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Emergency Debate Pod: Bye Bye Biden? · Politix

0:04
SPEAKER_01: Hello, and welcome to The Politics Podcast.
0:06
SPEAKER_01: I'm Brian Boitler.
0:08
SPEAKER_01: And I'm Matthew Iglesias.
0:09
SPEAKER_01: This is a special post-first presidential debate episode of The Politics Podcast.
0:17
SPEAKER_01: I don't think either of us are here to say it went very well for Joe Biden.
0:25
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to Portugal tomorrow.
0:29
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, good luck to the rest of you.
0:30
SPEAKER_00: I got my sleeve of emotional support Ritz crackers here.
0:34
SPEAKER_00: I'm a raw dog in this podcast.
0:37
SPEAKER_00: I don't have a drink.
0:37
SPEAKER_01: I don't have a snack.
0:39
SPEAKER_01: I don't have water.
0:40
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to anonymized, but, you know, some incoming remarks I got from friends and family.
0:49
SPEAKER_00: Any chance Biden will withdraw after this?
0:51
SPEAKER_00: I know you can't answer now.
0:54
SPEAKER_00: We had,
0:56
SPEAKER_00: oh,
0:56
SPEAKER_00: this is the first time I've thought Biden is actually going to lose in the DMs,
1:01
SPEAKER_00: followed by another person in the group chat saying,
1:03
SPEAKER_00: yes,
1:04
SPEAKER_00: I agree.
1:04
SPEAKER_00: This is terrible.
1:09
SPEAKER_00: It's so, so bad.
1:10
SPEAKER_00: I've got to say...
1:13
SPEAKER_00: On one level,
1:14
SPEAKER_00: I didn't think it was quite as bad as some of the people,
1:19
SPEAKER_00: my shocked correspondents did,
1:21
SPEAKER_00: because in part,
1:22
SPEAKER_00: I've just been more pessimistic about Biden's reelection odds than a lot of people
1:28
SPEAKER_00: that I know.
1:29
SPEAKER_00: And I was not surprised by the fact that Trump was like,
1:37
SPEAKER_00: on a message to the extent that some people were.
1:41
SPEAKER_00: I think you've seen that in Trump's interviews and stuff this year, but like, I don't know what to say.
1:48
SPEAKER_00: Like, be very generous about it.
1:51
SPEAKER_00: The president stuttered during a number of his answers because he's someone who has
1:56
SPEAKER_00: struggled with stutters throughout his adult life,
1:59
SPEAKER_00: as we've read in various things,
2:01
SPEAKER_00: but also as people get older,
2:02
SPEAKER_00: they're maybe not as good at that kind of thing.
2:06
SPEAKER_00: But I think it's like,
2:08
SPEAKER_00: De minimis, right?
2:09
SPEAKER_00: Like if you just like,
2:10
SPEAKER_00: you know,
2:10
SPEAKER_00: solid baseline,
2:11
SPEAKER_00: it's like part of the job of being a major party presidential nominee is that you
2:16
SPEAKER_00: go on television and you talk extemporaneously about things.
2:20
SPEAKER_00: And if you can't stop yourself from stuttering,
2:25
SPEAKER_00: like,
2:26
SPEAKER_00: I don't know,
2:27
SPEAKER_00: like it's a bona fide part of the job.
2:31
SPEAKER_00: Yes,
2:31
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
2:31
SPEAKER_00: it's like...
2:32
SPEAKER_00: At several critical moments...
2:34
SPEAKER_01: There's no ADA exemption for the president to not have to debate because he has a stutter,
2:39
SPEAKER_01: right?
2:39
SPEAKER_01: Like,
2:40
SPEAKER_01: just like...
2:42
SPEAKER_01: Like,
2:43
SPEAKER_01: you know,
2:43
SPEAKER_01: if you're a president who needs to sleep 12 hours a day,
2:47
SPEAKER_01: then you probably shouldn't be president,
2:49
SPEAKER_01: right?
2:50
SPEAKER_01: These are, like, actual important parts of the job, even if they're not important parts of the job.
2:54
SPEAKER_00: Well, you shouldn't be running for president.
2:55
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
2:56
SPEAKER_00: Right.
2:56
SPEAKER_00: It's always...
2:58
SPEAKER_00: But yeah,
2:59
SPEAKER_01: you shouldn't,
3:00
SPEAKER_01: you can't run,
3:01
SPEAKER_01: you can't be president without running,
3:03
SPEAKER_01: and you can't seek a second term without running again.
3:06
SPEAKER_00: But that's what I mean,
3:07
SPEAKER_00: you know,
3:07
SPEAKER_00: and like...
3:10
SPEAKER_01: Okay,
3:10
SPEAKER_01: look,
3:10
SPEAKER_01: here's what I want to say about how you framed it.
3:15
SPEAKER_01: i think that if biden had delivered a performance anywhere in the neighborhood of
3:20
SPEAKER_01: the 2020 performances he gave uh which were much less he won those debates um we
3:27
SPEAKER_01: would not be starting cold on this podcast episode with like look at all the text
3:33
SPEAKER_01: messages i got about how horrible this was and
3:37
SPEAKER_01: You're you're like,
3:40
SPEAKER_01: well,
3:41
SPEAKER_01: like thinking that Biden's position was dire to begin with kind of took the edge
3:45
SPEAKER_01: off for me is actually to me makes the situation worse because I agree with you.
3:49
SPEAKER_01: Like he he did not enter this debate winning.
3:55
SPEAKER_01: Generously,
3:55
SPEAKER_01: he entered the debate tied,
3:57
SPEAKER_01: but as an underdog or as an incumbent,
3:59
SPEAKER_01: that's like a really bad place to start.
4:01
SPEAKER_01: And so the stakes for him were higher than for Trump, right?
4:06
SPEAKER_01: And he did not like give people who had misgivings about him.
4:13
SPEAKER_01: And I don't mean me or you.
4:14
SPEAKER_01: I mean like if you were somebody who was a double hater,
4:17
SPEAKER_01: a Trump hater and a Biden hater,
4:20
SPEAKER_01: and you didn't have like a sophisticated understanding of like –
4:26
SPEAKER_01: What was wrong with Trump's presidency and what's good about Biden's presidency or vice versa?
4:31
SPEAKER_01: You left this debate thinking Donald Trump is not the incoherent president.
4:39
SPEAKER_01: like, failed president that liberals say he was.
4:43
SPEAKER_01: And Joe Biden actually is the,
4:47
SPEAKER_01: like,
4:47
SPEAKER_01: mentally,
4:48
SPEAKER_01: like,
4:49
SPEAKER_01: the president who has mental acuity problems who we should worry about.
4:54
SPEAKER_01: I mean, like, I think that he's that bad.
4:55
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's something I want to say, you know, analytically about it.
4:58
SPEAKER_00: I think.
4:58
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's hard to know for certain.
5:00
SPEAKER_00: But, you know, if you just looked at polls before the debate, what were Biden's good issues, right?
5:06
SPEAKER_00: Like, the Times-Siena poll
5:09
SPEAKER_00: showed candidate trust across the different issues.
5:11
SPEAKER_00: Abortion and democracy were Biden's strong issues.
5:14
SPEAKER_00: National security, inflation, and immigration were Trump's strong issues.
5:19
SPEAKER_00: And I think it's actually not coincidental that Biden's affect and presentation
5:26
SPEAKER_00: were way stronger during the abortion and January 6th sections of the debate.
5:32
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
5:33
SPEAKER_00: Those were the ones where
5:35
SPEAKER_00: His talking points are most obvious,
5:38
SPEAKER_00: where the logic of his position is most obvious,
5:41
SPEAKER_00: where it sort of doesn't matter what Trump says during his sections because you
5:45
SPEAKER_00: just punch back with like,
5:47
SPEAKER_00: I'm for Roe v.
5:48
SPEAKER_00: Wade,
5:49
SPEAKER_00: I'm against overthrowing the government.
5:51
SPEAKER_00: Inflation for Biden is like, it is a harder issue on the substance, right?
5:57
SPEAKER_00: Like the public does not trust him.
5:59
SPEAKER_00: Factually, this inflation occurred while he was president.
6:02
SPEAKER_00: We've talked about it lots of times.
6:04
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
6:04
SPEAKER_00: I did an appearance on the Ezra Klein show talking through like,
6:08
SPEAKER_00: there's a strong case to be made that like Trump's policymaking,
6:12
SPEAKER_00: uh,
6:14
SPEAKER_00: Will be worse on this subject.
6:17
SPEAKER_00: But it's just like a harder degree of difficulty, right?
6:20
SPEAKER_00: Like if I had to go up on the stage and debate a Republican about the 2024 election,
6:25
SPEAKER_00: like I would want to do abortion.
6:28
SPEAKER_00: Right.
6:28
SPEAKER_00: As my issue.
6:29
SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't want to do inflation.
6:31
SPEAKER_00: But I like to think I could handle the inflation because I'm like really smart.
6:34
SPEAKER_00: I spent a lot of time thinking about this inflation argument,
6:37
SPEAKER_00: you know,
6:37
SPEAKER_00: about like the weak points,
6:38
SPEAKER_00: ways to do jabs.
6:40
SPEAKER_00: And in those moments that called for real dexterity of like listening to exactly
6:48
SPEAKER_00: what the question was,
6:49
SPEAKER_00: listening to exactly what it was Trump said.
6:52
SPEAKER_00: turning it around to your strong points like being punchy getting off the kind of
6:58
SPEAKER_00: defensiveness like that was where biden struggled and i think like beyond the like
7:09
SPEAKER_00: atmospherics and theater criticism and whatever else it's like the the difficulty
7:17
SPEAKER_00: that you're going to have is that like this is just an inherently
7:22
SPEAKER_00: more complicated argument where you're operating out of a trust deficit.
7:27
SPEAKER_00: And unless you can either completely change the subject or else just be really quick-witted,
7:35
SPEAKER_00: you're going to stumble on it.
7:38
SPEAKER_00: Trump didn't say anything crazy during those sections of the debate.
7:44
SPEAKER_00: Whereas when they got him talking about January 6th, you know, he starts like going off in loopy ways.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: And like if the debate had been structured to open with the January 6th question
7:55
SPEAKER_00: and put the inflation question in minute 55,
7:59
SPEAKER_00: you know,
7:59
SPEAKER_00: people would have come away from Biden with a stronger appearance.
8:02
SPEAKER_00: But like it's all in the game.
8:04
SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, it's not like Tapper hit Biden with some like crazy low blow, right?
8:10
SPEAKER_00: Like what's up with inflation?
8:11
SPEAKER_00: Right.
8:13
SPEAKER_01: I could quibble with how Dana Bash and Jake Tapper moderated the debate.
8:18
SPEAKER_01: Like the fact that – I think they did not actually ask Donald Trump about his – or
8:24
SPEAKER_01: make a question or raise a question about Donald Trump's felony convictions.
8:27
SPEAKER_01: It felt that Biden would do it, and like January 6th came in halfway through the debate.
8:32
SPEAKER_01: But more or less, like they just –
8:36
SPEAKER_01: were timekeepers and question askers.
8:39
SPEAKER_01: And that was it.
8:39
SPEAKER_01: And it was not unfair to Biden that they ordered the questions that they did.
8:44
SPEAKER_01: Like, if you want to be generous to Biden, you could say, dude's got a stutter.
8:49
SPEAKER_01: Definitely true.
8:50
SPEAKER_01: Uh, stakes are extremely high and he was just flustered.
8:53
SPEAKER_01: Um, Donald Trump, um, is like untethered to truth.
8:57
SPEAKER_01: And so he just tells tons of lies and even like a, um, a really refined, uh,
9:05
SPEAKER_01: young rhetorically nimble debater would struggle if they thought that their
9:10
SPEAKER_01: objective up there was to be like that was a lie that was a lie that was a lie that
9:13
SPEAKER_01: was a lie and here's the truth and i only have two minutes to deliver that it's
9:16
SPEAKER_01: like an objectively challenging situation um i think that they're like the uh
9:26
SPEAKER_01: aesthetic problem Biden is going to have is that this is going to do the inverse
9:32
SPEAKER_01: for him,
9:32
SPEAKER_01: what the State of the Union address did in March.
9:35
SPEAKER_01: But that was March and now we're in June and the conventions are coming up.
9:41
SPEAKER_01: And so there's going to be
9:44
SPEAKER_01: Well,
9:44
SPEAKER_01: this is like he had already lost like the the advantage that the State of the Union
9:50
SPEAKER_01: address gave him on the age question where it put it to bed for a while and then
9:53
SPEAKER_01: Republicans started bringing it back and suddenly people were starting to worry
9:57
SPEAKER_01: about it again.
9:57
SPEAKER_01: And now like.
9:59
SPEAKER_01: Those questions are going to dog him more severely than they did before the State of the Union address.
10:04
SPEAKER_01: And there's not going to be a clear opportunity for him to prove that they were wrong, right?
10:09
SPEAKER_01: So that's really bad.
10:10
SPEAKER_01: And I think that that's ultimately going to be the discourse for the next who knows how long.
10:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
10:18
SPEAKER_01: Can Biden recover from this?
10:20
SPEAKER_00: I mean, in all seriousness.
10:21
SPEAKER_01: I don't know the answer to the question.
10:23
SPEAKER_01: But if you just want to say,
10:26
SPEAKER_01: let's,
10:27
SPEAKER_01: in golf terms,
10:28
SPEAKER_01: since they talked about golf,
10:30
SPEAKER_01: let's handicap the situation.
10:32
SPEAKER_01: Trump doesn't have a stutter.
10:33
SPEAKER_01: He's an overly confident narcissist.
10:35
SPEAKER_01: He says whatever he wants so he doesn't get tripped up if he says something that's untrue.
10:40
SPEAKER_01: And Biden definitely does.
10:42
SPEAKER_01: Let's just say that there's some system that we could put into place.
10:45
SPEAKER_01: to, uh, to like equilibrate for that.
10:48
SPEAKER_01: And that,
10:48
SPEAKER_01: and thus on the merits of like literally what they said in the transcript,
10:52
SPEAKER_01: you would say that's a,
10:53
SPEAKER_01: that's a tie debate or whatever.
10:56
SPEAKER_01: The, um, on the questions of inflation that you were like, this is really tough for Biden.
11:03
SPEAKER_01: I think that you saw when the question came to him,
11:06
SPEAKER_01: it was like,
11:07
SPEAKER_01: I think it was in the,
11:08
SPEAKER_01: um,
11:09
SPEAKER_01: like during the question about like black employment and,
11:12
SPEAKER_01: um,
11:12
SPEAKER_01: like the,
11:13
SPEAKER_01: the
11:14
SPEAKER_01: black experience of the economy under Joe Biden.
11:17
SPEAKER_01: They were like, what would you say to black voters who are struggling with inflation?
11:21
SPEAKER_01: And Biden was like,
11:22
SPEAKER_01: they're right to be upset because things are,
11:26
SPEAKER_01: you know,
11:26
SPEAKER_01: like we need to finish,
11:28
SPEAKER_01: you know,
11:28
SPEAKER_01: we need to get better.
11:29
SPEAKER_01: Like we haven't fully fixed the problems that Trump left us.
11:32
SPEAKER_01: And I was like gratified that Biden did say that like inflation was coming because
11:38
SPEAKER_01: of how badly Trump mishandled the pandemic.
11:43
SPEAKER_01: because he phrased it that way, they're right to be upset.
11:46
SPEAKER_01: Trump was able to come in and say, they're upset about what you did.
11:51
SPEAKER_01: You gave them the inflation.
11:54
SPEAKER_01: And I like,
11:55
SPEAKER_01: to me,
11:55
SPEAKER_01: I just like,
11:57
SPEAKER_01: in addition to having serious concerns about Biden's ability to mount this candidacy,
12:02
SPEAKER_01: I just want him to fire everyone in his campaign and in the White House.
12:10
SPEAKER_01: And like-
12:12
SPEAKER_01: I don't know that you can fire somebody whose takes you read or whatever, just the people you listen to.
12:16
SPEAKER_01: Stop listening to the people who told you that the thing to do is to like,
12:20
SPEAKER_01: I feel your pain like Bill Clinton did on inflation when people blame you for the inflation.
12:27
SPEAKER_01: Like Bill Clinton said, I feel your pain when he was running against an incumbent who caused the pain.
12:32
SPEAKER_01: And they have this so confused and like.
12:36
SPEAKER_01: Trump was able to just uppercut him in the jaw,
12:38
SPEAKER_01: where if you just say we are going to finish fixing the inflation that Donald Trump
12:44
SPEAKER_01: saddled us with,
12:46
SPEAKER_01: it doesn't leave the opening.
12:48
SPEAKER_01: And I mean, I feel like – I don't know.
12:50
SPEAKER_01: This feels a little petty to me, like I told you so kind of.
12:54
SPEAKER_01: backseat driving.
12:54
SPEAKER_00: This does feel petty to me, Brian.
12:57
SPEAKER_00: I think you're missing the big picture of this debate.
13:02
SPEAKER_01: I started with the big picture of this debate.
13:04
SPEAKER_01: We should get to it.
13:07
SPEAKER_01: Should people be talking to Joe Biden,
13:08
SPEAKER_01: having serious discussions with him about should he continue this race?
13:13
SPEAKER_01: He got flustered in no small degree because in his ear were people talking about...
13:20
SPEAKER_01: You need to talk about what you're going to do for the future and the detailed
13:23
SPEAKER_01: plans you have for people who have continued misgivings about the economy and not
13:29
SPEAKER_01: just like Trump caused the problems.
13:32
SPEAKER_01: I fixed most of them.
13:33
SPEAKER_01: I have more to fix.
13:34
SPEAKER_01: And that's for term two.
13:36
SPEAKER_01: like a much simpler way to go about it.
13:39
SPEAKER_01: And what a lot of people saw, I fear, was Joe Biden is senile.
13:44
SPEAKER_01: What I saw was Joe Biden has the weight of the world on his shoulders and too many
13:49
SPEAKER_01: thoughts in his head and a poor ability to articulate them.
13:53
SPEAKER_01: And it came out as a hash and like the worst hash you can imagine.
13:58
SPEAKER_00: Well, so I...
14:00
SPEAKER_00: What I was struck by was Biden not refuting the claim.
14:06
SPEAKER_00: So Trump made it two or three different junctures during the debate.
14:10
SPEAKER_00: The claim that the volume of immigration that has been occurring during Biden's
14:15
SPEAKER_00: administration is leading to the bankruptcy of Social Security and Medicare.
14:22
SPEAKER_00: That's a very powerful political argument for Trump because it connects one of his
14:29
SPEAKER_00: strongest issues,
14:31
SPEAKER_00: like immigration,
14:32
SPEAKER_00: with the traditional weakness of Republicans and Social Security and Medicare,
14:36
SPEAKER_00: and it flips it on its head.
14:38
SPEAKER_00: Now, it's completely untrue.
14:41
SPEAKER_00: But this is not part of Trump's 10 lies a minute kind of thing.
14:46
SPEAKER_00: This is a really big, important, factual question that Trump made several different times.
14:52
SPEAKER_00: And it's not only untrue.
14:53
SPEAKER_00: It's the opposite of being true.
14:56
SPEAKER_00: Donald Trump's immigration policies are going to greatly hasten the exhaustion of
15:02
SPEAKER_00: the Social Security Trust Fund.
15:04
SPEAKER_00: You can explain that in complicated ways.
15:06
SPEAKER_00: You can explain it in simple ways.
15:09
SPEAKER_00: Immigrants pay Social Security taxes and do not collect Social Security benefits.
15:13
SPEAKER_00: The Social Security actuaries say inflation extends the thing.
15:17
SPEAKER_00: I had a conversation with people at the Yale Budget Lab about this.
15:19
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot that you could say about this.
15:22
SPEAKER_00: It seemed to me like it took Biden by surprise that Trump was saying this,
15:28
SPEAKER_00: and he just didn't react to it at all.
15:33
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
15:33
SPEAKER_00: Like he didn't have the nimbleness to be like,
15:37
SPEAKER_00: whatever my game plan was,
15:39
SPEAKER_00: I need to address this claim that is being made.
15:43
SPEAKER_00: Because lots of people who are out there,
15:45
SPEAKER_00: people who didn't see this debate are going to hear secondhand from the media that
15:50
SPEAKER_00: Biden seemed incredibly old and that it was a bad performance and that's going to
15:54
SPEAKER_00: be bad for him.
15:55
SPEAKER_00: But like what's worse is that people who did see the debate
15:59
SPEAKER_00: are going to have heard repeatedly that Donald Trump's toughness on the border is
16:04
SPEAKER_00: going to safeguard your Social Security and Medicare.
16:07
SPEAKER_00: And that's not true.
16:09
SPEAKER_00: And it's shame on Trump for lying.
16:12
SPEAKER_00: But it's a debate.
16:15
SPEAKER_00: Your job up there on a debate is to contest your opponent's main points.
16:21
SPEAKER_00: And Biden just didn't do that.
16:24
SPEAKER_00: That's quite bad.
16:30
SPEAKER_00: If you lose public trust on the Social Security-Medicare issue because you allow Republicans—
16:37
SPEAKER_00: to bleed their advantage on being mean to immigrants,
16:41
SPEAKER_00: when it is something that should cross-pressure people.
16:43
SPEAKER_00: Immigration improves the demographic structure of the United States.
16:48
SPEAKER_00: We don't have 70-year-olds crossing the border.
16:52
SPEAKER_00: Young people are coming here.
16:54
SPEAKER_00: They're working.
16:55
SPEAKER_00: They're paying into the system.
16:56
SPEAKER_00: They're sustaining these programs.
16:58
SPEAKER_00: We need a secure border.
16:59
SPEAKER_00: That's why the bipartisan blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
17:02
SPEAKER_00: But that's why Trump's plans to slash legal immigration,
17:05
SPEAKER_00: to cut this program,
17:06
SPEAKER_00: to cut that program,
17:07
SPEAKER_00: to cut rich people's taxes.
17:09
SPEAKER_00: It's like an invitation to take immigration,
17:13
SPEAKER_00: which is a weak issue for Democrats,
17:15
SPEAKER_00: and turn it into a conversation about Social Security and Medicare,
17:18
SPEAKER_01: which is- Don't you think Gretchen Whitmer could do this better?
17:21
SPEAKER_00: Don't you think- No, I mean, I do.
17:22
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is what I'm saying.
17:24
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this was like real- I mean, I don't know 100% about these people, but-
17:31
SPEAKER_00: Closer to the point of what I think is like the real choice at hand.
17:36
SPEAKER_00: I think that Kamala Harris could do better than Joe Biden could.
17:40
SPEAKER_00: I think that the...
17:43
SPEAKER_00: I saw, I'm just going to pick on Nick Kristof because I saw him tweet it explicitly.
17:50
SPEAKER_00: But I think that like Joe Biden should step aside so that somebody like Gretchen
17:56
SPEAKER_00: Whitmer or Pete Buttigieg or whoever you care to name can be president.
17:59
SPEAKER_00: To me, that's a kind of, there's something like masturbatory about it.
18:05
SPEAKER_01: Masturbatory?
18:06
SPEAKER_00: Masturbatory.
18:06
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
18:07
SPEAKER_00: I don't dabble in such things.
18:09
SPEAKER_01: I started talking about how I was raw dog in this podcast,
18:12
SPEAKER_01: and now you're...
18:13
SPEAKER_01: Somebody should say something about Hak Tua at this point.
18:17
SPEAKER_00: I got canceled back in 2020 for saying that I didn't think Kamala Harris was a strong VP choice.
18:23
SPEAKER_00: I don't love Kamala Harris, whatever.
18:25
SPEAKER_00: But I think it's a little bit like...
18:28
SPEAKER_00: You're off in the zone of nonsense when you're speculating about third-order replacements.
18:36
SPEAKER_00: Maybe somebody else would emerge if Biden were to step aside,
18:39
SPEAKER_00: but your assumption should be the most probable person.
18:43
SPEAKER_00: if it's not the president, is the vice president.
18:45
SPEAKER_00: And I was not ready.
18:47
SPEAKER_00: When Ezra Klein wrote his infamous open convention take, I thought that that was premature.
18:56
SPEAKER_00: I thought that it was wish casting about a non-Harris nominee.
19:00
SPEAKER_00: And I thought that Biden looked like the stronger choice than Harris.
19:04
SPEAKER_00: And if the president is the stronger choice than the vice president, then the president should run.
19:09
SPEAKER_00: after watching that debate and also frankly,
19:12
SPEAKER_00: after watching some of Harris's recent campaign appearances where it's just like,
19:17
SPEAKER_00: you know,
19:17
SPEAKER_00: it's just like regular politician doing stuff like Harris's abortion lines on the
19:22
SPEAKER_00: campaign trail are great.
19:25
SPEAKER_00: Her lines about inflation are like not great, but that's because it's like an objectively weak campaign.
19:31
SPEAKER_00: issue for Democrats.
19:32
SPEAKER_00: Whereas Biden, when he was out there, his abortion lines were okay and his inflation lines were horrible.
19:39
SPEAKER_00: And that's just like, you're really, really, really underperforming out there.
19:44
SPEAKER_00: And that's quite bad.
19:46
SPEAKER_00: And to me,
19:48
SPEAKER_00: if Joe Biden were to call me up and he'd be like,
19:51
SPEAKER_00: Matt,
19:51
SPEAKER_00: you've been sharply critical of my vice president for all this time.
19:56
SPEAKER_00: Like, what do you think?
19:57
SPEAKER_00: I'd be like, you know what?
19:59
SPEAKER_00: Like, she's fine.
20:00
SPEAKER_00: She's not who I would have picked, but like, it's fine.
20:03
SPEAKER_00: She is a replacement level Democratic Party politician.
20:06
SPEAKER_00: And you at this point are a below replacement level Democratic Party politician,
20:09
SPEAKER_00: especially because someone who's not Biden could be like,
20:15
SPEAKER_00: I think could more credibly point the inflation finger at Trump.
20:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, at least be like it wasn't them personally, right?
20:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
20:23
SPEAKER_00: I just think there's a lot of advantages.
20:25
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so let me say a couple things.
20:27
SPEAKER_01: One is that like to your point about like Biden just not defending well against
20:32
SPEAKER_01: lies pertaining to his strong issues like Social Security.
20:36
SPEAKER_01: It's not that I don't agree with you.
20:37
SPEAKER_01: It's that like –
20:40
SPEAKER_01: I think people are not super well equipped,
20:45
SPEAKER_01: even in a well-thought debate,
20:49
SPEAKER_01: to know who's telling the truth.
20:50
SPEAKER_01: Is it the guy who says that people streaming across the border are going to take
20:55
SPEAKER_01: your Social Security dollars?
20:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but you have to say that he's lying.
20:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, I know, I know, I know, I know.
21:00
SPEAKER_01: And he did at a few points.
21:02
SPEAKER_01: Or is it the guy who's saying that immigrants are the reason why Social Security is not,
21:06
SPEAKER_01: like,
21:06
SPEAKER_01: insolvent already?
21:08
SPEAKER_01: um i think people struggle with that but one thing that i don't think that they
21:12
SPEAKER_01: struggle with is like assessing who is more in charge of the information in their
21:21
SPEAKER_01: head right and like in this instance like when prior to this debate because i
21:28
SPEAKER_01: assume this is all going to change now when republicans were clipping these like 12
21:32
SPEAKER_01: second
21:35
SPEAKER_01: videos of Biden at fundraisers or whatever to make him look senile.
21:41
SPEAKER_01: It was always like,
21:42
SPEAKER_01: it's interesting that they have to clip a 12 second video of a 45 minute
21:46
SPEAKER_01: presentation to make him look senile.
21:48
SPEAKER_01: Whereas what the Biden campaign was doing was just posting verbatim the text of 30,
21:55
SPEAKER_01: 45 seconds,
21:57
SPEAKER_01: two minutes of Trump rambling about sharks or toilets or whatever else.
22:01
SPEAKER_01: And like,
22:03
SPEAKER_01: I think that that's like a powerful juxtaposition.
22:06
SPEAKER_01: Like,
22:06
SPEAKER_01: it makes you think,
22:07
SPEAKER_01: if you examine it like that,
22:09
SPEAKER_01: that Biden's the one that they're lying about and Trump's the one with the real
22:12
SPEAKER_01: cognitive difficulties,
22:14
SPEAKER_01: right?
22:14
SPEAKER_01: But I think in this debate that we just watched,
22:17
SPEAKER_01: Republicans could do what Democrats are doing and just put two straight minutes of
22:23
SPEAKER_01: Biden trying to get his thoughts out into a video and put all the text in that
22:29
SPEAKER_01: video into a tweet,
22:30
SPEAKER_01: send tweet,
22:32
SPEAKER_01: and...
22:33
SPEAKER_01: Biden genuinely looks lost.
22:35
SPEAKER_01: Like, he doesn't know what he's talking about.
22:37
SPEAKER_01: And I don't think that's true, but I don't think that there's any way to explain it away.
22:43
SPEAKER_01: You know,
22:43
SPEAKER_01: like,
22:43
SPEAKER_01: we can try on the politics podcast,
22:46
SPEAKER_01: but Biden can't go out and be like,
22:47
SPEAKER_01: hey,
22:47
SPEAKER_01: folks,
22:48
SPEAKER_01: I know I seemed senile at the debate,
22:50
SPEAKER_01: but really I was just nervous and had a cold,
22:52
SPEAKER_01: and you should trust me that your,
22:54
SPEAKER_01: like,
22:54
SPEAKER_01: appearances were deceiving you.
22:56
SPEAKER_01: So that's really bad.
22:57
SPEAKER_01: And I think that, like, I am...
23:01
SPEAKER_01: interested to see what how badly biden's poll numbers dip after this i think it
23:05
SPEAKER_01: will be significant and i think that there will be real genuine serious discussion
23:10
SPEAKER_01: about him having to yield to someone else if that discussion does happen and it
23:16
SPEAKER_01: really takes root and it's not just you me ezra klein various columnists but like
23:23
SPEAKER_01: if barack obama goes or jill biden goes to joe biden says we should talk about
23:26
SPEAKER_01: whether this is right given everything that's at stake
23:30
SPEAKER_01: You know,
23:30
SPEAKER_01: I don't think it's masturbatory or masturbatory or whatever to imagine that it
23:36
SPEAKER_01: could be something- Onanistic.
23:38
SPEAKER_01: Onanistic, yeah.
23:41
SPEAKER_01: You know, you're most likely right.
23:43
SPEAKER_01: If we get to that point in the next week or two or month or whatever, probably it goes to Kamala Harris.
23:49
SPEAKER_01: But I think it's really up to Joe Biden, right?
23:51
SPEAKER_01: Like if Joe Biden decides, I can't like-
23:55
SPEAKER_01: I am too risky a candidate to pin the future of America on, and I need to give way to somebody.
24:02
SPEAKER_01: He could say,
24:04
SPEAKER_01: and that person is my vice president who I've trusted for the last three years and
24:08
SPEAKER_01: who served well by me and blah,
24:10
SPEAKER_01: blah,
24:10
SPEAKER_01: blah.
24:10
SPEAKER_01: Or he could say, look, it's so important.
24:14
SPEAKER_01: that we need to take the Biden-Harris administration off the table and give you a new ticket.
24:20
SPEAKER_01: And the people that I have the most faith in to beat Donald Trump and govern well
24:28
SPEAKER_01: Clean slate are these people, and I asked the DNC to nominate them.
24:32
SPEAKER_01: I think that that would carry a ton of weight.
24:35
SPEAKER_01: I think it would carry a ton of weight.
24:37
SPEAKER_00: I just want to try to clarify what I'm saying about Kamala here,
24:42
SPEAKER_00: which is not that if Biden steps aside,
24:45
SPEAKER_00: it necessarily has to be Harris.
24:48
SPEAKER_00: But then I think that as long as you,
24:50
SPEAKER_00: I think that when you like try to skip to these other conversations about like,
24:56
SPEAKER_00: could we like rig it for somebody else?
24:58
SPEAKER_00: Like, could we have an open convention?
25:02
SPEAKER_00: You wind up in the dynamic that has kept Biden as the 2024 nominee forever,
25:09
SPEAKER_00: which is like,
25:12
SPEAKER_00: look,
25:13
SPEAKER_00: there are people who,
25:15
SPEAKER_00: There's Joe Biden himself, right?
25:17
SPEAKER_00: He's got ego, whatever, whatever, whatever.
25:19
SPEAKER_00: But I also think people feel,
25:21
SPEAKER_00: you know,
25:21
SPEAKER_00: you could appeal to his sense of honor,
25:23
SPEAKER_00: his sense of integrity,
25:24
SPEAKER_00: his sense of duty,
25:26
SPEAKER_00: that he has to do the right thing.
25:28
SPEAKER_00: You can imagine him giving a speech where he talks about, you know, I mean, his son is going to prison.
25:33
SPEAKER_00: There's this war.
25:35
SPEAKER_00: Like, he wants to focus on this stuff.
25:37
SPEAKER_00: LBJ did it, like, now-ish.
25:39
SPEAKER_00: Right.
25:39
SPEAKER_00: He knows his numbers are down.
25:40
SPEAKER_00: You can imagine all that happening.
25:42
SPEAKER_00: There's also this gaggle, though, of like old time Biden guys, right?
25:50
SPEAKER_00: Bruce Reed, Steve Ricchetti, Donilon, whose first name I don't remember because there's two of them.
25:58
SPEAKER_00: But the one who works for Biden is Mike Donilon.
26:01
SPEAKER_00: You know, Anita Dunn even, right?
26:02
SPEAKER_00: Who like, those are Biden people, right?
26:07
SPEAKER_00: you know,
26:08
SPEAKER_00: they can continue to be the top advisors to the president of the United States,
26:13
SPEAKER_00: probably only if Joe Biden is the president,
26:17
SPEAKER_00: you know?
26:18
SPEAKER_00: So, like, they just, like, have a lot of equity in, like,
26:22
SPEAKER_00: wishful thinking.
26:23
SPEAKER_00: This is corruption that you're talking about.
26:25
SPEAKER_00: I mean, no, it's not corruption.
26:26
SPEAKER_00: It's a motivated reasoning.
26:27
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
26:28
SPEAKER_00: And so I think that if- The line there is blurry.
26:30
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
26:31
SPEAKER_00: Because I mean,
26:31
SPEAKER_00: I think that if we in the public present to them these very complications,
26:38
SPEAKER_00: like maybe you should step aside if you can arrange this elaborate scheme,
26:42
SPEAKER_00: then they're like,
26:43
SPEAKER_00: eh,
26:45
SPEAKER_00: Like maybe we should just not do that.
26:47
SPEAKER_00: Right.
26:48
SPEAKER_00: I just think like if, if the messages, which to just be clear, like this is by message.
26:53
SPEAKER_00: And like,
26:54
SPEAKER_00: I think it should be the message of people who think we do need a better nominee to
27:01
SPEAKER_00: be like,
27:01
SPEAKER_00: this is not good.
27:04
SPEAKER_00: Like you can't perform like running for president is a serious job.
27:09
SPEAKER_00: This is not the person who we want to hire for that job.
27:12
SPEAKER_00: it is time for the president to have conversations about how he wants to frame his
27:18
SPEAKER_00: decision to step aside.
27:19
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
27:20
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
27:20
SPEAKER_00: And then,
27:21
SPEAKER_00: and so you have to accept that like it just defaulting to the VP is a very likely
27:28
SPEAKER_00: outcome of that process and that you were okay with that.
27:31
SPEAKER_00: If you,
27:31
SPEAKER_00: if you accept the premise,
27:33
SPEAKER_00: like,
27:34
SPEAKER_00: no,
27:34
SPEAKER_00: it has to be some good,
27:36
SPEAKER_00: like,
27:36
SPEAKER_00: cause like one way this could go,
27:37
SPEAKER_00: the cleanest way for it is,
27:40
SPEAKER_00: is actually for him to resign as president.
27:43
SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't think you would do that, but just, like, mechanistically?
27:47
SPEAKER_00: Like...
27:49
SPEAKER_00: Well, sure.
27:50
SPEAKER_00: And then the vice president becomes the president that she's running for reelection.
27:53
SPEAKER_01: So politically, I think that's not wise.
27:55
SPEAKER_00: I agree.
27:56
SPEAKER_00: I think that that's there's problems with that.
27:58
SPEAKER_00: But I mean, it's just like that.
27:59
SPEAKER_00: That's the question.
28:00
SPEAKER_00: And like, that's what I think.
28:03
SPEAKER_00: I have been a big Biden defender, you know, about various things.
28:09
SPEAKER_00: I did not really think
28:12
SPEAKER_00: that the evidence of the polling suggested that the public was as worried about age
28:17
SPEAKER_00: as a lot of people in the media did.
28:19
SPEAKER_00: But...
28:22
SPEAKER_00: I think without actually going into these meta concerns about is he too old,
28:28
SPEAKER_00: you just saw there he was an underdog.
28:32
SPEAKER_00: Not a huge underdog, but he was an underdog in the campaign.
28:37
SPEAKER_00: And the way you go from being an underdog to being a winner is you have to...
28:42
SPEAKER_00: make appearances in the media and make your argument on behalf of yourself and against your opponent.
28:49
SPEAKER_00: And,
28:49
SPEAKER_00: you know,
28:50
SPEAKER_00: after the State of the Union,
28:51
SPEAKER_00: well,
28:52
SPEAKER_00: before the State of the Union,
28:53
SPEAKER_00: I was like,
28:54
SPEAKER_00: Biden should get out there and should do more stuff.
28:56
SPEAKER_00: And after the State of the Union, I was like, he did a great job there.
28:59
SPEAKER_00: He should get out there and do more stuff.
29:00
SPEAKER_00: And I think we're now seeing like
29:02
SPEAKER_00: why he hasn't been out there and doing more stuff that they correctly have a low
29:07
SPEAKER_00: level of confidence in his ability to consistently perform in those situations.
29:13
SPEAKER_00: And if you don't think your guy can consistently perform in those kinds of situations,
29:20
SPEAKER_00: that just means he shouldn't be your guy.
29:21
SPEAKER_00: Like that doesn't.
29:22
SPEAKER_00: So, okay.
29:23
SPEAKER_01: But thank you for saying that because like,
29:26
SPEAKER_01: if,
29:26
SPEAKER_01: if you're talking about Biden's inner circle,
29:27
SPEAKER_01: let's go back to Steve Keddie,
29:29
SPEAKER_01: Anita Dunn,
29:30
SPEAKER_01: Mike Donnellan,
29:33
SPEAKER_01: throw Ron Klain in the mix because I don't think Ron's actually a corrupt guy.
29:35
SPEAKER_01: I think he's he's like clear eyed, even though he's very loyal to Biden.
29:40
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to be staying at an Airbnb tomorrow.
29:42
SPEAKER_00: And so I want to assure Ron Klain that I love him and all of his work.
29:46
SPEAKER_01: And also like, yeah, if anything goes wrong, he has your back on it.
29:48
SPEAKER_01: OK, check it out.
29:50
SPEAKER_01: Look, we are we are gentlemen of our 40s.
29:53
SPEAKER_01: Imagine you have a parent.
29:55
SPEAKER_01: And you have serious concerns about their ability to live on their own or drive a car or whatever it is.
30:03
SPEAKER_01: And it's sensitive because they're elderly and they take pride in their ability to be independent.
30:09
SPEAKER_01: But you care about them.
30:11
SPEAKER_01: And you go to them and you say, I'm worried about this.
30:14
SPEAKER_01: And they say, I'm going to cut you out of the inheritance unless you drop this shit.
30:19
SPEAKER_01: Is it corrupt or is it...
30:22
SPEAKER_01: motivated reasoning to say, okay, fine, I'm going to drop it.
30:27
SPEAKER_01: Because that's, I think, like, that's, I think, the line, the blurry line that we're talking about here.
30:34
SPEAKER_01: If these people know in their hearts that Biden,
30:38
SPEAKER_01: after what they saw tonight,
30:39
SPEAKER_01: shouldn't be the nominee,
30:40
SPEAKER_01: but they won't say it because they want their clout,
30:44
SPEAKER_01: I think that's corruption.
30:45
SPEAKER_01: And I think that they should be fucking expelled from politics.
30:49
SPEAKER_01: But
30:52
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
30:52
SPEAKER_01: I mean, like, it's really like that.
30:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, I guess so.
30:58
SPEAKER_00: I actually think the problem is that the people we're talking about are going to be
31:02
SPEAKER_00: expelled from politics one way or the other.
31:05
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
31:05
SPEAKER_00: Like,
31:05
SPEAKER_00: it's a little bit of a...
31:08
SPEAKER_00: It's too late at night for me to come up with...
31:09
SPEAKER_00: In their own interest,
31:09
SPEAKER_00: they should just tell him.
31:11
SPEAKER_00: To come up with good metaphors.
31:13
SPEAKER_00: But, you know, there's a younger rank of officials who were...
31:20
SPEAKER_00: you know,
31:21
SPEAKER_00: have been senior players in the Biden administration but are still of the age where
31:25
SPEAKER_00: they will continue to have careers in Democratic Party politics or not based on
31:29
SPEAKER_00: what they do,
31:30
SPEAKER_00: you know,
31:30
SPEAKER_00: and I think the eyes of the world should be on them.
31:34
SPEAKER_00: I think,
31:34
SPEAKER_00: you know,
31:35
SPEAKER_00: the easy thing to do is say,
31:36
SPEAKER_00: like,
31:37
SPEAKER_00: well,
31:37
SPEAKER_00: we need people to,
31:38
SPEAKER_00: like,
31:38
SPEAKER_00: say things I agree with on Twitter,
31:40
SPEAKER_00: which is not always the most efficacious way to make changes that happen.
31:46
SPEAKER_00: But, you know, I mean...
31:49
SPEAKER_00: If you follow the logic of Biden's announcement speech from 2019 about Charlottesville,
31:55
SPEAKER_00: about Trump,
31:56
SPEAKER_00: et cetera,
31:56
SPEAKER_00: et cetera,
31:56
SPEAKER_00: et cetera,
31:57
SPEAKER_00: like the country is owed,
32:00
SPEAKER_00: you know,
32:01
SPEAKER_00: a maximal performer,
32:04
SPEAKER_00: right?
32:04
SPEAKER_00: If Trump is a liar and a scumbag that it is hard to like bird dog him and like nail
32:13
SPEAKER_00: that stuff down,
32:15
SPEAKER_00: you need somebody on that job full time.
32:18
SPEAKER_00: you know,
32:18
SPEAKER_00: like you,
32:19
SPEAKER_00: you,
32:19
SPEAKER_00: you need somebody who is good at it,
32:21
SPEAKER_00: who that's what they want to do and who has nothing better to do than to,
32:25
SPEAKER_00: you know,
32:26
SPEAKER_00: watch tape of Trump,
32:28
SPEAKER_00: uh,
32:28
SPEAKER_00: be ready to understand what kind of stuff he's going to say to go on.
32:33
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, so Biden's was, was struggling, right.
32:37
SPEAKER_00: But before this election, we know that his struggle was with, um,
32:41
SPEAKER_00: people who are less engaged with politics, right?
32:45
SPEAKER_00: The kind of people who you're not going to reach by doing sort of traditional,
32:50
SPEAKER_00: you know,
32:51
SPEAKER_00: traditional news kind of things.
32:53
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, baseline is like you want to try to get in front of non-traditional audiences, right?
33:00
SPEAKER_00: Like do some weird stuff, go on some unusual shows, some unusual podcasts.
33:05
SPEAKER_00: And it was clear, I think, in the months between State of the Union and now,
33:10
SPEAKER_00: that the campaign had some discomfort with that idea,
33:14
SPEAKER_00: you know,
33:14
SPEAKER_00: that he was in this,
33:15
SPEAKER_00: um,
33:15
SPEAKER_00: they went on Howard Stern,
33:17
SPEAKER_00: uh,
33:17
SPEAKER_00: which was kind of clever.
33:18
SPEAKER_00: Um, but Stern has become like weirdly gentle, um, and gentle and live like, you know, he hates Trump.
33:25
SPEAKER_01: So it was like, it was meant for, it was, it was staged for him to succeed, you know, and he did.
33:30
SPEAKER_00: But I mean, also just like Stern has, I think, you know, um,
33:35
SPEAKER_00: It's not the 90s anymore.
33:36
SPEAKER_00: Right.
33:36
SPEAKER_00: Like what what Biden needs is to be in like the equivalent of what Howard Stern was in the 90s.
33:44
SPEAKER_00: Right.
33:45
SPEAKER_00: Like somebody reaching a younger Biden.
33:47
SPEAKER_01: Biden go on Rogan.
33:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
33:49
SPEAKER_00: Whatever it is.
33:50
SPEAKER_00: Right.
33:50
SPEAKER_00: But honestly, yeah.
33:51
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like because, you know, Rogan would be hostile to Democrats at this point.
33:56
SPEAKER_00: But he's also polite.
33:57
SPEAKER_00: You know, he's not like a bully.
33:59
SPEAKER_00: Right.
33:59
SPEAKER_00: Well, and he's not that right wing fundamentally.
34:04
SPEAKER_00: He's not going to come at you with like capital gains tax cuts or something like that.
34:09
SPEAKER_00: You know, shoot the shit.
34:10
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, you know, I used to think that the White House team was making a strategic mistake.
34:19
SPEAKER_00: And I now think that that was an ungenerous assessment of what was going on.
34:25
SPEAKER_00: It's that they were like,
34:28
SPEAKER_00: knew that, you know, he was not.
34:31
SPEAKER_01: They just see him every day and they knew that he wasn't up to stuff like this.
34:34
SPEAKER_00: That he's not necessarily up to it.
34:36
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
34:37
SPEAKER_00: And they couldn't have the confidence, but that's like, then you gotta be smart if that's the situation.
34:42
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's nothing really else you could say about that.
34:46
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so let's close, because I want to keep this to like 40 minutes if we can.
34:50
SPEAKER_01: Were we wrong when we like shat on the Wall Street Journal for publishing that
34:57
SPEAKER_01: Biden hit piece sourced to Kevin?
34:59
SPEAKER_01: Like were maybe they on to something or was that still unfair and this was a result of something else?
35:05
SPEAKER_01: And then second,
35:06
SPEAKER_01: and this is I think really where we should end,
35:08
SPEAKER_01: is like I think the subtext of what we're saying here is that we both now kind of
35:14
SPEAKER_01: think it's time to start having the conversation about Biden dropping out for real.
35:19
SPEAKER_01: Is there a way?
35:21
SPEAKER_01: for biden if he if he thinks that that's wrong to like arrest that at this point or
35:28
SPEAKER_01: was this really the make or break moment and he and it was break and now he's
35:32
SPEAKER_00: fucked you know i i never want to say like make or break you know in that in that
35:41
SPEAKER_00: kind of sense like there's so much stuff you could do um like but like what like
35:45
SPEAKER_00: what what would that be
35:49
SPEAKER_01: Between now and August, whenever the convention is.
35:52
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's the same answer that it's always been.
35:55
SPEAKER_00: I'm just much more skeptical of it, right?
35:57
SPEAKER_00: But it's like, do more stuff, right?
36:00
SPEAKER_00: Like,
36:01
SPEAKER_00: if this was one performance out of 20,
36:05
SPEAKER_00: rather than one out of two,
36:07
SPEAKER_00: like,
36:07
SPEAKER_00: you'd be looking much better.
36:08
SPEAKER_00: I just,
36:09
SPEAKER_00: like,
36:09
SPEAKER_00: I now don't think...
36:11
SPEAKER_00: It used to be that I thought his chances of pulling that off were pretty good,
36:16
SPEAKER_00: and now I'm quite skeptical.
36:17
SPEAKER_00: But, you know...
36:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
36:21
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's what I have to say about that.
36:23
SPEAKER_00: I, you know, I just, I'm like, I'm already annoyed by this.
36:26
SPEAKER_00: Like one Democrat close to Biden explained that we'll take all of the party poobahs
36:31
SPEAKER_00: like Schumer,
36:31
SPEAKER_00: Pelosi,
36:32
SPEAKER_00: Bill Clinton,
36:32
SPEAKER_00: and Obama to convince him to stand down.
36:34
SPEAKER_00: And like, maybe.
36:36
SPEAKER_01: I think it would take his wife.
36:39
SPEAKER_01: Like,
36:39
SPEAKER_01: I think it would take like one,
36:41
SPEAKER_01: you know,
36:42
SPEAKER_01: just anyone who cares about Biden,
36:44
SPEAKER_01: who's been like,
36:46
SPEAKER_01: you know,
36:46
SPEAKER_01: loyal to him through this point saying,
36:48
SPEAKER_01: you know what?
36:49
SPEAKER_01: this is too important.
36:51
SPEAKER_01: And, and like you, you did the country well,
36:55
SPEAKER_01: the biggest service any living president has done by beating this motherfucker the
36:59
SPEAKER_01: first time,
36:59
SPEAKER_01: you don't want to end your career losing to him and then being responsible.
37:03
SPEAKER_00: Right, right, right.
37:03
SPEAKER_00: I'm just like, yeah, I'm a little skeptical of this.
37:07
SPEAKER_00: I think one thing that annoys people,
37:09
SPEAKER_00: people like to always complain about like the Democrats,
37:13
SPEAKER_00: which doesn't really make sense because that's not how American political parties work.
37:16
SPEAKER_00: And I think rather than acknowledging that that's not how parties work,
37:20
SPEAKER_00: they tend to like construct this idea
37:23
SPEAKER_00: This narrative about like poobahs and like Nancy Pelosi secretly doing things.
37:30
SPEAKER_00: But I'm with you.
37:30
SPEAKER_00: Like Biden, like most people, has a family, right?
37:34
SPEAKER_00: Like he's got a wife.
37:37
SPEAKER_00: He's got a granddaughter.
37:39
SPEAKER_00: you know, who's like grown up person who does stuff.
37:43
SPEAKER_00: He's got a son who's going to prison.
37:45
SPEAKER_00: Like he just has people who are able to have one-on-one unmediated conversations
37:49
SPEAKER_00: with him because they have a close personal relationship with him.
37:53
SPEAKER_00: And I think those are the people who are like persuasive, right?
37:57
SPEAKER_00: Now,
37:57
SPEAKER_00: if Joe Biden wants to know what Nancy Pelosi thinks,
38:00
SPEAKER_00: like he'll reach out to her and I think she should
38:03
SPEAKER_00: Tell him correct advice about this kind of thing.
38:06
SPEAKER_00: But to me, having like Barack Obama, like beating down the door to be like, Joe, you got to quit.
38:12
SPEAKER_00: Like, that feels weird to me.
38:15
SPEAKER_00: Like, I think I think Biden is going to be like this.
38:17
SPEAKER_00: This motherfucker always underestimated me.
38:19
SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean, who knows?
38:20
SPEAKER_00: Who knows what gets in people's heads?
38:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we underestimated him and then he underperformed that.
38:25
SPEAKER_00: Right, right, right, right.
38:27
SPEAKER_01: Okay,
38:28
SPEAKER_01: I will say to the point about the Wall Street Journal article,
38:32
SPEAKER_01: which is just like the most egregious example of the whole genre of journalism.
38:36
SPEAKER_01: I actually like I still think like Joe Biden does the job of president.
38:41
SPEAKER_01: Well,
38:41
SPEAKER_01: and I don't think that this debate proves that he's secretly senile and he's been
38:47
SPEAKER_01: slipping behind the scenes and people are covering it up.
38:49
SPEAKER_01: I think it was the stuff we said before.
38:50
SPEAKER_01: It's like very high stakes.
38:52
SPEAKER_01: He's like his stutter has gotten worse as he's gotten older.
38:55
SPEAKER_01: It's all that stuff.
38:56
SPEAKER_01: And Trump's a liar and he doesn't know how to deal with that when he's such a fact based person.
39:01
SPEAKER_01: But like.
39:04
SPEAKER_01: is the secret out now that doubts about
39:09
SPEAKER_01: Biden's fitness to be candidate as opposed to president are like widely held,
39:14
SPEAKER_01: even if people weren't willing to articulate them.
39:17
SPEAKER_01: And what I did during the debate when I was like trying to not look at the screen
39:22
SPEAKER_01: was I'd like I would like poke into the Twitter feeds of people who were kind of
39:28
SPEAKER_01: like Ezra was stupid.
39:30
SPEAKER_01: People who say he should drop out are stupid.
39:33
SPEAKER_01: You know, like people underestimate Joe Biden.
39:37
SPEAKER_01: Joe Biden's got this.
39:39
SPEAKER_01: just to see what they were saying in like,
39:42
SPEAKER_01: as they were watching,
39:43
SPEAKER_01: you know,
39:43
SPEAKER_01: and I'm talking about like friends of ours,
39:45
SPEAKER_01: like Josh Marshall or the,
39:50
SPEAKER_01: my former colleagues at crooked media or Simon Rosenberg or whatever,
39:53
SPEAKER_01: like just people in that,
39:55
SPEAKER_01: in that sphere of liberal politics where,
39:58
SPEAKER_01: where Ezra was like crazy for having put that out there or whatever.
40:05
SPEAKER_01: And like, they were just not talking about the debate.
40:07
SPEAKER_01: And I feel like their silence spoke volumes.
40:09
SPEAKER_01: Like they were, there was no good spin to put on it.
40:14
SPEAKER_01: And the shine came off and they were grappling,
40:18
SPEAKER_01: I imagine,
40:19
SPEAKER_01: with the fact that they were going to have to readdress this question that they
40:23
SPEAKER_01: thought that they had put to bed.
40:25
SPEAKER_01: And that's where I am.
40:26
SPEAKER_01: And like,
40:28
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
40:28
SPEAKER_01: I've always thought there might be this moment where we'd have to like entertain
40:33
SPEAKER_01: this question seriously.
40:34
SPEAKER_01: And that's where I am.
40:35
SPEAKER_01: I think if I woke up tomorrow and there was a release from the White House,
40:44
SPEAKER_01: Biden to make remarks from the briefing room or from the Oval Office at 2 p.m.,
40:48
SPEAKER_01: and then the leak came out that he was going to say he's going to suspend his
40:53
SPEAKER_01: candidacy for president and endorse Kamala Harris or whoever else,
40:57
SPEAKER_01: I'm at the point now where I would feel relieved.
41:01
SPEAKER_01: And I...
41:03
SPEAKER_01: I think that people who weren't willing to talk about this before are trying to...
41:12
SPEAKER_01: I think they're trying to talk themselves out of just agreeing it would be a relief.
41:21
SPEAKER_01: But I don't see how...
41:25
SPEAKER_01: how there's any other way to spin it after that.
41:27
SPEAKER_01: There's five months left in the campaign.
41:29
SPEAKER_01: There's one more debate.
41:31
SPEAKER_01: I don't really want to watch another debate after this one.
41:34
SPEAKER_01: And there's like just very little opportunity for Biden to,
41:40
SPEAKER_01: to prove to people that that was a,
41:43
SPEAKER_01: that I had a cold or whatever,
41:45
SPEAKER_01: you know,
41:45
SPEAKER_01: like whatever the,
41:46
SPEAKER_01: the,
41:46
SPEAKER_01: the party line is going to be.
41:49
SPEAKER_01: I think he just probably, like, people lost faith in him irretrievably.
41:54
SPEAKER_01: And when that's the case,
41:56
SPEAKER_01: and it's not Mitt Romney but Donald Trump on the Republican ticket,
42:02
SPEAKER_01: you've got to yield to somebody better.
42:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
42:09
SPEAKER_00: I think that that's right.
42:13
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's still a good amount of, like,
42:19
SPEAKER_00: bandwagon circling you know and one thing that's that's like challenging is that
42:28
SPEAKER_00: You know,
42:28
SPEAKER_00: it's like you try to step out there even slightly on like,
42:31
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
42:32
SPEAKER_00: I just did this,
42:33
SPEAKER_00: you know,
42:33
SPEAKER_00: I saw it on Twitter.
42:34
SPEAKER_00: Right.
42:34
SPEAKER_00: And so you immediately get like nine billion people be like, great luck spinning, Maddie.
42:39
SPEAKER_00: Like he's obviously senile and wildly unquipped, unequipped for the presidency.
42:44
SPEAKER_00: Right.
42:44
SPEAKER_00: And so now I'm like,
42:46
SPEAKER_00: I'm now back into defensiveness and be like,
42:48
SPEAKER_00: I don't know,
42:49
SPEAKER_00: guys,
42:49
SPEAKER_00: like I don't actually think he's wildly unfit for the presidency.
42:52
SPEAKER_00: presidency.
42:53
SPEAKER_00: Um,
42:54
SPEAKER_00: like everything that Biden has ever done as president that I've disagreed with is
42:59
SPEAKER_00: applicable a hundred percent in terms of like some,
43:03
SPEAKER_00: uh,
43:03
SPEAKER_00: lefty nonprofit institution that I don't like,
43:06
SPEAKER_00: uh,
43:07
SPEAKER_00: really wanted him to do it.
43:08
SPEAKER_00: And so he did.
43:09
SPEAKER_00: Um, um,
43:12
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, I don't know.
43:13
SPEAKER_00: But he's going to lose the election, so they should nominate somebody else.
43:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
43:19
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so check it out.
43:21
SPEAKER_01: Matt is off to Europe for next week.
43:27
SPEAKER_01: The plan was to go dark.
43:29
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to, without fully committing to...
43:32
SPEAKER_01: going light to, to like doing an episode next week.
43:36
SPEAKER_01: Um, a panel of top gerontologists.
43:38
SPEAKER_00: I just,
43:38
SPEAKER_00: I just,
43:39
SPEAKER_01: I just,
43:39
SPEAKER_01: I do want,
43:40
SPEAKER_01: I like,
43:40
SPEAKER_01: this was enough of a,
43:42
SPEAKER_01: if it had been a wash or if Biden had won,
43:44
SPEAKER_01: we'd be,
43:45
SPEAKER_01: we'd be dark next week.
43:47
SPEAKER_01: Uh,
43:48
SPEAKER_01: we might,
43:48
SPEAKER_01: we might not be because I do think that this was significant enough of a Biden
43:52
SPEAKER_01: under performance that news is going to move very quickly.
43:57
SPEAKER_01: And we don't want to leave you guys, uh,
44:00
SPEAKER_01: without some thoughts on where things are headed, given that situation.
44:04
SPEAKER_00: So stay tuned.
44:06
SPEAKER_00: We'll have Portuguese Prime Minister Luiz Montenegro.
44:11
SPEAKER_00: Producer Mike has chatted to me, and on a positive, and it's just like, I don't have one, buddy.
44:17
SPEAKER_00: No, okay, wait, wait.
44:19
SPEAKER_00: I do want to end on a positive, though.
44:20
SPEAKER_00: Okay, all right.
44:21
SPEAKER_01: You do it, and then that's the last line because we're 45 minutes.
44:23
SPEAKER_00: So in most countries,
44:25
SPEAKER_00: like in a parliamentary country,
44:26
SPEAKER_00: totally separate from age stuff,
44:28
SPEAKER_00: just like if you had an unpopular incumbent running against a like cripplingly
44:34
SPEAKER_00: flawed opponent,
44:36
SPEAKER_00: just like the natural thing would be to just like swap in the arbitrary different leader.
44:41
SPEAKER_00: And like lots of people have done this in different –
44:44
SPEAKER_00: countries that have parliamentary democracies all the time.
44:46
SPEAKER_00: And it often works quite well.
44:49
SPEAKER_00: Just bring some random person in who wasn't literally in office during the things
44:54
SPEAKER_00: that made people unpopular.
44:56
SPEAKER_00: You can't do that, quote unquote, can't do that in the American system for various reasons.
45:01
SPEAKER_00: To an extent,
45:03
SPEAKER_00: Biden just totally fucking up a debate is a pretext for doing what really would
45:09
SPEAKER_00: have been optimal
45:11
SPEAKER_00: anyway, just arbitrarily cycle out the unpopular incumbent.
45:17
SPEAKER_00: Ideally, as everyone agrees, in favor of some popular swing state governor, that's just better.
45:24
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
45:25
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
45:26
SPEAKER_00: I'm pessimistic,
45:28
SPEAKER_00: but also if Democrats do the right thing here and we emerge with the ticket of
45:34
SPEAKER_00: Gretchen Whitmer and Pete Buttigieg,
45:37
SPEAKER_00: that's just going to leave everybody not in a stronger position than from these
45:41
SPEAKER_00: dark days here,
45:42
SPEAKER_00: but just in a stronger position than any incumbent who had weathered the
45:47
SPEAKER_00: inflationary storm of 2022 could possibly be in.
45:50
SPEAKER_00: Because you could just have someone who wasn't responsible for that who's just like,
45:54
SPEAKER_00: Donald Trump's a fucking shithead who's going to wreck America.
45:58
SPEAKER_01: I want to speak for the probably 60 million people who are going to vote for Joe Biden no matter what.
46:03
SPEAKER_01: I would vote for a sprouting onion over Donald Trump.
46:06
SPEAKER_00: There's serious constitutional problems with the onion.
46:10
SPEAKER_00: Don't run an onion.
46:12
SPEAKER_01: It'd just have to be a 35-year-old onion.
46:14
SPEAKER_01: Lots of sprouting.
46:15
SPEAKER_01: What I mean is...
46:17
SPEAKER_01: It's not like we're owed anything because we're simple.
46:19
SPEAKER_01: Like we we're just going to like vote D down the ticket because the Republicans are who they are.
46:27
SPEAKER_01: But if you I think that there is three,
46:29
SPEAKER_01: four or five percent in polling that you would get from a candidate that doesn't
46:35
SPEAKER_01: shuffle because they have arthritis in their 81 year old broken foot and a
46:40
SPEAKER_01: candidate who you trust to be able to parry with the press and with the Republican
46:46
SPEAKER_01: nominee candidate.
46:47
SPEAKER_01: Nimbly good rhetoric,
46:49
SPEAKER_01: like so much of my political anxiety stems from worrying that Joe Biden is going to
46:57
SPEAKER_01: fuck something up.
46:58
SPEAKER_01: And then tonight, of course, it happened.
47:01
SPEAKER_01: And and like.
47:04
SPEAKER_01: It's like not everything in the world,
47:07
SPEAKER_01: but it's something to offer to the people who are going to do the work to get – to
47:12
SPEAKER_01: try to beat Trump to say we are going to give you a nominee who's not going to make
47:16
SPEAKER_01: you age 20 years between now and November because you're so stressed out about it.
47:22
SPEAKER_01: And I just think that it would like –
47:25
SPEAKER_01: good feeling would emerge.
47:26
SPEAKER_01: You know, people would just feel a sense of relief, like I was saying before.
47:31
SPEAKER_01: And, like, I think that hopefully, like, maybe we can look forward to that.
47:34
SPEAKER_01: That would be a good outcome.
47:35
SPEAKER_00: You're right.
47:36
SPEAKER_00: You're right.
47:36
SPEAKER_00: Let's look forward to the relief.
47:38
SPEAKER_00: Admit to yourselves that instead of,
47:41
SPEAKER_00: like,
47:41
SPEAKER_00: if you being awkwardly put on the spot and needing to answer the question is stressful,
47:46
SPEAKER_00: but that,
47:46
SPEAKER_00: like,
47:46
SPEAKER_00: if Joe Biden just did the right thing tomorrow,
47:49
SPEAKER_00: like,
47:49
SPEAKER_00: you would feel better.
47:50
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
47:52
SPEAKER_01: All right, folks.
47:53
SPEAKER_01: That was a...
47:54
SPEAKER_01: Hell of a night.
47:56
SPEAKER_01: Politics is a Matt Iglesias, Brian Boitler joint.
47:59
SPEAKER_01: And thanks to producer Mike for producing this late episode and all of our episodes.
48:04
SPEAKER_01: We will catch you either next week or else definitely the week after that.
48:09
SPEAKER_01: Goodbye.
48:09
SPEAKER_01: Bye.