Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Full Episode - Trump’s Polling Numbers Should Terrify The GOP + Why The West Is Living In A 1930s-Style Crisis Again

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Full Episode - Trump’s Polling Numbers Should Terrify The GOP + Why The West Is Living In A 1930s-Style Crisis Again · The Chuck ToddCast

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  Speaker 1: Shipstation dot com use the code toodcast. Hello there, and
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: welcome to the May fourth episode of the Chuck Podcast.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: And there is a reason I am time stamping it
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: with the date rather than just simply saying welcome to
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: the next episode of the check Todd kaskas. May the
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: fourth is a big deal in the Todd household. And
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: no it's not because we're Star Wars junkies. It is
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: the birth of our oldest child. So I have to
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: start off with a big happy birthday to my oldest child.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: I am drinking out of her coffee mug. Margaret right there.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: It's big week for her. It's not just a big
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: birthday week for her, but she graduates.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: College this week.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: Hence I'm showing out. So you're just gonna forgive me
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: for being proud dad here. I'm just blown away by
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: how successful she was and she has been, and I
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: can't wait to see her jump right in. She's gonna
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: have an oceanography degree minor and meteorology, so she is
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: here to help solve climate change or at least help
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: us all prepare and to live in this changed climate.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: But University of Miami has been a terrific place for
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: her to get that kind of education. They do probably have,
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: if not the leading school in environmental sciences and in
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: the ocean. In the ocean sciences, it is one of
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: the leading schools. And they should be right. They're right
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: there on the ocean, so it's like them. It's UCSD
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: on the Pacific side of things, right. Yeah, there's a
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: couple of other coastal schools, but we're gonna we're gonna
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: give it to you know, we're going to be parochial
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: here and give it to Miami. So you'll just forgive me.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: I'm in a just a good mood, and I'm on
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: and an extra good mood because I had a horrendous
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: half of my weekend. But it gets solved and then
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: I had a good part of the weekend. So why
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: did I have a hormdous part of the weekend? Because
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: I spent Friday and Saturday trying to pass a kidney stone.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: This is not something that is new to me. Unfortunately,
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: I am one of those. For those of you that
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: get kidney stones, you know what this is. You either
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: are somebody whose physiology is prone to it or somebody
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: who isn't. This is what I've learned over the years.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: I do my best to mitigate it. I'd gone almost
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: two years without having one, and I have learned over time.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: Believe it or not, I have done episodes of Meet
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: the Press while dealing with a kidney stone. I have
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: done Election Night while dealing with a kidney stone. I
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  Speaker 1: did a whole bunch of interviews on Friday while something
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: was developing and I could start to feel it. The
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: real pain hit me though Friday night. Didn't really sleep
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: much this Saturday and then Saturday evening. Sweet Relief And
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: if you want to understand the Sweet Relief, go watch
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: The episode of sign feldber Kramer deals with the kidney stone,
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: the before and the after in many ways that the
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: whistling and the happiness and the light on your feet,
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: there is something to it. Needless to say, I mean
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: an even better and an excellent good mood after what
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: was half my weekend in typical agony there, but I digress.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: Look a few more housekeeping notes. There is a brand
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: new episode of Dynastic. Got we Ja Donde and I
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: dive deep into the Pittsburgh Steelers, just one of the
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: iconic franchises in the NFL, almost an original, pretty close
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: to being an original. Came into the league in the
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: nineteen thirties and has been owned by the same family
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: ever since. I have to tell you the things that
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: I loved learning in this episode and of what we
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: put together in Dynastic was just sort of the early
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: roots of Art Rooney Senior, the original owner of the Steelers.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: This was basically a sports promoter in Pittsburgh who could
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: take the football, you could take it or leave it.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: I really love baseball, you love boxing, love horse racing.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: Just one of the great characters. It's his son, Dan Rooney,
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: that's truly the football man of Pittsburgh and in many
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: ways is the owner that helped create the conditions to
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: build the dynasty that was the Pittsburgh Steelers in the
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventies and it's still sustained excellence today. We have
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: some terrific stories We're gonna have a great interview with
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: that's going to dive deeper into the iconic era of
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: the Steelers, and that'll be coming up. I'll be promoting
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: that as soon as it hits the feed. But do
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: me a favor. We've been putting this in our audio
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: feed and I appreciate so many of you have already
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: jumped on board, but we'd love for you to like
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: and subscribe separately to our dynastic feeds on YouTube, on
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcast, Spotify, Apple, etc. We are
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: building something different. This is you know. I don't just
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: want all my political junkies only listening to this. We've
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: got plenty of great sports fans and we just would
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: love for you to help us out as we build
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: and grow. I just I have to tell you this
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: budding friendship I have with Jayadande is one of the
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: best new things I've got going this year. It's really
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: been a pleasure and a joy to work with him.
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: To.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: Be challenged by him, love the way he thinks as
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: a journalist. So we just it's been a terrific partnership.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: And if you're wondering what our next dive is going
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: to be in the month of June, it is the Warriors.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: And I'm going to say Warriors because they weren't always
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: in Golden State and it isn't only going to be
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: about Steph Curry. They had this other iconic basketball player
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: you might have heard of, a couple of them that
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: you might have heard of, one by the name of
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: Wilt Chamberlain and the other by the name of Rick Berry.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: So this is a franchise that is one of those
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: that I think people think Lakers, Celtics, and believe it
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: or not, the third most NBA titles ever, the Warriors.
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  Speaker 1: So we're going to dive into them in June. I'm
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: reading Rick Berry's memoir right now Old the University of Miami. Guy.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: It is fascinating. So I wanted to get that housekeeping
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: a bit out of the way. Oh, one more big thing,
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: crystalis and I will be and decision desk HQ and
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: Jeff Scaley You're going to be doing our pretty much
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: every Tuesday, but I think the three of the next
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: four Tuesdays we're going to be doing election night live streams.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: We got this Tuesday to me the Indiana primaries. I'm
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: going to talk about that coming up in my dialogue,
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: but these Indiana primaries are going to say a lot
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: about how lame is the duck that's sitting in the
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: Oval office at the moment. So we'll be covering that
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: starting at seven pm Eastern, So please tune into that
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: Tuesday night. So we've got that going on. So there's
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: your full update on all things both personal and professional there.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: So let's let's dive into this week in politics and
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  Speaker 1: what I've been digesting over the weekend and the big
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: thing that we got over the weekend in what I
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: would call sort of political analyst land is two good
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  Speaker 1: deep dive polls, one from Pew and the other from
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: the Washington Post ABC in episodes get it both out
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  Speaker 1: of the way. They're both panel surveys. Most everything is
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: now a panel survey, do you know, do I wish
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: we could do more face to face, more actual random
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: sample surveys. I do. It's not just cost prohibitive, but
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  Speaker 1: it's just very hard to get people to be responsive.
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  Speaker 1: So it's not that I'm skeptical of panel surveys, but
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  Speaker 1: I just always you know, you know, the panel survey
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  Speaker 1: e right, is going to be a professional poll taker
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  Speaker 1: in some form. And I know it's random sample and
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  Speaker 1: they don't take that many, but if you've agreed to
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  Speaker 1: be in the panel, you know you're going to be
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  Speaker 1: doing these things. Look, they've been remarkably consistent with and
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  Speaker 1: certainly I think are directionally something to pay attention to.
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  Speaker 1: And they've been doing it for a few years now,
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  Speaker 1: so you know, as I always say, it doesn't you know,
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  Speaker 1: if you keep your methodology the same, then your trend
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  Speaker 1: lines matter more to me. And Pugh keeps their methodology
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  Speaker 1: the same, and ABC and the Post and IPSOS since
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: they've gone into this partnership and gone away from live
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  Speaker 1: collar polling, theirs have been consistent. So I just wanted
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: to get those caveats out of the way because I
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: know some of you know I'm a big stickler on
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: pole methodology, and I certainly can't stand averaging of polls
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: because that's just wasteful and lazy. But these are two
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: good polls worth diving into. And let's just say, I've
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: got a lot of interesting thess that I want to
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: share with you and extrapolate on. So look, here's the
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: big I think headline from it. We've certainly had our
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: share of on popular presidents, We've had our share of
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: controversial presidents. But we're seeing a presidency lose confidence at
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  Speaker 1: everything all at once. It's not just job approval, it's
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: not just the professional side of things. Voters and Americans
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: are losing confidence in his personal in President Trump's judgment,
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: in his stability, and they certainly don't have trust. And
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: what may be even more striking with what we're watching
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: right now, one political party is still largely standing behind him,
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  Speaker 1: and yet his numbers are this bat and it's because
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: he's cratering among independents, and that is that is the
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: tipping point. That's why we're that's the difference between a
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: good night for Democrats and a wave for the Democrats.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: So let me get into this. So, look, you've seen
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: probably the headline number about his job rating sitting at
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  Speaker 1: thirty four percent, but this is bigger than that, and
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: I kind of want to I kind of want to
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: get at that a minute. Here he is. You know,
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  Speaker 1: I'm going to go to the Post Post. He's thirty
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  Speaker 1: four percent in the Pew poll and thirty seven percent
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  Speaker 1: in the Post Pole. But that thirty seven percent is
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  Speaker 1: actually one of his better numbers on overall job rating,
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  Speaker 1: right because among cost of living, his approval in the
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  Speaker 1: Post is twenty three percent. On inflation, it's twenty seven percent.
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  Speaker 1: On Iran, it's thirty three percent. On relations with US
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  Speaker 1: allies thirty three percent, on the economy thirty four percent.
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  Speaker 1: He is only above his overall job rating on the
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  Speaker 1: issue of taxes thirty eight percent, immigration forty percent, and
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  Speaker 1: the border forty five percent. Think about that his best issue.
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  Speaker 1: He's underwater on in the Washington Post. Every single major
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: issue you can think of, taxes, immigration, the economy, foreign affairs,
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: this war in Iran. It is all upside down. And
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: again his approval rating is actually is actually better than
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: when you start to dive inside the specifics, in the details,
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: and look, when you're sitting at thirty seven percent, that
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: means the only people that approve of you you are
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: people in your own party. So it's the hardcore base,
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: and his base right now is about two thirds are
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: with him. Sixty seven to seventy percent are with them.
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  Speaker 1: They make up that strong thirty seven percent. There's about
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: a third of the Republican Party who does not identify
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: as MAGA, who doesn't like many of these decisions. Now
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: let me move over to the Pew pole. I'm going
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: to match up these job ratings that you heard with
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: the majorities of Americans that just simply lack confidence in
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: Trump to make good decisions on key issues. He is
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: again has a upside down on confidence across the board
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: in everything they asked, at least the best he did.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: The best he did is has forty two percent of
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: people think have confidence in him to make good decisions.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: On the economy, that's his best performing number. Fifty eight
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  Speaker 1: percent do not believe, do not have a lot of
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: confidence or no confidence at all that he can make
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: good decisions on economic policy. So let me go down.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: That's just economic policy, and that's the best performing number
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: he has. He gets fifty eight percent of basically a
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: no confidence vote, fifty eight percent on immigration policy, no
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: confidence vote, fifty eight percent on trade policy. It's fifty
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: nine percent on law enforcement and criminal justice issues. Again,
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: these are the no or low confidence numbers, sixty percent
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: on managing the executive branch, sixty one percent on using
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: military force wisely. Again, all low confidence numbers here, sixty
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: four percent of making good decisions about healthcare policy, sixty
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: six percent on working effectively with Congress. It's his own party, right,
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: his own party controls Congress, and yet sixty six percent
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: of all Americans do not have confidence he knows how
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: to work with them. It's astonishing. Seventy two percent have
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: little confidence that he can bring the country together, and
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: seventy four percent have little confidence that he can work
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: well with Democratic leaders. So the point is, this is
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: in across the board repudiation. When you take these pulls together,
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: this is and the question is is this bottom right?
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: That's the only thing you got to ask yourselves and
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: Republicans and I'm and i am here to tell you
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: it may not be. So. The bottom line is, there
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: is not a single issue that was measured in either
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: the Pew pole or the post pole where a majority
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: of Americans say he's got this, not one, not even
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: the border, right, that's the limits test. The border, the
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: single issue that he has always pulled the highest on,
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: he is now underwater on that and in some ways
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: if he's underwater on that, which is something he has
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: actually fulfilled the promise he made on the campaign trail.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: Oh brother, everything else is a disaster, and he's starting
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: You're starting to see it show up more and more
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: in some character questions, because when you look at the
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: character issues, it gets warzt and it actually makes me
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: think that there's something more here to the Trump base
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: that I think we overlook sometimes. And I'm going to
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: get to that in a minute. But you know, this
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: stuff always goes hand in hand, right when they start
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: to not like your professional duties, then suddenly the character
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: issues that maybe they overlooked suddenly become more important. Let
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: me give you a one number here that just blew
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: me away. Seventy one percent do not believe he's honest
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: or trustworthy. Seventy one percent. I'm going to tell you,
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: I went in research to see if any president had
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: ever gotten that high. Now, look, it's not a quote.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: Even in Nixon's worst days, his personal unfavorable rating hit
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: sixty six percent. Never got over seventy percent. Bill Clinton,
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: during the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, his personal
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: judgment honest and trustworthy question got to sixty five percent
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: during the height of unpopularity of the Iraq War. That
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: honest and trustworthy, right the quote big lie about WMD
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: for George W. Bush, the high on the untrustworthy number
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: got to about the mid to high fifties. Donald Trump
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: has broken through the seventy percent barrier on this honest
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: and trustworthy. And look, this is something that was always
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: kind of built in. Everybody kind of knew this wasn't
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: an honest guy, but it was sort of like, he's
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: my honest guy. Is what the way dish this guy
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: is the way many of his voters I think saw him.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: And when things aren't going well for you, then suddenly
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: that stuff matters more. Anyway, It's just a number that
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: I think is much more, much more of a bigger
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: deal because it means to get to seventy one percent.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: That's a lot of Republicans that have decided he's not
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: honest and trustworthy. By the way. Going down these character questions,
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: sixty seven percent say he does not carefully consider decisions,
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: meaning he's a too whimsical about them, and fifty four
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: percent do not believe is a strong leader. Look, Donald Trump,
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: I think you know, you know, he's sort of the
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: whole The whole idea is the facade of strong leader. Right,
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: the whole idea is a facade of strength, and he
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: puts up a facade of strength every day. So the
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: fact that he tries to project strength and a majority
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: of the country do not believe is a strong leader
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: is even more damning. Right. It's not like a Joe
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: Biden who chose not to project strength publicly, and of
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: course people then of course fed into the idea that
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: he wasn't a strong leader. Trump actually tries to portray
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: himself as a strong leader, and he still got a
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: majority believing he's not a strong leader. These are end
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: of presidency type stuff. This is why I think there
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: is already a duck in the Oval office. And that
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: duck's pretty and it is probably uncrutches because that duck
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: is flame. Now, let's look at this interesting coalition, and
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: I think it tells you which voters have peeled away
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: from Donald Trump. First, there was a great question about that.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: Pugh asked about whether Trump was keeping his promises or
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: going to keep his promises. And at the beginning, you know,
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: this was among people who voted for Trump and ninety
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: five percent of them at the start of this administration
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: expecting him to keep all of his promise promises. Right,
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: it is now down to seventy eight percent of Trump
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: voters who believe he's keeping his promise, so, which means
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: you have this gap, right, nearly a twenty point gap.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: So those are these voters who have been going back
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: and forth. These are the vote voters that Trump has
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: already lost. These are more Latino. These are voters that
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: have been sitting in the independent column more than in
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: the Republican column. But this was a reminder that he
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: was renting this coalition. You know, when you win over
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: somebody that you didn't win over in a previous election,
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: you don't own them as as part of your coalition.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: You're kind of renting them. And if you succeed over time,
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: you might own them. And if you don't, they're going
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: to quickly leave. Well, it looks like they've quickly left.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: These are these Latino swing voters in Texas that we've
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: all been focused on. It's not just Texas but all
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: along in the Southwest, in particular Texas, Arizona, Florida to
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: a degree in Florida, but really more Texas and Arizona.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: This is why there's real questions about how Republicans drew
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: that map in Texas. Assuming that this shift among Latino
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: voters that has been taking place over a couple elections
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: and titles cycles was permanent, it ain't permanent. These are
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: swing voters, and we're starting to see the evidence. This
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• 22:02
  Speaker 1: Another interesting thing on Trump voters is who is sticking
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: with him and who is peeling away. He's got the
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: highest job approval rating among voters over that basically sixty
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: five plus. And where was Donald Trump over the weekend?
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: The villages. So he was talking to people that have
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: not left him. These are the people that have stuck
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: by him, are with him through thick and thin. His
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: biggest collapse as being among voters under fifty. So and
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: you might say, well, why is he at the villages? Well, actually,
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: in a midterm election, you better secure the base before
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: you start worrying about swing voters, because the best you
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: can hope for among those voters that have fallowed away
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: that are younger is that maybe they won't show up
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: in the midterms, but you have you cannot afford to
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: see erosion among those older base voters. If you do.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: That's how Florida becomes a swing stack in particular. But
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: that's a problem across the board. But the point is
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: is he he's got, he's his coalition. The swing voters
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: that he won over are gone. The question is are
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: they going to go to the Democrats or are they
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: going to stay home? And that, to me is an
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: open question. But there was something else in this poll
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: that made me think here that people that maybe there's
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: too much emphasis on love for Trump among his base,
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: and how much does his base love Trump just period,
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: and how much does his base love Trump as an
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: antagonist to the left? What do I mean by this?
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: So Peugh asked an interesting question about whether it was
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: acceptable to name government buildings after Trump while he's in office.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: Only one in ten Americans thought it was a good idea.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: The majority of Republicans thought it a bad idea. There
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: was a little more openness among Republicans to naming stuff
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: after Trump after he left office, but even that you
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: had a majority that didn't like it. So, look, this
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: is just a thesis, and this is something that I
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: kind of want to work a little bit more on.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: But I've always subscribed. Certainly, we knew this in twenty sixteen.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: I've always subscribed. There's a there's an obsession frankly right now,
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: and I think it's I think now this is something
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: that animates the basis of both parties, which is going
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: after the other side in some ways is more privately
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: owning the Libs right, make you know, drinking liberal tears.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: Right that the thing that Donald Trump animated the most
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: among some Republicans was that, and that, you know, So
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: I think the same people who love that Trump antagonizes
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: the left also secretly are embarrassed enough about him. They're like,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: who whah, you don't want his name on it. This
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: is not going to be somebody we want to remember
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: fondly going forward. But there are these voters that do
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: like him as a vehicle to essentially torture the left
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: and to make the left cry. I think there's something
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: I'm not saying it's a majority of this coalitionue, but
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: the fact that you see these if Trump is as
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: beloved as he sometimes portrayed in some lazier media profiles
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: of his voters, right, they go to the people, you know,
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: the diehards that go to every rally and all this stuff,
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: and I think it paints I think it paints a
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: picture of oh, the Trump based loves him the individual,
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: versus just the Trump base. Actually, what really they like
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: about him is that he sticks a finger in the
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: eye of the left. And they were what you had
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: a group of Republicans and I hear from them quite
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: a bit in the pre Trump days who just feel
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: felt like they would always get run over and bold thozed,
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: and so this idea of standing up to the sort
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: of call it the structural left, if you will, whatever
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: that means to them. To some it meant the media
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: industrial complex, which is a little more complicated than just
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: assuming you know it is. You know, if you think,
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: if you think the truth has a liberal bias, you know,
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: then I guess you could say it's part of that
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: industrial complex. But I but I understand, right, this is
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: this is decades of grievances that Roger Ale's through various
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: media entities over the years, sort of fed that grievance
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: and perception. So you know, Donald Trump was this sort
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: of warrior against this structural left, whether it was academia,
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: and they just love that he goes after these Ivy
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: League institutions, tries to, you know, make them suffer in
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: some ways, even though of course making them suffer makes
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: us all suffer it And it's sort of I think
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: it is sadly a defining characteristic A little bit of this,
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: of this support for Kennedy and his vaccine in his
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: campaign against vaccines. Well, the left doesn't like it, Academia
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: doesn't like it, the elites don't like it. So I'll
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: go along with it, right, I'll be more supportive of
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: it than secretly I should. Oh. By the way, though,
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: now that I see in measles outbreak, I'm going to go.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: Make sure my kids are vaccinated.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: So there is I looked at that number and it
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: was just you thought, well, if Trump is beloved, as
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: we all collectively characterize his base, then why is there
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: only one in ten Americans excited about him naming stuff
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: after himself? Right? Anyway, it's a little bit of It's
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: a thesis. The whole point of thesis is to test
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: to see if the premise is what we think it is.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: I think there are some ways to devise a questionnaire
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: sort of understanding the appeal of Trump. Right, how much
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: of the appeal of Trump is Trump himself and his character,
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: and how much of a peal of trump an his
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: diehard supporters is the simple fact that he's He's the
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: guy that'll throw a punch that they'd like to throw,
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: but they're basically too polite to do it. I think
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: there's something there, another thing that's eroding. And again, this
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: stuff starts to erode when the overall comp when you
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: start to question the overall competency of this president, Republicans
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: believe it or not, when this according to Pew. When
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: it started, they expected ethics and government to improve under Trump,
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: and now far few are saying that that's happened. This
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: is again unmet expectations of his own voters. His own
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: voters thought it was going to improve. It has now
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: dropped twenty points on expectations that government ethics is going
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: to improve. So what you're seeing right is the same
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: thing we've seen with some maga avatars. Right there isn't
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: It isn't just erosion. It's a slow loss of belief
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: in the entire Trump movement himself from the people who
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: wanted to believe it most. So suddenly Marjorie Taylor Green
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: and Tucker Carlson, then their breaks from Trump don't seem
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: like outliers. When you actually dig into the numbers here,
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: it starts to you know. Now, you may say Tucker
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: Carlson's doing this in order to keep an audience. He
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: may very well be, But the point is there's an
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: audience out there that he's essentially agreeing with Tucker that
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: are Trump's supporters who have lost faith in Trump. Now
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: you might think, okay, if things are this bad for Trump,
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: the alternative must be benefiting by a lot not so much.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: Both parties have almost identical fave unfavoratings, basically forty percent
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: favorable sixty percent unfavorable. There's like a one point difference.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: I think one's fifty nine, one's sixty. But the point
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: is this is margin Verer's stuff. They're both at forty sixty,
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: both upside down by twenty points identical. Right, the Democratic
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: brand has not improved at all. Now, Democratic approval has
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: improved among Democrats, but it is not improved at all
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: among independents or the swing voter set. And if you're wondering,
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: what will admit if the Democrats sweep Congress when both
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: the House and the Senate, which right now I think
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: they're heavily favored to win the House, I think right
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: I would make them a coin flip with the Senate,
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: maybe with Republicans still with a slight advantage of holding
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: the Senate. It's this question of whether you want so
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: it is interesting Pugh asked Republicans and Democrats separately, what
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: did they want out of their leaders? What's interesting when
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: Pew asked each party the following question, basically, do you
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: want your leaders pushing harder for Among Republicans, for Trump's
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: policies regardless of whether Democratic officials agree, or do you
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: think do you want do you want Republicans, do you
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: want Republican leaders in Congress or the president to find
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: more common ground with Democratic elected officials. And then among Democrats,
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: the question was worded, do you want to see democratic
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: leadership push hard against Trump's policies when they disagree, or
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: do you think they should find some common ground with Trump?
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: And these numbers are just astonishing because it's actually Democrats
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: are even more emphatic about not working with Trump than
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: Republicans are about Trump working with Democrats. By the way,
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: neither party, a majority of both parties do not want
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: their leadership to essentially work across the aisle. Translation, polarization
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: is here, it ain't going anywhere in the near future. Right,
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: Forty six percent of Republicans want Trump to find common
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: ground with Democratic elected officials. Sixty one percent of republic
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: bookings agree with the statement that they want Trump to
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: push hard for his policies regardless of whether any Democrats agree,
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: And then among Democratic voters, it's about forty two percent
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: who say Democratic elected officials should find common ground with Trump,
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: and a whopping eighty one percent of Democrats who believe
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: Democratic officials should push hard against Trump policies even when
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: they disagree. So what do you think this is setting
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: up Democrats win control of Congress? You think these two
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: sides are going to get anything done. The fact is
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: neither side has an incentive to work with the other
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: because the base of both parties says, I don't want
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: you working with the other side. Now, what I think
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: is likely is the Republican number working with the other
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: side will probably go up a little bit if Democrats
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: control Congress completely, because they will want Democrats to compromise
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: with them. And this is sort of a pattern that
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: you see. But this is the campaign mindset right now,
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: and Democrats are super fired up and they're not interested
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: in working with Trump on anything. And I don't know
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: if this is good politics or not. I'll just be
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: honest with you. I don't know if it's going to
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: be good for twenty eight or not. Maybe this is
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: how you win an election with fifty percent plus one,
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: and maybe this is how you maximize base turnout. But
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: can you govern this way? We've seen partisan governing fails, right,
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: It doesn't ever work in the long term. You may
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: get some short term wins, but you cannot sustain that
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: governance for very long. And there's so much other part
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: of the government that you actually need bipartisan buying on that.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: If you burn that bridge while shoving your unpopular agenda
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: on the other side, you risk you risk a big
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: backlash on that front. But the fact is, those numbers
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: tell me it doesn't matter. Well if you think, you know,
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: Congress has been the least productive Congress we've had, and
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: this of the same party as the present how productive
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: is Congress going to be when we're on opposite side. So, look,
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: this is why we're stuck. We want to sometimes blame
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: the system. Now, the system, it's incentive structures basically incentivize
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: the bases of the party and punish those in the middle. Right,
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: swing voters decide elections, and swing voters have no say
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: in actual governing right, as we've seen here, because the
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: bases are what animate everything. The bases are what keep
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: elected officials safe in primaries. And so you can just
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: see what's broken is the incentive structures. But the system,
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: in some ways it's doing it exactly. It's behaving right now.
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: The way the voter incentives are aligned and the way
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: the voters are asking them to do it. Voters right
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: now are rewarding confrontation. That's what they want. And this
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: goes back to you know, I did a little bit
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: of a couple of conservative media shows over the weekend,
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: and both were at basically pushing back on my premise that, yes,
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: it is the rhetoric is worse right now on the
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: left than it is on the right when it comes
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: to political violence and attacks on Trump. But the fact
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: is Trump created this environment, right. Trump is in charge
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: of the thermostat for America on this and in some ways,
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: you know this, he embraced pugilistic politics, this confrontational politics. Democrats,
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: with Barack Obama and Bill Clinton had embraced a different
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: style of politics, very much more trying to trying to
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: this pragmatic whatever you want to call it, but always
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: because part of it, I've always told you before, there's
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: a numbers problem that the left has, right, They've always
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: needed more moderates in order to win elections than the
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: right does. And now the Democrats are looking a lot
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: less like the compromisers of the Obama era or the
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: Clinton era. And I know some of my ends and
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: the right are going to say Obama wasn't he was
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: very partisan?
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: All right?
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: Ask yourself how partisan was Obama versus how.
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: Partisan the current Democratic Party is.
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: Okay, get your head out of your talking point A right, anyway,
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: I say that with love. Now, I know some of
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: you that listen are actually running for office this cycle.
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: So what would you take away? So which the Post
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: asked the following question, which political party do you trust
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: to do a better job handling each of the following? Okay,
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: and here's what was interesting about it. The issues were
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: asked were healthcare, education, cost of living, iran Ai, inflation,
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: reducing corruption in government, the economy overall, taxes overall, immigration overall,
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: and crime overall. Here's the big takeaway. The Democrats only
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: had a double digit lead on one issue and the
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: Republicans only had a double digit lead on one issue.
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: For the Democrats it was healthcare and for the Republicans
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: it was crime. So you're a candidate for office, those
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: are your two whichever side of the Aylle you're on,
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: right either, you know there is a you are. Whatever
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: you say on healthcare, you're going to be believed. If
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: you're a Democrat, whatever you say on law and order stuff,
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: you're more likely to be believed if you're a Republican.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: Every other issue, though, is pretty up for grabs. In fact,
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: right on education in schools, Democrats are up eight points.
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: On cost of living, Democrats are up five points. But
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: there was a neither party column that was provided and
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: neither and the Democrats had the same number at thirty
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: three percent. So you could argue that a third of
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: the country doesn't believe either party knows how to handle
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: the cost of living issues, just as something I would
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: take away if I were a candidate running for office.
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: On the situation run it's basically Dems plus two, But
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: twenty nine percent say neither party on AI. This was amazing.
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: Nineteen said Democrats, eighteen said Republicans, Fifty one percent said
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: neither party. So AI is an open that's an open
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: field on an issue as a candidate that you could
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: talk about and actually shape the electorate in there. They're
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: looking for guidance right now. They don't think either party
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: knows what it's doing there. On inflation, it was basically
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: a debt even thirty one to thirty, but more people
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: said neither party at thirty three percent than either the
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: Democrats or the Republicans on reducing corruption and government, forty
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: four percent said neither party. Again bigger than it's just
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: twenty six twenty six for either party. This means a
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: plurality of the country thinks both parties are corrupt and
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: neither one of them knows how to reduce corruption. So
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: I look at this issue numbers and go look at
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: it yourself. If you're running for office as a whether
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: you're running for office a Democrat or Republican or independent,
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: you've got to run against Washington and you've got to
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: run against both parties if you want to actually win
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: over credible swing voters. Here this is the It shows
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: me that a plurality of the country doesn't have confidence
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: in either party, sort of has some base line, you know,
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: thinks that Democrats at the end of the day care
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: about healthcare more than Republicans do, and that Republicans at
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: the end of the day care more about law and
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: order issues than Democrats do. Beyond those two sort of
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: built in stereotypes of both parties, everything else is up
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: for grabs. And in fact, if I were running for
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: office here number one, I'd look at this and I
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: would hope I'm not an incumbent. I think if I'm
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: an incumbent, this is very hard to defend and very
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: hard to run in. If I were an independent, this
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: would be a gold mine of opportunity. Again, it's opportunity,
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: but that was a.
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: Huge takeaway that I had in here.
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: There is an opportunity to sort of change the paradigm
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: on political conversation, on issue conversation. It's going to take
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: charismatic candidates to do that, so we shall see. This
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: episode of the Chuck Podcast is brought to you by Soul.
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  Speaker 3: SO.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: A few other notes from this poll. Massive enthusiasm gap
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: in favor of the Democrats seventy three percent in the
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: post survey said, Democrats said they are certain to vote.
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: It was in the low fifties for Republicans. That's how
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: waves happen. Waves don't happen because a huge number of
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: independents swing from one part of the other. That matters
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: a little bit. The waves happen when one party is
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: demoralized and democrats. A majority of Democrats believe this is
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: one of the most important midterms in their lifetime, more
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: than fifty percent said that. Just thirty to forty percent
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: of Republicans believe the same thing. So Democrats believe the
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: stakes are higher than Republicans do. Right, That's exactly the
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: opposite of what we saw in twenty sixteen presidential where
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: the Republicans thought the stakes of the election were higher
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: than the Democrats. When you have that in a midterm election,
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: that's how waves happen. By the way, in twenty twenty two,
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: the numbers were almost identical uncertainty to vote and on
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: how important the election was. So look, when you look
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: at this overall chart here, you realize that this is
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: a essentially a political disaster in the making for the Republicans.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: The question is what can be mitigated between now and
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: election day. The biggest thing Trump's got to deal with
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: is Iran, and this is where the bad polling will
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: now put constraints on perhaps what he'd like to do
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: versus what he's going to end up doing. Right, Iran
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: is deeply underwater. This is depending on which measurement scores
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: you see. It is now more on It is as
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: unpopular as the Vietnam War was at its most unpopular time,
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: and the Iraq War was at its most popular time.
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: So now we have a situation where the President has
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: announced it somehow claims that a military blockade of the
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: of the straight of Horn moves is not is doesn't
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: count on the sixty day clock on the on the
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: War Powers Act. It's laughable constitutionally, but it's only laughable
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: if Congress actually stands up to him on this and
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: says you're wrong about this. The clock is still ticking.
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: The clock didn't pause when the ceasefire started because you
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: did a military blockade. If you're doing a blockade, that
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: is active military action, that is not passive military action.
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: So you know, this is like a bad Star Wars day.
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: So I can use this. This is like a bad
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: attempt at a Jedi mind trick. By Haig's Seth and
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: Trump here, it just doesn't work. And the only way
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: it works is if you have a week speaker and
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: you have a spineless legislative branch. Because it is crystal
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: clear very you know, the Trump administration would be better
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: off making the case that the War Powers Act is
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: unconstitutional and a restraint that you know which other which
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: many people believe that that that have served on the
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: council side of things in the executive branch. It's not
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: a new argument to be made. I'd have more respect
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: if they made that argument than since they're accepting the
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: premise of the sixty day clock, this idea that it
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: somehow starts and stops depending on how hot the hostilities are.
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: But mind you, if you're doing a blockade, that's an
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: active military operation. That is not a it is not
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: somehow some sort of ceasefire. But look at those A
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: RAND numbers and ask you, right, supposedly the president is
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: considering escalation. Okay, if you're going to escalate, you better
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: be able to answer one question, what can you do
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: now militarily that you couldn't do before that actually changes
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: the outcome of the situation that you're in. Are they
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: going to kill more leaders and somehow hope there's going
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: to be a new set of leaders that come in. Honestly,
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: the only way you're going to be able to do
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: this is to commit a lot more assets. And what
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: do I mean by that ground troops. Well, if you
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: do that or whatever you do militarily, you're going to
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: be extending the political pain. You're going to extend the
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: economic pain, which extends the political pain. And that's just
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: look at these are the worst poll numbers he has had. Heartstop.
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: These are now hitting the same lows that George W.
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: Bush hit at the low points in two thousand and eight,
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: two thousand and seven, when the economies, you know, at
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: that point it's like a rack economy, and it was
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: just pighing on him. Okay, it is. We're looking at
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: George W. Bush levels, maybe Richard Nixon levels these and
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: he wants to try to escalate again. If you're going
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: to escalate, you better you better have a plan to
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: just finish this off. And I don't think that's there.
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: And that's why. And by the way, never mind that
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: we're now learning that our American military assets in the
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: region were damaged in far greater numbers. Then the Pentagon
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: has admitted, which means we have a lot more to
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: risk if we decide to flip on, flip the switch
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: and attack them again again. If you're going to do it,
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: you can't just airstrike your way out of this. You
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: tried that, it didn't work. So if you're really going
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: to change the calculus on this, you got And here's
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: the thing, there's just no political support for it, right,
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: And what have we always learned about military operations. If
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: you don't have the people, you're not going to succeed.
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: You're and simple. So this is why we kind of
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: know where this is headed. The fact is the Iranians
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: have put together a framework that's probably going to be
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: the working framework, which is some sort of negotiated end
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: to the blockades on the Strait and then a framework
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: of a set of negotiations over the nuclear stuff. But
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: that there's going to end up being a two part
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: deal here. And these poll numbers are screaming to this
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: administration that he has to do this. We know Donald
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: Trump has to do this. And how do we know
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: he's probably going to do this Because you're starting to
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: see more and more hardliners on this on the right
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: who have been cheering him on for doing this, and
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: frankly are quietly disappointed that he backed off, who are
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: trying to set some harder guardrails, like, well, you better
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: not cut the same deal Obama did, or you better
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: not do this, because secretly everybody knows a deal is coming.
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: And so now you're seeing when you read some of
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: these opinion columns from those that are defending what's been
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: done and saying, hey, you know there's more to be done.
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: They're just trying to shape the ending here, and they're
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: just trying to make sure that the negotiations themselves don't
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: get too weak. But there is just there is no
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: political room for him to escalate militarily. The Iranians know this.
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: If he does, I mean, he is just risking he's
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: risking I don't know what. At this point, he's risking
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: total political collapse. Right now. He's still got the base
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: of his party with them, okay. And when I say
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: of his party, of the Maga wing of his party,
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: the non Maca Republicans are not with them, but he's
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: still got the Maga Republicans with them. He risks losing
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: some of those if he somehow bulldozes his way into
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: trying to start up the military operation again, do a
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: bunch of damage, but make no progress from where we
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: are now. All right, now, a few other quick hitters.
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: I know I've gone on a little bit long here,
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: but a few other quick hitters of some things that
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: I kind of wanted to just call them little seeds
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: that I wanted to plant, and if you've got more
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: questions on them, throw them in the question bucket and
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: we'll talk more. I found the Tucker Carlson interview by
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: my friend Lulu of Courcianovar. First of all, she did
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: a tremendous job, and it was proof by the way
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: you can do a really smart interview without being a jerk.
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: You know, she went in there, accepted the premise. You know,
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: was I thought curious the entire time, and then when
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: she when he would say something that she had some
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: facts that pushed back on what he said. You know,
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: she didn't attack him for being an idiot or you know,
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: how can you say that are you lying?
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: Now?
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: Are you lying? Then? Right? She just simply said, well
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: we have this and look, I've seen Tucker be sort
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: of shown the truth before, and sometimes you can get defensive,
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: but I feel like her style disarmed him and you've
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: got more out of it. So anyway, I just anyway,
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: kudos to Lulu for that number one. Number two, what
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: I took away from it is because you know, I've
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: shared this with you before, I'm never quite sure, you know,
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: and I think I've learned more what I've taken in here.
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson really is sort of if Pat Buchanan and
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: Roger Ayles, you know, had a baby, it would be
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson because he's got the media savvy of ales.
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: He understands where this is going, and I think he
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: sees an opportunity to own a piece of a political
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: audience and he's done a pretty good job of it.
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: And he's really sort of marked his territory and markedist
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: turf there. And then when I say you can it
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: is because he's I think it's a true blue American isolationist.
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: Nationalist isolationists is to me sort of one and the same.
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: You're you know, most nationalists are going to be isolationists
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: and most isolationists are going to be nationalists. So that's
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: why to me, it's one of the same. Because what
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: did we learn in there. You know, he's uncomfortable with
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: with sort of Rubio's influence on Trump. He was very careful.
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: He didn't seem to want to get fans in trouble.
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: He didn't want to admit the last time he talked
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: to him, which tells me that they have a pretty
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: open line on this. And so you know, that's you know,
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: it's it's in some ways. I didn't learn anything new
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: about what Tucker Carlson believes, but I came away believing
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: he actually believes it.
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: More than I thought he did.
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: Right, There's always been a part of Tucker and most
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: of us that have known him a long time or
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: think we've known him, And I think that's a fair
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: way of putting it. There's a lot of calcul that's
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: always felt like a lot of calculation involved, But it
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: doesn't take away from uh. I think he understands, you know,
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: how to build a narrative, and I think he understands
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: how to build an audience and how to keep an audience,
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: and how to potentially persuade an audience. And he's just
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: you know, look strikes me as as somebody who is
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: building a movement, whether he ends up running for president
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: or he ends up being the intellectual force behind Jade
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: Vance's candidacy in twenty eight, which maybe where we're headed.
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure, but I will say this, I found
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: the interview very compelling, and I read the Sucker word
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: for word all the way to the end. I made
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: a big deal last week about my push that look,
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: if this, uh, this ruling by the Supreme Court of
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: the Voting Rights Act, which essentially is going to eliminate
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: majority minority districts around in the South and perhaps around
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: the country, that the proper that the energy in the
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: and in communities looking for better representation in politics and
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: in Congress ought to be focused on expanding the table
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: rather than fighting over the chairs around the table. And
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: obviously I'm arguing for expanding the House. Okay, uh, this
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: is a necessity. Madison himself argued for it. The only
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: way that people are going to feel represented is if
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: they're actually represented. And the problem is we do have
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: huge chunks of the population that don't feel represented in
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: this Congress. And it's because Congress is too damn small, right,
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: And if you essentially, look, if you doubled the size
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: of Congress, I promise you'd have Republican members, Republican Congression
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: members of Congress from Massachusetts, and you have Democratic members
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: of Congress from Alabama more than you have today. And
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: you'd have more in Tennessee than you'd have today, and
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: you'd have more Republicans in Minnesota than you'd have today.
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: It is, it is, there is. This is a giant population,
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: and it's a diverse population in America that has not
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: where Congress has not properly expanded. That was the Madisonian
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: argument that the House of Representatives was supposed to expand
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: with the size of the country, and we have not
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: expanded it since nineteen twenty. And you know, look, I
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: think in hindsight that that was among the mistakes in
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: the Voting Rights Act to sixty five, part of the
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: push in which could have been done. I don't know
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: why we didn't expand the House then, and probably could
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: have expanded by one hundred and fifty two hundred members,
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: but it would have done more to jumpstart diverse representation
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: in Congress starting in sixty six, rather than essentially it
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: didn't really kick in very well until eighty two and
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: ninety two, after the reapportionments of both eighty one and
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: ninety one. Now, what's going to be the fallout from this.
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: There's going to be some angry constituency groups, particularly in
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: the South, and I would keep There are five races
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: states I'd keep. I'd be focused on here where you
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: could see anger over sort of de representation of African
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: Americans in the South could backlash on Republicans and help
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: Democrats win statewide races. Now, part of it, Democrats have
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: to invest in this. But this is where if they
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: wanted to make Republicans pay a price, if they believe
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: Republicans have pushed this too far, you have to make
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: them pay a price at the polls if you want
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: them to you know, right, it's all about incentive, So
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: go win something, right, Georgia Governor, it's likely Democrats can
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: have an African American nominee Keisha Lance Bottoms. I think Look,
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: do I think African American turnout was going to be
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: pretty high in Georgia anyway? Yes, if you get it higher,
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: that's how she becomes governor. Mississippi African American Senate nominee
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: Scott colomb Or colombe. My apologies if Democrats engage African
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: Americans in Mississippi at levels like they have engaged African
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: Americans in Georgia. They can win some state wide elections
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: in Mississippi, but there's always been a bit of a
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: bit of a struggle, particularly in rural African American communities
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: in the South, where Democrats have struggled. You know, Democrats
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: struggle with the rural vote, whether it's white or black.
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: But again, backlash on the on what happened at the
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: Supreme Court could be fuel turnout fuel in Mississippi. I
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: think Alabama governor, especially k Ivy, clearly didn't want to
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: do it. Uh somebody got to her ear she changed
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: her mind to do this in the middle of the
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: of the gubernatorial campaign. This could very much help Doug Jones,
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: who's the likely Democratic nominee for governor against uh the
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: coach Tommy Tupperville. There look Doug Jones one on the
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: back of black women the first time when he won
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: that special Senate election against Roy Moore. Could again, if
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: you just have a slightly lower turnout among Republicans for
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: all the reasons I pointed out at the start that
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: we're seeing in all this polling, and you get a
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: surge and you get a higher than usual mid term
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: turnout among African Americans. That's how Democrats pull upsets in
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: governors races. There's likely to be an Africa We'll see.
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: There's a very competitive primary for governor in Florida on
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: the Democratic side between the African American mayor of Orange County,
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: Jerry Demings, and a former Republican Member of Congress net
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: turned Democrat, David Jolly. You know, if Demings gets that nomination,
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: and in fact, this may be a huge jumpstart to him.
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: This may jump, this may surge, this may again service
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: turnout fuel for him, because a lot of polling has
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: shown Jolly ahead. That could change due to backlash from
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: what the Supreme Court did and for the immediate decision
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: by Florida to redistrict in there so, and I'd keep
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: a eye in South Carolina spec again, any of these
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: states that choose to do this. Now you're just sort
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: of putting a neon turnout sign on for African American
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: voters in the South. And they have enough strong candidates
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: Democrats do in Mississippi, Senate, in Georgia, in South Carolina.
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: These are not gadflies. They may be they may pee
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: long shots, but there's a difference between a long shot
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: and a gadfly. Their long shots have money and organization.
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: Godflies usually don't have those two things. They got some
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: serious candidates that if essentially, you know, it's like two
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: and ten chance, but essentially Republicans are doing things here
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: that suddenly make the two in ten chance more possible
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: than not. So please keep an eye on that. And finally,
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: I've been hearing a lot of crankiness among congressional Republicans
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: that the Trump political operation is more focused on punishing Republicans.
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: See Thomas Massey in Kentucky, see the Indiana state Senate primaries,
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: where they targeted seven of eight state Senate Republican incumbents
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: that were running for reelection this year. And many of
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: these Republicans in Congress, they won't put their name on
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: it because we know they're not ready to actually publicly
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: call Trump out, but they will anonymously call Trump out.
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: They'll spend all this money to punish Thomas Massey, to
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: punish Republicans in Indiana over redistricting. But they didn't spend
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: money in Virginia, they didn't spend money in California. You
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: see where this is going. So if Donald Trump fails
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: this Tuesday in Indiana, and he only say, knocks off
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: two or three of the incumbents, right, I think if
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: he wins a majority, you have to say, Okay, I
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: guess this was money well spent. I guess I don't
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: even know if it really is. But he better win
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: a majority of the ones he targeted.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 3: Uh.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: And if he doesn't, then then it's it's even worse.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: And finally, I want to close my other little of
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: a fun, little uh sort of switcheroo that we're seeing
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: in Maine Senate. So when I last was with eu,
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: Janet Mills was still a candidate for the US Senate
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: in Maine. Now we know it's Graham Platner. It's going
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: to be there, presumptive Democratic nominee with against Susan College.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: It has been interesting to watch Democrats uncomfortable with Platner
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: try to come around on him and start to rationalize
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: why they're going to come around on him. And I
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: don't know about you, but I'm having flashbacks of Republicans
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: rationalizing their way to Donald Trump back in twenty sixteen.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: And boy, if there ever was a mirror image race
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: Clinton Trump Platner, Collins one is status quo of somebody
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: that went back to the nineties, Hillary Clinton, Susan Collins,
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: and the other is somebody with a call it a
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: unique background, had said inappropriate things at a variety of
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: ways and in a variety of times. But does it
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: look like a cookie cutter politician? Which one are you
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: betting on? Number one? But that's how I look at
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: this main center race. I think Platner would be more
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: of a problematic nominee if it were an open seat,
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: because then they'd have a better chance. Republicans would have
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: making it potentially a referendum on him. I think that's
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: what helped Fetterman defeat doctor Oz. Right, had it been
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: a sitting incumbent, then maybe Fetterman would have been more
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: of the of the referendum that Republicans were trying to
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: make them at the time. But instead doctor Oz was
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: the odd ball candidate as far as the electorate was concerned,
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: and Democrats successfully made it a referendum on him. It
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: is it is when you're in when the incumbent, it's
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: hard to not become the referendum, especially if you're the
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: party IMpower, and in this case, I think that is
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: that's what hurt Hillary Clinton in sixteen. She at the
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: end of the day was representing the party in power.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: And that's what's going to hurt Susan Collins in twenty
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: twenty six because she's representing the party in power. All Right,
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: with that, let's sneak in a break. I have a
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: terrific guest because it's a book that sort of helps
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: reinforce a premise that I've been sharing with you for
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: quite some time, and that is sort of our politics
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: went off the rails after the Cold War. This is
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: a book by In Shapiro. He's my guest. It's called
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: After the Fall, and it's basically how we lost the
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: piece after the Cold War, and it goes through all
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: the mistakes that were made in dealing with Russia, with
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: NATO expansion in the Middle East, a variety of ways
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: that this was of sort of if you know, a
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: lot of forks in the road that we kept taking,
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: the wrong fork is he said, Sally, the premise of
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: the book. It's a terrific book. Obviously, you know how
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: much I believe you know how important the Cold War was.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: It's sort of keeping us less polarized anyway. I think
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: you're going to enjoy the conversation, So let's sneak in
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: a break. When we come back. Ian Shapiro on the
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: other side, we got my time machine. Here's a quick hint.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: It's the first it's the first event we experienced together
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: as a society. First disaster we experienced together as a
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: society in real time. That's my hint. And then we'll
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: take a little question. Well, my next guest is the
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: author of a terrific new book that I as any
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: book out there on sort of this geopolitical moment that
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: we're in. I guess is Ian Shapiro. The book is
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: called After the Fall, and what it is it's essentially
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: from the end of I'll give you this subhead, but
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: because it's got a phrase in here that is doing
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: a lot of work, from the end of history to
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: the crisis of democracy, how politicisms broke our world. As
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: many of you know, I've used the Cold War and
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: the end of the Cold War as sort of a
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: way to try to explain politics during the Cold War
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: and the politics that we have today. Well in many cases,
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: and there's times that I talk about it as if
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: in some ways this was inevitable, But that's the strongest
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: part of this book, and the argument that Ian makes
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: is that this wasn't inevitable, this world, this moment that
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: we're in, this rise of populism around the world, this
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: fear of globalization around the world, he argues, was not inevitable.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: It was at we are here because of some mistakes.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: We may have won the Cold War, but we somehow
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: lost the peace. And so joining me now is Ian Shapiro. Ian,
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: congrats on the.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 3: Book, Thanks so much for having me on.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: Let me just start with how long have you been
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: How long did you work on this book? What when
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: did you frame this thesis in your head?
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 3: Actually I gave a set of lectures that Yale called
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 3: the Diveane Lectures in twenty nineteen, and they are unusual
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 3: in being both a regularly Yale course and open to
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 3: the general public. And that was that when I first
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 3: formulated the basic thesis of you know, of trying to
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 3: understand the pads are not taken. You know, how did
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 3: we get from the euphoria and optimism of nineteen eighty
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 3: nine to the bailful politics we've had since more or
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 3: less twenty sixteen. And it was you know, what were
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 3: the choices made and for gone along the way that
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 3: got us there.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well look you it's the phrase end of history.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: It's the title of a I don't know if we
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: call it now an infamous essay by Francis Fukuyama. And
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: it was you know, his argument, you know, and sometimes
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: the what he was arguing and what get and what
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: gets remembered or two different things, right, we know that
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: that happened sometimes in the sort of the what he
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: was arguing about was that there is there's no more
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: debate on what the best system is. Is was his argument,
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: and that and I think now he might argue that
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: it shouldn't have been an end of history as the
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: title of the piece, but that was the argument he
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: was making. But it is that transition to democracy that
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: didn't seem to that should have been the opportunity that
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: we missed. So let's go back. It's a big portion
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: of this, you call it missed moments. So let's start
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: from the beginning. I mean, one of the interesting things
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: to me, and the minute you said it, I was like, yeah,
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: why didn't we do this? Was no Marshall plan for Russia? Explain?
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so I should say, you know how the book
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 3: is about missed moments in geopolitics and international relations, and
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 3: the other half is in domestic politics, and I hope
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 3: we can talk about both. But you know, so you know,
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 3: at the end of the Cold War, the question was,
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 3: you know, what about the defeated adversaries. And you know
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 3: my argue, this is not a twenty twenty hindsight argument.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 3: Very credible people at the time were saying, you know,
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 3: the model for dealing with the defeated Russia should be
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 3: the model should be based on how we dealt with
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 3: Germany and Japan after World War Two. None other than
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 3: Richard Nixon, you know, as I discussed at some length
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 3: in the book, said, you know, this is the historic
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 3: opportunity to invest massively in the transformation of Russia into
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 3: a viable, diversified capitalist democracy and folded into the post
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 3: Cold War security and economic infrastructure of the world, just
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 3: as we did with Germany and Japan. And Nixon made
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 3: the point I think was spot on to not make
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 3: the mistakes that were made after World War One, when
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 3: you know, the victorious powers did the exact opposite, and
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 3: you know, Kines and others predicted that that would lead
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 3: the rise of Hitler and so forth, and so you know,
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 3: Nixon's argument was invested in the new Russia, make it,
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 3: you know, integrated. Yelson wanted to do it, and Isaiah
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 3: documented the book all the way through the nineties and
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 3: even in the first few years of Puchin administration, he
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 3: was lobbying to integrate economically with the West, to join
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 3: NATO and so on, and we just you know, blew
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 3: that opportunity by ignoring those entreaties, brushing aside. It wasn't
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 3: just Richard Nixon, you know, mitterol wanted to replace the
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 3: NATO arrangements with a new kind of Pan European UH
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 3: security structure, and many others were and instead, you know,
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 3: we we just ignored all of that and uh basically
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 3: expanded NATO into Eastern Europe, as I detail in the book,
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 3: in ways that would be bound to reinforce the reactionary
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 3: forces in Who were you know, fighting to stop the
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 3: transformation of Russia.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, is there one entity, one person that sort of
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: you know, if you if we could go back into
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: time and say, you know, if this moment hadn't happened, well,
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: there would have been more integration of Russia.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 3: Well, uh, you know, I certainly think that the Clinton administration.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 3: This is, by the way, not Democrats versus Republicans, because
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 3: there's plenty of claim to go around here. The Clinton
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 3: administration did not make the kind of you know, Marshall
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 3: plan like investments in the new Russia. Do you think.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: Domestic you know, you know, I try to put myself
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: back into that moment. Right, Why did Bill Clinton win
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: that election? Because he said George H. W. Bush was
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: too focused on world affairs? Right?
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 3: That was sense? Yeah, right?
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: How much? I mean, I can't help but wonder how
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: much that impacted the enthusiasm of perhaps those in the
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: State Department that might have been a little more forward
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: leaning on this.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So I actually I think that, you know, it's
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 3: a little more nuanced history. I think that what was
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 3: actually decisive in the Clinton administration was the ninety four
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 3: mid terms because until that point he was actually very
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 3: open to a lot of the arguments about being much
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 3: more constructive in dealing with Russia. And you know, there
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 3: were sort of two camps, those pushing for the integration
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 3: of Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary on one hand, and
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 3: others who were saying, no, we should really focus on
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 3: getting a deal with Russia. And they had come up
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 3: with a mechanism to sort of stay that off, called
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 3: the Partnership for Peace, which you know, because really nobody
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 3: knew how things were going to evolve. You know, it
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 3: was a very uncertain time, and you know, the nukes
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 3: hadn't yet been brought back into Russia from the former
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 3: Soviet Union and so on, and so the idea the
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 3: Partnership for Peace was that it would you know, temporize
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 3: and say, well, okay, all these former communist countries, you know,
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 3: can start cooperating through this mechanism, and you know, Yeltsin
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 3: went for it, and the easter Piers who wanted to
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 3: join NATO were complaining about it, but they were going along.
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 3: And then what happened was, you know, nineteen ninety four midterms,
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 3: new ingridch leads the first takeover of the House for
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 3: forty years, for forty years, and Clinton becomes spooked because
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 3: he's worried about his re election in twenty twenty six,
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 3: and it's about the swaying states. It's about the polls,
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 3: the Hungarians and the Czech Americans in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania,
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 3: and so he backs away from the whole you know,
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 3: rapprochement with Russia through this Partnership for Peace and starts
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 3: getting behind expanding NATAL into Eastern Europe. And I think
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 3: so after ninety four, the Clinton administration really changes on
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 3: this front and goes down that path. And then you know,
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 3: with Bush two, he wants to get all of the
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 3: these countries into his partnership, his coalition of the willing
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 3: to invade Iraq in two thousand and three, so he
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 3: promises a whole bunch of them membership in two thousand
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 3: and four, and then we're off the races.
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: So ultimately you're arguing that the expansion of NATO, which
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: has been what Putin argues right, which is the expansion
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: of NATO, was essentially almost a form of saber rattling
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: at the Russians, even though that was not supposedly the intent.
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 3: I think, I think there was an opportunity, and there
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 3: have been several opportunities to transform NATO into something else.
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 3: You know, at the end of the court, you know,
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 3: people like Mitterol. You know, we're saying, initially, well, you know,
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 3: it did this job, it's won the cult, Well we
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 3: should get rid of it and create something else. But
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 3: then as it persisted, and grew. There were questions, you know, what,
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 3: could it become an instrument of international peacemaking, an instrument
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 3: of you know, enforcing humanitarian intervention against you know, Tyranist regimes.
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 3: But those questions were never answered. There was never a
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 3: serious reorientation of NATO's mission. Instead, it was sort of
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 3: ad hoc things, you know, using NATO here, there and everywhere.
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 3: You know, whether to bomb Kosovo without Security Council authorization
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 3: into in nineteen ninety nine, or to topple Godafi in
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 3: twenty eleven, when in neither case was any NATO country threatened.
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 3: So the question is why is NATO doing this? And
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 3: you know, it never developed kind of legitimacy. It would
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 3: have had to have had to be seen as anything
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 3: other than an instrument of you know, unilateral Western power.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: The irony is that now NATO feels necessary again.
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well we're back in the Cold War, you know,
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 3: but we we didn't have to be back in the
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 3: Cold War. I mean that this is the real point
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 3: of the book. That or that part of the book.
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 3: It's that for you know, for the whole of the nineties,
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 3: Yeltsen was banging on the door to join Europe and NATO,
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 3: and until two thousand and three, so was so was
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 3: Putin we forget, you know, and Joe Biden said, Putin
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 3: is the most pro Western Russia figure who's ever and
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 3: pro and pro democratic figure that Russia has ever had,
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 3: you know, and he was a very different creature, uh
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 3: than he than he ultimately became in his second really
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 3: after two thousand and seven, when we started talking about
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 3: in Georgia and Ukraine. I mean, that was really the
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 3: real chipping point for the Russians.
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: I wonder, let me just one of one more, one
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: more counterfactual on NATO and then we will move, Which is,
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: what if we had brought NATO, What if we had
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: brought Ukraine into NATO in the nineties and that was
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: the and it happened sooner or you know, there's an
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: argument that said, if we brought Ukraine in, Russia never invades.
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 3: Well, I think your counterfacture isn't ambitious enough in that. Actually,
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 3: early on, Pouchain said it's up to anybody who wants
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 3: to join. Anyone can join NATO who wants. It's sovereign
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 3: countries and they can do what they like. But he
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 3: was doing it on the expectation that so could Russia join,
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 3: and once they became frozen out, then that's when he
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 3: backed off.
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: So I think that's what I keep coming back to,
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: was it isn't one. Was it just general distrust of
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: why there just wasn't more willingness to open the door
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: to Russia into NATO the.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 3: You know, I mean it was it was the pressure
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 3: on the Clinton administration mostly came from the East Europeans,
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 3: the Poles, the Hungarians, and they just didn't trust the Russia.
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 3: They didn't want them across. They think it's in their
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 3: DNA and so on. Then you had people in the
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 3: administration Stroke Talbot really wanted to add the Baltics, and
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 3: you know, Madeline Albright was really pushing for Poland, I
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 3: mean for the Czech Republic, and Braziinski wasn't in the administration,
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 3: was kind of hovering around. He was pushing for Poland.
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 3: And so you know that's where the pressure was coming from.
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 3: And you know that's what short circuited the attempt to
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 3: discover whether you know, people say, well, but you know, Russia,
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 3: you know, it's always been a threat. But after all,
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 3: that's what we did after World War Two with Germany.
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 3: You know, people, you know, Germany had twice gone to
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 3: war with the with the Western Powers, and you know,
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 3: many people said, well the Germans, you know, the Germans,
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 3: they're just germinally horrible. But you know, we were wrong.
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: And look at today, I mean that's basically most of
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: Europe is looking towards the leadership of of Germany at
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: this point. You do, you do talk about the globalization
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: issue as well, and that's a big part of this.
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: And yeah, sort of right, like this rise of nationalism
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: and populism. Look at the end of the day, it's
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: all economically driven, right, It's always economically driven. Even you know,
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: even these ethnic art fights and these there's usually you're
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: fighting over resources, right, You're fighting over over that. So
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: it's interesting you put the you look back at the
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: two thousand and eight financial crisis, and you see your
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: book is really a series of missed opportunities, right, I mean,
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: I think that that's probably a good way to note it.
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: And so NATO Russia nineties missed opportunity. You view the
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: two thousand and eight financial crisis as a major missed
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: opportunity for Obama explained.
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 3: So I think until the financial crisis just as they
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 3: had been unilateralism abroad with respect to geopolitical things, there
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 3: was basically unilateralism at home with respect to macroeconomic policy.
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 3: Because you know, the backstory was the Keynesians had been
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 3: discredited because they apparently couldn't deal with the stagflation of
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 3: the seventies, and that led to the advent, you know,
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 3: the mainstreaming of neoliberal thinking that had been hovering in
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 3: think thanks for decades by Reagan and Thatcher, you know,
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 3: and the center left parties were all on the defensive.
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 3: So they were getting hopping aboard that train. You know,
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 3: the new Democrats in here and the new you know,
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 3: labor in the UK, Meteorron's about turn in the eighties
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 3: and so forth, you know, the only way to powers,
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 3: you know, as Margaret Thatcher said, there is no alternative, Tina.
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 3: This became this famous phrase, you know, there is no alternative.
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 3: We are in and that became the consensus. And so,
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 3: you know, the center left parties all over the Democrat
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 3: land of the board, and you know, it was hegemonic
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 3: until the financial crisis, and in fact it accelerated with
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 3: the collapse of communism because really there was no alternative.
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 3: There's you know, communist economics was gone. But then then
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 3: the whole you know, the world ends in two thousand
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 3: and eight for three days. And what happens, uh, the elites.
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 3: First of all, they reached for all the Canesian instruments
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 3: they've been decrying for decades, you know, and spend billions
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 3: of dollars recapitalizing the banks, bailing out the elites and
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 3: so forth. But two things, and this is the missed opportunity.
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 3: I think. First of all, they continue with imposing austerity
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 3: on everyone else, like so it's Keynesianism for the elites
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 3: and you know, austerity for everyone else. And they don't
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 3: understand how much their legitimacy has been blown because they've
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 3: been saying for years, we're the only people who know
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 3: how to run capitalist democracies. We're the only people who
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 3: know how to run the financial global order, you know.
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 3: And now they look ridiculous because they were completely blindsided
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 3: by this mess. And that's when the populist entrepreneurs see
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 3: the opportunity to come in and say, no, it's not
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 3: true that there is no alternative to you guys, there is.
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 3: You know, the right wing party in Germany is called
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 3: alternative for Dustan, there is an alternative, and we're going
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 3: to be in and we're going to do a lot
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 3: of things that you people don't like, and we're going
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 3: to mobilize the people who've been left behind for decades,
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 3: and we're going to mobilize and them by attacking you,
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 3: by attacking globalization, by attacking everything you've been trying to
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 3: do since the nineteen eighties. So I think, you know,
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 3: what they didn't see was that, you know, and I
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 3: think this is where I folt the Obama administration that yes,
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 3: he had to bail out the banks, but that also
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 3: gave him leverage, you know, to say, well, the condition
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 3: for bailing out Wall Street is to bail out mainstream
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 3: and reinvest in in you know, new infrastructure for the
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 3: twenty first century and you know, transforming the labor force
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 3: and creating the conditions for broad based economic growth that's
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 3: going to benefit most people instead of this model where
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 3: you know, all the benefits go to the top.
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: It's still capital driven essentially, and.
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 3: Capital heart harvesting. You know. You know that's there's Piquetti's
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 3: famous book that you know, the returns to capital on
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 3: this ne only liberal model. I just vastly exceed the
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 3: returns to to labor, and so they just get further
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 3: and further behind.
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: You've diagnosed, you know, what what can be undone? What
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: you know? Nothing is permanent. I mean, you know that's
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: one thing we all learn is that is the second
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: we think something is in cement, you figure out it's not.
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: What can you unwind? And you know, look, I ask
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: because you know, I think that I think there's a
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: real question is what can be done in twenty twenty nine?
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: And I obviously say that because look, we have a
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: president now that really believes in this more nationalistic sense
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: everything's bilateral. And I always say that, you know, once
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: the biggest economy in the world does it, everybody else
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: is going to start to raise barriers. And that's what
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: we've seen. So how do you begin to undo some
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: of this If you think it can be undone in
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty nine, what does it look like? What's what's realistic?
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 3: Well? I do think you know what we are not
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 3: seeing is a realistic Project twenty twenty nine or realistic
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 3: equivalent of the Project twenty twenty five that the Republicans developed.
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: And that's because the left can't agree on it, right
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: there's this. I always say, there's a sixty percent majority
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: against populism, trump ism, nationalism, whatever you want to call.
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 3: But that's all they agree on exactly. But so, you know,
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 3: what are the right ideas? So I think I don't
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 3: think i'mwind is the right word, because you know, the
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 3: good policies for the twenty thirties and twenty forties are
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 3: not going to be a rehash of you know, New
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 3: Deal liberalism or or Great Society liberalism because we're living
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 3: in a different world. But what is needed is a
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 3: model for capitalist economic growth that's going to produce benefits
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 3: that are widely shared, and that means investing in twenty
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 3: first century infrastructure. It's applied AI. It is investing in
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 3: the in the labor force in ways that will make
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 3: them able to adapt to what's coming down the pike.
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 3: So I do think they're people. I mean, I'm very
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 3: impressed by people like Gina Riamando's take on these former
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 3: Biden Common Secretary and governor of Rhode Island. I mean,
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 3: she's very focused on developing transformation of the labor force to be,
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 3: you know, you able to compete in this new environment.
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: She's interesting. I was at a at an event with her,
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: and she was sort of the main guest smart and
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: she said something, and I remember this couple of years ago,
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: it was after she left office, but she said, you
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: know what nobody talks about anymore, that we haven't we
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: haven't reimagined our public school, public education system in one
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: hundred years, you know. And it's like that you want
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: to talk about workforce transformation, it actually begins with sort
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: of reimagining our public education system, which is just an
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: atrocious mess right now.
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, if you look at recive rates and math rates,
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 3: you know they're terrible. And you you know, the left
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 3: tends to talk too much I think about, you know,
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 3: civic education and so on. You know, what we need
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 3: is K through twelve literacy and that prepares people for
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 3: the workforce. But it's not just that. I think, you know,
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 3: the world in which people finish their education with a
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 3: high school or college and then work for somebody for
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 3: thirty years and then retired. That world is never coming back,
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 3: and so we're going to need a workforce that can
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 3: constantly be retrained, go back into you know, all kinds
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 3: of education because the rate of change in the economy
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 3: is so faest and I'm.
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: Well, let's take this. Let me let's let's take this,
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: because what you're talking about is is, look, the modern
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: employee for the next thirty years has to be flexible. Yeah,
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: but there are certain things you have to provide for
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: them in order to allow allow them to be flexible
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: as employees.
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: Right. Why do most people get a job today because
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: they need benefits, they need health care, they need certain
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: things that come with the job, and that actually prevents flexibility,
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: that prevents portability. That was in theory while Obamacare was
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: designed the way it was designed, but it isn't quite
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: working that way. What I mean is it a rethinking
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: of the social compact in order to give workers more
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: flexibility to survive in this new era. So what do
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: I mean by that? That's childcare, that's healthcare? I mean
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: does the state have to expand? And I know that's
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: going to make some people uncomfortable if if that's the answers.
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So, you know a lot of the writing about
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 3: this try it makes it distinctioning what they call predistribution
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 3: and redistribution. So the old welfare state in a tax
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 3: the rich and give people handouts poor is very unappealing.
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 3: First of all, people don't like being given handouts. They
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 3: want to work and earn a living. And the politics
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 3: of taxation is explosively toxic anyway.
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: Correct, It just blinds people.
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's I think the smart way to go
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 3: is to incentivize business to see that it's it's in
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 3: their interest to invest in the source of social and
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 3: economic infrastructure that's going to produce a workforce that they're
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 3: going to want to hire. And so, you know, I
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 3: think that is more the direction. You know, I did
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 3: a book in twenty twenty with a guy called Michael
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 3: Gratz or called The Wolf at the Door that's about
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 3: the kind of policies that promote that, and I'm just
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 3: building on that in my current book. But yeah, exactly,
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 3: you've got to have you've got to have portable health insurance.
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 3: They're more nice, expensive ways to do that. You've got
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 3: to have childcare. You've got to have the things that
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 3: make it possible for people to work flexibly, because you know,
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 3: we're still living in a world in which between thirty
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 3: and forty percent of the US population cannot find four
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 3: hundred dollars for a medical emergency without borrowing it or
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 3: putting it on a credit card that they can't pay
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 3: off at the end of the month. You know, so
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 3: people are one financial hiccop away from having a car
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 3: repossessed or you know, be defaulting on their mortgage. You know,
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 3: that is not that is not viable for people who
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 3: are going to be moving from job to job and
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 3: going to have to retrain themselves and perhaps have to
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 3: move physically.
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: And you know, I want to talk about migration here
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: a minute, in two different ways. We usually talk about
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: migration with immigrants. But you know, one of one to me,
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: one of the things that that people don't do enough
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: and we don't encourage enough is domestic migration. Right. Arguably,
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: domestic migration is what got us out of the depression
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: as much as as government did. People just decided, I'm
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: going to go move somewhere else where there's jobs, and
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: you know, we had you know, and that's that's healthy
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: if you haven't leave. But it's hard, and so yes,
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: we make it hard. Yeah, and in a way almost
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: we can't. Because if you don't encourage domestic migration, then
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: you are going to be more reliant on on on
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 1: international migration immigrants. And if you're an economy that doesn't then,
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: you know, I mean, look, I don't think our economy
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: can survive and thrive without immigration. But we're in a
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: moment right now where obviously, whenever there's a whenever there's
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: a concern over resources, everybody points at foreigners first.
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, that is one of the biggest
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 3: challenge because all of these countries where the politics of
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 3: immigration is so toxic, they all need immigration because they
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 3: all have shrinking working age populations supporting expanding retired populations.
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 3: And if you look at the demography of this, it's
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 3: absolutely terrifying. What's coming, Okay, I mean in.
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: Order for me to get so security, well, you know,
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: I'm convinced there's going to have to be a massive
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: you know, I joke. They're not going to just open
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: the borders. They're going to be offering incentives to fly
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: over the border. You know.
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah. But so if you you know, if you look
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 3: and here that you know, if we separate the politics
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 3: from the from the economics of it just for a minute.
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 3: You know, if you look at the countries that have
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 3: who are not clamping down massively on immigration, like in Europe,
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 3: it's who is it, It's Spain, and it is Poland.
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 3: Poland's got you know, got a lot of Ukrainian immigrants.
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 3: In Spain has immigrants from Latin America and from Mara
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 3: and it's a government that's quite friendly to immigration. That
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 3: they're performing very well, and all the economists will tell
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 3: you they're performing well because of the immigration. And you know,
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 3: the if you remember, one of the things Trump was
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 3: running on in twenty four was, you know, he was saying, well,
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 3: the jobs are going to immigrants. It was one of
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 3: the accurate things Trump actually said. But it doesn't matter
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 3: because you know, we have very long unemployment and it's
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 3: a segmented economy. The immigrants are not taking American jobs anyway.
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 3: But so the fact that we're creating jobs that go
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 3: to immigrants or the Spanish are or the Polish are.
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 3: The point is that then earn an income and pay
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 3: taxes which then can support you know, the expanding retired populations.
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 3: And so you know, finding a way to make that
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 3: politically sailable is hugely important because without immigration, we're just
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 3: going to have intergenerational class warfare as you have more
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 3: and more and more retired people being supported by shrinking shrinking,
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 3: shrinking working as population. I mean the basic arithmetic just
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 3: doesn't add up.
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 1: So to get back to where we started, but looking
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: at it from a slightly different prism, because you talked
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: about how, you know, we didn't we treated Russia, we
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: treated the end of Cold War more like the end
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: of World War One than the end of World War two. Yeah,
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: so do you You know, Neil Ferguson is probably the
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: most prominent writer about this, which is are we living
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 1: in a nineteen thirties world right now?
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 3: In some respects we are in that that was also
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 3: a period of massive economic dislocation. It was also it
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 3: was a period of fragmented political parties all over Europe
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 3: where and particularly on the left, you know, the all
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 3: the sense the parties on the left were squabbling with
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 3: each other rather than paying attention to what was happening
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 3: with the rise of right wing populism, and you know,
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 3: the the going off the gold standard produced sort of
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 3: you know, massive internal dislocation in all of these countries,
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 3: and it didn't end well. So you know, I think
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 3: a lot of the challenges others us sort of structurally
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 3: similar to the challenges that existed then, you know, and
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 3: so we really it makes it all the it makes
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 3: it more. All the more imperative that we think about
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 3: getting to a world in which there can be what
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 3: economists called inclusive growth. Growth is benefits are broadly shared.
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's not rocket science. You know, if if
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 3: most people are not benefiting from economic activity, they didn't
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 3: have any reason to support the existing order. And you know,
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 3: while the populists don't have policies that help, you know,
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 3: they don't work because you know, first of all, they're
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 3: fighting the lost war. The jobs are not going to
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 3: immigrants and globalization anymore. The jobs are going to technology. Secondly,
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 3: you know, they are choking off the one source of
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 3: support for government revenues that is so vital. We've just
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 3: talked about that. So it's not like they have the answers.
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 3: They mostly thrived by attacking the mainstream elites, not by
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 3: defending you know, if you look at Nigel Farage or
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 3: the alternative for deuts Stein to a marine Mepen, their
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 3: policies are fantastical. So it's not like they have answers
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 3: that they're political gasoline is you know, attack delegitimate the
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 3: existing elitest and say you don't have the answers, which
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 3: is true, and so you know that the point is
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 3: to have answers.
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: Is anybody getting this right?
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 3: I think? I think Spain is a pretty good example. Uh,
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 3: and it's the best performing economy in the OECD has
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 3: been for last year. And you know, you don't have
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 3: to you don't need to talk to you know, you
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 3: don't need Paul Krugman to you know, go read the
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 3: Economist magazine, go and read the mainstream for Financial Times.
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 3: Why are the Spaniards doing so well? And it's it's because,
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 3: you know, here you have a prime minister in Sanchez
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 3: who just who he says, you know, we can be
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 3: open and wealthy or closed and poor. It's you know,
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 3: and sure there's a far right populist party called BOS
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 3: in Spain, but you know, it's support level. It's not
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 3: half of what the national rally in France are getting.
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 3: Alternatively Deutscheiner getting in in Germany. So I think, you know,
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 3: I think that's it's it's one example where uh that
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 3: bucking the sort of the standard story. And I'm doing
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 3: pretty well. Spain's is, as I said, it's probably the
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 3: best performing economy in Europe right now.
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: There's one giant topic we haven't discussed since the fall
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: of the Cold War and that's the rise of China. Yeah,
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: how how does that? You know? There's this there's a
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: there's now a new consensus. I think in the elite
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: circles of Washington there's still a bipartist. I always say,
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: the bipartisan foreign policy consensus is still quite strong, right
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: in the quote unquote blob as some that are derivative
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: of it. I want to be a little derision towards it.
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: But the new collective wisdom is we got China wrong,
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: and do you accept that promise?
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 3: I do think we got China wrong. But I think
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 3: it's a little different than the other things I talk
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 3: about in my book, because in every other decision I
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 3: talk about in my book, there were many people at
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 3: the time saying, don't do this, or do the opposite
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 3: of this, and people blew them off and ignored them.
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 3: Whereas I think, you know, if you go back to
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 3: the nineties, people really didn't get it. I mean, there's
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 3: not the equivalent of the Richard Nixon or the George
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 3: Cannons or the you know or the you know, They're
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 3: not a whole lot people saying so in that sense, yes,
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 3: we got it wrong, but it is more of a
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 3: twenty twenty hindsight judgment than it is with respect to
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 3: these other topics. That having been said, I think that
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 3: the way we're responding to China now is crazy because
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 3: you know, I mean, on the one hand, you know
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 3: that Trump Trump's big motivation is the decline of America
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 3: and China is our principal rival. But everything he's doing
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 3: is benefiting China enormously.
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: I mean enormously. I just look at this. I mean,
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: you know, take the unintended consequence from the choking off
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 1: of the straight You've now got small developing countries and
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: mid sized countries who are very dependent on oil from
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: the Gulf going all right, we've got to do a
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: transition to alternative fuels. And where are they buying their supplies.
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 1: There's only one market them to China in eight the
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 1: United States.
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 3: And you know, they're diversifying their trade, they're accelerating their
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 3: investments in Europe, you know, and we're still you know,
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 3: we're still dependent on the.
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: Possible China's model is going to win the twenty first century.
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 3: I doubt it. I mean, I don't think they have
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 3: a model in the sense that you know, every there's
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 3: there's every time you have an authoritarian country that does well,
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 3: especially in the initial phases of industrial industrialization, everybody starts saying, oh,
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 3: you know, that's going to be the model. But you know,
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 3: it's very hard to run a complex economy with an
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 3: authoritarian government because you know, you the reason competition is
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 3: important is not just for efficiency, but also for generating information.
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 3: And in the prime system is a system of information.
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 3: And so yeah, it's fine when you've just got what
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 3: you've got to build, you know, railroads and bridges and
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 3: basic infrastructures obviously what you have to do. But once
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 3: you get into more complex economy, you need you need
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 3: price mechanisms, you need people to be able to make
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 3: their own investment decisions and so on. And you know,
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 3: Chinese facing huge economic challenges of their own. They've big
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 3: growth slow down, they've got huge inequalities between the prosperous
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 3: regions and on the coast and the rest of China.
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 3: So they you know, and they've they've then have their
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 3: own challenges. So I don't think the Chinese model is
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 3: you know, going to run rampant. And you know, if
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 3: you look, they've made some time this too. If you look,
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 3: we talked about demographics. Their one child policy is now
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 3: coming home to roost with a disaster of enormous proportions
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 3: for the next twenty years. You know, they got a
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 3: worker problem, right, huge problem of a shrinking workforce and
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 3: expanding retire So actually, you know, the medium term prognosis,
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 3: the Indian India looks better than China if you're sort
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 3: of taking the now the twenty five year view.
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 1: Oh, it's interesting about India. How would you you know,
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: sort of India is in some ways further along this
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: nationalist road than even the United States, right, yeah, in.
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 3: Some ways, but they have much better demography, and the
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 3: economy is very decentralized, and you know, the politics is
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 3: very messy, but it is competitive, you know, and you know,
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 3: look already lost his majority and he's got to do
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 3: coalition politics now. And I think that's all to the good.
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 3: You know. I think just as you need competition for
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 3: healthy economics, you've got to have competition for healthy politics.
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 3: And so I think it's it's it's great that you
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 3: know that they that they forcing to be forced to
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 3: come to grips with that.
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 1: So there's there's a parallel that I've been obsessed with
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: and I just would love your take on it, which is,
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: you know, for the longest time, it felt as if
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: the United States exported its politics, you know, what succeeds,
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: and it would export out to Europe and all of
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 1: this stuff. Right, you know, you wouldn't have had Tony
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 1: Blair without Bill Clinton. You might not have had you know,
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: you know, although Maggie Thatcher came for Reagan. But you know,
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: sort of there's always been this synergy. And I'm watching
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 1: the UK major parties suddenly not look like major parties anymore. Right,
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 1: the likelihood that the next national election has two parties
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 1: not named Labor or the Tories in the top two slots,
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: it's pretty high. Now, look, they have a system that
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 1: supports this. But when you look at the parallel tracks
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 1: the UK has been on politically and the United States
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 1: has been on politically, it's been a series of rejections
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: and the only way the Outparty has won is by
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: frustration with the End Party. There has not been a
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 1: essentially the Out Party really hasn't gotten reelected, right, It's
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: just been this sort of you know, even the times
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: where Conservatives kept their majority, they had to have a
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 1: new leader, right there had to be some sort of
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: some sort of change. Yeah, are are are we here
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: in the United States? It is sort of like, are
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: we on the tail end of this? Like what happens
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 1: in the UK is eventually going to happen here. Our
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 1: parties may collapse and we may see two new parties
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 1: or something like it. Or maybe we've already had it,
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: you know, and Trump just kept the name. He basically
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: started a new party, but he just kept the name
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 1: of it old one.
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 3: Well, I'd say to a couple of things about that.
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 3: First of all, these two countries are very likely to
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 3: have two parties. They might not be these two because
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 3: of that. If you have single member district big single
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 3: member districts, you're going to get to.
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: No other way to do it.
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 3: But could you know that doesn't mean parties don't disappear.
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 3: We we had a scrambling in the eighteen fifties Britain.
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 3: You know, the Liberal Party disappeared in the early twentieth century.
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 3: But you probably with these electoral systems, you'll probably end
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 3: up with two parties just to be doing I think
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 3: you're one hundred percent correct when you say the only
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 3: way parties are getting elected in these countries is by
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 3: rejecting the incumbents. It's not what the but you know,
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 3: I think it's because both parties have essentially been pushing
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 3: the same policies, and the problem with the policies is
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 3: that they benefit that all the benefits flow to the
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 3: to the top, and most people get left behind. So
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 3: what I where I you know, I think that the
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 3: it's the economy stupid was sort of right. But I
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 3: have a I actually have a paper called It's grown
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 3: out of the my after the full book that we're
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 3: talking about. It's called it's the politics stupid in the
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 3: sense that it's it's the way in which political elits
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 3: have responded to the economic changes that that is causing
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 3: that their rage against the mainstream political elits. In that sense,
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 3: saying it's the economy stupid doesn't quite capture it, because
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 3: it's really the failure of political elits to think about
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 3: what the the leaving, you know, the everything to the
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 3: market in a globalized economy was going to mean for
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 3: their voters and respond to it. And that's the real
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 3: nub of it.
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 1: In the nineteen thirties, the era led to a war,
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 1: to a hot war. I'm actually more optimistic that we're
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 1: not going to have that our economies are so integrated,
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 1: war is more difficult, right, I mean we're already seeing
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: that with Iran, right, like Trump, what might make more
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 1: strategic sense? He realizes it just so screws up the
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 1: global economy and he's desperately trying to get out. You
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 1: can kind of feel it, and the problem is the
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 1: Iranians can see it too, and they're using that as leverage.
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 1: But what does that tell you that, I mean, does
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: it give you a tiny bit of optimism that we're
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 1: probably not going to end up in a world war
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 1: like we did after the nineteen thirties.
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 3: So I think that there's an optimistic story then a
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 3: pessimistic story. So the pessimistic story is, well, you're just
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 3: saying this makes us Ohio. So yeah, you know, because
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 3: all these economies, you know, despite the trade will, these
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 3: economies are so integrated.
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 1: So we've all learned this COVID. COVID really taught everybody this,
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 1: I think.
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so that you know, if it does all blow up,
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 3: the results are going to be even more catastrophic than
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 3: doing the Great Depression. And you know, we saw this
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 3: during the financial crisis. You know, what did everybody do
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 3: even though the US housing market, course the whole thing
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 3: in the American banks were going bankrupt, everybody was buying treasuries,
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 3: right well, the all world was blocking to buy treasuries
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 3: because it was the safe the safe haven. And you know, now,
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 3: you know, with forty trillion dollars of debt, people say, oh, well,
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 3: you know, at some point it could really just implode still.
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 3: But you know, if you look at it in a
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 3: country like China, how much they have invested in US
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 3: equities in the stock market, you know, so that you know,
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 3: you could say, nobody's going to want to pay the
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 3: costs of really upsetting this apple card. But if it
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 3: does kind of come unstuck, you know, it's yeah, so
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 3: it's kay stakes. The stakes keep going up, and so
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 3: it's sort of mutually assured destruction if you like, you know,
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 3: if anybody really lets it. You know. The other thing
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 3: I would say on the optimistic front is, since we're
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 3: having a pretty gloomy discussion here.
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 1: I know what, you know, there's a distinction.
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 3: Between optimism and hope. And you know, Martin Luther King,
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 3: towards the end of these life lives, is the optimistic anymore,
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 3: but he's hopeful. Well, you know, think about think about
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 3: Imagine it's nineteen forty six and you were born in
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 3: nineteen hundred. You're forty years old. Forty six years old, okay,
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 3: and somebody said to you, what is the future hold
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 3: in any of the Western democracies, the US? What is
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 3: the future hold? You look back on your life, what
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 3: did you just what did you live through? You know,
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 3: World War One, you know, the thirties, the Depression, World
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 3: War two, fascism. You know, you would look at the
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 3: world that you'd say, it's just one catastrophe after another.
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 3: And if somebody had come along and said, well, actually
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 3: we're on the verge of you know, four decades of
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 3: the most incredible inclusive growth the world has ever seen,
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 3: just said they're not is So, you know, I think
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 3: it is important to understand the big structural forces. But
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 3: you know, they're not overdetermining and overdetermined, and it's not
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 3: the case that there are things we there's nothing we
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 3: can do. Yeah.
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 1: One final area that I think we don't talk about
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 1: enough in the geopolitical space is these rise of stateless corporations. Yeah,
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 1: and we're going to have a handful of massive companies
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: that are going to be arguably as influential, if not
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 1: more so than you know, you know, we always let
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 1: me put it another way, the governorship of California is
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 1: always described, well, it's the fourth largest economy in the world,
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 1: and d da, dada da. Well what's Google? What's Amazon? Right, like,
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 1: what's what's whatever? Elon Musk is building, which will include
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 1: a dominance of low orbit satellites. They don't think we
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 1: and already we've seen this. He can turn Starlink on
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 1: and off and have an impact on which side has
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 1: the upper hand in the war between Russia and Ukraine. Yeah,
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 1: this doesn't feel like something one country can manage anymore.
• 1:53:05
  Speaker 1: But but this seems to be a challenge that didn't
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 1: exist in our previous eras of sort of of of
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 1: of world consternation, if you will.
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah, although you know the you know, the the robber
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 4: barons and all of them, they had copper power in
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 4: their own era, and you know that's why you got
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 4: you know, the Teddy Roosevelts and and so on, you know,
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 4: deciding to get behind anti.
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 3: Trust and you know it is it is it is
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 3: you dead right, it's you know, one of the huge
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 3: challenges of our era that in some sense, you know,
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 3: we've got a world in which there are kind of
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 3: global oligarchs who who.
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 1: Some of them don't even want to live in a
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 1: country they'll live on. Uh you know, you know, they
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 1: want to be you know, they want to be citizens
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 1: of an island that they create.
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but at the end of the day, you know,
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 3: they do need people to buy their products. They do,
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 3: you know, they do. They can't create a world of
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 3: you know, dispossessed thrones. Uh. Using choosing my words metaphorically
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 3: there because you know, at the end of the day,
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 3: they they they need markets, they need demand, they need consumers,
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 3: they need you know, so life always has more imagination
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 3: than us, but it does. I mean, it seems to
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 3: me they're going to have to be mechanisms to regulate
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 3: what they do, and governments are going to have to
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 3: cooperate to the with the design and implementation of them.
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 3: A lot of it will need to be carrots more
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 3: than sticks. I mean, I think it's really important to recognize. Uh.
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 3: And and I think this is a message you know,
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 3: I I generally think of myself as someone who's eclectic
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 3: in my politics, but a message that left needs to
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 3: to hear is you know, if business is not part
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 3: of the solution, it's going to be part of the problem.
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 3: The notion that anybody is going to ram solutions down
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 3: the throats of business is crazy. Labor is too weak
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 3: all over the world. You know, you need, you're going
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 3: in need. And by the way, something that history that
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 3: is forgotten is one of the reasons we got the
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 3: New Deal and the Great Society and the social democratic
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 3: welfare states in Europe was that business was very open
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 3: to them. They're not all business, but there was a
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 3: significant business elites who took the view, you know, we
• 1:55:55
  Speaker 3: better make sure the work is don't conclude they have
• 1:55:57
  Speaker 3: nothing to lose but their chains, because and they you know.
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 1: I think healthcare is a great place to start. If
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 1: you can take the cost of healthcare off the books
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 1: of Amazon, I promise you Amazon will be you know,
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 1: will be a board. I mean they you know, if
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 1: that's the trade off, I think there's there's something to
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 1: be done there. I always thought that you.
• 1:56:20
  Speaker 3: Can invest in education, healthcare, education they care. Yeah, Now
• 1:56:24
  Speaker 3: that's one of my central arguments, and and I think
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 3: it's hugely important and incentivizing, incentivizing business to be part
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 3: of the solution rather than trying to, you know, go
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 3: after them with sticks, because it's not going to work
• 1:56:43
  Speaker 3: for part of the partly for the reasons you've been look.
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 1: I tend to agree with you, but I have a
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 1: feeling that the left in our country here has not
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 1: they want their shot at this and they feel like
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 1: they haven't had their shot.
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 3: Well, I what I would just say, and this does
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 3: really concern me, which is, you know, the Trump administrations
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 3: on every measure is you know, cratering. It's with popularity,
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 3: including the signature issues that got it elected, like inflation,
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 3: the economy generally, immigration, and the left is kind of
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 3: reveling in the shot in Fluida, but you don't look
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 3: at if you look at the numbers, the Democrats are
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 3: more unpopular than they were in the early nineteen nineties
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 3: when language brought the Republicans back to power. And yes,
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 3: they could stumble back into office if you know, if
• 1:57:41
  Speaker 3: the Republicans self destruct, but six months later they'll look
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 3: like the starmer administrator.
• 1:57:47
  Speaker 1: I was just going to say, this is exactly what
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 1: happened in the UK. Yeah, Labor won this giant election.
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 3: I have have a center left government comes to power
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 3: with a huge majority. He could do anything at once
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 3: and has no idea what it wants to do. So
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 3: you know it did.
• 1:58:06
  Speaker 1: Is well is it? Is it too big? I mean
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 1: I kind of think, you know, this is why I
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 1: think or I think sometimes the coalition is too big.
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 1: I think the Democratic the anti Trump coalition is too
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 1: big to govern macause they can't agree right like you do.
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but Starmar didn't need all of them.
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 1: He could have had.
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 3: He could have had you know, forty or fifty labor
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 3: and peace voting against his policies and still gotten them
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 3: all through parliament. He just didn't have policies, you know,
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 3: he was he was just bering. And that's what I
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 3: worry about. For the Democrats, what do you make of mom?
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 1: Donnie?
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 3: Pardon?
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 1: What do you make of mom? Donnie? And because you know,
• 1:58:49
  Speaker 1: if he succeeds, I think you will see the socialist
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 1: Democrats on the rise nationally.
• 1:58:55
  Speaker 3: Well, what does succeed mean that you can't succeed as
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 3: an urban mayor in a mayora because the vast majority
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 3: of what he says he wants to do would have
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 3: to be done in Albany. And you know he can
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 3: open a few grocery stores. But I mean, what what
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 3: is he really?
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 1: You know, it's a great question. I don't know what
• 1:59:11
  Speaker 1: success looks like.
• 1:59:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think being a mayor of a
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 3: big urban city in America is sort of the question
• 1:59:22
  Speaker 3: is is I don't want to say, how do you fail?
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 3: But it's pretty close. I mean, how many people go
• 1:59:28
  Speaker 3: from that onto national politics? It's just it's just you
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 3: you know, it's to.
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 1: Do a job. To do the mayor's job. Well, it's
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 1: kind of dirty.
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 3: Very yeah, very and you know they're largely price takers.
• 1:59:44
  Speaker 3: They're not, you know, unless he can get Albany to
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 3: cooperate with his agen you know. Now he's an extremely
• 1:59:54
  Speaker 3: shrewd guy, a very smart guy, and but you know,
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 3: you it's a very good example. He's got to think
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 3: of positive incentives for business in New York that are
• 2:00:05
  Speaker 3: going to have big spin offs for the people he
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 3: really cares about. And that's the creative challenge for the
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 3: twenty first century. If you you know, you couldn't you know,
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 3: you could love the lost era of powerful trade unions
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 3: and all of that, but you know, the private sector,
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 3: unionized workforce in the United States, it's like eight percent,
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 3: it's this is you know, it isn't there, it's not
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 3: coming back.
• 2:00:34
  Speaker 1: Well Ian, this is a really provocative book. And like
• 2:00:37
  Speaker 1: I said, it sort of dovetails where you know, when
• 2:00:40
  Speaker 1: people ask, you know, what happened to American politics, and
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 1: I'm like, well, if you bring back the Cold War
• 2:00:46
  Speaker 1: you might be happy again. Well, we've brought back a
• 2:00:49
  Speaker 1: Cold war and we didn't know how to win the
• 2:00:52
  Speaker 1: last we we didn't know how to win the peace
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 1: and after the last one book was terrific. So congratulations,
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 1: I appreciate the time.
• 2:00:59
  Speaker 3: Well, thank you for having me on. I really appreciate it.
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 1: And where can people find your work? I mean, how
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 1: often do you when you say you write some extra
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 1: papers if people are interested, is there other places.
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 3: That you write? You know, just google me up, gone
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 3: my website. There's working papers there, all my other books
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 3: there excellent. But you know, this is the this is
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 3: the this is what we've been talking about today. The
• 2:01:24
  Speaker 3: end of the After the Fall is the culmination of
• 2:01:29
  Speaker 3: of what I've been doing for the list.
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 1: Well, and you know I always say that further away
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 1: we get from nineteen eighty nine, the clearer this thesis looks. Yeah,
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 1: you know, yeah, it always takes. It takes a generation,
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 1: or takes almost twenty five to thirty years to fully
• 2:01:46
  Speaker 1: understand what happened.
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll leave you with a Grade one line from
• 2:01:51
  Speaker 3: Ernest Hemingway on that point, when they asked him how
• 2:01:54
  Speaker 3: he went bankrupt, he said, first, gradually, then suddenly my favorite.
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 1: I love that line. I think I use it for
• 2:02:01
  Speaker 1: so many things these days, but there's there's always something
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 1: to it, and it's just terrific. Great to thank me.
• 2:02:18
  Speaker 1: Do grab that book. I think it helps fill in
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 1: the gaps of sometimes of my domestic political analysis on
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 1: sort of the Postcorp war fallout versus how it fit internationally.
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 1: But it's a terrific book. I highly recommend it. All Right,
• 2:02:32
  Speaker 1: it's time machine time. Where are we going back? Oh,
• 2:02:42
  Speaker 1: we're going to May sixth, nineteen thirty seven, just before
• 2:02:50
  Speaker 1: America's involvement in World War Two. It's the day the
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 1: sky caught fire. So there was a time when crossing
• 2:02:58
  Speaker 1: the Atlantic didn't getting on a plane. It meant boarding
• 2:03:02
  Speaker 1: something enormous, something elegant, and something that floated an airship.
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 1: It was a flying hotel in the sky. The ship
• 2:03:11
  Speaker 1: arriving in New Jersey on May sixth, nineteen thirty seven,
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 1: was about eighty feet shorter than the Titanic. By the way,
• 2:03:20
  Speaker 1: that's how big this thing is. Okay, you know how
• 2:03:24
  Speaker 1: large and Titanic. Queen Mary's still around, so you have
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 1: an idea of that, right, that's the ambition of thing
• 2:03:30
  Speaker 1: in that afternoon, because it still was pretty unusual thing
• 2:03:33
  Speaker 1: to see one of these things land. There were people
• 2:03:36
  Speaker 1: gathered to just simply watch it arrive. Obviously people there
• 2:03:39
  Speaker 1: to pick up people, but just people wanted to watch
• 2:03:42
  Speaker 1: the spectacle of this giant floating airship get sort of
• 2:03:47
  Speaker 1: pulled down to the ground. Right. For many Americans there
• 2:03:53
  Speaker 1: in New Jersey, they thought they were watching the future,
• 2:03:55
  Speaker 1: and within minutes they thought they were watching the end
• 2:03:58
  Speaker 1: of days. The airship was the eh the led Zeppelin
• 2:04:04
  Speaker 1: one nine, the Hindenburg, more than eight hundred feet long, cabins,
• 2:04:10
  Speaker 1: dining rooms, observation decks. If you want to get a
• 2:04:14
  Speaker 1: slight picture in your head, Indiana Jones and the Holy Grail.
• 2:04:19
  Speaker 1: There's that mouns where Sean Connery and Harrison Ford are
• 2:04:22
  Speaker 1: on a zeppelin there, so you can put that picture
• 2:04:25
  Speaker 1: in your head. Remember how beautiful it was. The dining
• 2:04:28
  Speaker 1: room the observation deck, and a trip from Germany to
• 2:04:31
  Speaker 1: New Jersey took about two and a half days. By
• 2:04:35
  Speaker 1: the way, that was pretty fast for its time, but
• 2:04:37
  Speaker 1: it was already not the fastest option on the horizon.
• 2:04:41
  Speaker 1: But the arrivals they always drew crowds, not because they
• 2:04:44
  Speaker 1: were rare, but because they were remarkable. It was still
• 2:04:46
  Speaker 1: one of the largest machines ever built, descending slowly out
• 2:04:51
  Speaker 1: of the sky like some sort of spaceship. Right now,
• 2:04:55
  Speaker 1: this wasn't unproven technology. For more than thirty years, commercial
• 2:04:59
  Speaker 1: zeppelin travel had built a remarkable record over two thousand flights,
• 2:05:03
  Speaker 1: more than a million miles traveled, tens of thousands of passengers,
• 2:05:07
  Speaker 1: and not a single passenger injury. But by the mid
• 2:05:11
  Speaker 1: thirties there weren't many of these ships left. Britain had
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 1: abandoned them after the crash of the R one oh one,
• 2:05:17
  Speaker 1: the United States lost the USS Akron and the USS Macon,
• 2:05:21
  Speaker 1: and by nineteen thirty seven it was no longer a
• 2:05:24
  Speaker 1: global industry. It was largely just Germany that was still
• 2:05:27
  Speaker 1: doing the Zeppelins through ships like the LZ one two
• 2:05:32
  Speaker 1: seven Graft Zeppelin and the Hindenburg that kept this idea alive.
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 1: And it wasn't just transportation. The tale of the Hindenburg
• 2:05:42
  Speaker 1: carried the insignia of Nazi Germany swastikas visible in the
• 2:05:47
  Speaker 1: sky over the United States in nineteen thirty seven. So
• 2:05:51
  Speaker 1: this just wasn't a passenger ship. It was also a statement.
• 2:05:55
  Speaker 1: So on that day at Lakehurst, New Jersey, crowds are
• 2:05:59
  Speaker 1: watching camera rolling. There's a radio crew there to record
• 2:06:03
  Speaker 1: what's supposed to be a routine feature. This was supposed
• 2:06:06
  Speaker 1: to be the first anniversary of Transatlantic passenger service. Well,
• 2:06:13
  Speaker 1: the ship approaches the mooring mast. That's a routine for
• 2:06:17
  Speaker 1: these airships. It's familiar, it's expected. And then something goes wrong.
• 2:06:21
  Speaker 1: There's a spark, there's a flash, Flames begin to spread,
• 2:06:26
  Speaker 1: and in thirty four seconds, the entire airship is destroyed.
• 2:06:30
  Speaker 1: It's burning, it's collapsing, it's falling out of the sky.
• 2:06:35
  Speaker 1: And as the fire takes hold, the people watching aren't
• 2:06:39
  Speaker 1: just seeing a machine fall, they're watching something else, to
• 2:06:44
  Speaker 1: a symbol, Nazi Germany's most visible symbol in the sky
• 2:06:48
  Speaker 1: is falling in flames over American soil. And then there's
• 2:06:54
  Speaker 1: a voice. It's a reporter named Herbert Morrison, and he's
• 2:06:57
  Speaker 1: there to record the celebration of this first anniversary. Instead
• 2:07:01
  Speaker 1: he's narrating a disaster, and then his voice breaks and
• 2:07:06
  Speaker 1: one of the most famous lines ever uttered in mass media.
• 2:07:09
  Speaker 1: Oh the humanity now. Morrison would later say he shouted
• 2:07:14
  Speaker 1: that because he believed everybody on board had died, but
• 2:07:18
  Speaker 1: actually they hadn't. Of the ninety seven people on board
• 2:07:21
  Speaker 1: sixty two survived, believe it or not, thirty five passengers
• 2:07:25
  Speaker 1: and crew were killed, along with one ground crew member,
• 2:07:28
  Speaker 1: thirty six in total. And here's what changed. Morson actually
• 2:07:32
  Speaker 1: wasn't broadcasting live. The recording was flown to New York
• 2:07:36
  Speaker 1: and then aired the very next day, but as if
• 2:07:38
  Speaker 1: it was live to tape, so when people heard it,
• 2:07:42
  Speaker 1: it felt live. It was this first experiential media moment,
• 2:07:47
  Speaker 1: if you will. It was raw, it was unfiltered. So
• 2:07:53
  Speaker 1: this was the first time a recorded unfolding disaster was
• 2:07:58
  Speaker 1: presented to the public as breaking news. If you ever
• 2:08:03
  Speaker 1: wondered when did the news first break May sixth nineteen
• 2:08:06
  Speaker 1: thirty seven, people didn't just learn about the Hindenberg. They
• 2:08:10
  Speaker 1: experienced it, and they experienced it together. At the time,
• 2:08:14
  Speaker 1: there were questions about why this happened, Was it an accident,
• 2:08:19
  Speaker 1: was it a structural failure? Was it sabotage? Well, the
• 2:08:22
  Speaker 1: official Commerce Department finding pointed to static electricity that they
• 2:08:27
  Speaker 1: thought ignited a hydrogen leak, but the sabotage theory never
• 2:08:32
  Speaker 1: fully died. And in the end that question almost doesn't
• 2:08:35
  Speaker 1: matter because even if it was sabotage, it wouldn't have
• 2:08:38
  Speaker 1: saved the industry, right because the ship was using a
• 2:08:42
  Speaker 1: hydrogen which was very flammable. Helium was much safer, but
• 2:08:46
  Speaker 1: in the thirties the United States controlled most of the
• 2:08:48
  Speaker 1: world's helium supply, and guess what we had refused to
• 2:08:52
  Speaker 1: export it to Nazi Germany. That said, even with helium,
• 2:08:57
  Speaker 1: airships were still slow, crewe intensive, vulnerable to weather, and
• 2:09:04
  Speaker 1: airplanes were just improving rapidly. Helium might have made the
• 2:09:08
  Speaker 1: airship safer, but it wasn't going to make them competitive.
• 2:09:13
  Speaker 1: So when the timing was really bad for this industry.
• 2:09:16
  Speaker 1: When the Hindenburg burns, it didn't create doubt. It just
• 2:09:18
  Speaker 1: confirmed it. Right, there was already questions about this and
• 2:09:24
  Speaker 1: you and this is something that happens when the public
• 2:09:26
  Speaker 1: sees it happen in real time too, when they see
• 2:09:28
  Speaker 1: it all at once. The flames to collapse the voice.
• 2:09:31
  Speaker 1: You know, the Hindenburg just didn't fail technically, it failed publicly,
• 2:09:36
  Speaker 1: right at a moment when the public had somewhere else
• 2:09:39
  Speaker 1: to go airplanes, So technologies don't die just because they break.
• 2:09:44
  Speaker 1: They die when the fear feels universal, the flaw feels fundamental,
• 2:09:50
  Speaker 1: and the alternative is ready to go. And that's why
• 2:09:54
  Speaker 1: the airship era didn't die because it had been unsafe
• 2:09:58
  Speaker 1: for decades. It worked, it was safe, it was liable.
• 2:10:00
  Speaker 1: It died because for thirty four seconds in front of
• 2:10:03
  Speaker 1: the world it looked unsafe. And once people see something
• 2:10:07
  Speaker 1: that way together, they don't forget it. Because a part
• 2:10:12
  Speaker 1: of me wonders, how come we haven't tried to do
• 2:10:15
  Speaker 1: this more? Would people pay stupid? You know, we think
• 2:10:18
  Speaker 1: about faster ways to get across the Atlantic. We know
• 2:10:22
  Speaker 1: how much people love just sitting on a cruise ship.
• 2:10:26
  Speaker 1: It is mildly surprising one of these irrationally rich people
• 2:10:31
  Speaker 1: haven't tried to bring back the floating Zeppelins. Who knows,
• 2:10:35
  Speaker 1: maybe after hearing this, I'll have inspired some boards silicon
• 2:10:38
  Speaker 1: billionaire to do just that. So with that, there's your
• 2:10:40
  Speaker 1: lesson this week. Ask Chuck, all right, it's ask Chuck time.
• 2:10:54
  Speaker 1: First question comes from John Guyersville, California, and he writes
• 2:10:58
  Speaker 1: about the last episode or it was about my Wednesday
• 2:11:03
  Speaker 1: the Wednesday podcast, and he says, today you went from
• 2:11:06
  Speaker 1: normalization of Trump's many horrendous deeds to the indictment of
• 2:11:09
  Speaker 1: Komi a political enemy, to saying it would be atrocious
• 2:11:12
  Speaker 1: if the first thing in Democratic Congress did was to
• 2:11:13
  Speaker 1: impeach Trump. Are you really going to say that in
• 2:11:16
  Speaker 1: the pile of deeds he's done since being elected, which,
• 2:11:18
  Speaker 1: as you point out, are so many, they're quickly forgotten
• 2:11:21
  Speaker 1: that there's nothing impeachable. Just take today's isn't asking the
• 2:11:25
  Speaker 1: DOJ to charge of political enemy and abuse of power?
• 2:11:27
  Speaker 1: How about impeding the freedom of the press. I think
• 2:11:30
  Speaker 1: you've fallen into the normalization trap yourself. I'm not a
• 2:11:32
  Speaker 1: knee jerk Trump hater. I can point to several things
• 2:11:35
  Speaker 1: he's done which have some benefits, But surely there have
• 2:11:37
  Speaker 1: been no president with more impeachable in the history of
• 2:11:40
  Speaker 1: the republic. So yes, I think there are plenty of
• 2:11:46
  Speaker 1: impeachable offenses. But one of the things that we forget
• 2:11:51
  Speaker 1: about impeachment is, you know, one of my favorite you know,
• 2:11:55
  Speaker 1: there's a line in law school that says, uh, it's
• 2:12:00
  Speaker 1: something about you know, I think it's something to happen
• 2:12:03
  Speaker 1: to do with you know, can you sue for this?
• 2:12:05
  Speaker 1: And the answer is the point is is that you
• 2:12:07
  Speaker 1: can file suit on anything. Right, Well, impeachment is sort
• 2:12:11
  Speaker 1: of one of those things. What's an impeachable fence? Whatever
• 2:12:14
  Speaker 1: a majority in the House of Representatives thinks it is right.
• 2:12:18
  Speaker 1: So now you've pointed out things that I think we
• 2:12:21
  Speaker 1: collectively if we did a poll of American citizens, and
• 2:12:26
  Speaker 1: I almost wonder if we should do this right and
• 2:12:28
  Speaker 1: whatever gets sixty five percent or more should be seen
• 2:12:32
  Speaker 1: as something that maybe you write the articles because the
• 2:12:36
  Speaker 1: founders did figure out that you cannot throw somebody out
• 2:12:39
  Speaker 1: of office unless it's two thirds, and the whole point
• 2:12:41
  Speaker 1: of the two thirds is to make sure you had
• 2:12:42
  Speaker 1: at least half somewhere between a third and a half
• 2:12:46
  Speaker 1: of the other party, or is of the supporters of
• 2:12:49
  Speaker 1: the person you're impeaching, on board with this. And that
• 2:12:51
  Speaker 1: gets me back because I understand what you're saying. You're
• 2:12:54
  Speaker 1: saying on one hand, I was contradicting myself. I'm pointing
• 2:12:56
  Speaker 1: out all these different ways that what's wrong that's saying
• 2:13:00
  Speaker 1: the biggest mistake Democrats we've made would be start with impeachment.
• 2:13:04
  Speaker 1: This getting power simply to punish those that were in
• 2:13:11
  Speaker 1: power before you is a recipe. Again, it's part of
• 2:13:15
  Speaker 1: the race to the bottom. The second thing is he's
• 2:13:17
  Speaker 1: already If he had never been impeached, I think this
• 2:13:20
  Speaker 1: would be a more substantive argument and a worthy debate.
• 2:13:24
  Speaker 1: But he's been impeached twice, and they and failed to
• 2:13:26
  Speaker 1: be convicted twice. The voters threw him out once, and
• 2:13:33
  Speaker 1: every time the voters have had a chance to respond
• 2:13:38
  Speaker 1: to his presidency, they have voted the other way twenty eighteen, midterms,
• 2:13:43
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty, and we're about to find out in twenty
• 2:13:46
  Speaker 1: twenty six. Right, he has only succeeded when he has
• 2:13:49
  Speaker 1: been the challenger, when he has been out of office,
• 2:13:51
  Speaker 1: and he's been able to run against those that are
• 2:13:54
  Speaker 1: in office. So keep that in mind. But to go
• 2:13:57
  Speaker 1: back to the impeachment. If democrats do this as first,
• 2:14:00
  Speaker 1: you know, you're just setting up this. There's this group. Look,
• 2:14:04
  Speaker 1: I just went through the entire sort of Democrats are
• 2:14:08
  Speaker 1: not They're they're benefiting, but they're not benefiting from the
• 2:14:13
  Speaker 1: growing discontent of voters with this president, right, his numbers
• 2:14:18
  Speaker 1: are so bad you would think Democrats should be ten
• 2:14:21
  Speaker 1: points higher in their favorable rating, or at least ten
• 2:14:23
  Speaker 1: points greater than the Republican party, and they're not. And
• 2:14:26
  Speaker 1: it's because there's this loss of faith that either party
• 2:14:30
  Speaker 1: is going to somehow try to look out for the
• 2:14:33
  Speaker 1: greater good instead just worry about what's in the best
• 2:14:36
  Speaker 1: interests of their party, not necessarily the country as a whole.
• 2:14:41
  Speaker 1: And if look, if a Republican introduces articles of impeachment,
• 2:14:46
  Speaker 1: Democrats should support it. But to me, I wouldn't pursue
• 2:14:49
  Speaker 1: impeachment unless Republicans in Congress, you know, some group of
• 2:14:53
  Speaker 1: Republicans on their own decided to do it first. Then
• 2:14:56
  Speaker 1: you just bottom line is it's sort of like the
• 2:15:02
  Speaker 1: old pal doctrine, which you know, you better have overwhelming
• 2:15:07
  Speaker 1: you better, you better be ready to win, you better
• 2:15:10
  Speaker 1: have the votes already if you're going to go down
• 2:15:12
  Speaker 1: this road, because if you go down and lose again,
• 2:15:15
  Speaker 1: you probably forever defang the idea of impeachment. Right, it
• 2:15:22
  Speaker 1: would be our fourth straight failed impeachment going back to
• 2:15:25
  Speaker 1: Bill Clinton, and it would be sort of a mechanism,
• 2:15:31
  Speaker 1: you know, it's I guess it means it would it
• 2:15:33
  Speaker 1: would go back to being just you know, literally only
• 2:15:35
  Speaker 1: if he was actually looting the treasury and plain sight,
• 2:15:39
  Speaker 1: would anybody get a two thirds majority in order to
• 2:15:43
  Speaker 1: throw somebody out? So I understand what you're saying. I'm
• 2:15:47
  Speaker 1: not saying there are not plenty of ways that you
• 2:15:49
  Speaker 1: can draw up articles of impeachment against him, but when
• 2:15:52
  Speaker 1: you've already tried and failed twice, you better have the
• 2:15:58
  Speaker 1: votes before you pursued again. Appreciate the question, though, and
• 2:16:03
  Speaker 1: I encouraged this push back. That's what makes I'm more
• 2:16:06
  Speaker 1: interested in a podcast in a community that has more
• 2:16:11
  Speaker 1: friendly disagreement than anything else. Next question comes from Ben
• 2:16:16
  Speaker 1: from Colorado Riding again. He says, he goes, what are
• 2:16:18
  Speaker 1: your thoughts on the Adam Hamilton? On Adam Hamilton, the
• 2:16:20
  Speaker 1: Methodist pastor announcing his Senate running Kansas. It's a Democrat, Yes,
• 2:16:24
  Speaker 1: a big deal this week. I remember you had mentioned
• 2:16:25
  Speaker 1: him potentially running as an independent a few months ago,
• 2:16:27
  Speaker 1: and around that time there was polling that he would
• 2:16:29
  Speaker 1: have been up two points as an independent but down
• 2:16:31
  Speaker 1: eight as a Democrat. Could this be a ballot access
• 2:16:34
  Speaker 1: two way versus three way fundraising, general vibe shift, or
• 2:16:37
  Speaker 1: a combination of factors that led him to make that decision. Thanks,
• 2:16:40
  Speaker 1: it's a great question. Look, ballot access is one thing.
• 2:16:44
  Speaker 1: If you didn't think Democrats were going to take a knee, right,
• 2:16:49
  Speaker 1: You know, the gentleman by the name of Greg Ormand
• 2:16:53
  Speaker 1: came very close to winning a Senate seat as an
• 2:16:55
  Speaker 1: independent in twenty fourteen against Pat Roberts against the then
• 2:16:57
  Speaker 1: incumbent pat Roberts. Democrats sort of took a knee in
• 2:17:01
  Speaker 1: that race. They didn't have an active candidate and that
• 2:17:04
  Speaker 1: allowed for some consolidation. It's an interesting decision by him.
• 2:17:10
  Speaker 1: This is now the two pastors that they're going to
• 2:17:15
  Speaker 1: have as Senate likely Senate nominees. I say likely because
• 2:17:19
  Speaker 1: Kansas primary hasn't happened yet, but he will be the
• 2:17:21
  Speaker 1: heavy favorite. It it does eliminate the question of whether
• 2:17:30
  Speaker 1: of who you're going to caucus with and all of that.
• 2:17:35
  Speaker 1: I saw, as he says, well, traveling the state, more
• 2:17:37
  Speaker 1: people asked me to run as a Democrat, which might
• 2:17:40
  Speaker 1: be a little self fulfilling. That people most likely to
• 2:17:42
  Speaker 1: turn out for events like that are more likely to
• 2:17:45
  Speaker 1: be active partisans, that maybe the silent independent majority that
• 2:17:51
  Speaker 1: has been a sort of a full crumb of Kansas
• 2:17:55
  Speaker 1: politics over the last decade or so. But I could
• 2:17:58
  Speaker 1: argue that the Kansas Democrat brand is probably in better
• 2:18:01
  Speaker 1: shape than the national Democratic brand. But I'll be curious
• 2:18:05
  Speaker 1: to see how he how he presents himself. He I
• 2:18:07
  Speaker 1: think called himself an independent Democrat. I've seen a few Republicans.
• 2:18:12
  Speaker 1: I think that's what Lisa Murkowski calls us of an
• 2:18:14
  Speaker 1: independent Republican. I'll be curious to see how much that
• 2:18:19
  Speaker 1: holds and if that can hold up. Look, independent has
• 2:18:24
  Speaker 1: a halo effect, but I am conscious of just how
• 2:18:30
  Speaker 1: you know you There is impediments to this, but we'll
• 2:18:37
  Speaker 1: see It's it's a Democrat hasn't won a US Senate
• 2:18:40
  Speaker 1: race since before fdr In in Kansas. That's that that
• 2:18:48
  Speaker 1: is a that's one of the longest droughts I think
• 2:18:50
  Speaker 1: going these days in any state in the Union. So
• 2:18:55
  Speaker 1: that may be why he was and being uh the
• 2:18:59
  Speaker 1: pastor of one of the largest United Methodist churches in
• 2:19:02
  Speaker 1: the state, he probably thought being an independent would be
• 2:19:07
  Speaker 1: a little more a little easier for his congregation on
• 2:19:12
  Speaker 1: that front. But I'm fascinated by the candidacy, and I
• 2:19:16
  Speaker 1: think Roger Marshall's potentially vulnerable. The biggest vulnerability for any
• 2:19:20
  Speaker 1: Republican in the Plains or the Midwest are these tariffs.
• 2:19:24
  Speaker 1: And the tariffs are wildly unpopular in Kansas and Nebraska,
• 2:19:28
  Speaker 1: which is why both those incumbent senator Republican senators are
• 2:19:31
  Speaker 1: in bigger trouble than many people realize. But if you're
• 2:19:37
  Speaker 1: asking my question, Ben, I guess I am. Look, I
• 2:19:41
  Speaker 1: am very concerned about the Hartistan governance that's coming and
• 2:19:45
  Speaker 1: that we continue to have. I would like to see
• 2:19:48
  Speaker 1: a bulwark of independence in that Senate that behave as
• 2:19:51
  Speaker 1: independence that try to sort of figure out a ray
• 2:19:54
  Speaker 1: to sort of to turn the temperature down. So I'll
• 2:19:59
  Speaker 1: be curious to see if he does win where he
• 2:20:03
  Speaker 1: aligns himself. That'll be interesting. Next question comes from Jim Tobyhanna, Pennsylvania,
• 2:20:10
  Speaker 1: a big Buffalo Sabers fan. Anyways, Hey, I'm forty five
• 2:20:13
  Speaker 1: years old, and I have only a recollection and have
• 2:20:15
  Speaker 1: only a recollection of past presidents being presidents for all
• 2:20:18
  Speaker 1: and unifiers. Of the forty four presidents before Trump, have
• 2:20:20
  Speaker 1: any of them been so divisive and how they dictated
• 2:20:23
  Speaker 1: policy and were so blatantly for their supporters only things. Well,
• 2:20:28
  Speaker 1: you know, I think look, FDR was a pretty partisan president,
• 2:20:33
  Speaker 1: and in fact, if members of his own party didn't
• 2:20:35
  Speaker 1: go along, he primaried them. He recruited people to do that.
• 2:20:41
  Speaker 1: But you know, it's really about temperament. Right. We've never
• 2:20:44
  Speaker 1: had such a divisive temperament in the oval office. We've
• 2:20:48
  Speaker 1: had plenty of divisive political leaders who, at least in
• 2:20:52
  Speaker 1: their public behavior, tried not to behave that way. That's
• 2:20:57
  Speaker 1: the distinction with Trump that's greater than their every other president.
• 2:21:01
  Speaker 1: He's not the I think you you, I think there
• 2:21:03
  Speaker 1: are arguments to be made. We've had as partisan of presidents.
• 2:21:07
  Speaker 1: So it's not about whether you're behaved as a partisan.
• 2:21:11
  Speaker 1: It's it's how you publicly comported yourself and the temperament
• 2:21:15
  Speaker 1: you used in governing. And in that sense, there's been
• 2:21:18
  Speaker 1: nobody like him, right, particularly in the media age. Right, Right,
• 2:21:22
  Speaker 1: I mean, just look, Nixon wanted wanted to present himself
• 2:21:26
  Speaker 1: as a leader fire right. Nixon is the one that
• 2:21:28
  Speaker 1: went down to talk to protesters during the Vietnam War
• 2:21:30
  Speaker 1: on the mall right, Yeah, even you know, so even Nixon,
• 2:21:33
  Speaker 1: who was considered very divisive, tried didn't want to be
• 2:21:37
  Speaker 1: Barack Obama some of the rights. He's very divisive, but
• 2:21:39
  Speaker 1: he didn't want to be. Donald Trump wants to be.
• 2:21:41
  Speaker 1: He doesn't mind it. It's part of his political strength.
• 2:21:44
  Speaker 1: It is a he really does sort of buy into
• 2:21:46
  Speaker 1: the divide and conquer mindset a little bit. So I
• 2:21:51
  Speaker 1: don't want to apply he's he's the most partisan president
• 2:21:54
  Speaker 1: we've ever had. It's that he chooses his temperament to
• 2:21:59
  Speaker 1: be in devices mistakes and like I said, you could
• 2:22:03
  Speaker 1: and there are plenty of people there were of you, Hey, FDR.
• 2:22:06
  Speaker 1: He purged his own party of people he thought weren't
• 2:22:10
  Speaker 1: carrying his agenda out the way. He did, just like
• 2:22:12
  Speaker 1: this president. So the behaviors have been replicated in the past.
• 2:22:17
  Speaker 1: It's the temperament. It's that public temperament that's so different.
• 2:22:23
  Speaker 1: All right, Next question, Hey, Checking Company, thanks for taking
• 2:22:26
  Speaker 1: the time to read my note. What's your take on
• 2:22:28
  Speaker 1: the expansion of the men's and Women's March Badness tournament field.
• 2:22:31
  Speaker 1: I thought I gave you this take. I'll do it
• 2:22:32
  Speaker 1: real fast. I believe multiple conferences were behind the change.
• 2:22:35
  Speaker 1: But is it as simple as a money grab for
• 2:22:37
  Speaker 1: expanded coverage? Is it a way around the anticipated bifurcation
• 2:22:42
  Speaker 1: of programs who into haves and have nots due to nil.
• 2:22:46
  Speaker 1: You can tell where I fall on this. I see
• 2:22:47
  Speaker 1: our revolutionaries and similar becoming novelty programs on campuses, yes,
• 2:22:51
  Speaker 1: or something else day from U Street, DC by way
• 2:22:54
  Speaker 1: of Foggy Bottom Go Club, I mean REVS originally of
• 2:22:57
  Speaker 1: North Chicago. And you're right, folks from Chicago. Never give
• 2:23:00
  Speaker 1: it up, all fair, and thank you for that. Look, yes,
• 2:23:07
  Speaker 1: I know the mid majors were behind this push, and
• 2:23:09
  Speaker 1: I think this was I but mid majors wanted in it.
• 2:23:14
  Speaker 1: Ninety six seventy six makes the Power four and a
• 2:23:18
  Speaker 1: half conferences happy. And yes I say four and a
• 2:23:20
  Speaker 1: half because I think the Big East is half of
• 2:23:22
  Speaker 1: a power conference, but the bottom half not so much.
• 2:23:27
  Speaker 1: And it will be the Power four and a half
• 2:23:30
  Speaker 1: conferences that benefit the most, right I would like to see.
• 2:23:34
  Speaker 1: But look, I did a whole percentage thing on this,
• 2:23:37
  Speaker 1: and believe it or not, when the NCAA expanded the
• 2:23:40
  Speaker 1: field of sixty four in nineteen eighty five, twenty three
• 2:23:44
  Speaker 1: percent of all Division one schools were then going to
• 2:23:46
  Speaker 1: make the postseason, expanding it to seventy six. Now, because
• 2:23:50
  Speaker 1: we have a lot more schools in Division one basketball
• 2:23:53
  Speaker 1: than we did. We have over three hundred and fifty now.
• 2:23:55
  Speaker 1: We used to have under three hundred back in the eighties.
• 2:23:59
  Speaker 1: Believe it or not, fewer only twenty one percent now
• 2:24:02
  Speaker 1: of all of all Division one programs. We'll qualify for
• 2:24:06
  Speaker 1: the NC DOUBLEA Tournament at seventy six, So I think
• 2:24:10
  Speaker 1: you could argue it should be even higher that it
• 2:24:13
  Speaker 1: should be, that it should be ninety six, and you
• 2:24:15
  Speaker 1: would just have All it would do was just fill
• 2:24:18
  Speaker 1: up that Tuesday and Wednesday to be. Instead of two
• 2:24:24
  Speaker 1: days of sixteen games each on Thursday and Friday, you'd
• 2:24:26
  Speaker 1: have four days of sixteen games each Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
• 2:24:29
  Speaker 1: and Friday, one of the best two days of the
• 2:24:32
  Speaker 1: NC DOUBLEA Tournament Thursday and Friday. What's wrong with more
• 2:24:35
  Speaker 1: cow bell Tuesday and Wednesday. I think we'd love it,
• 2:24:38
  Speaker 1: and it would actually help the high mid majors at
• 2:24:40
  Speaker 1: seventy six, it doesn't. I'd like to see a few things.
• 2:24:44
  Speaker 1: You know, everything is metric obsessed, but if you don't
• 2:24:50
  Speaker 1: have a winning record, you shouldn't be allowed in the
• 2:24:53
  Speaker 1: NCAA tournament. That should be because we don't want lose
• 2:24:57
  Speaker 1: anybody five hundred or worse getting in the NCAA tournament.
• 2:25:01
  Speaker 1: I don't want to see a seventeen and seventeen Auburn team,
• 2:25:05
  Speaker 1: seventeen and eighteen Duke team just because they have a
• 2:25:08
  Speaker 1: lot more Quad one games than everybody else. They ought
• 2:25:11
  Speaker 1: to put in at least that metric that, you know,
• 2:25:15
  Speaker 1: some qualifier you have to have eighteen overall wins or
• 2:25:20
  Speaker 1: I just you have to be over five hundred. I
• 2:25:24
  Speaker 1: just you know, if they expand this tournament and all
• 2:25:26
  Speaker 1: it does is let some under five hundred garbage power
• 2:25:30
  Speaker 1: forward team get in over a twenty six win, you know, Belmont,
• 2:25:35
  Speaker 1: you know that's You're just it's not the point of
• 2:25:40
  Speaker 1: the tournament, and it doesn't help the nc DOUABLEA. It's
• 2:25:43
  Speaker 1: not good competition. It's just not good. If you weren't
• 2:25:48
  Speaker 1: good in your own conference and you were terrible and
• 2:25:52
  Speaker 1: you have a losing record, you shouldn't be in the
• 2:25:54
  Speaker 1: NCUBLEA tournament. So I really hope that they don't that
• 2:25:59
  Speaker 1: that's where so I was pro expansion, but I'm pro
• 2:26:03
  Speaker 1: to ninety six. I think the numbers dictate it. Yes,
• 2:26:08
  Speaker 1: I think it would actually help financially across the board.
• 2:26:12
  Speaker 1: Now I think they expanded to essentially to try to
• 2:26:16
  Speaker 1: get ahead of Congress forcing expansion or try to get
• 2:26:19
  Speaker 1: ahead of potential lawsuits from the nonpower majors conferences. So
• 2:26:24
  Speaker 1: I think that's where this came from. But I don't
• 2:26:26
  Speaker 1: think they expanded enough. And I know almost everybody else
• 2:26:29
  Speaker 1: who loves college. Oh this is a waste. Please do
• 2:26:33
  Speaker 1: you like the first two days in the NCAA tournament.
• 2:26:35
  Speaker 1: You're telling me you're not going to like two more days?
• 2:26:37
  Speaker 1: Just like it? All right? Last question and then I'll
• 2:26:43
  Speaker 1: finish up my little sports cast for the week. This
• 2:26:47
  Speaker 1: one comes from Stephen Vernon Hills, Illinois says, how much
• 2:26:49
  Speaker 1: effect do you think the Forward Party can have in
• 2:26:52
  Speaker 1: twenty six and twenty eight? You keep applying a third
• 2:26:53
  Speaker 1: choices needed to fix our current situation. I've signed up
• 2:26:56
  Speaker 1: for their emails. They have gotten my attention. Thanks Steve
• 2:26:59
  Speaker 1: and Vernon Hills, Illinois. Well, I think look, a lot
• 2:27:03
  Speaker 1: depends on some wins, right. A few independents truly need
• 2:27:07
  Speaker 1: to break through, not just come close. Breakthrough. And I
• 2:27:11
  Speaker 1: can tell you some candidacies that I think give Forward
• 2:27:14
  Speaker 1: some opportunity include Kevin Kylie in California, former Republican now
• 2:27:19
  Speaker 1: turned independent running as an independent now for his congressional seat.
• 2:27:26
  Speaker 1: A win there that would be send quite a message.
• 2:27:28
  Speaker 1: Mike Duggan in Michigan running as an independent for governor. There,
• 2:27:33
  Speaker 1: you got Dan Osborne in Nebraska. You may say he's
• 2:27:37
  Speaker 1: Democrat hiding in independent clothing, Seth Bodner who's running as
• 2:27:42
  Speaker 1: an independent in Montana. But to make the choice that
• 2:27:45
  Speaker 1: you want to be an independent first before a partisan,
• 2:27:49
  Speaker 1: that in itself, and you know, look what the Forward
• 2:27:52
  Speaker 1: Party is pushing for is just simply elected officials who
• 2:27:57
  Speaker 1: don't just salute party leadership. That's the problem, you know,
• 2:28:01
  Speaker 1: they they and it's a Look what they're trying to
• 2:28:04
  Speaker 1: do is they're recruiting people that are filed as Democrats
• 2:28:09
  Speaker 1: or as Republicans who pledged to be a Forward candidate
• 2:28:12
  Speaker 1: because they pledge they're not going to just salute partisan leadership,
• 2:28:16
  Speaker 1: that they're going to work across a cross partisan you know,
• 2:28:20
  Speaker 1: they're going to you know, support cross partisan legislation that
• 2:28:23
  Speaker 1: they're going to open up, that they're supportive of all
• 2:28:25
  Speaker 1: voter primaries instead of partisan primaries. And if you want
• 2:28:29
  Speaker 1: to be a Democrat supporting all partisan primaries or Republican
• 2:28:32
  Speaker 1: supporting all party primaries. The Forward Party is going to
• 2:28:35
  Speaker 1: be open to support on that. So they're just What
• 2:28:40
  Speaker 1: the Forward Party is trying to do is represent that
• 2:28:43
  Speaker 1: slice of voters that have that have been forced to
• 2:28:47
  Speaker 1: hold their nose and pick between two parties they don't like,
• 2:28:50
  Speaker 1: and instead have some sort of of voice in the
• 2:28:55
  Speaker 1: governing itself. Right now, swing voters decide who's in charge
• 2:29:00
  Speaker 1: and then have no say over what's being implemented. Literally,
• 2:29:04
  Speaker 1: Republicans wouldn't have a majority without these swing voters, and
• 2:29:07
  Speaker 1: Democrats wouldn't have had the majority the last time without
• 2:29:09
  Speaker 1: these swing voters. And yet they're literally their point of
• 2:29:12
  Speaker 1: view is thrown away, tossed aside for the partisan basis.
• 2:29:18
  Speaker 1: And again most of that is due to the incentive
• 2:29:20
  Speaker 1: structures of voting in primary politics. So look I go
• 2:29:26
  Speaker 1: look at you know, go back to my opening monologue
• 2:29:28
  Speaker 1: on these polls. The ingredients are there, the opportunity is there.
• 2:29:34
  Speaker 1: What Forward needs is charismatic candidates to make the case
• 2:29:39
  Speaker 1: that being an independent doesn't mean you're a mush, that
• 2:29:42
  Speaker 1: being an independent doesn't mean you just want some compromised
• 2:29:46
  Speaker 1: version of left and right all the time. What independent
• 2:29:52
  Speaker 1: means is that you're trying to expand access to governing
• 2:29:57
  Speaker 1: decisions for all voters. Right now, it is the hard
• 2:30:01
  Speaker 1: partisans that have more access to governing than those of
• 2:30:07
  Speaker 1: us sitting in between the thirty five yard lines. They
• 2:30:10
  Speaker 1: are there. They're cared about a lot during campaigns, and
• 2:30:14
  Speaker 1: I can tell you I can progressives and conservatives complain
• 2:30:18
  Speaker 1: all the time that the campaigns worry too much about
• 2:30:20
  Speaker 1: those voters. Yeah, except when they get into office, they
• 2:30:23
  Speaker 1: never worry about those voters. At some point, those voters
• 2:30:26
  Speaker 1: have to say enough is enough now they now those
• 2:30:29
  Speaker 1: voters might say I have had been given a choice. Well,
• 2:30:32
  Speaker 1: we'll see. We're going to keep an eye on what
• 2:30:33
  Speaker 1: happening in Kansas, and we'll see what those voters think
• 2:30:36
  Speaker 1: in Nebraska, and we'll see what those voters think in Montana.
• 2:30:40
  Speaker 1: But I think you clearly see when both parties have
• 2:30:43
  Speaker 1: decided that it's it's more important that they fight the
• 2:30:46
  Speaker 1: other side then figure out how to come to some
• 2:30:49
  Speaker 1: sort of common ground when common ground is possible, I
• 2:30:53
  Speaker 1: think that's what gives the opening to the Forward Party
• 2:30:56
  Speaker 1: to have a potential say here, look, it ain't easy.
• 2:31:00
  Speaker 1: It's fledgling. All of that is true. But when you look,
• 2:31:03
  Speaker 1: it's pretty clear to me. You know. Yeah, like I said,
• 2:31:06
  Speaker 1: you know, if you went into a store that sold
• 2:31:08
  Speaker 1: T shirts and I told you all they sold was
• 2:31:10
  Speaker 1: extra small and extra large, you'd be like, how come
• 2:31:12
  Speaker 1: they don't have anything for me? That's kind of the
• 2:31:15
  Speaker 1: way the doopli is working right now. That's the opportunity.
• 2:31:19
  Speaker 1: It's Look, it's not easy to shape a platform that's
• 2:31:24
  Speaker 1: essentially about about incentive structures, about sort of government. You know, all,
• 2:31:29
  Speaker 1: I would argue, Forward believes and is trying to go
• 2:31:31
  Speaker 1: back to first principles of the constitutional democracy republic excuse me,
• 2:31:36
  Speaker 1: the constitutional republic that the founders were trying to create.
• 2:31:40
  Speaker 1: And what many Forward supporters will argue is that the
• 2:31:43
  Speaker 1: current you know, what the system was designed to be,
• 2:31:46
  Speaker 1: has been essentially perverted by the two major parties, where
• 2:31:51
  Speaker 1: suddenly there's a whole bunch of people being left out
• 2:31:54
  Speaker 1: of decision making and governing. I think this is part
• 2:31:57
  Speaker 1: of why we got to expand the size of the House.
• 2:31:59
  Speaker 1: I think this is certainly true among minorities in this
• 2:32:03
  Speaker 1: country who are now going to feel even more left
• 2:32:05
  Speaker 1: out of governing. And again, swing voters may be a
• 2:32:08
  Speaker 1: minority of the electorate compared to the size of the
• 2:32:10
  Speaker 1: two bases of both parties. But in some ways they're
• 2:32:13
  Speaker 1: also being left out at the table and not given
• 2:32:17
  Speaker 1: a seat at the table. So we shall see, all right,
• 2:32:23
  Speaker 1: a few quick weekend sports since I was When you're
• 2:32:28
  Speaker 1: dealing with the kidney stone, you do a lot of pacing,
• 2:32:30
  Speaker 1: you know, you do a lot of you know, you
• 2:32:32
  Speaker 1: just have to move all the time. It's this incredible pain,
• 2:32:35
  Speaker 1: and you just feel like moving at least can distract
• 2:32:37
  Speaker 1: you from the pain. So I certainly watched a bunch
• 2:32:39
  Speaker 1: of plenty of NBA basketball. I don't know whether this
• 2:32:46
  Speaker 1: is an easy bet to go fine, but it is
• 2:32:48
  Speaker 1: pretty clear if the West is going to win, whoever
• 2:32:52
  Speaker 1: comes out of the West is now going to win.
• 2:32:53
  Speaker 1: With the Celtics out, they were the only team that
• 2:32:55
  Speaker 1: had the roster that might have been able to compete
• 2:32:57
  Speaker 1: with any of the teams coming out of the West.
• 2:33:00
  Speaker 1: Of them gone. And the fact that three of the
• 2:33:03
  Speaker 1: four first round series in the East went seven games
• 2:33:06
  Speaker 1: and the other one went six can you say you
• 2:33:11
  Speaker 1: have parody in the East? This gives my Washington Wizards
• 2:33:14
  Speaker 1: a little bit of hope, right because Mimy Heat, a
• 2:33:16
  Speaker 1: little bit of hope. I'm kind of a split personality
• 2:33:18
  Speaker 1: in the NBA between the Heat and the Wizards. Totally
• 2:33:20
  Speaker 1: confess that. But my god, right, the difference between the
• 2:33:27
  Speaker 1: one and eight is literally nothing right different Street two
• 2:33:31
  Speaker 1: and seven, Nothing different Street three. So there's a lot
• 2:33:35
  Speaker 1: of parody in the East. It may be that they
• 2:33:38
  Speaker 1: run into the juggernaut of whatever comes out of the West,
• 2:33:42
  Speaker 1: that's for sure. So I think all of these it's
• 2:33:46
  Speaker 1: been exciting. It's fun to see Game seven. Let's be honest.
• 2:33:49
  Speaker 1: I don't think we're watching any future NBA champions on
• 2:33:53
  Speaker 1: the East side of things. Kentucky Derby, that was a
• 2:33:58
  Speaker 1: fabulous race. I thankfully was watching in real time because
• 2:34:03
  Speaker 1: again I was pacing, desperate to get rid of the stone,
• 2:34:07
  Speaker 1: which was right after you know, got it done right
• 2:34:10
  Speaker 1: right after the Derby, sweet relief. That was an amazing race,
• 2:34:16
  Speaker 1: Golden tempo, amazing. Claire de Vaux the first woman trainer
• 2:34:21
  Speaker 1: of a Kentucky Derby winner. You know, it's funny. Horse
• 2:34:26
  Speaker 1: racing really is never going to get popular again. I
• 2:34:28
  Speaker 1: think we all know. If anything, I have a feeling
• 2:34:30
  Speaker 1: that one hundred years from now, maybe these races won't
• 2:34:35
  Speaker 1: exist anymore. But uh, these you know, the these Triple
• 2:34:41
  Speaker 1: Crown races, there's still something about them. My friends are
• 2:34:44
  Speaker 1: at NBC Sports do such a great job covering the thing.
• 2:34:47
  Speaker 1: But it was if you didn't go watch the entire race.
• 2:34:52
  Speaker 1: To see a horse literally go from last to first
• 2:34:55
  Speaker 1: in less than a I think half mile was just amazing.
• 2:35:00
  Speaker 1: And I have to tell you, I know, for one thing,
• 2:35:02
  Speaker 1: I'm certainly going to watch the Preakness. I hope this
• 2:35:05
  Speaker 1: horse isn't one of those that skips it because this
• 2:35:07
  Speaker 1: could be a lot of fun to see if this
• 2:35:10
  Speaker 1: horse can do this. But that was. It was amazing
• 2:35:13
  Speaker 1: to watch this horse track down the entire field to
• 2:35:17
  Speaker 1: get there.
• 2:35:18
  Speaker 2: So that was a lot of fun.
• 2:35:20
  Speaker 1: All right. I've gone on long enough. I gave you
• 2:35:24
  Speaker 1: a lot today with the with all those great polls
• 2:35:27
  Speaker 1: to dig through. Hope you enjoyed it. Appreciate you coming.
• 2:35:29
  Speaker 1: Don't forget to like and subscribe. Don't forget if you
• 2:35:32
  Speaker 1: like Dynastic to also tell the world by liking and
• 2:35:37
  Speaker 1: subscribing to that as well. I will see you Tuesday
• 2:35:40
  Speaker 1: night for the live election night stream. We're going to
• 2:35:43
  Speaker 1: see if there is a duck in the Oval Office.
• 2:35:46
  Speaker 1: That is uncrutches. That is the big news that will
• 2:35:49
  Speaker 1: be coming out of those primary results on Tuesday night.
• 2:35:53
  Speaker 1: And then of course i'll see you Wednesday morning. Thanks
• 2:35:55
  Speaker 1: for listening until we upload again. Hey,