Transcript

Boba Black Sheep · Politix

0:00
SPEAKER_01: I really have enjoyed this episode.
0:01
SPEAKER_01: I think this is one of our all-time greats.
0:03
SPEAKER_01: What we have learned from many, many, many,
0:05
SPEAKER_01: many years, I think arguably 32 years of modern Republican politics is that they...
0:12
SPEAKER_01: Hey everyone, you're listening to a free preview of the Politics Podcast.
0:39
SPEAKER_01: This week, we'll look at the midterm campaign in snapshot form.
0:43
SPEAKER_01: Where are Democrats looking strong?
0:44
SPEAKER_01: Where are they looking weak?
0:46
SPEAKER_01: How do their vulnerabilities stack up to the GOPs?
0:49
SPEAKER_01: Is there any reason for Democrats to be nervous?
0:52
SPEAKER_01: What the fuck is going on in Maine?
0:55
SPEAKER_01: Then we'll look at a couple examples of Trump and his loyalists abusing power,
0:59
SPEAKER_01: even as it seems they are about to lose it,
1:02
SPEAKER_01: and talk about what that says about how they're going to behave
1:05
SPEAKER_01: if Democrats take back Congress.
1:07
SPEAKER_01: Power-mad people won't give up power quietly.
1:10
SPEAKER_01: So what are the benchmarks for successful opposition?
1:14
SPEAKER_01: If you want to hear or watch the whole episode, upgrade to a paid subscription at politics.fm.
1:23
SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome to the Politics Podcast.
1:25
SPEAKER_01: I'm Brian Boitler.
1:25
SPEAKER_01: I'm Matthew Glacius.
1:27
SPEAKER_01: You have your laptop connected to a power source this week, I hope.
1:31
SPEAKER_00: Yes, it's going to be great.
1:32
SPEAKER_00: I've got everything.
1:34
SPEAKER_01: We're not going to have to race through anything.
1:36
SPEAKER_00: I've got everything packed up.
1:37
SPEAKER_00: We're ready to go.
1:37
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we've got a lot of Senate races to race through.
1:40
SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah.
1:41
SPEAKER_01: Are we going to do all 20 or whatever?
1:43
SPEAKER_00: Well, no.
1:44
SPEAKER_00: 33?
1:44
SPEAKER_01: Probably not.
1:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:46
SPEAKER_01: I had us talking about two in particular.
1:49
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:49
SPEAKER_01: I don't know where you want to start.
1:50
SPEAKER_01: I have us talking about Alaska.
1:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:55
SPEAKER_01: Because of some new reporting about Mary Peltola that was, I don't know if it's harmful or not.
2:02
SPEAKER_01: Not flattering about her per se.
2:05
SPEAKER_01: And then I have us talking about the great Boba scandal of 2020.
2:10
SPEAKER_01: Publicate.
2:11
SPEAKER_01: In Maine with Troy Jackson against Susan Collins.
2:16
SPEAKER_01: There was a bad New York Times poll.
2:20
SPEAKER_01: There's been some reporting about it that is noteworthy.
2:24
SPEAKER_01: I don't really care where we start, I think.
2:27
SPEAKER_00: Kind of go in either order.
2:28
SPEAKER_00: You know, Alaska, let's just start there.
2:31
SPEAKER_00: It's alphabetical.
2:33
SPEAKER_00: Mary Peltola has had a narrow lead in the polls against Dan Sullivan in most surveys.
2:42
SPEAKER_00: The New York Times came out with a Mary Peltola is a bad boss story.
2:50
SPEAKER_00: I'm open to it.
2:51
SPEAKER_00: Like I'm Maybe if you have two competing job offers and one is from Mary Peltola
2:58
SPEAKER_00: and one is from, uh, what's her name?
3:00
SPEAKER_00: Who's running in Minnesota.
3:02
SPEAKER_00: The one who's not A.B.
3:03
SPEAKER_00: Klobuchar.
3:04
SPEAKER_00: Like maybe you should work for her instead.
3:06
SPEAKER_00: Is she
3:07
SPEAKER_01: known to be very nice?
3:09
SPEAKER_00: No, I don't know.
3:10
SPEAKER_00: I just like, there hasn't been a story in the New York Times about how she's a bad boss.
3:13
SPEAKER_00: I have to say,
3:14
SPEAKER_01: I have.
3:17
SPEAKER_00: A lot of people on the Hill seem like maybe they're not great managers.
3:24
SPEAKER_00: It's sort of not how you become a United States Senator.
3:26
SPEAKER_00: I don't...
3:29
SPEAKER_01: And they're also like egoists and...
3:32
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
3:34
SPEAKER_01: I think that there are definitely people on the Hill known to be very good bosses.
3:39
SPEAKER_01: But this story about my boss is kind of full of herself or himself and uses us
3:46
SPEAKER_01: to do things that seem beneath the dignity of a college-educated young upstart
3:52
SPEAKER_01: or whatever, just so common that they don't really rate for me.
3:58
SPEAKER_01: And especially here, where like...
4:01
SPEAKER_01: The way this becomes a campaign liability is for Republicans to lean into the idea
4:06
SPEAKER_01: that people need to behave in a professional manner at all times.
4:10
SPEAKER_01: And I just don't think it's a particularly tenable line from them,
4:14
SPEAKER_01: given what's happened over the last 10 years.
4:16
SPEAKER_01: But we should say what the story said and why we think it became a story in
4:22
SPEAKER_01: the first place and whether there's any
4:26
SPEAKER_00: danger
4:27
SPEAKER_01: here.
4:28
SPEAKER_00: I guess the smoking gun...
4:30
SPEAKER_00: From the standpoint of Democratic Party staffers, is that she used some naughty words.
4:38
SPEAKER_00: You know,
4:39
SPEAKER_00: a disparaging term for gay men and a disparaging term for people suffering
4:45
SPEAKER_00: from intellectual disabilities,
4:47
SPEAKER_00: that you are, you know, not supposed to use those words in liberal society today.
4:54
SPEAKER_00: And I don't think she should use those terms anymore.
5:00
SPEAKER_00: Also, I don't know.
5:02
SPEAKER_00: You're not going to vote for Dan Sullivan because you thought Mary Beltola used...
5:08
SPEAKER_00: The F slur.
5:09
SPEAKER_00: Like, that doesn't make sense, logically.
5:11
SPEAKER_00: Like, nobody is going to do that, right?
5:14
SPEAKER_00: Now, if your take, really,
5:16
SPEAKER_00: from this story is that, like,
5:18
SPEAKER_00: she's like a sociopath on some level,
5:21
SPEAKER_00: unbeknownst to ordinary politicians,
5:23
SPEAKER_00: you know, that really might be a reason not to vote for her.
5:26
SPEAKER_00: I don't think that that's, like, true, though.
5:29
SPEAKER_00: Like, based on everything I know about members of Congress and working on the Hill, um...
5:36
SPEAKER_00: And I do, I mean,
5:37
SPEAKER_00: not to go too woke about this,
5:39
SPEAKER_00: but I do feel like women on the Hill get held to a different level.
5:46
SPEAKER_00: Standard,
5:47
SPEAKER_00: where like when a male senator or house member in this case is kind of a jerk,
5:53
SPEAKER_00: people are like, eh, that guy's kind of a jerk.
5:56
SPEAKER_00: Whereas there's an expectation that women are going to be like incredibly kind and nurturing.
6:01
SPEAKER_00: And when they don't live up to that,
6:03
SPEAKER_00: it becomes, I mean,
6:05
SPEAKER_00: this was this Mary Klobuchar story,
6:07
SPEAKER_00: sorry, Amy Klobuchar story when she was running for president.
6:13
SPEAKER_00: And like, It is true.
6:15
SPEAKER_00: I have always heard that she is a tough boss,
6:19
SPEAKER_00: that that is not considered the number one most amazing office to go work in.
6:25
SPEAKER_00: But also the context of the story was,
6:28
SPEAKER_00: it was really like she was mean to somebody when he fucked up.
6:34
SPEAKER_00: Not...
6:36
SPEAKER_00: Not like, and I've had bosses who were mean to people when they fucked up.
6:41
SPEAKER_00: I don't think that's the best way to be a boss,
6:44
SPEAKER_00: but I'm also not running to the New York Times with that.
6:47
SPEAKER_01: I think that we should, like the similarities there are well taken,
6:51
SPEAKER_01: but like the differences are important because I think what we learned
6:54
SPEAKER_01: about Amy Klobuchar was that beyond being like tough and short tempered
6:59
SPEAKER_01: with her staff,
7:00
SPEAKER_01: she also beat like The way she would lash out at people was strange, right?
7:07
SPEAKER_01: The story about being so frustrated that the staffer who brought her
7:12
SPEAKER_01: a to-go salad didn't put a fork in the bag,
7:14
SPEAKER_01: and so she ate her salad with her comb, right?
7:17
SPEAKER_01: Like, that was weird.
7:20
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I agree.
7:22
SPEAKER_00: It's weird.
7:22
SPEAKER_01: That's weird.
7:25
SPEAKER_01: In the Peltola reporting, I didn't detect anything weird.
7:28
SPEAKER_01: I detected two classes of...
7:32
SPEAKER_01: I don't know, Sin, like,
7:34
SPEAKER_01: one is the stuff that you said,
7:36
SPEAKER_01: which is that, like,
7:37
SPEAKER_01: in private,
7:38
SPEAKER_01: she is, like, uses offensive language, like, not politically correct language.
7:49
SPEAKER_01: And, you know,
7:50
SPEAKER_01: that could deter people who are really persnickety about that stuff,
7:54
SPEAKER_01: make them, like, a little bit less, whatever, excited.
7:56
SPEAKER_01: It might also, like,
7:58
SPEAKER_01: there is this, like,
8:00
SPEAKER_01: Thing that happened after Trump won where a bunch of people
8:03
SPEAKER_01: who aren't seemingly like like dyed in the wool movement conservatives were like
8:10
SPEAKER_01: into Trump because he would allow them to say words like like what was in
8:14
SPEAKER_01: the you know, you could say pussy again, right?
8:18
SPEAKER_00: Well, and specifically retard, which was one of the things
8:22
SPEAKER_01: that Peltola used, right?
8:24
SPEAKER_01: And if you're going to assume that there is going to be some sort
8:28
SPEAKER_01: of electoral backlash for this,
8:30
SPEAKER_01: you also have to count in the possibility that this is part of the unwokening of
8:34
SPEAKER_01: the Democratic Party that might bring some of that kind of voter back into the fold.
8:39
SPEAKER_01: So there's that.
8:40
SPEAKER_01: But then there's separately the bad boss stuff, like how she treats Trump.
8:48
SPEAKER_01: Staffers, like, face... And the two examples were one that she...
8:53
SPEAKER_01: With little detail, right?
8:55
SPEAKER_01: All the context has been kind of stripped away.
8:57
SPEAKER_01: She pushed somebody in the chest, apparently.
8:59
SPEAKER_01: And then the other one is that, like,
9:01
SPEAKER_01: after her husband died,
9:03
SPEAKER_01: she asked staffers to take over the duty he performed of feeding crickets
9:09
SPEAKER_01: to her pet chameleon.
9:12
SPEAKER_01: Because she's always flying back and forth from Alaska to Washington,
9:17
SPEAKER_01: D.C., which is a great distance, and the chameleon would die if left unfed.
9:21
SPEAKER_01: And, like...
9:23
SPEAKER_01: Neither of those things strike me as like eating your salad with a fork
9:28
SPEAKER_01: to show how pissed off you are.
9:29
SPEAKER_01: But, you know, or like making making a staffer shave your legs or whatever.
9:34
SPEAKER_00: Right now.
9:36
SPEAKER_00: So congressional rules say that staffers are not supposed
9:41
SPEAKER_00: to perform personal service for the members.
9:47
SPEAKER_00: And I've got to say.
9:49
SPEAKER_00: This just seems like a hard line to draw.
9:52
SPEAKER_00: You know,
9:52
SPEAKER_00: because it's not like...
9:57
SPEAKER_00: A member of Congress isn't like a computer programmer who's supposed to be
10:03
SPEAKER_00: at their desk coding all day.
10:06
SPEAKER_00: And we can draw a really sharp line between,
10:11
SPEAKER_00: you know,
10:11
SPEAKER_00: you've got a good desk,
10:12
SPEAKER_00: you've got a comfy chair, you've got the right monitor you need, and personal stuff.
10:18
SPEAKER_00: Like, what a member of Congress does...
10:21
SPEAKER_00: Is they got to travel back and forth from their district to the Hill.
10:27
SPEAKER_00: When they're at home, they need to travel around the district doing lots of different events.
10:32
SPEAKER_00: When they're in Washington, I mean,
10:34
SPEAKER_00: you're supposed to go to hearings and do votes,
10:38
SPEAKER_00: but you're also, like, members of Congress do a lot of meetings with people, right?
10:42
SPEAKER_00: Like, that's sort of the job is to go around and...
10:47
SPEAKER_00: You know,
10:48
SPEAKER_00: it's Alaska,
10:49
SPEAKER_00: so there's some issue about oil companies want to do one thing and
10:54
SPEAKER_00: the conservationists don't want to do that thing.
10:56
SPEAKER_00: And you kind of need to talk to the stakeholders and you need to talk to
11:00
SPEAKER_00: the other members and so on and so forth.
11:03
SPEAKER_00: So, you know,
11:06
SPEAKER_00: freeing up the principal's time or,
11:10
SPEAKER_00: in a stopgap, being the person who makes sure the chameleon doesn't die...
11:16
SPEAKER_00: That seems like how I would run my office if I was a member.
11:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you might be apologetic about it.
11:23
SPEAKER_00: Not just in the spirit of, oh, I'm so important, you know, you're freeing up.
11:27
SPEAKER_00: Like I, you know, I have people who work for me.
11:30
SPEAKER_00: I don't have those people like take out my garbage just to save me time
11:34
SPEAKER_00: so I can write more hot takes.
11:37
SPEAKER_00: But- It's like all a member
11:40
SPEAKER_00: of Congress does is like zip around doing official business and other people have
11:48
SPEAKER_00: to book their travel, make their restaurant reservations, carry their schedule.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: And then also,
11:56
SPEAKER_00: so you have to integrate with making sure you're present for your children
12:00
SPEAKER_00: at sufficient level.
12:02
SPEAKER_00: Occasions.
12:03
SPEAKER_00: You don't want an animal to die when you're thousands and thousands of miles away from home.
12:08
SPEAKER_00: Like I didn't really get, unless there's some more context.
12:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
12:12
SPEAKER_01: I mean, look, like, I don't want to be like, woe is me about members of Congress.
12:17
SPEAKER_01: Making $180,000 a year is good money pretty much everywhere in the country.
12:23
SPEAKER_01: And in theory,
12:24
SPEAKER_01: if you feel like your schedule is too busy to tend to your laundry or feed your pet,
12:28
SPEAKER_01: you can pay somebody to do that.
12:30
SPEAKER_01: And not only will you be able to afford it,
12:32
SPEAKER_01: but then when you move on to your next much higher paying job eventually,
12:36
SPEAKER_01: the money will come back to you.
12:40
SPEAKER_01: And so I can, you know, when this happens, I'm like...
12:44
SPEAKER_01: I kind of get it because members of Congress are extremely busy with a lot
12:49
SPEAKER_01: of mundane tasks and a lot of travel and have to maintain two houses and blah,
12:53
SPEAKER_01: blah, blah.
12:54
SPEAKER_01: But if you're going to need them,
12:56
SPEAKER_01: need to rely on staff for things that are mostly personal chores,
13:00
SPEAKER_01: there's a difference between being like, hey,
13:01
SPEAKER_01: I hate to ask you to do this and it will only be temporary,
13:06
SPEAKER_01: but can you take care of my chameleon until I can figure out a way to pay somebody
13:12
SPEAKER_01: to do it?
13:13
SPEAKER_01: And like John or Mary or whoever,
13:18
SPEAKER_01: like you are adding to your tasks,
13:20
SPEAKER_01: like going to my house every other day or whatever and feeding the chameleon.
13:24
SPEAKER_01: And then they say, but wait, like, I can't, you know, really?
13:29
SPEAKER_01: And, you know,
13:31
SPEAKER_01: then there's some blow up,
13:32
SPEAKER_01: like, you know, don't work here if you can't handle the blah, blah, blah.
13:36
SPEAKER_01: And I just don't know what happened in the interpersonal aspect of the request.
13:43
SPEAKER_01: But like if you're going to go out and dish on it,
13:46
SPEAKER_01: you should probably like make a be able to make a case
13:50
SPEAKER_01: that it was genuinely inappropriate and not like part of
13:54
SPEAKER_01: a like well established pattern among people who serve in Congress.
14:00
SPEAKER_01: And like to me, one of the one of the.
14:04
SPEAKER_01: Big question surrounding this story,
14:06
SPEAKER_01: because I don't think it's like particularly politically damaging to Peltola,
14:10
SPEAKER_01: is why the staffers felt like this was something they should do.
14:16
SPEAKER_01: Like, even if they were genuinely upset, like, do they want Dan Sullivan to win?
14:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, this is why I kind of emphasize the salty language stuff at the top, because I...
14:29
SPEAKER_00: I do know,
14:30
SPEAKER_00: you know,
14:30
SPEAKER_00: I think among Democrats,
14:32
SPEAKER_00: there is a broad consensus that we should not use terminology like that, right?
14:38
SPEAKER_00: But I do think there is a quite a wide range of views on exactly how big of
14:43
SPEAKER_00: a deal is this and how invested should we be in this kind of language policing,
14:51
SPEAKER_00: you know, purging of people's dialogue.
14:54
SPEAKER_00: And I can imagine there being Democratic Party staffers,
14:59
SPEAKER_00: professional Democratic Party political operatives who are 10x more upset about that
15:06
SPEAKER_00: than I,
15:07
SPEAKER_00: you know,
15:08
SPEAKER_00: being genuinely mad,
15:11
SPEAKER_00: especially given that Peltola also has a fairly heterodox record
15:17
SPEAKER_00: on various voting issues and just getting...
15:22
SPEAKER_00: Really upset at her about the substance of that in a way that I don't agree with,
15:30
SPEAKER_00: but I acknowledge that it is an emotionally authentic viewpoint that is out there.
15:39
SPEAKER_00: I can see something like that causing real...
15:45
SPEAKER_00: Staff turmoil,
15:46
SPEAKER_00: she talked on Tim Miller's podcast about something much more mild,
15:50
SPEAKER_00: but it was getting scolded by white people for referring to Eskimos.
16:00
SPEAKER_00: Rather than Inuit,
16:02
SPEAKER_00: when she was saying, I mean,
16:03
SPEAKER_00: she is a native Alaskan herself,
16:07
SPEAKER_00: and she was maintaining that people where she's from call themselves Eskimos.
16:11
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
16:12
SPEAKER_00: I've never been to Alaska.
16:14
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to claim to have superior insight into this Eskimo versus Inuit kind
16:19
SPEAKER_00: of controversy.
16:20
SPEAKER_00: But again,
16:20
SPEAKER_00: that's the kind of thing that happens,
16:22
SPEAKER_00: you know, particularly in intergenerational dialogue among, um,
16:28
SPEAKER_00: I'll explain what the conspiratorial theory is in a minute,
16:30
SPEAKER_00: but the
16:30
SPEAKER_01: reason I'm torn between them is...
16:47
SPEAKER_01: Is that like we've come a long way since Democrats pushed Al Franken out of
16:53
SPEAKER_01: the Senate,
16:54
SPEAKER_01: you know,
16:56
SPEAKER_01: and that was at least a riskless endeavor as far as,
17:00
SPEAKER_01: you know, the balance of power in the Senate goes.
17:02
SPEAKER_01: I think in hindsight,
17:04
SPEAKER_01: there are a lot of people who realize that that was that punishment to not fit
17:07
SPEAKER_01: the supposed crime.
17:10
SPEAKER_01: And we are now in a much more desperate situation where
17:14
SPEAKER_01: Where Democrats have been grappling pretty openly with where the line is.
17:21
SPEAKER_01: Where somebody,
17:22
SPEAKER_01: where it might be worth losing a seat rather than lining up behind somebody
17:27
SPEAKER_01: whose character is so flawed that like you degrade what it means to be trying
17:37
SPEAKER_01: to save America, right?
17:38
SPEAKER_01: If you line it behind him.
17:39
SPEAKER_01: So like Graham Plattner, right?
17:41
SPEAKER_01: Is like,
17:44
SPEAKER_01: Scandal one came out and people were not happy about it, but they accepted it.
17:48
SPEAKER_01: And then there was the next one and they accepted it.
17:49
SPEAKER_01: And then, you know what I mean?
17:51
SPEAKER_01: It was only when it was like,
17:54
SPEAKER_01: okay, smoking gun shit that they were like, we need a new candidate.
17:58
SPEAKER_01: Right.
17:59
SPEAKER_01: And like the revelation about Peltola is so ticky tack compared to even
18:05
SPEAKER_01: the first Plattner thing that like it.
18:09
SPEAKER_01: It makes me wonder if there isn't more animating the staffers who chose to go to
18:16
SPEAKER_01: the New York Times with this stuff.
18:18
SPEAKER_01: And what got me thinking conspiratorially is
18:21
SPEAKER_01: that I had been thinking conspiratorially also about what's going on in Montana,
18:26
SPEAKER_01: where Democrats nominated somebody who they believed would drop out of the race so
18:31
SPEAKER_01: that this independent- To
18:32
SPEAKER_00: clear the field for Seth Bodnar,
18:35
SPEAKER_00: who was recruited by-
18:38
SPEAKER_01: John Tester, right?
18:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, to run as an independent.
18:41
SPEAKER_01: And would probably be leading in the polls if the field were clear.
18:47
SPEAKER_01: There seemed to have been some sort of backroom understanding that she would do this.
18:52
SPEAKER_01: Her name is Alani Bankhead, right?
18:55
SPEAKER_01: And then she wins the nomination and suddenly she's like,
18:59
SPEAKER_01: under no circumstances will I drop out.
19:01
SPEAKER_01: She is splitting the Democratic vote basically down the middle.
19:05
SPEAKER_01: And so the Republican is very likely to win.
19:08
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like,
19:11
SPEAKER_00: why would somebody
19:13
SPEAKER_01: make a promise like that or at least lead people to believe
19:17
SPEAKER_01: that they would operate like that?
19:19
SPEAKER_01: Which is like, you know, it's Machiavellian, but it's not like illegal in politics or anything.
19:25
SPEAKER_01: And then to turn around and be like,
19:27
SPEAKER_01: just kidding, I'm going to sabotage the whole race for myself and for you.
19:31
SPEAKER_01: And one answer is, you know, you get a taste of...
19:37
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you could get him to drop out.
19:38
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you could win that way.
19:40
SPEAKER_01: But I don't think so.
19:41
SPEAKER_01: And it got me thinking, maybe there's Republican money.
19:45
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
19:46
SPEAKER_01: You know, like tempting her to stay in.
19:50
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of Republican money with not a lot of places.
19:54
SPEAKER_01: They're going to spend a lot of it in Texas.
19:56
SPEAKER_01: They're going to spend a lot of it in a bunch of battlegrounds
19:58
SPEAKER_01: that they weren't expecting to have to defend.
20:01
SPEAKER_01: But there's too much.
20:03
SPEAKER_01: They have more than they can...
20:05
SPEAKER_01: Do useful stuff with in the typical ways.
20:07
SPEAKER_01: But if you can pay in one form or fashion a Democrat to stay in the race,
20:13
SPEAKER_01: split the liberal vote and keep Republicans in a Senate seat,
20:17
SPEAKER_01: that money is really well spent.
20:19
SPEAKER_01: I'm not making any allegation.
20:21
SPEAKER_01: I'm just saying it's something that could explain what happened in Montana.
20:26
SPEAKER_01: And similarly, if you're somebody who Mary Peltola fired.
20:30
SPEAKER_01: And.
20:32
SPEAKER_01: Some Republicans like,
20:33
SPEAKER_01: you know,
20:34
SPEAKER_01: if you tell your story to the New York Times, I'll make it worth your while.
20:36
SPEAKER_01: I
20:38
SPEAKER_00: mean, certainly it is true that Republicans have this very large financial edge and famous.
20:47
SPEAKER_01: One, they also have this like extraordinary appetite for rat fucking style politics.
20:52
SPEAKER_00: Right.
20:53
SPEAKER_00: But I mean, but.
20:53
SPEAKER_00: But also that they are facing exactly the political landscape in which it's hard
20:59
SPEAKER_00: to turn a financial edge into electoral wins, right?
21:03
SPEAKER_00: That if you took the current political map and the current political climate
21:08
SPEAKER_00: and you gave Democrats the financial advantage that they held two cycles ago,
21:15
SPEAKER_00: you would say, you know what?
21:17
SPEAKER_00: It's incredibly useful.
21:20
SPEAKER_00: To like the long shot Democratic candidate running in Kansas to have tons of money
21:26
SPEAKER_00: at his back so that they can really tell the Adam Hamilton story
21:29
SPEAKER_00: to absolutely everybody who'll hear and explore all the unknown angles,
21:34
SPEAKER_00: et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
21:35
SPEAKER_00: But then you look at like, what does Ken Paxton's campaign against James Tallarico amount to?
21:42
SPEAKER_00: It's really just Ken Paxton saying like, What the fuck, guys?
21:48
SPEAKER_00: This is Texas.
21:49
SPEAKER_00: You're conservative.
21:50
SPEAKER_00: James Tallarico is liberal.
21:52
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, you hit the, it's good to have money, but you hit the diminishing returns.
21:57
SPEAKER_00: Everybody in Texas is going to see the ads about how James Tallarico is a Democrat
22:03
SPEAKER_00: who has said some Democrat stuff.
22:06
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, it's Texas.
22:07
SPEAKER_00: It's a Republican state.
22:08
SPEAKER_00: So if you can find creative things to do with the money,
22:11
SPEAKER_00: and this Montana thing is quite mysterious.
22:14
SPEAKER_00: There was super PAC money spent on behalf of Bankhead during the primary
22:22
SPEAKER_00: that was widely assumed to be pro-Badnar money.
22:27
SPEAKER_00: You know,
22:27
SPEAKER_00: that was spent with some kind of understanding that she's the Democrat who was going
22:32
SPEAKER_00: to drop out.
22:34
SPEAKER_00: You know,
22:34
SPEAKER_00: because this super PAC,
22:35
SPEAKER_00: it ran pro-Bodnar ads, you know, bio pieces to try to drive up his favorables.
22:41
SPEAKER_00: And it ran pro-Bankhead ads in the primary.
22:43
SPEAKER_00: And then after she won the primary, it stopped spending on her behalf.
22:47
SPEAKER_00: So somebody at least on the,
22:50
SPEAKER_00: we won't call it Democrat,
22:52
SPEAKER_00: on the Bodnar camp had the understanding that Bankhead was the candidate
22:56
SPEAKER_00: who was most likely to drop out, wanted her to win the primary.
22:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
23:02
SPEAKER_00: Either there was a huge misunderstanding or she was persuaded to change her mind by somebody.
23:08
SPEAKER_00: And the amount of money that it might plausibly take to get somebody
23:13
SPEAKER_00: to spend their mind there is worth many, many, many millions of dollars in TV ads.
23:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
23:19
SPEAKER_00: So we don't know.
23:20
SPEAKER_01: We don't know fully what- What do you think of the theory?
23:25
SPEAKER_01: That there is already, and there could be more, Republican money put to use in this way.
23:33
SPEAKER_01: Not to try to rescue a failing campaign by blowing millions of dollars,
23:36
SPEAKER_01: but by buying opposition research,
23:40
SPEAKER_01: true or not, by paying off people who could sabotage race.
23:45
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
23:46
SPEAKER_00: It certainly could be.
23:47
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think in Montana- In particular,
23:50
SPEAKER_00: when we're dealing with someone who is not a political professional,
23:55
SPEAKER_00: I find that plausible.
23:56
SPEAKER_00: I would love to look into it.
24:00
SPEAKER_00: In Alaska, I mean, I do go with my number one take.
24:04
SPEAKER_01: Your Oculus Racer take.
24:05
SPEAKER_00: This is just sincerely— Another thing that's in the story is
24:09
SPEAKER_00: that Mary Peltola got very angry that Planned Parenthood was refusing
24:15
SPEAKER_00: to endorse her re-election in 2024.
24:19
SPEAKER_00: And the crux of the matter was she voted yes on a defense appropriation bill
24:27
SPEAKER_00: that had a rider that was going to prevent funds from being used
24:32
SPEAKER_00: to give service members transportation across state lines to get abortion services.
24:40
SPEAKER_00: And Peltola said that she is pro-choice.
24:43
SPEAKER_00: That she has always been pro-choice and that she opposed the inclusion
24:47
SPEAKER_00: of this rider, which she voted against.
24:50
SPEAKER_00: But she was nonetheless going to vote for passage of the package.
24:55
SPEAKER_00: Her vote was not decisive in this matter, one way or the other.
24:58
SPEAKER_00: It was a classic case of,
25:03
SPEAKER_00: you know,
25:03
SPEAKER_00: Red District member just like wanted to vote yes
25:07
SPEAKER_00: on something relatively uncontroversial.
25:09
SPEAKER_00: Planned Parenthood not only dinged her for it, which is fair enough.
25:13
SPEAKER_00: They're an abortion rights group.
25:18
SPEAKER_00: People do scorecards, right?
25:20
SPEAKER_00: And you could be at 90% rather than 100%.
25:23
SPEAKER_00: And that can be impactful in terms of your ability
25:26
SPEAKER_00: to get executive branch appointments in the future, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
25:30
SPEAKER_00: But they went beyond that.
25:31
SPEAKER_00: They really went after her on this in a way that I think is a little bit irrational, right?
25:38
SPEAKER_00: Peltola also felt it was irrational,
25:40
SPEAKER_00: and she made a joke about one of these Planned Parenthood people and said,
25:45
SPEAKER_00: I hope she dies in a botched abortion,
25:47
SPEAKER_00: which is a mean joke, but I think we understand what
25:51
SPEAKER_01: the joke is.
25:54
SPEAKER_01: Can I weigh in on your side here?
25:55
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
25:57
SPEAKER_01: People who I think broadly agree with us about what should happen in both
26:00
SPEAKER_01: the Alaska race per se and the Senate election in general,
26:03
SPEAKER_01: saying that that comment really disturbed them.
26:06
SPEAKER_01: And I get it because if you just take it literally, it's a very dark comment.
26:12
SPEAKER_01: But it is also a species of ironic humor of the kind where it's like,
26:17
SPEAKER_01: I hope Dr.
26:18
SPEAKER_01: Atkins dies of a heart attack as cosmic punishment for him doing a bad thing
26:26
SPEAKER_01: that is making people make unhealthy choices.
26:28
SPEAKER_01: It's like it would put an exclamation mark,
26:31
SPEAKER_01: an ironic exclamation mark on that whole saga, right?
26:36
SPEAKER_01: And that's the species of joke that that is.
26:39
SPEAKER_01: Even though it's like very, very, very,
26:41
SPEAKER_01: very off color and very – I
26:44
SPEAKER_00: also think we have to understand the difference between
26:47
SPEAKER_00: a public statement and a private statement that has been made public.
26:52
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
26:52
SPEAKER_00: Right?
26:52
SPEAKER_00: That a kind of thing Donald Trump would do is say in a press release – Right?
27:00
SPEAKER_00: Like, punch back and say, like, I hope she dies of a botched abortion.
27:05
SPEAKER_00: And I think that is really inappropriate and that it is bad
27:08
SPEAKER_00: that Donald Trump has coarsened the public discourse in that way.
27:12
SPEAKER_00: Everybody who has a sense of humor has at some point said something in private
27:19
SPEAKER_00: about somebody they are fighting with that would be inappropriate if it was rendered
27:24
SPEAKER_00: as their public official response.
27:26
SPEAKER_00: Right?
27:27
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's the nature of the human condition,
27:30
SPEAKER_00: and that it's a mistake to treat something a member of Congress said privately
27:36
SPEAKER_00: that was revealed to the public as if it was something she said in public.
27:41
SPEAKER_00: Mary Peltola's public position on Planned Parenthood,
27:44
SPEAKER_00: as far as I know,
27:45
SPEAKER_00: is that she,
27:46
SPEAKER_00: Mary Peltola,
27:47
SPEAKER_00: is a pro-choice candidate who favors abortion rights and who thinks
27:51
SPEAKER_00: that Planned Parenthood and pro-choice people should be supporting her.
27:55
SPEAKER_00: I bring this all up, though,
27:56
SPEAKER_00: just to underscore the sincerity, which is that in the year of our Lord 2026-
28:03
SPEAKER_00: Dan Sullivan,
28:04
SPEAKER_00: who is a 100% score from the Susan B.
28:06
SPEAKER_00: Anthony list, is in a tight race against Mary Peltola in a red state.
28:12
SPEAKER_00: In Alaska, there are a lot of progressive positions that are unpopular, but abortion reasons.
28:18
SPEAKER_00: If the Sierra Club wants to say, Mayor Peltola is not in our side,
28:33
SPEAKER_00: She's going to say, yeah, I'm not.
28:36
SPEAKER_00: But she wants to be seen as the abortion rights candidate in this race,
28:41
SPEAKER_00: and she is the abortion rights candidate in this race.
28:44
SPEAKER_00: And the stakes in terms of whether or not Donald Trump will be able
28:48
SPEAKER_00: to continue stacking the judiciary with anti-abortion judges strike me
28:52
SPEAKER_00: as quite high.
28:53
SPEAKER_00: And nonetheless,
28:55
SPEAKER_00: Planned Parenthood Action Fund has not put her on their endorsements list,
28:59
SPEAKER_00: which I think is a
29:02
SPEAKER_00: It underscores that just there are people in progressive politics
29:07
SPEAKER_00: who are sincerely quite fastidious about Various things.
29:15
SPEAKER_00: And I just find it credible that there is some Peltola staffer
29:19
SPEAKER_00: who really is fired up about her salty language to the extent that they're willing
29:24
SPEAKER_00: to tank this race.
29:26
SPEAKER_01: Should we pivot to Maine?
29:27
SPEAKER_01: We should.
29:28
SPEAKER_01: I guess just to real quick say,
29:31
SPEAKER_01: these are not necessarily mutually exclusive hypotheses,
29:34
SPEAKER_01: but I take your point that the situation in Montana looks much more suspicious than
29:39
SPEAKER_01: the situation in Alaska.
29:42
SPEAKER_01: In Maine...
29:44
SPEAKER_01: Troy Jackson committed the sin of filming a vertical video with a cup of boba tea
29:51
SPEAKER_01: and saying something dismissive about all the billionaire money being spent on him.
29:56
SPEAKER_01: And apparently this is proof that the consultants have ruined his campaign, I guess.
30:02
SPEAKER_00: This, I would say,
30:04
SPEAKER_00: stood at the intersection of two different conversations that are happening
30:08
SPEAKER_00: in Democratic Party politics, right?
30:10
SPEAKER_00: One is...
30:13
SPEAKER_00: Troy Jackson, as a state senator, endorsed Bernie Sanders in the 2016 presidential cycle.
30:20
SPEAKER_00: There were very few Democratic Party elected officials around the country
30:23
SPEAKER_00: who endorsed Bernie in 2016.
30:28
SPEAKER_00: And Bernie has tended to be quite loyal to everybody who was with him early.
30:34
SPEAKER_00: And so Jackson was a Bernie Sanders superdelegate, either in 16 or 20 or both times.
30:41
SPEAKER_00: And then when Troy Jackson ran for governor this year, Bernie Sanders endorsed him.
30:48
SPEAKER_00: And Bernie and others appeared at a series of rallies for kind of
30:52
SPEAKER_00: a joint Graham Plattner-Troy Jackson ticket.
30:58
SPEAKER_00: And...
30:59
SPEAKER_00: Plattner won his primary quite handily.
31:03
SPEAKER_00: And Jackson lost his primary to somebody who,
31:07
SPEAKER_00: you know, was also progressive but not a Bernie person.
31:12
SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot of different reasons for that.
31:15
SPEAKER_00: But then when Jackson's campaign got into hot water, Sorry,
31:21
SPEAKER_00: when Plattner got into hot water and when he dropped out,
31:25
SPEAKER_00: very quickly,
31:26
SPEAKER_00: the kind of left people,
31:28
SPEAKER_00: both nationally and in state,
31:30
SPEAKER_00: were warning that party insiders might try to steal the nomination and
31:36
SPEAKER_00: the person it ought to go to was Troy Jackson,
31:40
SPEAKER_00: a fellow Bernie wing guy, a Plattner cross endorser, etc.
31:45
SPEAKER_00: The state party wound up setting up And it seemed for
31:48
SPEAKER_00: a moment like everybody was happy that we had the scandal played candidate off
31:52
SPEAKER_00: the ticket.
32:13
SPEAKER_00: We had the guy who the people behind Plattner wanted to be Plattner's replacement,
32:19
SPEAKER_00: but he was also a little bit more of a conventional figure,
32:24
SPEAKER_00: you know,
32:24
SPEAKER_00: somebody who people knew,
32:26
SPEAKER_00: somebody who has a personal beef with Janet Mills,
32:29
SPEAKER_00: but who in general people in mainstay politics seem to like just fine.
32:34
SPEAKER_00: But then I heard before it came out that Whispers from some out-of-state people
32:41
SPEAKER_00: who are present in Maine that Rebecca Traister was working on this big expose
32:46
SPEAKER_00: that was going to blow the lid off how Chuck Schumer and the D.C.
32:50
SPEAKER_00: consultants had sidelined the Graham Plattner grassroots movement,
32:54
SPEAKER_00: which in practice seems to mean Graham Plattner's consultants,
32:58
SPEAKER_00: and they were ruining the campaign.
33:01
SPEAKER_00: And so this story came out, and I would not say that the story – Like, has the goods exactly.
33:08
SPEAKER_00: But it is true that Jackson went with a DSCC-approved set of campaign consultants
33:18
SPEAKER_00: and operatives rather than...
33:20
SPEAKER_00: The fight agency people who had been working for Platner,
33:25
SPEAKER_00: one of my sources who was set to do some subcontracting work on
33:30
SPEAKER_00: the Platner campaign,
33:31
SPEAKER_00: he is also upset because he's lost a great deal of money as a result of this.
33:36
SPEAKER_00: There's just like a lot of money being spent on this main race
33:39
SPEAKER_00: and people understandably would like that the money go to them rather than
33:42
SPEAKER_00: to somebody else.
33:45
SPEAKER_00: Some of the atmospherics of it were like,
33:48
SPEAKER_00: oh, he's got these people from D.C. rather than people from Maine.
33:54
SPEAKER_00: You know, we were talking about people from D.C. versus people from New York.
33:58
SPEAKER_00: Maine-based political consultants are, in fact, working on this race.
34:02
SPEAKER_00: It's just it's a small state.
34:04
SPEAKER_00: There's not like a—not that many people live in Maine— Many,
34:09
SPEAKER_00: many millions of dollars are being spent on it.
34:11
SPEAKER_00: It's inevitable that the money would go to out-of-state people.
34:14
SPEAKER_00: But then there was a bad poll for Jackson in the New York Times,
34:19
SPEAKER_00: which sort of set the- It's the best pollster.
34:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
34:24
SPEAKER_00: It set the second guessing level, you know, to 10 out of 10.
34:29
SPEAKER_00: And then there's this other conversation that's been rattling around
34:32
SPEAKER_00: the Democratic Party in which some people are saying that the- Digital teams
34:39
SPEAKER_00: of Democratic Party campaigns do not have enough heterosexual men on them.
34:44
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
34:45
SPEAKER_00: This is like a huge thing.
34:47
SPEAKER_00: It was Rob Flaherty talked about it on his...
34:51
SPEAKER_00: His podcast is Nobody Knows Anything Pod.
34:55
SPEAKER_00: I said I didn't think that was right.
34:57
SPEAKER_00: Then when I was at the Arguments Anniversary Party,
35:00
SPEAKER_00: like two different young straight men who work in Democratic Party politics came up
35:04
SPEAKER_00: to me and they were like, you're wrong, Matt.
35:06
SPEAKER_00: Like the girls and gays, they're ruining our campaigns.
35:10
SPEAKER_00: So it's like, I don't know.
35:11
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
35:12
SPEAKER_01: They need to go work for Mary Peltola, clearly.
35:14
SPEAKER_00: Right.
35:14
SPEAKER_00: So this is this is flying around now.
35:18
SPEAKER_00: And then this Boba tea video came out.
35:21
SPEAKER_00: Now the payoff.
35:22
SPEAKER_00: Right.
35:22
SPEAKER_01: And so- Troy Jackson drinking a girly bubble tea drink.
35:27
SPEAKER_00: This was getting dunked on both by leftists
35:30
SPEAKER_00: who were like total Rebecca Traister vindication and also
35:35
SPEAKER_00: by this pro-straight man identity politics movement,
35:40
SPEAKER_00: which is quite strongly felt among- Heterosexual Zoomer male staffers,
35:49
SPEAKER_00: it seems to me,
35:50
SPEAKER_00: that some,
35:52
SPEAKER_00: I don't know,
35:52
SPEAKER_00: like lavender conspiracy is preventing them
35:55
SPEAKER_00: from putting out adequately butch social media content.
36:00
SPEAKER_00: And like, I just don't know, man.
36:03
SPEAKER_00: So I...
36:07
SPEAKER_01: Once again, I feel like what we've learned about Troy Jackson- As a straight man.
36:11
SPEAKER_01: As a straight man,
36:12
SPEAKER_01: what we've learned about Troy Jackson,
36:13
SPEAKER_01: either that he genuinely likes Boba T,
36:18
SPEAKER_01: or that he is kind of going native with the establishment,
36:28
SPEAKER_01: somewhat pales in comparison to what we've learned about Susan Collins and her-
36:33
SPEAKER_01: And her apparent willingness to hand people defense contracts via
36:38
SPEAKER_01: the appropriations process that she controls if they will give her super PAC money.
36:45
SPEAKER_01: If you care about things that matter,
36:47
SPEAKER_01: you will vote for Mary Peltola for the reasons we explained 20 or 30 minutes ago.
36:51
SPEAKER_01: Same thing goes here.
36:52
SPEAKER_01: This is not the sort of thing that really ought to matter.
36:56
SPEAKER_01: I do think for establishing the truth of what's going on here,
37:02
SPEAKER_01: it's important to know whether, Yeah.
37:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
37:18
SPEAKER_01: And then the Rebecca Tracer piece comes out and says,
37:21
SPEAKER_01: trouble in paradise, you know, like this outsider crew has come in.
37:25
SPEAKER_01: They are running a very different kind of campaign
37:27
SPEAKER_01: than Jackson naturally would be inclined to run.
37:31
SPEAKER_01: It's creating a lot of internal friction.
37:34
SPEAKER_01: And you can see it in the fact that he's not doing as many public events.
37:37
SPEAKER_01: He sounds more scripted and he's leaving the state to do fundraising a lot.
37:41
SPEAKER_01: And then after that,
37:43
SPEAKER_01: the New York Times poll came out and it creates this Story that fits the facts that
37:48
SPEAKER_01: the people who came to run his campaign have run it into the ground
37:51
SPEAKER_01: or are running it into the ground.
37:53
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if that's true because I don't know if the New York Times poll is
37:55
SPEAKER_01: an outlier or not.
37:58
SPEAKER_01: And we probably ought to wait for more polling before we like draw any kind
38:03
SPEAKER_01: of conclusion about it.
38:06
SPEAKER_01: But I do think that it's a couple of things are clear.
38:09
SPEAKER_01: One is that Jackson was going to have to staff up a campaign very quickly.
38:15
SPEAKER_01: Because even though he could have subsumed much of the Plattner campaign,
38:22
SPEAKER_01: he was starting from scratch.
38:25
SPEAKER_01: And it's not crazy to me that- Also, there was a cloud over the
38:29
SPEAKER_00: Plattner campaign team.
38:31
SPEAKER_00: I think this is what's being a little bit forgotten.
38:32
SPEAKER_00: Like, I get that the people who were working for Plattner feel like they were doing
38:41
SPEAKER_00: a good job- And that it kind of sucks that they lost this work.
38:47
SPEAKER_00: But the external perception was that they actually did a bad job by not vetting this guy.
38:56
SPEAKER_00: I mean, because two things can be true, right?
39:00
SPEAKER_00: It is a testament to the skill with which
39:03
SPEAKER_00: the Graham Plattner campaign was rolled out,
39:06
SPEAKER_00: that this random guy who nobody had ever heard of developed
39:10
SPEAKER_00: a Grassroots fundraising base,
39:11
SPEAKER_00: had a great launch video, became a big national media sensation.
39:15
SPEAKER_00: Like all of that stuff speaks well to their work as political campaign professionals.
39:21
SPEAKER_00: At the same time,
39:22
SPEAKER_00: they are the ones who found this guy who nobody had ever heard of and like told
39:27
SPEAKER_00: a national audience that he would be a good Senate nominee and he wasn't
39:31
SPEAKER_00: a good Senate nominee.
39:32
SPEAKER_00: So I think it would have been weird for Jackson to just roll them all over onto his team.
39:38
SPEAKER_00: The whole campaign would have been questions about like, what's going on here, guys?
39:42
SPEAKER_01: I do think that there might be a case in the next week or two for like a shakeup
39:48
SPEAKER_01: to not to like panic,
39:49
SPEAKER_01: but to be like,
39:51
SPEAKER_01: We need to bring in the kind of people who would run this campaign the way that gels
39:56
SPEAKER_01: with Troy Jackson's persona, his real authentic self, right?
40:01
SPEAKER_01: Because it's clearly not a good,
40:04
SPEAKER_01: like the things that Rebecca reported in her piece are palpable, right?
40:11
SPEAKER_01: Like there was a change and it doesn't seem to be like the guy who won
40:18
SPEAKER_01: the convention, et cetera.
40:20
SPEAKER_00: But- Yeah, okay.
40:24
SPEAKER_01: But it's also totally plausible to me that in two weeks,
40:28
SPEAKER_01: it's going to be like, yeah, he's still up by three or four points.
40:31
SPEAKER_01: Or even more,
40:33
SPEAKER_01: if the lasting impact of ProPublica's reporting on Collins' corruption is
40:37
SPEAKER_01: to give him an insurmountable lead.
40:40
SPEAKER_01: I think that that's also possible.
40:42
SPEAKER_01: I think a third thing is possible that this Boba thing is crazy like a fox
40:47
SPEAKER_01: and is working incredibly well.
40:49
SPEAKER_01: In that, like, it is viral for reasons that are on the surface are bad.
40:55
SPEAKER_01: But if a bunch of people watch it and learn that there's a ton
40:58
SPEAKER_01: of out-of-state money coming to help Susan Collins, like,
41:03
SPEAKER_01: spent by billionaires,
41:04
SPEAKER_01: and Jackson's, like, eh,
41:07
SPEAKER_01: that's only going to impress other billionaires,
41:09
SPEAKER_01: I think that's a pretty good look, you know?
41:10
SPEAKER_01: Like, point for the...
41:12
SPEAKER_00: He has certainly succeeded in driving attention to a...
41:16
SPEAKER_00: Somewhat boring, factual message that reflects well on him.
41:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right?
41:22
SPEAKER_01: And maybe this is just subtle genius on the part of
41:26
SPEAKER_01: the dread female slash gay digital staffers or whatever.
41:30
SPEAKER_01: I was not aware of this.
41:32
SPEAKER_01: The third thing I want to say, though,
41:34
SPEAKER_01: is that even whatever effect the DSCC-approved consultants have had
41:42
SPEAKER_01: on this campaign, he was...
41:45
SPEAKER_01: In a environment that seems to be swinging from 2024 at least 10 points
41:50
SPEAKER_01: in Democrats' direction, he was performing pretty badly, you know, like plus three.
41:55
SPEAKER_01: And I think a lot of that has to do with Collins.
42:01
SPEAKER_01: And to me as an outsider- Yeah,
42:02
SPEAKER_01: I mean, has
42:03
SPEAKER_00: Susan Collins ever won in a bad national cycle for Republicans?
42:06
SPEAKER_01: Right, right, right.
42:07
SPEAKER_01: But like, what is the source of Susan Collins' strength?
42:09
SPEAKER_01: And like,
42:11
SPEAKER_01: there is a story that I think you would tell about just being moderate- And look,
42:17
SPEAKER_01: like obviously she has like perfected the art of voting moderate
42:20
SPEAKER_01: when it does not hurt her party in any way.
42:24
SPEAKER_01: But like all the reporting I have read from Maine,
42:28
SPEAKER_01: every time Susan Collins is in cycle,
42:31
SPEAKER_01: quotes random people who are like,
42:33
SPEAKER_01: my heart is with the Democrats,
42:35
SPEAKER_01: but we got to keep Collins in office because if we don't,
42:38
SPEAKER_01: Maine is literally going to fall into the Atlantic Ocean.
42:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
42:41
SPEAKER_01: Right?
42:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
42:43
SPEAKER_01: And I think this is something like it's an idea,
42:46
SPEAKER_01: almost like a mimetic thing that she's incepted into the population of Maine.
42:50
SPEAKER_01: And it's not true.
42:52
SPEAKER_01: And some effort should be put into dispelling that notion.
42:55
SPEAKER_01: And like it is she's not the first senator who's ever benefited from incumbency in this way.
43:00
SPEAKER_01: Like, I think if you asked moderate Virginia Republicans like.
43:05
SPEAKER_01: They would say,
43:06
SPEAKER_01: ideally,
43:07
SPEAKER_01: Virginia would swing back purple or red, but we can't field a non-crazy candidate.
43:12
SPEAKER_01: And also Mark Warner brings bacon for us.
43:16
SPEAKER_01: And so we're better off with him.
43:18
SPEAKER_01: And so he'll overperform as a result of that.
43:21
SPEAKER_01: But they won't literally be like, what are we going to do without him?
43:27
SPEAKER_01: This is something unique to Maine that I think Comes from real effort
43:33
SPEAKER_01: to convince normal people that how senior your senator is,
43:38
SPEAKER_01: is like of exceptional,
43:40
SPEAKER_01: exceptional importance to whether your state thrives or doesn't thrive.
43:45
SPEAKER_01: And I don't think that is a true, that is true about any state.
43:52
SPEAKER_01: Almost certainly not Maine.
43:55
SPEAKER_01: And like if Jackson could convince those people
44:01
SPEAKER_01: Actually, it won't hurt if she loses.
44:05
SPEAKER_01: You'll be fine.
44:06
SPEAKER_01: The state will be fine.
44:08
SPEAKER_00: Yes, I think that that is probably true.
44:11
SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean, this is also relevant to the corruption story, right?
44:14
SPEAKER_00: Because there is a fine line between—
44:20
SPEAKER_00: Right?
44:20
SPEAKER_00: Like, these are...
44:39
SPEAKER_00: Two ways of saying I,
44:40
SPEAKER_00: Susan Collins,
44:41
SPEAKER_00: do not have a neutral principles-based assessment of the American national interest
44:47
SPEAKER_00: that is driving my appropriations.
44:50
SPEAKER_00: And it's worth thinking about.
44:56
SPEAKER_00: What is actually being done here?
45:00
SPEAKER_00: It is certainly true that there are a lot of Earmarks for projects in Maine
45:08
SPEAKER_00: that have Susan Collins' name on them.
45:12
SPEAKER_00: And that she spends a lot of time taking personal credit for things like
45:17
SPEAKER_00: the Causeway repair from Little Deer Isle to Big Deer Isle.
45:24
SPEAKER_00: But, you know, who is...
45:31
SPEAKER_00: We have a surface transportation funding program in the United States of America.
45:38
SPEAKER_00: It gives states money on the basis of a formula.
45:43
SPEAKER_00: Earmarking some of Maine's formula money to be used
45:47
SPEAKER_00: for this causeway does not actually increase the amount
45:51
SPEAKER_00: of surface transportation money that Maine gets.
45:54
SPEAKER_01: It's also not something that only she
45:55
SPEAKER_00: could do.
45:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sure.
45:58
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you would have to be on the appropriations.
46:00
SPEAKER_00: But I mean, like, I'm trying to make actually like a deeper point here, though, right?
46:04
SPEAKER_00: What she is doing with the earmarking is she is taking personal control
46:10
SPEAKER_00: over what main surface transportation money goes to.
46:15
SPEAKER_00: Now, in this case, I also use that causeway.
46:19
SPEAKER_00: I am glad that it was earmarked for that.
46:20
SPEAKER_00: I believe that the governor of Maine would have done that project one way or
46:24
SPEAKER_00: the other because it is a meritorious project.
46:27
SPEAKER_00: The earmarking only makes a difference if the project isn't meritorious.
46:33
SPEAKER_00: And it's worth understanding how it goes.
46:36
SPEAKER_00: So in the metapolitics around all of this,
46:39
SPEAKER_00: You know,
46:40
SPEAKER_00: Angus King is like a super conventional establishment Democrat,
46:44
SPEAKER_00: except he's an independent.
46:46
SPEAKER_00: And one of the few vestiges of his independency is he does not endorse
46:52
SPEAKER_00: in these races,
46:56
SPEAKER_00: which I think is bad because in this particular case,
47:00
SPEAKER_00: it would be quite meaningful to For the other United States Senator from Maine
47:06
SPEAKER_00: to just be like, you know what, guys?
47:08
SPEAKER_00: This doesn't make a difference.
47:11
SPEAKER_00: Trust me,
47:12
SPEAKER_00: as a professional United States Senator,
47:15
SPEAKER_00: Maine is going to continue to get its fair share of federal spending no matter
47:19
SPEAKER_00: who holds the other Senate seat.
47:22
SPEAKER_01: He could even say that without doing the fucking endorsement if he wants
47:25
SPEAKER_01: to be precious about it.
47:25
SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.
47:26
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
47:26
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
47:27
SPEAKER_00: I agree.
47:28
SPEAKER_00: Um, to just to come out here and be like,
47:30
SPEAKER_00: you know, like me and Shelley and Jared, we're just like all on these same letters.
47:36
SPEAKER_00: Like it's fine.
47:37
SPEAKER_00: Like it doesn't, it doesn't matter.
47:39
SPEAKER_00: He could even go the other way and he could be like, you know what?
47:42
SPEAKER_00: If the fucking Republican wins in Maine too,
47:44
SPEAKER_00: he's going to be on the same letters that Jared was on.
47:46
SPEAKER_00: Like it doesn't matter.
47:48
SPEAKER_00: You know, like just, vote for the candidate you like better.
47:52
SPEAKER_00: Um,
47:55
SPEAKER_00: I think there's an interesting dynamic, though,
47:58
SPEAKER_00: around the Jackson race,
47:59
SPEAKER_00: which is that one thing – I would say the clearest goods that Trayster got is
48:06
SPEAKER_00: that now that Jackson is the nominee and he is raising money from the sort
48:13
SPEAKER_00: of normal Democratic donor space – He seems to have been advised
48:18
SPEAKER_00: that he should tone down his anti-Israel rhetoric.
48:22
SPEAKER_00: He has not changed his position on anything related to
48:25
SPEAKER_00: the Israel-Palestine conflict,
48:26
SPEAKER_00: but he used to be very aggressive about talking about genocide and now is not.
48:34
SPEAKER_00: And
48:38
SPEAKER_00: Knowing what I know about Democratic Party donors,
48:40
SPEAKER_00: this is a thing where I can believe this is helping him
48:43
SPEAKER_00: with these Democratic Party donors.
48:44
SPEAKER_00: And it is something that,
48:46
SPEAKER_00: it's not a change in Jackson's campaign because he was not a great fundraiser
48:51
SPEAKER_00: when he was a gubernatorial candidate.
48:53
SPEAKER_00: Plattner was a great fundraiser as a grassroots small dollar donor thing.
48:58
SPEAKER_00: And so the question of like,
49:00
SPEAKER_00: why has it been harder for Jackson to tap that small dollar donor network Is it kind
49:07
SPEAKER_00: of a multi-sided one?
49:09
SPEAKER_00: I think that it seems to a lot of people from in and out of the state that
49:18
SPEAKER_00: while Plattner was running in the primary,
49:21
SPEAKER_00: it was very important to the national left for Plattner to beat Mills.
49:25
SPEAKER_00: And then when Plattner did beat Mills and was hit with some scandals,
49:29
SPEAKER_00: it was very important to the national left that Plattner stay on the ticket.
49:33
SPEAKER_00: And then when that became untenable,
49:35
SPEAKER_00: it was briefly very important to the national left
49:38
SPEAKER_00: that Jackson be Plattner's replacement.
49:42
SPEAKER_00: But that as soon as it was done,
49:44
SPEAKER_00: as soon as the left got what they were asking for,
49:47
SPEAKER_00: they sort of lost interest in this race and moved on to Michigan.
49:51
SPEAKER_00: And nobody is under an obligation to be emotionally invested in a Senate race in
49:57
SPEAKER_00: a state that they don't live in.
49:59
SPEAKER_00: And if you want to care more about Michigan than Maine, it's fine.
50:04
SPEAKER_00: But it is true that a candidate needs somebody to give them money.
50:09
SPEAKER_00: And it's like,
50:11
SPEAKER_00: if Bernie Sanders and AOC and Ro Khanna and all those people are not going
50:17
SPEAKER_00: to be constantly touting Jackson the way they were constantly touting Plattner,
50:23
SPEAKER_00: then it's like,
50:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he goes to a more conventional National Democratic Party fundraising base.
50:29
SPEAKER_00: Because I think we can all agree that it's not optimal for him to just be outspent
50:33
SPEAKER_00: by infinity to zero.
50:35
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
50:36
SPEAKER_01: And so it's like- It's a good point, but- What are we going to do here?
50:40
SPEAKER_01: But agency here goes every way, right?
50:43
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I guess if Jackson shows up,
50:48
SPEAKER_01: he picks the DSCC consultants
50:51
SPEAKER_01: and he taps their donor network- Those guys can make their expectations as clear
50:57
SPEAKER_01: as it is legal for them to make, and that's how he raises money.
51:01
SPEAKER_01: But if he doesn't like the way his campaign is being run,
51:05
SPEAKER_01: if he didn't want to be in that Boba T video,
51:09
SPEAKER_01: he can make a video of his own that said,
51:14
SPEAKER_01: we're going to run this campaign our own way,
51:15
SPEAKER_01: but we need the help of The Graham Plattner base.
51:19
SPEAKER_01: And everyone who was invested in that success, that is now the success that we need, right?
51:25
SPEAKER_01: And I can't run this campaign without money.
51:27
SPEAKER_01: And like, I think it would be, you know, turning on a spigot.
51:32
SPEAKER_01: Money would show up.
51:33
SPEAKER_00: Maybe.
51:33
SPEAKER_00: I just like,
51:34
SPEAKER_00: I think it's a tough situation because,
51:36
SPEAKER_00: you know, with Abdullah Syed, say what you will about it.
51:40
SPEAKER_00: Like everybody agrees, like whose candidate that is.
51:44
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
51:44
SPEAKER_00: You know, and...
51:47
SPEAKER_00: Like,
51:48
SPEAKER_00: there was a question as to would Chuck Schumer mobilize National Dem Resources,
51:55
SPEAKER_00: and he has.
51:57
SPEAKER_00: But also, it is the left's campaign, and everybody knows that.
52:04
SPEAKER_00: In Florida,
52:05
SPEAKER_00: there was this question that was being raised the other day of like,
52:08
SPEAKER_00: well, why won't Chuck Schumer invest in Florida?
52:12
SPEAKER_00: Like, isn't it because this DSA woman won the nomination?
52:16
SPEAKER_00: Now, I don't know whether or not that's why.
52:18
SPEAKER_00: I think it would be crazy to invest in Florida.
52:21
SPEAKER_00: I thought it was good that the DSA lady who the National Party didn't like won
52:26
SPEAKER_00: the race,
52:27
SPEAKER_00: because I think if Vindman had been the nominee there,
52:29
SPEAKER_00: it would have induced a lot of I feel like spending on Maine,
52:33
SPEAKER_00: Michigan, Iowa, Texas, Alaska, Ohio...
52:46
SPEAKER_01: We're going to find out tomorrow how much money.
52:50
SPEAKER_01: It's possible that Tallarico has more money than he needs already.
52:53
SPEAKER_00: Sure, but like Democrats are getting outspent quite badly on an unfavorable playing field.
52:59
SPEAKER_00: I think that like sucking it up And spending on Michigan,
53:03
SPEAKER_00: even if you don't like who the nominee is there, is correct.
53:07
SPEAKER_00: I think that fundamentally,
53:09
SPEAKER_00: Josh Turek in Iowa is the candidate where I most worry about
53:14
SPEAKER_00: the specific financial balance.
53:16
SPEAKER_00: Tallarico both has more money than God and is also getting clobbered by outspending.
53:22
SPEAKER_00: And it's just like, we can't.
53:25
SPEAKER_00: Like waste money on, I face,
53:29
SPEAKER_00: because of where I'm positioned, a lot of pressure to get in on Hamilton in Kansas.
53:35
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like,
53:36
SPEAKER_00: you know,
53:37
SPEAKER_00: if you're a billionaire and you've maxed out to all the key races,
53:42
SPEAKER_00: you should definitely give money to Adam Hamilton also.
53:46
SPEAKER_00: But like, should the Senate majority pack be spending on Kansas?
53:49
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I'm quite skeptical.
53:52
SPEAKER_00: Because there's this very outstanding question of like, are we going to win in Maine?
53:56
SPEAKER_00: Right?
53:59
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to say that Maine should be a gimme
54:01
SPEAKER_00: because beating Susan Collins is infamously difficult.
54:04
SPEAKER_00: But like, we got to win in the state that Kamala Harris won.
54:09
SPEAKER_00: And like, somebody's got to give Troy Jackson money to just run normal ads.
54:14
SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, but here's what here's what I don't fully understand.
54:16
SPEAKER_01: And you're closer to this world.
54:17
SPEAKER_01: And maybe after this,
54:19
SPEAKER_01: we can segue it into a question of like, like,
54:22
SPEAKER_01: or to our second topic,
54:24
SPEAKER_01: which is about like,
54:26
SPEAKER_01: the way Republicans are like stealing money and like spending more
54:30
SPEAKER_01: than is should be should be allowed, right?
54:35
SPEAKER_01: And what Democrats should do about that.
54:36
SPEAKER_01: But like,
54:39
SPEAKER_01: You know, Republicans, Republican billionaires are poning up a lot of money.
54:44
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to, like, pretend otherwise.
54:48
SPEAKER_01: But it's not like Democrats don't have billionaires.
54:50
SPEAKER_01: And it's not like the amount
54:51
SPEAKER_01: of money Republican billionaires have coughed up would bankrupt
54:56
SPEAKER_01: the Democratic billionaires if they decided that they wanted to make sure
55:00
SPEAKER_01: that Troy Jackson was flush.
55:03
SPEAKER_01: And I think Abdul El-Sayed probably doesn't need a ton more money.
55:07
SPEAKER_01: But sure, him...
55:09
SPEAKER_01: Sherrod Brown,
55:10
SPEAKER_01: Josh Turek, like you're talking about a rounding error on some enormous fortunes.
55:17
SPEAKER_01: I don't understand why,
55:19
SPEAKER_01: given the crisis environment we're in,
55:22
SPEAKER_01: clearly the Republican billionaires see it as a crisis, right?
55:29
SPEAKER_01: Those spigots aren't opening more.
55:32
SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean,
55:35
SPEAKER_00: the Republican billionaires are more numerous and they are richer than Yeah,
55:39
SPEAKER_01: but look, like,
55:40
SPEAKER_01: I would buy that argument if there was,
55:42
SPEAKER_01: like, three Democratic billionaires and they were all single-digit billionaires.
55:47
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
55:48
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
55:49
SPEAKER_01: But, like, there's a lot.
55:51
SPEAKER_00: I mean, Michael Bloomberg,
55:55
SPEAKER_00: who spent very heavily in 2024, does not appear to be convinced that 2026 –
56:07
SPEAKER_00: Is a big deal in the way that he was convinced in 2024 and 2020, right?
56:15
SPEAKER_00: I guess.
56:16
SPEAKER_00: I mean, just like based on the spending balance.
56:19
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he,
56:21
SPEAKER_00: you know,
56:21
SPEAKER_00: there's several people who spent really big on the two races against Trump and
56:29
SPEAKER_00: who do not appear to be as invested in the 2026 races writ large.
56:35
SPEAKER_00: And I think that that's bad.
56:37
SPEAKER_00: Um, we've been going on for an hour though, man.
56:40
SPEAKER_00: So I think, I think, I think we better take a break.
56:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
56:43
SPEAKER_00: We have to, we need money.
56:44
SPEAKER_00: We need that billionaire money.
56:45
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
56:46
SPEAKER_01: You know what we do every week is we basically do two podcasts and we,
56:49
SPEAKER_01: and we pay well the second one, but the second one's usually better.
56:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
56:53
SPEAKER_01: So, um, go to politics.fm, upgrade the subscription.
56:58
SPEAKER_01: Then you can listen to or watch, uh, the whole thing in its entirety.