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Having A Poll For Dinner · Politix

0:00
SPEAKER_00: They're playing like a football team that's like up 10 and is going to spend the
0:06
SPEAKER_00: whole fourth quarter killing the clock.
0:08
SPEAKER_01: But it's an insane thing to do if you're losing.
0:10
SPEAKER_00: But they're losing.
0:16
SPEAKER_01: Hey everyone, you're listening to a free preview of the Politics Podcast.
0:20
SPEAKER_01: In this episode,
0:21
SPEAKER_01: we're going to take a granular look at the most recent New York Times poll,
0:25
SPEAKER_01: which,
0:26
SPEAKER_01: like most polls these days,
0:27
SPEAKER_01: shows Joe Biden poised to lose nearly all of the swing states.
0:32
SPEAKER_01: This particular poll points to the prevalence of ticket splitting.
0:36
SPEAKER_01: State-level Democrats in the same poll are doing very well,
0:39
SPEAKER_01: and thus that Biden may not be the optimal candidate to run against Donald Trump.
0:45
SPEAKER_01: So we'll give the numbers an optimistic read,
0:48
SPEAKER_01: a pessimistic read,
0:49
SPEAKER_01: and then try to sort out why Biden's doing uniquely badly among Democrats,
0:54
SPEAKER_01: and what,
0:54
SPEAKER_01: if anything,
0:55
SPEAKER_01: he and his campaign can do about that.
0:58
SPEAKER_01: I hope you enjoy the conversation,
0:59
SPEAKER_01: and if you want to hear the whole thing,
1:01
SPEAKER_01: you can upgrade your subscription to paid at politics.fm.
1:10
SPEAKER_01: Hey, everyone.
1:10
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Politics Podcast.
1:12
SPEAKER_01: I'm Brian Boyler.
1:13
SPEAKER_01: I'm Matthew Iglesias.
1:14
SPEAKER_01: This week, I feel like the title and description of this week's episode should just be, fuck.
1:23
SPEAKER_01: Or like, fuck, really?
1:25
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
1:27
SPEAKER_01: Something like that.
1:28
SPEAKER_01: Short version is Joe Biden's losing five of six swing states in New York Times' marquee poll.
1:35
SPEAKER_01: He's losing some of them, the Sunbelt states, by what seem like implausible margins.
1:40
SPEAKER_01: But if they're real margins, they seem like insurmountable.
1:45
SPEAKER_01: And he's doing this as the Democrats who run those states are all popular.
1:51
SPEAKER_01: The Senate Democratic incumbents there are poised to win.
1:54
SPEAKER_01: The governors are popular.
1:56
SPEAKER_01: So it really seems like a Biden specific problem.
2:00
SPEAKER_01: So I guess like give the specifics, but also say why.
2:03
SPEAKER_01: Why do we care about this poll or do we care about this poll more than any?
2:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
2:07
SPEAKER_00: So I want to give just like one specific side.
2:10
SPEAKER_00: This is the most dramatic one is is the the poll shows Biden losing 38 to 50 in Nevada.
2:18
SPEAKER_00: which is a, that's a large amount to be losing by.
2:22
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, you could explain that in any number of ways, right?
2:26
SPEAKER_00: Like it might just be a bad sample.
2:28
SPEAKER_00: Who knows, right?
2:29
SPEAKER_00: It's a poll.
2:30
SPEAKER_00: But that same poll shows Jackie Rosen beating Sam Brown 40 to 38.
2:37
SPEAKER_00: That's not like an amazing number for Jackie Rosen.
2:40
SPEAKER_00: But what it means is that whatever is happening in that Nevada sample, right?
2:45
SPEAKER_00: Like maybe it's badly underestimating Democrats.
2:48
SPEAKER_00: Like who knows, right?
2:49
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying Nate Cohn is a god, but he has in that sample
2:54
SPEAKER_00: a bunch of people who are voting for Trump and also voting for Jackie Rosen, right?
3:02
SPEAKER_00: Or at least who aren't committed, something like that.
3:03
SPEAKER_00: He has a big delta between Sam Brown and Donald Trump.
3:09
SPEAKER_00: And we see this across the whole...
3:11
SPEAKER_00: The reason that I like this poll a lot,
3:13
SPEAKER_00: again,
3:13
SPEAKER_00: is not to say that the Siena poll...
3:16
SPEAKER_00: is necessarily better or more accurate than anybody else's polls.
3:20
SPEAKER_00: But that I think Nate Cohn and the team at the New York Times are good at journalism, right?
3:27
SPEAKER_00: They're good at crafting articles that are interesting.
3:30
SPEAKER_00: And so what they did, because normally you will either see a national poll
3:35
SPEAKER_00: which doesn't tell you much about specific states, or you'll see a state poll.
3:39
SPEAKER_00: So like it's a poll of Pennsylvania and it might show that Bob Casey is doing
3:43
SPEAKER_00: better than Biden,
3:45
SPEAKER_00: but you might attribute that to Bob Casey,
3:47
SPEAKER_00: right?
3:47
SPEAKER_00: Like maybe he's just really amazing.
3:49
SPEAKER_00: By doing Wisconsin,
3:50
SPEAKER_00: Pennsylvania,
3:51
SPEAKER_00: Arizona,
3:52
SPEAKER_00: Michigan,
3:52
SPEAKER_00: Georgia,
3:53
SPEAKER_00: and Nevada simultaneously,
3:55
SPEAKER_00: they show that Biden is running behind Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin.
3:59
SPEAKER_00: He's running behind Bob Casey in Pennsylvania.
4:02
SPEAKER_00: He's running behind Ruben Gallego in Arizona.
4:05
SPEAKER_00: He's running behind Jackie Rosen in Nevada.
4:07
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think they didn't even pull Michigan.
4:10
SPEAKER_00: Um,
4:11
SPEAKER_00: I don't know why they didn't poll the Michigan Senate race.
4:14
SPEAKER_00: No, it's not Whitmer.
4:15
SPEAKER_00: She's the governor, Slotkin.
4:17
SPEAKER_01: Did the poll not include, like, any popularity numbers for the governors?
4:23
SPEAKER_01: No, they didn't do governors.
4:25
SPEAKER_00: It's just the Senate races.
4:27
SPEAKER_00: But, I mean, it's enough to say, again—
4:31
SPEAKER_00: The reason we wanted to talk about this,
4:33
SPEAKER_00: right,
4:33
SPEAKER_00: is to get us like a little bit off some of our own kind of personal bullshit.
4:38
SPEAKER_00: Because,
4:40
SPEAKER_00: you know,
4:40
SPEAKER_00: it's like Brian and I,
4:42
SPEAKER_00: like anybody who covers politics all the time,
4:44
SPEAKER_00: like we have these like big picture ideas about like what's wrong with the
4:48
SPEAKER_00: Democrats or something like that.
4:51
SPEAKER_00: And maybe Brian's right.
4:53
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I'm right.
4:54
SPEAKER_00: Maybe someone else is right.
4:55
SPEAKER_00: Maybe this poll is wrong.
4:57
SPEAKER_00: Maybe things are better.
4:58
SPEAKER_00: Maybe Democrats' numbers will get better.
4:59
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of disputes you can have about the level.
5:04
SPEAKER_00: But there's just an interesting question,
5:05
SPEAKER_00: like,
5:06
SPEAKER_00: why is Joe Biden doing systematically worse than the Democratic Senate candidates
5:11
SPEAKER_00: across these states,
5:13
SPEAKER_00: right?
5:13
SPEAKER_00: Like, even if Biden's numbers go up five points and he wins, he'd still be running behind these guys.
5:20
SPEAKER_00: And that's a change.
5:21
SPEAKER_00: In 2020, Biden ran meaningfully stronger than
5:26
SPEAKER_00: than House Democratic candidates.
5:30
SPEAKER_00: He ran about the same as most Senate Democrats, but way worse than the Dem candidate in Maine, notably.
5:39
SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, this has been a shift.
5:41
SPEAKER_00: It used to be that voters at the margin liked Biden more than the generic Democrat, right?
5:49
SPEAKER_00: There was something Biden was doing that was making some people who were skeptical
5:53
SPEAKER_00: of the Democrats think they like Biden.
5:56
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe it was Trump.
5:56
SPEAKER_00: Maybe Trump was alienating them, right?
5:58
SPEAKER_00: He's uniquely bad.
6:00
SPEAKER_00: Who knows?
6:01
SPEAKER_00: But now it's the opposite.
6:02
SPEAKER_00: Now,
6:02
SPEAKER_00: Biden seems to be running weaker than the generic House ballot for Democrats,
6:07
SPEAKER_00: weaker than Democratic Senate candidates.
6:11
SPEAKER_00: And that is not the only thing that matters in politics,
6:16
SPEAKER_00: but it is a distinctive thing that is happening here and that...
6:22
SPEAKER_00: You know, the White House does not like to talk about, right?
6:25
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
6:26
SPEAKER_00: you can have political conversations with them,
6:28
SPEAKER_00: and they will give conversations about the big political picture.
6:31
SPEAKER_00: But they don't want to talk about this narrow political picture that,
6:34
SPEAKER_00: like,
6:35
SPEAKER_00: he is running weaker than,
6:37
SPEAKER_00: you know,
6:38
SPEAKER_00: a pretty motley grab bag of random Dem candidates.
6:42
SPEAKER_00: Right.
6:43
SPEAKER_01: So I feel like there's two,
6:46
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
6:46
SPEAKER_01: there's an infinite number of hypothetical explanations we could come up with,
6:50
SPEAKER_01: but the two that I think will be most plausible and that you'll just end up hearing
6:56
SPEAKER_01: about because they can both be said to fit the facts okay is one is like a more
7:02
SPEAKER_01: material explanation.
7:06
SPEAKER_01: analysis where you say Biden presided over a year of pretty bad inflation.
7:12
SPEAKER_01: People are still pissed about it.
7:14
SPEAKER_01: So he took a ding that didn't really affect other Democrats who aren't viewed to have,
7:21
SPEAKER_01: you know,
7:22
SPEAKER_01: buck stops here responsibility for the state of the economy.
7:25
SPEAKER_01: And then the second one is more of a vibey explanation.
7:31
SPEAKER_01: It's like some mix of he's old, he's been the subject of a lot of...
7:39
SPEAKER_01: mostly bullshit commentary about how old he is and of a dedicated propaganda
7:45
SPEAKER_01: campaign to make him seem doddering and incompetent for the job.
7:50
SPEAKER_01: It's more the videos of him turning around to shake the hand of somebody who's not
7:55
SPEAKER_01: there and less anyone's subjective sense of how responsible he is for why they're upset.
8:03
SPEAKER_01: And I feel like
8:09
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't have to be one or the other.
8:12
SPEAKER_01: But I struggle with the idea that...
8:18
SPEAKER_01: Voters have decided on the basis of anything like empirical or adjacent to
8:24
SPEAKER_01: empirical data that Biden is just much worse at this job than Donald Trump was.
8:29
SPEAKER_01: And so they want to go back.
8:32
SPEAKER_01: Whereas I totally can understand why some voter might think, wow, this like Joe Biden guy.
8:37
SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, we got Trump out and look what we got.
8:40
SPEAKER_01: He's like extremely old and it's embarrassing to say you like him.
8:45
SPEAKER_01: So I guess I wonder where you fall on the question.
8:48
SPEAKER_01: Like, I have seen people in our, like,
8:51
SPEAKER_01: our little community of writers suggested this just shows that the reasons Biden's
8:57
SPEAKER_01: losing are like basically banal.
8:59
SPEAKER_01: It's inflation and that's it.
9:01
SPEAKER_01: And so he's either got to hope that people's anger about it fades over the next six
9:05
SPEAKER_01: months or we're fucked.
9:06
SPEAKER_01: But that seems a bit too pat to me.
9:07
SPEAKER_00: I'm a little bit torn, right?
9:08
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
9:09
SPEAKER_00: oftentimes in life,
9:10
SPEAKER_00: right,
9:11
SPEAKER_00: you see a divergence between what does like a time series analysis seem to tell you
9:17
SPEAKER_00: and what does a cross-sectional analysis seem to tell you.
9:22
SPEAKER_00: And,
9:22
SPEAKER_00: you know,
9:22
SPEAKER_00: if I look at it at a time series of Biden,
9:25
SPEAKER_00: I'm inclined to agree with what you just said,
9:27
SPEAKER_00: right,
9:28
SPEAKER_00: that he has been worn down by media narratives,
9:34
SPEAKER_00: by age.
9:34
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's different ways you could frame it.
9:36
SPEAKER_00: Right.
9:36
SPEAKER_00: So there's like there's like the Brian Boitler, Will Stancil version of this.
9:40
SPEAKER_00: And there's the Nate Silver version of it.
9:43
SPEAKER_00: Um,
9:44
SPEAKER_00: but like the disagreement there is basically just like Nate is saying,
9:48
SPEAKER_00: but the negative media narratives are true.
9:51
SPEAKER_00: Um,
9:52
SPEAKER_00: you know,
9:52
SPEAKER_00: but,
9:52
SPEAKER_00: but like you guys are both pointing to the same phenomenon that it's like Biden
9:57
SPEAKER_00: specific stuff.
9:59
SPEAKER_00: And I, I feel that I vibe that right.
10:01
SPEAKER_00: Like I'm like eyeball deep in American politics all day.
10:04
SPEAKER_00: Um,
10:06
SPEAKER_00: But then I look at polling across the G7, and Biden's numbers are better than Rishi Sunak's.
10:13
SPEAKER_00: They're better than Schultz's.
10:16
SPEAKER_00: They're better than the very young and vibrant Emmanuel Macron's.
10:20
SPEAKER_00: They're better than dashing Justin Trudeau's.
10:24
SPEAKER_00: And also the American economy, as Joe Biden likes to say.
10:27
SPEAKER_00: I keep hearing that Biden should stop talking about how we have the strongest
10:31
SPEAKER_00: economy in the world,
10:32
SPEAKER_00: which may or may not be true.
10:34
SPEAKER_00: But it is both true that the United States of America has the strongest economy in
10:37
SPEAKER_00: the world,
10:38
SPEAKER_00: and also that Joe Biden is the most popular incumbent leader of a developed democracy,
10:46
SPEAKER_00: with the exception of people who are newly in office,
10:50
SPEAKER_00: right?
10:50
SPEAKER_00: Like people who recently beat Trump.
10:53
SPEAKER_00: some deeply unpopular incumbents.
10:55
SPEAKER_00: So that cross-sectional take suggests to me,
11:02
SPEAKER_00: you know,
11:02
SPEAKER_00: that,
11:02
SPEAKER_00: like,
11:04
SPEAKER_00: it is something to do with the inflation.
11:07
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
11:08
SPEAKER_00: so to give the German version of the Nate Cohn poll I just ran down is that...
11:15
SPEAKER_01: The Nate Cohn well-shung.
11:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sure, exactly.
11:18
SPEAKER_00: Nate Cohn, I guess Cohn is probably a German name, too.
11:22
SPEAKER_00: So in Germany, right, like, Scholz, the chancellor, is deeply unpopular.
11:28
SPEAKER_00: His coalition is on track to get thrashed.
11:32
SPEAKER_00: He has two coalition partners, like the Green Party and this kind of centrist pro-business party.
11:39
SPEAKER_00: The centrist pro-business party is getting totally wrecked because,
11:44
SPEAKER_00: like,
11:44
SPEAKER_00: right-wingers feel they've betrayed them,
11:46
SPEAKER_00: et cetera.
11:47
SPEAKER_00: So the far right is, like, surging and German democracy might collapse.
11:52
SPEAKER_00: At the same time,
11:53
SPEAKER_00: the most popular politician in the country is just the incumbent defense minister
11:59
SPEAKER_00: of Germany,
12:00
SPEAKER_00: who's a member of the same party and is just like not seen as responsible for the
12:06
SPEAKER_00: economy because he's the defense minister.
12:10
SPEAKER_00: He's been, you know, doing like...
12:13
SPEAKER_00: I don't know,
12:13
SPEAKER_00: like going to weapons factories and being like,
12:15
SPEAKER_00: we're going to rearm against the Russian threat.
12:18
SPEAKER_00: And people like him, even though his name is Oscar Pistorius, which is the name of a notorious murder.
12:23
SPEAKER_00: That is so funny.
12:25
SPEAKER_00: I didn't know that.
12:25
SPEAKER_00: Which I feel like has bad vibes.
12:29
SPEAKER_00: You know, so that's kind of like the German version.
12:31
SPEAKER_01: There are worse names you can have as a politician in Germany.
12:34
SPEAKER_00: Sure, sure.
12:35
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of, you know, a lot of history there.
12:40
SPEAKER_00: That's like the German version of, like, couldn't we just swap in Gretchen Whitmer?
12:44
SPEAKER_00: Except with the difference being that the way parliamentary systems work,
12:47
SPEAKER_00: like,
12:47
SPEAKER_00: they actually might just swap in a different guy before the election,
12:52
SPEAKER_00: whereas Democrats don't seem to have the ability to.
12:56
SPEAKER_00: Now,
12:56
SPEAKER_00: that being said,
12:56
SPEAKER_00: right,
12:59
SPEAKER_00: I could publish my paper,
13:00
SPEAKER_00: you know,
13:00
SPEAKER_00: in the American Journal of Takes presenting this cross-sectional analysis,
13:06
SPEAKER_00: but it's like...
13:09
SPEAKER_00: While I agree that if the political system was completely different,
13:12
SPEAKER_00: it would be optimal to swap in ideally a Democrat who like won really recently,
13:18
SPEAKER_00: like someone like Josh Shapiro just wasn't in office until January 2023.
13:23
SPEAKER_00: So he could just be like inflation.
13:25
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
13:26
SPEAKER_00: You know, I got nothing to do with that.
13:28
SPEAKER_00: Right.
13:28
SPEAKER_00: It's the same thing.
13:29
SPEAKER_00: Ruben Gallego, like he's a random House member.
13:31
SPEAKER_00: Right.
13:31
SPEAKER_00: So he's just there in Arizona where Biden's numbers have collapsed.
13:35
SPEAKER_00: But he's like, I was in the Marines, you know, like abortion rights.
13:40
SPEAKER_00: And that's the campaign you want to run.
13:42
SPEAKER_00: Right.
13:42
SPEAKER_00: Is a campaign from nowhere.
13:44
SPEAKER_00: But we can't like you can't do that.
13:47
SPEAKER_01: Well, maybe we can't.
13:49
SPEAKER_00: Yes, I mean, but that gets us back into the questions about like convention chaos, et cetera, et cetera.
13:54
SPEAKER_00: I do want to talk about those a little, but at the end, maybe.
13:56
SPEAKER_00: We should talk about it.
13:57
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it deserves to be on the table.
14:00
SPEAKER_00: Nate Silver also yesterday was like disparaging people who were touting Biden's
14:05
SPEAKER_00: good vibes a month ago because the polls hadn't changed that much.
14:11
SPEAKER_00: But I think this is a close election where the numbers have been fairly stable.
14:15
SPEAKER_00: And the fact is, is that people were panicking.
14:18
SPEAKER_00: Then Biden delivered a very strong State of the Union address.
14:22
SPEAKER_00: He did a little bit of, like, the synthesis of what we want, right?
14:28
SPEAKER_00: Like,
14:28
SPEAKER_00: he,
14:29
SPEAKER_00: like...
14:30
SPEAKER_00: He moved to the...
14:31
SPEAKER_00: He embraced the border security deal concept,
14:36
SPEAKER_00: lashed out at Republicans,
14:38
SPEAKER_00: gave very vigorous kind of performance there,
14:41
SPEAKER_00: got a lot of people out talking about stuff.
14:45
SPEAKER_00: Like...
14:47
SPEAKER_00: about Republicans.
14:49
SPEAKER_00: His numbers went up a little bit.
14:50
SPEAKER_00: The vibes improved a little bit.
14:52
SPEAKER_00: And it felt to me like, okay, here we have, you know, a strategy.
14:56
SPEAKER_00: Perfect concept.
14:58
SPEAKER_00: For going forward.
14:59
SPEAKER_00: But what happened then was they regressed.
15:03
SPEAKER_00: Right?
15:04
SPEAKER_00: They regressed to...
15:06
SPEAKER_00: their version of showing that Biden is an active president is having him do these
15:13
SPEAKER_00: like little rallies where,
15:16
SPEAKER_00: you know,
15:17
SPEAKER_00: he touts the concrete impact of different spending programs that he's delivered.
15:22
SPEAKER_00: And they just, they don't make news.
15:25
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
15:25
SPEAKER_00: Like you, you can say like he's doing stuff, but in the, um,
15:33
SPEAKER_00: Max Headroom quasi-reality that we inhabit,
15:36
SPEAKER_00: the president flying to Pittsburgh and doing an event at a factory there is like it
15:42
SPEAKER_00: didn't happen.
15:43
SPEAKER_00: Whereas the president getting on the floor of Congress and yelling...
15:47
SPEAKER_00: you know, is like it happened.
15:49
SPEAKER_00: Like it occurred in our clips and things like that.
15:53
SPEAKER_00: And we saw it.
15:55
SPEAKER_01: There was one,
15:55
SPEAKER_01: you know,
15:57
SPEAKER_01: Biden went to Wisconsin to tout the Microsoft AI facility that's going to open there,
16:04
SPEAKER_01: like for real,
16:05
SPEAKER_01: and contrast with Trump promising them that this big Foxconn facility would open
16:10
SPEAKER_01: and it was just vaporware.
16:11
SPEAKER_01: And I mean, that, I think, when he can find
16:17
SPEAKER_01: moments like that to um to underscore um the the to make a new contrast real
16:24
SPEAKER_01: because like because you know a big part of why he's losing or or a way to
16:30
SPEAKER_01: understand why he's losing is to look at how trump and he um hold up when you when
16:37
SPEAKER_01: you ask people who's better on the issues right and and
16:41
SPEAKER_01: In some cases,
16:42
SPEAKER_01: maybe they're arguable or just like whatever,
16:44
SPEAKER_01: like the country's like right wing on immigration,
16:48
SPEAKER_01: at least for now.
16:49
SPEAKER_01: And so Trump's right wing immigration policies are more popular.
16:51
SPEAKER_01: But like Trump outpolls Biden on transportation.
16:56
SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry, on infrastructure.
16:58
SPEAKER_01: And like he should be losing that poll badly.
17:02
SPEAKER_01: Right.
17:02
SPEAKER_01: And like you can argue it's a media failure.
17:05
SPEAKER_01: You can argue it's a messaging failure.
17:07
SPEAKER_01: But.
17:09
SPEAKER_01: There are ways for Biden here and there to remind people that the Trump economy was worse than his.
17:18
SPEAKER_01: The Trump infrastructure record was worse than his.
17:20
SPEAKER_01: The Trump crime record was worse than his.
17:23
SPEAKER_01: And try to get these numbers a little bit closer to parity.
17:27
SPEAKER_01: And this is sort of like why I...
17:30
SPEAKER_01: I am like,
17:31
SPEAKER_01: I want to give the inflation explanation like partial credit,
17:35
SPEAKER_01: but not total credit because the international context that you offered makes that
17:40
SPEAKER_01: seem like,
17:41
SPEAKER_01: like clearly a plausible factor.
17:43
SPEAKER_01: It is, it's sort of like a specter haunting a bunch of leaders around the world who presided over.
17:50
But like,
17:55
SPEAKER_01: Inflation has been at a very normal level,
17:57
SPEAKER_01: I think,
17:57
SPEAKER_01: like slightly higher than it was pre-pandemic,
18:00
SPEAKER_01: but still in a range where if it had kind of crept up to 3% back in 2018 and held
18:06
SPEAKER_01: steady there,
18:07
SPEAKER_01: nobody had been like,
18:08
SPEAKER_01: this is some huge crisis,
18:09
SPEAKER_01: right?
18:09
SPEAKER_01: So it's like normal level inflation.
18:12
SPEAKER_01: For over a year,
18:13
SPEAKER_01: there was no theoretical basis to believe that people had this lagging pissiness
18:22
SPEAKER_01: about inflation after it had normalized until this happened.
18:25
SPEAKER_01: And people kind of adopted it as like an epicycle to explain why Biden and all
18:30
SPEAKER_01: these other leaders remained unpopular.
18:32
SPEAKER_01: And like in the United States, unlike in some of these other countries, I think, like people are –
18:38
SPEAKER_01: doing better despite slightly higher than pre-pandemic inflation.
18:44
SPEAKER_01: So yes, it happened, but most people are better off.
18:47
SPEAKER_01: And why are they not aware of that?
18:49
SPEAKER_01: And then you present that to people and they come up with these other psychological
18:55
SPEAKER_01: hypotheses that have no,
18:57
SPEAKER_01: I think,
18:58
SPEAKER_01: like...
18:59
SPEAKER_01: academic or empirical basis, right?
19:01
SPEAKER_01: Like people will say,
19:03
SPEAKER_01: oh,
19:03
SPEAKER_01: well,
19:03
SPEAKER_01: like Biden's to blame for higher prices,
19:05
SPEAKER_01: but I am like,
19:07
SPEAKER_01: like I earned my raise.
19:10
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
19:10
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's like, that's an old, yeah.
19:14
SPEAKER_01: Okay,
19:15
SPEAKER_01: it's a thought,
19:16
SPEAKER_01: but like another thought is like we live in prosperous times and prosperity is
19:20
SPEAKER_01: supposed to yield positive political sentiment and it just hasn't done that.
19:25
SPEAKER_01: And like I was on a panel with Seth Maskett a few weeks back and he acknowledged
19:30
SPEAKER_01: that if Biden loses with this economy as a backdrop for the election,
19:35
SPEAKER_01: like political scientists are going to have a lot of explaining to do.
19:38
SPEAKER_01: And I agree with that.
19:39
SPEAKER_01: Like there were like –
19:43
SPEAKER_01: theories of politics that were deeper than just,
19:46
SPEAKER_01: oh,
19:46
SPEAKER_01: like,
19:46
SPEAKER_01: how do we torture the facts to explain why Biden's losing?
19:50
SPEAKER_01: And they don't seem to be holding up.
19:52
SPEAKER_01: And so I feel like there's got to be more to it than just some essential anger
20:00
SPEAKER_01: about inflation that anyone would have experienced.
20:02
SPEAKER_01: Like the fact that the second tier issue is immigration, like the second most
20:08
SPEAKER_01: important issue to voters in some polls i think it's even first i think like
20:12
SPEAKER_01: supports the idea that this can just be sort of incepted into people's heads
20:15
SPEAKER_01: because even if there are real issues happening at the border they directly affect
20:21
SPEAKER_01: like a tiny percentage of americans and then crime is often the third issue below
20:26
SPEAKER_01: immigration and the economy
20:27
SPEAKER_01: And it's way down from where the Trump era highs.
20:32
SPEAKER_01: And if this were really like people reacting to material reality,
20:35
SPEAKER_01: Dems would be winning that issue,
20:37
SPEAKER_01: not losing it.
20:39
SPEAKER_01: And the fact that they're losing it tells me that people are responding not to reality,
20:43
SPEAKER_01: but just bullshit in the ether.
20:46
SPEAKER_01: And I don't know what you do about bullshit in the ether, but it can explain a lot of this, I think.
20:51
SPEAKER_00: Okay, I mean, I'm glad you mentioned Seth Maskett, because, you know, a couple of points on that.
20:58
SPEAKER_00: One,
20:58
SPEAKER_00: like,
20:58
SPEAKER_00: yes,
20:59
SPEAKER_00: I do agree that,
21:00
SPEAKER_00: in particular,
21:02
SPEAKER_00: in the...
21:03
SPEAKER_00: You know,
21:03
SPEAKER_00: the way political science works,
21:05
SPEAKER_00: right,
21:06
SPEAKER_00: is it's divided up into sub-disciplines.
21:09
SPEAKER_00: There's political theory, there's international relations, there's U.S.
21:12
SPEAKER_00: politics, and there's comparative politics.
21:15
SPEAKER_00: And I do think that we are...
21:18
SPEAKER_00: Seeing U.S.
21:19
SPEAKER_00: politics subfield is taking an L here.
21:23
SPEAKER_00: They are needing to reset their...
21:30
SPEAKER_00: economic fundamentals theories in a very epicycle-like way.
21:35
SPEAKER_00: And it brings back the sort of oldest critique of those accounts,
21:40
SPEAKER_00: which is that they have too few data points.
21:43
SPEAKER_00: The theory is underdetermined by the evidence.
21:47
SPEAKER_00: There's too many degrees of freedom in specifying your models.
21:50
SPEAKER_00: And every time a new election happens, they basically have to change what the fundamentals are
21:56
SPEAKER_01: And I want to add one, which is that a lot of the theory predates social media.
22:01
SPEAKER_01: And that's just a huge change.
22:04
SPEAKER_00: So I'm with you there.
22:07
SPEAKER_00: That being said, the comparative facts still are what they are.
22:11
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
22:12
SPEAKER_00: And I think it would be a weird coincidence if,
22:15
SPEAKER_00: like,
22:16
SPEAKER_00: every incumbent leader across the G7 was making,
22:20
SPEAKER_00: like,
22:20
SPEAKER_00: identical messaging or tactical failures.
22:25
SPEAKER_00: You know, there's something...
22:28
SPEAKER_00: Yes, there's something off and it's just notable, right?
22:32
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think if you're talking about like, what should Joe Biden do?
22:36
SPEAKER_00: It's like, well, he can't, you know, there's only certain things he has control over.
22:40
SPEAKER_00: And so paying attention to his tactical decisions and things like that is very important and relevant.
22:45
SPEAKER_00: But Seth wrote a book in 2020 called Learning from Loss, the Democrats, 2016 to 2020.
22:54
SPEAKER_00: And it's a good book.
22:55
SPEAKER_00: It's a book that's on a good theme, right?
22:57
SPEAKER_00: Which is that like when political parties lose elections,
23:02
SPEAKER_00: the party elite tends to converge on some account of like,
23:08
SPEAKER_00: why did that happen?
23:11
SPEAKER_00: And they attempt to respond to it.
23:13
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes you see it's rejected, right?
23:14
SPEAKER_00: So like after 2012,
23:17
SPEAKER_00: Republicans decided,
23:18
SPEAKER_00: Republican elites decided that the problem was,
23:22
SPEAKER_00: was that Mitt Romney's harsh rhetoric about self-deportation had alienated young
23:28
SPEAKER_00: people and the rapidly growing Hispanic electorate.
23:32
SPEAKER_00: And they needed to, you know, make a compromise there.
23:36
SPEAKER_00: And Patrick Ruffini had this dissident account of that, right?
23:42
SPEAKER_00: He said that that theory was wrong,
23:44
SPEAKER_00: that actually Romney lost because of what he called missing white voters,
23:49
SPEAKER_00: which he's kind of characterized as like- Wasn't it Trendy who- Oh,
23:53
SPEAKER_00: Sean Trendy,
23:53
SPEAKER_00: yes.
23:54
SPEAKER_00: Yes, Sean Trendy.
23:56
SPEAKER_00: Now,
23:56
SPEAKER_00: an interesting thing about this is I think that if you look at Sean Trendy's work,
24:01
SPEAKER_00: the numbers don't hold up.
24:03
SPEAKER_00: It's not true, actually, that there was some large drop-off in white voters.
24:09
SPEAKER_00: And he was wrong, empirically.
24:13
SPEAKER_00: That being said,
24:14
SPEAKER_00: the candidate who Republicans nominated in 2016 had a theory of the electorate that
24:18
SPEAKER_00: was a lot closer to the missing white voters theory.
24:22
SPEAKER_00: And he also won.
24:24
SPEAKER_00: And so now I hear from people who think that the missing white voters was correct
24:28
SPEAKER_00: all along,
24:30
SPEAKER_00: which I don't think is true.
24:31
SPEAKER_00: But...
24:33
SPEAKER_00: There's different ways of learning.
24:35
SPEAKER_00: There's different ways of winning and things like that.
24:37
SPEAKER_00: And so if Biden loses,
24:39
SPEAKER_00: there's obviously going to be a very ferocious debate over what can we learn from
24:46
SPEAKER_00: this whole experience,
24:48
SPEAKER_00: right?
24:51
SPEAKER_00: And I don't think that like, well...
24:56
SPEAKER_00: he should have just like posted more on social media or something,
24:59
SPEAKER_00: is an adequate learning,
25:03
SPEAKER_00: specifically because there were,
25:06
SPEAKER_00: like if you look at,
25:07
SPEAKER_00: not that like Joe Biden's political problems are because of Lena Kahn,
25:12
SPEAKER_00: but like the whole reason she became FTC chair is she wrote a famous paper arguing
25:17
SPEAKER_00: that antitrust regulators were excessively focused on ensuring low consumer prices.
25:24
SPEAKER_00: Right.
25:24
SPEAKER_00: And that we needed like a whole new approach to political economy that wouldn't
25:28
SPEAKER_00: have this focus on low prices.
25:30
SPEAKER_00: And I think that one thing that we have definitely seen over the Biden years and
25:36
SPEAKER_00: not just the Biden years,
25:37
SPEAKER_00: but the Trudeau years,
25:37
SPEAKER_00: the Sunak years,
25:38
SPEAKER_00: the Macron years,
25:39
SPEAKER_00: the Schultz years,
25:40
SPEAKER_00: is that like the electorate actually does care like a lot about low prices.
25:46
SPEAKER_00: Right.
25:46
SPEAKER_00: You know,
25:47
SPEAKER_00: and so whatever you think the exact role of inflation in Biden's election,
25:53
SPEAKER_00: actually,
25:53
SPEAKER_00: especially if you believe in messaging over substance,
25:58
SPEAKER_00: it's like really bad to bring people in who take a like dispositional posture that
26:04
SPEAKER_00: says that prices don't matter.
26:06
SPEAKER_01: I don't think that that's a totally fair,
26:09
SPEAKER_01: like,
26:09
SPEAKER_01: like Lena Khan's theory of antitrust is not like prices aren't an important thing.
26:15
SPEAKER_01: It's,
26:16
SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to be really,
26:17
SPEAKER_00: really clear that what I'm saying,
26:18
SPEAKER_00: just that like a big part of the post 2016 learning from loss experience was an
26:24
SPEAKER_00: idea that Democrats used to pay too much attention to these like pointy headed
26:31
SPEAKER_00: economists who were like worried about interest rates,
26:35
SPEAKER_00: you know,
26:35
SPEAKER_00: who cared about the efficiency of regulations,
26:38
SPEAKER_00: who worried about going too far with economic stimulus.
26:41
SPEAKER_00: And they really did like remake the party.
26:44
SPEAKER_00: in light of those lessons,
26:46
SPEAKER_00: to implement this much more what they would characterize as populist economic
26:51
SPEAKER_00: agenda that was way more focused on job creation,
26:55
SPEAKER_00: job protection,
26:56
SPEAKER_00: you know,
26:57
SPEAKER_00: here we are,
26:58
SPEAKER_00: hard hats,
26:59
SPEAKER_00: strictest buy American rules ever,
27:01
SPEAKER_00: a different antitrust philosophy,
27:03
SPEAKER_00: more generosity to stimulus,
27:05
SPEAKER_00: keep canceling student loan debt,
27:07
SPEAKER_00: blow off all the fiscal people.
27:11
SPEAKER_00: I think that if you're focused on,
27:13
SPEAKER_00: like,
27:13
SPEAKER_00: the literal dynamics of inflation,
27:15
SPEAKER_00: you could say,
27:16
SPEAKER_00: like,
27:16
SPEAKER_00: wait,
27:16
SPEAKER_00: this actually worked out okay.
27:18
SPEAKER_00: Like, we had a big burst of inflation, but then it went down.
27:20
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, maybe it wasn't perfect, but it was fine.
27:24
SPEAKER_00: But especially if you're concerned about,
27:26
SPEAKER_00: like,
27:26
SPEAKER_00: the vibes and things like that,
27:31
SPEAKER_00: the fact that there was this big lesson learned that you should,
27:34
SPEAKER_00: like,
27:34
SPEAKER_00: stop projecting that you care about all this green ice shade stuff,
27:38
SPEAKER_00: I think...
27:40
SPEAKER_00: matters actually quite a lot, you know, just in a sort of we're learning from loss kind of thing.
27:47
SPEAKER_00: Like,
27:47
SPEAKER_00: I think you want to come back next time with more of that Barack Obama,
27:52
SPEAKER_00: Bill Clinton,
27:53
SPEAKER_00: you know,
27:54
SPEAKER_00: kind of vibes.
27:55
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
27:55
SPEAKER_00: you can see there was a great,
27:56
SPEAKER_00: a famous debate moment in 1992 where they get asked the question,
28:02
SPEAKER_00: like,
28:02
SPEAKER_00: how has the budget deficit impacted you personally?
28:06
SPEAKER_00: You know,
28:06
SPEAKER_00: and Bill Clinton gives this heartfelt thing about,
28:10
SPEAKER_00: like,
28:10
SPEAKER_00: people's economic struggles and,
28:12
SPEAKER_00: you know,
28:12
SPEAKER_00: how he understands,
28:14
SPEAKER_00: like,
28:14
SPEAKER_00: we got to cut the deficit because it impacts,
28:17
SPEAKER_00: like,
28:17
SPEAKER_00: every community out here.
28:19
SPEAKER_00: And Democrats...
28:22
SPEAKER_00: you know, like, made a big effort to, like, get away from that stuff, right?
28:25
SPEAKER_00: To focus instead on this,
28:27
SPEAKER_00: like,
28:28
SPEAKER_00: quest to build,
28:30
SPEAKER_00: you know,
28:30
SPEAKER_00: a European-style social democratic welfare state.
28:35
SPEAKER_00: And it's not... It's not working on a vibes level.
28:40
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
28:41
SPEAKER_00: It's not doing the messaging work that it's supposed to do.
28:45
SPEAKER_00: People are not sitting here thinking about, like...
28:50
SPEAKER_00: I really want Joe Biden's $5 trillion in spending increases that he says he'll
28:56
SPEAKER_00: deliver if Democrats get a majority.
28:59
SPEAKER_00: And I just,
28:59
SPEAKER_00: I think that should be like a little sobering to people who believe in that agenda
29:06
SPEAKER_00: as a substantive matter,
29:08
SPEAKER_00: that like it's not doing the work.
29:11
SPEAKER_01: Well, yes.
29:12
SPEAKER_01: I mean, like if you had asked me even before this election, before the 2020 election, I
29:19
SPEAKER_01: Like,
29:19
SPEAKER_01: do you believe in this idea that Democrats should cast off policy constraints,
29:26
SPEAKER_01: build the social compact that they think is most just,
29:30
SPEAKER_01: that will help the most people,
29:32
SPEAKER_01: and then people,
29:34
SPEAKER_01: having been helped by the government,
29:35
SPEAKER_01: will reward them politically by voting for them?
29:40
SPEAKER_01: I would have said, no, I don't believe in that theory of politics.
29:43
SPEAKER_01: I did at one point, I think, but I don't anymore.
29:47
SPEAKER_01: I feel like listening to everything you said,
29:50
SPEAKER_01: I want to imagine that the election was today and Joe Biden died.
29:57
SPEAKER_01: lost as these polls suggest he would.
30:00
SPEAKER_01: So that would be a pretty bad defeat, right?
30:05
SPEAKER_01: And so it was time for Democrats to start learning from loss, right?
30:10
SPEAKER_01: Like doing their after action assessment to try to avoid whatever mistakes they think
30:17
SPEAKER_01: contributed to joe biden losing to donald trump in 2024 and like some of them i
30:22
SPEAKER_01: think are are pretty obvious like try not to be president during a bout of
30:27
SPEAKER_01: inflation definitely try not to be the cause of the inflation and i think that like
30:34
SPEAKER_01: to some extent um
30:36
SPEAKER_01: Joe Biden's taking a big L on that when he doesn't need to.
30:40
SPEAKER_01: There are arguments to make, and he's kind of flirting with some of them to sort of pass the buck on it.
30:48
SPEAKER_01: Maybe at the margins, the American Rescue Plan exacerbated inflation, but it was a global phenomenon.
30:54
SPEAKER_01: And I think that he could more or less
30:58
SPEAKER_01: say, no, Donald Trump fucked up the pandemic and that's why we had inflation.
31:04
SPEAKER_01: Try to at least fight that issue to a draw.
31:08
SPEAKER_01: Don't be president during a bout of inflation.
31:10
SPEAKER_01: That's one thing.
31:11
SPEAKER_01: Another would be don't be 81 years old,
31:14
SPEAKER_01: or if you're going to be 81 years old,
31:16
SPEAKER_01: be one of those 81-year-olds who's a little bit more freakishly youthful than Biden is.
31:24
SPEAKER_01: Don't present as somebody who's
31:28
SPEAKER_01: I think those are pretty easy.
31:29
SPEAKER_01: You know, like I don't think that you're going to see Democrats post Biden flirt with inflation.
31:35
SPEAKER_01: And I don't think you're going to see Democrats nominate an 80 year old.
31:38
SPEAKER_01: OK, but what about from there?
31:41
SPEAKER_01: Right.
31:41
SPEAKER_01: Like and this is where I feel like,
31:45
SPEAKER_01: you know,
31:45
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what the information environment in Canada is like,
31:50
SPEAKER_01: let alone in Europe.
31:51
SPEAKER_01: And I and I don't know what Justin Trudeau does to try to get.
31:58
SPEAKER_01: people thinking about issues that are helpful for him and hurtful for – harmful for his opponents.
32:04
SPEAKER_01: But just like in the United States –
32:08
SPEAKER_01: There's a stupid thing happening like probably right now as we record this where
32:12
SPEAKER_01: Donald Trump is in court and he assembles a bunch of Republican influencers and,
32:18
SPEAKER_01: you know,
32:19
SPEAKER_01: vice presidential wannabes to help him violate the gag order and stand outside the
32:24
SPEAKER_01: court and just,
32:25
SPEAKER_01: you know,
32:25
SPEAKER_01: just cough up pro-Trump lies and bullshit about why he's like on trial.
32:33
SPEAKER_01: And there's just no Democrats doing it.
32:36
SPEAKER_01: Like Democrats see this and they're like, well, that's,
32:39
SPEAKER_01: I guess our hands are tied.
32:40
SPEAKER_01: And,
32:42
SPEAKER_01: you know,
32:42
SPEAKER_01: on and on down the line,
32:43
SPEAKER_01: like Trump gets caught offering kind of quid pro quo favors to the oil industry and
32:50
SPEAKER_01: like Democrats just don't respond.
32:53
SPEAKER_01: And I just I see what they do respond when.
33:02
SPEAKER_01: people say they're upset about inflation.
33:04
SPEAKER_01: Then Joe Biden goes out and says, and like, my number one goal is to reduce inflation.
33:08
SPEAKER_01: And people say that they're upset about crime and like my, you know, I'm, we're going to fund the police.
33:13
SPEAKER_01: And it's like,
33:14
SPEAKER_01: I see a world,
33:16
SPEAKER_01: a political world outside the,
33:19
SPEAKER_01: the question of material reality and fundamentals and so on where Republicans are
33:26
SPEAKER_01: inject topic ideas into the discourse and Democrats,
33:32
SPEAKER_01: all they can muster is to say,
33:35
SPEAKER_01: we'll solve the problem that Republicans made you concerned about with policy.
33:39
SPEAKER_00: Now I have to go back to my usual bullshit because like this is not true.
33:42
SPEAKER_00: Like this is a core point of Boitler thought that I think is false.
33:47
SPEAKER_00: Progressive movement constantly ejects topics into the news discourse.
33:53
SPEAKER_00: They do it when they care about the topic.
33:56
SPEAKER_00: The problem is- I'm talking about Democrats.
33:59
SPEAKER_00: Yes, but Democrats too.
34:01
SPEAKER_00: You want Democrats to care about what you care about, which is defeating Donald Trump.
34:07
SPEAKER_00: But factually, they don't.
34:11
SPEAKER_00: Democrats spent a lot of time,
34:13
SPEAKER_00: elected Democrats,
34:14
SPEAKER_00: with the support of the progressive movement,
34:17
SPEAKER_00: all the time,
34:18
SPEAKER_00: try to inject the Israel-Gaza war into the news-
34:24
SPEAKER_00: Because they care about it.
34:26
SPEAKER_00: They will try to inject climate stuff into the news.
34:29
SPEAKER_00: I share your outrage that nobody in the Democratic Party can lift a finger to try
34:37
SPEAKER_00: to make news around this Trump trial that's happening in New York.
34:41
SPEAKER_00: But it's not because Democrats don't know how to make news.
34:45
SPEAKER_00: They're not...
34:48
SPEAKER_00: which I think is not a word you're supposed to use.
34:51
SPEAKER_00: It's not because they're suffering from special... I don't know what it is.
34:58
SPEAKER_00: There is a question of what people want to do.
35:06
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember when...
35:09
SPEAKER_00: Somebody who got famous for being a lawyer during the Trump impeachment ran for a House seat, right?
35:20
SPEAKER_00: And,
35:21
SPEAKER_00: like,
35:21
SPEAKER_00: all the progressive groups,
35:22
SPEAKER_00: like,
35:22
SPEAKER_00: mobilized to stop him because that was,
35:25
SPEAKER_00: like,
35:25
SPEAKER_00: a cringe resistance guy,
35:27
SPEAKER_00: and they wanted,
35:28
SPEAKER_00: like,
35:28
SPEAKER_00: a real...
35:29
SPEAKER_01: Well,
35:29
SPEAKER_01: he's,
35:29
SPEAKER_01: you know,
35:30
SPEAKER_01: he's a billionaire heir or whatever,
35:32
SPEAKER_00: you know?
35:33
SPEAKER_00: Sure, sure, sure.
35:33
SPEAKER_00: And, like, I just, like, I agree with you that, like,
35:37
SPEAKER_00: This stuff is bad.
35:39
SPEAKER_00: That's great.
35:40
SPEAKER_00: But, you know, like, I have been, like, tearing my hair out this whole time.
35:46
SPEAKER_00: It's like,
35:46
SPEAKER_00: can't somebody get some University of Texas students to go do a protest on the
35:52
SPEAKER_00: steps of the Texas State Capitol?
35:54
SPEAKER_00: about the denial of abortion rights in the state of Texas and then get Greg Abbott
36:00
SPEAKER_00: to need to send the cops to bust up an abortion rights protest.
36:05
SPEAKER_00: And then every Democrat in the state of Texas could go say like, that's it.
36:09
SPEAKER_00: And again, it's like, it's just like, it's not true.
36:11
SPEAKER_01: That's the thing is like, I'm not talking about like the left and the groups because I do understand
36:16
SPEAKER_01: I like, I'm conceding these points to you.
36:18
SPEAKER_00: But I mean,
36:18
SPEAKER_00: I'm saying,
36:18
SPEAKER_00: I'm saying Democrats too,
36:19
SPEAKER_00: like Stancil had this Twitter thread yesterday that like,
36:22
SPEAKER_00: I thought started great.
36:24
SPEAKER_00: And then took this like insane turn where he was suggesting that it's like
36:28
SPEAKER_00: consultants who are telling Democrats that they need to focus on ambitious policymaking.
36:32
SPEAKER_00: And like,
36:33
SPEAKER_00: it's not consultants who are telling them that it's just like people who sincerely
36:37
SPEAKER_00: believe in the merits of this ambitious policymaking.
36:41
SPEAKER_00: And like,
36:43
SPEAKER_00: Democrats, Democratic elected officials are very responsive to them.
36:47
SPEAKER_00: The consultants,
36:48
SPEAKER_00: unfortunately,
36:50
SPEAKER_00: do have a tendency to sometimes like lie and say that this ambitious policymaking
36:56
SPEAKER_00: is going to turn out well because they themselves get a lot of work from the kind
37:01
SPEAKER_00: of ambitious policy demanders.
37:04
SPEAKER_00: But to bring it all back, back, back to where I started, like,
37:08
SPEAKER_00: I don't think that these macro disagreements about political strategy can explain
37:14
SPEAKER_00: very much about why Jackie Rosen is doing so much better than Joe Biden.
37:20
SPEAKER_00: Like, Jackie Rosen is not...
37:24
SPEAKER_00: She's fine, but she's not out there doing any amazing earned media kind of stuff.
37:31
SPEAKER_00: She's just doing very baseline Democratic Party politics,
37:37
SPEAKER_00: even in a state where the underlying politics are drifting against her.
37:42
SPEAKER_00: She has maybe broken to the right from Biden just on immigration, as I think a lot of
37:50
SPEAKER_00: kind of border state people have, but not that much, not that dramatically.
37:54
SPEAKER_00: And there is something going on that is specific to Biden.
38:02
SPEAKER_00: And it's either,
38:03
SPEAKER_00: I think it has to be inflation or his age or somehow the intersection of those two things.
38:13
SPEAKER_01: I don't think that's necessarily right because the public has some silly
38:24
SPEAKER_01: reactionary ideas about the president versus state-level politicians.
38:28
SPEAKER_01: And also, Jackie Rosen is not 80.
38:30
SPEAKER_01: So to your point that maybe Biden's unique liability is his age, the –
38:41
SPEAKER_01: people being miserable because the information environment is flooded with misery
38:47
SPEAKER_01: is like,
38:48
SPEAKER_01: it tracks to me that people would be like,
38:51
SPEAKER_01: and I'm going to blame the president for that,
38:53
SPEAKER_01: even though here at home,
38:56
SPEAKER_01: well,
38:56
SPEAKER_01: like Jackie Rosen,
38:57
SPEAKER_01: like Catherine Cortez master before her is like,
39:00
SPEAKER_01: younger than Biden, and is running against this Trump wannabe who sucks.
39:07
SPEAKER_01: And so I'm going to vote for her, but not for him.
39:11
SPEAKER_01: I can get myself into that headspace, even though I don't naturally inhabit it.
39:19
SPEAKER_01: I guess what I see happening with the consultants and the Democrats,
39:31
SPEAKER_01: Like response to Trump is to do policies,
39:35
SPEAKER_01: not that the consultant said do ambitious policy and that's your ticket out of this
39:41
SPEAKER_01: fascist threat.
39:42
SPEAKER_01: It was – you beat Donald Trump.
39:46
SPEAKER_01: Don't relitigate the past because voters hate that, which is just like –
39:51
SPEAKER_01: typical consultant, like it's, you know, look to the future, not the past bullshit, right?
39:57
SPEAKER_01: Just pabulum.
39:58
SPEAKER_01: And be normal,
40:00
SPEAKER_01: do normal,
40:01
SPEAKER_01: like kitchen table policymaking,
40:04
SPEAKER_01: and people will just reward you for not seeming like crazy people.
40:10
SPEAKER_01: And I think that that was the essential democratic strategist message to the leaders of the party.
40:16
SPEAKER_01: And they followed it.
40:17
SPEAKER_01: And it created this
40:19
SPEAKER_01: void of like dramatic tension that Republicans filled with anti-Biden shit.
40:26
SPEAKER_01: And like,
40:26
SPEAKER_01: so Republicans,
40:27
SPEAKER_01: not leaders of right-wing groups,
40:30
SPEAKER_01: but like the speaker of the house goes to Columbia university to,
40:35
SPEAKER_01: to get more eyeballs on protests and the fact that the graduation got canceled,
40:40
SPEAKER_01: but like Hakeem Jeffries does not go to Texas.
40:42
SPEAKER_01: Right.
40:43
SPEAKER_01: to stage the pro-abortion protests that you have in mind that I would love to see.
40:49
SPEAKER_01: And it's like, it's them.
40:51
SPEAKER_01: It's them.
40:52
SPEAKER_01: Like Elise Hoag can't get the press to follow her to Texas.
40:57
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
40:58
SPEAKER_00: But Hakeem Jeffries could.
41:00
SPEAKER_00: Maybe Hakeem Jeffries could.
41:02
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I still think like, is there a protest there or isn't there?
41:06
SPEAKER_00: Right.
41:06
SPEAKER_00: Is one thing.
41:07
SPEAKER_00: Left wing members of Congress also went to Columbia,
41:10
SPEAKER_00: like knowing that the whole thing was a publicity stunt designed to hurt Biden.
41:15
SPEAKER_00: They made it work because like and again,
41:18
SPEAKER_00: to give credit to the people on the left who are trying to help Donald Trump win
41:23
SPEAKER_00: the election,
41:24
SPEAKER_00: their theory of the case,
41:25
SPEAKER_00: right,
41:26
SPEAKER_00: like is that there is an ongoing genocide happening in Palestine.
41:30
SPEAKER_00: that Joe Biden has the ability to stop this genocide,
41:34
SPEAKER_00: and that if they maximize the electoral pain to Biden that is caused by leftists,
41:40
SPEAKER_00: they can force him to switch this.
41:42
SPEAKER_00: I don't think that any of the steps in that analytic chain are correct.
41:47
SPEAKER_00: But like,
41:47
SPEAKER_00: I do want to give the do to people who are doing it,
41:50
SPEAKER_00: because I think it reflects an overall dynamic that like,
41:57
SPEAKER_00: is that there's a lot of sincere issue carers on the left who also sincerely
42:02
SPEAKER_00: believe that left to their own devices,
42:04
SPEAKER_00: Democrats won't pursue aggressive progressive policy.
42:09
SPEAKER_00: And so what you need to do is invest your money in having leftists constantly
42:15
SPEAKER_00: either sabotage Democrats or threaten to sabotage them.
42:20
SPEAKER_00: And that that shapes the environment in a really fundamental way.
42:25
SPEAKER_00: And that is just not conservatives' approach to politics.
42:30
SPEAKER_00: They think that if they try to help Republicans win, that will make public policy be more conservative.
42:37
SPEAKER_00: Anytime I suggest that like left wing people should just try to help Joe Biden win
42:42
SPEAKER_00: the election,
42:42
SPEAKER_00: like they get really upset about that idea because they think that it will lead to
42:47
SPEAKER_00: a world in which it's always 1995.
42:52
SPEAKER_00: Right.
42:52
SPEAKER_00: In which the only thing that ever happens is Bill Clinton signing welfare reform.
42:58
SPEAKER_00: I don't really agree with that.
42:59
SPEAKER_00: But then you go back to Biden,
43:01
SPEAKER_00: like you characterized what Democrats did in 2021 as like an effort to return to normal.
43:10
SPEAKER_00: And I just don't think that's what they did.
43:13
SPEAKER_00: You know,
43:13
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
43:13
SPEAKER_00: I think that 2021,
43:15
SPEAKER_01: 22...
43:16
SPEAKER_01: Discount the art because there was a crisis when Biden took over.
43:19
SPEAKER_01: It was like getting better.
43:20
SPEAKER_01: But like everything from there, it was like...
43:25
SPEAKER_01: Like, well-focused group, pretty popular.
43:27
SPEAKER_00: It was well-focused grouped, but it was huge in scale.
43:32
SPEAKER_00: And it was deliberate.
43:33
SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean, you can go back and find the articles, right?
43:35
SPEAKER_00: Like, Biden is planning an FDR-sized presidency.
43:39
SPEAKER_00: I thought Osiris Buonevo,
43:42
SPEAKER_00: I think I'm saying his name right,
43:44
SPEAKER_00: did a really great piece,
43:45
SPEAKER_00: I thought,
43:46
SPEAKER_00: in The New Republic based on Frank Foer's book.
43:49
SPEAKER_00: And he was kind of like reading Foer against the grain.
43:54
SPEAKER_00: And he showed,
43:55
SPEAKER_00: I think correctly,
43:57
SPEAKER_00: that Biden,
43:58
SPEAKER_00: who's a pretty moderate guy,
43:59
SPEAKER_00: it appealed to his ego,
44:04
SPEAKER_00: the idea that he was going to become this progressive titan who pulled the country
44:12
SPEAKER_00: out of crisis with not just one,
44:14
SPEAKER_00: but many trillion-dollar spending bills and got him to do something that was a
44:19
SPEAKER_00: little bit against his instincts.
44:21
SPEAKER_00: But wait, I do want to I do want to drag this back, though, because we were we were talking like.
44:27
SPEAKER_00: Do you want to put a paywall here and then we can talk about.
44:29
SPEAKER_00: Let's let's put the paywall.
44:30
SPEAKER_00: Let's let's let's let's relitigate Joe Biden's age.
44:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
44:34
SPEAKER_01: let's do it,
44:35
SPEAKER_01: because I do think that there are ways to look at the New York Times poll and not
44:41
SPEAKER_01: feel gloom and doom or feel only minor gloom and doom.
44:44
SPEAKER_01: And then there's obviously like the.
44:48
SPEAKER_01: nightmare scenario interpretation.
44:50
SPEAKER_01: But if you want to hear about what we think about those things- Yeah,
44:52
SPEAKER_00: let's get the optimist take and the pessimist take and where we're all going.
44:55
SPEAKER_00: And hide them from non-haters.
44:57
SPEAKER_00: But you gotta pay us.
44:58
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