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See Ya Later, Validator · Politix

0:00
SPEAKER_01: Tim Walls cornered JD Vance with that question about like,
0:04
SPEAKER_01: will you admit that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election?
0:06
SPEAKER_01: Vance wouldn't do it.
0:07
SPEAKER_01: And so the Sunday show people,
0:09
SPEAKER_01: they went and they asked Vance again,
0:12
SPEAKER_01: Tom Cotton,
0:14
SPEAKER_01: Mike Johnson,
0:15
SPEAKER_01: the same question,
0:16
SPEAKER_01: and they all flunked it.
0:17
SPEAKER_01: And then Liz Cheney comes along and is like, this is why I'm supporting Kamala Harris.
0:22
SPEAKER_01: And it's like, that's good.
0:28
SPEAKER_01: Hey, everyone.
0:28
SPEAKER_01: You're listening to a free preview of the Politics Podcast.
0:32
SPEAKER_01: This week,
0:33
SPEAKER_01: Matt and I will talk about Republicans for Kamala,
0:36
SPEAKER_01: the backlash on the left to Republicans for Kamala,
0:40
SPEAKER_01: whether there's enough Republicans for Kamala to box out the far right,
0:45
SPEAKER_01: and what all of this has to do with the response to Hurricane Helene and with the
0:50
SPEAKER_01: revival of January 6 as a major campaign theme.
0:54
SPEAKER_01: I hope you enjoy the conversation.
0:56
SPEAKER_01: And if you want to hear the whole thing, you can upgrade your subscription to paid at politics.fm.
1:00
SPEAKER_01: Hey, everyone.
1:06
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Politics Podcast.
1:07
SPEAKER_01: I'm Brian Boitler.
1:08
SPEAKER_01: I'm Matthew Iglesias.
1:10
SPEAKER_01: So I don't know exactly to what extent these things are connected.
1:14
SPEAKER_01: But over the past week or so, I think maybe starting around the vice presidential debate.
1:18
SPEAKER_01: It's all connected, Brian.
1:20
SPEAKER_01: I guess so.
1:20
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I need to get my corkboard and red string out.
1:22
SPEAKER_00: There's no coincidence out there.
1:26
SPEAKER_01: Joe Biden's making weather happen.
1:29
SPEAKER_01: So starting around the vice presidential debate is when I peg it too,
1:32
SPEAKER_01: but maybe it was a little before that.
1:34
SPEAKER_01: The people who are most active in Democratic politics,
1:37
SPEAKER_01: progressive politics,
1:38
SPEAKER_01: have seemed a little gloomier or more anxious or something than any data suggests
1:44
SPEAKER_01: they should be.
1:45
SPEAKER_01: And the one thing it's definitely coincided with
1:49
SPEAKER_01: It's one that the VP debate itself,
1:51
SPEAKER_01: but more broadly,
1:52
SPEAKER_01: an increasing emphasis on the Harris campaign's part to court center-right voters
1:59
SPEAKER_01: and center-right influencers and validators to sort of coincide with early voting
2:05
SPEAKER_01: and a recognition that this is the home stretch of the election.
2:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
2:10
SPEAKER_01: I think that what she's doing makes a fair amount of sense given the context.
2:14
SPEAKER_01: And I'm not even certain if it explains the sort of vibe shift that I feel like
2:19
SPEAKER_01: I've detected and other people have written about too.
2:22
SPEAKER_01: But it is happening.
2:24
SPEAKER_01: And so we want to talk about the significance of it, if there is any.
2:29
SPEAKER_00: Yes, we do.
2:30
SPEAKER_00: I mean...
2:33
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's been a tough one, right?
2:34
SPEAKER_00: Because I feel like part of the psychology of American liberalism is that people
2:40
SPEAKER_00: feel strongly that they,
2:43
SPEAKER_00: in some sense,
2:44
SPEAKER_00: should be beating Trump by huge margins.
2:50
SPEAKER_00: And so just a couple of days of no news in the election leads to this incredible, ah,
2:58
SPEAKER_00: like Trump's got us, you know, kind of sentiment.
3:02
SPEAKER_01: It's what we said before about how like when Harris isn't making news that's beneficial to her,
3:07
SPEAKER_01: or harmful to Trump.
3:09
SPEAKER_01: The old,
3:10
SPEAKER_01: you know,
3:11
SPEAKER_01: sort of Biden-era doomerism in the news seeps in and everyone just kind of gets,
3:15
SPEAKER_01: everyone who isn't Trump or supportive of him gets a little weird about it.
3:20
SPEAKER_00: Well,
3:20
SPEAKER_00: and I asked you,
3:21
SPEAKER_00: so it was like three days with like no real polls and like most of the news was
3:24
SPEAKER_00: about hurricanes.
3:26
SPEAKER_00: And suddenly I saw people like tweeting again, like left-wing people, like Harris has no agenda.
3:31
SPEAKER_00: And it's like, you know, I don't know.
3:33
SPEAKER_00: She has, it's like the same agenda.
3:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
3:35
SPEAKER_00: that Democrats have just had this whole time, right?
3:38
SPEAKER_00: You know, and it's the same agenda she had when she had brat memes and the vibes were good.
3:45
SPEAKER_00: The news cycle just, like, shifted to some other things for a little bit.
3:49
SPEAKER_00: I also think...
3:49
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
3:50
SPEAKER_01: I want to confess,
3:50
SPEAKER_01: like,
3:51
SPEAKER_01: on my own part,
3:52
SPEAKER_01: and I remain,
3:53
SPEAKER_01: like,
3:53
SPEAKER_01: a little disturbed by this,
3:54
SPEAKER_01: is that,
3:54
SPEAKER_01: like,
3:54
SPEAKER_01: Donald Trump,
3:55
SPEAKER_01: and we're going to talk about the hurricane on the other half of this conversation,
3:59
SPEAKER_01: but,
4:00
SPEAKER_01: like,
4:00
SPEAKER_01: the hurricane hit,
4:01
SPEAKER_01: obviously,
4:02
SPEAKER_01: much more devastating than I think
4:05
SPEAKER_01: amateur meteorologists like me were expecting.
4:07
SPEAKER_01: Cause we didn't, I didn't think it was gonna like devastate Appalachia, like inland Appalachia.
4:14
SPEAKER_01: Um, but, uh,
4:16
SPEAKER_01: But the Democrats seemed very surprised and unprepared for what I understood as
4:23
SPEAKER_01: soon as I saw pictures of the damage,
4:26
SPEAKER_01: which is that Trump was going to come in and make propaganda happen around this.
4:31
SPEAKER_01: And that unsettled me.
4:33
SPEAKER_01: And as it happens, I don't think that the propaganda has had any effect on the race.
4:38
SPEAKER_01: And he's so clumsy about it and opportunistic about it that I think it could actually –
4:45
SPEAKER_01: backfire against him.
4:47
SPEAKER_01: But when that was the news, like my own feeling about how well things were going took a big turn.
4:53
SPEAKER_01: And so that could be it as much as, you know, campaigning with Liz Cheney or anything.
4:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, I think that, I think that, I think that progressives are a little like overkeyed
5:08
SPEAKER_00: to um trump's ability to like set the news agenda in slightly weird ways um or like
5:20
SPEAKER_00: underrate the fact that like democrats also do this sometimes i mean they didn't do
5:23
SPEAKER_00: it about the hurricane because i don't think i i don't think they saw a reason to
5:29
SPEAKER_00: necessarily um but you know like um
5:34
SPEAKER_00: You can,
5:35
SPEAKER_00: if prominent politicians all start saying something ridiculous,
5:39
SPEAKER_00: they can definitely get a majority of their base to repeat the ridiculous thing
5:45
SPEAKER_00: that they said.
5:46
SPEAKER_00: And then you'll have other people, you know, refuting it.
5:49
SPEAKER_00: And it's sort of just a question of like, is that constructive or isn't it?
5:58
SPEAKER_00: you know,
5:58
SPEAKER_00: based on like what,
5:59
SPEAKER_00: what it is,
6:00
SPEAKER_00: what it says,
6:00
SPEAKER_00: I got some readers got some questions for me about it.
6:03
SPEAKER_00: It's like, what do we do to like restore the credibility?
6:06
SPEAKER_00: But, you know, um,
6:10
SPEAKER_00: When George W.
6:11
SPEAKER_00: Bush was president and a hurricane devastated the city of New Orleans,
6:16
SPEAKER_00: and I think there were some very genuine flaws in the disaster response that the
6:20
SPEAKER_00: Bush administration mounted,
6:22
SPEAKER_00: I heard from a lot of,
6:24
SPEAKER_00: you know,
6:24
SPEAKER_00: like old heads in the neighborhood,
6:27
SPEAKER_00: you know,
6:27
SPEAKER_00: at Ooze and Oz and at the barbershop,
6:30
SPEAKER_00: like totally deranged conspiracy theories about Bush and Katrina and
6:36
SPEAKER_00: If Chuck Schumer,
6:39
SPEAKER_00: Harry Reid,
6:39
SPEAKER_00: I guess,
6:40
SPEAKER_00: would have been the guy at the time,
6:41
SPEAKER_00: if he had wanted to fan the flames of that and be like,
6:46
SPEAKER_00: yes,
6:46
SPEAKER_00: George W.
6:47
SPEAKER_00: Bush deliberately dynamited the levees to flood the Lower Ninth Ward and spare the
6:52
SPEAKER_00: white neighborhoods of New Orleans.
6:54
SPEAKER_00: Like he could have done that.
6:55
SPEAKER_00: Like people were primed to believe it.
6:57
SPEAKER_00: Some people thought that without prominent thought leaders doing it.
7:02
SPEAKER_00: But like Schumer didn't do that.
7:04
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, Harry Reid.
7:05
SPEAKER_00: Harry Reid was Democratic leader at that time.
7:07
SPEAKER_00: Schumer was very important, though.
7:09
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
7:09
SPEAKER_00: Neither of them did it.
7:11
SPEAKER_00: Neither in part because they're high minded, but also like it would have been stupid.
7:15
SPEAKER_00: There's no point in that.
7:18
SPEAKER_00: Chuck Schumer did raise a huge demagogic stink about Dubai ports world later that year,
7:25
SPEAKER_00: which is just to show it's not like he doesn't know how to do that.
7:31
SPEAKER_00: He just thought it was advantageous to do it about Arab ownership of ports and not about
7:37
SPEAKER_00: hurricane response well he also had but he had real actual failings like to work
7:43
SPEAKER_01: with sure yeah there were there were house investigations of the katrina response
7:47
SPEAKER_01: after democrats took over and you know that was like that wasn't like a fake
7:51
SPEAKER_00: failure that was a real failure it was but i mean by the same token i just i always
7:56
SPEAKER_00: feel like you know when you look at the polls right or or the vibes too when you
8:00
SPEAKER_00: look at harris answering questions it's like
8:04
SPEAKER_00: The things that people seem most upset about in the Biden era are like inflation
8:10
SPEAKER_00: and all these asylum seekers.
8:13
SPEAKER_00: And like one reason people are upset about those things is that they actually happened.
8:17
SPEAKER_00: You know, which gives you a stronger argument.
8:20
SPEAKER_00: I feel like it's unnerving as a user of X,
8:26
SPEAKER_00: formerly known as Twitter,
8:27
SPEAKER_00: to see Elon and Trump and like crazy people acting crazy about the hurricanes.
8:33
SPEAKER_00: But like also you got a bunch of Republican elected officials from the impacted
8:37
SPEAKER_00: states being like,
8:39
SPEAKER_00: no,
8:39
SPEAKER_00: that's not true.
8:40
SPEAKER_00: Like things are, you know, so like as a fight to pick,
8:45
SPEAKER_00: For Trump to be arguing with Republican county officials in Western North Carolina
8:52
SPEAKER_00: just actually doesn't strike me as a particularly constructive battle for him.
8:57
SPEAKER_00: It's just a kind of...
9:00
SPEAKER_00: you know, nerviness on his part.
9:03
SPEAKER_01: You can reinterpret it all as he's just desperate to claw back one or two or three and trying shit.
9:08
SPEAKER_01: And it's in his like inimitable fashion,
9:12
SPEAKER_01: like not,
9:13
SPEAKER_01: like it gets a lot of attention,
9:15
SPEAKER_01: but it's not necessarily effective.
9:16
SPEAKER_01: And if you look at it that way, there's like,
9:19
SPEAKER_01: no reason to worry about it politically.
9:20
SPEAKER_01: It's obviously like fucking up in some sense,
9:23
SPEAKER_01: like elements of the recovery effort,
9:25
SPEAKER_01: but let's,
9:26
SPEAKER_01: let's,
9:26
SPEAKER_01: I think we shouldn't shoot our shot on the hurricane.
9:29
SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah.
9:29
SPEAKER_01: Until after the paywall.
9:31
SPEAKER_01: And instead,
9:34
SPEAKER_01: like,
9:34
SPEAKER_01: home in on this question of whether this antsiness is about...
9:39
SPEAKER_01: Like,
9:40
SPEAKER_01: is it about Harris being really solicitous of,
9:44
SPEAKER_01: like,
9:45
SPEAKER_01: former Republicans or anti-Trump Republicans?
9:50
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I think...
9:52
SPEAKER_01: From your perspective,
9:53
SPEAKER_01: most listeners aren't going to be surprised to know that you think this is like savvy,
9:58
SPEAKER_01: late campaign.
9:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, it's okay.
10:01
SPEAKER_01: You know, politicking by Harris.
10:02
SPEAKER_01: I also think that,
10:04
SPEAKER_01: and even though like,
10:05
SPEAKER_01: you know,
10:06
SPEAKER_01: I've seen plenty of left liberal progressive brethren,
10:12
SPEAKER_01: like really kind of annoyed to see Harris with Liz Cheney,
10:17
SPEAKER_01: like asking questions like,
10:19
SPEAKER_01: who's this campaign for?
10:22
SPEAKER_01: Seemingly because it's not focused exclusively on the things that they want it to be focused on.
10:29
SPEAKER_01: But,
10:29
SPEAKER_01: like,
10:30
SPEAKER_01: I also feel like beyond whether this,
10:35
SPEAKER_01: you know,
10:35
SPEAKER_01: kind of like playing for the middle is great politics just as a general rule in a
10:40
SPEAKER_01: two-party democracy,
10:42
SPEAKER_01: like...
10:43
SPEAKER_01: There is credentialed academics who talk about the importance of the center right
10:50
SPEAKER_01: to blocking authoritarian backsliding in democracies.
10:55
SPEAKER_01: And I feel like that is a more fruitful way to dispel
11:03
SPEAKER_01: any progressive agita about Harris, like being cozy with the Cheneys.
11:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
11:08
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
11:08
SPEAKER_00: so this is Stephen Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt wrote a book called How Democracies
11:15
SPEAKER_00: Die that was sort of very,
11:17
SPEAKER_00: you know,
11:18
SPEAKER_00: it's a kind of...
11:19
SPEAKER_00: you know, a highbrow book, but for a popular audience.
11:22
SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of people read it during Trump's presidency.
11:27
SPEAKER_00: They were obviously referencing Trump and, you know, Trump-era threats.
11:33
SPEAKER_00: But their earlier book, you know, which is more academic in nature,
11:38
SPEAKER_00: um is called uh like conservative parties and democracy and you know it's about the
11:47
SPEAKER_00: fact that if you look at political trajectories you know throughout the world right
11:53
SPEAKER_00: it's like how do countries come to be democracies how do democracies get stabilized
11:59
SPEAKER_00: and you know the big difference is that in some places
12:05
SPEAKER_00: conservative social forces,
12:07
SPEAKER_00: which is usually wealthy people,
12:10
SPEAKER_00: especially people whose wealth is tied up in land or natural resources,
12:16
SPEAKER_00: clergy people involved in the locally dominant religion,
12:21
SPEAKER_00: military officers,
12:24
SPEAKER_00: people like that,
12:25
SPEAKER_00: who are the bastions of conservatism in every society.
12:28
SPEAKER_00: sometimes those people are incorporated into a small d democratic political party
12:35
SPEAKER_00: that is like,
12:36
SPEAKER_00: here,
12:37
SPEAKER_00: we've got some ideas to win elections and give people what they want.
12:41
SPEAKER_00: And maybe we can have a pension system for retirees because old people tend to be
12:47
SPEAKER_00: pretty conservative in their opinions,
12:49
SPEAKER_00: but also they need help from the welfare state because they
12:52
SPEAKER_00: can't work.
12:52
SPEAKER_00: And then you have functioning democratic governance.
12:55
SPEAKER_00: And other times,
12:57
SPEAKER_00: we see this time and again in Latin America,
13:01
SPEAKER_00: these kind of conservative social forces say,
13:03
SPEAKER_00: no,
13:03
SPEAKER_00: what we need to do is build a system that
13:07
SPEAKER_00: will not accept defeat,
13:08
SPEAKER_00: will not accept alternation of political power,
13:12
SPEAKER_00: will stage coups if we lose to the left,
13:15
SPEAKER_00: will entrench ourselves in different ways through abuses of the security services.
13:23
SPEAKER_00: And it's interesting.
13:25
SPEAKER_00: I think not as
13:28
SPEAKER_00: popular as a book about how Trump is bad.
13:30
SPEAKER_00: And in some ways,
13:33
SPEAKER_00: a little,
13:33
SPEAKER_00: I think,
13:33
SPEAKER_00: disturbing for people who are on the left,
13:37
SPEAKER_00: because it says that to some extent,
13:39
SPEAKER_00: the fate of these things is out of our hands.
13:42
SPEAKER_00: You know,
13:43
SPEAKER_00: that it's like,
13:45
SPEAKER_00: it's conservative,
13:47
SPEAKER_00: it's the kind of people who are just like,
13:50
SPEAKER_00: not going to become progressives.
13:53
SPEAKER_00: who sort of hold in their hands the future of these things.
13:59
SPEAKER_01: There is a lot of back and forth in the Trump era in particular about to what
14:06
SPEAKER_01: extent is the left to blame for the rise of Hitler or was the German left?
14:12
SPEAKER_01: And to what extent was the center to blame?
14:17
SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
14:19
SPEAKER_01: In that particular context, I think it's a reasonable discussion to have.
14:24
SPEAKER_01: But in a context like ours, I think what you're saying is true is that you can't really map it on neatly.
14:31
SPEAKER_01: And there's a strain of leftist thought that if mainstream Democrats just got
14:38
SPEAKER_01: democratic socialist religion,
14:40
SPEAKER_01: that it would become more popular than Republicans could grapple with and Democrats
14:46
SPEAKER_01: would win.
14:47
SPEAKER_01: elections handily.
14:48
SPEAKER_01: And like, I, I think the evidence for that is slim.
14:51
SPEAKER_01: Um, I simultaneously think that the converse is kind of like not super credible either.
14:57
SPEAKER_01: And that if like,
14:58
SPEAKER_01: like leftists just trim their sails or,
15:03
SPEAKER_01: um,
15:03
SPEAKER_01: if whatever,
15:05
SPEAKER_01: that,
15:05
SPEAKER_01: that,
15:05
SPEAKER_01: that would disempower,
15:07
SPEAKER_01: um,
15:08
SPEAKER_01: the right.
15:08
SPEAKER_01: It's just the, the fact is that, that Trump has built a,
15:13
SPEAKER_01: MAGA and MAGA has 45% of the vote, like pretty steadily.
15:18
SPEAKER_01: And that means that to like put elections away to make,
15:22
SPEAKER_01: you know,
15:23
SPEAKER_01: it's,
15:23
SPEAKER_01: if we had like a perfectly representative system,
15:25
SPEAKER_01: we would call MAGA like a,
15:27
SPEAKER_01: like a sporting tribe,
15:28
SPEAKER_01: but a failure,
15:29
SPEAKER_01: right?
15:29
SPEAKER_01: Like you could,
15:30
SPEAKER_01: you couldn't,
15:30
SPEAKER_01: you'd lose elections like by a,
15:32
SPEAKER_01: by a wide margin,
15:33
SPEAKER_01: every cycle in this system,
15:36
SPEAKER_01: it's good enough for them to win about half of all elections,
15:39
SPEAKER_01: right?
15:40
SPEAKER_01: And so that means you need to peel off votes from further right than where Democrats are, right?
15:50
SPEAKER_01: Like that there is no assemblage of very left people and centrist people that is
15:59
SPEAKER_01: large enough to regularly beat a faction that has 45,
16:04
SPEAKER_01: 46% of the vote laid out the way
16:08
SPEAKER_01: the Trump base is laid out.
16:11
SPEAKER_01: And so that, I mean, that does suck.
16:13
SPEAKER_01: It's, it's like a huge indictment of the American democratic, small D democratic political system.
16:18
SPEAKER_01: But it's like,
16:20
SPEAKER_01: it also like makes what Harris is doing perfectly explicable and nobody's feelings
16:26
SPEAKER_01: have to be heard about it.
16:28
SPEAKER_00: Right.
16:28
SPEAKER_00: Well, but I, you know,
16:32
SPEAKER_00: One of my frustrations with the way Democrats handle things in 2021 is that,
16:41
SPEAKER_00: you know,
16:42
SPEAKER_00: there was this moment of kind of contestation inside Republican circles.
16:48
SPEAKER_00: There were a number of votes to convict Trump in his second impeachment.
16:53
SPEAKER_00: Liz Cheney was still in the House at that point.
16:57
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I...
17:00
SPEAKER_00: I wish that Biden and the Democrats had gone in something of a more kind of like
17:08
SPEAKER_00: Boitlerian direction at that point and really tried to keep the focus on Trump and
17:13
SPEAKER_00: how Trump is bad and how Trump needs to be held accountable for his misdeeds.
17:20
SPEAKER_00: But I think that the only viable way to do that would have been to try to, um,
17:26
SPEAKER_00: Cooperate more with Mitt Romney and Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins,
17:32
SPEAKER_00: you know,
17:33
SPEAKER_00: not because even those people necessarily like move huge quantities of votes,
17:38
SPEAKER_00: but it's like,
17:38
SPEAKER_00: that's how you,
17:41
SPEAKER_00: you know,
17:41
SPEAKER_00: like,
17:41
SPEAKER_00: that's how you'd like signify,
17:43
SPEAKER_00: right,
17:43
SPEAKER_00: that I'm like zeroing in on some specific wrongdoings.
17:48
SPEAKER_00: But there was a lot of desire on the left to,
17:52
SPEAKER_00: I'd want to say,
17:53
SPEAKER_00: do the opposite of focusing in on holding Trump accountable.
17:57
SPEAKER_00: But there was a very steady demand to do,
18:01
SPEAKER_00: you know,
18:01
SPEAKER_00: ambitious,
18:02
SPEAKER_00: very ambitious policy changes on areas that were completely unrelated to the
18:08
SPEAKER_00: questions of,
18:09
SPEAKER_00: like,
18:11
SPEAKER_00: Donald Trump's crimes and things like that,
18:14
SPEAKER_00: which sort of naturally reassembled the Republican party.
18:19
SPEAKER_00: party, you know?
18:20
SPEAKER_00: And so I think it's like,
18:21
SPEAKER_00: it's good for Harris to,
18:23
SPEAKER_00: you know,
18:24
SPEAKER_00: try to get the support that she can from right of center type people.
18:29
SPEAKER_00: She doesn't have access to a time machine,
18:33
SPEAKER_00: you know,
18:33
SPEAKER_00: or anything else that she could do with this,
18:35
SPEAKER_00: but it's...
18:38
SPEAKER_00: you sort of keep making the bet that like,
18:41
SPEAKER_00: if you kind of like give no quarter to center and center right opinion,
18:47
SPEAKER_00: that like Trump's flaws are just bad enough that you're going to get people to vote
18:53
SPEAKER_00: for Democrats,
18:54
SPEAKER_00: to give money to Democrats,
18:56
SPEAKER_00: et cetera,
18:57
SPEAKER_00: et cetera.
18:58
SPEAKER_00: And I think it's like,
19:00
SPEAKER_00: hasn't worked that well,
19:03
SPEAKER_00: you know,
19:03
SPEAKER_00: and is something that I hope will be revisited if Harris is able to win.
19:10
SPEAKER_00: Um,
19:11
SPEAKER_00: and like,
19:12
SPEAKER_00: you know,
19:13
SPEAKER_00: I don't think that means having no governing agenda,
19:16
SPEAKER_00: but,
19:16
SPEAKER_00: but there is just kind of a choice,
19:19
SPEAKER_00: you know,
19:19
SPEAKER_00: it's like,
19:19
SPEAKER_00: what's,
19:19
SPEAKER_00: what's going to define you.
19:21
SPEAKER_01: So I, I, I'm glad that you, uh,
19:26
SPEAKER_01: you like view this through the lens that I view it through,
19:29
SPEAKER_01: which is that like Trump accountability after January 6th was,
19:34
SPEAKER_01: uh,
19:34
SPEAKER_01: was like paramount.
19:35
SPEAKER_01: It was necessary and Democrats didn't pursue it.
19:39
SPEAKER_01: It's not that they didn't pursue it, but they didn't pursue it well.
19:41
SPEAKER_01: And it was also something that they wanted to get out of the way.
19:44
SPEAKER_00: They didn't prioritize.
19:46
SPEAKER_01: Well, they did.
19:47
SPEAKER_01: They just wanted it out of the way.
19:49
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
19:50
SPEAKER_01: Right.
19:50
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
19:50
SPEAKER_01: And, and where I, I think the only, the only, uh,
19:56
SPEAKER_01: degree to which I differ with you on this.
19:58
SPEAKER_01: I would have loved it if after the impeachment or just even during the impeachment,
20:04
SPEAKER_01: but particularly when it got to the Senate and there was a trial,
20:08
SPEAKER_01: if the Democratic line on this had been a little bit more like,
20:11
SPEAKER_01: look,
20:11
SPEAKER_01: you guys are either going to join us in banning Donald Trump from seeking federal
20:18
SPEAKER_01: office ever again,
20:19
SPEAKER_01: or we're going to make accountability for January 6th
20:23
SPEAKER_01: and the involvement of people in your party like central to what we do because it's
20:27
SPEAKER_01: just not an acceptable state of affairs that we let this go he harangues you you
20:33
SPEAKER_01: guys run back to his defense and then we have another coup in four years we are not
20:37
SPEAKER_01: going to accept that and so you decide do you want to do it the easy way or the
20:41
SPEAKER_01: hard way like i think that would have been a smart approach it would have been like
20:44
SPEAKER_01: also you know like a an approach of like people who have like a like a
20:51
SPEAKER_01: value standing up for themselves both as like a matter of internal dignity and as
20:55
SPEAKER_01: like a political face like that's the face they put on um i i really pegged the
21:00
SPEAKER_01: failure though because that's like tough right a legislature it's meant to
21:05
SPEAKER_01: legislate and what are you saying that like if if trump doesn't get convicted in
21:09
SPEAKER_01: this impeachment trial we're not going to pass any bills we're just going to do a
21:12
SPEAKER_01: bunch of like show show trials in the in committees like i what i what i i
21:17
SPEAKER_01: What I really remember and what I really remember thinking at the time was a bad
21:21
SPEAKER_01: sign was the actions that Biden took during the transition and supporting reporting
21:28
SPEAKER_01: to the effect that he didn't want the Trump show to dominate his president.
21:32
SPEAKER_01: He wanted to move on.
21:34
SPEAKER_01: You could see this after the January 5th special elections when Democrats realized
21:40
SPEAKER_01: they were going to have a governing trifecta.
21:43
SPEAKER_01: Biden announced as soon as the results were known,
21:46
SPEAKER_01: basically,
21:47
SPEAKER_01: that his attorney general nominee was going to be Merrick Garland.
21:50
SPEAKER_01: Once he knew he had a majority in the Senate, he was like, I want that district circuit court, D.C.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: Circuit Court of Appeals seat open.
22:03
SPEAKER_01: I want to fill it, and then I'll give Merrick Garland as a reward the seat.
22:08
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
22:09
SPEAKER_01: Make him attorney general.
22:10
SPEAKER_01: And like,
22:11
SPEAKER_01: it was,
22:12
SPEAKER_01: I think,
22:12
SPEAKER_01: pretty evident already that that meant it was going to be like a careful plotting.
22:18
SPEAKER_00: Yes, I hear you.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: But like, here's the thing I've been trying to get you to agree with me on for years about this, right?
22:27
SPEAKER_00: Which is that like,
22:32
SPEAKER_00: The easy answer,
22:34
SPEAKER_00: whenever left-wing people get together,
22:36
SPEAKER_00: right,
22:37
SPEAKER_00: everybody has their thing that they're most fired up about.
22:40
SPEAKER_00: And so you're like, I wish Democrats were more hardcore on my thing.
22:44
SPEAKER_00: And then somebody else is like, I wish Democrats were more hardcore on my thing.
22:48
SPEAKER_00: And then you can all just agree that like Democrats should be more hardcore on all
22:51
SPEAKER_00: the things all the time.
22:53
SPEAKER_00: But that doesn't work as a politics.
22:58
SPEAKER_00: You can't just be Trump accountability maxing,
23:03
SPEAKER_00: but also totally overturning a generation of antitrust doctrine,
23:09
SPEAKER_00: and also remaking the childcare sector,
23:12
SPEAKER_00: and also all these things at once.
23:15
SPEAKER_00: And so it is true that
23:19
SPEAKER_00: that you could see that Biden had this Obama-like strain of like page turning.
23:26
SPEAKER_00: And then Merrick Garland is this kind of like soft guy.
23:29
SPEAKER_00: And it was sort of like a poor pick.
23:32
SPEAKER_00: And like, I agree with all of that.
23:34
SPEAKER_00: Like I,
23:35
SPEAKER_00: if I was to pick a faction of like,
23:38
SPEAKER_00: Democrats should be more hardcore about X,
23:41
SPEAKER_00: the thing I want Democrats to be more hardcore about is Trump accountability.
23:45
SPEAKER_00: But that actually means picking fewer fights elsewhere.
23:55
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't think it means that you have to- Looting the shot.
23:57
SPEAKER_01: Look,
23:58
SPEAKER_01: I do agree with you that the Democrats have done a poor job prioritizing on the
24:02
SPEAKER_01: legislative front in particular,
24:04
SPEAKER_01: and it's why it contributed to why the Inflation Reduction Act or the Build Back Better,
24:08
SPEAKER_01: I guess,
24:09
SPEAKER_01: turned into such a dog's breakfast and then eventually had to get thrown out.
24:12
SPEAKER_00: But it's why the mere act of campaigning with Liz Cheney
24:18
SPEAKER_00: generates blowback because Harris didn't give Liz Cheney anything.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: Right.
24:27
SPEAKER_01: That's the key, I think.
24:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but I think you look at the different trajectories of Liz Cheney and, say, Lisa Murkowski, right?
24:38
SPEAKER_00: So Liz Cheney votes to impeach Trump.
24:40
SPEAKER_00: Lisa Murkowski and a number of her Senate colleagues vote to convict Trump.
24:45
SPEAKER_00: But Mitch McConnell, because he's pretty good at his job, he protects his defectors from blowback.
24:53
SPEAKER_00: Whereas Kevin McCarthy is kind of like a weaker grip on the wheel.
24:58
SPEAKER_00: And so there's this massive backlash directed at Liz Cheney.
25:02
SPEAKER_01: Well, and also all the other non-leadership.
25:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
25:05
SPEAKER_01: Republicans who voted, like there were 11 or something of them.
25:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
25:08
SPEAKER_00: And they get hound.
25:09
SPEAKER_00: And so like,
25:10
SPEAKER_00: and then Trump,
25:11
SPEAKER_00: because he's a little bit weird,
25:13
SPEAKER_00: Trump like really tries to purge these House Republicans,
25:18
SPEAKER_00: but seems to like forget.
25:20
SPEAKER_00: That Susan Collins and Mitt Romney and some of these other people voted against him.
25:25
SPEAKER_00: So at any rate, we're now somewhat years later.
25:29
SPEAKER_00: We're like, because Liz Cheney was kicked out of the Republican Party, she's now like, you know what?
25:35
SPEAKER_00: Kamala Harris is a good person and you should vote for her.
25:39
SPEAKER_00: Whereas Romney and Murkowski and Susan Collins are all doing this weird thing where
25:44
SPEAKER_00: they're like,
25:45
SPEAKER_00: I don't know about that Donald Trump guy.
25:47
SPEAKER_00: It's hard to say who I'm going to vote for in the presidential election.
25:51
SPEAKER_00: Um, and, like, that's not good.
25:53
SPEAKER_00: I think that that does not speak well of them as individuals,
25:56
SPEAKER_00: that,
25:56
SPEAKER_00: like,
25:57
SPEAKER_00: Liz Cheney is making the more morally serious choice.
26:00
SPEAKER_00: But she also was forced into that corner.
26:03
SPEAKER_00: And I think it's not just, like, good to campaign
26:08
SPEAKER_00: Liz Cheney, but it would be a good idea.
26:11
SPEAKER_00: It would have been a good idea consistently over a period of years to do a more
26:16
SPEAKER_00: sustained outreach to Trump critics in the Republican Party.
26:23
SPEAKER_00: Not like totally give away the store to them on policy, but at least see what's in the store and
26:32
SPEAKER_00: see what they might be interested in,
26:34
SPEAKER_00: like try to have the conversation,
26:36
SPEAKER_00: not delude yourself into thinking you can turn the page on Trump,
26:42
SPEAKER_00: but to like actually focus on isolating Trump.
26:47
SPEAKER_00: It's weird.
26:47
SPEAKER_00: And the Trumpist threat.
26:49
SPEAKER_01: Because I think that this is what you're talking about.
26:52
SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
26:53
SPEAKER_01: really invokes a kind of politics that Biden is famously much better at than Obama.
26:58
SPEAKER_01: It's really about like palling around with Mitt and like,
27:02
SPEAKER_01: like just,
27:02
SPEAKER_01: you know,
27:03
SPEAKER_01: yes,
27:03
SPEAKER_01: you might want to test him for like policy ideas that aren't in like,
27:08
SPEAKER_01: um,
27:09
SPEAKER_01: um,
27:10
SPEAKER_01: anathema to you but really you just want him to have like a pretty decent feeling
27:14
SPEAKER_01: about you and your judgment and your you know your values right like and that way
27:18
SPEAKER_01: later down the line when it's like look this trump situation is like really putting
27:21
SPEAKER_01: the whole country at risk and i could use your um i could like use your voice out
27:27
SPEAKER_01: there to to just endorse kamala like endorse her because too much is on the line
27:33
SPEAKER_01: right that maybe that might work i'm skeptical that the reason like
27:38
SPEAKER_01: Maybe Mitt Romney's feelings about something like abortion,
27:41
SPEAKER_01: where there really is very little common ground,
27:44
SPEAKER_01: are the reason why he won't endorse a Democrat ever.
27:47
SPEAKER_01: But I don't really think it's like,
27:49
SPEAKER_01: oh,
27:49
SPEAKER_01: well,
27:50
SPEAKER_01: it turns out that the Inflation Reduction Act was too many dollars.
27:55
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I agree that it's not as mechanistic as that.
28:02
SPEAKER_00: But it's also true that you don't...
28:06
SPEAKER_00: Well,
28:06
SPEAKER_00: for one thing,
28:07
SPEAKER_00: I just think there's been this very palpable fear on the left of something like
28:11
SPEAKER_00: that happening.
28:13
SPEAKER_00: I think a really interesting moment of the Biden years is right at the beginning,
28:19
SPEAKER_00: or not quite the beginning.
28:21
SPEAKER_00: As you say, there's January 5th, there's the special elections.
28:25
SPEAKER_00: Biden starts making plans for his trifecta.
28:28
SPEAKER_00: January 6th happens.
28:31
SPEAKER_00: There's chaos, et cetera, et cetera.
28:34
SPEAKER_00: There's a phone briefing that some of Biden's economic team does on what's going to
28:41
SPEAKER_00: become the American rescue plan.
28:44
SPEAKER_00: And I kind of write down in my notebook, it's like, this is an opening bid from the White House.
28:47
SPEAKER_00: Because I'm like, the lesson we all learned from Obama is you got to go in with bigger asks.
28:52
SPEAKER_00: And so they want like $1.8 trillion.
28:54
SPEAKER_00: And then a bunch of Republicans come to the Hill the next day.
28:59
SPEAKER_00: And they're like, how about we do $650 billion?
29:03
SPEAKER_00: And Biden, in a striking move, I think, blows them off.
29:10
SPEAKER_00: you know, and says, like, nope, we're doing the 1.8.
29:15
SPEAKER_00: And then a further surprising thing is that,
29:18
SPEAKER_00: like,
29:19
SPEAKER_00: I thought at the time that what was going to happen was not,
29:24
SPEAKER_00: like,
29:24
SPEAKER_00: one moderate Senate Democrat,
29:26
SPEAKER_00: but,
29:26
SPEAKER_00: like,
29:27
SPEAKER_00: one or two dozen moderate Senate Democrats were going to be like,
29:30
SPEAKER_00: whoa,
29:30
SPEAKER_00: there.
29:32
SPEAKER_00: Like, we need to talk with our Republican colleagues about this.
29:36
SPEAKER_00: But they didn't, including Joe Manchin and Kristen Sinema.
29:39
SPEAKER_00: They were like, nope, we're going with the reconciliation bill.
29:43
SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
29:46
SPEAKER_00: It's an interesting choice.
29:48
SPEAKER_00: And I know some people who think that that is contributed to inflation.
29:53
SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure that totally holds up, but it set the tone.
29:59
SPEAKER_00: And it set the tone in a way that progressives were really excited about.
30:04
SPEAKER_00: People forget, but before Gaza, before Sleepy Joe, whatever, there was this span of like,
30:13
SPEAKER_00: you know,
30:15
SPEAKER_00: Biden's going to be like the new LBJ,
30:18
SPEAKER_00: but they meant in the,
30:19
SPEAKER_00: not in the war sense,
30:20
SPEAKER_00: in the domestic sense.
30:22
SPEAKER_01: In the great society sense.
30:23
SPEAKER_00: Right.
30:23
SPEAKER_00: Because he was like such a like awesome fuck you to moderate Republicans.
30:27
SPEAKER_00: And it seemed like he'd like gotten over on moderate Democrats.
30:30
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, people will probably debate for generations what the legislative legacy of all that was.
30:38
SPEAKER_00: But I think that it's part of the same choice.
30:42
SPEAKER_00: that you're talking about there, right?
30:44
SPEAKER_00: That like,
30:45
SPEAKER_00: these are two,
30:46
SPEAKER_00: they're two distinct choices to kind of like de-emphasize Trump and to like go like
30:54
SPEAKER_00: balls out with a aggressive legislative agenda,
30:57
SPEAKER_00: but they're happening at the same time.
30:59
SPEAKER_00: And it's like, and a singular vision of like, what is this presidency going to be about?
31:06
SPEAKER_00: And they're both based on the assumption that the Trump phenomenon would somehow burn itself out, right?
31:13
SPEAKER_00: That like the Republican party was going to like self immolate over Trump.
31:18
SPEAKER_00: And so you could focus on, you know, your infrastructure bill.
31:25
SPEAKER_00: And now here we are.
31:26
SPEAKER_00: And like,
31:28
SPEAKER_00: I think the odds of Republicans self-immolating over Trump if he loses a second
31:33
SPEAKER_00: time are definitely higher.
31:37
SPEAKER_00: But still, that's like a fire you want to tend, right?
31:42
SPEAKER_00: Not just assume.
31:44
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
31:45
SPEAKER_00: That Trump's going to go away.
31:46
SPEAKER_00: But to like take this seriously as like the central problem of our time.
31:50
SPEAKER_01: You say you've been trying to get me to like agree with you on this for a long time.
31:53
SPEAKER_01: And like I want to say this,
31:55
SPEAKER_01: that like pretend there was never any Trump or if there was Trump,
31:59
SPEAKER_01: there was no January 6th and you just lost and went away.
32:02
SPEAKER_01: And so now Democrats are like back to governing and.
32:06
SPEAKER_01: Um,
32:07
SPEAKER_01: I,
32:08
SPEAKER_01: I think that the lesson that they learned from Obama's experience with the stimulus was,
32:12
SPEAKER_01: um,
32:12
SPEAKER_01: an important one.
32:13
SPEAKER_01: And I'm kind of glad they did the, the rescue plan the way they did.
32:17
SPEAKER_01: I,
32:17
SPEAKER_01: we can,
32:18
SPEAKER_01: we can talk in another episode about what would have happened if they had done 650 billion,
32:21
SPEAKER_01: would there have been no inflation and a,
32:24
SPEAKER_01: and a more immaculate recovery?
32:26
SPEAKER_01: I'm skeptical,
32:26
SPEAKER_01: but,
32:27
SPEAKER_01: um,
32:27
SPEAKER_01: but that,
32:28
SPEAKER_01: but that when you come in with the ability to govern the way,
32:31
SPEAKER_01: um,
32:31
SPEAKER_01: the way Democrats did is like,
32:35
SPEAKER_01: the point of agreement between us.
32:37
SPEAKER_01: They should survey the United States of America,
32:40
SPEAKER_01: make an assessment of where the greatest need is for policy change and focus on
32:46
SPEAKER_01: those things and not the whole laundry list,
32:49
SPEAKER_01: right?
32:49
SPEAKER_01: Like it was,
32:50
SPEAKER_01: you know,
32:52
SPEAKER_01: Obama,
32:52
SPEAKER_01: when he campaigned in 2008,
32:53
SPEAKER_01: his top issue was climate change,
32:56
SPEAKER_01: then healthcare.
32:56
SPEAKER_01: He happened to come in during a like depression-sized economic collapse and
33:04
SPEAKER_01: And so his aim was like,
33:05
SPEAKER_01: ah,
33:05
SPEAKER_01: I got to get this stimulus out of the way so I can get back to the things that I
33:08
SPEAKER_01: campaigned on.
33:09
SPEAKER_01: And that was weird.
33:10
SPEAKER_01: In hindsight, you get it.
33:12
SPEAKER_01: Presidents want a legacy,
33:13
SPEAKER_01: and it's hard to build a legacy out of a one-time recovery if you don't leave a new
33:21
SPEAKER_01: institutional footprint where you were standing.
33:26
SPEAKER_01: And I think Biden would have –
33:33
SPEAKER_01: his unpopularity would have accumulated more slowly if,
33:38
SPEAKER_01: if he had done things legislatively the way you say,
33:43
SPEAKER_01: right?
33:43
SPEAKER_01: Like what, what does the post, what does post COVID America need to get back on its feet?
33:49
SPEAKER_01: Like, obviously like climate change is a long, like long term problem.
33:54
SPEAKER_01: We should keep chipping away at it, but like where are people like really messed up right now?
33:59
SPEAKER_01: Because we just went through a big trauma and made that the,
34:02
SPEAKER_01: like the central emphasis of his legislative agenda.
34:05
SPEAKER_01: Now,
34:05
SPEAKER_01: if you want to like add January 6th back in,
34:08
SPEAKER_01: like I think that it – that would be totally compatible with an aggressive attorney
34:13
SPEAKER_01: general being like – and the guy who led the coup is going to prison.
34:17
SPEAKER_01: Like we're just –
34:18
SPEAKER_01: Like the first thing coup related that we can charge him with, we're gonna.
34:22
SPEAKER_01: The phone call with Brad Raffensperger, like he's indicted for that, right?
34:27
SPEAKER_01: And then also a different component of the Justice Department can do,
34:32
SPEAKER_01: can like step up antitrust enforcement.
34:34
SPEAKER_01: And then Congress can also,
34:36
SPEAKER_01: like if it's like,
34:37
SPEAKER_01: okay,
34:38
SPEAKER_01: lots of Americans are doing work from home now,
34:40
SPEAKER_01: so let's make that more tolerable.
34:42
SPEAKER_01: The care agenda might fit into that.
34:43
SPEAKER_01: Okay, like that will be the thing that is the like build back better.
34:47
SPEAKER_01: and not 17 other different priorities.
34:50
SPEAKER_01: And like,
34:51
SPEAKER_01: if that approach makes somebody like Mitt Romney say,
34:57
SPEAKER_01: well,
34:57
SPEAKER_01: now I can't cooperate in,
35:00
SPEAKER_01: in like protecting democracy from Donald Trump.
35:02
SPEAKER_01: Well, then he kind of sucks, you know, like that.
35:04
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
35:05
SPEAKER_00: So I, okay.
35:06
SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, I, I'm going back to my, my Levitsky.
35:10
SPEAKER_00: It's about like, so what's interesting is that, you know,
35:15
SPEAKER_00: Despite whatever I may have said before,
35:20
SPEAKER_00: Romney and Collins,
35:21
SPEAKER_00: Murkowski,
35:21
SPEAKER_00: all those people did,
35:23
SPEAKER_00: in fact,
35:24
SPEAKER_00: vote for the Electoral Count Act.
35:28
SPEAKER_00: And they endorsed non-Trump candidates in the 2024 primaries.
35:34
SPEAKER_00: They were invested in protecting American democracy.
35:40
SPEAKER_00: What they're not doing is endorsing Kamala Harris.
35:44
SPEAKER_00: And I do think that you face a kind of a stark choice between,
35:51
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
35:53
SPEAKER_00: given that Trump is the nominee,
35:55
SPEAKER_00: right?
35:56
SPEAKER_00: Like,
35:58
SPEAKER_00: you can form,
35:59
SPEAKER_00: try to form,
36:01
SPEAKER_00: in a parliamentary system,
36:03
SPEAKER_00: like,
36:04
SPEAKER_00: you could try to form a grand coalition that includes a center-right party to box
36:09
SPEAKER_00: out the far right.
36:12
SPEAKER_00: Or you could form a red-green coalition and just roll the dice on getting the majority.
36:22
SPEAKER_00: And I think at some level,
36:24
SPEAKER_00: you do need to choose because there's a certain level of incompatibility there.
36:31
SPEAKER_00: And I think the concern that leftists would raise about my proposal is like,
36:37
SPEAKER_00: Oh, you know, like you Dems, like you'll just like always just say, well, the next guy's a fascist.
36:43
SPEAKER_00: So we can't do anything about it.
36:45
SPEAKER_00: And that's like, that's not how I feel about it.
36:48
SPEAKER_00: Like,
36:49
SPEAKER_00: Sincerely,
36:50
SPEAKER_00: like I think that if you did what it took to get a lot of Republican endorsements
36:57
SPEAKER_00: in the 2024 cycle and like beat Trump soundly and then like focused post-election
37:06
SPEAKER_00: on legal and political accountability for Trump,
37:10
SPEAKER_00: that like the system would return to equilibrium and you could run in 2028 on,
37:16
SPEAKER_00: it's great that the Republicans nominated like a
37:20
SPEAKER_00: who respects the fundamental principles of electoral democracy.
37:23
SPEAKER_00: It could.
37:24
SPEAKER_00: And his ideas are way too right-wing,
37:26
SPEAKER_00: and you should vote for me because I have a bold agenda for progressive change.
37:30
SPEAKER_00: And I think...
37:33
SPEAKER_01: You know,
37:34
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
37:34
SPEAKER_01: there has been a lot of institutional capture on the right by Trumpists and like and,
37:39
SPEAKER_01: you know,
37:40
SPEAKER_01: like Cheney,
37:41
SPEAKER_01: Liz Cheney,
37:41
SPEAKER_01: I believe.
37:42
SPEAKER_01: I think it was Liz was like, we might need to basically start from scratch.
37:46
SPEAKER_01: Like there's too much rot to root out of of the old.
37:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
37:54
SPEAKER_01: And so that gives me like,
37:55
SPEAKER_01: I think it's possible what you're saying is true,
37:58
SPEAKER_01: especially if Trump loses pretty badly,
38:00
SPEAKER_01: is that Republicans are finally going to be,
38:02
SPEAKER_01: and the billionaires who kind of treat the Republican Party as a loss leader for
38:07
SPEAKER_01: huge tax cuts will be like,
38:09
SPEAKER_01: our investment is not paying off in this guy,
38:10
SPEAKER_01: so we need this party to act differently,
38:14
SPEAKER_01: right?
38:15
SPEAKER_01: It could happen.
38:16
SPEAKER_01: I also think like,
38:19
SPEAKER_01: They don't have the people, but Trump and his successors have the people.
38:24
SPEAKER_01: And so it's going to be an interesting thing to watch if Harris manages to win.
38:29
SPEAKER_01: And the question of how solicitous Democrats are going forward of people like Liz
38:35
SPEAKER_01: Cheney depends on the answer to that question.
38:38
SPEAKER_01: In 2016, I forget who from the Republican Party ended up appearing at Hillary Clinton's convention.
38:50
SPEAKER_01: It might have been, but I remember there was talk at least of having John Kasich.
38:54
SPEAKER_00: Well, it was Kasich who spoke in the 2020 convention.
38:57
SPEAKER_01: Okay, okay, okay.
38:58
SPEAKER_00: He was like the most prominent sort of Republican for Biden.
39:01
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
39:02
SPEAKER_00: And people got mad, you know?
39:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
39:05
SPEAKER_01: And like from the perspective of 2020,
39:07
SPEAKER_01: it doesn't really make much sense because things had gotten quite poorly for the
39:13
SPEAKER_01: previous four years.
39:15
SPEAKER_01: But like in 2016, I remember when-
39:19
SPEAKER_01: fellow progressives would um talk about the the clinton campaign and the coming um
39:25
SPEAKER_01: the coming convention that they were upset that it was so geared towards the sort
39:30
SPEAKER_01: of center center right and at the time i kind of you know it didn't matter that
39:35
SPEAKER_01: much to me and i understand the value of like um independent validators right like
39:42
SPEAKER_01: like it
39:43
SPEAKER_01: You don't want to buy your toothbrush because Oral-B says to buy that toothbrush.
39:47
SPEAKER_01: You want to buy that toothbrush.
39:49
SPEAKER_00: The one 9 out of 10 dentists recommend.
39:50
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
39:51
SPEAKER_01: Right, right, right.
39:51
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
39:53
SPEAKER_01: And so it's just it makes sense as a marketing exercise to have people outside the
39:57
SPEAKER_01: party say you're good,
39:58
SPEAKER_01: right?
39:59
SPEAKER_01: But I remember understanding like,
40:00
SPEAKER_01: okay,
40:01
SPEAKER_01: look,
40:01
SPEAKER_01: we just had this like really brutal primary between Clinton and Sanders.
40:06
SPEAKER_01: And to heal the rift, she should really be focused on appealing –
40:12
SPEAKER_01: left and i i felt sympathy with that idea because i believed that donald trump was
40:18
SPEAKER_01: very likely to lose right so likely to lose that that it just felt excessively risk
40:26
SPEAKER_01: averse and maybe like a bad omen to have the the leadership of the party focused on
40:34
SPEAKER_01: on anti-trump republicans um
40:38
SPEAKER_01: And I don't think that's the case anymore.
40:40
SPEAKER_01: Right.
40:41
SPEAKER_01: Like he went and won the election.
40:42
SPEAKER_01: Um,
40:44
SPEAKER_01: and I don't think he won the election because Hillary Clinton's convention had like a,
40:48
SPEAKER_01: a day of anti like never Trump Republicans talking or whatever it was.
40:52
SPEAKER_01: Right.
40:53
SPEAKER_01: You know,
40:54
SPEAKER_01: he,
40:54
SPEAKER_01: he won the election for a number of reasons,
40:56
SPEAKER_01: but one of them is just that he's got a big enough pool of voters to win an election.
41:02
SPEAKER_01: Um, and if that's the case, then, um,
41:06
SPEAKER_01: you know, the, the, the approach that Harris is taking makes perfect sense.
41:11
SPEAKER_01: And like, I'd be a little bit worried if she wasn't doing it more than the other way around.
41:16
SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah.
41:17
SPEAKER_00: All right.
41:18
SPEAKER_00: So take a break and discuss,
41:21
SPEAKER_00: you know,
41:21
SPEAKER_00: how,
41:22
SPEAKER_00: how all this,
41:22
SPEAKER_00: how Biden could use his hurricane machine more effectively.
41:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
41:27
SPEAKER_01: I mean, let's do it.
41:29
SPEAKER_01: You, but I want you to lead by talking about like how the, the,
41:34
SPEAKER_01: hurricane thing and the Republican validator thing are connected because it's smart.
41:39
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