestle with is...
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: Does the rest of the party think 28 is a nomination worth having?
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: Or do they just say, have a ball, JD.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: Here are the keys to the car, man.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: Take it out and we'll see you in 2032.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: Great question. Yes.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: I really wonder if you're, let's just take Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: One's a future in the party.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: Two-term governor of Arkansas.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: Does she just stick in Little Rock and then just make her move in 32?
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: Or does she get tempted to run herself or at least try to get on the ticket in 28?
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's a much more open question now about who gets in.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: Is this a nomination worth having?
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: Can Trump fully control this?
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: Is it a coronation done by Trump in the West Wing?
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: Or is it a primary with voters in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina and beyond?
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: All open questions now.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: Jonathan, indulge me in another little side note, because you spoke of McCain and Bush.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: The second guest on this program, this Q&A podcast in 2015 was McCain.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: The first was Gary Kasparov.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I said something like, not in these words, but are you and Bush good?
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: Especially after that South Carolina primary in 2000 and so on.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: He said, oh, yes, we're very good.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: We're good.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because I wondered whether the enmity lingered.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think it did.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: They were good soldiers about it in 08 and Bush took it like a trooper.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: And when McCain basically, you know,
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: ignored him and ran from him because the politics demanded it.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: Bush didn't come to the conventions.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if he did – well, he had the hurricane
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: as cover, but right.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I will say this, Jay.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: Don't forget, McCain had two primary eulogists who happened to be his two rivals,
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: Barack Obama and George W. Bush.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I do think McCain got over it eventually with Bush.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: But I think in the 2000s, they were still pretty fierce rivals, and they weren't nice.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: We were up to 2015 when McCain and I spoke.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's true. Precisely, yeah.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: Jonathan, did you coin or just sort of popularize the term blacklash?
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I popularized it.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, that was a Democratic pollster named Terence Woodbury, who actually came up with that.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I give you credit in my column.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: Tell us about the blacklash, if you would, what it means and how it was manifested.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah. Yeah.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: A combination of three things, Trump's return to power,
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: his policies and obviously the choices he made.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: The decision to then do a sort of mid-decade redistrict
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: to draw out long-standing Black Democrats from congressional seats to try
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: to elect more Republicans.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: And then the Supreme Court's Voting Rights Act decision earlier this year combined
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: to energize Republicans.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: Motivate and some ways radicalize a lot of black voters, especially in the South.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: And effectively, Democratic strategists were handed the easiest messaging
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: in the world to motivate black voters, which is they are trying to stop you.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: They are trying to stop you.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: When you tell a black voter that they can or can't vote for somebody
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: that doesn't count for as much,
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: it exhumes the worst Memories of American history.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: And it played into that.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: And there were Republicans at the time, including the late Lindsey Graham,
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: who did not want to draw Clyburn out of his seat for precisely this reason.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: You would anger black voters.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: You would imperil incumbent Republicans in neighboring districts who had
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: to absorb more black voters.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: And you would largely create a fiasco for the midterms by energizing voters
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: who otherwise may not show up for midterms.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: Precisely what happened.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: And it was predictable.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of folks were warned about it.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: I wrote a column in May when South Carolina was thinking about doing it.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: And they did not wind up drawing Clyburn out of his seat.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: But I said, caveat on tour, buyer beware.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: Know what you're getting here.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: Know what you're getting here.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: Because you're going to basically destroy Trump's 2024 coalition.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: You've already undermined it with Hispanics, with the ICE moves.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: And now you're going to risk the gains you made with black men by doing this.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: And that's exactly what happened, Jay.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: You saw historic turnout, especially across the South,
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: of black voters and overwhelmingly supported Democrats.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: And are part of the reason why you've got a new Democratic senator in South Carolina.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: A new Democratic governor in Georgia, likely a Democratic senator in Mississippi,
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: and a Democratic senator and governor in Texas.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: Jonathan, I'm a little embarrassed to ask this, but you mentioned Lindsey Graham.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a little embarrassed.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Would he have run for re-election this year?
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: Was he up?
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he was.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a little embarrassed because you might say, of course, Jay, of course,
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: but he would have won Would he not have?
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: Or could Andrus have, because this has been such a weird year, would Lindsey have posted?
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think it's a great question.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, there's two questions that I've been wrestling with.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: One is, would Lindsey have survived?
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: And the other, would John Cornyn have won if Cornyn had beaten Paxton in the primary?
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the answer to Cornyn is, that's a tough race.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: Would Cornyn have had an easier job hanging on than Paxton? Of course.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: Paxton got waxed by 13 points.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: But it would have been tough.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think Lindsey hanging on would have been a little easier, Jay,
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: because they would have moved aggressively to define Andrews early.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: This is a gun control activist,
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: somebody who literally got into politics because she was passionate
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: about gun control. And They would have used that against her.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: They would have found all kinds of past statements she made.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, that didn't happen.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: It didn't happen because Senator Graham died, then Trump.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: Appointed, or I'm sorry, the governor appointed Darlene.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: Trump wanted her to run for the full term.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: She did, wasn't prepared to do that, obviously.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: I think Lindsey probably hangs on.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's tough in a difficult year, but he would have had a much better shot.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: Look, Alan Wilson won the governorship.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: It was closed, but he won the governorship as a Republican.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: I think Lindsey probably wins too.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: Back to the black lash for a moment.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: I am not, in my opinion, So-called career,
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: I've not been one to make much of race and ethnicity and sex.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I think I've made probably on balance too little of them.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because I grew up with kind of a sort of a colorblind liberalism, if you will,
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: sort of a mid 20th century colorblind.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: Midwest.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: This new governor of Georgia, is she Keisha Lance Bottoms? Yes.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: I read about her three firsts.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I must say, I...
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: I gulped a little.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: I might have gotten a little emotional.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: The first female governor of Georgia,
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: the first black governor of Georgia,
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: and the first black woman to be a governor anywhere.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: That is a hell of a, that is a heck of a trio of firsts.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: And really, it's sort of sobering.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: 2027, it'll be what you sworn in, I guess.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: First black woman to be a governor in America.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's not to be sneezed at.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: And to do it in Georgia, the old Confederacy, really the capital of black America is Atlanta.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: So it is significant for a lot of reasons.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: I would pull the camera back and say the country has an abysmal history
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: of electing black governors.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: There have been folks who have succeeded governors and become governor themselves,
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: but in terms of governors being elected in their own right you can count them
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: on one hand Doug Wilder Virginia
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: Deval Patrick Massachusetts Wes Moore in Maryland.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's not that much longer of a list than that.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: I may be forgetting somebody and I'm embarrassed if I am,
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: but I think those are the three elected that come to mind.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: Well, guess what?
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: There's now almost double that because Byron Donalds won in Florida,
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: David Crowley in Wisconsin, Keisha Lance Bottoms in Wisconsin.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: Aaron Ford in Nevada and Wes Moore reelected in Maryland.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: So the country made a leap in terms of electing black folks to executive positions
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: in the states that they hadn't made in our country's history.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: So Tuesday was significant because of that.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: But you're absolutely right, Jay,
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: that the gender dimension to it adds something significant,
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: and especially in the South,
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: where you just haven't had that kind of leadership from a black woman.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: Mm hmm.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, I was at a rally, I should mention,
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: outside Atlanta the week before the election when President Obama came down there
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: and rallied for Bottoms and for John Ossoff.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: And her stump speech, Bottoms talks about as a little girl growing up
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: in her parents' car riding past the governor's mansion in Atlanta and wondering
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: to herself, could I ever live in that house?
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: And when she said that, a handful of black women in the audience started chanting,
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, you can. Yes, you can.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: And the entire arena picked it up and chanted yes, you can at her.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, no, it was a very significant moment in the history of the South
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: and the history of the country to finally break the color and gender line
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: in American politics.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: Back to Texas. We were talking about Texas a bit.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I stipulate that Paxton was a bad candidate.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: He's one of the most corrupt politicians in America and But on the flip side,
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: Jay Mark, Tallarico struck me as a good candidate and a rather good political,
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: skillful political player. Do you agree?
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: I do. I do. Entirely.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds like your tone tells me not entirely.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: No. I mean, look, even Democrats in Texas would tell you that,
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: look the ideal Texas Democrat would probably be a military veteran.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: That are in somebody involved with the oil and gas industry, you know,
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: somebody that kind of has more of the Texas machismo than a former seminarian
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: and teacher from Austin, or from Austin, basically.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, Austin being the kind of blue dot in the sea of red,
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: or at least that was the case before last Tuesday night,
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: when there's a hell of a lot more blue sea now,
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: and it's the red dots in the blue sea.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: But I digress.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah. Profile not being ideal and his comments
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: in what you could call Woke 1 .0 also not being Ideal for Texas,
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: aside he ran a hell of a campaign and is
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: an enormously talented Speaker Ben Barnes who's The legendary former House Speaker
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: and Lieutenant Governor of Texas.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, he's the last living Democrat who was either Speaker or Lieutenant Governor
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: of Texas, which is extraordinary.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: And his phone's ringing off the hook because he's now in demand.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: I think he's 80%.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: Ben Barnes told me, he said, I saw Billy Graham preach.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that if Tallarico wasn't in politics,
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: he would be the best evangelist since Billy Graham.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, Ben Barnes has seen a lot of preachers and a lot of politicians.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's high praise.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: I caught Tallarico in Texarkana and Tyler,
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: two towns in East Texas where I sure as heck never thought I would be Jay
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_01: during a midterm election.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: Battleground Texarkana never came to mind.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: And he had rap crowds and his speech was fantastic.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: There's almost a kind of a Texas supremacy to his stump speech.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: He is, you know, he talks about the brilliance of Texas.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, where else could you have Barbara Jordan and breakfast tacos?
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, we have such famous musicians, such famous musicians here.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: They only need one first name, right?
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: Meaning Beyonce, Willie.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: And he was well-turned.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: He was very well-turned.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: He's a big talent.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm curious to see what he does.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: Is he a six-year wonder or is he able to establish himself and find a kind
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: of center-left or to center position to win re-election in Texas?
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: Because Texas obviously had a big night for Democrats,
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: but it has not become Boulder, Madison, or the west side of Manhattan.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's still Texas.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah. That's right.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm speaking to you from the west side of Manhattan.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think I can run here.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: The new governor of Texas, Jonathan, did you see Gina coming? I did not.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: I knew nothing about her practically until she ousted Greg Adams.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I know her and her family, actually.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: Her sister has worked in politics for years.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: Her father was the longtime chairman of the Texas Democratic Party.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: They're from the Rio Grande Valley, Brownsville, to be exact.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: There's an extraordinary symmetry here.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the Rio Grande Valley got so much attention
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: because it was historically such a Democratic bulwark in Texas.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: The Tejano vote, if you will, was always Democratic and loved the Clintons.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: And Gave Obama big numbers too.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: And Trump made big inroads there in 1620.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: And then 24, the valley fell and it became red and supported Trump,
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: which people never thought they'd say.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: Well, two years later, the reversal to the reversal comes. And guess what?
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: The next governor of Texas is a Latina from the Rio Grande Valley,
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: the very same place that Trump made such inroads with Hispanics two years earlier.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a fascinating turn.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: But here's the thing.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: There's not been a Texas Democratic governor since Ann Richards and she lost in 1994.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's been a long time.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: So there's no muscle memory, Jay.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's going to be fascinating in so many of these state capitals
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_01: where you haven't had Democratic governors institutionally.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: There's just not many folks there who have memories.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: Somebody told me, you'll appreciate this being a Midwesterner,
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: that Amy Acton in Ohio is talking not just to Ted Strickland's people,
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: but talking to Dick Celeste, who was governor in the 80s, who's still with us,
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: talking to his folks, right?
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: Because there's such little democratic infrastructure left in the state capitals.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's fascinating.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: Jonathan, tuck this into your repertoire.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: If it's not there already, it probably is.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes this program is rated R.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so certain folks can forgive me,
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: but there was sort of an informal Republican slogan in Ohio back
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: when I was growing up, Dick Celeste before Celeste Dick's you.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I haven't heard that name mentioned in many years.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: I love it.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: I love it. I love it.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: Jonathan, I'm a pretty committed Detroit Tiger,
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: but I was quite pleased when the Milwaukee Brewers won the World Series.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I love that. I love that.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: Why is Jay talking about baseball?
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, one of the things that pleased me was.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: The Brewers are not a rich team, except in talent and ability,
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: and they're the best team, but they're one of the least wealthy teams in MLB.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: So it let me I was sort of reassured to know that money isn't everything.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: And back to Texas and just the Paxton campaign alone,
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_00: I think Elon Musk put in about $170 million.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there's something, maybe I say this because I wanted Paxton to lose,
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: but I think there's something reassuring about our democracy that that didn't do it.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_01: No question.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's a cliche, but in his stump speech, Tyler Rico said, well,
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: you got to send a message to Elon Musk.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: Texas is not for sale.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's a little cheesy, but it works and it worked.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_01: Americans and the American voter.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's like the old Churchill line, Jay,
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_01: which you'll know better than I will off the top of my head,
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: but the Americans always get it wrong eventually before getting it right.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_01: Americans get it eventually.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_01: And in Wisconsin in 2025 with that Supreme Court race and in Texas in 2026,
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: the American voter got the deal.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: The world's richest man is trying to buy this race and that doesn't play that well.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: Now, it does help buy a lot of ads, and I thought it kept Paxton in the game.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: But ultimately, the blue wave was so tall,
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: the seawall, it wasn't 10 feet,
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_01: it was 40 feet, right?
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: And it just splashed over everything, including all of Elon's millions.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_01: But you think, maybe for the good of humanity,
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: that he would offer more SpaceX stock to the next generation than he will try
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: to buy cancels from now on.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: Let's spend a moment in the far northeast corner, Maine.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: And Democrats did a good job sort of easing out or maybe it wasn't so easy,
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: easing out Graham.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_01: And that was pretty fortunate. Yeah.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah. Thank you. You know, I'd forgotten his last name. Yes. Yeah.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so they get him out right under the wire. Right. Right.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: Deadline.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: And they have a new guy, Troy. Yep.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_01: Jackson.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: Didn't the Collins campaign kind of screw up at the end by seeming to make fun
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: of his career as a logger?
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I thought.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: I thought that ad was – I thought that ad was tinny.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_01: The class lines were so incredibly neon lit in that campaign.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not sure why you wanted to have somebody kind of looking like an L.L.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: Bean catalog come out and say that on TV.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: I think that was helpful.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_01: Especially because, you know, a lot of the upscale liberals, they knew who Jackson was.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: They're, you know, They weren't voting against Collins or for Jackson.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_01: They were voting against Donald Trump.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_01: OK, the entire election was a single issue campaign. And the issue was Trump.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't Collins. It wasn't Jackson.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I know they were tired of Collins because she was seen as too accommodating
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_01: of Trump, although in defense of her, she didn't impeach the guy.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_01: But it ultimately was just about Trump.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_01: And the Collins folks knew they were confronted with that and were trying
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: to fight it and do anything they could to make it about Maine issues
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_01: and about Jackson's capacity to be a senator.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: But snobbishness I don't think is a good political weapon,
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_01: especially in states that have a class bifurcation like Maine does
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_01: and where frankly you're already getting the wealthy people because they're voting
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_01: against Trump.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: There's coastal versus inland.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, my line about Maine is that if you can smell salt water,
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_01: then you're going to be in the blue part of Maine.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: If you're pine.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, exactly right.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: If there's more loons than lobster roll shacks, then you're in the red part of Maine.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly. Yeah.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: Jay Mart, here's a confession for you and for our audience.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: It won't shock anyone.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: I was, I blush to say, I was a Clinton hater in the 90s, both Bill and Hillary.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: That was a long time ago.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: And years and events have tempered that.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, erased it.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: I bet.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: You talked the other week with the big, yeah.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_00: What's it like to talk with him?
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: What's it like to talk politics with him?
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: A little like talking about, I don't know, talking about hitting home runs with Babe Ruth or?
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, no, it's somebody as somebody who grew up in the 80s and 90s
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: and has formative memories of Bill Clinton.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: It is striking.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, he's older, but the fastball still has got some pop.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe an 801, but boy, it's 99.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_01: And his appreciation for the American voter
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_01: and what politics means and what it does
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: and how it shapes the country is just unparalleled.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_01: So it's always a treat to talk to him.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and his insights about this campaign where I thought were, were, were so striking.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_01: He's also just great fun.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_01: He, he, he opens this, um, this rally
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: for the democratic Senate candidate Mississippi on a Friday night in Tupelo
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_01: before the election.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_01: And he says, I've got so many stories about Mississippi, but if I told them all,
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_01: we'd still be standing in here by the time of the election, uh, which I loved, uh,
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: and the crowd did too.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_01: And, um, But then he said, of course, classic Clinton.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: He was like, I don't want to talk about the past.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_01: I want to talk about the future.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: This is classic Clinton, right?
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: The segue.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_01: And he's still got a great feel for the pulse of the country.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, look, you can't not love politics
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_01: and not appreciate Bill Clinton's perspective.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, exactly.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's like James Carville.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I've written this, actually.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_01: When the documentary about Carville came out last year, I said,
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_01: for a lot of people in politics, the consultants, strategists, pollsters, ad makers,
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: staffers, Carville has almost become like the Manning family in football.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_01: They're not identified anymore with any given team or partisanship.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_01: They're just part of the game.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: He's an American icon.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, James is an iconic figure now.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_01: One of one, as they say.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_01: What's striking about James, and to Clinton to some degree, and Jay,
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure you get this too, the number of Republicans who really admire them,
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_01: not because they just love the game, right?
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_01: They just love the skills and the swagger.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_01: But boy, I get so many notes from Republicans about Carville.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_01: They all love him.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_01: How can you not? It's really striking.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, exactly.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_01: No, exactly.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_00: When you were talking with Carville on the road, Oh, yeah.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: You were in an Italian restaurant outside of New Orleans, I think. Yes. No. Yes.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: Correct. Correct.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_01: You're correct.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: And you said, you know, who's the best political athlete you've seen?
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_01: He said, yes.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if we can count abroad.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_00: I would name Tony Blair.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: I've never seen anyone light up a room like Blair.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: I saw Blair and Clinton together in the same room a couple of times at Davos.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: Who are your top political athletes?
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: In your experience, I'm not talking about FDR.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: Sure. Yeah. No, no, no.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, present day.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_01: Certainly in terms of wholesale, Obama, in terms of a wholesale politician,
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_01: meaning capacity to deliver a barn burner of a speech, Obama's hard to top.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_01: And Obama has the talent that Trump has,
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_01: even though they'd hate to be compared to each other,
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_01: of They have a good ability to poke people.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_01: They can really handle a knife.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_01: LBJ once told Senator John McClellan from Arkansas, John,
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_01: I've seen how you operate with a knife.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: Clinton can do that too, but boy, Obama and Trump can do it really, really well.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_01: I think Obama wholesale.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_01: Trump is talented wholesale too,
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_01: but it's like a Friars Club shtick with a political Jackie Mason up there.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_01: In terms of retail, Clinton's the big talent.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_01: In terms of all around, I'll give you a couple of names.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: Bill Barker.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: Jonathan, we're going to do this.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_00: Let me be clear about retail.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: Does that mean dealing with voters one on one?
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yes. Yeah, exactly. Is that what that means? That's right. Okay. Okay. Sorry.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_01: Keep going. Haley Barber.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_01: Haley Barber.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_01: Who can combine policy, politics, and a Hubert Humphrey-like joyful warrior spirit?
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you can do all three of those things,
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_01: then you're a first ballot Hall of Famer, right?
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_01: And Haley Barber certainly does those three things.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_01: Bill Clinton certainly.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'll give you somebody else.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_01: Tom Cole from Oklahoma, who is the chairman.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_01: Dr. Tom, right?
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_01: The outgoing chairman of the House Appropriations Committee who combines a love
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: for OU football and British political history that you don't find too often
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_01: in Norman, Oklahoma.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_01: I would give you the late Lindsey Graham.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_01: Again, combining a love for policy, politics,
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_01: and the intersection thereof in a joyful way.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'll never forget talking to Lindsey Graham backstage
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_01: at the Munich Security Conference earlier this year.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_01: I was doing a fireside chat with them, and I said, where are you coming from?
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_01: He's over in Jerusalem talking to BB,
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_01: and I'm trying to get this deal done with The Saudis and the Israelis
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_01: and getting this thing cooked.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Jesus, Lindsay, Senator, Jesus, Senator.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_01: I said, you're in Israel so damn much,
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_01: you're going to have to start paying property taxes there.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_01: He said, no, not my ideas.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_01: He said, I'm going to be the first franchisee of a Chick-fil-A in the Holy Land.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_01: But instead of being closed on Sundays, it'll be closed on Saturdays.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_00: He told me once, he was talking about his standard speech, and he said,
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: the first 20 minutes of stand-up.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's sort of his calling.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_01: Can I tell you a really fast story?
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: There's two Haley Barber jokes that I love, and I was reminded of a friend.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_01: From him or about him?
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_01: From him. Okay.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_01: One is...
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_01: He tells this story when Ross Barnett,
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_01: the SAG governor of Mississippi in the 50s and 60s,
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_01: was asked about the then hot issue
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_01: in the Pacific about who would control Kimo
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_01: and Matsu, which you will know about, but some of your listeners will recall.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_01: But that was a big Cold War question.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: The issue in the 1960 presidential campaign.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah. Who would control Kimo and Matsu?
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_01: So as Haley tells the story, Jay, Ross Barnett has asked this question.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Governor Barnett, What do you intend to do about Kimo and Matsu?
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, well, didn't I appoint those boys to the Fish and Game Commission?
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's the first one.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_01: I can't do it justice because Haley's got the accent to do it that I can't do.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_01: The other one was Haley was a young political operative and he either ran
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_01: or was pretty involved in Nixon's campaign in 68 Mississippi.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then I think he did a stint as ED of the state party.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_01: But in 70 or the aftermath of 70, he ran the census in Mississippi.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_01: Which is a good political patron's job, actually.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_01: You can get connected with all kinds of folks across the state.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so he's got all the staff,
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_01: and he talks to the staff about how they're going to do this
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_01: and what their process was for the census count.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_01: He says, are any of your folks
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_01: that you're counting broken down by sex?
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_01: And one old boy.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_01: And one old boy says, Mr.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_01: Barber, I don't believe so, but some of them do have a drinking problem.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's perfect. Perfect.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_00: Broken down by sex. Haley still with us?
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: Haley, Tom Cole, Lindsay.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know, people are going to throw something at me.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_01: But Rahm Emanuel, again, a love for policy and politics.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't call him a joyful warrior.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'd call him more of a relentless warrior.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_01: It reminds me of the Ed Koch line, Jay, that he's unavoidable for comment.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: I never heard that.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_01: He's...
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_01: But he does love, again, who can combine policy and politics?
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_01: Who can do both?
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_01: People imagine Haley Barber as this sort of, you know, political boss type,
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_01: you know, party apparatus, lobbyist, insider.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_01: And he was all of that.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_01: He's also a policy wonk who had a personal friendship with Robert Payer,
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_01: a byline you will recall at the New York Times,
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_01: who was the nation's foremost health care reporter for at least three decades
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_01: at the New York Times, who developed a relationship with Haley Barber
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_01: because they had a passion for health care policy.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody knows that about Haley, but it tells you everything about who Haley is.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_01: Anyways, go on.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_00: No, yeah, yeah.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_00: Haley is sort of a closet wonk.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_00: Correct.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I screwed up a little earlier.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_00: You said the name Tom Cole. Yes.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_00: I heard the name Tom Coburn.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I said Dr. Tom.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I thought you meant Dr. Ph.D. doctor because he has a Ph.D. in British history.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_00: No, you said Cole and I heard Coburn.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_00: Jay Mark, tell us about, I believe this is your phrase.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_00: You said something like, Washington's not ready for, quote, Hurricane Abdul.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_00: Hurricane Abdul.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me about the force that's coming.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_01: I want you to imagine one part Obama, one part Pete Buttigieg,
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_01: one part Donald Trump, and one part Stephen A. Smith.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_01: You just wrap all that together
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_01: in a young Egyptian-American millennial
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_01: weightlifting shit-talking person.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_01: With some Michigan Wolverine in him who likes to rag on Ohio State,
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_01: he loves banging on Vance about going to Ohio State.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_01: He says, your mascot is a damn nut.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_01: He's a very proud Michigan man.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, by the way, his origin story is that I think he was the – He was
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_01: the commencement speaker at Ann Arbor.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_00: Student commencement speaker, yeah.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_01: And Clinton gave the address, and Clinton, you're going to be a star, something like that.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_01: And Abdul's response was, you know, Mr.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_01: President, people with my name don't get elected in American politics.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's the origin story, at least.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_01: Abdul, you know, he is...
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_01: He's a Trump-like hunger for media attention, compulsive need for the camera.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_01: I spent a day with him.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_01: After every event, he did a media avail.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_01: He wants to talk to the cameras.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_01: He wants to own the information economy.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_01: He wants to do everything from Bon Appetit to the Mackinac Island Straits bugler.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, whatever, he wants to do it all, right?
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_01: And boy, Jay...
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_01: Tuesday night, he wins.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_01: By Thursday morning, he's sitting on the set of Morning Joe before going to The View
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_01: in Manhattan, right?
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, just not wasted a second.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_01: Not wasted a second.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's a hunger.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's a hunger.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_01: His politics are left wing, unapologetically so.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_01: Here's what I wonder about him.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_01: Is he more ideological or ambitious?
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_01: And what I mean by that is, is he willing to trim his sails?
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_01: Is he willing to be a pragmatist?
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_01: Is he willing to take a half a loaf?
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_01: Is he willing to work with folks he doesn't like,
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_01: or doesn't like their politics at least,
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_01: to try to establish a record and get some stuff done?
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_01: Or does he want to be a flamethrower and a performance artist in the Senate
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_01: and just use the platform to run for president? We don't know. We'll see.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_01: He denied emphatically to me when I saw him he was going to run for president in 2028.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_01: We'll see. David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager in 2008,
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_01: told me the other night at a panel that I was doing with Plouffe
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_01: at the Harvard Institute of Politics that he thinks if AOC doesn't run,
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_01: that Abdul will absolutely face pressure to run and may do it.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I think we'll know in the first three months, maybe even the first month, Jay,
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_01: which of those two pass Abdul takes.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Jay Mart, I have a few more for you, but before I ask them,
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_00: and I want to ask you something personal and try not to be modest.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_00: Who are your peers?
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_00: Who knows as much about American politics as you?
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking it must be five, 10 people,
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_00: but who knows as much as you do?
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, people have certain specialties, certain states, certain regions,
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_00: but I mean, nationally.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you're nice to say that.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_01: I've got a lot of great colleagues.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_01: My friend and longtime co-author and colleague, Alex Burns,
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_01: obviously is an enormously formidable journalist.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_01: Josh Dawsey at the Wall Street Journal.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_01: Dan Balls and Paul Kane at the Post.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_01: Ron Brownstein is brilliant.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_01: Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's Tim Alberta.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's a lot of folks doing great work.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_01: I love what I do.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's just who I am.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_00: You love to rib Josh. You love to rib him. I do.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_00: I like giving him a hard time.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_01: Josh reminds me of Jack Jermond.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_01: I adore Jack Jermond.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_00: I was a real right winger, Jay Martin.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_00: I adore Jack Jermond.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_01: Newsrooms are too staid, too colorless, too boring, too buttoned down,
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_01: too filled with people who went to fancy snooty schools and are careful about saying
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_01: the right or the wrong thing.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_01: To use a phrase boring, or they're at least more boring than they used to be.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_01: Political journalism used to have all kinds.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_01: You had patrician types, but you also had folks who never had a college degree.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_01: And The alchemy of it was that they all got along
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_01: because they all had this weird compulsion to know.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_01: They wanted desperately to break news.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_01: They wanted to know something that nobody else did and have it first.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_01: And they also wanted to understand the country and to explain the country to their readers.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_01: And it took all kinds to do that.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_01: And it took people from every conceivable background and perspective,
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_01: like a World War II movie of old, right?
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_01: You have like everybody in the foxhole together.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_01: Josh, to me, is a great throwback to what being in a newsroom used to be.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_01: He's a newsman with a capital N, and he's great fun and a sweet guy and a good friend.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_01: But there's lots of folks who do amazing work in this business,
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_01: and it's a lot of fun to work with them.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_01: Because I'm a bit of a nostalgist,
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_01: I tend to really enjoy the work of folks that came before me. I mentioned Dan Balls.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, David Broder, who was his mentor, is somebody who set the standard.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_01: Jack German, Bob Novak, Johnny Apple,
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_00: just immense,
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_01: immense talents.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_01: Drew Pearson, even go further back, whose son-in-law just passed away,
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_01: who was a great guy who I got to know late in life.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_01: So there's plenty of models.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_01: When I started this column four years ago, my idea was,
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_01: can I revive a kind of reported column for the digital age?
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_01: And what does that look like?
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_01: Is that possible?
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not constrained by 750 words in print.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_01: So the internet's endless.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_01: I can do a variety of things.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_01: And it's been great fun doing it.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I've had this opportunity, which you were kind to mention,
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_01: About going on the road and we had our best Madison Avenue minds come up with.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_00: Great shot.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_01: The title, On the Road with Jonathan Martin, really brilliant.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_01: And thankfully, the Charles Corral estate has not sued us
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_01: yet for copyright infringement, but On the Road with Jonathan Martin.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_01: And the idea is one part Lunch with the FT,
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_01: which is a great series in the Week in Financial Times,
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_01: one part Almanac of American Politics, deep in the weeds, Michael Barone nerd stuff.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_01: And one part, Anthony Bourdain. I love America.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_01: I love American history, politics, food, cuisine, localism, sense of place.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_01: How do I combine all that into some kind of a show that you can watch on YouTube,
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_01: listen to as a podcast?
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_01: And kind of that's the idea. And it's been neat.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_01: And it's gotten me around to lots of parts of the country.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_01: And We're hoping, Jay, that in this next fourth season,
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_01: some of the great GLP One makers, whether it's Novo or Lilly,
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_01: are going to sponsor the show and maybe take a personal interest in me.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_01: If you know what I mean, as they say in Philadelphia, give me a taste.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_01: Give me a little taste, Jay. Give me a little taste.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_01: No, I don't know what you mean at all.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_00: I think you're doing great, and I think you look great.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_00: Jonathan, if it's not too personal, I...
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm slightly confused about your relationship with Louisiana.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think you're a Louisianan, but you have embraced Louisiana.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's easy. I married Louisiana.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that explains it.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_01: I grew up in Virginia
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_01: and Virginia - What town Jonathan?
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_01: In Arlington, just across.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, in greater Washington. Oh, okay.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yep. Yep.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_01: I could walk to the Potomac as a kid.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, something of a Huckleberry Finn experience as a kid,
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_01: I walked to the Potomac River as a kid and fished and had my first beer down there.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_01: And it was a great place to grow up and pop over the bridge and be in D.C.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_01: in 10 minutes, but an incredible place to grow up and lived in.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_01: Richmond and love Virginia, but I married a New Orleans girl
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_01: and every New Orleans girl eventually goes home and it's like a magnetic effect.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_01: And like a lot of folks who aren't from New Orleans,
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_01: I have all the passion of a convert when it comes to New Orleans.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_01: And like most converts, they can't stop talking about New Orleans
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_01: and they can't stop talking about why they love it.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like New Orleans is the best place in America that you can go and leave
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_01: the country without needing a passport.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_01: Because when you go to New Orleans, it's the closest thing, I think,
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_01: to leaving the continental United States, but still being here.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_01: To me, it's one part Deep South, one part France, and one part the Caribbean.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's none of those three things, but it's all three of them in a kind of gumbo, if you will.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_00: So imagine my family were Michiganders up in the cold in Ann Arbor.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_00: And my sister in 1979, sight unseen, goes to Tulane for college.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_01: I love it. Roll wave.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_01: There you go.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_00: I visit her a couple of times for a week at a time,
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_00: become sort of a minor student New Orleansologist. Oh, I love this.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_00: That included eating at Shea Helene.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if they're still open by the time you got there.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_00: And lots of red beans and rice on Buster Holmes and so on and so forth.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I do get the romance.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_00: But one reason I loved it was that it was not quite American.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_00: I thought of America as Norman Rockwell,
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_00: American Gothic, Protestant, New England,
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_00: Upper Midwest America.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_00: And this was voodoo and Preservation Hall.
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it was thrilling.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_00: It was just so romantic.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and it's got a lot of a Caribbean in it.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_01: The accent is different.
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's a Southern accent, but it's a different kind of Southern accent.
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's this Brooklyn accent, this so-called yats. Yes.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_01: Where in the world? Thank you.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_01: The yats, a lot of That's Sicilians who came to New Orleans in the 19th century
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_01: and eventually spread out around greater New Orleans.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_01: And it stems from where you at? Where you at?
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_01: Because it is more Brooklyn than it is Alabama.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_01: And what's great about New Orleans is the accent can change literally within...
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_01: A half mile or a mile.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's just it's a different accent.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_01: There's different kinds of white folks and different kinds of black folks.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_01: And they have different kinds of accents. It's small.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_01: The metro is, I think, about a million people, but it contains multitudes like America.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I love it.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it's stupid to talk about black people in New Orleans because what do you mean?
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_00: There are all these gradations and divisions and rivalries.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_00: Black is kind of a dumb word when you get down to it.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yes. It's a dumb word.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's a complex place.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's a port city.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_01: And it has more in common with other port cities than it does other parts of the South.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_01: Its politics are more of a port city.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's got wards and neighborhoods by ethnicity and sort of history.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like in a way that, you know, Baltimore or Philadelphia would.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's not Montgomery, Alabama.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_01: And because of its proximity to the Gulf, there's a heavily Catholic presence.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_01: My wife growing up in the 80s recalls going to restaurants on Friday, Jay,
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_01: and not being able to order meat on the menu. It was Friday.
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_01: They only served fish.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a heavily Catholic town.
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's, I think, one of the sort of Capitals of Catholic America.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, I will say, it is the capital of Black Catholic America.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of the few places in America that's got a predominantly Black,
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_01: all-male Catholic school, St.
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_01: Augustine's, that's produced a number of talented people.
• 1:00:01
  SPEAKER_01: In every field, it's got a couple of historically black schools,
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_01: one of the colleges, one of which is affiliated with the Catholic Church.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_01: So, and as you know, our first American Pope himself is descended
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_01: from From New Orleans on his mom's side.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_01: And his mom has Creole roots.
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_01: Creole being the sort of Caribbean blacks and French who intermarried over the centuries.
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_01: So it is a complicated, complex, messy, delicious,
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_01: sultry, sexy, fattening,
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_01: decadent, and really frustrating but lovely place that I never want to leave.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_01: Hear, hear.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_00: Hear, hear. Well put.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_00: Jonathan, one of the best answers I ever heard in an interview, I just love this.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was a Larry King interview, and I've quoted this in many different contexts.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_00: Larry King asked Liza Minnelli, who's the best singer?
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, you mean besides Ella?
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_00: And she wasn't trying to quip.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_00: She was just taking the question seriously.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so when I'm asked, or when I ask, some people ask me, who's your favorite president?
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_00: I say, let's just take Lincoln off the table.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_00: Let's just take him off the table.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have a favorite president?
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_00: And if you'd like to exclude Lincoln and Washington, feel free.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have a favorite president?
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, LBJ.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_00: I would bet my bottom dollar that you know personally Robert Caro.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_01: I do know Robert Caro. Of course you do.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_01: He's been very gracious to me.
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_01: And he knows I'm an admirer of his.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_01: Been very kind to me and he's an enormous talent.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I, like every American, am eagerly awaiting this next, maybe last,
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_01: maybe not installment of his LBJ books and then looking forward to his future work.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think he wants to do an Al Smith biography as well.
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, I'm fascinated by LBJ.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_01: He's a politician in full and I'm fascinated by politicians, you know.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_01: I think it may have been Broder, but somebody once said, you know,
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_01: the way for a reporter to look at a politician is down.
• 1:02:21
  SPEAKER_01: And politicians are people who will break your heart,
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_01: which is why you shouldn't get in bed with them because they're politicians.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_01: But I actually like the company of politicians.
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_01: I like politicians as a class.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_01: And that kind of makes this job easier for me.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_00: I've often said, tell me whether you sympathize with this.
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_00: Politicians are in the likability business.
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so they tend to be likable.
• 1:02:49
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I've really liked and their politics were very different.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_00: These two I'm about to name.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_00: But each one was a cuss.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I liked each one because he wasn't ingratiating.
• 1:03:00
  SPEAKER_00: And the lack of ingratiation I found ingratiating.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I loved being around and talking with Phil Graham and Barney Frank.
• 1:03:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, they did.
• 1:03:13
  SPEAKER_00: They were wonderful political conversationalists and they weren't they didn't try
• 1:03:18
  SPEAKER_00: to they didn't cajole you, especially for I'd love them.
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_00: They're both blunt and cranky.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yes. Oh, my God.
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_01: Frank was famously cranky and could be a real pain in the ass,
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_01: but he was such a committed reader and he knew the material.
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_01: He knew his history and he understood the world that came before him
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_01: and he understood what could and could not be done today.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_01: And he worked within the system to make institutions work.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_01: And Frustrated with his own party, frankly, because of sometimes of their excesses.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_01: His memoir, which I actually reviewed for the Times, is wonderful.
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_01: He has this posthumous book out, too,
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_01: that I haven't read in full yet because the campaign, I couldn't get through it.
• 1:04:03
  SPEAKER_01: But no, he was a great fan.
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_01: Here's something else.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_01: I've got a weakness for politicians who were formerly staffers,
• 1:04:11
  SPEAKER_01: who started as staffers, because they understand the business so well.
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I mentioned Rahm and Haley Barber and Tom Cole.
• 1:04:19
  SPEAKER_01: Hell, you can mention Bill Clinton here too,
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_01: but certainly Barney Frank cut his teeth working for Kevin White,
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_01: the great Irish hope of Boston as mayor.
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_01: And folks who are staffers and then become politicians, I'll add Katie Britt,
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_01: who was Richard Shelby's former chief of staff, now a senator of her own.
• 1:04:37
  SPEAKER_01: They tend to have an appreciation for every element of the business.
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_01: And people who weren't staffers first don't always have that talent.
• 1:04:45
  SPEAKER_00: Shelby was a Democrat first, correct?
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah. When Katie worked for him, he was obviously Republican.
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_01: But no, fun fact for you, Jay.
• 1:04:54
  SPEAKER_01: Harry Reid's closest friend in the Senate for many years was Dick Shelby
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_01: because they both came in to the Senate in 1986.
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_01: They were both appropriators.
• 1:05:03
  SPEAKER_01: And obviously were Democrats.
• 1:05:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then Shelby left the party.
• 1:05:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll never forget interviewing Harry Reid at his nice, great,
• 1:05:12
  SPEAKER_01: very gracious office in the MGM Casino, a great cynic here after he left the Senate.
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, who do you keep up with, Senator, from Washington?
• 1:05:23
  SPEAKER_01: And he immediately said, well, I'm still talking to Dick Shelby, Richard Shelby.
• 1:05:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I was shocked for a minute. And then, of course, it all made sense.
• 1:05:30
  SPEAKER_01: Same class, same committee, and a kind of sensible, hard-headed, pragmatic politics,
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_01: at least back in the day.
• 1:05:38
  SPEAKER_00: I was going to ask you, Jonathan, here at the end,
• 1:05:41
  SPEAKER_00: whether you had a favorite interviewee Maybe you'd like to just give us several,
• 1:05:47
  SPEAKER_00: unless you have a favorite interviewee.
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_00: But we won't ask you for a complete list because you'll forget someone.
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_00: You'll say, oh, I could have had a V8.
• 1:05:55
  SPEAKER_00: But four or five of your favorite interviewees all time.
• 1:06:01
  SPEAKER_01: Well, my friends who see this are going to laugh because they know what I'm going to say.
• 1:06:05
  SPEAKER_01: And the first answer is Willie L. Brown.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_00: I was going to say that myself.
• 1:06:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_01: 91 years young, the pride of Mineola, Texas, who,
• 1:06:15
  SPEAKER_01: as so many black Texans and Louisianans did during the Great Migration,
• 1:06:19
  SPEAKER_01: went west to California.
• 1:06:21
  SPEAKER_01: And he had an uncle there and made his name
• 1:06:25
  SPEAKER_01: as a young man in ROTC,
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_01: next in line,
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_01: in formation with a guy named Burton, because his name was Brown.
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_01: He became friends with John Burton for life, who, of course,
• 1:06:36
  SPEAKER_01: was the brother of Phil Burton,
• 1:06:38
  SPEAKER_01: the great Power broker in California politics for so many years.
• 1:06:41
  SPEAKER_01: John Burton just passed away himself, also an influential California Democrat.
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_01: Willie Brown, speaking of a politician in full, is just great fun.
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_01: You are comatose if you can't have fun with Willie Brown.
• 1:06:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like something's wrong with you.
• 1:06:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like you're not of the living because he is great fun, a great company,
• 1:07:03
  SPEAKER_01: a brilliant observation, a brilliant observer of politics,
• 1:07:08
  SPEAKER_01: a brilliant practitioner of politics and somebody who still loves it so much.
• 1:07:12
  SPEAKER_01: He has lunch every day at the same place in San Francisco except for on Fridays.
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_01: He goes to a lunch group across the street to a different place and I'm One
• 1:07:21
  SPEAKER_01: of the great treats of my life has been getting to know Mayor Brown and talking
• 1:07:25
  SPEAKER_01: to him about politics. And again, the beauty of this, Jay, is I get paid to do this.
• 1:07:30
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have to pay for it. Somebody's paying me to do this.
• 1:07:32
  SPEAKER_01: Hell, I'd pay somebody to do that.
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_01: You'd charge for tickets to have lunch with Willie Brown for crying out loud.
• 1:07:39
  SPEAKER_01: So that's probably first on my list.
• 1:07:43
  SPEAKER_01: Nancy Pelosi is enormously challenging to interview.
• 1:07:47
  SPEAKER_01: She will not answer. She'll spin.
• 1:07:52
  SPEAKER_01: She'll give talking points.
• 1:07:53
  SPEAKER_01: She will make the audience turn on you if you have a live audience and use
• 1:07:57
  SPEAKER_01: the audience, which is usually friendly for her against you.
• 1:08:00
  SPEAKER_01: But eventually she'll say really interesting things and make news.
• 1:08:04
  SPEAKER_01: And she's enormously challenging. Charming.
• 1:08:06
  SPEAKER_01: And here's the thing about Nancy Pelosi.
• 1:08:07
  SPEAKER_01: She really likes men.
• 1:08:09
  SPEAKER_01: She's a female, obviously, pioneer, groundbreaking figure,
• 1:08:12
  SPEAKER_01: probably the most important female politician in the history of the country.
• 1:08:16
  SPEAKER_01: There'll be buildings named after her on Capitol Hill sooner rather than later.
• 1:08:19
  SPEAKER_01: But she came up in Baltimore politics, Italian-American, and she's got a capacity to charm men.
• 1:08:26
  SPEAKER_01: And she likes the company of men and she understands how men think.
• 1:08:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm Her mentors, a lot of them are men, and a lot of her protégés are men, too.
• 1:08:36
  SPEAKER_01: See, for example, Adam Schiff, the senator from California.
• 1:08:40
  SPEAKER_01: So she is a great American character.
• 1:08:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I just named two San Franciscans.
• 1:08:46
  SPEAKER_01: I shouldn't ignore the East Coast.
• 1:08:50
  SPEAKER_01: Who else are my favorite interviewees?
• 1:08:54
  SPEAKER_01: Coming back East.
• 1:08:55
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Lindsey Graham was great fun, too.
• 1:08:59
  SPEAKER_01: Every conversation with Lindsey, it wouldn't start with hello.
• 1:09:02
  SPEAKER_01: It wouldn't start with how are you doing.
• 1:09:04
  SPEAKER_01: It would start with he was like, Jay, he was bringing you in on some plot.
• 1:09:08
  SPEAKER_01: He was bringing you in on his latest caper.
• 1:09:11
  SPEAKER_01: Here's what I'm going to do. All right.
• 1:09:13
  SPEAKER_01: I think I'm going to say it like this.
• 1:09:17
  SPEAKER_01: And he was just like, he was using you for practice.
• 1:09:20
  SPEAKER_01: He was using you as a sounding board. He was playing stuff out. How does this sound?
• 1:09:24
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think? How do I refine this? What are you hearing?
• 1:09:26
  SPEAKER_01: This is what I'm hearing.
• 1:09:29
  SPEAKER_01: You were sort of in on the joke, and he was always up to something.
• 1:09:33
  SPEAKER_01: He was always going on some Codell or coming back from a Codell.
• 1:09:36
  SPEAKER_01: He died coming back from a Codell, God rest his soul, right?
• 1:09:39
  SPEAKER_01: But there was always- He went hither and yon by John McCain.
• 1:09:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's where he learned it, right?
• 1:09:45
  SPEAKER_01: And McCain was fun too.
• 1:09:47
  SPEAKER_01: McCain broke the, was it the third wall or the fourth wall, Jay?
• 1:09:53
  SPEAKER_01: Can't remember.
• 1:09:54
  SPEAKER_01: In a way that Trump kind of does too.
• 1:09:56
  SPEAKER_00: Great interview. Here I am.
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_01: I've got to say this usual bullshit politicians say, blah, blah, blah,
• 1:10:02
  SPEAKER_01: my great opponent and his lovely wife, whatever. Screw it.
• 1:10:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's not what I'm going to say. I'm going to say X, Y, Z instead, right?
• 1:10:08
  SPEAKER_01: There was a kind of wink and a nod that he was in on the joke too,
• 1:10:13
  SPEAKER_01: which of course political reporters love that because they want to know
• 1:10:16
  SPEAKER_01: that the politician actually is human and is in on the joke, right?
• 1:10:20
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a few for you.
• 1:10:22
  SPEAKER_00: Wonderful.
• 1:10:23
  SPEAKER_00: I want to tell you one thing about Willie Brown instead of 10 and one thing
• 1:10:27
  SPEAKER_00: about Nancy Pelosi instead of 20.
• 1:10:30
  SPEAKER_00: I was anti-Brown.
• 1:10:32
  SPEAKER_00: I was quite young in my early, you know, I just didn't like his style of politics.
• 1:10:35
  SPEAKER_00: I was a Reagan-Thatcher conservative.
• 1:10:38
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 1:10:38
  SPEAKER_00: I happened to be in San Francisco visiting friends.
• 1:10:40
  SPEAKER_00: It was Columbus Day and there's a Columbus Day parade in, and forgive me, Jonathan,
• 1:10:45
  SPEAKER_00: is the North End the Italian neighborhood? Yes.
• 1:10:47
  SPEAKER_01: Correct. North Beach. North Beach.
• 1:10:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's North End, Boston. Boston, correct.
• 1:10:52
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, North Beach.
• 1:10:54
  SPEAKER_01: You have your Italian communities on either coast.
• 1:10:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes.
• 1:10:59
  SPEAKER_00: And here comes Willie Brown in an open car sitting in the back on the top of it
• 1:11:04
  SPEAKER_00: and waving around.
• 1:11:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so help me, I got a grin on my face.
• 1:11:12
  SPEAKER_00: I sort of pointed, hey, Willie, you're looking good.
• 1:11:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he just beamed.
• 1:11:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll tell you a related story.
• 1:11:20
  SPEAKER_00: And some listeners may be surprised by this.
• 1:11:23
  SPEAKER_00: When I lived in Washington in the 90s, and goodness knows I didn't like Mayor Marion Barry.
• 1:11:28
  SPEAKER_00: And goodness knows I didn't like his racial politics.
• 1:11:32
  SPEAKER_00: I thought he was going to be bad for the city, bad for country.
• 1:11:35
  SPEAKER_00: I have a set of it or not, this involved golf, and I was at a reception,
• 1:11:40
  SPEAKER_00: and Marion Barry was a guest.
• 1:11:43
  SPEAKER_00: I believe it was during one of his terms.
• 1:11:45
  SPEAKER_00: He took a term or two off.
• 1:11:49
  SPEAKER_00: By God, he was charming.
• 1:11:52
  SPEAKER_00: I found myself grinning at him and having a very amiable conversation with him.
• 1:11:56
  SPEAKER_00: He was so personable.
• 1:11:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it just teaches you, and Pelosi...
• 1:12:03
  SPEAKER_00: She was giving an interview before an audience, a Democratic audience.
• 1:12:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I believe her interlocutor was Rachel Maddow.
• 1:12:11
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how to pronounce her name, forgive me.
• 1:12:15
  SPEAKER_00: And Nancy Pelosi said, George W. Bush is a lovely man.
• 1:12:21
  SPEAKER_00: And her crowd gasped a little bit.
• 1:12:24
  SPEAKER_00: She said, no, he's a lovely man.
• 1:12:28
  SPEAKER_00: And she went on.
• 1:12:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, good on her.
• 1:12:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 1:12:35
  SPEAKER_01: That won't surprise you, will it? No, not at all.
• 1:12:38
  SPEAKER_01: She had great admiration for Bush 41 especially because she's of a certain time and place.
• 1:12:45
  SPEAKER_01: She's not a baby boomer.
• 1:12:46
  SPEAKER_01: She's a silent generation.
• 1:12:48
  SPEAKER_01: She's a sort of Truman Democrat at her core.
• 1:12:54
  SPEAKER_00: Great supporter of Ukraine and Taiwan.
• 1:12:56
  SPEAKER_00: That goes a long way with me.
• 1:12:59
  SPEAKER_01: And also she cares about decency in politics.
• 1:13:02
  SPEAKER_01: And also you present yourself with a certain amount of decorum and you act
• 1:13:06
  SPEAKER_01: a certain way in public life and you look a certain way in public life, right?
• 1:13:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's just the world that she comes from.
• 1:13:12
  SPEAKER_01: And Bush 41 obviously exemplified that from a different branch of the American story.
• 1:13:17
  SPEAKER_01: But obviously she admired that.
• 1:13:21
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, Marion Barry was like a black James Michael Curley, right?
• 1:13:25
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:13:26
  SPEAKER_01: A rogue, and he didn't like it, and the demagoguery wasn't subtle, but he got it done.
• 1:13:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, a sharecropper's kid from Ittabana, Mississippi.
• 1:13:35
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh, you cannot deny, you cannot, you must give the man his due,
• 1:13:39
  SPEAKER_00: you must give him his due.
• 1:13:41
  SPEAKER_00: He rose from nothing, nothing.
• 1:13:44
  SPEAKER_01: And Willie is still ever the rogue.
• 1:13:47
  SPEAKER_01: And as recently as last week,
• 1:13:48
  SPEAKER_01: he was wearing an all-lavender suit in honor of the Valkyries,
• 1:13:53
  SPEAKER_01: the WNBA team from San Francisco.
• 1:13:55
  SPEAKER_01: Just won the WNBA final.
• 1:13:58
  SPEAKER_01: He was on some charity catwalk wearing a probably $20,000 custom-made...
• 1:14:04
  SPEAKER_01: Lavender suit. You can't make it up.
• 1:14:05
  SPEAKER_01: Willie famously would talk about how he had like a police siren escort motorcade.
• 1:14:11
  SPEAKER_01: And down to the minute, he knew exactly how fast he could get from his box
• 1:14:16
  SPEAKER_01: and candlestick park during the Joe Montana, Steve Young, the 49ers era,
• 1:14:23
  SPEAKER_01: back to the North Beach restaurant for dinner.
• 1:14:26
  SPEAKER_01: What a guy, what a country.
• 1:14:29
  SPEAKER_00: Here at the very end, Jay Martin, thank you so much.
• 1:14:31
  SPEAKER_00: What a delight to talk with you.
• 1:14:34
  SPEAKER_00: Bill Buckley used to say, this question's like, peaking duck requires 24 hours notice.
• 1:14:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm just sort of springing it on you.
• 1:14:42
  SPEAKER_00: But are there a couple of sleeper things from the midterms?
• 1:14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Things from the midterms people aren't talking about, sort of sleeper people, sleeper ideas.
• 1:14:57
  SPEAKER_00: Again, this should have told you an hour before.
• 1:14:59
  SPEAKER_00: Can you think of one at spur of the moment?
• 1:15:03
  SPEAKER_01: When the wave hits like it did on Tuesday, it is consuming.
• 1:15:08
  SPEAKER_01: A couple of things.
• 1:15:11
  SPEAKER_01: One, the district in rural Maine, Maine 2, the northernmost house district there,
• 1:15:18
  SPEAKER_01: there's two in the state, Went from being the reddest district held by a Democrat
• 1:15:25
  SPEAKER_01: in the country to the bluest district held by a Republican in the country,
• 1:15:31
  SPEAKER_01: which is astonishing to think about.
• 1:15:34
  SPEAKER_01: Secondly, North Carolina was like, I don't know exactly, I'm going to get it wrong,
• 1:15:40
  SPEAKER_01: but like 20,000 votes,
• 1:15:41
  SPEAKER_01: maybe 30,000 votes from having a 14 to 0 Democrat,
• 1:15:47
  SPEAKER_01: all Democrat congressional delegation.
• 1:15:49
  SPEAKER_00: It Like it was 1890.
• 1:15:53
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:15:55
  SPEAKER_01: Precisely.
• 1:15:56
  SPEAKER_01: Roy Cooper won by 20 points and his Republican opponent didn't even crack 40 percent
• 1:16:02
  SPEAKER_01: in a state that Democrats have carried
• 1:16:08
  SPEAKER_01: a grand total of once in this century.
• 1:16:11
  SPEAKER_01: But what's so interesting are the state ledge races that nobody pays attention to.
• 1:16:16
  SPEAKER_01: Georgia now has a House majority Democrat.
• 1:16:20
  SPEAKER_01: Texas has a House majority Democrat.
• 1:16:23
  SPEAKER_01: North Carolina, House majority Democrat.
• 1:16:26
  SPEAKER_01: And they did it by breaking gerrymandered seats expressly drawn to elect Republicans.
• 1:16:32
  SPEAKER_01: Now, Jay, there's not going to be a Republican majority. I'm sorry.
• 1:16:35
  SPEAKER_01: There's not going to be a Democratic majority in West Virginia.
• 1:16:38
  SPEAKER_01: But even in deep red West Virginia,
• 1:16:41
  SPEAKER_01: Democrats made gains in the legislature to the tune of like, I think,
• 1:16:45
  SPEAKER_01: almost 10 seats total in West Virginia,
• 1:16:48
  SPEAKER_01: which in this century has become basically like Assad-like margins
• 1:16:54
  SPEAKER_01: for the Republican Party.
• 1:16:57
  SPEAKER_01: But the wave hit everywhere.
• 1:16:58
  SPEAKER_01: And it hit with the force of a Mike Tyson uppercut.
• 1:17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Ladies and gentlemen, he is Jonathan Martin, Jay Mart.
• 1:17:06
  SPEAKER_00: You'll find him at Politico.
• 1:17:08
  SPEAKER_00: And in his show, On the Road,
• 1:17:12
  SPEAKER_00: what a political banquet you've laid out before us.
• 1:17:16
  SPEAKER_00: Quite literally.
• 1:17:18
  SPEAKER_00: But this talk has been to stick with this theme.
• 1:17:22
  SPEAKER_00: A feast.
• 1:17:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I must tell you, this is TMI, Jay Mart, but I,
• 1:17:28
  SPEAKER_00: who was all of my life in love with politics, fell out of love,
• 1:17:32
  SPEAKER_00: and you helped me get it back.
• 1:17:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's very kind of you.
• 1:17:36
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you. I really appreciate that.
• 1:17:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's generous.
• 1:17:40
  SPEAKER_01: I've enjoyed picking through the buffet with you, Jay, a great deal.
• 1:17:42
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me. Thank you.
• 1:17:43
  SPEAKER_00: Till next time, ladies and gentlemen.