Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Chuck’s Commentary - Blue Mirage, Blue Wave, Or Blue Tsunami? + Could John Fetterman Defect?

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Chuck’s Commentary - Blue Mirage, Blue Wave, Or Blue Tsunami? + Could John Fetterman Defect? · The Chuck ToddCast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: This episode of the Chuck Todd cast is brought to
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  Speaker 1: you by Chapter. Now, almost everything you hear about Medicare
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• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Hello there and welcome to the fall season of the
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: Chuck Todd cast. No, I'm not going to make up
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: just random days of the month where we claim to
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: start a new season like my favorite cooking show, Chopped,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: which has been on like 25 years, but claims to
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: have like 70,000 seasons, which I never quite get. So
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: it's in that spirit that you're here for the new season,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: the fall season, Labor Day. We're kicking it all off.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: But there is actually a tiny bit of a schedule
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: change instead of three updates a week that we've been
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: doing through the summer. And I'm counting Super Tuesday, which,
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: of course, is expansion. So now every day, Monday through Thursday,
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: Friday is now our only day we don't have an
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: intentional episode that we are dropping right here on the
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Chuck Toddcast feed. So on Mondays, you're getting what we're
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: getting right now. Welcome to Monday, right? Labor Day Monday.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: On Tuesdays will be Chris, Eliza, and I breaking things down.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: Super Tuesday, very midterm-focused podcast. I will now bring the
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: Wednesday podcast back for the fall season. And a lot
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: of those interviews will be, in some ways, interviews that
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: are sometimes a little off the news cycle. Intentionally so,
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: because I think– frankly. It's just I've got a range
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: of interests. And hey, I've got a podcast with my
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: name on it. So I'm going to share my range
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: of interests where I think you two might learn something
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: out of it. And our normal Thursday top five list
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: will go back to being on Wednesday. My college football
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: preview will be every Thursday. And yes, I am bringing
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: back my college football recap on Monday. So here we are.
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  Speaker 1: It is Labor Day. I'm going to talk about the
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: two things that that are probably occupying my mind the
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  Speaker 1: most right now, at least outside what's happening in my
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: own family and my own house. The sprint to the
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: midterms and the start of college football. And frankly, I
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: could spend a lot of time on both. And I
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: will spend a little bit of time on college football
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  Speaker 1: here later in this podcast. But of course, I know
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: why you're here. I know why I have subscribers. It
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: is politics and it is the midterms. But look, I'm
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: going to start with the midterms because we know the cliche.
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  Speaker 1: Labor Day has always been the traditional beginning of the
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: fall campaign, of which it's because we change seasons that
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  Speaker 1: we can say that. But this campaign is not like
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  Speaker 1: it needs any amping up. It's been going pretty much nonstop.
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  Speaker 1: It's a little bit quaint to say we're really kicking
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  Speaker 1: off the fall campaign when campaign season, of course, never ends.
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  Speaker 1: But Labor Day still means something. The primaries are essentially over.
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  Speaker 1: We've got New Hampshire and Delaware on Tuesday, Rhode Island,
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  Speaker 1: for whatever reason, decided Wednesday was the day they wanted
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  Speaker 1: to vote. And then we're done, done. But for what
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  Speaker 1: it's worth in those three primaries, I'm actually pretty interested
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: to see what is going to happen out of New
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  Speaker 1: Hampshire in particular. I've seen a lot of polling out
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  Speaker 1: of New Hampshire this summer, and I'll be honest, I'm
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: skeptical of just about all of it. Polling New Hampshire
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  Speaker 1: is always difficult. You don't know how many independents are
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  Speaker 1: coming in your primary versus the others. You can do
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  Speaker 1: really good polling and just be totally off on the
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  Speaker 1: number of non-Democrats or non-Republicans that choose to jump in
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  Speaker 1: your primary. So it can really throw things off. So
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  Speaker 1: that's why I'm curious. I want to see the raw turnout.
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  Speaker 1: I want to see, do Democrats continue what we've been doing?
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  Speaker 1: We talked on this podcast about the massive Democratic primary
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  Speaker 1: turnout advantage we've seen around the country. And I think,
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  Speaker 1: of course, it's one of the most important pieces of
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  Speaker 1: evidence we've gotten about the political environment. So New Hampshire
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  Speaker 1: is going to give us one last data point. Remember,
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  Speaker 1: New Hampshire is a swingish state that Donald Trump can't
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  Speaker 1: seem to carry, right? There's a few swing states, Colorado,
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: in my mind, that are still swingy states, but they
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: are just not swing states in the Trump era. Colorado, Virginia,
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: New Hampshire fit that quite a bit. I expect one
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: or maybe all three of them, when or if the
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: Republican Party pulls back from its nationalist direction that Trump
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  Speaker 1: has taken it, then I could expect those three states
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  Speaker 1: perhaps to become a tad more competitive again. But I'm
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  Speaker 1: still just curious, right? And I'm interested in those Democratic
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  Speaker 1: primaries that will tell us just how intense is this
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  Speaker 1: fight from the left? Is there another sign of this
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  Speaker 1: progressive socialist adjacent energy that we've seen in some places
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  Speaker 1: as it show up in New Hampshire? Obviously, that matters
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  Speaker 1: not just in these set of primaries, but it matters
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  Speaker 1: for 2028 because New Hampshire is always one of the
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  Speaker 1: more important settings for presidential primary politics. And just how
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  Speaker 1: bad is this establishment hangover? I don't expect Chris Pappas,
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  Speaker 1: the sitting member of Congress, who's essentially the agreed upon
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  Speaker 1: heir apparent there to Gene Shaheen, who's decided to retire.
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  Speaker 1: I don't expect Pappas to lose the primary, but what's
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: the margin? Who turns out? Right? That's interesting. So let's
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  Speaker 1: see some votes. And then we're going to be done.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: We'll have the nominees and the rest of the fall
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  Speaker 1: campaign begins. We have now less than 60 days till
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  Speaker 1: election day. So Simple question that I get asked now
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  Speaker 1: every day by somebody in my life. Sometimes it's family.
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  Speaker 1: Sometimes it's friends. Sometimes it's people I haven't heard from
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  Speaker 1: in about, oh, two years since the last election season.
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  Speaker 1: And it's the simple question of where do things stand?
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  Speaker 1: Where's this headed? Is there going to be a blue wave?
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  Speaker 1: So I think it's pretty simple. My answer is Democrats
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  Speaker 1: are ahead. We've spent enough time going through primary turnout
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  Speaker 1: numbers on my last episode of the podcast that I
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  Speaker 1: don't need to spend another 20 minutes on that today.
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  Speaker 1: The question I have on Labor Day isn't whether this
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  Speaker 1: is going to be a democratic-leaning environment going into November.
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  Speaker 1: I think we've established that. The question is, how big
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  Speaker 1: of a democratic advantage is this environment going to have?
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  Speaker 1: And as I look at the map right now, I
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  Speaker 1: think there are three plausible outcomes that we should be
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  Speaker 1: preparing for. And I'm going to put them in the
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  Speaker 1: most pithy way I can. You've heard me say this before,
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  Speaker 1: I think, in a few other places that I've either– Hosted,
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  Speaker 1: like over on Newsphere, or just participated in, like over
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  Speaker 1: on CNN, which is blue mirage, blue wave, blue tsunami. Essentially,
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  Speaker 1: small Democratic advantage, medium Democratic advantage, large Democratic advantage. These
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  Speaker 1: aren't simply different guesses at how many House seats Democrats win.
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  Speaker 1: They're different electorates, and that's what I want to go
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  Speaker 1: through today. The different turnout models, there are different answers
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  Speaker 1: to the question of what happens to the Trump coalition
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  Speaker 1: when Donald Trump isn't on the ballot. And look, these
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  Speaker 1: three potential outcomes, which I think are really the only
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  Speaker 1: outcomes we're dealing with here, could produce three very different congresses.
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  Speaker 1: So let me start with the smallest one, the blue mirage.
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  Speaker 1: And I think blue mirage, I put it about a 15%
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  Speaker 1: chance of this being a blue mirage. So let me
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  Speaker 1: define what I mean by blue mirage. A blue mirage
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  Speaker 1: means we spent the entire year correctly identifying a democratic-leaning
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  Speaker 1: political environment. and then watched it produce surprisingly small Democratic advantages, right?
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  Speaker 1: A blue mirage may still show that the Democratic enthusiasm
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  Speaker 1: advantage was real, that the primary turnout advantage was real,
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  Speaker 1: that the unhappiness with Trump was real. But Democrats, in
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  Speaker 1: a blue mirage scenario, it would mean that they couldn't
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: convert enough of that into actual seat gains. And remember
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: the house math here. Democrats need just a net gain
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  Speaker 1: of three seats to get to 218, three, that's it.
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  Speaker 1: So in a blue Mirage, they're probably going to win
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  Speaker 1: the House, right? Just like in the Republicans' red mirage
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  Speaker 1: of 22. Maybe they get four or five, maybe it's
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: seven or eight, but it's probably under 10. So it's
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  Speaker 1: not a 2018 style House result like we saw in
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  Speaker 1: the Trump first term. It's much closer to what Republicans
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  Speaker 1: did in 2022. Just enough movement to take control, right?
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  Speaker 1: But nowhere close to what you would have expected if
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  Speaker 1: you'd simply looked at the national political environment. And the
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: Senate is where you will really see if this is
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: a mirage, right? Maybe North Carolina still comes in, but
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  Speaker 1: Ohio doesn't. Alaska doesn't. Texas doesn't. And maybe Maine is
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: a coin flip. And then maybe Democrats... They could win
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: or lose Michigan in this scenario, but it probably is
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: keeping them up at night, and it's probably been a
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: race that they've been on defense of the whole time.
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  Speaker 1: So you could end up with a scenario where Democrats
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: essentially pick up a net of two Senate seats at best.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: Maybe they win three Republican seats and lose Michigan, but
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: the net is two. So the question would be, if
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: we end up in a blue mirage scenario, What's the explanation?
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: How would it have happened? Well, there are a few
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: ways we could get a blue mirage. The first is
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: simply the map. We spent the last year watching this
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: extraordinary mid-decade redistricting arms race. Republicans went into it understanding
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: that they might be facing a difficult national environment for
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: the midterms. So they tried to build themselves a sort
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: of a higher flood wall, if you will. And in fact,
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: you know, we just got another court case last week
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: that actually kind of muddied things up, right? We have
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: a new asterisk on the map. It's Missouri. Missouri Supreme
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: Court ruled unanimously over late last week that the Republican-drawn
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: congressional map cannot be used this November because a referendum
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: petition suspended it. So now the old map from the
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: 2022 that was used in 2024, but drawn in 2022
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: remains in effect unless something changes. And the state is
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: now asking the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene. It's kind
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: of complicated here, actually, in Missouri, because if they're going
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: to throw out these lines, they held primaries based on
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: the new lines. They didn't hold primaries based on the
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: old lines. So you're really just assigning these nominees who
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: won in the new lines? I mean, this is a
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: total and complete mess, but it's a mess because The
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: state elected officials who just wanted a partisan outcome here didn't–
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: went out of their way not to follow the law
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: in this referendum. And they seemed to– they were hoping
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: essentially to run out the clock and they would just
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: sort of jam this through and hope that even if
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: the courts ruled that it was unconstitutional, then they would
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: be forced to have a special election, which I still
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: think is going to end up happening in some form.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: If this– look, I'm very curious what the U.S. Supreme
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: Court does in this one. Because normally they stay out
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: of if the state Supreme Court rules unanimously and they're
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: the ones interpreting the state constitution, the U.S. Supreme Court's
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: not going to get involved there. So I don't think
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: they're going to. But I think there's all sorts of,
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: you know, voters could bring a lot. Anyway, Missouri is
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: now a total and complete mess. But if they use
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: the old lines, it adds a Democratic seat in Kansas
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: City and probably puts a Republican seat in the suburbs
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: of St. Louis in much more jeopardy, the Ann Wagner
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: seat there. which actually used to be Dick Kephart's old seed,
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: if you're keeping score at home. So we shall see,
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: but here we are on Labor Day weekend. And remarkably,
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: there's still at least one piece of the congressional map
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: that has a fricking asterisk to it. Heck of a job,
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: Republican party for starting this mess. And I know the
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: Republicans say, oh, the Democrats started it in New York
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: a cycle before. I am not gonna sit here and
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: litigate who started the redistricting wars. Okay, but I can
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: tell you these map wars have all, this all goes
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: back to Tom DeLay. So if you really wanna keep
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: coming back and you want an honest referee, not a
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: Big Ten official, but an honest referee, hint, hint, where
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: I'm going later in college football. If you want honest
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: refereeing about this topic, in the 21st century, this has
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: been a Republican phenomenon. In the 20th century, it was
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: a Democratic Party phenomenon. So every party has dirty hands
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: on this. But this most recent effort has been a
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: focal point of Republicans. So let's see what happens. But
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: it's a big structural piece. And here we are less
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: than 60 days. And we don't know. Voters in Missouri
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: don't know what congressional lines are going to be voting.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: But there's another one that I think is much more important. Look,
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: the maps have mattered to sort of strengthen Republicans. We're
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: trying to essentially build their flood, their sort of flood
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: wall higher, right, to see if they could, you know,
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: overcome the surge that comes with a potential dominant blue wave.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: But the bigger, more important point on this, if there
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: is a blue mirage, the explanation is going to be money,
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: because this is a very different financial environment from the
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: last couple of midterms. Democrats became accustomed in the early,
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: and particularly in Trump won 2018, and again in 2022,
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: of having a significant financial advantage in particularly at the
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: candidate level, you know, candidate to candidate fundraising. Democrats much
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: better at raising what are so-called hard dollars, meaning direct
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: contributions from people into the campaign itself, not super packed money,
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: not those dark money or anything like that. And as
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: you and what a lot of people don't know, that money,
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: you know, the more hard dollars you have, the greater
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: the discount the advertising is. So it really has allowed
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: that even though Republicans continue to have bigger donors contribute
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: to their various campaign committees, having that advantage on a
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: candidate level has allowed them to mitigate that and in
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: some places have actually a TV advertising advantage, even if
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: they were technically outspent, just because their dollars essentially went
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: further based on the law. Now, of course, there's that
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: Supreme Court ruling that's going to allow somehow political parties
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: that are coordinating with their candidates get those same So
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: it may allow some of this dark money to seep
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: into this. And it's a reason why I think Republicans
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: are dealing in a different environment this time that gives
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: them a bit of an advantage. So look, it's not
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: the financial environment that Democrats had that was essentially advantageous
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: to them in 18 and 22. It's not here this time.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: And it's not because the Republicans have somehow suddenly built
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: a Democratic-style small donor machine. The Democratic small donor machine
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: is still there. But what the Republicans have done is
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: make up for it with some just absolutely enormous checks,
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: particularly from two worlds, tech and crypto. When you look
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: at the money that's sitting out there, MAGA Inc., right,
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: has more than $ 400 million, primarily from tech and crypto.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: Senate Leadership Fund, $ 240 million. Congressional Leadership Fund, which is
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: the House super PAC. The Senate Leadership Fund should be
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: obvious what that is, but the Congressional Leadership Fund is
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: the House super PAC. They have roughly $ 140 million. And
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: then you start going through the dark money groups. You
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: go through the individual donors, the tech billionaires, the crypto money.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: The checks are enormous. Literally, the Democrats have George Soros.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: The Republicans have like 17 people giving the same amount
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: of Soros. And it's kind of why I think the
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: Republican Soros arguments kind of land flat, super flat these
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: days outside of the super right-wing base because, frankly, it's
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: Republicans that are the party of these big billionaires now.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: And it's something that I think a lot of Republican
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: candidates are nervous about. So this is becoming one of
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: the great counterfactuals of the 26th election. Can Republicans spend
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: their way around a bad political environment? Notice what I
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: said there, not change the environment. Essentially, you can't buy
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: a new national mood, but you can save a candidate
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: in Ohio and maybe you can save one in Alaska.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: Maybe you keep Texas from totally getting away from the GOP.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: Maybe there are four to six House members who otherwise
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: would have gotten swept out that you can save. That's
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: all you need to go from wave to mirage here.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: And what are they going to spend all that money
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: on saying? I think there's going to be two basic
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: messages that they're going to have. One is they're going
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: to try to do whatever they can to get the
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: MAGA vote to turn out. And we'll see. And two,
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: they're going to try to make independent voters nervous about Democrats.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: And that's where we get to the third ingredient in
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: the blue mirage, the Democratic brand. This is still an
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: unpopular political party. And that's important to remember here. Because
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: sometimes I think people look at Trump's numbers and assume
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: that every voter who is unhappy with Trump has therefore
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: become enthusiastic about getting the Democrats as the counter. Those
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: aren't the same thing. Pew found this spring that 59%
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: of Americans had an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party. 59.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: The Republican Party was basically in the same place. 58%.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: So somehow Donald Trump's enormously unpopular, but the Republicans and
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: the Democrats are viewed almost identically unfavorably. There's no advantage
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: that the Democrats had. That's not the way things were, right?
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: It's quite different from 2018. The Democratic brand was considerably
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: healthier heading into that election cycle. And that's the openings
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: Republicans have for this one. Take all this money, spend
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: September and October saying, okay, you're angry at us. We
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: get it. But do you really want them? The socialists? DSA?
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: Do you want a rising crime again? Immigration chaos at
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: the border? Throw in whatever cultural issue that they believe
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: will simultaneously scare an independent and motivate them. MAGA voter.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's trans women in sports. I don't know. And
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: if that works just enough, doesn't have to work a lot,
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: but just enough, suddenly a Democratic year produces a small
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: Democratic result. The blue mirage. Maybe one or two Senate
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: seat gains, maybe five to 10 House seat gains. Yes,
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: they get the speakership. but it ain't governable. And then
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: probably have a democratic house that starts behaving like the
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: Republican house we've seen now. Hey, this episode of the
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  Speaker 1: Chuck Todd cast is brought to you by ethos. Look,
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• 21:50
  Speaker 1: of 2026. Now let's get to the second possibility. The
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: blue wave. This is the easiest one to define. Basically,
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: the political environment we're seeing right now is real and
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: it translates. The turnout advantage that we've talked about is
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: real and it translates. Independents really are moving away from Republicans.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: And a meaningful chunk of the Trump electorate doesn't show
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: up when Trump isn't actually on the ballot. This is
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: where I think 2006 is probably a useful comparison here.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: People remember 2006 as this giant Democratic wave, and it
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: was in races that were won. Democrats won the House.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: by winning 40 seats. They won the Senate by winning
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: six seats. But here's the thing about waves. They don't
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: always necessarily mean that everybody wins by double digits in
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: each individual race. A wave can be a whole bunch
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: of close races that all break in the same direction.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: Karl Rove, almost sounding like Kevin Bacon in the end
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: of Animal House, you know, remain calm all is well.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: I remember Karl Rove making this argument right after the
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: 2006 results, essentially pointing out how relatively few votes distributed
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: differently across a collection of about six Senate races and
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: about 15 House races could have changed the outcome. Now,
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: Rove's point at the time was extraordinarily defensive. He was
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: trying to prove this wasn't a full rebuke, I think,
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: given what happened in 2008. It was a full rebuke, Carl,
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: and I think he knows that now. But at the time,
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: that was what he was arguing, and the numbers backed
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: him up a little bit. He was just desperate to
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: get people, don't overread the election. This doesn't mean that
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: we're in the middle of some realignment. We were in
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: the middle of some realignment, but I digress. But I
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: do think that Nugget actually tells us something important about
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: what a wave can look like. The close races stop
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: behaving like individual races. That's what happens in wave environments, right?
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: They start behaving like a national election. It's almost like
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: a school of fish. Everybody's swimming together. It's really hard
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: to sort of get away from the school of fish
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: swimming around. That's a wave. So what would that mean?
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: What would a blue wave mean? translated into this election cycle.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: North Carolina comes in, Ohio comes in for the Democrats,
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: Maine comes in, they hold Michigan, and they probably win
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: both Alaska and Texas, or at least one of the two.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: In the House, you look at places where Democrats have
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: been competitive before, places that they were very competitive in
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: in 12, 14, and 16, whether Democrats won them or
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: lost them, right? But they were competitive. Well, those places
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: start to come back. You'll get an early test in Virginia,
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: not just in the Virginia Beach swing district that always
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: seems to go with whichever direction the wind's blowing, but
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: also the first congressional district, which is suddenly getting more,
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: or even the fifth congressional district, which had pieces of
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: Charlottesville in it. So in a wave, isn't Democrats splitting
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: the genuinely competitive seats out there? A wave means they
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: win most of them, right? Like take Iowa. You're not
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: just taking one of the three targets. You're probably winning
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: two of the three, and maybe you win all three.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: Those Texas House seats that were drawn because Republicans thought
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: they'd won over the Latino vote, those all probably stay
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: blue or go blue. California and their remap ends up
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: benefiting the Democrats, right? This is the Max Millers of
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: the world don't survive in a blue wave environment. It's
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: not Democrats winning in places where Democrats have no business winning, though.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: That's going to be in my next category, and I'm
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: going to get to that. But a wave is Democrats
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: winning virtually everything that was reasonably available to them to win.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: That's why I'm pretty fascinated by the Republican midterm convention
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: in Dallas later this week. Because I think we're about
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: to see the Republican answer to what they think, or
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: at least what they think the answer is to what
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: is going to be a turnout problem. They have one, right?
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: We've seen it in the primaries. Republican voters are not
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: showing up. So we know what the focus of this
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: convention is gonna be about. This is the first ever
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: Republican midterm convention. Trump is speaking twice on two nights.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: JD Vance is speaking. You have most of the sort
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: of Republican leadership that's not in too much of a
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: swing area showing up. Doesn't appear Thune is showing up,
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: but I'm curious. I don't want to assume who's going
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: and not going for sure. Let's get the actual attendance.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: But it is. I'm not surprised that Ken Paxton is
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: scheduled to speak. I am a little surprised that a
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: Mike Rogers out of Michigan wants to go. I'm a
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: little surprised that John Houston out of Ohio is going again.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: Let's see what they say when they speak, because I
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: think the intention of this convention is pretty obvious. Let's
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: fire up the base. I promise you, this convention is
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: not going to be geared towards swing voters, which is
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: why I question why some of the swing state Senate
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: Republican nominees are showing up there, because who are you
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: talking to? I know you do need both swing voters
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: and the base to turn up, which is probably the
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: trap that's I think, impossible for many Republicans to deal with,
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: to navigate, right? If you need Trump space to turn out,
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: what it takes to get them to turn out is
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: going to turn off those swing voters that you need.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: And so in some ways, you need to let Trump
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: deal with your turnout problem, and you should only deal
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: with the swing voter problem. But some of these guys
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: feel as if that Trump is, and we know the
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: way Trump behaves, he doesn't give anybody a pass unless
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: they're Susan Collins. And he's going to feel if you
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: don't come kiss the ring, he's not going to come
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: help you. But I do question who's the persuadable independent
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: sitting at home on a Wednesday and a Thursday night thinking,
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: you know what I really want to watch tonight? A
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: political convention. Not when there are two NFL games on. So, look,
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: they're not going to be speaking. Even if they wanted
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: to speak to independents, they couldn't have scheduled this on
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: two worse nights. to talk to independent voters. They're not.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: This is all about one of two things. Making Trump
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: feel better that he's relevant and important, but two, seeing
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: if they can do anything to get this MAGA base
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: to show up. So this is a base event. And
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: I suspect we're going to get a lot of culture
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: war stuff, a lot of fear of the left, a
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: lot of socialism and communism talking points. A lot of
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: whatever they think reminds the Trump voter why he or
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: she needs to show up even though Trump isn't on
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: the ballot. So, It's going to be interesting. I'm quite
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: curious to see if any Republicans attempt to counter program. Right.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: Some of them. I mean, we know, look, Susan Collins
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: knows she can't go. I mean, it would be a
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: death sentence for her politically if she showed up there.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: But everybody that is in the sort of marginal Harris
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: districts or districts that Biden carried that maybe Trump won back,
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: but or Harris came awfully close. None of them are going.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: Zach Nunn from the Des Moines district. He says he's
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: staying in his district. Juan Siscamani. who's already got a
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: tough fight in Arizona. He says he has a debate
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: and he's going to miss it. Politico surveyed 70 Republican
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: candidates and found 45 either weren't planning to attend or
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: hadn't decided. I am very curious, is Trump going to
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: punish anybody that doesn't come? I am very curious who
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: shows up and it'll be interesting and we'll hopefully have
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: a roll call of stuff later in the week. There
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: are really two different questions for Republican candidates this fall.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: Do you want Donald Trump and do you want Donald
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: Trump's voters? Right. Those aren't necessarily the same answer. And
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: the whole Republican midterm strategy may depend on figuring out
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: how to get the second without creating problems for some.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: candidates with the first. Right. And Trump has another problem.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: He's better politically when he's the counterpuncher, when he's got somebody,
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: somebody or something to run against when he gets to
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: be the outsider, when voters want change and he's the
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: available vehicle for change. That's how he's won his elections.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: That's how he's been most effective. When he's been the incumbent,
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: he's been terrible at this. See 2018? See 2020, right?
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: Now he's having to defend the status quo. And that
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: means Republican candidates have to defend what's happening. Take a wrong. J.D.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: Vance's messaging on Friday was just horrendous, right, for anybody
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: who has to campaign on this. He's debating whether we
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: should call it a war. Donald Trump throws in that
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: the troops that have been killed in this war, because
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: it's less than 50, it's somehow small potatoes. Who the
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: hell says that about somebody who served in uniform? Imagine
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: the outrage on the right had a Democrat said anything
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: remotely close to this. I know Trump is graded on
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: a curve with his own voters sometimes, and the lack
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: of outrage and the hypocrisy of it might start to
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: wear down on independent voters who are just exhausted from
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: just this constant BSing that comes from that side of
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: the aisle. But We're going to debate calling it a war.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: He's talking about that there being no active shooting while
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: the United States actually engaged militarily with Iran within the
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: same news cycle that Vance said that head-scratching thing. So
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: forget the semantics debate here about whether is this a
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: war or not. Imagine you're a Republican candidate at a
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: state fair this weekend and somebody asks you, are we
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: at war? When does it end? Why did gas prices
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: go up? What's the answer? It's an incumbent problem, right?
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: And somehow J.D. Vance is trying to claim, well, it's
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: not as bad as it could be. It's not really
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: a war. I'm not sure if it's going to be
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: an end, but it's not fair to call it. Okay, brother.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: Good luck with that. All I know is that when
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: you were on the other side, any Democratic president that
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: launched any sort of military excursion, even for 10 minutes,
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: was contributing to the forever war. So what is this, Mr.
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: Vice President? Then there's the economy and affordability. And then,
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: of course, there's the issue that listeners to this podcast
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: know I've spent a lot of time talking about data centers.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: I feel like that I've been an early warning system
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: for some of you on this issue. And now you're
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: seeing it everywhere, right? This is no longer a sleeper issue.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: It is a real political problem because AI sounds abstract.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: But a data center in your community raising your electric bill,
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: that's not abstract, right? Water. isn't abstract. Some gigantic facility
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: appearing down the road isn't an abstract idea. What's particularly
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: interesting to me now is how you're beginning to see
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: Republicans responding to the same anger. And that's when you
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: know an issue is crossed over. And why I think
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: Republicans have a harder time on this issue, even though
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: they think if they just flip on it, they can
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: mitigate the damage with independent voters. I'm not so sure.
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: But you do know it's a It's a lethal issue, right?
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: When politicians from the other party start feeling like they
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: have to get on your side of an argument because
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: their own voters are telling them the same thing, right?
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: Look at Ohio and Texas in particular. This isn't simply
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: a Democratic talking point anymore. And this gives Democrats another
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: way to make this election about affordability, right? Groceries, housing, gas, electricity, right?
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: Groceries and housing, all directly with Trump's terrible tariff policy. Gasoline,
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: this war of choice with Iran, electricity. his decision to
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: essentially look the other way and let the tech companies
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: do whatever the hell they want, right? It is not
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: hard to connect all those things very quickly. It's a
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: pretty potent basket. Now, Democrats have their own problem in
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: a wave scenario too. And it's a question that I've
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: been wondering about, which is what are they offering? I
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: understand why Democratic leaders have been reluctant to put out
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: some grand agenda, a contract with America, a six for six,
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: which is what they put out in 2006. Part of
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: it might be strategic, right? Why give Republicans something to
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: campaign against or to shoot at when the election is
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: currently a referendum on the party in power, right? Don't
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: get in the way of that messaging. Perfectly reasonable strategy.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: But I also think there's another reason they won't put
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: anything out on paper. An agenda could divide Democrats themselves, right?
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: Put 10 things on a piece of paper and suddenly
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: the fight isn't Democrats versus Republicans anymore. It's Democrats arguing
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: over which five things belong on the paper and which
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: should be discarded, right? So I get the hesitation. My God,
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: look what happened to Jeffries for just having a conversation
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: with Kushner, right? He is– and look at the ridiculous
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: response to Jared Golden and Marie Glusenkamp-Perez because they wanted
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: to get a bill that Jared Golden cared about to
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: the floor for a vote. It just shows you, right,
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: Jeffries is no Pelosi here. He doesn't have Pelosi. Now,
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: Pelosi had 20 years to sort of earn the right
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: to essentially– put members in their place if necessary, cut
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: deals with them, whatever it is. Jeffries does not have
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: that kind of pull or hold over the caucus. And
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: I don't know if anybody could in his defense. But
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: you're seeing, right, if he offered up something, it might
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: make his challenge even greater. I'm half convinced he's going
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: to be calling Kevin McCarthy for therapy tips if he
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: ends up speaker at our blue mirage scenario. But I digress.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: But there's a risk by not putting on an agenda.
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: And Democrats, and here's the risk. Eventually, you're asking independents
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: not merely to fire somebody. You're asking them to hire
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: somebody else. And don't you need to give them something
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: to make them feel comfortable? Maybe I'm wrong here. And
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: maybe they don't. And sometimes wave elections, right, work that well.
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: It's 74 Democrats. They just simply said, not Nixon, right?
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: And that was enough. Now let's talk blue tsunami. I'm
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: guessing it's the headland that got some of you here.
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: That's the third possibility. And it's not remote, right? If
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: I've got blue mirage in a... I really think of
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: my three scenarios, blue mirage, blue wave, blue tsunami. Blue
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: tsunami is not the least likely. Blue mirage is the
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: least likely. I think blue wave is the most likely.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: So if I'm going to put them in sort of percentages, right,
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: of my pie, I think 15% chance it's blue mirage.
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: About a 50% chance it's blue wave where they... they
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: win both house. And I don't think you can call
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: it a wave if they don't win both the house
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: and the Senate. Okay. And then blue tsunami. So let's
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: get to the blue tsunami. I think it's in the
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: one in three range. So 30 to 35%. So how
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: do I define tsunami? Easy. We're suddenly talking about races
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: we weren't supposed to be talking about. It's as simple
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: as that. A wave means Democrats win almost everything that
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: was reasonably available. Tsunami means the definition of reasonably available changed.
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: Now we're talking about Kansas. Maybe it's a sweep of
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: both governor and Senate there. Now we're talking about Nebraska,
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: maybe the independent candidates in Nebraska, South Dakota, Montana, one
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: or two of them come in. Maybe we're talking about
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: South Carolina or Mississippi because a supercharged black vote combined
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: with a tepid MAGA turnout is a recipe for an
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: upset in one of those two, if not both of
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: those Southern states. And we're not talking about Texas Senate anymore.
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: That's table stakes. In a tsunami- Texas Senate is no
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: longer the interesting question. The interesting question becomes Texas governor.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: Is that a coin flip on election night? That means
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: we're in tsunami territory. Is Florida governor uncalled at 10 p.m.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: because it's that close to a lot 2018? That's tsunami territory.
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: Do Democrats win all of the races in Iowa, the
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: three House seats, Senate and governor? That's tsunami. Are there
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: places that right now during Labor Day weekend, everybody looked
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: at and said, nah, come on, that's not happening. I'm
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: looking at you, South Dakota Senate. I'm looking at you,
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: Kansas Senate. And on election night, we're sitting there waiting
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: for the returns and going, Jesus, we haven't gotten everything
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: in from Wichita. We need to wait for Wichita before
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: we could call Kansas, right? If we're having that conversation,
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: we're in a tsunami. And the turnout recipe is pretty simple.
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: Supercharged Democratic turnout, independents breaking heavily for the Democrats, and
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: MAGA staying home. All three of those have to hit.
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: You get all three at extraordinary levels, and that's how
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: the map expands beyond the places that we're currently spending
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: most of our time on, like Ohio and Texas and
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: Michigan and Alaska. That's the competitive landscape. That's the 35
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: to 35-yard landscape. Blue tsunami means we're talking Kansas, Nebraska,
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: South Dakota, Mississippi, South Carolina, something like that, Kansas Gov,
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: Iowa Gov. Total sweeps in Texas and Ohio for the
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: Democrats in Senate and Gov. So if this scenario is happening,
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: what else has to happen? Well, I think something else
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: does have to happen to get a tsunami beyond those
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: three things I sketched out. The corruption issue has to
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: break through. You know, it's interesting here. We've been waiting.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: I think corruption is sort of underneath all of this, right?
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: Trump's almost daily corruption, right? The paying for, you know,
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: pardons are for sale. It's just sort of matter of fact, right?
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: Everybody kind of knows the government's for sale and this
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: is what he does. And there's really no pushback on it.
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: And For Trump, it's a feature, right? The reason he
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: likes tariffs is not because he's a protectionist. The reason
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: he likes tariffs is because he can use it to
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: either coerce people to do his bidding for different reasons,
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: or he makes money off of giving them relief. Pure
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: and simple. It's no different than Tony Soprano. But for
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: the tsunami to happen, I do think corruption has to
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: become closer to being a top three issue. Now, weirdly enough,
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: data centers may be the most tangible way into the
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: corruption argument, right? Have the Republicans become the sort of
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: the party of data centers? Because tech decided to buy
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: off the Republicans all over the country. They wanted to
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: buy regulatory certainty or regulatory capture. By the way, some
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: Republicans have been uncomfortable with this. I want to shout
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: out the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, one of the
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: few people to push back on this White House. No, no, no, no.
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: States shouldn't be involved in all of this. You know,
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: we've got to have light regulation on these guys. You know,
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: there have been some Republicans who realize that's not going
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: to fly with most of the public. But there's a
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: lot of money to be raised if you do it
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: that way. And tech decided, you know, this is the
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: I think the strategic mistake big tech made is they
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: thought capturing politicians were going to get them what they wanted.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: I don't think they've, you know, they just completely ignored
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: the electorate backlash here, right? I mean, you know what
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: sucks about this is that basically the tech industry, I'm
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: looking at you, Elon Musk and Mark Andreessen and Peter
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: Thiel in particular, you've already come to the conclusion that
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: the voters are meaningless in this project of yours. I
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: can't tell you how freaking insulting that is. You went
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: to the politicians to buy them off rather than going
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: to the public to make your case. And the public
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: is telling you, fuck off. right now. They're that pissed
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: off about this. And it's all because of how you
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: went about it. Politicians, yeah, they're easy marks. They're always,
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: you just wave around $ 100, 000 and yeah, you're going to
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: get a whole bunch of politicians and you're going to
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: be able to capture a whole bunch of politicians. But
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: if you looked at how unpopular politicians are, did you
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: really think capturing politicians and capturing the regulatory was somehow
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: going to appease the public? Oh boy. Okay. And maybe
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: you think, well, we're getting what we want regardless of
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: how unpopular we are. I'm not sure. Let me know
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: what you think of those subpoenas when they start coming in, Mr. Thiel, Mr. Andreessen,
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: all of these folks. All of these folks. But I digress.
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: It's been an enormous amount of tech money coming into politics, right?
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: Crypto money, the same thing, right? The Genius Act was
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: for sale. pure and simple. So this is why I
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: think the data center issue gets, potentially gets the corruption
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: issue closer to the top of voters' minds. Because you can,
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: you know, corruption hits a lot harder if you can
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: connect it to your problems at the moment. And those
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: guys are doing that. And I'm paying more in electricity. Well,
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: the That MF-er just raised, pocketed a million dollars and
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: his son or daughter suddenly gets to run their own
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: crypto exchange. Are you shitting me? That's what happens, right?
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: And so this is, I think, the ingredient that's been
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: missing so far. I have not seen a coherent corruption
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: message yet that I think is broken through. Now, part
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: of it may be you're just never gonna break through
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: as well as the pocketbook issues are breaking through. And
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: I think that's a fair point. But the ability to
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: connect all these dots is sitting right there. Right? And
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: I think that's something that's just waiting to be, it's
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: a fuse. That's your prairie populist wildfire there. And it's
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: how a corruption narrative develops. It makes the abstract more tangible.
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  Speaker 1: 1-877-770-7867 if you're in Louisiana. And then... Once voters start
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: viewing an administration through that lens, then all the other
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: ridiculous stuff begins looking really bad too, right? Naming everything
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: after yourself, the arch, right? He's more worried about monuments
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: to himself than lowering the cost of ground beef in
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: your grocery bill, right? All the self-serving stuff. All of
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: these things that individually can look silly or narcissistic suddenly
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: become part of a larger story that voters tell themselves.
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: These people are in it for themselves. That's when that
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: issue becomes more politically dangerous. And it's one of the
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: things I'm going to be watching. If we're trying to
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: distinguish wave from tsunami, I think it's corruption. It's about
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: whether corruption actually becomes a voting issue, not just something
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: that pops when you ask it in a poll, but
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: something that is volunteered from a voter before you even
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: have to ask them. Because if it does, now you've
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: got affordability dissatisfaction with the president, the war Democratic enthusiasm,
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: independent movement, and a corruption narrative all reinforcing each other,
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: that's how you would get beyond a normal wave, right?
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: That's Watergate 74 shit. But there are a lot of
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: reasons to be cautious about this outcome as well, okay?
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: The Democratic brand problem doesn't magically disappear. The ideological fights
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: don't disappear. And Republicans are going to spend enormous amount
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: of money making sure voters know about every Democrat they
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: can associate with socialism, DSA, or whatever else tests best.
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: So the question is whether independent voters are as frightened
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: by that argument as Republicans hope. And I'm not sure
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: that they're going to be easy to convince on this issue.
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: Remember why Donald Trump became possible in the first place?
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: A lot of voters were willing to experiment because they
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: were so fed up with those that were in charge.
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: They were so fed up with the current trajectory of things.
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: They wanted something different, even if it was risky. They
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: didn't particularly care that the establishment told them this was risky.
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump's risky. So perhaps an independent voter looks at
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: Democrats fighting over their future and says, oh, my God, socialism.
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: But perhaps some look at it and say, oh, at
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: least they're arguing about something different. That is one of
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: the big unknowns of the next 60 days, right, is
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: whether the attacks on the Democrats for having these different views.
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: What if it's not the negative that Republicans think it is?
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: In the same way that all the arguments that Democrats
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: made in 16 and 24 about Trump, he's all these risks. Well,
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: to the voter that wants change, change is risky. And
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: change may be so worth it, you're willing to take
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: a risk. Republicans have won this way. They could very
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: well lose this way. So what am I watching? That's
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: the board as I see it on Labor Day. Blue Mirage, 15%.
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: Blue Wave, 50%. Blue Tsunami, 35%. And what's useful about
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: setting it up this way is that now we have
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: something to watch against for the next two months. We'll
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: start this week. New Hampshire, forget the polls for a second.
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: Show me turnout. Then we have that midterm convention. Watch
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: the convention. Who shows up? Which candidates do? Who intentionally
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: doesn't show up and makes a big deal that they
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: didn't go? Because they want voters to know they didn't go.
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: Who gets the microphone and what do they say? Which
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: Senate candidates do want to get caught standing next to
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump? It tells you they have more of a
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: base problem than a swing voter problem, right? And which
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: ones want to be 1,500 miles away? And most importantly,
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: what is the message coming out of there? How culture
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: worry is it? Is this essentially two nights of trying
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: to scare the bejesus out of the Trump coalition into
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: voting in a midterm? If it is, that's telling us
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: something about Republicans themselves think their problem is. Then you
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: get to watch the money. Republicans have a lot of it.
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: We're going to find out what they can actually do
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: with it. Does that money change the shape of the electorate?
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: Can it turn out MAGA voters who don't normally vote
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: in midterms? Can it make independents who are unhappy with
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: Republicans just nervous enough about Democrats that some of them
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: don't make the leap? Does it save two Senate seats?
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: Does it save six House seats? Because remember, that's all
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: it may take to turn what feels like a wave
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: into a mirage. Then watch the affordability issue, not simply
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: the economic numbers that Washington likes to talk about, but
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: what are voters actually talking about? Groceries, housing, gas, electricity.
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: And then watch the data center issue. How much more
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: does it become part of the conversation? Does it get
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: connected to corruption? Because if I'm right about this issue,
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: it's not only not going away over the next 60 days,
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: it's likely to continue to get bigger, right? Because we're
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: still nervous about this whole AI transformation we're in. And
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: then we'll watch independents. This is ultimately where I think
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: we're going to find the answer. An independent voter whose voters,
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: are they just simply unhappy with Trump? Or have they decided,
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: and they're so unhappy, they've decided to vote Democratic? Those
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: are two different things. If they're unhappy with Trump, but
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: skeptical enough of Democrats that they split their tickets, stay home,
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: or come back to Republicans after $ 500 million worth of
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: advertising that scares them about socialists, that's how you get
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: a blue mirage. If they break towards Democrats in the
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: places where Democrats are already competitive, they help accelerate the wave.
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: And if they break decisively enough that we're suddenly talking
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: about races we weren't talking about on Labor Day, there's
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: your tsunami. And then we have to watch MAGA. Because
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: I keep coming back to this. Donald Trump has demonstrated
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: an extraordinary ability to turn out people for Donald Trump.
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: What he's never demonstrated as consistently is an ability to
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: turn those people out when he's not on the ballot.
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: And that's the experiment Republicans are running one more time.
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: They have the money. They have the messenger to talk
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: to those voters and Trump, right? They don't listen to
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: anybody else. They're trying this convention. So we'll see. If
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: they succeed, this election could look a lot smaller than
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: the underlying political environment suggests. And if they don't, it
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: means no amount of money could have stopped this wave.
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: That's how unpopular Trump has become. And in a second
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: term sometimes, that's a bigger deal. No amount of money
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: can save you. So that's why I think these are
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: the three easiest categories to understand. Blue Mirage, Blue Wave,
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: Blue Tsunami. I'm not trying to tell you on Labor
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: Day exactly how many House seats Democrats are going to win.
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: And I'm not trying to tell you exactly what I
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: think the Senate number is going to be. In fact,
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: the war could change in the next 60 days, right?
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: We know that. What could happen in 60 days? Perhaps
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: the Strait is actually truly open before Election Day. Maybe
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: the price of diesel meaningfully drops in the last two
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: weeks of October. Maybe. Can the economy itself change that much?
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: Maybe the price of gas. I don't know about the
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: price of ground beef. The tariffs are still everywhere, right?
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: Candidates can make mistakes too. There'll be some debates, not
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: as many as we're used to. And there'll be scandals
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: we haven't heard of yet. And then who knows, like
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: we found out in Missouri, we could have one more
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: court case that we hadn't thought about that screws up
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: a map one more time. But I do think we
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: know what the three likely outcomes are. It's small, medium,
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: or large. That's where I think we are in Labor Day.
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: And beginning Tuesday, we get one final little bit of
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: evidence out of New Hampshire. I think I want to
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: learn something there. And I think there's something to learn,
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: as I've said. But the sprint is on. And we're
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: going to spend the next 60 days figuring out which
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: of these three elections we're actually living through. And we'll
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: get deeper into some of these races. I'll give you
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: specific House races to watch that are Mirage candidates, wave candidates,
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: and tsunami candidates. It's going to be a fun 60
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: days if you're a political junkie. But if you care
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: about the direction of the country, it's going to be
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: an anxiety-filled 60 days, no matter which side of the
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: aisle that you're on. All right. Before I get into
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: my quick college football stuff, and before I leave the
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: Senate board entirely, I do have one more question. Call
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: it my coda to this. And it's about a Senate
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: seat that isn't even on the ballot. Pennsylvania. I'm sure
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: many of you have already at least read excerpts, if
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: not the entire Wall Street Journal reporting on John Fetterman
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: this weekend. And boy, is it a story. Frankly, it's
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: a story of a senator whose staff has decided he
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: doesn't even want to do the job anymore, that for
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: whatever reason, maybe it's health issues, maybe it's laziness. We
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: don't know the answer. He's just not doing the job.
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: And this entire Wall Street Journal story is a reminder.
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: It's his staff that every one of those anecdotes had
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: to come from inside. The call came from inside the house. Right.
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: They talked to more than a dozen former staffers. They
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: reviewed internal messages and the text messages were just terrible.
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: You know, funeral was too long to stand through. Things
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: like that. And. Obviously, Fetterman's angry and he said, you know,
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: these are, you know, different staffers. So I'm reading this
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: thing and I'm reading his response to it. And, you know,
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: here we are. I spent an entire hour here giving
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: you these different scenarios, and I've been messing around with
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: the Senate math a lot. How do the Democrats get
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: to 50 or 51 seats? You know, what's the firewall seat?
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: You know, Michigan, et cetera. What's the pickup? And then
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: I'm now asking myself a question that isn't actually on
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: anybody's Senate map. Is John Fetterman going to be a
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: Democrat on January 3rd, 2027, the day the new Congress
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: is set to be sworn in? Right. And by the way,
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: he could leave the Democratic Party, stay an independent and
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: still caucus with the Democrats. Or he could leave the
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party, become an independent and decide to caucus with
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: the Republicans. Or maybe he doesn't caucus with either party.
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: But he denied, you know, and who knows, does it
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: still give the, you know, we don't know what the
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: math is. But Fetterman has become now one of the
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party's most persistent internal critics. The base of the
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: party hates him. Hell, moderate Democrats, every Pennsylvania Democrat seems
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: to be angry with him. He's repeatedly now broken with
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: the party on major issues. And this new reporting paints
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: a picture of somebody increasingly detached from the institution and
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: increasingly alienated from his own Senate colleagues. So you got
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: to put the question out there. Is Fetterman the ultimate
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: insurance policy for Republicans to hang on to control the Senate?
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: Of course, if that happens, I'm very curious about what
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: Lisa Murkowski would do in a situation like that. But
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: either way, it's pretty clear that even after Election Day,
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: we may have two Senate seats. We're not quite sure
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: which side of the aisle they'll end up wanting to
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: sit on. One is the senior senator from Pennsylvania, Mr.
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: John Fetterman, and one is the senior senator from Alaska. Ms.
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: Lisa Murkowski. All right. Now, before I get to my
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: conversation with Bruce Melman, I thought I would do a
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: few of my college football thoughts here. Well, obviously, I
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: was relieved to watch my University of Miami Hurricanes on Friday,
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: but let's be honest. What is the big story of
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: the weekend? Turned out not to be pro players playing
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: at LSU or Clemson boycotting having to play LSU, although
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: now I think Dabo Sweeney wishes he would have came
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: up with a principle to not have to play that
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: game because Clemson football's got humiliated and they're in deep,
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: deep trouble. But that is not the biggest story of
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: the college football weekend. You know what? Here's to the
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: actual games overcoming all the bullshit off the field stuff.
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: Western Michigan, who did not score. It was all like
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: it was just field goal after field goal. It was
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: a miserable game. I had it on my four box.
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: And you're just going, what is going on here with
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: this Michigan-Western Michigan game? Right. And it was just sort
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: of like just was watching at it. And then at
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: some point, you know, because you had some of these
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: other games, that Boise State-Oregon game was fantastic. Even Auburn-Baylor,
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: while horribly played, seems like every time you turn around,
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: another quarterback was throwing an interception. It was competitive and interesting,
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: and it was sort of kind of what you'd expected.
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: I feel like Baylor and Auburn are in about the
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: same place, although Baylor feels like they have a down
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: arrow and Auburn feels like they have an up arrow,
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: but they're kind of like, it's like they're meeting each
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: other on the way, you know, and so you knew
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: it was going to be super close and super competitive.
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: But look, I was watching it live, and I thought
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: what everybody else thought. I watched the NBC broadcast, and
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: it was pretty clear to me that There were zeros
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: on the clock I was watching and I thought game over. Okay. Shockingly,
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: Big Ten officials who were in charge of Michigan's home
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: game against Western Michigan just found one second on the clock. Now,
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: they apparently have shown enough evidence of this that even
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: the commissioner of the Mid-American Conference, the MAC, Western Michigan,
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: they're satisfied with the answer. Western Michigan is satisfied with
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: the answer. We're not going to get some state judge
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: in Kalamazoo asking to overturn the result, although I'm sure
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: that's coming if some fan wants to do it. But
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: it's certainly in an era where we don't trust our institutions.
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: Wait a for all of this to be correct, it
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: may mean that there's tenths of a second. And so
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: as my producer, Lauren Gardner said to me before we
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: started taping goes, maybe the college football and the NFL
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: needs to do what the NBA does in the last
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: minute of a game, which is show the tenths of
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: a second, right? We now know zero, zero point three, right?
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: Three tenths of a second is long enough to get
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: a shot off, right? So that's something we've learned over
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: time with the NBA clock stuff. Well, Perhaps both the
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: NFL and college football have to have to now during
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: the last minute and all the broadcasts have to do
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: that because we need sort of an honest accounting. But
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: there's one other issue here. Look, we're in an era
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: of distrust of all institutions generally. And now that sports,
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: even college sports, there's so much embracing of gambling, so
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: much embracing of the prediction markets. If any of this
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: stuff is thought to be bought off or rigged, the
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: entire system collapses. Which gets me to among the 7,000
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: problems college football has, I do think there's a massive
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: credibility problem on officiating. I'm sure plenty of good officials.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: But right now, all of the officiating is handled on
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: a conference level. And so, for instance, if you basically
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: pay a team to play you, which is what Michigan did,
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: they paid Western Michigan to play them. There's no home
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: and home, right? When you do Michigan, Oklahoma, Michigan's not
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: paying Oklahoma anything. to play Oklahoma next week. And Oklahoma
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: didn't play Michigan to play Michigan last year, right? The
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: home and home is the exchange of goods, if you will, right?
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: Each school will profit and benefit from the game because
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: of the visiting association. And there are some practices in these,
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: supposedly when you have Big, you know, Big Ten playing SEC,
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: then you're going to have either Big 12 or ACC officials.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: And if you have like you had Big 12 playing
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: the ACC in Ireland, you're supposed to have Big Ten
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: or SEC officials. Because they're worried about the idea that
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: there might be bias or the perception of bias. If
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: they didn't think there was bias, would they bother with
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: doing that? Right. The answer is no. There used to
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: be sometimes there used to be an accepted practice, I believe,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: where the visiting teams conference would be the officials, which
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: is another way of trying to balance things out. Right.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: You have a home field advantage. Right. The officials, if
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: they're from the same conference, might might be unconsciously biased
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: towards the home crowd. Right. There's certainly plenty of evidence
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: that that is true in college basketball at times. but
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: we got to have a better officiating system the conferences
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: shouldn't be in charge of officiating because no one's going
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: to trust these conferences these conferences are financially you know
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: can't afford you know they can't afford a michigan to
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: lose to a mac team that could cost them one
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: extra that could cost them a slot in the college
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: football playoff which costs the bottom line revenue so you
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: know you could make a case that the big 10
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: officials were in were were sort of incentivized to find
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: a second if they could. So, come on, guys. Of
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: all the things to clean up, let's create, and this
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: is where the, you know, if you want to generate
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: more fairness in the way games are officiated, we need
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: to have a college football, NCAA, college football, FBS, whatever,
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: maybe it's FBS, right? all right, or you want to
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: put the power four and they create their own, maybe
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: the college football playoff runs the officiating association and they
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: do all the hiring. Maybe you have two associations, the
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: power four, the rest of FBS, maybe you have one,
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: but you need to come up with a better system
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: that's more transparent that isn't run by the conferences. I'm sorry,
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: you cannot trust the conferences. And I know you think
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: Each conference will say, well, we're not, you know, it's
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: not in our, well, you know what? We've already seen
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: conferences behave with their self-interest first, more times than not.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: Not all the time, but more times than not. So
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: it's pretty clear to me, you know, the reason why I'm,
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: every explanation is going to be just, it's not going
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: to land with me a hundred percent with this Michigan business,
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: because I know the big 10, there's a lot of
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: entities that were incentivized to find any which way to
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: give Michigan one more shot at winning that game. So
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: it's a bad look. I'm sorry I feel this way.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry I'm sounding conspiratorial. But they themselves, these institutions
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: have been so poorly run, so financially incentivized, so filled
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: with making decisions based on who gives them the best
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: financial advantage versus what is fair and proper. I'm sorry,
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: you don't have the benefit of the doubt from me.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: And this is only going to lead to more concerns.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: So this is why, take this away from the conferences.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: These officials should work. Can you imagine if the AFC
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: East had their own officials, the NFC West had their own?
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: Of course not. It's silly. It's ridiculous. Well, it's silly
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: and ridiculous on the college level. And in some ways-
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: having a very controversial decision like this one, right? So
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: the easiest reform is to go to the tenths of
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: a second clock system where everybody sees it. So at
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: least there's some transparency there. But the bigger issue is
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: the conferences should not be in charge of officiating. Sorry,
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: you know, for the same reasons why the conferences have
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: screwed up. Remember, they have screwed up college football. We
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: all watched Nick Saban all weekend saying that Congress needs
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: to do this. And by the way, Pat McAfee, your
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: faux outrage about Congress going home. I promise you, if
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: Congress were more worried about The college, you know, dealing
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: with college athletics instead of lowering the cost of ground beef,
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: they get their asses handed to them by voters for
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: all another reason. So, no, you know, you get to
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: sound like you're Mr. Man of the People, Mr. McAfee.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: And look, there are times I enjoy you. I think
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: we're all a little over-served on our McAfee these days.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: I think a little Pat McAfee goes a long way.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: I don't need all Pat McAfee all the time. God
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: bless you, brother. Although, I'll do the kick if you
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: want to ask. But I'm sorry if you're, I get
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: it's easy to bash Congress and it can make sports
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: fans feel good. But if they actually prioritize dealing with
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: college sports instead of everything else, like the war in
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: Iran and the high cost, please, please. By the way,
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: I don't know about you guys. My favorite part of
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: college game day is every once in a while they
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: cover college football. I'm teasing guys, sort of. My goodness.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: I feel like there's fewer and fewer segments devoted to
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: the game itself and a lot more segments devoted to
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: the culture, the fun, and it's fun. And there's nothing
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: like game day on these campuses. My daughter's been involved.
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: My son, they love it. I get it. It is
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: a ton of fun. But for those of us watching
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: on TV, we do want a little more preview of
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: the games themselves. I'm not saying, I'm just saying. But hey,
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: I get it. All right. A few other reactions from
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: the weekend. So let me make my case why Miami
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: had the most impressive, you know, Miami and most arguably
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: the most impressive win of the weekend of the of
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: the of the top 10. They won on the road
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: in a conference game across the country. Now, I'm not
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: going to tell you that Stanford is a really tough
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: environment to play in. It is not. Their fan base
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: is such a strange fan base. They rarely show up.
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: It is a quirky, you know, there are Stanford football
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: fans that are obsessed, but not enough to fill that stadium,
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: no matter who comes to town. I guess Cal might
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: be the one that they fully sell out for. But
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: if you look at everybody else, and I will confess,
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: I'm doing this before, I'm taping before the Notre Dame-Wisconsin game,
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: but I don't even consider that a road game. You know,
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: I promise you these neutral side, I've been involved with
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: neutral side Notre Dame games. their Notre Dame home games
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: with a few more tickets allocated to the other team.
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: And yes, they may be playing in Lambeau Field, but
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: it'll be at worst a 50-50. But I promise you,
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: it'll be a Notre Dame crowd. But look, if Notre
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: Dame wins by the margin that Miami won, then I'd
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: say that both Miami and Notre Dame had the equal
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: wins of the first weekend. And I think both Miami
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: and Notre Dame are the You could make a case
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: they're two of the three best teams in the country.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: I get why both Miami and Indiana were not in
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: the top five. Every team in the preseason top five,
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: Ohio State, Oregon, Georgia, Notre Dame, and Texas, all had
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: one thing that neither Miami or Indiana had, a returning quarterback.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: Miami and Indiana had the new quarterback. So you had
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: to wait and see. Well, I think we wait and saw.
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: And both Miami and Indiana may have quarterbacks that are
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: better than the quarterbacks they had last year. There were
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: times that Hoover looked better than Mendoza. Mendoza's leadership is
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: something that's an intangible, it's hard to measure. There's no
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: doubt that Mensah, this is the most potent Miami offense
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: I've seen since 2000 and 2001. Those teams were incredibly
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: potent offensively, meaning you just knew every time they had
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: the ball, they were scoring a touchdown. And if they didn't,
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: it was because of some holding penalty and forcing them
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: to kick a field goal. But that would be about it, right?
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: It was in Malachi Toney. If... I think it's pretty clear.
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: There is only one, you know, the Heisman Trophy is
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: going to be won either by a quarterback or Malachi Toney. Sorry,
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: Jeremiah Smith. I don't think you're going to have near
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: the amount of attention that Toney gets. Look at the
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: way the already Toney's getting the coverage that Travis Hunter
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: got at the very beginning of his Heisman season, which
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: is every game preview. I would argue Darian Mensah of
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: the two who one guy, has more touchdown passes and incompletions,
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: 27 for 30, four touchdown passes, three incompletions, threw for
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: over 400 yards. So there's a reason why he's generically
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: right now the Heisman front runner. But Tony had one
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: of the greatest days in Miami Hurricane history for a receiver,
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: and he only played, what, two-thirds of the game? So
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: it is, you know, I'm not saying Tony's going to
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: win the Heisman. You're still more likely. A quarterback is
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: still Got a 70% chance of winning in the Heisman.
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: But I think if it's not a quarterback, I think
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: at this point, Tony is your most likely candidate, non-quarterback
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: candidate there. So look, but I'm going to be honest.
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: I'm a little nervous at Miami's inability to get the quarterback.
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: I'm a little nervous that we couldn't generate the pass
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: rush we could. I'm a little nervous that our running
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: game wasn't as punishing as it was towards the end
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: of the last season and all throughout the college football playoff.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: I'm going to chalk it up to a young offensive
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: line that Has a veteran quarterback that can essentially take
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: mistakes on pass protection, which we have great running backs
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: who know how to pass protect. And Stanford clearly stacked
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: the box. They had had seven or eight guys in
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: the box almost every play. And you're going to do
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: one-on-one with Miami's receiving core? You saw what happens if
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: you do one-on-one with Miami's receiving core. So I think
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: I'm okay on the running side. I think it has
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: more to do with how Stanford just made a decision
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: to try to keep us from running the ball. Okay.
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: I think they were curious how much we'd throw the ball.
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: We'll throw the ball quite a bit. The big weak point, supposedly,
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: is Miami at linebacker. That kind of showed itself a
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: little bit. My friend Mark Caputo said, you know, if
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: you judge Miami just by this one game, the recipe
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: for defeating Miami is a team that can control the ball.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: It's a team that can grind out a long five
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: to eight minute drive, right? Those five to seven minute drives.
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: Probably the only team on our schedule that can do
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: a strategy like that is Notre Dame. So we'll see.
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: It's setting up. I'm already looking forward to November 7th.
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: Other things. Look, Oregon has two new coordinators. I'm not
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: going to sit there and say they're no longer national
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: title contenders. Boise State, their biggest game of the year.
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: They care about the game a lot more than Oregon did.
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: So I think I'm still never– until Oregon breaks through,
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: you're not going to be a believer in Oregon, right?
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: It was like Indiana. Until they actually broke through, you
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: weren't going to be a believer. Oregon, to me, still
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: sits in that same spot, right? Until they actually win
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: a title, right? They've just never gotten there. They always seem,
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: there's always a part of it, yeah, there's always a
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: little bit, are they just too soft? I don't know.
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: Ohio State looked great. Georgia looked dominant. Texas looked great.
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: But we'll find out about Texas and Ohio State next week.
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: That's for sure. And I'll have more to say about
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: that as well. Look, games that I watched very closely
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: besides the Michigan game, besides Boise and Oregon was the
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: Alabama game. And I was impressed with the quarterback. They
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: do seem to have a real running game. I thought
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: East Carolina, you know, was going to keep it say
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: within 20 and a half points. And I was wrong.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: So this is a good reminder, by the way, current
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: issue of a current episode, set of episodes of dynastic.
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: I got none other than Paul Feinbaum with J.A. Donde
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: and I, and, You should take a listen to the
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: conversation in general, but do stick around for his comparison
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: where he asked the question, could Alabama become the next Nebraska?
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: He did not say that because he was offering a
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: compliment to Alabama. So it's definitely weird. But I will
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: say this. Alabama was not on the road to being
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: in Nebraska on Saturday. Not at all. Look, the team
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: that I'm most– I think the team, the best team
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: in the SEC is– not in the state of Texas
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: or in the state of Alabama or in the state
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: of Georgia. I think it's in the state of Oklahoma.
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: In fact, if I was going to make a way
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: too early prediction, I think if Miami makes the playoff,
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: they're going to have to get through Oklahoma to win
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: the national title. I think Oklahoma is going to be
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: that good. And I think when they blow out Michigan
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: next week, we're going to start to have a lot
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: of conversations about what's wrong with Michigan and whether Did
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: Harbaugh only win by just breaking every rule in the
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: book and then suddenly they can't win any other way?
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: That's an uncomfortable question that my fans of the Wolverines
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: are whispering to themselves at the moment, but they're not
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: quite ready to say it out loud because they got
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: their reprieve with the extra tenth of a second that
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: the Big Ten officials found. But boy, that's coming. But
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: who knows? Hey, the biggest leap teams make are from
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: week one to week two, right? All right, it is
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: time machine time. Let's press our buttons and see where
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: it takes us. This week, we're going back to September 8th, 1974. No, Matt,
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: I'm not celebrating the birth of you. That's my cousin, Matt.
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: He was born that day. No, we are looking at
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: September 8th, 1974 for another reason. Some of you may
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: know exactly what I'm referring to. We're looking back more
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: than half a century later, what may have been one
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: of the biggest mistakes in the legal history of the
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: American presidency. Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon. Now, that
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: is not how history has taught us to think about
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: this decision. In fact, almost the opposite. For most of
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: my adult life, the conventional wisdom surrounding the Nixon pardon
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: has become remarkably subtle. Gerald Ford did something courageous, so
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: the story goes. Something selfless. So the narrative has been written.
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: He knew it might destroy him politically, but America had
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: been through enough. Watergate had consumed the country for two years.
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: Vietnam had consumed us even longer. And this decent man
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: from Grand Rapids, Michigan, decided somebody had to end the
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: national nightmare. Eventually, we gave him an award for it.
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: In 2001, the John F. Kennedy Library gave Gerald Ford
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: its Profile in Courage Award for pardoning Richard Nixon. And
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: Ted Kennedy presented it to him. That was significant because
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: Kennedy who was a senator in 1974, had been one
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: of the pardon's fiercest critics. 27 years later, at the ceremony,
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: Kennedy says, now we see that President Ford was right. Well,
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: I'm here to argue maybe he wasn't. Maybe we rendered
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: that verdict too soon. Maybe the Americans who were furious
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: about the pardon in 1974 understood something that two generations
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: of political and historical groupthink eventually talked us out of.
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: The voters are always wise. And in this one, they
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: were wise. Because more than 50 years later, I think
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: we ought to ask a very different question. What if
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon didn't reinforce the idea
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: that nobody is above the law? What if it undermined it?
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: And what if the decision that looked like healing in
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: the short term helped create a much bigger problem in
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: the long term? That's the question I put into the
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: Time Machine segment this week. So we're going back. August 1974.
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: Richard Nixon's presidency is collapsing. The evidence is devastating. The
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: tapes have exposed Nixon's participation in the Watergate cover-up. The
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: House Judiciary Committee has approved articles of impeachment already. Supreme
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: Court unanimously ordered Nixon to surrender the tapes. But ultimately,
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: Nixon is resigning for the most fundamental reason that politicians
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: usually leave office. He has lost his political support. He
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: didn't leave because he had broken the law. He left
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: because he had lost support. Public opinion had collapsed. Republicans
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: are staring at the 74 midterms that are less than
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: 100 days away in August, mind you. And they can
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: see what Nixon is doing to them. And congressional Republicans
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: start abandoning him. Barry Goldwater, Senate Republican Leader Hugh Scott,
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: House Republican Leader John Rhodes famously go to the White House.
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: They tell Nixon what he already knows. Nixon, one thing
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: he understood was politics. The votes aren't there anymore. He's
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: going to be impeached, and the Senate has the votes
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: to remove him. His own party will not save him
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: was essentially the message. And so on August 9th, Richard
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: Nixon chooses resignation as opposed to a trial in the
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: United States Senate. Gerald Ford takes the oath of office
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: and Ford is in an extraordinary position. He is the
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: first president in American history who has elected neither president
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: nor vice president. He was never elected. Remember how he
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: got to the vice presidency? Spiro Agnew, who was elected
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: twice as vice president, 68 and 72, had resigned the
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: vice presidency less than a year earlier in a completely
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: separate corruption scandal that my old friend Rachel Maddow did
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: a terrific podcast on. Nixon appointed Ford to replace him
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: because at the time, everybody kind of knew, hey, you
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: need somebody squeaky clean. Gerald Ford was squeaky clean. Then
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: Nixon resigns because of Watergate. So Gerald Ford becomes president
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: because scandal and corruption have removed both members from of
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: the ticket that Americans elected in 1972. And in his
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: first remark as president, Ford gives us one of the
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: more memorable lines in presidential rhetorical history. Our long national
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: nightmare is over. It's a great line. But in retrospect,
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: it tells us something important about Gerald Ford's mindset. Because
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: Ford has already reached a conclusion. America needs to move on.
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: And 30 days later, he decides that he's going to
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: make sure America moves on. Sunday morning, September 8th, 1974,
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: Ford goes on television from the Oval Office, and he
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: announces that Richard Nixon will receive a, quote, full, free,
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: and absolute pardon for every federal offense Nixon committed or
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: may have committed during his presidency. Think about what that means.
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: Richard Nixon has not been indicted. He has not been tried.
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: There has been no presentation of evidence before any kind
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: of jury. There has been no verdict. There has been
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: no sentence. Investigators have not even finished determining the full
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: universe of potential criminal conduct. We don't know if a
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: crime was committed. And Ford pardons all of it. Ford
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: explains that the Nixon tragedy could, quote, go on and
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: on and on. And then he says something that more
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: than 50 years later deserves, I think, a lot more
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: scrutiny than we've given it. He writes, he says this,
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: someone must write the end to it. And I have
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: concluded that only I can do that. Why? Why Gerald Ford?
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: Who appointed Gerald Ford to decide when America had had
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: enough accountability? Because there was another way to write the ending.
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: It's called the criminal justice system. Investigators, prosecutors, a grand jury,
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: defense lawyers, a judge, evidence, a jury. and then eventually
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: a verdict. For just about every other American, that's how
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: we decide whether somebody committed a crime. And Richard Nixon
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: was now a private citizen. The Constitution actually anticipated this.
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: Impeachment doesn't substitute for criminal accountability. An official removed through
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: impeachment remains subject to, quote, indictment, trial, judgment, and punishment
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: according to law. Nixon avoided removal by resigning. But resignation
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: didn't erase potential criminal liability. And this wasn't theoretical. The
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: Watergate special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, was already considering criminal proceedings
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: against Nixon. The Watergate grand jury had already named Nixon
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: an unindicted co-conspirator. And Ford himself would later acknowledge that
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: there was, quote, a distinct possibility that Nixon could be
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: indicted for obstruction of justice. So whatever uncertainty existed about
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: other possible offenses, Ford knew this wasn't an empty exercise.
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: There was a serious potential criminal case sitting in front
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: of the Justice Department. The legal machinery was moving. And
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: the pardon stopped it dead in its tracks. But before
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: we judge Ford from the comfort of 2026, I'm going
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: to give him the strongest possible version of his argument.
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: Because it was a pretty good argument. So it's easy
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: for me to backseat drive this from here, given everything
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: we've learned. But I do want to take a minute
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: to point out what America was like in September 1974.
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: The president, a month early, had resigned in disgrace. The
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: vice president before Ford had resigned in a corruption scandal.
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: Vietnam had been a national trauma and we were trying
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: to wind that sucker down. The United States is approaching
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: what will become the humiliating final withdrawal from Vietnam. Saigon
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: would fall eight months later. The Soviet Union is still
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: a superpower with nuclear warheads pointed right at us. Cold
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: War is very much alive, and we're not certain we're
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: winning it at that moment in time. There's an Arab
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: oil embargo that has shaken our economy, right? Outside forces
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: making our economic downturn even worse. Inflation is just brutal.
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: Americans have lost faith in their government thanks to Vietnam
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: and Watergate. And the rest of the world is watching
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: what looks like an extraordinarily weakened United States of America.
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: And now imagine another year, maybe two, of Richard Nixon's investigation,
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: an indictment, a trial, former aides testifying, more tapes, more evidence.
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: The former president of the United States sitting in a
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: criminal courtroom while the Soviet Union and the rest of
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: the world watch America prosecute the man who had been
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: its commander in chief just weeks earlier. And so Ford
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: wasn't inventing the possibility that this could drag on. Four
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: days before the pardon, Jaworski told Ford's own counsel, Philip Buchan,
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: that simply selecting an impartial jury could require nine months
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: to a year, perhaps even longer. Jaworski would later publicly
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: describe the pardon as legal and timely. So I'm not
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: going to sit here and say it was an easy call.
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: Ford looks... at all of this and says, enough. We
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: have to govern. We have to demonstrate stability. We have
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: to get the country moving again. And it's a strong
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: short-term argument. It really is. The question is what America
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: gave up to get that stability. And here's where the story,
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: I think, becomes a little more complicated. Because the argument
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: that Ford should have allowed the process to continue before
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: deciding whether mercy was appropriate is not something we invented
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: 50 years later. Congress put that choice directly in front
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: of him. And Ford considered it and he rejected it
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: on the record on October 17th, 1974. And this was
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: extraordinary that Ford did this. And it only adds to
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: the list of things that you're like put on the
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: list of, boy, that is a commendable thing to do,
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: which is Gerald Ford went to Capitol Hill. A sitting
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: president appeared before the House Judiciary Subcommittee to explain why
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: he pardoned his predecessor. He allowed himself to be questioned
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: by members of Congress over this decision. Good for him.
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: I wish more presidents had the guts and the balls
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: to do what Ford did. It was an extraordinary year.
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: And if you want to understand why the historical verdict
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: on the Nixon pardon deserves another look, listen to what
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: Congress asked Ford that morning. Because, you know, all the
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: stuff that I'm now looking back on going, what the
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: frick were we thinking? Members of Congress asked these questions then,
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: and Ford was forced to answer some of them. So
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: I'm going to go through it. Congressman Wiley Mayne of
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: Iowa walks him through the roads he could have taken.
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: Why not wait until Nixon was indicted? Why not wait
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: until he was tried and convicted and then pardoned him?
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: Why not wait until he was convicted and actually sentenced
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: to prison and then decide whether to commute the sentence?
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: Ford says he thought about exactly those alternatives, and then
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: he explains why he rejected them. Time. He says waiting
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: for indictment, possible conviction, a conviction plus a jail sentence
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: would have taken at least a year and probably much longer.
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: It's from the transcript. And during that time, he says
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: the president and Congress would be prevented from getting to
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: the other problems facing the country. And so there it is.
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: Ford knew there was a, he thought there was a
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: process first option. He consciously rejected it because the process
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: would take too long. And that distinguished matters because Ford
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: wasn't saying the process was illegitimate. He wasn't saying prosecution
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: would be unconstitutional. He was, and he wasn't saying it
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: was going to clear Nixon. He just said the accountability
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: would be too disruptive. Congressman James Mann of South Carolina
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: asked Ford about the 10 possible areas of investigation identified
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: in the special prosecutor's material. Did the pardon terminate those
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: investigations of Nixon, he asked, and Ford answers, I think
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: the net result of the pardon was, in fact, just that, yes, sir. Right?
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: Mann's question is very specific. All of these Nixon investigations
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: come to a sudden stop because of the pardon. Now,
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: Ford separately tells Maine that he had no intention whatsoever
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: of stopping investigations into any other defendants or potential defendants.
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: He said the exception is Nixon. That the justice system
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: continues for everyone else. But for Richard Nixon, it stops.
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: But there's another exchange in this congressional testimony that makes
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: this even more striking. In Ford's prepared statement that morning,
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: he explains how he intends to handle pardon requests from
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: other people connected to Watergate. He said they should go
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: through the Justice Department. They should submit their request through
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: the pardon attorney. The request would be evaluated on its
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: own facts. And Ford says he will not decide those
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: cases based on what he calls the unique circumstances, unquote,
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: of Richard Nixon. So Ford himself is essentially making the
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: case that presidents should be treated differently, which, as we know,
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: is a road that a bunch of us wish we
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: never went down. Ford is laying down a process for
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: everybody else involved in Watergate. But then, it's a different story.
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: for a president. Later in the hearing, the chairman of
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: the committee, William Hungate, asked Ford, did you or anyone
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: representing you contact the federal pardon attorney about the customary
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: procedures for issuing a pardon to Richard Nixon? And Ford
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: admits that he didn't. So in the same statement on
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: the morning, Ford tells America, here is the process everyone
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: else should follow. Richard Nixon did not follow it. He
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: gets a separate process. And then Congresswoman Liz Holtzman of
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: New York presses another institutional point. During Ford's vice presidential
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: confirmation process the year before, she notes that Ford had
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: discussed the importance of the attorney general's judgment in connection
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: with a possible pardon. But Ford's own prepared statement that
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: morning had already conceded. I did not consult at all
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: with the attorney general on the subject of a pardon
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: for Mr. Nixon. It doesn't prove corruption, and it doesn't
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: prove a secret bargain. But it does tell us how
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: extraordinary this Nixon exception was. The ordinary pardon process wasn't followed.
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: The pardon attorney wasn't consultant. Gerald Ford made the lone
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: judgment here because he believed Nixon's circumstances were unique. Then
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: Holtzman presses him on the Constitution itself. She points to
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: the language saying that even an impeached official remains liable
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: to criminal punishment under the law. Ford says he is
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: fully cognizant that a resigned president remains accountable for criminal charges.
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: Fully cognizant doesn't mean you buy the rationale, right? He said, look,
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: the country has other problems. The president has other problems.
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: Congress has other problems. Continuing the Nixon matter will distract
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: America from them. So Ford understood the competing principle. Congress
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: put it directly in front of him, and he decided
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: something else mattered more. Then Congressman Don Edwards of California asked,
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: what may be the most important question of the entire hearing?
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: Because Edwards takes all of this constitutional theory and turns
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: it into something anybody can understand. Listen to the entire exchange.
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: I'm going to read it verbatim. Edwards. Mr. President, put
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: yourself in the position of the high school teacher, shall
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: we say, in Watts or the barrios of San Jose
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: or Harlem. And if you were such a teacher, how
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: would you explain to the young people of America that
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: American concept of equal justice under law? And Ford answers. Mr. Edwards, Mr.
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: Nixon was the 37th president of the United States. He
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: had been preceded by 36 others. He is the only
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: president in the history of this country who has resigned
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: under shame and disgrace. I think that in and of
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: itself can be understood, can be explained to students and
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: to others. That was a major, major step and a
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: matter of, I am sure, grave, grave deliberations by the
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: former president. And it certainly, as I have said several times,
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: constituted shame and disgrace. But Edwards isn't finished. Mr. President,
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: do you think that it is wise to pardon a
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: man before indictment or trial for offenses that are completely
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: unknown to you and which might possibly be terribly serious? Four. Well,
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: as I indicated, Mr. Edwards, I did to the best
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: of my ability check with probably the best authority in
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: the country on what, if any, charges would be made
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: against Mr. Nixon. Those were or potentially were serious charges.
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: I think that in taking the action I did concerning
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: those charges, I was exercising in a proper way the
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: pardon authority given a president under the Constitution. That's the
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: entire exchange. Edwards asked about equal justice under law, and
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: Ford's first answer is shame and disgrace. Think about that.
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: Shame isn't a criminal sentence. Disgrace isn't a verdict. Losing
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: your job isn't the criminal justice system. And what happens
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: when somebody could care less about shame. No way we
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: would elect a president who was shameless, would we? So
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: for virtually everybody else in America, resigning because evidence emerges
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: that you may have committed a crime doesn't settle your
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: criminal liability. Imagine a bank president saying, yes, I've been
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: accused of embezzling the money, but I've resigned in shame.
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: Haven't I suffered enough? That's not how this works. Then-Congressman
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: David Dennis, hardly a Nixon antagonist, helps Ford make the
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: point even more explicitly. He asks whether Ford believes Nixon's
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 1: resignation itself constituted, quote, sufficient strong punishment to answer concerns
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: about equal justice under law. And Ford answers, that is correct, sir.
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 1: There it is. That satisfying? Political punishment substituted for legal accountability?
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: Ford also argued that accepting the pardon carried an implication
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 1: of guilt. There was legal precedent behind that argument, but
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: an implication attached to accepting clemency isn't a trial. It
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: isn't evidence tested by the defense. There's no findings by
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: a jury. There's no judgment of conviction. And those distinctions
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: matter if what you are trying to establish is that
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: the president is subject to the same legal process as
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: everybody else. Nobody is above the law in this country
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: unless you're President Richard Nixon and Donald Trump. Seriously, folks?
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: So did the country really want Ford to stop this?
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: This is another thing that I've always been uncomfortable with
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: about this decision. Gallup was polling Americans from September 6th
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: through September 9th. Ford announced the pardon on September 8th.
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: Most of Gallup's interviewing occurred before Ford acted, so it
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: wasn't simply backlash to the pardon. Gallup's own summary of
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: the survey says 58% favored prosecuting Nixon for possible crimes,
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: compared with 38% who favored letting him off with a pardon.
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: Gallup separately asked another question. If Nixon were tried and
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: found guilty, should Ford pardon him? 38% said yes, 53%
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: said no. So even after a conviction, you still have
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 1: a majority not wanting to see him pardoned, wanting him
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: to go to jail if he was convicted. So both
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: questions basically had the same result. They were different questions.
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: Should there be a trial? And if the trial produces
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: a conviction, should there be mercy? Most Americans wanted the
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: process to continue. And most weren't yet convinced that mercy
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: should follow under either circumstance. So who exactly was exhausted?
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: Was it Washington? Yeah. Was it Gerald Ford? Of course.
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: He needed to establish his presidency. How about the Republican Party?
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: Republicans were heading into the 74 midterms with Richard Nixon
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: hanging around their necks. They had just been forced to
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: abandon their own president. They desperately needed to turn the page.
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: Those are pretty powerful incentives. But Ford wasn't elected by
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: the country to make this judgment. He wasn't even elected
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: vice president to make any judgment. He inherited the presidency
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: because the two men who had been elected president and
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: vice president were both gone amid separate corruption scandals. And
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: now this unelected president had decided that the country had
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: experienced enough of the Nixon process. The public reaction was brutal.
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: Ford's approval rating had been 71% in mid-August because he
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: was not Nixon. It was 66% in that Gallup survey.
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: It drops to 50 by the end of September. By January,
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: he's sitting at 37%. Ford's own press secretary resigned over
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: the decision to pardon, because suspicions exploded that somehow Ford
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: and Nixon had made a deal. Ford denied it. Eventually, Ford,
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: of course, loses in 76, narrowly to Jimmy Carter, arguably
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 1: over the Nixon pardon. But then something else happened. Time.
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: The anger cooled. Watergate receded. Slowly, the historical verdict changed.
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 1: And in 76, 55% of Americans still told Gallup that
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: Ford had done the wrong thing. But by 82, the
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: country was evenly divided. And by 86, a slight majority, 54%,
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 1: decided that Ford had done the right thing. And eventually,
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: the political establishment essentially closed the case. Ford had sacrificed
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: himself to heal America. That's the story. It was statesmanship.
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 1: It was courage. And in 2001, the Kennedy Library gives
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: Ford the Profile in Courage Award. And Ted Kennedy says,
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 1: now we see that President Ford was right. But what
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: exactly had we seen? That America survived? Sure. That Watergate
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: eventually disappeared from the front page? Yeah. That Gerald Ford
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: was a decent man who believed he was acting in
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: the national interest? I don't have– I think he was.
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: I think he thought he was. I don't doubt that.
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: But he did– the best thing for him to unite
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: a Republican Party behind him was to do the pardon.
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: And I think that's an inconvenient truth, as another vice
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: president might have said. But none of those things proves
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: the pardon was the right decision. And maybe 2001 was
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 1: simply too soon to render this verdict. History didn't stop.
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: For two generations, we repeated that Watergate proved nobody was
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: above the law. A lot of the system worked, right?
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: The press worked, Congress worked, the courts worked, the Supreme Court.
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: Republicans ultimately stopped protecting a corrupt president. The evidence came out.
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: Nixon lost support. He resigned. Everything seemed to work. but
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: the criminal justice system never got a chance to finish
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: the job. At the precise moment that America had the
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: opportunity to establish that a former president could become a
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: private citizen and answer for possible crimes committed while in office,
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: Gerald Ford stopped the experiment. Then we spent 50 years
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: telling ourselves the experiment succeeded. Think about the other Watergate defendants.
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: The cover-up trial began less than a month after Nixon
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: received his pardon. John Mitchell went on trial. H.R. Haldeman
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: went on trial. Ehrlichman, Mardian, Kenneth Parkinson. Four were convicted.
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 1: One conviction was later overturned. People who worked for the
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: president went through the criminal justice system. The president they
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: worked for did not. That's the precedent that Gerald Ford set.
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: And of course, America was going to have to confront
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: this question again someday. And it took almost 50 years
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: and Donald Trump. And I'm not asking you to assume
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: that Donald Trump committed crime simply because prosecutors charged him
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 1: with crimes. But see, this is the point. We don't
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 1: have federal trial verdicts. We never got them. Trump was
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: federally indicted after leaving office, and immediately America discovered how
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: many basic questions about presidential criminal accountability we had never answered.
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: Can a former president be prosecuted for things he did
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: while president? Which presidential actions are immune? Which are not?
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 1: What evidence can prosecutors use? What happens when the former
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: president is also running for president again? And what happens
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 1: if he wins? Trump argued that the prosecutions were politically motivated.
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: He asserted immunity. The immunity case eventually reached the Supreme Court,
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: and in 2024, the court held that a former president
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 1: has absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for exercises of his
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: core constitutional authority, at least presumptive immunity for other official acts,
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: and no immunity for unofficial conduct. No wonder J.D. Vance,
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: who himself needs a history lesson about Watergate, somehow thinks
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 1: that Nixon and Watergate were small potatoes. This was not
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: some obscure academic debate. But we turned it into one.
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: America is trying to determine in real time the rules
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: governing criminal accountability for a former president. And of course,
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: him running for president again created another complication. But remember,
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: he announced his candidacy for office to create that conflict. Right?
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: So they could use, right, by him announcing it suddenly
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: became political. But all of this stuff was happening before
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: he was ever running. But here we are. His opponents
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: argued that allowing a candidate to escape prosecution because he
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: was running for office would itself create a different kind
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: of immunity. And then Trump won. And then everything got dismissed.
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: We have no federal case. We have no idea. Again,
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: I'm not saying for sure that Trump was guilty. We
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: don't know because the process never played out. But this,
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: by the way, we also don't know if Trump was
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: innocent because this process has not played out. So look
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: at the dilemma we've created. You don't federally prosecute a
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: sitting president. Prosecuting a former president inevitably raises concerns about
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 1: political retaliation. If that former president runs again, prosecution becomes
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: intertwined with an election. And if he wins, he becomes
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: president again, and the federal prosecution cannot continue while he
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: is sitting in office. So when exactly does this process happen?
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: When is no one above the law? This is where
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: Nixon matters. Not because America needed to see Nixon behind bars. Actually,
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: I don't think he did. I think Ford, I think
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: the right thing would have been to see Nixon go
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 1: through the trial. If he's convicted, sentence, and then commute it.
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: I think Ford was ultimately right that sending a former
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: American president to prison while the country was still struggling
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: through the Cold War in Vietnam probably wouldn't have helped
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: the national purpose. but it would have established a process.
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: And Ford was offered that option. Why not wait for
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 1: the indictment, wait for the conviction, wait for sentencing, then
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: decide about the mercy question. But Ford said no, because
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: he thought it would take too long. We were in
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: a hurry. How many things in life, how many mistakes
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 1: are made in life, in business, in politics, in sports,
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: you name it. When you do something to deal with
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: the short term at the expense of the long term.
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: Unintended consequences. So I might be indicting this decision by
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 1: Ford late in this process. But it's the unintended consequences. Right?
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: The unintended consequences this created. You know, God bless Ford.
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: He thought shame mattered. But what happens when you have
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: a shameless actor in the White House? And now we
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: have a situation where we now have– the Supreme Court
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 1: has given this blind immunity to presidents in perpetuity going forward.
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: So again, all the reasons Ford did this, understandable in
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 1: the moment. I do think we've underrated the political inconvenience.
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: This would have– he would have been facing– there would
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: have been a trial because you had like the Nixon
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: truthers like the Roger Stones and his ilk of the world,
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 1: Roger Ailes, this whole group of people who thought Nixon
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: was railroaded because he was just– you're just practicing hardball politics. Essentially,
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: Ford gave them agency. So look, I think this is
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 1: now one of the worst decisions the president has made.
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: The long-term consequences we are paying the price for right now.
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: We have the most corrupt presidency in the history of
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: this nation because we decided to punt on holding the
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: previous most corrupt presidency in our nation's history to a
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: true account. That's your Time Machine lesson for the week.
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: Ask Chuck. All right. Let's see. Longtime fan from Arkansas's
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: 2nd District. First time Ask Chuck hopeful. Very nice. Well,
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: you're coming from the 2nd District, and I was about
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: to say, oh, that's potentially one of the most competitive
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: races in Arkansas. Maybe the most competitive race in Arkansas.
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 1: And you write, French Hill is already running gauzy feel-good
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 1: ads in his race against Chris Jones. Does that suggest
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: his internal polling may be showing a more competitive race
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 1: than expected? And just how favorable would the environment need
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 1: to be for Democrats to seriously compete for the seat?
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 1: And if Democrats win both chambers of Congress, do you
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: think Hegseth can face impeachment? You're my go-to political podcast.
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 1: Love the election coverage with you, Saliza and DDHQ. Well,
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 1: thank you for saying that. So the short answer is, look, yes. Look,
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: if there's To put it in terms of blue wave
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: versus blue tsunami, French Hill is in the blue wave
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 1: category of seats, right? It is the most purple of
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: the four congressional districts in Arkansas. One of my go-to
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 1: numbers on deciding whether a seat could be vulnerable in
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: a wave year is 55%. Well, guess what the presidential
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: number has been in Arkansas' second district? In 2016, Trump
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: got about 55%. In 2020, Trump got about 55%. And
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 1: in 2024, he got 55.5%, right? It was a little
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: slightly better, his best performance yet. So those are, you know, it's,
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: you know, What's the recipe for French Hill to lose
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: in this scenario, right? You have super enthusiastic Democratic vote, right?
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: So if Biden gets 42%, Harris actually got 42.5%. So assume,
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 1: do a three-point bump, right, for Democratic enthusiasm advantage. You're
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 1: sitting at 46. So now you're in a 52-46 scenario here, right,
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 1: a 54-46. 53-46 scenario. And you have a third party
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 1: candidate potentially peeling some votes away. Then you throw in
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: MAGA turnout being down. Maybe the suburbs are up. Maybe
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: a huge chunk of African-American voters overperform in the midterm year.
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 1: That's the recipe for that. And so I think French
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 1: Hill is on the line of blue wave to blue tsunami, right?
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: I fully suspect he's a single that, you know, if
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: he wins, he wins with single digits. I think at
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 1: our blue wave scenario, he either wins by somewhere under
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 1: five points or loses by like a point or two.
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 1: But look, he's also somebody that has been very self-aware
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 1: about his district. He doesn't pretend he's in a 70,
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 1: a 65% performing district, right? This is the most competitive
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 1: of the four congressional districts. This is Little Rock. This
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 1: does have the seat of government in it. You go
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 1: to any of these congressional districts, even in red states,
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 1: where the government, where the state capital is, and it's
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 1: just going to be a little less Republican. So ultimately,
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 1: I think it's Black turnout that will decide this. And
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 1: I think if one reason why I expect Hill to
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 1: survive in this environment, is that the statewide ticket isn't
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: very strong and there isn't a lot of investment in
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: trying to get the African-American vote to come out for
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 1: a statewide race. I know I've seen the one, there's
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: that one poll that popped in the Senate race that
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 1: showed the Democrat somehow leading Tom Cotton by a couple
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 1: of points. But that's the scenario is just what is
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 1: African-American turnout. And in my blue wave, blue tsunami scenarios,
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 1: I'm assuming a supercharged African-American turnout. And that could put
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, I do think it I think it's in the.
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 1: It's in the larger playing field, like I said, and
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 1: it's right on the cusp of a seat that in
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 1: a blue wave year, they probably don't win, but it
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be a shock if they did and definitely is
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 1: one of those seats that goes in a blue tsunami.
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 1: But I do think I would probably say French Hill
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 1: is like the pickup number 26 or 27 for Democrats
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 1: if somehow the House pickup number gets that high. Appreciate
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: the question. Next one comes from Max W. in Virginia's
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 1: 8th District. That's our district, Max. You're right here. So
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 1: this is somebody in my own congressional district. Help me,
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 1: Obi Chuck Kenobi. Oh, I appreciate that. You're my only hope.
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 1: You've talked a lot about rural voters who supported Trump
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 1: despite some of his policies potentially hurting farmers, ranchers, and
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 1: lower-income communities. So beyond explanations like race and gender, Why
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 1: do so many of these voters appear to support candidates
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 1: whose policies may conflict with their economic interests? And is
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 1: this actually a modern phenomenon or has it always been
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 1: a part of American politics? I'll hang up and listen. Well, look,
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 1: the rural-urban divide has always been there. It's actually used
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 1: to be in reverse, right? Particularly in these southern states,
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 1: the cities were more Republican-leaning and it was the rural
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 1: areas that were more Democratic-leaning. I mean, Oklahoma was one
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 1: of my favorite examples of this, where you would see Democrats–
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 1: The first members of Congress were from Tulsa and Oklahoma City,
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 1: were on the Republican side, the closer you were to there.
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 1: And then the rural areas were all Democratic. And that
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 1: was the South in general. But it developed this way
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 1: in Florida. The first Republicans to get statewide traction, starting
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 1: in the late 80s, early 90s, was a guy named
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 1: Bob Martinez from Tampa, basically the second biggest metro area
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 1: in the state at the time. And Jeb Bush from Miami.
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 1: So this was when the Republican Party's strength was the suburbs.
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 1: Now that's switched out. Now, the question on, I think
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 1: you left out one big topic, and it's religion. I
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: think that is what has made the cultural disconnect so
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 1: much harder for Democrats to overcome, as they've become a
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 1: more secular party. Even though they're in line with where
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 1: rural America is on economic interests. Literally, you talk to
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 1: those independent candidates that I've had on here that are
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 1: running as independents instead of Democrats in places like Idaho
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 1: and South Dakota. And remember the similar message both of
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 1: them gave, Todd Achilles and Brian Banks, which was people
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 1: wouldn't even, they won't have the conversation if you have
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: a D next to your name. But if you have
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 1: an I next to your name, then they'll have a conversation.
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 1: I think, look, the rural communities are more religious than
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 1: the suburban and urban communities. Do I think the trend
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 1: line over time is we're going to become a more
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 1: secular nation over time? I do. I think that continues.
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 1: But in the meantime, I think the biggest impediment, right,
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 1: when we say culture, right, you'll hear a lot of
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 1: sort of the non-argumentative word is just, well, cultural misfit
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 1: and stuff like this. But there is something to it.
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 1: But I think it really is on religious grounds. You know,
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 1: because in rural America, it's not that people are overly religious.
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 1: You know, it's not quite what Obama said that in
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 1: rural America, they cling to their guns in the Bible.
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 1: They're not clinging to the Bible. But the church in
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 1: rural America, churches are just the center of the community.
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 1: And it's where you interact with everybody. It's where you
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 1: get to know everybody. It's just... And so... you know,
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 1: people that spend twice a week at church in rural America,
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 1: Wednesdays and Sundays, it doesn't mean that they're, you know,
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 1: somehow more Bible thumpery than someone else is. But there's,
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 1: you know, there's not a whole bunch of other stuff
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 1: to do. And Wednesday's one of the, you know, this
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 1: is a community gathering time, you know, church night in
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 1: the South is on Wednesdays. It's not a, you know, yes,
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: in some places it can be very serious Bible study,
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 1: but in other places, it's really sort of a potluck dinner.
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 1: Or it's just another chance to get together with your neighbors.
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 1: And this is why I think 50% of the Democrats'
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 1: problems in rural America is just they stopped showing up.
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 1: And I think part of it is they were more
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 1: comfortable messaging voters in suburban America and urban America, and
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 1: they just got more and more uncomfortable. Bill Clinton came
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 1: from rural Arkansas, so he was comfortable talking to rural Arkansas.
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 1: Al Gore at least grew up in the summers in
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 1: rural Tennessee, he could have that conversation. But then you
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 1: look at, let's look at our last five Democratic nominees
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 1: for president. Obama grew up on an island in Hawaii
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 1: or Chicago. You have John Kerry, right? He kind of
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 1: grew up in boarding schools and then, you know, he's
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 1: in Massachusetts, in Boston, not exactly rural. Hillary Clinton, suburbs
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 1: of Chicago. We're a suburban kid and in parts of
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 1: Pennsylvania as well. Joe Biden, you know, Kamala Harris of
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 1: the Bay Area, Joe Biden, sort of the Philly exurbs,
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 1: if you will. Yes, you know, Scranton. And he certainly
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 1: had some working class roots, just like Hillary Clinton grew
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 1: up in parts of sort of working class suburban communities,
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 1: but not in rural. And it's been, you know, look
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 1: back now, the last time a Democrat was the national
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 1: nominee for rural America was Bill Clinton. Um, so I,
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 1: I do think it is a, it is a, a
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 1: lack of familiarity, right? And I, you know, the number
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 1: one thing you can do is show up and that's,
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 1: I'll be curious to see if, if Democrats really learned
• 1:54:12
  Speaker 1: the lesson by showing up in, um, in rural South
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 1: Carolina during the, during the, um, prize for first nomination. Um,
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 1: all right. Next question. comes from Carrie in St. Louis,
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 1: but she adds, North Dakota native and highly recommend the
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 1: new Teddy Roosevelt Presidential Library in Medora. I cannot wait
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 1: to go check that out, to be honest with you. Anyway,
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 1: let's get to your question, Carrie. And it is, I
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 1: know you enjoy alternative history, so here's one. You've described
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 1: yourself as an incrementalist, but what if a president moved
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 1: just as aggressively as Trump has, only towards broadly popular
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 1: goals like reducing homelessness, addressing addiction, expanding affordable health care,
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 1: and investing in science and medicine. Those efforts produced tangible
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 1: benefits within two years, and the president's party also controlled Congress.
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 1: What would your case for incrementalism be then? It's a
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 1: great question. I guess the question is, you're assuming that
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 1: a president could get all that done. And I guess
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 1: what I'm saying is, I don't know, I don't think
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 1: you can. And even the stuff that Trump has aggressively done,
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 1: what is he, he hasn't really done He's just basically
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 1: screwed with the tax code and he's messed with regulation
• 1:55:31
  Speaker 1: from an executive side of things. So he hasn't really
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 1: done what you're talking about would require a lot of
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 1: federal money investment. You would need a bunch of votes
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 1: in Congress for it and you would have a hard
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 1: time getting those things. So yes, I agree if they
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 1: somehow you got this. then yes, then I would lay
• 1:55:57
  Speaker 1: down my sword and say, hey, if you've got the
• 1:56:00
  Speaker 1: right leader, it must... For your scenario to work, it's
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 1: somebody with the charisma of Obama plus FDR plus Bill Clinton,
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 1: of that level of charisma, and majority's the size of FDRs, right?
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 1: Bill Clinton and Obama... had brief majorities that got close,
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 1: but even those majorities were a little divided. He had
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 1: these enormous majorities and he only really could make economic progress, right? He,
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 1: you know, that was the big thing that FDR got.
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 1: So I guess the problem I have with your what
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 1: if is, is I do think it means like winning
• 1:56:43
  Speaker 1: the argument was 60, of 60 plus type of super
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 1: majority type of election. And maybe that's possible. Maybe somebody
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 1: runs on a plan like that and people are all
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 1: in on something like that. And if they were, like
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 1: I said, I'd lay down my arms about incrementalism. I
• 1:56:59
  Speaker 1: just don't think we're that, like that's the reason I
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 1: argue for incrementalism is not because I think it's the
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 1: best way. I think it's the only way you can
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 1: govern this country. I think our factions are, you can
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 1: have larger goals and I can make an argument What
• 1:57:15
  Speaker 1: if I made progress on all of those things one
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 1: little step at a time? You could do seven incremental
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 1: things in seven different areas and it looks like you're
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 1: making massive change. So when I call myself an incrementalist,
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 1: it means launching social security, but one step at a time.
• 1:57:34
  Speaker 1: It doesn't mean not doing social security. So that'd be
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 1: the other defense of when I think sometimes my, yes,
• 1:57:41
  Speaker 1: I am an incrementalist, meaning when you're trying to make
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 1: huge change, do it one step at a time. If
• 1:57:47
  Speaker 1: you try to do six steps at once, you might
• 1:57:50
  Speaker 1: actually set yourself eight steps back. And that's why that
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 1: is my, it is not because I want to be
• 1:57:56
  Speaker 1: an incrementalist. It is more of this is our system
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 1: and you are only going to make change one step
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 1: at a time. That's my argument on it. But I
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 1: accept your what ifs but I don't buy it unless
• 1:58:12
  Speaker 1: somebody wins with some 60% of presidency and brings in
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 1: super majorities in the House and the Senate. Then, yeah,
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 1: they get to write the ticket. Two more questions here.
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 1: As a former House staffer, staff counsel from 1985 to 2010,
• 1:58:27
  Speaker 1: I share your frustration with how how the House functions today.
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 1: From my experience, the major turning point came under Newt
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 1: Gingrich when the House shifted from a committee-driven, member-up system
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 1: to a leadership-driven model, a structure Democrats later maintained under
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 1: Speaker Pelosi. I'm so glad you bring this up. The
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 1: biggest mistake, it turns out, she made was not changing
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 1: the Newt Gingrich structure that he brought in in 95.
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 1: She kept All right, let me get back to your
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 1: question here. Do you think expanding the House could help
• 1:58:59
  Speaker 1: restore some power to individual members and committees, bringing decision-making
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 1: closer to the people? I wholeheartedly agree with expanding the House,
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 1: more members, more input from the people. Look, the specific
• 1:59:11
  Speaker 1: critique of this form of Congress is just what you
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 1: wrote here. It is when Gingrich decided to take power
• 1:59:20
  Speaker 1: away from the committee chairs, put term limits in for
• 1:59:22
  Speaker 1: committee chairs, and essentially centralized authority to the leadership. Democrats
• 1:59:28
  Speaker 1: accepted that premise when Democrats won back Congress in 06.
• 1:59:33
  Speaker 1: It is, if you're going to ask me if it
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 1: was a mistake, the answer is an obvious yes. Did
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 1: it work short? Again, the theme of my Time Machine
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 1: episode this week is short-term versus the long-term. Short-term, it
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 1: helped Pelosi consolidate her power. You don't get Obamacare perhaps
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 1: without it. But I think weakening the committee structure, weakening
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 1: individual members in general and what they can and can't
• 2:00:03
  Speaker 1: do has just eroded the country's belief that the system
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 1: is representative of them. Right. And that's what I want
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 1: to restore. You know, I would accept bringing more if
• 2:00:15
  Speaker 1: you just made the committee chair's You know, gave committee
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 1: chairs and ranking members more authority and more power to
• 2:00:22
  Speaker 1: decide which bills get through committee. You might not need
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 1: to expand the House as much as I like to
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 1: expand the House. But look, we've got to ultimately you've
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 1: got to get back. The public does not believe the Congress,
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 1: the House of Representatives is representative of the people. That's
• 2:00:38
  Speaker 1: your problem. So how do you solve that? One is
• 2:00:42
  Speaker 1: the leader, the way Gingrich restructured how the House works.
• 2:00:47
  Speaker 1: should be thrown out. And Pelosi didn't throw it out.
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 1: She reaffirmed it in January of 07. Looking back, a
• 2:00:56
  Speaker 1: huge mistake. At the time, understandable why she kept it.
• 2:01:00
  Speaker 1: Not going to sit here and say, you know, because
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 1: you also have the point where it was almost by
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 1: the time she got, she was in charge and the
• 2:01:08
  Speaker 1: Democrats got, you know, we were 12 years removed. That's
• 2:01:11
  Speaker 1: half a generation. It's a lot of forgotten institutional memory.
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 1: And we'd been through 9-11. There's so many things happened
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 1: between 95 when Gingrich changes the rules and 07 when
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 1: Pelosi chooses not to change the rules. But I'm so
• 2:01:29
  Speaker 1: glad you brought that up because, yes, Newt started this,
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 1: but Democrats twice had a chance to roll that back
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 1: and chose not to. Final question for this episode. comes from, uh, Dan,
• 2:01:44
  Speaker 1: and he writes, Republicans have become very effective at reaching
• 2:01:47
  Speaker 1: less educated white voters on cultural issues, and those voters
• 2:01:50
  Speaker 1: deserve representation like anyone else. What would your advice be
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 1: to Democrats for breaking through the media bubbles many of
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 1: these voters occupy, whether Fox, Podcast, or X, and actually
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 1: speaking to them persuasively? Love all your content. I tolerate
• 2:02:03
  Speaker 1: the sports because I like you. Shana Tova, Dan, happy
• 2:02:06
  Speaker 1: New Year to you as well. Um, and I appreciate
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 1: you tolerating my sports rants. Um, look, in some ways
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 1: it's similar to the conversation. I do think, you know,
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 1: it's a cliche. You got to meet people where they are.
• 2:02:24
  Speaker 1: Somehow Democrats aren't, you know, they've seeded sports, the entire
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 1: sports culture to the right. I think that's been a mistake.
• 2:02:32
  Speaker 1: They've seeded religious culture to the right, right? That's a mistake.
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 1: Democrats have had entertainment mostly on their side, but we've
• 2:02:39
  Speaker 1: seen Republicans have come up with their own sort of
• 2:02:41
  Speaker 1: entertainment structure. So I I think of the two big
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 1: areas culturally, religion and sports, that these are two important,
• 2:02:48
  Speaker 1: you know, especially religion in rural communities in particular, sports
• 2:02:51
  Speaker 1: in general. I think it's seeding those two pieces of territory. And,
• 2:02:56
  Speaker 1: you know, I understand how the sports thing happened, right?
• 2:02:59
  Speaker 1: You know, well, our issues are more serious. We don't,
• 2:03:01
  Speaker 1: you know, we don't need to be talking about sports
• 2:03:03
  Speaker 1: right now. So it came up, it is in its
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 1: own way, like some, you know, it goes back to
• 2:03:10
  Speaker 1: somehow the Democrats became the party of school marms, right?
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 1: And when I was growing up, it was the Republicans
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 1: were the party of school marms and the Democrats were
• 2:03:19
  Speaker 1: the hippies and the pot smokers, right? Now the party
• 2:03:21
  Speaker 1: of tattoo, tattoo, vape smoking guys are not the left,
• 2:03:26
  Speaker 1: but it's the right. And I'm not saying, but it's
• 2:03:28
  Speaker 1: just the entire mindset where it feels as if the
• 2:03:33
  Speaker 1: Republican party come to the average sort of person, you know,
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 1: non-college educated, if you want to, you know, go down
• 2:03:40
  Speaker 1: that road. But basically, the average working person looks at
• 2:03:44
  Speaker 1: it and thinks, huh, Democrats judging the way I live,
• 2:03:48
  Speaker 1: Republicans don't. That's all. And I know that seems like
• 2:03:52
  Speaker 1: a simple thing, a simple analysis, but that's at its core, right?
• 2:04:00
  Speaker 1: The Democrats are the judgment party, and the Republicans have
• 2:04:04
  Speaker 1: become the live and let live party. Part of that
• 2:04:06
  Speaker 1: is Donald Trump, if they weren't the live and let
• 2:04:08
  Speaker 1: live party, right? Now, they still have some things that
• 2:04:11
  Speaker 1: run counter to that. And I know some of you
• 2:04:13
  Speaker 1: are listening going, well, but that's... Narratives are not always fair, guys.
• 2:04:18
  Speaker 1: Perception becomes reality even if it's not real. So ultimately,
• 2:04:28
  Speaker 1: it becomes just... It's okay to have your own sort
• 2:04:36
  Speaker 1: of interests and sort of, you know, Um, and I'm
• 2:04:42
  Speaker 1: not telling somebody who's not religious to suddenly become religious,
• 2:04:45
  Speaker 1: but you know, well then go connect in another way
• 2:04:49
  Speaker 1: in rural America. Um, but I think that's, you know, and,
• 2:04:53
  Speaker 1: and maybe stop judging and start listening. And again, easy
• 2:04:58
  Speaker 1: to say. Um, and I certainly think that that's the,
• 2:05:02
  Speaker 1: that's the, the sort of intellectual conversation that takes place, right?
• 2:05:06
  Speaker 1: The left comes across a little judgier, um, There's plenty
• 2:05:09
  Speaker 1: of judgment on the right. Don't get me wrong. But
• 2:05:12
  Speaker 1: this to me, I think, is the perception problem that
• 2:05:17
  Speaker 1: whoever wants to be the face of the Democratic Party
• 2:05:20
  Speaker 1: in 2028 needs to deal with. All right. I am
• 2:05:25
  Speaker 1: excited about increasing our frequency here. So we will do that.
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 1: I will try to make the episode slightly smaller since
• 2:05:34
  Speaker 1: I will have more opportunities to catch more stories. With that,
• 2:05:39
  Speaker 1: I'll see you in 24 hours.